6: The Resolute Watcher
The trip back to the posada was uneventful, with no abnormal activity that they were aware of. For this Philip was happy. He’d had enough of the unexplainable for now. He’d also had enough of Eve’s hostile attitude. The whole way from Auyantepui she’d sat with her back to him, staring out of the window, watching the sea of green undulate beneath the soaring helicopters.
In the distance, a blip on the ever-disappearing horizon, was the shrinking outline of the plateau. Behind the turning helicopters, as the sun shone brightly off their paintwork, the samauma trees swallowed the dark shape up with the curvature of the Earth. The helicopters began to bank right and descend, pointing towards the posada which had just come into view in the far-away clearing off the side of the road.
As the helicopters came in to land on top of the hotel, the leaves which had taken rest on the roof during the day were sent spiralling outwards, as water ripples in response to a falling stone. Juddering to a halt, the helicopters landed unsteadily on the helipad, and the passengers were let out onto the roof, most leaning on the side of the helicopters for support. Philip was helped down by his mother, dreading the awkward night of questioning and unwanted care that lay ahead of him.
*
“Are you sure you’ll be okay? I can stay behind if you want?” Beth said for what he hoped was the final time.
Philip sighed, “I’m fine. How many times do I have to tell you? Go enjoy your holiday.”
“You’re sure?”
Suddenly, there were four raps on their room’s door in quick succession. Without waiting for an answer, Rodriguez opened the door and stuck his head around.
“Mrs Quint, we are loading the coach now. If you are still coming, then...oh, I’m sorry, am I intruding?”
Beth stood up, “No, no, I was just leaving.”
As she stood, she reached for her bag. Swinging it onto her back, she strolled out past Rodriguez, who watched her go. Once she had gone, he slipped into the room with Philip, taking her place in the seat by his bed.
“Are you going to be fine here?”
God, why was everyone asking him that?
“It’s just, in case you don’t know, Eve wasn’t as badly injured as you, so she still has to come on the trip, which means you won’t necessarily have anyone to talk to.”
“I know.”
“Okay, well just remember, you can talk with the staff if you get lonely. I know it’s not much, but...”
“I’m fine.”
“Okay. Well, just amuse yourself; explore. We won’t be back until late afternoon, so don’t expect us before then.”
With that, Rodriguez did the same as Philip’s mother and left the room.
Philip waited until the sound of Rodriguez’s footsteps had died down before creeping out of the room also, following Rodriguez down the corridor to the top of the foyer staircase, flinching slightly due to his injured leg. Keeping out of sight until everyone had gone out of the front doors, Philip made his way across the mosaic floor and over to the window. He watched as the tourists filed onto the coach, where Alf was at the wheel. He saw Rodriguez mouth the register, and the coach set off.
He didn’t panic. He just stared. He felt as if he should know the man, but he could not remember him. He couldn’t see the man’s face in the shadow cast by trees, but that didn’t bother Philip. The man dressed all in black just stood there on the opposite side of the road, facing his way. Philip blinked, and the figure was gone.
This didn’t seem to register as anything important in Philip’s brain. With the coach gone, he had no reason to look outside. He turned to face the empty foyer, with its milky walls and arcing staircases. Doors lined the walls. Which to choose? There was a door, partially hidden in the shadow cast by the stairways, which swung marginally from its frame. A hair of light was stretching out from behind the door, the sounds of movement barely audible from the next room. Philip decided this was as good a place to start as any, and so made his way across the room and walked through the door.
The room on the other side of the door would have been spacious, if it hadn’t been for what looked like a nest of old-fashioned devices and objects, consisting of damaged tables, various rusted bed frames and a rather antiquated gas cooker, amongst other things. In the corner of the room, perched on the edge of a blackened washing machine, was a woman. She looked around fifty, dressed in a long, flowing floral skirt and a blouse which was worn off the shoulders. She was talking animatedly to someone who was at the moment out of sight, down another corridor leading out the back of the room, in what he guessed was French. They were not caring to whisper, for they assumed there were few others in the building to hear them.
“Il le fera comme il le fait toujours et comme il l’a fait avec moi,” the woman was protesting.
“Je n'ai pas dit ça, ce que je veux dire c’est qu’il peut en sortir, et il en sortira, avant que cela aille trop loin.”
The other voice was of a man. Philip could tell nothing more than that. It was then that the woman, opening her mouth to yell once more, turned to face the room, and saw him. She faltered.
“Anne? Qu’est-ce que?” the man called.
But she was ignoring him now, focusing on Philip, her eyes wide and panic stricken.
“Depuis combien de temps êtes-vous là? Qu’avez-vous entendu? Désolé.”
Philip just stared blankly back, “Sorry, me no speak French.”
He knew this wasn’t much of a cross-lingual bridge, but it was better than nothing.
“Désolé. Je ne parle pas Anglais,” she said back.
At that point, her associate came into the room, to see what had distracted her. Almost instantly, he too saw Philip.
Philip sighed, “Me no speak French.”
“It doesn’t sound like you speak good English either,” the man replied in his Spanish accent. “My name is Emilio Zacapa, and this,” he indicated the woman, “is Anne Bloodgood.”
