GUYANESE HORROR FICTION KAMARANG…The Bush Dai Dai takes a Child

Jan 06, 2020 News

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By Michael Jordan

The cops came about an hour after Sealey entered the Jaguar’s Den.
He was sitting by the bar, watching Alvin Benn sweep several beetles and cigarette butts into a spade. “Beetles like flipping rain last night,” Alvin Benn grumbled to no one as he headed to the dustbin.
Sealey glanced at his watch. Nine-fifteen. There was still a hint of mist in the air. He himself still felt a chill in his bones from his dip in the river. A few stragglers from the night before were there; some asleep at their tables, some still drinking. One miner sat alone, nodding in drunken sadness to the voice of Patsy Cline that came to him from Alvin Benn’s old jukebox.
Mentore had slept out. Bap Reggie, drunk as a lord, was still in bed. Sealey had left Leon asleep, too. The boy had staggered in after midnight with the smell of cassiri and the scent of the girl on him. He had pulled off his boots, thrown himself in his hammock, and gone promptly to sleep.
He was lighting a cigarette when Shirleen entered the disco. She was wearing clogs, a yellow shirt knotted at the front, and skin-tight pants. She shifted away from the outstretched hand of a half-drunk miner, walked quickly over to Sealey, and sat next to him.
Hi Shirles,” he said.
She just nodded. She fumbled in her bag and finally came up with marijuana joint. She leaned to him for a light. The spliff glowed as she dragged hard on it.
He wondered what had brought her to the disco so early. The prostitutes were usually late risers. Shirleen looked in need of sleep herself. Her eyes were red-rimmed. Her straightened hair was hastily combed back. She wore no makeup; not even the customary dab of powder on the neck and breasts. She dragged again on her spliff, sighed, and stared gloomily at the table.
“You okay?”
She shook her head. “Had a screwed-up night.” She pulled out a thin gold chain from beneath her shirt…squeezed the small crucifix at the end, then looked up again suddenly, the red-rimmed eyes on him.”Where Leon?”
“Sleeping.”
“Where?” The words came out sharply.
“At the logie.”
“Oh.” She squinted at him for a moment longer, then said: “Take care of that boy, Vibert Sealey.”
“I’ll do that,” he said, wondering at the sudden concern.
She seemed about to say something else—something important, he sensed. Instead, she dragged at the dwindling spliff, and began to prattle about some of the latest happenings at Kamarang. Some prostitute had gotten her hand broken by a miner who she had tried to rob, and talking about robbing, Ruth-Anne and Patricia still hadn’t turned up, since they disappeared from the landing—
Movement out of the corner of his eye, and he turned in time to see two men entering the disco. The older man was a police sergeant named Caesar, who had been stationed at Kamarang for about three years. The younger man looked familiar, too. Sealey thought he might have seen the man when he had gone to the station to lodge his gold and shotgun.
The detectives headed straight for the bar, where Alvin Benn was reading a newspaper. The older one nodded at Sealey. He shook his head in amusement at Shirleen, who was brazenly grinding out the remains of her spliff on the table.
The policemen were in plainclothes, but both had black notebooks. He saw now, too, that their shoes and trouser bottoms were stained with mud and moss. These men had just come from the jungle.
Caesar ordered a quarter of brandy. He poured a small shot, drank quickly, then pushed the bottle over to the younger detective. The young cop grimaced and shook his head.
“Take a shot man…” Caesar said. “You will feel better.”
The detective, staring down at the counter, shook his head again.
Benn was looking at them. “Something happen, Calvin?”
Caesar wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We just come from over the river. We find a dead child in the jungle. The whole flippin stomach tear out.”
“Christ,” Benn whispered. “Jaguar?”
“Dunno yet.” Caesar glanced across at Sealey. “Is one of ole Perez great-grandsons.”
Perez. Sealey suddenly felt cold. He pressed out his half-smoked cigarette, excused himself from Shirleen, and hurried back to the logie. He changed into a pair of high-topped boots, and put on the brown, broad-brimmed Stetson hat he wore in the bush. He collected two bottles of whiskey from a carton and put them in a small shoulder-bag. Bap Reggie was nowhere in sight.
The boy was still asleep in his hammock. Leon’s shirt- buttons were loose, revealing the imprint of fresh teeth-marks just above his left nipple. Sealey had a vision of the girl bending to Leon; her wide, full-lipped mouth seeking his chest.
He hurried over to the Kamarang Police Outpost, uplifted his shotgun, then went down to the river. A boy in a corial took him to the other side. He stepped ashore, and took the track that led to the Amerindian village, and to Perez’s hut. It was a small settlement of thatched huts and land cleared for farming. Usually, there would be children playing near the huts, or splashing in the river. But today, the children huddled together, wide-eyed and silent. Men milled around in small groups, with shotguns and skinny hunting dogs at the ready. He caught the smell of deer-meat smoking at a nearby fireside.
There were three women in Perez’s hut. Myra, Perez’s youngest daughter, sat in a tibisiri chair next to a younger woman, who had apparently been crying. The third woman lay in a hammock as she nursed a baby.
