RIVER OF NINE TAILS
“Any idea what killed him?” the American shouted over the chugging engine.
Elliot couldn’t answer, couldn’t drag his eyes away from the dead Vietnamese guide. The boat rocked as he watched the other man shuffle along the wooden seat and clamber over their rucksacks, ducking beneath the branch that had torn the canopy. In all his thirty-eight years on the planet, this was only the second dead body Elliot had seen. The first had been his wife.
“Where’s the kill switch on this thing?” The other man’s lip curled as he stretched over the body to reach for the engine.
Smoke belched from the long vessel’s exhaust, filling the blue sky with grey clouds.
As the only passengers on the sampan, the first they’d known of any problem was when the canopy ripped, and the boat thumped the riverbank. Elliot’s immediate thought had been that they were stopping despite the lack of a jetty and the captain had misjudged a landing.
The American, whose name Elliot didn’t actually know, cut off the engine. He scrambled backwards, awkwardly maneuvering around the slumped body, and the silence of the Mekong Delta closed in.
“Look at that mess.” The man’s voice seemed even louder now. “Look!”
Elliot was looking.
The Vietnamese man who’d introduced himself as Captain Duc, wore brown trousers and an open shirt. Blood glistened on dark skin from where it dribbled over his chin and down his neck. Dead eyes stared through the remaining smoky wisps, seeming to fix on the relentless sun.
The boat tilted as the American stood, his sunglasses swaying on the cord around his neck. “It’s leaking!”
Brown water lapped his sandals, splashing his socks. Blood swirled.
“Stand still!” Elliot yelled and grabbed the wooden rail. “Seriously, mate, don’t move.”
“I can’t swim.”
When Elliot relaxed his grip, he slowly stood, bracing himself against the rocking motion.
“We’re in the shallows,” he said, now standing straight, “we’ll be absolutely fine.”
Again, the other man shifted sideways. This time the sampan tilted.
“Whoa!” Elliot yelled.
Duc’s body flipped to sprawl facedown, half over the side. A limp arm slapped the water.
“Jesus, what the fuck?” the American shouted.
“Keep still!”
Two ragged, near-circular holes of flesh and shirt fabric gaped beneath the dead man’s shoulder blade. There were even a couple of ribs on show, splintered, grisly.
“What could’ve done that?” the man demanded.
Water rapidly filled the boat, now lapping their shins.
“Eels?” Elliot murmured, but doubted his words. “Piranha?”
He knew he was talking bollocks; he had no idea what the hell could’ve done it.
The man’s chest heaved. He looked as if he was going to have a panic attack. Elliot’s own breathing was fast. Beside him, extending almost parallel with the torn canopy, a low branch hooked out over the riverbank as though offering assistance.
“Come on,” he said, and reached for the branch.
Water splashed as the American headed for Elliot, and the boat jerked to the left and right.
“Slowly!” Elliot shouted before he could gauge the branch’s strength.
The water level rose and splashed around them, covering their knees in frothy bubbles.
“We must get off the boat!” The man flailed arms, the boat rocking. He barely managed to keep upright. The rails were sub-merging and the shredded canopy draped into the water. He slipped, yelled something, and leapt toward the riverbank.
Elliot looked up to the branch and allowed it to take his weight.
Behind him, he heard a splash and water drenched him. Waves rushed the mud and tree roots that lined the bank, and the boat pulled away from his dangling boots. For a moment he hung there, then hoisted himself hand over hand along the branch; awkward yet successful, he finally tiptoed the muddy bank and dropped to his knees. With his breath coming in short, hot bursts, he scrambled through reeds and slick foliage. Mud squelched.
“I’m soaked,” came the voice beside him.
Mud covered the other man’s clothes, mostly caking his lower-half, so much so that it looked like he wore brown trousers. His hair was flat to his scalp and water dripped from a stubbly chin. Despite the situation, Elliot almost laughed. Humor was his defense mechanism, and this was the kind of moment where it would erupt as uncontrollable laughter. Instead, he used Duc’s floating body as a way of sobering him up.
It worked.
“We need to get out of here.”
The American’s jaw flexed as he scooped mud from his clothes, while behind him the sampan sank lower, leveling with churned blood and froth. Duc’s body, a water bottle and a plastic bag drifted downstream, chased by swirling bubbles disappearing behind tall reeds where the river narrowed.
“Whatever killed him,” Elliot said, “could still be in the water.”
“Dude, stop stating the obvious.”
“You have any idea where we are?”
“Do I look Vietnamese?”
“Mate, I’m only asking.”
They stood on the riverbank and watched the waves lessen, giving way to ripples which rolled out toward the opposite bank.
“Brandon.”
“Huh?” Elliot looked down at the outstretched hand. “Oh, right, yeah . . . ” He clasped it. “Elliot.”
Although Brandon’s grip was all mud and water, it was firm, friendly. “I don’t mean to be a dick.”
“I get it.” Elliot wiped his now-muddy hand on his shirt. “That was enough to make anyone lose their cool.”
Brandon motioned to the river. “My phone was in that rucksack.”
“Want to dive in and get it?”
“No chance.”
