Dark Horizons

by Dan Smith

  ‘Mm-hm.’ She stopped and looked back at the longhouse.

  ‘I didn’t hear anything drop.’

  ‘Must’ve been when I was looking for my tin. Shit, I’ll have to go back for it.’

  ‘Go back in? You’re joking, right?’

  ‘Wait for me here,’ she said, starting towards the longhouse.

  I went after her, putting a hand out to stop her. ‘He went the other way. The other house. Don’t you think you should tell him first?’

  ‘Alim? You gotta be joking.’

  I shook my head, not understanding.

  ‘You saw what he’s like. What you think he’s gonna say if I tell him I dropped my iPod in there? You think he’s gonna let me go look for it, or d’you think he’s gonna say tough shit, what’s yours is mine? You have any idea how much he’d get for it?’ She began walking and I followed alongside.

  ‘And if he catches you in there?’ In my mind I saw the gun pressed to Domino’s chest.

  ‘He won’t.’ In the other longhouse, the music started up again, one or two guitars playing, men singing. ‘Wait here for me.’ She stopped at the base of the ladder and looked at me. ‘I’ll be two seconds.’

  ‘I’ll come with you.’

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘You’ll slow me down.’

  ‘I don’t trust that guy. What if he comes back? He’s weird. Dangerous.’

  ‘He’s weird all right, but I reckon he’s harmless.’

  ‘Harmless? After what he just did?’

  ‘He didn’t do anything,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t dare. And keep your bloody voice down.’

  I thought about the pistol and the parang machete. ‘Didn’t look harmless to me,’ I whispered. ‘You’re not going in there on your own. What if—’

  ‘He’s in the other house, for fuck’s sake, he won’t come back.’ She put one hand on her hip as if she were thinking about something. ‘You ever smoked before?’

  I looked at the joint in my hand.

  ‘It’s making you paranoid,’ she said. ‘You need to relax.’

  ‘No, I’m—’

  ‘Wait for me over there.’ She pointed to the line of trees. ‘Finish the joint, chill out, be quiet, I’ll be back in one second. Maybe two.’

  I started to protest again, but she cut me off, saying, ‘I’ll be fine,’ and climbed the ladder, pushing on the underside of the trapdoor, looking down and smiling when it opened.

  The music from the house next to us stopped and we looked at each other for a moment before Domino spoke again. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘Quickly. Wait over there.’

  ‘All right,’ I agreed, but let her hear the reluctance in my voice. ‘I’ll wait.’ I backed away from the ladder, watching Domino climb the last few rungs, her legs disappearing into the darkness.

  Then the trapdoor shut behind her and I was alone in the night.

  8

  I stopped and watched the door, straining to hear any noises from the other house. Nothing but the wind and the insects. I considered following her, then sighed and walked to the edge of the trees. I placed my feet carefully, rolling from the heel to the ball of my foot, keeping my tread light so that I’d hear anything out of place. But still there were no sounds. Nothing.

  When I came to where the trees grew thicker, I sat down and leaned against the trunk of a tall pine, the dead needles a cushion under me, the old bark rough against my back, and I raised the cigarette to my lips and dragged on it, exhaling a rush of scented smoke. I held it up in front of my eyes and studied the place where Domino’s lips had been, adjusted my focus to look at the Batak house, the ladder and the trapdoor, then refocused on the place where Domino’s mouth had been.

  I was beginning to feel a vague sense of panic now and I told myself that Domino was right; it was the dope. I shouldn’t smoke any more; it was making me anxious. I took another drag and cleared the pine needles in a small circle beside me. I brushed them away until my fingertips touched dirt, then I scratched a small hole and crushed the glowing end of the cigarette into it. I watched the last wisps of smoke dissipating, then looked over at the house again.

  Domino had been gone longer than I expected. She said she’d dropped her iPod, so all she had to do was go in and get it. Pick it up, put it in her bag and come back out again. I shook my head, rubbed my face and told myself she was probably looking for it. It was dark in there; maybe she couldn’t find it straight away.

