A Whisper of Southern Lights

by Tim Lebbon

  “Jesus,” Sykes said, and his voice galvanised the surprised soldier.

  The soldier had time to shout before Gabriel’s knife struck him in the throat. He fell back, rifle slipping from his shoulder, and there was a dull splash as he disappeared from sight.

  Two other soldiers stood, already training their rifles in Gabriel’s and Sykes’s direction.

  “Get his rifle!” Gabriel shouted, and then he was moving. He ran straight at the men, growling, hands raised like claws, blood streaking his face from the mutilated eye socket, clothes covered in stinking water and shit, and he was something they had never seen before. One tried to fire, but his safety must have been on. The other was stepping backward, shaking his head as though to clear this gruesome vision. Gabriel reached them, snatched the rifle from the closest soldier’s hands, reversed it and slashed him across the face with his own bayonet.

  As the first soldier went down, hissing through slashed cheeks and lips, the second found his confidence and raised his rifle.

  Gabriel knew that any shooting would draw instant attention, and their escape would be thwarted. Not only that, but Temple would be drawn to the violence. Their showdown would come much sooner than Gabriel had hoped for, and any chance of finding the grave would be long gone.

  He threw the rifle like a spear. It had no chance of working, but he hoped it would give him enough time to make it across the muddy ground to the last man standing.

  The guard shouted something and knocked the rifle aside with his own. He took aim again, and Gabriel could see that he had gathered his senses.

  One second; that was all he had.

  He fell to the ground and rolled, passing over the thrashing soldier, whose hands clutched at his slashed face, lifting him as he went to stand again, hoping to use him as a shield.

  The second soldier came at Gabriel, rifle still raised and looking for a shot.

  Sykes stood. He swung the liberated rifle, and though this one did not have its bayonet attached, the stock made a satisfying thump as it struck the soldier’s head. He dropped his rifle and went down, reaching out just in time to prevent himself taking in a mouthful of rancid water. Sykes was on him quickly, swinging the rifle again. Then he stood on the semi-conscious soldier’s head and pressed his face down into the mud. He looked away as the final bubbles rose.

  Gabriel wrapped his arm around the head of the man with the slashed face and broke his neck.

  Sykes came to his side, panting, shaking, sweating. “Do you think they heard?”

  Gabriel looked across at the prison. There was no sign of activity, no running men or revving motors. “No,” he said. “But they’ll soon be missed. We have to move.”

  The man with Gabriel’s knife in his throat was still moving feebly as blood gushed from the wound. One clawed hand reached for the knife but seemed unable to find it.

  “Us or them,” Gabriel said.

  Sykes nodded, moving away.

  They slipped between the trees, still crouched low in case anyone was watching from the prison. They moved quickly, eager to put distance between themselves and the jail before nightfall.

  Long way to go, Gabriel thought, but moving away from Temple feels good. Feels as though I’m going in the right direction for the first time in a long while. Heading for something meaningful. Whatever the hell is in that grave better be worth this.

  Night fell, the men ran and time moved them closer to the end.

  Ten

  I KNEW BY THEN that he was not a man. Gabriel had told me that a demon wanted me dead, but he had yet to talk about himself. About why he wanted me alive, and needed to find Mad Meloy’s grave, and why whatever Davey had written down and buried with Meloy might be so important.

  I was just a soldier. I had fought my way down through Malaya, been captured when Singapore fell, imprisoned, escaped, and now I was on the run with . . . something that was not a man.

  Then what was he?

  Escape from Changi Village was easier than I could have expected. Getting out of the jail itself had been difficult, but the area of Changi was left mostly to the prisoners, with Japanese guarding the outer extremes only. We made it to the sea, dodged a couple of patrols and found a boat to steal. Before launching, I told Gabriel I needed food and water. He seemed impatient but nodded and told me not to be long. I left, heading for a house that looked abandoned, wondering whether he even needed to eat or drink at all.

