We could all see that it was, if not Pablo, then his ghost. He was darker and skinnier than before, like the rest of us. His hair was dirty and unkempt, and his chin was fringed with the beginning of a beard. But he had the same walk. The same intense stare. When that stare landed on me, I felt the eerie sensation that I’d experienced a hundred times on the island. All at once, I realized that the enemy, the person who had been spying on us, who had severed the neck of the ibis, might very well be looking at me right now.
As for the old man, he was a strange creature. Leaning on a walking stick, he was mostly bald, save the odd tuft of yellow-white hair sprouting above his ears. Moles and freckles mapped a dermatologist’s nightmare atop his head, on his shoulders, and along his skeletal arms. When he stepped forward with his stick, he was more spry than I would have guessed. I zeroed in on his filthy hands and feet. In the firelight, I could see that his nails, particularly his toenails, were long and pointy as claws.
The ragged loincloth drooping about the old man’s waist looked so ancient it was impossible to know what color it had once been. A beat-up belt held up the loincloth, and from that belt hung a knife sheath and a pair of wire-rim eyeglasses. The glasses were old-fashioned, something you’d find at a flea market or antiques store, maybe even a museum. I noticed that one of the lenses was missing. For some reason those glasses gave me an awful feeling.
“Pablo, are you all right?” Chester asked incredulously. “I can’t believe it’s you. Where have you been?”
Pablo’s expression didn’t change as he eyed us, one by one. I could tell that Chester wanted to go to him and embrace him but was holding back out of fear. There was something frightening about Pablo, beyond the obvious changes in his appearance, or the fact that he was standing beside an ancient stranger. I think it had to do with his eyes. At Drake Rosemont, they’d been serious, but open and friendly. Now they were grave.
The old man looked at us and glowered. “Who blew the conch?”
His voice was gravelly, and he had a British accent. Only it didn’t sound anything like Rittika’s. Hers was highbrow, the old man’s raw and unpolished. His jaundice-yellow eyes scanned each of us, but settled on Rittika, who held the huge shell in her hands.
“Only the chief blows the conch,” he said.
“Who are you?” she asked, taking a half step closer to her brother.
The old man smiled, revealing a wasteland of a mouth. He had only a couple of teeth left, and they were yellow-brown, stumpy as an old horse’s.
“The chief,” he replied.
Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Mel take her knife out of her sock. A second later, she had it pointed toward the old man.
“What do you want from us?” she demanded.
Pablo looked at the chief, clearly deferring to him.
“We told you before. Leave this island,” the old man spat.
“Why do you want us to leave?” she asked.
His eyes narrowed. “Why? You’ve eaten my fruit, hunted my pigs, stolen my conchs, taken my …”
“We were just trying to survive,” Mel interrupted.
“This island is not yours!”
“It’s not anybody’s.”
The old man seemed to be growing angrier. “I fought for this island. I stayed, even after the big liner sailed away. I’ve been here longer than you’ve been alive.”
“We mean no harm,” Mel said, changing tactics and lowering her knife.
At that, Pablo laughed hollowly. “You mean no harm,” he repeated sarcastically. “Do you say that to yourselves when you think about Anne Marie’s dead body?”
“You know what happened?” Mel asked.
“Of course I know.”
“You’ve seen everything,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“What you guys did to Anne Marie at the tar pit—it was the most vicious thing I’ve ever seen,” he said, his bitterness palpable. “You were like animals. No, worse than animals! Because animals at least have a reason for what they do.”
Suddenly, a monkey appeared. The same one that was always lurking around. I watched it intently, expecting it to dash into the jungle as it always did. Instead, it ambled up to the old man and sprang into his arms. The man propped the creature on his shoulder, where it perched contentedly, as if that were its usual roost. Ming and Avery shrank back fearfully. Rittika slipped behind her brother.
“Is that why you left?” Mel asked, zeroing in on Pablo. “Because you couldn’t stand to be around us anymore?”
“I knew I was better off on my own,” he replied coolly.
“Where did you go?”
