Meritt had been a war hero, who, from those court-martialed later, was said to have been the most vicious of torturers. The press had labeled him, in mocking Joseph Campbell’s book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, “The Hero Who Skinned A Thousand Faces.”
The war had been over for a good twenty years, but Nathan was said to have fled to White Chapel. There were reports that he had taken on a Khou-dali wife and fathered several children over the two decades since his disappearance. Nathan Meritt had been the most decorated hero in the war.
Children in America had been named for him.
But then news of the massacre surfaced, the stories of his love of torture, and his rituals of skin and bone.
It was the most fascinating story she had ever come across, and she was shocked that no other writer, other than one who couched the whole tale in a wide swath of fiction, had sought out this living myth.
While Jane couldn’t get any of her usual magazines to send her gratis, she had convinced a major publishing house to at least foot expenses until she could gather some solid information.
* * *
To get to White Chapel, one had to travel by boat down a brown river in intolerable heat. Mosquitoes were as plentiful as air, and the river stank of human waste. Jane kept the netting around her face at all times, and her boatman took to calling her Nettie.
There were three other travelers with her: Rex, her photographer, and a British man and wife named Greer and Lucy.
Rex was not faring well. He’d left Kathmandu in August, and had lost twenty pounds in just a few weeks. He looked like a balding scarecrow, with skin as pale as the moon, and eyes wise and weary like those of some old man. He was always complaining about how little money he had, which apparently compounded for him his physical miseries. She had known him for seven years, and had only recently come to understand his mood swings and fevers.
Greer was fashionably unkempt, always in a tie and jacket, but mottled with sweat stains, and wrinkled; Lucy kept her hair up in a straw hat, and disliked all women. She also expressed a fear of water, which amazed one and all since every trip she took began with a journey across an ocean or down a river. Jane enjoyed talking with Greer, as long as she didn’t have to second-guess his inordinate interest in children. She found Lucy to be about as interesting as a toothache.
The boatman wanted to be called Jim because of a movie he had once seen, and so, after morning coffee (bought at a dock), Jane said, “Well, Jim, we’re beyond help now, aren’t we?”
Jim grinned, his small dark eyes sharp, his face wrinkled from too much sun. “We make White Chapel by night, Nettie. Very nice place to sleep, too. In town.”
Greer brought out his book of quotes, and read, “‘Of the things that are man’s achievements, the greatest is suffering.’” He glanced to his wife and then to Jane, skipping Rex altogether, who lay against his pillows, moaning softly.
“I know,” Lucy said, sipping from the bowl, “it’s Churchill.”
“No, dear, it’s not. Jane, any idea?”
Jane thought a moment. The coffee tasted quite good, which was a constant surprise to her, as she had been told by those who had been through this region before that it was bitter. “I don’t know. Maybe Rousseau?”
Greer shook his head. “It’s Hadriman the Third. The Scourge of Y-Cha.”
“Who’s Y-Cha?” Rex asked.
Jane said, “The Monkey God. The temple is in the jungles ahead. Hadriman the Third skinned every monkey he could get his hand on, and left them hanging around the original city to show his power over the great god. This subdued the locals, who believed their only guardian had been vanquished. The legend is that he took the skin of the god, too, so that it might not interfere in the affairs of men ever again. White Chapel has been the site of many scourges throughout history, but Hadriman was the only one to profane the temple.”
Lucy put her hand to her mouth in a feigned delicacy. “Is it… a decent place?”
Greer and Lucy spent their lives mainly traveling, and Jane assumed it was because they had internal problems all their own that kept them seeking out the exotic, the foreign, rather than staying with anything too familiar. They were rich, too, the way that only an upper class Brit of the Old School could be and not have that guilt about it; to have inherited lots of money and be perfectly content to spend it as it they so pleased without a care for the rest of mankind.
Greer had a particular problem that Jane recognized without being able to understand: he had a fascination with children, which she knew must be of the sexual variety, although she could’ve been wrong. It was just something about him, about the way he referred to children in his speech, even the way he looked at her sometimes, that made her uncomfortable.
