The Year's Best Horror Stories 16

by Karl Edward Wagner (Ed. )

  The three weanlings greeted her arrival with open-mouthed smiles and stayed on their bellies, waiting for their shares of the meal. But the smallest of the hairless cubs crawled over and reached out for the bird with one pink paw.

  The she-wolf dropped the bird and put her own paw on it, gently biting the hairless one on the top of the nose. At that, the cub seemed to shrink back into itself. It whined and, mouth open, rolled over on its back. Its bare pink belly, streaked with dirt, moved rapidly up and down with each breath. It whimpered.

  The she-wolf gave a sharp bark of assent and the hairless cub rolled over on its stomach and sat up.

  At the bark, the four other cubs came to her side. They watched, eyes shining with night-sight, as she gobbled down sections of the bird and chewed each piece thoroughly. Then she regurgitated back the soft pieces for each of them. The larger hairless cub gathered up several of the biggest sections and brought one over to its small twin.

  Soon the only sound in the den far underground was that of chewing. The she-wolf gnawed on the small bones.

  Then the meal was finished, the she-wolf turned around three times before settling. When she lay down the three hairy cubs came to nuzzle at her side, but she pushed them away. They were ready to be weaned and it would not do for them to suck more. She had but a trickle of milk left and knew the cubs needed that slight edge of hunger to help them learn to hunt.

  But the other cubs were different. Their sucking had never been as hard or as painful when the milkteeth had given way to the shaper incisors. They had never hurt her or fought their brothers for a place at the teat. Rather they waited until the others slept, moving them off the still-swollen milkbag with gentle pushes. Somehow, through three litters they had never nursed enough.

  The she-wolf made room for the two hairless cubs to lie down by her side. The smaller cub nursed, patting the she-wolf with grimed paws. It gave soft bubbly sighs, a sound that had once seemed alien to the she-wolf but was now as familiar as the grunting sounds of the other cubs. She licked diffidently at the strange matting on the cub’s head, all tangled and full of burrs. Each time she took the cubs outside, the matting was harder to clean. The she-wolf seemed to remember a time when the two had been completely without hair. But memory was not her way. She stopped licking after a while, lay back, closed her eyes, and slept.

  When the little cub finished nursing, the older one moved cautiously next to it, curled around it, and then fell asleep to dream formlessly in a succession of broken images.

  “There is a manush-bagha, sahib,” the small brown man said to the soldier sitting behind the desk. The native held his palms together while he spoke, less an attitude of prayer than one of fear. With his hands apart, the soldier would see how they trembled.

  “What does he mean?” Turning to his subaltern, the man behind the desk shook his head. “I can’t understand these native dialects.”

  “A man-ghost, sir. It’s a belief some of the more primitive forest tribes hold.” The younger man smiled, hoping for approval from both the colonel and the native. “A manush-bagha can be the ghost of some dead native or ...”

  “By God, a revenant!” the colonel exclaimed. “I’ve always wanted to find one. My aunt was supposed to have one in her dressing room—the ghost of a maid who hanged herself. But she never manifested while I was there.”

  “... or, in some cases,” the younger soldier continued, “it can be dangerous.” He paused. “Or so the natives believe.”

  “Better and better,” murmured the colonel.

  “They are eaters of flesh,” the brown man said suddenly, hands still together, and eyes now wide.

  “Eaters of flesh?” asked the colonel.

  The native lowered his eyes quickly and said very quietly. “The manush-bagha eats human beings.” After a beat, he added, “Sahib.”

  “Splendid!” said the colonel. “That caps it. We’ll go.” He turned to his subaltern. “Geoffrey, lay it on for tomorrow morning. I want beaters, the proper number of rifles, and maps. And get this one,” he pointed to the brown-skinned man before him, “to give you precise directions. Precise.” He stood. “Not that they know the meaning of the word.” With a quick step he left the room, oblivious to his subaltern’s snapped salute or the bow of the native or the long glance that followed between them.