  I stared at my wrist, cursing the boy who had stolen my belongings, left me to bleed and die in the road. The absence of my watch gave everything a surreal edge. I had no way of tracking what was happening to me. And as the memory of the crash came back, the trapdoor in the occupied longhouse opened, spilling light in a crooked rectangle across the cleared ground. I shuffled back, around the thick trunk of the tree, thankful for my dark clothing, and watched Alim descend the ladder, followed by a second, slightly taller man. They stopped in the shard of light and looked back at the longhouse, as if expecting someone else, but no one came. The weak glow from the building cast across their faces and I could make out Alim’s features, but it was his partner who caught my attention. He had a lazy, arrogant manner about him, the way he stood with a slight hunch, his legs bowed, and he carried a rifle over his shoulder. He was heavier built than Alim, and the way they spoke, although I couldn’t understand the nasal tones, I could tell that he was talking down to Alim. He lifted his hand and pointed at the smaller man, then he looked around again, as if he had sensed my presence in the forest. I squatted further, seeing the way he squinted out at the dark, and I imagined I saw something hard and unpleasant in those searching eyes as he stepped forward, unslinging his rifle and tucking it into his shoulder, pointing it into the night. He turned on the spot, slowly, as if his eyes could pierce the night, then he relaxed, lowered the rifle and turned back to Alim to continue his castigation. When Alim answered him, the second man struck out and slapped Alim’s face. His movement was fast and vicious and I heard the sharp smack of skin on skin, and watched as the two men became silent and stood facing each other until Alim looked away, adopting a submissive pose. And then the altercation was over, and the taller man slung the rifle over his shoulder and came straight towards the line of trees and stopped. Alim stayed where he was, head bowed, then he too came into the shadow and after a few moments I heard the sound of them urinating onto the ground.

  Now I looked away from the shapes of the two men, over to the other longhouse where Domino was, and I was shocked to see that she was now on the ladder. She wasn’t much more than a dark shape, but it was definitely her descending the rungs, and she had no idea the two men were there, camouflaged against the trees.

  I tried to wave my hands, catch her attention, but I knew it was useless. I turned my head, looking from Domino to the men and back again, hoping, praying, that Domino would spot them first. And when one of them spoke, his voice carrying in the stillness of the night, I saw Domino’s shadow stop dead on the ladder. She hung in time for a heartbeat, then her torso and legs disappeared back up into the longhouse.

  I returned my attention to the two men. They’d finished their business and were heading back in the direction they’d come until Alim stopped, spoke, then broke away and made for the longhouse that Domino had just re-entered. When he reached the ladder, he paused to scratch his foot, then stepped up and climbed into the building.

  The next few minutes happened to someone else. I was a spectator, looking down on myself, frozen, not knowing what to do. An impossible situation in an impossible place.

  A lump rose to my throat and all I could taste was the bitter flavour of the weed. I told myself she was OK. Domino was fine. She would be out in a minute. I looked at my wrist again and swore. I couldn’t tell how long she’d been gone. There was no way of knowing.

  I counted seconds in my head, trying to keep track of how many minutes I was waiting, but it was difficult to concentrate. There was a numbness across my forehead, the feeling that my skin was
pulling tight around my skull. My thoughts spiralled with concern for Domino and what Alim might be doing to her. I couldn’t let him hurt her. I couldn’t just stand here. I had to do something to help.

  I pushed myself up, putting one hand against the tree, bringing it away with a sticky resin on my fingers. I rubbed it on my stolen blue trousers as I headed towards the house. Domino had been gone too long. I couldn’t wait any more. Fearing the worst, my breathing became shallower and I set my mind to what I had to do. My body was preparing itself for what might lie ahead in the darkness of the longhouse. Images flickered through my head. Violent images of what Alim might have done to her, what was now lying behind the trapdoor. I pushed them away and approached the building, making as little sound as possible.

  I braced myself when I reached the ladder, took a deep breath, placed my foot on the lowest rung and began to climb. It wasn’t high, perhaps eight rungs, and I was at the top, my hand reaching for the underside of the trapdoor, when it yawned open before me.

