Canticum Tenebris (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 2)

by John Triptych

  Langdon jogged until he got close to the other man. “What was that about?”

  “They are reneging on their agreement to guide us to the elephants,” Hendrik said. “They saw you hunting the lion and say you have angered the gods with your blood lust. They no longer wish to guide for us so I paid them only for the lion kill and let them go.”

  “Those goddamn bastards,” Langdon said. “Just like the damned black thugs in the states. After all I money I paid for this trip- now this. You should have never hired those untrustworthy pygmies in the first place.”

  “I have seen a herd of elephants not far from here a few days back,” Hendrik said. “I will take you to them on the promise that you only kill the old bulls in the herd and nothing else.”

  Langdon nodded. “Okay, it’s a deal.”

  Hendrik looked at him in the eye. He was tired of this, but he had made a commitment and his word was good. “I want you to promise me that you will not take a bad shot. If you do not shoot at its heart, the animal will be only wounded and suffer. Then we will have to chase it to finish it off.”

  Langdon saw that he was serious and nodded once more. “I promise.”

  By the time they got to within walking distance of the elephant herd, the sun was starting to set. Although Langdon was getting impatient once again, Hendrik figured that if they could make a quick kill then the rest of the day’s trip would be worth it. Both men put on their bush camouflage jackets and left the car behind. Just as they started to make their way to within visual sight of the herd, the wind began to pick up. Hendrik took this as a good sign since elephants normally had bad eyesight compared to humans but their sense of smell was better. The breeze would hide their scent from these beasts and would allow them to get within range of Langdon’s bow.

  Another hour had passed. Both men maneuvered their way around the thick bushes until they were less than forty yards away from one of the elephant bulls that was making its way to the perimeter of the herd. They were carefully stalking the old male after they picked it out as the one who had wandered farthest from the others. Langdon began to sweat again as his adrenaline kicked up a notch. A few minutes later, they were only less than thirty feet away as the old bull elephant began to rub its sides against a nearby tree.

  After placing an arrow on the shelf of his compound bow, Langdon took a deep breath, then drew the bow string back and began to aim at the elephant’s rib cage just behind its foreleg. His arm was shaking because he had never shot at an elephant before. If he made this, he could bring down the animal with just one arrow. But at the split second he released, the old bull sensed something dangerous was nearby, and it pivoted in their direction. The elephant instantly trumpeted with pain as Langdon’s arrow struck the animal in the upper part of its right shoulder and it quickly ran off, deeper into the bush.

  Hendrik cursed once more. Of all the things that had to happen, this was no doubt the worst. He checked his rifle and began to move to where he had last seen the elephant.

  Langdon ran alongside of him. “Where are we going?”

  Hendrik didn’t pay attention to him as he walked over to where the elephant had just bolted from and checked the reddish sand. He saw that there was a blood trail leading north to the base of a nearby mountain. Depending on how fast that bull could go, it might take at least an hour to catch up with it. He wasn’t sure about the severity of the wound, but it was clear from the tracks on the ground that the animal was limping.

  A tap on his shoulder made him turn around. It was Langdon. “I asked you where we’re going,” the American said.

  “We need to catch up with that bull and finish it off,” Hendrik said brusquely.

  Langdon frowned. “But it’s evening now. Can’t this wait till tomorrow? We can come back then.”

  Hendrik shook his head. “In all the years that I have done this, I have learned it is best that we catch up with this bull and put him out of his misery right away. Your arrow shot wounded his foreleg. That poor elephant must be in terrible pain.”

  Langdon sighed. “Look, with all the money I’m paying you, you ought to do what I tell you. And I’m telling you, I want to go back to the lodge now and rest.”

  Hendrik turned around and started to walk deeper into the bush. “Then go back by yourself, Mr. Winchell.”

  Langdon just stood there for a minute as rage briefly overtook him. With all the money he was paying this idiot, he had to put up with this? He felt like just telling the transplanted South African to go to hell and give him back his money, but then he realized that the man could easily leave him here to die since he carried the car keys and knew the way out of here. It was clear that he had no choice. After clearing his mind, Langdon started to trot after him.

  The sun had finally set but the cloudless night was clear. Both men could see the outlines of the tall pale grass and the dark trees in clumps around them so there was no need to use their flashlights. Hendrik could see where parts of the bush was trampled over by the wounded elephant as he sensed the beast was not that far from them as he kept on moving. Within minutes, he saw the bloodstains on the grass. The night sky made the blood trail look like dark ink spots as he finally saw what looked like the elephant’s back just a mere forty yards ahead. He then took out the lens cap from the scope of his rifle and began to sight it. Hendrik moved a little bit to the right of where the animal seemed to be lying so he could see if he had a clear shot at the animal’s rib cage. Langdon finally caught up to him and started walking alongside.

  As Hendrik finally got to the elephant’s flank, he knelt down on one knee and began to take aim using the scope. That was when he saw that there was a smaller, man-sized form that seemed to be right beside the animal. As he tried to get a clearer look using his optical sight, Hendrik made a sharp gasp as if to catch his breath before abruptly getting back up to his feet, and then started to sprint back to where the vehicle was. Langdon narrowed his eyes in complete surprise as the other man ran past him, but he too turned and followed as fast as he could.

