Dark Horizons

by Dan Smith

  ‘You going to kill him?’ I asked.

  Michael looked down at me. ‘Why? You wanna do it?’ He whipped the machete from its sheath and touched the edge of the blade to the man’s neck.

  I shook my head, paused for a moment longer, then took the final rungs and placed my feet on the soft ground.

  44

  The last light of the day finally receded from the trees, leaving the wrecked community smothered in a misty wash. The air was fresh and cool. By my feet lay the once-living inhabitants of the longhouse. The sound of flies was a constant and high-pitched hum in the darkening night. I didn’t look down. Instead, I looked across at the figures bathed in the spectral light.

  Kurt, the all-conquering lord of our community, was standing tall, Danuri’s rifle in hand. Beside him was Domino, her posture more crooked, her shoulders slumped. Helena stood away from them, not far, but far enough to show that she was not with them – not of them. An unwilling part of the scene that was playing out before us. I admired her for it.

  At Kurt’s feet, Danuri. On his knees, his head bowed in defeat.

  Domino came towards me now, expectant, but I knew that whatever had existed between us was gone. The living desire that pulled us together, the need we’d had for each other had now dissipated, become a part of the mist that surrounded us. And just as the sun would finally begin to shine tomorrow, to burn away the mist, so it would be for us. Whatever it was that had bound us together, it would fade to nothing, seared away by the events we had experienced here in these woods. But this was not over yet. Between now and then, there was more for me to witness – a spectator, not an actor. Maybe that’s who I was. A tourist in other people’s lives.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said to her. ‘You’re supposed to be—’

  ‘This is where I belong.’ Her eyes were wide, her pupils dilated by whatever drug she had taken. She put her hand out to touch me. She ran her fingertips across my face as if to reassure herself that I was there. She hesitated when she came to the painful places Danuri had seared with his cigarette, then she took my hand and pressed my palm against her own cheek and closed her eyes as if feeling the familiarity of a favourite soft toy. She spoke my name once before she moved my hand, took it away from her face and let it drop as she put her arms around me. ‘I love you,’ she said, but it wasn’t true. Our circumstances had brought those words to her lips.

  It wasn’t long before Michael emerged from the longhouse, bringing the other man with him. The man who had restrained me now stumbled and flinched as Michael goaded and prodded him with the sheathed parang. His face was battered, his shirt stained with his own blood. He hunched and cowered as he moved, his manner displaying that he was resolved to total submission. I did not pity him. A base part of me would’ve liked to see the man killed for what he’d done to Helena and me – a part of me that I cursed for delighting in my suspicion that the man’s ordeal was not over yet.

  Michael stopped beside me and leaned in close. ‘You thought I was going to kill him, right?’ I could smell his stale breath, the strong odour of sweat. I could even feel the heat emanating from his skin. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘We’ve got something special in mind.’

  ‘You ready?’ Kurt asked Michael as he came closer. He handed him the pistol that had been at Danuri’s hip. Michael tucked it into the back of his waistband and slipped his arm through the string on the parang’s sheath so that it hung loose at his side.

  ‘Come on,’ Kurt said to the rest of us. ‘We have things to take care of. Michael, you and Alex can bring Jason.’

  Michael came back towards me, tapping me on the shoulder and beckoning me to follow.

  He slipped his hands beneath the dead man’s armpits and signalled for me to take the feet.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Just get over here and do it,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I don’t want to be part of this. Let us go.’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘Me and Helena.’

  Michael shook his head. ‘You’re already part of this,’ he said. ‘Now get the fuck over here and help me carry him.’

  ‘I’m going to leave.’ I turned and looked across at Helena. ‘Any of you can come with me.’

  ‘The fuck you are.’ Michael dropped Jason’s shoulders and came towards me, head lowered, his intentions clear. Michael and Kurt were my enemies now, just as Danuri was, and, not for the first time that night, I wondered if I was going to leave this place alive.

  Cornered and afraid, I stepped back and raised my fists ready to defend myself. But Michael was too practised. His hands found their way through my feeble guard like snakes through long grass. He gripped one hand round my throat and slapped me hard across the face with the open palm of his other hand, catching the place where Danuri had burned me.

