The Devil’s Sentry Box
by Bev Jafek
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
“Something even stranger,” whispered the sergeant. “I saw it with my own eyes, yet I do not understand it.”
The general gasped in horrified delight and placed his arm around the sergeant’s shoulder. “Continue, continue!” he whispered. “Report every day. We will get to the bottom of it in time, my Christian soldier!”
Sergeant Gonzalez straightened up and looked firmly into the general’s eyes. “I will fathom it. Leave this weird business to me!” The sergeant walked swiftly away, leaving the general to stand alone, purring in pleasure, his eyes as round as a child’s.
Shortly after midnight, Sergeant Gonzalez was again at his post in the dark corner, watching the soldier who had just entered the sentry box for the nightwatch. He strained to notice every detail about the man and his surroundings to discern any possible clue as to what had befallen the last sentry. He considered what he knew about this particular sentry. He was a young recruit from a northern Spanish fishing village who drew pictures of wildlife in his spare time. He considered the man to be unusually sensitive and thoughtful for a soldier; as was true, he noted with interest, of the previous night sentry. They were men who took no pleasure in killing Indians and seemed to be of a more empathetic and philosophical cast, like himself. What relationship, if any, did sensitivity and thoughtfulness have to what was happening? He lay in the dark, watching and waiting for the incomprehensible to unfold.
Again, the night was very cold toward the end of the watch, and the sentry became loud and agitated. The sergeant was instantly on his feet and began to move closer to the man. The sentry shouted, threw his rifle on the ground and began tearing at his clothes. His face and chest were contorted and covered with tears and sweat, and quickly he was dressed in nothing more than his boots.
Terrified, the sergeant drew closer, but the sentry only ran past him out of the passageway. In a flash, the sergeant was inside the sentry box. He ran his hands over the stone walls while looking avidly out to sea. Nothing, there is nothing! he thought, only the moon and the sea. He turned and ran after the sentry, at last stopping at the top of Calle del Cristo, seeing only a bit of the man’s nakedness embraced by the dark city. He walked back to the sentry’s post and looked out to sea. Confound it! he thought. It had escaped him again. In consternation, he remained as long as possible looking out to sea, attempting to comprehend what had vanished and involuntarily said aloud, “Come to me, Lucifer, if it is you.”
It was nearing 4:00 a.m., however, and he returned to his bed. He must make every effort to avoid the general the following day, he decided, since the man would probably stalk him. An extraordinary and perhaps unearthly mystery, his adventure would require all the nights and efforts he could give it. The story of the vanished sentry was all over the fort by the time the sergeant rose from his bed, and he saw General Tejadillo lumbering everywhere, trying to find him; his huge round face a pink globe glowing with excitement. Sergeant Gonzalez decided to disappear down Calle del Cristo himself to avoid the general.
At midnight, however, he was back at his post in the passageway behind the sentry box, staring intently at the new sentry. This recruit, he knew, wrote poetry and frequent love letters to women and also seemed to possess distaste for the Spanish army’s extermination of the Taino Indians. Though exhausted, Gonzalez sat on the ground and watched the young man assiduously.
Sometime in the middle of the watch, the soldier uttered a sharp cry and seemed to disappear into the sentry box while a shadowy, unknown thing, alive, sidled across its floor. Sergeant Gonzalez froze in terror, every nerve blazing to the eerie new development. At last! he thought, and then all rational thought left him: Into the moonlight stepped a peacock, fanning its brilliant blue and green tail as it slowly moved toward Sergeant Gonzalez. “Mother of God!” the sergeant cried, too weak from shock even to stand. The peacock continued its unhurried, undulating step; its huge tail displaying a perfectly iridescent emerald, gold and midnight blue sheen in the moonlight: the tail’s pattern of many vividly colored circles became mobile eyes that seemed to both fluctuate and peer at the sergeant, as though a many-eyed supernatural being was slowly discerning his presence.
Majestically, the bird passed him and disappeared down the passageway. The sergeant was too overcome with shock to follow it, but he looked down the passageway and saw the bird rising in low flight over the dunes and then sailing down to the ocean, where it languidly strutted along the surf and eventually disappeared.
The sergeant continued to gasp for breath in his dark corner. He had never felt such a combination of shock and misery. What on earth would he tell the general? That his sentry had turned into a peacock? God forbid! Was he losing his mind? God forbid! It had happened right before his eyes. He rose and staggered out of the passageway; finally reaching his bed, where he instantly lost consciousness from fright and exhaustion.
He awoke to the general’s plump, pink face bending over him, his immense military hat giving him what to the sergeant looked like a ram’s side horns, and for a moment he thought Lucifer had finally come. “I could hardly sleep when I heard another sentry had disappeared,” said General Tejadillo and virtually beamed with delight. “And you, my fine soldier, have the key to the mystery. Quick, quick, come back to my office and tell me everything, every little bit, every detail. I will wait for you.” The general left his bedraggled sergeant to rise, perform his ablutions, and try to concoct a story that would be true and yet, God forbid! pure fiction as well.
