Vampire God of Levunu

James Abraham Carter

Adam Reynolds sat on a rickety chair in his spartan home, a native-style hut on the isolated Pacific island of Levunu, a far cry from his ancestral manor in faraway England, now lost to him forever. Two years ago, he could never have imagined that his life would undergo such a dramatic change in circumstances.

Adam, the only son of his socialite widower father, Sir James Reynolds, had been laid low by his sire’s gambling addiction. By the time Adam discovered the problem, it was too late; the family fortune had been squandered on casinos, horse racing, and the like. This blow was bad enough, but tragedy was soon added to the mix. His father, unable to cope with the crisis, had committed suicide.

The sound of a gunshot had alerted Adam to the tragedy. He had rushed into the study and found his father lying there, the smoking Webley by his side, and soon things spiraled further into darkness. By the time his father’s debts were cleared through a fire sale of all his worldly goods, Adam was left almost penniless.

Those people he thought were his friends proved false. Invitations to parties and other social events quickly dried up, and one fellow even crossed the street to avoid being seen with him. The somewhat naive young man soon learned a harsh and bitter truth. In his aristocratic circle, the poor were considered losers and a burden on society, and now he, Adam, was regarded as one of them.

Having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, Adam quickly discovered that his skills were ill-suited to the life of a commoner. He was a good horseman and a fair marksman when it came to shooting pheasants. He had been studying English literature at university but was unable to continue as he could no longer afford the fees. Eventually, he survived by taking a job as a cleaner in a high-class restaurant he had once regularly frequented.

Each of these things was a significant blow in itself; cumulatively, they were a tragedy that could have crushed another man. Fortunately, Adam was no effete blue blood, and in adversity, he discovered an inner strength that enabled him to carry on. But every man has his limits, and this came when Ann, his fiancee, broke off their engagement. Adam knew he should have seen it coming, but he was madly in love with Ann and thought her feelings were of equal measure, only to discover, to his bitter disappointment, that she was just as shallow as the others who had abandoned him.

A few days later, Adam lost his job, and he was on the verge of falling into the black pit of hopelessness and depression when an advertisement changed his life. The firm Allan Jacobson & Co. was looking for a single young man to manage its vanilla plantation on Levunu, an island located northwest of Indonesia. No experience was necessary, as on the job training would be provided. Conditions would be harsh and primitive; the amenities of civilization were entirely absent. Death from tropical diseases was a very real possibility.

Adam, now bitter and cynical, had had enough of civilization. This was an opportunity to leave England and the hypocrisy of its society, to put it all behind him and start afresh. He jumped at the opportunity. Fortune favored him. He was the only applicant; the brutal honesty of the advertisement had dissuaded other contenders. Fortunately, he had taken to his role as plantation manager like a duck takes to water, and over time, his bitterness faded.

Lightning lit up the night sky. Thunder crashed. A tropical storm was in full swing, its fury bringing Adam back to the present. A kerosene lamp on a nearby table illuminated the single room. Adam gazed out the unglazed window, watching the rain pelt down, grateful that the thatch roof didn’t leak. He wouldn’t like to be out in the full force of the tempest, exposed to the raging elements.

A sudden pounding on the door startled him. For a moment, he hesitated, wondering who it could be. No other Europeans were on the island, and the native village from which he drew his laborers was a mile away. Again, the pounding sounded, this time with greater urgency.

Adam quickly rose, crossed to the door, and opened it. He stared, mouth agape. A young Native woman stood on the veranda, completely nude and shivering from the cold rain that had thoroughly drenched her. It was the last thing that he had expected.

“Please help me,” she piteously begged in her own language. “Do not send me away into the storm.” Then, before he could reply, the girl cast a frightened glance behind her, as if expecting pursuers to burst forth from the darkness of the jungle at any moment.

The young man regained his composure. Jack Leighton, the previous manager, had taught Adam everything he needed to know, including the indigenous dialect. Leighton had also warned him about interfering in the locals' affairs. Adam would be their employer, not their master or a missionary. Especially, he was to keep away from the native women to prevent tensions with the islanders. But even so, Adam felt he could hardly turn away a frightened woman in obvious and dire need of help.

“Come in,” he replied in her language as he opened the door wider and gestured to a chair beside the small table on which the solitary kerosene lamp burned.

The girl entered and sat, pressing her thighs together to hide her vulva from which the hair had been plucked, as was the fashion among her people. Adam removed his shirt and handed to her. The girl quickly wrapped it around her loins as he sank into the other chair and eyed her speculatively. She appeared to be eighteen, five years younger than he was.

“What is your name, and what trouble afflicts you?” He cautiously inquired.

