Dark Horizons Read online

  I hurtled past Domino, hearing her call my name, then I bumped, slid and tumbled more than forty feet, coming to a halt when I crashed into a well-placed outcrop at the side of the path – a black mass of rock, formed as a short, low wall, which stopped me dead in my tracks when I struck it at speed. I was lucky not to hit it with my head, but that was where my luck ran out. My contact with the solid wall came with a sickening crunch, which sent pain like nothing before it coursing through my right shoulder, spinning down my spine and reverberating back to the base of my skull. The pain was overwhelming. An intensity of physical sensation that I hadn’t experienced before. It was as if I’d been hit by a charging bull; an outrageous and sudden feeling that was accompanied by a grotesque sound. A combination of dry cracking and wet popping, and then all I could do was release the agony from my body in the only way available to me. I opened my mouth and howled.

  11

  I tried to sit up, but my right arm was useless. It lay limp beneath me. I rolled to one side, using my left arm to lift my right into what I thought would be a more comfortable position but, once again, pain rocketed through me, burning outwards from my shoulder as if someone had exploded napalm in my armpit.

  Instead, I shuffled back against the rock that had stopped my fall, caused the discomfort that now smothered me. I shook my head and looked up, seeing Domino coming down the track. She was close, just five metres away, following the twists of the path. I wanted to call out to her, tell her not to hurry, tell her to be careful on the rocks, but I’d spent my last energy howling to the sky like a wild animal. All I could do now was watch her approach.

  When she reached me, she dropped her bag onto the hard ground and crouched at my feet. ‘Shit. Shit, shit, shit,’ she was saying. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’

  I nodded my head in agreement.

  ‘That looked bad. Do you feel like anything’s broken?’ She looked over my shoulder as she spoke, assessing our options. Down the mountain or up the mountain. Either way we went, there was little civilisation. We were a good hour’s hike from the kampong we’d been to last night, and that was at least a few miles from the main road, which, in turn, was a long way from anything, as far as I remembered from our trip last night. In the other direction there was the settlement I’d seen from above, but it didn’t look like much, and I doubted it would have hospital facilities. A doctor maybe.

  ‘There’ll be boats,’ I reassured myself, not realising I’d spoken aloud until Domino asked me to repeat what I’d said. I just shook my head and closed my eyes against the pain.

  ‘Alex? Alex? Did you hit your head?’

  My face contorting.

  ‘Is it your head, Alex? Did you hurt your head again?’

  Unable to speak. The pain coming in tidal waves.

  ‘Open your eyes. You need to sit up.’ She grabbed my shoulders and hefted me up, eliciting another howl. ‘Don’t pass out on me,’ she said, running a hand over my head.

  I tried to nod.

  ‘You think you can move?’ Her voice insisting. ‘We’ll have to get moving. Can’t stay up here.’

  ‘Just for a moment,’ I managed, my breath coming back to me. ‘Give me a moment.’ I adjusted my position, tried to make myself more comfortable.

  ‘It hurt?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, it fucking hurts.’

  ‘Where? Your head?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You think you broke something?’

  ‘Feels like I broke everything,’ I said, the stabbing sensation subsiding now that I’d moved.

  ‘For real?’

  ‘I dunno. Feels like my shoulder.’

  She seemed to relax, pursing her lips, breathing hard through her nose. ‘You’re not exactly the luckiest guy I’ve ever met, Alex. Gave me a fucking scare there. Thought you were a goner for sure.’

  I forced a smile. The pain was lifting a little now. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Thought you were going all the way down.’ Domino looked over my head once more. ‘You seen? This rock hadn’t stopped you …’ She made a whistling sound.

  I shuffled to a kneeling position, turning round to put my left hand on top of the rock and pull myself up to look over.

  On the other side was an escarpment, the most vertical part of the climb. An almost sheer face of black rock, virtually no vegetation growing there. A narrow path was cut into the rock, two feet across, cracked and damaged.

