In my mind, they were all guilty of murdering Johnnie, Chik, and Sammy. Taking care of me after scarring my face didn’t square their account. They owed; they would pay.
With the gun pointed at the open doorway, the flashlight beside it, I lay down again and propped my head on the softest part of the camera bag.
In the morning, I planned to send a message to the savages who had killed my friends and disfigured me: I would hang the old witch’s head from the same pole they had used to display my friends.
I could be savage, too.
*
Well after dawn, I awoke with my left arm stiff from lying on the rough floor all night. I rolled onto my back, which answered the movement with a crackle. Searching for a comfortable position, I twisted back onto my side and stared into the opened eyes of the old woman.
She blinked.
I bolted upright, throwing my head into a spin.
As my head cleared and my vision focused, I stared at my hogtied captive. She blinked again.
I tried to rouse up clear memories of the night. My plan had worked. She had come back, bringing the green liquid, a new monkey bone, and something small bound in a leaf. I had scuffled with the old witch—I thought of her as a witch because she was old and a woman and mysterious and besides, why not? For all I knew, she could be a healer treasured by her tribe of headhunters. Nah, I thought, until she proves otherwise, she’s a witch.
I had battled the witch and another person, gender unclear. I’d won the fight, but I couldn’t remember how. I had bite marks on my left arm. Fortunately, the old woman’s people did not file their teeth into points, as some Dyaks did.
So much was vague and unclear. How had I…? No, no questions. I had overcome two people despite my injured face and weakened condition. And I’d managed to drag the old woman into the hut. And I had killed her—I was certain of that.
I hadn’t banged my wounded face against anything in the process, either. The thought of doing that made me shudder. I gingerly touched my right cheek, which no longer hurt much or even felt warm. At least one thing was improving.
I ceased my reveries when I felt the witch’s eyes on me. I turned to face her. She lay on her stomach, hogtied and naked, with her sarong all bunched up around her waist. My gun and flashlight pointed at her head. I uncocked the gun and put it and the light back into Johnnie’s pack.
“Well, Johnnie, what shall we do with her?” I refused to address the old woman directly. I thought a few moments.
“The witch and her friends have certainly reduced me to their level. I’m running around half-naked and ready to kill anything that comes my way. That’s not very civilized, and I’m not very comfortable with that, Johnnie.”
I untied her legs, rolled her onto her back, and set her up upright against the wall of the hut. I kept her hands tied behind her. I poured water from one of Johnnie’s bottles into the gourd. I put it to her lips, and she drank.
“You know, old woman, something very powerful in me says you ought to die.”
I had told myself I would not address her, but she needed a talking-to.
“That water you drank belonged to one of the people you beheaded. We weren’t doing anything to harm you. All we wanted to do—all I wanted to do—was find your black orchid. And you killed three people and did this to me.” I pointed at my cheek. She watched me talk but showed no emotion. Tough old witch. I hated her, couldn’t stand to look at her any longer. Outside it was light, but there was nothing to see, just the empty common area surrounded by abandoned huts on stilts, and nothing to hear. I climbed down the ramp; the second body was gone. I wondered at that. Bodies come and go in this place. I walked the perimeter of the hut several times to loosen up. The old woman had scooted into the doorway and watched me.
I made a decision. I re-entered the hut and pulled the sarong back up where it belonged. I learned last night that I had killer instincts, but I was no pervert. I hefted the old witch—she weighed almost nothing—and lugged her down the steps, setting her down in the shade under my hut. I pulled the Webley from its holster, cocked it, and placed the end of the barrel on the bridge of the woman’s nose.
I swiveled my head back and forth slowly in the universal symbol of disapproval.
She didn’t seem frightened, but she stopped tugging at the rope. This told me two things: She wasn’t entirely primitive and knew what a gun could do to her at such close range. She was also no fool.
I slid the gun back into my holster, pulled my boots over bare feet and slipped on my shirt. I was fully dressed for the first time in more days than I could count. That small realization made me feel civilized, though I had my doubts.
“Let’s go.”
I tugged on the rope, and the old woman rose, far more easily than I had. I wrapped the loose end of the rope twice around her neck and tied it.
I hefted Johnnie’s pack onto my back and pulled the revolver.
I raised the pistol and fired a shot into the air. In the forest silence, it sounded like thunder from hell. The woman jumped.
I prodded her toward machete man’s house. Half a dozen steps from the hut, I tugged on the rope and she stopped. I had a point to make to her and to anyone watching. I waved the pistol in front of her eyes, put it to her head, then aimed at the hut and fired. Noise roared through the village again. The corner post nearest us exploded into slivers, and the old woman dropped to her knees. A .455 lead slug can do that.
“Well, Johnnie,” I said aloud, “I think we’ve made our point, and we are sure giving them more warning than they gave us.”
I hauled the old woman to her feet again and nudged her toward the rear of the hut. I cocked the Webley, put my finger on the trigger and aimed at her back. If the old woman’s friends shot darts my way again, she would die before I passed out.
