Horror in Paradise (13 page)

“I’ve seen them both, and it was neither. But I certainly saw this old bird, as plainly as I see you!” I insisted a little hotly.

“No, you didn’t, old boy, as there isn’t such a person to see!”

We would have argued half the night if Tom hadn’t suddenly been struck by some idea. He stopped in the middle of a word, his jaw still open in surprise and his eyes filled with a sudden and wild speculation.

“By God,” he said, half to himself, “it couldn’t be he!”

“Who are you talking about?” I asked rather peevishly. “I tell you he came right up to me.”

“Come over to the house with me right away, and we’ll ask the girl’s father Utato. He will know whether or not it is the one I think it is. Yes. Wait . . .”

By now my feelings were ruffled. First I had been made distinctly uncomfortable by an odd old gentleman, and now Tom doubted my story. Nevertheless I went  . . .

Tom in his slow halting way told in Tahitian my story of the meeting with the old Chinese. Hardly had the last words escaped his lips when an effect, electrical in its suddenness, took place in the room. In the light of the kerosene lamp the eyes of Utato seemed to grow larger and took on the expression of one who has seen something that isn’t there. Pindini’s smile ceased. She leaned forward, looking at me with all the ancient belief in her ancestors’ gods written on her face. Touching her rosary the picturesque but stupid Tiare mumbled to herself.

Suddenly Utato, in an odd jerky voice, cried out:

“Parquitala!”

“Yes,” said Tom. “I thought it was he, but I wanted to be sure.”

By this time the porch was full of natives, coming from I don’t know where, and the liquid name Utato had just uttered was repeated from mouth to mouth. A hypnotic influence seemed to possess us all. I found myself reenacting the scene, just how I stood when he passed me, and how he looked at me when he turned. All this I pantomimed to the cries of
“Aue, atie!”

Then the spell was broken. Everyone started to talk at once, about Parquitala and when he had last been seen.

“Remember, Mytea?” said Utato. “We were playing cards one night and suddenly a shadowy form appeared at the door of the hut, smiled at us, and as quietly disappeared. It was the figure of a French gendarme that no one had seen before, nor have any of us seen him since.”

My curiosity by now knew no limits. “But who is Parquitala?”

“Don’t you know?” came from every throat. Tom finally quieted them, and told me the story of Parquitala.

Before Laval, fired with the mad flames of religious fanaticism, had started his holocaust of idol-breaking, there stood in the lovely Valley of Ititouiti at the foot of Mount Duff an altar dedicated to Parquitala. A small marae it had been, and not listed among the nine great maraes of the islands. No one clearly remembered why it was called Parquitala’s altar. It was said that in the dim and ancient days of cannibalism a high priest had lived called Parquitala, who tended three grotesque gods on the altar that later was to bear his name. He had been, so old rumor relates, a great soldier, a mighty warrior, as well as a powerful magician. That he must have been a man of powerful personality is certain, as only three names stand out high above the countless others that have passed in The Forgotten Isles: Maputeoa, Laval, and Parquitala.

Now when Laval and his men were winding their way down the steep path that leads to the valley where Parquitala’s altar stood, fired with the insane zeal of impending destruction, the high priest of the little marae—who had been warned—sorrowfully gathered the three clumsy wide-eyed stone gods into his canoe. He must, of course, before he did this, have prostrated himself before the ancient shades of the gods of his people and begged them to forgive what he was about to do, since he did it only to save the magnificent memory of Parquitala. At all events he steered his canoe to the deepest part of the lagoon and there dropped the gods one by one into the inscrutable cerulean depths. When Laval and his assistants arrived, nothing was left to destroy but the terraces of the altar, which in frustrated fury he ripped apart till scarcely a stone was left where the altar had stood.

As time went on and Catholicism replaced the idols of paganism with painted plaster effigies, the simple natives humbly accepted the substitute and immolated themselves on the altar of Laval’s mad ambition. But Parquitala, untouched by the occult splendor of the long glittering arm of the church, walked abroad unmolested by the holy water, spells, or incantations which were thrown upon his name. Perhaps he embodies the spirit of all the ancient gods and is deathless. At any rate when he chose to appear no power could be raised against him. The years passed, and the silent shadow of Parquitala moved as though Catholicism had never existed . . .

The Polynesians reckon time by the moon, and it is on the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth nights of the moon month that the ghosts walk. The full moon has risen, and its lower rim just touches the horizon at sunset. It is an ideal time for ghosts to walk at will. Of course suggestion plays a great part in our lives, and to a simple South Sea islander the suggestion that on these nights the
tupapau
are abroad is extremely potent.

However, with all my philosophy and understanding of scientific metaphysics, I will say that there is some very powerful force at work, not only on the nights mentioned but on other nights as well, especially on Manga Reva and the near-by islands. The
tupapaus
on The Forgotten Islands seem to possess more freedom than those of Tahiti, which rarely walk save on the three nights of the moon on which they are set at liberty from their ghostly fourth-dimensional state of confinement.

On the island of Maupiti, one of the Leeward group of the Society Islands where I once lived for several months, I retired on the first night of my arrival on the island in a small bedroom which opened doorless from the main living room, where the family of PihauTane, my host, slept. Tired and exhausted from my trip I slept soundly. But at about two in the morning I found myself awakened by some force outside myself. Raising myself on one elbow, I looked about. Sitting in the middle of the doorway was a vague figure which slowly took the very tangible form of an old man. He was so old that his eyes had sunk to pinpoints and his long upper and lower teeth protruded beyond his gums. One hand was raised in a gesture of command and he looked straight in front of him, as though looking out the window. When I first saw him he was wavering and mistlike, but before long I saw him with absolute distinctness. Where the light came from I do not know. While I watched, wide awake but powerless to move because of the strange effect on me of this curious phenomenon, I saw shapes slowly rising from the floor. They were black shapes, half seal, half cat, with long black bodies that curled around one side of the ancient figure. They were like seals in their movements, but each animal—if that is what they were—had four very short paws, no tail, and in their catlike heads were set enormous eyes.

