The Year's Best Horror Stories 7 (4 page)

And Mr. Legere was standing by Green Terror's cage.

It was like a tableau from Dante. The near-empty cage-clearing inside the circle of trailers; the two men, facing each other silently, their clothes and hair rippled by the shrieking gale; the boiling sky above; the twisting wheatfields in the background, like damned souls bending to the whip of Lucifer.

"It's time, Jason," Mr. Legere said, his words flayed across the clearing by the wind.

Mr. Indrasil's wildly whipping hair lifted around the livid scar across the back of his neck. His fists clenched, but he said nothing. I could almost feel him gathering his will, his life force, his id. It gathered around him like an unholy nimbus.

And, then, I saw with sudden horror that Mr. Legere was unhooking Green Terror's breezeway-and the back of the cage was open!

I cried out, but the wind ripped my words away.

The great tiger leaped out and almost flowed past Mr. Legere. Mr. Indrasil swayed, but did not run. He bent his head and stared down at the tiger.

And Green Terror stopped.

He swung his huge head back to Mr. Legere, almost turned, and then slowly turned back to Mr. Indrasil again. There was a terrifyingly palpable sensation of directed force in the air, a mesh of conflicting wills centered around the tiger. And the wills were evenly matched.

I think, in the end, it was Green Terror's own will-his hate of Mr. Indrasil that tipped the scales.

The cat began to advance, his eyes hellish, flaring beacons. And something strange began to happen to Mr. Indrasil. He seemed to be folding in on himself, shriveling, accordioning. The silk shirt lost shape, the dark, whipping hair became a hideous toadstool around his collar.

Mr. Legere called something across to him, and, simultaneously, Green Terror leaped.

I never saw the outcome. The next moment I was slammed flat on my back, and the breath seemed to be sucked from my body. I caught one crazily tilted glimpse of a huge, towering cyclone funnel, and then the darkness descended.

When I awoke, I was in my cot just aft of the grainery bins in the all-purpose storage trailer we carried. My body felt as if it had been beaten with padded Indian clubs.

Chips Baily appeared, his face lined and pale. He saw my eyes were open and grinned relievedly. "Didn't know as you were ever gonna wake up. How you feel?"

"Dislocated," I said. "What happened? How'd I get here?"

"We found you piled up against Mr. Indrasil's trailer. The tornado almost carried you away for a souvenir, m'boy."

At the mention of Mr. Indrasil, all the ghastly memories came flooding back. "Where is Mr. Indrasil? And Mr. Legere?"

His eyes went murky, and he started to make some kind of an evasive answer.

"Straight talk," I said, struggling up on one elbow. "I have to know, Chips. I
have
to."

Something in my face must have decided him. "Okay. But this isn't exactly what we told the cops-in fact we hardly told the cops any of it. No sense havin' people think we're crazy. Anyhow, Indrasil's gone. I didn't even know that Legere guy was around."

"And Green Terror?"

Chips' eyes were unreadable again. "He and the other tiger fought to death."

"Other
tiger? There's no other-"

"Yeah, but they found two of 'em, lying in each other's blood. Hell of a mess. Ripped each other's throats out."

"What-where-"

"Who knows? We just told the cops we had two tigers. Simpler that way." And before I could say another word, he was gone.

And that's the end of my story-except for two little items. The words Mr. Legere shouted just before the tornado hit:
"When a man and an animal live in the same shell, Indrasil, the instincts determine the mold!"
 

The other thing is what keeps me awake nights. Chips told me later, offering it only for what it might be worth. What he told me was that the strange tiger had a long scar on the back of its neck.

3: Charles Saunders - Amma

A soft strain of music drifts delicately among the familiar midday noises of Gao, capital city of the empire of Songhai. Softly it weaves its way through the shrill bargaining of market women; the intrusive importunings of tradesmen; the strident admonitions of
adhana-
priests to prayer and sacrifice at the shrines of the gods; and the clink and jingle of mail- clad soldiers strutting through the streets. The music is easily recognizable: notes plucked by skillful fingers from the seven strings of a Soudanic
ko.
 

