by RA Williams
Adongo held out a hand to Gaele. But the Belgian could only watch in horror as the Mohawk appeared like a demon from the rain, burying his hatchet in Adongo’s back. Crying out, his son slumped atop him, the Mohawk continuing to hack at Adongo’s back, opening mortal wounds. With his eyes meeting his son’s, Gaele tried to ask for forgiveness, but under his son’s weight he couldn’t breathe.
‘Je t’aime, mon père,’ Adongo managed, just before he died.
Fumbling to retrieve his Colt revolver, Gaele got a shot off. The Mohawk knocked the gun away, leaving the bullet to ping off harmlessly into the night.
‘I’ll open you up and have Siobhan feast on your guts,’ he sniggered, raising his hatchet with his good arm.
Gaele closed his eyes, awaiting the strike that would kill him.
But something struck the Mohawk first. He fell forward against Gaele, eyes wide with mania.
‘Not now,’ the Mohawk burbled, blood dripping from his mouth as he struggled to gain his feet. He turned unsteadily, a length of spear handle protruding from his back, pointing across the parade ground to the Belgian’s younger son, whose arm was still extended from the throw.
Squirming out from under his elder boy, Gaele climbed to his feet, grasping the bleeding wound in his side. By the light of the burning shed, he watched as the Mohawk stumbled to the jungle fringe, Barasa’s spear still impaling him.
A few yards into the shadow hovered Siobhan. She watched Balthasar as he fought off her wraiths. A banshee shriek, and she was gone. The Mohawk attempted to pursue her.
Gaele raised his gun once more; it felt a ton in his hands. He had lost too much blood. Vision growing fuzzy, he sighted in on the back of the Mohawk’s head. He was a hundred yards distant, at the fringe of the jungle where the light from the fires began to fail. He aimed low, at the base of the Mohawk’s neck, before squeezing the trigger. A bead of stinging sweat dropped into his eye, causing him to quaver.
Henry squealed. The bullet zipped through the rain. The Mohawk yelped as the bullet carved out an enormous hole in his back. Lurching forward, he tumbled over a creeper vine, disappearing from view.
Gaele collapsed. The night grew quiet as the glow from the fires faded.
An owl hooted somewhere nearby. The Belgian’s eyes cracked. The morning sun percolated through the leaves of an apa tree. His eyes slowly met the long-eared owl’s unblinking stare, unmoved by the night’s horrific events. A fragrant tree-orchid growing from a limb dripped sweet water onto his lips. Beyond the spit of boulders forming the station’s landing, he heard the distant roar of cataracts.
Slowly, he propped himself up. The wound to his side ached. He was not dead. He lay amid a pile of abandoned Congolese pirogues under the canopy of the jungle fringe. Someone had moved him. He raised his arm. His wristwatch was broken, the crystal cracked, hands frozen at eleven forty the night before. He gazed across the parade ground. The remains of the station annexe smouldered, and the customs shed still burned. The pitched eaves of the director’s villa had fallen in, and the Lewis gun lay unattended on the veranda. There was not a carcass to be seen – neither Crimen nor grenadier – but a foetid odour of burning flesh told him where they were.
Major Hadley squatted at the edge of the Ituri River, washing crusted filth from his body. Only cicatrices remained as evidence of the horrific burns he had suffered. Repeatedly, he scrubbed his arms and hands, as if no amount of lather would take away the blood he had permitted to be shed. Raising his head from the river, he shouted over the distant roar of cataracts, ‘God in heaven. Show no mercy to me.’
As he turned towards the Belgian, Gaele saw the disturbing savagery in his eyes had gone. After a wash-up, he looked young – dare Gaele say, innocent even. Skin luminescent. Slight in build. Face without flaw of age.
Then, joining him in the shade of the apa, Balthasar said, ‘You’re alive?’
‘I am,’ he croaked.
‘Happy to see you survived.’ Balthasar presented him with an old glass bottle.
Gaele struggled to pull the cork from the neck. He gave it a sniff. Uchema. A native wine fermented from goma fruit. He sipped, but his throat wasn’t having it and he coughed it up. He tried again. It went down the second go. It wasn’t medicinal, but it would do.
