The Jekyll Revelation

by Robert Masello

England Dear Henley— What I must tell you now, I tell you with dread. It has happened again. What we thought—what

I have been the unwitting agent of its malevolence. To you alone, my oldest friend—you who know so much of the story and played such a brave

night, as I sat on my verandah, lighting a pipe and contemplating the face of the full moon—sometimes, Henley, it hangs so close to this mountaintop, it is like having a silver pocket watch dangling in front of my eyes—I saw a flicker of light emerging from the jungle and making straight for the house. For a moment, I thought it might finally be one of the aitus—evil spirits—that the natives believe haunt the tangled slopes of Mount Vaea, but then it resolved itself into the burning

and dig the well. He arrived panting at the foot of the porch—his bare brown legs are crisscrossed with so many tattoos that they look as if he wears lace breeches. ‘Keep your voice down!’ I warned. ‘The house is asleep.’ ‘Come quick,’ he repeated, though in a lower tone. ‘And bring gun.’ ‘Why?’ Pausing to catch

of the stain on the drooping folds of the pareu wrapped around his waist. In the moonlight, it had at first appeared to be dirt

inside and up to the eyrie in which I write. As you know from previous letters, the house has no doors, the better to let the trade winds play through its many rooms, but the servants sleep willy-nilly on the floor, wherever they choose to throw down their grass mats, and so I had to tread lightly, and with