by R. K. Syrus
The Ghost Eater came into the light. He was large, his clothing made him look squared off at the shoulders. It was hard to tell him apart from the trees behind. When he stood, he was as still as a stone. It was a false stillness. This was like the illusion sent out by the river crocodile or the tree snake.
When the Eater finally spoke, his voice was the sound of a thousand beetle jaws rasping inside a rotting hollow log. “Now, who might you be?”
The stranger replied too quickly. It dawned on Elahaj that the newcomer might not know enough to be respectful to the Ghost Eater. Though he had expensive clothes and fancy electronic devices, he should consider his words and how he spoke them to a being that was part man, part beast, and part spirit.
“I am Delphino Everett. The leader of a bioarchaeology expedition sponsored by Linacre College, Oxford.”
Everett spoke with enough pride to make Elahaj nervous. The Eater’s man-face could be reasoned with as long as one did not enrage the two other sides. In a moment, he would need to speak with the man-face. These new people were making that unnecessarily complicated. At the moment, he could only listen and watch.
“My colleague is Dr. Akan, MD.” Everett nodded to the taller black man. “We’re tracing the matrilineal origins of sub-Saharan albinos. Apparently we are following the same breadcrumb trail of alleles as these brutes, who I assume are under your charge,” he said, taking the green light from his head. “But it would appear our respective endeavours were undertaken for egregiously different purposes.”
The Ghost Eater’s purple-black lips made a sucking sound. “Well, cover me all over in ‘don’t give a shit.’”
The Eater moved forward, closer. If Elahaj had blinked, he would have missed the movement, so sly it was, deliberate, and quick.
“You may give a… uh, a care… about this: Dr. Akan is employed by Worldwide Help International.” Everett spoke more carefully but again with all too much boldness. He reminded Elahaj of a tourist trying to take a picture with a lion.
“We are all witness to your barbaric assaults. This country enthusiastically administers the death penalty for poaching.” He looked with disgust at the severed arm. “Technically, that includes human as well as animal trophies. Of course, if we don’t return safely to the WWHI compound, the government gibbet will be the least of your worries.”
The Ghost Eater wore a long coat made of stiff cloth, like that of safari tents. The ends dragged through the ashes of the cold village campfire as he walked forward. He chuckled. It was not a pleasant sound to hear.
“Every time I get a death sentence, a demon sprouts its wings,” he said softly and smoothly, like the noose of an oiled rope closing fast.
The Eater added, not softly, “Tie them. And find me my shetani zeru!”
One of the Eater’s men knocked away some kind of electronic device from the doctor’s hands, but they did not have time to tie them. Elahaj stepped out into the lights.
“Hello, Sir Ghost Eater. I am Elahaj of this village.”
“Little kijana, I’m kinda preoccupied.”
The Eater called him “boy.” He felt the need to speak with authority, though he was small for his age.
“I am taking my marks of manhood after the next great beast walk. I must speak with you.”
He drew himself to his maximum height. His upper body was in full view, his feet and other items hidden by a log. Maybe it looked like he was leaving the option of running again open for himself. He could not. No matter how things turned out between him and the Eater, that was not an option. Another reason to start with flattery.
“You are very old,” Elahaj said. “Yes, very powerful, and wise. Women sing songs of you. No man and no beast willingly invites your anger. But, we must ask you to stop chopping my mother. We ask you: Please leave this village.”
The Ghost Eater had a gun. Maybe he was deciding if a normal-colored boy was worth a bullet.
“Who’s ‘we’?”
“My friend, the Tree Sprit has a message: Let everyone go. Leave.”
Elahaj searched for the other’s man-face. The Eater looked at him. Black-rimmed lips peeled back from sharpened teeth.
“Boy, is there an ‘or else’ that comes with that?”
Elahaj was unsure. The Eater was equal parts mindless animal, wicked spirit, and evil man. The evil man could be reasoned with. If the other aspects dominated, the Eater would kill everyone in a rage.
Elahaj was not sure which aspect ruled the mind behind the hooded eyes set deeply in vulture-gray skin. He said it anyway.
“It is a big world, and I do not know many things. But I know the one thing the Ghost Eater fears… is fire.”
The last word hung in the air.
With that, Elahaj threw forward a large plastic jug that had once held gasoline. It was empty.
“You wouldn’t…” A hundred thousand beetle jaws gritted and vibrated their anger from the deep pit of a dark throat.
“Sir, Tree Spirit says to go and never come back. All the ghosts will be gone. Nothing for you here.”
The Eater’s helpers looked around as though they expected the encircling thorn brush to erupt in a blaze and the fat Kigelia trees to start belching flame at them from hollows in their trunks.
On their own, the trees would do nothing. He and the villagers knew from a long history that they would just sit and watch people do as they would. The trees were lazy. In response to the terror and pain brought here by strangers in the dead of night, what did they do? Only filled him with small power, and even that for only a short time. Then again, it was better than no help at all from the world of spirits. He must make the most of it.
Before he could be shot, Elahaj took the precaution of igniting a butane torch. He had found this in the back of one of the visitors’ trucks along with the gas cans. It was much more reliable than the plastic lighter he had planned to use. A solid finger of blue flame sprang out. He held it above the dry grass.
