“Almost every time,” he told himself, trying not to think about cutting off any part of his body.
The awful pain in his fingertip threatened to keep him from thinking clearly. Still, he gritted his teeth in rage and managed to momentarily focus on what he was doing there.
“Carmen,” he murmured.
He turned around and took the lamp into the hallway. After looking in two empty rooms, he found himself before a third room with a locked door.
He quickly opened the latch and held the lamp in front of him as he entered the room.
Inside, face up on a large, unmade bed, lay Carmen, her hands clasped over her stomach as if she had been waiting for a visitor and fallen asleep.
Someone had gone to the trouble of doing her hair and putting on light makeup as well as a white lace dress, which was definitely not the nightgown she’d been kidnapped in hours earlier.
Riley bent down next to the bed and shook her gently.
“Carmen,” he said. “Carmen, wake up. We have to go.”
But she didn’t react at all.
Suddenly concerned, Riley put his hand on her neck and found to his relief that the pulse, though slow, was regular and strong.
“Carmen,” he insisted more loudly as he shook her harder. “Fuck, Carmen, wake up.”
It was as if she were under a spell, Riley thought. And then he was suddenly inspired to bring his face to hers and kiss her sweetly on the lips.
If it works in the fairy tales. . .
He waited a moment to see if it had any effect, but all she did was wrinkle her nose and pucker her lips slightly as if she’d smelled something unpleasant.
“What the hell’s going on here?” Riley asked himself, moving her hair from her face to see if there was some wound.
On her right temple he could see the large purple bruise on her dark skin marking the place where she’d been struck during the assault on the ship and knocked unconscious. But that didn’t explain the state she was in now.
He sniffed her lips, suspecting Klein may have gotten her drunk, but he didn’t smell any alcohol. However, the skin on her face did give off a slight pungent odor that vaguely reminded him of chlorine used to purify pool water.
That made no sense, he thought, confused as he stood and paid attention to the room he was in for the first time.
A wardrobe, a couple of chairs, a dresser, and two framed prints of mountainous landscapes were all that was in the room apart from the bed where Carmen lay and a photo hanging over the headboard. In it a man that was certainly Klein, only ten years younger and a hundred pounds lighter, looked fixedly at the camera, hand in hand with a beautiful woman who looked at him sideways, exuding love and admiration equally. It was Klein’s late wife, surely.
Riley looked at Carmen again and couldn’t help but compare her to the woman in the photo. The dress was the same.
Then a reflection caught his attention—what he’d thought was a bottle of water resting on the dresser. He brought the lamp closer and everything made sense.
“Chloroform,” he read. “Son of a bitch.”
Maybe there was a way of waking up someone sedated with chloroform, but Riley certainly didn’t know it, and the pain in his finger was only increasing. It was becoming more and more difficult to think clearly.
“Fuck-fuck-fuck,” he shouted, shaking his hand and only causing the pain to intensify more.
He had to do something with that finger, but he also had to get out of there with Carmen right away, though to do that he had to wake her up first.
He couldn’t carry Carmen in his current state.
Determined, he left the room in search of water or some other liquid that would help him wake Carmen up by splashing it on her face. He couldn’t think of anything better.
He went back to the hallway, looking for the kitchen or pantry, and at the end found a thick wooden door with an iron frame, secured by a latch that reminded him of a refrigerator’s.
“Should be here,” he said, talking to himself to try to maintain his concentration on anything but that unbearable pain.
He turned the handle, opened the door slowly and went in, lamp in hand.
For a moment that felt like an eternity, he blinked, disoriented, in the middle of a large room, unable to understand what that nightmarish place was.
54
From floor to ceiling, lining the shelves covering the walls of the windowless space, were rows of glass jars of all sizes. Dozens of them. But what terrified Riley was seeing that from inside those jars, human heads seemed to watch him through the yellowish liquid they floated in.
“But what . . . ,” he muttered, taking a step back with a shudder.
There were heads of blacks and whites. Heads of men, women, and children. Some with their mouths frozen in an endless scream. The majority of their eyes were open wide, lifeless eyes that seemed to stare at him in a silent warning.
In other jars, floating in what Riley assumed was formaldehyde, were gorilla and monkey heads, as well as those of smaller animals like bats and rats. In the back of the room, covered in shadow, several rows of containers held animals he couldn’t identify until he looked closely and realized they weren’t animals after all. They were hearts, lungs, kidneys, and brains. That museum of terror was probably Klein’s lab, and the shelf of medical books and bottles of chemicals to his right seemed to confirm it.
The footnote to that atrocious group was a large black wooden table with thick leather straps and iron chains hanging to the floor.
Leaving the oil lamp on a small desk with several notebooks neatly piled on it, Riley approached the table with morbid fascination. He immediately sensed the smell of disinfectant permeating the wood, and looking closer he saw a trail of overlapping dark spots. Dark stains there had been no way to remove. Bloodstains.
That table was halfway between an operating table and a medieval torture rack, and thinking of all he’d seen that night, he figured it was probably both, especially since on one side was a metal tray lined with tidily arranged saws, pliers, scalpels, and knives.
