She led the way through what had to be an ancient street. Now Vincent realized that the landscape wasn’t as unfamiliar as he had thought. He had seen this before, but from a different perspective, and at the time he had not realized what he was seeing.
They camped in the Old City that night and the next morning Vincent saw what an immense task of exploration and learning lay ahead. They left the hilltop before noon, plunged back into the underground network, and by twilight they emerged close to the Wall. The Storyteller led them through a small door, then up a long stair, zig-zagging in switchbacks to the very summit of the Wall. Her house waited there. Oji fluttered to its roof and in the last light of day began to preen himself.
The Storyteller sent Kara into the village, and she and Vincent stepped into the open doorway of the hut. To Vincent’s right the vast jungle rolled away into the darkness. To his left he could see the cooking fires and the torches of the village. The Storyteller smiled and nodded toward the inside of her hut. Only then did he see an enormous chest, well made to withstand the moisture and temperatures of the island. Something his father had brought a quarter century before. And inside it—
A profusion, a wealth, of photographs. Stacks of motion-picture film canisters. A stack of yellowing pads of paper, carefully wrapped.
“Your father’s,” the Storyteller said quietly. “Yours.”
And for all the rest of that day, Vincent looked through the stacks of pictures, even partly unrolled some of the photographic film. The pads were journals and sketchbooks. He never realized how much his father loved to draw! Many were roughly dated. And the dates began in the year 1934—the year after Kong’s appearance in New York, the year that Carl Denham returned to the island. Most of the photographs came from his father’s original visit, but some he had taken on his return. An entry dated 1935 noted, “Some film left, but out of developer. Guess I’m strictly a sketch artist from now on.”
Vincent was amazed at his father’s curiosity and his ordering of facts and images. He laughed aloud. “I never realized how much like Dad I am. He would’ve made a good scientist.”
Sketches of animals, of people, and of a strange kind of writing, not quite hieroglyphic, not quite pictographic. Vincent realized that his father had been working out the island’s forgotten written language, working at the problem patiently and for years on end. He found a battered notebook in the stack and realized it was a dictionary of sorts, or a cross between a dictionary and a journal. He read one of the latest entries, dated January 1955.
Carl Denham had written, “I am now certain. The dinosaur life of the island is gradually dying out, as it died out millions of years ago in the rest of the world. In twenty years I have seen the species of dinosaur reduced by a third. In a hundred years, how many of them will be left? Will any be left? I am glad that I never made it clear where this island was. I hope that the maps I gave them were effectively misleading. Still, I wish there were something I could do. Could more civilized people have stopped the dying—or would they have hastened it? No one will ever know. It is up to the islanders now. It is up to them to save everything.”
And the photos! Carl Denham had never lacked nerve. They showed dinosaurs in intimate detail, feeding, grooming, mating—even charging toward the camera. Vincent felt his eyes brim with tears.
A tentative hand touched his arm, making him flinch in surprise. Kara looked at the photograph he held, an eight-by-ten print of a valley jumbled with bones. Denham had written in the margin “Dinosaur graveyard.”
“I have never seen these things,” Kara said. “How could images be captured like this and stopped in time? What do they mean?”
Vincent cleared his throat. “They mean that my father wanted to save the creatures of the island. Even if he could save them only in pictures.”
Kara frowned in thought. “Like . . . like Kong kept the bones.”
“Yes,” Vincent agreed. “Like that. For the same reasons, perhaps. To belong to a wider world. To preserve memory even beyond life.”
They paused by the window opening, and watched a golden sunrise over the dark green jungle canopy.
“Vincent Denham,” Kara said in a tremulous voice, “I ask you this: These things tell more of the life of my island than I know. More even than the Storyteller can speak of. Will you—I have no right to ask. Will you return one day to help me learn about the meaning of these things? Will you teach me the things your father learned?”
Vincent reached for her hand and held it. She squeezed his hand softly, a pressure both childlike and imploring. He looked into her eyes and nodded. “I will.”
