The Apes of Wrath

by Richard Klaw

  Gulka moved away from the ape in a half-circle, crouching, spear ready. With all his craft he was seeking to trick the gorilla, to make a swift kill, for he had never before met such a monster as this, and though he did not fear, he had begun to doubt. The ape made no attempt to stalk or circle; he strode straight forward toward Gulka.

  The black man who faced him and the white man who watched could not know the brutish love, the brutish hate that had driven the monster down from the low, forest-covered hills of the north to follow for leagues the trail of him who was the scourge of his kind—the slayer of his mate, whose body now hung from the roof-pole of the negro village.

  The end came swiftly, almost like a sudden gesture. They were close, now, beast and beast-man; and suddenly, with an earth-shaking roar, the gorilla charged. A great hairy arm smote aside the thrusting spear, and the ape closed with the negro. There was a shattering sound as of many branches breaking simultaneously, and Gulka slumped silently to the earth, to lie with arms, legs and body flung in strange, unnatural positions. The ape towered an instant above him, like a statue of the primordial triumphant.

  Far away Kane heard the drums murmur. The soul of the jungle, the soul of the jungle: this phrase surged through his mind with monotonous reiteration.

  The three who had stood in power before the Black God that night, where were they? Back in the village where the drums rustled lay Songa—King Songa, once lord of life and death, now a shriveled corpse with a face set in a mask of horror. Stretched on his back in the middle of the glade lay he whom Kane had followed many a league by land and sea. And Gulka the gorilla-slayer lay at the feet of his killer, broken at last by the savagery which had made him a true son of this grim land which had at last overwhelmed him.

  Yet the Black God still reigned, thought Kane dizzily, brooding back in the shadows of this dark country, bestial, blood-lusting, caring naught who lived or died, so that he drank.

  Kane watched the mighty ape, wondering how long it would be before the huge simian spied and charged him. But the gorilla gave no evidence of having even seen him. Some dim impulse of vengeance yet unglutted prompting him, he bent and raised the negro. Then he slouched toward the jungle, Gulka’s limbs trailing limply and grotesquely. As he reached the trees, the ape halted, whirling the giant form high in the air with seemingly no effort, and dashed the dead man up among the branches. There was a rending sound as a broken projecting limb tore through the body hurled so powerfully against it, and the dead gorilla-slayer dangled there hideously.

  A moment the clear moon limned the great ape in its glimmer, as he stood silently gazing up at his victim; then like a dark shadow he melted noiselessly into the jungle.

  Kane walked slowly to the middle of the glade and took up his rapier. The blood had ceased to flow from his wounds, and some of his strength was returning, enough, at least, for him to reach the coast where his ship awaited him. He halted at the edge of the glade for a backward glance at Le Loup’s upturned face and still form, white in the moonlight, and at the dark shadow among the trees that was Gulka, left by some bestial whim, hanging as the she-gorilla hung in the village.

  Afar the drums muttered: “The wisdom of our land is ancient; the wisdom of our land is dark; whom we serve, we destroy. Flee if you would live, but you will never forget our chant. Never, never,” sang the drums.

  Kane turned to the trail which led to the beach and the ship waiting there.

  THE CULT OF THE WHITE APE

  Hugh B. Cave

  In another selection from Weird Tales, Cave delivers a riveting tale set in the hills of Congo. Full of supernatural, romance, brutality, and terror, this story lingers long after the last page.

  The hour is midnight. The oil lamp on the table before me, casting its weird glow over my face, is a feeble, inadequate thing that flickers constantly as the corrugated iron roof of the shack trembles with the throbbing beat of incessant rain. It has rained here in the village of Kodagi for the last four months—a horrible maddening dirge that drives its way into a man’s brain and undermines his reason. The M’Boto Hills of the Congo, sunk in the stinking sweat of the rain belt, are cursed with such torment.

  It was raining when Matthew Betts came here. I was outside at the time, working on the veranda inside my cage of mosquito-netting. A man must have some relief from the monotony or else go mad; and I had found, after being sent here by the Belgian government to fill the position of chef de poste, that my hobby of entomology was a heaven-sent blessing.