A new stab of pain in his left arm woke Riley from his daze, and to his alarm he found that when he tried to move, he couldn’t.
He understood that the venom was quickly advancing through his body. At that speed, it was only a matter of minutes until the paralysis would reach his head or his heart and then he really would be fucked. He and Carmen. The two of them.
In all likelihood the two of them would end up lying on that table under Klein’s scalpel and their heads would be added to the macabre collection along the walls.
Riley focused on the tray filled with torture instruments and, trying not to think about what he was about to do, took the heaviest, sharpest knife he saw.
“I can’t believe I’m going to do this . . . ,” he mused, watching the reflection of the lamplight on the polished blade.
Forcing himself not to think about it, he looked through the desk drawers and closet until he found what he needed: a roll of bandages and a jar of alcohol.
Without stopping to think—otherwise he might not do it—he soaked the bandages in alcohol and left them on the table.
Then he took the knife and, with a tremor, placed his left hand on the edge of the table. The ring finger already looked like a blood sausage from Burgos.
Riley realized that finger was already lost no matter what, and that thought filled him with enough courage to raise the knife as high as his head.
“To hell with it,” he growled. “I still have nine left.”
He took a deep breath, clenched his teeth, and brought the knife down on his finger with all his might.
Something made Carmen wake up.
She didn’t know what, but she suddenly felt her mind had come out from behind the dense cloud of unconsciousness, as if from the depths of a pool of molasses.
She opened her eyes slightly, just enough for some light to come through her lashes, a dim, warm glow apparently coming from a lamp.
She still felt too confused to think clearly or remember where she was. So she blinked a couple of times and awkwardly rubbed her eyes with her hand as if she still didn’t have full control of her body.
Then she took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and suddenly saw a grisly black silhouette leaning over her, staring.
Without thinking she shouted at the top of her lungs and punched the face as hard as she could.
“Fuck!” the looming figure said, touching his jaw. “What the hell are you doing?”
Carmen’s confusion only increased when she recognized the voice as belonging to someone she knew very well.
“Alex?” she asked, surprised. “Is it you?”
“No, it’s Humphrey Bogart,” he grumbled. “Why’d you hit me?”
“Why are you painted black?”
The captain of the Pingarrón seemed to have forgotten he was covered in that dark mud from head to toe.
“Oh yeah,” he murmured. “It’s a long story. How are you?”
Carmen did a mental scan. “A little sleepy, but I think I’m . . .” Then she realized Riley’s left hand was wrapped in blood-soaked bandages. “What happened to you? Did they hurt you?”
“Actually, I did it myself,” Riley sighed. “But I’m better now.”
“But, how?” she insisted, alarmed at the large amount of blood.
“Later,” Riley said. “Now we have to go.”
“Go? Where?” She looked around. “Where are we?”
Riley was about to tell her he’d explain that later too, but he decided it’d be better to give her a brief overview before going forward.
“It’s Klein’s house,” he explained. “The natives attacked the boat, kidnapped you, and brought you here. Hudgens, Jack, and I managed to jump in the river and now we’re trying to get out of this hellhole.”
Carmen sat up in the bed to look closely at Riley. “Klein?” she asked.
“Klein,” Riley said. “He turned out to be an even crazier son of a bitch than we thought.”
Carmen tried to stand, but she had to sit down again, immediately dizzy.
“Let me help you,” Riley said. “The dizziness you feel is from the chloroform Klein gave you,” he added, seeing the confusion on Carmen’s face. “I had to slap you to wake—” and he shut his mouth when he realized he was saying too much.
“Chloroform, you say?” she asked incredulously, running her hand along her cheek. “And you slapped me.”
“I . . .” He shrugged. “It was the only way.”
She gave him a long, suspicious look. “It’s okay,” she said, finally, and she stretched and added. “Help me get up.”
Riley put his healthy hand under one arm and helped her to stand.
It wasn’t until then that Carmen realized the dress she had on wasn’t hers. “Did you dress me?” she asked Riley, confused.
He shook his head. “Klein,” he said, without pointing out the strange detail that it was the dress on the woman in the photo.
Carmen looked down and pulled on her neckline to find she didn’t have underwear on. “Wonderful,” she murmured with a grimace.
“Let’s go,” Riley urged, nearly dragging her. “We have to get out of here before he comes back.”
Carmen took a couple of steps and stumbled. She would have fallen if it weren’t for Riley, who held her tightly.
“You take the lamp,” he instructed, showing her his free hand wrapped in scarlet-stained bandages.
She did, and as the lamp neared Riley’s face, she realized his eyes were bloodshot and inflamed.
“You look awful,” she said unceremoniously as the two walked down the hallway, clutching each other like two drunks in the middle of the night.
“I’ve had a bad day,” Riley sighed. Then he added with a grin, “And this makeup doesn’t suit me.”
“Must be that,” she said with a nod, relieved to hear some humor.
With each step Carmen felt a little more alert and less groggy, but she still needed help when they got to the living room, where Riley asked her to sit and wait a moment.
