Chapter 8
Collinwood, after sunset
Burke had arranged with David to let him try to find out what he could, alone. David had agreed, going calmly upstairs to collect his hockey gear as Burke leveled a fiery eye at Barnabas.
"I came here tonight to meet with Liz," he told the other man. "We specifically arranged that I'd be here this evening to tell her about my time in Brazil. I want to know what's going on, and where she is. And where the hell is Collins?"
Barnabas took Burke's arm and pulled him into the drawing room, shutting the doors hurriedly behind them. Leaning against them, he faced Burke.
"Roger is taking David to the skating rink tonight," he said tiredly. "He knows it's the night you were to tell Liz about South America, so he had proposed removing himself to make you more comfortable."
Burke stared at him and then grunted, "How almost human of him. But where's he removed Liz Stoddard to? Don't you think you ought to tell me what's going on around here? She's not in the house, is she?"
Chagrined to be facing Burke alone, Barnabas drew up his lean frame and equivocated.
"Let me allow Professor Stokes to go over it all when he gets here."
"Who the hell is Professor Stokes, and why would he be the one to tell me what's happened to Liz? Why can't you tell me yourself? Apparently she's not been hospitalized, because David checked." He saw Barnabas wince and said, "Yes, the kids are aware something's going on. Do you think they're idiots? Why are they being kept in the dark?"
Barnabas closed his eyes, and Burke lowered his voice. "Barnabas, what is it? Why won't you say?"
He hadn't foreseen this. Burke was one of their four suspects, and Barnabas had no clue as to how Elliot would have wanted to handle the matter. Elliot was due at Collinwood at any moment. Julia had accompanied Roger to go check on Elizabeth in the crypt.
What was the harm in telling Burke about Elizabeth? If Burke were the vampire, he was certainly aware that the family had noticed the change in Elizabeth; and if he were not, then the man deserved to know of the danger so that he could protect himself.
Barnabas rapidly reflected.
Here it was, past sundown, and Burke had returned David safely to the house. Barnabas himself had seen David trooping up the stairs as normal as punch. No one at Collinwood had even known the boy had left! If Burke was the vampire, he'd had an open shot at biting David. And yet here was the boy, upstairs safe and sound, having spent time after dark in Burke's company.
Barnabas consulted his gut instincts. He didn't believe that Burke was the one they sought. Burke Devlin, killing little children? Chomping on Elizabeth's neck? Climbing in and out of a coffin? It was unimaginable. Barnabas couldn't seriously view the man as a suspect, perhaps because he knew Burke, whereas the other three were just strangers to him. Illogical, but there it was. Burke was the same as when Barnabas knew him of old; there was not the faintest hint of the supernatural about him. And he didn't seem to be faking his bewilderment at the current state of affairs. No. Barnabas still felt that Castlewold was the culprit, no matter how affable a façade the talent scout presented.
Roger disagreed, but had told Barnabas that as David insisted on attending the lessons at the rink, he was going armed. "I understand that some fathers of the boys have been into the locker room," he had said wearily, "no matter what Castlewold has to say about it. I'll be there with David before and after the lessons. And I'm carrying a silver dagger, a Balisong knife our forbear Isaac Collins picked up on one of his voyages, should anything happen."
Frankly, Barnabas thought that was wrong, and on more than one head. He couldn't see what good silver would do, since silver had never affected him as a vampire. A silver bullet penetrating his vampire heart would have been a different matter, but he could handle silver and had many times, even when he had been undead. Perhaps silver's effectiveness against the undead was nothing more than Eastern European legend, though it was a mean weapon when it came to werewolves. Also, had David been his child, he would never have allowed him so close to Castlewold. On the other hand, the boy was now a teen, and trying to explain why he couldn't attend the rink with the other boys would have meant explaining everything. He could see Roger's position.
But Barnabas was ready to break with Roger on this point. It was stupid and dangerous to keep the young people uninformed.
He looked at Burke appraisingly.
"Elizabeth was attacked."
Concern moved in Burke's eyes. He slowly settled his hands on his hips as he dealt with this information.
"By whom? What happened?"
"Burke," Barnabas said tiredly, "we have a problem, similar to what was going on back in '67 before you left for South America. The truth is that we have a vampire in Collinsport."
Mrs. Johnson and Hallie met in the east wing.
"We'll have you set up in a tick," she promised the girl. "Mr. Collins said it's fine for you to take one of the bedrooms near him and Dr. Liska."
"It's only for a few nights," Hallie promised, trying to pull herself together.
She had requested this temporary move in order to get away from Tisa, whose bedroom adjoined hers in the central hall. Tisa gave her the willies.
