The Night Boat Read online

  Along Front Street where the jungle bent down low in strange shadowy shapes, he saw several men standing in the road. When his headlights touched them they twisted away before he had a chance to recognize any of them. They leaped into the surrounding underbrush and were gone in a few seconds. When Kip came to the church, he found it darkened and deserted. He stopped the jeep and sat there for a few moments, listening. When the next brief flurry of drums came, still somewhat distant, Kip caught their direction. He took a flashlight from a storage box on the rear floorboard, clicked it on, and climbed down from the jeep.

  There was a narrow path leading past the chicken coop and Kip walked along it as silently as he could, the thorns catching at his shirt. The jungle was densely black on all sides and quiet but for the persistent, steady drone of insects. In a few more minutes he could hear fragments of voices, the sudden crying out of what sounded like several women at once, the forceful voice of a man, all punctuated by sudden bursts of the rapid drums. He went on, following the path even when he was forced to crawl beneath a thick cluster of wiry brush. The voices became progressively louder, more frantic, and at last he caught a glimmer of light ahead. The drums pounded a steady rhythm, three or four patterns intertwining, louder and louder, each beat accompanied by a scream or a shout as if the drums themselves were crying out in either pain or ecstasy. The noise grew until the drumming was inside Kip’s head, a wild and unconfined frenzy of sound. And through the drum voices there was the voice of a man, rising from a whisper to a shout: “Serpent, serpent-o, Damballah-wedo papa, you are a serpent. Serpent, serpent-o, I WILL CALL THE SERPENT! Serpent, serpent-o, Damballah-wedo papa, you are a serpent…”

  The jungle was suddenly cut away to make a clearing; Kip quickly turned off his light and stayed hidden in darkness. Blazing torches formed a wide circle around a small three-sided, straw-roofed hut. Directly in front of the hut, surrounded by black and red painted stones, was a fire that licked up toward the jungle ceiling high overhead. A strange geometric figure had been traced in flour in front of the fire, and placed at points on the figure were various objects: bottles, a white-painted steel pot, a dead white rooster, and something wrapped in newspapers. The drummers sat behind the fire, and thirty-five or forty people made a ring around them—some lying on their bellies in the soft dirt, some twirling madly in circles, still others sitting on the ground, staring with open, glazed eyes into the depths of the flames. The drumming was furious now, and Kip saw beads of sweat fly off the half-nude forms that circled the fire. One of the dancers lifted a bottle of rum and let the liquor pour down into his mouth, then he doused the rest of it over his face and head before spinning away again. Empty bottles lay scattered about. Sweat streamed from faces and over torsos, and Kip caught the powerful smell of strong, sweet incense in the air. One of the dancers whirled in and threw a handful of powder into the flames; there was a burst of white and the fire leaped up wildly for a few seconds, illuminating the entire clearing with red light. A man in a black suit leaped in the air and crouched down at the base of the flames, shaking a rattle over his head. It was Boniface, the fires glinting off his glasses. Sweat dripped off his chin as he shook the rattle and cried out, “Damballah-wedo papa, here, Damballah-wedo papa, here…”

  A woman in a white headdress fell down beside him, her chest heaving with exertion, her head revolving in circles and her eyes glistening with either rum or ganja. She lay on her belly, snaking along as if she were trying to crawl into the flames. It was the Kephas woman, the same woman Kip had seen that very afternoon sitting in a dark corner of her house muttering something he had failed to understand.

  Boniface shook the rattle, now in time with the drum beating, and reached into the white pot with his free hand to withdraw a thick snake that instantly coiled about his forearm. At the sight of the snake there was a chorus of screams and shouts. He held it up, crying out, “Damballah-wedo papa, you are a Serpent. Serpent, serpent-o, I WILL CALL THE SERPENT!”