“I’ve not had a phone since I left the UK,” Elliot said, wondering when precisely he’d disconnected from the world. It hadn’t been when he cancelled his phone contract, it was way before that. The months leading up to his departure blurred as though he’d sidestepped reality, so perhaps that was the reason why he felt somewhat desensitized to the insanity around him right now. He knew he should be scared shitless, wearing a similar wide-eyed what-the-fuck-just-happened expression as—
Brandon was still talking. “ . . . and you’re a rare one, buddy. The first traveler I’ve met who hasn’t been glued to a cell phone. New experiences for these youngsters, and they’re all attached to those things. No hope for mankind’s future. Eventually everyone will live life vicariously through a screen.”
Elliot glanced around them. He had no idea what to do. Perhaps there was a small part of him that wanted to wade out into the water, search the murky depths and confront whatever it was that had killed Duc. Maybe the animal had answers about Death.
“I figure,” Brandon continued, “we are both older than your typical traveler.”
Elliot blinked, shivered, and focused on the man’s words.
“Yeah, I guess,” he murmured.
He too had met countless other travelers, most in their late-teens or early twenties. They had no idea how life could set fire to your balls. Whether boy or girl (not man or woman, they were just kids after all), they’d often exchange short conversations before they returned to a handheld device, hunched, squinting. Granted, some were searching online for information about their surroundings, local traditions, translations, and the like, yet the majority seemed fixated with that constant need for validation from peers on the other side of the globe. In the twenty-first century, there was no longer a round-the-world trip, it was more a round-the-world ego-trip. There would always be that lifeline back home for them, certainly, but there’s no absolute freedom of being let off the leash, to absorb each and every experience at hand.
A lifeline . . . For Elliot, besides parents both in their seventies, he had nothing left back home. Not even a house. Not anymore.
And now he didn’t even have a spare pair of pants.
Brandon pointed to the brown depths of the Mekong Delta. His voice echoed on the hot air as he yelled, “How the fuck did that man die?”
***
Keeping the winding length of the river to their right, the two men agreed to follow its course, where eventually, it would lead them to My Tho, the village in which they boarded the sampan. Not wanting to walk too close to the water, not knowing what lurked beneath its brown depths, they kept it just in sight.
After a long stretch of silence, Brandon asked, “What brings you out here?”
Elliot wasn’t ready to answer that, especially to a travel companion whom he’d met only a few hours ago. Thoughts of Jane immediately came to him, albeit fleeting, yet enough for a familiar icy hold to grip his stomach and rise to his heart. Loss, guilt, confusion. Loneliness. He almost said, “To escape” but managed to catch himself and instead replied, “To see more of the world.”
Seeming content with that answer, Brandon nodded enough to make it necessary to push his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose.
They walked in silence again.
“The Vietnamese refer to the Mekong Delta as ‘Song Cuu Long’, or something like that,” Brandon eventually said, “and is over two-thousand-seven-hundred miles long.”
“Yep, and it starts way up in eastern Tibet.”
“It does.”
Elliot stopped and looked over the other man’s shoulder to where he could just about see the river through swaying palm fronds.
“Apparently, Song Cuu Long means ‘River of Nine Tails.’”
Elliot didn’t answer, he stared at the river, thinking he’d seen something.
“Or maybe it’s ‘River of Nine Dragons,’” Brandon added, mistaking Elliot’s attention on the river for interest in his trivia. “I can’t remember now. I read it some—”
“Shhh.”
The fronds steadied, making Elliot wonder if they’d moved because of the current or something else. He couldn’t hear anything. He stretched his neck, not wanting to approach in case that something else was there.
“What’s that?” he whispered.
Brandon turned to look, his jaw line twitching and eyes bulging behind sunglasses.
A gnarled branch broke the water’s surface.
Elliot started to laugh, relax, then—
It was not a branch.
Whatever Brandon said next was snatched by a torrent of water and parting fronds. In a rush of scaly limbs and a blur of mud, what appeared to be an alligator or crocodile (Elliot had never known the difference) scrambled up the riverbank. Toward them.
The thing had the body of a crocodile yet had no mouth, just a long snout with a splintered stump where a horn once was. As the men staggered backwards, sideways, yelling and sliding in the mud themselves, Elliot failed to work out where the torso ended and where its limbs began. Limbs . . . too many . . . all along its back, thrashed and whipped away branches and foliage. Whatever the animal, this creature, was, it lashed out with those determined appendages—that’s what they were: appendages with snapping mouths, like tentacles only with glistening circular maws filled with yellow teeth that lined the throats all the way downwards.
Even in the insanity of the moment, Elliot somehow managed to count the fucking things.
Nine.
Nine thrashing appendages, not including the four stumpy legs, each one culminating in a claw as long as his forearm.
“Run!” he shouted and sprinted up an embankment, further into the jungle.
“What the fuck is it?” Brandon’s voice was too far behind.
A glance over a shoulder, and Elliot saw the man had only just made it onto the embankment. The American scrambled clumsily in the mud as though his legs disobeyed him. He got up, threw a wide-eyed glance at the lumbering animal, and ran toward Elliot. At least, he tried.
He slipped sideways and whacked the ground with a “Hummmph!”
From where Elliot stood, flanked by looming trees, he could see only the top half of the man . . .
There was a slapping sound, like a wetsuit dropped onto soft sand, and a crunch. Brandon screamed, and his head and shoulders fell from sight.
More wet sounds, more crunching . . .
Elliot went to take a step toward the poor bastard—he had to help!—but then saw a whipping appendage, bloody, slick and glistening in the rays of sunlight which lanced through the jungle ceiling.
