Dark Horizons

by Dan Smith

  For all I knew, Helena might have been sitting safely among the others, eating, smoking, playing mah jong, but I began to imagine the worst. I worked hard to persuade myself that she was fine. The trip across the lake would have taken at least half an hour, with that much again to reach the community. One hour travelling, perhaps longer, and an hour or so once she was there. She was fine. She would arrive any moment. There was no need for me to go after her.

  By two o’clock, with my stomach turning and my mind awash with thoughts I didn’t want, I decided to settle my bill at the losmen, have everything ready so I could leave as soon as Helena returned. And if she wasn’t here within the hour, I would go after her. I would look for her. I wouldn’t leave her behind this time.

  Stepping from my guest house, closing the door behind me, I heard Helena call my name. I stopped, one hand still on the key and watched her running up from the lake.

  Before she reached me, I could tell that she was distraught: the tone of her voice when she called my name. The frantic manner in which she ran.

  Behind her, Richard’s boat was bobbing on the surface of the lake. Richard’s face was turned towards us, but I barely registered that he was there, my concentration was so taken by Helena, who came to a halt by my side, her shoulders slumping as if bearing a heavy weight, her eyes closing, her head shaking.

  ‘What?’ I asked. ‘What happened?’

  Helena opened her mouth to speak but all she could do was shake her head.

  I put my hands on her. ‘What’s the matter? Tell me what’s happened.’

  Helena looked at me, taking a deep breath, pursing her lips.

  ‘What happened? ’

  ‘I was in the trees, coming back from the shrine … from Sully … and I saw …’

  ‘What?’ My hands gripping her slim shoulders, squeezing until I could feel the hardness of the bone beneath her skin. ‘What did you see?’ Flashes of being woken by Domino, seeing her in a similar state.

  ‘Men,’ she said again.

  ‘With guns.’

  ‘What men?’

  ‘Danuri.’

  ‘Danuri?’ Even now I remembered the way he’d looked. Calm and intimidating. The man who had pointed his rifle into the trees the night Domino had stolen Alim’s pistol.

  ‘They beat Domino.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I saw them hit her, drag her away.’

  ‘Drag her where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I took my hands from her shoulders and pulled her close. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘They were looking for Kurt,’ she said against my chest. ‘Shouting for him. Everyone ran, but they caught Freia and Jason. Domino, too.’

  I looked down at her, putting my mouth on the top of her head.

  ‘They started hitting them. Said they’d keep doing it till he showed himself.’

  ‘And did he?’

  She shook her head, said nothing, so I held her tighter, tried to be strong for her. I felt the same creep of fear that I had felt that morning in the forest, when Domino came to tell me about Matt, but muted. I experienced it as though by proxy, as if it flowed from someone else.

  When she spoke again, her words came in a whisper. ‘They cut Freia’s throat.’

  I stood back. ‘What?’

  ‘Jason, too.’

  I felt cold.

  She came closer, pressed herself against me again.

  ‘Are you sure? I mean, maybe it just looked like it?’ I reached for another explanation. It was too unreal. As if there was insufficient drama to accompany such news. ‘Maybe they’re still OK.’ But she couldn’t be mistaken. You can’t be mistaken about a thing like that.

  ‘No. There was blood. So much …’

  ‘What about Domino?’

  ‘They hit her.’ Helena looked up at me.

  ‘Did they … ?’

  ‘No.’

  Everything was a muddle in my head. It had all changed so much. What had once seemed good and calm had twisted beyond any recognition. As if some malevolent darkness grew out there, easing itself among the trees, corrupting everything it touched. But there was nothing mysterious about the polluting forces at work. The darkness that resided there was born in the hearts of people like Kurt and Michael, and they spread their poison with false promises of freedom.

  ‘And he didn’t come forward?’ I asked. ‘Kurt?’

  ‘I didn’t see him.’

