Tropic of Darkness

by Tony Richards

  * * *

  Light, like the answer to some age-old, practically forgotten prayer. It was coming in, narrow as razorblades, to slice through the pitch black inside Jack’s head. Early morning light. There for a brief instant, and then gone as his eyes closed again.

  A breath. He was aware of taking it. A very painful thing to do, as it turned out. His ribs felt tighter around his lungs. And there was a stickiness across his nose and mouth. His own blood . . . yes, for sure.

  But he could not feel rust or moisture any longer. He was not on the ship. Where, then?

  The question hung there in the darkness for a second. And then, like those brief slivers of pale light, it was gone.

  * * *

  Falling slowly. Turning as he fell. The darkness now had texture, form. Was swaying softly as he went by, as if his passage was disturbing it.

  Jack reached out and tried to touch it. His fingers brushed against a delicate fabric. He was falling down a shaft, the walls of which were lined with fluttering black silk.

  Finally and gently, he arrived at the bottom. And he lay there, perfectly at ease.

  She came to him.

  The black silk parted and she stepped through. So utterly beautiful. No woman he’d ever known came near to matching her.

  Isadora DeFlores knelt down beside him, and her eyes were full of love.

  He tried to respond to that. She raised a hand. Made a faint shushing noise. Soft as gossamer, her fingertips alighted on his cheek.

  “Oh, my poor Jack. Look what they’ve done to you.”

  Finding a bruise, her fingers began to circle it. And its soreness faded. She was smiling.

  “You see? I can help you. I can take away the pain. You’ve been carrying so much pain, for so very long a time.”

  His discomfort subsided. Her face was so close to his he could smell her breath.

  “This is what you want,” she told him. “This is what you’ve wanted for a whole age, without knowing it. Somebody to comfort you. Somebody to make you feel at ease. You’re tired of always moving on. Tired of everything changing. And so very tired of being tired. Isn’t this so much better, Jack?”

  He felt like he was falling asleep all over again. His eyelids had grown leaden, and his limbs extremely heavy.

  “You’re the one,” she was intoning. “I’ve waited for you all these years. We’ll be together, until the end of time.”

  She kissed his mouth.

  And then, she did something extremely puzzling. Took hold of his sleeve and shook it. Why had she done that?

  Both her hands were at his shoulders. So it had to be someone else.

  A voice drifted to him, from the top of the deep well.

  “Señor?”

  It was a child’s voice, not a woman’s.

  “Por favor, Señor?”

  Jack bobbed back to consciousness.

  The sunlight rushed in at him and his teeth set with pain. His body was full of it, his bones aching and his head raw. The woman hadn’t soothed a single injury. It had been merely an illusion.

  Jack pushed himself up, managing to get one eye open enough to see who’d shaken him. It was a little boy, no more than five years old, clad in a pair of overly large khaki shorts. The kid returned his gaze, aghast. Both his grimy hands went to his mouth in horror.

  And then, he was turning on his heel and running away as fast as he could.

  Jack watched until he was gone, then raised a hand and felt his lips. They smarted at the slightest pressure, and his fingers came back stained a reddish-brown. It wasn’t the first time that he had come out on the wrong side of a fight, but he had to look like roadkill this time. Little wonder that the kid had run.

  Groggily, he tried to figure out exactly where he was. It was a patch of dry grass, by the side of a wide road. Traffic rumbled past. Beyond that was the wire fence of the dockyard—but not where he’d first entered. He could see a gate. Those bastards had simply carried him out and dumped him here.

  His head had begun to throb. But there was something else wrong. He remembered what.

  It was the dream that he’d just had. She’d almost gotten to him this time. Almost suckered him, seduced him. That was bad enough. But there was one extra problem.

  Daylight. This time, Isadora DeFlores had visited him during the day. And he’d had it on good authority that was pretty much impossible.

  He didn’t understand it, but knew one thing for certain.

  He wasn’t even safe with the sun out any longer.

  * * *

  Somehow, Jack had found his feet and was stumbling along the edge of the road. The few pedestrians coming his way stared at him and gave him a wide berth. He was conscious of faces looking at him from the windows of passing cars, children leaning out and pointing.

  Everything was still extremely blurred, the ground beneath him genuinely unsteady. He went around a corner, lurching. And then a rank of cabs came wobbling into view. He forced himself in their direction. Reached the first in line, making the driver, who was reading a newspaper, jolt.

  Jack bent down, but the man flinched back.

  “Doctor—Torres?”

  He realized his voice was being muffled by his swollen lips.

  “I have to find the clinic of Doctor Aldo Torres. Do you know—?”

  The cabbie shook his head, then rolled up his window.

  He got the same response from the next driver in the line. But the third, an elderly guy with a huge walrus moustache, peered at him in a measured way, then nodded.

  “Yes, I know him. Come, get in. But keep your head off the upholstery.”

  He kept on glancing at Jack in his mirror as he drove.

  “You a sailor?”

  “No.”