The woman slipped through the forest easily; I struggled behind her. Holding the rope and pistol, I plowed through sharp-edged leaves the size of elephant ears. I sidled left, trying to protect my tattooed cheek, but every other step seemed to cause a leaf to graze my wounded face. One hundred baby steps into the forest, I could taste blood on my lips.
Only simmering anger and the knowledge that the old woman would die with me kept me going.
I couldn’t see a path. My feet threaded through a hairline gap between the roots on the jungle floor. I looked behind us once and saw only bent and twisted foliage, the wake of my passage.
After an hour, I realized I would never make it to midday. My boots were lead weights. The trees and foliage I shoved through held me upright. Leeches and who knows what else gathered on my neck and exposed legs. I checked the compass twice, but it told me nothing. We navigated around trees and impassable thickets. The old witch could be leading me in a circle, and I would only know it if we crossed our own path.
I went over and over the logic of my escape plan. The villagers needed water. The hag had gotten water to make the grassy liquid. You don’t build your village too far from water. We would come upon a spring, or creek, or river before the sun stood directly above us, or we would both die.
Long before noon, however, I could go no farther. My face and chest, arms and legs were covered in scratches and bleeding cuts. The snakes I had seen—three-foot-long green ones—no longer made my gut clench. I completely ignored the bugs, leeches, and worms making a home on and in me. I had to pee and I needed a drink of water, but I didn’t want to let go of the pistol or the rope.
The forest remained strangely quiet as we passed through it. My thrashing through the brush, no doubt, frightened and quieted both birds and monkeys. And maybe human hunters tracking our progress did the same.
The old woman stopped and refused to move forward. I nudged her with the barrel of the gun, but she stood still. I thought the Webley would keep me in control. That wasn’t working out. I wanted to shoot the witch, but where would I get without her?
I tried to see around her, or over her, really, because she was so short. I thought may
be she’d seen some danger and was trying to protect us by stopping dead. I saw nothing ahead but greenery. I leaned her to one side and used my foot to probe the path ahead. It went on, at least a half step ahead of her.
So here I was. She had lured us into a trap, thanks to my desire to see a single black orchid in its native environment. She was just as responsible for the deaths of my friends as if she had swung the machete herself. Maybe she had. Without her, I was a dead man, lost in a remote forest, soon to have my bones picked clean by Borneo wildlife. I was pissed and frustrated and wanted nothing more than to make this old witch pay for her treachery.
I could think of nothing else to do. Exhausted, I uncocked the pistol and shoved it into my holster. I unwrapped the rope around her neck, and then untied her hands.
“All right,” I said. “You win. You screwed me and my friends good and hard. You deserve to die a long, slow, painful death, and I hope you do, sooner rather than later. But I’m not going to be the one to do it. Beat it. I’ll live or die on my own.”
She looked at me as if she understood every word. Then she slipped around me—how she managed it in that space I have no idea—and in a few steps disappeared back the way we had come.
All I wanted to do was lie down and die.
Addressing my last words to the beautiful, fearsome, alluring jungle around me, I announced,
“I’m not going to die needing to pee.”
“Good idea,” a voice answered. “I’d pee first. Makes everything seem a little better.”
I staggered backward, snagging my pack on a string of vines.
“What the…”
“Step back, Yank,” the voice instructed, sounding very much like Johnnie. “We’ll have you out of there in no time.”
The trees shook, then leaned to one side. A white face appeared through the greenery.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Friends of Johnnie’s. Is he here?”
“No,” I said. “No, he’s not here anymore.”
And I cried.
Empaya Iba Speaks
Gentle ones, fear not.
Find peace in the deep forest.
The one who bears my mark is strong;
He will protect you and the Mother Soil.
New to our ways,
Empaya must teach him.
His new powers,
Empaya must show to him.
Go now, until we return,
Empaya Iba and the one who bears his mark.
My sister will tell you the way;
All will be well.
So say I, Empaya Iba, spirit of the Black Orchid People, guardian of the Mother Soil, giver of the Long Sleep, seer of the Many Eyes, mage of the Many Legs.
Chapter 10
Civilization
Doctors in Australia marveled at my condition.
Not a single fresh bug bite, despite the rescue team being marked on every inch of exposed skin. That was the good news.
The tattoo on my face, which I thought was getting better, was in fact badly infected and full of maggots, which might actually have prevented the infection from being worse than it was. My face, neck, chest, arms, and legs were slashed, deeply in some places, by my charge through the jungle, and many of the cuts were infected. Some type of parasite had taken root in my left eye and both ears, and my digestive system contained several types of worms. (Thank you, monkey meat.) I was severely dehydrated and malnourished.
Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, I thought to myself, it was a pretty good play.
Antibiotics and time would take care of most of my wounds, the docs said as they shot me full of drugs. I could stay—wherever I was—as a guest of the Australian government as long as I liked.
Clean sheets and air conditioning did as much for my recovery, I think, as the medicines.
The long-term prognosis was great, except for one thing: I was scarred for life.
