Ghosts of Tsavo

I’d always been a light sleeper. It was a curse, actually, since I would have much preferred to sleep through any trouble that occurred at night than to be pulled into it. When I was asleep, no one could hold me responsible for ignoring various nocturnal creatures. Quite frankly, as long as their behavior didn’t involve me, I didn’t much mind what they did, as long as they let me sleep without biting me, or worse, shedding near me.

  Sadly, whenever the paranormal world interacted with the normal, there tended to be produced an unpleasant level of noise, usually of the screaming sort. This was quite sufficient to wake me up and lure me out of bed. And that was exactly what happened that first night of the hunt. Something woke me: a whisper, a shuffle perhaps. At least it wasn’t a scream. I lay on my camp bed, staring up at the darkness, and strained my ears and my nose.

  While my ears and nose revealed nothing more, my eyes adjusted to the gloom as one side of the tent—the one with the door flap—was a tad brighter from the slight glow of the nearby fire pit. In the pervading darkness, that glow seemed bright and welcoming, so I rolled over to face it. I was just wondering if there was any tea brewing over the remains of the fire when a shadow stepped up to my tent.

  Fortunately, I was too distracted contemplating the possibility of tea, so I didn’t shout aloud, but only pulled away from the tent wall. The shadow remained there, blocking some of the firelight and an arm rose as if to knock on my door. The shape of the arm looked familiar, but so did the manner in which the hand hung suspended between action and inaction. And the two—the shape of the arm and the tilt of the hand—reminded me of two very different beings who couldn’t possibly inhabit the same body.

  At least it’s not a lion, was all I could think of and then someone screamed.

  “Oh bother,” I muttered, kicking off my blanket and flinging on my traveling coat. I hesitated. Should I take the walking stick or bow and arrows? I settled on the bow. After all, if I was close enough to a lion to make effective use of my walking stick, then I was far too close.

  On the other hand, I suspected the only danger we were in was of losing some sleep. And for me, that was a terrible dilemma indeed.

  I fumbled with the ties holding my canvas door in place. By the time I pushed the tent flap aside, the shadow was gone. Instead, I was rewarded with the unappealing vision of Mr. Adams in his nightshirt. He was running around the small camp in great excitement, his long nightshirt flapping unattractively about his plump knees, his jowls quivering below his mouth. In a bizarre effort to dress, he had put on his waistcoat, which strained to contain his great belly. He could barely draw breath, yet he was using it all for shouting.

  Lanterns were lit and torches were thrust into the sparking embers of the fire as tents spewed out their bleary-eyed occupants. A few of the tents had partially collapsed.

  “We’re under attack,” Mr. Adams bellowed between wheezes.

  “Good thing we have the wagons circled around,” I said to Cilla, who had stumbled out of her tent when I did. Her head was wrapped in a pretty scarf and despite the early hour and her hasty efforts at covering herself, she still managed to look quite presentable. Mrs. Steward would’ve been suitably impressed.

  I sighed as I pulled my overcoat around me, just as Mr. Timmons trotted over to us.

  “Are you ladies all right?” He hugged Cilla but looked intently at me.

  I gazed briefly up at the night sky, the stars so thick I could barely see the space beyond, and twitched my bow against my leg. “Yes, Mr. Timmons, we’re quite all right,” I informed him as I once again pondered the shape of the shadow’s arm. “As is the camp. It’s just Liam.”

  “Protect the women,” shouted Mr. Adams, swinging his rifle around for emphasis and nearly knocking one of the porters into the fire pit. “Hide the goats!”

  “There’s no need to panic, sir,” Dr. Cricket called out amidst the noise and confusion, his hair sticking straight up and his glasses on crooked. But no one paid him much attention, for Mr. Adams was by far the more entertaining spectacle, and amusement trumps logic any day.

  “Load your rifles, men,” ordered Mr. Adams as a button popped off his waistcoat. In response, men scattered in all directions, searching for their rifles in collapsed tents.

  “Well, if there are any lions in the area,” I muttered to my two companions, “they’ll be long gone by now.”

  “But Mr. Adams, sir,” Dr. Cricket said, running after the camp superintendent just as Liam appeared around a tent. The automaton had a collection of tent pins in each hand. “Somebody stole Liam from my tent and set him loose.”

  “Stop or I’ll shoot, I really will,” screamed the camp superintendent, his voice jumping up an octave as he raised his rifle to his shoulder.

  “Oh my,” Cilla gasped and she grabbed my hand as if that could be of any assistance against a bullet.

  “You mustn’t,” Dr. Cricket protested. “It’s not his fault. It’s theft, that’s what it is.” He grabbed at the gun, shoving it away from Liam and directly toward us.

  Mr. Timmons pulled us down just as Mr. Adams pulled the trigger. With a distressingly loud bang, the bullet tore through the tent canvas. Where it finally ended up I’m not sure, but I’m most grateful it didn’t end up in my head, or anyone else’s.

  “Stop, Liam, stop,” Dr. Cricket cried out. He sounded rather desperate as he battled for control of the rifle and for the attention of his creation.

  Liam did stop, right in the middle of the fire pit, the glowing embers sparking onto his pants.

  Mr. Adams’ fat cheeks reddened. “That… thing!” He gasped, too furious to summon additional words out of the ether.

  “I assure you, he’s quite harmless,” Dr. Cricket said, his eyes imploring the crowd of nervous, tired campers to support him. None of us felt inclined to do so just then.

  “I’m confiscating it as of now,” Mr. Adams shouted into Dr. Cricket’s ear.

  “But… but…” Dr. Cricket’s pale face whitened further as he watched his creation manhandled out of the embers, his eyes blinking rapidly behind his thick glasses.

  Meanwhile, I was still on the ground with one of Mr. Timmons’ thick arms across my back. “Thank you, Mr. Timmons,” I said through gritted teeth. “That will be all.”

  He chuckled as he helped Cilla and me to a vertical position. “The pleasure was all mine, Mrs. Knight.”

  “Yes,” I said, “indeed it was.”

  “Poor Dr. Cricket,” Cilla cooed. “I wonder what got into his tin man.”

  “Yes, I do wonder,” Mr. Timmons said, studying me for a reaction.

  One of my skills did include what Prof. Runal called a “poker face,” and I kept one firmly in place as I gazed back at Mr. Timmons. “A malfunction,” I said coolly. “It’s bound to happen from time to time in mechanisms with such a complex machinery.”

  I didn’t have to study his energy field to know he believed that theory as much as I did, which is to say, not at all. But I didn’t dare ponder too deeply about the alternative possibility.

  Chapter 16