Horror in Paradise
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EUGENE BURDICK • ROBERT DEAN FRISBIE • JAMES NORMAN HALL
• W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM • JACK LONDON • GENEVIEVE TAGGARD
• ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON • MARK TWAIN
are among the thirty-four writers whose true “grim and uncanny tales”
from Hawaii and the South Seas are collected in this volume.
COPYRIGHT 1986 BY
A. GROVE DAY AND BACIL F. KIRTLEY
First Edition
Manufactured in the United States of America
Acknowledgments
“The Puzzle of the Ninety-Eight” from The Blue of Capricorn by Eugene Burdick. Copyright 1961 by Eugene Burdick. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.
“The Honolulu Martyrdom” from Shoal of Time by Gavan Daws. Copyright 1968 by Gavan Daws. Reprinted by permission of the University of Hawaii Press.
“Bully Hayes and Ben Pease” from Slavers of the South Seas by Thomas Dunbabin. Copyright 1935 by Thomas Dunbabin. Reprinted by permission of Angus & Robertson.
“The Marchers of the Night” by Mary Pukui and Martha Beckwith. From Kepelino’s Traditions of Hawaii, edited by Martha Warren Beckwith (Honolulu: Bernice P. Bishop Museum, 1932). Reprinted by permission of the Museum.
‘The Girl in the Red Gauze Blouse” by Marjorie Sinclair. Reprinted by permission of the author from Hapa, No. 3, Fall, 1983. Copyright 1983.
“Over the Reef” by Robert Dean Frisbie from The Book of Puka-Puka, copyright renewed 1957 by Florence Frisbie Hebenstreit. Reprinted by permission of Mrs. Hebenstreit.
ISBN 0-935180-23-0
Library of Congress Catalog No. 86-060370
Horror in Paradise
Teaser
Dedication
Foreword
A. Grove Day
Bacil F. Kirtley
The Girl in the Red Gauze Blouse
Marjorie Sinclair
Emma De Vries and Queen Emma of Hawaii
Yao Shen
The Puzzle of the Ninety-Eighty
Eugene Burdick
Phantoms and Physicians on Tepuka
Clifford Gessler
The Honolulu Martyrdom
Gavan Daws
Wandering Spirits of Manga Reva
Robert Lee Eskridge
Sejak the Witch Killer
Charis Crockett
Gods and Old Ghosts
Don Blanding
The Man Who Turned into a Cassowary
André Dupeyrat
Over the Reef
Robert Dean Frisbie
Two Sorcerers of Black Papua
Merlin Moore Taylor
From the Faery Lands
James Norman Hall
Siva and the Devil
Robert James Fletcher
My South Sea Island
W. Somerset Maugham
A Stinking Ghost
Sir Arthur Grimble
Savagery Among the Black Islands
Florence Coombe
The Amateur M.D.
Jack London
The Plague
Genevieve laggard
The Lanai Horror
Pacific Commercial Advertiser
Another Molokai
Robert Louis Stevenson
The One-Eyed Akua
Eric A. Knudsen
A Christmas Ghost on Rotuma
Hugh Hastings Romilly
A Basket of Breadfruit
Louis Beck
The Burning of the Clipper Ship Hornet
Samuel L. Clemmens [Mark Twain]
The Slave Ships of Callao
James Cowan
Bully Hayes and Ben Pease
Thomas Dunbabin
Mrs. Thompson Among the Cannibals
Thomas Henry Huxley
Burial of the Last Prince of Kauai
William D. Alexander
A Samoan Poltergeist
Rev. John B. Stair
Lord Byron Views the Rites
George Anson, Lord Byron
The Ship That Was Wrecked By the Whale
Owen Chase
Two Tales of Old Hawaii
Johannes Andersen
Temple of the Red-Eyed Pigs
Benjamin Kaoao
The Marchers of the Night
Mary Pukui
Martha Beckwith
About the Editors
DEDICATED
to the memory of my dead wife,
JOAN,
who read thousands of pages
of Pacific narratives
helping me look for suitable accounts
BACIL F. KIRTLEY
Foreword
The islands of the Pacific have been a favored region for legend and romance ever since the early eighteenth century, when Jonathan Swift invented the tales of Lemuel Gulliver. But when the great explorers filled in the map with charted islands in place of mythical kingdoms and writhing leviathans, a shelf of “true” literature began to accumulate.
