Wages

“Ironic isn’t it? The world’s most renown private investigator going missing?” Chief Minh asked, laughing as he fished two cigarettes out the pack. Mose didn’t smoke anymore, but a shared cigarette was much more than just that. Besides, it’d help dull the precinct’s mustiness.

     “I’m not sure I’d call it irony,” Mose said, taking the orange-tipped cigarette with  quickly remembered zeal. She hadn’t practiced Vietnamese much since her mother passed, but she was pretty confident in her choice of words.

    “Then what would you call it?”

     “Unfortunate.” 

Chief Minh leaned towards the mountains of files atop his desk and raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps this is something like ‘The Belgian Butcher’ or ‘The Swindler in Sri Lanka’?”

         Mose had noticed upon arrival, amongst the crime novels on the bookshelf, the complete boxset of fictionalized prints based on her father’s cases. 

“This isn't a game,” she said. “My father’s in danger, and I believe only you can help me.”

     The Chief’s gaze narrowed with purpose.

     “Hue holds a painful place in his heart,” she said. “Bach Ma in particular.”

     “The Forest of Howling Souls,” he said. “He’s not the only one.”

         The room went cold with the hushed spectral voice. “The wage is set.” Mose peeked slowly over her shoulder, and exhaled in relief. Just smoke clouded cubicles, clanking steel fans, and hurried officers. You’re not crazy, she assured herself. Just exhausted. There was a reason why she didn’t take cases back to back.

     Chief Minh balled his fist in trembling strength. “For the great Detective Meyers, I’d go to hell and back.” Was he referring to her or her father? Neither had served as detective for years, but titles had stuck.

     “I’m looking for a village he encountered during his time with the Marines. Thung Lung Ran—”

Before she could finish, he was up and rifling through the books on the shelf. “Before I forget, could you sign this? It’s one of my favorites. Your birth scene is… eye opening.”

         Mose ground her teeth and signed the inside cover of the ‘The Canadian Clock’.

“Thank you,” he said, with a wide grin. “Sorry, where were we?” 

     “My father’s situation,” she sighed. She decided to forgo the details of his manic journal writings regarding Thung Lung Ran, vengeful spirits, or the repeated phrase, ‘For the wages of sin is death.’ “I tried researching the village myself, but the files are classified.”         

Chief Minh stood and turned towards the window, an incandescent cityscape waking to a violet evening.

     “Thung Lung Ran is gone… but blood leaves a debt.”

         Disturbingly like what her father had written. 

“I regret to inform you Ms. Meyers, but this is not the first I’ve heard of Americans returning to Bach Ma. You might think your father is in danger, but maybe this is the price of war. Everything has a price, right?” 

         “Didn’t you say you’d go to hell and back for him?”

         He laughed. “The truth is a wheel doesn’t turn itself.”

     At least it was a familiar game. Mose slid a wad of rainbow bills across the table. Roughly twenty million dong. Chief Minh flicked the rubberband, counted deftly, and pushed back half.

         “Professional courtesy?” she asked.

         “Think of it as personal.”

He whistled with two fingers and a young officer burst through the door. Was he waiting there the whole time? “Gather what we have on Thung Lung Ran. And get a permit for entry into the Bach Ma’s protected zone for Ms. Mose Meyers.” The officer nodded and disappeared. “As much as I’d love to send someone with you, we’re understaffed.”

“Everyone is.”

     After roughly an hour and half, three more cigarettes, and four glasses of rượu đế, Mose found herself looking at photographs of the burned village and corpses. A smoke-filled valley and an ocean of discharged bullet cases. Amongst the information was a recent topographical map of the Bach Ma Forest and the village’s once location. 

         Chief Minh extended a sweaty hand. “I hope I see myself in one of your stories.”

“I don’t plan on having any.”

“Yet here we are.”

     Out on the street, a small cog amidst the speeding traffic and pervasive chatter, Mose felt a raindrop on her cheek. Her throat sealed tight and gaze turned magnetically to the presence above. A shadow behind the clouds, but unmistakable, those pitch black eyes which had diffused from nightmare into reality. Unblinking and famished. She gripped her pack and hurried. Sleep, she thought, that’s all I need.

