‘I’m coming with you.’
‘It might be easier if you didn’t.’
There it was. He thinks I’m a liability.
‘Nonsense. You’ll need an extra pair of eyes and an extra gun.’
I won’t let him take all the glory.
We set off, leaving the leopard carcass, her eyes thick with flies because the natives refused to carry her back to the mission for me.
I had to stop after a few miles. Marcus emptied out everything unnecessary from my pack. I hid this journal and pencil in my pocket.
August 22nd 1892
I thought, wrongly, that the discipline and cruelty of Eton had prepared me for everything. Marcus gave me his spare bootlaces when mine snapped. When he saw my blistered feet, he insisted we make camp and produced a bottle of iodine.
‘Do you regret coming?’ I asked him.
‘No. Your father would never have forgiven me if I’d let you do this alone.’
The fire crackled and our feet were between us on the log on which we perched. I was as if we were boys back in the nursery and I felt a companionship that I hadn’t known for years.
It seems to me that father did Marcus a grave disservice. He doesn’t know his place in the world. He is neither master nor servant.
August 24th 1892
My wild dreams shame me. Kitty crawled towards me on all fours, emerging from the darkness. She licked her lips, moving constantly, like the leopard. When she finally stood up, she was naked and I pushed her against a tree. My hand was on her throat. Her hips made rhythmic motions to an unseen drum. She opened her mouth and inside there was an elephant orchid, in delicate shades of pink and grey. It opened itself to me, quivering with dew.
I was moaning. Her hands were on my chest and I tried to move them downwards. She fought me off.
‘Philip, wake up, for God’s sake.’ It was Marcus, shaking me awake. ‘Stop that bloody racket.’
Marcus didn’t notice my flushed cheeks. He was too concerned with the drums, which weren’t a figment of my dream at all but very real and very close.
August 27th 1892
Our interpreter, Oliver, is terrified but he is solid and stoical. He could have left us in the night but he has stayed. Raised at the mission, he has great respect for Marcus, who calls him by his real name, Melingwa.
They were talking quietly, thinking I couldn’t hear. I overheard Marcus say to him, ‘If anything should happen to me, will you take care of Philip? Make sure he gets back.’
The African nodded slowly. I resent being treated like an imbecile.
Oliver thinks he can get us to the city. The leopard tribe told us to avoid the drums at all costs. We have skirted the source of the sound. It is perpetual and maddening.
August 1893 (exact date unknown)
I can’t believe we are here. It is an awful, empty place of huge marble steps and alters. Oliver is keeping watch from the wall. The drumming is getting fainter.
I have a fever and am sweating profusely. The dreams are unrelenting. I am ashamed to write down the things I do to Kitty. If I ever get home, I fear I’ll be no fit husband.
We are sheltering under an arched doorway, afraid to light a fire. The hanging vines look like serpents. Great, heady scented blooms burst from the mouths of toppled idols and consume crumpling parapets.
‘They were a great nation once.’
I snorted.
‘These men were kings, Philip.’
‘Heathens and savages.’ I was being deliberately obtuse.
‘Someone will say the same of us one day. We all presume to be the pinnacle of civilisation. Rome fell. Spain fell. So will Britannia.’
‘Rot.’
I don’t care for his philosophy, even though we are sat in the ruins of the evidence.
August 1892
We have found it. I have held the elephant orchid in my hand and wondered at the fragility of the thing that brought me half way around the world.
The elephant graveyard is on the far side of the city where the defensive wall has crumbled. I have never seen such a place, a cemetery for monoliths. It is littered with a dozen carcasses in various states of decay. The smell is foul. Torn hides hang loosely from rotting flesh. There are gleaming bones, a fortune in ivory curving from bare skulls.
We saw the damndest thing. When we arrived there were visitors. Marcus explained they were a herd of elephants, migrating through this place. It was as if they were passing by and thought they’d pay their respects. They trumpeted in outrage and stamped their feet, scattering the greedy vultures. The ugly birds hovered at a safe vantage point.