Ever since the ancient era of our cave-dwelling ancestors, listeners have shivered with delight when hearing stories of terrifying events while sitting in safety around the evening fire. Today, the popularity of horror tales and films repeats the instinctive joy of viewing another’s distress while comfortably at home. Horror fiction is a marketable type along with romance, sci fi and fantasy, westerns, sea stories, and detective yarns.
We have chosen, however, except for the opening short story, to collect here a volume of narratives of actual events—as true, that is, as truth is possible with messages from the uncanny world. Horror of a crude and obvious sort, of course, can be found in your daily newspaper; but few such episodes are worth preserving as literature, lacking as they do the shivery appeal of whisperings and tellings. We have sought not only stories of sorcery and the supernatural, but also classic narratives of man’s inhumanity and desperate survival by beach and ocean, in jungle or city highrise. Often the true accounts of what has happened in the island world of Oceania rival in suspense or allure even the most imaginative yarns of South Sea fiction.
The selections that follow draw upon supernatural folklore, reports of sprites and phantoms, visions and fancies. Here are tales of the kahuna cult of Hawaii and the witch doctors of New Guinea, ghosts on high isles and reef-decked atolls, diabolism and fatal tabus. Here are the misadventures of beachcombers and yachtsmen, and buccaneers like Bully Hayes and Ben Pease. Here are the wars of island tribesmen and the beleagured defenders of Wake Island in World War II. Here are the survivors of an attack on a ship by an enraged whale, or the sun-parched occupants of open boats on the vast world of water. Here prowl phantom animals and here march the menacing giants of the nighttime. Here the sudden “cauld grue” of fear brings a copper taste to the tongue and a conviction of the existence of things that must not be.
The arrangement of the stories comprises a reverse chronology based on the date of the incidents they present. Starting with more recent events and exploring into the past, the reader, besides encountering memorable tales, may find it easy to make something of a historical excursion into the Pacific past as well. The range in time runs from the 1980s back to the ancient years before Captain Cook’s ships sighted the Hawaiian group. The boundaries of “paradise,” for our purposes, extend across the Pacific from Juan Fernandez in the east to the Carolines in the west and encompass the island areas of Polynesia, Melanesia, and Micronesia.
We have aimed to present herein a variety of episodes and personalities. The collection, we feel, reflects occurrences, or aspects of l
ife and character, that will evoke for the reader pretty much the seamy side of Pacific life as it was, in spirit as well as in fact.
A.G.D.
B.F.K.
University of Hawaii
Marjorie Sinclair
The Girl in the
Red Gauze Blouse
Marjorie Sinclair is the author of two important novels: Kona (1947) and The Wild Wind (1950). These reflect life in Hawaii just before and after Pearl Harbor. She has also published poetry, biography and translations of poetry from China, Japan, and Polynesia.
Mrs. Sinclair, educated at Mills College, first came to Hawaii in 1935. She married the late Gregg M. Sinclair, president of the University. After his death in 1976 she married Leon Edel, author and educator. In the islands she is well known for her “ghost stories,” of which “The Girl in the Red Gauze Blouse” is an outstanding example.
The lives of children are
Dangerous to their parents . . .
Louis Simpson
1
ON Tuesdays and Saturdays I always go to visit Tommy, my small son. He lives in a special school where children with his kinds of problems are trained. It is six blocks from our house. I always walk, even in the driving wind and rain. I really prefer to walk in wind and rain. They prepare me.
