He Could Hear Them by Janz Duncan
He could hear them. The crunch of boots on gravel – those small stones he had so painstakingly strewn upon the long sinuous red-soiled track so that he might hear the tiniest movements upon it – was ominously loud in his brain. He had to think quickly: which way lay his escape?
Bevan cussed. Never, never, in his life had he ever done so, not even when he’d lost part of one big toe in army manoeuvres. That was a hellish pain best left unremembered. He’d had to learn to walk again . . . and then, to run, taking the tumbles of the rough and rougher. Now, that phantom piece of missing flesh and bone throbbed. It presaged danger.
He peered through the tiny sliver of windowpane he’d left uncovered by the pulled back curtain. Good! He couldn’t see them yet, but the fact that he could hear their steady marching meant that there must be a whole contingent of them. Trust the army to send so many to catch one puny man. He was not armed; and had not been interested in arming himself. ALL he had wanted was to be left in peace: to live his own life without nosy parkers and government diktats bothering him.
CHAPTER 1
He knew now that he should have listened to his sibling. He’d always believed that the way to a peaceful life lay in non-committal grunts that signified nothing. Why would he rock the boat? It was safer to sit on the fence. Anything for a quiet life was his motto.
But he hadn’t given serious enough thought to his sister’s warnings. They had been oblique because the email he’d received had been addressed not only to him but also to their middle sister – she with the propensity to sulks and tantrums. Nonetheless, he’d understood her concerns, and had known that he must tread carefully. He’d also understood that she’d wanted to warn their sibling about the potential consequences of her actions upon their brother. It was why the email had been addressed to them both. Unfortunately, he had been weak. He’d given way to the other for an uncomplicated home life. Now, he was close to paying the price.
They’d shunned their eldest sibling. She’d tried to be reasonable and diplomatic, but her kindness and concern had led her nowhere. Instead, they’d stripped her of her inheritance, and left her to eke out a poor living with those arthritic hands. They’d taken all she had and split her million and more between them. He could see her now: sorrow etched on her face; love in her eyes, and worry in each and every deep and shallow line that creased her once beautiful face. His middle sibling had celebrated by buying a fancy new car. Red, it was – the colour of luck. After all, she’d captured a double share.
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There was no one to help him in his rainforest hideout. He’d found it quite by chance when hiking countless moons ago with friends. Its overgrown environment was a hostile and gloomy hellhole of draping greens and tangling browns, steaming moisture-soaked in the hot humidity of the tropics. The occasional eldritch screeches of unseen birds, the sudden rustling of glossy leaves sprouting riotously from massive overhead branches, and the sinuous undulation of fallen ones carpeting what should preferably have been an undisturbed forest floor, pressed upon his anxious mind and conjured visions of poisonous snakes akin to those vicious serpents of folkloric tales that one malicious family retainer had often delighted in recounting just before bedtime.
The sound of marching feet intruded. He had to get away! How? Where? Would he be shot? There was no fairytale secret room in his hideout. Instead, it was a two-room attap hut on stilts situated at the end of an ill-kept narrow overgrown track that erupted with slimy muddy potholes whenever the rains or monsoons came. Where could he go?
Bevan banged his palm upon his forehead, “Think, think, think! There must be some place to hide!” He prayed for forgiveness to the God he hadn’t bothered to commune with since their white-collar theft from his older sister. He pleaded for a way out of his current situation. Meanwhile, his mind was fighting itself – the rational mind against the panicked responses that were agitating for ascendance. THINK!
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The clomping of boots was so close now that he fancied he could smell the soldiers’ body odour. However, it was the sourness of his own sweat that’d crept into his nostrils. Fear had caused him to perspire freely. Fear, and the 34C heat.
