Nightmare Country

by Marlys Millhiser

  “How about the big wave?”

  “I’ll give you that tidal waves formed by earthquakes start sooner and don’t manifest themselves greatly till they come against land, but it is possible that the beginning of a small, localized tidal wave started and was foiled among coral banks some distance away and returned or swept back to provide that particular experience for you. Little is really known about them at their point of origin, you know. The total blocking out of sunlight is still a mystery also. The sense of a lack of gravity could have been caused by the sudden dropping of the boat off the wave.”

  “Happened before the water went down,” Thad insisted.

  “If it were totally dark, you’d have no way of knowing, really. Remember, science is not meant to provide answers for which there is no proof. But it is indefatigable, and given time, can probably explain most everything. And now that this has been taken proper care of, for the moment at least”—Geoffrey Hindsly set down his glass and stood, in an obvious gesture of dismissal—“I propose to begin my vacation, which is long overdue I might add. What say, Eliseo, is it too late in the day for a spot of fishing, do you think?”

  When all but Eliseo and Hindsly stood outside in the Mayapan’s compound, Martha said, “Am I imagining things or were we just treated to a first-class snow-job?”

  “Didn’t really explain a damn thing, but it sure did sound good.” Harry Rothnel straightened his shoulders and stretched his hands toward the palm fronds and coconuts above them. “I feel better already.”

  “How about you, Doc?” Don scratched at thick curls and squinted at the sun. “Think we been had?”

  “No, I think it was a very straightforward, unbiased, and logical explanation based on a professional study of the evidence at hand, on sound scientific principles, and on knowledge of natural laws inherent in this universe. And if I hadn’t been in that little ‘tragic mishap’ myself, I’d buy it. In fact, I’m thinking of doing so anyway, because I want to feel better, like Harry.”

  Thad pushed against his father’s house, and the net hammock swayed gently. He closed his eyes on the sun glancing off the sea. It was time to make plans. It had been for some time. But it was so easy to let time slip away on Mayan Cay, to relax into lethargy.

  His plans for himself and the future had all been oriented around his family and his practice. Now only the practice was left, and the old plans and dreams no longer related. His goals had once been to save enough to put his son through college, maybe have another child, pay off the house, perhaps start his own clinic, have enough to retire comfortably with Molly, do some traveling. Dull but comfortable goals. They’d already begun to seem a little too dull and comfortable before his family was torn from him. But after, he’d have given anything to get those goals back.

  He lifted the letter again but didn’t read it, just looked at it—notice from the lawyer that his divorce from Molly was final. Thirty-seven years old, and no ties except to a house and a practice, both of which could be disposed of. He could be a veterinarian anywhere. Or something else. Thirty-seven years old, and he didn’t know what he wanted to do. Middle-aged adolescence.…

  Thad Alexander was suddenly skiing down an endless slope in Switzerland with the dream woman. Then they were sipping wine in front of a blazing fire, sitting close, talking. Thad didn’t feel like an outsider.

  That night he found himself wandering through a dark tunnel, and he knew he was dreaming. He had been here before. He was inside the ruined mountain. He felt the presence of others gliding past, wandering aimlessly as he did, like spirits he couldn’t quite see. Could almost hear their vague whisperings. Could almost feel the rush of air as they passed, apparently unable to see him either in the dim passageways.

  Thad wandered a long time, contentedly. There was something here he was meant to find. The passageways were a maze, and he was lost before he started, but knowing he only dreamed, this didn’t matter.

  Then Rafaela’s voice spoke to him out of the dark, sounding like an eerie echo in this hollow mountain. “Thaddeus, come with me. You must wake and get away from this place. An evil one is here. Thaddeus, please, this is Rafaela. We must …”

  The voice seemed to come from everywhere. He moved off into a side tunnel, but he didn’t find Rafaela. Again he felt drawn in a certain direction, and moved toward it, curious as to what was to be revealed to him. Perhaps his goal in life lay before him, where it had been hidden from his conscious mind and would now become apparent in a dream, as was often done in the Bible. Suddenly there was a barrier in front of him—invisible—but his senses warned him just in time. He put his hands out to the cool touch of a series of diamond shapes. Odd that they should feel so firm and still be invisible. Could this be what he was meant to find?

