THE BEAST

Short Story

THE BEAST

By Lawrence Kadzitche

It was a village enveloped in fear. Death, coming like a thief in the night, held the people to ransom. Nobody had seen him, but his unperceived black shadow, made everybody feel him.

And so far, he had claimed the lives of six strong young men. So it was not surprising that the men sitting with worried faces under the Kachere tree were trying to figure out ways of dealing with him.

The young man in the expensive blue suit was the Member of Parliament for the area. An educated man with a Bachelor of Arts from Chancellor College, he called him a wild beast – most likely a hyena.

But the village headman, an elderly man who had never been in a classroom, described him as a strange beast, without doubt an animal incarnate of a human being.

“We should call a witchdoctor to deal with it,” he suggested.

The MP laughed. “What will the witchdoctor do? Put it in his nsupa?”

“This is no ordinary beast,” the village headman said with conviction. “It must be the spirit of one of the dead people which has resurrected into a beast.”

The MP regarded the village headman sitting on a stool before him. A gray-haired old man in his early eighties, he was in a worn out gray overcoat and khaki shots. His feet were bare. He held a carved walking stick in his right hand. He looked out of context with the modern world. No wonder he believed that a hyena on the rampage was an incarnation of a person.

“This is a normal beast, a marauding hyena,” he said at length, trying to reason with the elderly man. “When a man is dead, he is dead. He can’t turn into a hyena or anything else.”

The old man pulsed his lips and scratched his head. “A hyena does not normally attack people,” he pointed out. “But this one attacks healthy strong young men like a hungry lion. And in broad daylight, too.”

“I’m a practical man and I don’t let imaginations get the better of me,” said the MP.” I’ll call government hunters to kill the stupid hyena.”

“But Honourable MP….”

The MP cut him off with the wave of his hand. “This matter is closed, village head. The hunters will be here tomorrow to kill the hyena. I expect you to cooperate with them.”

However, when the MP arrived the following day with the hunters, he was surprised to see a strange man squatting on his heels near the village headman. He was a very small, very thin and very old man in a monkey skin that made him look exactly like an emaciated monkey. His shaved head, stuck full of chicken feathers, looked like a decorated death’s head. Magic gourds, roots and bones hung about him. He carried a black horn in his left hand and a whisk in his right hand.

“Who is this man?” the MP asked, pointing at the diminutive man.

“He’s the witchdoctor I was talking about,” replied the village headman.

“A witchdoctor!” spat the MP. “What’s he doing here?”

“Well, I thought…” stammered the old man.

“I don’t care what you thought,” snarled the MP. “Did you send for him?”

The village headman cleared his throat. “Honourable MP, Sir, you don’t understand. This beast is …”

“… the reincarnation of your grandfather!” mocked the MP angrily. “I won’t have witchdoctors on the loose in my constituency. What do you want people to think of me?”

The old man shrunk before the angry young man glaring at him. “Sir…”

“Don’t you know my enemies can take advantage of this?” shouted the young man. “MP calls for a witchdoctor to hunt a hyena. Bah!”

The village headman scratched his head. He couldn’t understand why one could feel ashamed about consulting a witchdoctor. The youth of today………

“This could cost me my constituency,” continued the MP.” Send him back.”

“But Sir……”

“No buts me, village head,” drawled the MP. “I said send him back. Right now.”

“I’ll stay in case your hunters fail,” a voice in deep bass said.

The MP turned, startled. The witchdoctor had a strange voice like that you would expect to hear from the mouth of a ghost.

“It’s not necessary,” said the MP. “The hunters will take care of the hyena.”

“Well, they may fail,” replied the witchdoctor. “You never know.”

The MP’s eyes locked with those of the witchdoctor. He found something threatening in the small, sunken eyes of the little man. It was as if he was staring at a skull whose eyes were alive. It was his eyes that gave ground.

“OK, please yourself,” the MP said, trying to sound indifferent.

“I’ll stay.”

“Alright, I’ll let him stay to please you,” the MP said, addressing the village headman. “But if the hunters kill the hyena, I’ll have your head to please myself.”

As if to mock them, the beast howled from the thicket where it was known to hide. The howling rose and fell lushly for some time, dying in strange peal of laughter. In spite of himself, the MP’s skin crawled with fear.

“That’s the beast,” the village headman said in a quaking voice.

It was early in the afternoon. The howling in the forest continued as if the beast was throwing a challenge at the hunters, daring them to provoke it.

The hunters, followed by villagers, made for the forest. The villagers stopped at a respectable distance from the edge of the forest while the hunters plunged into the forest like Ngoni warriors on the offensive.

Then suddenly gunfire mixed with blood curdling screams filled the atmosphere. The firing went unabated for sometime then died as suddenly as it had began.

The villagers outside the forest stood transfixed, not knowing what had happened. The forest was strangely silent that even the dropping of a feather could have been heard. What had transpired in the forest?

A sudden howl sent the villages falling back as if punched by the sound.

“It is still alive,” the witchdoctor said. “I’ll go and finish it.”

Only the village headman and the MP summoned enough courage to hesitantly follow him. A horrifying sight greeted their eyes. All the game rangers had been butchered. One had his head torn off, another his throat torn out. The head hunter’s savagely mutilated body was hanging in a tree.

“Jesus! A hyena could not have done this,” exclaimed the MP.

Even as he spoke, something crashed into him with the force of a runaway truck. He fell to the ground like an axed pole.

As he scrambled to his feet he came face to face with a huge creature with a mottled mangy skin. It had the body of a hyena, head of a lion and feet of a leopard.

The thing was on two feet, with its arms drawn forward, the talons crushing the air as it prepared for another attack. The MP started screaming with mortal fear.

The witchdoctor burst into action. He started blowing the horn while thrusting his whisk in the direction of the approaching creature. Suddenly, thunder boomed and the animal stopped in its tracks as if electrified.

Black clouds appeared from nowhere. Lightning lit the sky as thunder rolled and rolled. The beast appeared to be struggling with an invisible force that was pulling it back.

Suddenly, lightening struck the beast. It let out a terrible howl of pain, its limbs flailing about. Then it became rigid as a pole and its body began to change shape. When it toppled to the ground it had assumed the form of a human being.

The witchdoctor pointed his whisk to the sky and the lightning and thunder stopped immediately. The black clouds hurried away and the day became sunny again.

They went to have a closer look at the beast. The MP was surprised to see that it was a well-known businessman who had died the previous month.

He had even attended the man’s funeral where relatives had requested that no speeches should be made. But trying to take advantage of the big gathering, the MP had used his influence to make a public speech.

“This man turned into a beast because someone made a speech at his funeral against his wishes,” explained the witchdoctor, casting an accusing eye at the MP. “He killed the young men as revenge for their failure to enforce his will.”

As they spoke, the corpse began rotting away.

“Will this cost your seat in Parliament?” asked the village headman.

The MP stared at the putrid mass of rotting flesh.

“No,” he answered earnestly. “Is he really dead or he will come back as another animal?”

End