Dreams from the Witch House: Female Voices of Lovecraftian Horror (30 page)

Still, the natives watched him silently with their baskets or tables of goods. Bream decided that silence must be part of the way they did transactions, perhaps to make the buyer uneasy. Bizarre, against natural expectation. They watched him as lizards did, ready to dart away or flick their tongues out.

Up ahead, he saw a kind of alcove formed by huge palm leaves bound together. No doubt it was the jungle native’s market. Within it, a half-naked old crone with a thick black band on her upper arm said something menacing as he stopped to inspect her wares—twisted roots, leaves with sharp edges, bones. She had packets shaped from folded leaves as well, holding something. An unspotted orchid with a rotting stench stood up from the strip of bark that formed her rickety table. The orchid’s fingerlike white roots gripped the edge of the bark like claws.

“What did she say?” he asked McClellan.

“Something about your insecticide,” McClellan answered. “You know you’re still holding it, don’t you?” He was bemused.

The old woman frowned slightly, and that irritated Bream beyond measure. An ant crawled across his neck and he reached back with two fingers of his free hand and pinched it. He flicked it away. He did not intentionally flick it at the old woman.

She hissed and spoke again. He turned to McClellan, his eyebrows raised. A crack of thunder sounded in the distance.

“She didn’t like that, I don’t think. Accused you of killing her daughter or something. Of course
daughter
is a kind of generic word around here,” he continued. “The trees are daughters, the rivers are daughters, perhaps even the ants are daughters. I wouldn’t be surprised. They believe the natural world has rights. Maybe even intelligence. I think they paint spiders for some of the festivals. To amuse them.” He grinned. He seemed to be enjoying himself.

It began to rain harder (
ah, had it eased up then
, Bream wondered—
eased up and he hadn’t noticed it?
) and there was an eerie silence behind the sound of rain hitting leaves, and natives whispering, and boats not far away, and bowls and tables—the detritus of daily life. The insects were silent, waiting for some sign that there was a reason to announce themselves. The old woman stared at him fixedly. The rain ran rivulets down her shoulders. Bream swiped at water sourcing down his nose and into his mouth. He had the feeling that everything he did was momentous; maybe it was because everyone was still watching him. He couldn’t just turn and leave, because that would have been weakness. He wanted to show them his authority. He wanted to show them he was important.

“Tell her I’ll buy all her things,” he said abruptly. His first impulse had been to smash all her shabby goods, run them off the table, kick anything in the baskets next to her. But he felt the eyes around him, heard the insect silence, and fell prey to the need to exercise his disdain and his power. This woman, this poor, illiterate Indian, was subject to his whims, good or bad. McClellan was saying something or other in what he imagined was the local patois and her eyes were still on Bream as he swept everything into the bag with the insecticides and then held out money, which she didn’t take. He dropped it on the ground in front of her. She pointed to the bag he held and spoke angrily.

 “What is it? What’s she saying?” Bream asked impatiently.

McClellan had an odd sort of half-grin on his face. He bent and picked up the money again and showed it to Bream. “She said this isn’t the right kind of offering. Or gift, maybe. I think you were supposed to give her a gift. She’s hard to understand. She has a tough dialect. But I think you might have insulted her.”

Bream looked into the woman’s face, which was sharp and almost sullen. He felt eyes on him, and he looked around slowly to the other Indians at their stalls—not stalls, really, bunches of items on the ground, small piles of goods. Every native there watched him closely; they didn’t avert their eyes when he looked their way.

The woman clicked her tongue once. Bream looked at her then. Her eyes were small and dark and intense, and very steady. It was annoying how those savages felt they could stare at him. He almost had to shake himself, that was how mesmerizing the woman’s gaze and the natives’ silence was, but he roused himself, turned, walked over to the river, and threw the bag in.

The air in the market began to thrum with indignation.

McClellan hurried over to him “I think you’ve done something,” he said, surprised. “I think you may have gone too far.”

