Private Demons Read online

  “And now,” Calais said, “if you will excuse us, Sri Halim and I are old friends. We would like to talk alone together.”

  Yang waited another few seconds, as if he couldn’t decide what else he should try to extract, then abruptly got up out of the chair. Even in the air-conditioned room, his shirt had stuck to his back. “Tomorrow then, “ he said. He hesitated in front of Lucien, as if to shake hands on the deal, but Calais did not look up. Yang left, letting the door slam shut behind him.

  Halim grunted, and tossed the can into an open crate that served as his garbage pail. “You should have let me do this for you.”

  They heard his car start up outside.

  “I think it is best my way,” Lucien said. “There may be terms he will not like.”

  “His uncle, you should know, is a member of the Privy Council.”

  So that was it.

  “Very powerful in the national legislature.”

  “I assumed there was something like that.”

  Halim shrugged, as if he had done all he could do. Laboriously, he got up out of his chair and went to the window; poking his fingers between the slats of the Venetian blind, he peered outside.

  “Yang is gone,” he said, and punched the off-button on the air conditioner. “I hate this machine.” The noise in the room was blissfully reduced. Next, he turned off the crackling static that issued from the radio unit. “I did not want Yang to hear.”

  “Hear what?”

  “Listen.”

  At first, all Lucien could detect was the creaking of his own chair, and the humming of the refrigerator on the floor beside him. Then, leaning forward, he thought he heard, as if from far below them, a man’s voice, muttering something, in what seemed like English. Then it was gone.

  He looked up at Halim. “You have a room under this?”

  “Yes.”

  “And who is in there?”

  “His name is Molloy. Kevin Molloy.”

  The name was vaguely familiar. But he could not quite place it.

  “Fishermen—friends of mine—pulled him from the water,” Halim said. “He was a crewman, on the Garuda."

  Lucien was stunned.

  “I have kept him here, for you.”

  “I have to see him,” Lucien said, jumping to his feet. “I have to talk to him.”

  Halim closed his eyes, and held up one hand. “You can talk to him—of course you can talk to him. That is why I have kept him alive. But I must warn you, he has very strange stories to tell . . . very strange. The doctor says he is very ill.”

  “Let me see him.”

  “Of course,” Halim said, lowering his hand. “Of course . . .” He turned toward the back of the office, and passed through a hanging bead curtain. There was a rickety staircase that led down to a sheet-metal door. Halim knocked once, then three times. He said to Lucien, “There’s a smell. It can’t be helped.”

  The door opened from the inside. A tiny wizened man, wearing glasses and a dark suit, let them in.

  “This is Dr. Chom.”

  Chom nodded, then went back to a wooden chair in the corner and sat down. The only light was provided by a bare bulb suspended from the ceiling.

  The smell was, indeed, nearly unbearable.

  Against the far wall, a cot had been set up. A man was lying on it, and as far as Lucien could tell, his arms were bound to the frame. He also appeared to have been horribly disfigured.

  Lucien stepped closer. The man was staring straight up at the ceiling, staring with the one eye left in his head. The entire right side of his face looked as if it had been blasted with a blowtorch; the eye socket was a blackened pit, the cheek reduced to a bloody pulp of scorched flesh and gray cinder. The hair too had been burnt off, though on the left side it was stiff and dead-white. Around his neck, there were two silver chains. On one, there was a St. Christopher medal; on the other, a pair of dog tags that identified him as Kevin Molloy, Seaman First Class.

  There was froth on his lips.

  “The smell, it comes from the burns,” Halim explained. “Dr. Chom is using his own medicines. Very good medicines.”

  Lucien picked up the edge of the sheet that covered Molloy, and looked underneath. As with his face, the right side of his body was twisted and scorched; the white of his ribs showed through the oddly translucent film that was all that remained of his skin. He was skeletally thin, and his hands, as Lucien had suspected, were tied with adhesive strips to the bed frame.

  “That is to keep him from touching,” Halim said, patting the right side of his own body to demonstrate. “Also, he tries to get up many times. Gets very excited. Not good for him to move.”

