Chapter One: The Incident
There is a crossroads just outside the town of Honoré on Saint-Marie as you head into the rainforest. It is a charming place in the daytime, even in the heat, shaded as it is under trees heavy with foliage and made fragrant with various blooming exotics. In the twilight it is less pleasant. In darkness it is a little eerie, and a favorite haunt, according to the local manbos, of certain of the lesser loa.
If you're coming from town and you turn left, the path will slope downward out of the forest and join the coast road that serves several small semi-private beaches, including that of the official residence of the current Met Police Detective Inspector. If you turn right, the path loops back and climbs slightly, widening and paving itself in the process, to parade amongst the higher-priced suburbs on the hill overlooking the town center.
If you continue straight ahead, the road takes a shallow curve inland and begins to ascend the volcano, reaching first a small plateau on the mountain spur before winding its way upward. The trees tend to shy away from the path on the plateau and only gather around it again as it hikes up toward the twin houses of Levi and Leona Munro, who although the parish register lists them as being officially married, cannot bear to live under the same roof. Their different households are separated by the road, and as Leona keeps pedigreed goats and Levi grows prize-winning vegetables, every now and then the peace-keeping skills of an officer of law and order are called for.
This particular evening it was DI Richard Poole's turn, again. He was on call and the Defender was parked at his "bungalow", awaiting action. He had been trapped on this festering paradise now for five months, eleven days and eighteen-some hours, and he had already made the climb to the Munros twice. The team he had been blessed with (or saddled with) had assured him the first time it happened that it would all be over in minutes, with no paperwork to speak of. He could trust Fidel Best to know this as he was a meticulous worker and Poole liked him. He could trust Dwayne Myers to know it as Dwayne was the street man who knew everyone on his patch, and against his own policeman's judgment, Poole liked him too. And he could trust Camille Bordey to know it as – well, because she was a native, and intelligent, and, andandand, socially apt, and well, pretty, and . . .
It's none of your business why I trust Camille! one part of his mind told the other as he hauled himself into the Defender and started off.
Now as it happens, the crossroads had never been properly laid out, developing as it had from goat paths, and the branches forked off in their different directions just anyhow. It was also not paved in any way, and ever since his first trek Munro-wards, DI Poole had been arguing before the City Council that the intersection badly needed improvement. The Defender hulking around the corner from the beach and making that left turn to the volcano was difficult enough in daylight, but in the half-light visibility from one branch of the crossroads to the next was zero. One of these days, he kept telling the Council, there was going to be a serious accident there.
On this occasion he had managed the turn well enough and had crawled up the incline to the Munros' joint holdings, where he had the joy of standing in the middle of the road with his arms out, keeping the two of them apart for half an hour in the failing sunlight while they screamed at each other over some property damage. They only call the police in order to have a witness as to how well they get along, Poole thought, between spoken admonitions to calm down and to use their words.
"I've had enough!" Levi was howling, "I'm filing a complaint!"
No, you're not, Poole thought as Leona shrilled out "So am I! I've told you a thousand times to fix that flaming fence so my Georgina can't get into your flaming marrows! Why do you never listen?!"
Because he's learnt to tune it out, Poole slipped in mentally, while outside he was saying in measured police tones, "If either of you would care to come down to the station tomorrow, we'll be happy to file as many . . ."
"And another thing!" Levi trumpeted. As Leona joined in, Poole gave up talking and concentrated on holding the two lovebirds apart. How it was on all the earths there were that two people could get such a charge out of fighting with each other, Richard Poole would never know.
...
When Levi and Leona had both screamed themselves out and were only muttering about possible complaints, Poole wished them good night, climbed back into the Defender and made an eleven-point turn to go back down the volcano road to the plateau.
It was deep dusk by now, as deep as dusk ever got in the Caribbean without being full night. From somewhere above the moon now peered down and now hid coyly amongst the clouds, so it was only partially lighting the few trees on either side of the plateau path, leaving the Defender's headlights to focus on the sandy road ahead.
Poole cautiously guided the vehicle along, noticing as he did how, with the retreat of the trees, the songs of nightbirds had vanished. Even the abundant insect life seemed to have packed it in. The only noise was the grinding of the Defender as it prowled along the slip of road toward the forest, and even that seemed as if it was coming from far off.
Eventually, Poole slowed, braked and stared. When he had passed this way something less than an hour ago the path had been clear. Now there was a great black log across it, just at the beginnings of the slope down into the forest.
