Dark Horizons

by Dan Smith

  Kurt thrust his torch into the ground, collected his flashlight and switched it off. He stalked over to the stone and ran his hand across the top. ‘They say that once you’ve laid eyes on Lake Toba, you can’t ever bear to be away from it.’

  ‘I like that.’

  ‘It’s just for tourists, though. Something to write on the brochures to get the foreigners to come and spend their money. Take only photos, leave only footprints, that kind of shit.’

  ‘But they’ll never forget it,’ I said, thinking about the first time I’d laid eyes on it. ‘You don’t forget something like that.’

  ‘True, but it doesn’t mean you can’t live without it. And there are other things here that’ll stay in your heart. Things you really won’t want to live without. Things that’ll keep drawing you back. The lake is just one of them.’

  ‘What other things?’

  ‘One of them I can see in your eyes every time you look at Domino.’

  He paused as if waiting for a reaction. I gave none.

  ‘And this community,’ he said. ‘We’re part of this place now. All of us who live here. The lake is as much ours now as anyone’s. Did you know the Batak people believe this is the centre of the world? That all life originated here?’

  I shook my head, wondering if this was what he’d brought me out here for: to open his arms and tell me we’re all children of Toba. I hadn’t yet seen anything in Kurt to inspire me in the way he’d inspired others, but maybe this place wasn’t about him at all. Like he’d just said, it was about the place. Maybe that’s what he was trying to tell me.

  ‘The stone chairs,’ said Kurt. ‘The ones back there?’

  ‘In the clearing?’

  ‘Hm. We put them there. Michael and me. We couldn’t find the real ones, the original ones, but there would’ve been some so we made our own. Took us days to get the rocks where we wanted them. We found a place out behind the longhouses where they were littered all over the hillside, so we picked out the right ones, pushed and rolled them into the clearing. They’re not carved, but they’re good enough.’

  He leaned against the boulder and crossed his arms. ‘You know why I was so sure there should’ve been stone chairs?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Because this was here. This rock.’ He unfolded his arms and put his hands on it again. ‘You see, back there, where we live, that’s where the village elders would’ve sat. I dunno, maybe hundreds of years ago. Discussions about daily life, meetings, judgements, that kind of thing.’

  I walked further into the clearing, moved around the boulder, ran my hand over its smooth surface.

  ‘But here,’ he said, slapping the rock. ‘This is where people died. Right here on this stone.’

  I removed my hand, snatching it away as if the rock had instantly become hot.

  ‘I just can’t believe how no one ever comes here,’ I said. ‘I mean, if you’re right, then this place must be of interest. Historically.’

  ‘If I’m right?’ said Kurt. ‘Why wouldn’t I be right?’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘There are other places like this. On Samosir you can see something like this in Ambarita.’

  ‘I read about it.’

  ‘In a guidebook.’

  ‘Yeah. In a guidebook.’

  ‘I guess people don’t know about this one,’ he went on.

  ‘Someone must know.’

  ‘We know. And we keep it to ourselves.’

  ‘No one ever comes up here?’

  ‘Occasionally they come. They’ve heard about us or they stumble on us, and we welcome them. But it doesn’t happen often and they never come this far. Why would they? Why would anyone find this unless they were looking for it?’

  ‘And the people who come,’ I said. ‘They don’t tell others?’

  ‘We ask them not to.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘You must ask them very nicely. For them to actually not tell anyone, I mean.’

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference, Alex. Who would they tell, and what would it matter? People leave us to it.’

  ‘Except for Richard,’ I said. ‘Didn’t he send the police up here one time?’

  ‘We don’t have to worry about that kind of interference any more,’ Kurt replied. ‘We have someone to take care of that now.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘We have a good place here, Alex; we like to keep it that way. It’s calm, relaxing. A kind of haven. It’s a way of life and we like to keep it. Domino told me you have no family; no ties to the outside world. No one to give a shit. Except for us, of course; we’re your family now.’