  Dr. Chom said something, quickly and in a Thai dialect Lucien didn’t understand. Halim nodded, and said to Lucien, “Dr. Chom says his fever is down. Much worse yesterday.”

  “Is that when he was found?”

  “Yes. Some fishermen from a small village, Koy—”

  Lucien immediately recognized it as the place Wilkerson had warned him not to go.

  “—pulled him from sea. He was holding onto two buckets tied together with hemp. One fisherman, who speak English, listen to what he say, and know he should bring him straight to Sri Halim. I listen, and I keep him here for you.”

  “He should be in a hospital,” Lucien said.

  “Dr. Chom better than hospital,” Halim countered. “And Dr. Chom not talk to anyone else.”

  The eye on the left side of Molloy’s face, the side closest to the wall, shifted to the right, to regard Calais. The eye, a clear gray-blue color, contrasted strangely with the burnt skin and singed scalp. The eye had a kind of sparkle to it.

  “I’m Lucien Calais . . . I owned the Garuda. You are with friends. You are going to be taken care of.”

  The eye remained fixed on him, without blinking.

  “Can you understand me?”

  Molloy’s lips parted; even his teeth and tongue appeared blackened.

  Dr. Chom got up, and held a plastic cup with a flexible straw for Molloy to drink from. When he had sipped, Chom returned to his chair.

  “Can you remember what happened?” Lucien asked.

  Almost imperceptibly, Molloy nodded.

  How old was he? Lucien wondered. The mutilation was so great it was hard to tell.

  “Tell me . . . tell me what you remember.”

  Halim put a three-legged stool behind Lucien, then said, “I will be upstairs. Smell too bad here. Do not open the door unless you hear the signal.” He went out of the room, leaving Chom in the corner and Hun silently guarding the door he’d pulled shut behind him.

  Lucien drew the stool closer to the bedside, sat down, and waited. What had Molloy seen? What did he know? The burns had to be a result of the explosion on board—but how on earth had he survived it? He alone? And after all those days on the open sea? There was so much Lucien wanted—and needed—to know and it was all locked up inside of a man who looked as if, by all rights, he should have been dead already.

  Lucien saw some movement in Molloy’s right hand . . . as if he were trying to raise it to touch Calais. But the adhesive strip kept the hand firmly in place.

  “Don’t try to move,” Lucien said. “It’s better if you keep still.” The fingers, gnawed and bony, flopped back against the iron bed frame. “Is there something you want? Something I can do to help you?”

  At this, Molloy’s eye seemed to brighten even more, and he licked his lips in preparation to speak. Fixing Lucien with his unwavering gaze, he whispered, “Bless me, Father . . . for I have sinned.” Then he waited, as if for a response from Lucien.

  “I’m not a priest,” Lucien said, as gently as he could. He repeated who he was, and why he was there, but it seemed to make no impression on Molloy.

  “It has been a long time, Father, since my last confession.” What was left of Molloy’s face—and now it seemed to Lucien that the man could not have been older than his late twenties—contorted itself into the semblance of a smile . . . a gr
im but eager smile that also showed a trace of embarrassment at having to admit to that lapse in faith. He was looking at Lucien, anxiously, expectantly, waiting, Lucien assumed, for some sort of reply, or guidance. But what did a Catholic priest do, or say?

  “Tell me,” Lucien finally said, “what you want me to know. Tell me what you did that you wish to be forgiven for.”

  The smile on Molloy’s face became even more strained. His eye looked away, men back again, at Lucien.

  “I cheated, in a card game,” he said. “I was using marked cards.”

  This was what had been preying on his mind? “You are forgiven,” Lucien said, prepared to play the role of priest at least this far. “Don’t do it again,” he said, wondering if this was what a proper confessor would say.

  “I won’t, Father, I won’t,” Molloy assured him. “But I also did something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “Last time I had shore leave, I had . . . relations, if you know what I’m saying . . . with a woman.” The eye blinked rapidly, two or three times. “I’m married, back in the States.”

