Dark Horizons

by Dan Smith

  I hardened my resolve and went back.

  It took me a couple of minutes to find them, but once I spotted them, they were unmistakeable. The regular, angular, shapes were clear among the soft shadows and the curves of the forest.

  I kept the beam of the torch centred on the closest of them and began walking towards it, once again afraid to take my eyes from it.

  It was exactly what I had thought. A shrine. My fear had been that the shrines might be recent, but this one was very old. There were signs to suggest that it had once been painted, flecks of faded colour on the carvings, but time had taken its toll. The wood was worn, sheltered by the trees but still affected by the elements. Even here, the rain would penetrate the canopy.

  I crouched to look closer, holding the torch in my right hand and using my left to dust away the dirt that coated the carving. A spider, small-bodied and long-legged, disturbed by my unwanted attentions, scurried over my hand, causing a sudden feeling of revulsion, making me wave my hand in quick, sharp movements. I shone the torch closer, shifting it across the surface of the shrine, checking for more creatures before I continued, taking away enough grime to read a name. Sondang Sirayit. No dates, but I knew it couldn’t belong to a member of this community. The shrine was probably older than all of us.

  Close by, another, similar in age, and again with just a name. Tetty Sinaga. No dates. I studied them both, comparing the craftsmanship, seeing the immediate similarity in their shape and design. There were others, too, perhaps four in this group, each of them a dozen feet away from the other. And behind them, another two, although perhaps not quite as old. These ones still had some of the paint clinging to the dark wood. I crouched in front of the smallest one, wondering if this person had not been so important, or perhaps a smaller shrine was meant for a child.

  I imagined that these were the graves of the people who had once lived in the longhouses we now inhabited. Perhaps they had even built them, and the hands that had put them together now lay beneath my feet, a collection of bones.

  I was saddened to find the graves, to know that people had been buried here, but I wasn’t uncomfortable with it, and I was relieved that the graves were old. I was glad that these people had not been put in the ground by Kurt and his community, and I passed among them, crouched low in the ferns and other plants so that I could read their names. I was oblivious to the night around me as I picked out the individual burial places, discovering this for myself, with no one at my side to judge me.

  Much further back, though, hidden behind a ragged growth of shrubs, I held back the foliage to find another, more recent shrine. And when I read the inscription, this one pinched my skin, tightening it to a constellation of tiny bumps, freezing the blood beneath.

  Taking shallow breaths, I ran the torch beam over the shrine. A small longhouse fashioned from one piece of wood. The carving here was no older than a year or two. The paint was still clear, bright, vivid. The markings were less practised, almost crude. The work was less authentic. And the words on the shrine were not local. I was not familiar with the natives of this place, nor was I familiar with their language, but the words carved on this hidden shrine were western – ‘Our Friend and Brother’ – and I knew Matt had not been the first.

  I touched a hand to my chest and wondered whose shirt I was wearing.

  31

  There is nothing present in darkness that isn’t present in light. Darkness is not a thing. It is a nothing. But when I switched off the torch and the night wrapped itself around me, I sensed the ghosts of the people buried here. ‘Our Friend and Brother’, the corpse at my feet, with only soil to keep us apart. I wondered who had called him ‘friend’, but hidden him here, away from the others, away even from the place where Matt had been laid.

  I had rarely felt like a true part of the community, but it was only now that I began to fear it. Whatever bad things had happened here, and whatever bad things were going to happen, I didn’t want to be a part of them.

  I glanced around me, my eyes becoming accustomed to the dark. From where I was sitting I could make out the shrines I’d first spotted, and as I scanned the forest, other shapes came to me from the gloom. It surprised me that once my eyes were allowed to settle, I could see well enough with just the light of the moon. In fact, the torchlight had hampered my vision, giving an unrealistic hue to everything, casting shadow, making me see only within its orange eye.

