The Claw

Thirty-two

It was no dream. Bright green lizards were scuttling over a clump of tree-roots twice as tall as Alan, and he was wide awake. The jungle dimness closed in like green steam; his forehead was streaming, his clothes were sodden, the giant trunks were dripping rain. Parrots and enormous butterflies, vivid as hallucinations, darted through the greenish air; monkeys swung screaming from branch to branch two hundred feet overhead. Ahead of him, the forest ceiling dropped to the level of the oil-palms, which rattled and jerked with the rain.

A flash of lightning sent bars of shadow slicing through the undergrowth, toward the village of conical huts, green beehives three times the height of a man. Four tribesmen waited at the edge of the village, spears in their hands, their loinclothed bodies slick with rain, their skin the colour of tar. As he followed Isaac, the air felt almost as hindering as the insect-ridden vegetation underfoot. Perhaps that was his own reluctance to go on.

They'd found the lead they had been so desperate for. Leaving the train at last, they'd trudged for miles through forest, beyond the settlement the station had served, such as the settlement was. It had taken them hours of wandering, during which they realized they'd been misdirected from the settlement, before they found the village, a handful of squat square huts where tribesmen sat in the dusty compound as if they hadn't moved for years. Alan had no idea what race they belonged to. They and their chief had sat, growing dusty, while Isaac spoke to them, and Alan had wondered – rather horribly, at that – if this would be as much of a blind alley as Port Harcourt. But the chief had remembered Marlowe, and had sent them where he'd sent the anthropologist: back to the coast, east of Lagos – where the police had told Isaac that the Leopard murders were continuing. All at once the trail was coming clear, taking Alan further into the jungle, further into his dream. Now that something was happening at last, their progress seemed almost too swift. Already they were at this village on the coast, where a tribesman had been murdered by the Leopard Men.

One of the tribesmen in the rain stepped forward and held up his spear. At least this was nothing like Alan's dream of the glade, of the spidery figure and the cooking-pot, Alan thought as Isaac began to parley. He had almost to shout to make himself heard above the clamour of rain on palm-leaves and the rumble of thunder. Rain broke on the points of the spears, crawled glistening in the tribesmen's cropped black curls; Alan felt rain crawling on his own scalp like lice. In the village, the only woman he had seen was hurrying a small boy dressed in enormous baggy shorts into one of the beehive huts.

Isaac was still talking – Alan had lost all sense of time; he could have been standing in the mud for hours – when the other tribesmen stepped forward to stare at Alan's long cracked nails. They stood so close to him that he could smell their breath and see their decaying gappy teeth. Before, they'd looked stern and suspicious, their faces giving nothing away, but now they were altogether more distrustful.

They walked around him, prodding and pinching him, and then they stared into his face. The tallest of them addressed him. When he turned his head to ask Isaac what the man had said, his neck felt stiff, painfully tense. 'They want to look at your teeth,' Isaac said.

Alan could only do as he was told. He bared his teeth and tried not to look afraid; above all, they mustn't sense his fear. It was only like being at the dentist's, after all; certainly he felt as helpless. The tribesmen were thrusting their fingers into his mouth, pulling his lips wider until the skin that attached them to his gums felt as if it would tear.

The man who had been parleying with Isaac came to look. He stared expressionlessly for a while, then he nodded and turned away. As Isaac followed him, Alan stumbled after them. His legs felt so weak he was afraid of falling. No doubt the three tribesmen close behind would catch him if he did.

The village was more or less circular. Interlocking rings of huts surrounded a central compound. The thatched pyramid roofs reached almost to the ground and rose to points twenty feet overhead. They looked freshly painted with the rain that streamed down them, layer after layer. Beyond one open doorway Alan heard children whispering in the dark – many children. He wondered if they were being hidden from him.

