Blood on Celluloid

by B. L. Morgan

  You’d think the jungle would get quieter when night came, actually it was the opposite. Bugs and birds that were afraid to make a noise in the daylight raised hell as soon as it got completely dark.

  We came to a wide place in the road and Mai Lin told me to pull over and stop. I did and we dug out a few flashlights from our bags and took a look around.

  The woods weren’t as thick as they looked like from the road, seeing only with the Subaru’s headlights. About twenty yards from the road there was a clearing that would be large enough to build a fire and lay our sleeping bags around.

  “It will be safe to sleep out here tonight,” Mai Lin told us. “Almost no one drives on these roads at night and a fire will keep the animals away.”

  “I hope so,” Candi told us. “I don’t want to be no animals dark meat midnight snack.”

  “What if I bite you in the dark?” Ron asked.

  “Well, you are an animal,” Candi told him as she and Ron gathered firewood. “But I think I’ll make an exception and let you get away with it.”

  * * *

  After about fifteen minutes we had a good sized fire burning. We sat around the fire listening to the sounds of the night creatures just beyond the glow of the flames, and every now and then caught the sight of glowing eyes as they passed by our campsite.

  Mai Lin asked Ron, “I understand why John has to take revenge for what was done to his woman, but why are you with him?”

  “Sherry was family,” Ron answered simply. “She was a good woman who was done very wrong. Somebody’s got to pay.”

  Mai Lin looked at Candi.

  “Where he goes, I go,” Candi said, throwing her arm around Ron. “That’s how it is. That’s how it’s gonna be.”

  I looked at Mai Lin. “What’s your story?” I asked her. “You speak mighty smooth English to be just a Thai country girl.”

  Mai Lin smiled. “I did grow up in the village where my store is, but my father worked hard to be able to send his children to school in Bangkok. He wished for a better life for us than the one he had.

  “He sent my brother and I to live with relatives in the capitol, and when the time came I even attended the university. I fell in love and married a man who, after a time, began lying to me and spending his nights with prostitutes.

  “We divorced and I returned to the village where life is simpler. I like being able to look in a person’s face and believing what they say is true. In my village, I can live like that.”

  Mai Lin leaned toward me then and looked deeply into my eyes. She said, “John, I know what you want is revenge, but what you really need to do is to heal.”

  I considered what she said for a moment and told her, “For somebody who ran away from an education and a chance at a better life, you’re acting like you know a whole lot about what other people need. It looks to me like you’re somebody who needs to do some healing. Before you can fix somebody else, maybe you should learn how to fix yourself first.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The next morning Ron took over the driving for a while. I was glad he did because my ass was starting to wear out that driver’s seat.

  Mai Lin sat beside him in the front and told him what turns he needed to make. Every now and then she’d glance back at me over the seat and give me strange, long looks.

  I didn’t know what the hell was in her head. I didn’t know if I’d insulted her when I told her to get her shit together before she tried to tell me what I needed to do. I didn’t really give a shit either.

  She volunteered to guide us to the border. I hadn’t hired her to be me psychiatrist. What she thought didn’t matter to me.

  Sometime around four PM we came out of the jungle and were back among open fields again. The difference with these fields and the ones we’d passed through before was that there were no farmers here.

  Mai Lin explained that we were in territory now that was in dispute. Neither Thailand nor Tehan Setar had solid claims to this land. Because of this most farmers would not settle here. They didn’t want to be in the middle of a border war if one broke out.

  After about an hour of this kind of land we pulled over and Candi took over the wheel. She wanted to try her hand at driving a car that steered from the right hand side.

  She didn’t run us off the road or into anything, so it must not have bothered her too much.

  When evening was falling we came to a shallow river that Mai Lin said was named The Phao River. That’s where we stopped for the night.

  * * *

  Just like we’d done the night before we had a meal of some of the camping food we brought and me and Ron and Candi took turns at watch, each of us doing three hours a piece.

  I took the first watch.

  Nothing much happened. Bugs buzzed my head. I found a dead tree and broke off some branches and built the fire a little higher.

  Ron and Candi shared the same sleeping bag. They’d told Mai Lin she could use one of theirs and they didn’t seem to mind cuddling up.

  Before I knew it, it was time for me to wake Ron up for his three hour stretch at guard duty. He popped open a Coke we’d packed and set back against a rock and got comfortable.

  I dragged my sleeping bag out away from the fire into the shadows. The light and the crackling sounds from the campfire kept me awake the night before. I didn’t want to have that happen again.

  Out here, among a few clumps of weeds that gave a little bit of cushioning to the hard ground, crickets or whatever the hell these bugs were over here, chirped out to me. They sang a song of the wild lands and the simple life. That song, and the cool night breeze, and the stars like glittering jewels thrown across the sky, were soothing to me.

  I drifted, floating, and let my mind sail on the wind. Everything felt peaceful and calm and darkness came down over me.

  I felt her against me, the smooth softness of her skin and the soft silk of her hair. The scent of her skin, her hair, her breath filled me. I drew her to me and kissed her on the mouth over and over. The yearning inside of me was overpowering.