  It took me by surprise, I’d heard nothing from within, and I flinched, my immediate reaction to move away, to escape whatever it was I was going to see. I stepped down, missed my footing and slipped. I reached out as I fell, grabbing for the edge of the ladder, but my weight was too much and I was falling too quickly. My feet caught on one of the lower rungs, buckling my legs, toppling me backwards and dropping me to the ground. I landed on my back, the air escaping my body in a quick release, and my chest hitched, desperate to take in more breath.

  At the top of the ladder, Domino looked down at me. ‘Shit. What the fuck are you doing?’ Her voice was quiet, almost inaudible.

  I shuffled away from the ladder, trying to stand. ‘I thought …’

  ‘Shh. Quiet. You trying to kill yourself ?’ She came down face forward, her heels on the rungs, pulling the trapdoor behind her. ‘Jesus Christ, Alex, you scared the shit out of me.’ She reached the bottom and came to my side. I could see, in the moonlight, that there was a film of sweat across her forehead. ‘Come on,’ she said, helping me up. ‘We have to get out of here. All your bloody noise.’

  We hurried back to the line of the trees, to the safety of the darkness.

  ‘I was worried,’ I said. ‘You were gone so long, and that guy in there—’

  ‘I was only in there a couple of minutes, Alex.’

  ‘I thought … Shit … did he see you?’

  ‘What do you think? Course he didn’t bloody see me.’ We moved further into the shadows, quickening our pace. ‘You think I’d be in one piece if he bloody saw me?’

  ‘Then how the hell did you get out?’ I imagined a different scenario now – one in which Alim was not the aggressor. ‘How did you get out without him seeing you?’

  ‘I hid,’ she said. ‘It’s dark in there. Loads of places to hide. When he went to the far end, I slipped out. Mind you, with the amount of bloody noise you made, it’s a wonder he didn’t follow me.’

  I let out a long sigh, feeling like I was releasing ten years’ worth of tension. ‘So did you get it?’

  ‘Get what?’

  ‘Your iPod.’

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, I got it.’

  We were away from the houses now and I stopped, turning to her. ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

  ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘I mean, why would I?’ She touched a hand to my cheek, then put her arm through mine. ‘You were scared for me?’

  ‘Yeah. And for me.’

  ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Over here.’

  I wanted to say something else, but I didn’t know what.

  She led me past the place where she’d told me to wait and she stopped, shoving me against a tree and moving close, pressing herself against me, pushing her tongue between my lips. I opened my mouth wider to receive it.

  ‘You feel that, Alex?’ she said, breaking away.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘The adrenaline in your veins.’ She kissed me again, hard, uncontrolled.

  ‘Adrenaline?’ I said, catching my breath. My hands were still trembling, my heart still pounding, but maybe it was for another reason now. I could taste her saliva on my lips.

  ‘Doesn’t it make you horny?’

  ‘Horny? I don’t know if that did, but—’

  She put her hands on my face, ran them over my head, across my shoulders, down my chest. ‘It does me. Makes me feel fantastic.’

  Her actions were unexpected. I thought she’d want to get away, but we were far enough from the houses now, no sign of Alim coming out, so I responded by kissing her again, wrapping my arms around her. I slipped one hand behind her head, tangled in her sun-bleached hair; the other ran across her slim back, pulling her into me, crushing her pelvis against mine.

  We stayed that way, moving together, tasting each other, before she leaned back, smiling. ‘That’s good,’ she said, breathing hard, her mouth wide. ‘Really good.’ She put her hands either side of my head and kissed me again, pulling away, saying, ‘God, I want to fuck you.’

  The words startled me. Dirty. Passionate. Lustful. No one had ever said it to me before. Not like that. She stared right into me, no embarrassment, no shame, no looking away. She knew what she wanted.

  ‘Then why don’t you?’ I said, pulling her dress higher around her waist, sliding my hands underneath and feeling the flesh where her buttocks met the back of her thighs.

  ‘Uh-uh.’ She moved my hands. ‘Not here.’ She looked back at the longhouse. ‘Not yet. Something I want to show you.’

  ‘Show me?’ I pulled her towards me, feeling teased.

  ‘Not yet.’ She broke my embrace. ‘Not yet.’

  9

  I followed her through the woods, not knowing where we were going or what I might walk into. There was light, but not much, and I kept my eyes fixed on her shape just ahead. We circled away from the village, keeping among the trees until they began to thin out. When we finally emerged from them, Domino stopped. I came alongside her and stared out at the night, understanding this was what she wanted me to see.

