Rembrandt's Ghost (30 page)

At the river she saw that Winchester had done his job perfectly. A half dozen canoes were floating away on the gathering current and were swiftly being taken downstream. The others were already scrambling into the remaining dugout, while Eli held the narrow craft steady, looking anxiously for Finn as she ran toward him.

Silently she scurried aboard, then felt the sudden shift as Eli pushed them off and threw himself into the stern of the canoe. Someone in the darkness pushed a paddle into her hands. She cut the long, beautifully crafted blade into the dark water and felt it dig in. Tears finally coming freely, the memory of the tall, bearded man in the ancient padded armor clear in her mind, she helped maneuver the dugout into the center of the hurrying river, heading toward the distant sea. They’d done it. For the moment at least, they were free.

The river current, swollen by the recent rain, carried them swiftly down to the sea. On their left, foam bright and phosphorescent in the darkness, the never-ending breakers pounded at the distant reefs. On their right, two hundred yards inshore from where they paddled, was the looming jungle, no more than a darker shadow in the perfect blackness of the total tropical night. There was no sound except for the line of glowing breakers and the pounding of the surf on the nearby beach. Three hours had passed and still there was no sign of anyone following them.

By midnight they were exhausted and the tempo of the paddling slowed. The tide was running against them now and it was all they could do to keep from being swept out onto the reefs. Finally, with the sky brightening to a golden smear that turned the black expanse of jungle to a sharp-edged silhouette, they reached the keyhole cleft that marked the entrance route to the Punchbowl deep in the center of the island.

“There,” said Winchester from the rounded prow of the dugout, pointing toward the shore.

Finn stared, bleary-eyed, into the rising dawn. At first she couldn’t see anything except the beach and the dense jungle beyond, but then her eyes adjusted and she could make out a narrow slice of weak daylight between the steep hills.

“The tide is turning again,” said Billy quietly from his position midway up the narrow canoe. “If we just keep to the path of the current, it should carry us into the Punchbowl without any trouble.”

Finn and the silent man with the native haircut put the blades of their paddles into the water on either side of the canoe, steering into the tidal sweep that steadily carried them toward the shore. In minutes they were slipping easily between the high walls of the gap and into the steep, hidden canyon that lay beyond. The water burbled along the sides of the dugout, and beyond, in the jungle growth that shrouded the ancient volcanic walls, the first chattering, screeching sounds of morning could be heard.

“He said something in Latin,” murmured the man with the strange haircut, speaking for the first time since they’d escaped from the village.

“That’s right,” answered Finn.

“He seemed to think it answered your question about leaving this place.”

“Yes,” said Finn. She’d been thinking about it herself for most of the night as they paddled along the perimeter of the island.

“What did he say?” asked the man. The tidal rush was pulling at them even more rapidly now, swirling around them, carrying them dangerously close to the near rock wall. There was no beach here, only jagged rock, the fringe of jungle hanging precipitously in the thin soil. The man dug in hard with his paddle and the others did the same, carrying them back into the center of the passage to the interior.

“Fugio ab insula opes usus venti carmeni,”
said Billy, irritation in his voice. “Escape to my hidden island of treasure on winds of music,” he explained.

“No,” said the man with the native haircut. “That’s not correct.”

“What would you know about it?” Billy said.

“It’s from Homer’s
Odyssey
,” the man answered without inflection. “I spent a number of years in boarding school translating huge sections of it as punishment for skipping class.” He laughed softly. “That particular passage refers to Circe and her island. Some scholars believe Homer took his ideas from the eastern epic of Gilgamesh in which the hero escapes from the island by going through a tunnel where the sun comes into the sky.”

“So how do you translate it?” Billy said.

“Escape
from
my hidden island of treasure on winds of music. The word ‘ab’ means ‘from,’ not ‘to.’ ” He shrugged. “It would seem to have more relevance.”

“He’s right, you know,” said Winchester. “About the Latin, I mean. Studied Homer myself.
‘Virtutem paret doctrina,’
and all that. ‘Let education make the all round man.’ Scot’s College.”

“I stand corrected,” said Billy stiffly.

“Is there a place like that here?” Finn asked, calling forward to Winchester, sitting in the front of the dugout.

“A place like what?” Winchester asked, digging in with his paddle.

“A tunnel where the sun appears. Something to do with wind. Music. I don’t know,” she said, frustrated. It wasn’t much to go on.

Then, suddenly, the fjordlike confines of the keyhole slot leading to the Punchbowl ended and they were swept into the huge, almost perfectly circular lagoon that had once been the raging heart of a volcano.

Winchester spoke. “There was a cave I saw once, during my first year here,” he said. “I didn’t think much of it at the time. A blowhole, I suppose you’d call it.”

“Blowhole?” Run-Run McSeveney muttered. “Sounds like some
bowffing cack erse
people I’ve known in the bluidy past.” He dug his paddle into the water, scowling as usual.

“A blowhole is a volcanic leftover,” explained Winchester. “A vent tunnel.” He paused in his paddling, looking upward to the far side of the enormous circular valley, scanning the jungle forests rising from the misty dawn. “I was hunting when I happened to find it,” he said. “Quite shocked me actually. At first there was nothing and then it was like standing next to an exploding steam pipe.”

“There’s a place like that in your South Dakota,” said Billy. “My parents took me there when I was young. Wind Cave or something.”

“Could you call it music?”

“I suppose,” said Winchester, “if you weren’t too musical. More like a bloody great whistle.”

The incoming tide swept them into the Punchbowl’s sinister graveyard of hulks, looking even more ghostly in the early morning half-light. They slid silently past the moldering wreck of some ancient ironclad schooner, the masts long rotted, the hull a dark, gap-toothed wreck of barnacles and crusted sea life. The old vessel was anonymous now, the name on her upended transom long since worn away. To the right, rising out of the fog, they could see what was left of the
Batavia Queen
. Ahead of them were a dozen other wrecks and the shattered remains of the old single-engined aircraft that had returned Pieter Boegart to the island.