  “I just thought . . . they are always getting into fights, is all.” The man seemed to be chewing something over. “There are clinics nearer by. Why this one in particular?”

  “It was recommended by a friend.”

  Maybe the man knew what Torres did, and maybe not. But he went completely silent at that point, pretending he was concentrating on the road.

  Jack’s head seemed to be hurting worse than ever. Swimming. Swimming.

  * * *

  The motion of the cab was getting to him, and so was the heat. His eyes were drifting shut again.

  No! I have to get to the clinic!

  But he’d arrived. He was already there.

  He was sitting on a hard chair in a white-tiled empty room. Jack looked around.

  “Is anybody here?”

  There was a plain door in front of him. Far too plain, in fact. It had no handle and no keyhole. But after a while, he could hear footsteps coming up behind it on the other side, tapping. The sound of high heels.

  “Who’s there?”

  The door began to open.

  It was her, revealed. She was dressed in a crisp white uniform this time. A nurse’s cap was pinned to her tumbling locks. And—curiously—she was wearing shades. Thick, black lenses. Jack could only stare at their opaqueness, wondering why she’d put them on.

  She favored him with a grin and then shut the door behind her. Jack tried to draw away as she approached, but it proved impossible.

  Click.

  One painfully slow step at a time. Her body swaying as she moved, her smile becoming menacing.

  Her fingers went to the buttons of her coat, undoing them. Reaching him, she planted her hands on his shoulders, sat down, straddling his lap. Her face was closing in on his. And he hated those shades. Wanted to see her eyes again. If this was the end, he wanted to drown himself in those twin pools of hazel.

  Jack reached up and lifted the dark sunglasses away.

  The eyes staring back at him were a fiery, tigress green. This wasn’t Isadora. The woman’s features screw
ed up.

  “Why should she have you?” she yelled, her voice echoing weirdly. “Why that simpering bitch, and not me?”

  Jack shoved her away violently.

  The cab’s interior came lurching back.

  * * *

  “If Gilliard is still here,” Torres was telling the others, “then I doubt it is by any accident. Dark forces have built a cage around him he cannot escape from, and that can only indicate one thing. He must truly be the one the sisters have been looking for.”

  “Surely only one of them can take him over?” Manuel asked.

  “Of course. Maybe they are squabbling over him right now.”

  Hague could contain himself no longer.

  “Good God, do you know what this sounds like? Stuff from the Dark Ages.”

  Torres stared back at him calmly. “It must be very hard for you,” he answered. “I completely understand. But before this thing is done, one way or another, I think you will be left in little doubt that what I say is true.”

  He spoke the words with such unflinching gravity the only thing Hague could do was give way for the moment, sinking back into his chair again.

  “The first thing must be to determine the condition Jack is in.”

  Torres opened a drawer in his desk and took out four small objects, which he held cupped in his palm. Hague peered—they were four pieces of coconut shell, so far as he could see, dark on one side, white on the other.

  “This is called dar coco al santo, Doctor. And I’ve never known them to be wrong.”

  “Bits of coconut?” Hague snorted. “And I thought reading tea leaves was a lame excuse for superstition. I was obviously wrong.”

  But Torres ignored him. He got up, went across to a wooden cabinet, and opened it. To Hague’s bemusement, there was a tureen inside that looked like it was filled with stones. Beyond it was some kind of statuette.

  “This is the vessel of Orunla, guardian of all high priests. And I am going to ask if he is happy with Jack Gilliard.”

  “Happy—?” Hague started complaining.

  But Manuel halted him with a brisk shake of his head.

  “This is a serious ritual,” he whispered.

  Torres got water from his sink, sprinkled drops of it in front of the statue and then started talking to it in Yoruba. He touched the floor and the tureen three times, still murmuring.

  The Babaaláwo brought his hands together at his chest, the rinds in them. And then cast them on the floor.

  Every single one had landed white side down. Four dark husks showed, and the man looked deeply troubled.

  “The worst possible answer. Death.”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Hague groaned impatiently. “Don’t you think our time would be better employed just trying to find the man?”

  “But there’s no need for that,” Torres replied quietly. His head had lifted, as though he were listening to something only he could hear. “No need at all. He is already on his way.”

  * * *

  When Jack didn’t show up after ten more minutes, Torres’s unease rose. He started pacing the room and then came to a decision. Headed for a side door. The rest followed him outside.

  The Yanqui had been trying to get here, but he hadn’t made it the whole way. He was lying facedown in the dirt between the curbside and the parking lot.

  And he was barely conscious.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-NINE

  They carried Jack inside between them, put him in a chair. He looked like he’d gotten in a fight with a machine, his whole face puffed up. And from the way the man was holding himself, Hague reckoned a couple of his ribs were fractured for good measure.

  But he had to content himself with a spectator’s role while Torres took over.

  Oddly, the Cuban’s main interest didn’t seem to be in Gilliard’s injuries. He took a flashlight from his pocket, and shone it into the musician’s pupils. Gilliard kept muttering something, talking low and breathlessly. Hague could barely catch any of it. Only something about being chased. And daylight.

