Headhunter

by Tim Curran

  “Yeah, Mac, I must pissed somebody off,” he said, “for them to put a demon on me. Wonder what I do?”

  I didn’t see him for two days.

  Then he came through the door like a haunted man, looking over his shoulder into the corridor, looking out the windows. He wouldn’t sit down, wouldn’t stand still. He came bearing no gifts and he wouldn’t take anything to eat or drink. He was shaking and dirty and it looked like he’d been wearing the same clothes for days. There were great hollows under his eyes. He said things were bad, very bad. He said Americans didn’t believe in things like spells and curses and omens, but the Vietnamese took things like that very seriously. He went to a sorcerer he knew, an old man who lived in a small shop full of powders and herbs and mummified animal parts. This man could take off curses and the like, he said. When Ky entered his shop, the old man looked like he was having a stroke, started babbling and spitting and praying, lighting up incense. He told Ky to get out, that he had the mark on him and there was nothing he could do for him.

  “Mac, he say…he say, the Devil Hunts the Heads, it was after me, nothing he could do about it, the sorcery too strong,” Ky whimpered, chewing at his nails which were worn to nubs. “What I do? What I do? What I do?”

  “Ky, you’re gonna stay with me now. Me and you, we’ll fly out of here. We’ll go back to Milwaukee. It can’t touch us there, it can’t—”

  He held a finger to his lips. “Listen,” he said frantically. “Listen…”

  I did. And for one insane, impossible moment I thought I heard something out in the corridor, something very close, but distant. An echo of a sound: a rustling, sliding noise. Then it was gone. I looked out in the corridor and there was nothing, just a suggestion of dankness. A hot, damp jungle odor. But then that was gone, too.

  I came back into the room and locked the door. It was hot in there, a stagnant breeze blowing in the window. Yet, sweat on my brow, a creeping chill fell over my bare arms, snaked up my spine. I looked out the window. Midday in Saigon—street vendors and street kids, GIs and cars and rickshaws crowding for space. Typical. Noisy, bustling, alive like an ant hive. Things…things like the Headhunter, I told myself, they couldn’t happen in broad daylight.

  But I knew I was wrong. Deathly wrong.

  “This morning, five in the morning, Mac, I wake up. Everyone in house wake up,” Ky said in a shivering, yellow voice. “Every door in house blown open and windows all shattered in. Like some storm hit us. But it was no storm. I found big, muddy prints in the hallway, yes? They come up stairs, down hall, stop before my room. There was slime everywhere. Stinking, bad smell. It hunts me, Mac. Maybe tonight or tomorrow night…I don’t know…”

  He left then.

  He wouldn’t stay. He ran off and I never saw him again. Not alive. A few days later, the White Mice came to see me. The White Mice are the Saigon police. They took me to the house Ky had shared with his mother, three sisters, two brothers, and an uncle. Numerous children. They all kept their distance from me. Jabbered at me in Vietnamese. I saw the makeshift panels that covered the windows. There was a muddy trail leading up the stairs and Ky’s door had been split right down the middle, one half hanging by the hinges, the other half hanging by the lock. Inside, the room was trashed. Furniture shattered, rugs torn, bed collapsed, blood sprayed over the walls. Ky’s headless corpse was stuffed in a closet, the window to the street had been blown out. There were ruts scratched into the walls, wallpaper hanging in strips. Claw marks. The cops said it looked like a tiger had been at work in there, one with really big claws.

  They asked me questions and wanted to know about Ky’s enemies.

  I told them nothing.

  That night, it came for me.

  I woke at four in the morning from some wild dream that I was caught dead center in a particularly vicious firefight between the grunts and the gooks. The bullets would pass right through me, but kill everyone around me. It was the sort of dream psychiatrists get a hard-on over. My eyes snapped open and my brain came awake with an almost electric clarity and I knew I was not alone.

  So, I lay there, listening.

