Dark Places

by Evans, Jon

  He was a good guy, the Great White Hunter. And yet. There was a reason why he'd made it onto my shortlist of three. He had an explosive temper. He had zero sympathy and zero empathy for anyone's weaknesses or shortcomings. He got along, he was friendly, he was socially adept… but you never felt any warmth talking to Morgan. Always the sense that he was perfectly capable of forgetting the rest of us and walking away at any moment, without so much as a glance over his shoulder. He'd left the truck a couple of times, in Burkina Faso and again in Ghana, for a few days. Mind you a lot of us had done that, when we needed a break from truck life… but he was the only one to leave alone.

  But while I'd thought in the abstract that he was potential killer it was a total stomach-churning shock to realize that it was actually true. That he had killed people, friends and strangers alike… and then mutilated their bodies… It was so hard to reconcile this fact with the garrulous, gregarious Morgan we knew and loved despite his many faults. I tried to come up with reasons why I could be wrong, why it might not be him, how I could have misinterpreted everything. There weren't any. There was no other possibility. It was Morgan. He had hid it well, but he was sick in the head, like a rabid dog.

  I wished some of the other truckers were with me. Seeing Morgan again gave me the irrational feeling that all the rest of them were just around the corner, camping next to the Big Yellow Truck. Maybe I should have contacted Hallam and Nicole and Steve after all, should have told them what I suspected. They might have come to Indonesia with me. They would have known what to do. They were good at that. But there would be no help, no advice. In some ways I was more alone than I had ever been. The nearest person who knew me was Carmel in Sydney, a good two thousand miles away. Unless you counted Morgan Jackson himself.

  The rain fell so fast and strong that it sounded different from rain back home, not a pattering but a load roar on the roof. I decided to go e-mail the news to Talena. I rolled out of my bed and approached the door. Then I froze. It occurred to me for the first time in a way that actually meant something that I was in great personal danger. That Morgan had already come after me up on the Himalayan trail, and that it would be no great matter to find out where I was staying. And that mid-monsoon would be the perfect time to kill me, with zero visibility, everyone staying inside, another hour to hide my body before the monsoon ended. He could have followed me to my cabin, he could be standing outside with a parang right now, patiently waiting in the rain for me like the Great White Hunter he was.

  I stood there, my hand outstretched towards the bar that guarded the door, sweating heavily, and not from the humidity. Maybe he wouldn't try anything. He was with friends. That helped. But then he was with friends, a truckful of them, when he had killed Laura.

  I thought of Laura, dying on the beach trying to hold her belly together, and I began to grow angry. I had a name and a target for my fury, and it grew inside me like a fire that has found dry wood, physically warming me, blotting out the cold icy fear. She was the only woman I had ever loved, and he had gagged her and probably raped her and gutted her like an animal.

  What am I supposed to do, stay in here all day? I thought, and I yanked the bar off the door and pulled it open with unnecessary violence. The rain poured into my cabin in what felt like sheets of solid water. I stepped outside, looking quickly around, ready for a fight, parang or no parang. There was no one there.

  It was only twenty steps to Mekar Sari's covered patio, but by the time I got there I looked as if I had swum the distance. Femke was sitting on her hammock chair, breastfeeding her baby. Through the window I could see her Indonesian husband working to repair a broken chair.

  "Hello, Mr. Wood, are you enjoying our rainy season?"

  "Very much," I said. "I need to use the computer… ?"

  "Sure thing." She stood up gracefully, without interfering with her baby's meal, led me over to the corner of the patio where the computer stood, clicked on the connection icon on the desktop. I watched the connection window open, with the little icon of the telephone and wires. But instead of disappearing after a little while, a tiny red X appeared at the end of the wire.

  "Scheisser," she said. "Sorry, Mr. Wood. The storm has damaged the phone lines."

  "Oh," I said. "Shit."

  "Maybe tomorrow," she said, "it usually takes them a day or two… "

  "All right. Thank you anyways," I said.

  "Wait," I said as she stood up, "could I write an email and put it in your outbox? So it would go out the next time you connected?"