Kara looked in his eyes and smiled before leaving Vincent to his thoughts. From behind him Vincent could hear the Storyteller’s sigh. “And the circle is complete,” she murmured. “Journeys end, and the old find rest. Now at last my quest, too, has ended.”
Vincent turned. “What do you mean?” he asked, feeling a tremor of uncertainty.
“I think Kara will be well now,” the Storyteller murmured. “Her heart has been awakened to what I have tried to teach.” She signed. “For a long time I have been afraid that she would choose the path of Bar-Atu, the path of fear and hatred. If that happened, I think my people would die in the next generation. But now I know the ancient break will finally be healed.”
“Who is she?” Vincent asked.
“She does not even realize it,” the Storyteller said, “but her great-grandfather was Kublai, and her great-grandmother was Ishara. Their only child was a daughter, born seven months after the death of Kublai. The child was adopted by an Atu family.”
“Adopted? Why?”
“Storytellers do not raise their own children,” the old woman said simply. “We regard all the people of the island as our children.”
“You are Ishara,” Vincent said.
The old woman nodded again. “That was my name.”
At first, Vincent could not say anything. Finally, he stammered, “B-but that’s impossible. You’d be over—”
“I am very old.” The old woman smiled.
All Vincent could do was wonder.
The next morning Oji woke Vincent with a screeching “Ya gonna sleep all day?” so exactly in his father’s tones that he lurched from sleep feeling ten years old. Kara emerged from the far rooms of the hut with a basin of water. He washed the sleep from his eyes and then Kara said, “The Storyteller wishes us to go down into the village.”
They climbed back down the stair—Vincent realized that at this point, on either side of the immense doors, the Wall was very thick, and the stair actually was buried inside its body—and emerged through another small door on the village side. But instead of taking the winding pathway, Kara led Vincent off to the left. “Here,” she said. She pressed a section of the Wall, and it swiveled on hidden hinges. A doorway barely large enough for them to pass through was revealed.
Vincent felt his heart pounding strangely. The door did not open to the jungle side of the Wall, but to a dark, cathedral-like room, at least twenty feet wide at the base—
“We were inside the Wall!” he said, comprehension breaking through. “This was where the Storyteller nursed me back to health!”
The Storyteller herself stepped from the shadowy darkness. “This is something else your father discovered,” she said. “Look at the walls, Vincent Denham.” She handed Vincent a torch.
He stepped to the wall and touched it. It was not, as it appeared, a great structure of wooden logs. Instead, to his hand it had the rough feel of concrete. Petrified wood?
“It is another of the Old Ones’ creations,” the Storyteller said, answering Vincent’s puzzled expression, not any spoken question. “A kind of mortar that becomes harder and firmer as time wears on. The strongest construction material they knew. Here, and for many paces back, the Wall is a double thickness. This is their second Citadel; here they stored the whole of their secret knowledge after the Tagu were banished from the Old City. Upon returning to the shelter
of the Wall, which was originally a simple barrier, they built a second Wall here and sealed their secrets within it. The Storytellers knew the eventual fate of the Atu, as surely as knowing a dropped stone will hit the ground. They wanted to protect the greatness of the Tagatu culture, and the beliefs upon which it was built.
“After the fall of the Old City, the surviving Atu returned to the Wall and begged forgiveness. It was granted them and they again made their home among the Tagu. You have heard the story of what happened next. The Storytellers and their beliefs were nearly wiped out and all knowledge of their culture’s achievement buried. The Wall was sealed. Over centuries, the way in—and there was only one—became wholly forgotten.”
“How was it rediscovered?” asked Vincent.
“When your father first arrived here and Kong rampaged through our village, there was a miracle of sorts found in the wake of the destruction. The shock of Kong’s blows had loosened sections of mortar, which had been used to seal and repair the Wall for millennia. In restoring the Wall, my followers found the passage—and they told only me.”
“I wondered how a wooden Wall could have lasted all these years,” Vincent said.
