Children of the Dusk Read online

  Table of Contents

  PART I

  Prologue

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  PART II

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  CHAPTER FORTY

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  EPILOGUE

  Children of the Dusk

  By Janet Berliner & George Guthridge

  Crossroad Press & Macabre Ink Digital Edition

  Copyright 2010 by Janet Berliner and George Guthridge

  LICENSE NOTES:

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your vendor of choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ALSO BY JANET BERLINER FROM CROSSROAD PRESS:

  NOVELS:

  Child of the Light (Book 1 of the Madagascar Manifesto)

  Child of the Journey (Book 2 of the Madagascar Manifesto)

  Sol’s Song

  What You Remember I Did (with Melanie Tem)

  PART I

  Prologue

  Grasshoppers blackened the moon.

  The Malagasy laughed delightedly and pointed what was left of his fist at the predawn sky. Abandoning his guardianship of the limestone crypt, he shrugged off his ragged, clay-colored loincloth. By the fading light of the stars, of glowworms, and of the last embers of the coconut husk fire, he began a sinuous dance of triumph. He moved around the moss- and ivy-covered totems that dotted the area, carelessly swatting at the mosquitoes and the rain flies that heralded a tropical downpour. When he tired of the dance, he removed a liana from one of the totems, wove it into a garland, and placed it on top of his grisly red and salt-and-pepper head like a crown.

  He ran his misshapen fingers down the totem. Miniature zebu horns topped an arabesque of curling leaves. Carved lemurs balanced on one another's backs, looking outward with huge, whorled eyes.

  The grasshoppers moved away from the huge egg-yolk moon, away from the Zana-Malata who grinned a toothless grin. "Minihana!" he shrieked. "Eat!" He opened the gaping pink hole where his nose and mouth should have been, pushed his tongue outward in the manner of an iguana, and drew a stream of glowworms into his throat.

  He exhaled a burst of fire and chuckled at his own cleverness. Soon, he thought, it would be time for lambda, the dressing of the dead, and only he knew who waited inside the crypt. He and the tree frogs and the glowworms. Meanwhile, he could wait. Here, in isolation, time meant nothing to him--any more than it did to those who were buried in the valavato.

  He moved around the totems that dotted the area. At his feet, a dô snake slithered away, carrying with it the soul of one of the dead who haunted the burial ground. Behind him, five short, black men, eyes painted with white and black tar circles, bodies pulsating with a luminous white mud, appeared out of the rim of trees, cavorted a moment, and disappeared.

  As if it, too, knew that changes were imminent, the rainforest chorus stopped. When only the bats sang a cappella in the damp tropical air, the fox-lynxes raised their long faces to watch him. The aye-ayes and the larger lemurs fled; the zebu sauntered down the hill, bells clanking hollowly and dewlaps swaying beneath their chins.

  The Zana-Malata stayed where he was, listening to the voices of the dead. Chief of all he surveyed, he stared down at the crescent coral reef three hundred feet below the burial ground. On the horizon, his keen eyes discerned the lights of a ship moving toward him. He glanced at the moon hanging over the horizon.

  It was beginning. The ghosts were returning to Nosy Mangabéy, his island where the dead dreamed.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Nosy Mangabéy

  10 September, 1939

  Sitting on the damp sand, Solomon Freund watched as lifeboats and launches traveled back and forth from the Altmark to shore. Some brought only men; others carried equipment and supplies loaded by the freighter's cranes and his fellow Jews. A large, awkward-looking raft, made of wood strapped onto empty fuel drums, was being readied to carry the small tank from the ship to shore. Knowing the German military, there was doubtless some order about the landing, but to Sol it seemed chaotic. He wondered cynically if Abwehr manuals contained explicit instructions for hacking a path through a rain forest.

  Limited by his tunnel-vision, Sol tracked the boat which brought Major Otto Hempel. The SS officer strode from the water, his wolfhound and nine-year-old Misha Czisça in tow. Reaching the beach, he looked out over the water with ill-disguised disgust. Sol turned back toward the ship and saw Erich Weisser Alois, Abwehr colonel, riding in the last boat. Erich. Despite his hatred, Sol could not avoid thinking of his childhood friend in the familiar. Head uplifted, eyes surveying the surrounding jungle as if he half expected natives to come rushing out and throw themselves at his feet with offerings of gold, Colonel Alois stepped from the launch. Behind him, two Jews carried his beloved German shepherd, Taurus, strapped to a hospital stretcher.

  "We're going to have to cut a path to the top of the hill," Erich said. He turned to Hempel. "Give the Malagasy a machete." He nodded toward Bruqah, their coffee-colored guide. "After you've supplied all of your men with machetes, give the Jews the rest."

  "The Jews?" Hempel asked. "Is that wise?"

