part0030

They had reached the top of the hill and now stood panting in what was nearly a driveway, Ana bent over with her hands on her knees. She had never been a big hiker. The imposing facade of the reception awaited its first ever customers.

The rain lashed down, bouncing off the dirt, and a brief burst of lightning momentarily illuminated the empty building. It was designed in typically gaudy style to resemble a Thai temple. It could have been stunning, with golden spires reaching for the sky and miniature pagodas lining the walls. A narrow bridge led to the entrance over what was intended as a koi pond. The roof was multi-tiered in the traditional style of a Buddhist temple and carved figures decorated the exterior.

Now though, without constant care and attention, the colours had faded. Moss and creepers slithered up the wall, vanishing into cracks while a tree lay blocking the entrance, a victim of one of Thailand’s many tropical storms. The carved figures showed signs of wear, the wood splintered into thin lines where tiny plants and insects now made their home. To one side lay a pile of bamboo scaffolding that had collapsed after years of neglect.

Beyond the reception the yellowing apartment blocks stood watch, four storeys of empty rooms and broken dreams.

‘Let’s go inside,’ said Ricky.

‘Yeah, good idea,’ said Ana.

But none of them moved. The rain soaked their skin, their flimsy underwear doing nothing to protect them from the torrential downpour, the water dripping from the tips of their noses.

‘You first, Ricky,’ shivered Rachel.

‘Why always me?’

‘Because you’re a big, tough man,’ said Ana, still trying to catch her breath.

‘Cunt,’ he muttered, and without another word he hopped over the fallen tree. The girls followed, reaching the stone bridge that led into the lobby of the resort. Filthy water filled the koi pond, crooked white branches jutting out from the brown murk. Ana stopped at the entrance, afraid they were being followed. Through the gloom and the rain she couldn’t see much of anything. The trees swayed and loose leaves and scattered branches rolled by like tumbleweed.

Around the same time, Paul and Chakrit were doing their own investigating on the deck of old Prama’s boat, still wedged on the sandbank not far from shore, deserted and eerily quiet.

‘Rachel? Ana? You guys here?’ shouted Paul, his voice lost in the wind, the rain drumming off his face.

‘Let’s try downstairs,’ suggested Chakrit. He handed Paul the flashlight and unsheathed an eight-inch hunting knife from his belt.

‘What the fuck do you need that for?’

Chakrit ignored him. They kept low and crept towards the wooden hatch that led below deck. Chakrit carefully lifted it and sidled down the steps, gripping the knife in his rain slicked hand, his heart beating in his ears. The water poured down the stairs like a miniature waterfall.

He slowly, so-very-slowly opened the door at the foot of the stairs. A boxy room, a stained mattress at one side and a girly calendar on the wall. Another door led to a toilet, vomit caked around the rim. Paul walked behind Chakrit, shining the torch over his shoulder.

Paul’s jaw clenched. ‘So where are they?’

‘Maybe they seek shelter?’

‘They had shelter here.’

‘Not enough room.’

‘Great. That’s just fucking great.’ Paul kicked at the wall. The sound was hollow and unsatisfying. ‘So where would they have gone?’

Chakrit let out a deep, painful sigh. ‘Uphill. To old hotel. You check your phone?’

‘Yeah. It says she’s on the island, but it doesn’t really narrow it down. Phone’s almost dead anyway, had to move it to low-power mode.’ He waited for Chakrit to suggest something. ‘So what now? ’

‘We go uphill. But my friend, there could be much danger. In Thai jungle, everything wants you dead.’

‘I’ll be okay. I just wanna find Rach and get off this island. Her clothes were on the beach, you know. I mean, her shoes and everything. You think she’ll be okay?’

Chakrit paused. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

Paul blocked his route. ‘You never answered my question.’

The men locked stares as the rain thrummed off the deck. Paul stood a good three inches taller than Chakrit. The smaller man smiled. ‘Thai jungle very dangerous. If she sticks to the path, she’ll be okay.’

‘That’s assuming there are paths here.’