She didn’t fathom his marriage to Lucy at all, but she fathomed very few marriages. While Greer had witnessed the Bokai Ritual of Circumcision and the Resurrection Hut Fire in Calcutta, Lucy had been reading Joan Didion novels and painting portraits of women weaving baskets.
They had money to burn, however, inherited on both sides, and when Greer had spoken, by chance to Jane at the hotel, he had found her story of going to White Chapel fascinating; and he, in turn, was paying for the boat and boatman for the two-day trip.
Jane said, in response to Lucy, “White Chapel’s decent enough. Remember, British rule, and then a little bit of France. Most of them can speak English, and there’ll be a hotel that should meet your standards.”
“I didn’t tell you this,” Greer said to both Jane and Lucy, “but my grandfather was stationed in White Chapel for half a year. Taxes. Very unpopular job, as you can imagine.”
“I’m starved,” Lucy said, suddenly, as if there were nothing else to think of, “do we still have some of those nice sandwiches. Jim?” She turned to the boatman, smiling. Lucy had a way of looking about the boat, eyes partly downcast, which kept her from having to see the water, like a child pretending to be self-contained in her bed, not recognizing anything beyond her own small imagined world.
He nodded, and pointed toward the palm leaf basket.
While Lucy crawled across the boat—unbalanced and in terror that the entire thing would tip and throw her into the water—Greer leaned over to Jane and whispered, “Lucy doesn’t know why you’re going. She thinks it’s for some kind of National Geographic article,” but he had to stop himself for fear that his wife would hear.
Jane was thinking about the woman in Thailand who claimed to have forgiven the man who tore her face off. And the children from the massacre, not just murdered, but obliterated. She had seen the pictures in Life. Faceless children. Skinned from ear to ear.
She closed her eyes and tried to think of less unpleasant images.
All she remembered was her father looking down at her as she slept.
She opened her eyes, glancing about. The heat and smells revived her from dark memories. She said, “Rex, look, don’t you think that would be a good one for a photo?” She pointed to one of the characteristic barges that floated about the river, selling mostly rotting meat and stuffed lizards, although the twentieth century had intruded, for there were televisions, on some of the rafts, and a hibachi barbecue.
Rex lifted his Nikon up in response, but was overcome by a fit of coughing.
“Rex,” Lucy said, leaning over to feel his forehead, “my God, you’re burning up,” then, turning to her husband, “he’s very sick.”
“He’s seen a doctor, dear,” Greer said, but looked concerned.
“When we get there,” Jane said, “we’ll find another doctor. Rex? Should we turn around?”
“No, I’m feeling better. I have my pills.” He laid his head back down on his pillow and fanned mosquitoes back from his face with a palm frond.
“He survived malaria and dengue fever, Lucy, he’ll survive the flu. He’s not one to suffer greatly.”
“So many viruses,” Lucy shook her head, looking about the river. “Isn’t this where AIDS began?”
“I thi
nk that may have been Africa — or outer space,” Greer said in such a way that it shut his wife up completely, and she ate her sandwich and watched the barges and the other boatmen as though she were watching a television show.
“Are you dying on me?” Jane asked, flashing a smile through the mosquito net veil.
“I’m not gonna die,” Rex said adamantly. His face took on an aspect of boyishness, and he managed the kind of grin she hadn’t seen since they’d first started working together several years back, before he had discovered needles. “Jesus, I’m just down for a couple of days. Don’t talk about me like that.”
Jim, his scrawny arms turning the rudder as the river ran, said, “This is River of Gods, no one die here. All live forever. The Great Pig God, he live in Kanaput, and the Snake God live in Jurukat. Protect people. No one die in paradise of Gods.” Jim nodded toward points that lay ahead along the river.
