The Mark of the Spider: A Black Orchid Chronicle Read online

  Things are rarely as they seem.

  David L. Haase learned that lesson during his career in investigative and political journalism. Probe deeply enough, he found, and all sorts of strange things come to light.

  Haase has now turned his reporter’s eye and inquiring mind on the world to produce supernatural suspense and sci-fi stories.

  An amateur photographer and dirty-thumb gardener, he loves prowling through greenery, taking close-up shots of macro nature and discovering new life. His explorations provide the backdrops for reality-laden supernatural adventures into jungle and desert, suburban flower gardens and vacant city lots.

  The Mark of the Spider is the first book of the Black Orchid Chronicles, featuring nature photographer Sebastian Arnett.

  An earlier book, HOTEL CONSTELLATION: Notes from America’s Secret War in Laos, recounts his experiences as a young reporter during the Viet Nam war.

  www.DavidLHaase.com

  Contents

  Also By David L. Haase

  A Borneo Lullaby

  Chapter 1: Portents

  Chapter 2: The Stranger

  Chapter 3: False Start

  Empaya Iba Speaks

  Chapter 4: Temptation

  Chapter 5: Ambush

  Chapter 6: Captive

  Chapter 7: Alone

  Chapter 8: Hope

  Chapter 9: Hostage

  Empaya Iba Speaks

  Chapter 10: Civilization

  Chapter 11: Untimely Death

  Chapter 12: Advisory

  Chapter 13: Warning

  Chapter 14: Menace

  Empaya Iba Speaks

  Chapter 15: Alert

  Chapter 16: Threat

  Chapter 17: Homecoming

  Chapter 18: Invitation

  Chapter 19: Stranded

  Chapter 20: Reunion

  Chapter 21: Situation

  Chapter 22: Busted

  Empaya Iba Speaks

  Chapter 23: The Indian

  Chapter 24: Showdown

  Empaya Iba Speaks

  Chapter 25: Resurrection

  Chapter 26: Surveillance

  Chapter 27: Sweat Dream

  Chapter 28: Replacement

  Chapter 29: Distraction

  Chapter 30: Operational

  Chapter 31: Murder

  Little Sister Speaks

  Chapter 32: Run

  Chapter 33: Repositioning

  Chapter 34: Impedimenta

  Chapter 35: Cornered

  Chapter 36: Escape

  Chapter 37: Pursuit

  Chapter 38: Friends

  Chapter 39: Reunited

  Chapter 40: Hide and Seek

  Chapter 41: Empaya Iba

  Empaya Iba Speaks

  Chapter 42: Plan B

  Chapter 43: Red Orchids

  Chapter 44: Realizations

  Chapter 45: The Ex

  Chapter 46: Faithless

  Chapter 47: T

  Chapter 48: News

  Chapter 49: Hacked

  Chapter 50: Persuasion

  Chapter 51: Trap

  Chapter 52: Bait

  Chapter 53: Trouble

  Chapter 54: Attack

  Chapter 55: Betrayed

  Chapter 56: The Reckoning

  Chapter 57: Accounting

  Empaya Iba Speaks

  Acknowledgments

  Also by David L. Haase

  Also By David L. Haase

  HOTEL CONSTELLATION

  Notes from America’s Secret War in Laos

  © 2018 by David L. Haase.

  All rights reserved.

  This book is in copyright.

  Subject to statutory exception

  and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recorded, or photocopied form without the written permission of the author and C. Lawrence Publishing.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Books may be purchased by contacting the publisher and author at:

  www.DavidLHaase.com/Contact/

  Trade Paperback ISBN: 978-0-9994847-3-9

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-9994847-2-2

  Library of Congress Control Number 2018907176

  Cover design: Damonza.com

  Interior Design: Damonza.com

  Editor: Sylvia A. Smith

  For Elizabeth

  Who always believed.

  Sorry it took me so long to take your advice.

  For John Morrow

  Who would have taught me so much more about photography, shooting and Indian spirits, if only he had lived.

