by Vered Ehsani
Dr. Cricket droned on. “If not for Lieutenant Colonel John Patterson, they’d still be out there.”
“And far away from here, at the Tsavo River,” I pointed out. “But now it seems we have a problem with their ghosts, who aren’t limited by geography.”
Dr, Cricket huffed and blinked fiercely at me. “I don’t believe in ghosts.”
I raised my eyebrows. For a brilliant inventor, he really was a simpleton.
“They’re just another pair of hungry lions and we’d best take care,” he continued. “During the last three months of that previous reign of terror, those lions attacked almost every night, and the labourers refused to work.”
“Can’t say I blame them,” Cilla muttered.
“Well, the British Parliament certainly did,” Dr. Cricket said. “Such a delay on the train project was most undesirable.”
“Indeed,” I added. “It must have presented quite an inconvenience, what with all those dead labourers refusing to work.”
“Well, be that as it may,” Dr. Cricket said, clearly not paying me any attention, “the construction crews tried everything to scare the lions off, including campfires and thorn fences, but nothing stopped them.”
“Then how’s a circle of wagons going to help us here?” I asked innocently.
Flustered, Dr. Cricket rose and left us, mumbling some excuse about needing to check on Liam as if the automaton needed a babysitter.
“You are terrible,” Cilla scolded me with a laugh.
I couldn’t argue with that.
Chapter 16
I’d always been a light sleeper. It was a curse, actually, since I would have much preferred to sleep through any trouble that occurred at night than to be pulled into it. When I was asleep, no one could hold me responsible for ignoring various nocturnal creatures. Quite frankly, as long as their behaviour didn’t involve me, I didn’t much mind what they did, as long as they let me sleep without biting me, or worse, shedding near me.
Sadly, whenever the paranormal world interacted with the normal, there tended to be produced an unpleasant level of noise, usually of the screaming sort. This was quite sufficient to wake me up and lure me out of bed when I’d much rather sleep through it all. And that was exactly what happened that first night of the hunt. Something woke me—a whisper, a shuffle (at least it wasn’t a scream). I lay on my camp bed, staring up at the darkness, and strained my ears and my nose.
While my ears and nose revealed nothing more, my eyes adjusted to the gloom as one side of the tent—the one with the door flap—was a tad brighter from the slight glow of the nearby fire pit. In the pervading darkness, that glow seemed bright and welcoming, so I rolled over to face it. I was just wondering if there was any tea brewing over the remains of the fire when a shadow stepped up to my tent.
Fortunately, I was too distracted contemplating the possibility of tea, so I didn’t shout aloud, but only pulled away from the tent wall. The shadow remained there, blocking some of the light and an arm rose as if to knock on my door. The shape of the arm looked familiar, but so did the manner in which the hand hung suspended between action and inaction. And the two—the shape of the arm and the tilt of the hand—reminded me of two very different beings who couldn’t possibly inhabit the same body.
At least it’s not a lion, was all I could think of and then someone screamed.
“Oh bother,” I muttered, kicking off my blanket and flinging on my traveling coat. I hesitated—walking stick or bow and arrows?—and then settled on the bow. After all, if I was close enough to a lion to make effective use of my walking stick, then I was far too close.
Then again, I suspected the only danger we were in was of losing some sleep. And for me, that was a terrible dilemma indeed.
I fumbled with the ties holding my canvas door in place. By the time I pushed the tent flap aside, the shadow was gone. Instead, I was rewarded with the unappealing vision of Mr. Adams in his nightshirt. He was running around the small camp in great excitement, his shirt flapping unattractively about his plump knees, his jowls quivering below his mouth. In a bizarre effort to dress, he had put on his waistcoat, which strained to contain his great belly. He could barely draw breath, yet he was using it all for shouting.
Lanterns were lit and torches were thrust into the sparking embers of the fire as tents spewed out their bleary-eyed occupants. A few of the tents had partially collapsed.
“We’re under attack,” Mr. Adams bellowed between wheezes.
