They could take another route to Komang’s house: Abang had told him, ‘You can either approach through the village, that’s the short way, you can do it on foot, or you can ride on the moped on a track through the fields, but then you’ll have to leave Wayan with the moped in the middle of the fields and he won’t like that.’ Many Balinese thought spirits lived in the water, the Invisibles. Tonight, he thought, they are probably right.
He stepped back into the compound and hissed to Wayan, ‘Start the moped.’ Abang had drawn a sketch of the paths and tracks around the village in Harper’s notebook and Harper’s visual memory was good, but he wasn’t sure whether he would be able to find his way in the dark.
As he returned to the day bed to pick up his bag, he fumbled in his pocket for his cigarette lighter, flicking it and holding it up so that he could see Wayan’s face, both rictus and blank. ‘We should stay here, sir?’ he said.
‘We can’t,’ Harper replied. ‘It’s not safe.’ This was not true. He doubted very much the men would come for him and Wayan, they would be too anxious that his status was unconfirmed, that he might be too important to kill.
Wayan would not start the moped for him unless he thought it was more dangerous to stay in the compound than go out into the night, so Harper repeated, ‘It’s not safe here, the men will come here. We have to go round a back route. I will direct you.’
The noise of a moped engine: so ubiquitous in the day you hardly registered it, yet a cacophony in the dark. It would alert the men to the fact that someone else was on the move — but he and Wayan would be riding on a different path, a circuitous route. Wayan’s hand shook as he tried to turn the key and for a moment Harper wondered if he should have left the man behind and taken the moped on his own. Then the engine let loose with its small ascending growl, Wayan kicked the machine into life and Harper swung his leg over. ‘To the end of the road, then left,’ he said in a low voice, in Wayan’s ear. ‘Be careful, go slow, stay in the middle.’ They couldn’t afford to end up in a ditch in the dark.
They turned left up the track that wound round the village. Gripping the seat with his knees, he held his cigarette lighter out and flicked it once in a while to illuminate the track, letting it die, then flick, die then flick. Each time, he saw no more than a few feet ahead, the mud track, the bushes either side, the shadow that the motorbike and its two riders cast, like that of a strange beast.
After what seemed like a very long time, they had crested the rise and bumped slowly along another track until it narrowed and disappeared. This, if he had calculated correctly in the dark, was the edge of Komang’s far field. Harper whispered in Wayan’s ear, ‘Kill the engine.’
There was an odd aural illusion then, as the engine died: he thought for a minute or two that there was total silence around them, only to find that as his hearing adjusted to the lack of engine sound, the night noises of the open fields rose up from the water, the click and sing of insects, the hum and shimmer of it.
‘Sir?’ asked Wayan and Harper put his hand on his shoulder to quiet him.
For a few minutes, they listened. The darkness was complete out here and he dared not flick the lighter now they were out in the open. Perhaps when he skirted the trees on foot, he would be able to see if there was a little moonlight, enough for him to get his bearings. He estimated it would be another ten minutes or so to walk along the edge of the field and pass the treeline, using the route he had walked with Komang that afternoon — if his guesses about the path had been correct.
He dismounted the moped, removed his bag from across his chest and gave it to Wayan, then said to him, ‘Turn the moped round but don’t restart the engine. Stay right here so I can find you. Don’t move from this spot, and don’t light a cigarette or use your lighter. Listen, Wayan, there is great danger, okay? So it’s important you listen to me, only listen to me and you will be okay. Stay here. Right here. I’ll be back in a short while.’
Harper turned and set off before Wayan could argue with him. Wayan would be worried about the spirits of the night, how they could approach him from behind, or any direction, all at once perhaps, if he was not allowed to use a light. But there was no argument Harper could have advanced that would have allayed that particular fear, and there was no time. And as he skirted the edge of the field, his feet sinking a little deeper each time into the soft mud, he thought that perhaps Wayan was right: perhaps the group of men approaching Komang’s house now with paraffin lamps and machetes were spirits. Wasn’t it easier to think of them, or even yourself, in that way, rather than to look at your neighbour’s face in daylight and know the truth?
The insects hummed and sang, his feet made sucking noises in the mud, but other than that, it was silent as he approached the end of the field. As the treeline ended, he knew he should be able to see across the next field to Komang’s house.
He paused for a moment to listen — and then, sailing across the field through the black night, came a single, lengthy, agonised scream.
He was frozen, a sick, light sensation overwhelming him, and then he was running forward, the mud clinging to the soles of his shoes, impeding the lifting of his feet by just fractions of a second but enough to feel as though his feet were being sucked at, pulled down.
At the end of the treeline, he ducked down, although he knew there was no danger of the men looking his way, and in a crouching position, he ran back a little then crossed the next field, towards the patch of orange light he could see at the back of Komang’s house. From this distance, it was impossible to see what was happening. Where there was light at all, it was too bright and where it was dark, too dark. He could just make out a group of men, gathered close together and illuminated by a bare bulb hanging from the veranda and the orange light from their flares. Silhouetted against the glow from the house were black shapes, rising and falling. There were no more screams.
Then there were shouts as the group of men broke apart and Harper thought he saw the flit and flicker of someone fleeing the house at running pace. He crept a little closer, wading knee-deep in muddy water now. Some of the men were pointing in the direction in which the shape had fled.
A child of around six, a girl with plaited hair, appeared on the veranda — perhaps the fleeing shape had been one of the older children making a terrified dash for it, and the girl had followed but not run. Go back, Harper thought desperately, staring at the girl through the dark, go back inside, but the men nearest the veranda had seen her and only then did the child seem to realise her own folly. She turned and ran back inside the house. The door slammed shut but the men were already swarming onto the veranda and Harper had no need to stay to see what would happen next.
He made his way back across the rice field, knee-deep again, wretched at his own failure — he had been sent to do one simple thing, and he had failed. Had he been vehement enough, as he had sat on that veranda only a few hours ago, watching the golden light across the fields and drinking sweetened tea? Back towards the house, he heard the children’s screams, high and shrill.
It was only when a man’s shout came from behind him, sounding closer than it should be, that Harper turned and saw the silhouettes of men at the edge of his field. He had been spotted.