The old woman’s anger was palpable and offensive as she shouted out unintelligible words to him. Bream walked back to her, wanting to stand in front of her, just stand there and show her who he was. She should look at him with respect. Instead, she pulled herself stiffly together and held her hand out, pointing at him. To his horror, the armband—or rather, what he’d mistakenly thought was an armband—began to move and break apart in small jostling pieces of some kind. The things raced along her outstretched hand and then jumped off her fingers, straight at him.

Ants. Some made it to him, some fell to the ground and scurried towards him. He stumbled backwards, grabbing the can of insecticide from his pocket, and sprayed.

The market broke into shouts and wails. The old woman stepped back and away while Bream dealt with an onrush of hands grabbing at the insecticide, jabbering madly. The can disappeared into the crowd and then the crowd itself began to gather its things impetuously, bending and swooping over their small wares, collapsing all of it all into small bundles.

McClellan pulled Bream through the crowd as the natives moved off, glancing back over their shoulders, muttering at him in their heathen language. Within minutes, the market was empty.

Bream gave vent to his outrage. “What was that? Who is she? Did you see that? Those ants jumped off her onto me! She can control ants!” He sputtered. “What does she use—did she throw sugar at me, so they would go after it? Are such things allowed here? Barbarians,” he muttered, brushing himself down to make sure no insects remained.

McClellan stopped under a tree and turned to him. His usually serene face showed concern. “She’s a shaman, a priestess. You shouldn’t antagonize her. Even if you don’t believe in the gods, then believe in the priests and priestesses. This is their world, their rules. You may have violated a taboo, or made some kind of challenge.” McClellan wiped the rain off his face. “You have to respect what is older and stranger than you.”

Bream frowned; he eyed McClellan sideways. “You don’t believe this stuff about gods, do you? Little gods?”

McClellan sighed and began to walk towards the river. “It’s not about what I believe or you believe. If
they
believe, then it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not because they’ll act as if it is true. And priestesses protect their charges, and people of every belief destroy heretics. So it pays to show respect.” He looked around with concern. “We should get away from here as quickly as possible. There’s a reason they left, don’t you think? Afraid of what would happen next. Didn’t you say you wanted to show me your other property? Let’s get away from here.” They were at the dock, approaching their
panga
, the canoe with the outboard motor that the town Indians used to ferry goods and people around the river settlements. McClellan’s voice was clearly anxious; he kept putting his hand on Bream’s shoulder to hurry him along.

Bream nodded. That had been the plan; he had wanted to show a white man what he had accomplished so far, and McClellan would have to do, whatever his weird ideas. No other white man had shown up in the months Bream had been here. He glanced at the river, swollen and muddy, almost over its banks. The land in town was higher than his own land—and it irritated him, as if he’d been tricked into it. A slight elevation, and
they
owned it.

He tried to shake off his annoyance. The whole thing had unsettled him. Those ants! How and why would a woman wear ants? In his own land, where a man could be clean and dry, where ants and the uncivilized knew their places, such a thing would be impossible. This climate was ancient and sapped a civilized man’s intelligence. And his temper as well.

I want to rip it all up
, he thought;
this teeming, massing place. Nothing is ever still here. It is all relentless growing, relentless mouths.

His thoughts battered him as hard as the rain, which whipped itself into a frenzy once he and McClellan settled into their boat. Lightning ran horizontal, across the tops of the damned trees, sparing them. Had it been up to Bream, the lightning would have struck every last tree and burned it. Burning trees was necessary, and it gave him pleasure. The land was wasted on trees and vermin.
Burn it all, clear it out, grow crops or beef or anything with value.

 The most immediate irritation, however, was that he was sure McClellan was a fool. McClellan and his interest in tiny gods, his pretense at studying peoples’ beliefs. His private income couldn’t be much or he would have left as soon as he’d landed. A sensationalist, by all signs. That woman in the market was just an impoverished Indian with primitive magical items. Really, just leaves and flowers though of course leaves did have medicinal purposes here, where real doctors knew better than to roam. Things were out of proportion.

The pilot took them up the river for a while and then the motor slowed down so they could pull into a tributary, which they followed through the heat and the squawking of forest animals—birds, monkeys, frogs and for all he knew or cared, the trees themselves.

