All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By by John Farris Page B

a tragedy of coincidence; not in supernatural direction or villainy. However—soon after their rescue from the sandbar the little girl died in Jackson's arms, without opening her eyes. Jackson, though he'd contracted a fever from his immersion, sought to return at once upriver. He was convinced that his father would die too, unless he could persuade Eustace to leave the forest forever. Without a steamer available, it was very difficult to reach Tuleborné through the floods and unpredictable currents. Nevertheless he spent a few coins he had in his pocket to secure provisions and a Negro's canoe, and set off alone on the hundred-mile journey. The chef du poste at Zenkitu, a young lieutenant, promised to follow within a few hours. Fortunately for Jackson, he was true to his word."
    "And Jackson made it to Tuleborné?"
    "Quite a feat of navigation for one his age; also consider how weakened he must have been, how near delirium. Jackson's written account of his first hours at the ruined settlement is passional, well couched but almost certainly distorted by hallucination. He stepped ashore as the last rays of the sun flashed along the river with the velocity, the heliographic violence of day's end in the tropics; night overtook him before he proceeded a dozen steps and he was utterly alone in the shooting, shaking light of his acetylene lamp. The earth at his feet was as hot and wet as a living heart, and the air cooling like a blizzard across his skin. He called and called for his father, working himself into a convulsion of fright. He was not answered; yet Jackson was sure he was being watched. He had grown up in the forest, and its peaceful moods, the fainéance of the beast, were a part of his skin tone, a rhyming pulse in the innermost mind. He also knew when the forest was out of sorts, in a murk of badness, sweating evil and dangerous to be near. This night he was suspicious of its carnivore odor, unnerved by howls and whispers and a stupefying hiss of intimidation that flowed leaf to leaf and curled invisibly around him.
    "Trembling with fatigue, hagridden, feeling the malevolence of the forest closing on his fragile light, nonetheless he searched the village as he had to. Prosaic horrors were everywhere. He found the priest and nuns at their prayers, but dead of bloat, in a blue shimmer of transmutation. More dead, those luckless Negroes too ill to have returned to their families, were moldering in the hospital's dormitory. And then Jackson saw his father."
    Her voice, from so much talk, had become a rasp, low for his ears. Lord Luxton leaned forward on the settee, unwilling to miss a word.
    "In the outermost flicker of the lamp's reach Jackson observed eyes—great brooding orbs just above the level of a sill. Unmistakably his father's eyes, though boiled down to the last pip of intelligence, of humane intent. The rest of his face, fringed in frosty white, parched by grief and sickness, was unfamiliar, a total shock to the boy as he advanced the lamp. When he'd last seen his father, less than a week ago, there'd been only a few streaks of gray in the full head of hair and mustache, and his face, though grim and heartbreakingly indicative of spiritual surcease, had not sunk into such a wretched appearance.
    "'Go away!' Eustace shouted, as Jackson took another step. 'It's too late. Nothing can be done, she has me!' And with that he darted away from the unscreened window, toward the forest.
    "Jackson pursued him, running with the lamp, dashing its light into the suspirating darkness, a dark of wood, of belladonna. The lamp, faint as a starpatch on the limitless wall of the forest, provoked new sounds, almost like laughter. Shocking laughter; it stopped the poor boy in his tracks. His father was nowhere to be seen. He felt a tug at his right-hand sleeve and whirled—but nothing was there. Sweat streamed down his face. His knees collided as he shook. And then a light appeared overhead, separated into