Renegade (28 page)

As I entered a darkened corridor, I heard the scuffling of Jupe’s nails around some crypts to my right. I darted that way and then all became silent. I could neither see nor hear Jupe and the air grew colder, freezing even, although I could no longer feel the gusts of wind from outside. Terror overtook me, and I knew that I was not alone.

“Abbie.”

I heard my name spoken, immediately behind me. A whisper.

I whipped around.

Mariah.

I had not even heard her approach and now she stood inches from my face, her hair loose, sweeping thick and dark across her shoulders. In spite of the weather, she wore no shoes; in fact, she wore nothing except a long white gown, not even undergarments. In the dim light I saw her nipples, the rise and fall of her breasts beneath her gown.

Even amid my terror, I gasped at her loveliness. Sorrow and guilt spread through my chest.

“Abbie,” she said again, moving even closer. I felt her breath on my cheek, saw my own breath puff before me.

Entranced, overwhelmed, I wanted to touch her.

“You’re dead,” I said sharply, trying to break the spell.

She smiled. It was a classic Mariah smile. Glorious and wicked.

She leaned toward my ear, as she used to when telling me a secret. I felt her lips brush against my skin, and I could not move as I smelled something sweetly rancid. Dizzied, I closed my eyes; my world spun.

“No,” she whispered. “You are.”

I opened my eyes again, and found myself in a coffin. Mariah was lying still, dead, a corpse beside me. I pounded the casket lid, screaming, suffocating, and frenzied.

I must have gasped in my sleep, because Simon was gripping my shoulder, and I saw an elderly female passenger glancing in my direction, clearly annoyed at my outburst.

“What is the matter, Abbie?” Simon asked.

I tried to suppress the terror that I felt. Then I saw more unfriendly gazes from the other few passengers as I struggled to regain my composure. “Just a nightmare.”

The semicircular windows of the coach showed that night had come. Everything in the coach interior was dark, shadowed.

“We’re almost to Edinburgh,” Simon whispered quietly.

As Simon arranged for a carriage ride from Edinburgh to Caithness—paying extra, I was certain, for us to travel alone and to leave immediately—I scanned the busy train platform, waiting for his return. The platform was unusually busy for this time of night. It was difficult to see, amid all the harsh gaslight and foggy night air, but as I watched for Simon’s tall form, I saw a flash of straight, ash-blond hair. It looked like the distinctive hair of the man I had seen in Highgate Cemetery that morning, near Mariah’s grave. But when I looked again at that spot in the crowd, I saw nothing.

“We have to hurry, Abbie,” Simon said, appearing quickly and taking my arm.

I cleared my throat and said nothing. After the nightmare, and with all the stress of the journey, I felt certain that my strained eyes were playing tricks upon me.

Once we were settled in the carriage and the journey began, I knew exactly why Simon had recommended that I sleep on the train. Although we were the only passengers, the ride was fast and jolty, and Hugo took up so much of the floor space, that it was impossible to sleep. Simon had mentioned that the trip would take at least four hours with no stops.

Perhaps it was the late hour, but I no longer felt like respecting Simon’s many secrets. There was a reason behind his melancholy, his wintry eyes, and I felt determined to discover it. I thought of his refusal to tell me about his time in Africa.

“Simon. What happened in Africa?”

My voice sounded like a gunshot in the darkness, jolting and a little cruel.

He turned to look at me. A bit of moonlight shone through the drawn carriage drapes and I saw his face tighten a bit. “Abbie … ”

“I know something happened, Simon. Something, I would guess, that you’ve never even told Rosamund about.”

His lips tightened. I was correct.

“Please, Simon. We might all die anyway before this journey ends. Tell me.”

He sighed. The carriage had suddenly become stuffy, cramped, so he opened the window. Cool, very cool air swept through the interior for a moment; I had forgotten how very far away from London we were. Both Simon and I remained silent as the carriage cooled for a few minutes. Then he shut the window and drew a breath.

His voice was low. Even. Barely audible. He pulled aside the curtains to look out the window, and I saw the sharp shadows of branches across his face.

“I have always been sober, distrustful, even disdainful of the life I lead in Kensington with my mother. Six years ago, before I attended medical school, I made a decision to also attend seminary. My mother, of course, was not terrible happy about that. Her brother-in-law, my Uncle Fitzwilliam, had become a priest as a young man, and after becoming a missionary, descended into the Congo and never returned. We knew where he was posted, near Port Francqui in the Belgian Congo. His mission was to convert and attend to the needs of the natives there, and he had every hope of being well-received, as I heard from my mother that he was of an intelligent and generous nature.”

Simon turned back to look at me. “He wrote to us often. I listened eagerly to my mother read us his letters. This uncle, to my young mind, seemed to be living life the right way, not living in ease like myself and our other relatives. Rather, he was living a life abroad, a life of simplicity, serving others. Then suddenly his letters stopped. We assumed he was still at his missionary post, but my mother fretted occasionally. Then suddenly, a year later, when I was seventeen, we received a brief note telling us that everything at the post had gone well. He said that he was living in perfect community with the Congolese.”

He looked at me hard. “I was young. The idea of that life seemed so inspiring. I had felt certain of my belief in God then—that God had purposes for men. I requested, from my mother, the funds to travel to Africa to meet with my uncle. She reluctantly agreed. Europe was just beginning to colonize in Africa, and the journey was very dangerous. But I was determined.”