More screams . . .
From somewhere far away, yet perhaps closer than Elliot thought, something like a horn blew. A piercing note, shrill. It seemed as though even the birds fell silent along with Brandon’s screams. Then another note. The same, only this time sustained.
Something thumped and a branch snapped.
“You run, motherfucker!” Brandon shouted.
The horn’s blast silenced at the same time as a great splash. Out on the river, water misted the air like a thousand sun-glinting crystals.
Brandon groaned, and Elliot ran to him.
Brandon was huddled in the mud and wet leaves, clutching his leg.
Elliot moved in beside him, marveling at how the man wasn’t yelling. Bite marks, unsurprisingly identical to Duc’s, covered his leg from thigh to ankle. One was ragged and to the bone. Blood streaked his skin, saturated his sock and dripped on the ground.
“Mate,” Elliot whispered.
His first thought was a bandage for the worst of the wounds, and so immediately unbuttoned his shirt and shrugged out of it. Ripping fabric always looked easy in a movie but as he tried, he slipped and smacked his hand on the tree beside them.
Now Brandon began whining.
“You’ll be fine, mate.” Although Elliot wasn’t entirely certain. All the shit he learnt back in school, they never taught him to deal with a man whose leg had been ravaged by a river monster with nine mouths. Algebra, long-shore drift, how Jonas Salk cured polio in 1953 . . . but what do you do when faced with a wound such as this?
The man now mumbled while Elliot succeeded in ripping the arm off the shirt. The tearing sound seemed too loud. Perhaps the creature would hear it and come back. This time for him. A squint through the foliage at the now-still Mekong water, revealed nothing.
Somewhere far away, a bird cawed.
He calmed his breathing, if only for Brandon’s sake, and wrapped the fabric around the ravaged flesh.
“That’s the worst of them,” he said and gave it a final pull.
Brandon hissed through clenched teeth. Spit sprayed.
“Not sure what to do about these bite marks, though.”
“It hurts, man!”
“Now who’s stating the obvious?” Elliot looked at the remains of his shirt, not caring that he was now topless. It was wet, covered in mud with leaves and twigs sticking to it, but it would have to do. He tied it around the man’s leg as best he could.
“Thanks.”
“You’re going to be fine,” Elliot assured him. “You reckon you can walk?”
“I sure as fuck don’t want to stay here.”
The jungle buzzed with insects, something Elliot hadn’t noticed. Now the adrenaline had lessened, and blood no longer roared in his ears, he guessed it made sense that he’d begin to notice their surroundings.
“Let’s get you up,” he said and offered his hand.
The buzzing sound seemed to be getting louder. Closer.
Brandon looked past Elliot’s bloody hand. “Is that . . . ?” His voice was hopeful. He shifted in the mud and winced, placing both hands on the ground ready to push himself up.
“A motorbike, yeah.”
“Scooter.” The American still didn’t grab his hand. “Two of them.”
Elliot lowered his arm and followed the man’s gaze to peer deeper into the jungle.
It was indeed two scooters revving, and eventually they pulled into view. Both riders were young men, one whose open shirt flapped behind him, and the other who wore a red cap. As they approached, they exchanged something in rapid Vietnamese. They pulled up in a burst of engine revs and churned mud, not too far away.
“Thank God,” Brandon said, now clutching his leg again. He’d settled back down.
A cloud of petrol fumes clung to the air as the two riders regarded the travelers for a moment.
The man with the open shirt dismounted and kicked out the stand. Around his neck was what looked like a dried chili looped through a rusty metal ring and tied to a twisted leather cord. Elliot guessed it was some kind of Vietnamese superstition; back in the UK, it was a rabbit’s foot for a lucky charm, so why not a chili?
The guy with the red cap stayed mounted.
“Thank God,” Brandon said again as Chili-Man crouched beside him.
“You guys speak English?” Elliot asked.
Red Cap looked at him, then at Brandon.
“No?” Elliot pointed to the wounded man. “He needs help.”
“Yeah, I need help,” he hissed as Chili-Man prodded the makeshift bandage. “Hey, hey! Gentle! Come on . . . ”
Chili-Man looked up at his companion and said something.
Elliot had so far visited Thailand and Cambodia, and while exploring, he’d made every effort to learn pleasantries: hello, goodbye, please, thank you, plus other useful words. Sometimes even phrases. Now, faced with this emergency—let alone the fact their guide had earlier been killed by a river monster—he wished he’d invested in something as simple as a phrase book. However, even if he had one, it would no doubt be at the bottom of the river.
He had to accept this insane situation they faced.
Red Cap finally dismounted from his scooter and wheeled it up against the foliage. His dark eyes fixed on Brandon, then he said something so rapidly, Elliot doubted that if he even understood even a little of the language, he’d fail to catch it. Although, perhaps he heard the words “Cuu Long.”
“Hospital?” Elliot asked. “Um, medic, medicine . . . pharmaceutical . . . nurse?”
Chili-Man pulled out a hunting knife.
And thrust it into Brandon’s chest.
“What the—?” Elliot’s words echoed around them.
Brandon’s eyes bulged, looking at the blade sliding out from the gushing wound.
Elliot stepped forward. Someone from behind—Red Cap, of course—grabbed his arms. He wrestled in the man’s grip while he watched Brandon’s head fall back, dead eyes locked on the branches overhead. What felt like rubber pinched his skin, binding his wrists. He struggled, uselessly.
