Dracula of the Apes 2

by G. Wells Taylor

  She had said that the blackbacks were beautiful to look upon with all that muscle, but that she had been spoiled by her long friendship with Gazda.

  “You are smart,” she had said, when the awkward discussion of mating had come up. “And Ooso is smart enough to know that.”

  “Then why does Ooso want blackbacks?” Gazda answered. His mother had long thought that the pair should mate when they reached the age, but the night ape could not bring himself to tell her the truth. He was sure that the little she-ape found him too ugly to consider such a union. He was so different.

  “They are smart enough to stay with Ooso!” his little friend had replied. “Gazda won’t. He wants to mate with the moon.”

  Like his mother, Ooso complained about his strange absences and nocturnal habits. But she was never really angry and liked to goad him into boisterous bouts of horseplay that always left Gazda laughing and wishing he could stay with Ooso.

  But she was right; he was in love with the night.

  In time, Gazda’s growing acceptance of his differences had increased his emotional distance from the tribe. They were apes and his adoptive family, but he was a night ape, and he longed to know more about his own kind.

  He judged that the unique powers: his strength, heightened senses and awareness, must have been a natural thing among the night ape tribe to which he clearly belonged and should well have been a thing of pride. Being of a smaller build than the other anthropoids, he had to be stronger and better at those things that ensured survival in the jungle.

  Gazda also linked his growing prowess to his ability to overcome his fears. He had explored Fur-nose’s lair all on his own—something that no blackback in Goro’s tribe would do. In fact, the old story had said that it was Goro who had first entered the tree-nest. So, Gazda was quite pleased to know he had the courage of a silverback.

  Even though in all honesty, even Goro had had Baho at his side, and a force of blackbacks behind him—but Gazda would never doubt his king’s courage.

  The night ape was not above superstition however, and remembered the odd sense of familiarity he had felt when first investigating the tree-nest, almost like he had been there before, or that it had somehow been preordained that he should enter the lair and become its new master.

  His thoughts often drifted back to that day, and were encouraged to do so by the presence of the strange snake symbol he wore around his neck, and the long lethal knife that was thrust through his belt.

  The other apes had taken notice of Gazda’s acquisitions when he had first brought the strange artifacts back to the tribe, but it took some time for gossip about them to circulate.

  Gazda’s nocturnal existence and the daytime sleeping that resulted, when coupled with his absences while hunting had already created a rift between him and the other apes. Being creatures of daylight, they had other interests and habits, and by the time he’d been into Fur-nose’s lair; he had few close dealings outside the grooming circle.

  There, he would notice the curious glances from his tribe mates—any who looked upon the long knife or the snake disk were plainly intrigued—and this had alarmed Gazda at first. He had been protective of his, formerly Fur-nose’s, lair and did not want to have to explain how he had entered.

  So the night ape would answer any curiosity with the distraction of grooming, though he rejected the inquisitive Omag’s overtures to groom, repulsed by the beast’s mangy hide, and the unsettling way the crippled ape eyed Gazda’s shining fang.

  The act itself, whether they were at the Grooming Rock or at some other point along the trail, induced an incredibly calm and suggestive state in the recipient—but in this was Gazda different, also.

  His mother had long been the individual most in receipt of this attention, but as others worked up the courage for such an exchange with the night ape, word had spread around the tribe that Gazda’s nimble fingers, when raked through the fur, created a thrilling sense of calm that surpassed the grooming of all others.

  Those who felt his touch remembered a stillness accompanied by mental pictures of events that had happened long ago when they were infants, or other cherished memories were conjured up that had long slipped their minds.

  This made some recipients uneasy, since few were able to disregard the night ape’s many differences; but it also made them curious. Gazda’s knowledge of their prejudice made him stingy with the talent, and he reserved it for those he considered friends, or for others who were asking questions.

  Those went away with bold memories of an inner peace, but no new understanding of where the night ape got the shining fang or the snake rock that hung around his neck.

  Gazda’s reluctance was understandable also, for being the bearer of little fur; his participation in the ritual was lopsided in favor of the hairy apes he groomed.

  He did enjoy the closeness as any ape would, but he grew bored with it in time, and his quick mind was preoccupied with many questions that could not be answered by simple company.

  Likewise, he had come to believe that while the grooming encouraged interdependence and cooperation within the group, it also created dependence, and Gazda wondered if this explained why he could do things alone that the other apes feared.

  Gazda often ranged away from the others when he’d had his fill of grooming and interaction, retreating to his tree-nest sanctuary whenever he felt the sheer weight of the tribe closing in around him.

  In the daylight hours, he would also use his time for sleep, or to seek out Magnuh to pester if the great beast was near. Admiration for the elephant’s ambush by the great blue water yet lingered, but Gazda also considered it a debt that needed to be repaid.

  The night ape was still amazed that the injuries he had sustained when the elephant attacked had left no scars. In fact, all of the marks had disappeared that night by the time he’d finished hungrily hunting down some bushpigs and savagely drinking his fill of their blood.