  As he couldn’t pass through the barrier, Thad walked along it, trying to discover what it was by its size. A vast screen or door? To what? It suddenly either came to an end or opened for him to pass through, and the passages continued, one leading off another in no logical pattern.

  Thad sensed the thing for which he looked beckoned him on and guided him along the right corridors. He could feel excitement in the air around him, knew he was growing closer to his destination. Those other wanderers who barely escaped his vision seemed agitated and brushed against him, their movements tugging at his pajama pants.

  The tunnel curved, and there was light ahead. Dull. Metallic. A portion of the rock wall had fallen away, to lie piled on the floor. Above it, about shoulder height, was a jagged crack from which the light shone. That light blinked and then began a gradual flickering that picked up speed as a shiny object on the other side of the wall began to spin even more rapidly, and with a whirring sound that reminded Thad of a cold wind singing through snow-laced pine boughs.

  The smell of lemon intruded on the cave smell of damp and dirt. It grew into a heavier scent that suggested the cloy of gardenia with something spicy added, and finally matured to the pervasiveness of rotting fruit and vegetation.

  Jungle. Thad stood barefoot, facing a wall of jungle vine, his heart thudding with the shock of waking to something so opposite from that which he’d just been living. Part of the vine was wrapped around his shoulders as if it had reached out to thread him into the wall.

  Something prickly crawled with agonizing slowness across his instep, and the skin half-way to his knee prickled an answer. There was a damp squishiness beneath the heel of his other foot.

  Thad shuddered but couldn’t move as the vine along his shoulders stirred and began to slither. It coiled back on itself until an end emerged from the endless vine with white blossoms that carried the sweetly sickening scent. The vine lowered the head of a snake. His stomach lurched.

  He told himself this was just another fellow creature and there was nothing to fear, but his complete disorientation made self-suggestion useless. The snake appeared to notice that this bulky object was capable of movement too, and some strength. It lifted itself back up onto the vine, writhing away into it until snake and vine had become one.

  Thad swallowed back the reaction forcing its way up his throat, and looked about him. He had no idea which way led to San Tomas. He stood there imagining hundreds of tiny biting insects attacking his skin, and listened for the sound of the generator to guide him. Instead, he heard the whirring that had reminded him of wind singing through a winter forest. The sound in his dream. It came from the other side of the wall of vine.

  His vision had been better in the unlighted tunnels of his dream than it was in the moon and shadow reality of the jungle. And the stench of the orchidlike blossoms was overwhelming. But he stepped in closer to the vine and peered through it. He saw patches of things. Of light and of dark. Of a stone building on stepped rises coated with vines and jungle plants. And of Roudan Perdomo wearing his International Harvester hat.

  Whatever lowered itself on him this time was harder than a snake and made his stomach lurch more violently.

  27

  Thad awoke to the
throb of the island’s generator. He sat leaning up against the chain-link fence surrounding the power plant, dried mud and vomit crusted on torn pajama pants. He leaned his head back against the fence and quickly changed his mind. A good portion of his skull was tender and began shooting dartlike pains toward his left eye.

  “Aye, backra, you wanna leetle rum?” A bottle waved in front of his face and then withdrew. “No, maybe you haf too much already, huh? Sleepin’ in the street. Mon, I dun even do that.” Ramael, the fisherman, squatted down in front of him. His eyes traveled over the embarrassing mess Thad had become. “You wan’ help, backra?”

  Thad pulled himself up by the fence and then ran a hand over it. Cool metal diamond shapes like the barrier in his dream. He pushed past the fisherman and headed down the street toward the sea. Staggering along a silent beach until he came to the cemetery, he turned in to the water and walked almost until the end of the cross cut into the seaweed before it was deep enough to swim. The first glimmerings of dawn silhouetted the line of white surf breaking on the reef when he splashed out of the water and onto the cemetery beach, naked and cleansed.