  There were two other shrines, not far from where I was sitting, and something else that I hadn’t noticed in the light of the torch. A mound, like a pregnant swelling in the earth. I wondered what the swelling was – the rest of the forest floor was quite flat, covered only by the patches of ferns and other flora that grew there. But this was no plant. This was something else. Something more solid and impenetrable. A crouching person maybe. An animal. Or a beast.

  I waited, watching, but the thing didn’t move, so I stood, and without turning on the torch, crept over, moving my feet slowly so as not to disturb it. When I came to it, though, I realised it was not a living thing but a mound of dirt. Loose soil. With two cangkuls lying across the top. And on the other side of it was a shallow hole. What I was looking at, illuminated in silver moonlight, was an empty grave.

  It was only then that I saw the light among the trees, bobbing backwards and forwards, flashing between the dark trunks, killing shadows, allowing them to flood back again.

  Someone was coming.

  My instinct was to remain hidden and, almost without thinking, I hunched low, becoming smaller so I wouldn’t stand out if the beams came close to me. As the torch continued to glitter and sweep in the forest, I dropped forwards into a crouching position and moved away from the shrines, going deeper into the forest, taking shelter behind an overgrowth of ferns. I lay down among them, facing the direction of the light.

  It was almost ethereal, watching the light bobbing towards me but hearing nothing. A forest spirit come to visit the remains of its dead ancestors. But no matter what fanciful images came to mind, there was no denying what this was. Someone was coming to the spot where the dead were buried.

  I kept low as the torchlight came closer, and as the beam widened, catching my eyes in one instant, I buried my face in my arms, which were crossed in front of me. I pressed my nose to the dirt and waited for the light to pass away from me before I dared look up again, trying to raise nothing more than my eyes above the level of my arms. I shuffled further back among the plants, eager to see who it was, what they were going to do.

  When the progression of the light through the trees finally stopped, I heard voices, whispering, carried on the breeze. I saw figures. Not one, but three. At first they were difficult to make out. The person holding the torch was obscured from view by the thick trunk of a tree. All that was visible was the beam of light, directed at the ground, and the slight protrusion around the edge of the tree trunk. The others moved further forward, carrying something between them, and bent over to place it on the ground. When they stood, they stretched their backs.

  These two figures were clearer, illuminated in part by the orange light from the torch but also by the moon and my improved perspective now that I’d allowed my eyes to grow accustomed to the night. The tall stature and wide proportions of the first man were unmistakeable. Since coming to Indonesia I hadn’t seen a man as tall or as muscular as Michael. The other person was harder to make out at first, but when the torch bearer swung the beam up, towards his face, his identity became clear. Kurt.

  It was impossible to tell what they’d been carrying – the angle was all wrong – but I had a keen idea. I tried to persuade myself that it was the shrine that Michael had been carving earlier that evening. It made sense they’d want to come out to place it by Matt’s grave, and I guessed that the torch bearer would be Jason. He too would want to be there when they placed it. Only thing was, though, I could think of no reason why they would do it now. In the dead hours of shadow and obscurity. And they were not standing at Matt’s grave. Th
ey were further in, close to the hole I’d seen. A hole that could have only one purpose in such a place.

  When the circle of light settled on the ground, it fell upon the object they had been carrying, and although it was bathed in shadow, it confirmed what I had feared. A body. They had come here to bury another body.

  When Michael and Kurt had rested, they spoke again, this time a little louder. I still couldn’t hear what they were saying, or who was speaking, but some of the words reached me.

  ‘… get it done …’

  They leaned down, put their hands on the body and pushed, rolling it into the hole, dropping it in with a dull thump.

  With the body out of sight, Michael and Kurt began scraping the soil back into the hole, grunting with the effort, while the torch remained fixed on the spot.

  When the soil was all in place, the two men battered it flat with the cangkuls, then collected pine needles from the surrounding area, scattering them on the disturbed soil. With that done, they stretched again, then stood, hands on hips, looking down at the spot where they’d put the body.

  ‘… should do it …’ I heard one of them say, but neither of them made a move.