  I swallowed. ‘Who made it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The path,’ I said. ‘Who made it?’ I mean, why would anyone want … ?’

  ‘Don’t know. It’s always been here. Me and Kurt found it a couple of years ago, but I guess the people down there know about it, too.’

  ‘Kurt?’

  ‘Yeah. Never seen anyone else on the path, though.’

  ‘Who’s Kurt?’ I’d heard her use the name at Alim’s place and, even through the pain, I felt piqued to think that she’d shared this journey with someone else.

  ‘You’ll meet him soon enough,’ she said. ‘In fact, he’s the one who’s going to make your shoulder better.’

  I looked at her, wondering what she was talking about. ‘I need a doctor, not some old boyfriend called Kurt. This pain is—’

  ‘Kurt is a doctor,’ she said. ‘Well, kind of.’

  I wanted to say more, but a wave of nausea washed over me like a thick, oily blanket and my clear vision became clouded. I closed my eyes and waited for the pain to subside.

  ‘Still hurt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’ll skin up. It’ll take the edge off.’

  I started to shake my head, feeling a pang of anger towards her. It was her answer to everything. Smoke dope. But she was only doing what she could. A doctor would give me something to kill the pain and nausea, so maybe she was right. Maybe it was exactly what I needed. It might take the edge off and give me enough strength to make it down the mountain. There was a path, after all; it wasn’t like I was going to fall. ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘OK. That might work.’

  She sat beside me and reached for her bag, taking it by one handle and pulling it towards her. ‘I’ll sort us out,’ she said as the loose handle caught on a lip of rock, tipping the bag onto its side, spilling some of the contents.

  The tin of dope was first, the packet of kretek, a lighter, a flat yellow box of Chiclets chewing gum, a clear bag of white tablets, knotted at the top, a book. The cover was a montage of photos – cars and clear blue skies – but I couldn’t read the title. The glimpse I had was too brief because as soon as the bag tipped and the contents spilled, Domino moved to block my view as she gathered everything together. Before she could totally obscure it, though, I caught a hint of something that made me want to look closer, see what she was concealing. But I had to be wrong. I shook my head. It was probably the shock of the fall, the pain from the bump.

  I thought I saw the grip of a pistol. The marked, dark steel of the gun I’d seen in Alim’s hands.

  Domino tucked the bag beside her and made a start on the joint.

  ‘What’s that in your bag?’ I said.

  ‘Stuff for the plane, mostly. Never carry much more than something to read, some music.’

  ‘I thought I saw …’ Even without saying the words aloud it sounded ridiculous.

  Domino stopped what she was doing and looked at me.

  ‘Pills,’ I said. ‘And … and Alim’s gun.’

  Domino continued to stare at me. She studied my eyes, tried to read my mind, then sighed and put the joint down. ‘I didn’t really drop my iPod,’ she said. ‘I wanted to see what else he had in his little box.’

  ‘The pills I just saw?’ I shifted and winced as a sharp bolt flashed through my shoulder.

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘No. Hurts like fuck.’ I waited for the pain to subside. ‘What about those pills, then? What’s that all about?’

  She looked away from me, clenching her beautiful, serious jaw. I watched the muscles twitching there before they relax
ed and she turned back to me. ‘I was pissed off at the way he treated me, leering like that. I thought maybe we could get something for free.’

  ‘And the—’

  ‘Gun?’ she said, putting her hand in the bag, taking out the pistol, holding it up.

  ‘Yeah. The gun.’

  ‘Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t do anything to him.’

  ‘I know. You told me.’

  She turned it over in her hand. ‘I grabbed it when I heard him coming back in. I thought if he caught me …’ She shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t even know what to do with it.’

  ‘He left it on the table? Didn’t take it with him?’ I said, thinking maybe it was what he went back for. Maybe it was what she went back for.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘And he didn’t notice it was missing?’

  ‘Don’t know. I guess not.’

  ‘But he will. Eventually.’

