~ ~ ~ • ~ ~ ~
“Well, ain’t this just the bee’s knees?” Welsh says, shining her portable lamp around the natural chamber beyond the gap. After the cleft in the rock by the pool drop, a narrow split in the wall has been widened by centuries of water action that opens into an oblong cleft in the Earth, a seemingly widened crack that has been split apart by titanic earthen forces, and the natural terminus of the crack at the base of the water-filled drop.
The mouldering debris left in the chamber leaves evidence that somebody had once lived in this underworld abode.
The narrow chamber’s gap has been taken over by the remains of a thin bamboo frame and tattered canvas — a sprawling device of some sort that has been casually discarded.
Welsh gives it a moment’s curiosity before casting her light about further.
Directly opposite to the entrance a ramshackle table has been formed out of detritus boards laid over stacked rocks. A long-since unused radio still sits on top of crude table; the device’s casing has rusted through from the moisture-laden air. Several bits of discarded papers sit beside the electronics. A small misused hand-powered generator sits forgotten on the floor. Wires from the radio head off through another cleft at the end of the chamber’s long axis — just large enough for a single small person to pass through.
Welsh considers it likely another egress point.
With the available floor space lacking and claustrophobic, makeshift bedding has been propped up on one of the jutting ledges — seemingly placed high to lift the sleeper out of any water that has obviously run through the chamber during the wet season; but also strategically locates them high should they be surprised by unannounced visitors. The bedding is long forgotten, and has been left to lie mouldering; though it still bears some telltale markings of a soldier’s kit despite the wasting of years of neglect.
“What you think?” Welsh asks while still hovering by the entrance, leery of further traps.
“I shouldn’t think the interior of a home, even so obviously temporary, should be trapped as well.”
Welsh nods. “Well, if I get blowed up, I’m gonna haunt your ass somethin’ fierce.”
The redhead steels her jaw and steps into the chamber.
She stays as clear of the broken frame as she can, first taking a look at the radio. It has long since passed its usable era. The paper debris next to it appears to be a couple more books similar to the discovered notebook safely back at the resort on Mbanika Island.
These ones didn’t fare nearly as well.
Seeing nothing of value, she turns her eyes upwards to the bedding with the curiosity of a delving explorer.
As she lifts herself up, Welsh hears Sylvia follow behind her into the chamber. She spares her companion a glance before turning back to her ledge-top discovery — and grunts with disgusted disapproval.
“Well, I found our guy,” Welsh says. Her eyes peer into the empty sockets of a moulding skull staring back at her.
Bits of hair still stick to the ratty cranial bones. By appearances of the skeletal remains the person died in their sleep. The softer organic matter has long since dissolved; even in the coolness of the underground world. In the wake of rapid decomposition, the bones have been left lying on a bed of strange gritty black ash. The granular remains are not unlike coal dust.
Welsh lowers herself back down.
“Anything else?” Sylvia asks.
“Knock yourself out,” Welsh says with a jerk of her thumb up the corpse.
“Honestly. You amaze me sometimes.”
“I donnae like dead folk, okay? Seriously. You wanna go poking around in the fuckin’ bones of a corpse, go ahead,” Welsh says with a growling retort. She then waves to the split frame and canvas. “I’m gonna look at this here... thing.”
Sylvia shakes her head. “I will need that light then.”
“Nu-uh. You lost yours.”
“You can be such a child.”
Welsh shrugs with a grin. “Ya, but who’s the one wit’ the light?”
Sylvia sighs, and turns away.
“Oh, fine, ya big baby,” Welsh says. “Here. I’ll jus’sit in the dark then,” she holds out the lamp.
Sylvia takes the offered illumination. “We actually have a reason to be here; not to indulge in idle curiosity. I would rather not make an attempt to climb back down this mountain in the dark.”
Welsh doesn’t reply, leaving Sylvia to lift herself up to the ledge to investigate the corpse on her own.
Sylvia props herself against the rock and lifts the lamp to closely examine the remains.
“This person would appear to have died in their sleep,” she says. “And were burned? Is this ash?”
Welsh shrugs in the darkness, even though Sylvia wasn’t really asking her.
“No clue. Investigatin’ dead thin’s is your department.”
Sylvia passes the light over the length of the skeleton, her eyes sharp and careful.
“However, the bones are not scorched. The only signs of trauma are several unhealed fractures of the ribs. There is no indication of any healing; as the injuries were sustained just prior to death.”
“Buddy died from broken ribs?” Welsh looks over, curious.
“Unlikely,” she says with a pause. “None are broken through enough to puncture an organ.”
Sylvia lifts herself up further, remaining careful not to disturb the remains.
“The right humerus looks like it might have been injured as well,” she adds, looking closely at the upper arm bone. “But the bone seems like it could have also cracked later from environmental causes — possibly along an already weakened injury.”
“Sure,” Welsh says.
There is a slight clatter of bones as Sylvia is forced to shift the remains for further examination. She turns the light from the bones to the strange ash material, examining both substances as they pertain to the whole.