  "Certainly," she said, and opened up Outlook for me. "Just close it when you're finished."

  "Thank you," I said, and sent a quick message to Talena:

  Subject: To be opened in the event of my death or disappearance

  His name is Morgan Jackson. He was on the Africa truck.

  I thought the Subject: line was kind of funny. I was in that kind of mood.

  When I was finished I saw that Femke had gone inside to check on her husband instead of returning to her hammock chair. I padded back across the wooden patio, dripping with every step. And just inside the patio screen I saw one of her husband's parangs, protruding from a wooden block.

  I stopped and looked over my shoulder. Neither of them was looking. I reached down and took the cold wooden handle of the parang and pulled it free. It took a surprising amount of force. Her husband was much smaller than me but very strong. But I worked it free with a second violent jerk and walked back to my cabin.

  Once inside I quickly dried the iron blade with a T-shirt and I examined it carefully. Like a machete, but curved like a scimitar. A blade maybe two feet long. The handle was well worn hardwood. It felt good to have a weapon. A sword. I imagined swinging it at Morgan Jackson. It was a pleasing image.

  The rain lasted longer today, three and a half hours instead of two, and the sun was already sinking into the horizon when it let up, sudden as a thunderclap. I knew what I should do. What I should do was pack up and find a horsecart (cedak in local parlance) willing to drag my sorry ass down the muddy smear that was the road to Kotoraya. Then I should take a bemo back to Mataran and email Talena. And the next day I should ferry it back to Bali, head for Denpasar airport, and fly back to the good old U S of A, mission complete, Laura and Stanley Goebel's murderer identified.

  But that is not what I did.

  Chapter 15 Run Through The Jungle

  I had an early dinner at Mekar Sari.

  "Mr. Wood," Femke asked me, after serving a superb dish of gado-gado, "have you by any chance seen a parang anywhere near here today?"

  "No," I said, affecting surprise.

  She shook her head. "These people. They're terribly racist, did you know that? Because I am white, they think it is perfectly all right to steal from us anything that they can."

  I made sympathetic sounds, feeling a little guilty, and went to bed before the sun had sunk into darkness.

  * * *

  Hypothetical question. Suppose you have identified to your own satisfaction, beyond any reasonable doubt, a serial killer who has murdered at least two people for sure, one them a woman you loved, and will probably kill again. Suppose you know that there is no chance of the authorities ever catching up with him, because you have no hard evidence and furthermore he was smart enough to commit his murders beyond the jurisdiction of competent authorities. Suppose further that you and the killer know each other well. Suppose even further that he must also know that you know, or at least be very deeply suspicious. And finally suppose that you encounter one another in a remote Third World village.

  The question is… no. There are three questions. One, what is the right thing to do? Two, what is the smart thing to do? And three, what do you actually do? Those were the questions that ached in my brain that night as I lay behind a locked door and window and stared at the ceiling, listening to the unnerving keening noise, just at the edge of hearing, that radiated from the rice paddies. Some local critter, I guessed, like a cricket but more disturbing
.

  The smart thing to do, that was easy. Run like hell.

  The right thing to do — well, never mind right in the moral sense. We were way past morals here. Try right as in what I wanted to happen. I wanted Morgan Jackson dead. Of that I was certain. I was as opposed to capital punishment as the next guy. Amnesty International was my favourite charity. But I wanted him dead. It wasn't even the threat he posed to future victims. I wanted him dead for what he had done to Laura.

  Could I kill him? Almost certainly not. He was the Great White Hunter, he was bigger than me, and stronger, and he had killed before, and overall was about a hundred times as dangerous as yours truly. But could I as in could I bring myself to do it? Would I kill him? I didn't know. In the heat of action, maybe, but in cold blood… I didn't know. Talena had said I wasn't a killer. But I didn't think she knew me as well as all that.