  She whispered on my ear, “John, I need you.”

  I kissed her again and said, “Oh god, how I miss you, Sherry.”

  She stiffened in my arms and I realized that the scent was different; the texture of the skin and hair was different. This was not Sherry in my arms.

  This was not a dream.

  Mai Lin was here. She was the woman I held.

  “I’m sorry,” I told her and a tear ran down my cheek.

  She touched the tear with her fingertip then kissed the spot where it had been.

  “It is OK,” Mai Lin said. “I just wish someone would love me the way you loved her.”

  “Someone will,” I told her.

  “Perhaps,” Mai Lin said. “Maybe it will be you. Maybe when you are done with what you have to do, you will come back to my village?”

  I didn’t answer her. Mai Lin’s offer was tempting but I didn’t know if I could ever love anyone ever again.

  We held each other in the darkness until the night passed away.

  CHAPTER 36

  In the morning, when all of us were awake and feeling like moving out, we took a good look at The Phao River. It was wide and shallow. The river was shallow enough so that we could wade across but it was too deep for the car to make it.

  “Are there any bridges across this?” I asked Mai Lin.

  “None close to here,” she answered, “And all the bridges would have armed guards. This is one of the natural land marks that define the border between Thailand and Tehan Setar. When you cross The Phao you will most certainly be within the borders of Tehan Setar.”

  “Are you in the mood for a good hike?” Ron asked Candi.

  “I can walk you in the dirt,” Candi told him.

  “Do you know roughly where Tehan Setar City is from here?” I asked Mai Lin.

  “If you head directly east following the road that is on the other side of The Phao, it is about thirty miles,” Mai Lin told u
s.

  We started packing our supplies inside our three duffle bags and Ron asked Mai Lin, “Do you know how to drive?”

  “Of course,” she answered. “I learned in Bangkok.”

  He tossed the keys to the Subaru to her.

  “Since we’re on foot now we won’t need this car anymore,” Ron told her.

  “What will I do with this car?” Mai Lin asked.

  “Well,” Ron told her. “Start by driving back home, then if you need to go somewhere, drive it there, then keep on driving it anywhere you need to go until the fucking wheels fall off.”

  “I cannot pay you for it,” Mai Lin told him.

  Candi told her, “Don’t let that bother you. That ain’t Ron’s car. He doesn’t give a shit what happens to it.”

  * * *

  We said our good-byes to Mai Lin on the Western shore of The Phao. She wished me good luck and gave me a long, lingering look that said more than spoken words ever could.

  As I stepped into the slow current of the cool waters of The Phao River, I knew if I went back to Mai Lin’s village I would have the love of a good woman waiting for me. In her village I could find a relatively peaceful life and never want again for someone to love and hold.

  I knew I would never go back. Peace and contentment just ain’t in the cards for me.

  * * *

  The water only came up to my waist and it felt so good that after we reached the far shore I went back in and dove under to get completely cooled off.

  Ron and Candi did the same thing and it wasn’t long before we went dripping on down the dirt road that Mai Lin told us would be waiting for us.

  On both sides of the road were more of those flooded fields where rice was being grown. There were a lot of smaller roads that lead into this one and after about an hour of walking a guy coming off of his field gave us a ride in his ox pulled cart.

  Two hours after that he came to a village where we gave him some cash and he went on his way.

  This walking and ox cart riding was too damned slow. We needed a car.

  In the village, there was a place to eat and get a beer and three cars were parked outside it. We went in and had Candi ask who owned the cars. One of the guys at the bar draining a beer said that the brown Honda hatchback was his.

  He came outside with us and we started his car. It seemed to run good but the inside smelled like beer vomit.

  We gave him fifteen hundred dollars and drove with the windows down and the air conditioner running full blast.

  Just before dark we arrived at Tehan Setar City.

  CHAPTER 37

  Where Bangkok had been a huge exotic metropolis, where you actually had to go out and look for the grimy sections of town, in Tehan Setar City you didn’t have to look for the ghetto. The entire city looked rundown and decaying. This entire place was a slum.

  Except for the smell inside the Honda, I was kind of glad I was driving an old beat-up rust bucket. A new car would stand out here like a sore thumb. This piece of shit on wheels was right at home among all the boarded up businesses and falling down houses.

  One other thing, besides the city slowly crumbling, was obvious to us once we entered the streets of this city. The child sex trade was alive and well in Tehan Setar City. Here there were streets after streets of clubs that advertised Boys For Sale, Girls For Sale, Kiddies Under 10 For Your Pleasure. The guys that went in those clubs had to have something wrong with them. If you have any decency at all in you the one thing you don’t do is mess around with children.

  The laws in this country, if there were any laws at all, must be warped all out of shape.

  We needed some directions so I pulled over and parked in a gas station, went in and bought a city map. I was glad the map was bilingual and that they accepted Thai money.

  Back in the car we located Udon Way, the street that The St. Wisdom Orphanage was on, and headed over there.