  ‘I thought you were gonna be tougher than this, Alex,’ he said. ‘The way you jumped off the bluff with a witty quip. The way you swam straight out to help Helena.’

  ‘I’d rather save lives than end them,’ I said, my voice constrained by his fingers gripping my throat.

  ‘Then maybe you want to think about saving your own and doing as you’re fucking told.’

  ‘Leave him, Michael,’ I heard Domino say, and when I looked over, I saw that Helena had stepped forward, too. But there was indecision and fear in her face. She knew what Michael would do if she chose me over him. But Michael took no heed of either Helena’s reaction or Domino’s words. He was too caught up in the pleasure of the moment.

  I tried to pull his hand away, but his grip was too strong, so I reached with both hands and grabbed the loose skin under his arms, six inches above his elbows. I took the tight folds between finger and thumb, twisting and pulling at the same time. Michael let out a cry of pain and jumped back as if I’d electrocuted him. He released his grip, but the victory was short-lived. He swung his right fist up under my chin, clattering my teeth together, forcing my head backwards so that I caught a brief glimpse of the canopy before he thrust his left elbow into the side of my neck, felling me with ease.

  He hurried to stand over me just as Kurt called to him, but Michael glanced across and held up a hand before grabbing the scruff of my shirt with both hands and pulling me to my feet.

  With blurred vision, I was able to see that the others were standing in more or less the same positions as before. Michael’s attack had been fast. I could see the expression on Helena’s face, even in my current state. She was begging me, without words, to do what Michael wanted. There would be another time, another opportunity to get away from here.

  ‘OK.’ I held up my hands. ‘OK. Stop. I’ll do it. I’ll help.’

  ‘I should fucking think so.’ Michael released his grip and straightened my shirt for me. ‘After everything we’ve done for you.’

  I put a hand to my face and stared at him.

  ‘After you, then, Alex. We haven’t got all night.’

  He waited for me to move over to where Jason lay; then he followed. I gripped Jason’s cold, naked ankles and together we carried him back to the others.

  ‘Ready now?’ Kurt glanced back at us.

  Michael nodded, ‘Ready,’ and we began walking.

  45

  We moved in silence, led by Kurt and his captives, weaving through the forest, walking to the stone, passing it and heading out to the place where we’d buried Matt. Night had settled and the feral darkness was lit only by shafts of electric torchlight piercing the trees, creating a mosaic of light and shadow on the ground. Here and there, the light moved among the trunks as if it were a solid entity, given shape by the lingering mist that rested a foot or so above the forest floor.

  When we came to the spot where Matt was buried, Kurt told the two men in front of him to come to a halt. We put Jason down and moved to one side. I could see, just in front of us, a space where someone had been digging. A hole, squared at the edges, perhaps ten feet by six feet. It was no more than a foot deep.

  I guessed
that, when they’d been hiding in the forest, Kurt and Michael had already made a start on a single grave big enough for all our friends.

  ‘This is where you buried Alim?’ said Danuri. ‘All the way out here?’ He snorted and spat. ‘Like a dog.’

  ‘Not here,’ Kurt said. ‘This spot is for those who lived here. Your friend is buried over there. Like a dog. He doesn’t deserve to lie in this spot.’

  As Kurt spoke, Michael stepped around the hole in the ground, going to the far end. He picked up two cangkuls and threw them at Danuri’s feet, where they landed with a clatter.

  ‘What?’ asked Danuri.

  ‘Dig,’ said Michael.

  ‘We need to bury our friends.’ Kurt nudged the muzzle of the rifle into Danuri’s back.

  Danuri took a deep breath and nodded his head, stepping down into the hole and telling the other man to do the same. They went to opposite ends of the hole and began digging, slinging the loose dirt to the side.

  Michael glared at me and pulled Helena close to him before squatting at the far end of the grave, his eyes on the two diggers. Kurt remained where he was, rifle at the ready, a half-naked tribesman.

  Taking the opportunity to be alone with Domino for a moment, I grabbed her sleeve and took her back, away from Kurt. ‘What the hell’s going on?’ I asked her. ‘Kurt can’t do this.’

