How, I do not know, even now. Throughout our conversation, his eyes never lost the expression of looking at me as one marked for death; yet there was compassion in his gaze, too, as if he sincerely wanted to help me—or perhaps it was that he believed we could gain strength from each other.

“It was shortly thereafter that he dug up a metal canister containing most of the old records and drawings you see on the table. He gave them to me, as if wanting to rid himself of them. Perhaps that was so, for I know now they were responsible for his condition when I found him.

“I stayed with him, and during the hour that followed, the terror seemed to leave his body. When I asked him how this thing had come about, he told me that the curse of Koví was upon him for having used a horse in the tilling of his land. I laughed at this but was stopped short by his shrill warning that I, being a professional horseman and of the family, would suffer the most horrible death of all if something was not done to help me.

“When I heard this and looked more closely at the drawing of Koví in my hands, I felt the greatest fear of my life. I wanted to get away immediately—from Odin, from Haiti, from everything my family represented. But I knew I could not run. It was too late for that. I held the ancient records of my family in my hands. I had nowhere to go but to pursue the legend of Koví. This I knew instinctively and without any doubt, as if I had known always that such a time would come.”

The captain paused and Alec remained silent. The captain’s world was one he never would understand. He could call it “primitive nonsense,” but to the captain it was far more than that.

“I tell you this, Alec, not expecting you to understand but hoping that it will help satisfy your curiosity as to why I am here with Odin. The curse of Koví is upon us.”

The captain paused again and no breath seemed to stir within him. “In possessing these ancestral records and drawings,” he went on, “I have become involved in what has gone before and, in effect, am held to be an intrinsic part of it. As Fate would have it, I am a horseman not unlike the first of my great ancestors, who betrayed his own people to possess a horse. It is my objective to pursue the legend to the end, to Koví himself, if he exists more than in the minds of men, so that I will be freed from the curse of my ancestors.”

The captain studied Alec’s face, then picked up the papers from the table. “Do I need to tell you, Alec,” he said, “that according to these records the home of Koví is in this area?”

“You’re crazy,” Alec said quickly, without thinking.

Surprisingly, no anger showed in the captain’s face.

“No, Alec,” he said. “I have all the proof I need. He was seen by my people, and it is written in their records. There is the drawing, too, of what they saw. Would you like to see it?”

Without waiting for a reply, the captain picked up one of the drawings and handed it to Alec.

Alec was determined not to recoil at the sight of a weird picture, any more than he had when he saw the grotesque figurine. Each was the work of a superstitious mind, producing what it wanted to see. Yet a feeling of terror swept over him as he looked at the drawing.

He had expected to see a drawing of a supernatural monster, half man, half animal, anything but the childlike lines that filled the tissue-thin paper. He could make out no central figure. There was just a series of designs, mosaic in composition, depicting eyes and limbs and parts of bodies, some recognizable and others not.

The very air in the room grew cold. The drawing was obviously the work of a person whose imagination was guided by the subconscious.

“What do you see?” the captain asked anxiously. When Alec did not reply, he repeated his question.

It was like looking at a picture puzzle and being asked, “How many objects can you find? What do you see?” Alec thought. Only this puzzle conveyed more than one’s eyes beheld; it transmitted a cumulative force of dread that was almost overpowering.