HORROR THRILLERS-A Box Set of Horror Novels (5 page)

She knew one day
someone would come. Fate could not be so cruel as to deposit her on
an island in the middle of an ocean and leave her there for the rest
of her days. She just knew someone would come!

Angelique had lived
before many times, the Haitian incarnation only the one that had not
yet ended by either murder or accident. She had known the royal
family in Egypt when the girl queen, Cleopatra, had reigned. Before
that she had known the times of the early days of the Roman Empire,
before it was an empire—when indeed it was not yet Rome, but
just a trail at the bottom of the seven hills leading to salt
deposits. There were other and varied incarnations throughout
history, all of them made interesting to her because she found a way
to manipulate her way into power, into security, into riches. But
never before had she come back as a child, cursed forever to a small,
frail body. And never before had she been abandoned and trapped this
way on an unknown little island where the populace hadn’t even
progressed toward a civilization that knew how to build ships. She
had tried to teach them, over and over again, and had sent off crews
in rough-hewn dugouts, but either the rough seas pushed them back to
shore, or crashed them headlong into the cliffs.

The ships sailing
toward the island meant freedom, for they were real ships, ships with
sails, wide-breasted and sturdy. They looked like greater ships than
even the Romans had built during her time in that age of history.

She would wait until
these seafarers left again, for surely they’d find nothing to
plunder or of interest on the island, and when they left she would
secret herself aboard one of the vessels. Freedom! She knew she must
leave this island and these primitive people or go insane.

She had reached
nearly to the top of the rugged mountain and flailed at the thick
vines and bushes that covered the entrance to the cave. From her
vantage point high up the mountainside, she could see the ships
coming, their sails unfurled yet, the waters parting before their
mighty bows. They were beautiful to her, these ships, and indicated
the people who constructed them were from an advanced civilization.
The sight excited her so much she could hardly pay attention to what
she was doing.

She pulled and
hauled and the hanging vines held fast, thwarting her. She cursed her
strength, cursed the little arms, the small hands, the short legs of
her tiny body.

I didn't know! She
raged to herself. She had not known, waiting in the dark, that the
body awaiting her entry was that of a little child. Had she any
inkling she would never have made the leap, dooming herself to life
lived in miniature. All she had known was that Death had found a
human, had taken it, and had summoned her forth. She tried to see
through the veils separating her world from this one, to determine
what the dead body might be like, but everything shimmered, like
light on water, blinding her. She would either enter or turn back and
she couldn't turn back. She was already too close to the earth,
trapped in its atmosphere, spiraling downward from stars and
galaxies, falling from the dark heaven she'd inhabited for too long.
She saw the body as a pinpoint of light and no more. Nothing could
stop this invasion, nothing could brake her descent, and once she was
inside the body, she owned it, having let go of the spirit in the
other world, and embedding it in this one, in this small body of a
little girl.

She was the only
angel of the fallen who could do this on her own, without help from
another. She was the most powerful, the strongest, the supreme angel
of them all.

And now she was a
human girl.

Her thoughts
painfully returned to what she was doing. She swore at the vines and
hacked at the bushes, pulling and tearing, cuts opening on her hands.
She would not give up, she couldn’t. She worked furiously,
enraged, determined to get her way, to get herself inside the cool,
safe cave and away from the prying eyes of both natives and intruders
sailing quickly now to her shores.

Finally some of the
vegetation gave way and, parting, provided entrance. She squeezed
through the narrow opening and stepped into the dark interior where
little sunlight entered. She saw it was a large place just as she
remembered. The overhead rock was smooth and vaulted and a great
many feet above her head. The floor at the entrance was level and
the earth soft and dry beneath her bare feet. She stepped forward,
hands outstretched, and suddenly stepped on something sharp, causing
her to howl and jump back, hopping around. She stooped to
investigate. It was a cache of bones, and nearby, several long sharp
teeth of an animal. The bones were those of small animals, perhaps
hogs or the small deer that roamed the island, or antelope. The
teeth, another matter altogether. She lifted one, laying it gently
in her torn palm and studied it closely. It was an incisor, at least
six inches long, curved and pointed. It could be from a saber tooth,
she realized, a tiger that did not today exist on the island. The
bones, then, were leftovers from dinners and snacks taken by the
ancient beast, and then later the beast itself had expired here.

This was indeed an
ancient place and had been home to animals for millennia.

She turned to make
sure the vines were rearranged again at the entrance. She must make
sure her safe place was not noticed by a hiker up the mountainside.

Now she went further
into the darkness of the cave, for she heard the sound of water, and
thought that was a very good thing. After some time she came to a
bend in the cave wall and, trailing her hand along the damp cave, she
rounded the corner, almost stepping into a hole that would have
definitely taken her into the deep bowels of the mountain. She stood
absolutely still, sucking in damp, cool air, thanking her stars. She
could have ended it all here. Over the lip of the hole from the
opposite direction, across from where she stood, came a small stream
of water that slid smoothly into the opening where it dropped down
into the darkness. She did not hear a splashing as she might if the
water struck a surface or a pool so the hole was very deep.

She would have to
find a way to get to that water across the way, she knew, to slack
her thirst. At least it was there, an underground stream dropping
off into the mountain hole and probably rushing away through some
opening in the bottom of the mountain. To those on the jungle floor
it appeared as a rushing stream.