“Ah, here,” she says, shining the lamp on a length of white bone. She finds its mate where it has been broken through with violent force. The radial explosion of damage through the material left behind a telltale signature.
As an idea forms in her head, she pushes aside more bones to sift through the ash.
Welsh looks on with some curiosity, careful to avoid looking too long at the dead.
Sylvia ‘ahs’ with some triumph as her light discovers the object of her hunt. She lifts up the small find: a bit of compressed metal.
“What do you make of this?”
Welsh steps over to have a look.
“I would say tha’s a bullet.”
“Obviously.”
Welsh takes the hunk of lead and the lamp to examine closer.
“Looks like... a .45 slug. Could be from either a M1911 or a Tommy. But definitely would be American. Think that killed him?”
“Oh, that is most certain. Given the location of the rib damaged by the GSW, he would have suffered severe organ trauma.”
Sylvia turns the light onto the chamber. “Though there is little indication that he was shot here. And for our benefit, I would hope that was not the case.”
Sylvia turns from the corpse to the middle of the chamber.
“What do you make of that device?”
Welsh takes the lamp back to shine it on the bamboo and canvas frame.
“It’s busted to all Hell; but near as I can tell, it looks like some sort of glider.” Welsh says, pulling on the frame to indicate the tortured remains of a canvas enshrouded wing.”
“Really?” Sylvia turns from the body to look closer.
“Ya, pretty damn slick how it all seems to fit together too. It has some markings cut into the bamboo all neat-like; though I cannae make any sense of. They look like Kanji, but not any kind I’ve ever seen. Still, the whole rig woulda been pretty lightweight and collapsible.
“But unless there was some form of propulsion that ain’t presently visible, it donnae look like it would be serviceable for much more than a controlled drop fr
om a cliff or a plane.”
Sylvia nods. “Well, that could explain how he was able to jump around the islands.”
“What? You actually think he flew this thing between the islands? Seriously?” Welsh asks, looking dubiously at her companion. “He put on his wings and summoned up the spirits of Fūjin or Susanoo-no-Mikoto to launch him into the sky like some wannabe Polynesian-reincarnated Daedalus?”
Sylvia shrugs. “We have seen a lot stranger.”
Welsh snorts and waves her off.
“If he was wounded on Bougainville Island where the journal was found — considering the dates correspond to the Allied presence there — that would account for the bullet wound.”
Welsh stops fiddling with the broken wing to look over her shoulder at her friend.
“He hung around after bein’ shot for like two days while an invasion was explodin’ all around him. Then decided on flyin’ back across the fuckin’ ocean on a hang-glider — wit’ the bullet still in his gut?”
“Perhaps.”
“Seriously, who the Hell is this asshole? Superman?”
“Well, I would not presume so. Superman was bulletproof.”
Welsh snorts. “Geek.”
Sylvia rolls her eyes.
“But seriously; after all that, he just dies here? Why the Hell do the flight? He had to know the strain would totally kill him.”
The taller woman ponders a long moment before stepping back up to the remains. She folds her arms on the rim of the ledge. She hunches a little to rest her chin on her folded arms and looks deeply into the skull’s empty eye sockets.
She ponders several long moments. The silence of the cavern fills in the audio void between the two women.
“He knew he was dying,” she says finally, her voice almost a whisper.
“Wut?”
Sylvia looks back at her companion. “He knew he was going to die. The Americans had already taken the other islands and it was only a matter of time before Bougainville also fell...” Sylvia lets her voice trail off in thought.
After a few moments, her eyes light up with realization. She quickly sets to sifting through the gritty ashes.
“Oi, now what? Tha’s really messed up.”
“The Americans were driving the Imperial forces off the islands. He could not let himself be taken by them — alive or dead. Neither himself and perhaps something he was carrying.”
“The acquisition?” Welsh asks, her curiosity overcoming her distaste for the dead as she steps up next to Sylvia. “He put himself through Hell so the Yanks wonnae get it...”
“It would seem,” Sylvia says as she pushes through the thick ash.
Welsh gives the skull a nod. “Damn... Props to you, sucker. Shitty you had to die for it.”
Sylvia gasps. Her fingers touch on something hidden under the bones and ash. She tightens her grip and pulls it loose; drawing up a slim length like a blackened yardstick.
Even after seventy years, the silken tsuka ito handle wrapping remains taunt and pristine. The scabbard is unmarred beyond the previous difficulties of daily use.
“Well, donnae tha’ jus’ beat all?” Welsh says, her eyes examining the ash-dusted weapon.
Sylvia stares at the sheathed blade, enamored by the elegant beauty of the craftwork under the harsh glare of her the electric torch. Yet even ensorcelled by the majestic beauty, she cannot fail to notice the flash of shadowy movement at the edge of her vision, and the faintest swish of cloth against cloth.
Reacting from the purest instinct against an unknown threat, she shoves Welsh back away from her. The redhead stumbles into the broken wings of the glider — just as the flare of a blade flashes through their lamplight. The weapon’s razor-edged tip nicks into the redhead’s deltoid muscle; though was fully intended for her exposed throat.
Thank you.
Thank you for reading this month’s Tales of the Arcane short story anthologies.
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