  My Lady growled low and showed him her teeth.

  “Goddamn world,” Thad snarled at the Virgin Mary, and trudged to his father’s house.

  Thad told no one of his sleepwalking dream or of the attack on him. He made flight reservations on Sahsa Airlines for New Orleans, filled out forms to liquidate his father’s bank account, and began sorting through Edward P.’s belongings, deciding what to ship to Anchorage and what to give away to the islanders. He would sign the house over to Lourdes Paz just before he left so that she and the children could be next door to Rafaela. The shed they lived in wasn’t large enough even without Aulalio. His longing grew for the crisp, energizing air of his home, the snappy pace of life there, the satisfying flavor of red meat, the relationships with his patients and their owners.

  But he had to reschedule his time of departure because the one bank in all of San Tomas, the Bank of Nova Scotia, held an extreme version of bankers’ hours. It was open only on Tuesdays. And there was more paperwork to satisfy the government of Belize before Edward P.’s funds and property could be released to Thad. It would be another three weeks, at least, before all was in order.

  He kept a wary eye on Roudan Perdomo and on Stefano Paz. If Roudan had been in front of him, chances were that it had been Stefano who’d hit him from behind. They seemed to wander off toward the generating plant together often. For all he knew, they had some kind of a still in the jungle. Whatever it was, he didn’t care. He was leaving Mayan Cay forever. He was no hero type who had to solve every mystery that came his way.

  He had another strange dream, but awoke to find himself in bed this time, which was fortunate, because he was out of pajamas and had taken to sleeping in the buff again. He’d also taken to carousing far into the night with the boys from L.A. so that he wouldn’t dream, and then sleeping just as far into the day and dreaming anyway.

  In this one he found himself in the dream woman’s apartment and didn’t have to walk through doors. She was there with the heavyset girl, and he listened passively as they argued about going to some party. He watched the dream woman a little sadly, as if saying goodbye to her. She was really having a problem with this girl he assumed to be her daughter, but he could sense the deep ties between them even though they warred, sparred, parried. Even though they existed only in his dreams. Once he left Mayan Cay, Thad hoped never to dream again.

  He made a day trip to the U.S. consulate in Belize City to enlist help in expediting matters with Belmopan. Martha Durwent’s son, Greg junior, arrived to take his mother home. Thad threw a good-bye party for her, Geoffrey Hindsly, and Ralph Weicherding, who were also leaving the next day. It didn’t seem to Thad the party had been over for more than a few hours when he was awakened by a pounding on the door leading to the outer staircase.

  He grabbed a pair of pants and opened the door to a chilly fog and Harry Rothnel. Harry wore a straw tourist hat with a Budweiser hat band, a jacket, and long pants.

  “Need help, Doc. Bodecker’s gone. Walked off in his sleep. He’s been doing it a lot lately, but we’ve always found him before he got far.”

  Thad finished dressing and joined Harry in the cemetery. The fog coming off the sea was almost rain. The tilted tombstones and tumbled sarcophagi looked drippy and eerie. My Lady looked miserable. He couldn’t see the water, but its lapping sounded louder on the mist, and the surf out on the reef roared even though there was no wind on shore. With sight limited and sound magnified, they searched carefully around the buildings of the Mayapan. The echo chamber under the long dock warned of the build-up of heavy seas rolling in to shore even in the lagoon.

  “Don’s been havin’ this same dream over and over, about wandering around in a bunch of tunnels,” Harry said as they walked past the wooden fence that divided the Pazes’ and Edward P.’s portion of sand from the sand street that led directly into the village. “You won’t believe this, but I had the same dream not too long ago … Where you going, Doc?”

  “I think I may know where to find him.” Thad led his companion through a sleeping San Tomas to the power plant. The gate was closed, and all they could see through the chain links was mist. He followed the fence to its end, remembering again the barrier in his dream. When he reached the corner, he headed past it for the jungle behind San Tomas.