Roger had approved the transfer with alacrity. Hallie would feel a good deal safer near Roger and Veronika than in the central portion close to her frightening cousin.
The woman and the girl worked together in the small attractive room, making up the bed, tucking in the sheets and blankets. Hallie placed the pillows she had brought from her bedroom.
Just as they finished, Mrs. Johnson straightened and turned.
"What is it?" asked Hallie, watching the other woman in a listening pose.
"Did you hear that?" asked Mrs. Johnson. "It sounded like someone going into the west wing. That door makes a very particular sound."
"I didn't hear."
"Probably David. For goodness' sake, he's got to leave any minute for the skating rink. Or is it Mr. Collins looking for something? I'll go see."
By the time Veronika, Julia, and Elliot arrived at Collinwood, the men had been conferring for twenty minutes.
Elliot soberly took in the handsome figure of Burke Devlin and smiled when they were introduced.
"I've been telling Barnabas," Burke said in a no-nonsense tone, glancing at each of them, "that you need to stop trying to hide the truth from David. He deserves more respect. And do you really want to keep him and the other kids in the house from knowing that there is an active danger out there?"
Barnabas hastened, "I have shared with Mr. Devlin the news of Elizabeth's condition, and its cause. It has occurred to me, Elliot, that Collinsport was experiencing something of the same troubles four years ago. Burke, at that time, was involved in the investigation."
"What type of investigation?" asked Veronika.
Here, Barnabas had to proceed carefully. Only one person in the room knew that he himself had been the cause of the 1967 terror in Collinsport. That was when he had been wakened from his monstrous sleep by a hapless thief in search of jewels—Willie Loomis—and unleashed upon the town. Barnabas noticed how very still Julia was. She gazed down at her hands.
"It's not as though I remember very much of 1967," Burke muttered, opening his hands. "But something was going on that spring and summer. It had to do with Maggie Evans, didn't it? And Dave Woodard had a weird blood sample from somebody." He shook his head. "I don't recall much more and I don't remember how any of it turned out. You're saying that the same sort of thing is going on now, with Liz's blood."
"We believe so," Julia responded unhappily, glancing around the circle with troubled green eyes, "in fact, we are certain. We feel that there is a vampire preying on the town. There were two children killed at the beginning of the week, I don't know whether you saw that in the newspapers. They were absolutely drained of blood. And now Elizabeth has been bitten in the throat, and is undergoing ... a marked change. We removed her from the house because it is obviously a little too easy for the vampire to get at her here."
"Drained of blood, why does that ring a bell? Didn't that happen in 1967 to somebody's cattle?"
"Right," Barnabas replied. He looked a little white about the mouth.
"And Liz is in a safe place?" Burke persisted. "Is any place safe from this type of assault?"
Elliot smiled thinly. "We have taken certain steps to make it so."
Burke briefly ran his hands over his hair. "Well, this is a lot to throw at a guy. Veronika? Do you concur with the general assessment?"
"We are divided there," Julia admitted, answering before Veronika could. "As far as I am concerned, there is no question. Elizabeth had dual puncture marks on her neck. She can't bear the light, she's fretful and restive. Screaming at us to leave her alone, and dropping into a faint if pressed too hard. She won't reveal what did this to her."
"Jesus," Burke whispered, staring at Julia. His jaw clenched.
Veronika looked helplessly at Burke. "There is no such thing as a vampire. I don't understand any of this. Elizabeth would not let me examine her, but from the way she is behaving, I think she ought to be hospitalized at once. She is undergoing some sort of psychoneurosis that needs to be explored. I cannot fathom Dr. Hoffman's stance in the matter."
"Dr. Liska," Julia chastised her, "we've seen this before. I know how foolish it might look on its face, but are you enough of a scientific pioneer to explore the possibility of this? And I am sorry to say that this is not Collinsport's first encounter with vampires."
Veronika hesitated under Julia's indomitable gaze, then let out her breath in a frustrated burst. "We'll have to wrestle the question some other time, I'm afraid. And soon. I can't, in good conscience, continue to stand by and see the woman imprisoned in the—where she is," Veronika said uneasily. She had seen Julia raise her hands in urgent deprecation to forestall her next words.
"Just where is Liz?" Burke asked in frustration.
"Somewhere very safe," Elliot said smoothly. "And now, I wonder whether we ought to take advantage of having the house to ourselves, for I see it is time for David and Roger to be off. We will have a good long time to listen to your story, Mr. Devlin. I look forward to it very much if you will permit that I stay."
