Dead Island

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In his full ceremonial regalia, the witch doctor was a terrifying sight. His leathery body, bedecked with rattling beads, was painted in symbolic swirls of white and red. Over his shoulders was a cape of cured crocodile skin and his long, matted hair was entwined with twists of coloured cloth. He wore bracelets and anklets made of human bones, and on the belt around his waist, resting on his stomach, was a grinning human skull.

He led the procession uphill, on a winding path through the bamboo and the lansan trees, through riotously coloured clusters of plumbago and allamanda and the red, saw-toothed lobster claw. Here in the jungle the vegetation grew quickly, and often the young men had to dart in front of the witch doctor to slash a path through the undergrowth with their machetes.

The girl the witch doctor had referred to had ropes tied round her wrists and was being dragged along by two powerful men who wore nothing but loin cloths, and whose muscular bodies were painted in the same swirling ritualistic symbols as those displayed by the witch doctor. The girl, by contrast, though her skin was dark like that of the natives around her, wore western clothes — jeans and a thin white cotton shirt. The clothes were torn and dirtied, however, and her face was bruised and bloodied. Her fingernails were ragged from clawing and scrabbling in vain at the bodies of her attackers. She was weeping and begging for mercy, arms stretched out in front of her, stumbling along in bare feet.

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