For Those Who Dream Monsters (6 page)

“Okay,
I’m going. I’m going.”

Everyone
looked on in astonishment as Pierre turned the tank around carefully and
disappeared into the scrub beyond the village. That was the last they would see
of him until dinner that night.

“What do you mean, you haven’t started yet? You’ve been gone all day and the
least you could have done after your performance earlier today was to start
stripping it down. You may think that the planting season is a long way away,
but it will be on us faster than a hyena on an abandoned antelope calf, and
what will we do if we haven’t got tools to till the earth with?”

They
were all sitting in the large canvas dining tent specially erected for
important village occasions such as this.

Pierre
was taken aback by the village elder’s outburst, but he wasn’t giving up
easily.

“We
can till the earth with sticks and sharpened stones – like we did last year and
the year before that. And the kind people of Europe and America have sent us
plenty of grain and dried food, and food in metal tins. We don’t need to
destroy the tank … you never know when the village might need it.”

The
village elder was speechless for a moment and turned a deep purple colour that
rather worried both his foreign guests and the other villagers, who had not
seen him turn this particular shade since his son had informed him that he was
marrying the girl from the neighbouring village who everyone knew was most
definitely not a virgin. Finally the elder spoke:

“How
dare you speak for this village, and how dare you mention the people of Europe
and America!? You have betrayed everybody’s trust, and you insult our guests
who have come a very long way to bring us the tank so that we can till our land
and feed ourselves, and not so that you can ride around in it making a
spectacle of yourself!”

The
foreigners had no idea what the village elder was shouting, but they could tell
that the little man his anger was directed at was not going to get off lightly.
Jim picked at his plate of rice distractedly, feeling guilty and uncomfortable
about his role in the blacksmith’s disgrace.

“Blacksmith,”
the elder continued, “you leave this table now, and you go and start converting
that useless piece of junk into farm tools for the people to use, or I will
personally cast you out of this village and make sure that you never return!”

A
gasp went round the table. Pierre hung his head and stood up.

“Yes,
elder,” he said quietly, and headed out of the dining tent, avoiding the eyes
of the others – some pitying, some indignant, but all of them fixed on him. “
Tua
madre succhia cazzi nell'inferno
,” he added under his breath in Italian as
he left the tent, passing through a shaft of light from the full moon as he
went.

Alicia was feeling increasingly tense. The heady smells of the food set on the
table before her, and of the plants and creatures outside the dining tent were
making her head spin. Some unfamiliar sense was telling her that flesh might
alleviate her symptoms, and she reached out, grabbing a chunk of the pungent,
fatty, non-descript meat from the large bowl that had been lovingly placed in
front of her and the other foreigners. Alicia sniffed at the meat suspiciously,
and immediately started to drool. She took a tentative bite, then stuffed the
whole chunk into her mouth and reached out for another.

One
of Alicia’s colleagues had been staring at her for a while before she noticed.

“What?”
she asked, staring back.

“Nothing,
it’s just that I thought you were vegetarian.”

“I
was.” Alicia didn’t offer anything by way of an explanation, so her colleague
mumbled an apologetic, “Right,” and returned his attention to his own plate.

“You
must excuse our blacksmith,” the elder had calmed down following Pierre’s
departure. “He’s always been a little eccentric.”

Alicia
devoured several helpings of the oily meat, but still she was ravenous –
ravenous and nauseous at the same time. The shaft of moonlight falling into the
tent had crept its way across the floor and reached the table. It now touched
Alicia and bathed her in its silver radiance. As it caressed her face, Alicia’s
body started to tingle. Every nerve, every sinew, every cell of Alicia’s body
tingled and glowed; it was as though she were dissolving and merging with the
moonlight. For a moment she felt at peace, but then a light breeze stirred,
bringing with it the smells of the night outside – the chickens, the goat, and
other, larger, sweeter-smelling prey. Her head spun, and she had to get out –
had to become part of the dark outside. She hastily made her excuses and left
the tent, declining her colleague’s offer to escort her to her hut.

Once
outside, the night hit her with all its splendour. Alicia moved soundlessly
over the dusty ground, savouring the slight chill in the air now that the sun
had gone down, and the sounds of insects and small animals moving around in the
scrub beyond the villagers’ huts. She kicked off her shoes and felt the gritty,
sandy earth beneath her feet as she wandered aimlessly through the small
village, marvelling at how textured the night was, how full of colours despite
the unifying silver of the moonlight. How strange that all her life she had
never walked in moonlight. How strange that she had built her self-worth on
what others thought of her – others like her ex-husband who had sapped all her
love and youth out of her, then thrown her away. How strange that she had ever
cared about anything other than the night on her skin and the moon in her hair.
The moon – that was when Alicia saw it – burning in the sky above the scrub,
melting away her doubts and inhibitions, dissolving her thoughts and memories
until the old Alicia was no more.

Eyes
still turned up to the shining orb, the new Alicia pulled off her clothes and
flung them aside, intending to head for the scrub, but then a mouth-watering
scent made her turn back towards the village. Sweet and inviting, it drew her
relentlessly to a small hut, her excitement growing with every step she took.
As she neared the hut, she felt a stabbing pain as muscle and bone shifted and
transformed beneath her skin. Her skin itself seemed to burn and blister,
breaking out in thousands of new hair follicles, each one sprouting a tiny
black hair that grew with unnatural speed. As her spinal column and limbs
recreated themselves, what was once Alicia slumped into a half-crouch. The
smell emanating from the hut was irresistible now. All other sensations faded
away, and there was nothing but the smell of the sleeping child waiting for
her. A brief and final flash of memory – of the miles she had travelled to help
the starving children. Of how they’d been waiting for her, waiting for Alicia,
to come for them.

