Stephen Gallagher - The Bedlam Detective

We could not think of restoring the tomb. Between us we had not the necessary strength, and besides, it was irreparable. One of the side slabs was cracked, and the other completely broken. We remade the shrouds as best we could and dragged the bodies back to their hole. We placed flowers in the grave all around them and then piled on every one of the stones that we could move, plus a few more from the river. This time there was no service, no ceremony.

After that, with only the clothes we stood up in, we set off to follow the river onward as best we could and eventually, God willing, to walk out of the jungle.

We knew of only one reliable food source. Like our Indians, we were reduced to cutting into flowering bamboo and eating the grubs we found inside. Though trained in botany and able to identify some of the more extreme poisons, I had little useful knowledge that I could apply to living off the land. Disgusting though the bugs were-and we ate them alive-they sustained us and did us no harm. Whereas our one experiment with berries left us violently sick and shaking for most of a day.

Though some of the time he’d walk along for hours in an introspective silence, at his worst Sir Owain was a raving companion. At night, he would pick out sounds and identify them with total certainty as the cries of beasts that were calling to one another, plotting to capture us. By day he’d point to their traces, which I actually believe to have been made by some of our former companions moving ahead of us. It seemed only logical to assume that they would be following the river, as we were.

One time, as we rested in exhaustion after a hazardous descent beside a waterfall, Sir Owain suddenly gripped my arm and pointed across the river, saying, “See. There one goes.”

All I could see was the fog of spray at the base of the falls, and the rainbow that it made.

“I see nothing,” I said.

“I see the spaces where they’ve been,” he said. “The space retains the shape. Until it fades.”

Make of that what you can.

I began to understand why our Indians had turned so lazy. The bamboo grubs, which habit made easier to stomach as the days went by, inclined us to lethargy and fueled the most strange and vivid dreams. Taken early in the day, they induced a daze that lasted for hours. One time I stepped on a sharp rock and did not realize until much later that it had split my boot and my foot was bleeding badly.

At night, we’d pile up fronds to make a bed. Sleep came easily. Exhaustion and bamboo grubs saw to that. One morning, at daybreak, I awoke to find Sir Owain shaking me.

“Bernard,” he said, using my given name for only the second time. “I’ve done it. I’ve killed one.”

I blinked and yawned and raised myself. “What do you mean?”

“I followed it and killed it. Look.”

He showed me his hands. There was blood on them. On his hands, on his clothes, everywhere. And on my arm, where he’d touched it.

I said, “Show me.”

He led me down to the riverbank. I was limping. It was the start of an infection that would come close to losing me a leg.

Sir Owain was chattering away.

“I saw its eyes before anything else,” he said. “They were yellow. And they shone, Bernard. Lit from within. I swear to you they shone like lanterns!”

Pain lanced up my leg from my wounded foot as I tripped over his hunting rifle. The weapon was lying in my way, discarded and undischarged. Had he fired a shot during the night, bug juice or no bug juice, I’m sure the sound of it would have woken me.

“Owain,” I said, “look at me.”

He stopped. I looked into those eyes and saw a man lost in madness.

“It was there, Bernard,” he pleaded. “It was as real as you are. It’s like nothing you’ve ever seen. Please. I can prove it to you.”

We came to a clear and level spot by the river. There we found a half-built raft, and three of our former companions. The astronomer, our cartographer, and one of the Portuguese laborers. All slaughtered. They’d been hacked down and cruelly cut about. In places their wounds were to the bone. Close by lay a machete knife. They’d been using it to build the raft and I was almost certain it was the instrument that had cut them down.

Sir Owain wasn’t looking at the bodies. He was scanning all around behind him, looking for something else.

I said, “Well?”

“It was here,” he insisted.

“So where is it now?”

“Others of its kind must have dragged the dead beast away,” he said. “It’s how they keep from being discovered.”

“There’s no sign of any such thing,” I said. “Just these men. Look at them.”

“I know,” Sir Owain said. “Torn by the beast.”

I could get no more out of him. We took their knapsacks and dined on their rations. I washed the machete in the river and we set about completing their raft. I kept the machete by me at all times. I had begun to fear that Sir Owain himself had used it on our companions, cutting down men while in his mind he fought dragons.

They’d made a rudder for steering the raft, and it had some slight effect on our course, but mostly we were at the river’s mercy.

A few minutes after we’d launched, I spied a figure on the bank. It was one of our camaradas , standing out on a promontory. I might easily have missed seeing him, as he did not wave or call out. He stared at us and did not move.

I put my hands together before my face and called out, “Don’t just stand there, man! Swim for it! We’ll pull you on board!”

Perhaps he did not hear me over the torrent’s roar. He certainly made no move in response.

As we drew closer I could see that he was paying me no attention at all. His gaze was fixed on Sir Owain. I leaned on the tiller in an attempt to bring our raft closer to the bank, to give him more of a chance to reach us if he swam. But the raft kept to its course, and merely began to turn around its own center. We were level with him now, and then we were passing him by.

“What are you waiting for?” I called out. “It’s only a raft, it won’t steer. We can’t get to you!”

If he jumped now, he’d still have a chance. We’d be ahead of him, but he’d be swept along at the same speed as ourselves. He could swim to us then.

Without taking his eyes from Sir Owain, the man responded with something in Portuguese. Then he moved back into the jungle. Presumably to make his own way; he may have reached safety, but if he did I never got to hear of it.

I wish that I could at least remember the sound of his words, so that I could repeat them to someone who speaks the language and perhaps find out what he said. All through this Sir Owain returned his gaze, but he made no move and showed no emotion.

I have thought about that moment often, and I often remember the look that passed between the two.

We did not leave the raft for three days. The cut on my foot began to fester. By then Sir Owain had grown delirious, and my own condition was not much better. I’ve been told that my wound turned gangrenous.

I remember him screaming that the beasts were in the water and were now conspiring to follow him home. And I remember one time opening my eyes, and in a brief moment thinking that I could see the world with equal clarity and now understood what he’d told me; that we may not see our beasts, but with practice and understanding we may perceive their shapes in the spaces where they’d been. But of our eventual rescue, I’m afraid I remember very little at all.

The Coastal Milk Train got him into Arnmouth just after daybreak. As Sebastian was once again putting his name into the Sun Inn’s guest book, Stephen Reed appeared at his side.