Chapter Forty-One

Captain Gosswick surveyed the many graves, finding his soldiers’ names etched on several: Dan Vickers, Theodore Quig, Joe Dunlap, Nigel Bigsby. As much as it saddened Gosswick that he’d lost so many of his men, it was the other graves that gutted him most.

Dozens of dirt mounds covered the island with barely a thin wooden cross to mark each one. He recognized them as Kikuyu graves, the dead tribal people who’d been buried by Christian missionaries. He didn’t need epitaphs to know who was buried here. Many graves were under swamp water, with only the rickety crosses visible. Gosswick’s heart shuddered as he stepped between smaller dirt mounds. Twenty of them. From their crosses dangled trinkets – a bead necklace, a doll, a tiny pair of shoes.

Sykes walked up beside him. “Does this look familiar to you too?”

Gosswick uttered one word, “Kenya.”

Three years ago a dark period of his life had branded permanent scars on Aiden Gosswick’s soul. He’d been between expeditions, so he and a few of his soldiers had signed on to do mercenary work for a gold mining company near the town of Kakamega. It was the heart of the Kakamega gold rush, and because of the Great Depression, men from all over the world had flocked to this armpit of western Kenya in hopes of finding glittering rocks in the mines and rivers.

Gosswick and his crew protected the mines controlled by Skinner Mining Company. The company’s owner, Lachlan Skinner, rewarded his soldiers with bonuses of gold for doing his dirty work. Gosswick and his men, having come from the slums of England, were happy to oblige.

The mine’s black workers, mostly men and lads from the Kikuyu tribe, feared Skinner. He was a brutal disciplinarian, and many of his workers had whip scars lashed on their backs by Skinner himself. He’d made enemies too. One was Abu Khan, an underground Kikuyu rebel who lived like a ghost among the tribe. Several of Skinner’s laborers were discovered smuggling gold, and rumor had it “the Black Ghost” was using the gold to buy guns. After years of growing tension between the Kikuyu and the white European settlers, it was feared that Abu Khan was planning an uprising to take over the mines.

Skinner paid Gosswick handsomely to flex his military muscle, subdue the local tribes, and do all he could to smoke out their Black Ghost. “I want Khan’s head,” Skinner demanded. He intended to place the rebel leader’s head on a pike above the mine entrance to remind the workers who they should be loyal to.

Gosswick painted his face red to match one of the Kikuyu demons. Then he set off on a witch hunt with a squad of three mercenary soldiers – Sykes, Quig, and Vickers – and thirty lethal Maasai warriors who had been given rifles. During a raid, they had driven huge gun-mounted lorries through the villages in a brigade that sent the Kikuyu scattering for their huts. Skinny black children playing in the dirt road stopped and stared until their parents scooped them up and ran.

Gosswick and his crew got out and walked the villages, holding guns and machetes. The trigger-happy Maasai shot their rifles toward the sky, mostly to terrorize their long-standing enemies. The rivalry between Kikuyus and Maasai went back hundreds of years. Gosswick tasted the tension of war in the air as he spoke to the chiefs of the surrounding villages and demanded they turn over Abu Khan. When the chiefs acted as if he didn’t exist, the mercenaries stormed their huts. They found caches of gold and hidden guns – and took them.

Over the next few weeks, Gosswick’s squad made more raids into the villages and skirmished with bands of Khan’s men. Standing behind a mounted machine gun on the back of one lorry, Gosswick rattled off continuous shots, mowing down rebels fighting from ditches in a field. Sykes helmed the second gun, his bullets ripping holes through hut walls. Bodies of the slain rebels were then tied to the backs of the bumpers and dragged through the village to send a message.

Nicknamed Moto Nyoka, which translated to ‘Fire Snake’ in Swahili, the brigade with the red-faced demon soldier shooting from the back of a truck became a legend in those parts.

Gosswick got so used to the bloodshed it numbed him. He’d lost count of how many days he’d walked past corpses bleeding on the roads. His men shot at village dogs that fed on the dead. What got to Gosswick were the kids peering through the wooden bars of their huts as he and his men lined up their fathers and executed them. Children lost their mothers, too, when the women foolishly tried to protect their husbands.

After six months of senseless killing, Gosswick began to question if the Black Ghost ever existed. Perhaps he was only a figment conjured by a corrupt businessman who feared his own shadow.

On his days off, Gosswick drove into the Kakamega town and drank the horrors away at a bar. Across the street was an orphanage. There were always kids giggling and playing in the streets, reminding him of his sins. If there’d been anywhere else to go, he would have. He recognized some of the children, whose parents he’d killed. They didn’t seem to recognize him without his war paint. Still guilt began to eat at Gosswick like a cancer. He brought the children sweets. Excited, they would crowd around him, patting his pockets for treats. He played hopscotch and stickball, even secretly donated some of his pay to the orphanage.