He wasn't sure what made him peer more sharply at a hut on the other side of the compound: perhaps an inkling that the men were turning him away. The interior was dark, and a leaf that dangled from the thatch above the doorway hindered his view, but he glimpsed someone lying in the hut. As he squinted, he saw that the supine figure was glistening. It couldn't be with the rain. He had the impression that there wasn't much left of the still figure in the dark.

Though he quailed inwardly, he managed not to flinch. The Leopard Men must have done that to the corpse in the hut, and that meant he was on their trail at last. Perhaps soon his helplessness would be over. The thought made him halt, forgetting where he was, until his shoulders began to sting. The tribesmen were prodding him with their spears, steering him towards the chiefs hut – he could tell it was the chiefs by its size. He lurched forward involuntarily through the entrance, and almost fell at the feet of the chief. Perhaps he'd been meant to fall.

The chief sat in a tall chair carved with masks and symbols. He might have been an ebony statue, larger than life, his hands gripping the arms of the chair. He looked old and fiercely proud, as far as Alan could make out his expression beneath the drooping eyelids. An animal's pelt covered his scalp, its empty legs dangling beside his ears, yet it seemed not at all absurd. Old shields and spears leaned against the walls and a rusty notched blade lay at his feet.

Isaac stepped forward to stand beside Alan, and began to speak. Alan felt helpless again, standing there stiff-faced while Isaac spoke on his behalf – all the more so because the chief was staring straight at him. Time passed, until he could no longer tell if he was actively holding his face stiff or was just unable to move it; Isaac's speech seemed as unlikely to stop as the roaring downpour. Alan's legs were shaking with the effort of standing still, but he couldn't shift his feet – he was too aware of the points of the spears, hovering almost negligently at his back. For all he knew, Isaac was still going through the formalities of addressing the chief.

After what seemed like hours, the chief leaned forward, necklaces rattling like dice on his bare chest. He was staring fiercely at Alan and pointing through the doorway. As his mouth opened, Alan saw the gaps in his teeth, but his voice and his movements seemed unchallengeable. Alan found that he was turning to leave even before the spearmen ushered him outside. Without asking Isaac, he knew where he'd been told to go. At least he could go without being prodded; at least he could steel himself against what he must see.

Outside, the rain leapt in the compound, pitting the mud, surrounding each hut with a watery aura, pouring down his face until he could hardly breathe. The spear-points touched him almost gently as he hesitated, blinking in order to see. Yes, they were driving him toward the hut where the Leopard Men's victim lay.

His stomach tightened as he reached the doorway. He had to see this; it was the first real step of his search. He wouldn't flinch, he mustn't show fear. That was his only clue as to how to deal with the situation in which he found himself – you didn't show fear in front of primitives or mad people or wild beasts.

He blinked the rain out of his eyes, wishing that they could stay blurred. Now he could see that the shape in the hut lay on a mattress. Old though it was, the mattress must indicate respect for the victim. He forced himself to peer into the dark, to see without going closer. The spears were pricking him, he was going to have to stumble in, but suddenly there was no need, for a flash of lightning showed him everything.

He thought he'd managed to steel himself. But it was one thing to be told what the Leopard Men did to their victims, quite another to see for oneself – albeit briefly -the red, ragged hole that the heart had left, the raw stumps where fingers had been torn off, the eyes that had seemed to glare at him. They looked far too big for their sockets now that the skin had gone from around them.

He'd seen all that, but it was only a memory now. He could turn away before the next flash; what else could the spearmen expect him to do? The lightning flashed again, but he was turning; the mutilated corpse was at the edge of his vision. The splintered hole in the chest, the fingerless hands, the eyes bulging from their raw sockets. .. Then he realized that the Leopard Men did this to children, their own children. It was too much. His torso jerked forward convulsively, and he vomited into the mud and the rain.

When he straightened up at last, so weakened now that he didn't care what the spearmen were doing, he saw that they were all staring ambiguously at him. Even if he'd been able to, he wouldn't have dared to move, not even to brush the dribbles of rain from his eyebrows out of his eyes. Had he shown disrespect to their dead? What would they do now?