  ‘Probably,’ Domino nodded, her expression suggesting it was a consequence she hadn’t considered. She was a hit-and-run girl, I’d seen that already. An animal of instinct.

  ‘And what happens then?’ I asked her.

  ‘Maybe he’ll think he lost it.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Or that someone else took it?’ she offered.

  ‘He’ll know it was you.’ Her impulsive nature was attractive, but it had its downside.

  ‘How could he know?’

  ‘Would he have to?’ I asked, looking back up the hill. ‘Maybe he’d just have to suspect.’

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘Does he know where to find you?’

  She ignored me and returned to the task of making the joint.

  ‘You shouldn’t have kept it,’ I said. ‘You should’ve put it back.’

  ‘Too late for that now,’ she replied, putting the joint in her mouth and lighting it.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Too late.’

  12

  Coming down the steep crag, every movement intensified the pain in my shoulder. It was a feeling that consumed all. Like a flesh-eating disease, it affected every part of my body. As if someone had slipped a narrow, hot knife into the front of my shoulder, pushing it back into the socket, and was grating it against the dry, sensitive bone inside. Twisting muscle and sinew. Every time I moved, bumped on the track, it was as if the stiletto was raking deeper, pushing harder.

  The gun now lost to the Technicolor of my pain, I tried to concentrate on the ganja buzz in my head, keep my eyes on the path at my feet. Domino stayed close, keeping just behind me. She wanted to go in front, watch for potential hazards that I might miss in my inattentive state, but I told her not to. The way I was right now, I might slip again, and if she was too close to me, I’d take her with me.

  We managed the remainder of the descent without incident, reaching the flatter ground within half an hour.

  ‘Not far now,’ said Domino. ‘We’ll go straight through the village. Find Kurt. He’ll fix you up.’ She was sweating. Blonde hair pushed back, a few darkened strands clinging to the dampness along her sharp jaw line, her temples, around the top of her forehead.

  I nodded. ‘Lead the way.’ From where we were, I couldn’t see any sign of life, nor could I see the lake. In front of us there was a maze of paddy fields reaching out towards a low line of traveller’s palms, which spread dark-green feathered leaves, fanning like peacock’s tails to hide the village. The collection of regular-shaped fields stretched from one side of the valley to the other, maybe seven or eight fields across and five deep. They were kept separate by shallow walls of dirt arranged into irregular squares like a surrealist’s chessboard. Each was filled with water, something I’d been unable to detect from above because they were overgrown with bright green rice plants. In one of the furthest fields I could see a group of people, knee deep, their bodies bent low.

  We kept to the raised walls between the paddies, following the worn paths through the grass that tried to grow there. We moved more quickly now, and it wasn’t long before we neared the line of palms, their upright branches spreading wide like Chinese fans. The group of workers looked up as one, stopping to watch us pass.

  Three women, their skin weathered and dark, each wearing an arrangement of material – a kind of flat turban – on their head. Their check-print sarongs were pulled high and tied between their thighs like oversized nappies. They nodded in greeting, one of them raising a hand, saying, ‘Horas’.

  I raised my good hand in return, looking down at them in the water, and forced a smile as best as I could. They watched us pass, and when we’d cleared the field I turned to see that they were still looking in our direction.

  At the far edge, beside a pump spewing water into the fields, a water buffalo lay on the dry land, enjoying the morning air. The beast’s ribbed and nicked horns reminded me of those that had been roped to the central post in Alim’s longhouse. But while those had felt macabre and cautionary, these were benign and almost without purpose.

  Just as the women had done, so the kerbau watched us pass, its brown eyes unblinking behind long eyelashes, its tail swishing flies from its hindquarters. It turned its head, its jaws moving slowly in rumination.

