Alex Delaware - 10 - The Web by Jonathan Kellerman

Author:Jonathan Kellerman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 0345530861
Published: 1995-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

“What’s so urgent?” he said, flicking the lights on in the bungalow. The newspaper clippings were gone from his desk. So were all his other papers; the wood surface gleamed.

“We never talked about A. Tutalo—”

“Surely you can see why that wouldn’t be a priority at this time—”

“There are other things.”

“Such as?”

“Murder. Ben. What’s really going on with Aruk.”

He said nothing for a while, then, “That’s quite an agenda.”

“We’ve got nowhere to go.”

“Very well.” He pointed crossly to the sofa and I sat, expecting him to settle in a facing chair. Instead, he went behind the desk, lowered himself with a grimace, opened a drawer, and began searching.

“You don’t believe Ben could have done this,” he said. “Do you?”

“I don’t know Ben very well.”

He gave a small, tired smile. “Psychologist’s answer. . . . Very well, I can’t expect you to follow me blindly; you’ll see, he’ll be vindicated. The notion of his butchering Betty is beyond ridiculous—all right, trivial things first. “A. Tutalo.’ You couldn’t find an organism by that name because it’s not a germ, it’s a fantasy. A local myth. The “A’ stands for “Aruk.’ “Aruk Tutalo.’ An imaginary tribe of creatures who live in the forest. Goes back years. A myth. No one’s believed it for a long time.”

“Except Cristobal.”

“Joseph hallucinated. That’s not belief.”

“You convinced him he hadn’t seen anything?”

Pause. “He was a stubborn man.”

“Have there been other sightings?”

“None since I’ve lived here. As I said, it’s a primitive idea.”

“Creatures from the forest,” I said. “What do they look like?”

“Pale, soft, hideous. A shadow society, living under the forest. Nothing unique to Aruk; all cultures develop fantasies of fanciful, lustful creatures in order to project forbidden desires—animal instincts. The minotaurs, centaurs, and satyrs of ancient Greece. The Japanese have a saucer-headed anthro-creature called the kappa who lurks by forest streams, abducting children and pulling their intestines through their anuses. Witches’ rituals use animal masks to hide the faces of participants, the Devil himself is often thought of as the Great Beast with goat feet and a serpentine tail. Wood-demons, anthro-bat vampiric creatures, werewolves, the yeti, Bigfoot, it’s all the same. Psychological defense.”

“What about the catwoman—”

“No, no, that was something totally different.”

“A response to trauma.”

“A response to cruelty.”

“Worm people,” I said.

“There are no mammals native to Aruk—one uses what’s at hand. “Tutalo’ is derived from an ancient island word of uncertain etymology: tootali, or wood-grub. From what I’ve gathered they’re large, humanoid, with tentaclelike limbs, slack bodied but strong. And chalky white. I find that particularly interesting. Perhaps a covert indictment of colonizers: white creatures “appearing’ on the island and establishing brutal control.”

“Demonizing the oppressor?”

“Precisely.”

“Was Joseph Cristobal politically active?”

“On the contrary. A simple man. Illiterate. But fond of drink. I’m sure that had something to do with it. Today, your average villager would laugh at the notion of a Tutalo.”

“He was your gardener. Did he sight the Tutalo here?”

He licked his lips and nodded. “He was working on the eastern walls, tying vines. Working overtime, everyone else had gone home.

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