“I am Yanowi, daughter of Kuna, the chief,” she replied. “My father has given me to Ubunu, the sorcerer. But he is an old and evil man. I do not wish to spread my thighs for him, so I fled during the storm. The heavy rain will wash away my spoor. My people speak well of you, and I appeal to your mercy. Hide me here. Do not send me back.”

Adam’s pleasant face turned grim. He knew of Ubunu, the sorcerer. Kuna was the chief, but it was really Ubunu who ruled from his shadowy hut, with its grinning skulls, strange pungent herbs, and leering ancestor masks. Just as the Church, in ages past, had terrified congregations into compliance with its threats of hell and the devil, so too did Ubunu exploit his people’s fear of malevolent spirits and black magic to impose his will upon them, with the mythical Vampire God his principal instrument of terror. Only he, or so the sorcerer claimed, could keep the people safe from it, with the further threat that anyone who opposed his will would be sacrificed to the devil god.

Adam had witnessed one of Ubunu’s performances when he was first introduced to the natives by Leighton. It had been a nighttime ritual in which ancestral spirits had been summoned. Strange, unnatural shrieks sounded from the surrounding darkness as the leaping flames turned a mysterious green. Ritual objects had appeared only to vanish again as enigmatically as they had come.

The midnight setting, with its moody atmosphere and the wild throbbing of the drums, added drama to the already impressive performance. But Adam, thanks to his well-rounded education, knew the secrets of the act - a combination of sleight of hand and ventriloquism, and the subtle casting of some substance into the fire that had changed the color of the flames.

Ubunu, though, was no harmless trickster. Missionaries had come to Levunu over the years, but every preacher had unaccountably died within a few weeks of their arrival. Upon reviewing the accounts, which were meticulously recorded in the diaries that previous plantation managers had kept, Adam came to the conclusion that the sorcerer was responsible, seeing the proselytizers as a threat to his authority. Poison was the most likely murder weapon, Adam had reasoned, but whatever subtle toxin the sorcerer employed was beyond forensic abilities to detect, so nothing could be proven. The young man looked at the worried girl who had been given to Ubunu. It would be a dangerous thing, indeed, to oppose the wily villain.

Yanowie read the thoughts reflected in his expression, and desperation came upon her.

“You are young and handsome,” she said truthfully. “But you are alone. It is not good for a man to be alone,” she continued as she removed the shirt she had wrapped around her loins and tossed it away. The girl then parted her thighs and spread her slit explicitly wide for him to see in unimpeded detail. “In exchange for shelter, I will give myself to you for your pleasure.”

Adam stared at her. She was attractive, and he wasn’t a racist. Desire came swiftly and hotly upon him at the enticing sight. Her words struck home, as did her actions. Although he enjoyed his job, he could no longer deny his loneliness, nor the long years of unfulfilled desire since Ann’s cruel rejection of him. But even so, he was still a gentleman and would not take advantage of a vulnerable woman in her hour of desperate need.

“You may stay,” he replied, moved by compassion as he fought down the raging urges that threatened to overcome his better nature. “My bed is yours. I will string up a hammock and sleep in that.”

**********

Two weeks had passed since Yanowi’s arrival, and they had settled into a comfortable routine. Despite their cultural differences, Adam found the girl remarkably easy to get along with. At first, she had been frightened that Ubunu might discover her, but as the days passed without incident, she relaxed, and her bright, cheerful personality replaced the haunted look that she had worn when she’d first arrived.

Adam, however, was beset by unease. His job meant he was away from home for most of the day, leaving her alone as he supervised the plantation laborers and inspected the vanilla for pests and diseases. He could feel the tension in the natives and caught them looking at him with suspicious glances. By now, the entire village knew that Yanowi was missing. Levunu was a small, rocky island that rose to a jungle-clad peak. There weren’t many places where you could hide. No one said anything, but the accusing looks told of their suspicions.

These were the thoughts troubling Adam as he made his way home through the late afternoon, the setting sun casting long shadows before him as he walked up the dirt path toward the hut. As he drew near, his spirits lifted at the thought of seeing Yanowi. Her smiling face, a vision of loveliness, rose in his mind, and his pace quickened with eagerness. Clearly, he was falling in love with the girl.

Adam stepped through the door, the greeting for Yanowie dying on his lips. Ubunu the sorcerer stood in the room, his skull-like visage twisted into a malicious grin of dark triumph. Before Adam could react, Ubunu cast a handful of greenish powder into his face. The young man stumbled back, coughing and sneezing. His vision began to darken. Dizziness beset him. He staggered forward and took a wild, desperate swing at the sorcerer, but the wily fellow easily stepped aside. Adam, unbalanced, crashed to the floor. Ubunu stood victorious over the unconscious man and laughed in cruel delight.