  ‘… not enough … something else …’

  Then more words, and the torch was redirected, sweeping the area around them, flashing past my hiding spot among the ferns, then returning and stopping.

  Michael and Kurt turned to face my direction, both of them coming towards me, their footsteps becoming louder, their voices more audible.

  ‘We need to cover it more,’ said Kurt. ‘Put some plants over it or something.’

  ‘Plants? How we gonna do that?’ said Michael.

  ‘Pull some up,’ Kurt replied. ‘Replant them. Few days, it’ll look like they were always there. Doesn’t need to be too much; no one’s coming out here.’

  ‘We didn’t do it to … to the other one.’ Michael’s head turned in the direction of the shrine I’d been looking at.

  ‘Still can’t say his name?’

  ‘I can say it.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Kurt. ‘Sure you can. Well, anyway, he was one of us. He was our friend and he deserved better. You want to make one of your carvings for this wanker as well?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So let’s just get on with it, then, shall we?’

  Now the figure with the torch was coming closer too, their whole shape obscured by the diffused glow of the light. They were nothing more than a dark silhouette, sweeping gently from side to side, looking for a good place from which to take a few plants.

  The most obvious spot was right here, the place where I was hiding.

  ‘Over here,’ Kurt said, and my heart hammered hard in my chest. I would surely be discovered if they came this way. ‘There’s loads here.’

  The torch jerked in my direction now, falling a few feet short of my crossed arms and protruding head. I ducked down and shuffled back among the plants, keeping as slow and quiet as possible.

  Michael and Kurt came closer, blocking the torchlight, casting shadows, and the torch bearer moved the light to accommodate them.

  Then Kurt spoke again, saying, ‘For fuck’s sake, D, keep the light still, will you?’

  Now my heart stopped hammering. I stopped creeping backwards and lifted my head above my crossed arms. I stared at the silhouetted figure with the torch, but still couldn’t make out who it was. Perhaps I’d heard wrong. Perhaps Kurt had said something else, uttered another person’s name.

  But then she spoke and I knew it was her.

  ‘Can we just get out of here?’ she said. ‘I don’t like this.’

  It was Domino. The girl who had saved me, who had inspired me. The girl I had followed to Lake Toba.

  ‘We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you,’ Kurt snapped. ‘Christ, D, you don’t half cause some shit.’

  ‘And you better get your boyfriend to stop asking so many questions,’ said Michael. ‘And keep him away from Helena, or we’re gonna have to dig one of these for him.’

  ‘He’s not interested in her,’ Domino replied. ‘She’s the one trying to latch on to him.’

  ‘Stop it, you two, let’s just get this done,’ Kurt told them.

  I was frozen to the spot, my mouth open, my eyes wide. I lay paralysed by fear and indecision and incomprehension. I could do nothing but watch as Kurt and Michael came closer still, reaching the undergrowth I was hiding in. Kurt felt for the base of one of the plants and tugged, fixing his feet securely on the ground and leaning away, using the strength in his legs to pull up the plant. When it came loose, popping from the soft soil, he fell into a sitting position and the fern landed in his lap.

  ‘Couple more ought to do it,’ he said, throwing the fern at Domino’s feet and repositioning himself. He lifted his head to Michael. ‘Come on, then. Gonna be much quicker if we both do it.’

  I heard Michael sigh, then he, too, felt for a plant and began tugging.

  As they struggled to pull the foliage from the soil, Domino moved the torch, alternating between the two of them so that each would get light. On the third or fourth pass, sweeping the light from Michael to Kurt, each of them with their head down, the light flicked across my face and became still, highlighting me like a rabbit caught in the glare of a hunter’s lamp.

  I ducked my head low, once again burying it in the crook of my crossed arms, but I knew it was no use. Domino had seen me. She couldn’t have failed to see me. It was the only reason why she’d stopped sweeping the beam. Slowly, I raised my head and looked at her, no more than a few feet away. I couldn’t see her face – the glare from the torch ensured that – but I knew that if the darkness were replaced with daylight, we would be staring at each other. Each of us as stunned and shocked as the other.