  “Oh, Doc, hey, I don’t think we better go in there. Roudan says it’s full ah snakes and sinkholes. Don’d have no reason to go in there.”

  “Reason’s not what’s guiding him now. Look, there’s even a path.” It wasn’t a very good one, strewn with all sorts of deadfall from the bushy trees and the coconut palms. There had once been a coconut plantation on Mayan Cay, and though not native to the island, the palm had taken over beach and jungle interior alike in the years since its introduction.

  The morning fog was thinner here back off the beach, and wisps and strings of it floated from tree branches and palm fronds like gray Spanish moss. It dripped onto their shoes and pants legs from tall grasses and broad-leaved weeds along the trail.

  “We should be looking on the streets of the village and in people’s backyards or along the shore—not in here.” But Harry stayed close behind him. Small hermit crabs lugged their appropriated shell homes across dried coconut husks and flattened weed stalks in an effort to get out of their way. “You may be the best damn doggy gynecologist on all of Mayan Cay, turkey, but you are one hell of a people finder. Now, ah came to you for help …”

  The trail soon ended, or rather diverged off in several tangents.

  “Leave it to a goddamn Yankee. If we are not already lost, we are going to be soon. Now, will you please tell me just why we are here to begin with?”

  Thad didn’t know if these “trails” had been worn by foot travel or water drainage. But he chose the widest and continued on, telling Harry about his own sleepwalking experience. “And I’d been having that same dream about the tunnels, and I think I walked in here. Maybe there’s something in here that attracts dreaming minds.”

  “You know, I’ve been to Grand Cayman, Haiti, San Salvador, Roatán—all pretty exotic places—but I don’t ever remember a place as weird as this one, even disregarding humongous silver things that—”

  “Shhh, listen!”

  The sound of a man sobbing somewhere ahead, and then a shout of outrage and pain.

  “Take back everything I said. That’s ol’ Bodecker, all right. Biggest baby you ever saw,” Harry said disgustedly, and stepped into a puddle that gave way clear to his knee.

  Thad reached a hand to help him out, and hurried in the direction of the sobbing, leaving Harry to limp, curse, and squelch along behind. Don Bodecker stood in front of the vine wall in a pair of Jockey shorts. One side of him was mud-splattered. He turned slowly, eyes wide, rubbing his hands up and down his bare arms.

  “Thank God,” he mumbled when he saw Thad, and rushed to meet him, envelo
ping him in a suffocating bear hug. “Jesus, Doc, how’d I get here? And where’s ‘here’?”

  “Now I’ve seen everything.” Harry appeared on the trail. “Donald Bodecker, you unhand that man. Have you no shame? And you in your underpants!”

  Don let go of Thad and rushed to embrace Harry.

  “This boy needs help bad.” Harry patted his friend’s shoulder and explained to Don that he’d been sleepwalking again. They put Thad’s jacket over his arms and tied Harry’s around his waist.

  “I want you two to do me a favor,” Thad said. “I want you to go with me to the other side of that vine and see what’s there.”

  They followed him reluctantly as he looked for a passage through the vine wall. The blossoms were closed up now, and their opulent fragrance had pleasantly diminished.

  “Keep your eyes open, Bodecker. Last time Doc was here, somebody hit him over the head,” Harry said, and picked up a stick.

  They found an opening along the trunk of a palm where the vine had been hacked away by a machete. The raised tangle of growth on the other side looked more like a steep hill than a little building on raised steps, as Thad had thought when he’d seen the place at night and in pieces through a veil of vines and blossoms. There were even trees growing over the top of it

  “If you’re expectin’ some kind of ancient machinery left over from thousands of years before Christ,” Harry said dryly, “this don’t look like it.”

  Thad moved around to the left of the hill. The fog had lifted into the sky, and now it came back down as rain. They were soaked in seconds. “I didn’t know there were any hills on the island.” Thad had to shout over the clatter of rain on jungle leaves. “From the air it all looks flat.”

  “Probably ’cause of the trees on top. Maybe the green flattens out everything. Come on, Doc, let’s get out of here. Ol’ Don’s chilled.”