  The she-wolf listened to the soft breathing of her cubs and quietly moved away from them. She padded past the sleeping forms and wound her way through the tunnels of the white ant mound and out the second entrance to her den. In the darkening forest her gray-brown coat blended into the shadows.

  Above in the sal canopy a colony of langurs, tails curled like question marks over their backs, scolded one another, loudly warning of her intrusion. She turned her head to look at them and they moved off together, leaping from branch to branch to branch. The branches swayed with their passage, but the trunks of the trees, mottled with gray and green lichens, never moved.

  A covey of partridge flew up before her, a noisy exhalation. Two great butterflies floated by, just out of reach, their velvety black wings pumping gracefully, making no noise.

  The she-wolf paused for a moment to watch the silent passage of the butterflies, then she turned to the east and was gone quickly into the underbrush.

  When she returned to the den, over an hour later, she had another plump guinea hen in her mouth, one feather comically stuck to her nose. Tonight there would be good eating.

  The colonel and his subaltern rode in the bullock cart, moving slowly through the forest. Hours before, they had left the neat, green rice swamps to cross the countryside toward the sal.

  “A barren waste,” the colonel said, dismissing the grayish land.

  Geoffrey refrained from pointing to the herons that stalked along the single strand rivers or to remind the colonel of the low croaking of the hundreds of frogs. Not barren, he thought to himself, but with the different kind of richness. He said nothing.

  The native guiding them told Geoffrey his name was Raman, though he had told the colonel he was called Ramanritham. He walked ahead of the bullock cart to help lead the cranky beasts while the two hired carters went on ahead of them with axes. In this particular part of the sal forest vines grew up quickly across old pathways. Every day fresh routes had to be cut.

  The swaying of the cart had a soporific effect on the colonel who nodded off, but Geoffrey refused to sleep. Being new to the sal, though he had read several books about it, he wanted to take it all in.

  The canopy was so thick, it was hard to tell whether or not the sun was overhead, and the only light was a kind of filtered green. A magical sense of unpassed time possessed the young subaltern, and he drew in a deep breath. The sound of it joined the racheta-racheta of the stick that protruded from the empty kerosene can the carters had affixed under the wagon. As the stick struck the cart wheels it produced a steady noise which, the carters assured them, would frighten away any of the larger predators.

  “Tigers do not like it, Sahib,” the carter had said. Geoffrey hadn’t liked it either. It seemed to violate the jungle’s sanctity. But after a while, he stopped hearing it as a separate noise. At one point the path was so overgrown, the carters and Raman could barely cut their way through, and Geoffrey joined them, first stripping down to his vest. As his arm swung up and back with its axe, he noticed for the first time how white his own skin seemed next to theirs, though he had acquired a deep tan by Cambridge standards. But his arms looked somehow unnatural to him in the jungle setting.

  At last they completed their task and stopped, all at once, to congratulate one another. At that very moment, Geoffrey heard the low cough of a tiger. He started back toward the cart where his gun rested against the wheel.

  One of the carters called out to him. “It is very far away, Sahib, and you must not worry.”

  Geoffrey smiled his thanks and walked away from the three men in order to go down the path a little ways by himself. When he looked up, there was a peacock above him
, on a swing of vine. He could remember nothing in England that had so moved him. He stood for a moment watching it, then abruptly turned back. When he got to the cart the colonel was awake.

  “For God’s sake, man, put on your shirt. It won’t do.”

  Geoffrey put on his shirt and climbed back up in the cart. The noise of the stick against the wheels began again, drowning out everything else.

  The colonel was refreshed by his nap and showed it by his running commentary. “These natives,” he said with a nod that took in both the carters who were city-bred and Raman, “are all so superstitious, Geoffrey. And timid. They have to be led by us or they’d get nothing done. But, by God, if there is some kind of ghost I want to see it. That’s not superstition. There are many odd things out here in the jungle. I could write it up. Major General Sleeman did that, you know. Field notes. About the oddities seen. It just takes an observant eye, my boy. I took a first at Oxford. What do you think, Geoffrey?”