“I thought we were in a rush,” she said.
“We are,” he said, tearing a piece of curtain fabric and touching it to the lamp flame. “But we have to do something before we go.”
“Something?”
“I’ll be right back,” Riley answered.
Carmen sat there, waiting next to the unconscious body of one of the natives who’d kidnapped her. If I weren’t so dizzy, she thought, tensing her jaw, I’d kick him till my foot hurt.
Suddenly, from the end of the hallway Alex had gone down came the unmistakable sound of glass breaking on the floor.
A moment later there was a blast of light and the sound of an explosion, then Riley appeared in the hallway, his silhouette standing out against the fire burning behind him.
“All done?” Carmen asked.
“All done,” he said.
Riley hung the Martini-Henry over his shoulder and helped her stand up, though it wasn’t necessary this time. After taking one last look back to watch the flames rush violently through the hallway, Carmen headed to the door Riley had just opened.
When she looked forward, she thought her heart stopped for a second.
She felt her strength leave her again and had to grab onto Riley’s arm to keep from falling.
55
More than fifty Mangbetu warriors holding spears and torches formed a wide semicircle in front of the house. Their bodies were covered from head to toe in gray-white ash like the embers of a bonfire at dawn, and there was dirty red pigment around their mouths and eyes, which Riley was sure must be blood. Their threatening look made them seem like an army of angry ghosts in the light of the flames consuming their town in the distance. It was no wonder that the witnesses of their atrocities confused them with bloodthirsty phantoms and spirits.
In the center of the semicircle, hands on his hips, ignoring the light rain that had returned to make the torches sparkle, Hans Klein—still with traces of Verhoeven’s blood on his chin—looked back and forth between Riley and Carmen.
For an instant that felt like an eternity they were surreally silent.
Riley could feel the heat of the growing fire on his back. Klein seemed to accept it with resignation, as though it was a fair price to pay for his mistakes.
Mistakes that were all personified in Riley, who then took Carmen’s hand to give her courage for what was ahead.
“It’s my fault,” Klein finally said in a tired voice, the rain running along his face. “It’s all my fault,” he insisted, waving over the house and the town burning farther away. “I didn’t stop you when I could have. I let you get here, and now . . .”
Klein left the sentence hanging. He looked down and ran his hand along his head, at once thoughtful and terribly exhausted, like a man facing a task that, despite himself, he had no choice but to do.
Riley and Carmen stayed silent, expectant.
“You,” Klein said, looking at Carmen. “I saved your life, you know?” He paused so he could consider the implications of the phrase. “The Mangbetu are simple and generous people, but not even I can keep . . .” He shook his head. “Anyway, it’d be better if I spared the details.” He tutted and added, “A shame. A real shame.”
Carmen raised a haughty eyebrow, giving Klein a silent look of contempt as only a woman can.
“You’re a monster,” Riley said gravely. “Everything you said at dinner, trying to justify your actions—nothing but garbage and lies. You’re just a goddamn bloody psychopath. What I saw you do to Verhoeven tonight . . .” He shook his head, unable believe what he’d seen.
Klein ran his hand over his mouth, wet with the still-fresh blood of the Boer. His mouth curled into a sneer.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “These people are real.” He turned toward the Mangbetu, motioning toward them with the pride of a father. “Real men whose sense of morality is pure and unpretentious. They d
on’t lie, they don’t steal, they’re not hypocritical or greedy. They just want to be left in peace, for white men not to enslave them, cut down the forests that shelter them, or exterminate the animals who sustain them. Could that somehow be wrong? Isn’t that what we should all aspire to be? If the rest of humanity were like them”—he shook his head bitterly—“the world would be a more habitable place and I wouldn’t have helped create the Aussterben.”
“Bullshit,” Riley replied. “I saw you eat the leg of a man who was still alive. There’s nothing right about that. I don’t know about them, but you’re a fucking psychopath.”
Riley felt Carmen look at him for confirmation, then turn to Klein with renewed disgust.
“Don’t get caught up in the details,” the German said. “It’s pure paraphernalia, a ritual not so different from that of the Christians who figuratively eat and drink the body of Christ. Isn’t that a form of cannibalism too? For the Mangbetu, devouring the body of an enemy is to grant them an honor by converting them into part of themselves. They especially believe that the flesh of a white man gives them the power of whites. That’s why they kill as many as they can, and why they paint their skin like that. If you think about it,” he added, “it’s not without a certain poetic justice.”
“I hope one day they do it to you. We’ll see if you think it’s poetic then.”
Klein made a gesture of impatience. “Anyway, Mr. Riley, I didn’t expect you to understand.”
“Captain, if you don’t mind.”
Klein smiled condescendingly. “Captain,” he said before adding, “though I have to admit I underestimated you all, especially you in particular. I never thought you’d cause so many headaches.”
“You obviously don’t know him,” Carmen grumbled.
“Did you really,” Klein went on, “think that you would get away with this? That I’d be so stupid as not to realize the fire was a crude distraction?”
Darkness: Captain Riley II (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 2) Page 40