  When Betts came, I was busily sorting specimens and mounting them on the little oki-wood table in my veranda laboratory. Beside me, on the stoop, squatted old Kodagi. A cunning man, Kodagi. A wizened monkey of a man with parchment face and filed teeth and a broad grin that bespeaks much hidden knowledge. He belongs, I believe, to the Zapo Zaps—a queerly deformed race which inhabits these mysterious jungles. For years he has been the village Ngana, the witch-doctor and magician of the tribe.

  Kodagi, I like to believe, is my friend. It is a peculiar half-dead friendship at most, and yet I am thankful for the little that is allotted me. There are rumours—more than rumours—that Kodagi disliked intensely the white man who held the position of chef de poste before me, and that this white man died a slow, unpleasant, and altogether inexplicable death. More than once I have suspected that Kodagi is one of the all-powerful members of the Bakanzenzi—the terrible, cannibalistic secret cult which even the natives of my village speak of in fearful undertones.

  Kodagi was watching me astutely as I went about my work. His beady eyes followed me everywhere, saw every movement. Occasionally he muttered something to me under his breath; but the monotonous beat of the rain smothered his voice.

  All at once he turned, to stare at the opposite wall of the clearing.

  “Look, Bwana!” he pointed.

  I jerked about obediently, to see the nose of a safari winding its sluggish way into our silent domain. Sloshing through the soft mud they came, with heads down and backs bowed under the weight of their burdens. At their head strode a white man—a hulking buffalo of a man with coarse red face and loose-fitting white drill which hung from him like a drenched winding-sheet. In one hand he carried a kiboko. The other hand he flung up to salute me, and shouted boisterously, at the same time turning in his tracks to snarl at the cringing natives behind him. They were afraid of him evidently, for they cowered back in silence and huddled together in whispering groups while he strode forward to the veranda.

  I watched him quietly. I thought I knew his identity, since I had been informed that certain land close to the village had been leased by the officials of a powerful rubber company. This company, the report stated, would send a chap named Betts—Matthew Betts—to the village of Kodagi, where he would experiment with various types of latex-producing trees and vines.

  If this was the man they were sending, I decided instantly that I disliked him. He was drunk; and it is not good for white men to drink native rum in the sweating, fever-ridden murk of the Congo, less than five degrees from the equator. I was infinitely glad when my Jopaluo house-boy, Njo, relieved me of the task of opening the veranda door for him.

  I saw then that he was very drunk. He stumbled on the step and lurched forward. Perhaps he did not see Kodagi crouching there; perhaps he saw but did not care. At any rate, his outstretched foot entwined between Kodagi’s black legs. He stumbled and caught himself on the mosquito-netting. Then, before I could prevent it, he swung upon Kodagi with a rasping snarl. His heavy boot drove into the Ngana’s naked ribs. Kodagi, screaming in pain and writhing hideously, tumbled off the stoop into the mud.

  The result was instantaneous. Straightening up, Betts stepped toward me with, a livid grin. Two steps he took, and opened his mouth to speak. Then the grin faded with uncanny abruptness, leaving an expression of unholy fear on his bloated face. I saw his eyes dilate. His features lost colour. He flung himself sideways and jerked up a Luger in his fist. A sudden belch of flame seared through the muzzle;
and the bullets, whining dangerously close to me, roared blindly into a patch of thick scrub beside the veranda rail.

  After that there was complete silence for a moment. Betts stood rigid, trembling. Behind him, at the rim of the clearing, the porters of his safari were running madly to safety, screeching in terror. Njo, my house-boy, was down on his knees in the middle of the doorway, muttering in his native tongue. Kodagi, who had been lying prone in the mud at the foot of the stoop, had vanished!

  I turned slowly, mechanically, to stare at the clump of brush which had excited Betts’ drunken attention. I saw nothing—nothing at all. Frowning, I strode to Betts’ side and gripped his arm.

  “What the devil,” I snapped, “are you doing? Are you mad?”

  “Mad? Mad!” the words came from his dry mouth in a thick whisper. “You—you didn’t see it, Varicks?”

  “See what?” I said curtly.