“Get off me!”
Chili-Man approached him, slowly raising the dripping knife. Perhaps a smile twitched his lips.
“Don’t do this!” Elliot yelled.
A fist swung upwards and Elliot’s nose exploded in a hot wet crunch. In a blur of tears and motion, the two men forced him to his knees.
“Mnnnnnnn, mnnnnnn, mnnnph,” Elliot said through a weird suffocation.
They crammed something green into his mouth, something bitter. Clamping his teeth together and trying to breathe through a broken nose was impossible. He tried to spit the stuff out, but they rubbed it over his teeth and gums. It tingled.
The pair laughed and released him.
With his arms bound, he thrashed about in the mud, spitting, choking.
“Bastards,” he said, but his voice sounded strange. Perhaps . . . perhaps it was . . . because . . . his nose . . . broken . . .
Stones and twigs and leaves scratched his naked torso, yet it all felt somehow distant . . . too far . . .
And a darkness crept into his vision.
Pressing in, sideways, numbing. A coldness spread through his body, and all he could taste was that bitterness.
With an ankle each, the two men dragged him past the body of his brief and now dead companion. He slid through mud, trying to kick, to struggle, but his body didn’t seem to obey.
That darkness came at him in waves.
As the drug took effect, tangled thoughts battered him. He wanted to laugh about the fact that he’d only just learned of the American’s name. With his brain whirling, his face on fire, he squinted through tears and blood and that pulsing blackness, and Elliot said goodbye to Brandon. Silently though, because his lips didn’t—couldn’t—move.
By the time they had him beside the river, his arms and legs were utterly useless. Paralyzed, it seemed, apart from his brain . . . yet even that was as slow as the river’s current which gently lapped his boots.
They left him there.
Alone . . . to be fed to that creature . . .
Don’t leave me!
Elliot listened to the two Vietnamese men return to their motorcycles, mud squelching and twigs snapping. One engine sputtered, revved, and then the other. Both now revving, they rode off.
Hey!
Engines faded into the silence.
Hey!
Now he was left with only the sound of the Mekong Delta.
As he laid there, feeling the sunshine on his face in that disconnected sort of way, the realization that Death was coming comforted him. Perhaps he was ready . . . He’d seen Death up close. Three times now: Twice here in Vietnam, the other back home in the UK.
Jane . . .
Death wasn’t too far away, and this time it was for him. If there was an afterlife, he’d get to see his wife again.
Did . . . did something splash just then?
Jane.
Why was it, when Death approaches—now in the guise of the thing that had killed Captain Duc—you begin to question if there’s some other place beyond all this?
Maybe something did splash.
This was it.
Time to die, Elliot.
And he was happy to accept.
He closed his eyes and thoughts of Jane soaked into him as even now he knew the mud and water soaked into his clothes. Of everything about her, all that she was . . . and—Death was coming, right now, just for him, all for him—and how he’d rushed her to hospital and . . . and not long after that how the surgeon’s well-practiced apologetic gaze fixed on him, and—
Splash. The sound of a rowing boat.
Jane?
A boat.
Was he relieved? Perhaps, perhaps not. What was his life now?
A slim wooden canoe cut through the water’s surface like a knife spreading smooth peanut butter on bread.
He wondered if his savior had any food on board his vessel.
Help me.
The small man with a conical hat guided the canoe toward him.
Hunger pangs—he felt them. Yet still he couldn’t feel his legs. Or arms.
Did he want to call out? Did he actually want to be saved? Death, for Elliot, was not quite ready for him after all.
Jane, maybe I won’t be joining you. Not yet.
***
Twilight pressed in on the darker greens which flanked his journey, the rhythmic splash and creak mesmerizing, almost hypnotic. Elliot was sprawled in the canoe, looking up at his conical-hat-wearing savior who rocked back and forth, heaving the oars up and down, splash and creak, in and out of the water. The man was perhaps in his forties, a fisherman Elliot assumed, given the tangle of net and rope that he now laid on.
He was still hungry, and the sky was darkening.
Perhaps the man was taking him to a fish farm, and he’d be fed one of Vietnam’s tasty dishes. What was the fish called? Elephant ears, of all things. Yes, that was it . . .
Definitely hungry now.
Elliot’s nose was still blocked, so he breathed through his mouth. Also, just like his arms and legs, his voice failed him; he wanted to thank the man, wanted to talk about what he’d witnessed. Regardless of whether or not the man understood English, Elliot had to tell him.
He had no idea what the hell it was they’d shoved in his mouth, but at least the effects seemed to be wearing off. The numbness had subsided, and he felt the humidity of the evening, plus the wooden boards beneath him poking into his back. Still he couldn’t move, but he guessed it wouldn’t be too long before he’d regain control of his body.
This was all insane.
Occasionally, his savior would look down at him, flashing a brown-toothed smile. Mostly though, he’d glance over his shoulder to keep the canoe on course to wherever their destination was.
Stilted wooden houses lined the water’s edge, their crooked jetties clawing out from the riverbank. The aroma of cooking meat teased Elliot’s swollen nostrils, while the occasional local man, woman and child stared through glassless windows. At one point, where the river narrowed, a group of children sat on the riverbank and whispered among themselves. One girl, whose dress seemed too bright for her surroundings, pointed at the canoe as it sent ripples toward her bare feet. Her toes curled, and she giggled, nudging the little boy beside her. He grinned.
