Red Sun Also Rises, A by Mark Hodder Read Free Book Online Page B

clearing.
    I shrieked, dropped my pistol, turned, and ran. By the time I reached the cabin, I’d half-convinced myself that the pungent aroma of the flowers had caused me to hallucinate.
    I made no mention of my excursion to Clarissa. I feared she might already regard me as prone to mental instability.
    Perhaps I was.
    My nightmares grew worse.
    By the middle of the year, the missionary station was completed. Even in a comfortable climate this would have been considered fast work, but under the burning Melanesian sun it was incredible, and I stood in awe of Clarissa’s practical skills, endurance, and knowledge.
    “I shall send a man to deliver a message to all the villages,” I told her, “to inform them that we shall hold our first service this coming Sunday. Perhaps curiosity will drive a few to attend, but even if just one person comes, it will be a start.”
    In the event, that’s exactly what I got—a congregation of one.
    Iriputiz.
    So I gave my first and only sermon on the island to its witch doctor, employing as much Koluwaian as I could muster but resorting frequently to German. I explained what the Bible is, and how, through its guidance, a man might live according to God’s will and thus gain eternal peace in the Kingdom of Heaven. I then asked Iriputiz to follow me in the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer.
    “And this will make your god come to us?” he asked.
    “God is already present,” I answered.
    “I do not see him.”
    “He is in all that you see. He is in the air we breathe, the light that shines upon us, in the chirp of insects and the splash of the waves. God is everywhere and everything, for the world is His creation.”
    “I do not believe you. Take me to this place you call Heaven. I want to see it.”
    “The gates of Heaven open only to those who have professed faith in Our Lord, and in his son, Jesus Christ.”
    Iriputiz gave a snort of disdain. “This is all a story,” he said, and stamped out of the church.
    “I don’t think I’m cut out for this,” I confessed to Clarissa. “These people need something more tangible than words. It’ll take fire and brimstone before they believe.”
    “Give it time, Aiden. I’ve noticed much disrepair in Kutumakau and the villages. I shall embark on a mission of restoration, and I have it in mind to create some sort of metal pylon at the top of the highest hill to draw the lightning away from the tree houses. Once these people gain material benefits from our presence, perhaps they’ll be more willing to listen.”
    I nodded my approval but felt useless. It also occurred to me that, despite the frequency and ferocity of the electrical storms, Clarissa and I hadn’t once witnessed or heard of an actual lightning strike.
    Moving into our new station appeared to cure me of my nocturnal terrors—I credited the light sea breeze I allowed to blow through my room for this—but on the night of the sermon, I suffered a bad dream of a different sort, one so vivid that it might have been real.
    I’d retired at about eleven o’clock and, after an hour of restlessness, had fallen into a fitful and incomplete sleep—that state of suspension where one is aware that the body is slack and snores are being produced, but still feels rather too conscious for it to qualify as proper rest.
    I was aware of the salt air whispering through my window. I was aware of the perpetual trilling of the frogs. I was aware that drums were rumbling in the jungled hills.
    And I was aware that my bedchamber door slowly creaked open.
    A cloud of steam billowed into the room, and with it Iriputiz, who appeared to be floating a few inches above the floor. He slid to my bedside and looked down at me.
    “I will send you into the final storm, Reverend Fleischer, there to meet the god I serve—a real god! He has a task for you.”
    He reached out and grasped my forearm, sinking his long pointed fingernails into my flesh.
    With a cry of pain, I jerked awake, sat up, and