  Just as Langdon caught up to him once more, he could see that Hendrik was obviously stressed and seemed to be out of breath as the experienced guide’s face was deathly pale- it was as if he had seen a ghost or something.

  “Hendrik, what’s going on?” Langdon said as he ran alongside of him.

  The other man kept looking behind them as he kept up the relentless sprint. “We must get out of here,” Hendrik half-whispered between heaving breaths of air.

  Langdon was in generally better shape since he was ten years younger but the relentless effort was also starting to tire him. “What’s going on? What did you see? Why didn’t you take the shot for chrissakes?”

  Hendrik didn’t answer as he kept on moving as fast as he could. When he finally couldn’t run anymore, he switched to a brisk walk although still glancing occasionally over his shoulder. Fifteen minutes later, both men could see the black boxy shape of the Land Cruiser that Hendrik had parked underneath a tall acacia tree earlier that afternoon.

  As the details of the vehicle were finally clear enough to be noticed when they got closer, Hendrik’s heart sank in despair. He pulled out the flashlight from his jacket pocket and shined it over the car as Langdon gasped in surprise. The Land Cruiser was wrecked. The front hood had been ripped off and the windows had been smashed inwards. The tires had been slashed through and the engine block was gutted; the fan belt had been torn out along with the radiator- both were in pieces on the ground beside them. Langdon pulled out his own flashlight, and as he shined the beam along the side of the vehicle, he saw what looked like claw marks that torn right through the metal bodywork like it was made of paper.

  “What in the hell?” Langdon said as he began to sweat heavily, despite the chilly air of night. “What kind of an animal could do this?”

  Hendrik was hyperventilating. “The Maasai. They warned me.”

  “What do you mean the Maasai? Did they do this?”

  Hendrik looked
at him with half-lidded eyes. The American was so stupid and now he had just signed their death warrant. “The Maasai told me that the gods were angered at what you had done to that lion. They told me that the ngojama would be hunting us tonight and like a fool, I refused to believe them. Now we are mostly likely going to die out here tonight.”

  Langdon had a blank look on his face. “What a-are you t-talking about?”

  Hendrik noticed some dried pieces of wood lying near the tree and he frantically began to gather them. “Get as much of that wood that’s lying around and hurry! We must make a bonfire, perhaps it will scare that demon who is coming for us.”

  Langdon looked around him and started to pick up some of the fallen branches. “What do you mean? What demon?”

  “It was standing near the dying elephant when I saw it with my rifle scope,” Hendrik said as he frantically began to place the dried wood into a small mound in front of the gutted vehicle. “And it looked back at me with blazing eyes- it was like staring at the eyes of death.”

  “What did you see? Why didn’t you shoot it then?”

  Hendrik took out his lighter and began to spread flame over the pile of dead wood. “I doubt the rifle would be of any use on a demon. Legends state that they cannot be killed by men. The one thing we can hope for is that this fire keeps it away.”

  The dried wood rapidly caught fire as both of them kept grabbing nearby pieces and fed it. Within a few minutes the flames had become as tall as them. That was when Langdon noticed something that was headed in their direction.

  Langdon pointed towards a copse of trees less than forty yards away. “Look, look over there!”

  As it got closer, they could finally see its full features as the flickering firelight illuminated the creature. It was clearly man-like as it walked on two legs and had similar ape like arms but that was where any semblance with humanity ended. It was covered in a coat of black fur with taloned hands but the most horrid aspect was its face; it looked human enough with a proper nose and high cheekbones but the eyes were as red as crimson and had no pupils. Its gaping mouth was full of fangs that seemed to drool sticky strands of saliva and blood.

  Langdon screamed as Hendrik readied his rifle. The old South African knew that creatures of legend could not be killed with ordinary weapons and that the most he could do was bargain and for his life. Langdon quickly remembered that he still had his bow so he took an arrow from the side quiver strapped to his hip and placed it on the bow’s ledge before pulling back on the string. As the creature moved in closer, Langdon aimed for its heart and let loose, but the demon caught the arrow in midair with its clawed hand before snapping it in two.

  “Shoot it! Shoot it!” Langdon screamed before he turned and realized that Hendrik was aiming his hunting rifle at him instead. “What in the hell are you doing?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Winchell,” Hendrik mumbled as he pulled the trigger.

  3. Yokai

  Tokyo

  His full name was Yoshiro Kamiki, but he preferred to be called Hiro for short since he felt it was a play on the English word hero. Although he had flunked the entrance test for university three years ago, Hiro liked to consider himself as an educated salary man even though he was working as a dishwasher at a small yakitori restaurant in the Shimbashi district. After he left school, he moved into a small apartment with the Nishimura brothers, his best friends since elementary school. The three of them shared a love for manga comic books and video games. Whatever free time they had was spent either reading their massive manga collection or hanging out in the arcades and picking up the latest mobile games for their smart phones. Hiro and his friends could have easily led mundane lives just like the millions of other young men in the world if it wasn’t for the Glooming, but in the last few weeks their lives had suddenly taken a different turn.