“Good thing we have the wagons circled around,” I said to Cilla, who had stumbled out of her tent when I did. Her head was wrapped in a pretty scarf and despite the early hour and her hasty efforts at dressing, she still managed to look quite presentable. Mrs. Steward would’ve been suitably impressed.
I sighed as I pulled my overcoat around me, just as Mr. Timmons trotted over to us.
“Are you ladies alright?” He hugged Cilla but looked intently at me.
I gazed briefly up at the night sky, the stars so thick I could barely see the space beyond, and twitched my bow against my leg. “Yes, Mr. Timmons, we’re quite alright,” I informed him as I once again pondered the shape of the shadow’s arm. “As is the camp. It’s just Liam.”
“Protect the women,” shouted Mr. Adams, swinging his rifle around for emphasis and nearly knocking one of the porters into the fire pit. “Hide the goats!”
“It’s alright, sir,” Dr. Cricket called out amidst the noise and confusion, his hair sticking straight up and his glasses on crooked. But no one paid him much attention for Mr. Adams was by far the more entertaining spectacle, and amusement trumps logic any day.
“Load your rifles, men,” ordered Mr. Adams as a button popped off his waistcoat. In response, men scattered in all directions, searching for their rifles in collapsed tents.
“Well, if there were any lions in the area,” I muttered to my two companions, “they’ll be long gone by now.”
“But Mr. Adams, sir,” Dr. Cricket said, running after the camp superintendent just as Liam appeared around a tent. The automaton had a collection of tent pins in each hand. “Somebody stole Liam from my tent and set him loose.”
“Stop or I’ll shoot, I really will,” screamed the camp superintendent, his voice jumping up an octave as he raised his rifle to his shoulder.
“Oh my.” Cilla gasped and she grabbed my hand as if that could be of any assistance against a bullet.
“You mustn’t,” Dr. Cricket protested. “It’s not his fault. It’s theft, that’s what it is.” He grabbed at the gun, shoving it away from Liam and directly toward us.
Mr. Timmons pulled us down just as the gun went off. The bullet tore through the tent canvas. Where it finally ended up, I’m not sure, only that I’m most grateful it didn’t end up in my head, or anyone else’s.
“Stop, Liam, stop,” Dr. Cricket cried out. He sounded rather desperate as he battled for control of the rifle and for the attention of his creation.
Liam did stop, right in the middle of the fire pit, the glowing embers sparking onto his pants.
Mr. Adams’s fat cheeks reddened. “That… thing!” He gasped, too furious to summon additional words out of the ether.
“I assure you, he’s quite harmless,” Dr. Cricket said, his eyes imploring the crowd of nervous, tired campers to support him. None of us felt inclined to do so just then.
“I’m confiscating it as of now,” Mr. Adams shouted into Dr. Cricket’s ear.
“But… but…” Dr. Cricket’s pale face whitened further as he watched his creation manhandled out of the embers, his eyes blinking rapidly behind his thick glasses.
Meanwhile, I was still on the ground with one of Mr. Timmons’s thick arms across my back. “Thank you, Mr. Timmons,” I said through gritted teeth. “That will be all.”
He chuckled as he helped Cilla and me to a vertical position. “The pleasure was all mine, Mrs. Knight.”
“Yes,” I said, “indeed it was.”
“Poor Dr. Cricket,” C
illa cooed. “I wonder what got into his tin man.”
“Yes, I do wonder,” Mr. Timmons said, studying me for a reaction.
One of my skills does include what Prof. Runal calls a “poker face,” and I kept one firmly in place as I gazed back at Mr. Timmons. “A malfunction,” I said coolly. “It’s bound to happen from time to time in mechanisms with such a complex machinery.”
I didn’t have to study his energy field to know he believed that theory as much as I did, which is to say, not at all. But I didn’t dare ponder too deeply about the alternative possibility.
Chapter 17
After the kafuffle with Dr. Cricket’s automaton, I wondered if I would ever fall back asleep, and I was still pondering that when I woke up to the sound of birds and the sight of a giant insect hovering over my face.