  Domino looked at me in a daze, and I could see that her pupils were still dilated. ‘For Christ’s sake, Domino, do you even know what the fuck is going on here?’

  ‘We’re going to bury our friends.’ Her words were slow.

  ‘I can see that, but what about them? You do know he’s going to kill them?’

  Domino raised her eyebrows, blinking her eyes as if trying to focus. ‘What?’

  ‘We can’t let Kurt kill them.’

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘You saw what they did to our place. Our friends. Look what they did to you.’ She raised a hand to my burns.

  ‘What about Michael? Does he deserve to die for what he’s just—’

  ‘And look what they did to me.’ She went on as if she hadn’t heard me, turning her face to show me the bruising. ‘And that’s just what you can see. There’s other marks I could show you, Alex. And some you’ll never see. Men are pigs.’

  I looked away and closed my eyes. It was unforgivable. What this man had done was unforgivable, but I still couldn’t bring myself to accept that Kurt was going to kill him. ‘It doesn’t make it right.’

  She pulled her lower lip between her teeth, then looked down and away. She shook her head. ‘They killed Matt,’ she said.

  ‘I thought you said he OD’d.’

  ‘That’s what we told everyone. Kurt didn’t want people to be scared, he wanted to protect us, but it doesn’t matter any more. It’s all gone now.’ She sighed. ‘You didn’t believe it, though. You saw the bruises on him. You knew.’

  I pressed the heel of my palms into my eyes and rubbed hard. I wanted it all to stop now.

  ‘It was a warning from Alim and Danuri. “Do as you’re told.” Remember when they came up here?’

  ‘A warning? Because you’d been sneaking around in their house?’ I said, knowing this could have been avoided. It all led back to one thing. One person. Domino.

  ‘Yeah, because of that. And because Kurt didn’t like it that they wanted to cut our pay. And because Michael put his hands on him. They wanted to let us know who was in charge, Alex, so they taught us a lesson.’

  ‘But why Matt? He wouldn’t hurt anyone.’

  ‘He was an easy target? He was the first person they saw? He did something to piss them off ? Who knows, Alex? Ask Danuri.’

  ‘So Kurt decided to return the favour? They kill Matt so Kurt … what? He sends Michael to kill Danuri’s brother-in-law? Alim. The man I saw you burying.’

  ‘No,’ said Domino, kept going only by whatever drug she had taken. ‘You have to believe it wasn’t meant to be like that, Alex. We went down there to talk to him. Me and Kurt. After the funeral.’

  ‘You and Kurt? Not Michael?’ He seemed like the ideal person for that kind of work, but even as I said it, I remembered it couldn’t have been him. Michael and I had worked on the longhouse that day.

  ‘Just me and Kurt. That’s all. We went down to straighten it out, make it all better, but things got out of hand. He started touching me like … like that time you were with me. You remember what he was like.’

  ‘So Kurt killed him?’

  Domino shook her head.

  ‘Who, then?’ But it could only have been one other.

  ‘An accident.’ A look of defiance coming over her face. A look I’d seen before. ‘But I’m not sorry.’

  I stared at her. ‘I pushed him off me. Pushed him away and he fell. Didn’t get up again.’

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  ‘Buffalo horns,’ she said. ‘Went right through his neck.’

  I imagined Alim half lying, half sitting, skewered on the horns tied to the central column of the longhouse. Gurgling. Drowning in his own blood.

  ‘And that bastard down there deserves the same.’ She looked over at Danuri. ‘For what he did to me. And to the others. To our home.’

  This knowledge of Domino did not surprise me as much as I might’ve expected it to. I’d been through so much that was unexpected since meeting her, I was beginning to think nothing would surprise me any more. But I hated myself for being such a fool. I’d fallen for her, I’d followed her, and I had even helped her. My money had paid for her release from the very place she belonged. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I can understand why you feel that way, but—’

  ‘No, you can’t. You can’t have any idea what they did to me down there. What they made me watch right here, in my own home.’

  ‘Domino …’

  ‘Don’t ask me to stop,’ she said. ‘Just stay with me.’