Until one day Skinner’s spies made a horrible discovery – Khan’s rebels were running the orphanage, hiding guns there and possibly the Black Ghost himself. Skinner ordered Gosswick and his men to raid the building. When their brigade of trucks rolled into town, Gosswick’s crew faced twenty small boys and girls who could barely lift the pistols and rifles they’d been given. The children lined up on the sidewalk in front of their building like miniature soldiers. Not one was older than twelve and a few were as young as five. The sight was so absurd that Sykes cracked a joke about Khan recruiting pygmies. The other soldiers chuckled.

Standing behind his mounted Lewis gun, sweat beading on his forehead in the dry heat, Gosswick yelled for Abu Khan to come out. No one answered. He studied the dirt-crusted windows of the two-story building, and then his gaze returned to its young sentries. One of the little girls rubbed her eyes as if ready for a nap. The other children watched the brigade, some squinting into the sun, a few straining to hold their guns upright.

Gosswick hadn’t wanted to fight them. He’d even tried talking them into dropping their weapons.

But one of the nervous orphan boys fired a shot. It may even have been a mistake. Gosswick would never know. The bullet pinged off the barrel of his machine gun and something in him came alive, a soldier’s reflex. Gosswick unleashed the Lewis gun. When it was over, he had slaughtered all twenty-two children.

The Black Ghost was never found.

Every night the dead children haunted Gosswick’s dreams. They giggled, tossed the ball with him, felt his pockets for treats.

Now, standing on this impossible island of graves, he feared he might be going mad. He heard the Kikuyu children giggling in the dark. Out in the swamp, beyond the ring of their lights, the giggles turned to screams. The staccato sounds of machine-gun fire rattled in a long burst. Gosswick clamped his hands over his ears.

No one else seemed to hear anything – the children or gunfire. The others quietly explored the vast graveyard, lost in their own thoughts.

The machine-gun fire ended abruptly. Gosswick strained his eyes back at the swamp forest. The spiky trees began to spin in circles around the island. He knelt on one of the mounds. His fingers touched a bony leg, and he recoiled. He stared at his trembling hand.

Sykes put a hand on his shoulder. “You all right, Captain?”

“Do you remember what we did to the Kikuyu?”

His most loyal soldier looked at all the graves and nodded. His face remained as hard and stoic as ever.

“How does it not get to you?” Gosswick asked.

Sykes faced him and stared with cold eyes. “Killing’s just part of the job.”

* * *

Ely walked with Dyfan through the garden of tombstones.

“I see the will-o’-the-wisp,” the psychic whispered. He hurried to a tombstone and stroked the engraved words, his fingers pausing over each letter. “It’s hers, isn’t it?”

Ely wiped away lichen, revealing Celtic designs and an epitaph. “Gwendolyn Arwen Penrose, 1895–1930. Maker of divine music. A goddess who loved a mortal.”

Dyfan closed his eyes and smiled. “When my wife used to play her violin, her music took me to faraway, enchanted places.” He tilted his head. “Do you hear that?”

The blind man stood and faced the water. “My Gwendolyn’s out there. I can hear her bow caressing the strings.” Tears fell as he moved his head in time to an imaginary concerto.

Ely listened. He heard nothing beyond the occasional crackle of branches. Then he swore he heard someone calling his name, only it wasn’t a woman but a man with a heavy smoker’s voice that he recognized. “Ely…”

The hairs rose at the nape of his neck. Ely slowly turned and began walking toward the voice. At the center of the graveyard he came upon a long wooden box filled with soil. The moist dirt moved with pale worms.

Impossible.

The sight of the box took Ely back to a terrible time in his childhood, when he spent a summer near Monk Lakes, living and working at Mr. Garrick’s worm farm. Behind the farmer’s house stretched a long, one-story structure with a curved roof and rock walls covered in dead vines. The only light came from several broken windows, holes in the arched ceiling, and a few light bulbs hanging twenty feet apart. The cavernous interior, which had once housed barrels of wine, was now lined with long, open wooden boxes filled with soil and every kind of species of earthworm and grub. Ely had fed the worms, made sure their dirt bedding stayed moist, and captured them for the local fishermen who bought them as bait. Sometimes, when Ely took a break to read a comic book, Mr. Garrick would get onto him. “You need to feed the worms, boy!” Then he’d roll up the comic book and hit Ely on the head. “Back to work.”