The Storyteller smiled. “The frame is made of wood, but wood that is soaked in the mortar. Otherwise, the Wall surely would have fallen to rot. Or to the lightning. The Gate has been patched many times when it caught fire. Can you imagine what would have happened had the whole Wall ever burned?”
Vincent could not. The structure was too big, too solid. “It would have looked like the burning of Atlanta,” he said. Kara looked at him quizzically.
“When I entered the Wall for the first time,” the Storyteller said, “I saw that the fallen mortar inside had uncovered hidden things, ancient signs and symbols. There they stayed, meaningless and the Wall in disrepair except in those areas that were essential to keep the creatures at bay. It was your father who first studied them when we returned. He was the first to realize that maybe there was more to the Wall than we had imagined. We had few symbols that meant words, and from those few your father worked at the meanings of the others, until he had recovered the formulas of my ancestors. And from the writings we learned which seeds and spores to gather from the jungle.”
Kara stepped forward. “Now the Storyteller says the time has come to reveal the knowledge. Our people must learn to follow the way of our ancestors. We must find peace or die.”
She reached for Vincent’s hand, and again he felt the soft pressure that seemed a hesitant request. He squeezed her hand in response.
“It seems the answers were here all the time, waiting until we were ready to accept them. The Storyteller has always taught me that life has a plan and that we will be given the things we need when we are able to make the best use of them,” Kara said.
“No one knows the whole Story of Life,” said the Storyteller. “We are all meant to learn from each other, and the end of the Story can only be guessed at. The story of King Kong has had the power to reach across time and act as the center around which all of our stories revolved. It is only right that we should honor his memory. Follow me.”
The Storyteller led them into the Wall, down into subterranean chambers and then back up into a large vault where scented braziers illuminated a stunning sight: the tomb of Kong.
“We have labored on it for twenty-five years,” the Storyteller said as Kara knelt and Vincent stood staring. “It is finished now, and soon we will move Kong’s bones here to rest.” The vault was vast, as quiet as a cathedral, and in its simplicity as majestic as a palace. “Here he will remain for as long as the island exists,” the Storyteller said. She bowed her head. “And here my story ends.”
Later that day, they sat on the crest of the smaller hill. Overhead, pterosaurs, vast and majestic as legendary dragons, wheeled and flashed in the sun. From the crest of a jungle ridge came the cry of some enormous creature, not angry. It was natural to Vincent, the sound of a creature that was simply itself, not an imagined god.
Vincent had been in silent thought for a long time when he said, “My father didn’t understand what he was doing when he took Kong from the island. He caused so much suffering, all without meaning to.”
Kara touched his hand. “And how many of us really know what our actions mean or what ends they lead to? I now understand that your father had a good heart and no wish to injure anyone. The Storyteller taught me that somehow suffering always raises to greater heights a spirit willing to endure. Like Ishara, your father never gave up. Like her—” Kara took a deep, cleansing breath. “Like her, he believed.”
EPILOGUE
ABOARD THE DARROW, AT SEA
September 28, 1957
Tropical sunsets were becoming a flamboyant memory as the ship worked her way into higher latitudes. San Francisco was not so many days ahead. Vincent Denham stood at the rail and watched the white wake sketching itself back across the Pacific, toward the smoldering red twilight, toward Kong’s island.
“Your old man would be proud of you,” Driscoll said quietly.
“I’m proud of him,” Vincent said simply.
“You’re not taking much back.”
“I’m taking more than you know,” replied Vincent. Briefly he smiled, remembering how he had once imagined the skeleton of Kong poised in the Museum of Natural History. A brass plaque would have given the name of the specimen—a Latin tag in which carldenhami would have figured. And crowds of people would stare and wonder.
But in the end, what was he taking back? A very few bones and a wealth of memories. And plans for the future.
Driscoll sighed. “Well, I’ve seen the island twice now, and that’s enough for me. You know, all these years I thought those islanders were the most primitive of savages, but from what you say, they may be the greatest ancient civilization the world has ever known. I’m sorry you can’t let the world know—but I’m glad, too, in a way. Let your old man and Kong rest in peace there.”