  Kip’s heart was hammering, his head about to crack from the noise. The drummers stepped up their rhythms, the muscles standing out on their arms, droplets of sweat flying in all directions. Kip could barely hear himself think; the screaming and the drums were bothering him, reaching a part of his past he had closed tight, to a place of fearful memories and grinning faces hanging from straw walls. Boniface turned and draped the writhing snake around the woman’s shoulders like a rippling coat, and she cried aloud and stroked its body. The reverend put aside his gourd rattle, lifted the object wrapped in papers over his head and began to spin in front of the fire, shouting out in French. The old woman let the snake slide from arm to arm. She played with it, teasing it with a tetettetette noise. Boniface lifted a bottle of clear liquid, poured it into his mouth and held it there while he unwrapped the object. In the light of the fire Kip saw it was a crude wax image of the submarine; Boniface tossed the paper into the flames and sprayed the image with the liquid from his mouth, and as the others shouted and urged him on he held his hands out to the fire, his eyes wild and his teeth bared in a grimace. In another moment the heat began to melt the wax, and Boniface began to knead the image until wax dripped down his hands and arms. When nothing was left but a misshapen blob, he cast it into the fire and stepped back. The others screamed louder and danced like possessed souls. Boniface spat into the fire.

  The old woman stared into the face of the snake, then lifted her chin and let it explore her lips with its questing tongue. She met the tongue with her own; they seemed like nightmarish lovers. When she opened her mouth to let the reptile probe within, Kip could take no more and stepped out into the light.

  One of the drummers saw him first; the man gaped and faltered in his rhythm. The others noticed at once; heads turned, and someone shrieked as if in pain. A few of the dancers leaped up from the edge of the fire and ran for the jungle. The Kephas woman looked at Kip in horror, the snake slithering from her arms into the grass, and then she too ran away, her skirts billowing behind her. The rest of them were gone almost at once, the jungle closing behind them, the darkness swallowing them up.

  And in the silence, still echoing with the beat of the drums and the shouting, Boniface stood framed against the fire, staring across the clearing at the constable. “You fool,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “It wasn’t yet complete!”

  Kip said nothing, but walked to the edge of the fire. He examined the assortment of bottles. One of them looked as if it were half-filled with blood.

  “IT WASN’T YET COMPLETE!” Boniface shouted, his hands curled into fists at his sides.

  There was another pot filled with water; Kip picked it up and poured it over the blaze. The timbers hissed and smoke twisted toward the sky. “I’ve let you carry out your ceremonies,” he said quietly. “I haven’t raised a finger to interfere. But, by God”—he turned to face the other man—“I’ll not have you making something out of that boat and the old man’s death.”

  “You young ass!” Boniface said, wiping beads of sweat away from his eyes. “You don’t understand, you could never begin to understand! You fool!”

  “I asked for your help.” He kicked at the embers and dropped the pot to one side. “Is this how you’re helping me?”

  “OUI!” Boniface said, the anger white-hot in his eyes. He held Kip’s gaze a few seconds longer, then looked back into the remains of the fire. His shoulders were stooped, as if he had been drained of all strength. “You can’t see, can you?” he asked, in a tired whisper.

  “What was the Kephas woman doing here?”

  “It…was necessary.”

  “God, what a shambles,” Kip said, looking around the clearing.

  “All necessary.”

  “I don’t want any trouble, Boniface. I thought I made that clear…”

  Boniface glared at him sharply, his eyes narrowing. “You and the white man are to blame. Both of you brought that thing into the boatyards. Now you are to blame!”

  “For what!”

&n
bsp; “For what may take place if I’m not allowed to take a hand against it!”

  Kip looked down into the glowing remains of the fire and saw the clump of wax there, blackened by the heat and ashes. He kicked it out into the grass and looked across at the reverend. “What kind of madness is this?”

  “I expected better from you,” Boniface said bitterly. “I expected you to be able to see. The white man, no, but you, Kip…you could open your mind if you wished, you could feel it…”

  “What are you saying, old man?” the constable asked him harshly.

  “I know about you; you think you can hide it but you’re mistaken!”

  Kip took a step forward. “What are you saying?”