  ‘Stay with you? You want me to stay with you while you do this? And then what? And then Kurt turns on me? On Helena? Are you going to kill us, too?’

  ‘No.’ She put her hands on me. ‘I won’t let them touch you, Alex. You can’t think that. And Michael would never hurt Helena.’

  I shrugged her off and turned to face away from her, away from everything that was happening, putting it behind me, wishing that not seeing it would make it all go away.

  ‘You got a problem back there?’ I heard Kurt say.

  I didn’t hear any reply, but Kurt didn’t speak again. I stayed where I was, staring ahead of me into the forest, thinking that I could run. Keep running and not look back. They probably wouldn’t even bother chasing me because they had Danuri and his partner to deal with. I could make my way back down the hillside, get a ride in Richard’s boat, go to Medan and catch a flight home. I still had my passport. I could get more cash, be away from this place within two days, sitting back in England, breathing the cold air, feeling the familiarity of my home. But if I ran now, Helena would be left alone with them, and I knew I wasn’t going to desert her.

  Instead, I did as I was told. I helped place Jason’s body in the hole and then rested for a while before returning to the main clearing to retrieve the others. And each time we came back with more of our friends – Danuri and his man carrying, too – Kurt walked behind us, rifle firm in his grip.

  When we returned to the grave for the last time, we laid the remaining bodies alongside the others and stood in silence while Danuri and the other man threw the soil over them. Jason, Alban, Freia, Chris, Morgan, Eco. These people would go unremembered except by those of us who had survived them, those standing around their grave right now, and those who had escaped the brutality of Danuri’s visit, scattered to the wind as if they had never been here. Matt and Sully had their markers, but we would have to leave this place now – there would be no time to prepare a shrine for them, just as there had been no time to prepare individual resting places for them. A mass grave in a remote forest. Like the dirty secret of a despotic ruler.

  I tried to distanc
e myself from Domino, stay closer to Helena, knowing that if we had an opportunity to get away, we’d have to take it. But such an opportunity didn’t present itself, and when the grave was filled, Domino came close, speaking into my ear.

  ‘One last thing to do,’ she said, looking over at Kurt’s prisoners. ‘And then we can leave.’

  46

  I knew. As soon as we came into the small clearing, exhausted from the carrying and the digging and the fear. As soon as Michael pushed the two men to stand either side of the rock and stepped back to join us. As soon as Kurt looked at each of us in turn before addressing the two men. I knew what he intended to do to them. And I was forced to consider my own position once more. The only things that stood between me and Michael’s blade were Domino and Helena, and I had begun to wonder if even they would be any match for Michael’s anger when it reached its darkest ferocity.

  The air was clear and dawn was pushing in among us when we came to the place where it was going to end. The trees reached up around us, impervious to the acts that were being played out in this dark paradise. The rock in the centre of the clearing, however, seemed to live, and I saw it as I had seen it in my hallucinations, smiling, waiting for its thirst to be quenched. The pig’s blood that still marked the ground here, the drying entrails, the vacant porcine head – these things were not enough. The rock wanted a different kind of sacrifice.

  ‘You know what this rock is for?’ Kurt said to Danuri.

  ‘I’m not Batak. And neither are you.’

  ‘No matter. When in Rome …’

  ‘You should stop this now,’ said Danuri. ‘You won’t get away with what you’re doing. You will be caught.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Domino. ‘But you’ll be dead.’

  Kurt held up his hand to Domino. This was his time now.

  ‘Let us go,’ said Danuri. ‘Walk away and don’t come back. It’s not too late. Not yet.’

  ‘Of course it’s too late. It was too late the moment you got rid of Hendrik. He was a good guy; I could deal with him. It didn’t feel so … I don’t know, it didn’t feel so dirty. It felt like a way to survive, everybody getting along, no one wanting too much. But you? You make it unclean. You make it like it’s a bad thing. You bring guns and attitude. You couldn’t just let it flow. You got greedy and you pushed your partner out, probably cut him up and buried him deep, and now you’re paying the price. It’s fate. Karma. Whatever you want to fucking call it, it’s unavoidable. You set it all in motion.’