That Night in Lagos
SOCIETY FOR PARANORMALS
Case 0.5: That Night in Lagos
By Vered Ehsani
from Africa…
With a Bite
That Night in Lagos
One does not require much supernatural experience to appreciate why one should endeavor not to anger a giant Praying Mantis, unless of course duty requires it. Even then, prodigious care should be taken so as not to lose one’s head in the process, for of what use is a headless body to anyone?
In hindsight, I reflected I would’ve been best advised to avoid the precarious situation altogether by refusing to follow the dictates of my curiosity. Or better yet and by all rights and logic, I could have told my employer, the Director of the Society for Paranormals & Curious Animals, that I couldn’t possibly abandon my domestic post to gallivant around the world without so much as a chaperone. After all, what would the neighbors think of that?
But as per usual, rights and logic had little sway in the matter and that wily old werewolf had his way. Thus I found myself in the unenviable position of hiding in a ship off the coast of Lagos, wondering how I would survive long enough to submit my report, while my outraged aunt fended off nosy neighbors back in London. And it had all started with the little people.
It resembled a routine investigation into the smuggling of Brownies, but I knew the moment Prof Runal called me into his office that I was in for a spot of trouble.
“Beatrice, my dear, do sit down, my dear, do sit down,”
he huffed as he pushed himself upright and gestured to a plush chair facing his oversized desk.
Everything about Prof Runal, the Director of the Society, was oversized: his voice, his build, his beard that covered his large jowls, and his nose. “All the better to smell you with, my dear,”
he would joke which, coming from a werewolf, wasn’t really a joke.
Before I’d taken my seat, he set one of the pendulums on his desk swinging. As the five bronze balls clicked against each other, noise from outside the office faded into a background murmur. I knew our conversation would be impossible to listen in on. At the time, I really couldn’t imagine whom he was so concerned about. Whenever those balls started ticking, I knew I would be presented with an unusually arduous case involving dead or disappearing bodies. That morning, I was not disappointed.
“What do you think about this Brownie case, Beatrice, what now?”
he asked in his booming baritone.
I cleared my throat and avoided inhaling too deeply through my nose. As dear as the man was to me, and as much as he had done for me, he had a most noxious bodily odor. In a word: he stunk. That had nothing to do with his habits of hygiene but rather it was the unavoidable wet dog stench associated with his being a werewolf.
“Well, sir, I heard we’ve tracked the smugglers to a foreign owned shipping company. It’s based out of Lagos, of all places,”
I updated him.
“Good,”
he nodded, his mane of hair flopping about his heavy set face. “Very good. And so that’s where you’ll be off to then. It’s part of Her Majesty’s Empire, so it shouldn’t be too taxing, not at all.”
“Sir?”
“To Lagos, my dear, you’re going to Lagos,”
he said, except from him it was at a near yelling volume.
“You’re sending me to Lagos,”
I said, resigning myself to my fate but hoping he’d realize the silliness of such a decision and change his mind.
Werewolves seldom do change their mind. In addition to being smelly, they are wholly and utterly stubborn.
“My aunt has just announced my somewhat delayed coming-out party,”
I reminded him, on the off chance he might be persuaded to send someone else.
“Yes, and I have provided my congratulations,”
he boomed. “This case shouldn’t take too long, and you’ll be back in a jiffy.”
I very much doubted a round trip to Lagos would be completed in anything remotely resembling a jiffy, but I was curious. Any information we had on African paranormals was almost exclusively about West Africa. Even still, my knowledge was theoretical, as I hadn’t as yet had the opportunity to engage directly with the supernatural elements of that region.
“Well, I suppose the party could be delayed a bit,”
I acceded.
“Excellent,”
the professor said while thumping a hand against his desk, causing all the contents to rattle like a bag of dry bones. “Then off you go, and do keep me informed as to your progress, my dear.”
As Prof Runal preferred immediate action, I found myself on a ship that very night. A doctor’s note (written by a Society vampire of that profession) was dispatched to my guardians, the Steward family, with an explanation that I had contracted a highly contagious virus and was under strict quarantine in a distant sanatorium until further notice, meaning until I should improve or die. The note ended with reassurances that my chances of survival were fairly reasonable.
I shall not bore you with the details of my time on the ship, for it was tiresome and even reflecting on it makes me weary. Only when I spotted my destination did a sense of animation stir my blood. I stared at the small town huddled on one of the delta islands at the edge of a jungle. The buildings, mostly made of wood and mud, were dwarfed by the trees that loomed over them.
“What a grand thing it is to travel,”
I marveled, the tedium of the trip evaporating at the prospect of a little adventure. My spirits were so buoyed that I vowed, “This Brownie case will be wrapped up in no time, I’ll have the advantage of an expedition to Africa, and I shall return to London before anyone really misses me.”
Only after the passage of time can I laugh at my naïve presumptions.
Upon disembarking, I was met by a certain Inspector Jones of the British police force based in Lagos. I could immediately discern in the Inspector’s features that he had been expecting a man. This wasn’t at all surprising to me, as I was the only female investigator of any kind that I knew of.
All that the man had been told was that I was searching for slave traders (which wasn’t far from the truth). He hadn’t been informed that I was a woman, and a young one at that, an oversight that Prof Runal never failed to make as he paid little consideration to such minor details.
Inspector Jones was therefore much dismayed to discover this inconvenient truth upon meeting me at the port. His African counterpart merely shrugged his shoulders, accustomed as he was to the oddities of the white foreigners.
I sighed with a weariness no Englishwoman in the prime of her youth should experience, and gripped my walking stick with firm resolve. Inspector Jones glanced at the stick, his dismal view of me lowered further as he presumed me an invalid.
It was an understandable and unfortunate assumption that most people fell victim to upon seeing my walking stick. I was neither elderly nor infirm. The walking stick was a most useful tool, made of oxide green metal. One most certainly didn’t want a close encounter with either end, nor with the various tools cleverly disguised within it. It had been recently gifted to me by Prof Runal to celebrate my completion of one year of employment with the Society. Indeed, anyone who survived their first year had great cause for celebration.
“Investigator Anderson?”
Inspector Jones politely inquired, glancing behind me, perhaps in the hope that the real and very manly Investigator Anderson would appear.
“Indeed,”
I replied and gripped the bronze-plated steel fist that topped the fully loaded walking stick.
For a moment, I contemplated putting that fist to good use. A solid thump upside the head could do wonders, or at the least awaken a man to the startling fact that not all Victorian women were fainting wallflowers.
Given that Inspector Jones would be of no use to me concussed, I restrained myself and added, “You may call me Miss Bee.”
Thoroughly disappointed by my response, Inspector Jones frowned and stared at me fully for the first time. He startled when his gaze met mine, but was too much the gentleman to comment on the intense, nearly golden shade of my eyes. Still, he stared a tad longer than social convention should allow.