The elephants paid attention to a single skeleton that had long since been picked clean. They caressed it with their trunks, lingering as though bidding a final goodbye to an old friend. Finally the bull turned and the others followed, a solemn line with their heads bowed.
‘Isn’t it strange?’
‘Why?’ Marcus asked, ‘They have family bonds, just as we do. They know love and loyalty. They mourn their own.’
We’d been well informed. The orchids grew from ear and eye sockets, from holes caved in skulls. Any way to penetrate the precious brain.
Marcus showed me how to pack them for transport but I’m ashamed to confess to retching so badly that Marcus had to finish the task for us.
In the end we could only find ten plants that were healthy enough to travel. I pray this is enough.
September 1892
It’s a miracle. We have been rescued by The Liberty. I never thought I’d be pleased to see Dawkins or him us, especially as the last time we saw him, he was at the end of Marcus’ gun barrel.
But I get ahead of myself.
We traced our way back to the city gates. I’m ashamed to admit I’d expected Oliver to have deserted us but he was waiting on the wall. Next to us, he no longer looked like a savage.
We were weary but in good spirits. I felt, for the first time, an appreciation of Africa. It is utterly foreign and grand, shafts of sunlight piercing the towering canopy. Birds, in brazen reds and blues, squawked and wheeled about, high above us.
God bless my laces. I’d stopped to retie them and when I looked up, Oliver was racing back through the undergrowth, motioning for us to hide. There were no beating drums to warn us, only the sounds of the living, breathing jungle.
The men that led the procession were made of muscles and sinew. That they were warriors was as much in the way they moved as in the spears they carried. The group was thirty strong. Six of them bore their queen aloft. She was magnificent. A giantess. A diadem winked from her forehead and she wore a cape of iridescent plumes. This was no blessed, benign monarch. Her chin was caked in dried blood. Her eyes blazed with unholy fire and I drew back, afraid she’d seen me in the undergrowth. I tremble to recall her.
Behind her, trussed and carried on a pole, was one of the leopard men. His head lolled and I hoped he was dead. It was a hideous sight, meat carved from his oozing thighs and calves as if they’d snacked upon him. The only drumming was their feet as they passed by.
We tried to stay clear of them but they blocked our path at every turn. Even Oliver became disorientated, unsure of the direction home. Each rustle and snap in the undergrowth became a torture. The devils made sport with us, drumming for days at a time as if they disdained sleep. They drove us ahead of them, making us march without pause and I thought exhaustion would kill me. If I dared to close my eyes, all I could see were those terrible eyes and bloodstained teeth.
The splendour I’d glimpsed now mocked me. My arms ached from hacking at the dense vegetation. In the darkness of the canopy, I hungered for the sunlit fields and copses of Carfax.
I mused over their hesitation at attacking. Oliver gave me a sour look. ‘They’re seasoning the meat.’
The drums started up. I struggled to catch where they came from, the sound seemed so sudden and all around us. I wanted to fall to the ground and give up then but Oliver pushed me on. The faster we ran, the
faster the drumming became. My heart couldn’t keep up. I thought it would stop.
Then silence, filled by something else. The sound of the river. So here was a dilemma. We would be strung upon a pole or have to take our chances in the water.
Then we heard another sound being carried downstream. A determined chugging, the mechanised glory of civilisation steaming towards us. There was a hoot as she took the bend. It was strange fortune that brought us to that point, with The Liberty bearing down on us.
We were giddy at the prospect of salvation, terrified that it would pass us by. We threw away caution, firing our guns and waving our ragged shirts above our heads. What a sight we must have been.
Hearing the steamer, our pursuers broke cover. Their howls froze my blood. The Liberty gave us the cover of her rifles as we ran for the gang plank.
Only three orchids had survived our flight from the city and we each carried one. Mine tipped from its bag. I went back to where it lay as soon as I realised. Marcus, seeing I was no longer at his side, glanced over his shoulder, eyes wide. He shouted my name. Soon we’d be within arrow range. One of the warriors raced towards me, spear raised.