  Let me stress that I had no crazy plans about breaking into his room and running amok with the parang. I wasn't going to try to exact revenge all by my lonesome. My self-preservation instinct remained strong. So why didn't I leave? Why wasn't I already in Mataran? I didn't know. I don't know. It wasn't mental paralysis, though the effect was much the same. It was just a deep-rooted feeling that I shouldn't go. That somehow my work there was not done.

  Maybe, looking back, I was just waiting for him to come to me. I wasn't afraid any more. My anger didn't leave any room for fear. I understood now, for the first time in my life, what people were talking about when they talked about cold fury. I understood how it could last for years.

  So when it was well past dark I unbarred the door and stepped outside into the warm damp night, Maglite in one hand, parang in the other.

  He wasn't there. Nobody was there. I shined the Maglite around and its beam was swallowed up by the darkness. The moon was not yet up. Last night the starlight had been bright enough to navigate by, but tonight a thick tapestry of cloud hung overhead, and the darkness was absolute.

  I closed the door behind me and began my trek to the Harmony Cafe. I had to walk a zigzag rice-paddy-ridge path for five minutes and then go down the muddy road about half a kilometer. There was nobody else on it. A donkey whinnied somewhere, and something splashed in one of the rice paddies. A cool wind blew in fits and gusts. The air was fragrant with the clean sweet smell of recent rain. I was nervous but not frightened. The parang was comforting in my hand. I didn't know what I was doing.

  Like many Indonesian lodges the Harmony was built as a U-shaped bungalow around a flagstoned patio. I crept around the edge of the building, looking in windows. There were still three rooms that flickered with candlelight.

  In the first, an old Indonesian man lay back on a moth-eaten bed, smoking ganja. I glanced in the second window, and past a curtain that covered it incompletely I got an eyeful of two topless Swedish beauties giggling and comparing their tan lines by candlelight. They seemed so completely incongruous to the pervasive sense of menace I felt that I nearly broke out laughing. After a moment's ogling I tore my attention away from the walking male fantasy and went to the third room, where Morgan and his redheaded friend Peter were lazily playing cards while Peter smoked a joint. I noticed that Morgan waved off Peter's offer to share. Very unlike him. Unless he was planning some kind of activity for which he did not want to be stoned.

  I stood there for awhile, indecisive, and then I walked back across the road and found a big rock to sit on, close enough that I could still make out shapes at the Harmony Cafe, far enough away that I wouldn't be noticed. I sat there for a long time. I placed the parang and Maglite between my feet. I think I fell asleep.

  Something brought me back to consciousness. At first I couldn't tell what. I looked around. The moon had risen. I suddenly realized that in the moonlight I might well be visible from the Harmony so I backed away another twenty feet.

  And only just in time. A shape detached itself from shadow and set off up the road. From the Harmony, towards Mekar Sari. A tiny circle of light led its way on the ground. Someone carrying a flashlight, I saw, as my eyes focused. And carrying something else. A parang, like mine. Morgan Jackson come to kill me. I must have heard him leaving his room. I hesitated for a moment, and then I followed him, flushed with adrenaline, like when I had found Stanley Goebel's body. Every sense on high alert, every muscle ready for action.

  The wind had picked up, for which I was grateful. Its soft whoosh helped to conceal the squelch of my boots in the mud. It was hard to follow him without using my Maglite, but I managed. I knew where he was going, which helped. Once I almost overbalanced and plunged into a rice paddy, but after a vertiginous moment I recovered my footing. He was moving much faster than me, armed with a flashlight and less concern for noise, and when Mekar Sari loomed out of the darkness I could no longer see him. For a moment a wild panic rose in me, thinking that he'd seen me following, that he waited in ambush. But then I saw movement right next to my cabin. He was there, underneath the window that faced Gunung Rinjani.

  I came as close as I dared, up to the mandi shack about twenty feet from my cabin, and peeked around the corner at him. I could see him clearly, silhouetted against the pale wood of the cabin. He waited patiently for a good five minutes, sitting on the chair beneath my window where I ate my breakfast, his head cocked, listening carefully. I focused on breathing silently. I slowly tensed and relaxed each of my muscles so that they did not cramp. I couldn't remember where I'd read about that trick. Some trashy fantasy novel. The parang felt very heavy but I did not dare to put it down and risk a noise.