He paused, swallowed as if his throat were parched. I saw him look down at his long, pale, slender fingers in the dim coach light. “The journey was difficult and arduous. I became sick with ague for one week during it, but recovered quickly. Once I reached Port Francqui, I inquired about my uncle, asking many if they knew the whereabouts of Father Fitzwilliam St. John. What I learned from the local merchants in the area was that they had not seen him in three years. Apparently he’d gone off into the jungle and never returned.

“I found this odd, particularly since he had only recently written to us. I won’t tire you with the details, but I remained at the Port Francqui post for a month. I realized that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with the Europeans, even if I did speak Dutch moderately well. I studied and learned enough of the local Bantu to communicate with the native Congolese.”

Hugo raised his head and growled as a dog barked somewhere in the distance. When he relaxed, Simon began speaking again. “We talk about imperialism like it is a noble concept, as if we are helping other nations. But we are not. I saw such terrible atrocities in the name of imperialism, and, I have heard that it has only become worse now that the area is completely controlled by King Leopold. Imperialism is an excuse for exploitation. It was only through communicating with the natives that I learned that there was talk of another post, somewhere deep in the interior of the jungle. I had difficulty getting information because few Congolese would talk of the place. Eventually, with extra money, I secured two guides to take me to this secluded post. It was a three-week journey, and I became covered in mosquito bites from head to foot. My leg was infected by a snake bite. Nonetheless, we eventually reached the post.”

He stopped talking and stared at me as the carriage lurched violently. We were ascending a hill, and the road seemed to be extremely rocky. Still, Simon’s face remained immobile, statuesque, and I felt as if he were far from me.

“And then?” I whispered. A dread set in upon my heart. “When you reached it … ”

I saw the weighted, anxious look in his eyes, the same look I had seen when my hypnosis session had gone terribly wrong and he’d kissed me, saving me from becoming lost in my psyche.

“We smelled the place before we saw it. It reeked of rotting flesh. My guides and I had had to put cloths around our faces to keep from fainting. And then we saw the spikes, on the walls surrounding the post. The spikes had heads: Men’s heads. Women’s heads.” Simon paused. “Children’s heads. Even the heads of infants. Many of the heads were no more than skulls. But some heads appeared to have been from recent deaths.”

I put my hand over my mouth. Unable to speak, I thought I might vomit. I had never heard of anything so awful. I did not want him to continue, and yet I knew that he had to. I knew the weight of memories, and I knew that for his own sake, Simon could not carry his own in solitude forever.

“As we passed through the broken front gates, I saw that this ‘missionary post’ was merely a small village. It seemed empty. Isolated. The only thing greeting us was that smell of rotting flesh. The flies in that area were intolerable. I saw a few, very few, half-starved people—they had a distracted, fearful look in their eyes. Many were missing fingers, arms. I saw a five-year-old boy missing a leg. It was easy to locate my uncle, as he was in a large mud hut in the center of the village. When I entered the hut, I saw that he was nothing like the handsome, youngish man I had seen in Mother’s photographs. He was thin, dreadfully thin. He wore a turban over his head and had markings upon his face. Crucifixes covered every inch of the wall behind his bed. Silver, golden, carved wood crucifixes. I saw a platter of raw meat in the corner of the hut.

“My uncle said nothing, but rather stared at me through deep hollow eyes, eyes that resembled so many of the skulls upon the village walls—expressionless, empty. He said nothing for so very long that I wondered if perhaps he had forgotten how to speak English. I hardly knew what to say, except to tell him who I was.

“But Uncle Fitzwilliam had not forgotten about our family. He suddenly spoke of how marvelous his post was, of how happy he was that I had decided to join him. He said he would send a servant with me to my quarters to make certain that I was comfortable after my long journey.

“I remember feeling speechless. It was as if he was ignorant of all the grotesquery surrounding us, of the almost empty village with its hollow-eyed, mutilated inhabitants.

“A native woman escorted us from the hut. She had all of her limbs and I suspected that she was my uncle’s mistress. Something terrible was quickly becoming clear to me. The story behind this place was becoming clearer. As I walked beside her, with my guides at my side, I asked her in Bantu who God was. She pointed into the hut and explained that my uncle was God. As one of my guides questioned her further, I realized that my uncle had told them he was God—that he was the true God. I learned that my uncle had taught them heresies, twisted the notions of communion and sacrifice to create a cannibalistic ritual system. The villagers I saw were the few natives who had stayed, who believed that my uncle was who he said he was, and they gladly gave up their limbs, their children even, for his cannibalistic appetites. He had told them that this was the only way to heaven. The eyes of that small boy haunted me. As I began to understand the situation, I found myself shaking, trembling violently. I was only eighteen then; I had grown up so sheltered—this sort of cruelty was catastrophic to me.”

Simon paused again for several minutes before going on. This time I did not urge him on; I felt a tear slide down my cheek in the darkness. I had considered sharing the trauma of Mother’s death, of losing Roddy, but I knew that my story paled in comparison to this. Another tear slid down my cheek. How could he keep this to himself for all of these years?

“I went into his hut again, and he was eating the meat from the platter. He ate it raw, and I still remember shuddering, knowing and believing that it was human flesh he consumed. But I had to be certain.

“‘Who are you?’ I asked him. ‘God,’ he replied, barely pausing as he chewed. I wondered how he could stay so thin if he ate human flesh so frequently. I knew that what I feared was true. He was delusional.

“‘And who are these people to you?’ I asked him. ‘They are my followers. Gladly giving up their flesh for me.’