Oliver, too, had doubled back. I fancied I could hear their pistols above all the others. Marcus fired again and a bullet exploded in the chest of my attacker. Too late, too late. As Marcus stood over me, the javelin struck him in the thigh and he crumpled to the ground.
Dawkins fired his cannon from the deck. It was a thunder crack that silenced the world. The soft rain of arrows paused for a moment and Marcus, ever level headed, even when wounded, cried and clutched at the spear, ‘Just pull it out!’
He was right. The shaft was at least four foot long and it would have been impossible to move him with it stuck in place. There was no time for delicate extraction. Oliver wrenched it free and I tried to staunch the bleeding. Apparently the canon fired again, but I didn’t hear, being so intent on carrying Marcus, who was now unconscious, aboard.
The orchid lay where I’d dropped it.
September 29th 1892
Dawkins has confined us to one cabin. Oliver is allowed in daily to tend to Marcus. I’m too weak to write much. My fever rages and abates by turns. What I thought was the fatigue of overexertion is illness.
Marcus is all noise. I am kept awake by my stomach cramps and Marcus’ ravings. Although he is pale, his wound is black and smells rank.
I fear neither the single orchid that remains or Marcus will see England.
September 30th 1892
I am burning. Despite Oliver’s protest that I should sleep, I write to preserve my sanity. Marcus, in his delirium, called me, ‘My dear brother.’
Brother. He was always the brighter one. Quicker in everything. I remember our father clapping us both on the shoulder. His pride in Marcus’ achievement. How he must’ve wished that Marcus had been the legitimate one, not I.
My father brought his doxy and his bastard into our home, my mother not yet cold.
I must stop. I think I will be sick.
October 1892
Kitty, Carfax and England are a dream. I am in hell.
I awoke earlier to find Dawkins holding a cup of water to my mouth. My journal was on his knee. When I asked for Oliver he replied, ‘Don’t concern yourself with him. He’s quite safe.’
It was then that I started to fear for Oliver’s safety. Dawkins mopped my brow, the cloth sopping with sweat. The orchid withered on the nightstand beside me. He asked me its worth and when I told him, he gave a low whistle.
‘It’s a pity, especially when you’re been to so much trouble.’
Then he said something I didn’t quite catch. ‘He’s going to die anyway.’ He must have meant, it’s going to die, but I can’t be sure.
1893
It’s strange to read these words again, the elephant orchid beside me, now in bloom. It is the only one of its kind in England and has shown itself to be strangely robust. It shouldn’t have survived so long. When it dies, a part of me will die too.
I am compelled to account for myself. I don’t expect forgiveness. Carfax has been stripped to pay off Dawkins. I’ve taken to burning the furniture for warmth. The chaplain comes each day and we pray together but I doubt much of me is worth redeeming.
I am procrastinating. I remember fragments of that time aboard The Liberty. I was so weak or feverish. Dawkins visited regularly, solicitous for our health but I could see avarice in his eyes. I told him flatly that Lord Huntley wouldn’t deal with him. That my safe return was as important to him as any orchid. A bluff. He wouldn’t give a fig who delivered his orchid to him. I knew Kitty’s tears would be transient and I was proven right. I met her, once, to break things off. Only a few months later her engagement was announced in The Times. So much lost for a woman not worth the having.
Dawkins knelt beside me and put his mouth to my ear, taunting me with secrets from my journal.
‘Your brother took that wound for you, you milk-fed sop. He was the better man. There’s no doubt of that. What would your father think of you now?’
He would go on in this way and suddenly turn it all about.
‘That bastard, Marcus. He has no claim on you. He’s just a servant’s son. How dare he presume?’
And then it would be, ‘We’ll not make it to the surgeon in time to save him. It’s cruel to let him suffer. They’re dying, him and the plant. If he was one of your prize hunters, wouldn’t you show him mercy? ‘
I was on fire. My fever was at its peak. Dawkins goaded me. Confused me. He fuelled my anger. Brother. Brother. Brother. How long had Marcus known?
