Potlendh Page 3

  “Look! It’s not a bird! It’s a plane!” Tony lost his temper at this moment, and he was not in a very happy mood. He did not know that the old man was testing him, or he might have talked differently. “We got lost in a cloud. The engines aren’t working right. We probably need more fuel. And, we are stranded out here on this—this—stupid Island with a crazy person!”

  The old man changed his appearance slightly, and his voice took on a more serious tone. “People are never stranded, Mr. Tony. They only feel that way because they want to be, or when they have forgotten that there are other people around that can help them.”

  Tony looked very surprised. “You’ve been fooling us.”

  “Oh, no. I never fool anyone. I generally appear as what people expect me to appear. It is a shame that you do not exercise that same ability. Or, is it that you want people to see you as the cranky, angry person that you are showing me now?”

  Tony exhaled deeply. “I’m sorry. It’s just that we were avoiding a super typhoon, and we need to get to the Philippines. I’m responsible for these two children, and I want to take them to safety. That typhoon out there could be coming this way, for all I know.”

  “Oh, the children are quite safe here. And, don’t worry. The typhoon is not coming this way. I can assure you of that.”

  Tony sounded incredulous. “Really? How? You have no radar, no radio—” at this he looked up into the sky—“and you can’t see anything but clouds. How do you know there’s no storm coming?”

  “Because I know where I am and where the storm is.”

  “And, if you don’t mind me asking, just where in the world are we?”

  “Here,” the old man answered enigmatically. “Right here.” And he tapped the ground with his gnarled staff.

  “Well, thank you,” Tony responded unhappily. “And, I’m sorry, but that doesn’t mean that I am very happy at the moment knowing that.”

  “I have a proposition for you, Mr. Tony. Why don’t you get back into this seaplane of yours and fly to the east. There you will find a proper airport. Fill your bird up with all of the fuel you will need and come back here.”

  “If I’m going anywhere, I’m taking the kids with me,” Tony declared defiantly.

  The old man looked at the seaplane very critically. “The journey is not a long one, Mr. Tony. But you will have to fly with as little weight as possible. It is best that you leave the children with me. Don’t worry. I’ll take very good care of them.”

  “No way.”

  “You have little choice. If you try to fly out of here and to the Philippines while carrying these children and their baggage, you will not make it. You and the children will die, Mr. Tony. By yourself, you have a very good chance.” He started to turn towards the lone building.

  “Please, Tony,” Karen interjected. “We’ll be all right. I mean, except for Mr. Who, this place might be deserted for all we know. And this old man really seems rather harmless.”

  “The sooner you leave, Mr. Tony, the sooner you will be back,” the old man stated over his shoulder and continued his slow saunter towards the building.

  “I don’t like the idea of leaving you two alone for a second. What if I can’t get back? What would your father say? No, no. It’s out of the question.”

  “You will get back to us,” Karen assured him. “I believe in you.”

  “Me, too, Tony,” Carl chimed in. “Besides, I think I could take the old man if he tries anything. He looks about as dried up as anything I’ve ever seen. I bet I could blow him away with one breath.”

  “With your breath, you could blow anyone away,” Karen muttered under her own breath.

  “Don’t let appearances fool you, Carl,” Tony advised the young boy. “As much as I don’t like this, I guess I’ll have to leave you two behind.

  “Oh, this is crazy talk. What am I thinking? I’m not going with you, and that’s that!”

  Tony and the children looked at each other. Then they looked out at the ocean. They gazed at the mountain in the far distance, fenced off by lower mountains covered with a forest or jungle growth. Finally, they looked at the dilapidated building into which the old man had disappeared.

  “I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Tony finally acquiesced. “Hopefully, Manila or Mindanao will only be a few hours away.”

  After they offloaded the twins’ bags, along with any unnecessary equipment, which consisted mostly of oceanographic odds and ends, Tony climbed back into the cockpit. The twins watched him wave a sad farewell, taxi the seaplane to the far end of the runway, gather speed, and slowly climb back into the air. It quickly shrank to a mere speck before completely disappearing. For the longest while, they looked on with mixed feelings of apprehension and with deepening resignation, knowing that they had no choice but to stay and wait for Tony’s return.

  Hopefully, it would not be long.

  “Bring your bags inside, children,” the old man called to them from the building. “You might be here a while. I made some cold lemonade, if you’re interested.

  Grudgingly, they picked up their suitcases and slowly crossed the dry, packed, lifeless earth towards the dilapidated building. The adventure they had anticipated with the onset of the super typhoon dissipated with each passing second. Marooned on an uncharted Island in the middle of God-knows-where, their spirits fell to a new low.

  Once inside the building, however, the children were amazed at how cool the temperature felt. They had not noticed how warm the sun had been outside, despite the total cloud cover, or how much they had been sweating. They also realized that the insides of the building, which appeared rather small from the outside, seemed much bigger than they should have been. Carl was tempted to go back outside, take some rudimentary measurements, and then compare them with measurements of the inside. There were only a few articles of furniture: a sagging and rickety table and four chairs that looked like they would instantly turn to dust just by looking at them.