“And what about the Monkey God?” Jane asked. Jim smiled, showing surprisingly perfect teeth, which he popped out for just a moment because he was so proud of the newly made dentures. When he had secured them into his upper gum again, he said, “Monkey God trick all. Monkey God live where river goes white. Has necklace of heads of childs. You die only once with Monkey God, and no come back. Jealous god, Monkey God. She not like other gods.”
“Monkey God is female,” Jane said. “I assumed she was a he. Well, good for her. I wonder what’s she’s jealous of?”
Greer tried for a joke. “Oh, probably because we have skins, and hers got taken away. You know women.”
Jane didn’t even attempt to acknowledge this comment.
Jim shook his head. “Monkey God give blood at rainy times, then white river goes red. But she in chains, no longer so bad, I think. She buried alive in White Chapel by mortal lover. Hear her screams, sometime, when monsoon come, when flood come. See her blood when mating season come.”
“You know,” Greer looked at the boatman quizzically, “you speak with a bit of an accent. Who did you learn English from?”
Jim said, “Dale Carnegie tapes, Mr. Greer. How to Win Friends and Influence People.”
Jane was more exhilarated than exhausted by the time the boat docked in the bay at White Chapel. There was the Colonial British influence to the port, with guard booths, now mainly taken over by beggars, and an empty customs house. The place had fallen into beloved disrepair, for the great elephant statues, given for the god Ganesh, were overcome with vines, and cracked in places; and the lilies had all but taken over the dock. Old petrol storage cans floated along the pylons, strung together, with a net knotted between the cans.
Someone was out to catch eels or some shade-dwelling scavenger. A nervous man with a straw hat and a bright red cloth tied around his loins ran to the edge of the dock to greet them; he carried a long fat plank, which he swept over the water’s edge to the boat, pulling it closer in.
The company disembarked carefully.
* * *
Rex, the weakest, had to be pulled up by Jim and Jane both.
Lucy proved the most difficult, however, because of her terror of water. The boatman pushed her from behind to get her up to the dock, which was only four rungs up on the ladder.
Then, Jane didn’t feel like haggling with anyone, and so, after she tipped Jim, she left the others to find their ways to the King George Hotel by the one taxicab that existed in White Chapel.
Jane chose instead to walk off her excitement and perhaps get a feel for the place.
She knew from her previous explorations that there was serendipity to experience. She might, by pure chance, find what she was looking for. But the walk proved futile, for the village was dark and silent, and except for the lights from the King George, about a mile up the road, the place looked like no one lived there. Occasionally, she passed the open door to a hut through which she saw the red embers of the fire, and the accompanying stench of the manure that was used to stoke the flame.
Birds, too, she imagined them to be crows, gathered around huts, kicking up dirt and waste.
She saw the headlights of a car and stepped back against a stone wall. It was the taxi taking the others to the hotel, and she didn’t want them to see her.
The light was on inside the taxi, and she saw Rex up front with the driver, half asleep. In back, Lucy, too, had her eyes closed; but Greer, however, was staring out into the night, as if searching for something, perhaps even expecting something. His eyes were wide, not with fear but with a kind of feverish excitement.
He’s here for a reason. He wants what White Chapel has to offer, she thought, like he’s a hunter. And what did it have to offer? Darkness, superstition, jungle, disease, and a man who could tear the faces off children. A man who had become a legend because of his monstrosity.
After the car passed and was just two sets of red lights going up the narrow street, she continued her journey up the hill.
When she got to the hotel, she went to the bar. Greer sat at one end; he had changed into a lounging jacket that seemed to be right out of the First World War.
“The concierge gave it to me,” Greer said, pulling at the sleeves, which were just short of his wrists, “I imagine they’ve had it since my grandfather’s day.” Then, looking at Jane, “You look dead to the world. Have a gin and tonic.”
Jane signaled to the barman. “Coca-Cola?”
When she had her glass, she took a sip and sighed. “I never thought I would cherish a Coke so much. Lucy’s asleep?”
Greer nodded. “Like a baby. And I helped with Rex, too. His fever’s come down.”
“Good. It wasn’t flu.”