*

With each step through viscid soil and unrelenting downpour, Mose felt the forest call for her surrender. A granite sky watched from above the canopy. On the surface, the forty miles to Thung Lung Ran didn’t sound like much. The trail taxi puttered her a good fifteen before forest density and legal restrictions turned the driver back. Determination and fresh legs conquered the next few, but now, lost within the night, on an ever-stretching incline, and fighting with— currently— unconditioned lungs, she questioned everything.

She had experience in similar environments— the kidnapping of a certain parliamentary member’s mistress in Ecuador, the disappearance of an American senator’s son in the Congo, and the tracking of an esteemed Japanese family’s fabled treasure through the Aokigahara— but never anything so onerous. The thought of her father toiling through these mountains pressed her forward. What if the elements got him? Met with the sight of a horrifically large centipede devouring an equally large, thick-legged spider, she pondered something worse. Her ears perked to the violent cry of dying prey in the distance. A cruel symphony of whispers followed in the wind. 

         “Wretched harlot!”

         “Leave!”

         “You’ll ruin everything!”

A pearl of lightning illuminated the moon-sized eyes in the clouds. Fear crawled like an insect beneath her skin. Mose tightened her grip on the machete, lowered her head, and trekked. Through toil and time, the hill’s incline broke to a flat. A deep wave of exhaustion dropped her to the mud. Not far off, a roar shook the air.

     On hands and knees she crawled to the overlook of the next valley. More trees and more hills, in the distance, the low hiss of a waterfall. Lightning flashed, and with it, she eyed a haggard old woman standing on a rocky outcropping below. Her skin crawled and heart pounded a breathtaking beat. Even through darkness, the figure’s outline remained. Everything in her said run, but people— though often unpleasant— were information, and more importantly, only existed in habitable environments. 

     Careful with the slick stone and unstable soil, Mose shimmied down, holding onto trees for support, and found the outcropping was actually the lower lip of a cave. Within, there danced a fire and a cross-legged crone with bundled white dreadlocks and a hide cloak. Her eyes were like those of two differently decaying corpses, one pitch white, the other pure black. Mose found herself frozen in shock, hardly feeling the downpour. Around the cave there lay mortars and pestles, barrels twined by vine, sharp and blunt tools, strings of dried herbs, hide clothes, and a massive pair of withering wings mounted on the wall. 

Mose swallowed her fear and called out, “May I join you?”

The woman adjusted one of the burning logs with her hand. So not to disturb the economy of sound, Mose tread softly forward and took a seat near the flames, pack and machete close at her side. As the feeling returned to her extremities, she became fully away of the horrid sogginess softening her flesh.

     “Thank you,” Mose said.

“I can neither bar nor grant entrance to a place that is not mine,” the woman said.

     “Well, you were here first—”

     As was only natural, Mose continued to scan the room. Given there was only one bed roll, she likely was out here alone. And for a very long time.

     “My name is Mose.”

     Like a sphinx, she stared. Mose removed a peace offer from her pack in the form of a flask, took a sip, and offered it. The woman smelled the contents and poured it into the fire. 

     “Not exactly what I was thinking,” Mose said, screwing the top back on. “Is this your home?” 

     “My kind has no home in this world. We were exiled for questioning your need.”

Sheet of rain roared beyond the cave.

     “All your kind?” Mose said. 

     “We were enemies in a past life.”

         Mose eyed the machete. “Really?” 

         The crone smiled. “In a past life. I have no enemies now beyond myself.”

         Mose nodded, trying to digest this nonsense. Across the world she’d met many hermits, wise and mad alike. The jury was still out on this one. “Have you seen a man out here recently?” Mose asked. “Dark brown skin? White hair? Thick mustache?”

“No, but I’ve heard.” The crone chipped away at a stone with her thumb nail. “The cries of the ma đói have risen.”

     Did she hear the voices? Afraid to invoke that which she had no name for, Mose whispered, “Who are the ma đói?”

