DEVIL’S KEEP Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR PHILLIP FINCH

  AND HIS EVOCATIVE,

  SUSPENSE-CHARGED BOOKS

  “Gripping. … Finch seamlessly weaves together

  the various strands of his story … [and] manages to build suspense to fevered intensity.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Highly recommended for plot, introspection,

  location, hero, and most of all, disturbing insight.”

  —Library Journal

  “Finch provides a razor-sharp Philippine setting

  and a splendidly laconic voice for his disillusioned, desperately hopeful hero.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “A dramatic and emotional story, vividly told.”

  —Booklist

  Devil’s Keep is also available as an eBook

  Also by Phillip Finch

  Diving into Darkness: A True Story o

  Death and Survival

  Fatal Flaw

  F2F

  Paradise Junction

  Sugarland

  DEVIL’S KEEP

  PHILLIP FINCH

  The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  Pocket Books

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,

  and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination

  or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or

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  Copyright © 2010 by Phillip Finch

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  Interior design by Esther Paradelo

  Cover design and illustration by Tony Mauro

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6856-1

  ISBN 978-1-4391-6951-3 (ebook)

  For Daniel

  who was there on Day One

  Prologue

  As their outrigger banca skimmed across the rolling swells beyond the Sulu Sea, JoJo and Rasul Pangulag came upon the most amazing sight they had ever encountered.

  Somebody was feeding the fishes off Berbalang Island.

  The brothers were Badjao, water gypsies. They roamed the wild Sulu archipelago that stretches hundreds of miles from Borneo to the southern Philippines. Their families lived in shacks set on stilts above tidal waters, but the brothers spent days at a time in the slim twenty-foot banca, occasionally smuggling, usually fishing.

  They rarely visited the waters around the island. Few Badjao ever did. The berbalang was a dreaded shape-shifting ghoul of Sulu myth, said to feed on the corpses of its victims. Most Badjao didn’t really believe that the island was home to the berbalang, but they didn’t exactly disbelieve it, either.

  There were more practical reasons to avoid the island. It was beyond the Badjao’s natural territory, the placid shallows of the archipelago where one could travel three hundred miles without losing sight of land. Berbalang Island was a solitary place, with ferocious tides and wind-driven seas, the last chunk of land before several hundred miles of open water.

  But the brothers’ catch had been poor for several days, and they were venturing out in hopes of changing their luck.

  The island was a craggy hump of volcanic rock, forested with coconut palms and banana trees. JoJo and Rasul approached it from the west. They headed for a steep bluff that plunged down into the sea, an area where mackerel were known to run. The banca’s single-cylinder engine clattered as it labored through high swells. Rasul sat working the tiller. He watched JoJo standing easily at the prow, peering out across the open expanse of water, which blazed under the midday sun. Rasul was twenty-nine years old, JoJo twenty-seven. They were both small and lithe, brown-skinned men, although JoJo was perhaps an inch taller, his skin a tone or two darker from the hours that he spent in the hot glare of the sun, while Rasul sat in the shade of a canvas canopy.

  They were about half a mile off the island when JoJo shouted over the engine’s noise and pointed out across the water. Rasul followed the line of his brother’s arm and finger. A speedboat was rounding the rocky point at the far end of the island. This was no hand-built native boat. It rode high, the sharp white bow uplifted, throwing up twin plumes of spray as it banged through the waves.

  It was a wonderment. Neither of them had ever seen such a craft in these waters.

  The speedboat slowed and stopped, settling into the water. At the wheel was a pink-skinned man with light hair. A foreigner, Rasul realized. It was stunning. No foreigner ever ventured within a hundred miles of these waters. The man at the stern stood up, and Rasul got another shock. He was huge, the biggest man Rasul had ever seen: tall, wide, and solid. His chest and upper arms bulged against a white T-shirt. To Rasul he looked like a pink bear.

  He stood near the stern and lifted a tall white bucket. He tipped the bucket forward, and something spilled out over the side, splashing into the sea.

  The banca was still pushing across the water, on a course that would take them about one hundred yards from the speedboat. As they closed the distance, the pink-skinned giant picked up another white bucket. Rasul shaded his eyes against the sun, looking through the glare, as the huge foreigner lifted the second bucket over the side and upended it. Solid chunks of something slithered out and down into the water. Food. Meat. This can’t be true, Rasul thought. Nobody throws away food.

  The foreigner dumped out a third bucket. Now the banca was closer, and Rasul could see the water simmering around the stern of the speedboat. Fish were surging up, dimpling the ocean as they ate at the surface. Gulls were flapping in from perches atop the cliff, circling low over the speedboat and diving toward the water.

  JoJo and Rasul shared a glance of bewilderment. The foreigner was actually feeding the fish.

