Sinister Paradise Part 5

The chirp was louder now. It was no longer one bird chirping in the dark night, it was a dozen. And it wasn't quite the sound of a bird any longer, it was a musical tinkle, an air-borne throbbing somewhat similar to the sound of a harp, a softly ringing chime. Parker could easily imagine that somewhere among those dark trees was a harper, moving closer.

The harpist did not seem to be upon the ground. He--or she--seemed to be up in the air, somewhere near the tree tops, moving in the dark night.

As the sound came louder, a man in the village suddenly went down on his knees, then another and another, until the whole group, including Gotch, were kneeling. Even Mercedes went to her knees in response to deep internal, superst.i.tious pressures. Only Retch and Parker stood erect as two men strong enough to face the sound coming from the night.

"Get down, you fools!" Peg-leg's voice had real anguish in it.

"Get down, h.e.l.l!" Retch answered. He had a gun in each hand, his own and the one he had taken from Parker.

"Beel! Beel!" Mercedes was jerking at Parker's leg. "What is 'appening?"

"Something," Parker answered. "I don't know what." There was fear in him. He could feel it in his heart, sense it in his bones, taste in his mouth. He rose above it.

The sound swept through the air. It came out over the trees above them.

On the ground, the kneelers moaned in response.

The harping sound leaped up, became a melody of weird notes filling the night air. Mingled with the eerie music were the moans from the prostrate humans.

Looking upward, Parker caught a glimpse of something moving through the sky. It blotted out the light of the stars and it looked a lot like a bird but like no bird he had ever seen before. It was too big to be any bird that had ever flown through Earth's air, but yet it flew. As it flew, it made the sound of a gigantic harp.

The bird pa.s.sed over the village, moving along the cliff. As it slid into the distance, the harp music faded slowly away, became again the sound of a sleepy bird.

Around the village, the prostrate humans moaned, stirred, began to rise.

"What the h.e.l.l was that thing?" Parker gasped.

"The d.a.m.ned fools call it the Jezbro!" Retch snarled. "The yellow cowards are afraid of it. I don't know what it is."

Parker was silent. To him, Retch sounded like a man scared right down to the soles of his shoes but desperately trying to pretend he wasn't.

"It was a warning sent by them," Peg-leg whispered, gesturing up toward the cliff in the darkness. "A warning to us to mend our ways."

"It was no such thing!" Retch shouted.

Peg-leg did not argue. He got slowly and silently to his feet. The group was silent, perturbed, and afraid. Even Gotch was silent. Whatever had pa.s.sed overhead, had cast a pall of fear over them.

"You bilious, yellow-livered cowards!" Retch raged at them.

They made no response. The fear the Jezbro had inspired in them seemed to have made even his anger unimportant.

"But what is the Jezbro?" Parker questioned again. "I mean--"

"I told you it's nothing and that's enough of an answer. Hey!" The guns that Retch held came up sharply as another figure came soundlessly out of the forest and moved toward them. An old, bent, wrinkled Indian who hobbled along with the aid of a staff.

"Oh, it's you, Pedro!" Retch said. "What the h.e.l.l do you want?"

For all the sign he gave, the Indian, Pedro, did not hear Retch's question. He hobbled straight to Parker.

"_En la manana Padre Rozeno huit nole el hombre e la mujer._ Father Rozeno will see the man and the woman in the morning." The voice was broken with age.

"I don't get it," Parker said. The Indian was already turning. He had delivered his message, his errand was finished.

"That d.a.m.ned Rozeno is not going to see anybody in the morning!" Retch yelled.

The Indian staffed his way into the forest. He still seemed not to hear Retch.

"Tell him they won't be there!" Retch screamed.

Pedro's back went out of the firelight as he moved into the trees.

Retch seemed almost to go mad. His face turned purple. Both guns came to focus on the spot where the Indian had disappeared.

"Why shoot him?" Parker said. "He was just a messenger."

"d.a.m.n it!" Slowly, while the group watched impa.s.sively, Retch got himself under control. Suddenly he began to laugh. Strangely his laughter in this moment was more horrible than his anger had been.

"He sent for you, and the woman. All right, he'll get you. But I'll go with you. If he wants you, I'll take you to him." Again the laughter sounded.

"Who is Rozeno?" Parker asked.

"He is, or he was once, a Spanish priest. He and Ulnar think they rule this island. They are the two men we saw watching us from the sh.o.r.e.

You'll see them in the morning."

That was the last word Retch said on the subject. He took Gotch apart, to talk to him. Peg-leg found food for Parker, but refused to talk. "Na, na, my son, when the Jezbro pa.s.ses over us as a great bird--when it goes through the woods at night as a great howling beast--we do not talk about it."

Parker pressed for more information, but the old man turned stubbornly silent. Later he found Parker a place to sleep in his own hut. Parker had the impression that, all during the night Peg-leg, sat on guard at the entrance.

But nothing came in the night. In the morning Retch was there, saying, with grim bitterness, that now it was time to go up the cliff to see Rozeno and Ulnar. Mercedes, looking wan and bedraggled, with hate in her hot black eyes, was with him. So was Gotch. Gotch did not look in the least happy.

"What's biting you?" Parker said to Retch.

"Nothing."

"I get the impression something around here is just about scaring the pants off of you."

"You're crazy!" Retch's voice was a snarl. "I'm not afraid of anything around here--you--or anybody else." As he spoke, the man's face was a mask and his eyes were wild.

"Sure, okay, I get it," the pilot answered.

They moved along the cliff until they came to a ledge that sloped upward.

"We go up here," Gotch grunted.

As they went upward, they rose above the tops of the trees. Sparkling thinly in the morning sunlight, the sea came into sight. Circling the sh.o.r.eline at a distance of about a mile, a curtain of mist was visible.