  A Borneo Lullaby

  Come, little ones.

  Come to Iba, Empaya Iba.

  Touch my soft fur.

  Look deep into my all-seeing eyes.

  And sleep.

  Come to Empaya Iba of the Midnight Flower and the Far Forest.

  Curl into me.

  Warm yourself.

  Sleep in my silk.

  Come to Empaya Iba, guardian of the Mother Soil, giver of the Long Sleep, spirit of the Black Orchid People.

  Gaze tired eyes at my mark.

  Come to the one who bears it.

  Sleep with us, him and me, Empaya Iba, mage of the Many Legs.

  Chapter 1

  Portents

  I heard the buzz, but the warning didn’t register.

  I knelt on matted greenery, my khaki shorts bunched up almost into my crotch, my head and torso contorted to the left as far as they would go without toppling me. I held the camera about six inches off the ground, pointing skyward. Tiny specks of light flashed on the orchid as dark green foliage swayed above. Every time I got the dabs of light just where I wanted, I lost focus. My gut ached from holding my breath.

  I was aiming at the rarest orchid I had ever captured in the wild. This wasn’t the Rothschild golden slipper with the dignified name and the black-market bounty of $5,000 a stem. And it certainly wasn’t the priceless black orchid, priceless because it was more myth than fact.

  But the orchid I was trying to capture was rare. Two and a half inches wide, orange and yellow, it went by the unfortunate name of rat-tailed orchid because it reminded some orchidists of the rodents. I couldn’t make out the resemblance from its five twisting petals, but there you are. Still, for months I’d been shooting orchids in Borneo, from dawn till the heat of the day drove me from the rainforest. I had never seen a rat-tail until today.

  Zzzmmm.

  There it was again.

  Tears rolled down my cheeks. No, not tears. Sweat. Sweat in Borneo. Like tiny insects hot-footing down the back of my legs into the pools formed by the backs of my knees.

  Zzzmmm.

  I shook my head, drops of perspiration flying.

  Focus. Literally. Concentrate and focus. I told myself.

  The light is perfect, there at the tip of the petal. The sheikh will love it, if I can just get everything aligned for one instant. I used a safe-cracker’s touch on the macro lens. I felt my eyes bulging from holding my breath. One more instant—

  “Boss lelaki, hi.”

  Click.

  “Dammit, Firash, I almost had it.” I sucked in air, trying not to move from my awkward pose.

  “Boss lelaki Sebastian, run. Bees!”

  I whipped my head toward the sound of Firash’s voice and saw his brown back sprinting out of view.

  Where? What bee
s?

  I’d been watchful of bees, hornets, and wasps since the horticulturists at the Sabah Agricultural Station had warned me about swarming Borneo hornets. They were aggressive, the experts cautioned, and attacked when their nests were disturbed. Children, and even the occasional adult, had died of hundreds of stings, each hornet able to sting over and over without dying. I hadn’t seen a nest ever, and it had been weeks since I sighted a bee, but—

  ZZZmmm.

  I glanced toward the ground. A handful of hornets—sleek inch-long black dive bombers capable of delivering painful bites—milled above my thighs.

  I catapulted off my knees and got a stinger buried in my thigh.

  I spun to follow Firash and tripped over my camera bag. The camera flew out of my right hand as I broke my fall with my left. For half an instant I thought of grabbing for the camera with its trove of imperfect shots of the rat-tailed orchid, but my legs had other ideas.

  Hornets struck through my shirt as I scrambled through the brush toward the trail a dozen strides away. I slapped at the stinging insects circling my head and finally broke through onto the trail.

  I struck off downhill on the narrow path, away from the arduous uphill trek back toward the center of the park. I didn’t know if I could eventually outrun the swarming hornets. I’m an out-of-shape 220 pounder, but hunching over flowers was about as much exercise as I get. In the last few weeks, I’d even taken to letting Firash, my lean young Malay guide, carry my 40-pound camera bag. The odds were not in my favor.

