Story Excerpt - W Maltese

Location:Zanzibar
Submitted by: William Maltese
ZANZIBAR
1994
—recounted by William Maltese, international author of horror-genre books DEMON’S STALK, DEMON’S CORONATION, TOO BEAUTIFUL, DOG-COLLAR BOYS, and the first gay werewolf novel, VALLEY OF THE DAMNED). ©2005 William Maltese.

(See the author’s Home Page web-site at http://www.williammaltese.com)

Suddenly, I was alone. Strange, in that it had only been seconds before that I’d queried my guide about the possibility of snakes; we were both chest deep in jungle undergrowth (and I still was) in a space otherwise filled with towering trees planted with orchard-row precision by Arabs who had originally intended the wood be harvested for use in the construction of sea-going dhows.

“A snake was actually spotted around here just three days ago that was as big around as a fat man’s torso.” That was how my guide had responded to my question. Had he, then, provided an unremembered (by me) addition, along the lines of?: “You wait here, while I see if I can’t scout out the monkeys.”

After all, we were there to see the famous Zanzibar monkeys; so far (after a morning of trekking), we’d had no success. The primates in question had grown leery of locals who had recently — Zanzibar’s economy definitely down the toilet — taken to eating the them; a law only recently passed that made such dining an offense punishable by death (obviously some bureaucrat had the incentive to look at things over the long range, figuring tourists would one day return in force and would need something to see, once they got there; most of the historical slave sites having already deteriorated to invisibility within the cannibal undergrowth; the only visitors, at the time, usually just the occasional Swede, out for a vacation bargain, or someone interested in studying Swahili at the island’s Swahili Language Institute).

Not that I was in Zanzibar specifically to see the monkeys. I had gone to the bother of visiting there (and, in those days, it was a big bother, what with the communist regime in power) to research the book SLAVES I was writing with Alex von Mann for Brit publisher Prowler Books (1997). “The monkeys” were something I’d spontaneously figured interesting by way of background to be included to enhance my reputation as an author who always provided his readers with a been-there, done-that, got-the-T-shirt ambience.

I heard the rustling of brush, though there wasn’t even the faintest breath of a breeze. Didn’t see whatever was making it, mind you; nor had I seen anything or anyone the whole day, besides my now-missing guide. Whatever made the nearby sounds, and the easily followed line of whishing branches and leaves, passed off to my left. Thank God, way too fast-moving for a big-bellied snake!

“Ali?” I called to my hoped-for guide, in case he’d momentarily lost me (and/or his direction). No response. Well “no response” isn’t exactly correct, in that I did think that there was an accompanying rasp of heavy breathing; although, any such sounds were quickly rationalized as my own (disappearing into the Zanzibar jungle not exactly my idea of a “way to go”).

What followed was an exact repeat of what I’d just seen (and heard). Brush movement, made by God only knew what, proceeding off to my left. Definitely, it wasn’t the “whatever” merely backtracking; it was something/somebody else … (maybe in pursuit?).

Certainly, I had no plans to go anywhere. “Stay put” had always been the survival techniques drummed into me from Day One. And if Ali had left me in the one place, while he did the heavy-leg work of locating the monkeys, he’d know to find me where I was, damned surprised and likely as angry as hell to find me silly enough to have moved.

Except a sudden and exceptionally loud crack … (of an apparently larger twig?) … accompanied by a decidedly human groan, had me decidedly worried that Ali might well have met some unforeseen disaster, hurt and needing my help. How was I to be rescued if the man I was counting upon for succor was wounded himself?

It was the second echoing “crack” and ensuing louder groan that convinced me that I couldn’t just stay put. I made the excuse for disobeying de-rigueur survival-in-the-wild instructions by convincing myself that the noises were coming from close by. If I just made sure that I stayed oriented (damned hard to do considering the symmetry of the surrounding trees), I could still find my way back to where Ali knew (or hopefully knew) he’d left me.

And, in fact, the causation of the noise and the groans was only a few yards away, viewed through a slice of conveniently drooped foliage: two men: one black, naked, and strung from metal wrist-bracelets, the connecting chain of which was draped over the bottom limb of a small tree; one obviously Arab (not Ali), fully clothed (albeit sweaty) cat-o’-nine-tails in hand; the whip quickly in movement (for obviously not the first time) to come down hard and fast on the Negro’s already blood-striated back.

I was about to interrupt the sadistic display when a certain unexpected pressure, exerted to the top of my right shoulder, reflexively sent me into a speedy one-hundred-eighty-degree pirouette that completely put me off balance, followed with an arm-flailing fall back onto my ass, then to my back, then to the culminating hard bang of my head against the speedily having come up to meet me ground (the latter little cushioned by any in-between flora).

“Shit!”: my concluding comment to the whole series of painful (for me, and for the black man) — not to mention macabre — events.

“Mr. Maltese?” Ali’s response, in that it was he who was suddenly down on his knees and apologizing for having so startled me.

My resulting scramble to my feet, despite Ali’s insistence that I stay put until we were both certain I hadn’t suffered injury, including a concussion, immediately turned me back in the direction of the man-beating-man scenario I’d witnessed prior to going all Raggedy-Andy, only to find nothing there.

I can well imagine what Ali must have been thinking as I stumbled (still admittedly dizzy) the few remaining yards to where there should have been the naked black man, the whip-wielding Arab, and the metal bracelets connected over the low-growing limb of a small tree.

In fact, the tree in question, beneath which I was suddenly standing was a large one, no branches anywhere near ground level. This left me confusedly turning … turning … turning … beneath its shade like a Whirling Dervish with a balance problem.

Again (or, more likely, still) dizzy, I was back on my ass, then on my back, in no time, helped along, I suspect, by one foot becoming entangled by the visible-at-ground-level part of the tree’s extensive root system. It was from this position, though, that I was allowed a glimpse of the anomaly existent as part of the high (but lowest) limb of the tree extended far out of reach above me.

“What’s that?” I wanted to know; Ali looked up, obviously without a clue, and probably thinking he had the bad luck of seeing the likely only American on Zanzibar suddenly turn wild man. “Here, give me your binoculars!”

I aimed the provided high-magnification lenses toward the vegetation above me.

“The monkeys are back that way.” Ali pointed in an entirely different direction; obviously, he didn’t have a clue.

Like a chain around the neck of a dog too long, metal links one-time draped across that tree limb now far above me (when that tree limb was younger and smaller in circumference), now had portions of living wood (like fur and flesh) encroached so much upon it that the corroded metal still there was almost totally invisible, without magnification, from ground level.