     “Anguished souls awaiting justice.”

         A strong beat pounded at the back of Mose’s skull. Even with the visions and voices over this past week, Mose wasn’t ready to exchange a life’s worth of beliefs for superstition. “Too bad the dead don’t have their own police—”

Moist footsteps splatted at the mouth of the cave, a woman, an animal. Naked, with dark matted hair, long bristling whiskers, and a distorted skeletal build. Her skin was wrinkled and sun scorched. But most unusual was the massive log tied by vines to the nape of her neck and upstretched arms. 

The old crone shot a single glance to the visitor as she plopped down beyond the rain’s reach. After minutes watching the woman rock in silence and make no effort to unbind the log, Mose finally asked, “Are you okay?”

The woman continued to sway.

“Don’t interfere with what you don’t understand,” the crone said.

     Curiosity dwindled in the face of needful intervention. Mose called, “I can cut your ties.”

     The woman’s gaze remained lost within the flooded wilderness. What the hell was wrong with people out here? And why were there people out here? “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

     Mose fished through her pack for a knife.

     The crone said, “You don’t know what you’re tampering with.”

     Mose unsheathed her stainless-steel fixed blade, “And what’s that?” 

     The crone tossed the now carved stone effigy into the fire and uttered something in an alien tongue— similar to the ghostly whispers. “In the final year of the war, when the people of Thung Lung Ran had given up hope in Kinh Dương Vương and Lạc Long Quân, they turned to the God of the oppressors. If salvation can’t be paid upon known shores, they must be paid beyond. Duy, there, was the last child born to the village, the product of foreign seed. It was determined by the elders that upon her shoulders their burden would fall. Since she could walk, she’s known nothing else. Tighter restraints and larger logs each year, until the last of them died out. But till the end of her days, she’ll pay their price.” 

     With saliva foaming on her lips, Mose growled, “Her own family did this?”

     “She accepts the necessary.”

     This crone was no wise woman, just a crazed coward.

     “Think what you want,” the crone said. “But the war ended the year she took up the log, and since then, no armies have returned to these woods.”

“That’s…” Mose stammered, ultimately deciding it was useless to explain the circumstances behind geopolitical conflicts. She approached, knife in hand, cooled by the influx of air from the rain. The woman’s eyes turned upward, clear and uncertain, yet did nothing to stop Mose as she sliced the vines. With gritted teeth Mose heaved the massive log from her back and tossed it crashing into the valley.

     “Better, right?” Mose said, offering her canteen.

     In her glittering eyes, Mose saw a deep and searing panic. Her teeth chattered and mud streaked down her cheek. Though clearly painful, the woman attempted to raise her arms to their previous position.

     “It’s okay,” Mose said, forcing them down. “It’s over.”

     The woman stared calmly, but at the sound of thunder, her face contorted into snarling rage. She leapt and snatched Mose by the throat. Toppling against her weight, Mose’s head cracked on the rocky floor. She looked in asphyxiated agony to the woman's tearful eyes and felt their splash upon her cheeks. Mose smashed her forearms into Duy’s elbows, broke her grip, and flipped to take the top position. With her face pinned to the ground and arms twisted back, realized just how weak the woman was. 

     “Are you done!” Mose asked.

     Duy panted and wailed like a dying animal, but as she thrashed away the last of her energy, Mose released and backed away. The woman rose— an awkward and painful act with her deformities— and looked between Mose and the crone. A deep agony rested in her trembling gaze, the look of a shamed child. She raised her arms as they had been and sprinted into the pounding rain in tears.

     Mose stepped in the rain and watched her escape into darkness, a painful hope that the woman might turn around. 

     “I told you not to interfere,” the crone said, starting past into that deep night.

     “Where are you going?” Mose asked.

Her silhouette melded with the darkness of the valley. Mose shook her head, and with trembling fists, stormed towards the fire. She sat and stared into the heart of the flame, searching for clarity. Whispers, rain, and the faint scent of burning whiskey is all she found.

