The Ghoul Archipelago

1. JIM-1

1. JIM

Jim had never been so eager to burn a person before.

“Shall I fire the body?”

He stood, torch in hand, waiting on the riverboat captain’s decision. They had tied the boat off a few hundred meters upstream, just past the tributary that led west, into Patusan’s jungle primeval. The boat’s captain, Charles Marlow, crouched over the bloated corpse of the islander they had noted from the boat, and stopped in order to examine.

“Hmm?” was all Jim got by way of a reply.

Perhaps taking liberties (but, then again, perhaps not), Jim put his hand on Marlow’s shoulder and tried to press him to stand.

“Captain Charles, you not lean so close,” Jim said, “there dysentery and malaria to contend with. And worse things. Bodies not for such close examining. For burning.”

Sighing heavily, Marlow stood, brushing Jim’s hand off his shoulder as though it were a mosquito or a speck of bird s**t.

“It’s really not the disease which worries me, Jim,” Marlow breathed, “take a gander over yonder.”

Jim followed the invisible line of Marlow’s finger to the corpse’s neck. Jim had never been one to be queasy, but neither was he overly fond of the mutilated dead. He had up until now not closely examined the body, certainly not as closely as Marlow had been examining it, for what seemed like an eternity now.

The woman had at some point tripped and put her eye out on a low, sharp tree branch. She laid there, still, torso and legs flat, but head and shoulders propped up a few dozen centimeters off the ground. Jim had seen no cause to look for further means of death. Marlow had, and so it seemed, as usual, the captain was right.

The islander’s neck was unusual in that it was little more than exposed bloody meat. Thorns lay embedded in odd places throughout, and most of the skin had been stripped off.

“She got her throat caught in the underbrush,” Jim said, “and then a vine ripped a chunk of it away.”

Marlow had already wandered off as Jim was speaking. Hurrying, but not so fast that his torch would extinguish, Jim went after his boss. The Englishman seemed to be looking for something.

“I say, do tell me, Jim, if you were to get caught on a thorn right now, do you think that you would continue walking?”

“No,” Jim said, “I extricate it. Sloooowly.”

Jim dragged the last word out to three and a half syllables to indicate exactly how slowly he meant. Marlow nodded.

“You certainly wouldn’t keep walking until it ripped a chunk of your arm out,” Marlow said, “or, God forbid, your throat.”

Although he didn’t need to, Jim shook his head. Marlow whirled on the man, clearly eager to make his point. He reached up and scarcely glancing at it, plucked a chunk of pink, maggoty flesh from a tanglevine.

“And supposing you did all this, that, and the rest,” he said, “would you then proceed to walk a few yards more, until you...”

Marlow slammed his fist into his other palm, to indicate, presumably, impaling one’s eye on a tree branch. The poor dead woman’s neck flopped in his hand as he did so, splitting nearly in half. Seeming to notice the gruesome bit of viscera for the first time, Marlow let the throat skin slip from his fingers to the ground, and rubbed his hands together to get the bugs and bits of grime and blood off.

“I saw dog once,” Jim said, “a mangy animal, yellow, with big spots rubbed out of his fur, walking through the streets of Manila with foam on his mouth. I not think to notice such an animal, but he, ah, walked along the cobblestones with his ear to the ground. The whole left side of his face rubbed off, all just muscles and protruding bone, and a sightless eye rotating in its socket.”

“Rabies,” Marlow guessed.

Jim nodded. A twig snapped behind his head and Marlow’s hand went instinctively to his hip. He slowly, but forcibly, undid the button on his brown leather holster.

“I dislike these woods,” Marlow said. “If I didn’t know any better, and I was a bit of a superstitious man, I might swear we were being watched.”

Jim nodded.

“There no settlements here,” the Filipino said. “The jungle said haunted in these parts. No one comes here.”

“She came here,” Marlow said, c*****g his head towards the corpse, “so that’s quite evidently not the case. Unless you should think she’s a specter and not a real corpse, eh?”

Jim held his tongue this time. He had already made his point about the rabid dog. Far sadder was the tale of a person afflicted by some disease that wasted away the mind. Jim had always been taught to respect his elders, but he had seen far too many whose brains had turned to goat cheese, who began calling him “Bill” or not recognizing him at all.

“Let’s make our way back to the boat, shall we?” Marlow said, not taking his eyes off the wood line behind Jim.

No doubt it was his imagination, but Jim was sure there were shadows all around, watching them. He proffered the torch to the riverboat captain again.

“What about the corpse?” Jim asked.

Marlow eyed it with rather visible distaste.

“Yes. Well. Leave it for the gulls, I should think,” Marlow said. “As it so happens, I’m worried about my own corpse right this very instant.”

Without turning around or drawing his pistol, Marlow walked backwards towards the boat. Jim joined him, almost reflexively turning his back in the same direction that Marlow had his. He thought better of it, though; figuring at least one of them should be looking in the direction they were actually travelling. He put another libertine hand on Marlow’s shoulder and led the suspicious white man all the way back to the boat, his torch the only pinprick of light in the dark.

Jim refused to breathe again until the boat was motoring down the river and the dead woman was out of sight.

“I thought I might have heard it said somewhere that it was not the custom to bury the dead on Patusan,” Marlow said, once the cool night air and thin spray of river mist had calmed their nerves.

