Chapter Thirteen
Outside of Onorien’s compound, three of the island’s natives crouched just on the other side of the hedgerow that marked the area into which they would be best off not entering. The thought had not actually crossed their minds, and the only people who ever went beyond the hedgerows were those who inhabited the mansion and those taken into the mansion. The three men gripped their spears nervously, knowing how close they were to mortal peril, how quickly and unexpectedly death could come to anyone who strayed – intentionally or accidentally – onto the manicured grass.
The three were all well-versed in the tales of the mansion, although most were crepuscular visions infused with adrenaline and wrapped in fear, making them unreliable as factual accounts. Only Thijmen, the eldest of the three men, had actually witnessed anything from start-to-finish, and even he could not understand what he had seen. One moment several years ago when Nereika had been taken into the mansion by the white-haired white man, Geert, her older brother, had run across the lawn in an attempt to rescue her but had turned into a pile of black charcoal and ash after he had been engulfed in a bright purple flash of fire and light. One moment, Geert was flesh and blood, filled with life and shouting for the return of his sister, the next he was being lifted into the air by the breeze, tiny bits of fluffy ash dispersed by the wind.
Thijmen had frozen in place and watched in sheer disbelief; there was no explanation at hand. His best friend had been there, and then wasn’t. Nereika had been taken inside, willingly, it seemed, after she had encountered the white-haired man on the beach while searching for sea shells. Geert and Thijmen had been frolicking in the surf, having seriously misjudged how close to the mansion grounds they were, an error Thijmen had never made again. Every square inch of this end of the island had been etched onto his brain in the moments following Geert’s spectacular death.
“Do you think he knows we’re here?” Willem asked, his eyes darting nervously through the early evening gloom.
“I’d assume he knows we’re here, so we shouldn’t linger long,” Thijmen said and shrugged, looking around the jungle. “He always seems to know when we’re here.”
“I say we just sneak in and kill the bastard,” Pieter said. “Who the hell is this man? How many of us will he take into his mansion, never to be seen or heard from again? What of Dedrick? How long until he becomes just another one of us stolen from the jungle?”
Thijmen glared at him. “We see Nereika all the time, so there’s no reason to think the worst has come to him. It’s only been a couple of days. Besides, are you going to be the one that tests the grass?”
All three of them turned and stared at the lawn. All were certain it was deadly. While Thijmen and Willem stared up at the mansion, Pieter grabbed a small rock and lobbed it through the air. It landed with a soft thud on the grass and rolled a foot before stopping. Thijmen and Willem both held their breath with fear, their eyes wide with disbelief and apprehension.
“Pieter,” Thijmen hissed. “You’re going to get us all killed.”
Pieter snorted quietly. “It’s only grass, Thijmen, and that man is only a man, no matter what the legends say.”
“You’re betting our lives on that, Pieter,” Willem said softly, scanning the mansion for signs of movement inside. There was nothing.
“He’s the reason we’re all trapped on this island, and you know it,” Pieter said. “We don’t know how, but it can only be him. He keeps us here so that he can kidnap us at his leisure and take us into that mansion for whatever evil it is he’s up to, and you both know it. We all know it; everyone in the village knows it. We’ll never be free until we’re rid of the white haired man.”
Thijmen and Willem exchanged knowing glances: they both knew what Pieter said was true, but neither of them knew why or how it was true. Indeed, everyone in the village knew it was true, that the crazy old white-haired man in the mansion was somehow keeping them trapped on the island. None of them knew why, and nobody who’d ever been taken by the white haired man had ever come back out of the mansion. Only Nereika was known to have survived, and she had never made any attempt to escape. They knew this to be true because, for every day of the past nine years, someone from the tribe had kept a watch on the mansion, waiting expectantly for Nereika to jump from a balcony or run from a door, and, yet, nothing had ever happened. She always seemed content, somehow.
Pieter stood and stared down at his two friends, made the barest of shrugs and pushed through the shrubbery wall and onto the grass beyond, his arm slipping from the last-instant grasp of Thijmen’s hand. And nothing happened. Pieter stood there on the edge of the lawn, spear in hand, his eyes searching wildly across the expanse of the mansion, expecting the white haired man to suddenly appear, but really expecting to have been turned into a cinder block in an instant of white hot pain. But, there was nothing. Pieter turned and looked back through the shrubs at where he knew his two friends were squatting.
“Get back here, now,” Thijmen whispered hoarsely, “before you press your luck.”
Pieter glanced back up at the mansion, felt a twinge of fear in his stomach, and squeezed back through the shrubs. He smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of confidence or certainty, but, rather, the visage of a man who knows he has somehow cheated death.
“You see, it’s just grass,” Pieter said, the palms of his hands slick with sweat as he grasped his spear. “And that man is just a man, like you or I.”
“Maybe,” Thijmen said, “but now it is time to go.”