Bed of Nails (18 page)

“So that leaves Wes. Lister and Grimmer had a falling-out, and the partnership broke up. Did the up-and-comer get too big for his britches in Bret’s eyes? Not only did Wes get the Ripper and the rest of Bret’s client base, but he had the nerve to write a thriller that rivals
Crown of Thorns,
and one that attracted a mainstream publisher. Is Wes feeding off Bret’s Hanged Man murder of Cardoza, or was
Halo of Flies
inspired by Wes’s own crime?”

“He knows the Ripper,” Ralph said. “He was on the ghost tour. He has a copy of the program. And—thanks partly to the Hanged Man crime down here—he and his novel are a hit at the convention.”

“It says here in the program”—Zinc held it out—“that Bret Lister and Wes Grimmer are about to do round two in their bareknuckle bout. ‘How to Write a Horror Best-seller: Is There a Demon You Can Sell Your Soul To?’”

“I wonder,” said Ralph.

“Wonder what?”

“If there is. And if one of them did.”

Thanks to the Ripper’s having provided the key to the occult realm, the Goth had thrown the gates of time wide open. For the past seventeen months, the Goth had wormholed at will through the astral plane, experiencing the cannibal horrors currently on display in the painting
Morlocks,
which hung in the Morbid Maze gallery at this hotel. As the Tarot killers had discussed the last time they met at the mental hospital on Colony Farm, it had taken a year and a half for the Goth to set up the Ripper’s revenge. But now the trap had been baited with the new Hanged Man victim in Seattle, and the Mountie had been lured to the horror convention.

First, the bait.

Next, the hook through Zinc Chandler’s cheek.

The Goth sat at a writing desk that faced a mirror that could have been the looking-glass to Wonderland. On the surface of the desk lay a blank sketching pad. The rancid odor of insanity began to fill the hotel room as the Goth’s psychosis slipped out of hiding and into a florid state. Curtained windows along the wall that looked out at the swimming pool hid the antics of children in the water from the psycho’s eyes. Slowly, the spark of consciousness in those eyes dulled, until their stare was as blank as the sheet of drawing paper.

The Goth was time-traveling.

Back …

Back …

Back …

Cries from the horizon announce the return of war canoes. Some of the double-hulled
drua
in the Bauan war fleet are so big that they carry 250 warriors along with cargo. The cargo this morning is
bakola
from a raid on the Rewa, a rival coastal clan. The anticipation of glutting themselves on “long pig” at the victory feast brings the islanders running joyously to the beach. What brings the reverend to the door of his small Christian mission on this side of the narrow stream that separates it from the god-house of the cannibal king are the screams of captured children hanging from their heels atop the masts.

The year is 1838; the place, the Fiji Islands.

I’ve traveled back to get ideas for the Odyssey.

Time travel is nothing like how it was described to me. No doubt that’s because the Ripper signed the symbols in the Hanged Man wrong, and consequently he has to cope with the cosmic glitches that result from an incomplete cycle of occult manifestation. But for me, it’s like casting a mental yo-yo into my personal wormhole through space-time. Unlike the Ripper, I can go wherever and whenever I want. Nothing but my free will determines whether I stay there physically forever or pull my consciousness back to the here and now.

I’m a free spirit.

And I have all the time in the world.

That’s how I currently find myself in the yard out front of the Fiji mission. This mission church is similar to the one where I grew up in Mission, British Columbia, and to the one my ancestors built in the Cook Islands, back in times parallel to these. It’s a white clapboard chapel with a steeple over the door. The god-house beyond the stream is a thatched temple with a heap of sun-bleached bones piled out back. The skull of each
bakola
eaten by the cannibal king—smashed open to add its brain to past feasts—sits atop a separate stone set in a line along the beach. History will later record the number of stones as 872.

Now the frantic rhythm of beating drums drowns out the masthead screams. This is a portentous sound, never to be forgotten, for the pounding of hollow bamboo stamping tubes on board answered by drums on the beach is heard solely before a village feast.
Thudda-thudda
...
thudda-thudda
... My heart thuds in time with the driving beat as the long pigs come into view.