  Not just that. From the eager way the fish were rising, they seemed to be expecting food. So this wasn’t the first time they had been fed this way.

  Unbelievable.

  The foreigner now picked up a fourth bucket and lifted it. But he didn’t tip it over the side, not right away. He cocked his head and looked toward the banca, seeming to notice them for the first time. Rasul sensed that the look was not friendly. Instinctively, Rasul pushed the tiller, turning the banca away from the speedboat, and cut the engine down to idle.

  He watched with JoJo as the big man dumped out the fourth bucket and put it down. The water was alive now, the fish in a frenzy. Their silvery flanks flashed in the sun as they attacked the food.

  The foreigner could have easily scooped u
p a boatload of fish with a few dips of a hand net. But he didn’t; he just put down the bucket and went forward to the wheel, throttling up the engines. The speedboat made a throaty burbling sound. It pulled away quickly, leaving a broad wake as the foreigner turned the wheel and cut back toward where he had first appeared. In less than a minute he was gone, vanishing around the point.

  The patch of sea where he had spilled out the buckets was still alive with the feeding fish, the surface almost boiling now with greedy movement.

  And that clearly was the most amazing sight JoJo and Rasul had ever seen: a feast of fish left for the taking.

  Rasul didn’t hesitate. As soon as the speedboat was out of sight, he gunned the engine, full power. The banca began to move forward. Rasul, back at the tiller, couldn’t see the feeding fish from where he sat. But he let JoJo guide him in, steering by the small motions that JoJo flicked with a hand held behind his back as he stood at the prow. Right. Right again. Easy left. Steady. Easy right. Slow. Stop.

  Rasul turned off the engine, and the boat glided to a halt. Up front, JoJo was staring down at the water. Rasul expected him to snap into action—grab a net, something—but for a few seconds JoJo remained fixed on the water.

  “Jo?” said Rasul.

  JoJo didn’t answer. He crouched on one knee and got low to the water. Still staring.

  Then he abruptly recoiled, straightening at the waist.

  He turned back to Rasul. His face showed shock. Fear.

  “What is it?” Rasul said.

  “Turn around. Now.”

  “What?” Rasul began to rise out of his seat, to get a look at what had startled his brother.

  JoJo’s head blew apart.

  In the same instant, time began to parcel itself out in excruciating segments.

  There was the part where JoJo’s face ruptured in ghastly slow motion.

  There was the part where Rasul heard a wet spattering on the deck and felt a stinging mist on his face and arms, and heard a thunderclap from above, and thought, Rain?

  There was the part where JoJo’s body began to topple forward and Rasul looked into the top of JoJo’s head and saw just a bloody husk, and then the part where Rasul heard himself keening a mournful “Jo!”

  And then Rasul realized that the mist was blood and tissue, and the stinging was pieces of bone, pelting him, and the thunderclap was not thunder but a gunshot from somewhere up at the top of the cliff.

  JoJo’s lifeless body thumped down hard into the banca, sending a shudder along the deck.

  Now time began to move in a hurry, and Rasul moved with it. He pushed the throttle all the way forward, and leaned into the tiller to turn the banca. The bow came around; the island swung out of sight behind his back. The banca picked up speed, headed back the way they had come.

  Rasul twisted the throttle hard, trying to squeeze every bit of power out of the engine, and for several seconds the banca plowed straight westward, banging into the waves. Rasul fought against panic. Dark blood was spilling from JoJo’s head, pooling on the deck, and Rasul flashed on that last moment of his brother’s existence, the startled and stricken expression on JoJo’s face the instant before he died.

  What did he see? Rasul thought. He glanced back over one shoulder, but there was only the wake that the banca made, and the fish still thrashing at the surface.

  Rasul looked forward again, westward to where the archipelago lay. Home.

  A heartbeat later, Rasul found himself sprawled inside the boat, facedown, as if he had been flung to the deck. He was aware of having been struck from behind, a hard and heavy blow at his back. He dimly heard another thunderclap from the island.

  He had been shot.

  The banca was still churning forward. Rasul knew that without a hand on the tiller it would soon begin turning in circles. He tried to get up, get back to his seat, but he couldn’t move. His arms, his legs—they didn’t respond.

  Another gunshot cracked from the island. A bullet smacked into the deck a few inches from Rasul’s face.

  Another gunshot. The bullet ripped through the plywood on one side of the banca and blew out a fist-sized hole on the other side.

  More gunshots, more gaping holes. Some of them were below the waterline, and the sea rushed in, mingling with the blood. The banca was swamping now, slowing as it filled. Rising seawater sloshed into Rasul’s face, and he struggled to push himself up. But he couldn’t move: he felt pinned by a great weight. He gagged at first on the water, but it quickly became all too much to resist. He surrendered and let the seawater course down his throat. He tasted it, the salty tang that he had known every day of his life.