  Through the palms and bamboo and banana plants and I could see the lake again, and up ahead, at the end of a short path lined with elaborate shrines, the small village stood on the bank, a collection of houses without pattern. There were several Batak longhouses like the ones I’d seen last night, but there were other buildings here, too. Mostly they were made from wood – rickety affairs with rusted corrugated roofs and slats missing from their walls. One or two were made from brick but these, too, were in poor repair. And there were people here. Enough people for this to be a village. Not like the place we’d visited last night, where there had been a handful of houses and we had seen only two men. As soon as we came out of the trees here I could see many people going about their daily business.

  ‘Through the village and out the other side,’ said Domino, running a hand across her brow. ‘We still have a little way to go. You gonna be OK?’

  ‘How far?’

  ‘There’s a track out of the kampong. Maybe ten minutes, then we’re on our way. We’ll be there in forty minutes.’

  ‘Forty minutes?’

  ‘You can do it.’

  ‘There’s no one here?’ I asked. ‘No one who can help?’

  Domino shook her head. ‘Nope.’

  I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to force away the pain. ‘Right, then.’

  Domino hesitated and watched me. We’d been travelling for a good hour since the fall and she’d heard every wince, yelp and sharp intake of breath. Domino knew I was hurting. Perhaps she could almost feel it herself.

  ‘Maybe there’s someone,’ she said. ‘I mean, he’s not …’ She broke off and looked down. ‘Maybe we’ll go to him. He might help.’

  I glanced at the first in a row of shrines to my left. A brick-built block, decorated with two white crosses, on top of which was a miniature Batak house – a perfectly scaled version, intricately painted, adorned with carvings and topped with a thatched roof. A shrine could not change who a person was, no matter how much attention the builder paid to the detail, but it made for an exuberant reminder that someone had stepped foot on this land; that they had touched other people’s lives and meant something to someone. I wouldn’t mind such a legacy myself. It was a far more colourful and celebratory acknowledgement of someone’s life than the plaque my mother had on the crematorium memorial wall. Not even a carved headstone and a small piece of land to rest in. Just a scattering of ash into the surf of the North Sea and a brass plaque on a wall. It didn’t change who she was, but it was grey and inadequate by comparison.

  ‘If there’s someone who can make this pain go away, I’d like to meet him,’ I said, taking my eyes off the shrine. ‘Right now I reckon I’d let someone cut my arm off.’

  Domino smiled at me. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.’

  Despit
e the pain, I smiled too.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I reckon there’s someone who can help.’

  Coming into the village and walking among the ill-repaired buildings, people looked up from their work to follow us with curious eyes. A group of women, sitting in a huddle, talking in conspiracy, leaning to spit red gobs of betel nut through tombstone teeth. A woman using a long, thick, wooden pole to pound rice in a stone bowl, the rhythmic thumping of wood on stone halting when we approached. A black dog, its fur coated with dry dust, slinking between two buildings, pausing to watch us pass. Children stopped playing, some of them running over to touch us, the taller ones reaching up to feel Domino’s golden hair.

  ‘Most of these people,’ she said, ‘they don’t get out of the village much. They have boats, and there are towns on the lake, places for them to go, bring in supplies, but mostly they stay here. Grow rice and catch fish. They don’t see that many whiteys.’

  I looked around, the nausea coming in waves again. The buzz from the dope was wearing thin, the pain seeking out the worn patches and pushing through.

  Offset from the road, a smallholding, not much more than wire mesh wrapped round two-metre fence posts. There were a couple of pigs in there rooting around, looking for scraps. There were chickens, too, some inside and some outside the fence. Scrawny and dirty, their white feathers marked with grime. A young girl, not even ten years old from the look of her, was squatting by the fence holding a chicken tight under her arm. With her free hand, she set down a glass bowl and a knife, adjusted the chicken so its neck was over the bowl. Picking the knife from the dirt, she drew it across the chicken’s throat in a sawing motion, the bird jerking in her firm fingers, the glass bowl filling with deep red. She looked up as we went by and she nodded once, saying, ‘Horas’, before turning her attention back to the chicken, which she released, allowing it to tumble for a while, frantic in death. I watched with fascination, even through the haze of my pain.