Popular Myths of the Makallo Island Peoples

by Adrian Bryer

The ridgeback sand fly can be found in the greatest numbers along the eastern shore of Makallo Island. In the still heat of summer, when the wind shifts directions and is buffered by the pines, the ridgeback can amass in swarms nearly half-a-mile long.

Aside from the spectacle of the ridgeback’s swarming behavior, the species’ most well-known characteristic is the feverish trance that develops in response to its bite. Although we now understand the symptoms to be induced by a peculiar strain of the parasite Plasmodium deificus, carried unwittingly by the sand fly, it was once believed to be an effect of the god Tikano, who was said to have the ability to transmute his body into a swarm of flies . . .

Nathaniel Baker read this passage again, slowly. He sat at his desk in a makeshift lab adjoining a similarly improvised hospital ward in the sparsely populated hill country of Makallo Island. The patients’ moaning in the ward drifted through the baby-blue curtains partitioning their beds and filled his lab with the unsettling sounds of illness. Through the window screen, a horde of nighttime insects chirped and hummed.

He removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. How long had he been reading? Having exhausted the scant medical literature available on Plasmodium deificus, he’d moved on to texts that were only tangentially related, led by a dim hope that a clue might present itself and lead to a breakthrough in his research.

Nathaniel never gave up on a problem, however intractable it seemed. It’s what got him through grad school and fueled all his subsequent career success. He’d been like this ever since he was a child, always questioning things and then pursuing those questions with unyielding energy until he’d come to an answer. Right now he was trying to find some explanation for the bizarre psychedelic effects of Plasmodium deificus, a parasite endemic to the region that caused visions, auditory hallucinations, and distortions of consciousness—not to mention a persistent and potentially debilitating infection.

He turned again to the book, a thick volume whose pages swelled in the tropical humidity. Popular Myths of the Makallo Island Peoples. A somewhat dated text, but still full of interesting information about the ritualistic uses of the parasite. It was not unusual for hallucinogenic plants to be employed to induce a shamanic trance state, but in Makallo, a similar practice had developed around the infectious disease caused by P. deificus, and that was extraordinary. Of course, it didn’t come without a cost. Delirium, diarrhea, necrotic sores—if a severe case went without treatment it wasn’t uncommon for the patient to die from dehydration or sepsis.

“Still up?” A voice ejected Nathaniel from his reverie. 

His graduate student, Tessa, stood in the doorway of the lab, one hand resting on the frame. She wore an oversized T-shirt and plaid pajama bottoms, and her shoulder-length hair had been pulled back neatly into a ponytail. He had never seen Tessa without makeup, and he was struck by how beautiful she still looked.

“I’m starting to worry about this insomnia of yours,” she said.

He looked at the clock. It was coming up on 2:00 a.m. and still he had little to show for his extracurricular reading. But what else could he do? Sleep felt like a luxury at this point. Nathaniel approached his first set of deadlines, and the little grant funding he’d been able to secure was already starting to dry up. If he didn’t make some progress soon, the whole project could be shut down. He thought about explaining this to Tessa but in the end decided she was better off not knowing. He needed her to be calm. It was a feeling he’d come to rely on.

“I don’t sleep much,” he said. “And what about you? It looks like you just got out of bed.” He looked pointedly at her pajamas.

“I forgot my charger.” She sifted through the large stacks of paper on her desk without success, then hunted through a few drawers at random. It didn’t escape Nathaniel’s notice that this was the third night in a row Tessa had found her way back into the lab to check on him. 

“Ah, have you drained your battery talking to Dylan?” Nathaniel teased. He’d never met Tessa’s boyfriend, who was still back in the U.S., but sometimes it felt like he was in the room with them, constantly present in the little glowing box glued to her palm.

“We’ve been having a discussion all night.”

Nathaniel raised an eyebrow. 

“A discussion? That doesn’t sound good.”

“A long-distance relationship isn’t for the faint of heart.”

Tessa smirked and continued looking for the charger. Nathaniel tried once again to read the same passage in his book.