He could smell smoke long before they reached the clearing. He scratched at his wrists and picked out an ant from under his fingernails.

“I smell smoke,” McClellan said, surprised. The man was slower than he should be.

Bream nodded. “I have them burning trees down, clearing the land.”

McClellan pursed his lips. “In this rain? How can you do it in all this rain?”

“I have them pour enough kerosene to get it started.”

“That must run off into the river,” McClellan said. “No wonder they think you’re killing everything.”

“I’m not killing everything. I’m clearing land.”

They turned a bend in the river and looked at the burning land. Wisps of smoke drifted up from each individual smoldering tree, as if the clouds were forming from them, as if feeding and creating the clouds.

Bream’s itching was unendurable. “Why are there so many ants in the boat?” he complained. The Indian who was piloting looked at him briefly. The man wore only a tattered pair of shorts with not a bite or mark showing. Even McClellan’s bare arms looked blotchy from the sun but not from bites. Bream scowled at the burning trees. “They can burn every last tree in the jungle as far as I’m concerned. What do ants eat? Destroy whatever they eat, all of it.”

“I think they eat leaves,” McClellan said. “Whatever lives in the trees.”

“And me,” Bream added bitterly. His eyes roamed morosely through the burnt acres and their streamers of smoke. “Look,” he said abruptly. “That woman in the market! She’s here!”

McClellan looked where he pointed. “I see her,” he said sadly.

The men who should be burning more trees were gathering around her. She was higher than they were, Bream could see, standing on a mound. “What is that?” he asked. “What is she standing on?”

“Termite nest,” McClellan answered. His voice had gotten a little nervous since they’d seen the witch woman, witch doctor, priestess—Bream didn’t care what she called herself, but he
did
care that his workers were putting their cans and lighters down, listening to the witch woman.

 “Pull up, right now!” Bream shouted to the pilot, who kept his head down and drove on very slowly, dipping left and right, as if looking for a place to land. Bream felt a line of pinches at his neck, as if a collar made of needles had been tightened. He swatted at his neck and saw blood on his hand, but no ants. Perhaps these bites were from mosquitoes or gnats. He’d once been bitten on his tongue. He had a horror of swallowing one intact. What would that be like, stung somewhere on the inside?

“Get his oil,” Bream ordered McClellan, pointing at the
canoa
Indian. “I’ll set the fires myself if I have to! The men are leaving, look! What did she say to chase them away? Superstitious fools!” He was no good at balancing himself on a moving boat; he lost his footing and sat down heavily.

It took him a moment to right himself again. When he looked up, the woman was gone.

“Did she just vanish?”

McClellan shook his head. He hadn’t tried to get any oil at all; he hadn’t moved at all. “She turned and walked away. Look, you have to be more careful here. You’ve angered her with all this. I hope you haven’t ruined it for me, either. She’s got influence, power. There’s something to it, something is going to happen. Can’t you feel it? She’s a priestess after all, she’s in tune with everything alive here. Haven’t you ever wondered why ants are so organized, how they can act together? Even what their intentions are? It makes you think.”

“For God’s sake, McClellan, think about what?”

McClellan stared at him intently for a moment. “It makes me think about what they might plan on doing.”

It began to rain again, all at once, a waterfall of rain. “Let’s get back before the big rain starts,” McClellan said finally, turning away from him and instructing the pilot.

Bream wanted to shout,
This isn’t the big rain?
But he’d been there long enough to know. It would get bigger.

One of his floating lawns had pulled off and away and he didn’t care. Let it all rot. His ear throbbed, red and swollen. He didn’t remember that bite. He ordered insecticides to be sprayed everywhere, even though the stench annoyed him. He ordered the servants to find more ants, to go out into the jungle and find ants, to find ants and find ants and find ants, he wanted to see all of them dead, all those vile and hateful beings. He gave his orders and stalked along the veranda as the blistering rain poured. Each drop seemed needle-sharp. Let them leave their bowls of dead ants in front of his door. He would drink gin until he couldn’t stand, he decided.