  I could hear something…something out in the corridor or something outside my window, something stealthy and good, very good at being silent, something that could’ve moved without a noise but wanted me to hear it. I laid there, my heart pounding like some sacrificial drum, my lips pressed tightly, my hands gripping the mattress. Outside the window, I could hear it brush itself against the outer wall with a secretive rustling sound, even though I was on the fourth floor. I saw some cyclopean, hulking shadow pass over the shade. Then it was in the corridor and I could hear it breathing with a wet, rasping sound like something bubbling and gurgling deep in old pipes. There was a sound like knives casually dragged across the woodwork out there, but I knew they were no knives. Outside my door, the thing paused, claws clicking and rattling on the brass doorknob, the sound of that breathing like a howling wind echoing through a storm drain.

  I was shaking, sweating profusely with a stale, cool sweat that bathed me in an acrid fear-stink. I knew it smelled me. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to press myself down into the damp mattress. Waiting, you see, just waiting for that door to come apart like balsa wood…then the Headhunter would be standing by my bed, its breath like corpse gas. Then its claws would be at my throat—

  But that didn’t happen.

  Not that time and I was bound and determined not to let it have another shot at me. What I had to do was to think, to use my brain and figure out how to get away from it or kill it or both.

  Because, sooner or later, I knew, it would have me.

  11

  Ky’s death effected me in ways I can’t even begin to explain.

  By that point, I’d seen so many people die and die horribly, you would have thought I was immune, numb to feeling anything. Every time I closed my eyes at night, I saw a parade line of the dead—grunts, friends, other correspondents. But the loss of Ky hit me very hard. He was such a good-hearted kid. There’s nothing that kid wouldn’t have done for me; he worshipped me. I think maybe I loved that crazy little street rat with his schemes and scores and innumerable angles, always scamming. Ky had grown up in the hotbed of war, but his mind had been carefully molded by watching old American movies—a little Viet George Raft or James Cagney was he.

  I went into a slump.

  Probably I already was in one, but it got worse. I started moving around Saigon, never staying anywhere for long. The drinking and drugging got worse and my editors started threatening to pull the plug on me because my stories weren’t coming over the wire and just what the hell was it I was doing over there, anyway? They wanted me to come home. But what was there back in the States for me but an ex-wife and too many bad memories? Then again, what was there in Vietnam but death and despair and horror? Yet, like a metal filing to a magnet, I was drawn to it.

  I cried over Ky.

  I missed him terribly. He was the only light in the dank cave of my existence. I felt tremendous guilt because the Headhunter had come after Ky because of me. I had put that thing on to him…but who had put it on to me? That was a question I wrestled with. It all kept coming back to Bai Loc, that old blind man laughing and the woman with her threat.

  What had she been, a witch? Was that it?

  The Viets, particularly the country peasants, firmly believed in the power of sorcery and conjuration. I was half-tempted to look up that shaman that had told Ky “he had the mark on him” because I was pretty sure I had it, too. But why? Because I’d been at that village? The paratroopers had been there, too. They had done the killing, not me. Or was it not that simple? These people, they understood war and battle, it was in their blood and souls and, God help them, they accepted it. So maybe they didn’t blame soldiers…only those that glorified in it like me.

  Was that it?

  Or was there really no true explanation, just a spin of the wheel and that old lady had seen the mark on me and recognized it for wh
at it was?

  My head was going around and around and I had to take action, do something, go somewhere, put together a story for the wire services. Anything, but this bullshit superstitious funk I was in. So I grabbed the first thing I could get which happened to be a hamburger op with the Marines of 1/3. Just another hill up along the DMZ, Hill Three-Hundred and something, named (as all hills were) by their height in meters. Hotel Company was already there and had taken a few casualties and a few more VC POWs. I choppered in with India Company and right away some ballbuster sergeant was handing out entrenchment tools and telling us to dig in and dig in deep, things were about to get hot and heavy. We did for about an hour or two while the Marines assaulted VC positions, getting killed and doing a lot of killing. When it was done with, they counted 40 VC KIAs, 16 WIAs. The Marines lost seven; twenty others were hit but would probably make it. It was a successful op as far as things like that went. I’d been through so many by that point that I found myself napping off on the hillside.