After another minute or two, she gave up the search and collapsed into her chair.

“Maybe it’s for the best if my phone dies,” she sighed. “I need to take my mind off Dylan. Why don’t you tell me about your book? You’ve barely looked up from it since I got here.”

“Oh, this? Nothing. It’s about Makallo. The, uh, religious myths here.”

“Dr. Baker! I didn’t know you were interested in that sort of thing. Not very scientific, is it?”

“I have interests outside of biology, I’ll have you know. In fact, I’ve been thinking I might start believing in god. Actually, I could use a little deus ex machina right about now,” he said, then dropped to his knees and pressed his palms together in mock supplication.

Tessa laughed at his display. “Not a bad idea. But he might figure out your plan. You know, the whole omniscient thing.”

“Damn, I forgot about that.”

“I know how you feel, though,” she said. “We’ve been here for months, and it doesn’t seem like we’ve learned anything new.”

Nathaniel’s expression became serious, and he stood up and began to pace in large, meandering circles, weaving expertly around the lab equipment. 

“About that. This book has given me an idea. You’ve heard about the Tikanan shamanic rituals, right? That’s when they intentionally contract the disease and supposedly can use the psychedelic state to commune with their god.”

Tessa nodded. She swiveled in her chair as he walked, following his course with her gaze. After a few moments he became conscious of his pacing and stopped.

“Listen,” he continued. “We know how to treat the infection. As long as the patient is hospitalized in time, the symptoms are mild. But the neurological effects, the hallucinations, that’s what we haven’t been able to explain. There’s no mechanism for it—at least, none that we’ve been able to detect. And our patients have been stubbornly tight-lipped about their experiences, like it’s some kind of taboo to discuss it with outsiders. But here’s my idea. What if we intentionally transmit the parasite into my bloodstream? You can treat the infection immediately after, so I won’t have to deal with any symptoms, and then once I’ve recovered I’ll be able to report on my psychedelic experience!”

Tessa walked over to Nathaniel and put her hand on his shoulder. 

“Dr. Baker, you can’t be serious.”

“Of course I’m serious. You said it yourself: we’ve barely learned anything since we got here. And without more information, we’ll keep going in circles.”

She paused for a moment, searching Nathaniel’s face, then spoke: “Is this because of Ulao?”

His eyes widened. Ulao? That was the patient who had been brought in soon after they’d established the treatment facility. A family had driven up frantic and crying. They explained that their eldest son, Ulao, had gotten a number of sand fly bites during a walk and now seemed to be hallucinating. They weren’t a religious family, and they were terrified the infection would be severe and debilitating. Nathaniel recalled seeing him at the apex of his psychedelic trip. The man seemed euphoric, all grins and laughter and tears of joy as if he’d witnessed something so beautiful he’d been completely overcome by emotion. Once he returned to normal, Ulao immediately joined the local church, much to his family’s shock.

Nathaniel couldn’t believe Tessa would bring that up. Was she suggesting that he hoped to have some kind of religious experience, to give up his life and career and devote himself to a foreign god? Maybe it was Tessa who needed to catch up on her sleep.

“I know this seems crazy, but nothing else we’ve tried has given us any answers. If I experience firsthand the effects of this disease on perception and consciousness, it may give our research some direction.”

As he spoke, one of the patients in the nearby ward cried out for the nurse. Her wailing echoed through the lab as a reminder of what could go wrong. But Nathaniel was steadfast and looked pleadingly into Tessa’s eyes.

“I know you, Dr. Baker. Once you’ve got something in your head, you see it through. I’ve never met anyone who hated not having the answers as much as you.”

“If I remember correctly, that’s the reason you wanted to work with me in the first place.” 

Nathaniel thought about their first meeting, when she’d interviewed for the position in his lab. She talked about how much she admired his work, how impressed she was by the lengths he’d go to uncover something new. Well, here was her chance to prove it.

“If we do this, you don’t get to go straight back to work, all right? You rest. You recover.”

“I promise.” He offered his pinky finger, and she responded in kind. “Does this mean you’re going to help me?”