  I found some tinned food and a tank of water, warm but sweet. I opened two tins and ate a meal, careful not to give my starved stomach too much of a shock.

  It was a small, well-kept home, and I wondered what had become of its occupants. There were no pictures and little to indicate who had lived there. I took a quick look around for weapons and found some knives in the kitchen. They were very sharp, and I slid a couple into my belt.

  Gabriel was sitting beside the boat as I approached. “We have to go now,” he said.

  “I found some food and a couple of knives.”

  “Good. In the boat.”

  “Is he coming?”

  “He’s closer than before.”

  We launched the boat and climbed in, taking turns at the oars. When Gabriel rowed, he stared over my shoulder, back at the land we had just left. Sometimes, he winced in pain. Once away from the land, we both took a minute to dip in and wash away some of the filth. I felt better, but I thought that even if I bathed forever, the smell of my escape would still be upon me.

  Even with the looming threat behind us, I found the sound of the oars dipping into the water soporific.

  “So, are you going to tell me anything?” I asked.

  Gabriel smiled, and it shocked me. I had not seen it before. It did not suit his face. “You’d never believe me.”

  “Try.”

  “I can’t. I don’t. All the people I’ve met . . . I’ve never really explained what I’m doing. I don’t know myself.”

  “Is it revenge?”

  “Yes, revenge. Is it that obvious?”

  I nodded. “And you’re not a soldier.”

  Gabriel stopped rowing. “Is that obvious, too?”

  “It was a guess, but I was pretty sure. So, what are you? Spy? Special Operations?”

  “None of that.” He seemed almost disappointed, as though he wished I could guess more.

  “So, Temple . . . this demon, this Twin thing . . . killed someone you cared for?”

  He stared over my shoulder again, but he was seeing something far more distant than the shores of Singapore. He rowed, arms reaching, shoulders flexing, and the whole movement—Gabriel, the boat, the water—was unbelievably calming. “Yes, that’s what he did.”

  “And the man with the snake in his eye?”

  He stared at me with his one piercing eye, and I felt naked beneath his scrutiny.

  “Sorry, I—”

  “I haven’t seen him for centuries. It’s his fault I’m here, chasing Temple. And because he’s here again, something must have changed.”

  “Centuries?”

  Gabriel shook his head and rowed harder.

  “Gabriel, centuries?”

  He said no more. Our brief conversation was over, and I had no idea when or even if it would ever begin again.

  Night fell as we were on the water, and Gabriel was keen to move quickly to take advantage of the darkness. It took us a couple of hours to reach the mainland, and from there he wanted to flee the built-up areas for the jungle. I guessed that Mad Meloy’s grave was maybe thirty miles inland—we’d been stopping and starting down from there, fighting, killing, dying—and Gabriel said we could make it in two days.

  The way I felt right then, I was thinking two weeks.

  Gabriel never let up. He was constantly on edge, talking very little but always looking as though he expected an attack at any minute. We hid from Japanese patrols, using side streets whenever we could, spending an hour here and there in abandoned gardens, and he never seemed to tire.

  Now and th
en, I tried to question him again. “Centuries, Gabriel?” I asked. He mostly said nothing, or if he did reply, it was to tell me I would never understand. I wished he would let me be the judge of that.

  We passed several areas that had been flattened by bombing and shelling, and which now were all but deserted. A few people wandered around, blasted into shock, seemingly aimless but always needing to move on. Dogs scampered through the rubble, and they looked well-fed. We never saw any Japanese patrols in these places—almost as if they had no wish to occupy the ruins—and so, we travelled through them as much as possible. It slowed our progress but made it less dangerous.

  “Is he close?” I asked as we rested in a rubble-strewn garden.

  Gabriel shook his head. “Not right now. I think he’s still back on the island.”

  “Then we’re away from him!”

  “It doesn’t work like that. He’ll find out where we are, and he’ll come.”