  Lucien felt, however hypocritical, that he should take a stricter tone about this offense; Molloy seemed desperate to believe that he was receiving genuine absolution. “Marriage is sacred,” he said, “and I want you to remember that in future. But for now, you are forgiven.” How much longer, Lucien wondered, was he going to go on with this charade? What else did Molloy need to unburden himself of? “Is that all?” Lucien asked, trying to sound both grave and sympathetic.

  Molloy was studying his face with great intensity, as if struggling to decide whether or not to say whatever else it was he was thinking, as if all the rest had just been a prelude, to test the receptivity of his audience. “No,” he finally said, “there’s something else.”

  Lucien waited.

  “I ate . . .” and he stopped, the tendons in his throat visibly contorting. “I ate . . . meat.” His lone eye was probing Lucien’s face, imploringly, sadly.

  But what could be wrong with eating meat? Lucien wondered. The Catholic Church, so far as he knew, didn’t prohibit it.

  “You ate meat?”

  Molloy nodded, jerkily.

  “Then you are forgiven,” Lucien said, yet again. “Eating meat is not a sin.”

  Molloy’s expression didn’t change. It was as if the absolution weren’t yet clear enough . . . as if something had yet to be properly spelled out.

  “No” Molloy said, “it’s the kind of meat. It’s what I ate, Father. It’s what I ate.”

  “And what was that?” Lucien asked. He began to despair of learning anything from Molloy; the man was clearly in a state of total delirium.

  “I ate . . . human meat.” The smile faded. “I ate human meat, Father . . . I was very hungry. You understand, don’t you, Father? It was all there was. It was all there was.” The words tumbled out as if a dam had just burst inside him. “I ate it because I had to, Father. I’d have died if I hadn’t. I’d have died.”

  Was he hallucinating? Or had he really done this? And whose flesh had he eaten?

  “Yes . . . yes, I understand,” Lucien said, hoping to calm him. “I understand . . . that you had to do this.”

  Molloy still didn’t look convinced. “It was on the Death Ship,” he said, as if by way of explanation. “It’s all there was to eat on the Death Ship.”

  “What do you mean by the Death Ship?” Lucien asked. “Is that the ship you were on, the Garuda?" Should he even be pursuing this tortured, and possibly delusional, confession?

  Molloy now looked frustrated at Lucien’s inability to grasp everything instantly. “No, it was the Death Ship that we saw at sea . . . that we changed course for. Skolnick thought it coulda been boat people. We had orders,” he confided, “standing orders, to pick up boat people.” He offered it as another small proof of his otherwise good character.

  For Lucien, the story had suddenly taken on a far greater probability—he recognized Skolnick as the name of another of his seamen, and those were indeed his standing orders to his fleet. “You saw another boat and you went to help it? What did this other boat—the Death Ship—look like?”

  Molloy was licking his lips again, with the tip of his blackened tongue. Dr. Chom brought over the cup with the straw, and Lucien took it from him. “Here,” he said, offering it to Molloy from his own hand, “drink this . . . take your time.”

  Molloy sipped from the straw, slowly, and grimaced when he’d finished. Swallowing appeared to cause him great pain.

  “She looked like a junk . . . only she was black, with a bat-wing sail . . . and oars, rows of ‘em, on both sides.”

  Lucien grew very still. “Go on.”

  “When she pulled up alongside, we grappled her . . . and Skolnick went on board to check it out. We waited awhile—me and Koop, Al Koop—and when Skolnick didn’t come back, I went on down after him. Koop had a bad ankle—that’s why I went.”

  Lucien nodded, and waited in silence for him to continue.

  “There was this light, kinda yellow, inside the cabin. So I went on down to the stern, quiet as I could go, and I lifted the flap, just a little, to see what was goin’ down inside.” He licked his lips, nervously, again, and Lucien suddenly realized that he needed another drink. He bent the straw toward his lips, and Molloy sipped, and winced as it went down.

  “What did you see?” Lucien asked, in low tones.

  “I saw . . . I saw . . .” He started to laugh, softly, maniacally, and shake his head on the pillow. “I saw . . . the damnedest thing . . . I saw Skolnick, and he was tied to the mast pole.” He laughed again. “And it looked like he was tied with snakes—if you can believe that. Like there were snakes tied around his neck and his stomach, holding him up against the pole.”

