by Ian Cook
Then, a few seconds later, a look of sheer terror came over Rebecca’s face, as her eyes seemed to fix on something in the distance.
Her long scream jolted the whole scene. Pablo instantly placed both his hands on the table. The drumming stopped abruptly, and the dancing girl ran back behind the rocks.
Everybody looked at Rebecca in astonishment. She seemed to be staring, petrified, at the rocks behind which the girl had disappeared. A skeletal figure was emerging from behind the rocks and starting to walk straight towards her. Yet nobody else seemed to see it.
At first, it looked like an emaciated corpse. Then she realised the horrific being was nothing less than the living, full-sized embodiment of the grisly wooden figure that the old lady had been holding. Its bones were held together by mahogany coloured skin, which was peeling away in places and hanging loose. There was no nose, only a deep black hole beneath which yellow and brown rotting teeth were bared in a ghoulish grin. The eyes were viscous white spheres, with jet black pupils. A wispy red beard was stuck beneath the jaw-bone, and long earlobes hung down on either side of the face.
As it came closer, she noticed something alive and moving in the base of the rib-cage. She was overwhelmed with revulsion; its stomach was crawling with maggots.
It advanced slowly, but as it came to a halt barely a couple of feet in front of her, still grinning, it stretched out a bony arm towards her, its fingers reaching out to touch her face.
Rebecca screamed again, backing away in terror, and fell sideways, tipping over her chair in a desperate attempt to escape the bony fingers.
Looking around her, she was amazed to find that no one else was affected by the terrible apparition. They were not even looking at it. Instead they were all simply looking at her with a mixture of concern and amazement. Jim leapt to his feet to help her up.
“Rebecca – what’s wrong? What’s going on?”
She looked up at him, her face contorted with fear. It took her a few more seconds to notice that the apparition had disappeared. The islanders were sitting there quietly, as if nothing had happened. Even the old lady sat completely expressionless, with the carving in her lap.
Rebecca looked around, bewildered and visibly trembling. “That horrible thing – what was it? Just hideous! Revolting! So…” she searched for the right word, “vile!” Her face was white. “Where did it go?” she whispered.
Jim grasped her arm, trying to stop her shaking. “What on earth’s the matter, Rebecca? What happened to you?”
“Didn’t you see it? It was right in front of you!” She looked anxiously in turn from Jim to Larry. “A rotten corpse – but it was walking, and full of maggots!” She stared at them, but neither of them looked at all shocked. Just a bit baffled. “But it came right up to me. You must have seen it! It almost touched me. It was right here. Just where you’re standing.”
Then, again, Rebecca’s eyes widened in horror. Looking over Larry’s shoulder towards the rock, she could now see another figure approaching. A man, this time, naked apart from a white loincloth and a headdress of bright red feathers.
Again she began to shriek and tremble. Larry and Jim both grabbed her now, their eyes swiftly scanning the scene for any clue as to what she was looking at.
The new figure walked slowly in front of the islanders, and without stopping or turning, walked silently away into the darkness.
Again, no one else but Rebecca seemed to notice it. Once more, she looked expectantly and questioningly at Jim and Larry.
“There! You must have seen that one? It came out from behind the rock. It was walking right in front of us, and then it just disappeared.”
Jim looked anxiously at Rebecca, turned to Pablo who was shaking his head and then back to Rebecca.
“For God’s sake, you must have seen that one! He walked right past us,” she said, pointing to the other side of the table.
“Who was it, Rebecca?” asked Jim. “What are you talking about? We didn’t see anything. What was it like? Can you tell us what it was like?” He took her hand. “Come and sit down. You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. But there’s nothing to worry about, I promise you.”
“It was definitely a real person,” Rebecca said quietly. “Someone just wearing a loincloth, and a headdress with red feathers.”
It was at this point that her eyes were drawn upwards to the sky.