‘How long have I been down?’
‘Two days.’
‘Two days?’ He forced down another gulp of the sour wine.
‘You’ve been in a bad way.’
‘Bilious fever,’ Gaele said. ‘Congo takes its toll.’
Balthasar nodded. ‘Either in lump sum or by instalment.’
Gaele agreed, as he stiffly rose to his feet. ‘I have experienced the barbarity of Congo’s interior for more years than I wish to remember.’
Slowly, he made his way from the shade, lifting his face to the sun. In that moment, it was better to be alive. Turning, he looked to the still-burning customs shed, a pyre stacked high with carcasses. Black smoke drifted into the cloudless sky.
‘What I saw, those beasts, this is the fruit of your plague?’
‘It’s not my fruit.’
‘Yet here you are, disposing of the evidence?’
Balthasar took the bottle off him, drank a mouthful. ‘In a month, the jungle will reclaim this place. A few charred scraps of wood and rusted zinc, the only evidence Kinuwai Station ever existed.’
‘You burn them?’
Balthasar nodded. ‘The banshee Siobhan created a hive in the station annexe.’
Gaele did not understand.
‘Crimen. This is what they do.’
‘Hive?’
‘The hive remains close to her, creating a hollow. They swarm, consuming everything until the food source is exhausted. Then Siobhan abandons the hive and moves on.’
‘Your Reine Blanche has fled?’
Balthasar nodded. ‘It’s been a decade since my White Queen has shown herself. Now, she has vanished. Abandoning her Sentinels.’
‘Sentinels?’ the Belgian asked, slowly climbing the steps to the villa. Turning an undamaged wicker chair upright, Gaele sat down heavily. ‘I understand these words, but not their meaning.’
‘Crimen exist in a hierarchy. The lowest caste is a by-product of Siobhan’s feeding. These are Huntians.’
‘The mapping expedition and the search party who came after were her food source?’
Balthasar nodded before motioning towards the smouldering pyre. ‘Those not devoured outright are infected and become Guilty. As you witnessed, these Huntians are sluggish, confused and weak. They are votaries, mindlessly striking for no other reason than to consume flesh, and easily dealt with by decapitation.’
The Belgian gazed from the pyre to the jumble of trunks Balthasar had recovered from Margoux. ‘There are others?’
Balthasar left the veranda. Pulling on a pair of leather gloves, he lifted a metallic spike of a most extraordinary golden, aubergine hue.
‘Jungfräu. Tool of my trade.’
‘You must wear gloves when holding it?’
‘It’s mercury. One that can be made solid.’
‘It is for these Sentinels?’
Balthasar nodded. ‘The banshee fatigues and must rest during periods of brumation. She will become decrepit and retire to a hollow where she will go dormant in her sarcophagus. To mind her, she keeps a Sentinel.’
Gaele understood. ‘Those great strapping beasts protect her?’
‘Yes. In exchange for their servitude, she accedes to their predation.’
‘Her blood flows freely within them?’
‘Freely? No. She does nothing freely, Monsieur. She offers specious gifts. Dosis.’
‘Dosis?’ he asked. ‘You mean a dose?’
Balthasar nodded.
‘Dose of what?’
‘A dose of her blood makes a Sentinel godlike. Their infatuation makes them the ideal tutelary.’
‘On them, you use the spikes, Buster?’
‘Yes, but as you’ve witnessed, engaging the
m is difficult. Killing them more so.’
‘But not on Siobhan?’
‘No.’ He sighed. ‘The banshee cannot be killed with this spike. Her wickedness is far too great. However, raw Jungfräu ingots can keep her in a state of brumation.’
‘There is a way to kill her, ja?’
‘With Risineum.’
‘This, you do not have?’
‘I do not.’ Balthasar sounded tired.
‘And how is it you know so much?’
‘A long time ago, the banshee gave me her gift.’
