never seen a European before, despite the proximity of German colonies—an indication, perhaps, of just how small and remote their island was. They were untouched by civilisation and had, in fact, barely emerged from the Stone Age. Their diet consisted of fruit, tubers, nuts, fish, monkeys, and wild pigs, the land animals being hunted with barbed spears. The people eschewed ornamentation and wore only loincloths, with no necklaces, rings, or beads of any sort. They did, however, practise tattooism, and from head to foot were covered with swirling patterns of deep red and pale yellow dots. In stature they were a small but plump people, averaging about five-foot-four, with coffee-coloured skin, long black hair, and unfathomable brown eyes. Their jaws and cheekbones were prominent, as is common in primitive races, and their teeth large. Most of the men filed their incisors to points, and I was disturbed to learn that this was in connection with an aspect of their diet that, for them, possessed spiritual significance.
The Koluwaians were cannibals.
They were also slavers, making frequent raids on neighbouring islands and returning with young men and women who’d be spirited away into the jungle to who knows what fate—a cooking pot, I feared.
During the first few days after our arrival, we lived in a couple of semi-derelict shacks on the outskirts of Kutumakau—the town was little more than a sprawl of similarly dilapidated huts—and close to the edge of the steaming jungle. I found it almost impossible to sleep there, not only due to the oppressive humidity, the cacophonous night storms, the mosquitoes and invasive vermin, and the ceaseless din of chirruping tree frogs, but also because, from the moment I set foot on the island, I was subject to terrifying nightmares. These always began with a heightened awareness of my own pulse. Gradually, my heartbeat would increase in volume until it pounded in my ears, then I’d envision the blood coursing through my arteries and would sink into it until I seemed to exist at a microscopic level, with red cells roaring around me. From this crimson tide, Alice Tanner emerged, shamelessly naked, floating, smiling cruelly, her eyes filled with scorn.
In every nightmare, the same conversation occurred.
“Miss Tanner! You have to go! Please, hurry!”
“But I want to look at you, Mr. Skin-and-Bones.”
“He’s coming!”
“Mr. Books-and-Bible.”
“Can’t you feel him, Alice? Can’t you sense him in my veins? He’s approaching! He’s close! Get away from here! Run! Run!”
“Mr. Thoughts-and-Theories.”
“Oh, sweet Heaven, Jack is coming! He’s coming for you!”
Something loomed behind her. A blade slid out of her belly and sawed up through her sternum.
An alleyway.
Alice, on her back, her eyes glassy, her throat slit twice through, her stomach ripped wide open.
The knife—in my hand.
Night after night, I’d jerk awake with a cry of horror, to find the atmosphere throbbing with the thunder of drums.
°
“I don’t understand it,” I said to Clarissa one morning. “It sounds like every village is drumming from midnight onward.”
“There might be a purely practical explanation,” she replied. “Maybe it’s to keep nocturnal predators away.”
Two weeks after our arrival, a wizened and uncommonly tall and thin islander named Iriputiz came to visit us. He was a grotesque individual whose dark skin was covered with scars, as if he’d suffered severe burns; whose long face radiated a malign intelligence; and whose eyes were forever restless, never settling on anything for more than a few seconds.
He was Koluwai’s witch doctor.
We introduced ourselves and invited him in.
Speaking in German, which he’d apparently learned during visits to neighbouring, more developed islands, he said, “It is the time of storms on Koluwai.”
His voice creaked like old wood.
“And very odd they are, too,” I responded, speaking the same language and waving him to a chair. “All flashes and bangs but no rain. How long does the season last?”
“We do not measure time as you do, but I have knowledge of your calendar. By that, they come maybe every fifteen months and last for three. They grow stranger and stranger, and, after the strangest of them all, finish quite suddenly. We are now a month into the season. You are a priest, yes?”
“Yes.”
“You have whisky?”
“No, but I have wine.”
“Give me some.”
Clarissa fetched a bottle and poured him a glass. He emptied it in a single swallow.
“More, and more again,” he said.
Glancing at me, my sexton gave him a refill.
He swigged it back, held his vessel out for another, swallowed that, too, then dragged his skinny wrist across his lips. “You will both go from here today. You are