8
Culann stood as the boat pulled into view. The dogs surrounding him whined nervously. He still considered the possibility that this was all a drug-induced hallucination, but it certainly seemed real enough. An eighteen-foot canoe cut through the fog. A lantern dangled from a pole at the bow. Just behind the lantern, a figure paddled off the port side. Another figure stood astride the middle of the canoe, pointing towards the shore. At the stern sat a third figure who paddled off the starboard side. As the canoe approached, the two paddlers pulled in their oars and allowed the boat to glide over to Culann.
“You?” said the standing figure in a hauntingly-familiar voice.
“Oh, shit.”
The Captain hopped up onto the dock in one step. The canoe barely rocked. His companions stumbled after him with considerably less grace. As the Captain approached, the dogs slunk away, leaving Culann to face him alone. The Captain wore his usual bomber jacket and aviator sunglasses. He was accompanied by a skinny Inuit teenager wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and a round little white kid in cargo shorts and a t-shirt.
The skinny one rubbed the back of his neck while the fat one surveyed as much of the fog-blanketed island as he could see.
“How are you still alive?” the Captain demanded.
“I don’t know,” Culann replied. “It doesn’t affect me for some reason.”
“The others?”
“They’re all dead.”
The Captain shook his head and said, “You shouldn’t have taken it from me.”
“I know that now. What is it?”
“It is something you have no hope of understanding, much less controlling.”
“Doesn’t it affect you?” Culann asked.
“No. I thought I was the only one. Apparently I was wrong.”
“What about them?”
The Captain shook his head. The two boys looked at one another.
“What’s going on?” the skinny one asked. “Are we in danger?”
Without turning to face him, the Captain replied, “You are both going to die.”
“Fuck this,” the fat one said. “Let’s get out here.”
He turned and headed back to the canoe. The Captain spun around and shot him in the back. The kid toppled forward into the water. The skinny one held up his hands and backed away. The Captain shot him in the chest, and he collapsed onto the deck.
The dogs howled behind Culann. He still wore Williams’ belt and had a gun of his own within inches of his hand, but he couldn’t bring himself to draw it. He’d never fired a gun in his life, so he was unlikely to win a shootout with the Captain. The Captain turned back around to face him, and the dogs instantly got quiet.
“They were going to die anyway,” he said.
“Maybe not,” Culann replied. “After all, you and I are still alive.”
“For now.”
The fog was now so thick Culann could see only a few feet in front of him to where the Captain stood. The Captain left his sunglasses on anyway. He still held the gun in his right hand, but he dangled it at his side. The Captain evidently hadn’t seen Williams’ pistol, which was covered by the hem of Culann’s t-shirt.
“Where is it?” the Captain asked in his booming, mechanical voice.
“I threw it back in the water.”
“Don’t lie to me. I know it’s close.”
“I’m not lying. It’s in the water. I can probably fish it back out again, but not until you tell me what the hell is going on.”
“You are not in a position to make demands, greenhorn. I found it in the middle of the goddamned ocean. You can’t hide it from me here.”
“I didn’t say I wanted to hide it from you. I just want to know what it is and what you are going to do with it.”
The Captain stood silent for a moment. Culann could read nothing in his impassive expression, but he could feel the Captain staring at him from behind those dark lenses. After careful consideration, the Captain raised his arm and shot Culann in the right thigh.
The bullet ran through Culann’s flesh like a sharp jolt of electricity. Aftershocks of hot pain coursed up and down his leg. Culann dropped to the deck and pressed his hands over the two clean holes on either side of his thigh. The dogs let out another chorus of whimpers, but they stayed back.
“Now that we understand each other,” the Captain said, “I’m going to tell you what you want to know. When I’m done, I’m going to ask you again where it is. Each second that goes by without you telling me what I want to know is going to mean another bullet. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” Culann hissed through clenched teeth.
“Good. Now pay attention, because when the story ends, we’re getting back to business.”
9
“I first found it forty years ago. We were on a bombing run over Cambodia when all of a sudden my instruments stopped, and my engines went dead. We crashed deep in the jungle. I came out okay, but my DSO was killed, and my observer had two broken legs. I went to see if I could find some friendlies to help us.
“The jungle was totally quiet. I’d been in country for four years, and the jungle was always full of noise from insects, birds, monkeys, and all the other wildlife. When I climbed out of my plane, there was absolute silence.
“My compass didn’t work, so I just picked a direction at random and started walking. The jungle was dense, and I didn’t have a machete, so I humped it pretty slowly.
There were no bugs, which was really odd for the thick of the Cambodian jungle. After about an hour, I came upon an old temple in a clearing, right in the middle of nowhere.
“The temple was centuries old. It was built from cut stones that were now covered with moss and vines, but at one time it must have looked like the ziggurats in Sumeria.
The bottom half was like a pyramid with a big staircase carved into one side that led up to the top half, which looked like a Greek temple, with columns all around. This was a holy place, or the opposite, and I could feel power coming from it. Even though it was over a hundred degrees out, I was shivering.
“I had no idea where I was. I thought that maybe if I climbed to the top of this thing, I could get a better view of my surroundings. As I approached, these two
“The temple was full of bones. They were human bones organized into a couple hundred lines. There was one line of skulls, one line of femurs, one line of knucklebones.
Someone had taken the time to sort through a dozen or so bodies. And then I saw one intact skeleton set against the wall. As I moved closer, I realized that it wasn’t a skeleton, it was a man, and he was still alive.
“He was an old man, ancient, and he was completely bald and completely naked.
He was so skinny he looked like bones wrapped in old leather. He grinned at me when I approached and he didn’t have any teeth. He was sitting Indian-style with his hands folded in front of him like he was praying. I assumed he was some kind of hermit monk who’d gone crazy out here all by himself, which is probably the truth.
“It was sitting on the ground in front of him, and I realized he was praying to it. I walked closer to him, stepping one foot over the other on the narrow path between lines of bones, which I didn’t want to touch—bad voodoo.