There are other
ko
songs that mingle with the general hum of the city, for the ko is popular, and Gao large. Yet some there are in the teeming populace who pause when the notes of this one reach their ears. By the singular quality of its melody, they know that this in no outdated local strummer of weary songs, nor love-struck youth seeking to impress the object of his callow affections. They know, these connoisseurs of the
ko,
that a new
griot
has come to Gao.

Before the final notes of the song have faded, a small crowd is gathered at the
saffiyeh,
a small square off the main marketplace where, traditionally, the newly arrived
griot
comes to display his talents. The stranger sits with his back against a whitewashed wall; his fingers dancing lightly acrosa the strings of his instrument. More like hands hardened by the gripping of sword or plow, these, than hands accustomed mainly to the touch of laquered wood and slender wire.

Beneath the road-worn garments of a wanderer, the
griot's
frame bulks large, yet strangely gaunt, as though once-massive thews have been reduced to the minimum amount required for physical activity. His sepia-toned face is solemn and middle-aged, webbed with lines scored by adversity. Large eyes, dark and luminous, seem fixed upon a point somewhere above the heads of his audience. Two
tira,
leather charm pouches, hang from beaded cords around his neck. Beside him rests a great empty turtle shell, upturned to receive the bronze coins and quills of gold-dust he hopes to earn from his listeners.

The crowd stands quietly. There are turbaned men swathed in voluminous
johos
over cotton trousers, and turbaned women garbed in colorful
asokabas
that descend from waist to ankle, leaving the rest of the body bare. Children clad after the fashion of the adults squeeze between their elders' bodies, the better to hear the
ko
of the new
griot.
The dry-season sun burns like a torch in the cloudless sky, bathing ebony skin in a glossy sheen of perspiration.

The
griot's
song ends. His listeners stamp their feet on the dusty pave: a sign of approval. Even though no coins or quills have yet found their way into his tortoise shell, the
griot
smiles. He knows that a man of his calling is first a story teller, no better than second a musician. His
ko
has served its purpose. Now it is time to earn his day's livelihood.

"I am going to tell a story," the
griot
says.

"Ya-ngani!"
the crowd responds, meaning "Right!"

"It may be a lie."

"Ya-ngani."

"But not everything in it is false."

"Ya-ngani."

The
griot
begins his tale.

Mattock resting on one broad shoulder, Babakar
iri
Sounkalo stood shaking his head in the midst of his charred beanfield. For the thousandth time he cursed the Sussu, whose raiders had swept down from the north to despoil isolate border towns like Gadou, the one closest to Babakar's ruined farm. The Sussu had, as always, been driven back to their barren mountains by the soldiers of Songhai; Babakar himself had taken up lance and shield to join the forces of Kassa
iri
Ba, the invincible general from Gao, and the blood of more than a few Sussu had washed his blade.

But now, as he surveyed the burnt acres of the field that had been in his family since the first stone was laid in Gadou, the taste of triumph had faded for Babakar. His wassa-beans had been reduced to a mere blackish stubble, and though he-knew that the next crop would grow even faster in the ash-enriched soil, alone he could never replant his beans before the wet season ended.

Alone… again the bitter memory seared across his mind: the memory of his wife and two daughters butchered by the swords of the Sussu who had nearly destroyed Gadou with their treacherous attack. Sussu lives had paid for the loss of his family; Kassa
iri
Ba himself had praised Babakar's ferocity in battle.

Now, though, Babakar faced only a grim choice as his reward. He could re-till his field in the slim hope that the wet season would last long enough for a new crop to rise, saving him from starvation. Or he could join the many others already in flight southward to the provinces untouched by the border war. The idea of abandoning the land still nurtured by the spirits of his ancestors remained unthinkable to Babakar.

"You'll accomplish nothing standing here in self-debate," Babakar chided himself. With a gusting sigh, he raised his mattock from his shoulder and swung it down into the soil.