  * * *

  Night descended over this city of lost children as I drove to The St. Wisdom Orphanage. One thing that struck me was that it seemed like the same types of people were on the streets at night that were on the streets during the day. In the American cities that I know, the night people were a different breed than the day people. Except for families getting groceries or going to a movie, the night people were usually predatory types out hunting for something.

  The night people were people going to nightclubs or bars, looking for love in all the wrong places, or drug dealers or drug buyers or some other type of criminal looking to cash in under the cover of darkness.

  When we arrived at The St. Wisdom Orphanage, the first thing it reminded me of was old pictures I’d seen of The Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. The orphanage was a large square stone structure with high walls all the way around it. It had a huge thick wooden door at the front, with a big steel knocker in its center, and a sliding peep hole.

  Over the door there was a plaque that read in two languages The St. Wisdom Orphanage, A Sanctuary For Children From A Harsh World.

  I used the knocker and banged hard on the metal strike plate.

  After two long minutes went by, the peep hole slid open, and an old lady’s watery eyes looked out at us.

  The old lady inside spoke something to us in Thai and Candi said something back that ended in Sherry St. Claire.

  “Oh, so you are from America,” the old lady answered, with a thick cultured British accent. “I should have known immediately, but my eyes aren’t what they used to be, and my mind is not quite as sharp either.”

  The peep hole slid shut. We heard the latch undone and the big wooden door swung inward.

  The lady that greeted us was a small white haired woman who wore a black nun’s habit. She beamed a smile at us and gave each of us a brief hug as we came in through the door.

  “It is so nice to hear from someone who knows Sherry,” she told us. “I am Sister Mary Sheridon. I welcome you to our home. Please follow me. We can talk in my office.”

  The inside of this building was well lit and decorated with religious figures and paintings. It had the look of a Catholic Monastery with one difference. On the walls mixed in with the pictures of Christ and the Saints were pictures that were obviously painted by children.

  Looking through the windows as we walked down a corridor to Sister Mary Sheridon’s office, we could see that the structure of the entire orphanage was that of a large square building with a spacious central courtyard. Nothing was luxurious about how the place was built or decorated but everything was immaculately clean.

  We arrived at the Sister’s office. She led us in and motioned us to sit in chairs around her desk.

  “Tell me,” she said to us as we sat down, “How is Sherry getting along? She was one of our success stories, and Sherry was always one of my personal favorites out of all the girls that have grown up here.”

  I looked at Ron and Candi and they looked at me. This was going to be hard.

  In the past, when I would have deserved to be called a bastard, I would have enjoyed telling this woman that someone she loved was gone forever. But now I understood the pain she was about to feel and I knew I would never enjoy that again.

  The look on our faces gave the news before I uttered a word.

  “No, please Lord, no,” Sister Mary Sheridon said, before I made a sound.

  I went and put my arm around her shoulders.

  “Sherry is dead,” I told her. “We’re here to make someone pay for it.”

  PART II

  WELCOME TO

  ANOTHER JUNGLE

  CHAPTER 38

  When Sister Mary Sheridon regained her composure, I filled her in on the how’s and why’s of what we were doing in her office at that moment.

  “Revenge is not something that I would normally support,” she told us. “But in this instance, you will do a greater good by removing those who murdered Sherry than by letting the lord make them pay in his own good time.

  “The men who harmed Sherry are doing terrible thi
ngs. They need to be stopped.”

  “Where can I find William Po?” I asked the Sister.

  “I do not meet him directly,” she told us. “He has his men bring us the children that he recovers from The Flesh Pit.”

  “The Flesh Pit, what’s that?” Candi asked.

  “There is an exclusive resort in the jungle somewhere, where children are the playthings of perverse foreigners. It is said that other, worse atrocities happen there, but I don’t know anything for certain.

  “Po’s men ambush caravans that supply the stolen children, and the caravans that bring the damaged children out to dump them on the streets of Tehan Setar City. The children that come out of that place are usually traumatized so badly they will never function normally in society. Most we take in become nuns or monks.

  “I will have one of the sisters guide you to the bus station where William Po’s men bring us the children.”

  Now it hit me.

  Sherry was one of the few success stories.

  I asked Sister Mary Sheridon, “Did Sherry go through that?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “When Sherry was seven her father and mother came to Thailand for a vacation. A sight-seeing tour they were with was attacked by bandits. All the adults were robbed and murdered. The children were sold into slavery. Sherry was unfortunate enough to be pretty. Because of that she ended up in The Flesh Pit.”

  “When she was twelve she escaped somehow and was picked up by Po’s men and brought to me. For two years she could not speak and when she finally did it seemed like she could not stop crying. Every little thing would make her cry. But she got past that too.

  “She was a strong little girl. If she had not been, she never would have survived.

  “Most of the children who come through The St. Wisdom Orphanage we can never trace their origins, their families are too poor, but Sherry was different. She regained the memories of her former life. Through what she told us and her dental records, we traced her back to her parents; Jean Claude St. Claire and Myong Tokuyama St. Claire. They were French citizens.