“I’m
coming for you,” she called out to the sleeping child, her voice a low howl
emanating from deep within, silencing the insects in the scrub and piercing the
delicate fabric of the moonlit night.

“What in God’s name…?” The village elder stopped midsentence as the
bone-chilling howl came again, unfamiliar to the villagers, but a sound
instinctively to be feared nonetheless.

“It
sounded just like a wolf,” one of aid workers finally broke the silence that
had settled like a shroud upon the dining tent.

“There
aren’t any wolves in Africa,” Jim’s fellow driver responded quietly.

“Well,
it sounded just like one.”

As
the villagers exchanged frightened glances and everyone wondered what to do
next, the howling came again, this time even lower in pitch and ending in a
growling, roaring sound that was wolf, but not wolf. And this time it was
accompanied by a child’s terrified screams – one, two, the third one cut short.

“Paulie!
Paulie!” One of the local women leapt from her place at the table and ran
shrieking out of the tent. Jim ran after her, followed by the village elder and
the rest of the diners.

The
sight that greeted them defied belief. Loping away from one of the huts was a
huge creature, wolf in all but the fact that it moved on two legs. In its jaws
it carried a bleeding child, gripped clumsily by the throat. The child’s mother
swooned for a moment into Jim’s arms, then shrieked and ran at the beast. The
beast lashed out with a hideous paw-hand, its long razor-sharp claws catching
the woman across the throat and flinging her to the ground, where she gurgled
for a moment, then bled out.

The
monster threw down the dead child and confronted the crowd of humans that had
spilt from the mouth of the tent. A growl-roar rose in its throat, and then it
hurled itself forward, ripping, biting, tearing. The crowd scattered, villagers
and foreigners running screaming for their lives. Jim ran to his truck and
returned carrying a loaded revolver.

“Hey,
over here!” he shouted at the creature, drawing it away from the body of a male
villager it was disembowelling. As the creature ran at him, Jim discharged
several bullets, each one hitting the thing point-blank in the chest. Jim’s
determined expression turned to one of fear as the creature kept coming at him.
It hardly broke pace as it slashed the driver across the throat with its claws,
veering away from the mortally wounded man to confront a couple of village
youths armed with makeshift spears.

Jim
fell to the ground near the scrub, clutching at his maimed throat, trying to
stop his life from draining out of him. Then a hand was touching his shoulder
gently, but urgently, and the driver heard a familiar voice through the
pounding of blood in his ears.

“Mr
Jim! Mr Jim!” Pierre crouched down in front of the driver, distress and sorrow
in his eyes.

“Pierre,”
Jim managed to gurgle.

“Mr
Jim, you hurt bad.”

“Listen
Pierre…” Speaking made the blood squirt out of his wound, but Jim was
experienced enough to know that nothing would save him now anyway. “Told you
how the tank was fired…”

“Yes,
Mr Jim.”

“Still
can be… Ammo … in my truck… In back … under blanket…”

The
blood was spraying out from between Jim’s fingers, and his words were coming
out as little more than gurgles, but Pierre’s determined nod told him that
somehow the blacksmith understood.

“I
use them, Mr Jim. I use them.” Pierre kept his hand on Jim’s shoulder until the
light went out in the driver’s eyes, his hand dropped from his throat and the
last of his blood spurted out onto the earth.

As quickly as it had appeared amongst them, the creature disappeared, loping
into the scrub and trees behind the village. But everyone – everyone who was
still alive, that is – knew instinctively that it was coming back.

After
a hasty and half-hearted search for Alicia, the foreigners left, saying that they
would send help, and taking Jim’s body with them. The villagers wished that
they too could leave and say that they would send help, but they had nowhere to
go. Centuries of living in a war-torn country left them in little doubt that
the help which the westerners would send would not arrive in time to make a jot
of difference to any of them, so they buried their dead and made plans for
surviving the following night.

Alicia had fed well the previous night, but now the hunger was back, stronger
than ever. She could smell the goat as though it were standing right in front
of her, but she could smell the humans too – despite their best efforts to hide
themselves away. She would have them all – the goat and the humans – and then
the hunger would subside and she would be able to rejoice in the night and the
light of the moon before it waned again to nothing.

As
she approached the village, the enticing smells intensified and Alicia began to
drool. She quickened her pace, the hunger inside her lesser only than the rage
that accompanied it.

She
burst out of the scrub and threw herself at the goat tethered to a stake in the
middle of the village square. Just then something long and thin glanced off her
side and fell to the ground next to her – it was a wooden spear with a
sharpened stone tip, thrown by one of the villagers. Alicia roared and leapt at
the man, her fangs ripping out his throat before he had a chance to scream. The
other humans were all around her – pelting her with stones, spears, clubs and
anything else they had managed to assemble in the way of weaponry. Alicia
hardly felt a thing as the puny projectiles bounced off her thick hide. But
then there was a small sting – like a mosquito bite – on her back. She spun
round and saw the village elder pointing a revolver at her – one of the youths
had found it lying next to the body of the dead truck driver and the elder had
taken it upon himself to pull a couple of rounds of ammunition out of the dead
man’s pocket. Alicia felt a couple more mosquito bites as the man discharged
the remaining bullets at her chest. She roared and was about to leap at him,
but stopped as a loud rumbling sound caught her attention.

The creature spun round, its slanted yellow eyes staring into the scrub.
Despite their terror, the villagers momentarily lowered their weapons,
following the creature’s gaze.

The
rumbling sound grew louder and then a long metal tube broke through the brush,
followed by the rest of the vehicle. The tank emerged fully from the bushes,
gun barrel loaded and pointing dead ahead. The vehicle came to a halt, the lid
in its top opened and the village blacksmith stuck his head out.