When I went this morning, I noticed a girl ahead of me. I don’t often pay particular attention to casual persons—especially on the way to Tommy’s. This girl, however, walked with a kind of arrogance which was almost a stately dance. Her brown hair fell to the waist; straight and shining, rippling slightly as she moved. She wore tight blue jeans and a red gauze blouse which was torn over one shoulder. On her feet were rubber zori. Her heels were cracked and dirty. Her appearance was quite typical of many girls in Honolulu, but her manner marked her. It was the swagger—with a touch of anger. She might indeed, three or four generations ago, have been a young chiefess, used to having her wishes granted immediately.
When the girl reached Tommy’s school, she paused at the walk leading to the front door. I waited. I did not want to have to face her. I never wanted to see anybody before going to Tommy. Besides, my feelings for some unexplained reason ran strong. It was as if she had said something rude or had done something which inflamed me. My attitude was quite senseless and a little frightening. I had never even seen her before! And to have it happen before visiting Tommy—just seeing him was enough disturbance for any day.
I was relieved when she started on her way again. I turned up the walk to the thick glass doors of the school. At the entrance I looked back to see where she had gone. She was nowhere in sight. It was a quite sudden disappearance, especially as I could see a good two or three blocks down the street. I took a deep breath and opened the door.
Tommy stood, as usual, in a corner of his airy bedroom. His arms, tightly held to his side, seemed thinner than I remembered. His small face was pale, his eyes and mouth pulled in like an old woman’s. He looked shriveled and unwell. He had never been a rosy, plump child; he was thin from babyhood, and his skin had a dry-leaf pallor. I sat on the floor in front of him and spoke his name quietly over and over again. Occasionally when I did this, his lips would tremble or his fingers reach very slightly in my direction. Out of some dark place inside came a vague impulse to touch someone—his mother, if he understood I was his mother. Or what a mother was. At least he had an impulse—I had touched something in him. You may imagine how I waited for these moments.
Today, however, he remained impassive. He looked at me for three or four minutes. He looked—but it was more as if I wasn’t there. Finally he turned to the window. I could see only his back. Above him tinkled the wind chimes I had bought for his birthday. I asked him to listen to the music. His back stiffened. I stood up and went to his small rocking chair. He loved the chair and would rock for hours on end, so they told me. I began to rock. It was comforting. Just the movement soothed fear and anxiety. Finally I tiptoed from the room. His teacher always laughed at me for tiptoeing. But I had no desire to disturb Tommy—wherever he was in his dark place.
In the hall the teacher was waiting for me. She said he had spoken some words during the week. His appetite was not good, but he hadn’t lost weight. “He’s coming along nicely” were always her parting words.
I left the school in my usual devastated condition. Inevitably I went home from these meetings to prepare a miserable dinner for Tom and myself and to spend the evening drinking wine in front of the TV. Tom almost never asked about Tommy. I imagine my mood told him all he could bear. He seldom went to see the little boy; and he would never go with me. We had not yet been able to talk in any direct way about our child, to ask why we should have had such a little boy—to discuss the meaning of Tommy in our lives. The doctors and teachers tried to encourage us about him. But whenever we attempted to talk, we both became angry. It had been this way for almost three years—Tommy would soon be five.
I had not found the courage to tell Tom what I now recognized as a truth—that Tommy would never be more than he was. It is a truth of the kind that one is horrified to reveal—one runs away from it. At times now, the child no longer seemed pathetic to me. He was simply a sad grotesque little human being, a creature which shouldn’t have been born. At moments I hated him. I hated him because I had created him—I had given birth to a distorted, unnatural creature. The child’s existence both accused and imprisoned me. One has a right, I said defiantly to myself, to hate one’s own creation, especially when it is unnatural and so frighteningly sad. Furthermore, the hate filled me with guilt. I told myself over and over that I was a mother without feeling to hate a damaged little boy who was flesh of my flesh. Flesh of my flesh, those ancient words appalled me . . . How much Tom and I had wanted to have little Tommy!