The enemy dead are sitting up in the prow of each canoe. Arrayed in two rows along the bow deck, the corpses squat on their hindquarters with their knees cocked up and their hands lashed together around their jackknifed legs so there is space enough in the hind part of the bend for a long pole. Side by side, each body supports the others as the
bakolas
sit strung along the poles like shish kebabs. Vermilion and soot were used to paint the naked dead bound for the god-house ovens, so they still look like they did alive in battle.

The god of war has triumphed.

Times are good.

The beaching of the canoes sparks activity on deck. Unstrung, the
bakolas
are thrown into the surf for cleansing and purification. To keep the corpses from floating away, the Bauan warriors link each one to its boat by a vine stem tied around one wrist. As for the fifty living children hoisted up to the mastheads as victory flags, the rocking motion of the canoes has knocked some out, silencing their piercing cries. Conscious or unconscious, down they drop as the hoists are cut, then each is thrown into the water to sink or swim. Those who stumble ashore face a deadlier threat, as Bauan boys learn the art of Fijian warfare by firing arrows at them or bashing their brains out with clubs.

“‘Suffer the little children to come unto me,’” the reverend prays as he holds a Christian cross high at the mission door.

“Fat chance,” I say.

He turns to frown blankly at me. No doubt he’s wondering how in hell I materialized in his yard.

“Magick,” I offer.

What little clothing the warriors wear is shed as they jump off the boats and onto the sand. There, they begin to dance the
cibi
in unison in front of the god-house. Hundreds of naked cannibals strut their stuff for a horde of stripping women, the ceremony accompanied by the erotic rhythm from several villagers hammering on the end of a hollow log. Each trying to outdo the others in ferocious overkill, the men have painted their faces and bodies with hideous patterns. Amid terrific yells that punctuate their war chants, the victory dance is made up of a series of threatening and boastful poses with bloody clubs and spears. Their arms extended, some fall backwards onto the beach, only to spring forward to regain their feet. Others flaunt erections raised by all the excitement.

Now it’s the women’s turn to dance the lewd
dele.
The only Fijian dance for which they strip bare, it praises the prowess of their heroes and insults the
bakolas.
The men haul the bodies out of the surf and lay them face up on the sand. While their breasts bob to the beat of the drums and their hips undulate, the women dance suggestively to mock the corpses. Killing and eating the Rewa isn’t enough, so they prod the genitals of the dead with sticks as they sing.

I take note.

For the Odyssey.

Despite the overpowering heat, the reverend sweats it out in his suit of Bible black, as if the stifling garment is the armor of God. Watching him stare in horror at the ritual on the beach, I suspect he’s more affronted by the sex than the violence.

“Father forgive them …” he mumbles.

His words trail off.

“Are we having fun yet?” I jest.

Brandishing their clubs and tossing them into the air like jugglers, some of the warriors lead a parade up the beach to the god-house while others drag the
bakolas
facedown through the sand like logs to be fed to a fire. The cannibal king and his high priest stand waiting at the temple. Both men are larded with layers of flab from lifetimes of consuming the fatty flesh of other humans. The
bakolas
are flung at the feet of the cannibal king as the high priest dedicates each in turn to the Bauan god of war.

The braining stone—the
vatu ni mena
—is a heavy column that has been erected on the grounds of the temple. As each
bakola
falls prey to the appetite of the god, his brain is sacrificed to the stone. A pair of burly islanders each grab hold of an arm and a leg to lift the corpse from the ground, then, using the body as a human battering ram, run with it at top speed to smash the skull open against the phallic column, the way they crack coconuts for their meat.

Crackkk!

Crackkk!

Crackkk!

The burly batterers carry the corpse back to the high priest. So fat he finds it difficult to bend over the remains, the priest combs hair away from the crown of the shattered skull so that his fingers, plump as sausages, can pluck shards of bone out of the tissue that has been bared by the braining against the stone. With a blade, he cuts the organ free from its calcium confines and drops it into the yawning mouth of the brain pot close at hand. There, the brains will boil in blood for the next few hours, until the flesh is reduced to a simmering savory stew swimming in a rich red gravy that’s fit for a god of war.