  But I figured it would make good copy.

  When I got back to Saigon, Quinn was waiting for me. He’d come down from the Special Forces A Camp to bail some of his people out of jail. Apparently, there was some raid being planned in North Vietnam, a raid to be carried out by a combined group of U.S. Army Rangers, Green Berets, and Nung mercenaries. Well, command didn’t trust the Nung, so they wouldn’t arm them. So, a couple Rangers had gone into Saigon to make an arms purchase on the black market. They were busted with something like four cases of Russian AKs and about 10,000 rounds of ammo. Quinn got them out—and got the hardware, too—by greasing a few palms.

  He said that’s how it works. The Army wouldn’t pay to arm the Nung mercs, but they’d gladly pay graft.

  “Just one big fucked up system, Mac,” he told me. “Listen, I gotta go up country in an hour or so, but…I was wondering…you still following that Headhunter thing?”

  I swallowed down hard. “Yeah. My editor likes the folklore angle. Sure.”

  “Then I want you to meet someone…guy with the National Police. He’s a hardcase, but he’s okay. I’ve talked with him about this stuff before. He’s got a story for you. I told him you’d look him up.”

  I could hardly wait.

  12

  His name was Nguyen Cao Trang and he met me on the terrace at the Continental Hotel. A place crowded with loud, obnoxious American engineers and businessmen making a real killing from the war. They drank and ate and bragged, their thin pretty Viet girlfriends studying their hands most of the time.

  Trang was a slight little man barely over five feet, but sculpted hard and fierce. He had a particularly cruel-looking face with a down-turned mouth and eyes that were little more than glistening steel balls set in sharp-cut slits. And when an Asian has a cruel face, it is very cruel.

  He rose and shook my hand, gave me a curt little nod, recognizing me immediately even though we’d never met. It made me wonder if he had a file on me. He probably did. The National Police watched everyone, even themselves. His grip was very strong and I figured he could’ve broke my hand if he wanted to or every bone in my body if he set his mind to it. I was nearly a foot taller than him, but I swear he towered over me.

  “Please sit down, Mister Mac-Kinney,” he said, stressing the “Mac”.

  “Call me Mac, everyone does,” I told him, ordering a beer.

  “Yes. So.” He ran a thin finger along his jawline, giving me the impression that just because everyone else did, he wouldn’t. “Sergeant Quinn told me you are interested in a particular story. This is true?”

  “Yes. The Headhunter.”

  He nodded. “Nguoi san ddau. A fearsome legend. Or perhaps not a legend at all?” he said, his English perfect. He sat there looking at me with those grim, relentless eyes. Eyes shadowed by too much living or perhaps not enough. Quinn had told me he was a major with the intelligence section, his specialty being interrogation of suspected VC operatives. Quinn also told me that Trang’s interrogations were usually fatal. “Before I tell this story of mine, you will tell me why this subject interests you.”

  I wrote for a living. I was a pretty good liar. I could wade in with the best of them and pile up the shit so high it would cover you in its steaming warmth, but you’d believe it. But Trang? I had the feeling he could read my mind, so I told him the truth. I started with Bai Loc and ended with Ky’s murder and what had been sniffing around my room a few days before.

  When I was done, he merely nodded again.

  Lighting a cigarette and fitting it with a silver holder, he began: “I am from a small farming village east of Pleiku in the Central Highlands called Me Tho, Mister Mac-Kinney. The village was destroyed by an NVA raid some years ago. But, no matter. I had a younger brother named Lin.” He paused here and I could hear him grinding his teeth as if he was trying to hold back a tide of emotion. “Lin suffered damage to his brain in the womb. As a result, he was crippled. He could walk, but just. He was never as smart as some of the other children, but he was a wonderful boy. His level of caring and empathy and understanding was far beyond anything they could comprehend. Nature had robbed him of certain attributes and heightened others. Sensitive, humorous, but simple. He took the greatest joy from things other boys would have walked right by—moonlight, the stars in the sky, the feel of wind in his face. I loved him, yes, and perhaps idolized him because he seemed in touch with things that were unknown to me. Simple, I said? Perhaps. But possibly advanced beyond all that you and I could hope to know or understand.