  His rapid healing seemed to be another difference between him and Goro’s tribe, and one that would give him an edge over all the others, so he dared not raise the question. He had not yet seen it in other apes, and Omag’s many obvious scars and wounds suggested that the others did not heal as easily as Gazda did.

  If his peers had noticed the ability in the night ape, none had cared to mention it. That was either in deference to their superstitious fears or his mother’s sharp canines that had long ago taught the other apes to mind her son’s privacy.

  One day part-way through his tenth year, Gazda came upon a large python high in the trees that was many times his body length and was at its thickest the width of his own waist. The sun was high overhead, and it was at this time that his night strength briefly returned each day, so he fell upon the slippery creature without any hesitation, his long knife held high overhead.

  But the wily old serpent managed to catch the night ape’s powerful legs before he could strike, throwing the reckless creature off balance and into crushing loops that pressed against the hard ridges of Gazda’s muscular chest—smothering him.

  With his left arm caught and held tight to his body, the startled Gazda began to reconsider his rashness; until he realized that he still had full use of the sinewy arm and hand that held the long knife.

  The snake had not recognized the threat.

  It had always seemed that the shining blade tilted every struggle in Gazda’s favor, though his natural instincts could be made impetuous by its bitter edge—a logical but dangerous mistake, that would eventually destroy what young Gazda held dearest.

  The night ape struck again and again and the snake’s warm blood spurted up Gazda’s arm and across his face, and he thrust his long knife into the muscular flesh until the thick fluid seeped into the tight space between the snake’s and his own smooth skin.

  The python panicked finally, hissing and biting at Gazda’s face many times, snapping at his eyes to distract him, but too late did the reptile attempt escape and loosen the coils that were crushing it
s opponent.

  So as the night ape’s limbs came free, he kept hold of the python, crouching over the dying serpent to strike and cut until the long thick body almost fell in two where it died draped across the branches.

  Gazda quickly pressed his mouth against the creature’s open flesh and drank its slow blood as he felt his temporary night strength ebbing with the sun’s passage overhead. He lapped at the many red wounds until he was full, and the fluid became like fire in his sluggish veins.

  But empowered by victory, he rose to his full height over the corpse as he’d seen Goro and other blackbacks do after battle or with the spoils of a hunt; and the night ape set his foot upon the vanquished enemy and beat his chest as he roared out the call of a great and terrible bull ape.

  This was the largest beast that the night ape had ever slain; truly he would be accepted as a blackback now. Might it also cause him to rise in his place within the tribe, or earn him some long absent respect?

  Giddy with his own success, Gazda cut the mottled skin away from the creature’s flesh, and with skull still attached, he balanced the python’s head atop his own while its empty hide hung down his back like a hood and cape.

  He roared again like a victorious bull ape and then laughed as an exciting thought struck him.

  Gazda started through the trees, chuckling as he went, as his gory prize slid over the branches behind him. He laughed outright when he dropped silently from the overhead branches to land nearly center to his tribe that sat grooming in a great contented circle around their king.

  When Gazda hit the ground he crouched low and hissed to hide his laughter, and all of his brethren, even Goro, turned to see a great python in their midst—and they screamed in terror! Rolling and jumping away the apes cringed in the undergrowth, or climbed shrieking into the high branches.

  As Gazda got to his knees, and panted joyfully, the silverback recognized the small, bloody figure beneath the tattered snakeskin laughing happily at Goro, his king—his joke! The great silverback roared and bared his fighting fangs, and then pounded the ground with mighty fists.

  He charged out of the undergrowth directly at the night ape.

  Gazda realized the foolishness of his joke where he cringed in the grass as the bull ape thundered closer, thinking Goro yet mistook him for a snake and was set to kill him.

  But at the last minute, the big silverback reached out with a powerful hand as he charged past and plucked the awful snake head and skin from Gazda’s gory back.

  Wheeling away, the silverback dragged the snakeskin over the grass and dirt, and soon the entire tribe had taken to the trees while Goro screamed his great fury as he tore the dead snake’s hide to ribbons.

  Gazda had run for the safety of the trees but was met halfway by his mother. He leapt for her open arms, and when well within her grasp, she bit him.

  The night ape rolled away, crying out at the pain, as his mother charged after him beating his legs and back until he surrendered completely, crouching low in the grass with an open hand offered to her—but she slapped it away.

  Rubbing at his injured shoulder, all thoughts of Gazda’s wounded pride were dispelled by his mother’s angry look. In the trees around them other apes hung from branches or clung together, all of them agitated and scowling at the night ape, slowing coming to understand what had occurred.

  What had Gazda done?

  “Gazda be different without shaming Goro or scaring tribe,” Eeda scolded, snapping her fangs to silence her son when he tried to speak. “The king treats Gazda like ape. The tribe treats Gazda like ape. So be ape not a snake!”

  Gazda slumped in the grass before his mother as Goro continued to drag what remained of the dead and tattered snakeskin through the undergrowth.

  Near the king, Omag had crept out of the trees with his blackback allies, intent upon the skin. The crippled ape’s astonishment was plain, and his realization was evident. Hooting excitedly he looked back and forth between the tangled snakeskin, and the dense brush that hid Gazda.