Chakrit shoved past Paul, easily knocking him aside, and headed up the stairs. Paul waited, surveying the scene. There was nothing to indicate that anyone had been on the boat apart from an overflowing ashtray, and Rachel didn’t smoke. Fuck, he wasn’t even sure what he was looking for. It’s not as if they had any clothes to leave lying around.

It was Chakrit. Paul left behind the empty room and climbed back out into the rain.

‘Bring the torch. Shine here.’

Paul didn’t like being told what to do, but he supposed Chakrit was the expert. The deck was slippery, and he gripped the railing as he made his way towards Chakrit.

There was something lying at his feet. Against his better judgement, Paul illuminated the unmoving lump.

‘What the fuck is that?’ he asked, running the beam up the pale white body, the harpoon gun still wedged between its teeth.

Chakrit shook his head in disbelief. ‘And who killed it?’

The two men looked at each other .

Above them the thunder roared.

It sounded like laughter.

At least the inside of the hotel offered some shelter. Sure, there were plenty of holes in the roof where water cascaded in and the floor was damp with puddles, but it was better than being in the jungle.

Palm leaves criss-crossed the floor like scars, and bags of cement lay piled in the corner, abandoned and forgotten. There was a huge stone desk by the wall. Presumably it would have been the reception desk, but unfinished and unadorned it reminded Ana of a sacrificial altar.

‘You okay, sis?’

Ana nodded. ‘Just cold.’ She sneezed again, the sound bouncing off the bare walls. She rubbed her temples, leaning against the wall for balance.

The voices were back and stronger than ever. Taunting, laughing, sighing, moaning. She only understood two of the words.

The rest was nonsense, gibberish.

She dug her nails into the palms of her hands, pressing them in, bursting the skin. It helped to quieten the voices.

‘Should we start a fire?’ asked Ricky.

‘I dunno,’ said Rachel. ‘Would that not give away our location?’

‘But don’t we want to be found? By a rescue team, I mean? ’

‘We’re fucked either way,’ grimaced Ana. ‘Might as well be warm.’

‘And for all we know, Darren and the others are still out there. Maybe they’ll see the smoke and come find us,’ said Ricky.

Ana was unconvinced. Rachel just looked down at her hands.

‘Come on then, let’s get this fire going,’ said Ana, stooping to gather a small armful of wood. ‘How well does bamboo burn? There’s no shortage of that.’

‘I guess we’ll find out,’ said Rachel. ‘Ricky, grab as much as you can from that pile round the front.’

‘I can’t carry it all myself. My arm is all messed up, remember?’

‘Shit. Fine, I’ll help. You okay in here, Ana?’

‘Don’t have much choice, do I?’

Rachel sighed. ‘I guess not.’

She was so tired. She hoped the bamboo would keep them going all night.

Presuming they made it that long.

‘Careful,’ he said, holding out his hand for Rachel.

‘Thanks, but I’m perfectly capable of walking.’

Were all Scottish girls as prissy as these two? He decided never to go and find out. He also decided never to go travelling again. From now on, his holidays were going to be along the California coastline, where the weather was good and the bitches were hot. Still, he couldn’t complain about his current view, Rachel’s shapely ass bouncing as she jogged through the downpour to the bamboo, the polka dot panties clinging like a second skin. The long rods of wood were drenched, and she looked around for some that were sheltered from the rain.

‘Shit, it’s too wet, Ricky. We need to find some dry wood.’

‘What about out back? There’s gotta be something in those other buildings. They looked more finished than this one. Maybe they’ve got tables and chairs and things.’

Rachel considered the idea. Ricky’s heartbeat quickened.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But let’s hurry, I don’t want to leave Ana alone too long.’

‘Uh, yeah, sure,’ he replied, barely listening, watching the way the rain dripped down her spine and rolled over the curve of her ass as she crouched by the bamboo. They would be alone soon.

Just the two of them.

Rachel went first, taking the long way round the lobby. Ricky stayed close behind, watching, feeling the stirring in his groin.

A thousand thoughts ran through his head. He had killed a man today. Was it even a man? It was something. A living, breathing creature, and he had blown its head clean off with a flare gun. The idea appalled him, repulsed him, and yet…

He felt strong. Powerful.

