Vultures in rainforest. Grayscale
Another Excerpt from ...And the Night Hissed by Claude Opara. A hideous forest guest visits Dr. Cromwell and his team of slave raiders.

“Damn filthy scum! I’ll teach you a lesson you won’t forget!”

“Ma binu!” she cried. “Ma binu!”

He stood over the weeping girl and tugged on her wrapper which had loosened with the fall. She protested weakly as she struggled to keep the folds of her cloth tightly secured to her chest. She beseeched her towering adversary in Yoruba but her pleas fell on deaf ears as she was stripped naked in our presence and her cloth torn. O’Brien stared down at her voluptuous nudity for a short while then released a long sadistic laughter.

I looked around at the others. Nobody moved. They all spectated in amusement as they sipped their coffee. Fisher, McAlister, Twain, Brown—all were enjoying themselves thoroughly. Hookes sneered in the distance as he watched the drama unfold while polishing his gun. Some men laughed in the background, while others cheered O’Brien on. I, on the other hand, was becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

O’Brien pummelled the slave girl with his fists until her face was swollen and she could scream no more. Old cicatrices on her body were re-opened and new cuts were made. There was blood on her lips, nose and teeth. Her eyes grew dull and dazed. I was certain another blow would end her life.

Then something in me snapped. I could not bear to watch any more. I dropped my cup, stood up resolutely and wrestled the Irishman off the battered slave girl. “I think you have made your point, sir! That’ll be enough punishment for one day.”

He gave me a wry smile. “So you would rather attack me than see a Negress put in her rightful place, Doctor?”

I shouted in exasperation, “You almost killed the girl, for the love of God!”

“And what is that to you?” Fisher asked, stirring his cup placidly.

Capt. Abraham and Twain stared at me curiously.

My face must have turned red because O’Brien’s smirk broadened as he watched me. He wiped his bloodied hands with his handkerchief and walked away without a word.

Confound the man! He had craftily set me up.

“Don’t be absurd!” I barked, throwing my hands up in frustration. “We were just talking about getting more slaves a moment ago . . . then this!”

“The man does have a point,” the Captain was forced to admit. “We can’t afford to lose any now. Okay, boys! We go north! Olu, get the guides! Let’s go over that plan once again!”

* * *

While I waited for the Captain and his team to finalize arrangements, I lay beneath a mahogany tree trying to forget the morning drama and the compromising situation I had put myself in. Instead, I ruminated on other events that had occurred since we set foot on African soil. Three of our colleagues had met their end— one of who was a good friend and member of British nobility. The natives had attributed their deaths to an unseen righter of wrongs, a Snake Warrior, a spirit called ‘Adaniloro’, a nemesis. Nemesis, they had said. I recalled all I knew about Nemesis in Greek mythology. I believe she was also called the Daughter of the Night? And what a coincidence that was! All three of our late comrades had died at night. Was there a connection? Could the Greek Nemesis be Olori Ejo’s wife by any chance? I laughed at the thought. The first good laugh I had had in the last few days.

I rolled over and watched the enigma called Hookes as he skillfully polished his rapier. True to character, the man had discreetly withdrawn himself from the rest—an anti-social trait which had attracted much condemnation from his fellow guineamen. Unflattering rumours on his person were rife but the man was unperturbed. Some claimed he dabbled into occultism and astrology when he was a teenager, others said he was once a serial killer. Nobody dared ask. The rumours just kept growing. Next thing I would hear, he was Olori Ejo himself. I sighed and looked away.

The whole camp was a beehive of activities. Everyone was preparing for the journey ahead. Tents were being folded and packed, slaves were being coffled. Everything was going according to plan.

Then we saw him.

A man—nay, a shadow of a man—in torn and bloodstained clothes emerged from the trees. We all stood there frozen to a spot. It was like something from the bowels of Shades itself—something that could make the most revolting tramp in England vomit. It was white— though not British—but wore no shoes upon its feet and no hat upon its head. It was like a twig—lean and fragile—with a shaggy beard and an unkempt mustachio. I could not discern its eyes as they were deep, sunken and partially concealed by a mop of dirty black hair. It was obvious that this hideous creature had not seen water for many a day as flies swarmed around its head and open gashes. No sooner had it emerged from the bush than vultures appeared in the morning sky, possibly relieved that they had not lost their potential prey to the forest. They circled high above the clearing, eagerly awaiting the inevitable while it stumbled through the bushes and into camp, collapsing in a pile beside the remains of last night’s fire.

McAlister rushed to its side but staggered back from the malodorous smell. The flies fought desperately for their prize. Above, the vultures hovered around for awhile but, interpreting recent developments better than their insect counterparts, they reluctantly abandoned their mission and disappeared behind the trees.

“How is he?” Fisher inquired from a distance with a handkerchief over his nose.

“I dinna ken f’r sure,” the Scotsman replied. “I think the doc ’ad be’er ’ave a look-see.”

Confound him! I thought. Why me?