  “One afternoon we were sent on an errand by our mother. We were to go to a nearby village and collect a pig that my father had purchased. The trip should have taken no more than a few hours, but with my brother’s troubled walking, it took much longer. But Lin refused to be restricted by his limitations. He fought very hard for things you and I take for granted, Mister Mac-Kinney. He was very brave and strong. I firmly believe there was nothing he could not have accomplished.” Trang paused again, his mouth twisted into a hard scowl. “So. We brought the pig back from the village and as we walked the trail through the forest, the sun began to set. A full moon was already coming up…”

  The shadows rose up around them (he said) and Vietnamese boys were no different from American boys or English boys or African boys for that matter. He began telling Lin a story of two boys who vanished into the jungle, were snatched away by a witch and roasted over a fire. How their ghosts still prowled the forest and at night they would come out, stinking of burning flesh, trying to capture wayward boys for the old witch and her stew pot. Lin didn’t care for the story, but he laughed, trying to make light of it. But as darkness pressed down upon them and the jungle was alive with the sounds of night predators and that big moon came up above, he grew frightened. So did Trang, but he couldn’t stop himself. Other, older boys had tormented him with likewise stories of man-eating tigers and wild men and hungry ghosts. Now, it was his turn to pass it on.

  Finally, Lin asked him to stop. It was enough, but Trang couldn’t. He told his brother how those ghosts had no eyes and their faces were burned to bone and their bodies were like blackened, gnarled trees. Trang admitted to me that he was just rolling with it. He had heard a version of this from other boys, but most of this one was his own.

  Lin needed to rest; his bad leg was paining him. He began to laugh despite his fear and told those old ghosts to go ahead and take him if that’s what they wanted, because his leg was sore. Trang said he shouted this into the jungle. That his voice echoed through the dark, forbidding undergrowth, seeming to break apart as if it were echoing through a thousand secret places…and then it came back at them: a cruel, inhuman mockery. Not Lin’s voice at all…but the voice of something else, something terrible hiding in those green, cryptic depths.

  Again Lin said it was enough, enough, to please stop it now.

  But Trang was suddenly too terrified to speak. For maybe Lin thought that it was his older brother throwing his voice, playing parlor tricks on him, bu
t it was not so. The jungle seemed suddenly filled with malevolent, hidden life. It filled its lungs and was breathing, aware, sentient of the two boys. Branches were snapping and they kept hearing a strange hissing noise. The pot-bellied pig they had been leading around by a rope looped around its neck began to get nervous. It pawed at the ground, grunted, sniffed, began to make low squealing sounds.

  “For it knew,” Trang said. “It knew we were not alone out there. Animals can sense such things.”

  Trang could take no more.

  He dragged Lin away, holding his hand and holding the pig’s lead in the other. He said he turned once and it seemed that the jungle itself was rising up, covering their tracks, inching forward. Lin said that the ghosts, those awful ghosts were coming for them and Trang tried to explain that it was a story, a foolish, silly story boys told to boys and so on down the generations, but Lin was having none of it. The moon hung above them like a rotting, radiant orb and the jungle was alive and gliding with shadows. There were noises to all sides, big and busy sounds of rotting trees being kicked aside and underbrush crackling and—

  Lin screamed.

  So did Trang.

  They thought the ghosts were in front of them, but then the pig’s lead went tight, snapped rigid and nearly took Trang’s shoulder out of the socket with it. The pig squealed and the darkness seemed to be crawling all over it. Then the lead went limp and the boys fell into the grass. In the moonlight, Trang said the rope was dark with blood and before either of them could take that in or even consider the horrible consequences, there was an awful, ear-splitting roar and something flew out of the shadows and hit Trang, knocking him flat. He was covered in gore. He had been hit with the severed, still-bleeding head of the pig.