“Look, you’re going to do what you want no matter what I say. Better I’m there to make sure nothing goes wrong.”

“So it’s a promise?” he asked through a grin. “You’re going to stick with me?”

Tessa took a deep breath. “Yes, Dr. Baker. It’s a promise.”

* * *

The next evening, once the rest of the laboratory staff retired for the night, Tessa and Nathaniel rolled one of the hospital beds into the lab and set up their equipment. Tessa had placed a glass box containing about a dozen flies on a small table next to the bed. The flies bore the distinctive markings of the ridgeback: a pattern of black and orange spots on their rough backside, and wing venation unique among other closely related species. They were all females—the males ate only nectar and other plant fluids—and they were all hosts to the enigmatic parasite.

“All right. Everything’s ready,” said Tessa. “You’re sure you want to do this?”

“Yes. You don’t have to keep asking me that.”

“Just checking.”

Tessa removed the lid from the fly enclosure and, using a small vacuum-like device, proceeded to target the flies one by one and suck them up into a clear plastic bag. Once the flies had been collected, she removed the bag from the vacuum and twisted it at the top to prevent their escape.

“I took away their food this morning, so they should be hungry.”

“Great.”

Nathaniel reclined on the springy mattress and propped his head up with a stack of pillows. He could feel his heart thumping in his chest, and despite the air-conditioned room, a thin film of sweat coated his forehead.

“We’re all ready,” said Tessa, her voice even and calm. “What do you think? Hand?”

“Yes, I think that would be best.”

Nathaniel extended his hand slowly toward Tessa, and in one swift motion she untwisted the top of the bag and swallowed it up in the clear plastic. The flies soon recognized their new food source, and they immediately alighted on the back of his hand, his fingers, his wrist, and started to feed. Having studied the flies, he knew that they didn’t have teeth but, instead, two serrated mandibles that could slice through skin, revealing a drop of blood like a small red jewel.

Nathaniel turned his head away from the flies. He kept his body still, counted his breaths. The bites were unpleasant, not excruciating. Still, he’d rather not watch himself become the target of a feeding frenzy.

After a few minutes, Tessa removed the bag and returned the flies to their enclosure.

“How are you feeling?”

“So far? I’ve been better,” he said through a grimace.

Tessa frowned, then applied an antiseptic spray to the bites and gave Nathaniel a handful of pills for the pain.

“You should take it easy. I’ll be right by the bed if you need anything. Just let me know.”

There was nothing to do now but wait. They sat together and listened to the ambient humming of the lab equipment. Neither attempted conversation. There was nothing left to say about their situation, and any attempt to distract from it would have been laughably transparent.

Tessa texted Dylan briefly—her nightly ritual—and then leaned back in the chair and watched Nathaniel, monitoring him as a mother would her ailing child. He felt an odd warmth knowing that she was there, and he thought that if not for his current state of anxiety, he might actually get some sleep. Instead, he opened up the book that had given him this crazy idea, and picked up where he’d left off.

Little is known about the shamanic practices common to the Tikanan cult, as their religious order is notoriously closed off to outsiders, but it is said that communion with the god Tikano is considered a rare and sacred event, and that he will often grant rewards to certain chosen followers if they are willing to prove their loyalty . . .

As he read, the letters on the page began to vibrate, dance, then travel across the paper and combine into a circle of undulating black ink. In his shock, he threw the book to the ground, and it landed with a loud thud. Tessa jolted upright in her chair.

“What’s happened?” she said. “Is everything okay?”

Nathaniel twisted himself in the sheets and gestured wildly toward the book, which now sat limp and harmless on the floor. Tessa rushed to his bedside and grasped his hands in her own.

“Nathaniel, calm down! I’m right here.”

When she spoke, he saw her words floating through the air as bright colors and shimmering lights, as though his vision had developed a new perceptive power. Despite the darkness in the lab, everything shone as if illuminated by an amber glow. The hallucinations were beginning.