I approached the shabby fellow reluctantly, cursing my profession as I did so. The stench was stifling. His face was battered and swollen. His breathing was laboured and painful. His eyes—oh, those terrible eyes—were a pale grey and totally blind. They stared at me nonetheless in sheer fright—pleading and weeping. He had sores and deep knife cuts all over his extremities and blood oozed from his neck and thighs. This gory and pathetic sight lay before me.

As he felt my presence near him, he whispered in a queer tongue, slurring his words as he did so, “Agua.”

“Quick!” I cried to McAlister who stood some distance behind me. “I think he wants some water. Hurry!”

McAlister scuttled off.

“The man is Portuguese,” Fisher declared. “I know a bit of Portuguese. Let’s see if I can find out what happened to him.”

Fisher knelt down beside me, wrinkled his nose and addressed the creature in rusty Portuguese. The man answered feebly for a while then paused to guzzle water McAlister had just brought.

“What did he say?” Capt. Abraham demanded. He was visibly disturbed.

“He says he is a Portuguese soldier. He came to Africa with a company of soldiers to purchase slaves at Lagos—a Portuguese slave and goods port some two days’ walk from here. The rest sounds rather bizarre, really.”

“What did he say?” Capt Abraham repeated impatiently.

“He says his entire company was obliterated leaving him the sole survivor.”

“Who did this to them? The natives?”

“I haven’t asked him that yet.”

“Well then, ask him!” Capt Abraham snapped.

Fisher glared at the Captain for a moment then inquired brusquely. He went pale at the Portuguese’s response.

“Well?” Capt. Abraham asked impatiently.

El espirito vingativo das cobras.”

“Excuse me?”

“The avenging spirit of the snakes,” Fisher translated.

“What in the world . . . ?”

“The snakes did it,” Fisher explained, a little less confidently.

Before anyone could comment on this revelation, the Portuguese soldier jolted forward, choking on his water. I patted him on the back to clear his air passage but instead, he spurted out both blood and water. We stepped back instinctively.

“He’s dying!” I cried desperately.

Capt. Abraham cared little for the soldier’s survival. “Quick, Fisher! Ask him what he means by . . .”

Too late. A familiar rattle resonated from the Portuguese’s throat.

“He’s dead,” I announced hoarsely. Once again, I felt helpless—like a liability to the group.

O’Brien rushed to my side and seized the limp figure. He shook him vigorously—frightening off the flies as he did so. “What did you mean by that, you Don Quixote? What about the snakes?”

“Dead men can’t answer questions, O’Brien,” I said sarcastically.

The Irishman swore under his breath then released the corpse.

There was silence now. Not a word was spoken for an eternity. We were all trying to make sense of what had just transpired. Behind us we heard the faint voices of lamenting slaves and guides. Was this soldier sent as a warning? As a harbinger of doom? Did his murderer only preserve his life long enough for the message to be delivered? There were no answers—just questions.

Mr. Hawksworth was very pale now and he goggled at the Captain over the rim of his spectacles. “Cap-Captain, do you think there was something in what he said? This avenging spirit?”

I remembered the acolyte’s distinct words: ‘A warrior of snake—with Vengeance and Death in his wake!’ Because the downtrodden hissed incessantly in Olorun’s ear, Olori Ejo was formed. Vengeance was awakened. Could he be behind all this? Could he be the reason behind the Portuguese’s panic, his blindness and deformity, his fellow companions’ deaths? What lay in store for us in this cursed jungle? Would we ever see the shores of Britain again? Suddenly, I was gripped with paralyzing fear—fear unlike any I had ever felt before.

“Balderdash!” The Captain tried to laugh. “Gentlemen, what we have just witnessed are the ramblings of a dying man deluded by hunger, thirst and disease. Who knows what poison he might have been injected with to trigger such hallucinations? Is it not possible, Doctor?”

“Er . . . I think so . . . possible, yes.”

“Right then! Let’s get back to our tasks! We need to be on our way in the next five minutes.”

For a while, nobody moved. We were yet to recover from the shock—yet to grasp the reality of it all. We were still trying to decipher the inscrutable words of the deceased—like they had come from the Rosetta Stone.

“Move it!” the Captain barked.

Nobody dared disobey those orders.

AN EXCERPT FROM …And the Night Hissed

Previous excerpts here.

Claude Opara
Claude Opara

Claude is a Nigerian author, artist, architect and project manager. An avid movie watcher, history buff and football fan, he also has a penchant for nature, travel and adventure.  He has authored a few books with  ...And the Night Hissed being his first novel, a historical thriller about a slave raid gone awry. He has also written and published two lighthearted comics and a children's storybook under his An African Legend series which were endorsed by NERDC and distributed to schools nationwide by UBEC (Universal Basic Education Commission) as a library resource. His short story From Sandstorms to Streetlights is published in "Nest of Tales" an anthology by the Association of Nigerian Authors (ANA), Lagos Chapter. Claude is also the co-founder of Teambooktu.com.

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