CHAPTER 27
The heavens over Orongo were glowing with light. Rainbow shades of red and violet were spreading out over half the night sky, breaking into brilliant greens and blues at the edges. The light pulsated, growing stronger, fading slightly and then brightening again.
But this time everyone else was looking too, gazing upwards in silence at the spectacular sky.
Jim looked faintly relieved. “This is okay,” he said reassuringly. “It’s the Southern Lights – the aurora australis. The same sort of thing as the Northern Lights we saw in Orkney. We’ve seen them here a couple of times this week, but nowhere near as dramatic as this. It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?”
“Oh, just fantastic,” groaned Rebecca, still shaking with fear.
“There’s a lot of solar radiation going on at the moment,” said Jim. “That’s why we can see the Southern Lights, even though we’re so far from the Antarctic. It’s extraordinary. But, honestly, nothing to worry about. The Earth’s magnetic field protects us.”
“Never mind about the bloody lights,” said Rebecca. “What about the horrible walking corpse, and the naked man with the headdress?” But it was rapidly dawning on her that Larry and Jim had simply not seen them. Nor, it seemed, had anyone else.
“You look as if you’ve had enough for one night. What about a cup of tea?” asked Larry.
“No thanks,” replied Rebecca, deflated. “I think I’d rather get back to the hotel and lie down. Maybe it’s just me. Too much travelling perhaps. It must be catching up on me.”
Larry looked very concerned. “But are you sure you’re all right? Something happened – do you want to tell us again?”
Rebecca shook her head. “No, I’m okay. Really.”
“I can take you back to your hotel, if you want,” said Pablo.
“Thanks,” Rebecca replied gratefully.
It was only then that she noticed Dr Neferatu was no longer there. “I see Dr Neferatu’s gone.”
“When you got upset he went off without saying a word,” said Pablo. “He was going towards the track. The funny thing is, I don’t know how he was planning to get back to where he’s staying.”
“Perhaps he’d arranged for someone to pick him up,” suggested Jim.
“I don’t even know where he’s staying, otherwise I could check,” said Pablo. “We’ll look out for him on the way back.”
Jim took Rebecca to one side. “Are you really sure you’re okay? Let me take you back to the hotel.”
She thought for a moment. “No, I’d better go back with Pablo. It’s his job to help me, and I wouldn’t want to upset him.”
“It could be because of all this travelling – and this place can be a bit of a culture shock,” Jim said, as he walked with Rebecca to Pablo’s bike. “Could it be something you ate? It’s not the most hygienic place in the world. If you come back tomorrow, you could speak to Señor Nata and his family. They might be able to help. Larry won’t mind if I take a couple of hours off. If you like, I could show you where they carved the moai.”
He held her close as Pablo got on his bike and waited. “Don’t worry,” Jim said. “A good night’s sleep, and you’ll be fine.”
Pablo rode the bike back to the hotel as carefully as he could. He checked everybody they passed, but Dr Neferatu was nowhere to be seen. Parking the bike, Pablo went into the hotel with Rebecca.
As she collected her key from the smiling receptionist, Rebecca turned to Pablo. “I just know everything I saw was for real. And I know it had nothing to do with bad food, or whatever. I know I saw a walking corpse, and I know I actually saw the man wit
h the feather headdress.”
She hoped Pablo, who knew this place better than anyone, could offer some sort of explanation. Instead, his expression simply glazed over.
“Not now. You need to rest,” was all he said.
She moved towards the stairs, but stopped again. “And another thing. There’s something very odd about that Dr Neferatu. I don’t like him at all. He was really weird.”
“What do you mean?” asked Pablo.
“He wouldn’t let go of my hand when Larry introduced me to him. Then he dug his nail right into my hand. It was horrible. And it was after that, that I began to feel so light-headed and weary. It was a bit like having some blood-sucking insect drain your blood.”
Pablo nodded his head. “Odd character. He didn’t even seem to know which day he had arrived. Tuesday or Wednesday, he said.”