  Boniface stood his ground; was about to explain but then thought better of it. He bent down and began to gather up the bottles that stood along the lines of the geometric figure. He put them down into the white pot that had contained the snake, and they rattled together.

  “What do you know about me?” Kip asked very quietly.

  The reverend began to smear the geometric lines with his foot. “I know,” he said without looking up, “who you could have been.” His head came up, and he stared fiercely into the constable’s eyes. A strange, almost tangible power riveted the other man where he stood. He could not have moved even if he’d wished.

  “Listen to me well,” Boniface told him. “If you refuse to take the boat to deep water, you must do these things: Lock that shelter securely. Let no man go near it. Let no man touch his hand against that iron. And for all our sakes do not try to break the hatches open. Do you understand what I say?”

  Kip wanted to say no, that Boniface was a raving fool, that the man didn’t know what he was talking about, but when he spoke he heard himself say, “Yes.”

  And in the next instant the reverend was gone, melting away into the darkness beyond the circles of torchlight. Kip had not seen him turn to go, nor did he hear the man making his way through the underbrush; he had simply vanished.

  Gradually the night sounds returned, filling in the spaces left when the drums and the shouting had stopped. Insects called to each other across the jungle, and the cries of the nocturnal birds sounded like the voices of old men. Kip covered the embers with dirt until he had completely extinguished the fire, then clicked his light back on and retraced his path to the jeep. There was a yellow glimmer of a light behind a window shutter at the church and a shadow moving about within.

  He climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. He was actually eager to get away from this part of the island; it was Boniface’s kingdom, a place of shadows, jumbies and duppies, faceless things that walked the night seeking souls. He drove back toward the harbor, along Front Street and through the village. Still no lights, no sounds. And before he realized it, he had passed the road leading toward his house and was driving to the boatyard as if drawn there by something beyond his control. There was a sheen of sweat on his temples and he hastily wiped it away. He couldn’t shake the image of Boniface, standing before him, touched with amber light that glittered in his thick glasses. I know, the man had said, who you could have been.

  And then Kip’s foot came down hard on the brakes.

  The jeep started to spin in the sand, but Kip let the wheel turn and then corrected its direction; the jeep straightened, whipping grit up behind it, and then stopped abruptly as the engine rattled and died. Kip sat and looked straight ahead for a long time.

  The boatyard gates were shattered, the weathered timbers broken and lying splintered on the ground. The timbers that still remained in the gate sagged forward, like bones in a broken rib cage, their edges raw and jagged.

  An ax, Kip thought. Some bastard has taken an ax to Langstree’s gates.

  He picked up his light, climbed out of the jeep, and went through into the yard. Nothing else seemed to be wrecked, though in the disarray it was difficult for him to tell. He swept his light in an arc. Nothing moved. There was no noise but for the sea and the slow creaking of a boat moored to the wharf. This would be the right time for someone to break in, with Langstree away. Why the hell didn’t the man hire a watchman? That cheap old bastard! he thought angrily, knowing it was his own responsibility if someone had made off with something valuable.

  As he moved deeper into the yard, he tried to keep his mind off the U-boat ahead in the naval shelter. The image of the rotting thing was a searing flame in his mind. He moved past a great heaping tangle of ropes and cables and walked faster, heading directly for the shelter.

  He saw immediately that the door was open; he stopped in his tracks, shining the light about, and then slipped through into the stench of decay. He moved his light slowly along the hulk, not knowing what to expect, not even knowing what he was looking for. And when the beam picked out the form of. the cylinder truck on the forward deck he swore and let his breath out in a hiss.

  As he crossed the gangplank he shined the light down onto the deck, and then he saw the gaping, smooth-edged void where the hatch had been burned out. The hatch itself, the bottom of it encrusted with some kind of yellow fungus, lay several feet away on the deck. Kip thrust the light down toward the hole, aware that his heartbeat had picked up, that there was something…something…something…

  Aware that blood was splattered around the yawning opening.