  When news reports about the return of the ancient gods began to filter all over the internet and the world media, the Japanese government made official announcements that citizens needed to stay calm and remain in their homes while it assessed the situation. Within days of their announcements, the internet began to slowly die out as world trade had virtually stopped. Then a large number of airplanes had mysteriously crashed all over the world forcing the authorities to ground all flights while countless ships had also disappeared in every ocean, the few survivors telling stories about being attacked by sea monsters. Within less than a week, practically every city on the planet had begun to experience blackouts as lack of fossil fuels due to the trade disruption was beginning to be felt. To make matters even worse, citizens of Tokyo had begun to report encounters with strange and varied creatures from legend called yokai. These supernatural monsters soon began to rampage and terrorize people across every city in Japan. Although the police and military were deployed in an attempt to deal with these creatures, their weapons seemed to be of little or no use against these mysterious apparitions.

  With the police and military spread thin, a number of residents in Tokyo began to form mutual defense groups and started to fortify their residential enclaves. Both the government and private merchants would regularly attempt to bring in convoys to the most stricken parts of the city in order to deliver much needed food and fuel to the trapped residents. In the daytime, most of the people of Tokyo would spend all their efforts to gather food and other supplies and then lock themselves behind bolted doors when the evening came as the yokai came out of their hiding places and preyed on those foolish enough to venture out at night.

  By the beginning of the second month after the Glooming began, Hiro and his friends were lying around on the tatami mat floor of their tiny apartment in the Sangenjaya district. Every other night, they reread some of their old manga comic books. Of the two Nishimura brothers, Shinji was the older one, and he was the expert when it came to cataloging as well as answering trivia questions about their manga collection. He was the one most disappointed when the crisis began because no new manga comics were being printed. Hiro and Shinji’s brother Shogo were more into video games, but with the electrical grid being inoperative for weeks now, all they could do was just read the same comics by candlelight, night after night.

  The evening air was warm and humid so they had left the balcony doors open in order to let some wind in. Shinji was thinner than the other two and he adjusted his glasses in order to squint less as he took out a comic book from the pile that was beside him and flipped through the back pages first- because in Japan books were printed backwards and were meant to be read starting from the rear.

  Hiro was lying on the floor and stared at the low ceiling. The flickering candlelight made strange shadows that danced across the painted white walls. “I’m bored. So sick of reading now,” he said to no one in particular.

  “Shut up, I’m reading,” Shogo said as he sat cross-legged on the tatami mat while thumbing through another manga book. He had broad shoulders and his short hair was in a crew cut. Shogo was short and squat; he was also the fattest and the other two called him Sumo whenever they felt like teasing him.

  “You haven’t read Cobra Sukiyaki Be-Bop yet,” Shinji said to Hiro. “It’s on the top shelf.”

  Hiro frowned as he propped up his head on one elbow. “I need to do something, it’s been almost a month and we’re trapped here!”

  Shogo looked up at them. He was clearly annoyed. “Will you two stop talking? I’m trying to finish this!”

  Shinji slowly shook his head. “What do you want to do, Hiro? The building watch told us it’s too dangerous to go out at night.”

  “Anything beats staying cooped up here all night,” Hiro said as he sat up. His once purple hair was now fading back to black because he couldn’t dye his bed-head styled hair anymore. “We should help people to fight against the yokai.”

  Shogo put down his comic book and started to chuckle. “Look at this guy! He is so sick of reading manga, now he wants to be in an actual one!”

  Shinji looked at Hiro closely. “Do you want to die or some
thing? Not even the military can fight the yokai. All we can do is to lock ourselves in at night and hope they don’t come through that door.”

  “Maybe the military isn’t able to kill those monsters because they use modern weapons,” Hiro said as he moved quickly to a nearby chest and began to rummage through its contents. “But if we fight them like the old samurai, I bet we can kill a few yokai and we will be hailed as heroes.”

  Shinji saw what he was doing and quickly got up and stooped over beside him. “What are you doing? That’s my chest!”

  “Hang on a minute,” Hiro said, looking for something in the old wooden box before finally grasping it as he brought it out with both hands. “Here, I found it.”

  Shinji frowned as he saw that Hiro had pulled out his katana from the old wooden chest. The Japanese-style sword was an antique, given to him by his grandfather. Weapons of any kind were strictly prohibited in the country and so Shinji had to get a permit from the government just to keep it. “Put that sword back, Hiro.” he said.

  Hiro stood up as he continued to clutch at the wooden scabbard that was holding the blade. “We can fight the yokai with this, Shinji. Let’s go out tonight and find those monsters.”

  Shinji grabbed the sword away from him and hissed. “You are crazy! Even if this sword could hurt those demons, I don’t have any experience in fighting with this.”

  “You did practice iaido a few years ago, Shinji,” Shogo said. “Hiro took some kendo classes too.”

  Shinji turned beet red and glanced at his brother. “You think taking a few classes is enough? You’re both crazy and you’re both going to get us all killed!”