Jon Evans - Dark Places

Let me stress that I had no crazy plans about breaking into his room and running amok with the parang. I wasn't going to try to exact revenge all by my lonesome. My self-preservation instinct remained strong. So why didn't I leave? Why wasn't I already in Mataran? I didn't know. I don't know. It wasn't mental paralysis, though the effect was much the same. It was just a deep-rooted feeling that I shouldn't go. That somehow my work there was not done.

Maybe, looking back, I was just waiting for him to come to me. I wasn't afraid any more. My anger didn't leave any room for fear. I understood now, for the first time in my life, what people were talking about when they talked about cold fury. I understood how it could last for years.

So when it was well past dark I unbarred the door and stepped outside into the warm damp night, Maglite in one hand, parang in the other.

He wasn't there. Nobody was there. I shined the Maglite around and its beam was swallowed up by the darkness. The moon was not yet up. Last night the starlight had been bright enough to navigate by, but tonight a thick tapestry of cloud hung overhead, and the darkness was absolute.

I closed the door behind me and began my trek to the Harmony Cafe. I had to walk a zigzag rice-paddy-ridge path for five minutes and then go down the muddy road about half a kilometer. There was nobody else on it. A donkey whinnied somewhere, and something splashed in one of the rice paddies. A cool wind blew in fits and gusts. The air was fragrant with the clean sweet smell of recent rain. I was nervous but not frightened. The parang was comforting in my hand. I didn't know what I was doing.

Like many Indonesian lodges the Harmony was built as a U-shaped bungalow around a flagstoned patio. I crept around the edge of the building, looking in windows. There were still three rooms that flickered with candlelight.

In the first, an old Indonesian man lay back on a moth-eaten bed, smoking ganja. I glanced in the second window, and past a curtain that covered it incompletely I got an eyeful of two topless Swedish beauties giggling and comparing their tan lines by candlelight. They seemed so completely incongruous to the pervasive sense of menace I felt that I nearly broke out laughing. After a moment's ogling I tore my attention away from the walking male fantasy and went to the third room, where Morgan and his redheaded friend Peter were lazily playing cards while Peter smoked a joint. I noticed that Morgan waved off Peter's offer to share. Very unlike him. Unless he was planning some kind of activity for which he did not want to be stoned.

I stood there for awhile, indecisive, and then I walked back across the road and found a big rock to sit on, close enough that I could still make out shapes at the Harmony Cafe, far enough away that I wouldn't be noticed. I sat there for a long time. I placed the parang and Maglite between my feet. I think I fell asleep.

Something brought me back to consciousness. At first I couldn't tell what. I looked around. The moon had risen. I suddenly realized that in the moonlight I might well be visible from the Harmony so I backed away another twenty feet.

And only just in time. A shape detached itself from shadow and set off up the road. From the Harmony, towards Mekar Sari. A tiny circle of light led its way on the ground. Someone carrying a flashlight, I saw, as my eyes focused. And carrying something else. A parang, like mine. Morgan Jackson come to kill me. I must have heard him leaving his room. I hesitated for a moment, and then I followed him, flushed with adrenaline, like when I had found Stanley Goebel's body. Every sense on high alert, every muscle ready for action.

The wind had picked up, for which I was grateful. Its soft whoosh helped to conceal the squelch of my boots in the mud. It was hard to follow him without using my Maglite, but I managed. I knew where he was going, which helped. Once I almost overbalanced and plunged into a rice paddy, but after a vertiginous moment I recovered my footing. He was moving much faster than me, armed with a flashlight and less concern for noise, and when Mekar Sari loomed out of the darkness I could no longer see him. For a moment a wild panic rose in me, thinking that he'd seen me following, that he waited in ambush. But then I saw movement right next to my cabin. He was there, underneath the window that faced Gunung Rinjani.

I came as close as I dared, up to the mandi shack about twenty feet from my cabin, and peeked around the corner at him. I could see him clearly, silhouetted against the pale wood of the cabin. He waited patiently for a good five minutes, sitting on the chair beneath my window where I ate my breakfast, his head cocked, listening carefully. I focused on breathing silently. I slowly tensed and relaxed each of my muscles so that they did not cramp. I couldn't remember where I'd read about that trick. Some trashy fantasy novel. The parang felt very heavy but I did not dare to put it down and risk a noise.

After the five minutes had passed he stood up, calmly walked up the three steps that led to the door, and pushed it open. He stood still for a second, as if surprised that it had not been locked. That was my chance. I knew it as it passed. In that moment of surprise I could have charged him from behind with my parang, could have had a better-than-even chance of getting the first swing in. I didn't try it. I didn't really even consider trying it.

He turned on his Maglite and inspected the room. I heard him grunt in surprise. Then he turned around and played the Maglite around, and I ducked behind the corner of the mandi stall. I heard him laugh, quietly but perfectly audible at my distance, as if he'd just gotten a joke.

"You out there, Balthazar?" he asked, his voice low but carrying. "You been keeping an eye on your old mate Morgan? I reckon you are. I reckon you're right behind that mandi there, aren't you?"

I focused on breathing absolutely silently.

"I think we should have a bit of chat, mate," Morgan said. "Just a full and frank exchange of views. That's all I came here for." I heard the creak of wood as he stepped down from the doorway.

"Of course if you prefer," he continued, "we could settle this the old-fashioned way. Mano a mano. Deeds not words, eh? Step right out, Mr. Wood… if you think you're hard enough."

I didn't move. I couldn't decide how to hold the parang. Low, to slash upward when he turned the corner? Or up, like a sword, to defend myself?

"Fair enough," he said. "No need to make this a dialogue now. I always preferred the monologues myself. I reckon you've been doing some snooping, haven't you? Been thinking, what's my old mate Morgan been up to? What kind of shenanigans? And by now you've got a pretty good idea, I reckon. Right now you're deeply concerned about your own fair skin, aren't you, Woodsie? Anxious about the future of your own ocular capabilities, if you take my meaning?"

I listened desperately, for the sound of his boots, and to the sound of his voice, trying to work out how close he was. I didn't think he was coming any closer. But I knew the Great White Hunter could move like a cat when he wanted to.

"Well, I didn't come here for that. I'm on holiday, don't you know?" His laugh rippled through the darkness. "And the truth is I like you, Paul. Always have. And I'm not too fussed about any snooping you may have done. Anything you dredge up, it's not going to do me any harm, I think we both know that. Fact is I'm impressed. You were always the Internet wizard, weren't you? Presume that's what led you here. I'll have to take more care in the future. Point taken. And as for you, you'd best take my point. Take it to heart."

And here his voice became edgier, angrier. Became the voice of a murderer.

"My point is, fuck off. This is your only warning. Sod off back to America and stay there. I'm a patient man but my patience has its limits. Don't make me work my magic on you, old boy. Don't wave a red flag in front of The Bull. You hear me?"