“I know. I can detect the D.T.’s at twenty paces. Was it morphine?”
Jane nodded. “That and other things. I brought him with me mainly because he needed someone to take him away from it. It’s too easy to buy where he’s from. As skinny as he is, he’s actually gained some weight in the past few days. So, what about you?” She didn’t mean for the question to be so fraught with unspoken meaning, but there it was: out there.
“You mean, why am I here?”
She could not hold her smile. There was something cold, almost reptilian about him now, as if, in the boat, he had worn a mask and now had removed it to reveal rough skin and scales.
“Well, there aren’t that many places in the world… quite so…”
“Open? Permissive?”
Greer looked at her, and she knew he understood. “It’s been a few months. We all have habits that need to be overcome. You’re very intuitive. Most women I know aren’t. Lucy spends her hours denying that reality exists.”
“If I had known when we started this trip …”
“I know. You wouldn’t have let me join you, or even fund this expedition. You think I’m sick. I suppose I am. I’ve never been a man to delude himself. You’re very—shall I say—liberal to allow me to come even now.”
“It’s just very hard for me to understand,” she said. “I guess this continent caters to men like you more than Europe does. I understand for two pounds sterling you can buy a child at this end of the river. Maybe a few.”
“You’d be surprised. Jane. I’m not proud of my interest. It just exists. Men are often entertained by perversity. I’m not saying it’s right. It’s one of the great mysteries…” He stopped midsentence and reached over, touching the side of her face.
She drew back from his fingers.
In his eyes, a fatherly kindness. “Yes,” he said, “I knew. When we met. It’s always in the eyes, my dear. I can find them in the streets, pick them out of a group, out of a schoolyard. Just like yours, those eyes.”
Jane felt her face go red, and wished she had never met this man who had seemed so civil earlier.
“Was it a relative?” he asked. “Your father? An uncle?”
She didn’t answer, but took another sip of Coke.
“It doesn’t matter, though, does it? It’s always the same pain,” he said, reaching in the pockets of the jacket and coming up with
a gold cigarette case. He opened it, offered her one, and then drew one out for himself. Before he lit it, with the match burning near his lips, he said, “I always see it in their faces, that pain, that hurt. And it’s what attracts me to them, Jane. As difficult as it must be to understand, for I don’t pretend to, myself, it’s that caged animal in the eyes that—how shall I say—excites me?”
She said, with regret, “You’re very sick. I don’t think this is a good place for you.”
“Oh,” he replied, the light flaring in his eyes, “but this is just the place for me. And for you, too. Two halves of the same coin, Jane. Without one, the other could not exist I’m capable of inflicting pain, and you, you’re capable of bearing a great deal of suffering, aren’t you?”
* * *
“I don’t want to stay here,” she told Rex in the morning. They had just finished a breakfast of a spicy tea and shuvai, with poached duck eggs on the side, and were walking in the direction of the village center.
“We have to go back?” Rex asked, combing his hands through what was left of his hair. “I don’t think I’m ready, Janey, not yet. I’m starting to feel a little stronger. If I go back…and what about the book?”
“Not back, no,” she said. “I just meant I don’t want to stay here. At the hotel. Not with those people. He’s a child molester. No, make that child rapist. He as much admitted it to me last night.”
“Holy shit,” Rex screwed his face up. “You sure?”
Jane looked at him, and he turned away.
There was so much boy in Rex that still wasn’t used to dealing with the complexities of the adult world; she almost hated to burst his bubble about people. They stopped at a market, and she went to the first stall, which offered up some sort of eely thing. Speaking a poor version of Khou-dali, or at least the northern dialect that she had learned, Jane asked the vendor if there might be another hotel – not an English one, but one run by locals.
He directed her to the west and said a few words.
She grabbed Rex’s hand and whispered, “It may be some kind of whorehouse, but I can avoid Greer for at least one night. And that stupid wife of his.”
Halloween Chillers: A Box Set of Three Books of Horror & Suspense Page 33