  “The pills I gave you?” Torres was asking.

  “Gone. I lost them.”

  “When you took this beating, yes? Bad fortune has clung to you ever since we met, is that not so?”

  And when Jack confirmed it, the doctor nodded. He went over to a cabinet, produced a vial of fluid and a vacuum-wrapped syringe.

  “Painkiller?” Hague inquired.

  “No, anything but,” came the reply. “Caffeine.”

  The older doctor jerked with shock. “What are you trying to do, finish him off altogether?”

  “The sisters will, if they get half the chance. We must do everything in our power to keep Jack awake.”

  A feeling of sheer helplessness descended over Hague as he watched the man swab Gilliard’s arm. Nothing here was as it should be. No one acted as they ought. He felt like he was lost in fog, nothing familiar to guide him by.

  Gilliard’s hands began to tremble as the drug hit his system.

  “Luis, get over here,” Torres snapped. “Keep him walking around. I’ll get some cold compresses and then take a look at those ribs.”

  He glanced back at the cornet player.

  “They have come to you in daylight, you say? This is serious, then . . . I’ve never heard of such a thing before, and there is not a single mention of it in the book.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “We’re running out of time, perhaps. They’re getting stronger.”

  * * *

  They’d all grown silent when Jack finished telling them his story, everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Even Doctor Hague felt uneasy. The surgery seemed to echo, and he could hear the smallest murmur from the street outside.

  “It is exactly as I feared,” Torres was muttering. “The sisters are preventing you getting off this island any way they can. Maybe they sense victory. The promise of it draws them closer. They are taking their first tentative steps out, and ought to fear the sunlight less and less with every new excursion.”

  “And we stop this how?”

  “Take the fight to them, Señor. Push back, and hopefully destroy them. They are out in the open now, so it is possible.”

  “But it’s my fight,” Jack protested. “I don’t want anyone else putting their safety on the line for me.”

  The high priest looked down for a short while at those words. And there was a peculiar cold light in his pupils when his gaze returned.

  “You remember what I told you when we first met, Jack? That if the sisters manage to return, a doorway might be opened between our world and the supernatural one? Who knows what disasters may occur if that thing happens? It is not just you. No, it is all of us.”

  “That’s just speculation.”

  “No it’s not. The dream world and the real world must not be combined.”

  At which point, the Babaaláwo turned his stark attention to the others.

  “It is wholly your decision. None of you should feel obliged, and no worse will be thought of you if you back out.”

  Luis looked a little scared, but tightened his grip around Jack’s shoulders.

  “I’ve come this far, so I guess that I’m still in.”

  Torres stared round at the others. Manuel drew back slightly, then gave a tense nod. “Para mi familia,” he muttered. “And for Carlos.”

  “And you, sir?” Torres asked of Hague, who pursed his lips.

  “I still don’t believe a word of this. But I didn’t come the whole way out here just for a vacation. I could use a laugh.”

  “Five of us, then. That is good.” Torres rubbed his palms together, gathering his thoughts. “There are things I need to pick up from my house. It’s best that you go on ahead, and we meet up again in a few hours’ time.”
>
  “Where?” Hague asked.

  “At the DeFlores mansion, of course.”

  * * *

  Except it turned out that the tunnel underneath the bay was closed. There’d been an accident inside, police vehicles and ambulances everywhere. Barriers were being set up, uniformed men waving at approaching cars and shouting orders. The traffic around them was completely stalled.

  Manuel couldn’t afford to waste this much fuel, and so he had to switch his engine off. Which meant they had no ventilation save the windows. They sat in the hot sunlight for over an hour. The barriers ahead showed not the slightest sign of being lifted.

  Finally, the short man cursed, turned his ignition, and then edged the Dodge back and forth until he could swing it round the way he’d come.

  “We’ll have to take the other route.”

  The bay sprawled in every which direction, and there was no single road around it, which meant a long journey.

  Luis produced a cell phone and called Torres’s house, informed him what was going on.

  “He thinks it’s no accident,” he told the rest when he hung up. “Too much of a coincidence. It is the sisters, trying to slow us down.”

  A point that was emphasized heading up along the Via Blanca. They were part of a line of smoothly flowing traffic, and there seemed to be no obstacles in the least . . . when a truck up ahead of them, piled high with building material, abruptly swerved and shed its load. Dozens of breezeblocks and great swaths of lumber hit the asphalt. The cars in front of them slewed sideways as they braked, and several collided.

  It was more than two hours before they were on the move again.

  And heading up the north side of the bay, the steering wheel went spongy under Manuel’s grasp. He swore again, pulled over to the roadside. And when he got out, the rear offside tire was flat.

  The spare had no air in it either.

  Hague eased himself out, shielding his eyes against the glare.

  “You guys go on,” he told the others. “I’ll be okay.”

  Was he genuine, or was he getting nervous, trying to back out?

  “In this heat?” Manuel shook his head angrily. “And besides, I don’t think Jack can even make it the rest of the way on foot.”