Edgar Mittelholzer - My Bones and My Flute

[humgoo]

Edgar Mittelholzer - My Bones and My Flute (Secker & Warburg, 1955; this NEL edition, 1974)

Blurb:

"Do not trouble evil lest evil trouble you", this was the warning Ralph Nevinson ignored to his peril.

The dark jungles of New Guinea hid the curse of the Dutch planter whose family were savagely slaughtered in a slave uprising centuries ago. His old manuscript was hidden away in a rusty canister, passed on from generation to generation. Ralph Nevinson was the man who, in his violation of the script, incurred the curse on himself, his family, and friend.

Together they heard the weird music of the flute. Each day it approached closer. Each time it was more urgent. Urging them to leave the safety of home and follow the mad dancing white figure, that would lead them all to their deaths …

Edgar Mittelholzer, author of the KAYWANA TRILOGY, is a powerful storyteller. No-one will forget the chilly fear of this tale, for a long time after they close this book.

British Guiana, 1930s. Twenty-something Milton Woodsley abhors being a useful member of society, so he becomes an artist. His family are embarrassed, but at least Milton finds a sympathetic ear in Ralph Nevinson, an avuncular family friend as well as owner of a timber company. One day Milton is invited by Nevinson to tag along for a steamer family trip upstream (i.e. to the jungle where the sawmill is located), the given reason being that Milton is commissioned to paint some jungle-themed pictures to be hung in the office of Nevinson's firm.

Naturally Nevinson has an ulterior motive. Turns out he's one of those nosey antiquarians (MRJ is name-checked in the story), obsessed with the region's Dutch colonial past. Inevitably, one day he bumped into a cursed manuscript, apparently written by a Dutch necromancer whose whole family had been killed during a slave rebellion. Said demonologist knew that his soul would not rest in peace unless his bones were given a proper Christian burial, so he left the manuscript before shooting himself. Clever!

Now anyone who touches the manuscript is cursed, the symptom of said curse being that the cursed person will, from time to time, hear the playing of a flute inaudible to others. The simple tune will come closer and closer day by day, until the cursed person is finally lured by the flute player to commit suicide. Nevinson has been hearing the music for some time now, and that's why he enlists Milton's help covertly (the artist type naturally knows how to fight the supernatural—he's got nothing better to do anyway).

Solution to the curse? Find the place in the dense jungle where the Dutch guy killed himself and bury his bones and flute properly. Find how? That's the predicament facing Nevinson, his snobbish and racist wife Nell, his rebellious daughter Jessie and Milton, who will be joined by doughty native servant Rayburn when they arrive at the jungle cottage to complete the cast. Locating the place aside, the demons the Dutch guy used to deal with seem none too pleased with the prospect of having his soul set free.

I think I should have enjoyed this one a lot. However, despite the promising opening, I found myself rushing through the last hundred or so pages. But then it's not likely you will read another ghost story set in Guyana and replete with racial terms of yesteryear, so still recommended.