  Firash called out from up ahead.

  “Jump in water, boss lelaki. Jump.”

  A slight clearing and depression appeared on the right side of the path, one of the many muddy water holes in Borneo this time of year. A brown arm waved me toward it.

  I pounded past Firash’s submerged body, my legs churning and my lungs heaving. I can’t swim. I’ve almost drowned more than once. Even a foot of water in a mud hole terrifies me; I wasn’t going to dive headfirst into the muck and drown. I would take my chances with the bees, angry as they sounded, and they sounded pissed.

  My boots thumped on the slippery path, left-right-left-right. Even with the downhill tilt of the path, with gravity in my favor, I was slowing—or the hornets were speeding up. Either way, the buzzing sounded louder and closer.

  I gulped air; my ears pounded; my chest and head felt like exploding. I could not keep this up much longer.

  Why am I even trying? Some part of me wanted to know. Half of the time, I just want to lie down and die. I don’t want to be alone like this. Without Sarah.

  Her face came to mind as I huffed along, batting insects and overhanging branches from my path. But it no longer appeared fresh and sharp. Details were missing. I knew it was Sarah, but she was indistinct, blurry and out of focus.

  I thought back to the hospital, four years back. The sound of electricity and faint mechanics keeping my Sarah alive. I sat, cupping her fragile fingers in my callused hand, willing the ventilator to give her one more breath, one more chance to beat back the beast devouring her from the inside, to survive a moment, five, ten, just to live so I wouldn’t be alone. Psshhh, plop-plop. Psshhh, plop-plop. Psshhh, plop-plop. Thirty times a minute, hour after hour, day after day until the day they came in their green scrubs and stopped it.

  “It’s no use, Mr. Arnett,” they said. “She’s gone.”

  I gripped her cold fingers. “No. Please, no.”

  The buzz of the electricity, the background dirge of Sarah’s life, stopped. The monitor’s green line refused to climb and fall again. I remembered. Standing alone in a corner, two green ghosts tucking Sarah into a crinkly white plastic bag.

  A cough, hard and hacking, brought me back. I was staggering.

  Smoke. Faint whiffs of smoke. My God, what was happening? There was no smoke, could be no smoke. Fires are not allowed in Sabah Agricultural Park.

  If there was smoke, I was entering danger greater than a swarm of stinging hornets: Poachers, thieves of timber and rare orchids. I’d heard they start gasoline-fueled fires to clear work areas around their prey. Bees were bad; poachers were worse.

  Hornets attacked my head, neck, torso, and legs. I swatted them from my face, but they just attacked my hair and ears. I’d suffered at least 30 or 40 stings, each one a needle jab deep into the skin. How much farther before I collapsed under a cloud of furious insects? Maybe the poachers would find my dead body.

  I could see the edge of the smoke, and in a few more plodding steps plunged into it. I gasped a lungful and coughed, tripping myself and tumbling to one knee. The hornets descended with me. I inhaled deeply and held my breath. I pushed up and away for one final all-out sprint.

  “Siapa disana? Siapa disana?”

  A voice surprised me through the smoke hanging over the trail. I staggered on.

  “Siapa disana?” Other voices, insistent, unfriendly, joined in.

  I don’t speak Malay, but I didn’t need Firash to translate.

  Someone—a bunch of someones—wanted to know who I was and what I was doing.

  “Bees. Run.”

  I intended a warning shout, but all that came out was a croak.

  “Run.”

  I fell to my knees, swatting weakly with one hand, trying to stay upright. I crawled forward deeper into the smoke.

  The swarm hummed a vicious tune behind me, but fewer hornets circled my head.

  Cries of “tawon, tawon” joined the chorus. Their harsh tone told me these were not friends. My oxygen-starved brain tried to count voices—how many was I up against?—but my body used what little energy I had just to draw a breath.

  I gulped smoke-filled air and coughed. Sweat poured off my face. Collapsing in the dirt, I tried to push forward, lizard-like, on my knees and elbows.