As Gonzalez entered the general’s office, his body was as limp and pathetic as a rag doll. The general smiled up at him and whispered, “At last!” in near-ecstasy. As he continued to look up in florid expectation, Gonzalez decided upon a partial truth.
“Each night...” he began miserably, “toward the end of the watch... the sentry has shown incomprehensible emotion, something like horror, thrown his weapon down, and even torn his clothes off. In truth, I have never seen men in such a state before. Then, naked, they run down Calle del Cristo. That is exactly what I have seen, and I can draw no conclusions from it.
The general’s hard, rapacious eyes darted from side to side like an excited reptile before its meal, and he silently twisted his beard. “Were they dreaming?” he finally asked. “Nightmares?”
“They could run! They were awake.”
“But they felt horror... like nightmares. The devil can give us visions, whether we are awake or asleep.”
“True, but how then can we know? I was instantaneously inside the sentry box where it started. I saw what was out the window, and there was nothing unusual. Nothing!”
“Hmmmm... nothing” pondered the general, “nothing... hmmm.” He had pursed his forehead and lips and twisted his beard into a knot, making him look like a desiccated apple. “What can be more complex than... nothing?”
“Nothing!” said Gonzalez in relief: the general could obviously make no more sense of it than he. “It is a terrible, an immense mystery. I sense it has intimately to do with the sentry chosen for the watch. Sensitivity renders them more vulnerable to the effect, whatever its cause. I must have more nights to watch them...” Then, seeing a possible advantage, he continued, “If I could cease reporting every day, if I could watch the sentries until I am completely certain...”
The general’s eyebrows shot up. “Incommunicado!” he whispered in excitement. “Yes, yes! We will do that! I will pass you every day and look deeply into your eyes, but you will say nothing until it is clear. Yes.” His face was full of plump, pink animation again.
Gonzalez saluted fervently and marched out of the office while he was ahead, relief inundating him. He was now rid of the general until he had the truth. He went back to his cot and, in an orgiastic combination of fear, misery, and relief, lost consciousness.
When he awoke, the air was growing cold again, and the moon shone orange in the black sky overhead. He had missed dinner, but that was of no consequence, he thought. Immediately, he went to his post in the dark corner of the sentry’s corridor.
The sentry, he noted, was very young, no more than a boy, really, and often played music on a crude peasant’s pipe that had always charmed Gonzalez. Instantly, he realized that the boy was like the others and hence at greater risk. But greater risk of what? That was the quandary.
As he relaxed in the corner, he felt hungry, almost famished — an advantage, he decided, in sharpening his perceptions. The reverse was true, however, and he fell asleep at his post for the first time. He was awakened by the sentry himself. The boy was making loud noises, crying out, and Gonzalez saw the now-familiar sight of a sentry throwing his weapon out the window and tearing at his clothes. Again, the boy seemed to fall into the center of the sentry box and was replaced by a strange, moving shadow.
Gonzalez rose and moved down the passageway toward the shadow. It was now moving at a distinct, rhythmic pace, and Gonzalez was horrified all the while he advanced. “Mary, Mother of God,” he whispered uncontrollably.
With the same rhythmic motion, familiar as moving water, a golden-eyed tiger extended its immense head and forepaws out of the sentry box and then lifted its massive body into the corridor. In the moonlight, its fur was luminously white but for the perfectly symmetrical markings that moved to the deep, rhythmic growl the creature uttered. Sergeant Gonzalez was frozen to the wall as the tiger approached him. “Mother of God, protect me!” he whispered.
The beast’s fur, like the peacock’s plumage, displayed a subtly brilliant flux, the symmetrical stripes seeming to glide over the huge muscles of the cat as it moved, while its eyes were a greenish-gold splash of ferocity in the moonlight. Altogether, a fluid icon, an unknown picture, was implicit in the magnificent form as it moved, a truth he could not possibly read. The cat paced languorously as had the peacock, as though sensually aware of its own body, and at last disappeared down the corridor. The sergeant was full of piercing emotion as the creature vanished, only to cry out as the powerful thing jumped effortlessly over the sandy shoulder at the top of the corridor and ran toward the ocean. It stopped beside the tide and looked out to sea, as though the dark possessed some voluptuous message, then paced along the surf until it disappeared.
Sergeant Gonzalez fainted into the passageway and was found by the morning sentry. His comrades carried him back to his cot, and the inevitable morning rumors of satanic influence circulated throughout the fort. This nightly repetition of a disappearing sentry would now have been cause for alarm among the soldiers, but many of them believed the sentries had been defecting all along. Others thought the devil could not possibly be worse than soldiering in the New World. For the rest, the rumors were more tantalizing than frightening.
Copyright © 2019 by Bev Jafek