  About twenty metres from where I was standing, the ground fell away down the hillside. A gentle slope at first, then sharper, trailing perhaps four hundred metres to the ground below. Beyond that, an area of flat ground, dotted with tiny lights, and then nothing but water.

  ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Danau Toba.’

  I stared out at the water, the moon reflected on its calm surface. A slice of silver, resting on the lake beneath a clear sky of pinprick stars. A lake that stretched to infinity, never reaching its furthest shore.

  ‘That’s what you wanted to see. It’s what the tourists come for, but they never see it from here. Not like this.’

  I sat on the dirt, among the tufts of grass and taut saplings that sprang from the earth, and I wrapped my arms around my knees. I could still feel the buzz from the ganja, but I no longer felt anxious. Kissing Domino had pushed it aside. The walk had expelled it from my system. Seeing the lake stretched out below me replaced it with a different feeling altogether.

  ‘Like looking into heaven, isn’t it?’ Domino said. She sat down beside me, squeezing herself close.

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘The lake,’ she said, taking something from her bag. ‘Do you know where it came from?’

  ‘Sure.’ I continued to gaze at it, remembering what I’d read. Something prosaic that could, in no way, capture the beauty of what I was seeing. ‘A volcano did that. Bigger than Krakatoa. Bigger even than Vesuvius. A super volcano. There’s still a fault under there,’ I said. ‘Pushed out another volcano in the middle of the lake. Did you know that the island of Samosir is nearly as big as Singapore?’

  ‘Sounds like you read the guidebook,’ she said, taking a cigarette and rolling it so the tobacco came loose and fell onto the ground. ‘Anyway, that’s not what I meant.’ She scooped marijuana into the emptied cigarette, tapping it on the lid of the tin to settle it, just as Alim had done.

  ‘What did you mean, then?’
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br />   Domino finished making the joint and lit it, lying back on the dirt. Her dress pulled tight across her flat stomach, her hip bones protruding on either side.

  ‘There’s a legend,’ she said. ‘About a fisherman who caught a golden fish. He took it home to eat, but decided it was too beautiful.’ Domino passed the joint to me.

  I took it, considered whether or not to smoke it with her, but decided to go ahead. I wouldn’t get anxious here. Not with such a beautiful view, not with Domino lying beside me. ‘A golden fish,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Yeah. Golden fish. So anyway, he decided not to eat the fish because it was too beautiful. Instead, he put it in a pond to keep as a pet. But the fish turned into a princess, the most stunning woman he’d ever seen, and he immediately fell in love with her.’

  I glanced down at Domino and then lay back beside her, staring up at the stars. She shuffled to make herself more comfortable, put one leg over mine, wrapped her arm around my own.

  ‘So he asked her to marry him and she said yes, but on one condition.’

  ‘There’s always a condition,’ I smiled.

  ‘Always,’ said Domino. ‘Women always like to have a condition.’

  ‘They do?’ I looked at her.

  ‘Sure,’ she shrugged. ‘Why not?’

  ‘So what’s yours?’

  ‘Do you want to hear the story or not?’

  ‘Go ahead.’ I took a drag of the joint, beginning to feel even more relaxed now.

  ‘Well, the condition was that he couldn’t tell anyone she was a fish. I mean, he wasn’t allowed to ever talk about it, probably not even think about it.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘So they got married and had a kid – a boy. The boy turned out to be a bit naughty, though, and one day when he was taking his dad some lunch out to the field, he got hungry on the way so he stopped to eat it.’

  ‘Sounds like trouble,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly. He yells at the kid, calls him a stupid son of a fish or something, and his wife, the princess, she finds out straight away. She just knows. And she also knows that something bad is going to happen now that her secret is out. And that bad thing is the mother of all storms. The gods are angry. So she tells her kid to run up into the hills just as the storm comes. There’s thunder and lightning and a volcano and all kinds of nasty shit, and as the princess runs away, every time she takes a step, a spring wells up where her footprint was, and they gush with water and they join and the whole place floods, making Danau Toba.’