Excerpt from
Blue Devil Island
©2007 by Stephen Mark Rainey, Thomson Gale/Five Star Books
 

Chapter 3
I rarely have vivid nightmares, although a certain few have etched themselves into my memory with disturbing clarity. So it was with the one that dragged me back to wakefulness just before midnight – appropriately, on Halloween night, although that fact eluded me at the time. I had been asleep for perhaps two hours when steel claws clutched my chest and ripped me like a piece of carrion from the comfortable darkness of slumber, shocking me so that for several confused moments I had no clue where I actually was. Eventually, the irregular, buzzsaw-like grating of air through Comeaux's pipes reminded me that I was in my tent, laid out on my cot beneath a protective web of mosquito netting. The jungle was alive with insect and animal noise, now more than ever creating the impression that the night creatures were actually laughing.

In the dream, I had been walking at night on a torchlit path through the tropical flora, apparently searching for someone or something; in one of those nonsensical transpositions of time and place that happen in dreams, I believe it was supposed to be my younger brother, Robert. As I wandered, I eventually came to a clearing, and at its far end I saw a cave mouth in the side of a huge granite wall that extended into impenetrable darkness high above my head – much like the actual location on the island, only far larger. From the cave, a shadowy figure slowly emerged, seeming to glide on legs that did not move. The figure was draped in a robe of blood-red material that looked like satin and that rippled and rustled strangely, as if beneath the fabric, several arms or other appendages were engaged in a struggle with each other. I could not see his face, even though the torchlight otherwise fully illuminated his body. His arms lifted, and when the sleeves of the robe fell back, I could see that his skin was onyx black and glistened as if coated with oil.

Although he presented no overt threat, I felt terrified of him; he was inhumanly tall – at least eight feet – and seemed to be studying me, even though I could not see his eyes. I crept closer, strangely compelled to view his peculiarly hidden face; but as I approached, he lowered his hands and motioned for someone – or something – behind him to come forward. Now, two squat figures that looked like huge toads appeared at the cave mouth, loping oddly on stiff, bipedal legs, and settled themselves at the figure's sides. He held his black hands to their mouths, and each of them spread its wide jaws to reveal a gray, wormlike tongue that flicked forth and began to lap at his fingers. A deep, cavernous voice said, "I look forward to getting to know you."

The toad-like creatures leered at me with their bulging eyes, as if ecstatic to simply be in the presence of their tall, faceless master. From the dark depths beyond the figures, a low, flutelike piping began: a discordant melody that was at the same time eerie and profoundly melancholy. Though I perceived the sounds to be a product of musical instruments, after a time, the tones took on the timbre and cadence of a voice speaking in some grotesque, chirping, alien tongue. And, somehow, of all these sounds and images, it was this piping that shattered my nerve and sent me retreating into blindingly dark wakefulness.

The night air felt comfortable, for a low breeze whispered softly through the camp, dispelling the humidity. But my nerves could not have been more unsettled if I were in the cockpit and under fire; thus sensitized, I actually jerked upright when I heard a soft rustle just outside the entrance to the tent. It sounded like a furtive footfall. I couldn't see what time it was, but I doubted anyone from the camp would be up and about at this hour unless they were on their way to the head.

I have never been prone to overreacting. Nevertheless, I slipped my hand beneath the mosquito netting, reached for my .45, which lay on an up-ended wooden crate at the head of my cot, and crept from my bed to the closed tent flap. I stood still and listened for a full two minutes, half-convinced that I could hear the faint sound of measured breathing just beyond the layer of canvas. Then, with an unsteady hand, I unfastened the flap and mosquito netting and thrust my gunhand through the opening. When I poked my head out, I saw no one loitering around the tent or amid the faint, moonlit trees. But as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I thought I saw a silhouette, black against black, a few yards to my right. It was obviously not a tree, for it was shaped like a man – a very tall man – and as I watched, it seemed to glide into the black forest on legs that never moved.

Only my well-honed, ingrained self-discipline and the halfhearted conviction that I had merely experienced the last vestiges of some weird, waking dream kept me from raising my gun and emptying the clip into the mocking, leering night.

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