Vincent turned and leaned on the rail. Night was climbing in the eastern sky, and already a few stars studded the growing darkness overhead. “I’m going back to a different world from the one I left,” Vincent said. “Different because I see myself differently. You took a big risk in helping me. In hindsight, it was kind of selfish to ask you to put yourself on the line like that.”
Jack flicked his cigarette into the ocean. “Don’t kid yourself, Vincent. It wasn’t only for you that I went back. I had a few things I had to straighten out myself. Besides, if it weren’t for your old man, I never would have met Ann.”
“Thanks, Jack. That reminds me. I’ll be going back myself. I think they need someone to finish the work Dad started. Besides, Kara asked me to.”
Driscoll smiled but did not reply. They simply stood companionably on the deck while the night came on and the wake stretched ever more to the west
NEW YORK
November 3, 1957
As the airliner tilted back and fought for altitude, Vincent Denham stared out the window at the pinnacles and canyons of New York City. Night was fast coming on here. Looking down, Vincent saw the glare of streetlights and advertising signs. Somehow they reminded him of the village on Skull Island, viewed from atop the great Wall.
And out there, on the island, halfway around the world, daybreak would be coming on just now. The light of a new dawn would wash across the sea, touch the ichthyosaurs leaping in the lagoon, set the tilting wings of the pterosaurs ablaze with ruddy light, reveal the rounded surface of Skull Mountain, bring life to a village of hopeful people.
And the light of day would break like a rising tide on the Wall, the great and enduring Wall, no longer an imaginary barrier of the past, but a gateway to the future—a future that awaited his return.
Vincent eased back in his seat, closed his eyes, and dreamed.
THE END
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
KONG: King of Skull Island
Created and illustrated by
Joe DeVito
Written by
Brad Strickland
with
John Michlig
This electronic edition of KONG: King of Skull Island would not have been possible without the help of everyone at Copyright 1957, LLC, especially my partners Tom Coyne and Nick DeGregorio, creative designer Colin Fuchs and Peter Coyne. I would also like to thank Richard Curtis for his valuable advice.
I would like to thank the following people involved with the original print KONG: King of Skull Island book:
Colonel Richard M. Cooper, the entire Merian C. Cooper family, and the late Charles B. Fitzsimons for their kindness and acceptance; my publisher of the original DH Press print book, Mike Richardson, editor, Chris Warner, and everyone at DH Press for their enthusiasm, expertise, and guidance; Barry Klugerman, who has been an extraordinary artistic and literary mentor over the twelve years of this project; Jennifer Goetz and Sieran Vale, for their valuable contributions toward pulling storylines together; attorneys Alan Franklin and Randy Merritt, for help and advice far beyond business; Richard Curtis for introducing me to Brad; Joe Viego, for his invaluable help and support; Arnie Fenner, for his steadying advice and unwavering confidence; Michael Friedlander, a kindred spirit; Arnold Kunert, for connecting me with two of my childhood idols, Ray Harryhausen and Ray Bradbury; and Cilius Lam and John Routh of Birchfield Design Group.
Many others provided needed help and support throughout. In the professional world: The late Ralph Amatrudi, Jill Bauman, Rick Berry, Georg Brewer, Vincent DiFate, Dr.’s Jane and Howard Frank, Charlie Kochman, Bill Logan, Michael Mims, Will Murray, Frank M. Robinson, Dr. Jack Seydow; Rob Simpson, Mark Cotta Vaz, James Warhola, and Bob Walters. On the home front: Joe Stallone, Ed Russo, Ron Schiller, Bug; Dean Balosie, Elmer Schiller, Billy Kowalczuk, Anthony Manganelli, Pete Rippa, Joe Bigley, Kevin McLaughlin, and Dan Hogan. I want to sincerely thank all those whose constant prayers saw me through; and last but first, Mother Mary and St. Jude - the novena worked!
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