Darkness

by David Fletcher

  Nevertheless, his tasteless breakfast did appear to have some effect. When, after a little less than ten minutes, he rose to his feet again, he felt mildly revived and his legs felt distinctly stronger. He therefore lost no time at all in putting them to the test and, much to his delight, discovered that they didn’t now wobble and were quite amenable to carrying him through the water, albeit very slowly. What yesterday had been a ponderous pace in negotiating the continuous obstructions in the stream would today, Dan realised, be reduced to an extremely sluggish pace. Indeed, sometimes there would be no pace at all, as on frequent occasions he was forced to rest on one of the obstructions or let himself collapse on the side of the stream to allow his body to scrape together the little energy it still possessed.

  This was how the morning passed – laboriously and painfully, and increasingly in something of a stupor. However, Dan was still moving. He was still making his way along the stream and there was no possibility in his mind that he would stop. At least not until the middle of the day, when he planned to take an extended break to avoid the midday heat.

  When he did this – next to the huge root-ball of a forest giant – he first tried to gauge how far he had come, and quickly decided he had no idea. All he did know, he thought, was that he had come in the right direction. He hadn’t retraced his steps back to the Lodié. And in his present condition, that was something to take pride in. Even if it made him more aware than ever of his condition, which was now so poor that he wondered whether he might never move from his present location, and even if he did, whether he would get anywhere near his goal. Maybe, he thought, he had not, as he had been warned, underestimated himself, but instead he had overestimated himself – grossly. He was old. He was unused to physical exertion. And he was very, very weak.

  Fortunately, this dismal evaluation of his situation was soon relieved – by exhaustion. Dan fell fast asleep, and then stayed asleep for over two hours. When he finally woke, his mind was not this time on the absence of sweat bees but on the absence of Kim. He had dreamed about her. She had been with him in Ngaga, searching for gorillas but finding only “painted ladies from the East”, clones of Svetlana who had disposed themselves around the giant branches of a giant tree, and were all busy either varnishing their nails or applying makeup to their already highly made-up faces. Kim had burst out laughing and this had caused the clones to scatter within seconds. Then Dan had joined her in her laughter and she had begun to tease him, first by dodging behind a tree and then by running off down a track, still laughing. Dan had followed her, and soon her laughter had become fainter. She was getting further down the track and further away from Dan. He could not keep pace, and no matter how fast he ran, Kim seemed to be running faster and faster. And then she was gone. The laughter had disappeared completely. And Kim had disappeared completely. And although still in a dream, Dan knew she would never come back. His daytime dream had turned into a true nightmare.

  Now that he was awake, the recollection of this terrible vision made him feel desolate and more fatigued than ever. Was it really worth ploughing on? Was it really worth putting his body through yet more pain? And in any event, could his body sustain yet more pain? Even still slumped on the ground he was now aware of aching joints, something he’d not been aware of before. And he was aware of his muscles as well, particularly those in his arms. They now felt unusually tender.

  He checked himself. This was stupid. He may have been a fool to embark on this extraordinary venture in the first place, but to abandon it now, now that he might be near its end, would be far more foolish. He had to go on. While his body was still prepared to respond to his will, he should direct it to take him further up this stream, and that meant, to start with, directing it to pull itself up and once again to test those legs. He therefore took two deep breaths and ordered himself to rise – and he did. It made him feel a little woozy, but that soon passed and when he was confident he wasn’t about to sink to the ground again, he began to march into the water.

  Moving seemed to help. It was increasingly painful as those joints and muscles began to register their distress, but the pain itself seemed to act as a spur and it was undeniably a distraction from what he now suspected was the growing futility of his task. He was now making extremely slow progress, even on those stretches of the waterway that were relatively clear of any impeding vegetation. He just couldn’t do anything at more than a true snail’s pace and it was becoming the same for his mind. His thinking was slowing down, so that at one point it took him minutes to register that his last water bottle was empty and that if he wanted a drink he would now need to resort to the stream.

  This new need became a distraction in its own right as he stumbled along looking for somewhere that offered a suitable drinking spot – whatever that might be – and failed to find one for almost half an hour. Finally he began to appreciate that he was becoming very confused, and just as he was convincing himself that any patch of water was as good as the next patch for his needs, he came across a clearing in the forest where the stream had expanded into a small pool. It wasn’t a particularly attractive pool as it was choked with various bits of detritus and something that looked a little like a distant relative of water hyacinth, but it was enough of a novel sight to arrest Dan in his tracks. It might even prompt him into taking that drink from the stream – just beyond the pool where the water looked to be a little clearer.

  It was as he was processing this new sight and the need to stop for a drink that he had to attempt to process another sight. It was of something at the edge of the pool, no more than ten feet from where he was currently standing unsteadily in the water, and whilst it was not moving it was clearly alive. Dan knew this because he could see its eyes and these eyes were clearly seeing him. His “knowledge of African reptiles” immediately kicked in, and even in his currently muddled state, he knew what it was. It was an African rock python, and although it was coiled and not conveniently stretched out against a measuring tape, it was probably more than three metres long. Its girth was so great that it could not have been shorter.