Some moments of quiet followed.
The blue flame hissed.
The city people watched.
Father Rebmann muttered a prayer.
The severed arm dripped blood.
People were clearly thinking about what would happen next. The holy father broke the silence.
“Leaving out the unholy aspects,” he said, “the young man has a point. There is a drought, ja?” He took his hat off and fanned his bearded face. “The brush is very dry. With this much fuel spread around us…”
“And four more cans, even bigger than this one,” Elahaj added.
After a few seconds, the Ghost Eater reached his hand back. It swept past the ivory handle of his gun. He pulled his coat closed. His hollowed-out mouth aimed right at Elahaj. “You’re smart. Something my guys should be but ain’t.”
He flicked his thumb at his helpers. They murmured, frozen by their own fears.
“And you’re not a coward,” the half-demon concluded. As he blinked, the Jeep’s headlights reflected off his retinas. Purple-rimmed lips pulled back from the points of dark, filed-down teeth. “If you want to be rich and powerful, come see me. I’ll be waitin’, Elahaj.”
The taste of sudden, and in truth, unexpected success was soured a bit in his mouth by two things. First, the Eater now knew his name. In his haste, he had forgotten that. One’s right name was a thing to keep hidden from all but guaranteed friendly sprits. Second, all the while he spoke, the Eater was looking past him, past the trees, as if he could see the lean-to where his baby brother was.
Very quickly, it seemed, the Eater and the albino hunters drove off. They kept his mother’s arm but took little else to show for their troubles.
With the stressful minutes past, the Tree Spirit’s power drained out of him. It flowed back up into squat trunks and drooping branches. Elahaj collapsed, cross-legged, to the ground.
He remembered only some of the things that happened next. The black doctor putting blood back into his mother and sewing the end of her arm. The German
father leaning over him, his thick tobacco-stained fingers cleaning the thorn jab in his hand. The dull ache of the other injuries he didn’t remember getting.
“Ja,” the missionary said through his sparse yellowing beard. “I have seen a wildfire go from lightning strike to taking a whole mountainside, all before a man can empty his bladder. The poacher who survives, he is one who has learned when to run.”
He looked closely at Elahaj. Perhaps the holy father was trying to give him comfort, or admiring him for his bravery, or curious about the ways of the Tree Spirit. At the best of times, it was hard to figure out what was on a foreigner’s mind.
“Ach, poor Rachel.”
The strange white man, Everett Delphino, held his baby brother.
“Kofi,” he said to his friend the black doctor, “WWHI has a high-risk relocation division, don’t they? We’ve got to get everyone who carries the albinism gene to the capital.”
The scientist was a most strange man. With delicate long fingers, he put a small cotton-tipped stick into his brother’s mouth and kept some of his spit as though it were most precious.
“You’re a unique little achromian, aren’t you?” The baby grabbed at Everett’s large complicated-looking wristwatch. “Yes, you are.”
Elahaj sat on the empty gasoline jug. Men talked and ran and spoke on expensive phones to places far away. He stared at the edge of the forest. He stared until he saw the blush of dawn. He did not really believe the Ghost Eater was gone until birds started singing.
• • •
“Me and the missus been talkin’,” the American man who wore glasses said. “We’d like to help your fine organization in some way.”
The couple were speaking to the parish office secretary, but Elahaj’s ears pricked up immediately. By the looks of their clothes, their watches, and the keycard of their hotel, they were certainly wealthy.
He had to get them away from the holy white father’s office before they were talked into donating all their money to buy goats and chickens for poor farmers. It was needed for something more important.
A week ago, before the sun was fully up, he, his mother, and brother—who had no name by baptism or tribal name ceremony—had left the village. They rode inside Dr. Akan’s official WWHI truck.
All the way, his mother fussed with her newly bandaged stump, trying hard not to get blood on the expensive leather seats. Dirt roads turned to gravel and then to smooth blacktop as they drove to a truly terrifying place: the capital.
As they inched along, he had looked out through thick, tinted windows. The narrow jam-packed streets were a new experience. He thought all of the cars in the world had come together to annoy one another. They coughed and barked and honked like the worst kind of irascible animals around a small watering hole. But here, he was told, ghosts were safe. Laws written in books by educated people protected the weak. Most of the time.
Dr. Akan had a stick. Elahaj asked about it. It was decorated with the WWHI symbol. He was naturally interested in any kind of beneficial magic, especially after his experiences. He asked about it. The symbol represented some sort of snake that lived in the sky and the giant who carried it, the doctor tried to explain. Elahaj decided this shiny metal stick was like the spirit wand a witch doctor would carry.
“Oh, no,” Akan said, “hakuna uchawi. No. It’s not magical at all.”
It was called a “scroll,” and he had trouble believing it was not magical. It opened into a shockingly large flat piece of plastic paper. This, in turn, opened into smaller rectangles through which one could see other places. With it you could see and speak to the whole world. One wave of this stick got them past the guards at a modern hospital. Most definitely uchawi.