"Burke was going to tell Elizabeth tonight everything that happened to him in Brazil," Barnabas told Veronika. "It is naturally a disappointment to him that she isn't here. Burke, would you allow the four of us to listen to the story, on her behalf? We can act as her representatives until she is well enough to come back."
Burke meditated. He wasn't pleased. "All right," he growled. "I don't mind telling the four of you. But listen, I want to know where she's being kept," he said harshly. He shot dark eyes at Elliot. "Perhaps after Professor Stokes has had a little more time to evaluate me, you people will tell me what you've done with Liz."
Not likely, Elliot thought.
He smiled frankly at Burke. "Quite shrewd of you, Mr. Devlin. Yes, you and I are strangers to one another at this point. But I warn you, I am being very cagey about sharing information until we unmask the monster and destroy him."
"Him," Burke uttered, and gave a tight smile. His eyes hooked into Elliot's. "How do you know it's a him?"
No one had anything to say in response.
Burke glanced around at his audience. Elizabeth was not there, which upset him. But neither, thank God, was Roger—he would have called the thing off had Roger insisted upon sitting in. Around him sat Barnabas, Julia, Veronika, and Stokes. He had steeled himself psychologically to tell his story this evening, so he might as well get it over with. He began.
"Okay, where the hell do I start. I recall very little about the crash itself. I know it was two hours from Belém to Manaus by air. Both cities are in Brazil, with the Amazon River lying between. I had business in Manaus. Had I safely arrived there, the plan was to continue on to Grenada for a stopover with friends, presumably to announce my engagement to Vicky, then straight on to Bangor. These details only came back to me a couple of months ago.
"I never made it to my friends in Grenada, of course. I don't even remember their names anymore.
"We were over the Amazon River when the pilot began shouting. There was so much noise, and I was so far down the rear of the plane, I couldn't hear what he said. We dipped a few times and I remember the treetops coming at us from an angle. I think I also remember seeing sparkling water, like sunshine spangling the surface of the river, but it was upside down—in other words, above me. That might have been a hallucination; I'll never know. I've worked hard for years just to dredge up this much recall about the crash.
"I don't remember us actually smashing into the earth. The next thing I was aware of was lying stretched out on the ground in some kind of rude shelter. This was now weeks later, but I had no way of knowing that. I'll never forget the smell of that shack—stew cooking over an outside fire, flowers, and a god-awful stink. What smelled so badly was my bloody bandages. I was in a campesino settlement called Baroté, but of course, I had no clue. Campesinos are peasants, rural farm people. We were in the rainforest.
"All my attention was focused on my body. I was the …what's the word. The—locus, that's it, I was the locus of excruciating pain, wave after wave of it. When you're in that much pain, everything telescopes inward. I could hardly sense my surroundings. If I wasn't screaming or panting with pain, I was unconscious. It seemed that my only reason for being alive was to go through this agony. The family whose home I was in tried their best to take care of me. They spoke to me, but I couldn't understand them. I just lay there and stared at them, gnashing my teeth. I was dressed in someone else's clothes, a loose woven shirt too big for me that stank of someone else, and somebody's pants that were too small. The family took turns feeding me, and then, after a long time, slapped a spoon into my hand and insisted I feed myself. I think half the camp wanted to baby me, but the other half knew that was the wrong thing to do. They wanted me to recover all the way, for my sake.
"I guess I died a few times, but they said that they'd brought me back with prayer, and doing things like dashing water in my face. They could hardly slap my face, or do chest compressions—my head was broken up, my chest was broken up. Everything I had was smashed to smithereens.
"After a while, a stranger and his sons came and carried me off. I remember the silent procession through the rainforest. At first I could see the stars, but they soon vanished; we were journeying deep into the interior where the stars don't penetrate the treetops. Whenever I'd shriek in agony, they'd hastily stop and clap a hand over my mouth. The stranger whispered to me, and though I couldn't understand his words, I'd quiet down. I understood from their behavior that there was danger somewhere, and that it was crucial to be noiseless.
"I stayed with this guy and his sons for quite a long time in a settlement even smaller than Baroté. The man's name was Kaique Lustosa. He was a native of the area, looked and dressed like a regular farmer, though he wasn't really a farmer.
"At this point, let me explain that I'd entirely lost my memory due to the trauma of the crash. Didn't know who I was, didn't care, and had lost all desire to speak. But they knew I was an American because they'd seen my identification in my wallet—which was taken away from me. I'll explain that later.
"Lustosa bound my wounds with poultices. He also gave me some pretty crazy drugs, and, boy, they worked against the pain. The other campesinos had set my broken bones. To distract me from my physical agony between doses, Lustosa began Spanish language lessons. I'd known some Spanish before the crash—I must have—but it was all gone.