* 

A warm breeze sang through the cave. Mose rolled to the waking light of dawn. When did the rain stop? Where was the old woman? Mose rubbed her eyes in forceful disdain. The air was moist and rich with the scent of the earth. She slid on her— slightly drier— socks and boots, filled her canteen from one of the barrels, and consulted the map. Two more hills before the valley of Thung Lung Ran. 

     Through deadfall and freshly formed muck, arboreal creaks and insect buzzing, she thought of her father. The stern face at Sunday mass, the long pipe and sour coffee breath, the steadfast heart which shared its flame and lit the torch of her life’s purpose. She hacked through the vines and ignored the sting of sweat in her eyes.

In the knots of the endless trunks, thousands of phantasmal eyes watched. With deep, tiring breaths, Mose looked across the next valley and to the stone peak on the other side. Beyond that, the end of this terrible journey. The sun shone amidst a blue sky, pillow clouds floated gently to the horizon and a temperate breeze cooled her face. She closed her eyes. For a moment, she thought she might cry. He’s just doing what he thinks is right, she told herself.

     Nearer and nearer she drew towards the crash of water in the next valley until she came before a cascading, green waterfall. Mose dropped in elated relief and splashed her face, poured it atop her head, washed under her arms, and—

Clap!

Was that a gunshot? By the weak reverberating tone, perhaps a twenty-two— like the missing rife at her father’s apartment. The dangers of the jungle slipped into the back of her mind and she grabbed her pack. With each hurried step she felt the end of the labor just beyond her fingertips. She slid to a stop before an open clearing, the sun beaming down through the trees and her father kneeling before a human body. His ebony skin shone slick with sweat, his pinstripe suit was littered with frayed holes and muck. He tore through his pack in search of something. At his side, the old twenty-two. Mose recognized the figure before him, naked and looking to the sky, was Duy. 

“Hold it!” her father shouted, spittle catching in his mustache and forcing gauze on her chest.

     “Dad…” Mose asked, slowly approaching

     With the manic eyes of a cornered wolf, he turned. A lather of blood dripped from his hands. She should have listened on that blue winter evening as they looked at the New York skyline from his apartment, his tears over atonement and the voices in his head.

     “Moses…” he whispered. The wrinkles in his face deepened.

     “What happened?” Mose asked, kneeling at his side and examining Duy. Her skin had grown pale, the gauze on her chest already soaked red. She whispered to herself with eyes on the sun.

     “I can’t explain everything,” her father stammered. “I was looking for… God. She attacked me... I see now that this is what I needed. The others weren’t enough. Quickly, Moses! Get her to the village.”

     “There’s no one there anymore.”

     “Just listen to me! Moses!” he shouted, shouldering his rifle and taking up Duy’s arms. “Get her legs!”

Nausea swelled in her throat. It didn’t seem right, but nothing did. He’d always known before. She pursed her lips, stared into Duy’s dimming eyes, and did as told.

* 

“Almost there,” her father said, wiping his cheek’s sweat with his shoulder.

Her lungs were going to pop. How far had they carried her? At each crest there was always another, up the hill and down the valley. The soil drank their steps like quicksand. She thought to ask him once more what they were doing, but between the sharp pain in her chest and the knowledge he’d again curb her question, she kept silent. Seeing her father like this— covered in muck and blood, his suit tarnished, and deranged— flooded the levees of her heart. She should have moved back to New York two years ago.

“Here,” her father said, approaching the flat of the valley. “Put her down.”

Mose saw nothing different about this thicket.

“Please, tell me what we’re doing? Duy’s dying.”

     “Who? Never mind, take this,” her father said, handing Mose a thin strip of black cloth. “The village is just ahead.”

     “Dad, there’s no one left—"

     “Just listen! We’ll carry her before the staff, drop her, and I’ll take care of the rest. But no matter what, KEEP THAT ON!”

“Listen to yourself. This is insane.”

     “It’s not a matter of sanity. The way was set long before us. Now pick her up.”

     “If we move her, she’ll die.”

     “We can’t change that, but if we are to live, we must act.”

     “... I won’t do it.”