Myra rose to greet Sealey. “Uncle Vibert,” she said, attempting to smile. He held her hands and squeezed them gently. Her fingers were cold. There was grief and fear in her eyes.She glanced back at the woman in the tibisiri chair, who was crying again. “That is the mother.”
Sealey nodded at the red-eyed girl, then turned back to Myra.” Where your daddy?”
“He outside with the body. I will get someone to take you to him.”She called out to a passing boy.
Sealey followed the boy down a path that led to the back of the village. They came to a spot about fifty yards from the huts, where Sealey saw a small gathering of men. He caught the same tension that he had noticed before. Again, some of the men had shotguns. Sealey pushed his way through the small group. He saw Perez and one of his sons within the circle of men. A policeman in uniform was there. They were standing around a sort of wooden platform. On it, wrapped in a piece of canvas, was a bundle with the unmistakable shape of a child.
Sealey edged his way to Perez, who was staring at the bundle. The old man glanced up.
“You heard.”
Sealey nodded.
Perez turned back to the wrapped-up form. “My youngest great-grandson,” he said.
Sealey vaguely remembered a chubby boy of about three sitting in Perez’s lap when he had passed through the village on his way to the landing.
Perez moved closer to the platform. Gently, he began to unwrap the canvas that covered the child. A sigh went up from the circle of men as the body was bared to their view. The child was naked. If you looked at his face, you might have thought him asleep, except there was a gaping hole where his stomach should have been. Something had scooped it out clean. Sealey could see the edges of a few broken ribs. Even the child’s penis was missing.
Perez stared at the child for a moment. He plucked a dry leaf off the boy’s chest, then ran his fingers gently though his hair. “My youngest great-grandchild,” he said again, looking into the boy’s face as if he was speaking to him. Then slowly, he covered the body. He touched the wrapped-up form once more, then stepped back into the crowd.
“What did this?” Sealey asked. His voice sounded hoarse and far away.
“We not sure yet…” he sensed something evasive in his friend’s voice.
“How it happened?”
It seemed that the boy and some of the other children had been playing hide-and-seek on the outskirts of the village. It was only when dusk fell and they were leaving for home that the others realised that he wasn’t with them. They had thought he had wandered home. But he wasn’t there, or at any of the other huts in the village. They had begun to search, but then night had fallen. They found him this morning in the forest, in an area about an hour’s walk from the settlement.
“You saw anything in the area to tell you what happened? Like animal tracks?”
In answer, Perez touched Sealey lightly on the shoulder then began to shift away from the crowd. His two sons, with their shotguns, and a middle-aged hunter with two skinny dogs followed. Sealey again sensed that tension. He knew, somehow, that something strange was about to occur.
Perez walked until they were out of sight of the crowd, then he stopped. The group paused at the edge of the forest. “I take you to the place where we find the boy,” he said. “Then we talk.”
They walked a little further, until they came to a small trail. Perez and his two sons checked their shotguns. The hunter glanced at the trail, then spoke to Perez quickly in the Akawaio dialect, while gesticulating at the trail. Perez answered him in the dialect. He pointed angrily at the trail with his shotgun.
The hunter fumbled in his pouch and took out some crushed leaves. He passed some to Perez and his two sons, and, after a moment’s hesitation, to Sealey, who watched as the men put the leaves into their mouths. Sealey followed suit, almost too puzzled to notice the pungent taste. He knew of the binas Amerindians used to give them good luck on the hunt. There was the one where you rubbed ginger into cuts on your hands. There was the one where you put slime from a frog’s skin up your nostrils. But these crushed leaves were not a hunting bina. This was supposed to be a powerful charm to protect persons walking through the forest alone, and to protect them during sleep, and against evil.
What evil did Perez think awaited them in the jungle?
Now the men spat out the chewed-up leaves. They muttered something again. Then Perez nodded, checked his shotgun again, and stepped into the trail…
At first, the trail was wide enough for them to walk in pairs. But gradually, they were forced to walk in single file as they went deeper into the forest. At one point, they startled a flock of parrots out of a fruit tree, and the birds flew off, cackling like schoolgirls. But as they went further, silence enveloped them, save for the panting dogs and the sound of their progress.
Suddenly, Perez signaled, and they turned off the track into another trail; the ground soft beneath their boots and thick with decaying leaves. Sealey could see where the earth had been disturbed by the clumsy feet of the policemen who had gone before then.
As Sealey stepped into the trail, leaves from a stray branch brushed his face. Their touch stirred some buried memory and he suddenly thought, with surprise, I have been here before. For a moment, even the feel of the rotting leaves beneath his boots seemed disturbingly familiar. But he shook off the feeling of déjà vu and continued down the trail.
They had been walking for about ten minutes down the new trail when they came across the first dead baboon. The first thing that alerted Sealey was the faint reek of carrion; the smell growing stronger as they stepped deeper into the jungle. Then, at a bend in the trail, Perez signaled them to stop. He stared into the bushes on his right, then squatted on the ground.