"This might be easier for you to understand if I stop here to explain my physical condition.
"I'd broken 13 bones, and my skull had shattered four ways to Christmas. I had every type of skull fracture in the book; you name it, my head had done it. My brains were almost leaking out of my ears, and by rights I shouldn't have survived, but there I was."
"Dear God," Veronika said, massaging her forehead as though it ached. Burke smiled at her.
"Living with the Lustosas was a little frightening. Though they took excellent care of me, and were kind, the sons would slam into the shelter and scare me to death, drag me out of bed, force me to walk around the camp with them. They did this on their father's orders; Lustosa senior was trying to keep me alive, get me engaged and moving again. It was torturous, but finally I was able to sit up without help and stagger around on rudimentary crutches. I yelled at them nonstop, but they were pretty good sports about it.
"But through this, my mind was entirely gone. I questioned nothing. I didn't know how I'd got there or who I was, and it didn't much seem to matter. Things simply were the way they were.
"At night we'd eat by the campfire, and just linger on for hours with nobody speaking. This was a truly silent family. I was the only character out of place, hollering all the time, but they finally taught me to shut up.
"Time went on. Then one day, out of nowhere, it occurred to me to ask them what day it was, and whether I could see a newspaper. They looked at me but said nothing. By this time, I had pieced together that I was from some other place and didn't belong here. I was getting the sense that I had been interrupted on a journey. The image of an airport was beginning to form in my mind, and with it, a sense of urgency. I figured I was probably three weeks or maybe a month overdue for wherever I'd been headed, and that perhaps people were waiting for me. I felt I ought to try to find out whether anyone was looking for me. Lustosa got a strange look on his face and turned his eyes away, which I couldn't figure out.
"Days passed, and I got more obst—obstr—" Burke struggled, "obstinate. …obstreperous. I begged them for information about myself. And I wanted to know the date.
"Soon after that, César—the elder son—brought me an old newspaper. It looked ancient. It was grimy and practically coming apart from the rainforest humidity, and naturally the paper was in Spanish. I made out the date of it all right—February 11, 1970. I couldn't believe it. Here I thought I'd been out of touch for a couple of weeks, and nearly two-and-a-half years had passed!"
Burke threw his head back in a laugh. There was a suppressed sob in the sound. His features twisted. He gave a wet grunt and pressed his eyes with his hands. Julia's face was wet, and Veronika had a terrible battle to stay seated. She sank her fingers into the armrests of her chair. Barnabas sat unmoving, fascinated and troubled.
Burke pulled himself together, laughed, and spoke. "Seeing the date of that paper did something to my mind. The last time I'd known anything about it, it had been October of 1967; I was sure of that. Within the next few days, I regained a lot of my memory. I knew that my name was Burke Devlin and that there was a woman somewhere waiting for me, even if I couldn't remember her name.
"I could visualize my childhood home, my dad, our house, but couldn't remember the name of my town. I began seeing faces in my mind. Was this one my brother? Was that one my sister? Finally, with a shock, I remembered I'd been about to marry Vicky. I couldn't recapture her name, but I saw her face in my thoughts.
"César had a girl in Galucayas, a town that had a generator and therefore occasionally electrical power. I knew that I could send telegrams from there. But send them to whom? The question drove me mad. I spent days and nights pegging around on my crutches, falling down, trying to get up without help—I wracked my brains for recall, and after what felt like a lifetime, dredged up the name Collinsport. And Vicky, and Collinwood, and Maine." He glanced around the circle. "I still didn't have many of your names, but now I had Vicky's. I figured Collinsport was small enough so that the words "Vicky" and "Collinwood" would get the cable to the right person.
"I got César to send a telegram to Vicky for me the next time he was in Galucayas. Now, since all my things were missing, my money, my watch, even my belt, I couldn't pay for the cables. Lustosa gave his son some pesos and told César to go ahead and send the telegram for me. César did so, and we waited, and after four days he went back to check at the telegraph post office. There was no cable for me.
"My memory was strengthening. I had long talks aloud with myself, and your names all began to recur to me. I realized I was a businessman of means; my memory gave me the names of my bankers, stockbrokers, people I had employed. I remembered Stuart Bronson, James Blair. I could close my eyes and visualize their faces and even their office addresses. As the weeks wore on, I sent telegrams to everybody: Vicky, Liz, Maggie, Sam Evans, Dave Woodard, even you, Julia. I cabled my bank and my attorneys. There was no response. Not one."