  She would’ve known I was gone as soon as she had awoken. Perhaps she hadn’t even been asleep, and had known that I’d left the longhouse. But she wouldn’t have known where I had gone. This was probably the last place she would have expected me to come in the dead of night.

  I wondered if she had told Kurt I was gone.

  Time crawled while Domino kept the light on my face, and my heart beat in slow motion, like a deep, heavy drum. The air was sucked out of the world, and my entire body felt as if a great weight were bearing down on it, crushing it, forcing the air from my lungs, squeezing my chest, breaking my bones. My legs were numb, my eyes wide, my mouth gaping. Then, as if the air rushed back into our world, she redirected the light, moving it to one side, the beam jerking erratically across the forest floor.

  ‘A little light here, Domino,’ I heard Michael say, from somewhere a million miles away, his voice coming to me down a narrow tunnel.

  Then the beam was on him and, like a wild animal released from the spell of the light, I began to move again. I wanted to bolt, but instead, inched further back into the flora, afraid that Michael would see me, terrified that he would have a reason to dig another hole out here in the wilderness.

  32

  When they were done, Kurt and Michael picked up their tools and made ready to leave. They cast one final look around the site, then Kurt took the torch from Domino and they set off in the direction from which they’d come.

  I watched the light moving into the distance, a will o’ the wisp, flitting among the trees until it was gone. I waited, still prostrate among the plants, scanning the trees for any sign of their return – perhaps Domino would change her mind, decide to tell them I was here – but there was no more movement in the forest.

  My heart was still drumming when I finally sat up and looked around. I remained that way, watchful, then got to my feet, collected my torch and crept to the spot where they’d been. In the dark, with just the moonlight, there was little sign they’d been here at all.

  I stared at the spot where they’d buried the body. Where Domino had helped bury the body. She’d had a hard day, Kurt told me. She didn’t want to talk about it, she’d said when we’d been together by the cliff. And now I understood wh
y. In my naivety, I’d thought it was something to do with me, but now I could see that more serious matters had been troubling her. And with that understanding came a lucid realisation. I would have to leave this place.

  Right now. Without changing my mind. It was time for me to take control.

  I would have to leave the community. Leave Kurt and his people, leave my examined life, and most of all, I would have to leave Domino. But even knowing what she was involved in, I felt a sense of loss. A sadness that she was not what I thought she was. No longer was she just a wild and eccentric animal. Now she was something more.

  Coming back through the forest, I wished I didn’t have anything to collect – that there was no reason for me to go back. But all the belongings I had in the world were in the longhouse. My money-belt, locked in the cupboard, right next to the place where Domino and I slept. It was all I had, and I couldn’t leave without it.

  The only thing standing between where I was now and escape from Kurt’s camp was that money-belt.

  The sky was starting to lighten when I headed back to the camp, but the light was not good, the brightness of the moon having waned, only to be replaced by the greyness of the approaching dawn. Looking up, I could see the clouds through the trees, no sun burning through them yet, just a dim and difficult light that made it harder to see than before. Everything had a sombre hue, the shadows closing in on me as I picked my way through, until eventually they thinned out again and I saw the shape of the longhouses in the main clearing.

  The place was deserted. The fire had long since died and lay cold, waiting to be revived. The table was empty, the kitchen was desolate, the longhouses remained still. No music, no laughing, no voices. No movement of any kind.

  Knowing this was my best chance to retrieve my belongings, I emerged into the clearing and approached the longhouse. If I left it much later, people would be waking, but for now they would still be sleeping off the after-effects of last night’s party. I hoped that the gravediggers were asleep too, tired from their exertions in the forest, and was glad I’d been relegated to the back of the longhouse. Being the runt of the group had some benefits after all: at least I wouldn’t have to pass everybody in order to get to my belongings. Just Domino.