When I looked in the mirror, I saw a grotesquery. The tattoo, raw, red, and puckered with infection, covered the entire right side of my face and penetrated the muscle underneath. The doctors predicted that when my cheek healed, the tattoo would look embossed. There would be no point in grafting skin over it. The tattoo would remain.
I was a marked man.
*
Johnnie’s ethnologist friend, aptly named James “Jimmy” Beam, appeared two days after my rescue. He was as different from Johnnie as a person could be: Short, thick, muscular, and burned red wherever skin was exposed to light. Where Johnnie was all starch and creases, Jimmy was rumpled right down to the skin. He perspired without provocation, just like I did. I liked him immediately.
He found me sitting in the shade of a small veranda outside my room, staring out over the Australian outback. Cool misters sprayed down the temperature.
“I’m Beam,” he said, startling me. “I run things for you. Do you need anything?”
I lifted my head.
“Sebastian Arnett. I could use a gin and tonic come cocktail hour.”
“If the docs okay it, I’ll have it for tea time. That’s about four o’clock American time. Any particular brand?”
“Tanqueray if you can find it.”
“I can make that happen. Anything else?”
“How long will I be here?”
He perched on the low wooden rail demarking my sun porch.
“Up to you and the docs. Mostly you. You can leave anytime you want. I wouldn’t go without the docs’ approval; you’ve got some odd bugs in you that most medical people wouldn’t know how to treat. But you’re free to leave, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It was.”
“No problem on our end. Your embassy in Canberra is working on a new passport for you. We couldn’t find any documentation in your stuff in Tenom.”
“No. It was in my camera bag. I must have forgotten to pack it when I… when I left the jungle.”
“Right. So, tell me what happened to Johnnie.”
I told him, going silent from time to time as I recalled my three lost companions.
“Did you find the village?” I said at the end of my tale.
“No. No village. No villagers. No path. No heads. No bodies. No rare flowers. Nothing but bugs, snakes and leeches. Lots of those.”
“How did you find me? And what took so long?”
“You were there. You know what it’s like. We couldn’t find an entire village. You’re damned lucky we found you.”
“So, how did you do it?”
“It was mostly your sheikh’s doing. We sent a team out when Johnnie didn’t respond to our ping. They found the new village. The headman was worried about you boys; something about a strange old woman who magically appeared one day, then took off with you the next.
“We went up and down that river, hoping to find you guys camped out or at least get a distress signal. That’s when your sheikh contacted my government. Long story short, he had your coordinates from your phone calls. After that, no problem. My team found your landing spot all hacked up. No sign of the boat.”
Jimmy gave me a look.
“Then—and this is where it gets interesting, to my mind at least—you show up in a matter of hours. Almost as if someone had planned it that way.”
I shrugged.
“Not my plan,” I said.
I gently touched my wounded face.
“None of it makes sense. Johnnie said you studied these primitives.”
“Aboriginals. Not primitives.”
“Whatever. This is your area. What do you make of it?”
“I’m thinking,” he said, “and I don’t really like what I’m thinking.… You need anything, just ask. I’ll be back in a few.”
*
Beam’s “few” stretched out to almost a week, during which my body reacted poorly to all the poisons the docs used to kill my parasites. I was starting to feel normal when he finally showed up, unshaven, haggard and even more sun-burned than before.
“Mr. Beam,” I said. “
Glad you dropped in. I’ve been thinking of checking out.”
“’Morning, Yank. Call me Jimmy. My friends do. And you can leave whenever you like.”
“Great.”
“Got a bit of news for you. Some good, some… so-so.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“We had a visitor.”
“For me?”
“About you. A representative of your sheikh. He’s ready to fly you to Abu Dhabi whenever you’re ready.”
“Okay. And…”
“His people found three heads in Borneo—like someone had left them to be found. One of them was Johnnie Walker’s. We’re still trying to confirm that the other two belonged to Kechick and Sammy. There’s no doubt in my mind, though. It’s them.”
I didn’t know what to say.
“Your sheikh—what’s his name?” Jimmy Beam asked.
“Ibrahim bin Abdullah bin Rashad Al Ain.”
“That’s him. He went in like a hurricane, buying up property and people. He cut a path 100 yards wide from the river until he found the village where you were kept. I was there. Impressive what you can do with an unlimited supply of money.”
“So, he didn’t have any trouble with the government.”
“What government? It’s too close to the border between Malaysian and Indonesian territory. Given the minerals and timber, at some point they will have to sort out boundaries, but that’s still down the road a bit.”
“Did they find the old woman?” I asked.
“No old women. No old men. No children. No headhunting warriors. No sign of your machete man.”
I raised my hand to my forehead, shielding my eyes from the brilliant sunlight.
“Do you suppose I dreamed all that?”
“If that’s what you dream, I’d say it was more like a nightmare,” Jimmy said. “No, it was real enough.”
“What happened? Why Johnnie and the others? Why not me?”
“As an ethnologist, I can talk about spirits, headhunter rituals, Dyak markings. As an employee of a certain Australian government agency, I can talk realpolitik.”
The Mark of the Spider: A Black Orchid Chronicle Page 7