  The night ape coughed and sat upright as the rest of the tribe continued to climb down from the trees. He was glad of the long grass and the bushes that grew about and hid his embarrassment.

  He absently lifted the shiny stone disk that hung around his neck to show it to his mother, to remind her...but she looked away without giving the prize a glance.

  Instead, Eeda tore strips of green bark from a nearby bush that she chewed upon while her embarrassed son leaned in beside her.

  She ignored the pale and upturned palm he offered.

  Gazda studied the shining disk and tried to smile but his mood only darkened further. His snakeskin trick had been funny, but it had come at a price—reminding everyone how different he was.

  And with that thought, he remembered how the snake had hissed as it fought him, and how the night ape also hissed when he fought. This made Gazda think of the dead beast’s hairless skin, so much like his own in texture.

  Gazda was like a snake and an ape!

  He wrapped his arms around his knees and brooded for some time before his spirits rose again as he thought of the kill and the blood.

  And if Gazda was like a snake? Did that matter if his differences gave him knowledge of the long knife? If it gave him the strength to kill a python that his entire tribe—even Goro—had run screaming from.

  But would his trick make them afraid of Gazda too? Many in the tribe had no love for him already. That was the warning in his mother’s words.

  He cheered up considerably when Eeda finally relented, panting her forgiveness before she started grooming the thick hair atop his head.

  Gazda crooned with pleasure as the day sleep came upon him, but his mind still toyed with another notion. Perhaps the night ape would look for a skin that had fur on it, and like Fur-nose wear it to cover his own, so that he would not be so different.

  Then Goro and the tribe could not complain.

  CHAPTER 15 – The Call of Dreams

  As young Gazda was growing into his 11th year, he had become more and more impatient with the boring day-to-day lives of the tribe. He was tired of grazing, chewing food, breaking nuts and shells and termite-fishing, fruit picking and ape grooming—and he found that his discontent could not even be remedied through interaction with his friends.

  While the closest of them little Ooso could be encouraged to think beyond the tribe, an ape she remained, finding comfort in the very things that so chafed against Gazda. She even went so far as to suggest that he’d do better to embrace the life that was unfolding. There was food, and rest, and did he never think of starting a family of his own?

  She had explained that she was close to choosing from among her many suitors.

  Kagoon, the other of his closest mates, was hopeless for as he had grown larger he had become more of a blackback preferring the company of others like him. His physical size and strength had helped him to overcome the reticence that he had always felt because his brain was renowned for its slowness, but few among the other adolescent males seemed to notice.

  It had been years since Kagoon had spent much time with either Gazda or Ooso, though his distance from the she-ape could be attributed to his interest in her as a mate. Ooso had tried to dissuade him after he announced his intentions, but was unable to do so without hurting his feelings.

  They all remained friends, but they were growing apart.

  So with his closest companions in the full embrace of tribal life, Gazda started taking longer trips away to explore Goro’s land, to hone his hunting skills and to visit Fur-nose’s—now Gazda’s—lair where he could hole up to contemplate his fortunes, sleep, or puzzle at the treasures and oddities he found inside.

  Gazda felt safe within its walls for he’d noticed that all the animals gave the structure a wide berth when passing through the clearing, as though memory of its former occupant kept them away.

  He knew the tree-nest had that effect upon the blackbacks of his tribe. Its history was told in tales by
the older apes—especially Baho—who knew of Fur-nose and now the lair’s avoidance had been made into law by Goro’s insistence that it was not a place for apes to be—and few could forget the thunder-hand.

  Especially when they were reminded.

  It didn’t matter that the odd creature had been dead for years and the thunder-hand gone. Of course, Gazda understood these things better than anyone, but was happy to leave the stories in place for he did not want the other apes to know he had adopted the tree-nest as his own lair.

  Sometimes he wondered if the other jungle creatures avoided the tree-nest because they felt the presence of the dark trees that Gazda had come to shun on his trips into the clearing. Their unsettling smell was always evident if the wind was right, and they were ever there at the corner of his eye.

  The first time Gazda slept there had come after a noisy argument among the she-apes had brought him from his morning nap and sent him storming off through the treetops in search of peace and quiet.

  He had only just arrived at the lair when the day-weakness came upon him again, so he quickly shut the door. With only a glance at the former occupant’s remains; he stretched out on the big flat structure that he had intuitively come to recognize as Fur-nose’s bed. Its soft covering against his naked skin had made his repose there irresistible.

  After a brief sleepy study of the pelts, skulls and horns that adorned the wall over him, he had closed his eyes and then...

  There was darkness, but sound had come to him from within it. A sad call that came again and again, seemingly from all around him as if it were generated by many creatures or had echoed from afar. No lion’s roar, or hyena’s scream to warn of danger, this was a high-pitched howl like birds or monkeys might make, but deep with feeling; a lament that had strangely soothed him.

  Gazda had been drawn toward the bittersweet call in his dream, dear and familiar to him somehow, but mournfully did it linger in his heart, repeating there tragically like the cry of orphaned apes lost in the night. He awakened weeping with his eyes temporarily blinded as though a black veil set over them was slowly drawn away.