  I didn’t like the way he said it, but he was right.

  ‘It’s best that way. It means we can be here without any interruption. Without any influences.’

  ‘What about Sully?’

  ‘Sully? Who told you about him?’

  ‘He had ties, right? That’s why you had trouble with Richard. That’s why he sent the police up here.’

  ‘Sully’s gone,’ Kurt said. ‘We don’t talk about it any more. And the thing with the police … well, I guess that’s why outside influences need to be kept low. We don’t want that to happen again.’ Kurt smiled, the orange glow from the torches smothering his face, giving life to shadows that distorted his features. ‘Michael heard you talking to Helena. Asking about going down the hill.’

  ‘And you’re worried that if I go down, I’ll do something to jeopardise this place?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I won’t,’ I assured him.

  ‘Domino must see something in you otherwise she wouldn’t have brought you here. We’ve accepted you, shown you something of our home. I’m hoping I can trust you to be part of our way of life.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, thinking maybe Kurt was a little too strange for me to want to spend a lot of time with him. ‘But I’m not sure how happy Michael is about it. He doesn’t like me.’

  ‘He just takes a while to get used to new people, that’s all.’

  ‘Seemed friendly enough when I first arrived.’

  ‘What matters is that Domino wants you here.’ He leaned across the stone. ‘You like her.’

  ‘I do,’ I told him. ‘And so do you.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You and Domino—’

  ‘But she likes you,’ he interrupted with a smile that looked more like a grin, ‘and that’s what’s important right now. She likes you. Maybe more than you realise.’

  I wondered once again where he’d been when Domino and I had been alone in the longhouse on my first night. Had we, perhaps, not been alone at all?

  ‘I wanted to show you around,’ he said. ‘That’s the real reason I brought you here. You need to see everything before you decide whether or not you want to stay.’

  ‘I thought I already decided,’ I said, not believing this was everything. There was more to this place. More to Kurt. ‘I did that when I jumped off the cliff.’

  Kurt made a noise that sounded like it might have been a laugh but I couldn’t be sure. It might have been a dismissive sound, as if to say that jumping off the cliff had been nothing, just child’s play, and that the real test was to come. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The cliff. You did well. You looked brave when you did it.’

  ‘Anyone ever refuse?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And what do you do?’

  ‘We push them off. After that, it’s up to them.’

  I waited for him to laugh, smile, anything, but I realised he was serious. ‘You just push them off ? And they don’t get hurt?’ My mind went back to the night I had jumped. The sound of another person hitting the surface, struggling. Distress in the water. I imagined something like that happening to Sully. I wondered if he had sunk into the depths of Lake Toba and this community had kept it hidden. I could believe such a thing of Michael and, maybe, Kurt. But Domino? Helena? I wasn’t sure they would be a willing part of such a conspiracy.

  ‘It was Domino w
ho pushed Helena off,’ he said.

  It explained why she was so determined to jump that night. She hadn’t done it before. Not herself.

  ‘Some of the guys went down to make sure she didn’t drown. After that it was up to her if she came back up. She decided to come.’

  ‘Why?’

  Kurt shrugged. ‘She wanted to be here. There was someone … waiting for her.’

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘Who, then?’

  Once again Kurt shrugged as if to say, ‘What does it matter? Things are what they are.’ He sat down and leaned his back against the smooth stone, beckoning me over to sit beside him. I hesitated. I considered whether or not I wanted to sit, almost as if I were deciding whether or not I wanted to stay with him in this place; stay with any of them in their strange little community, living together in their longhouses, pretending the outside world didn’t exist other than to provide them with supplies and something to look down on from their tower. But then I saw Domino’s face in my mind and my resolve softened. If she was here, then I was prepared to stay a little longer.

  I went over to Kurt, lowering myself beside him, leaning against the rock.