  Maybe that was why the room seemed large, Carl reasoned as he carelessly dropped his suitcase near the door. A detailed relief map of the Island hanging on the far wall caught his attention (and interest). Not only did it hang on one wall, it completely covered the wall from corner to corner. Not only was it quite large and colorful, it looked as though it had been painted yesterday—or even today, for that matter.

  Karen set her suitcase gingerly beside that of her brother’s and carefully approached the table. She did not want to sit down on one the chairs, for she feared she would easily break it. The glass of lemonade she sipped, expecting it to taste bad or worse, being drugged, was actually quite delicious, and before she knew it, she had drained the whole glass.

  “I didn’t realize I was thirsty.”

  “Everyone gets thirsty,” Mr. Who commented wryly. “The trick is satisfying that thirst.”

  “Can we go into the village?” she asked the old man who looked at them curiously if not kindly.

  Who clucked his tongue as he slowly raised his eyes toward the ceiling. “I’m not sure that would be a good idea.”

  “Why?” Carl asked, standing before the map, intently looking at its features. He was not completely sure, but there were times when he thought the map changed even as he peered at it.

  “Many visitors go to the village,” Mr. Who answered. “No one comes back.”

  “Huh?” Carl turned towards the old man, his interest now heightened in a different direction.

  “Is there something bad in the village?” Karen asked with growing fear.

  “Oh, no,” Mr. Who assured them. “That might be the problem. Everything in the village is very nice. When visitors go into the village, they do not want to leave. And that, my children, is very bad.”

  “Well, what’s in the village?” Carl pressed.

  Mr. Who sighed. “Well, for you, young man, there are video games of all kinds. I suppose you like to play sports, too. You can play baseball or basketball or whatever you like for days on end without stopping.”


  Carl’s eyes lit up when the old man said the words “video games.” “That sounds like fun!”

  “I suppose it is,” Mr. Who agreed without any enthusiasm. “But what happens to fun when you just continue to play, never stopping to eat or sleep or do something important in your life.”

  “What about for me?” Karen asked eagerly.

  “I know that you would like to shop until you drop. There are so many young girls and women who do just that. Well, maybe they do not drop, but they don’t want to stop.”

  “We want to go.” Carl looked at his sister for her confirmation.

  “Yes!” Karen nodded enthusiastically. “It’s better than waiting here for—who knows how long. Tony might take forever to get back here.” Fear crossed her mind. “Maybe he won’t be able to find this place again.” She looked at her brother for support, but the same fear had crossed his mind, too. “Anyway, I’m bored. We’ve been stuck in the middle of the ocean for months, and I don’t want to be stuck on this Island in a rickety old shack waiting for Tony to come back with nothing to do in the meantime.”

  Again the old man sighed. “I cannot stop you, children. But it is against my advice if you go there. I may never see you again. Worse, your pilot friend may never see you again. You may never get back to your home and see your father again.”

  The look of determination on the faces of the children told him that he was not going to convince them otherwise. The children had already made up their minds. Thus, reluctantly, he escorted them outside and pointed out the direct path to the village.

  The path was well marked, expertly paved with stones that made it look as if it had been laid recently. Or, at least, it was well maintained. Unlike the surroundings, it actually looked rather inviting—safe, if you will.

  “You must promise me something,” he said as parting words. “If you do return from the village, you must promise me that you will come straight back here to this building. This building is the only safe place I know of. I cannot say the same about the rest of the Island.”

  “What do you mean ‘if’ we come back?” Carl demanded. “I thought you said there was nothing dangerous about the village.”

  “Did I? Dangerous? Oh, I don’t think so. But then, no one has ever come back to tell me if there is. Still, I have not heard anyone getting hurt by going there.”

  “Come on, Carl.” Karen pulled on his arm. “Talking to him is like talking to a crazy man. You won’t get any answers, just more riddles.”

  “Just remember this: do not go exploring this Island on your own. Come right back here.”

  “Why? Are there monsters out here as well?” Carl queried, almost mockingly.

  “Monsters? Monsters are figments of the mind, Carl. There are greater dangers on this Island than mere monsters.” Mr. Who turned to go back into the building. With a wave he added over his shoulder, “Well, since your minds are made up, good luck.”

  “We’ll be back,” Carl called back, but Mr. Who did not seem to acknowledge him.

  “Come on,” Karen insisted. “I want to get there. I don’t want to waste another second on Who, this Island, or even you.”

  “But, what if there are monsters?” Carl protested.