I assure you one of the last things I would ever wish to see upon waking is a Shongololo. In fact, it’s very much near the top of my personal “Creatures I Never Want to Encounter” list. Which, of course, was why the universe conspired to ensure I met up with one.
Worse still, the metre-long, creepy arthropod appeared right above my head while I was luxuriating in my tent with visions of the upcoming Christmas season meal floating through my head. Mr. Adams had assured us all that he had a trunk full of food for the occasion: “Locked, let me tell you, and I have the only key. We shan’t be lacking for anything, not on my watch.”
I had just reached the point when I was contemplating what that meal would look like in the colony of British East Africa when I peeled open my eyes. And there it was, floating above my head—not the meal, of course—all of its thousand spikey legs squirming along its tube-like form, its arm-long antennas poking at the net, searching for a weak spot.
I contemplated screaming. That, after all, was what any civilised Englishwoman would do when in such a circumstance—that of a paranormally enhanced insect hovering overhead.
Then again, I’m not so civilised. I also have a rather stout constitution and a certain reluctance to fainting and other womanly reactions typical of the times.
By the time I finished all this convoluted contemplation, the moment to scream had long since dissipated, somewhat like my appetite, as fast as a puddle of rainwater in the savannah at midday.
Sighing, I twitched the mosquito net draped over my mattress, but the Shongololo simply tightened its grip, its heavy, metre-long body twisting the netting, stretching it. I hoped it held. The net, that is. The last thing I needed was for the beastie to fall on me. Its cylindrical body was as thick as my thigh. Granted, my thighs aren’t that big, but for an insect to be that thick around is still rather impressive, in a highly disturbing sort of way.
I glared up at the shiny, black arthropod. Its plated surface glittered darkly in the shaft of sunlight squeezing through the flap that operated as the tent door.
“And what do you want?” I demanded crossly.
Arm-long antennas flicked at me. Below the appendages were two large, round, glassy eyes that were a darker shade of black than its body. Its countless legs shifted and dug into the net.
“Appalling manners,” I muttered, now beyond cross.
Just at that moment, who should decide to float through the tent but my deceased husband.
“Good morning, Bee,” he said in his ghostly soft voice, scandalously chipper.
I despise morning people.
“This tent is becoming rather crowded,” I informed him, hoping he’d pick up on my acerbic tone of voice.
Alas, no. The charming ghost just smiled his beautiful smile, his light brown eyes golden in the dim light.
Ah, yes, the curse of being a widow who has a highly developed third eye: I’m still stuck with my husband, without any of the benefits.
I chose to ignore him and focused on my first unwanted guest, that guest being now in the process of chewing at the net.
“Good gracious,” and with that, I abandoned all hope of a restful lie-in that morning. I heaved my body off my mattress, stumbled through my dead husband and wrapped myself in a Maasai blanket.
The Shongololo watched me hop around. The front part of its body, the part that passed for its head, shifted in my direction. The rest of its mass followed as it slithered down the net, its thousand legs clicking together in time with its rather sizeable pincers.
“Well, I suppose it serves me right,” I muttered as I leaped onto my leather traveling trunk. “Insisting on attending this accursed hunt.”
Gideon chuckled softly. “I did tell you…”
“Oh do shut up,” I snapped. “I wasn’t talking to you in any case. Nowadays, I prefer to converse with myself, for it’s the only way I’m guaranteed a civilised response. And if you’re going to leave me a widow, then please do me the service of leaving me completely, since you clearly aren’t of much use in your current state.”
“You’re in a pleasant mood,” he observed with a taunting grin.
“Sarcasm will get you nowhere.”
He chuckled, I grumbled, and the Shongololo clicked its way across the tarp floor. Warmth from the rising sun oozed through the olive green tarp, but that didn’t dispel the cold in my hands. Fortunately, I was armed with more than just a trunk full of clothes, a book on Victorian etiquette, and a dead husband. Mrs. Steward might think me a burden, but I am, after all, a rather resourceful lady.
“Where’d I pack it?” I demanded as I rummaged through my saddlebag.
“Holy water won’t work,” Gideon informed me in his soft-as-silk voice. “Neither will garlic.”