It was then that he saw her, swinging gracefully down the road that separated his field from that of a neighbor slain by the Sussu. The mattock nearly fell from his hands. For it was from the west that she came, and Babakar knew that only the semi-arid wasteland called the Tassili lay west of Gadou. The woman couldn't have come from
there…
. she must have run off in that direction to escape the marauders, and was only now making her way back to more habitable terrain.

As the woman came closer, Babakar saw that she was, though disheveled, beautiful to behold. Though she was not tall, a willowy slendeness lent her an illusion of greater height. The tattered condition of her
asokaba
contrasted with the neatly folded turban that clung closely to her head. Between the two garments, a pleasant expanse of bare black skin was filmed with a thin layer of road dust, reminiscent of the coating of ashes young girls smeared on their bodies before their puberty dances. A look at the way her conical breasts jounced with each step convinced Babakar that the stranger had passed beyond that age, though from the tautness of her skin she could not be much older than twenty rains. Her face, withdrawn and pensive, would not have been out of place at the Court of the Hundred Wives of the
Keita,
the Emperor of Songhai, who took only the most beautiful women of the Soudan to his golden love-chamber. Of possessions besides her garments, the young woman had none save a few neck and arm ornaments.

Babakar was just asking himself if he should call out to the stranger when she caught his glance, smiled, and came toward him. That smile stirred something in Babakar that had remained sullen and dormant since the day-over a month past now-when he had returned from his field to discover the Sussu-violated corpses of his wife, Amma, and daughters in the smoldering ruins of their home.

"Does this road lead to Gadou?" the stranger asked. Her very voice reminded Babakar of the beloved tones of another, long stilled by the slash of a Sussu sword.

"What's left of it, yes," he replied. Then, on an impulse: "Where do you come from? Only lizards and gazelles dwell in the Tassili."

The woman dropped her gaze. "I was taken by some deserters from the main body of raiders. They weren't even Sussu, but renegade Nobas who had joined the Sussu for the plunder. There were five of them. They swept me onto one of their horses and took me away to the west, and they found a patch of bush, and then they… they…" She choked, unable to continue.

This time Babakar's mattock did drop to the ground as he crossed quickly to the woman's side and laid a hand on her shoulder.

"War makes victims," he said. "Loss is the lot of us all. My wife, Amma, and my two daughters were slain by the Sussu. You, at least, still live."

The stranger's head came up sharply. Her eyes met Babakar's. "Amma? I am also called Amma…"

Babakar's hand tightened on smooth skin. The pressure was gentle, though, and she did not flinch as she well might have at the touch of a strong man's grip.

"They used me until I begged to die," Amma continued tightly. "And they might have taken me back to their own country if they hadn't been pursued by Sussu who were angry at the Nobas' desertion. There was a fight… I escaped while they killed each other for the gold the Noba had stolen along with me. I walked through the waste, taking food where I could find it. When I left the Tassili, there was death all around. I took these garments from the body of a woman who no longer needed them. I thought I might find something in Gadou. But there is death there, too, you say."

Again she looked down. Babakar took his hand from Amma's shoulder and clenched it as if he were gripping the hilt of a sword.

"Yes, there is death," he said bitterly. "With this hand I killed as many Sussu as I could see. But in the end, I have only this burnt-out field; my family is still dead, and there is no one to help me to replant my crop before the rains pass."

They remained silent for a time, each adrift in sad reverie. Then Amma said, "There is nothing for me in Gadou, and I weary of walking. I will stay here and help you with your crop."

Astonished, Babakar could only respond, "I have but one mattock."

Amma laughed, her smile rendering her face even more attractive than before. "I'll use this," she retorted, bending down to curl her slim fingers around a fire-blackened stake which had been part of a fence that once guarded Babakar's field. Without further words, Amma began to thrust the jagged point of the stake into the soil. Fresh earth emerged as she twisted the stake in a digging motion.

Only for a moment did Babakar watch her. Then he picked up his mattock and proceeded to work at Amma's side. A cloud appeared, in the sudden fashion of the wet season, and a hot, misty rain soon, washed down on two dark, naked backs bent to the soil.