"You sent me a telegram?" Julia interrupted, sitting up straight. She looked around at the others with horror. "But I never received—oh, Burke, I swear to you that I—"
"Hang on, Julia," Burke requested tiredly. "No, you wouldn't have gotten it. Just let me continue.
"I didn't know what to make of it. Did Vicky not love me anymore? Had she moved on after such a long time, perhaps moved away? Let me make plain that it still felt to me as though no more than two weeks had passed. Had I been absolutely confirmed dead? Why did none of my friends respond? And my associates, Bronson and Blair, why didn't they answer? Why no response from my bank? …These questions drove me mad. I finally concluded that too much time had passed; these people either didn't want to know me anymore, or more likely, had received my messages and decided someone was masquerading as me. I was dead. I was sure my bankers and stockbrokers had dismissed my communications as a hoax.
"I spent my nights hobbling around that camp like a frustrated maniac, then I'd stumble to my pallet for a few hours of nightmares. My memory was coming alive. And still no word arrived for me at Galucayas."
Burke slumped in his chair. He took up his water glass and swallowed its contents, and continued.
"In time, I grew calm. I had to accept it. Actual years had passed, whether I liked it or not. My fiancée was probably gone. I was old news. I no longer existed.
"One morning, I told Lustosa that I wished to leave. I gave him profuse thanks for saving my life and rehabilitating me. I asked him to draw me a map so that I could return to Baroté to thank the Nunes family. Those were the people who'd taken me in when I was mostly a vegetable. They had also named me Rafael, which means 'healed of God.' I wanted to express my gratitude to everyone there, and prove to them I could walk and talk.
"Hearing my plans, Lustosa looked grave. I remember he bowed his head. It was strange to see this big fellow looking frightened. He said that returning to Baroté would be a mistake and that on no account should I go alone. But I was relentless. I knew that Baroté was a great deal closer to the nearest big city than Lustosa's camp in the rainforest interior. I didn't want to go to Galucayas, because it lay in the opposite direction and sounded awful. I was determined to leave, and Lustosa finally let me go.
"I was given a rough map and told it was a journey of perhaps three nights northeastward. I gathered my strength and set off.
"The rainforest is terrifying. When I look back, knowing what I know now, I'm shocked to think I went out there alone. I was frightened, but by then I knew more about how to survive it than I had. I made it to within a day of Baroté before I got into trouble."
Burke stopped.
"I mentioned earlier," he whispered, "that my wallet and identification had been taken from me. The people of Baroté had gone further than that. They had also taken my watch, money, shoes, and clothes. These things they buried. They did this," he continued in a hushed voice, his eyes on the empty glass in his hand, "to save my life and to protect the settlement. My things would have proved me to be a Westerner. The junta militar was all over the rainforest. Those were roving bands of murderous soldiers from the autocratic regime Brazil's got now under President Medici. These junta kidnapped civilians and made them disappear. Many junta were in the rainforest to get forced recruits from the peasant settlements. They'd tried recruiting students in the cities, but the students couldn't handle the privations of the countryside.
"The people were resisting. Baroté had passed me over to Lustosa not only to save my life—Lustosa was a medicine man—but also to secure their own safety. Had the junta discovered me in Baroté, I would have been executed, or more likely ransomed, and all the men of the settlement put to death likewise for having tried to fool the junta; I'll explain that in a minute. Baroté had buried my belongings deep in the ground. I have no doubt that they intended to give it all back if I returned, but for the present, this was the only course of safety.
"So, there I was, alone in the wild, a day's journey from Baroté. I made camp for the night and went to bed. The junta must have heard me cry out in my sleep. Worse luck, they probably heard me yelling in English. That was all they needed—the secret was out. I was either an Englishman, or better yet, a wealthy American whom they could ransom for a fortune.
"They attacked while I was asleep. I never had a chance. And they marched me straight to Baroté.
"The people of Baroté are very intelligent. When they had first tracked down our plane burning in the rainforest, they counted the bodies. They knew that the junta would also trace the plane and listen to the radio reports, and know how many passengers had been on the plane. Had the number of remains not added up, the junta would have come looking. With me alive and well, the dead count would have been off."
Burke cleared his throat.
"Now, it's not very difficult to produce a dead body in the rainforest. Snakebite, animal attacks, food poisoning and disease accounted for a lot of deaths. What the settlement did when they had originally found me at the site of the crash was to carry one of their recent dead out there and set his body on fire. They told me that when they left him, he was completely charred. They were protecting me, and themselves, but mostly me. This is a deeply religious people, and desecrating the body of one of their dead was a—an—anath …. " Burke began to struggle.
"Anathema?" Veronika quietly supplied.