  “The—the thing—there in the reeds!” His eyes shifted furtively. Reddish brown eyes, they were, sunk in fatty pits that made them incredibly small and pointed.

  “You’re drunk,” I shrugged. “Come inside.”

  “I—I saw it, Varicks,” he muttered again. “An ape-thing—a white ape—big as a man—standing there snarling at me—”

  “Come inside,” I ordered, taking hold of him. Evidently he had swilled enough native rum to put a less powerful man under the ground. White apes—in the Congo! That was about the limit—the nearest thing to D.T.’s I had seen in many months.

  But he refused to be led away. He wrenched his arm from my grip and continued to stand there, staring, muttering something about not daring to turn his back. I saw that I should have to use extreme measures, or else have a raving fever-drunk lunatic on my hands.

  “You’re seeing things,” I said quietly. “Come on—we’ll have a look. If anything was hiding in the reeds, there will be footprints in the mud. You’ll see.”

  He went with me unwillingly, holding back so much that I was practically forced to drag him along. Together we stumped down the veranda steps and wallowed through the mud to the suspicious patch of brush. He stood beside me, uneasy and twitching, as I pushed forward and parted the high reeds with my hands.

  Then, very suddenly, I froze in my tracks. My arms remained outflung, like the wings of a great bat. My groping foot stiffened in the very act of kicking the reeds aside; and there, directly beneath it, lay the soggy imprint of another foot!

  Betts’ eyes went horribly wide and filled with fear. His fingers dug into my forearm. He whispered something, but I did not hear, for I was already on my knees, examining the thing in front of me.

  It was the mark of a man’s foot—a naked, human foot. In the heel of it, where a little pool of water should have accumulated, lay a well of something else—something red and sticky that was blood.

  Without a word I stood up again. Carefully, painstakingly, I examined every inch of that clump of reeds. I found nothing else—nothing but that damning, significant imprint of a human foot and the spilled human blood in the heel of it. When I finally pushed Betts toward the shack, my fists were clenched and my mouth was screwed into a thin, troubled line. I was afraid.

  On the veranda, inside the screen of mosquito-netting, I lowered myself heavily into a chair. Betts sat close to me, facing me, peering fearfully into my face. For an instant neither of us offered to break the silence which had crept over us. Then, leaning forward, Betts extended an unsteady hand to clutch my knee. His lips sucked open.

  “What—what was it?” he whispered thickly.

  I did not answer him immediately. I was thinking of Kodagi, whom he had kicked into the mud, and who had disappeared with such incredible swiftness. One moment the village sorcerer had been lying lifeless in the filth. Next moment Betts had seen that hideous apparition in the reeds, and Kodagi, all at once, had vanished.

  “I don’t know what it was,” I said evenly, replying to Betts’ query. “I only know that you’ve made a horrible blunder.”

  “A—blunder? Me?”

  “In this village,” I said meaningly, “one doesn’t kick and beat the natives. This is deep-jungle territory. The natives are not the half-civilised, peaceful breed you’re accustomed to handling. They are atavistic. Many of them are members of the Bakanzenzi.”

  “You—you mean—”

  “Up here,” I said quietly, “you are in the heart of strange jungles and strange people, where queer things take place. That’s the best explanation I can offer you.”

  “But the ape—” he mumbled. “I saw—”

  “This is not gorilla country, Betts. The big apes never come here. They never leave their stamping-grounds in the Ogowwi and Kivu districts.”

  He blinked at me uncomprehendingly. His fat hand came up shakily to wipe the sweat from his jowls. Evidently my words had made a deep impression upon him, for his eyes were quite colourless and his mouth twitched.

  “Get me—a drink, Varicks,” he said gutturally. “I need it.”

  I hesitated. He had had enough to drink already. But one more might serve to steady his nerves and prevent a collapse. I got out of my chair to get it.

  He rose with me and turned clumsily to the veranda door. Jerking it open, he looked toward the opposite end of the clearing, where his safari had first appeared.

  “Lucilia!” he bellowed. “Lucilia!”