  Rasul knew that he was dying. He thought of their families, wives and children, waiting. They would never know what happened. He thought of bright sunlight on the sea, a cooling breeze on his face as he steered the banca over crystal green water. He thought of JoJo standing up at the bow, agile and complete.

  And as the light faded, he saw JoJo peering down at the water where the fish were feeding, then almost jumping back in fright, the shock on JoJo’s face.

  And again the question, now the very last thought that ever passed through Rasul’s mind:

  What did JoJo see?

  What?

  Harvest Day

  –10

  One

  In the cool darkness before a Sunday morning dawn, Marivic Valencia stood beside the coastal road that ran beside Leyte Gulf and waited for the Manila-bound bus that would carry her away from her family. She was eighteen years old, slim and pretty and demure, with long black hair bound in a ponytail behind her head. She used no makeup. She wore denim jeans and a loose T-shirt.

  A large duffel, stuffed full, sat in the gravel beside the road. Marivic had never been more than an hour away from home; now she was beginning a journey that would take her to a job thousands of miles away, and she didn’t expect to return for at least a year.

  Her family huddled around her. Lorna, her mother, held her tight. The five little ones, arrayed from fourteen to two years old, clung to her. They attached themselves wherever they could find a handhold: one at each elbow, one at a shoulder, the two smallest wrapping their arms around her legs. Her twin brother, Ronnie, stood a couple of steps away, looking perplexed and helpless.

  She and Ronnie had always been close. Each understood the other like nobody else. They hardly needed words. Marivic met his eyes and shot him a smile that was supposed to say It’ll be all right, and Ronnie nodded and smiled back weakly.

  Now others were appearing, aunts and uncles and cousins wandering over from the small village across the road where she had grown up, the place called San Felipe. They gathered around Marivic and her family, murmuring low, sad words. Marivic felt dampness at her cheek: her mother was weeping. A couple of aunties began to sob too.

  Marivic wished the bus would hurry and get there. She wasn’t eager to leave, but she wanted this to end. It felt too much like a funeral, and it was all too familiar.

  Departures were a way of life for San Felipe, as for all other small towns and villages in the rural Philippines. People left all the time. They left to find work, to make money. Some headed for Manila. Others, more adventurous and more fortunate, were hired for jobs abroad. At least a dozen of the sons and daughters of the village worked overseas, sending home remittances that sustained their families. Marivic’s father had been one of those. The duffel was his old sea bag.

  Until his sudden death two years earlier, he had been a seaman, a chief mate who spent nearly a year at a time on a Norwegian freighter, returning home for only a few weeks before going out to sea again. Each time he left, the family had gathered here beside the road, just like now, weeping and clinging as they waited for the northbound bus.

  Marivic could remember each of those departures. Until this moment, she had never realized what an ordeal it must have been for him.

  Now twin lights appeared down the road, growing bigger and brighter. A breeze from the south carried up the
rumble of a diesel engine. “Here it is,” somebody said, and Lorna wailed.

  The bus loomed up, slowed, and chuffed to a stop. The door swung open, and the crowd parted and made a path for Marivic to the open door and the steps beyond. But Marivic couldn’t move. Lorna had tightened her embrace, and the little ones were clinging even harder.

  The driver ended it. “We have a long way to go,” he said, in a tone that was stern but not unkind.

  Lorna squeezed her once more, kissed her, released her. Marivic kissed each of the younger children, then Ronnie. She picked up the duffel. Her ten-year-old brother, Ernie, was carrying a string sack with bananas and snacks for the long trip ahead. He held it up to her; she took it and climbed up, and the driver shut the door behind her.

  She walked about halfway down the aisle, lifted the duffel onto a rack overhead, and dropped down into an open seat. The engine rumbled, the bus pulled away. Marivic got just a glimpse out the window of her family and the others, and then they slid out of view.

  She was on her way.

  As the bus rolled up the coastal road, with dawn lifting over the gulf to the east, Marivic felt lonely, excited, scared—and very lucky. Manila was just a stopover. After a couple of weeks of processing her passport and paperwork, she was headed abroad to help care for the children of a wealthy Arab family in Dubai. She would be paid the equivalent of eight hundred dollars a month, plus room and board. The Philippines had millions of unemployed college graduates who gladly would have left home and family to earn that kind of money, doing even the most menial labor.

  And Marivic didn’t even have a high school diploma. After their father died, she and Ronnie had left school and gone to work. Ronnie harvested copra from coconut trees on the steep mountainside behind the village. Marivic got a job as a waitress at a roadside restaurant near the village. Long hours, hard work, and awful pay didn’t add up to much: in the past year, she had earned the peso equivalent of $750. Now she would be making more than that every month, and sending most of it home to support her family.