  After the five minutes had passed he stood up, calmly walked up the three steps that led to the door, and pushed it open. He stood still for a second, as if surprised that it had not been locked. That was my chance. I knew it as it passed. In that moment of surprise I could have charged him from behind with my parang, could have had a better-than-even chance of getting the first swing in. I didn't try it. I didn't really even consider trying it.

  He turned on his Maglite and inspected the room. I heard him grunt in surprise. Then he turned around and played the Maglite around, and I ducked behind the corner of the mandi stall. I heard him laugh, quietly but perfectly audible at my distance, as if he'd just gotten a joke.

  "You out there, Balthazar?" he asked, his voice low but carrying. "You been keeping an eye on your old mate Morgan? I reckon you are. I reckon you're right behind that mandi there, aren't you?"

  I focused on breathing absolutely silently.

  "I think we should have a bit of chat, mate," Morgan said. "Just a full and frank exchange of views. That's all I came here for." I heard the creak of wood as he stepped down from the doorway.

  "Of course if you prefer," he continued, "we could settle this the old-fashioned way. Mano a mano. Deeds not words, eh? Step right out, Mr. Wood… if you think you're hard enough."

  I didn't move. I couldn't decide how to hold the parang. Low, to slash upward when he turned the corner? Or up, like a sword, to defend myself?

  "Fair enough," he said. "No need to make this a dialogue now. I always preferred the monologues myself. I reckon you've been doing some snooping, haven't you? Been thinking, what's my old mate Morgan been up to? What kind of shenanigans? And by now you've got a pretty good idea, I reckon. Right now you're deeply concerned about your own fair skin, aren't you, Woodsie? Anxious about the future of your own ocular capabilities, if you take my meaning?"

  I listened desperately, for the sound of his boots, and to the sound of his voice, trying to work out how close he was. I didn't think he was coming any closer. But I knew the Great White Hunter could move like a cat when he wanted to.

  "Well, I didn't come here for that. I'm on holiday, don't you know?" His laugh rippled through the darkness. "And the truth is I like you, Paul. Always have. And I'm not too fussed about any snooping you may have done. Anything you dredge up, it's not going to do me any harm, I think we both know that. Fact is I'm impressed. You were always the Internet wizard, weren't you? Presume that's what led y
ou here. I'll have to take more care in the future. Point taken. And as for you, you'd best take my point. Take it to heart."

  And here his voice became edgier, angrier. Became the voice of a murderer.

  "My point is, fuck off. This is your only warning. Sod off back to America and stay there. I'm a patient man but my patience has its limits. Don't make me work my magic on you, old boy. Don't wave a red flag in front of The Bull. You hear me?"

  He waited, as if I was going to answer. Finally he laughed again.

  "Silence is golden, isn't it, mate? Ain't that the truth. Well, that's precisely the lesson I wanted to drill into you, so I suppose I can't complain… You take care now, Paul. Me and my little band are off tomorrow. I recommend you stay here. In fact I insist, and I warn you, I'll make it my business to stay informed of your activities. And I recommend you avoid seeing me ever again. Now piss off and fare thee well."

  And then he walked away, deliberately noisy, whistling loudly — that British Army tune from Bridge On The River Kwai — his boots crunching away from me, taking the long way back to the Harmony around Mekar Sari. I found I could breathe again. As the whistles diminished into the distance I scrambled back into my room and barred the door. I was very glad to be alive.

  Don't wave a red flag in front of The Bull. Words to live and die by.

  * * *

  I dreamed of Swiss Army knives and of parangs. But I woke alive and whole and unimpaled, and I was grateful for it. I lay in bed a long time, luxuriating in each breath, full of wonder at my own existence, that I could draw in the air and expel it again, could with a twitch of my mind cause that heavy lump of flesh called my leg to rise into the air and then let it fall again, could experience the world around me with so many different senses.