  Now the thickening smoke rivaled the hornets as a threat. My head pounded to the beat of my heart, and my heart felt near to bursting. The hornets made half-hearted attempts to sting again, but I was beyond caring. I tucked my face into the soaking arm pit of my shirt, hoping to protect my face from smoke and more stings.

  “Dekat sini. Di sini. Di sini.” An angry voice nearby cried out.

  I heard footsteps approaching.

  “Di sini.”

  A sandaled foot landed on my head.

  Lightning streaked behind my closed eyes.

  “Yang anda?”

  I grunted, still gasping, but I could neither answer nor move.

  A foot hammered into my back. A new level of pain whipped up and down my body.

  “Yang anda? Yang anda?”

  I gasped, coughed and retched.

  “American… American photographer.”

  More voices joined the tormenter above me.

  “Orchids… American… Taman Saba… Sabah Park,” I said, punctuating each word with a cough. “Orchids.”

  A new voice joined the group, and a figure squatted at my face. I couldn’t see him, but I could smell his shit-stained shorts and unwashed body mingling with the smoke.

  “You are American, eh? I speak American a little. You speak Malay?”

  “No. No Malay.” Cough. Cough.

  “You sure?”

  “No Malay.”

  “You know Malay people?”

  “Firash.” Cough. “My helper.”

  “Firash Taufik? That Firash?”

  “Yes. Firash.” I paused to breathe in smoke and excrement-scented air. “Firash helps me… find flowers. You have water?”

  “Sure. We got water.”

  He spoke quickly in Malay, and one set of footsteps departed.

  “Firash don’t teach you Malay words?”

  “No. He helps me find flowers… Bees. Run. Stinging.”

  I felt a slight breeze as a hand wafted the air above my head.

  “You don’t worry bees. Smoke kills bees. We got smoke some. You don’t worry.”

  “Uh. Thank—”

  “See now. You don’t know Malay words. You don’t know Malay peoples. Just
Firash. Right.”

  I struggled to rise onto an elbow. A hand pushed me down again.

  “Right?”

  “Yes… Yes.”

  “We go. You rest. Tomorrow, you don’t come back. Right? You don’t tell no one about smoke. Right?”

  “Yes. Yes. I won’t tell. Water, please.”

  “Sure, sure. Firash will bring. You don’t follow. You don’t come back. You come back here, we kill you.”

  Chapter 2

  The Stranger

  I didn’t notice the newcomer enter.

  Hunched over the bar, I was pondering my plight. Every red welt on my body itched despite layers of white cream the Tenom clinic had given me.

  My camera equipment—two camera bodies, five lenses, assorted light meters, shutter remotes and other stuff—lay on a work bench at Sabah Park, fouled by hornet corpses and soaked by rain water.

  The park’s camera tech accepted a month’s salary from me to clean and dry everything, but until he finished—“Soon, soon,” he promised daily—I had no tools. I could have ordered new gear from Singapore but that would require trekking down the coast to the Sultanate of Brunei to clear it through customs. Drying and cleaning everything was the faster bet, and I only needed one lens and camera body to resume some work.

  I needed to work, not because I feared the sheikh who had hired me or because I needed the money; the sheikh was both patient and generous. I needed to work because I drink too much when I’m not working, goaded by the demons of memory.

  Meanwhile, I still couldn’t sort out my encounter with the poachers. Firash denied knowing them; I didn’t believe him. I trusted Firash; he was a good guide and all-around fixer. But he was a fixer.

  And Firash knew a lot about poaching.

  “What are they doing with the fire,” I asked when he came to my rescue.

  “Rosewood,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  “What were they burning?”

  “Brush. Make space, easier to cut down tree.”

  “Is that legal?” I said. He looked away.

  “Very much profit, one tree,” Firash said. “This long”—he held his hands about three feet apart—“two hundred dollars, your money. Two weeks money. A lot for many peoples.”