  Dan was not sure what to do. He had been to Africa many times before, but on all those visits he had generally observed its wildlife from the back of a Land Cruiser or a Land Rover. Only infrequently had he been on the same level as a potentially dangerous creature, and he had most certainly never been this close to a creature that had the potential to kill him and against which he had no defence. He was now so weak that the python, if it chose to, could envelope him within its grasp and squeeze him to death within seconds.

  He would, he decided, leave it to fate. African rock pythons, he knew, were not particularly aggressive, and even if this one could scent a nearby meal, it might think twice before tackling such a large dinner, and a dinner that might just have a way to fight back. Fate, of course, always needed a hand, and Dan provided this in the form of a fixed stare at the creature and an almost unconscious attempt to make himself look bigger and taller. The snake appeared to register either the stare or the display in that it began to slightly rearrange its coils – but it did no more than this. It did not begin to glide towards him, and Dan was left to edge himself away from where it was resting, and ultimately to quit the little pool area without even a suggestion of a real reptile-against-mammal encounter.

  Before he knew it, he was out of sight of the enormous animal – and panting uncontrollably. He had just come very close to being squeezed to death – in an inaccessible corner of Africa by an African creature he had only once seen before – from a very safe distance and in the company of a proficient guide. The experience had clearly released some adrenalin and, as well as providing him with a bout of panting, it had also provided him with a mental and physical boost. It was palpable. Immediately, his mind felt clearer and, as well as his joints and muscles feeling less inflamed, he was aware of a surge of power. It was as though somebody had just injected him with a large dose of purified vigour.

 
Needless to say, Dan harnessed this unexpected recovery in his condition without delay. As soon as he’d supped from the water of the stream – ingesting whatever might be living within it – he was again making headway, and at a modestly increased rate. He even felt moderately elated.

  Unfortunately, this adrenalin-charged stimulus didn’t last indefinitely, and eventually it began to subside. First the joint and muscle aches returned. Then Dan found it increasingly difficult to manage even the simplest of obstructions, often falling over in the water and wounding himself on thorns and rocks in the process, until his progress was again more “hobbled” than pedestrian. Indeed, he hardly seemed to be making progress at all. He was also becoming confused again, to the point where he had to sit himself down and, with a great deal of effort, reassure himself that he was still walking in the right direction, that he hadn’t finally done a U-turn that would take him back to the Lodié River.

  It was shortly after this episode of profound self-doubt that it began to get dark. Despite everything and despite the marked deterioration in his condition, Dan had somehow managed to keep moving forward for over four hours since that snake encounter, and he was still alive and still just about conscious. Indeed, he was still relatively aware of his circumstances and certainly aware enough to make the considered decision to call it a day. He’d stand down his body and look for a suitable place to rest it. And if he didn’t fall into sleep as soon as his body hit the ground, he might even have a literal bite to eat. But just a bite. He still had no appetite whatsoever – but just the beginnings of a headache, something he’d not experienced since his chronic migraines had left him more than five years before.

  He managed to stay awake for a few minutes – and to have that bite of an energy bar. And he also managed to register the full implications of his burgeoning list of ailments. This provided him with a perverse sense of satisfaction and eased his passage into another well-earned spell of sleep. He would now not wake for almost twelve hours and would even sleep through his dreams.

  thirty-one

  Dan awoke with a start – and with a splitting headache. It was as though he was back in the bad old days of migraines, a time when whole days and even whole weekends could be lost to that dreadful pain in his brain. However, he was alive enough to his situation to know that this wasn’t a migraine attack and that he couldn’t indulge himself in a day in bed and wait for the pain to pass. On the contrary, he needed to wake himself up properly and once again get on his way. He would not be getting any stronger now but just weaker by the hour, and he needed every hour to count.

  With this unequivocal degree of resolve he pulled himself to his feet and then dragged himself towards the stream. There he slowly lowered himself down, took a drink as if a forest animal, and then pulled himself up once again. He then thought about having a pee, but soon became aware that he didn’t need one.

  ‘Not enough water,’ he told himself. And then he mouthed the word ‘dehydration’.

  But it was no more than an impassive recognition of his condition, and this condition seemed irrelevant to his purpose. However much water he drank was neither here nor there, and the water was probably doing him all sorts of harm anyway. Accordingly, all thoughts of dehydration and how possibly to avoid it were pushed from his mind, and instead he just focused on the course of the stream and his passage along it.

  Progress was again extremely slow. Dan was now a damaged vessel. And this vessel’s engine was all but spent and its means of locomotion was severely damaged. Furthermore, its control function was deteriorating so rapidly that it would soon be ineffective. It wouldn’t be that long before it couldn’t decide whether it was taking itself the right way up the stream or the wrong way down it. It could still manage to get Dan’s legs over obstacles and, more often than not, make sure that his head didn’t come into contact with a low-hanging branch, but that was about it. Any real decision-making facility was now draining away, and Dan’s mind was becoming little more than an automaton, one programmed like an autopilot to maintain only the simplest functions of its corporeal container.