  ‘You mean he let them beat her? He hid in the forest and let them kill people?’ There were many things wrong with the way they lived, but Freia and Jason didn’t deserve that. All they had wanted was a different life – to belong – and I had a vague sense of that because there had been rare moments when I, too, had felt a part of that community. But something had always made me step back and now I understood that nothing had changed in that place. It had always been heading in this direction. Something like this was always going to happen.

  There were tears in Helena’s eyes and I knew that beneath the fear and the revulsion and the loss, there was guilt, too. Like Kurt, she had remained hidden. She had done nothing.

  I touched my hand to her face, wiped away a tear with my thumb. ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ I said, feeling stronger, calmer, focusing on Helena. ‘You couldn’t have done anything.’

  ‘He said he’d kill Domino. If Kurt didn’t give himself up, he’d cut her throat.’ She reached up and put her hand on mine. ‘Then they took her away.’

  ‘Shit, so where was Kurt?’

  Helena shook her head. ‘I didn’t see him.’

  I imagined him scurrying into the forest like a frightened animal, trying to arrange his thoughts, see past the blood and the death and the fear. ‘And Michael?’

  Again, she shook her head.

  ‘We have to do something,’ I said.

  ‘I just want to get away from here.’ She pressed my hand against her face.

  I nodded. ‘Me too.’ But we couldn’t just walk away. If Kurt didn’t help Domino, no one would. She would die. ‘I should do something.’

  Helena stepped back and looked at me.

  ‘We can’t just leave her,’ I said. ‘We can’t leave thinking she’s going to die.’

  Helena continued to stare.

  ‘She’s got no one else to help her.’

  ‘What about the others?’ she asked. ‘Michael? Kurt? She has them.’

  ‘Does she? You said you didn’t even see them.’ I looked at the ground, walked away running both hands over my head, came back to her. ‘She meant something to me, Helena.’ I made fists, unable to relax. ‘Last night you asked if I liked Domino because she helped me.’

  ‘You said “maybe”.’

  ‘Right. And that’s why I have to help her. She helped me when I needed it, and now she needs me. I have to do something. I can’t just let her …’ I could hardly believe I was saying it. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t happening to me.

  ‘How would you ever know? We leave now, don’t look back, you’d never know.’

  ‘I don’t want to not know. I don’t want that. It’s like you wanting to say goodbye to Sully. You want it behind you.’

  ‘What can we do, though? We can’t go back up there.’

  ‘You don’t have to do anything. You can wait here. I’ll get Richard to take me to the police. Let them deal with it.’

  She thought about it for a moment, shaking her head. ‘Don’t leave me on my own.’ She took my hand. ‘Let me come with you.’

  It felt good to know she needed me. I didn’t want to be alone, either. ‘I’ll understand if you want to stay here.’

  ‘No.’ She squeezed my hand, seemed to stand a little taller, her back straighter. She was strengthening herself. ‘We’ll do it together.’

  I threw my backpack into my room, then took Helena’s arm and, together, we went back along the path towards the water. We didn’t speak as we walked.

  When we came to the boat, Richard held out his thick arms. ‘She d
idn’t have enough, but said you’d be good for the money, and seeing as how I like you now and she looked so sad—’

  ‘You know where to find the police?’ I said.

  ‘Police station?’

  ‘Will you take us? Show us where?’

  ‘What you want to go there for?’

  ‘Something’s happened,’ I said.

  ‘Up at Camp Weird? Someone get busted?’

  ‘Someone got murdered.’

  ‘Murdered?’ He half laughed, searching my eyes for the hint of a joke, but saw none. The smile fell from his face. ‘Seriously? Murdered? Who?’

  ‘Some friends,’ I said. ‘Maybe more if we don’t go now.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ He sat down and ran a hand over his head, looking at Helena. ‘I thought you looked upset, but … I’m sorry. You want to tell me what happened?’

