Curse from the Dark Continent

By Adrian Scott

Alan Carmody, a cattle breeder in South Africa, loses everything when an evil witchdoctor causes his negro hands to run off, after burning and looting his farm and killing his family. He kills the witchdoctor and emigrates to Australia, but the witchdoctor's spirit in the giuse of a cheetah, begins hunting down all with whom he comes into contact in this new country, until only Alan is left.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adrian Scott
• Release date: Oct 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465794451

Adrian Scott

I have been writing short stories since 9 years old, changed to writing novels 4 years ago. in that time, I've written 69, now working on my 70th; thirty-one of which have been published in the US by Renaissance ebooks and Publishing by Rebecca J Vickery. I am also publishing on Smashwords. Society of Vampires volume 1, published by Rebecca J Vickery, Publishers, US; has also been forwarded by Rebecca to Francis Ford Coppola for consideration as a movie. So it's all go at the moment. I have three daughters, all of whom I regularly see. My wife of 31 years, Penny, passed away on March 17, 2011. I live in a retirement village in Caboolture Queensland with my dog, Scamp. He is my main critic and friend.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

December 21; 1822: Dwelo-Mbala sat before his conjuring fire, his eyes as still and shining as the surface of the great lake before him.

Not a ripple broke the surface of the waters; it was as if the life that lived in the depths knew of the spirit-man’s presence and the deeds he would perform this night, and had taken refuge far from the dark man, far from the spirit world of which he was a part.

His voice murmured low, a sibilant, susurrating sound in the darkness of the African night, as quiet as the breeze that ruffled the leaves of the bent and bowed trees that rimmed the great lake and surrounded the hills in the far distance. Even the moon stood still, as if it were afraid to disturb his trance by daring to move in its heavenly abode.

He felt not the breeze; the cheetah-skin he wore draped over his head and back, and which hung down past his knees when standing, shielded him from all weather, and made him a part of the mighty animal that had worn the pelt in life, and which now lay in its grave, buried but not forgotten, never forgotten, by the man whose spirit had combined with it and now walked the earth, part-human, part-beast.

The flames of the tiny fire that crackled before his crossed legs shone on the dark skin of his face, creating flickering shadows and highlights across the high cheekbones, shone in the eyes and gave them life, even while the dark man was on his spiritual plane, communing with the beast that had become a part of him on the night that it had lain down its life for him.

Fifty yards away, hidden from sight by a clump of thorn-bushes that hardly moved in the night breeze, lay the white man, his eyes focussed on the dark shape down at the water’s edge. Somewhere a lion roared its anger to the world, but he did not hear it, so intense was his concentration.

His vision was narrowed to what he could see at the tip of his rifle – the dark man, the tiny imaginary spot at the base of the spine, where the barrel of the rifle rested, unmoving, unwavering, held firmly but not too tightly in Alan Carmody’s hands.

His forefinger rested lightly on the trigger, no pressure there at the moment as he waited for the final act in the spirit man’s ‘performance,’ as Carmody had so often referred to it.

Time and again, he had lectured his workers on the farm in the veldt of the dark man’s play-acting, his impotence, his powerlessness against the white man’s magic, represented by the powerful weapon, the round leaden projectiles that waited for the spark that would send them on their way, bearing a message of death for whomever lay at the end of the barrel.

But they had not listened, and one by one, they had drifted into the night, taking only that with which they came, their clothing and amulets, leaving behind the gifts he had given them, the bribes he had paid them to ignore Dwelo-Mbala’s curses and threats. And now the farm sat, empty and deserted, the fences broken and fallen into disrepair, the house slowly succumbing to the encroaching forest that sought to reclaim all that Alan Carmody, over the years, had claimed for his own.

Gone were the great herds, the sheds, the outbuildings. Gone were the workers, the field-hands, the men who controlled the herds. All that remained was emptiness, and loneliness, and two graves side by side beneath a leaning tree where Sheila Carmody had liked to sit with the baby on her lap, the baby that had died at the age of two years from a disease that no doctor could put a name to, could comprehend, could cure.

For Dwelo-Mbala had placed a curse on the land and on the white people who had laid claim to it, and the curse, over the two short years now passed, had taken its effect.

It was now as he had said it would be: Alan Carmody walked alone, would always walk alone…and all because he did not listen to Dwelo-Mbala and do as he had instructed.

Suddenly the tiny glow of the flames fifty yards away disappeared as the dark man leaped high in the air and came down, his back arched over, his feet and hands resting on the hard-packed earth. And at the same moment, Alan Carmody fired.

The ball took the dark man at the base of the spine, and rammed its way up through the body to lodge at the base of the brain.

Dwelo-Mbala froze for a moment of time. Then, quite dead, he tumbled slowly forward until his forehead rested on the African soil of which he was a part, and remained in that position.

Carmody rose, the rifle hanging from his right hand, and walked down through the low bushes and shrubs, over the red earth, until he stood at the side of the body, gazing down on the result of that tiny degree of pressure on the trigger of his musket. He lifted a booted foot and placed it on the left shoulder, then pushed, and the body tumbled over onto its right side, still in that final position it had taken just before the instant of death, the eyes now glazed over, the breath stilled forever.

Dwelo-Mbala had been repaid, just as Carmody had said he would. It had taken six long months to track down the black man to his lair, far out on the desert. But Carmody had accomplished the task and completed his last hunt on this continent.