“My name’s Philip.”
Emilio smiled, “Yes, we know who you are: the boy who was found on top of the plateau. We’ll be seeing a lot of you I think.”
“I doubt it,” Philip snorted, “I’ll be going home soon.”
The man and woman looked at each other.
“Right,” Emilio drew out.
There was an awkward silence where the three of them just stared at one another.
“You speak very good English,” Philip said, breaking the tension.
“Yes, thank you. I studied for a number of years at a British university. Picked up a lot of the language, but, as you can see by my job, I didn’t do so well in my chosen course.”
“Is that what you were arguing about before?”
Emilio looked Philip up and down, as if working out if he was someone to whom he could divulge a secret, “No, it wasn’t.”
“Il n’est pas au courant, vous ne pouvez rien lui dire,” Anne almost shrieked.
“Je dois le faire,” Emilio glared before turning to Philip, “Follow me.”
Philip wound his way through the maze of outdated appliances, slowly, so as to not agitate his leg, to where Emilio was, still standing in front of the back doorway. Then, out of nowhere, Anne sprang forth and spread her arms wide on the other side of the doorway, blocking their path.
“Penses a ton travail. Rodriguez est plus important.”
“Si je ne l’aide pas, il va finir comme vous,” he snapped back.
The pair stared into each other’s eyes again, as if daring the other to back down. Anne’s chest rose and fell, her breathing became deeper. But in the end, she backed away, allowing them past. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to look at Philip as he passed her.
The corridor, like the other rooms in the posada, was as cream as the outside walls. There were no pictures, but on the left-hand wall there were large rectangular holes which acted as windows, the late morning sun pouring through to illuminate the passage. Emilio led him on, down the length of the passage, and down another side corridor, this one not illuminated by sunlight, which branched off at the end of the first. At the end of this one, they came to a door. Upon the wood was a worm-eaten plaque, scratched into which was a message in Spanish, angrily written perhaps with malicious aforethought. Disregarding this, Emilio opened the door and pushed Philip into the room beyond.
It was something between a small room and a broom closet. In the centre of the room was a small, round table, and the walls were masked by thick, protruding bookcases. This only left a tiny space within which to move around the room. Emilio squeezed in behind Philip and pulled a cord by the door, turning on a flickering light on the ceiling. Philip shuffled around to the other side of the table to get out of the way of Emilio, who was already reaching for a book on one of the higher shelves.
He slid the dusty novel out from its fellows and dropped it onto the table, which was only just big enough to hold the weighty book. There was no inscription upon the faux leather cover, which had up until a few moments ago lain snugly under a carpet of dust, identical to all the other books in this cramped library. Emilio hooked his fingers under the cover of the book and forced it open with a faint cracking sound coming from the spine. Under the cover, there was not a mass of text from top to bottom of every page, but pictures, of different sizes and qualities, stuck onto each page by faded red photo corners. Many looked like clippings from newspapers, and there were a few dark photos which Philip couldn’t quite make out in the poor light of the library. Turning back to the newspaper articles, he noticed the date on one of them: October 26, 1967.
“What do you know of an incident at Shag Harbour?”
“Never heard of it,” Philip dismissed, unsure whether he should laugh or not.
“I didn’t think you would have.” Emilio took a deep breath, and as he spoke, he indicated to various pictures, “In 1967, Rodriguez was 21, and had recently moved to Nova Scotia, in French-speaking Canada, looking for work. He ended up owning a small building along with Kurt Wade, the brother of his wife-to-be, next to a place called Shag Harbour. It was both a Bed & Breakfast and a diving training centre. It was going well; he was earning enough to live off, and he got into a relationship with his co-owner’s sister. Then, in early October, the staff of an orphanage, which Miss Bloodgood called home, took a trip to Shag Harbour. It was sort of a week-long beach holiday, and they decided to stay in Rodriguez’s B&B. On the second night, a large unknown object impacted the waters just off Shag Harbour. Everyone nearby came to look. And Anne was the only person to sneak a diving kit on and swim down to look at what it was. She must have been about ten, maybe just older, I don’t really know. But she found something; it wasn’t an airplane, it was something no one has heard about since. But in the following days, Rodriguez made a small fortune doing diving trips down to the wreck. He also became Anne’s foster parent, saying he would love her as though she was his own daughter. But he exploited her, used her to gain even more money, for everyone would want to see the girl who found this wonder. But the Canadian government got involved, started investigating the scene, and forced Rodriguez, Eve’s mother and Anne to leave Nova Scotia, and to never exploit people and her like that again. That was when he moved here, to Venezuela.”
His story finished, Emilio closed the album shut and pushed it back onto the shelf from whence it came. Philip continued to look at the man.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because the same could happen to you,” Emilio groaned, exasperated. “You have just found a place on top of Auyantepui where no one has gone before. And what’s more, I hear there was some sort of opening in the ground, in which they could see something architectural. Rodriguez will take this opportunity to earn a fortune, and he will wring you dry for every Bolivar you’re worth. Do you understand? You’ve seen the quality of Anne’s living conditions; you don’t want to end up like her. I’m not trying to be threatening; I’m just giving you advice. Don’t get caught up in this potential enterprise!”