  Helena looked at me for reassurance, so I nodded and told her to go ahead. I wanted to hear it again myself, now that she was calmer. So she spoke it aloud again, it still feeling unreal, and when she was finished, we lapsed into silence, even Richard finding it hard to take in.

  He lit a cigarette and took a long drag. ‘You sure you want to get into this?’ He was serious now. ‘You might be better off just walking away. Kind of luck you have, they’ll think you did it.’

  ‘We can’t walk away,’ I said.

  He whistled through his teeth. ‘Well, I’ll probably regret it but I could do with some extra cash. And Hidayat’ll be proud of me.’ He looked at Helena. ‘You clean?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Nothing on you at all? You don’t want to go walking into a police station loaded with powders and pills. You know what they’d do to you, right?’

  ‘I’m clean,’ she said.

  ‘OK, then. Climb aboard.’

  39

  Crossing the water, Helena and I sat facing each other, not speaking, only the sound of the engine until we neared the far shore. As Richard took us closer I looked out at the other boats here, idling in the water, some moored to the narrow, precarious jetties that reached out into the shallows of the lake, others discarding passengers or moving back out onto Toba. There was more noise here than I had heard in a while, a great and colourful agitation of life. Shouting and singing, people everywhere, loading and unloading, children running and laughing, jumping into the water. A truck stood in the shallow water, its tyres half submerged, as three boys carried baskets of live chickens from the flatbed and loaded them onto a waiting boat. From its exhaust, a blue-grey stream of fumes bruised the air, wafted across the surface of the water and faded into nothing. Richard took us a little further along the shore, away from the main throng, and brought his boat to a standstill by a section of concreted bank.

  Richard moored the boat, then he led us across the busy road saying he’d take us right to the police station. On the other side of the street, a large open square surrounded on three sides by battered and neglected concrete buildings. Two-storey blocks with balconies and rusted tin roofs, the ground levels filled with ramshackle shops spilling out into stalls that filled much of the square. There were lean-tos less functional than the one we’d had in the forest clearing, some of them adorned with torn plastic sheets around the sides to protect the stall owner’s stock. A giant go-down had enormous sliding doors pulled wide to reveal a cornucopia of batik shirts, kris knives, Batak carvings, ulos, rolls of material and assorted touristy trinkets. There were mats laid out on the ground from which cross-legged women sold goods from colourful piles of exotic fruits and spices. Powders that were brown or black or grey – as red as blood or as yellow as the sun that burned above us. There were canvas ponds filled with live fish, baskets piled high with dried ones. There were chillies and bananas and rambutans and mango-steens and other fruits and vegetables I had never seen. There were stalls draped with colourful cloths, and there were even vendors who carried their entire stall with them, around their neck, trays laden with cigarettes and sweets and plastic toys. Two buses, end to end, their matching paint jobs of dark blue with yellow stripes and complex lettering. Both had bare-chested men on their roofs, stacking baskets higher than their heads. The bus closest to me had a detailed painting of Lake Toba on its rear. There were mopeds and bicycles and people passing to and fro among the stalls and the grime. The ground was loose with standing water and discarded produce, the air filled with the smell of petrol fumes and rotting fruit and open drains.

  We passed it all by, making our way along the road, beside a building site where men were sitting on an unfinished roof, their legs dangling, drinking from tin cups as they followed us with curious eyes. Behind the new building, other concrete constructions, their white walls stained, rose up the hillside.

  A good twenty minutes’ walk from the commotion of the market, we came to the police station, a squat building of just one storey, bricked, plastered and painted white. Three or four other buildings stood around it, some of them stained around the roofs where the rain had leaked down the walls, marking the whitewash.

  There was a high fence around the small compound, something like chicken wire crowned with barbs, and wide gates, which were now open. At the mouth of the enclosure, next to the gate, a police officer was waiting for the opportunity to raise the red and white striped barrier that was on a counterweight across the main entrance.

  Richard nodded to the man, spoke a greeting and passed to the side of the barrier. Helena and I followed him, grateful for his help.