A few days after I saw the girl in the red gauze blouse—her image remained in my mind—I had a dream about Tommy. One of the strangest and most frightening dreams I ever had. He was a Hawaiian child. Of course in actuality he was part Hawaiian—from Tom. And I had much wanted a Hawaiian child. In the dream he was a brown-skinned little boy whose head had grown to a monstrous size. He had to hold it up with his small hands. Like an overripe melon. Tommy lived on a sandy beach where low-growing trees shaded him from the hot sun. Naupaka and other shrubs grew lushly along the edge of the sand. Tides pushed up, leaving ragged lines of coral rubble from the sea. This little landscape was very sharp and clear like a miniature painting. Between the shrubs and the coral rubble Tommy had a very small spot to sleep, but it was hard for him to find a place for his monstrous head. In the shifting fashion of dreams, we were suddenly high on the lava slope of the mountain behind the beach. There were scrubby trees, and many people were milling about. Tommy was walking among them when suddenly he cried out. I rushed to him. His great head had broken like an egg, and the blood drifted out like a piece of red gauze. I screamed and woke up. I couldn’t stop trembling, and Tom shook me gently. I told him I had a dream but couldn’t talk about it. He put his arms around me and pulled my head onto his shoulders . . . He let me cry there softly and stroked my hair. I kissed his cheek in relief and gratitude.
For a while after this dream I could not bring myself to see Tommy. The large head of the dream reminded me by contrast of his babyhood, when everyone had admired the shape of his head and the beautiful proportion of his little body, the long slenderness of his fingers. This was before we knew about his trouble. I remembered the feel of that little head in my hand and how deeply and tenderly I loved him. I loved him even more because he seemed so frail.
There was another reason I loved him in this special way. He had something I didn’t, I couldn’t have. Something I wanted more than anything. He had a share of his father’s Hawaiian blood. I was one of those persons who romantically yearn for the purity and directness of a people close to the grass and earth, to the sea and mountain. I had grown up in miles of pavement and apartments. And I came to Hawaii to escape from those drab stretches of cement, steel, glass. I longed
for mountain areas where I could be lost in the foliage of forests, hearing only the birds, the wind, and the water. It was, I thought, almost magic that I should meet Tom and marry him. He had a big sprawling family which welcomed me. I felt at home in a world which had always been, I thought, beyond my reach. Then came the baby. The baby established me, I was part of this world I wanted. I had given my flesh to it.
My flesh—in horrible distortion. The dream of the monstrous head lingered. I relived it every day; I saw the head break, I saw red float out. And I wondered why the dream had in this oblique fashion connected Tommy with that handsome girl in the red gauze blouse.
2
Gary, a friend of Tom’s, invited us one Sunday to go out on his catamaran. I packed a lunch and we sailed out of the yacht harbor on a blue-green sea. I settled myself comfortably on the trampoline and let the men handle the boat. Gary sailed expertly through the reef channel and out into the open choppy water. The men talked. I watched the vaporous clouds and the green mountains. The wind stroked my arms and legs. I was sleepy and closed my eyes.
When I awoke I saw the girl leaning against the mast, her long hair moving in the wind like seaweed in the water. I wondered if I had somehow missed the fact the Gary had brought a friend. The girl was handsome—a straight nose, full lips, and fine tan skin. Her eyes, a dark brown, bulged slightly and seemed fixed on a far-off place. Then I saw her blouse. It was red gauze. I told myself in panic that I must still be asleep. Yet I saw her very clearly, and I could hear Gary and Tom talking and the water rushing along the side of the boat. I could even feel the warmth of the sun on my body. Suddenly the men swung the boom to change tack.
The movement did not disturb the girl—the boom seemed to pass right through her. Her gauze blouse hovered like a brilliant flame. I pounded my hand lightly on the trampoline to make sure I felt the rough texture of the fabric. I pressed my cheeks and forehead. I was awake and everything was real. She remained there against the mast, motionless, her eyes fixed. I got up on my knees and started to move toward her. Gary saw me and shouted, “What about lunch?”