“I slept in the jungle a couple of days. Then I went to the caves. That was where I met the chief.” Pablo glanced at the old man, a glint of adoration in his eyes. “He didn’t like me at first; I could tell. But when I told him I didn’t mean any harm, he let me be. He even gave me food and water. He was kind …”
“I was waiting for you,” the old man said. He fished something out of his loincloth and held it up for us to see. It was, of all things, the pilot’s glass eye. “When I found the sign, I knew you’d come.”
“He’s been waiting for someone to help him watch over the island,” Pablo explained.
“I’ve been here a hundred years,” the old man said. “All this time—no hunters, no friends, ’cept a monkey or two. My job’s to keep others out. But I’m slow now, slower every day …”
“When the chief can no longer protect the island, I will,” Pablo finished.
A hundred years? No hunters? It was hard to understand what the old man was saying. Harder still to believe it. Clearly, he wasn’t in his right mind. Maybe it was old age; maybe it was being marooned on this island, all alone. Talk about going stir-crazy. And yet Pablo gazed at him almost reverently, like Luke Skywalker might look at Yoda.
“The chief has taught me things,” Pablo said. “Things I’ve always wanted to know. Like how to live in nature, surviving, taking only what you need. The chief—all he wants is to live on this island by himself. I can respect that. He doesn’t want anyone to mess with it. And he’s right. People have a way of destroying everything that’s beautiful.”
At that he looked directly at Rittika and Rish. “It’s funny, we’re in this whole new place, this Eden. But you guys are still the same: selfish and destructive. You’ve never been able to see past yourself, your money, and houses, and vacations. When I used to tell you about the things I believe in, you looked at me like I was crazy. You didn’t get it then, and you don’t get it now.”
“Bro, listen to yourself. What the hell’s gotten into you?” Chester asked. “We’re your friends.”
“You’re not my friends. You run around the jungle with your spears, yelling about war. You tortured Anne Marie, then let her die. She needed our protection, and all she got was pain. So don’t dare try to tell me you’re the good guys.”
At that, a burst of anger exploded in me. I thought about how worried I’d been about Pablo. I thought about how much I’d missed him, and how I’d always counted him as a friend. I’d assumed he’d counted me as one, too.
“But you’ve spilled blood, too,” I said. “You killed the ibis—an innocent animal. An endangered animal.”
In that instant, I saw the old Pablo. Hints of sorrow and regret flashed in his eyes. Although fleeting, there was still a tenderness there as he looked at me. If I were going to be honest with myself, I guess I’d hoped Pablo would be more than a friend.
“What can I say?” he said softly. “There has to be sacrifice to achieve the greater good. You guys started this thing—I’m just trying to finish it.”
“Pablo, we’re going to leave,” Mel said, her voice even and controlled. “I’m sure you’ve seen the raft.”
I wondered why she had chosen this moment to announce our news. Maybe she thought it would calm him down.
“I’ve seen it. But it’s not big enough for all of you.”
“That’s right,” said Rittika, reappearing from behind Rish, still holding the conch. “Some of us want to stay.”
“The chief won’t allow you to stay. The longer you’re here, the more you destroy.”
At that, the monkey on the old man’s shoulders hissed and jumped to the ground. He began to scamper around Camp Summerbliss, in and out of tents. “He’s probably looking for shoes. He’s the one who stole Chester’s,” Pablo said. “He’s got a pile of ’em in the caves, from god knows when—and who.”
I felt sick thinking about those shoes, and about what had become of their owners. Mel must’ve been thinking the same thing, for she asked how many others had come to the island.
The old man began to count on his fingers like a child. He got up to nine. “They came on boats,” he said. “One or two at a time. Some left right away. But some stayed. I gave ’em a scare.” He pointed to his knife sheath, then ran a long, ragged fingernail across his own throat.
Pablo looked at him and nodded. Then he said, “Like I said, sometimes sacrifices must be made. And there will be more sacrifices, if you don’t go. All of you.”
There was no question that it was a threat. I felt simultaneously revolted and mind-blown. I realized that the chief and Pablo finding each other was like a perfect storm. The old man wanted only one thing: to keep the island—his island—free of others. Pablo wanted only one thing, too: to protect this vulnerable place of natural wonders. Somehow, these two callings had collided, becoming one and the same, and uniting two unlikely people in the process.