Gaele sighed, exhausted himself, and perhaps a little bit shocked by the things he had witnessed. Looking to the pyre within the customs shed, he remembered that his sons were among the ashes of the dead. ‘Once you obliterate all traces of this place, there will be no witness to your revolting legacy, save I. Will I be rewarded an equally merciless death?’
‘You are not the only witness, Mssr Gaele.’
He looked at Balthasar, confused.
‘Barasa is alive.’
The welcome news that his younger boy had survived gave him renewed hope. ‘Where is he?’
Balthasar tossed the spike back into his trunk, kicking the lid closed with his boot. Turning, he drew the Belgian’s attention to snow-capped mountains many miles to the east.
‘The Ruwenzori Mountains?’ asked Gaele.
Balthasar nodded.
‘No one dare venture there.’
‘He’s gone on an errand for me,’ said Balthasar. ‘I expect his return at any time.’
The Belgian exhaled, nodding without really knowing what he was nodding about.
‘What then?’
‘I’ll reduce Kinuwai Station to ashes, and disappear.’
‘Go on,’ begged the Belgian. ‘Go on.’
‘Away from here.’ Balthasar gazed about at the sacked station. ‘Where is your home, Mssr Gaele?’
‘Oostende.’
‘Do you wish to die in your bed there?’
Gaele shook his head, looking across the Ituri at the impenetrable jungle and the mountains beyond.
‘There is nothing in Belgium for me.’
‘Well, have you ever visited Folkestone?’
❖❖❖
31 AUGUST 1939
FOLKESTONE, KENT
For it is only given you on
condition you make use of it
for another or pass it on.
—Mauss, ‘The Gift’
‘Expecto resurrectionem mortuorum.’
They were the first words she’d spoken for hours. The Belgian’s story was shocking, but she didn’t for an instant doubt a word of it. Not after he mentioned the banshee’s howl; remembering how Balthasar had turned to her in Titanic’s flooding hold, alerted by the unholy banshee howl. Elle realised then that she had been that close to the Reine Blanche. To the banshee Siobhan.
‘What you were witness to,’ she told him. ‘It was a predation event.’
‘I do not know what is a “predation event”. But surely you will tell me.’
‘An event when one species annihilates another. This attack you describe. I have heard of it before. Many times, actually. I’ve just never met anyone who witnessed such an event.’
‘You have witnessed such an event?’ Gaele asked.
‘Not exactly. But I have witnessed a Crimen feeding.’
‘Then you have some understanding of their brutality.’
‘I do.’
‘The Reine Blanche.’ Gaele reached for the whiskey bottle. It was empty. ‘The banshee named Siobhan. What she offers, few can refuse.’
‘Dosis.’
‘Dosis,’ repeated the Belgian. ‘A simple dose of her blood brings out savagery such as I have never witnessed before.’
‘Including in Balthasar Toule.’
‘Including in Buster Hadley.’
Tipping the bottle, he coaxed out its last drops; no sooner had they landed in the bottom of his glass than he tipped it back and returned it to the table. He sighed wistfully.
‘There was a time when I believed in man’s decency. I was a man of faith, and faith alone.’
‘What changed you?’ she asked.
‘Titanic,’ he replied. ‘The suffering of innocence shattered my faith. Congo. It extinguished my faith entirely. I could not return to Belgium. What use had civility for me? I remained in Africa. I thought I could save Congo from the brutality of the bourgeois colonials by taking so much as to make it worthless.’
‘You don’t strike me as a bitter man, Mssr Gaele. In fact, I would say the opposite were true. If you hadn’t any faith, why did you take such a risk on me?’
‘Because of Buster Hadley.’
It was not the answer she expected.
‘After the obscene butchery I witnessed…’ – he paused, correcting himself – ‘…in which I partook, I was convinced he was no better than the Mohawk. It was not until later I realised I was wrong.’
‘Later?’
‘When I watched a young man turn to dust before my eyes. I knew nothing before then. You might say Buster saved me from the ennui that was my life.’
‘You have a higher purpose now?’
‘No more do I spend my days feeling old and useless. Although my task is a dangerous one and I have no desire to be eaten, I have a sense of purpose beyond fiscal gain.’