Burke smiled. "Yes, thank you, doc. This was anathema to them. But they did it. The junta probably definitely came upon the crashed plane, counted the bodies, and was satisfied. But it was all for nothing.
"I don't want to remember what happened next, much less tell you about it, but here goes." He passed his hand over his face, took a deep breath through his nostrils, and continued.
"It was obvious that I wasn't part of the settlement. I was about a foot taller than everyone else, and despite my terrific sunburn, I had a lighter complexion. I was barely beyond beginner-level Spanish. Pretending was out.
"The junta forced the people of Baroté to dig a deep, wide pit, and tossed me in it. They positioned a felled tree across the center of the pit, over me. My shirt was ripped off, and they threw a rope over that tree and tied me to it so that I was suspended there, my hands over my head. I was shocked when one of the junta jumped into the pit with a whip and started using it on me. I was repeatedly interrogated. I didn't have much to say for myself. They wanted to know my name and the names and addresses of those back home they could touch for my ransom, or possibly kidnap in their turn. The hell with that! I told them to piss up a rope.
"At the same time, they brutalized the people in the settlement, whipping and starving them, trying to get the same information out of them. Most of the peasants couldn't read and didn't know my name, but they sure as hell knew where my ID was buried. Nobody broke, nobody turned my things over to the junta. No one said a word.
"This went on for a while. The junta gave me water but not much food. I lost count of how many whipping sessions I suffered. I forgot everything but the pain, my rage, and Vicky's face."
Burke fell silent. He wasn't going to tell these people everything that had happened to him; nothing could make him do that. It was bad enough that this one thing would always live in his own mind.
July 1970
12 miles north of Rio Preto da Eva, State of Pará, Brazil
Baroté Settlement
Burke hung his head and took a breath. He couldn't get his eyes open; dried blood had matted his lashes to his cheeks.
He could hear Gama slowly pacing above him along the rim of the pit. This was the officer who had begged to be in charge of Burke's 'interrogation.'
By stages, he got his eyelashes unstuck. If only he had the use of his hands; but they were tied over his head and he could no longer feel them. His feet barely touched the ground. It was difficult to breathe. He stared at the roots and stones that dotted the walls of the pit. He'd been down here long enough to memorize their pattern. They were indistinct; that meant that dark was coming.
A bug stung him between his aching shoulder-blades. He tried to roll his back muscles, but what good would that do? Did he think he could make the insect stop stinging?
Something hard tapped him on the side of his face, and he grunted as it slid down his cheek. Gama, spitting on him. He took a moment to master his rage, then slowly turned his face upwards to where Gama stood looking down on him, one boot perched against the felled tree that lay transverse across the pit.
Burke blinked, thinking he was seeing things. Slightly behind Gama, at his shoulder, stood a tall person in costume wearing a mask and headgear. The effect was frightful, giving its wearer a cloven head. A formidable forehead, painted red, simply split in the middle and grew upwards in two thick lumps that curved backwards like ram's horns. The whites of the eyes were an unpleasing dark orange threaded with ropy blood vessels. Strangely, the nose was a delicate aquiline. The expression, if it could be called that, was one of diabolical idiocy. The mask looked as though it had just been told a horror story. Fangs like hooks protruded from what appeared to be a slack wet mouth.
Suspended painfully by his wrists, his lungs straining for breath in this inimical posture, Burke gazed from Gama to the masked figure beside him. Must be Mardi Gras, he thought tiredly, though he was more than four months off in his calculations. It was all he could come up with.
The individual wore a reddish robe with emblems slashed all over the weird, fibrous fabric. The characters didn't look Chinese or Hebrew or Arabic. For a second he recalled H.P. Lovecraft stories. He dully wondered what the costumed figure was supposed to represent as it stood staring, unmoving behind Gama. He wondered why the junta had such vestments with them in the rainforest.
Gama addressed him.
"Hey, big American. You want some bread and meat? We have naked young girls in the kitchen. The little cunts of Baroté are cooking dinner for us."
Burke mentally translated Gama's words to English and then immediately shut out the image of the little daughters of his friends being abused up there by the junta.
He was accustomed to Gama asking him if he was hungry. He would never again answer yes; he'd learned what that brought him. The one time he'd weakened and tiredly agreed that he wanted to eat, Gama had gone away for an hour and then returned with a leather bag full of liquid and a flexible pipe. It had taken four of them, but they'd finally gotten the pipe down his throat and filled him with liquified waste. He'd vomited so violently that they'd cut him down for the day, leaving him retching uncontrollably, convulsing in the mud.
