She is convinced that she is heading towards Voorman’s bones. After this incident, Nell starts to dream about walking through a forest, full of malevolent presences. In the meantime, Nell-who has finally been told the story-tries to burn the document, hoping to put an end to the haunting, but the match is snatched from her by an unseen hand and put out. Jessie and Milton have both also handled the manuscript-Jessie inadvertently and Milton on purpose-so three of the party can hear the flute that follows them everywhere. What follows is a slow ratcheting up of tension. The ostensible reason for this trip is that Milton has been commissioned to paint some jungle scenes for Ralph’s office. Together with Ralph’s wife Nell and daughter Jessie-who are both unaware of the manuscript-they set off on the Berbice River into the jungle. Milton shares Ralph’s interest in Guianan history, and is intrigued. Ralph confides in Milton Woodsley, a younger man who is a friend of the family and the narrator of this book. The person would be haunted by the sound of a flute, and after a few days of hearing it, would feel an uncontrollable urge to follow the sound to their death. He commanded the person who touched the manuscript to find his bones and flute and give them a Christian burial, or they would die. Voorman wrote the manuscript before he died and put a curse on it. He committed suicide and was never given a proper burial: his bones and flute lie somewhere in the Guyanese jungle. Voorman’s wife and daughter were killed by the rebels, but he managed to escape with his precious flute and hid in a cave.
Ralph Nevinson, a successful businessman in New Amsterdam, British Guiana, comes across an old manuscript written by Jan Pieter Voorman, a Dutchman who died during the slave uprising of 1763. This book by Guyanese writer Edgar Mittelholzer is set in Guyana in 1933. A tuneless, wandering trickle of treble notes coming from out of the trees that stood so still in the night.” It was a flute, clear, leisurely, distant. It had nothing of the imaginary about it. “In this instant my trance of introspection vanished.
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