     His eyes turned into implacable steel. “Then my blood will rest on your hands and her life will be wasted.”

     “Don’t say that to me.”

     His glare remained, his words bouncing within her skull. She looked up to the blackening sky through the canopy. Pained and ravenous whispers carried in the air. 

     “How will we find our way?” she asked, looking at the blindfold.

     “Just follow my voice. We’ll provide what is needed and go. All will be forgiven.”

     She swallowed the cramp in her throat and tied the blindfold. The voices of the dead hummed.

“Come,” he said.

Once again, she took up Duy’s cold legs and followed her father. In the treeline and upon the forest floor, she heard rustlings, slithering, and hissing tongues. Throaty growls reverberated into her skin. The path, the village, the souls. The hair on her neck stood. The lingering scent of rot filled her nostrils and flies buzzed around her ears.

     “Ease her down,” her father said. “Now on your knees. Bow.”

     Face pressed to the ground, she felt the sorrowful energy of the people, the landing of bugs on her neck, what she could only describe as a totem planted before her, and a strangling guilt. The moist sound of tearing of flesh followed. Duy’s breath sped in a shallow rhythm. 

     “Dad!” Mose said, through tears. 

     “Quiet!” To something beyond them he said, “Accept this sacrifice, purge my conscience.”

     The whispers in the air— though spoken in an alien tongue— seemed to be bickering. Heat radiated from the totem.

     “This isn’t what it wants,” she said. 

     “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

     Frigid winds clawed her skin. Tears soaked the blindfold. This was redirection. 

Her father snatched her wrist by python-like strength. “Don’t.”

“I’d do anything for you,” she said. 

     Mose yanked her arm free and tore the blindfold off. She saw that they knelt at the center of a vast clearing. No homes, no villagers. Set before them, a rotted doe, blood caked and dry around a bullet-wound in its heart with maggots wiggling beneath the flesh. Beside it a slightly less decayed monkey. And now Duy, eyes open, teeth chattering, flies swarming. Blood seeped under the gauze on her chest, but now a deep gash marred her stomach too. Her father remained face down in the mud, a dripping red dagger in hand. The whole scene was watched by a planted staff. A rudimentary construction of wood carved in the likeness of a twined serpent with a wide hood. Bright rubies shone in the place of the snake’s eyes. Mose met its gaze, and all at once, all her trespasses returned. A life of lies, selfishness, wrath, and greed which she claimed was human nature. She wept, eyes peeled and unblinking. The whispers silenced for a moment, the flies cleared. A weight fell from her shoulders. The staff’s gaze softened. Just wood and rock.

“Take your blindfold off,” Mose said.

“... You’ve betrayed me,” he said, with a quivering voice.

“Never—”

Like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, his blind fist crashed upside her head. Mose fell, spinning and deaf, lost in space until her father grasped her neck and forced her into the mud. Veins bulged under his skin and sweat dripped from his blindfold. Her throat burned under the immense pressure and stars filled her vision. Bits of spittle rained as she clawed up at his face.

     “I could’ve done it alone!” he said.

     The world went black as her head submerged beneath the mud. The last thing she heard was her father’s pained cries. Then blackness. Breathless hell. 

     The vice unclamped.

     Mose pulled herself up from under the muck and gasped. Her father rolled back and forth screaming, pulling at the horde of snakes which hung by their fangs from his legs, arms, and neck. Black, green, white, and brown. She covered her mouth in horror at the hundreds more slithering around her and towards him. Slender bodies flew as he threw them one at a time.

     “Help me!” her father said, still refusing to remove the blindfold.

     “I…” Mose stammered, but she had no words.