“Can you remember where it was?” Finn asked.

“Certainly,” said Winchester. He stopped paddling for a second and pointed up the side of the steeply sloping caldera. “It’s just there, where those two hills thrust up. I call them the lions.” Just then the sun rose fractionally higher, throwing the two crouching shapes into sharp relief. Winchester was right. The two hills looked exactly like crouching lions facing each other.

“A tunnel where the sun comes into the sky,” said Khan.

“That could be it,” said Billy, excitement rising in his voice. “It fits.”

“We’re going too fast,” said Briney Hanson, looking out over the water. There were ripples and eddies everywhere marking unseen hidden obstructions; the remains of vessels captured by the deadly wrecker’s island. “We should warp up to the lee side of one of these old wrecks and wait for the tide to slack. It’s too dangerous to go on like this. We could hit something.”

“Aye, he’s right about that,” cautioned McSeveney, peering over the side.

“That’s ridiculous. I can see perfectly,” said Winchester from the bow of the dugout. “It’s clear water. I can almost make out the bottom.” There was a sudden swirling in the water as the tide pushed them past the listing wreck of the old oil tanker,
City of Almaco
, the tall, rusted stack over her rear superstructure and the stumps of her derricks all that were visible in the mist. The sheering currents fought against each other for a moment, swinging the canoe around like a swirling leaf in a rushing gutter, and the goatskin-clad professor found himself facing back the way he’d come. Panicking, Winchester clutched the low thwarts and tried to stand.

“Sit down!” Hanson bellowed. “You’ll tip us over!”

“Ye
numpty cludge
!” McSeveney yelled, trying to steady the boat. “We’re tipping!”

It was too late. Winchester’s sudden movement pushed the dugout in another direction. The fighting currents slammed the boat against the side of the old oiler and they spun around a second time, tilting heavily to one side. Winchester lost his paddle, made a desperate grab, and then everyone was in the water.

The full horror came without warning as Finn hit the water and went under. For a moment she didn’t know what was happening. Then she was aware of a lashing pain across her cheek and then another whiplash against the bare skin of her stomach where her shirt had pulled up. She gagged at the sudden pain, thrashing to the surface, fighting for air. There were more excruciating lashes to her arms and legs. Through the pain she was faintly aware of Winchester’s screams that he couldn’t swim. She managed to lift one hand, sweeping whatever it was away from her face, feeling more stinging pain across her palms and cheek. She blinked and saw the horror that lay in front of her.

The water all around her was a solid mass of bubbling, undulating slime. Attracted by the warm shallow water and the recent rain, a huge, roving colony of box jellyfish had made their way on the incoming tide to the Punchbowl’s interior. The mindless nightmare now lay like some obscene, translucently pulsing blanket across the surface of the sea.

Horrified by the sight, Finn thrashed at the water with her arms, trying to beat the pulsing creatures away from her body. A dozen burning filaments dangling beneath the oozing bubbles of jelly stroked the flesh of her legs and she screamed again, rearing up out of the water, trying to do anything in her power to get away.

Spinning in the water, Finn was dimly aware that the colony had formed itself into a giant crescent flowing toward the shallows closer to the beach, the two outer arms of the arc spreading out on either side. Turning, choking, she tried to find the shape of the overturned dugout. She swam toward it, now at least fifty feet away, surrounded by the purple-humped monstrosities. The colony, a hundred fifty yards long and twice as deep, was a death trap, oozing all around her like some grotesque minefield, waiting to entangle her completely.

A small patch of straggling organisms on the forward edge of the swarm lay in her path and she arched her back in a desperate attempt to avoid them. They were small, their slightly squared bubble sails still immature as they pulsed toward her, the strings of sensory eyes around the bubbles, perimeters clearly visible like black specks in the clear mucosa of the body.

Their stingers swept lightly against her and she gasped with the burning pain. She cried out again, batting weakly at the creatures, just managing to keep her head above water, and then the numbing cramps began as the deadly venom reached her bloodstream. She knew that she was weakening and soon she’d be unable to swim.

Dimly, at the edge of her awareness, she thought she heard Billy calling her name, but help was too late in coming now. The jellyfish had completely surrounded her, each gentle motion of the swell and their own pulsing energy bringing the colony close around her so that the feat would be shared equally among the ever hungry creatures. Finn began to sink under the water, the last of her strength draining from her body as their poison took hold.

Eyes open, she saw what lay beneath the surface and recoiled in unholy terror as all hope vanished. In the faint morning light, the hideous flotilla had been terrible enough; beneath the blue-green water, it was a vision straight from hell. Millions of tentacles, some light as a human hair, others thick as twisting ropes, dangled from the bellying domes above, an endless hypnotically swaying forest of deadly threads that had already wrapped themselves completely around Ben Winchester’s body in a monstrous tangle, slowly but surely pulling him upward into the very center of the swarm, his corpse slowly drained of nutrients until finally everything that had been the man would be absorbed within the colony.

Finn remembered hearing once that drowning had been called the death of dreaming, but this was a death of nightmares everlasting, and even as she sank downward her hands fluttered, some last instinct trying to push her back toward the surface.

She felt a clutching pain deep within her chest as the last of the air exploded from her lungs. Vision blurring as she died, she saw the last of Winchester’s pale face in front of her, Medusa-like, his hair a mass of serpent strands like some mythical creature caught within the colony of roving jellyfish. Then the vision faded and darkened. Pain was swept away, she heard her name called one last time, and then there was only darkness and the pounding of her final desperate heartbeats echoing faintly and fading in her ears.