Dawkins clamped his hands around mine to keep the pistol from falling. I couldn’t pull away. Or perhaps I didn’t try. Dawkins put the barrel tip to Marcus’ head. I don’t remember what I said, but suddenly the gun was smoking in my hand, having dispensed anger and mercy all at once. Both my finger and Dawkins’ were on the trigger. Oliver was hammering at the door. I heard his protests as they dragged him away.
Marcus took a full minute to die. He said my name. There was such satisfaction on Dawkins’ face. Even before the serving girl, he didn’t care for Marcus.
Marcus. Even in that sickened, stricken state, I knew I’d been a party to an awful thing. As he said my name I knew what I’d lost. As a child, he’d picked me up whenever I fell. He was the only one who could console me. He was my brother.
There, the truth, but not the worst of it.
I fainted when Dawkins hacked his head off with a machete.
I keep Marcus close. If Dawkins thought I’d give him up a second time he was mistaken. I don’t care about the cost. Huntley and other fellows from the Royal Academy send me begging letters that I’ve long ceased to open. I couldn’t give them the orchid, even if I wanted to. Its roots are too entwined with Marcus’ skull.
Dawkins, my blackmailer, doesn’t know his luck. He presses me for money, not realising I’d be happy to send us both to the gallows but for the one person I must consider, not sent overboard to the crocodiles as I’d feared.
As I sit staring at the fire, my only friend is beside me. The best friend I could have, in fact. He ensures that I don’t forget to eat and is company when I can’t stand to be with myself. When I told him the truth he didn’t turn away from me. When I told him that he wouldn’t like it here, he came anyway because, he said, he’d made a promise. They call him Black Oliver in the village, but I call him by his real name, Melingwa.
Shawn Oetzel
SCRUNCHIES FROM HELL
It started when my girlfriend Joan, returned from shopping with her friend at the mall. It was such an ordinary day, but I guess they all are until something like this happens. Joan, God she was beautiful with her long black hair and blue eyes that seemed to go on forever. You could get lost in those wondrous orbs and never care about finding your way back. She was as close to perfection as you can get. Maybe that’s why they chose her.
‘Hey Babe, how was the mall?’ I asked her pretty flippantly.
She liked to shop and went quite often so it’s not like this was an earth shattering event or anything.
‘It was alright I guess,’ she began so innocently; completely unaware of the horror about to be unleashed.
‘Did you get anything good?’
‘Not really,’ she answered, and then nonchalantly showing me a white bag she was holding in her right hand, she unwittingly set loose a foul evil spawned in the deepest bowels of Hell. ‘I did pick up some hair scrunchies at Claire’s. They were four for a dollar so I picked a couple dollars’ worth.’
It seemed so innocent of a statement. She bought some new hair scrunchies, so what. To be honest, I couldn’t have cared less. I mean really, what guy gives a damn about things like that? It’s not like she brought home new lingerie or anything. Hell, I would have gotten excited about that, but hair scrunchies? How could anyone really care about something so mundane?
Looking back now, I can’t believe how incredibly wrong I was. How could I have known I would end up paying for my indifference with my most cherished blood? How could anyone have guessed something so ordinary would actually be the stuff nightmares are made from?
It was at that time I noticed she had her lustrous black hair pulled back into a ponytail. She often did this when she did not want to be bothered with having to fix it up. She thought this made her look frumpy, but in truth, it made me want her even more. God, she was beautiful. Only the darkest of evils could have forced me to do what I had to.
No matter what she did, she was gorgeous. She was the type of woman who was drop dead sexy without ever really trying to be. She knew she was good looking, but didn’t ever flaunt it. She was not stuck up or conceited in anyway, but damn was she hot.
She flashed me her million dollar smile which naturally made my heart melt, and then turned to head into the kitchen. At first I was preoccupied by the swaying of her cute ass, but when I looked up something caught my attention. It was the face of evil staring back at me with a look so intent I actually felt my own soul shrink back in fear. Oh, from a distance it appeared to be a red hair scrunchy, but I swear to any God you want me to that that scrunchy had eyes, and it winked at me.
Horror Express Volume Two Page 11