Where had that come from? There were no trees nearby large enough to make a roadblock that size, nor could he imagine anyone being able to cut one down and haul it into place in the time, not without noisy equipment. Poole snicked off the ignition and sat in the driver's seat looking at the log. None of the trees around here had black bark like that, peeling off in places as it was – or was that some sort of arboreal condition that only made the bark seem shredded, as if . . .
A little piece of his mind, right forward above the eyes, told him very quietly and coolly that this thing shouldn't be here. It wasn't real; it looked as if it had been cut out of some old carbon paper and pasted onto the landscape. What –
Then the knob on one end of the thing raised itself and swiveled toward him, bringing the great body of it along behind so it rolled lazily over, and two sullen red eyes stared back at him. In a moment it pushed itself up to a sitting position, the dully glowing eyes never blinking, never leaving his frozen gaze.
You spelled it wrong, the front bit of his mind was going on, still very calmly, although the sensory systems behind it were gibbering in disbelief. It's not log, L-O-G, it's Dog, D-O-G. Black Dog, in fact. Barghest. Gytrash. Black Shuck. Moddey Dhoo. Gwyllgi. A bogle he'd been told about since his childhood, a phenomenon neither haunt nor demon, but a thing of the liminal places, belonging to no destination, only to the in-between areas. Like isolated, unforested roads on inhabited islands covered in rainforest, just as twilight comes down on confused and beginning-to-be-frightened policemen.
Once sat up, the Black Dog was still, just sitting, just staring, from the middle of the road; a lump the size of a cow or a shire horse, shaggy, and apparently set in its chosen place for eternity. Poole looked back at it over the wheel of the Defender, which he was gripping with both hands in white intensity. Moments passed.
"Uh," he got out, finally, then adjusted his vocal cords with a hack. "So," he went on, "Good um, evening. Who – who is it, then?"
According to his granfer, the Black Dog came to announce a death.
It wouldn't talk, of course, but it helped Poole to talk to it right then. "It's not mum or dad, is it? Or, or no, it wouldn't be anyone on Saint-Marie, would it? Not Catherine at the bar, or Dwayne or Fi-" His throat dried up then and for a moment his glare was almost as fierce as that of the Dog itself. "It's never Camille. It had better not be Camille."
The Black Dog only sat, only stared.
"Look," said Poole, once the wave of cold fear had passed, "I'm not doing anything. I mean, no one's dependent on me. I could go. In her place. In anyone's place." It was part of the duty of a Metropolitan policeman to offer himself in a hostage situation in place of a member of the public.
Having said that, he reached for the handle of the car door and cranked it, then froze. Something was telling him, not from the frontal lobe but way far down in the brain stem, to stay where he was.
He spent a few moments more fighting it, trying to reason away this whole absurd situation, but the stare of the Dog in front of him pinned him to the car seat every time he thought about making a move to climb out.
Then, with no warning, the Black Dog lumbered to its feet. It was huge and hairy and its red gaze never blinked, not even as it padded silently up the road toward the dead bulk of the Defender.
Poole fixed his eyes straight ahead, toward the forest at the end of the plateau. He was not going to beg, he was not going to squeal, he would do nothing that would reflect on the dignity and professionalism of the Met Police.
(Well, maybe a tiny whimper as it gobbled him down would be permitted. No one would ever know it, after all.)
It passed so close to the open window of the cab that Poole could have reached out and patted it, had he any inclination on any level of sanity to do so. Instead, he saved the remnants of his courage for the moments after it had passed, when he was able to swing the door open and drop out of the Defender, pushing himself along the flank of the vehicle in its wake. It was going for the Munros. He was responsible, he had to stop it from . . .
But he couldn't. It wasn't there. No tracks, no traces; only empty road, pale in the moonlight, stretching back along the plateau toward the forest on the slopes of the volcano.
He circled the Defender, doing a visual search in every direction. Nothing. It was too big to have hidden itself behind any one tree, and too slow-moving to have made it all the way to any forest cover. It was simply gone.
And this is an incident, Poole told himself, shakily. I'm going to have to report this, all of it. I'll look a complete fool.
At length he got back into the truck and started it up, to crawl back to the edge of the tree cover and down the dark curve to the crossroads. He was only partway there when ahead of him there was the roar of an engine, a squeal and a shout, then a muffled whump. A car horn began blaring incessantly, Poole stepped on the pedal, and the Defender nearly flew down into the middle of a terrible accident.