This continued for some time. There seemed no end to the stream of little black monsters that rose from the floor, caressed the mummylike figure, and then circled upward and vanished into the ceiling. Although some curious things happened to me before, this was my first real occult experience in the South Seas and a sort of hypnotic terror came over me. I began to repeat a formula for the banishment of demons and the powers of darkness.

I had scarcely started when the seated figure turned its head slowly toward me, and from what I had thought were eyeless sockets shot dark gleams, like fires glowing in a pit.

The head grew large, the shriveled gums and protruding teeth still hideously plain, and the body assumed proportions to match the head. The arm raised in command slowly reached out till the long bony fingers were just within reach of my face.

I had the feeling that I was being hypnotized, first into a daze and then into a deep sleep, and I sank away, dimly remembering that the demon’s head had swelled until it touched the ceiling before I lost consciousness. The black stream of animals had ceased the moment I commenced the formula. As I dropped into sleep I seemed to fall into an ancient state of being, something from thousands of years ago, so that I was terrified at first, happy at last that I could do so.

From that day I had no trouble with my life in Polynesia. All forces, material and occult, reached out to help me in every way.

When I told the natives some time after this about my experience, I received nothing but belief and then I was told the story of Pihau’s house.

Pihau built his house, against the approval of every one on the island, on the site of a ruined marae, which happened to be situated on land which he owned. Now while the natives have accepted the Christianity presented to them by the missionaries, they yet have a deep-rooted fear and respect for the ancient altars of their ancestors, and to build a house on the site of one of them is sacrilege indeed.

According to the natives the high priest of the Tieopolo has a kind of vicarious life if he finds a living person through whom he may express himself. Old Nairou, the Marquesan father of Pihau’s wife, was such a person. He saw the
tupa-pau
every night. In the morning he described the form under which the demon had appeared to him the night before. Sometimes he took the form of an animal; again he was a huge half animal, half human being, terrifying to behold; again he appeared as a black and uneasy cat or dog that ended his wanderings by darting from the ground suddenly straight for the sky and disappearing. Sometimes he appeared as a very old man accompanied by black animallike forms, and again he appeared as a ball of faintly luminous fire.

The natives believed that my seeing him without warning or preparation on that first night of my island visit was a sign that I was accepted by their ancient powers. Their ancient gods were pleased with me for some unknown reason. This of course established an easy atmosphere for my work, for if you have the sympathy of the people with whom you are living you have nothing to fight against. The natives christened me “ghost cousin,” an appellation which my neighbors of Manga Reva took over, and which they seem to feel I rightly deserved.

There is no middle ground in sympathy with that half world. One either wanders farther and farther into the intricacies of the fabulous jungles of the old Manga Revan world, or one does not. Nothing rests for a second where it was, up to that fractional margin which divides what we call the past and present understanding of time.

That the gray guardians of the other world had listened to Tom’s plaintive desire to know more definitely the phantoms that haunted the island and his brain alike was made evident about a week after the storm and the finding of the skull.

The night before Tom’s final acceptance of the unseen had been a peculiar one for me. I slept fitfully, hearing voices and steps of people passing. Mad fancies played hide-and-seek in my mind. The dog slept uneasily, turning and twisting in her sleep, making a new bed for herself in that ancient fashion peculiar to animals, turning around and around before settling down for the night. Finally I got up, unlocked the door, and went out on the porch. The wind had blown ragged clouds across the moon. It was chill, and I felt uneasy in the dimness of the half-shrouded night.

Suddenly beside me, close beside me, flashed a gray cat, apparently fast asleep. It lay curled up, suspended in midair. I jumped. It flew with an abrupt movement beside me, so close that it touched me. I felt it distinctly. Then it dashed around me and circled out into the vagueness of the garden beyond.

All my adjustments, mental and emotional, were so ragged that I had difficulty in finding myself. I reentered the house, locked the door, crept into bed and deliberately slugged myself with my mind into sleep.

Next morning as I was having my coffee Tom wandered over in his leisurely fashion. I told him what I had seen. All his features lighted up.

“Bob, do you think it will happen again? Could I see it?”

“Heavens, I hope not, old man! This restless flitting about of sleeping cats, without obedience to the laws of gravity, is getting on my nerves.”

After supper that night Tom and I were smoking the last of a precious package of cigarettes. The sun had long since disappeared, yet enough light remained to shape trees and houses in a half-distinct way. We were standing on the porch, relaxed, talking about a proposed trip to Agakaouitai and the burial place of the old kings. Tom suddenly stiffened and slowly turned his head. I followed his eyes and there in the black velvet depths of the open cookhouse we saw a dimly outlined shape like a man, a half man rather, as the outline stopped at the waist. The figure was a line drawing, such a sight as a child might crudely sketch in white chalk on a blackboard, a child’s conception of what a man might be. While we watched—and it seemed an eternity—it came swiftly toward us, faster than a frightened fish in the lagoon. It seemed to be drawn upon the air, the lines not luminous but white, and though I knew that it was coming rapidly toward us I cannot tell just how I knew this. It darted around us and disappeared into the garden, as the cat had done the night before.

Speechless and choking with emotion, Tom pointed to where it had disappeared. I was the first to come to myself.

“Well, Tom, how about that?”

But Tom couldn’t articulate his thoughts clearly for several minutes. Finally all his curiosity, fright, and wonder came out in jerky sentences as he asked what it was, why it didn’t stay longer, and what it meant.