  The main road into the compound curved in a circle, and there was a sign with an arrow pointing the direction of traffic flow. Right now, though, the only vehicle in sight was a white van – a strange, squat contraption with a short flatbed and a bubble-shaped cab. Across the front, in black lettering, the word Polisi. We passed the van and approached the main building.

  Richard was first up the steps, pushing his way through the green painted door, holding it open for us. We went inside and allowed the door to swing shut on its sprung hinge.

  ‘You want me to do this?’ Richard turned to me.

  ‘It should be me.’ I looked over at the policeman behind the desk, his posture deliberately intimidating. He was sitting straight up in his chair, staring directly at us, both hands on the table as if he were about to push himself out of his seat. In front of him were several piles of papers, a couple of pens and a nasty-looking baton.

  ‘You speak Indonesian?’

  ‘No,’ I admitted, accepting that Richard knew the customs, the language, the culture far better than I. ‘Thanks.’

  He approached the desk as the man behind it began to speak. Conversation passed between them, but I understood none of it. To me it hardly even sounded like a language.

  ‘You speak any at all?’ I asked Helena, keeping my voice low.

  ‘Not much.’

  The man behind the desk rummaged in a drawer for papers, started taking notes. On occasion, Richard turned his head in our direction as if he were talking about us.

  After a few minutes I put my hand on Richard’s arm. ‘What’s he saying?’ I asked.

  ‘Just relax. I’m doing what I can.’

  I stepped back, biting my lip. I was beginning to feel more anxious.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Helena whispered, taking my hand. ‘I’m sure it’s going to be fine.’

  ‘You understand any of what they’re saying?’

  ‘A little,’ she said. ‘From what I can make out, Richard’s telling him what happened. Saying that Domino’s been abducted.’

  I took my hand from hers. ‘They need to get up there and look for her. Why isn’t he in a hurry?’

  Helena shook her head. ‘Everything works like that here. Everything is slow.’

  ‘We can’t afford to be slow,’ I said, snapping my attention away from Helena when I heard a chair scraping on the concrete floor.

  The policeman at the desk was standing now, still speaking, but holding his hand out to Richard in a gesture I recognised. He was telling Ri
chard to stay put. Wait here. He looked around Richard at me, his eyes lingering on Helena for longer than they needed to, before he spoke a few more words and disappeared through a door to the side of his desk.

  ‘He wants us to wait,’ Richard said as soon as he was gone.

  ‘I gathered that. What else did he say?’

  ‘Said he needs to get his superior.’

  ‘So are they actually going to do anything?’

  Richard sighed. ‘Sit down a minute. He’s gone to—’

  ‘Sit down? That’s the last thing I want to do. I want to make sure they’re going to do something. The longer this takes, the less chance she’s got. Maybe I should talk to him.’

  ‘Probably better not,’ Richard said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You start making a fuss, Alex, and they’ll kick you out of here so hard you won’t know what day of the week it is. This isn’t England. You give them any reason to, they’ll either lock you up or forget you ever came in here. You think they actually want to do anything? That guy, all he wants is an easy life.’

  I closed my mouth and stared at him. Helena took my hand and pulled me towards the chairs, but I remained standing.

  ‘Sit,’ Richard said. ‘Please.’

  I sighed and sat down, putting my head in my hands, sensing Richard and Helena taking seats on either side of me.

  ‘Things take time here,’ Richard said. ‘Jam karat. Elastic time. Nothing ever happens now. It always happens later. In a moment. A few minutes, an hour, a day.’

  ‘A day?’

  ‘It won’t take that long,’ he reassured me. ‘But if you want to find out what happened to your girlfriend—’

  ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

  ‘OK, whatever, but you’re going to have to be patient and stay calm.’

  I sat forward on my seat, as if in prayer. After a while, Richard leaned back and took a cigarette from his packet. He offered them to us but neither of us accepted.

  He sat beside me without speaking, the smoke drifting into my eyes.