There was no time now. He must run! Bevan hurried to the back door and yanked it open. Closing it softly, he narrowly missed tumbling down the hut’s rickety narrow steps, then tiptoed as quickly and gingerly as he could across the crackly leaf-covered hard packed earth so that his urgent footsteps might not give him away. As he reached the edge of the unfenced compound that seamlessly adjoined the rainforest, he broke into a run, all caution thrown now to the wind.
Mercifully, the increasing tempo of the soldiers’ marching feet covered the lesser sound of his flight. Bevan ran for his life! He moved like a gazelle where he could – graceful in leaps and bounds so that he might leave scant trail, and soft in his landings so that none might hear those periodic thuds. He ran like he had never run before. He didn’t know where he was going. Just that he was going!
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CHAPTER 2
Bevan gasped for breath. The 4 p.m. jungle-dim glow had faded into darkness, and he had been running for what felt like hours. His legs were the consistency of jelly and surely his heart would burst out of his chest! He could only manage short gasps: his nostrils no longer seemed capable of inhaling air. The stitch in his side was a burning poker that tunnelled mercilessly into his innards. He was spent.
Perspiration poured down his head and body. Drops of salted water drenched his being. But there was no water to drink.
Bevan didn’t know where he was. He had lost his bearings in his headlong dash. All was blackness around him. Could he find shelter? He didn’t even have a match or torch or anything that could give him any light. Neither did he have a compass to guide his path. His thoughts were rueful, “Fine soldier that I am!”
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CHAPTER 3
There is nothing like hard luck to bring a person’s mind back down to earth.
First things first! Bevan was aware that he needed shelter, or at least some place to hide where he mightn’t be easily found. Next, he really needed to quench his thirst and replenish lost fluids. Thirdly, he needed rest. He had to recoup his energy that he might flee again and find safety.
The blackness of night was a blanket that both endangered and soothed. It soothed because it had smothered all illumination that would’ve made it easier for the soldiers to track him down. It endangered because he had now lost all sense of direction and was totally disoriented.
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Not everyone communes with one’s self, but Bevan was one of those who often did. He began by cursing his own cupidity and stupidity. He berated himself for being led astray by a sister who’d had no care for his safety, and was intent only on taking from their sibling what was not hers to inherit. He had been a spoilt child; but his middle sister had always held the ace card, for she was the original spoilt brat possessed of a personal servant from birth who’d catered to her every whim.
She had known the dangers he would face in holding on to a landed inheritance which he could have legally sold and kept his share of the proceeds, but wasn’t his to legitimately keep. It was the law of the land, and they all knew it. Nonetheless, she had pushed him into it – and without any resistance on his part either, he had to admit. His eldest sibling had warned them both of the legal consequences that were his alone to bear – of possible imprisonment or a fine or both because of constitutional rules specific to anyone in his situation. Unfortunately, he had ignored her. Instead, he had seen his oldest sister being deprived of her inheritance and, coward that he was, had sat on the fence as usual. He cursed himself again – this time for his own cowardice because he’d desired a comfortable life with their middle sibling.
The ex-soldier shook his head hard as if to dislodge the thoughts that’d taken entrenched sitting rights in his brain. He needed to focus. Focus! Time was quite literally of the essence and the troops would soon be upon him unless he took advantage of his head start.
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Dark clouds that he couldn’t see parted, and a bright half-moon suddenly appeared in the pitch-black sky. In a tropical firmament festooned with tiny pinpricks of stars too far away to cast any useful illumination, the moonlight was a godsend. Although it could not fully penetrate the leafy canopy, chinks of white light shone through slits and gaps and shone gently upon the dank blackness underfoot. Pray God he would not inadvertently step on a snake! Or walk into a mound of red ants. “God!” He’d forgotten all about God in all his recent chicanery! Where had his religious upbringing disappeared?
Bevan trod as lightly as he could, mindful that sound carries in motionless air. Peering hard, he hiked in a zigzag pattern the better to lose his pursuers, not knowing where he was going, but intent nonetheless of finding a place of safety where he could rest and plan his next steps. Thirst tickled his throat. Fear of being caught spurred him on. His physical fitness could have been better. Much better. He’d left the army three decades ago, and his almost mid-50s physique displayed the usual signs of middle age.