At first, Sealey thought he was looking at the carcass of a large, furry dog. But on stepping closer, he realised that the creature was a baboon. It lay on its back, big teeth bared, long limbs sprawled. The vultures had taken its eyes, and something else had taken its stomach.
The hunter squatted besides Perez, disturbing a hoard of feasting cow-flies. A quick exchange in Akawaio, then Perez signaled to them to continue.
About a minute later, they found the second baboon. Its body lay in the centre of the trail. Its eyes were still intact, but its entrails were missing. This carcass was fresher, but about a day old, Sealey guessed. This one was female. One of its teats hung from a flap of skin. Its human-like paws were clenched tight in death. Perez glanced at Sealey. He nodded grimly, then continued.
And now Sealey sensed that the men had grown more alert. The dogs, pulling on their leashes, made occasional, yipping sounds. Perez’s pace had increased. His sweat-soaked cotton jersey stuck to his back, but he was almost loping along now like a youngster. Sealey knew that there would be no tears from this old man, though he would get drunk tonight. And he would not rest until he had hunted down whatever that had killed his great-grandson.
Was it a jaguar?
Such attacks were rare. There was a case, several years ago, when a little girl had gone into some bushes to play and had startled a she-jaguar and her cubs. It had torn the child’s scalp clean off. But Sealey felt in his bones that this was different. It was in the men’s reaction to the sight of the dead monkeys. It was in the feel of the forest. Usually, he had always felt at ease in the jungle. But somehow, the jungle felt different today.
Suddenly Perez stopped and said, “Here.”
They had reached a semi-clearing in the forest. Perez pointed to a spot to the left of the trail. The grass here was pressed down, as if something had been lying there. There were splotches of blood on the ground.
And now the dogs erupted into hysterical barking; crouching low, noises pointing to the crushed grass, tails locked between their legs. The men looked around hastily, squinting in the semi-darkness, shotguns pointing to and fro. After awhile, the hunter murmured to the dogs and the barking subsided.
Perez peered into the forest a few moments more. Eventually, he lowered his shotgun and squatted to the forest floor.”This is where we find the little one,” he said, his voice a half-whisper. He looked at Sealey, who had squatted besides him. “You notice anything strange?”
Sealey scanned the spot where the body had been found then said: “Not much blood.”
Perez nodded in agreement.
“Maybe it feed somewhere else.”
“And then bring the body here?” Perez shook his head. “Don’t think so. No blood anywhere else. We checked.”
He squinted at Sealey. “Notice anything else?”
A faint, rankish smell that he couldn’t quite place. He sniffed the air. There it was again…
“You smell it too,” Perez said. “Not jaguar smell. And the boy’s body. No scratches. You know how jaguar eats.”
Sealey nodded. A jaguar would have held the body down with one paw while it tore at the body with its teeth. The body should have had scratches made by the big cat’s paws. And so should have the monkeys’.
“One more thing,” Perez said. “Look.” … Perez picked up a twig and pointed to the spot with the body had lain. And now that Perez had shown him, Sealey saw the faintest of footprints.
Sealey stared at the footprint, feeling more unsettled by it than by anything he had seen so far. What could it mean?
As if Perez had read Sealey’s mind, he said: “We don’t think that the little one was killed by a jaguar. We think he was murdered.”
“What?” Sealey heard the shock and dread in his own voice.
Perez nodded. “He killed by something more dangerous than jaguar.” Perez paused, then ended: “I think he killed by a bush dai dai.”
In the silence that followed, Sealey found himself thinking that he had been waiting for something like this ever since they had entered the forest. He was seeing the other Perez; the side of his old friend that he would never really know; that Perez, who knew the forest herbs that could cure or kill; that Perez, who sometimes spoke to beings that only he could see.Sealey waited. There was more to come; such as why Perez thought that a bush-spirit had killed his great-grandson.
“Two things make me know,” Perez said. He placed the stick on the depressed ground where they had found the body. “The boy was lying with his head this way—” … He pointed to the south—”… and his feet were this way…” He was pointing north. “The footstep is here, at the side of the body. “You see?”
Sealey looked. He felt the prickle of goosebumps on his arms. He knew that the bush dai-dai were supposed to be forest-spirits whose feet were turned the opposite way.The footprint near the stick was turned away from the spot where the body had been.
“You said two things,” Sealey said. His tongue felt heavy.
“Yes,” Perez said, and turned to the hunter. “Show him.”
The hunter hesitated.
“Show him!”
The hunter stared at Sealey a moment longer, then loosened the string on his pouch. His hand came out clutching something.
“We found it on the mother monkey. In her hands.” Perez turned again to the hunter. “Show him.”
The hunter opened his hand…
…and Sealey found himself staring at a clump of blood-streaked hair…
(Taken from the Guyanese supernatural novel, KAMARANG by Michael Jordan.
KAMARANG is available on AMAZON (Kindle version).
KAMARANG will also be available again from January 14 at Austin’s Book Store. Contact Michael Jordan for more information on +592 645 2447, or email address [email protected]

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