He had been in fights before. Plenty of them, always one-sided fights that ended with him on the ground, bleeding and sobbing. He had never understood why people picked on him.

Now, finally, he did. It was because hurting someone gave you power. It made you ten-feet tall. For the first time in his life, he felt like a real man. But he hadn’t just beaten up some loser. No, he had killed. Taken a life. Wiped someone from existence.

Death was a turn-on. Who knew?

Of course, the joke was ultimately on himself. Soon, it would be his turn. And Rachel’s. And Ana’s. There was no way in hell they were getting off this island.

Delaying the inevitable, that’s all they were doing.

He pictured the creature’s head exploding again. Suddenly he wanted to cry. What was happening? Why him, why now? Why couldn’t Ana have just fucked him back on the boat? Or better yet, back on Koh Phangan. And Rachel too, though he knew she was out of his league.

That bitch. It was her fault they were all here. If she had just given him what he deserved, none of this would have happened.

They slopped their way through the mud towards the apartment blocks. Ricky nodded in satisfaction. He was right; they were in better condition than the reception. Even the roofs looked intact. He saw Rachel smile to herself like it had been her fucking suggestion.

What was she planning?

Those girls were only looking out for themselves. He knew it. They whispered behind his back all the way up the hill. Were they planning on killing him? Maybe that was why they were building a fire; something to roast his flesh over. Even if they were rescued, he knew they wouldn’t let him off the island.

Ahead of him, Rachel broke into a trot and he adjusted his shorts to give his erection room to breathe.

They were using him. Letting him go first through the jungle. He had saved their lives, and how did they thank him? Not by spreading their legs, which would have been the decent thing to do.

Well, if he was going to die, he would take them down with him. And if they were all going to die, why not have a little fun first?

Ana wondered why she hadn’t just gone with Rachel and Ricky. She was alone in the vast, empty lobby, but there were sounds from all around. The constant drip-drip of the rain coming through the ceiling. The wind battering the walls hard enough to dislodge the plaster, the unusual-looking birds that roosted far above her in the beams of the roof, squawking and ruffling their feathers.

And the voices, of course.

They were back with a vengeance. Perhaps they had never really gone away? She had buried them in a shallow grave, but they had risen like the undead and sought her out again.

Stress, her doctor had said. The stress of looking after her ailing mother, of tending to a dying woman. So why had it all started months before they even knew her mum was sick?

The doctor could not explain that one.

Ana grabbed bricks from a large pile and laid them in a circle, then arranged the small bundle of kindling she had gathered into a pyramid. There was no point in trying to light it yet. The fire would be out in seconds. She needed the others to bring back plenty more, hopefully some nice, dry fuel wood. She listened to the storm and wondered if they would find any .

She heard wet feet slapping behind her, slowly, rhythmically.

She tried to ignore it, thinking instead of going to Girl Guide Camp with Rachel when they were younger. It was where Ana had learnt to build a fire. She would help the Guide leaders by gathering the wood and constructing it, though she wasn’t allowed to use the matches to light it.

The footsteps behind her continued their inexorable journey.

She remembered holding Rachel’s hand during the ghost stories, and how they had tried to out-sing each other during the campfire songs, always a competition to see who could be the loudest.

The footsteps stopped. Ana swallowed hard but didn’t turn round.

‘You’re not real. Leave me alone.’

The steps resumed, growing louder, plodding towards her.

‘Please, stop. Just go.’

Her whole body tensed as if bracing itself for impact. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Please, no.’ She turned her head, scanning the bare and decrepit walls of the resort until she saw it.

Rachel, or a ghastly, inhuman copy of her. The cadaverous doppelgänger fell to its knees, limbs jutting out at inhuman angles, the pale, dead skin so tight over the bones that it was torn in several places. There was no blood, just thick, oozing white sap.

It’s all your fault , said Rachel, as she held both hands in front of her gut and plunged the talon-like nails in, ripping the dry, powdery flesh apart and giving Ana a glimpse of the black nightmare inside her, coiled and deadly.

