The Solomon Curse

Sam sat forward. “I’m sorry. Did you say ‘giants’?”

Tom nodded. “That’s right. Plenty of them in the mountains. Best to stay away and mind your own business. Stay in Honiara. Enjoy yourself. Be safe.”

“You’re saying there are giants here?” Sam asked again, his tone skeptical.

Tom grunted again. “Been here forever. And then some.”

“As in ‘big people’?” Remi clarified, surprised by the unusual turn the conversation had taken.

“Not people. Giants. Huge. They live in the caves and eat people. People aren’t their friend. Most country people know about them. They see them all the time.”

“This is a legend, right?”

“Call it what you want, I’m just warning you so you don’t get into trouble. You friends with Orwen. Wouldn’t do to be eaten by giants.”

Sam chuckled. “You honestly believe in giants?”

“Hell, boy, I seen ’em. Plenty of ’em, in my time. Over twice as tall as you, covered in hair. Meaner than that crocodile that ate your mate.” Tom spat again and then seemed to lose interest in the conversation. Sam and Remi tried to get something more out of him, but, while polite, he answered their questions with cryptic comments and generalities.

“Is there anything else we should know about besides giants?” Sam asked with a good-natured smile.

“Laugh all you want, but there’s strange things going on. People are disappearing. Getting sick for no reason. Up in the hills, there are areas nobody will go because they’re poison. The island’s changing and giants are only one of the dangers. Never seen nothing like it before, and I know enough to understand none of it’s good.”

“Is that what people think about the bay, too? That it’s poison? Cursed?” Remi asked softly.

“I don’t know nothing about no bay.”

“What about stories from the old days. Anything about lost cities?”

Tom petted his skink and shook his head. “You talking nonsense now?”

“No, I just thought I’d heard something about a lost kingdom.”

“That’s a new one on me,” Tom said, but his tone sounded guarded.

After a few more minutes of stonewalling, Tom a

Sam started the engine and turned to Remi. “Can you believe that?”

“What, the giants or not knowing about the bay?”

“Both. I watched his eyes. He knows more than he’s letting on. I think the giants were just to distract us.”

“It worked. It’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard. But he described them with a straight face.”

“I’m getting the sense that the national pastime here is BS’ing the tourists. There’s no such thing as giants.”

“I know, but he was awfully convincing about there being danger around every turn and people disappearing. What do you make of that?”

“I honestly have no idea. But what I do know is that it tells us nothing about the bay or why it’s cursed. More like he was trying to scare us away from asking any more questions.”

A rumble of thunder sounded from the west and their eyes met. “Not again,” Remi said.

“You up for another old-timer? Maybe he’s friendlier than Tom.”

“If it’s pouring down rain, it could get awfully messy on a muddy road.”

“I say we go for it.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Remi fluttered a hand. “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Fifteen minutes later, the blue sky turned to roiling anthracite and dark clouds pummeled the island with driving rain. The potholes made a terrible road even slower going, and when they ran out of pavement, it quickly became obvious that their willingness to forge ahead was no substitute for a su

The rain didn’t let up, and the trip back to the hotel took twice as long. When they finally reached the hotel lot, they exhaled in relief as they parked. Dripping, they entered the lobby, and the front desk clerk beckoned to them. Remi went to see what she wanted while Sam continued to the room. There were two messages: one from Leonid, saying he’d had his first classroom lesson and would be doing a shallow dive in the afternoon, and the second from Manchester, inviting them to di

“You want to go?” Sam asked when she made it back to the room.

“Sure. Why not? We can see what he thinks about the giants.”

“I know what I think about them. Boogeyman stories to scare children.”

“Probably. But you have to admit the whole discussion with Tom was unsettling. He really sounded like he believed that stuff.”

“He’s at an age where he might not be able to tell the difference between reality and hallucinations, Remi. What did you make him as? Eighty? Older?”

“Hard to tell, but he seemed pretty sharp to me.”

They met Manchester at another seaside restaurant, this one a little tonier than the prior night’s. A glance at the empties on the table and the bottle in his hand showed that the big man was already through his second beer when they arrived. He motioned them over with his ever-present smirk.

“Sorry the weather didn’t cooperate today. Should be fine tomorrow,” he said as though he was personally responsible for the storm.

“No problem. We got to see one of the two fellows you directed us to,” Remi said.

“Oh, good. Which one?”

“Tom.”

“He’s a character, isn’t he? Did you get anything useful out of him?” Manchester asked, draining his bottle.

“Just a shaggy-dog story about giants.”

“Ah, yes, the giants. A local tradition. Everyone knows someone who’s seen them, but when you start trying to nail the story down, it gets slipperier than a greased eel.”

“Tom said he’s seen them.”

“Of course he has. I mean, I’m sure he’s seen something he thought was a giant. A shadow in the rain forest. An unexplained blur. He doesn’t mean any harm. But did he know anything about your bay or the sunken ruins?”

Sam shook his head. “Regrettably, no. All he did was talk about people disappearing because of ca

Manchester signaled to the waiter for two beers and then raised an eyebrow at Remi. “And what would you like?”

“I’ll stick with water. The heat dehydrates me.”

Manchester called the waiter over to relay Remi’s request and then settled back in his chair. “So ca

When the waiter arrived with the drinks, Manchester ordered a seafood feast for them all that could feed ten people. They took their time eating as Manchester plowed through helping after helping with the commitment of a bulldog. When they finished, Sam turned the conversation to the gold mine.

“You mentioned the mine last night. How long has it been in operation?”

“On and off for a dozen years. Up until recently, it hasn’t done anything—ever since what we call the social unrest happened.”

“I never associated Guadalcanal with gold, for some reason.”

“Most Americans don’t. The only reason they’ve heard of the island is because of the big offensive against the Japanese in World War Two. But gold has been one of our defining characteristics—it’s how the Solomon Islands got their name.”

“Really?” Sam said.

“Yes. When the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century, they found gold at the mouth of the Mataniko River. Their leader, an explorer named Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira, came to the unusual conclusion that this was one of the areas that the biblical King Solomon must have gotten some of his legendary gold from and named us after him. Let’s just say for an explorer, his sense of geography might have been a little off.”