• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He’d hesitated enough, and passed inwards before his dread could stop him, and make a coward of him again.

The bone knife was clenched oh-so tight in his right hand; the only reassuring thing in his life at that moment. More chinks in the walls let cracks of light pierce the darkness, which was becoming not so complete now as he waited for his eyes to catch up.

Absolute silence.

He’s not here, Wayun told himself. Relief was like a draught of cool, fresh water. He’s not here. I don’t have to do this.

He could see more now. The room had nothing in it. Apart from three dark silhouettes occupying the centre of the room.

None of them moved. The smell was fetid, and it reminded Wayun of the smell of the heads impaled above the landing pier. Rot. Death. Wrongness.

He’d been right to come then; the smell confirmed that.

This was the heart of their cause, and it was just a heart of badness. Of dark, and of wrongness.

But the Krallik wasn’t here, so his bravery was all in vain.

He would have to return, and did he have the courage and stamina to put himself through all this again?

He strained his eyes, focusing on the three motionless shapes. One was bigger than the other two, and it was placed in between them, as if in a position of command flanked by servants. A big shape, yes. Maybe something sitting in a chair.

But not moving, so it couldn’t be the Krallik, no. The shape was somehow wrong, like the smell. Irregular, not like that of a normal man. Or was that just down to the unnatural position in which it was slumped on what had to be a chair?

It was moving.

The dark silhouette of a head, raising itself, disjointedly, wrongly.

Run, boy. Run.

This was no place for heroes.

Run...

It had been an entire day, and only now Father Pieter began to think about emerging from his hiding place.

He had not heard any sounds of violence for some time now. His vision through the missing slat in the attic where he had hidden himself was limited; he could only see a slice of the plankway in front of his house, a couple of stalls beyond, a stretch of the harbour, a few smashed motor canoes belonging to Indoni traders, and the floating body of one of the owners, his feet nudging the stilts of the pier in the filthy swell.

He edged open the hatch to the attic, wincing at every creak the wood made. His ears ached with the silence.

Composing himself further, he gingerly lowered the ladder down to the floor of the landing below, and levered himself onto the rungs.

He froze on the landing, ears straining for any indication of possible violence.

Nothing.

He crept to the window, back pressed against the wooden wall, darting a quick glance out through the pane.

A gorgeous sunset was falling over Flamingo Bay. Agat had the best sunsets in Papul. Better than any Father Pieter had ever witnessed on Earth.

A golden, pink-candy radiance emblazoned the landing. It gilded the walkway below, the corpses scattered across it (he would not look at those he would not look at those he would not). It burnished the bay, hand-painted the trees crowding down to the sea on either side of the shanty town. Normally, Father Pieter would have been transfixed by its beauty. Now it just filled him with horror. He had to get out.

Out of Agat.

They would kill him – he knew that. If they came back, they would kill him.

Maybe it would even be Julius, his old friend, the one he had entrusted with so much learning, so much responsibility.

Was his God so easy to reject, after so many years, and in such a brutal fashion?

He risked another glance through the window, half hoping to see a boat chugging towards the shanty town. A boat carrying his beloved friend Father Tomas. Half-praying for this event, and half-fearing it, because although it might mean his own salvation, it could just as equally result in Tomas meeting the same fate that would almost certainly be handed out to Pieter. He couldn’t let his friend see what had happened here, all their great work turned to blood and butchery.