Preview

Six of us decided to go, me and Billy, the third officer and three other guys.

The rest wanted to go to Bali by boat. I didn’t like that Constellation plane very much, but to be honest, it was a good flight and to see the archipelago from the sky was fantastic. The service on board from those small, slender, light brown stewardesses in colourful uniforms was perfect, and the food delicious but spicy – those stewardesses were too. You might not know it, but the Indonesian people smoke a funny kind of cigarettes with powdered cloves in the tobacco. It smells strong and sweet, but you get used to it, krekketek I believe they call it. The plane was practically imbued with the scent of it. We landed at an airport called Maumere, which was way east on the island, but it gave us a chance to see something of Flores too; there’s a lot to see there. We went to a crater called Kelimutu; I remember because I saved all the tickets. You won’t believe it, but there were lakes in the mountains with water of different colours, red, blue, and green.

Of course, daredevil Billy wanted to dive in one of them because there was a sign strictly forbidding it. We also made a hike through the rainforest and over cliffs to reach a village called Wae Reboribo, I think. It is a traditional village with teepees built from reed. Only Manggarai are living there, very interesting. But our destination was Lenteng, way west of the island, where a boat was waiting to take us to Gili Motang and those pre-historic dragons. The boat was more a sort of large canoe, with a roof but open on all sides. Attachments were sticking out on port and starboard to stabilise the thing during rough seas. We were sitting on wooden benches; the diesel engine smoked and smelled like hell. I don’t remember exactly how long the boat trip took us but sitting on those damned wooden benches, well, it was long enough. The water there is crystal clear, and we could see all sorts of fish. It was just the six of us in the boat that could hold two dozen, but it was booked for us in my name by that guide. Anyway, it was only forty bucks for all of us.

We soon approached what looked like a giant cone-shaped green mountain sticking out from the ocean. Gili Motang is only some twenty miles in all and uninhabited. We landed at a coral sand beach. The boat stayed out, so we had to wade knee-deep through the water with rolled-up trousers and shoes in our hands. To be honest, my heart was beating in my throat, and we looked over our shoulder at the boat, thinking, stay close, buddy.

Bart paused, rubbing the back of his hand across his mouth to remove spittle. He looked at the sky where a few clouds were assembling, threatening to cover the sun.

“Then what?” Harry asked, in his mind walking through the cool water to the beach.

“Nothing”, Bart responded.

“What do you mean nothing? They don’t exist, those monsters?” There was disappointment in Harry’s voice.

“Oh yes, they do; you better believe it. But they’re not exactly welcoming you at the beach to their island. Nor do you look for them with a bag of peanuts like you would for monkeys in a zoo.

The boat driver shouted at us, ‘Tuan, perhatikan! Hewan-hewan itubarrabarra’ or something, – that is Indonesian, it means Sir, watch it! Those animals are very dangerous.” He stared at his hands as if the warning in that strange language still reverberated in his memory.

“But we were there to see Kimono dragons”, he continued, “so we were going to see them. On the far side of the beach, the vegetation starts right away with dense shrubs and tall trees, and paths that are six feet wide are meandering through it to higher elevations. We decided to follow the path.

The light hardly penetrated through the foliage closing in high above our heads. Then, finally, we reached an open spot, but still no dragons, at least that’s what we thought. There were only a few large grey rocks the size of a bus. Then suddenly, one of the rocks turned its ugly head in our direction. A huge forked tongue, like that of a serpent, flashed in and out of its closed jaws as if tasting our fear.  Suddenly the monster opened his enormous maw and produced a blood-curdling hissing sound like the steam of a locomotive while staring at us with tiny hypnotic snake eyes. Its mammoth head resembled that of a dinosaur crocodile but much uglier. ‘Holy shit’, whispered someone in alarm. We wanted to run, should have too, but we stood our ground as if our feet had grown roots. Thick green phlegm was slowly seeping from its jaws. It was the scariest thing alive I had ever seen.”

Harry did not move. He seemed to be frozen stiff, as if he himself was hypnotized by the monster. Both of his hands were firmly gripping the bench seat. Perplexed, he drank in every word of the man beside him who had stared death in the eyes.

 “Then we noticed that the monsters didn’t move; they were actually rather uninterested in us. After having stuck out his devilish forked tongue and hissed once, the dragon lowered his monstrous head again and didn’t move anymore. ‘Shit, that was scary’, said somebody, ‘my God, what a horrible beast, just like from pre-historic times. What would they eat? The island is tiny.’  ‘Maybe each other’, the third officer said, ‘or their own young, as I was told they do, in the village you come from.’ Everybody laughed, and the panic was gone.