     A low rumbling shook the air, and from the treeline emerged a colossal tiger with eyes white as a dwarf star. Grisly wounds scored its dark fur. Ribs pierced out of its skin and flesh hung from its skull. A thick scar protruded from its forehead, a cross with a circle up top, no, an ankh. Mose’s body turned to ice. The serpents cleared, reverent of the undead beast. Her father gasped and convulsed, his veins now black and throbbing. Vomit pressed up her esophagus, but with the creature’s eyes upon her, she couldn’t move. The tiger knelt and sniffed her father. Some voice inside told her to beat it back, fight tooth and nail, even if it killed her. She started to rise and— 

An air shattering and bone deep roar. The canopy shook with the birds’ flight and rodents scuttled. Warm urine soaked Mose’s legs. The creature looked down on her father and flashed its black teeth. Is this it? she asked herself. All you’d do for the man who gave you everything. Perhaps made vicious, shrunken in the face of his past, but her father still. 

… Whatever comes comes. 

With the tiger’s gaze on her father’s neck and blood hammering through her brain, she ripped her machete from its sheath in thoughtless desperation and swung. The blade plunged into the skull. Its impact shot up her arm. It raised its head in stoic preturbation. And this is death.

The monster crashed with the weight of a train. The air squeezed out of her lungs by the massive paw upon her chest. In the white, textureless eyes she saw power beyond this world. Decaying incisors, long as steak knives, hung within inches. Each breath smelt of rotted carcasses. Somehow, no blood dripped from the bone-deep gash where the machete was still lodged. An effortless growl shook her tendons. No thoughts, no regret either. 

“Please…” she said, staring into its primeval eyes. “Give us a chance.”

Its snout flared and ears perked in something resembling understanding. Time seemed to stretch. She suddenly realized just how helpless she and all humans were. Why were people worried about anything when something like this exists in the world? A deep, life-giving breath filled her lungs as its paw lifted. White noise buzzed as it backed away. A thousand thoughts flashed, but she followed none.

Up from the mud, Mose tripped towards the staff, and with both hands ripped it free. Her father, like Duy, lay in shallow convulsions, his veins black and face twitching. None of it made sense, just instinct, more human than she. Mose pulled his blindfold off and unveiled his blood-filled gaze. 

“Just admit it,” she said, holding the serpent’s face to his. His eyes widened in terror, his head shook and teeth showed in teratoid repulsion. Their shared guilt weighed in the air and turned each breath into a forcible heave. She felt the staff’s weight pushing against him like a magnet of the same polarity.

As dark tears streamed down his cheeks, the throbbing of his veins slowed, their discoloration lighted, and the rigamortis-like stiffness of his body eased. Beyond the mud and blood, she saw something close to the man who’d raised her.

Paws smacked through the moist earth behind. Mose turned to see the undead tiger’s long black tongue dragging across the blood on Duy’s belly. A new worry arose, a new battle. She looked at the twenty-two strapped to her father’s shoulder. Again it licked, and she noticed the ankh scar on its forehead was pulsating. One more time, and the gash sealed. Then to her chest, it left unblemished flesh. Duy drew a long breath and a bit of her color returned. The tiger continued onto the thick calluses around her neck and wrists. In grateful tears, she held its matted cheek and pressed her forehead to its dry, battle-worn nose. A sharp cardiac pain forced Mose to grab her chest. 

The tiger spared not one glance more before limping wearily back towards the treeline. Mose felt she should do something for it, but could only watch. It was the sort of debt and guilt one bears for a lifetime. Duy rose slowly and looked at her wrists, then to her father, still lying in shock.

“Please, don’t look at me,” he said.

She uttered something in the likeness of the ma đói’s tongue before starting off into the jungle, hands at her side, child-like insouciance.

Mose wasn’t sure how long they stayed there in that uncertain silence, pressed into the mud by the weight of the unknown, but eventually, when the sky was near black, her father said, “I love you, Moses.”

The mud drank the staff’s base as she dug it in its home. Not a voice could be heard. The knots of the trees were just that. The clouds held naught but water.

* 

Silent at her desk, the sounds of London traffic white outside of her flat, her father’s snores rising and falling in the other room, Mose stared at the letter in breathless disbelief. Less a job query and more a novel of a man’s life written by his mother. It described a young American veteran who, without warning, disappeared a week ago. In his apartment, notes regarding a number of Iraqi villages he’d laid waste to and the repeated phrase painted on the walls—

         “For the wages of sin…”