Now Burke just looked from Gama to the silent figure behind him. The contrast was startling. In his twenties, Arturo Gama had the sleepy hazel eyes and pouty lips of a teen idol. His brown hair was streaked from the sun and swirled casually away from his face. His teeth were perfect, if yellow. The dimples in his cheeks would have been endearing on somebody else. Gama was a sadist, and when he smiled, you got uncomfortable in the region of your bowels. And there was the moveless person beside him wearing the frightening, staring mask and headgear with its cloven head, standing there utterly noiseless. The mask stared at Burke, but then he thought that its irises slowly dragged upwards, directing its glance over Burke's head, like it was studying the rope that held him. Had those frozen eyes moved? They couldn't move. It must have been a shift of the mask; either that, or he himself was so broken and exhausted that he couldn't trust his own vision.
The mask couldn't have moved its eyes.
Something else seemed wrong to Burke, and to get his mind off his multitude of hurts, he concentrated on it furiously. From what he could see, the man's chest was odd. Was he actually wearing the mask on the back of his head and facing away from the pit? For in the chest area the articulation of muscle and bone seemed wrong, exaggerated. His weary mind searched for a comparison. It was like the chest of a Komodo dragon, the almost swaybacked effect of a lizard chest supported on either side by squat, tense limbs. But this man was upright on two legs—right? Burke couldn't see much of the figure, but he had to be. Men didn't walk on all fours. If he were on all fours, then he had some long damned limbs. Burke noted that the set of the shoulders was wrong, too, like they had been wrenched backwards nearly one full rotation.
Certain that he himself could not have dreamed up such a figure, he felt that this couldn't be a delusion. It was just some sort of trick.
Did Gama and this freak expect him to tell them good evening? Bullshit. He waited for Gama to do something.
Gama's lips parted, obviously about to deliver a wisecrack.
The thing beside him cocked its head and lunged its gray fangs into Gama's throat.
In the pit, Burke leapt in reaction, jerking his restraints.
Gama's face changed. He did not move except as tugged by the violence of the creature's champing mouth that shivered him like a toy in the teeth of a dog. He looked surprised.
His eyes rolled back in his head, perfect lips still open and silent.
The attacker had not blinked. Burke could see that one of the creature's wide-open eyes was smashed against Gama's jaw. The powerful, devouring mouth with its muscular grasping lips siphoned and sucked; before Burke's eyes, Gama was turning very pale. Still he stood upright; the creature must have been supporting him, the better to drain his blood. At the force of the thing's titanic vacuuming suck, Gama's shoulders, chest and arms began to shrug upwards as his tendons and muscles curled in response to the ungodly pull.
Burke was horror-struck. He understood then that Gama had not known something was beside him.
Only Burke had seen the thing.
Rapt, he stood helpless in the pit, wrists weeping against the rope, and watched as Arturo Gama was sucked empty.
Later, Burke understood that the following morning a human leg, white as pearl, complete from toes to hipbone and perfect curved buttock, was discovered outside the cooking shed. Ants should have devoured the leg, but they hadn't. There wasn't one ant found on it.
Gama was missing. His companions were quiet.
The next event to occur was that Gama's head was found poised in the center of the community dining table in the clearing. He looked as though he were fast asleep, his complexion a dusky gray. The congealed blood from the severed neck should have drawn every insect within two miles, but the head lay inviolate, as if no natural thing would touch it.
At night, hanging in the lightless pit, Burke was as silent as he could make himself be. He tried not to gasp or fret in his bonds as the slow hours passed. His eyes ranged ceaselessly over the rim of the pit and beyond, scanning the dark trees for the return of the abomination he had seen.
He shivered the recall away, ransacked his thoughts, picked up where he'd left off.
"Then one day, something incredible happened. Guerrilla fighters in the area realized that the military had taken Baroté. They attacked and pretty much decimated the junta. That was a glorious day for us; everybody cried. The rebels hauled me up out of the pit, asked the peasants who the hell I was. I got a lot of personal satisfaction when they buried the bodies of the junta in the hole I'd been tortured in.
"The guerrillas didn't necessarily want to deal with me after we were all liberated, but they talked it out and decided the least they could do was get me to a hospital. So they did. I was transported to one local hospital after another and then finally back to the big hospital in Belém.
"Before I left, Baroté made certain I got my valuables back. My clothes and money had all pretty much rotted by that time, and moisture had ruined my watch, belt and shoes. The guerrillas set me up with a spare uniform.
"Something else happened. César Lustosa showed up in Baroté before I left, and confessed that he'd never sent any of my telegrams. Not one. I was too sick with pain to do anything about it, but of course, I was incensed.