Rapping his fingers on the old bar counter, he reached for a fresh bottle of spirits, and then pushed it aside.
‘Despite his failings, your Balthasar Toule is worthy of redemption. Sadly, I cannot be the one to do it.’
‘Not that I doubt you, Mssr Gaele, but you said something I don’t understand.’
‘What is it, mijn liefste?’
‘About your faith being renewed. That it didn’t happen until you watched Balthasar turn to dust before your eyes.’
He smiled sadly. ‘You travelled a long way to arrive at this moment, Dr Annenberg. And you exceed even my expectations in picking up on clues.’
‘Picking up on clues is what I do,’ she replied, in that moment feeling her long road was nearing its end.
‘Good. Then I do dearly hope you will have a bit of faith in me, and travel a bit further.’
‘The incident at Kinuwai Station was nearly twenty years ago, Mssr Gaele. Nothing can possibly remain. And anyway, at this moment, I don’t have the strength to book a passage to Congo.’
Reaching behind the counter, he retrieved the Winchester she had heard so much about.
‘He’s not so far as that.’
Gaele turned off Old Folkestone Road and onto a dirt track, ill-suited for a Ford Anglia. Although new, the motor car had been sprayed in khaki, giving it a nondescript, War Department look. He switched the headlamps off. Guided by the light of the moon, the motor car wound its way up a steep hill, branches whipping against the doors.
Elle had dared not question him since he’d retrieved Henry from behind the long bar, but she could read road signs: Dover. They were headed upcoast from Folkestone. Not a long drive; nine miles, paralleling chalk cliffs for most of it.
The car creaked to a halt. Switching off the motor, Gaele took his gun and a dinged thermos from the back seat before quietly closing the door.
‘We’ve entered the Western Heights.’
‘Sounds spooky. All right, I give up. What’s that?’ she asked, looking around, only seeing hawthorn shrubs.
‘A lot of old ditches built to defend Dover from Napoleon.’
‘Call me daft, but I don’t remember Napoleon ever invading England.’
‘You are correct, dear Doctor. And so, during the reign of Queen Victoria, the army added barracks, transforming the Heights from a bastion into a proper military camp.’
Elle frowned. ‘Don’t you think the British Army’s going to be suspicious of a couple of foreigners, one carrying an elephant gun?’
‘The Heights is not currently garrisoned. There might be five guards on sentry duty at this moment,’ he said, climbing a d
irt trail along a gently sweeping hillside. A dark shape loomed above them. Three artillery emplacements emerged from the gorse, strands of ivy creeping across the concrete barbettes, the guns long gone. Bypassing them, the trail rambled through unattended grass and copses of trees, and they passed a wide but shallow ditch. At its bottom lay the flint remains of a round stone foundation. A rectangular chamber sticking out at the back gave the ruin a curious keyhole shape.
‘I’m reliably informed it’s the ruin of a Knights Templar preceptory,’ whispered the Belgian, ‘from the twelfth century.’
‘Here?’
‘These Heights… their secrets are often hidden in plain sight.’
As they made their way through a stand of sycamore saplings, Elle wondered what else was hidden in plain sight. She suddenly felt ill at ease as she realised that any semblance of civilisation was a long way off.
Crossing a tarmacked road, they descended a scrub-covered hill, ending at a sheer cliff edge. The lights of Dover’s Western Docks twinkled below. In the distance, she saw a couple walking hand in hand along a beachfront promenade in the balmy air.
Jitters dissipating, she decided to follow on. Ahead, lamplight filtered through the leaves, the trees growing sparse as the trail came to an end. On a terraced hillside loomed austere barrack blocks with pitched slate roofs.
Steadily and quietly, she followed Gaele, climbing narrow flights of stairs linking the terraces, passing cookhouses, ablutions blocks and even a gymnasium, all modernised with electric lamplight.
Through a lit window, she saw a guard sipping a cup of tea and puffing away on a cigarette. At such an hour, the mere crack of a twig underfoot would shatter the stillness, giving them away. It occurred to her the Belgian seemed more interested in the thermos in his hand than being discovered by a British sentry.