  He was silent for a while before he spoke. ‘The Bataks who lived here,’ he said, ‘they were cannibals.’

  I didn’t look at him.

  ‘I don’t mean like bones through their noses, explorers in a pot kind of cannibals. They didn’t just eat anybody.’

  When he paused, I caught a hint of sound from somewhere in the forest: a primal, animal noise that shrilled and was then gone.

  ‘Criminals mostly,’ he said. ‘They’d bring them right here, to this rock. That’s what it was for. They’d put him over the rock and torture him to scare away the evil spirits. Chop off his head, cut him into pieces, eat his heart and his liver, drink his blood. Village elders first, then the rest of the villagers got their share. Ate him till there was nothing left but bones that they’d throw into the lake.’

  ‘Sounds disgusting.’

  ‘Yeah, disgusting all right. Sometimes they tied a man to a stake, worked themselves into a frenzy, then ate him alive, cutting pieces off him. Took a long time to die, I reckon, but they only did it to convicted criminals – and people who consented. The ill and the old.’

  ‘Well, that makes it all right then.’

  Kurt made that noise again, the one that might have been a laugh and might not. ‘They had some strange customs but they weren’t savages. You know, most of them are Christian now?’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘Sure you do; you’ve read the guidebooks. You prepared yourself before you came. You knew you were coming to Toba to see the lake. You’d go to Samosir to see the longhouses, maybe go to Tuk Tuk to smoke some dope like a hippy, score some Frank Sumatra and kick back. After that you’d go to Brastagi, see the volcanoes, say you’d been up Gunung Sibayak, maybe even Sinabung if you’re really brave. Aceh, Bukit Lawang, all the tourist spots. Then Bali, to Kuta, to dance and drink and live like a westerner abroad.’

  It was, pretty much, my intended itinerary.

  ‘You came here as a tourist, Alex, and we’re giving you the opportunity to live here as something else. Not as a native, though. Something … else. Like nothing else. You live here, Alex, you’re like nothing else in the world.’

  I wondered if Kurt really believed we were that unique. There might be people living in places like this all over the world, all of them thinking they were the only ones. Perhaps another community, right here on the banks of Lake Toba.

  ‘Like I said before, Alex, the day you jumped: do you want to be a tourist, or do you want to be something different? Do you want to see this country, or do you want to see into yourself ? Find out who you are?’

  For all his bullshit, Kurt understood. He’d seen what I was looking for. My life had stopped when my mother’s illness deteriorated, and I had stagnated. I hadn’t felt like a person, more like an extension of someone else. I had watched her die while I weighed my choices, wondering what I could do for her, and then I’d had to carry the consequences of the decision I made. But now I was free, I wanted to find myself again. Be who I wanted to be. If I even knew who that was.

  ‘Stay with us a while. See what we have here. Find a new peace. That thing you’re looking for?’ He leaned across and tapped my head. ‘It’s right here. All you have to do is find it. Happiness isn’t about getting what you want, Alex, it’s about appreciating what you have.’

  ‘How would we ever get any better, then?’ I said. ‘If we never try to get something we don’t already have – or be something we aren’t already.’

  ‘Don’t overcomplicate things, Alex. Just sit back and let the experience wash over you.’

  I looked at him now, nodding. ‘I think I’d like to stay a while,’ I said. But it wasn’t because of him and his speeches. Him, I could live without.

  ‘So do that. Settle in. Be one of us before you go looking for a way out.’

  ‘A way out?’

  ‘Michael said you were talking about leaving, remember?’

  ‘I was planning on coming back.’

  ‘Stay a while longer,’ he said. ‘For Domino. No more talk of leaving.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Good.’ Kurt tipped his head back against the rock and looked up at the sky. ‘She’ll be pleased.’

  I thought about her, pictured her as I had first seen her, an angel coming to my rescue as I lay on the warm road, surrounded by blood and death. Then I saw her as she had been when we were together on the hillside, watching the lake and making love for the first time. I remembered the way she had looked with her hair spread on the uneven ground, tangled among the grass, her eyes squeezed shut one moment then locked on mine the next.