  “How will he find out? No one else knows.”

  “He has his ways and means.”

  I thought of Sergeant Major Snelling running from that house, the terror on his face, and then the demon thing flexing his hand as he followed. Ways and means. I had no wish to witness them myself.

  Gabriel seemed able to move without being seen. He knew the correct routes to take, sensed his way past Japanese units or gatherings of locals, steering us safely on a midnight journey through a place that should have offered us danger. The night was not without its tensions—sometimes, I was afraid to breathe lest I be overheard by the enemy—but as dawn tinged the horizon, I truly began to believe that Gabriel would see us through.

  And I was growing more afraid of him with every hour that passed.

  On the second day, we moved away from the built-up areas and the landscape turned more to jungle. We stopped for breakfast and I broke open a tin of processed meat. I offered some to Gabriel, but he was uninterested. I drank, and Gabriel refused the water.

  “How long can you go on without eating or drinking?” I asked.

  “Until I’m hungry and thirsty.”

  I ate more meat. As the sun rose, I realised that I knew this place. “A mile up there is where Davey bought it,” I said. “Brave bastard.”

  “He said nothing else to you about the man in the jungle?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “We’d just been machine-gunned and my friend was dying. I can’t remember every word he said, so, no, I’m not sure. Can’t you see into my head to check?” I leaned forward and tried to stare at him, but I looked quickly away. His eye was just too strange.

  “No, I can’t see into your head.”

  “Then trust me. He told me about something he’d written down, said it was important. Then mentioned the man with a snake in his eye. Whatever that means.”

  “Whatever, indeed.” Gabriel reached for the water canteen and let a few drops speckle his tongue. He touched his forehead and sighed. “We should go. He’s coming.”

  “How come you know when he’s after you?”

  “He gave me these wounds. They remember him.”

  Just what the hell had I got myself mixed up in there?

  We followed a road into the jungle. Occasionally, the roar of a motor forced us to hide in the undergrowth, but by mostly staying to the road, we made good progress. This was the way we had come days before, shoved ahead of the Japanese force like the bow wave of a boat. We were passing places where men I knew had died, and here and there, we smelled the distinctive aroma of rot. Sometimes, the rotten things wore Japanese uniforms, but I found no particular joy in that. I had never found it in my heart to truly hate the enemy, but as time went on—and I saw more of what was happening in and around Changi and Singapore—I found less cause for forgiveness.

  I had been training to be a bricklayer when war broke out. I was a good man, so I believed, as were those who had fought and died around me. None of us deserved this.

  And I was feeling more and more used by Gabriel, as though I were a tool dragged behind him rather than a man. He rarely spoke to me, and when he did, it was to ask yet again what Davey had said when he was dying, how he had described the man in the jungle. I came to believe he was trying to make me slip up with my story. Did he think I was lying? Or did he simply not trust my memory?

  We walked all through that day, narrowly avoiding one Japanese patrol by hiding in a culvert beneath the road. We stayed there for some time and I fell asleep, weariness overtaking my concern and giving me a few precious minutes’ respite from the heat, tiredness and fear. When I woke up, Gabriel was staring at me—really staring—analysing my face and neck.

  “You look so normal,” he said.

  “I am. I was.”

  “I can’t remember being normal.”

  “Centuries, Gabriel?”

  “Centuries.” He did not elaborate. And it was that unwillingness to talk, more than anything else I had seen or would yet see, that made me believe.

  Centuries.

  Eleven

  THEY CONTINUED THROUGH THE NIGHT. They moved slower than during the day, and though the heat was not as bad, there were what felt like a million mosquitoes bugging them, feeding on their sweat and the blood on Gabriel’s face. He felt them tickling the inside of his hollowed eye socket. Sykes kept up well, though Gabriel suspected they would have to rest when dawn arrived.