Elliot wanted to wave . . . but couldn’t. Although his fingers did manage a pathetic twitch.
As he passed, not wanting to lose sight of them, he craned his neck—or indeed, he tried. Too much effort. As he returned his gaze upwards, to the first stars now piercing the ever-darkening sky, he felt the children’s eyes follow him.
The canoe cut its way through the winding river, taking him deeper into the Mekong Delta. He wondered where their destination would be. The man’s home? And how long until they reached it?
The sky darkened further. He had no idea how long he’d been in the canoe, nor did he have any idea how much time had passed since seeing the children. Or how long it had been since the men on scooters, and . . . bloody hell, they’d killed Brandon. And what about the river monster?
Elliot’s breath quickened.
Eventually the sky turned to black and unknown constellations stretched overhead, sharp and bright.
On his twelfth birthday, Elliot had unwrapped a telescope after months of pestering his mum and dad for one. He’d already learnt every constellation in the Northern Hemisphere and wanted something to take him higher into the night’s sky. With light pollution diluting the skies where he grew up in the UK, here in Vietnam, it was the blackest he’d ever seen. Beautiful. Inspiring, no less. And he saw every star, millions of them, sparkling.
Truly remarkable.
Listening to the rhythmic splash and creak of the oars, and looking up at those unknown constellations, he wondered what had made him lose interest in astronomy. He’d never thought of it before now, but he guessed it was the following teenage years that did it. He wondered whatever happened to his telescope. Perhaps it was still in his parents’ attic. Also, come the age of fifteen and sixteen, he’d developed a huge interest in music and soon learnt to play guitar. Then—
“Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll,” he said in a nasally voice. Chili-Man had done a fine job of busting his nose.
The Vietnamese man glanced at him.
Something shot past the man’s shoulder. A fiery streak.
At first, Elliot thought it was a shooting-star, but another fired past him. This time from the other direction.
Fire. Yes, that was it.
Another, and another.
Fireflies.
So many.
Those fireflies reflected the constellations, and in seconds, more filled the sky as though they intended to stitch a canopy between him and the blackness. Thoughts of a canopy led to thoughts of the sampan and Duc. The river monster. Brandon. The hunting knife. Death. And Jane.
Always, thoughts of Jane were never far off . . .
As he watched the fireflies weave intricate patterns overhead, Elliot noticed the rhythmic splash of oars had ceased.
Something filled his mouth. Fingers. A bitterness caked his tongue.
Tingling . . .
***
At some point, Elliot must’ve lost consciousness. Or at least he’d kept floating in and out of lucidity. When he opened his eyes to squint into a sunrise, he couldn’t quite make out where he was. With arms and legs awkwardly bound, pinching his skin, his muscles numb but no longer in that drugged way, it felt as though he was tied to a tree. Although, the surface was smooth: concrete, a pillar of some kind.
His head banged with the mother of all hangovers. Even worse than the one the day after Jane’s funeral. Indeed, he thought that had been up there with one of his greats.
From somewhere close by, flies buzzed. His nose was clogged, and it felt ten times larger than it should be, yet still, the smell of damp concrete invaded his heavy head. A foul taste filled his mouth.
He was in a building, in a single room featuring several rows of pillars that reached up to a broken roof. Sunlight pushed through the overhead gaps and through the barred windows to his left and right, enough to spotlight dozens of rotted cacao husks across cracked tiles. In places, the tiles had given way to sprouting weeds and heaps of dirt. The main exit, not too far ahead of him, was nothing more than a rectangular hole in the wall which probably once framed double doors. Crumbled steps led down onto grass that stretched a short way into tall palm fronds and reeds, and then the river. Brown, still, all-too familiar.
He could not recollect how he’d got there. He remembered that bitter taste and a sickness filling his head. He remembered being wheeled into the jungle—on a cart, yes, pushed by the man he’d mistakenly thought of as his savior. He remembered seeing more Vietnamese locals, mostly adults this time, solemnly watching him. He remembered how the ride was jerky, a constant nausea repeatedly stealing him into a private darkness.
His ears were ringing, a fuzziness still pressing into his mind, thoughts colliding. It threatened to again snatch him into blackness. His chin kept bouncing back onto his chest. It was such an effort to lift his head, so he kept his eyes down, staring at the filthy tiles. What looked like rubber tubing was bound tight around his bare ankles. Close to his muddy toes, absurdly, was a grubby playing card: the three of diamonds. There was no sign of the rest of the deck.
He’d been stripped down to his underwear, and he shivered despite the humidity. Feeling incredibly vulnerable, he almost screamed, yet managed to catch it before it tumbled from dry lips. What if the monster was nearby? He didn’t want to attract any attention, not wanting the monster to know where he was. He knew, however, that the monster would probably be able to smell him.
And speaking of smells . . . what the hell was that other stink clawing down his throat? It was putrid. He lifted his head, albeit slightly, and squinted into the shadows. Huddled in the corner, flies buzzing around them, he saw several heaped bodies. Mostly naked, each with similar wounds as he’d seen on Duc’s body and Brandon’s leg. He shifted to the left and right, and saw, then heard, the others in the building with him.
A sound outside, from behind, made him twist awkwardly, trying to look over his shoulder.