  Lucien felt his blood run cold.

  “But that was nothing,” Molloy went on, chuckling now, as if the story were just too rich for words, “that was nothing, compared to the rest . . . There were pieces of him, like an arm, and a hand, and one leg, that were missing. And there were these guys—the dead guys, I call ‘em—bent over the oars, eating the stuff. They were eating the pieces of Skolnick like they were eating fried chicken or something. They were eating like crazy, like this was the best stuff they’d ever had . . . It was crazy,” Molloy said, “the way they were eating that stuff.” He shook his head again, in amused disbelief.

  “What did you do then?”

  Molloy paused, as if remembering—seeing—something else. “You know,” he said, seriously now, and not yet ready to dispense with this part of the story, “I think Skolnick was still alive . . . His eyes were open, Father, and I think he saw me. He was looking right at me . . . I think he saw me looking at him . . . What do you think, Father? Do you think he saw me looking at him? Do you think he knew I was there?” It sounded, as if this were of vital importance, and Lucien realized that he had to weigh his answer carefully.

  “I think he knew that you were there . . . and I think that that was a help to him. That he knew he was not alone.”

  Molloy appeared to consider it, but then decided that it had not really addressed his fears. “But do you think he knew I couldn’t do anything about it? Do you think he knew I couldn’t do anything about saving him, Father? Do you think he understood that?”

  “Yes . . . I’m sure he understood,” Lucien said, and for the first time laid one hand, as lightly as he could, on the sheet that covered Molloy’s chest. “I’m sure he understood.”

  Molloy closed his eye, and took a long, but stertorous, breath. Lucien could feel his bones, brittle and hard, just beneath the coarse, white sheet. “He musta known that,” Molloy said, as if to himself, “he musta known I couldn’t do anything.”

  Lucien waited, until Molloy had recovered himself, then asked, “What did you do after that?” They had still not even come to the explosion, or its cause . . . though Lucien knew enough now to realize it might make as little sense, in the usual meaning of the word, as everythi
ng else he had already learned.

  “After that, I put down the flap. I started to head for the bow, when I noticed the grappling hook musta let go somehow. We weren’t connected anymore . . . we were drifting away. I was afraid to shout . . . I was afraid the dead guys would hear me in the cabin.”

  Lucien nodded, to indicate that made good sense to him.

  “I was lookin’ around, for a life jacket, or something that would float . . . and the next thing I knew, I was flat on my back. The Garuda exploded, just like she’d been hit with a torpedo. She went up like a torch—the fire went everywhere. That’s what got me,” he added, as if it might not have been noticed, “that’s how I got burnt.” His eye dropped to the plastic cup in Lucien’s hand. “Could I have another hit of that, Father?”

  Lucien held it while he drank. The top of his head looked as if an insane barber had chopped and seared half of it clean, and left the other half thick and white with hair. Dr. Chom came over, and seemed to be trying to tell Lucien that the patient needed to rest now, that he had talked too much already. Lucien held up one hand, to show that he understood and would be finished very soon. Chom grunted, shook his head, and waddled back to his chair.

  “Thank you, Father,” Molloy said, rolling his head back on the nearly flattened pillow. “I’m glad Skolnick understood about how things were. I’m glad he knew about that.”

  Lucien could tell that Molloy’s energy was flagging; soon, the pain would overcome him again. Before that happened, Lucien wanted to find out whatever else he could . . . whatever else Molloy could remember.

  “And after the explosion,” Lucien asked, “how did you survive, on the Death Ship?”

  Molloy sighed, and closed his eye again. “I stowed away in the bow, under some buckets and rope. That’s where I had to do what I said earlier . . . you know, about eating the meat.” He coughed, once, and it was clear it caused him agony. Chom, without a word, came over again, this time with a syringe already prepared. He lowered a corner of the sheet to expose Molloy’s upper arm—Lucien saw the faded tattoo of a motorcycle—and gave him the shot. To Lucien, Chom muttered something that was plainly an admonition.