Secrets of Kenya Innards

for such savages to believe in superstitions. And typical bly taken her too. She would be frightened and weak. of them to bother him, Lord Caulfield, with them. She wouldn’t have found the strength to swim this far. He tested his boundaries by diving deep, to discov- Now it was his time to join her. He’d died up there er there was no bottom he could reach. With what already. Now all he had to do was die down here. strength he could still muster, he pushed through the inky waters until he found a wall. Not coarse, like the O labyrinthine caverns he had brushed earlier, this stone The hands of time marched ever-onward, not that had a smooth organic texture as if it had once been liv- Lord Caulfield could tell, or even cared. ing flesh, petrified eons ago into whatever unseen He drifted in and out of consciousness. Dreams shape it now held. He imagined himself inside a body, brought vivid images of lions copulating with their swimming through the arteries of something ancient mates, beneath such splendid skies that only an African and gargantuan. sunset could paint. When he woke he could see only Exhausted, Caulfield drifted for hours, kicking only darkness, only silence, and terror. when required to remain afloat. He noticed that the He had crawled from the river onto the pebbled further he drifted the faster the water flowed. His mus- beach, enthralled by a half-remembered urge to sur- cles burned. A weaker man already would have vive. For what end he could not be sure. Later, when his drowned. Perhaps this river was a test, an evaluation of grip on consciousness lasted longer than a few seconds his strength and determination! Were his kidnappers at a time, he listened to the occasional sliding of rocks measuring his fortitude for later valuation in a slave as his tormentors searched the cavern for him. He market? Were they betting on how long he would swim could even hear their inhuman whisperers discussing before he gave up and drowned, as if he were a pawn, him. If he died here, too weak to ever move again, his life fit only for the amusement of savages? He felt Caulfield knew in his heart that he would become their cheated that he knew he would never know. food. What else could they possibly want but his flesh, On he drifted. for that was all he had left to offer now? Their earlier, More time, more uncertainty. flickering tongues had said as much. Sure that he was more than a mile underground, During other moments of wakefulness he was cer- Caulfield thought he heard more gibbering and meep- tain that they had crawled close while he slept, sniffing ing, filtering from unseen peepholes above. They were to see if he still lived. They had not taken him yet. Per- watching him, with a keen wisdom suggesting aspects haps alive, he must still hold a purpose. to these creatures that Caulfield’s mind had refused to In time he began to perceive light. accept — until now. His captors can see in the dark. They can do this only because they are not human.Sample file O He might have sobbed at that thought, but from the This was no normal light, certainly not illumination darkness came too many noises for him to be sure. that would grace the surface world. This glow was a Yet they did not take him. They let him drift on. sickness that oozed from the walls, an eerie blue hue Onwards he floated, half swimming, willing himself that shone like a contagious disease. But as unnatural to stay above water. Memories of his wife’s fear of him as the blue haze might be, the light did offer hope that were calming. He thought of hunting wild animals, of it might illuminate passage back to the surface. that moment just before he caressed the trigger, his Struggling to his feet, Caulfield found the strength kill-point large in his sight. Emotions of the hunt filled to regain his posture, to stand proud as a man of his being, floating with him, sustaining him. Fleeting Britain worthy of the title of Lord. He had not yet given thoughts that he might be losing his mind trailed up on life. Despite the burning pain in his limbs, the behind. Maybe he should just give up and drown? But throbbing between his temples, and regardless of the Caulfield’s pride would never admit weakness. terror welling inside, Caulfield marched boldly for- When he believed he could swim no more, when ward. he had finally reached a point were he could accept Ahead he saw that the light grew stronger. A passage the cold-water embrace of a painless death, he washed revealed itself, opening like a mouth and leading into a upon a shore. At long last, something solid under his calcified tunnel reminiscent of a windpipe. Caulfield belly — an underground beach of pebbles that were chuckled deliriously when he realized that there was no his salvation. other path to follow but this one. Although he was no Too exhausted to move, too drained of energy to care longer physically restrained by those hideous creatures, that this might be his end, Caulfield again remembered he was still being herded nonetheless. This light had his wife. He considered that his kidnappers had proba- been provided for a reason — he had to be able see if 10 Secrets of Kenya he was to be effectively encouraged through this next In these depictions his captors were prey to these segment of his forced underworld journey. greater predators. The squid-like creatures fed on His thoughts were confirmed when he discovered human and ghoul alike, destroying and engulfing chaotic cave paintings, neither aesthetic nor well com- rather than herding. Caulfield imagined the end of the posed, schizophrenic and deranged. The curvature and world in this mad scribbled tale, from a future time style of the depicted figures were similar to those he’d when waves rise and the skies permanently darken. been shown by tribesmen in caves on the veldt — only This will be a time when neither humans nor ghouls these were wild and frantic, as if the artists who drew will be left alive on the surface of the earth. Only those them feared for their lives, or had lost what sanity they who live beneath — human prisoners and their ghoul might have once retained. The subject matter was lav- keepers — will survive. Humanity serves a single pur- ishly relayed in all its feverish and gory detail. Caulfield pose: to be kept as ghoul food, held in pens and bred shuddered, because they suggested ancientness, as if for the long, dark nights to come. the depictions were as old as the rock itself. Most of all, Would the ghouls eat him now, or would he be it was what the drawing represented that chilled saved for later? Despite his middle-aged body he was Caulfield’s heart the deepest. still strong, fit, and healthy, so his flesh would be a wor- The subjects of many of the paintings were thou- thy meal. If they let him live, in time he would grow sands of humans being herded like cattle. Like him, old, degenerating into a feeble and decrepit body of lit- they were nude. They all were forced to move in the tle worth, no more than skin and bones. Recalling the same direction, all looking ahead and down, fearful of game he liked to eat, Lord Caulfield answered his because they knew there was only one path that could own question. The succulence of youth was more than be taken, to whatever end. These people were being just skin deep. driven underground, deep into the bowels of the earth, Though Caulfield was famished, and though he deeper than any South African diamond miner could knew there was no path back to his old life, he still stag- dream to reach. gered on in defiance. He didn’t know what lay ahead, The herders were also depicted, creatures shaped as but considering what he’d been through so far, salva- humans but far more grotesque than even the ugliest tion must await. Why was he alive even now, if this man. Their mouths were snouts, like those on a dog. were not so? Their feet ended in cloven goat-like hooves. But their On he marched, and soon the blue light was joined most telling feature was in their hands — for the fin- by sound. This was not the gibbering and meeping that gers ended in sharp talons, just like the claws that had he had grown accustomed to, for he heard humans, cut Caulfield when he had been snatched from the sur- howling and shouting in vast numbers, in the thou- face world. sands. With a sinking feeling, Caulfield consideredSample that file perhaps these were warnings to others who passed this O way, and that perhaps they had been deliberately left by Like a yawn from a corpse’s throat, the tunnel opened his captors to sap his hope, now that they had sapped into an enormous chamber, a tiered wall that stretched his physical strength. The style wasn’t African — this for miles in every possible direction. Every which way wasn’t really art at all. It was the handwriting of night- Caulfield gazed, from side to side or up and down, the mare. He guessed that the ghouls had carved this. They ends of the wall disappeared into an all consuming were sending a message.

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