  But before Geoffrey could answer, the colonel continued, “Manushes. Man-eaters. Silly buggers. Probably only some kind of ape. But if it were some new sort of ape, that would be one for the books, now wouldn’t it? A carnivorous ape. Probably that, rather than a ghost, though ...” and his voice turned wistful, “I never did see my Aunt Evelyn’s ghost. A maid, she was, got caught out by one of the sub-gardeners. Hanged herself in the pantry. Aunt Evelyn swears by her.”

  Geoffrey had fallen asleep.

  The she-wolf stood by the entrance to the white ant mound and called softly. The cubs came out one by one. Overhead a slight breeze stirred the canopy of leaves, and green fruit pigeons called across the dusky clearing, a soft, low sound.

  The first cubs out were the three weanlings, sliding bellydown out through the entrance hole, and then stretching. The two hairless cubs crept out after, their light brown muzzle-faces peering around alertly. The she-wolf stalked over to her cubs and as if at a signal, they knelt before her, wagging their tails.

  She gave a sharp high yip and they stood, following her out of the clearing. They went past the great mohua tree and into the tangled underbrush which closed behind them so quickly there was no sign that any creature had passed that way.

  Raman held a sal leaf in his palm as they walked along. He said he could tell how much time had passed by the withering of the leaf. Geoffrey timed it with his pocket watch and was amazed at how accurate the little man’s calculations were.

  “And how long now until we get to your village?” Geoffrey asked.

  Raman looked up at a stray ray of sun that had found itself through a tear in the canopy, then looked down at the leaf in his hand. “Before dark,” he said.

  Geoffrey repeated this to the colonel and told him about the withering leaf.

  “Silly buggers,” said the colonel. “What will they think of next to twit you, Geoffrey? Of course the man knows how long it takes to get to his village. The leaf is sheer flummery.”

  The she-wolf led the cubs to the edge of a clearing where a herd of reddish-brown chital grazed. One of the cubs, excited by the deer, yipped. At the sound, the herd ran off leaving a thick smoky cloud of dust behind.

  The pack circled the clearing, five small shadows behind the she-wolf. At the southern end of the open area, she dropped suddenly to her stomach and the cubs did likewise.

  As they watched, a strange noisy man-cart crossed the clearing, accompanied by a dreadful sound. Racheta-racheta-racheta. The pack did not move until long after the cart had passed. The she-wolf growled and her cubs crept beneath a pipal tree and waited, lying heads down on their front paws. Only when she was sure they would not leave the shelter of the tree did she check out the trail the bullock cart had left behind. There were deep ruts in the grass and the underbrush was broken. The smell of the bullocks was a deep meaty smell. The smell of the cart was sharp, but there was something slightly familiar about it, too.

  The she-wolf sniffed one more time, then loped back to her cubs. At her bark they rose and followed. She was careful to avoid the broken grasses and the cart smell, which offended her nose. The deep meat smell bespoke of an animal too large for a single wolf to handle. She knew they would have to range further.

  But after coursing the jungle with the cubs for most of the night, the she-wolf had still made no kill. There would be no good eating this night. She shepherded them back to the white ant mound where, after nuzzling them all, she allowed them to suck until they were full.

  The men of Raman’s village ran out to greet the cart through green clumps of bamboo that hid the adobe-and-thatch houses. Much to Geoffrey’s embarrassment, the men insisted on washing the visitors’ feet, but the colonel took it with a certain graciousness.

  “Let them do it, Geoffrey,” he said placidly. “It does no harm, and it certainly keeps them in their place. But stop blushing, boy. Your face is too wide open. It’s like a damned girl’s.”

  After the washing, they replaced their socks and boots, and threaded their way down the packed dirt street, the colonel greeting everyone with a kind of official bonhomie that Geoffrey found himself envying. Raman strode ahead to announce them. With the noise of the cart and the bellowing of the bewildered bullock and the nasal whine of narh pipes, it was a wild processional.