  Kurt reached into his top pocket, his fingers working to grip something, but I ignored him, thinking only of Domino now.

  ‘Just one last thing,’ said Kurt. ‘And then you’ll be part of our group.’

  ‘Hm?’

  ‘Just one more thing.’

  I looked down at what he was holding. A small box, wooden from the look of it, but it was difficult to tell in this light. He opened it and took something from inside. Tiny, almost invisible in the fingers he held out to me.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘You eat it,’ he said, taking my hand and placing a small tablet in my palm. ‘And you enjoy it.’

  I stared at the small white object, innocuous and yet sinister, staring back at me. Something unknown. Another part of the adventure.

  ‘Eat it?’ I asked, feeling my throat become dry, my tongue click in my parched mouth. I could feel the hard rock of the execution stone against my back. ‘You’re not trying to drug me up,’ I said, trying to lighten the moment. ‘Put me over the stone?’

  ‘Don’t joke about that,’ Kurt said. ‘There are souls all around us, watching everything we do. I’ve seen them. We all have. You will too.’

  ‘Souls?’

  ‘Swallow it,’ said Kurt. ‘And stay here a while. Think about … well, think about whatever you want to think about. Whatever is most important to you.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘And then Domino will come.’

  I looked at the tablet again. ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s an eye opener,’ he said.

  22

  When Kurt left, I looked at the tablet resting in the palm of my hand. I picked it up between finger and thumb and turned it around. No markings. Just a white tablet. I didn’t know Kurt and I didn’t know what he’d given me to swallow. I felt like I did when I had looked over the edge of the cliff and considered jumping. The risks were almost the same, or at least that was the way I saw it at that moment, sitting in the dark, resting against a rock that had been used as an execution block in some distant past.

  I mulled over the possibilities in my mind. I could go back to the others, tell them I’d taken the tablet, but I didn’t know what effect
s I was supposed to feel. There might even be someone out there, right now, watching me. Kurt, maybe. They’d know I hadn’t taken it and they’d send me back down the hillside, make me leave Domino behind. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I wanted to be with her despite my reservations about Kurt.

  If I had thought about it more deeply, though, I might have realised that I had broken free of the prison that had been my mother’s illness just to stumble into another incarceration. The only way I was going to be free was if I left it behind me, turned away from Domino and Kurt and everything that had happened to me. Right then, I couldn’t see that, and I stared at the tablet, wishing it could tell me whether it was something sinister that would make my kidneys bleed, or if it was something else: something that would show me a new experience. But I couldn’t back out now, and for ever wonder what would have happened, so I made a choice. I put the tablet between my teeth and closed my lips around it. I shut my eyes and swallowed. Then I opened my eyes and looked at the sky.

  The stars were clear and the dark heavens were full of them, the tiny pricks of silver touching almost every part. And they were brighter than I had ever seen them. Not like the faint stars at home. Here the sky was a sequinned curtain, every inch decorated and glowing.

  I felt nothing from the tablet. No obvious signs of pain or discomfort. Normal. Perhaps it wouldn’t show me anything other than my ability to let go. I had let go for just one second and taken a risk.

  For a while I stayed as I was, staring up at the sapphire sky above me. I watched the stars, tried to identify the constellations using my rudimentary knowledge of such things, but mostly I just saw patterns with no meaning.

  Still I felt nothing from the tablet and I began to wonder if it was a joke; another initiation into Kurt’s group.

  After some time sitting with my shoulder blades against the smooth surface of the execution rock I shifted my weight, pushed myself away from the stone that had seen blood. I stood and looked at it, pondering how many people had been stretched across it, their organs removed for eating, their blood spilled for drinking; how many souls had touched it and then moved up into the cleared circle in the canopy above me.