“Perhaps he was jet-lagged, too,” replied Rebecca.
“No, not that. What I mean is, there are no LAN flights here on Wednesdays, and the flight on Tuesday was cancelled because of a strike in Santiago.”
Rebecca now felt even more bewildered by the night’s events, and she began to wonder if she was in fact living in a bad dream.
“Tomorrow, we’ll go and talk to Señor Nata and his family,” said Pablo. “I’ll pick you up around nine. Meanwhile, get some rest.”
With that, he shook her hand and strode out of the hotel.
CHAPTER 28
After Rebecca and Pablo had left Orongo, Señor Nata and his family had cleared the place up and disappeared quietly into the night.
A deep silence fell over the camp and a warm breeze stirred, making the gas lamps flicker. Larry looked up at the sky. No trace remained of the aurora, but the moon, now smaller, still shone brightly. He pushed his chair back and put his feet up on the table.
Jim joined him with half a bottle of wine. “I hope Rebecca’s going to be all right,” he said. “I’m beginning to worry about her. I think she was genuinely scared out of her wits by something. What do you think could have happened?”
“I don’t know. I think she really believed she had seen something real, and that something was pretty unpleasant. But no one else seemed to see anything. So why her?”
Jim topped up Larry’s glass and poured one for himself. “It seems obvious to me that she was having some sort of hallucination,” he said.
Larry looked doubtful and didn’t respond.
“Funnily enough,” continued Jim, “I was just reading the other day that the blinding light St. Paul saw on the road to Damascus could have been due to an attack of temporal lobe epilepsy.”
Larry had known Jim for some time and knew him to be a cool and analytical scientist. But this was a step too far.
“Oh no. Surely not,” he said. “I don’t buy that. That didn’t seem anything like an epileptic fit to me. Anyway, who knows? Perhaps Paul really did see a blinding light. It could be Rebecca did actually see something that we couldn’t. Maybe there really was something paranormal happening around us.”
“But nobody else witnessed it, as far as I could see,” responded Jim. “Surely you’re not suggesting she was seeing the spirits of the dead? More likely somebody put something in her drink. Pablo, perhaps… or Dr Neferatu…”
“Oh, come on! Pablo is the model of decorum. And why on earth would Dr Neferatu…?”
“I know, I know. But those weird things she said she had seen could only have been inside her own mind. A figment of her imagination. There is no other logical explanation.”
Larry looked at Jim. It was clear to him that something was going on between Jim and Rebecca. And yet, for some reason, Jim now seemed to be unsympathetic and was distancing himself from her.
Larry shook his head. “All I know is she was genuinely not just petrified, but revolted by something. I tell you, Jim, there’s something about Easter Island, especially Orongo. The sense of the supernatural is everywhere. I’m surprised you don’t feel it. Personally, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that she could have seen – perceived if you like – things that perhaps actually were there in some form. Only none of us could see them for some reason.”
“Okay, so would a camera have picked them up, do you think?” asked Jim.
“Don’t know. Nobody was taking photos.”
“So…” said Jim. “We have no proof there was anything there at all.”
Larry was feeling mellow with the wine but was beginning to find Jim’s comments more and more dogmatic and irritating. During the many times they had worked together, he had grown to like and respect Jim. Now, though, Jim’s attitude seemed deliberately harsh and out of character. He wondered what was troubling him.
Larry took his feet off the table and leaned towards Jim. “One shouldn’t rule anything out until it’s proven impossible,” he said firmly. “Anyway, I’m no scientist, but it strikes me that the universe is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we are capable of imagining.”
Jim merely yawned. “I don’t think we’re going to get very far with this one tonight,” he said. “She’ll probably be okay tomorrow.”
Larry decided to back off. “Tomorrow, she might see it all a bit more clearly herself.”