Now, he would walk back to his camp a mile away, and sit by his fire until morning. Then, when the sun rose, he would pack up his belongings, mount his stallion, and ride into Capetown, a day’s journey away. He would close his bank accounts, and take all that belonged to him in a valise, go down to the waterfront, and purchase a one-way ticket to that land far to the south that he had heard of often but never seen.

And there, he would start a new life, a new beginning, a new future, far from the sorrow and loss of his present life, far from the dreams that had died the night his wife and baby had succumbed to the disease that ate away at their flesh until there was almost nothing left.

And he would forget about Dwelo-Mbala and his curses and magic spells and evil words.

Back at the death-site, as the fire burned low and ashes began to build around the flickering flames, a tiny whirlwind grew. Spinning and twisting, it moved across the fire, sucking up ash and small pieces of bark, then moved on to the land and drew into its skirts the dust of the desert. It hovered, motionless almost, beside the still body of the spirit man, then almost timidly, stepped onto the body.

And through the whirling shape of the twister, a dark form could be seen leaving the body of the spirit man, leaving the still body of Dwelo-Mbala, and rising into the whirlwind like a second breath of wind, a shape that was not a shape, a form that was not a form.

Then the whirlwind picked up speed, and twisted faster and faster, rising higher and higher into the air until, with a sudden clap of sound, it disappeared.

The spirit of Dwelo-Mbala had joined its brother, the cheetah. And now the two would combine to form a force that would stalk the white man from place to place, across oceans and vast seas, across lands it had never seen. And then it would seek out the white man and take its vengeance…

CHAPTER TWO

February 13th; 1823: Alan Carmody walked from the Quay up along the cobbled length of George Street, gazing at the slums near the waterfront, the Rocks area off to his right, where hotels and bars and lodging-houses for those who could afford little clung to the cliff face like cockroaches clinging to a rough-hewn wall, and wondered if he had made the right choice.

Barely thirty-four years had passed since the First Fleet had delivered its cargo of goods and humanity in all its squalor and filth to these shores, and the displacement of the dark man, who had occupied these lands for nearly forty thousand years had begun. Yet already, rooftops showed in the places where great forests of trees had been felled, and water-courses had been diverted to serve the white man better. And the native had been driven back into the bush that surrounded the bay or, in some cases, attempted to become part of the white man’s world and taken to wearing items of clothing given to them along with tobacco and rum and diseases the dark man had never experienced on these shores.

Prisoners laboured on roads and buildings of sandstone, their clothing little better than the rags given to the dark-skinned inhabitants, their shoes no more than rough leather with thin soles that quickly wore through and brought the civilized man’s foot into hard contact with the unyielding earth.

The voices of those in charge could be heard all along the great thoroughfare, together with the crack of whip and cries of those who received the nine-tails on their bare flesh. Kindness, in this place, was replaced by brutish cruelty; civility replaced by torture; and the friendly face of a passing man or woman was averted in shock and horror at the sufferings of the prisoners who worked in chains through the heat of the day.

Carmody had had cause to use the whip on occasion in Africa, when errant workers had rebelled against his authority, or had been brought back in manacles from the bush where they had fled. But never had he seen it used with such willingness and abandon as he did now.

Deep within him, an anger began to grow, an anger directed against the unbending authority of the military men as they exercised that authority over the prisoners in their charge. But he fought down the anger until it was replaced by a sickened, cold hatred that he kept masked, for he had no desire to become one of the many serving the power of the few.

He walked up along George Street and turned left into King Street, and here there were less uniforms, less filthy and torn rags in place of clothing. It seemed that, this far from the centre of power, the ‘trusties’ were permitted to work, those who quickly learned that to fight and rebel was hopeless, and had already suborned themselves to the soldiers who held sway over them.

Leaving behind the squalor and the suffering, he turned left into MacQuarie Street, where blocks of land were being cleared with axe and rope, and architects studied the shape of each block and worked on designs for buildings that would replace the trees and shrubs and tiny streams that had trickled here, buildings that would display the majesty and magnificence of early-Victorian style, where lawyers and doctors and professionals of all manner would work in offices that often belied the wealth of the inhabitants.

Halfway along the block, he came to a building that did not seem to belong amidst the glory and glamour being erected on either side: two-storeyed, roofed in thatching, and its walls and doors made of bark and sapling, it bore the name of the ‘Grosvenor’ Hotel, and claimed, on another sign, to be the ‘best accommodation Sydney had to offer.’

Carmody stopped, and looked about him. To right and left were sandstone blocks and scaffolding, men in be-suited elegance carrying large clipboards on which rested blueprints of the buildings that would, on completion, dwarf the ‘Grosvenor’ and make it appear as a bandaged thumb in an elegant group of fingers. Yet it was the address he had been given. There was no other.

He pushed open the door, noting the lean the right-hand door took on as he applied pressure to it, and stepped into a vestibule at the far end of which stood a desk constructed by placing a long, wide plank across two empty barrels. And on the desk rested a large ledger.

As Carmody stepped up to the desk, a dowdy woman in flour-daubed apron and gown stepped from within a dark room behind the desk, and stared openly at the new arrival as if he were an insect to be disposed of. But when she noted the gold-and-diamond ring adorning the little finger of his right hand, she