**********

Someone was calling Adam’s name. The voice impinged upon his mind, drawing him up from the black depths. He regained consciousness, his mind still fuzzy, and a bitter taste lingered in his mouth from the powder that had rendered him senseless. He was lying on rocky ground, his hands and feet bound with cords. Stalagmites, like the teeth of some huge ossified beast, met his startled gaze while stalactites thrust down from the cave ceiling, completing the impression that he was caught in the maw of a petrified monster.

“Adam, are you badly hurt?”

The young man turned and gasped in shock. Yanowi stood several feet away, her hands bound above her head to a stalactite. The clothes he had given her had been brutally torn from her body leaving her bruised and completely naked. Ubunu stepped from the shadows before he could reply. The sorcerer’s eyes glinted maliciously in the dim light. He stared at Adam like a cat about to pounce on a mouse.

“You stole my woman,” he said, his voice tinged with hate and bitterness. “You will suffer for this affront. No one takes that which is mine.”

The sorcerer then turned and looked viciously at Yanowi. “I no longer want you,” he snarled. “You have been degraded by the polluting seed of the white man. You are nothing but a village whore.”

Yanowie, despite her fear and the dreadful peril that she was in, wasn’t going to meekly take that insult.

“Adam has treated me with respect. I am still a virgin. I asked him for shelter, and he gave it to me without expecting me to spread my thighs for him. It is you who are degraded. You pollute yourself with your evil thoughts.”

Ubunu laughed bitterly. “Do you expect me to believe that lie? You will suffer for this, both of you. I will summon Mugu, the vampire god, and have the pleasure of seeing him slay you.”

Yanowie gasped in fear. The sorcerer placed the ornately carved cylindrical drum he had been carrying on the ground and began to play a wild beat on it. His voice rose in an eerie chant that echoed weirdly within the cave, a savage symphony that made Adam’s hair stand on end as he desperately struggled to free himself from his bonds. Before, he’d dismissed the Vampire God as nothing but a native boogeyman, but now wild fear assailed him, for clearly Ubunu was summoning some dire threat.

The cave’s far end vanished into unknown and gloomy depths, and it wasn’t long before a shape emerged from the shroud of this mysterious darkness. Yanowie screamed in horror as the shambling, shadow-cloaked figure that had been called forth by the throbbing drum drew ever nearer. The thing squinted in the weak light - a creature of darkness that had risen up from the earth’s depths like an unholy demon from Abaddon.

Now fully visible in all its sickening horror, Adam could see that its body was humanoid but green and scaly. The head, with its large ears and snout, was very much like a bat. The thing’s small black eyes fixed on the girl. Its drooling maw gaped displaying rows of jagged teeth. Again, she screamed as it stalked toward her.

Ubunu laughed, delighting in her terror. Adam cursed, but not with impotent helplessness. The young man had been frantically rubbing the ropes that bound him against a rock. He could feel the strands beginning to part. The creature, now mere feet from Yanowie, reached for the terrified girl. The sight lent Adam strength. With a wild yell, he hurled all his might against the weakened cords.

The rope snapped. Ubunu cursed. The sorcerer drew his bone dagger and struck at Adam. The young man barely managed to catch his would-be killer’s wrist. The desperate Englishman slammed his fist against his snarling opponent’s jaw. Ubunu fell on him. They grappled, wrestling fiercely for possession of the dagger. In the background, Yanowie’s screams added to the nightmarish scene.

The two wildly fighting combatants rolled against the monster’s foot. It recoiled from them as if a burning coal had touched its body. Adam sweated. His ankles were bound, hampering his movement. Yanowie was in dreadful peril. He had to end the fight, and fast. He head-butted the sorcerer. Ubunu dropped his dagger. Adam clamped one hand around his throat, then the other. The sorcerer grabbed his wrists. Again, Adam slammed his forehead against his foe. Ubunu’s eyes rolled in their sockets. Adam got on top of him, throttling the man with all the wild strength he possessed.

Ubun went limp. Adam turned his head. Fear clutched him. He swore. The creature had gone, taking Yanowie with it. Frantically, he dragged himself toward the sorcerer’s dagger, grabbed it, and cut the ropes around his ankles. The young man scrambled to his feet. A dozen questions crowded his mind concerning the creature. He forced conjecture aside. There was no time for speculation. He must focus on the rescue of the girl. Adam wanted to race madly after Yanowie and her vile kidnapper. He looked at the dagger clutched in his hand. It seemed a puny thing when compared to the horror he had to face. He had a shotgun, but it was in his hut, and there was no time to get it.

His mind raced, looking for a solution. Then he remembered how the creature had recoiled from Ubunu when they had rolled against it. Why hadn’t it attacked them? Further memories arose. Adam stepped to the corpse and bent down. The sorcerer wore a leather pouch around his neck that emitted a pungent smell. Could this be the answer? Was it a repellent that would keep the horror at bay?