They stepped forward, and his muscles stiffened until they felt like bone. But the men gazed approvingly at his vomit, poked it with their spears. Gradually, with a wave of relief that made him afraid his legs might give way, he realized that he'd done the right thing. He'd proved he was human, free enough of the taint of the Leopard Men to be appalled by what they'd done. For a moment – only a moment – he felt he could go home.

No, that was a false hope. He had to go on, and now he felt he could. Though he was shuddering, he felt cleansed; the rain was almost refreshing. When they indicated that he should return to the chiefs hut, he managed to control his legs enough to walk without stumbling.

Once the men had spoken to the chief, he made a sign for Isaac to address him. Again, Isaac seemed to speak for hours before the chief replied. Sometimes the heavy lids drooped further, and Alan wondered, as his legs twitched with the strain of standing, if the old man was dozing. He wouldn't have blamed him. The endless incomprehensible stream of language was sending Alan to sleep on his feet.

He started awake when the chief suddenly spoke. The old man was sitting even straighter in his chair, his throne. He was gazing expressionlessly at Alan as he spoke to Isaac. Whatever he was saying, Isaac had reluctantly to agree, though not without a glance at Alan that looked apprehensive, or worse. Alan restrained himself from demanding what was wrong. He'd soon know; the chief had raised one hand in a gesture of dismissal. The audience was over.

The tribesmen led Isaac and Alan back to the edge of the forest. The din of rain and screams of birds and animals sounded gigantic as the trees. When he blinked rain from his eyes, Alan could just see the trail that led back to the jeep. Beyond the tribesmen, children were venturing out of their hut to splash in the mud, rushing in again to take refuge as the lightning flashed. As Alan turned to follow Isaac, one of the tribesmen lifted his spear. Alan thought he was wishing him victory.

Once Isaac was sure of the trail, he began to talk, shouting to make himself heard above the downpour. 'I had to tell him you were under the curse of the Leopard Men, otherwise he would have told us nothing.'

'What did he say?'

Isaac hesitated. 'He seemed to know already.'

Alan shook his head, impatiently and nervously. Water sprayed from his hair. 'I don't mean that. What did you learn?'

'Well, they saw the men who did it. They were too far away to be stopped. From the description they sound like the old Ju-ju men, but I don't understand how they could have survived all these years. They were very thin, not like men at all, so I was told. You saw what they did to their victim. I was told they used only their teeth and nails.'

The forest was growing darker, except where the lightning glared down, and even that blackened the shadows. Screams greeted every flash. 'Does he know where they are?' Alan demanded.

'His men pursued them into the forest to the east, but then they lost them. I had to be careful what I asked. Ordinarily he wouldn't admit that to outsiders – certainly he wouldn't tell the police. It's a matter of pride that his warriors should deal with the culprits themselves.'

Suddenly he was avoiding Alan's eyes. 'He told you something else, didn't he?' Alan said.

Isaac didn't look at him. 'You're sure the claw is lost.'

'Stolen.'

'Gone, at any rate. It's probably all to the good. There's no reason to suppose you're meant to give it back, and besides, one wouldn't like to think that it was anywhere near your wife and child. The Leopard society was exclusive to men, but that needn't mean that its influence is.'

His reluctance was almost palpable. 'Is that all?' Alan demanded, and when Isaac didn't answer, 'What else?'

'I am afraid I may have been wrong about the legend -about what must be done for the power to be consumed.'

'I'll do anything if it works.'

'I ought to have known,' Isaac said to himself, as if he could still avoid telling Alan. 'I should have known what might be necessary to consume the power of a cannibal society.'

'I'll do anything that's necessary.' The look in Isaac's eyes had made him quail. 'Anything,' he repeated, but most of his fierceness was directed at himself, for he felt sick and fearful. He was close to recalling what he had had to do in his dream.