  Temple was on their trail. He had discovered their escape and now he was following, using whatever strange means he had to track them up through Malaya and into the heart of the jungle. Gabriel knew that he had to prepare to take on the demon yet again, and a collage of images kept flooding his mind’s eye, visions of Temple in dozens of the fights they had been through—screaming, shouting, laughing. Always laughing. Virtually every time they met, Temple would get away, and Gabriel would be left with another scar. Nothing was ever resolved. There was no end, and a resolution to this quest felt as distant as ever.

  Until now.

  The man with the snake in his eye had been there, and somewhere ahead of them was a grave that could hold wonders.

  “I’ll need to rest soon,” Sykes said, and then he started coughing as a breeze tainted the air around them. It was the smell of pained death. There was not just rotten meat there but rage, hopelessness and dead prayers. Somewhere ahead lay a scene from Hell, and something told Gabriel that it could be linked to his quest.

  “We need to push on,” he said. Without waiting for a reply, he left the road and plunged into the jungle. He was following his nose.

  Sykes soon caught up with him, breathing hard. “We’re close,” he said. “I think I recognise the bend in the road back there, by the fallen tree. We’re close. Maybe half a mile into the jungle, there’s a small river, and that’s where we fought. For a while, at least, before the bastards moved on to set up their next ambush.”

  “And this is where Mad Meloy is buried? Close to here?”

  “Very close. But . . . I never saw his grave.”

  “What?”

  “Davey buried him. I know roughly where. And there’ll be a marker.”

  “If your Davey had any sense, he’d have left no sign—”

  “There’ll be a marker.” Sykes sounded definite, and angry that Gabriel would even doubt him. “No way Davey would have left Meloy out here alone and unknown.”

  They went on, pushing through undergrowth, and the first body was a dead Japanese soldier. They passed him by, and Gabriel knew this was not the source of the smell. There’s more, he thought. More to this than death. There’s . . .

  “Holy fucking shit,” Sykes said.

  There was a clearing in the jungle, not too dissimilar from the place back in Wales where Gabriel used to sit and muse as a normal man. Around this clearing stood trees and wild clumps of foliage, and tied to them—at ground level or higher—were dead men. Some were crucified between the trunks of two trees growing close together. Others were tied closer to the ground
, a bucket of water left before them as torture. One man had been pinned to a tree, a broken branch protruding from his abdomen. All of them were emaciated—that much was obvious even in death—and those who had not died of their immediate injuries must have starved to death.

  “Bastards,” Sykes muttered. He walked into the clearing, seemingly ignoring the stench. “British, Australians, Indians,” he said. “They didn’t differentiate. Didn’t care. Look.”

  Gabriel looked, and even he felt an element of shock. In a spread of young bamboo lay a dead man. The only reason he was still on the ground was because he had been staked there. Two dozen bamboo shoots had grown through him, distorting his body. They were dark with dried blood, and ants, flies and beetles buzzed the wounds.

  “This may not have been the Japanese,” Gabriel said.

  “Your demon could do all this?”

  “With ease.”

  “Why?”

  And then Gabriel heard the voice he had been dreading.

  “Bait,” Temple said. “Hello, Gabriel.”

  “You didn’t do this.”

  Temple looked around and shrugged. “How do you know?”

  “Because I see your eyes,” Gabriel said. “And you’re fascinated.”

  The man who could have been a demon then looked directly at me. “So, has this one-eyed madman told you all those strange stories about me? Called me a monster? Said he and I have been fighting down through the centuries, battling here, scrapping there? Did he tell you about the pirate ship, and Queen Victoria, and the Antarctic expedition? Such an imagination.”

  “He told me centuries, and I believe him.”

  “Why? He’s insane.”

  “I’ve seen you before,” I said. I took a step closer to Gabriel, relying on my knowledge about Mad Meloy’s grave to afford me some protection. Other than that, I sensed that I was nothing to these two beings. They existed somewhere else, a place where the war did not matter other than being a different venue for their conflict.