The heavy-smoking farmer had always stunk of tobacco and sweat. He worked hard during the day and drank hard at night. He took great pride in his worm farm. “Got the largest assortment of worms in the whole of England,” he often boasted to customers. “European night crawlers, red wigglers…. If they squirm, I got ’em.”

At the very back, he had one special dirt box filled with white worms that fascinated Ely. These were longer and fatter than the brown earthworms. Valuable, too, because Mr. Garrick imported them from India. When he found out Ely wasn’t selling the white worms, the farmer whipped him with a garden hose. Ely had suffered so many bruises he could barely sleep for days.

A scrawny lad who had been raised by a single mother, Ely had been impressionable and eager to have a father figure. At first, he believed he deserved to be disciplined. He had looked up to Mr. Garrick and desperately wanted to please him. The farmer took advantage of this and more than once beat Ely. “Every boy needs discipline. Sufferin’ a bit of pain will make a man outta you.”

The hose whippings became more frequent and severe. One day, while Mr. Garrick was getting drunk, Ely shoveled out several worms and stomped on them. Mr. Garrick saw the mess and chased him through the compost barn. “I’ll kill you, you little shit!”

Ely tried to get away, but the man was faster and stronger. He pinned the boy down and stuffed dirt and worms into his mouth. As Ely choked, Mr. Garrick got up and started to walk away. Ely, crying and spitting dirt and bits of worm, grabbed a shovel and struck the bastard on the side of the head. His boss fell to the ground. Blood covering his ear, Mr. Garrick tried to crawl away. A rage Ely didn’t know he had in him took over, and he brought down the shovel, over and over, and smashed the farmer’s head in, killing him. Afraid of what would happen if anyone found out, Ely buried the body in the crate with the white worms. Then he ran away and caught a train to Dartford, where his mother lived. Months later, the newspaper reported that Mr. Garrick’s skeleton had been found buried with hundreds of fat white worms. There was brief mention of a teen who had worked for Garrick, but none of the customers knew Ely’s last name or where he might have gone. Thankfully his boss had run a dodgy business and paid Ely only in cash. The farmer had been deep in debt with mobsters, so police decided hit men must have killed him.

Memories of that traumatic summer had stayed with Ely. Now, he trembled as he stared down at the lidless, wooden crate filled with soil and squirming white worms. Somehow it had manifested in this cemetery. He kicked the frame to make sure it wasn’t an illusion. His boot struck solid wood.

“Ely Platt…” the smoker’s voice rasped again. The dirt in the box shifted. A mouth that no longer had lips said, “You can’t escape me, boy…”

* * *

For Imogen, crossing the island’s graveyard made her heart ache. Sobs rose in her throat for several tombstones she discovered, each marked with the names from her childhood: the dozen staff members who had worked at her parents’ house, among them her favorites – Mr. Kent; Mr. Edwin; young Rory; the cook, Miss Beatrix, and her helper, Mabel; nanny, Miss Emily – and at last her parents, William and Cora Riley. All the people Imogen had abandoned in the fire.

Guilt and grief filled her heart until she could barely breathe. She knelt between her mum’s and dad’s graves, side by side, just like at the cemetery back home. Somehow it was replicated here, mixed in with graves that others in the group recognized.

Caleb found Imogen. He read her parents’ epitaphs and knelt beside her. His quiet presence reassured her.

“Did you find your family here too?” she asked.

“Not mine,” was all he said, but she could tell something had bothered him deeply.

* * *

The group gathered finally at the center of the island where the orb hung suspended, the only benevolent entity in this godforsaken realm. Caleb assumed the illuminated sphere must be an angel sent to guide them through the valley of death.

Caleb had no explanation for the existence of this impossible graveyard. He was still disturbed by the two headstones he’d found etched with familiar Greek names: Nikolai and Christoph, the deep-sea divers he’d watched die in the Blue Hole. How could they be buried here among Imogen’s family, Trummel’s sister, Dyfan’s wife? Gosswick and Sykes claimed to be responsible for a large number of the graves. A realization suddenly dawned on Caleb. This cemetery wasn’t a resting place for loved ones who’d passed. It was a repository for the sins Caleb and the others had committed.

In Catholic school, he’d learned about purgatory. Father Victor, the school’s headmaster, had told the students, “Nothing unclean shall enter the kingdom of heaven. After you die, your soul must purge its sins.”

The surrounding branches shook. A drifting fog shrouded parts of the swamp. Pale faces appeared in the mist, just beyond the branches. There must have been fifty or more dead souls out there. As the fog began to roll across the island, swallowing crosses and tombstones, the dead came with it.