“No,” Jim agreed, “but neither is it to leave the dead for the birds. Now, in Persia, I hear it done...”

“So, it’s cremation that’s the custom here, then,” Marlow concluded, cutting him off. “That might go some way towards explaining why you were so eager with that firebrand.”

Jim nodded, and almost as an afterthought, tossed the torch into the water. It sizzled where the oily end struck the water, and sank with a thunk even before the boat was out of earshot. Marlow’s eyes were twinkling with a sort of perverse glee.

“I say, Jim,” he said, lowering his voice for no particular reason, “is it true what they say? That the locals in this island chain also burn the sick before they die?”

Jim cast his eyes down on the water.

When he lifted them again, he said, “True that they say that.”

“Might be that the locals have convinced themselves that it may just be safer that way,” Marlow mused. “In order to ward off the spread of malaria and the like.”

“And the like,” Jim agreed.

It was almost midnight before they came upon the burned-out skeleton of the old wooden mission. Marlow slowed the boat to a crawl and kicked Jim until he woke. It was his first trip downriver, but it was not Jim’s, so Jim was serving as a guide of sorts.

“Jim, old boy, gather your wits about you. What is that?” the white man asked.

Bleary, rubbing the oh-so-precious little bit of sleep out of his eyes, but not betraying his tiredness in his voice, Jim replied, “That the old Christian mission. Pastor Coughlin abandoned it six months ago when it burnt down.”

“During a funeral service, no doubt,” Marlow said.

Jim shook his head.

“I don’t think so,” he said, “the Bugis claim it was the Malays, and the Malays claim it was the Bugis. But all agree it was arson. Only one was killed: a woman.”

“Was she a missionary?”

Jim nodded.

“Sad. They said she beautiful.”

“Well, where is the preacher now? Not dead as well, I trust?”

“He moved on to Hippo.”

Marlow snorted.

“Hippo. The only island darker and more remote from the eye of civilization than this one,” Marlow said. “Didn’t he consider the challenge of bringing Christ to Patusan to be big enough?”

Jim shrugged.

“He had few enough followers here. The white woman’s widower. Hardly any natives. Perhaps he thought Hippo be more fertile ground.”

“I suppose it’s as likely as not that he’s bought the farm by now,” Marlow said. “Crushed in a wrestling match with some great bear of a Hippoan, I shouldn’t be surprised. Or perhaps they took his head. Then again, if there’s irony in the world, perhaps they nailed him to a tree to be quite like his savior.”

“We move on now,” Jim said, stifling a yawn even though everything in him wanted to let it out, “village will still bustle at dawn, but fishers all empty out shortly afterward.”

“Well, the good Lord knows I should prefer not to spend a whole day waiting. Here, take the wheel, won’t you, Jim? There’s a good lad.”

Jim did as he was told while Marlow plopped down in Jim’s newly vacated space. The watery moon was full and bright enough that Marlow threw a coolie hat over his face to ward off the light.

The path from Allang to the fishing village was almost as direct as one could hope for. Except for the tributary the day before, and a few other false starts here and there that quickly dead-ended, all Jim had to do was follow the course of the main river. Now, in the blackness, all he did was ensure that he stayed between the wall of trees, which reached almost out to the bank on either side. Jim navigated on, mesmerized by the black water and the moon reflected in it, his only navigational beacon.

Once, later that night, as dawn was approaching and the ethereal blackness was turning to violet and navy, Jim heard a splash over his shoulder. He idled the riverboat, turned off the engine, and walked aft to peer into the water.

“...Is it?” Marlow muttered groggily, not bothering to remove the straw hat from his face.

“I think we lost a box,” Jim said.

Marlow was awake and at his side in the blink of an eye, scanning the water. It was no use; neither of them could see anything in the muddy stream in the brightness of noon, let alone at night.

“Are you quite certain?” Marlow asked.

“I heard splash,” Jim said, “big splash.”

The riverboat was small, and aside from a few provisions for its two-man crew, it was stacked stem-to-stern with cardboard boxes marked “SDM.” A small rug, rolled up like a crepe, was tucked neatly between two crates.

“Ah, damn it all to Hell. Bergeron will have my ass for breakfast if I’ve lost one of his oh-so-precious boxes.”

Running his left hand through his closely cropped hair, Marlow counted the remaining boxes with the index finger of his right. He snorted.

“Blimey, I should say you’ve cracked, Jim,” the Englishman said, “they’re all here.”

“I swear I hear something fall into the water,” Jim replied weakly.

“Perhaps it was a rock or a coconut,” Marlow said, “or a vixen. Or one of those damned jungle cats.”

Jim shook his head, saying, “I thought it bigger.”

“Get some shuteye, Jim. I’ll take the wheel for the duration.”

Jim tried, but found he couldn’t sleep. The oppressive shades of dead men and half-faced dogs seemed to peer at him from the riverbanks when he kept his eyes open. The dead woman with a tree limb through her eye and her throat ripped out, gazed at him balefully every time he closed his eyes.

He was trapped in a trance halfway between slumber and wakefulness when they finally reached the fishing village. A crude arrow shaft landed in between Jim’s legs, thankfully missing him by a few centimeters. That jolted him awake.