‘There has to be some kind of furniture in here,’ shouted Rachel. She wondered how Ana was getting on and wished they had stuck together. When did splitting up ever yield good results?

She stopped suddenly, caught on something, like her panties had snagged on a nail.

She felt an odd sensation at the base of her spine as Ricky grabbed the waistband of her knickers and yanked her backwards, catching a momentary glimpse of her bare ass as he did so.

‘Hey!’ she yelled as he twirled her round to face him. He planted a hard kiss on her lips as one hand found the plump flesh of her ass and roughly squeezed it, his hard-on pressing through his shorts into the wet flesh of her belly. She wriggled free and fell backwards into the mud, the rain pressing her hair to her face. She swept it away and looked at the bedraggled figure above her.

‘What the fuck are you doing, arsehole?’ she demanded. Ricky stroked the tentpole in his shorts without seeming to realise he was doing so.

‘We’re all gonna die here, you know that?’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘You wanna die a virgin?’

Rachel laughed bitterly. ‘You’re barking up the wrong tree, pal. I’ve not been a virgin for a long, long time. ’

She tried to get to her feet and Ricky kicked her in the ribs. ‘What the fuck!’ she cried as he forced himself down on top of her, pinning her arms down into the dirt.

‘We’re gonna die Rachel,’ he shouted over the thunder. ‘All of us. I could have made it real special for you, but you fucked up. Still, I’m a nice guy. I’m gonna give you another shot. If we can’t make love at a time like this, when can we?’

‘You’re a fucking nutter!’ she roared, throwing her knee up into his groin with all the force she could muster. He yelped like a soprano and she shoved him off, splashing backwards through the filth until she ran out of ground and fell several feet, landing on her back in soft mud. Where was she?

Lightning flashed again.

A large pit, probably intended as a swimming pool but just as unfinished as the rest of the place. A mud bath, more like. She struggled to her feet, hands sinking into the sludge.

Ricky appeared at the lip of the excavation. He pulled his underwear off and nursed his aching testicles, his erection undiminished.

‘Fucking bitch!’ he cried, jumping in after her.

But he wouldn’t. Not any more. Things were too far gone now. They were in the endgame. She was his by right. He would fuck her and then kill her. Or kill her then fuck her, whichever came first.

No one was around to see.

No one was around to judge him.

She could scream all she wanted. And afterwards, he would go back for Ana. Why not? They would all be dead soon. All of them. There were no morals anymore. No such thing as right or wrong in this situation.

There was only live or die .

And once, just once, he wanted to wipe that smug, self-satisfied little smirk from Ana’s fucking moon-face.

The mud sucked at his feet and he sank up to his knees. He pulled them out one at a time with a squelching sound as Rachel kept going backwards, trying to get up, trying to run, or find a way to defend herself. He was gaining on her. She slithered on, the howling wind stinging her eyes, the rain making progress slow, almost impossible. She turned her back on him and tried to get to her feet, then screamed as her knickers were dragged down to her knees. She tripped on them and collapsed face-first into the mud. Then Ricky was on her, manhandling her onto her back. His eyes blazed with fury, his tongue poking out the side of his mouth in a parody of concentration.

‘No! Ana! Help!’ she called, but her words were lost in the storm. She felt the tip of his penis nudging her thigh as he tried to guide it in.

Running out of time, she lashed out and caught her assailant on the bridge of the nose. Even over the gale-force wind she heard it crack.

‘Ow! You bitch,’ he shouted, restraining her arms with one hand as he raised the other to his broken nose. He stared at his fingers — it was hard to tell where the mud ended and the blood began — then tightened his fist and rammed it onto Rachel’s face. Her vision exploded in stars and colours. He struck her again and almost came right there. Then he briefly let go of her, afraid to ruin their special moment. She reached for his injured arm and raked the makeshift bandage down, finding the deep wound and stabbing her fingers into it. Her nails scraped the exposed bone and came away with meaty chunks of flesh beneath them. Ricky howled in agony and she took the opportunity to draw back her fist and punch him in the throat, leaving the knuckle of her index finger sticking out. It caught him in the Adam’s apple, and he rolled backwards, gargling blood and shrieking obscenities.