  Near the end of the village was a rather larger hut, and this, Raman assured them, was where the most welcome visitors would stay. The carters would be put up elsewhere. Two women in white saris with brass pitchers on their hips nodded as Geoffrey got down from the cart. The colonel was last to dismount and as his feet touched the ground, there was a low admiring murmur. He smiled.

  “Ask them, Geoffrey, what time dinner is served.”

  Dinner was served immediately, and though the English retired early, the villagers stayed up well into the night entertaining the carters with rice beer and Ramen’s boasts about how the colonel would kill the manush-baghas the next day.

  When they woke in the morning, quite early according to Geoffrey’s watch, the village day had already begun.

  The mohua tree loomed over the clearing like an ancient giant, its trunk crisscrossed with claw marks. All day the noise of hammers and the shouts of men dominated the clearing but the she-wolf and her cubs did not hear them. They were deep in the den, sealed off by sleep and the twisting tunnels of the white ant mound. By dusk when they were ready to go out into the woods to hunt, the men were long departed. Only the machan, some twenty feet up the mochua tree, gave mute evidence that they had been there. That and the scattered pieces of wood and broken branches.

  The she-wolf, in the darkness of her den, stretched and stood. Two of the cubs were awake before her and they danced around her legs until she cuffed one of them still. Roughly she licked awake the other three. The smallest of the hairless cubs whimpered for a moment, but at last she too stood.

  They scampered around the winding tunnel until they came to the entrance. Then they waited until the she-wolf went out first into the darkening world.

  Three miles from the village was the clearing where the manush-baghas had been sighted.

  “Always at dusk, sahib,” explained Raman. “Only at dusk.”

  That was why the villagers had gone on ahead early in the day to build a machan, a shooting platform, in the only large tree in the clearing, an ancient mohua. They had finished the makeshift machan by noon, and had hurried home, feeling terribly brave and proud.

  Picking up his smoothbore, the colonel turned to Geoffrey. “Well, it’s up to us now.”

  Geoffrey nodded. “Raman will take us to the clearing,” he said, “but he will not stay the night. He is too afraid.”

  “Well, tell him we are not afraid. We are English.” Geoffrey told him.

  “And tell him he should come in the morning with several others and we shall have his manushie for him.” The colonel smiled. “Do you have that cage out of the cart? We shall have to carry it there. Don’t want the noise of that blasted cart to scare away the ape. Raman shall have to carry it.”

/>   Geoffrey nodded and turned to give the instructions to Raman and the others who had gathered to see them off. Then, in a modest processional, quite unlike the one of the evening before, they went down the packed dirt road and off to the west.

  There was much more of a path at first, and even when the path gave way to hacked jungle, so many men had been there just hours before, the walking was easy. Raman, who shouldered the cage without complaint, slipped easily along the walkway, and they followed, reaching the clearing well before dusk.

  Some thirty yards from the mohua tree, near a stand of blackthorn, was a termite mound that looked very much like an Indian temple. Next to it were the remains of another mound that had been destroyed by the last rainy season.

  “There, sahib, that is where the man-ghost lives,” whispered Raman, letting the cage off his back and wrestling it to the foot of the mohua tree. “At night it will come. The manush-bagha.”

  “Very good, Raman. You may go now,” said the colonel. He chucked as Raman took him literally and fled the clearing. “Well, well,” the colonel added. He walked over to the termite mound and walked around it slowly and thoughtfully.

  “Would an ape live in there?” asked Geoffrey uncomfortably.

  “Would a ghost?”

  They circled the mound again, this time in silence. Then the colonel nodded his head back toward the mohua tree. When they were beneath it, the colonel looked up. “Time to settle ourselves,” he said.

  Leaving the lantern at the foot of the tree, the colonel climbed up the rope ladder first and Geoffrey followed.

  “I think,” the colonel said, when they were settled on the wooden platform, “that the drill now is no more talking. Load your gun, my boy, and then we will sit watch.”