Creator: Tom Johnson
A monster of the
woods meandered through the dense jungle of tall trees and thick vines, but
this one had little shape to prove it was animal. It was not a man. Though at
times it may have resembled a man in form, the creature took on the semblance
of the forest itself. Depending on the shadows, it could have been green or
gray, or even a dark brown. Its body was more like that of a tree trunk, its
arms thick as limbs. Perhaps the feet and hands ended in claws, but who could
tell with this shaggy brute?
The
monster had been a man in the distant past, but its memory of that time was
dim. He had been a fierce warrior of the Masai until a poisoned arrow from a
M'Buto pygmy pierced his heart, cutting him down in the prime of life. There
had been a small village, a wife and daughter, but memory slowly fades over
time. His body had lain in the jungle marshes, merging with the vines, roots,
and grasses that grew so abundantly in the rich soil, until he became a part of
the very earth that had received him that fateful day. He may not have
remembered that day, over twenty years in the past, when his hunting party had
been ambushed by the pygmy headhunters, for his memory was only partly human
now. Somehow the pygmies had overlooked his body, leaving it to rot in the
jungle vegetation. But something had been different about this land, something
that was magic. For the living plants covered him, becoming a part of him, and
wouldn't let his body return to mud and clay, from whence it had come. Sometime, during the twenty years his body
had lain there, the memory of the man guided the things merging with him,
attempting to again form the body of a man. The ugly monster did have something
of a human shape: two thick legs and arms, and something that resembled a head
of sorts. There the resemblance ended. This thing was no man.
Though the
natives thought of him as a monster, even monsters can prove to be a hero!
The Devil B’Tonga has appeared in
two short stories so far.
The Devil B’Tonga NIGHT TO DAWN
Magazine
The Junglew Girl EXCITING PULP
TALES (Altus Press)
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