“But what am I supposed to do? I don’t leave here until tomorrow evening. Plus he can’t exactly take me away from my parents.”
“Yeah, don’t count on that,” Emilio muttered, and then aloud, he continued, “Just stay away from him. That’s the most you can do. Now, let’s get you back where you’re meant to be.”
“Where is that exactly?” Philip asked as he and Emilio left the library.
A number of hours earlier, Emilio had led him back through the room where they’d met (where Anne was still avoiding eye contact with Philip) out into the foyer and into something like a lounge. There were high windows on two walls plus a little cafeteria off another, and in the seating area Philip had chosen to occupy, there was a semicircle of antique couches and chairs, centring around an old television set.
So Philip had had much of the day to flick through the poor quality channels, some in English, some Spanish and some French, plus some he neither recognised nor understood. Not paying much attention to these flickering images, he’d spent a lot of time thinking about what Emilio had said to him. Even if he’d been right about Rodriguez, how was he supposed to avoid the man for the whole of today and tomorrow? In the evenings (or at least there had been the previous evening), Rodriguez held a group meeting to talk about the next day’s timetable. Rodriguez also walked around talking to people at dinner time. There was no escaping him without being noticeably missing. And if Emilio was right, Rodriguez would make a beeline for him, so there was no chance of being simply ignored.
Philip looked out at the late afternoon sky through the towering window. In the distance, he could just see the peak of Auyantepui over the treetops. They would be making their way back about now, rowing along the river from Angel Falls. He was sure his parents would make him look at all the ‘interesting’ pictures they’d taken.
His gaze drifted downwards, into the trees themselves, at the man dressed all in black. Philip blinked. The man had moved. He was closer this time, yet still under the shade of the trees. Not panicking, Philip walked around to the window on the other wall. There the man was again, in the same position, just under different trees. Still nonchalant, Philip strode over to the little cafeteria, went around the counter, and began the ascent of the stairwell at the back.
It was a gentle curve, going with the arc of the building’s shape. Along the left hand wall were small, round holes which acted as windows. Philip kept looking out of them as he passed, every time seeing the mysterious figure.
At the top of the tiring staircase, the path levelled off onto a narrow corridor. Again, on the left hand side, were windows to the outside world. Again, the man was perfectly in the middle of his view, looking up at him. He was making no gestures, no signs of communication; he just kept on watching Philip, not even seeming to blink. At the end of the corridor, the path branched off. Philip chose the one on the right, the one that led to his room. Though there were no windows down this corridor, he knew the man would remain close by.
At his door, Philip snatched the key from his pocket and rammed it into the door. For all his force, the key turned smoothly and without resistance. As the door swung back, he heard the unmistakable sound of the coach pulling in onto the driveway of the posada. He could hardly mistake it for anything else around here; there weren’t that many things to make such a sound. Quickly, yet not running, Philip moved over to the window at the end of the room which looked over the entrance to the posada. There he could see the rear of the coach around the corner of the building. Yet he could also see the man, still looking directly at him.
Philip turned, taking a few steps back across the room. The man was in the doorway. He took up the whole of it, not leaving any room to slip by. Now up close, Philip could see that his black attire was not a smart suit as he had thought. Though the jacket, shirt and trousers may have once looked decent, they were torn and worn out in various places, looking shabby as well as old. Even the man looked very worse for wear, seeming to need all of his strength to keep upright in the doorway.
Again, Philip felt that he should know the man. Although he had lost the memory of their encounter at the ‘Cloak and Scythe’, he had that tingling thought at the back of his mind that there was something he should dislike or fear about this man that should make him want to avoid or attack him. But he didn’t know what this was.
The man’s eyes were bruised, as were other parts of his person that Philip could see. He continued to stand there, moistening his cracked lips with his tongue, holding on to the doorframe.
They heard the front doors to the building opening.
“Philip, we’re back!” they could faintly hear Beth calling.
Philip looked in the direction from which the voice had come, which happened to be a wall. He looked back at the door. It was empty.
“Hello again,” the man said from behind him.
Philip entered transit, reappearing at the top of the stairs to the foyer. His mother looked up at him from the group, which was trudging in through the double doors, dripping wet. Philip began to move down the stairs, and winced, his body still hurting.
“Are you okay?” Beth called, her voice suddenly higher through fear and concern.
“Completely fine,” he said back through clenched teeth. “I see the rapids were fun.”
He made his steady way down to the mosaic floor of the foyer and strode as best he could, not to his mother’s open arms, which confused her, but to Rodriguez. Ignoring Emilio’s advice, he had to talk to him.
“How many people were here today?”
“Just you and the staff, why?” Rodriguez looked down quizzically.
“How many wear black uniforms?”
Rodriguez smiled, he finally got to show off his knowledge, “No, black isn’t a major clothing colour in Venezuela. Traditionally, people wear bright colours such as...”
“Yeah, don’t care,” Philip moved purposefully to the window, leaving Rodriguez to lose his smile.
Through the foyer window he could see the coach, and he could see the man. He blinked. The man was gone.