  At once Kip sucked in his breath, stunned. He bent down and touched a hand to the thick globs of blood. He wiped it off on his trouser leg. The blood was so dark it was almost black, and he realized he was standing in it. Puddles had collected around the hatch opening like oil seepage. And now he smelled it as well, like a thick, coppery taste in his mouth. There was a larger lump of something beside him, and it was only when Kip had bent to examine it that he realized it was a piece of black flesh.

  The U-boat moaned softly, and a timber creaked, the echoes filling the inside of the shelter. He turned, played the light up the conning-tower bulwark and toward the stern. A sharp, piercing fear was inside him, jabbing at his guts, and he fought to keep hold of his sanity. He backed away from the hatch, keeping his light on it, until he’d reached the gangplank.

  The flashlight beam played across the murky green water: A Coke can floated against the hull, and beside it a beer can. The water, pulled in through the sea bulkhead, was dotted with cigarette butts, and his light touched the staring eye of a white, bloated fish. Something else was there as well, floating just under the gangplank at Kip’s feet.

  A welder’s mask.

  Kip got to his knees, reaching down with one hand to pull it from the water. And as he did and the mask came free, the body underneath it rose to the surface. The eyes were wide and terror-stricken, the open mouth was filled with water. Beneath the battered face the throat had been torn open. Bare bone glittered in a red, pulpy mass that had been a larynx and jugular vein. Half the face was peeled back, the teeth broken off or ripped from the mouth. The arms floated stiffly at the corpse’s sides, and already tiny fish were darting in to taste the blood at the mangled throat.

  Kip cried out involuntarily and pulled his hand back, the welder’s mask dangling from his fingers. The body began to turn in a circle, bumping against the side of the basin. Kip felt the place closing about him, felt the darkness reaching, and beyond the darkness things that grinned and clawed at him with filthy bloodstained fingers. He backed away from the U-boat, his legs like lead, and then half-walked, half-ran into the fresh air outside, drawing breath after breath to try to clear away the sight of that dead, gray-fleshed face.

  “My God,” he muttered brokenly, supporting himself against the shelter wall. “My God my God my God…”

  For he had recognized the expression on Turk’s dead, puffed face. It was a glimpse into an unnamable horror.

  Eight

  DR. THEODORE MAXWELL, a heavyset black in his mid-fifties, let the blood-spattered sheet drop down over the ruin of a face. He wore a smock smeared with human fluids over his clothes. Rays of morning sunlight streamed in dusky patterns t
hrough the drawn blinds of the Coquina clinic examination room. He shook his head, pushed his eyeglasses off the bridge of his nose, and let them rest on top of his balding head. He had seen bad things before: men whose noses had been cut off by rusted razors in barroom brawls, automobile accident victims, the mangled remains of a young child caught in the screw of a trawler. He was familiar with the ugly wounds of life, and familiar as well with the sight of death. But in his experience most people died in their sleep, with an expression of peace and almost of relief. This one was different. This young man who lay before him had seen Hell before he died.

  Maxwell reached for a clipboard and began to jot notes for later reference.

  “What’s your opinion?” Kip asked wearily, his eyes hollow from lack of sleep.

  Dr. Maxwell looked up quickly, then went back to his clipboard. He finished writing, then said in a soft, quiet tone of voice that belied the tension he felt, “Perhaps the most brutal beating I’ve ever seen. All manner of things were used: fists, fingers, some kind of blunt instruments. Maybe a wrench, and there’s indication a hammer was used on his skull.”

  Kip frowned, staring at the outline of the corpse.

  “Any next of kin?” Dr. Maxwell asked.

  “No. I don’t even know where he was from. He was an island drifter.”

  The doctor put his clipboard aside, steeled himself, and lifted the sheet again. The muscles of the face had frozen in that hideous grimace, and Maxwell shuddered as he gazed into those staring eyes again. He took a small penlight from his breast pocket and leaned over the throat. Yes. Those marks were unmistakable.