McCammon, Robert R. by The Night Boat

Author:The Night Boat [Boat, The Night]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-11-07T03:26:52+00:00

Driving into the village, Kip knew there was something terribly wrong; he saw the empty streets, the shuttered windows, the voodoo talismans scrawled on stucco and clapboard. Anger surged within him, and he felt a confusion he couldn’t begin to define. One of the symbols, chalked against a sea-green door, held his attention, started the slow stirring of memories—sluggish, nebulous—at the back of his brain. It was the crude drawing of a huge hand, from top to bottom of the door, the fingers spread as if to ward off the invisible. Kip pulled the jeep to the side of the road and stared at it, unable to tear his gaze away.

He was a child again, a boy of thirteen, sitting at a low table eating from a bowl of corn mush and ham bits. He ate slowly, though it was his first meal in over a day. Across the plank-walled room, a few half-charred logs burned erratically in a stone fireplace. On the floor was woven seagrass, well-worn; the window shutters were closed tight and the only light came from several oil lamps placed around the room. The dim half-glow illuminated the straw tribal masks on the walls, their features cunning and wolfish: heavy-browed seashell eyes gleaming. He thought they were staring directly at him, and that sometimes their features changed to look almost human, but grotesque and freakish.

A man sat in a rocking chair before the fire. He stared into the flames, rattling a jar of dog’s teeth distractedly. After a while he took one of the teeth out and tossed it in, then bent forward as if he saw something there. He leaned back, the runners making a soft, catlike murmur on the grass mat. From one corner there was a low rustle; the man turned his head and the boy caught a firelight profile of slitted eyes in an aged, weather-lined face. On a bed of seagrass across the room there was a large green iguana almost two feet long; a metal collar clamped about its neck secured the reptile to a line tied around an overhead beam with enough slack so that the lizard could move about in the room. Its pale red eyes stared at Kip, the white flesh under the jaw and belly undulating as it breathed. It came forward a few feet, crunching on the grass, stopped, flesh quivering along its spine, slender tail sweeping across the floor. Its head moved jerkily, eyes fixed on Kip.

“Feed it,” the man said.

There was a piece of doughy brown bread beside him. He tore off a small chunk and tossed it over. The lizard jerked, scurried back, waited. Then it advanced on the bread and licked at it.

Kip was still dazed from hunger and weak from sleeping. In the past three days he had slept a great deal, intoxicated by the strange fumes eminating from pots the man kept in a circle around the boy’s bare mattress. Sometimes his sleep was dreamless and black, the sleep

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