“All right,” Rittika said suddenly. “I respect where you’re coming from. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should leave.” She looked at the old man, then bent her head as if in shame. “I’m sorry for the trouble we caused.”
I stared at her dumbfounded. Was the world turning upside down? Rittika was not one to go down without a fight. I had never seen her yield to anyone, least of all to a shriveled old man.
Lifting her head, Rittika looked at her brother, who nodded, then handed the conch to the old man. He clutched it in his bony hands and smirked his decrepit smile. The jungle, once again, went eerily silent.
The chief proceeded to examine the conch. With his attention on the shell, I half expected Rish or Chester to launch a surprise attack, but they didn’t. They were probably waiting for Rittika to tell them what to do.
For what seemed like an eternity the old man studied the conch. Then he put it to his lips. The sound that he produced was the loudest we’d heard yet, more thunderous than thunder. Birds squawked and winged into the air. Something small and shadowy skittered past on the ground, disappearing with a squeak into the jungle. We waited nervously, unsure what we were waiting for.
Looking pleased with himself, the old man laughed. Despite his odd appearance, I realized there was something innocent about him—it was almost as if his mind hadn’t aged along with his body. He let the shell hang by his side. Then he turned to Pablo to speak. When he opened his mouth, however, he could only gasp.
Suddenly, he dropped the conch and grabbed his throat. His gasps turned to raw, guttural spasms. He stuck out his tongue like a dog. It hung there, skinny and pink, sloppy and strange, saliva dripping off the end, as his eyes rolled back in his head. I took a step back in horror, watching his arms and legs begin to twitch. Even his bad leg jerked about.
One by one, he lost control of every part of his body. I’d never seen anyone have a seizure before, but I was sure this is what one must look like. The thrashing, flailing, and convulsing. It was madness.
Pablo put his arms around the old man’s body from behind, trying to calm him. The monkey screeched wildly. I watched in horror as the chief began to gnaw on his own tongue, turning it to bloody chuck. His eyes had rolled back so far that only the whites were visible.
He looked pathetic, tragic, and possessed all at the same time.
Desperately, Pablo shoved the tongue back into the old man’s mouth, but it was too late. It was already bitten in half. The whole scene was a gorefest: spit and blood everywhere, the monkey screeching maniacally from the sidelines, a piece of pink tongue on the ground, everyone stunned quiet except the old man, who tried futilely to breathe and talk as his body shut down.
The last thing I remember before the old man died was Pablo’s expression. He looked like that painting The Scream by Edvard Munch, his mouth a perfect O, his uvula visible at the back of his throat. By then, Mel had put the tip of her knife against Pablo’s back.
“Don’t move,” she warned. He was still clutching the chief and didn’t look like he was in a position to do anything at all. Rish and Chester pried his arms off the old man and tied his wrists together with vines. The old man slumped onto the ground.
“What just happened?” Avery demanded, tears streaming down her face. Beside her, Ming was bent over, dry-heaving.
I didn’t need anyone to explain. And the fact that I already knew how the old man had died made me feel so guilty that I almost dropped to my knees. When Mel looked at me, I couldn’t meet her eyes. I could only imagine how she must feel—disappointed and betrayed, as disgusted with me as I was with myself. Her knife might have been pressed to Pablo, but I was pretty sure it was she who felt stabbed in the back.
“I poisoned him,” Rittika said simply.
“What? How?” Avery sputtered.
“Remember that little yellow frog? Mel filled syringes with its poison, but I was the one who actually did the deed.” She gloated, bending down and patting her sock. “I’ve had one tucked in here. Thought it might come in handy, and it did.” She glanced at me, but I couldn’t meet her gaze, either. “Thanks, Sam.”
Scornfully, Rittika assessed the chief’s body. Then she bent down, plucked the wire eyeglasses from his loincloth, and attached them to the shark’s-tooth necklace around her neck. A hunter’s trophy. Darkly, she turned her attention to Avery and Ming with a new level of authority.
“Toss him into the ocean,” she ordered. “I don’t want him on my island anymore.”