A god who is fed through the mouths of the priest and the king.

To squeals of joy from the naked women crowding in front of the god-house, the priest slices the genitals off each enemy warrior. Females are barred from partaking in the cannibal feast, so they get their kicks in vicarious ways.

On the bank of the narrow stream flowing between the god-house and the mission, at the back corner of the temple grounds, grows a sacred grove. The
akau tabu
—the “forbidden tree”—stands in the center of the grove, surrounded by a ring of shaddock trees. The forks of the shaddock trees are wedged with trophy bones from previous cannibal feasts. I can make out the bones that garnish the nearest trophy tree: two thighbones, a jawbone, a shoulder blade, and several ribs. Evidently, they date from a while back, for the bark of the tree has grown to incorporate them into its trunk.

The
akau tabu
is a large ironwood tree selected for its conspicuous location. From its limbs dangle countless scraps of skin that, if this were the Wild West, could be scalps. Belying that, however, is the kinky, curly nature of the hair, which matches that in the pile of sex organs sliced off the
bakolas
by the high priest.

When the pile is big enough to warrant a walk to the grove, one of the lesser priests conveys the genitals to the genital tree and proceeds to hang them along the hairy branches like Monday-morning washing along a clothesline. As a new supply of forbidden fruit is added to the already abundant tree, I watch the reactions of some of the women who cry out with ecstasy, and wonder what fantasies pass through the minds of these Eves in Eden.

Cannibalism and castration.

What a heady mix.

Those rituals concluded, it’s time to cook the feast. The butchers of the temple have dug
lovo
—sanctified pit ovens—in the ground around the god-house. One by one, the brainless bodies stripped of their genitals are lugged by the burly pair to the
i sava,
a large flat dissecting stone. On it, the bamboo knives of the butchers go to work, segmenting the bodies into prime cuts. First, the heads are severed, low down on the neck so the shoulders of the torso are flat. The heads are sent back to the high priest, who keeps track of which
bakolas
the king eats to make sure that their skulls are added to the line of stones. Next, the limbs are cut off joint by joint: the hands at the wrists, the arms at the elbows and the armpits, the feet at the ankles, the legs at the knees and the groin. Assistants grab each piece as it falls away from the skill of the chief carver’s knife and pass it off to an assembly line that ends at the ovens. Along the way, the raw flesh is wrapped in plantain leaves, and the most succulent segments—the thighs and the arms—land in special pits. Particularly with long pig, those at the top eat high on the hog.

The culinary art of the chief carver holds me in awe. The knife he wields is a blade of split bamboo. Naturally effective for gross surgery, it is kept razor-sharp by tearing strips off the edge. This the carver does on the upswing with his teeth, and soon the rhythm of slice and tear has him drenched from head to toe in blood. He licks his lips as he works.

Butchering the torso is a sloppier task. Except for the heart—since the
mana
is there—the vital organs and the entrails are thrown aside. The discards are quickly gobbled up by pigs, which forage around the temple to scavenge scraps.

It occurs to me that there is irony here. “Long pig”—
puaka balava
—is strictly for men, while “real pig”—
puaka dina
—is fit for women to eat. But if the pigs around the temple can eat human meat, why isn’t it taboo for women to eat the pigs?

That thought is broken by a shout from the king.

“I sigana!”

The big guy is hungry. He doesn’t want to wait while bonfires heat the stones that go into the ovens.

To tide the king over, hors d’oeuvres are served. What elevates his majesty above his common subjects is the luxury of never having to feed himself. That’s what the subservient women who make up his harem are for. In calling for
i sigana
—the choicest of pieces—the king sends his female retinue scurrying to the high priest, who harvests dainty morsels from his pile of severed heads.

“Vinaka! Vinaka!”
extols the cannibal king after he is fed eyeballs freshly plucked from their sockets by a nude girl who drops them down his throat like peeled grapes.