Rachel managed to stand and shakily faced Ricky. She didn’t even recognise him; a man possessed, eyes hungry with lust and madness.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she wailed, her feet squelching with each step as she backed up, not realising how close she was to the hole in the middle, the hole that decades ago had swallowed up a young Thai construction worker called Arama and unleashed hell on the remote island of Koh Wai.

‘I’m doing this because your body is mine by right,’ snarled Ricky, the bandage on his arm fluttering in the wind like a sad flag, blood pouring from his nose and arm. ‘I saved your life!’

Rachel shuffled backwards until her heels hung over the edge of the abyss. She felt wind caressing her legs and back and realised that one more step would send her hurtling down into fuck-knows-where.

Ricky came for her, his erection leading the charge.

Rachel dodged to the side and kicked out, aiming at his shins.

His legs struck her ankle, sending shooting pains through Rachel’s leg, but it was worth it.

Because Ricky fell forwards, the pit opening up before him like a black hole of insanity.

He groped wildly as he fell and caught a handful of Rachel’s hair, dragging her with him. For one heart-stopping moment she thought she was falling until a searing pain in her scalp told her otherwise.

Ricky, clutching a filthy clump of Rachel’s locks, vanished .

She listened as his thin, reedy scream faded into the distance, her heart pounding. She waited. There was nothing.

She ran a hand over her head and found the bald patch where Ricky had torn her hair out at the roots, then hauled her mud-caked knickers back up. Flipping onto her belly, she slid across the mud to where Ricky had fallen.

She stared down into the abyss but could see nothing.

‘I hope you die, you fucking wanker,’ she spat. She got to her feet.

She had to find Ana.

The ground had swallowed him whole, and now he was falling. Was this what it was like to die? An eternity of tumbling through a black, empty void? He came, his own semen splattering his face as he floated into the darkness. He would have been sick, but his stomach was still somewhere on the surface trying to catch up.

And then he stopped.

Something soft and springy had broken his fall. He lay still, then after a while opened his eyes. Far above him the night sky was a navy blue against the awful round blackness of…of wherever he was now. This cave. He tried to move but couldn’t. Had he broken his neck? No, he could wiggle his fingers and toes.

He was not paralysed, just stuck on something.

He started to laugh at his own good fortune.

The clouds parted above him and the moon’s celestial beam streamed into the cavern.

All around him were webs. Thick, monstrous spiderwebs spanning as far as he could see in a giant funnel, vanishing below into a chasm. Animals and birds were trapped there, most long dead and stripped of flesh, leaving only a rotting skeleton.

He stopped laughing.

‘Help,’ rasped Ricky, his head spinning, the taste of his own semen on his tongue.

From far, far below came a clicking noise, like nails dropped on a hardwood floor. Ricky swallowed, inadvertently gulping a mouthful of his own cum. He struggled, pulled, thrashed, screamed.

The shadows stirred.

It was coming for him.

The clouds shifted and the moonlight faded away until all around was sheer emptiness.

Ricky’s stomach lurched and he vomited over himself. He tried to scream but this time nothing came out.

He could sense its presence, his jaw opening and closing, eyes blinking madly, head shaking from side to side. A shape loomed up over him. He could smell it, feel its foul, unearthly breath on his face, as coarse hairs brushed his frigid, naked limbs.

Just when Ricky thought he could take no more, the clouds parted again, allowing the moonlight to penetrate the inky surroundings. Ricky saw his own face reflected in hundreds of swollen, inhuman eyes. He saw the fangs, dripping with venom. They plunged into his stomach, the massive creature now mercifully blocking the light. Ricky’s whole body shuddered as the fangs withdrew, rending his flesh like the world’s worst autopsy and leaving a gaping hole in his torso .

As his life slipped away, Ricky was sure he felt hands - human hands - rooting around in his stomach, scooping out handfuls of his intestines. Some of them slipped out of the creature’s grip and slopped back down onto Ricky’s prone body, somehow finding their way back into the ravaged stomach cavity.