Jim nodded and changed the subject to Dr Neferatu. They soon established that neither of them had ever heard of him before he had approached Jim in Cambridge, and that his intention to get hold of Easter Island antiquities did not seem to ring true.
When Jim detailed Dr Neferatu’s grant proposal, Larry felt perplexed.
“Shouldn’t you at least check him out?”
“I suppose I should. It’s just that it seemed a bit of a gift. I always seem to be applying for grants, and I’m supposed to be a scientist, not a fundraiser.”
Larry smiled in sympathy. “But even so…” he said, before deciding it was too late to pursue the subject further.
They chatted idly about the plans for the next day, until Jim sleepily rubbed his eyes. Making his apologies, he got up and walked a little unsteadily towards his tent. “Don’t let the nasties get you in the night,” he said, as he unzipped the flap.
Larry sat for a while, deep in thought, before gulping down the last of his wine, stretching his arms and making his way to his own tent.
As he prepared his camp bed, he whistled, slightly out of tune, the opening bars of the aria ‘Nessum Dorma’.
“What are you trying to do?” he heard Jim say in a muffled voice. “Wake the dead all over again?”
CHAPTER 29
As he lay on his camp bed with his hands under his head, thoughts about everything that had happened that evening tumbled through Larry’s mind. For one thing, he was still worried about the sudden apparent change in Jim’s manner and his seeming lack of sympathy for Rebecca. He had always known Jim to be open-minded and generous in nature, and it appeared to him that this evening, Jim had not been at all like the Jim he knew.
And another thing – was it just by chance that Rebecca’s extraordinary experiences should coincide with the unprecedented appearance here of the Southern Lights? Perhaps they had affected Jim as well? Could that explain his odd behaviour? But in that case, why wasn’t I affected myself? Or was I? Then there was Dr Neferatu. What a bizarre name. Sounds like something out of Dracula. He looks like something out of Dracula, too.
There was something about the way Dr Neferatu had latched on to Jim that Larry did not trust. And there was something very odd about the way he had mysteriously turned up on Easter Island at this particular moment of time.
Furthermore, Larry was more preoccupied than he had admitted by the murders. Until now, he had not felt personally involved. But with the arrival of Rebecca, things were now different, and he could not help feeling, however unreasonable it might seem, in some way responsible for her safety. She did not appear to be an unusually nervous or hysterical sort of girl, and yet the look of terror in her face had been very real, and very disturbing. He tried to tell himself that it was really none of his busines
s and that, in any case, her safety was not really under his control. Eventually, knowing he could do no more that night, he drifted into a troubled sleep.
It was not long before he was tossing and turning, for some reason reliving the terrible event in his life that had occurred so many years ago.
It had happened in Turkey, when he had been driving a Land Rover with his wife, Moira, a fellow archaeologist, beside him. Twenty-seven years old, with long dark hair parted in the middle, dark brown eyes and an attractive tan from four weeks in the Turkish sun, she exuded life and fun. Their two daughters, Kate, who was six and a half years old, and Clea, just five, were playing ‘I Spy’ in the seat behind them and singing along to ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’, which blasted out from Radio Cyprus.
Moira, who had been busy balancing motherhood with part-time work as a demonstrator at University College, London, had brought the girls out to join Larry for the long summer break. He was working on the excavations at Aphrodisia in southern Turkey, happy in the knowledge that he was privileged to be involved in such an important dig.
On that fateful day, they were driving to Antalya for the weekend. He knew the road well and was driving cautiously, taking no chances. A few yards in front of him, a pick-up truck was trundling along, transporting a single cow to market. Clearly agitated by the bumpy journey along the rough road, the animal was repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, trying to turn round in the very limited space. Larry did not even notice that the animal was not roped.
Then, quite suddenly, it reared up on its hind legs. Somehow, in the space of a few seconds, it managed to get its front feet on to the tail-gate and was struggling frantically to get itself over. In a split second, it overbalanced and fell from the back of the lorry, straight into Larry’s path.