“The only thing more inconvenient than a know-it-all husband,” I said, “is a dead know-it-all husband.”
“And a bullet will just bounce off its shell plating,” he continued. “Not even silver bullets will dent it.”
As if getting murdered wasn’t enough, he now had the audacity to instruct me in my business. Tiresome man.
My hand closed around a little satin sachet.
“Ah ha!” I yanked the small bag out. Without wasting another moment, I sprinkled some of the contents around the truck, creating a powdery circle of…
“Cinnamon?” Gideon asked.
“It works jolly well against ants, so it will suffice,” I said. “By the way, where were you earlier this morning?”
Gideon shrugged his shoulders and continued to watch the Shongololo. “Nowhere in particular. Why?”
“Dr. Cricket’s automaton went on a bit of a rampage,” I said as I tossed a pinch in the direction of the Shongololo. As the ground spice floated onto its antennas, the creature hissed and twisted in on itself, until it looked like a shiny, round footstool made of plated armour. Just the sort of thing any lady of impeccable taste would want in her tearoom, I’m sure.
“Really?” Gideon mused absently.
Grabbing my rifle, I used the wooden butt to push the heavy coil of insect across the tarp floor. With a grunt, I shoved it out through the loosely tied tent flap, then sprinkled a line of my precious cinnamon across the doorway.
“Well, that’ll at least keep it out while I dress,” I said with great satisfaction. “And there’s still enough to have with dessert.”
“Dessert? Here? You’re optimistic,” Gideon said.
“And you’re still in my tent,” I said caustically.
With a regal bow and a roughish smile, he faded away and out of the tent, or at least so I hoped. Then again, I still wanted to question him further as to his whereabouts during the night. Liam’s hand gesture had reminded me of Gideon’s.
I sunk back onto my trunk and held my nose over the spice sachet. I closed my eyes and breathed in the cinnamon scent along with visions of a large table back home, laden with roasted meats, pies, and so many other delicacies that were probably non-existent here on the African grasslands. But at least I had a monster-free tent for now. And really, what more can anyone ask for?
Chapter 18
Gideon was right this time: I had been far too optimistic, believing we’d actually h
ave dessert. In the end, we didn’t even receive the dinner. That was a great pity for, what with Liam’s destructive interruption of the night and my close encounter with a Shongololo, I had been so looking forward to a hearty meal, whatever form it might take. You can very well imagine my disappointment when Mr. Adams effectively cancelled the Christmas season, or at least the party.
We were all congregated around the recently stoked fire that morning, bleary eyed, when he stumbled up to us. “The food stores, raided!” he blurted out. “That thing”—and he pointed at Dr. Cricket—“ate our dinner.”
“I most certainly did not,” huffed Dr. Cricket, his eyelids a pair of rapid blurs.
“Is there at least breakfast?” I enquired.
“It wasn’t Liam,” Dr. Cricket protested. “He only eats used cooking oil.”
“And since we don’t serve that for breakfast, could we eat now?” I asked, starting to feel grumpy. I was quite capable of skipping dinner and even skimping on supper. But my posture wilts without a hearty morning meal, which I was fearing might be the case that day.
“The lions,” someone whispered, and within a heartbeat, the whisper spread through the small camp.
“At least they didn’t eat one of us,” Cilla said to me.
“Yes, there is that,” I replied unhappily. “But really, I do hope they left us something.”
“Wasn’t the food chest locked?” Dr. Cricket demanded, clearly upset his invention was being blamed for everything save the weather.
“Yes,” Mr. Adams snapped, his hands clenched tightly, his plump knees quivering. “And someone or something opened the lock and left the trunk wide open for any fowl or beast to eat our provisions.”
“But you had the only key,” a low voice broke through the bubble of conversations.
Everyone looked to a suddenly silent Mr. Adams, conjecturing amongst themselves as to the true source of the morning’s tribulations, but I studied the speaker. Mr. Timmons. He didn’t look at all upset about the prospect of skipping all our meals. No, in fact, he seemed rather pleased. His energy glowed with a repressed joy, something he was keeping close to himself.