“Yes,” he cried, sitting straight up in bed, “who’s there?” His voice was swallowed up by the darkness even as the echoes of the knocking still banged about in his skull. Brandon stared at the outline of the wooden door across the room and had no idea whether it was standing open or closed tight. His hand drifted to the hilt of the Mayan club, his fingers caressing the coils of the snake. As if released by its solidity, its violent purpose, he slipped silently from the bed and drifted like smoke towards the door, sloughing his fears like an old skin with each step. As he neared and his eyes adjusted, he was reassured to see that the door was indeed fastened and the war club which he had unconsciously raised to shoulder level was lowered to hang by his side. He eased over to the window in order to peer out onto his porch.
The second series of knocks drove him backwards in shock — it was as if they were being sounded within the very room itself. “Goddamn,” he cried out as the club rose into the air, “Goddamn!” He charged the door and threw it open. The night outside washed up to his very doorstep, an inky ocean. The kerosene torches placed along the walkways had been extinguished to economize, while the weak light next to his door glowed without illumination in its smeared lantern. The inlaid eyes of the war eagle stared sightlessly after its prey. Brandon was sure he heard footsteps slapping the boards of the walk.
In the near distance, a small pinprick of light indicated the hotel desk and as Brandon watched, it suddenly blinked out and returned a mere second later, as if someone had run past it. Brandon began to run as well, the adrenaline coursing through his veins removing any vestiges of sleep and fear. He sprinted toward the lobby and its beacon.
The girl behind the desk leapt to her feet with a strangled scream as he pounded into the room. He looked this way and that for whomever he had chased. The doors to the dining room were closed, as was the gift shop, but he tried each to make sure they were locked. He turned towards the clerk. “Who came in here?”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but walked towards her and around the counter, as there was no other place for his tormenter to have gone but into the office behind the check-in desk. She backed up slowly to allow him to pass, her eyes wide and moist with terror. He stepped into the cramped office. There was no one there. The small room contained nothing but two metal desks and a filing cabinet. An exit door at the rear stood open, allowing for a cross-breeze; beyond it lay the endless night of the jungle.
When Brandon returned to the lobby, he found himself alone.
Brandon staggered into the dining room the following morning, his sleepless night evidenced by the bruised-looking smudges beneath his eyes. Paige was waiting for him. “Mr. Highsmith,” he called out in his large voice, “after you get your coffee, perhaps you’ll join me in my office.” He pointed at the tiny room Brandon had visited the night before. The waitresses watched him like a row of owls from across the room. Brandon nodded, filled his mug, and followed the big man into the lobby.
“Mr. Highsmith,” Paige began as he settled heavily on the edge of one of the desks — he did not offer Brandon a seat. “In the short time you have been with us you have managed to frighten my staff and insult me, and Mr. Fuentes tells me that you made threatening gestures at him yesterday at the temple. There is no point in this situation continuing; I’m sure that you agree. I must insist that you leave our company at the earliest opportunity. Perhaps you will make arrangements now for an earlier flight home. Please feel free to use my phone.” He stopped and took a breath while studying the younger man. The morning breeze had faded with the rising sun and both men were perspiring heavily in the closed confines of the office. “You need to go home,” he concluded more softly.
Brandon looked up from beneath his eyebrows at the older man and whispered, “She wasn’t going to give you a good report; she was going to recommend against bringing investors into your resort. She didn’t think things were right here.” He placed emphasis on the word “right.”
Paige’s great dark face grew darker yet. “Who?” he asked.
“You know who,” Brandon answered. “Julia.”
Paige seized the office phone and thrust it at Brandon. “Call... now, please!”
Brandon made no attempt to sleep that night, as he knew it would be useless. His flight from Belize City was the following afternoon, but he would have to leave the resort at first light in order to make the plane. In any case, he had determined, after his conversation with Paige, that he would not be caught sleeping again under his roof.
Across the sandy expanse that separated his bungalow from the main building the thudding rhythm of drums reached him. This was the night the resort hosted the celebration of Garifuna music and dancing that Julia had written of. A barbeque was provided on the beach for the few guests. Occasional gusts of alcohol-fueled laughter reached him above the thumping music, the incomprehensible songs. His war club rose and fell on his chest with his breathing, its oystershell eyes winking in the overhead light. After several hours, the world outside his door grew dark and silent once more.
The tapping seemed not so loud and he wondered if its previous resonance had been fueled by his dreams. Its source this time, however, was evident even in the glowworm light of his porch lantern. The slim young man who tapped shyly at his door had not even seen Brandon sitting mere feet away in the wicker chair at the end of the porch. As Brandon watched, he placed his ear to the door and listened intently for a moment, his hand drifting over the doorknob, then away. He stepped beneath the feeble lamp and studied something in his hand, looked back to the door, then appeared to shake his head.
It was as he was bending over to retrieve something he had placed at his feet that Brandon spoke. “Did Paige and Fuentes send you... did they send you to Julia?”
The young man spun around to Brandon’s voice in time to witness his materialization from the greater gloom, the club rising rampant in his hands, the cruel beak slicing hungrily through the thick air. His only word was, “Mercy.” After the first blow brought him to his knees, Brandon completed his task with workmanlike efficiency — a passerby might have thought he was chopping wood.
The disheveled policeman sat outside Brandon’s cell and watched him drink the tepid coffee as his wife and three children studied the young murderer from around the edge of the outside door. The policeman removed his ill-fitting hat and waved it at his family as he would at flies. “Go away,” he commanded. They withdrew with titters and smiles to the safety of the outside world. The eastern sky had just begun to pink with the promise of day.
“You are a bad murderer,” the policeman observed aloud, “to remain with your victim instead of running away — not that that would have done you any good, of course.”
Brandon made no answer to this, but said softly, “Thank you for the coffee... thank your wife for me.”
“Why did you kill our brother and friend, Marcus Donda, young man? You are covered with his blood. Why did you lie in wait for such an innocent?”
When Brandon remained silent the policeman continued angrily, “He was an altar boy, did you know this? But how could you,” he asked the room at large. He sighed deeply, then added, “I cannot protect you here, young man; not once the word is spread. You will be transported at first light to Belmopan.” He seized the paper grocery sack that contained the bloody club and made for the door.