With his eyes now adjusting to the building’s gloom, he saw he was far from alone. It appeared he was one of eight men and women, all stripped down to their underwear, all bound to a pillar. Listening to the surrounding whimpers, he was surprised he’d not noticed his company sooner. His ears were still ringing, though, so maybe that was why.
Bound to the opposite pillar, a dark-haired woman, perhaps in her fifties and wearing mismatched underwear, hung with her head down. A long stream of spit dangled from her quivering lips.
Elliot awkwardly changed position, so he could see the others, the rubber tubing pinching his wrists and ankles.
There was an unconscious man whose black skin hid beneath so much mud. He’d puked down his chest and it had spattered the broken tiles at his feet. Another man, Asian and wearing boxer shorts covered in smiley faces, was murmuring to himself, his eyes glazed. There were two women, neither any older than twenty, dressed in bikinis. Daylight streamed through an adjacent window to highlight lank hair clumped over sunburned and blistered shoulders. One was unconscious, her chin on her chest, while the other murmured, her eyes rolling behind flickering eyelids. A mumbling older man with hair thick with dry mud, glanced at him and shouted something in German (Elliot understood some of the language, but not whatever it was that came from his blood-flecked lips). Although bound to the nearest pillar, he couldn’t hear what the German then began to mumble. The other captives he couldn’t quite see, so didn’t know whether they were male or female; he only saw their silhouettes in the gloom. However, he knew they, too, were all in a similar state of either confusion or drugged oblivion.
More shuffling from behind.
Someone else, a young guy wearing blue swimming shorts, was being dragged into the building by two men. His eyelids flickered, his lips trembled. Elliot was not surprised to recognize his captors: Chili-Man and Red Cap.
“What do you want from us?” someone screamed, the words echoing in the confines of the building. Such was the voice that shrieked, it was difficult to tell whether it was male or female.
From a ragged throat, Elliot shouted, “What is this?” and coughed.
No one answered.
A woman yelled: “Let us go!”
Again, there was no answer.
The German continued mumbling without even lifting his head.
As the two men went about tying their final captive to a pillar, another man entered the building. Vietnamese like the others, although much older, he was bare from the waist up, his skin wrinkled and saggy. He held a curved horn in both grubby hands. Hollow, etched with curious sigils and symbols, it balanced on his palms as though precious.
“No, don’t,” Elliot murmured. He remembered the last time he’d heard the horn being blown and it made the creature return to the river. So he could only assume this time it would summon the thing. “This is madness!”
Chili-Man and Red Cap stepped back from the newly-bound captive whose head now lolled. A long stream of spit dribbled from his chin. They walked away, footsteps echoing, and passed the older man. They nodded to him. He didn’t acknowledge them as they left, and simply continued into the centre of the building.
“Don’t do this!” Elliot shouted.
“Please, let me go,” someone whimpered in what sounded like a French accent.
“Let us all go!” shouted someone else.
The German still mumbled.
Now holding the horn in one hand, the old man raised it to his lips, inhaled, and blew. Given the confines of the room, the note it played resonated, filling Elliot’s head.
The old man blew again, long and loud.
And another, and then another.
“Stop that!” Elliot yelled.
Someone else: “Please!”
The dark-haired woman shrieked: “Noooo!”
Something splashed in the river.
Everyone hushed, apart from the mumbling German.
Elliot’s heartbeat filled his head. Death was finally coming. Coming for them all.
He squinted through the exit and out toward the river. There was more splashing, and branches cracked. Palm fronds swayed. There . . . there was the mouthless snout of the creature. The ivory stump on its forehead glistened, trickling water.
Those who saw the creature screamed.
The creature lumbered up the bank, its reptilian bulk sliding through mud, and those vile appendages parting and breaking fronds. Emerging fully into the daylight, the creature paused and hung its head, nostrils flaring as though seeking something.
Us, thought Elliot, it’s following our scent, our fear.
In an almost-casual way, it dragged its fat body toward the building, head low to the ground, those appendages thrashing the tall grass.
More screams echoed.
As the first paw reached the cracked paving slabs, the appendages calmed, yet still the mouths chattered. It heaved itself up the steps. Claws scraped and clicked the broken masonry. Its snout twitched, its head swayed. Even slower now, it slithered into the shadows and headed for the bodies in the corner.
The screams lessened, becoming sobs and curses and whispers of denial.
Flies scattered as the abomination slumped against the pile of dead, to nestle into the embrace of bloated limbs and rotted flesh. Curses quieted to whimpers, and Elliot swallowed his fear the best he could. Perhaps the monster wasn’t going to feast on them after all. The appendages jerked, mouths closing one by one. Each coiled in on itself, some wrapping around another, tightening against the thing’s scaly flank. It reminded him of Medusa’s hair.
Without any sign of the horn-blower, a strange silence fell upon the captives, interrupted only by rhythmic panicked breathing and the occasional sob.
The thing didn’t move, seeming content with its bed of dead bodies. Its black eyes closed, and eventually flies began to settle on its flank and unmoving appendages. The only movement now was its gently flaring nostrils. Softly breathing, its bloated stomach extended and contracted, extended and contracted. And—
The mud-streaked stomach split in a mess of blood and oozing filth, steam rising, curling into the shadows.
And three eggs, each as large as a man’s head, spat out.