All three of them were well cared for. However, after a while, Elahaj sensed the two foreigners’ attentions fade. Everett and Akan had many interests beyond protecting a few albinos. He had to find others who would help him do what he needed to do.
The German holy father took them to his boss’s office. No one seemed pleased to see the bearded minister. He had been in the bush for many years. The city had grown too big for his mind. He seemed lost. Elahaj knew how he felt.
In his pocket he had only the few coins they’d given him. In the capital, he had no idea who was who or what was what. His one certainty was his belief that his baby brother could not stay. Not after he heard the Eater say his name. Just like an animal will tell you what it intends by growl or bark or roar, he sensed unquenchable hunger. Not here, not in the capital, not anywhere in Africa would a prize shetani zeru baby ever be safe.
He put on the clothes the missionaries offered him and spent a few coins on a Coke. It was sweet, good, and fizzy, but didn’t last long or satisfy. The city might be the same. He had to take what he needed and go.
From street kids, he learned a few things.
From the “document man,” he learned more.
Documents and government decorations were like spells. People saw a mark and had to do what the mark said. This was good magic to counter the bad; that he understood, but not much more. He could read nothing. Yet the Eater himself had told him he was smart and not a coward. That was something. So he acted more confident than he truly felt.
Elahaj knew when was the time for patience and also when to seize an opportunity. Like the one that had come in the form of this well-fed foreign couple who had dropped by the parish office. They were offering to help—he had to accept before someone else did.
Speaking as fast as he could, which he knew impressed Americans, Elahaj convinced them he was the most reputable tour guide in the capital. He got the man and his wife away from the office. He had to get out of earshot of the nosey secretary to do this thing properly. He had to convince them to kidnap his brother.
Elahaj realized the type of people who would quickly and with no questions just take a child away across the sea were not people you would want taking your helpless infant brother away.
He watched this couple.
They were kind to each other but cautious. They avoided the fake beggars in the street. The parish secretary had told him they had been on charity missions in many places. They had good jobs and owned some land where they lived. They had a son, but he died of cholera while he was studying for ministry.
These were very fine people with high morals. A kidnapping, even for the most wholesome reasons, was not something they would ever agree to. They would have to be tricked into stealing his brother.
His story, when he finally settled on the best one, was very convincing. It was much more believable than the truth. His tale involved two orphaned boys fleeing from tribal wars. Elahaj said he was the baby’s only living relative. He added in a long trek across the savannah while being chased by leopards. He felt the couple would like stories featuring picturesque drama.
With half smiles on their faces, they gave him money. It was enough to start the document man working. In all likelihood, they did not expect to see him again.
The next day, he surprised them at their hotel. They seemed more interested in the boerewors—a round sausage he brought them as a present—than the barely dry papers fresh from the printing machine. He had been right to invest some money in food. These folks liked to eat.
After that, they trusted him. Getting Mr. and Mrs. Bryan to believe they were an orphan albino’s last hope of survival was not hard. Nearly all of the ghosts in the capital were missing some part of their body.
Elahaj told the Americans that getting the right magic onto pieces of paper and plastic would be expensive. They handed him more cash than he’d ever seen. It was more than all the livestock in his village was worth. They gave it to save a poor orphan albino. There was only one place the Eater would not find him: America.
His brother—and this made him jealous for a moment—even got his photo taken and put onto the most priceless paper of all. He took a picture of the document with a flip phone he’d found in the trash and charged up at an electricity stand.
A week later, in a building more impressive than the hospital, and at a line he was not allowed to cross, he waved goodbye to the three of them.
Years passed quickly. Elahaj learned to read. In the process, he’d talked himself into an exciting new job with a literacy organization known as First Book. The work came with a new place to live. As he was deciding what to take and what to leave, he found copies of his brother’s travel papers. He saw the mistake he had made back then.
The mistake had to do with his brother’s name. Elahaj recalled the precise time he made it.
It was a few days before a woman in a robe gave the final blessing for his brother to join the Bryans’ clan and go with them across the sea. He went to get the last papers that were needed. The document man had an office in a room underneath a halal butcher’s shop. Elahaj had been there many times to shop for food gifts and arrange for his brother’s travel to safety.
Down some dusty stairs, if one went left, one would find goats and lambs hanging by their hind feet, quietly bleeding into buckets from very large cuts in their necks. If one went right, one found a man with a hooked nose and a very large head topped with a round hat of crimson cloth.
The document man looked startled when Elahaj entered, though he had knocked twice. He was perhaps expecting someone else. Elahaj also noticed the pictures of the man’s wife and sons were not on the shelf but now inside a bag, partly hidden by the desk. He did not know much about how things worked in the capital, but Elahaj thought he should complete his business soon.
“Do you have my money?”
“Yes, sir,” he replied respectfully. Mindful of the bloody room next door and the industrial-sized meat grinder, which was always mulching meat, tendons, and cartilage into many yards of juicy sausages, he added, “It is not on my person at the moment. I will bring it to the café when everything is ready.”
As he nodded, the man’s mouth smiled, but his eyes did not.
“There was one last…” He checked the papers he was working on. “Ah, the child’s name. I have his new parents’ names. I need the rest.”