  I was bewildered—even more bewildered when I followed the direction of his stare and saw what I had not noticed before. A masheela chair—a kind of covered hammock carried by four bearers—had been set down at the edge of the jungle. The bearers, having fled like frightened rodents at the sight of Betts’ demonstration, had now returned. At the sound of the big man’s voice, they lifted the masheela and carried it forward.

  “My God!” I said thickly. “You haven’t brought a woman here?”

  “Why not?” Betts grumbled.

  “This is no country for a white woman, Betts. You know damned well—”

  “That’s my business,” he snapped. “She’s my wife.”

  I choked the retort that came to my lips. Then I turned to stare at the woman who was approaching us. She was young—much younger than her bull-necked husband—hardly more than a slim, very lovely girl. When Betts spoke her name and she placed her hand in mine, I felt that I should be more than glad to endure her husband’s drunken presence during his stay in Kodagi’s village. A white woman, here in this horrible place, was an angel from Heaven.

  During the following day I saw little of Betts and his wife. They drove their safari to the far end of the village and took possession, with their entire equipment, of a huddled group of broken-down abandoned huts. Njo, my house-boy, brought news to me late in the afternoon that Betts had gone alone into the jungle on a preliminary tour of inspection.

  “Alone?” I frowned, peering into Njo’s yellow-toothed mouth.

  “Yes, Bwana. He is an ignorant fool!”

  “Drunk?” I said curtly.

  “So drunk, Bwana, that he can not walk straight!”

  “Hmm. You think he was drunk before, when he claimed to see a white ape in the brush, Njo?” I asked meaningly.

  The little Jopaluo’s eyes widened in fear. He fell away from me, grimacing. I had to repeat the question before he would answer.

  “Others have seen the white ape, Bwana,” he whispered uneasily. “I myself have looked upon it one night in the jungle near the moon-tower of the Bakanzenzi; and many of the Manyimas and Zapo Zaps have seen it. It is mafui—the were-ape. It is not of this world, Bwana!”

  “You are afraid, eh?”

  “Afraid! Aiiiii! The mafui means death!”

  I glanced at him quickly. There was no doubt about the terror in his face; it was genuine and abject. With a shrug of indifference, altogether assumed to mask my own forebodings, I turned away—and then turned back again.

  “Where is Kodagi?” I demanded.

  “He is in his hut, Bwana, across the village.”

  “Go to
him then,” I ordered, “and tell him that I am sorry for what the big man did to him. Tell him to come here and I will take the pain from his bruises.”

  “Yes, Bwana!”

  Njo scurried out, leaving me alone. For some time I paced back and forth in the central room of the shack, listening to the throb of rain on the roof above me. Presently I went out on the veranda. I made sure that my revolver—a Webley forty-four—hung in its holster at my belt.

  An hour later Betts came to visit me. He came alone, wallowing and sloughing through the black mud, completely drunk and in ill temper. He fell shakily into a veranda chair beside me.

  “Stinkin’ weather!” he cursed. “Rain, rain—”

  “You’re drinking too much,” I said curtly. “A man can’t bloat himself with liquor up here and remain alive as well, Betts. He can’t—”

  “Can’t!” he bellowed. “You and the rest of the fools in this country make a bloody creed out of that word. Can’t do this; can’t do that. They told me I can’t grow rubber in the Ituri district. Well, by God, I’ve got the concession and I’m going to!”

  I shrugged. If he wished to kill himself with native poison, that was his affair. But I thought of his girl-wife—slim, flower-faced, and so very lovely. I pitied her from the bottom of my heart.

  It would be the inevitable conclusion. He would drink himself semi-insane. The rain would beat into his mind and drive out reason. He would turn on Lucilia, make life a living hell for her. From the momentary glance I had already had of her troubled face, it was evident that the process had already begun.

  “Look here,” I began curtly. “You’ve got to send your wife out of this. You’ve no right to keep her here and—”

  The door opened behind me. I turned quickly, to see Njo, the house-boy, scuffling toward me. He had returned from the village. He had a message for me. Bending over, he delivered it in a whisper.

  “Kodagi says, Bwana,” he muttered, “that he will come and he thanks you. He says that you are his friend, but the red-eyed white man had better beware. That is all, Bwana.”