He heard Tessa calling out to him, but try as he might to reply, his mouth wouldn’t form the words. Even if he could speak, he doubted whether it would make any sense. How could he possibly describe this experience? Waves of light and sound came upon him with a crash and then retreated in an endless cycle. He had lost all sense of time. Individual seconds were drawn out to excruciation lengths while hours passed by in an instant. It was a whirl of chaotic experience, but one trend seemed to hold in spite of the chaos: the amber light that had been present from the start grew steadily brighter, enveloping the world in its glow. However, although one would expect the light to reveal, this light could only obscure. The surrounding environs were washed out, like an overexposed photograph, and lost their dimensionality.

Eventually, the blinding light relaxed itself and grew dim. He could see better now, slightly, and observed that he was in a new place, one totally dissimilar from the lab. The light had cleansed the physical world of all form, and now he found himself in a vast expanse of emptiness, and he felt as though his body were floating. This was no mere hallucination—he knew it with as much certainty as his own name. He’d been here before, in this eternal plane from which the material world derived its energy. He recognized it in the dimness of a sort of primordial memory, and it felt like a surreal homecoming.

Just then, a deep voice rang out and a figure appeared in the distance, growing larger as it moved toward him.

“I am Tikano, god of pestilence,” it called. “I am the plague-bringer, he who walks hand in hand with death! What brings you to my domain?”

Nathaniel cowered under the god’s imposing figure and searched frantically for some escape, but his field of vision seemed to be bounded on all sides by impenetrable white light.

“You seek to leave so soon? You may depart from this place when I grant you leave,” he barked. “Until then, you will do as I say. Speak! What is your name?”

“N-Nathaniel,” he replied.

“A weak name. Tell me, Nathaniel. What do you think of the divine realm? Does it please you?”

He took a moment to inspect his surroundings.

“It feels . . . familiar,” he replied. “Why does it feel so familiar?”

Tikano laughed. “Your body has never been here before, nor your mind, but there is another part of you that has. A part of you that is eternal. When you die, that piece will return to this plane. It is always wanting to return.”

Tikano stepped closer, and his appearance finally gained definition. Nathaniel could see that the figure standing before him was taller than a man, but lean—emaciated, even—with sunken eyes and thin, colorless lips. Tikano wore a sumptuous orange robe, and his bald head was draped in a web of fine gold chains. In his right hand, he clutched a long dagger with a hilt wrapped in leather cord; in his left, a bronze goblet whose contents sputtered and wheezed a caustic vapor that smelled of rotten meat. The whole appearance of this god was an unsettling blend of regality and illness.

“I see you are not a follower of mine,” said Tikano. “You are fearful of my countenance. But there is no need to worry. I have no plans to blight you. What kind of host would I be? Even we gods, though at times fickle, have our own standards of hospitality.”

“My apologies,” replied Nathaniel. “I don’t mean to offend.”

“This is not my first time meeting a human. There is no need to apologize. I understand your ways better than you do. Now, get on with it.”

“Get on with what?”

“Ha! Never have I talked to a human without any questions. You are always so full of questions. So, go on. Ask.”

Nathaniel thought for a moment. He did have questions, but he wasn’t sure where to start. He put to words the first thought that came into his head.

“Okay. Here’s one. Why do you bring illness upon the world? What’s the purpose of so much death and misery?”

Tikano’s expression changed into a snarl, and his form suddenly wouldn’t hold its composition. His body disassembled into little black and orange flies that crawled atop one another and then flew apart, briefly, only to come back together and re-form, gaining corporeality once more.

“You humans would see light and think that it is darkness. There is no good that wasn’t born from suffering. You think the body is real, that the material world is real? Trees burn, metal rusts, flesh rots, and still you believe in the permanence of materiality. My followers have been disabused of this notion,” he said, proudly. “They are no longer so attached to their bodies.”

Nathaniel recalled the eerie calm he had observed in his patients, even in the face of bodily disfigurement. He’d attributed it to the euphoria of the psychedelic experience, but could it have been something else? An indifference to their physical health inspired by Tikano’s teachings?