***
The monster, this abomination of nature, shuddered. The grotesque appendages shivered, and the mouths chattered, briefly, then silenced. Its tail cradled the three ovoid eggs. Filth streaked each mottled shell, glistening weakly in the poor light. A stench of rotten fish and seaweed wafted through the building.
Someone gagged, heaved, and Elliot heard vomit spatter the floor.
A convulsion wracked the creature’s body and a front claw stretched to clutch the tiles, and then the other. Still its eyes were closed, and with steaming offal flopping out of its split gut, the creature began to drag itself away from the eggs. The tail uncoiled from around them and slid through the muck. The appendages were still intertwined close to the creature’s spine and several of the mouths opened and closed. It was as though they gasped.
Screams and yells erupted. Elliot, too, added to the cacophony, his throat raw as he and his fellow captives, those lucid enough, watched the creature maneuver away from the eggs. Blood and filth smeared the tiles in its wake, claws scraping.
Elliot struggled in his bonds, bile rising in his throat. Reaching the centre of the building, the creature slowed and eventually slumped as though its legs gave out. He saw the stump at the centre of its head and knew the horn that was once there had become the tool with which to summon it.
He eyed the eggs. Why had they captured him and the others? Were they to be food for the eggs once they hatched?
A man shouted, “Let us go!”
The creature appeared to be dying, its nostrils flaring, its head twitching. As it inhaled and exhaled its final breaths, the appendages unraveled, mouths gulping air.
One detached with a squelch. Sentient. It slopped on the floor.
Another, and another. They left only raw holes along the creature’s back, oozing pus and watery blood. In seconds, the nine appendages snaked lethargically away from the creature’s now-still form. One by one, they slithered away, each in separate directions. Blind, weaving through the detritus across the floor . . .
The captives quieted, a collective intake of breath to share a blanket of silence.
Each snake-thing wriggled, seeking, teeth chattering . . .
One reached the German first. He no longer muttered. It teased his feet, and if anything, he looked more curious than fearful.
Another flopped, writhing in dirt and slime, approaching someone else further in the shadows. Elliot couldn’t see who it was.
Further away in the corner, highlighted by streaming sunlight through a hole in the roof, Elliot saw one squirm toward a woman. As if with a sudden surge of life, it coiled up her leg. She shrieked. Trailing muck, the thing reached her face, teeth chattering a million miles per hour. In less than a second there was nothing left of her skin other than a ragged mess. Her scream was silenced when it shot down her throat, tail vanishing. She gagged, choked, convulsed.
So far none had approached Elliot, nor the unconscious dark-haired woman opposite, but he knew it was only a matter of time. He looked about him, searching for nearby movement.
He saw nothing. Yet.
The German didn’t move as he simply allowed the snake-thing to reach his chest, its teeth grinding. His own mouth wide, he jabbed his head forward and bit down on it. He shook it from side to side, blood and muck misting the air. It thrashed in his jaws, snapping its teeth, trying to gain purchase on his chest or shoulder or neck or . . . It clamped onto his nipple and tore away a flap of skin and chunk of muscle. He yelled, releasing the thing from his mouth. It darted for the wound, ribs snapped. Blood sprayed as it punctured his heart. He contorted, and his head dropped. The snake-thing burrowed into his chest, but slowly, its tail whipping spasmodically. Then it flopped and hung from the gaping wound, evidently dead.
Another poised in front of a young woman, coiling down into itself, ready to pounce. She screamed at it, bucking and twisting. It sprung upwards and dived into her mouth. She choked, writhing. Then she was still.
Yet another did the same, this time to the Asian man. Gurgling, choking, and thrashing.
Close by, something slurped. Elliot jerked around, looking for—
A snake-thing leapt up on him, slimy, warm, wrapping its tail around his shoulder and armpit . . . then his face. It smothered him, and corkscrewed around his neck, strangling. Dots peppered his vision. Desperate to keep his mouth closed, he struggled beneath its slippery length. His nostrils hissed through busted cartilage and bone.
No choice, he gasped . . .
The thing jammed into his mouth.
His throat stretched as it forced its way downwards. Utter agony.
Darkness closed in . . . and with it, unconsciousness.
***
In a myriad of colors, greens and browns, and the color of Death, Elliot’s vision shifted into bright light. His heart beat a monstrous rhythm in a tight chest. His sore throat felt like he’d swallowed a melon, and his stomach was bloated, aching as though he had indeed consumed one. He wanted to spew.
Then he remembered: he’d swallowed one of those fucking snake-things.
His breath started to come in sharp, short, painful bursts.
Moonlight pressed in through the barred windows and broken roof. From what he could tell, the other captives, those who remained, were slumped, unmoving. Dark filth puddled at their feet. Someone remained bound to a pillar, the man’s stomach and chest ravaged like a sack of meat, sliced and gaping. A snake-thing lay folded in the bloody mess near his feet, dead. Another was on the floor a little farther away. Several were coiled, motionless in the shadows. And the eggs . . . they were still in the corner against the dead bodies.
Some of the other victims had evidently been removed from the building and it appeared there were only three people left alive, himself included. Still bound to the pillar opposite, the dark-haired woman squirmed. The whites of her eyes shone beneath fluttering eyelids.
A fiery pain exploded in Elliot’s gut and snatched him back into the dark. Head spinning, the blackness welcoming. A brightness, a darkness, together it churned.
Within that peculiar half-light, half-dark, someone approached . . .