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He found it! A large stand of trees guarded the narrowest and smallest hollow he had ever seen, probably comfortably fitting no one taller or broader than an 8-year old. He would never have spotted it if a moonbeam hadn’t fortuitously shone upon its almost concealed entrance as he’d hiked past. He turned towards it.
Bevan never gave more thanks for his tiny, skinny, stature than he did so now. In actual fact, he’d hated being so small, but his intelligence had more than made up for his size. Most 10-year-olds were taller and broader than him. Where, he asked himself now, had his intelligence flown when giving way to his second sister’s demands?
The fugitive peered into the opening and then crawled backwards into the bullet-shaped hollow beneath the trees. He fit! Next, he crawled back out of his newfound hiding place, moved some distance away from it, and began picking up what fallen greenery he could lay his hands on. These he brought back with him to the hollow and used them to better hide and camouflage the entrance to his safe space. Then, he wriggled backwards into it, made a tight flip, and lay down. Bevan felt secure in his cocoon but for one thing. No one would be able to find him here. “Not unless they were to recruit search dogs for their hunt!” He felt a cold shiver running down his spine at the thought.
Parched and exhausted, Bevan slept.
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CHAPTER 4
They came.
The dogs were quiet as mice. Well-trained regimented creatures, they hunted without sound, like tigers after their prey. Their handlers rested with them, postures vigilant yet relaxed, holding lightly to their collars, their touch a gentle reminder to stay. To wait. To stake out.
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Night-vision goggles assisted their sight. Four handlers and their dogs: they walked towards the hollow and took up their positions 30 feet away. The runaway’s scent was strong here. The greenery Bevan had positioned to hide the hollow remained in place.
At a sign from their commander, the handlers approached the opening, their dogs obediently silent. They exhibited no excitement as they sat solemnly before the spot into which the ex-soldier had disappeared. There was no noise, save for the occasional creaking of branches rustling in the faint breeze, and the usual sounds of night creatures and insects making their signature calls.
The soldiers began to pull the makeshift camouflage away. When they had finished and found the barrow, one of them shone a high wattage searchlight into it. It revealed nothing out of the ordinary. And then a dog was sent in to double check. It returned “empty-handed” and bemused.
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CHAPTER 5
Bevan stood at a counter in his bank. He was in the process of transferring funds from his account to his eldest sibling. He needed to cleanse his conscience that he might at last regain his inner peace.
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Two hours after he had crawled into his makeshift hideaway, Bevan had awoken with a start to a conscience that had pricked him sharply and incessantly. He knew now what he had to do as he gently eased himself up and checked that the coast was clear. He was fortunate: his hideout had not been discovered and the army commandant had ordered his men back, with a small number to return with dogs.
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Bevan had returned home, then washed, and changed into the dapper weeds of a well-heeled man about town, his confident air bearing no resemblance at all to the frightened anti-hero fleeing the army. Then, he had made his way to an exclusive bank.
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In her home some 6800 miles away, his eldest sister shivered in a wintry unheated room. She lived in a studio flat now. Food was scarce, but hardly necessary. Her stomach had shrunk over the past three years for lack of sustenance.
Her head hurt. Her stomach ached. Her large brown eyes were sad.
Bevan’s sister closed her eyes. Tiredly, flittingly, she opened them again. Then slumped forward.
She would never find out about the million that had been transferred into her account. It would be of scant comfort to her now. She was 58.
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Janz Duncan is a Singaporean who met her Scottish husband to be whilst studying for her postgraduate English Literature degree at Edinburgh University, They have a Bed and Breakfast in the Lake District National Park, and are kept sane - or insane (?) - by the adopted giant breed dogs they have rescued over the past 18 years.