The answer left him unsatisfied. What was he supposed to do? Give up his worldly possessions and flagellate his backside in a cave? 

“Fine, I have another question. Actually, it’s the reason I’m here in the first place. How does Plasmodium deificus work? I mean, what causes the neurological effects? I’ve been studying it for ages and can’t identify the mechanism.”

“The answers you seek cannot be found in the physical realm.”

Nathaniel waited for elaboration but Tikano was immobile, as though his reply had been more than sufficient.

“What do you mean? Surely there’s some effect on the brain—”

A storm of energy, bright and hot, swirled around the god, and his left shoulder began to decompose, as if unwillingly, into a swarm of flies. He focused his gaze on the buzzing creatures and they returned to their original formation, melding seamlessly into the surrounding flesh.

“Fool!" he spat. "You observe the world, analyze its forms and processes, desperate to understand the incomprehensible. But it is all in vain. We gods move through your world in all manner of ways, and we cannot be reduced to mere data. You seek truth, and that is commendable, but as I said, it cannot be found in the physical realm. This place is truth. I am truth. That is all.”

The two stood together in silence for some time, Tikano as still as a statue and Nathaniel, unused to this feeling of weightlessness, rising and falling in response to subtle, unseen forces.

Had Nathaniel’s career, his whole life, been in search of something that could never be found? He thought of his expensive lab equipment, the tools that promised to capture the minutiae of his world, and how impotent they now seemed. All he’d ever wanted was to make sense of a life that overwhelmed him with its mystery, to see the threads that tied everything together. The answers he’d once held up as truth now dissolved into nothingness in his hands.

Nathaniel could no longer bear to meet this god’s piercing gaze with his own. He pressed his palms against his eyes. There was nothing more to say. Too much had been lost in these brief moments, and he was terrified that he would never gain back what little peace of mind he’d had before coming here.

“Worry not, little human,” said Tikano. “It is the natural order for growth to follow destruction. Both are equal players, and you would do well to treat them with the same reverence.”

He thought about Tikano’s words, how destruction and growth were inextricable, and the idea comforted him. He had lost one sense of truth but gained another, and it was only through the dissolution of his initial beliefs that he could make room for new understanding.

“Are you beginning to see?” asked Tikano. “The work you do, your research, it is a fool’s errand. If you believe that I am real, that my power is real and beyond that of your own, then you will do as I command.”

“What is your command?” asked Nathaniel, feebly.

“You will abandon your research. It is contrary to my design.”

If all this were real, thought Nathaniel, then so was the danger if he defied Tikano’s wishes. But then, wasn’t the potential reward equally real?

“I’ve heard,” said Nathaniel, recalling the book that started this whole journey, “that you sometimes reward your followers for their loyalty. Is this true?”

Tikano laughed. “You have heard rightly. And is there something you wish for? Some gift in exchange for your obedience?”

Nathaniel thought about his research and realized he wouldn’t miss the job. Not really. He’d lost his only reason for pursuing it. But as for Tessa . . . he’d grown used to her company. The thought of leaving her made his heart sink.

“I cannot make a human act in defiance of their own will,” said Tikano, somehow reading the current of Nathaniel’s mind. “If your wish is to be with this woman, then she must choose to join you, just as it is your choice to follow me.”

Nathaniel felt a heavy weight in his stomach, as if he’d swallowed a fistful of lead.

“She’d never choose to be with me,” he said, suddenly remembering Dylan. “She’s already in a relationship. With someone back home.”

“A problem easily solved.” Tikano grinned, exposing a row of crooked gray teeth. “My domain is not confined to this island. I command disease in all parts of the world. This man is but a minor obstacle.”

Nathaniel considered the implication of Tikano’s words. Was this the destruction that would precede growth?

“Tell me, Nathaniel. Do we have a deal?”

A fly detached itself from the god’s body and buzzed across Nathaniel’s eyes. He lifted up his hand, and the fly descended in a zig-zag, landing abruptly in the center of his palm.

Yes, he thought at last. It is my god’s will.