"Lustosa had told him to pretend to send the cables. I suppose he was thinking of safety, but no matter how I tried to explain it to myself, I couldn't follow his reasoning. But that really broke me. I felt betrayed.
"By the time we arrived in Belém, I was down with dengue fever. Just as I was recovering from that, I was hit with my first attack of malaria. It took me a long time to pull myself together. And then, well, let's just say I faced a few other hurdles. I was seven or eight months in the hospital."
"I was a nine days' wonder with the medical staff because I'd had so many broken bones, not to mention multiple skull fractures, all of which had been treated in the rainforest by a medicine man. And yet I was walking and talking, and mostly coherent." He grinned.
"It was funny how in the rainforest I had pretty much kept my health; but the moment I was in the hospital, I fell apart. I was really sick and delirious for a while.
"My back was badly infected from the whipping and the dirty conditions. They shaved my head so that they could examine the healed fractures. A hospital resident realized that I spoke English and engaged me in conversation in that language, so I began to use English again. I realized how close I'd come to having forgotten my native tongue.
"This resident, his name was Dr. Blanco, wanted me to swim for physical therapy, but the hospital had no pool. Blanco spoke to his fiancée's father, a wealthy man in São Luis with a mansion and an indoor pool. This millionaire's name was Gustavo Iscarra. He became interested, and sent someone to fetch me. Here I was claiming to be a millionaire myself, with no way to prove it. He invited me to stay at his villa and use the pool at all hours for my exercises. At this point I was walking stiffly, like a zombie, and really needed the therapy a pool could offer, so I didn't mind going to São Luis.
"I was with him for about five months, and I grew stronger, more limber, using his pool.
"Gustavo and I had long conversations in the evening when his business had concluded. We discussed banking and business trends. Every morning we checked out the international stock markets. We talked of the violent Medici regime and the political woes of Brazil. I believe he found me entertaining company, but decided I was a poseur and con man who'd never earned more than three thousand dollars in a year. He didn't believe I was a millionaire in my own right.
"I told him I needed to telegram my attorneys and bankers. He paid for the cables, and replies started coming in. For I had remembered something.
"When I'd made my first million, I'd set up a trust for myself, the terms of which were as follows: if ever I disappeared or were feared dead, all monies would be channeled into high-interest-bearing accounts for seven years. This was a feature I'd dreamed up in prison. At the end of seven years, if I didn't show up, this money would go to a selected charity, and no power on earth could stop it. But if I returned within seven years and proved it was really me, it would all be there waiting for me. So I knew that once I'd proven my identity, I'd still be wealthy. However, my attorneys weren't going to take the word of some faceless guy in South America sending them telegrams; I'd have to come in person and be questioned, and let them have a look at me.
"I sent no more telegrams to Vicky. I was going to come to her in person.
"Gustavo was a kind man, but didn't believe my claims of wealth; not even when I showed him cables from my attorneys. I finally laid a bet with him: if he would pay my airfare all the way back to Maine, I would repay every centavo he had expended on my behalf before his next birthday. And his birthday was right around the corner. He smiled, thought it was a good joke. And he agreed.
"On September 16 of this year, I landed at Bangor International Airport. I checked into a hotel and summoned all my associates. They were flabbergasted. They recognized me. Further than that, I had been able to recall passwords and number codes that proved irrevocably that I was who I said I was.
"I was home. I was a millionaire again. I was Burke Devlin again.
"That was difficult getting used to. I remembered who I'd been before my rainforest adventure, and how healthy I'd been. A safety deposit box had photos of me for my attorneys to be able to prove my physical resemblance if ever needed. Physically, I was altered. I still had two eyes, a nose and a mouth, but so much else had changed. My eyes had frightening depths, my face had new lines—I looked like I'd gone through dire straits. My body was permanently scarred, and I might have malarial attacks for the rest of my life. Recovering from malaria means that I shouldn't be living in Maine, but Collinsport was my home. I didn't want to be anywhere else.
"I realized, too, that sometimes I was mentally confused. I've forgotten things that had happened just before my plane crash, and at times I struggle to recall certain words. I can't always come up with someone's name right on the spot. Things had changed.
"One of the best moments of my new life came on October 4th, when I sent Gustavo Iscarra, one week before his birthday, several thousand dollars from my bank—my upkeep at his expense in his home, payment for the cables, and settlement of the hospital bill I owed his son-in-law.
"Once I'd done that, I finished straightening out multiple money matters and bought myself a new wardrobe. That was a hell of a day—I was so shaky, Stuart Bronson and his son had to come clothes shopping with me. And I arrived in Collinsport this past Sunday.
"And that's it. And here I am."
Burke smiled.