  Fortunately, this automatic governor managed not only to keep Dan going but it also managed to keep him going in the right direction. He didn’t perform a U-turn. However, neither did he perform any of those operations that might have helped him to keep going indefinitely. So Dan didn’t stop walking when it came up to midday. He just kept plodding on, sometimes falling over more times than he took steps forward, but always on and on. He never rested at all. Nor did he eat or drink. And if he thought of anything at all it was of his painful limbs, his painful head and his now painfully dry mouth – as a way of not thinking about Kim.

  She had joined him on his walk soon after he had set off. And whilst initially he had welcomed her company, he had soon become guilty that he was taking her to such a dark place, somewhere simply brimming with darkness and somewhere he could not now avoid. So anything had to be harnessed to have her gone, to send her back out of harm’s way, to purge her from his concerns. And it had worked. Pain could be an ally when you wanted it to be, when you wanted it to blot out an even greater pain. Particularly when you were essentially delirious…

  That was now Dan’s condition. His thinking was irrational and he was barely aware of where he was. All he knew was that he needed to keep moving – and to keep moving on his own. He couldn’t have Kim with him here. All he could afford to retain as his companions were pain and resolve, even if he couldn’t now quite recall what that resolve might concern.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon when the vessel finally succumbed. For more than twenty minutes it had actually advanced up the stream on its knees. It had crawled through the water and dragged itself over obstructions with its bare hands, or even slithered beneath them when it couldn’t quite manage that. All this time, Dan was unaware of what he was doing and what he was demanding of his broken vessel, so that its ultimate foundering was all but inevitable. It happened just as it was attempting to make further progress up the stream by hauling itself over a particularly large bough that was blocking its way to a large open area beyond. Of course, Dan was as much unaware of this open area as he was of his collapse into unconsciousness on top of the bough. And he was also unaware that he had been delivered a long-awaited respite from all his pain.

  thirty-two

  It was the return to pain that told Dan he was still alive. In the first seconds of consciousness he realised that being dead simply could not involve the multitude of aches and discomforts that now assailed him. His joints and muscles still ached. His head ached. And he now had a really sore throat, and he felt hot and shivery at the same time. He must have developed a fever as he’d slept.

  That thought triggered a question in his mind: how long had he slept? And then another: where had he slept? To answer this second question he needed to sit up. At the moment he was lying on his back – on a bed – and all he could see was a featureless concrete ceiling. So he was inside somewhere, but where exactly? As he pushed himself into a sitting position, the first thing he saw was a long decorative metal grille. He was in a room and this grille formed its entire front. Through the grille he could see a narrow covered terrace and beyond that, a clearing edged with forest trees, but nothing else. He then began to inspect the room itself and registered that its three solid walls were made of concrete and that it contained just his bed, two dilapidated chairs and a desk, and that in one corner, and adjacent to the grille, was an enormous sunken bath – just next to a filthy wash basin and an even filthier loo. It didn’t take him too long to realise that he was in some sort of box-like, stand-alone lodge cabin, and one that had seen rather better days. This was good. As was the fact that he had deduced it was good. Because this meant that he now had his mind back and also that it was working quite well.

  In fact, it was now time to put it to work in earnest, to ask it to review what had happened to him over the past few days and what was li
kely to happen to him now. Well, as regards the immediate past, this review revealed a remarkable – if obvious – fact. This was that his gradual decline and ultimate total collapse had two components. It had to or he wouldn’t now be making this deduction. And the first component was the degradation of his body due to his being ill. It was why he had all those aches and pains and now a sore throat and a fever. The second component was an overlaid deterioration brought about by demanding of his body more than it could properly manage. He had been on the move for six punishing days – with endless physical challenges, unavoidable mental stress, too little rest and too little to eat. Add in the heat and humidity and self-inflicted dehydration – and the illness-induced weakening of his body – and it was remarkable that he hadn’t actually died. That he had only become completely delirious and ultimately unconscious was equally remarkable and, of course, very welcome news.

  Dan dwelled on this deduction for a little while longer. He couldn’t help thinking that it had all been a little bit too much “touch ’n go”. After all, he could easily not have made it, and all those long months of planning and all of his commitment would have been for nothing. There again, the planners did seem to know what they were doing, and they would have known the impact of illness and extreme exertion on a middle-aged body. Maybe they had calculated when and where it would finally run out of steam, and maybe part of that calculation was what it implied in terms of his changing his mind. If he hadn’t become increasingly weak and confused, might he have decided to turn back? Might he have decided to use his energy and clear thinking to get back to Ngaga? It all sounded a little cold-blooded, and it would have involved elevating an unlikely eventuality into a real possibility. It just didn’t seem feasible – or right. But Dan just couldn’t come up with anything else that might reconcile the meticulous approach that had been taken in putting together this venture and the precarious nature of its success – so far.