Adam quickly hung the pouch around his neck, a determined look on his face as he speedily set off on the trail of the vile beast, armed with only courage and Ubunu’s dagger. The natural tunnel descended into the earth. Darkness pressed in around him like a closing fist as he raced along its length. But as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that he wasn’t passing through utter blackness. From the rock grew clusters of yellow crystals that emitted a faint radiance, and it was by this dim light that he found his way.

After about fifteen minutes, the tunnel debouched into a vast cavern illuminated by larger outcrops of glowing crystals. Adam paused on the threshold, taking in the scene he now beheld. Fern trees rose up into the steamy air, and beneath them was a dense undergrowth of smaller plants that had adapted to growing in the dimness. His keen eyes fell upon a trail that snaked through the subterranean forest, and he quickly set his feet on it, praying that this path was the one the vile creature had taken.

A woman’s scream sounded from up ahead. Adam suppressed an oath and sprinted along the path, beset by wild fear for Yanowie. He burst into a small glade at the trail’s end and beheld a sight that made his blood run cold with dread. Yanowie had been cast upon a nest of ferns, her limbs bound by silken strands that looked like cobwebs. A large, leathery egg also lay in the nest, a small, clawed hand protruding from its punctured shell.

A screeching cry made Adam swiftly turn around. The adult monster, the kidnapper of the girl, confronted him. It lunged, claws extended, to clutch and rend the puny man. But then the thing recoiled as the pouch's odor impinged upon its senses. Yanowie screamed again. Adam cast a glance at her. The vile creature in the egg had fully hatched - a miniature version of the parent monster. The horror had reached the girl’s throat and was about to clamp its jaws upon her jugular.

Adam, knowing he would never reach her in time, tore the leather pouch from his neck and hurled it at the horrid hatchling. It struck the creature. The thing screeched and scuttled from the nest. The girl was safe, but now Adam was without protection. The monstrous mother, enraged by his harming of her young, charged toward him, feral eyes alive with savage violence.

Adam leaped aside and tripped the beast as it hurtled past, narrowly avoiding its slashing claws. The monster crashed to the ground. Adam leaped upon it. He slammed his dagger into its prone form, but the bone weapon was neither hard enough nor sharp enough to penetrate the rugged creature’s scaly hide. He kicked it in the head as it tried to rise. The thing collapsed. Adam raced to Yanowie and slashed the silky strands that securely bound the frightened girl.

“The devil creature is not dead, merely stunned,” he said, his voice alive with urgency. “Come on, we’ve got to go.”

The couple ran. They raced along the trail and fled madly up the rocky tunnel. Behind them, they heard an enraged roar. The savage creature had regained its feet and was in swift pursuit. They reached the point where Yanowie had been bound. The cave’s entrance was very close. Then from the shadows leaped a wild figure, a rock clutched in its hand to brain Adam.

“Look out,” Yanowie yelled.

Adam managed to grab his attacker’s descending arm. It was Ubunu. Adam, in his frantic haste to rescue the girl, hadn’t made sure that the cunning sorcerer was dead. Both men wrestled desperately. A savage roar shook the cave. Yanowie screamed as the monster burst from the darkness and charged toward them, its fang-rimmed maw frighteningly agape. Adam saw it. Desperation fueled his strength. He rammed his knee into the sorcerer’s groin.

Ubunu howled. Adam shoved him with all his strength. The injured man crashed against the rushing monster. He screamed shrilly as the horror’s claws and teeth closed upon his flesh. Adam and the girl fled. They passed between the bushes planted generations ago at the entrance, bushes whose pungent leaves trapped the creature in the cave with their repellent scent. The couple raced down a jungle trail, the sorcerer’s dying cries fading behind them as they swiftly sped to safety.

**********

Adam closed his diary, in which he had recorded his strange and unnerving adventure. When the next supply ship arrived, he would submit a requisition for dynamite, and with it, seal the entrance to the cave, thus permanently ending the menace of the monster, for who knew how many of the horrid creatures lurked in that strange subterranean world.

Yanowie entered his hut, and he rose to greet the smiling girl. Adam had been very worried about how the islanders would react to the death of the sorcerer, fearing that they might seek vengeance against him. But Kuna, the chief and father of Yanowie, had, like all the other tribespeople, been greatly relieved that the dread sorcerer’s reign of terror was finally ended. Indeed, so thankful had Kuna been for saving his daughter from the evil man and the monster that he readily consented when Adam asked for Yanowie’s hand in marriage.

Adam eagerly embraced his young wife, and as he gazed at her, he realized that in this wild and primitive wilderness, he had found something far more precious than anything civilization and its shallow glitter could offer.

The End