  "Are you questioning my orders?" Erich's voice was dangerously quiet. "Take one squad and lead the way. Use Bruqah to guide you. I am sure you will at least agree with that, since it is his primary function here," he went on, having apparently decided to downplay the matter of Hempel's insubordination. "Freund, stay with them and take care of Mir...the woman. Pleshdimer, you and Taurus bring up the rear." He raised his voice. "We are going up that hill." He pointed toward the jungle. "There will be no relaxation of discipline. For the sake of every Jewish life here, I will say this once, and once only. You are to use the machetes for creating a path. Look as if you see them as weapons, make one movement that smells of an attempt to escape, and we will shoot half of you Jews and let the dogs finish the rest. Now move it!"

  Without so much as a glance at his heavily pregnant wife Miriam or at Solomon, he turned his back to them and waited to be obeyed. Hempel, obviously furious, strode toward the ridge of trees, his omnipresent companions trotting behind.

  Bruqah, ever the Malagasy aristocrat though he
was for the moment a guide, watched without comment or movement.

  "Do you not fear them?" Sol asked him.

  "Pah!" Bruqah spat onto the wet earth.

  "Does anything frighten you?"

  Bruqah threw his head back and laughed uproariously. "You ask questions like a small child." He helped Miriam to her feet. "What Bruqah fears you cannot understand. Not yet."

  "Tell me."

  "Bruqah only fears things of man and not of man," he said softly, all trace of laughter gone.

  "You are right, I do not understand." Sol was reminded of the days in the farmhouse outside Oranienburg where he had first met Bruqah. The Malagasy had been assigned to prepare them for their journey and sojourn here. He was apparently studying botany at the university in Berlin when he was offered the job in exchange for transportation home. The more he had come to know Bruqah, the more convinced he was that the events were less coincidental than they appeared.

  "We of Africa accept she mystery," Bruqah went on. "It is for Europeans to need understanding. Belief be truth here." Bruqah pointed his walking stick at a twig. "What be this, Lady Miri?"

  "A twig," Miriam said wearily.

  He tapped the twig lightly with his cane. A chameleon skittered into the underbrush. Bruqah smiled. "Come, Lady Miri. Come, we go, Solly."

  Sol caught himself grinning. No one had called him that since he left his mother in Amsterdam. Seeing his smile, Miriam returned it with one of her own. He saw a glimpse of the young girl he had once known and felt a transient stab of hope as they entered the jungle. All his life he learned through riddles. His father had said it was part of the Judaic tradition. Perhaps by solving the riddles of this new land, he would find answers to his old problems, as well.

  Sunlight gave way to the dark and dankness of the rain forest. Sol's physical discomfort was increased tenfold by his inability to see more than a couple of meters ahead. A high-pitched chittering spoke of living creatures disturbed by the human intruders, and around him, pinpoints of light flickered on and off, as if the forest were peopled by a million glowworms. Were it not for the moisture that hung in the air and covered him with a film of sweat, and the mold and moss that enveloped everything like a possessive lover, he might have been in the Black Forest.

  Abruptly, the chittering stopped. A raucous sawing began, followed by a series of deafening squeals which rose to a crescendo and shook the bamboo and ferns into responding. Leaves rustled and dripped and snapped back, ignoring his swinging machete. When he looked behind him, the forest seemed to have regenerated. He could hear the others, Jews and soldiers alike, fighting their way through the heavy undergrowth.

  Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

  Soft and shrill and mournful, the cry echoed through the forest, its sound so chilling it made Solomon's teeth ache.

  He lifted his machete. Behind him, he heard the unnerving, metallic snaps of safeties being flicked off as, again and again, the sound came, piercing through the branches overhead.

  A guard, panicked by the unfamiliar sound, opened fire.

  Ha-haai! Ha-haai!

  "Eeee-vil!" Arms raised, Bruqah followed the sounds with a shaking finger.

  "Probably a harmless monkey," Hempel said contemptuously. "Stop acting like a bunch of children."

  "There are no monkeys in Nosy Mangabéy," Bruqah said in a low voice, the veins pulsating in his neck as he strained to see up into the jungle canopy. "Not in all Madagascar."

  "What was it?" Solomon asked.

  "H'aye-aye," Bruqah said, imitating the sound. He turned away from them and moved through the tangle of ferns and vines, parting the foliage with his walking stick and his machete. In an instant he had disappeared.

  "Come back here!" Hempel shouted.

  Bruqah returned, clutching his head, wailing and spinning as if he were performing a ritual dance. Gripping his face, ogling the newcomers to the forest, was a red-and-gold striped iguana the length of his arm.

  "Do something, one of you!" Grabbing Sol's machete, Miriam chopped wildly at the bush ahead of her. She collapsed, crying, as Bruqah reeled toward her.

  "For Christ's sake!" Hempel shouldered past Solomon. He tore the giant lizard from Bruqah and, holding it upside-down and squirming, cracked its back and threw it to his wolfhound, Boris. Pleshdimer, the Kapo who served as Hempel's man-servant, crouched at the dog's side and grinned as it tore the reptile to pieces.

  "Whatever's amusing you," Hempel said, "you might remember that one of these days you'll be glad to dine on that same meat."

  "Are you all right, Bruqah?" Miriam asked in a small voice.