  Karen put her left arm around his right arm. “That’s why you got me to protect you. Right?” Thus, arm-in-arm, the twins walked down the well-marked path towards the village. But I must tell you that if they started out in confidence, it had begun to wane the further they distanced themselves from the lone building and Mr. Who.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE VILLAGE

  The path to the village was not only direct but also easy to follow. From the distance, the buildings of the village did not look much better than the lone building next to the runway. Being made of wood, they looked bleached brown or tan in color, although there were signs that some maintenance was routinely done to keep them from falling down completely. Most unnerving, the twins noticed an absence of sound, except for the distant waves gently breaking on the beach and the wind occasionally moving the leaves and branches of the sparsely planted nearby trees. Normally, the closer you get to habitation, there is a cacophony of sounds generated by people, something I like to call noise. But they could hear virtually nothing that confirmed life: no voices of people, especially children playing, no rattling of pots and pans, no engine noise of cars, or the clip-clop of hooves. It was dead, like what we usually think a cemetery is like. If you want to know the truth, the children felt this to be very eerie

  A friend of mine once tried to explain to me that evil always looks very nice, beautiful even. This is very hard to imagine at first, because when I was growing up, you could always tell who the bad guy was. He wore a black hat, and if he was an unattractive person—ugly would be too cruel to write—kind of rough-looking, unshaven, a few scars on his face, large and menacing in size—then his taste in clothing was terrible: dirty, torn, dark colors, and the like.

  In contrast, the good guy always wore a white hat. He was handsome for the ladies and appealing as a man’s man for the men. He was educated, spoke nice, ever so polite, and not afraid to fight the bad guy to protect the innocent and the weak.

  Nowadays, in the movies and on television, monsters are shown to be quite ugly. Demons are black and disfigured. Rarely are monsters even cute, like in cartoons. Bad guys dress nice, but they have terrible attitudes, and they love to do bad things, especially to people. They like people to suffer—no, they enjoy watching people suffer. And, bad deeds are always cloaked in secret and darkness, as if they are allergic to light. They have fearful weapons and are always bullying people and forcing their evil desires upon them, making the latter suffer and despair.

  The good guy wears a bright suit or costume, identifying himself as different from both the bad guy and the normal citizen. He can counter any evil with his weapons of love and sacrifice. And, he never asks anything from the people he has sworn to protect.

  My friend argued that if the “dark side” is really so ugly, then why would anyone be attracted to it. I mean, have you ever met someone who decided to be evil and ugly and dark because it was cool? Thus, my friend insisted, evil must be attractive to appeal to people who, after having become addicted to evil, surrender their souls to darkness, ugliness, and just plain being bad.

  Why do I mention my friend? Well, as the children looked around the village, there was nothing about the buildings’ appearances that attracted them, and there was nothing that caused them to pause to think about immediately returning to Mr. Who either. The street was well paved and maintained. A small water fountain crowned the village square, and its trickling water actually sounded melodic and comforting. I suppose the fountain overcame the children’s apprehension of the village, so that the exterior of the buildings became more like an invitation to solve the mysteries of their interiors. More and more the twins looked upon the village as their first adventure with the possible reward of discovering something new and having fun at the same time. Even the absence of seeing a single person no longer bothered them.

  “Where should we try first?” Carl asked, breaking the long silence that started when they took their first steps down the path. He was thinking that the video game rooms had to be inside one of the buildings somewhere.

  Karen pointed at a building (which were all connected, by the way; separate doors left an impression that there were many buildings) in front of her. “That seems to be the biggest. Let’s try that one.” She was imagining huge clothing stores just waiting for her behind the outer walls.

  If the exterior of the village was nondescript, the children were in for a pleasant shock when they passed though two huge doors that swung open easily to admit them. It was like they had stepped out of a typical Old West frontier town (sans cowboys, horses, and cattle) and into a modern mall city. There was color everywhere: vivid colors of every hue. Everything was quite modern. They saw all kinds of amusements inside, everything and anything that could excite a ch
ild’s imagination to giving delight to an adult. Noise pounded their ears: people enjoying themselves, music blaring competitively with different popular songs, bells and whizzes from a multitude of amusement stands that appealed to both young and old alike. Then there were the aromas: exotic and familiar fast food treats, that “new” scent that comes with new clothes or a car, perfumes and colognes permeating throughout the mall from vendors and store fronts, and so much more.

  “Now, this is more like it,” Carl exclaimed in awe as he tilted his head back to view the tallest Ferris wheel either of them had ever seen. It must have stood five stories tall. Almost every seat was filled with happy people of all ages. The only turnoff was the long line of people waiting their turn; they must wait for hours for only a few moments of thrill.

  “So, should we split up and meet later?” Karen suggested.

  It was at this moment that I believe Carl had a panic attack.

  “I don’t think we should separate.”

  “But I want to go shopping, and you hate shopping.”

  “I’m just afraid we’ll never see each other again.”

  “That’s silly. Besides, you like spending hours and hours playing video games, and I hate waiting for you, being bored with nothing to do but watch.”

  “But what if we never get back together again?” Carl pressed.

  “What?” Karen seemed slow to understand. You cannot blame her. After being cooped up on a man-made Island and only getting to see clothes and shoes and the like through pictures on the Internet, she wanted to touch and smell and explore everything here. It was like her wildest, most fantastical dream had been finally realized.

  “This place is so huge! If we separate, I’m going to lose you.” Carl whined.

  “Don’t be such a baby!” Karen scolded. “Look, we can always meet again right here. Or, we can meet at the entrance—” She stopped thunderstruck. The large doors that had given them entrance were now barely large enough for a small child to slip through.