A Supernatural Tale from Easter Island
Based on True Events
“On Easter Island, where ancient stone heads stand sentinel over barren hills, a translator seeking escape meets a Mapuche carpenter at a dying beach fire. As night deepens and others drift away, the carpenter shares a story of love, dreams, and ghosts that challenges everything the translator believes about reality.
Some say the island’s massive Moai guard terrible secrets. Others claim they simply wait – for visitors who dream too deeply or listen too long to stories told in the dark.”
On Easter Island where past and present blur like shadows at twilight, ancient stories still hold power
Captured by a Vision
Is a dream reality or is reality a dream?
The Mapuche man continued… “I dreamed I was walking on the beach just after sunset looking out into the Pacific, and then she was just there, as though she had stepped out of a shadow. Beautiful with dark eyes and dark hair like a waterfall cascading down her back.”
But some dreams exact a terrible price!
Sample
I’ve just arrived at the party and I’m instantly captivated by a slender island girl in her late twenties with dark eyes, and glistening black hair that falls all the way down to her lower back.The night is warm and she’s wearing a tank top that shows off, among other things, perfect shoulders. Her beauty and easy confidence create ripples and eddies as she moves through the crowd. They tell me I just missed her dance. I’m disappointed, my timing used to be a whole lot better.
After a brief introduction she asks
“And what is it that you do?”
“Words are my business.”
“So you’re an author?”
“No, actually I’m a translator. Spanish flows through me like light through a prism, and then comes out every colour of English.”
(That’s the poetic version reserved for women that I’m trying to impress.) I translated a novel once, a screenplay, and some prayers for an obscure Catholic sect, who like Francis of Assisi, wax rhapsodic in the presence of a blade of grass or every dandelion widening a crack in the sidewalk. But usually it’s financial reports for banks or copper mines.)
“Truth is, these days I feel more like a mercenary. Who do I have to kill? When do you want it done? Leave me a large briefcase full of money under the wharf at Midnight.”
She laughs and I’m not entirely sure if it’s at the joke, or me.
I came to Easter Island (or Rapa Nui as it’s called by those who live here) to unwind the knots that build up in the shoulders and the brain sitting long hours at a computer trading my poetry and music for ten cents an English word. My life in Chile these last twenty five years has been filled with impossible deadlines, sleepless nights and soulless quarterly reports, sucking the creative marrow from my bones.
I remember reading that when Captain Cook came here in 1774 he was greeted by islanders who floated on driftwood lashed together with string, barely fit to be called canoes. These days I feel like that, bits of dead wood held loosely together by sorry sinews, saltwater leaking through me in spite of my best efforts. This vacation is supposed to help me get my head straight so I can plan my next move. I’m thinking I’ll start a restaurant, or maybe backpack across Asia.
We exchange a few more pleasantries but I can see that I’m losing the dancer’s attention. Even five years ago this could have gone somewhere, but the lines on my face are starting to blow my cover. So I bow out and make for way for other younger men. It’s just as well. A friend told me about this guy he knew who met one of these Rapa Nui girls while vacationing here. He got to first base with her and was trying to steal second when he was met by seven young men that beat him viciously.
“Why?”he moaned, spitting sand and blood.
”Dees ah aww women!”
Lesson learned, he decided to switch up his game and find romance with a beautiful Scandinavian tourist. Not far into that endeavour the same delegation thrashed him again.
“She’s not even an islander,” he roared in pain and anger.
The leader of the young men spoke, “These tourists that come here, dey ah also ah women.”
I can’t help but think of the Moai, the Island’s iconic giant statues buried up to their necks like victims of Indian torture as depicted in old Westerns. This strikes me as a warning.
“This is what we do to interloping giants. Imagine what we do to you.”