  "I'm all right, Lady Miri." Bruqah signaled Solomon to come closer. "That thing." He stepped aside for a moment to allow Hempel and his machete crew to work past them. "Liguaan, like you," he told Sol. "She eye the future while she eye the past."

  "How do you know...?" Sol stopped. He would examine the meaning of Bruqah's words later. Right now Miriam needed his attention. He helped her to her feet. She looked exhausted. He wanted to pick her up and carry her, but he was too debilitated; even with Bruqah's help it was all he could do to half-drag her along.

  The climb grew steeper, the forest more dense. Layers of branches crisscrossed overhead. The leaves underfoot were slick from the humidity and lack of sunlight. Millipedes and beetles ran over their legs, stickers jabbed their arms, wet ferns, rough as a cat's tongue, stuck to the sides of their faces. Looking for ballast, they found themselves grabbing onto the yellow pitcher plants that seemed to flourish in the forest despite the weak light. When they did, a sticky syrupy substance erupted, bringing armies of flies and ants and mosquitoes against which there was no defense.

  "Be careful," Bruqah said, when he saw them touching the pitcher plants. "For some people, pitcher plants dangerous. Make them breathe bad. Die, even."

  Sol slapped at his neck and looked at his hand. On it lay a mosquito the size of an average fly. "Look at this thing," he said. "It's big enough to roast for dinner. We'll probably all need quinine, which doubtless our Nazi friends have brought along.” If we don't die first from malaria, he told himself. “For the time being, we had better do what they say."

  They resumed their climb. Eventually they found themselves in a boggy meadow. Only the lack of incline, the larger expanse of clear flat ground between trees, and the fact that those who had gone ahead of them were gathered together at the far end of the clearing, gave them any sense that they had crested the hill and exited the forest. Near them, leaning against a tree, was Hempel. "Wait here," he told Pleshdimer. "Shoot anyone who gives you trouble. I'm going to see what's beyond those trees."

  After Hempel walked away, Sol helped Miriam to sit down, her back against a log. "Nothing happens without a reason."

  He said the words out loud. He had to. For one thing, nothing short of his favorite rationale, which generally worked for him even under the most arduous circumstances, would stand a chance of reaffirming his faith. For another, the steady deterioration of his eyesight brought on by retinitis pigmentosa required--demanded--the reassurance of the sound of his own voice. As if knowing his hearing was unimpaired would somehow make the fact of his loss of vision bearable.

  Now if I could only discover what those reasons were, he thought, life would begin to make sense.

  Maybe.

  Gasping after the hike up through the rain forest, he wiped his glasses and looked around as best his tunnel vision would allow. He watched the guards and his fellow prisoners...free laborers...file onto the relative flatness of the boggy hilltop meadow.

  Dusk was descending, the sun setting behind the western edge of the dark overstory of foliage that surrounded the meadow. Night, he had been told, would come quickly in the tropics, almost like a curtain being rapidly drawn, but for the moment the side of the meadow in which Sol stood was cast in brilliant light. The air was so moisture-laden that the sunlight seemed to refract, lending the meadow an ethereal quality which was quite unnerving after the brooding darkness of the rain for
est. He wondered how much of the odd light was due to the sunlight and humidity and how much to his own weak eyes. The disease had stolen all of his sight except for a circle of clarity, nearly devoid of color.

  He wasn't going to be much use to himself, let alone anyone else, once blindness set in. When that would happen was anybody's guess; that it would happen was inevitable.

  He moved his head from side to side to examine his new environment. Wreathing him in green, slender white-barked trees rose two hundred feet, where they spread their dense leafy canopy, blotting out the sky and perpetually dripping water. Curtains of gray moss, and creepers and lianas, hung down in a tangle from the trees; parasitic orchids sprouted from the trunks. At ground level, huge ferns, gleaming with moisture, grew higher than a man's chest.

  Here and there, Sol intuited rather than saw a spot of color: the red acanthema blossoms, which Bruqah had warned them were deadly poison; the blue dicindra vine which opened in the early morning, closed up as the sun reached its height, and reopened briefly at dusk. His basic impression was that of a vast, oversized, gray-green world, an alien place, inhospitable to man.

  By contrast, the hilltop meadow seemed almost congenial. Judging by the charred snags partially sunken in the marsh and by the singularly large count of dead trees, there were times of the year when there was relief from the wetness that hovered around them like a living entity.

  At the far side of the meadow stood what Sol took to be a tanghin tree, at least judging from what he remembered seeing in Bruqah's crude drawings. Beneath the tree, a lopsided, thatched shack, constructed of mud and wattle and pandanus palm fronds, stood on uneven stumps that elevated it a meter off the ground.

  "Man who lives there carries storm in she heart," Bruqah said, misusing the personal pronoun as he almost habitually did. He sauntered closer to Sol, walking stick in hand, long, bronze-colored legs moving him with fluid ease through the meadow grass.

  "Is he one of your people?" Sol asked, hunkering down next to Miriam, who was resting at his feet, her head against a log and one hand on her nine-month pregnant belly.