She turned back and
made her way into the cave proper, to have a look around. She would
need to move some of the great piles of animal bones, get them out of
her way. She would need some of the leaves from the giant vines at
the entrance to fashion a comfortable bed. As for food, she would go
out at night only, not much more than a predator herself, but one
with preternatural powers, and hunt what she needed.

All the while she
would keep an eye on the strangers and the ships, waiting patiently
for indication of their departure.

She sat down on a
hump of earth and tucked her knees to her chin. She breathed in
deeply of the metallic scent of the mountain water deeper at the back
of the cave, and sighed. A caul like soft mist fell over her face,
draping it with damp.

She hoped it would
not take long—the leaving of the ships. She had been living
this horrible, primitive existence forever, it seemed to her, just
forever and a day and she was more than done with it. She expected
she was half-mad already. Her mind was an idle bit of matter sitting
like a slug in her skull. It had not been stimulated. She had no
scrolls to read, no writing materials, no historians or philosophers
to teach her, no pomp and circumstance of politics, no passing
pageantry to behold. And being a child, she could not even indulge
the flesh with the animal pleasure of intercourse, which she missed
as if it were a phantom appendage she longed for.

A slight rustle
sounded loud to her ears and without hesitation to think what it
might be she reached out swiftly with one hand and caught the
wriggling, furry thing that had tried to skitter past her to the
vine-covered exit.

She brought it to
her face, squinting in the gloom. It wriggled ferociously and tried
to take nips at her fingers. It was a rat, a rather large one, with
a long whipping tail and beady little black eyes. It was in a
thorough panic as it squirmed in her hard clutch.

“
Hello, my
friend,” she said, smiling. “It is kind of you to
visit.” And then with her other hand she gripped the head of
the little beast and wrenched it sideways until she heard a crunching
sound of bones snapping. The rat stopped wriggling and lay limp in
her hands.

Now she had
something to eat. She would be sustained until nightfall.

CHAPTER 7

TAKING A NEW LAND

Christopher Columbus
stood on deck and instructed his men in what they were to do upon
landfall. His ship led the others forward through the swells, their
sails now lowered, the land close enough they could go ashore in
small boats.

“
You can see
them streaming down to the shore, excited about our arrival. Make
friendly gestures and do not scowl at them. Remember that they have
not seen a white man. Make no sudden movements and do not get too
close to them. We’ve seen natives like this before and you
should know what to do. We'll try to gain their confidence, trade
with their leaders or elders or kings, and once entrenched we will
make this great place ours in the name of the great Isabella, Queen
of Spain!”

A roar rose from the
clustered men. They were almost in rags, unshaven, dirty, and hungry
as well, for fresh food. Their stores were low and this new land was
a wonderful gift, a land of mountains and green forests, no matter
that it was also a great adventure. There might be gold hidden there,
treasure, what it was their captain wanted most and what they, too,
wanted with every fiber of their beings. Even though they were
forbidden to take gold for themselves, everyone filched a little
along and hid it on the ships before sailing away. Also, as they
could see, rushing down and into the small lapping waves along the
sandy shore, there were women! The men had not had congress with a
woman for months and were bursting with lust. Given half a chance, at
this point in their journeys, they would poke a cow or a horse or any
sort of four-legged beast, but a woman was certainly preferred.

“
Take your
time,” Columbus was instructing. “Say nothing while I
hold palaver with the tribal leaders. Begin slowly to set up a camp
inland, bring our cooking pots and spices, find something to cook,
asking the natives politely. Now….” He paused, wiping
sweat from his brow with a handkerchief scented with grated lime.
The limes, almost gone now, only a few left, were shriveled and
juiceless after all this time on board, but their skin still held
some fragrance that revived his senses. He did not feel so well
though it was a great victory to discover what he thought might be
China, his real destination. He had made one mistake already,
happening on the New World, but this could be the place he sought.

His stomach had
become sensitive on him, growling, going sour, spewing shit that was
so foul he gagged. He wondered if he’d outlast this trip
unless he got stronger. “Now, let us lower our boats and
strike land! In the name of the Queen! In the name of Spain!”

After the excited
roar, the men set to work. Columbus staggered a bit before taking
hold of the railing to steady his gait. He went into the first boat,
as was his custom, and waited for it to fill with oar men and his
personal guards, armed to the teeth with muskets and swords and
knives at their belts. He himself did not carry a weapon, not needing
one and in fact knowing he could approach people easier if unarmed.
But on sighting the land, he had retired to his cabin, cursing his
grumbling belly, and carefully dressed in full gear, with his silver,
plumed helmet and his silver chest plate hammered to a dull shine,
and his best leather boots that were now looking a little worn and
creased.

He had evidence that
dressed this way, in full regalia, he was looked upon by the
primitives as a god come ashore, a mythical being stepping forth from
the frothy edge of the sea like Poseidon rising from the waters. He
was supremely confidant his stalwart men would overcome this place
and dominate it within days. He hoped for gold, heaps of it,
mountains of it, caskets of it. He hoped for treasure beyond all
treasure to bring back to his queen, to his homeland. He hoped for
an easy victory, low loss of his men, and a land that he could title
to Spain that was worth titling.

He clutched his
churning stomach and leaned forward and kept his hard gaze on the
people awaiting his arrival on shore. This was so easy, he thought,
it was almost ridiculous. They were so stupid they thought he was
their friend, their new god, come to deliver them, to show them
miracles.