Footsteps echoed. Perhaps there were even voices.
Elliot’s mind whirled, a sickness washing over him, smothered in stink. He looked around, scanned the slumped bodies in the shadows. The woman gazed at him, her jaw slack, her eyes reflecting little more than pain and confusion. Her lips parted as though about to say something, but instead belched. The stink blended with the taste in his own mouth. His stomach rumbled. His fingers tingled. A heat filled him, moved within, and a rush of nausea buzzed like insects.
Again, darkness took him back down, down, down . . .
As the buzzing sound seemed to intensify, the churning darkness melded with the light.
Someone pinched his chin, calloused fingers rasping on stubble.
“Huh?” he shook his jaw away from the fingers.
Through the darkness and flashes of sunlight, a wrinkled Vietnamese face squinted through the shadows which again threatened to take Elliot down. It was the old man from earlier, however long ago it had been when this bastard summoned the monster: the horn-blower. It was as though the man was inspecting him.
Most of the other pillars were now empty. Rope and rubber tubing coiled in puddles of clumped meat and blood and motionless snake-things. The dark-haired woman was still there. Blood and spit dribbled from her lips.
She screamed, and the sound snatched him upright.
His stomach twisted. Agony. Interchangeable, dark and light, shadows and sunshine . . . and maybe this time there was some motion.
He felt his arms and legs released, and his body slumped. His knees cracked on the floor, palms slapping the cool tiles. Two more men approached: Chili-Man and Red Cap. They lifted him, each man hooking one of Elliot’s arms around their neck.
Malnourished, his head heavy after being drugged, he pathetically wrestled with them. But they effortlessly dragged him out into the daylight where the sun burned. It was as though his fists were made of rubber.
In moments they reached the riverbank.
Were they now going to let him die here?
Blinking into the sunshine, the water teased his feet as the two men left him alone. Movement from beside him, and he noticed the woman was also slumped on the riverbank, their unbound legs tangled in reeds, their bodies sprawled in mud. The sun burned his bare skin, made him itch. The sound of the men retreated back into the jungle, back toward the building.
He tried to call to them, but he only succeeded in dribbling.
The woman shivered, clutching her distended stomach.
He, too, rubbed his stomach. It looked like he was pregnant. Looking at the woman who faced away from him, for a moment he thought she was his wife . . . but images of the monster, the building, the eggs, the snake-things, consumed him. She was not his wife, she was not Jane.
Had they been freed?
Yet . . . yet inside him there was no freedom. Inside, that thing was there.
He moved, slid through mud, his fingers caressing something slick, curved.
An egg.
The woman shifted to face him. She belched. The stink was foul. She already held one of the eggs, but the shell was lighter than his. Just the two of them there, huddled in the reeds at the water’s edge, both like expectant parents. Why was the shell of her egg lighter than the one he held? Something was wrong. Inside: no life. The egg, dead. For a moment, he remembered . . . something . . . someone . . . Jane. His Jane . . . They’d conceived. They were once close to being parents.
He pressed his face to the eggshell. It cracked as he pushed his hairy chin into the goo that oozed through segments of shell and tearing membrane. He didn’t much care for the taste; he didn’t much care for anything now.
Once, though, he did care.
Mouth open, he buried his face in the muck and slurped the gloopy contents. As he did so, he thought of Jane and the child they never had, the life they never had, and the life Jane lost. The life, the lives, he lost.
The woman reached out for him, her fingers raking the blistered, crusty skin of his arm. Her mouth opened, and she murmured something, then coughed. Her body shook, then was stolen by convulsions. The egg rolled beneath her. She arched her back and turned over and crushed the egg with her bulbous stomach. Spasms wracked her body, and calmed, and then she was still.
He stared into the woman’s dead eyes.
Time seemed to stretch, the sun arcing overhead, changing from hot to warm. Eventually the sun vanished. While the first stars pricked the darkening sky, he realized he clutched an egg. It nestled between his thighs. He could not remember how this last egg, this healthy egg, had got there.
His egg.
He closed his eyes, accepting the darkness.
Only this time it was a content sleep.
***
Waves gently lapped him. He felt different. His breathing moved like liquid, as though valves opened and closed somewhere in his throat, his nose. He slid into the mud and lowered himself into the welcoming depths of the Mekong Delta, watching his hands cup the brown water. A glance behind, and he saw the egg almost glow under the burning red of sunrise.
The woman’s body, grey and sun-scorched, now hid beneath a haze of buzzing flies.
He felt a sheen of translucent skin shift over his eyeballs as he submerged. Beneath the water, he could see perfectly. He swam and marveled at the tiny bubbles tracing the scales that covered his arms.
Beneath the water, he glided. Agile. Powerful.
Along his back and shoulders there was a mild discomfort, and he felt movement there. It was the extra appendages that were even now splitting the skin down his spine.
He would not swim out too far, nor for too long.
He couldn’t.
He could not leave the nest.
Soon, he headed effortlessly back toward the egg cradled in the twists of broken fronds. His head broke the surface, water tumbling down his long face. The sun was now higher, burning orange through the reeds where the egg was barely visible. As he waded closer, he saw a crack appear in the ovoid shell.
He slid through the mud, keeping the egg in sight.
The shell cracked further, fragments peeling. A scaly muzzle tore through the thin membrane as though sniffing the air. A frail claw reached out.
The thing that was once Elliot embraced its child.