I do not know when it will reach you, but I hope it does not take long.

  I love you, always.

  Kenneth.

  FOUR

  20 October 1940

  My Dear Mother,

  The edge of the war has snuck upon us like a fog.

  It is not at all what I expected. Today we passed a village that had been burned to the ground. Empty eye sockets stared back at us from razed, blackened bodies swarmed by flies. More than a dozen of them were children. It was horrific.

  We lost Richard and a native soldier named Barinyima when bullets began to fly from the surrounding bush. We rapidly took cover and returned fire. When we found our attacker, he turned out to be a solitary hunter from the village (according to his tribal markings and dress). His eyes were sunken and red, and his face was gaunt. Three of our bullets had hit him in the chest and abdomen and he was bleeding out but still speaking. Muttering and mumbling in anger. Emeka thinks he must have mistaken us for some Italian soldiers who attacked and burned down his home. He said the man’s last words, gurgled through blood, sounded like, “The forest will eat all of you foreign devils.”

  We buried the hunter and Richard in a mass grave along with the villagers we’d found. Phillip spat on the hunter’s body before we covered them all with earth as though his saliva were venom that could kill the man dead again. What was the point? He is so much like Father in his dislike of the people whose home he has come to and claims dominion over in the name of the King. At least Father has the shattered leg as an excuse for hating the people who resisted him so forcefully. I wonder what Phillip’s excuse for all the hatred is. In the end, we are all the same when we return to the earth. Human.

  The war is suddenly very real now and we are yet to encounter the enemy. We have only seen the residue of their presence; felt the aftereffects of the damage they have done. They are not supposed to have made it here, this far south from the Sudan though, so I am curious about what happened in this village. A rogue company of soldiers? Perhaps it wasn’t the Italians at all. Whatever happened here, it is ugly. So ugly. I have not had this feeling since I was in Bonny.

  I think all of this is starting to affect me deeply. As we left the place where we had buried the bodies, I even thought I saw the shadow-creature from my dream standing beside a tree, watching us. When I blinked it disappeared.

  I am not sure I should be writing about this to you but who else in the world can I unburden myself to? I probably won’t send this letter. But I need to record my thoughts somewhere. So, I continue writing whenever we make camp.

  Love,

  Your son Kenneth.

  FIVE

  29 October 1940

  Dear Mother,

  We have now entered the war proper. Since we passed Juba at the tip of the Sudan, three other villages we’ve come across have been destroyed, their people scattered into the surrounding hills and bush and forests. I am certain now that this is not the main Italian front but isolated and lost groups retreating to join their main army and leaving a trail of bloody, broken people in their retreat. We found bodies of some Italian soldiers too though. Badly mutilated and torn to pieces, almost unrecognizable but for the shreds of their uniforms that remain. The natives did not let them go without a brutal fight, it seems. We stopped burying the bodies after the second village.

  The soil here is red, rich with iron and clays but seeing all this, it is easy to imagine that it is blood. Red blood seeping into soil, saturating it. I remember the soil in Benin was red too when we lived there during Father’s service.

  Today we finally came upon the 5th Indian Infantry, who have been advancing from the north. We met them in a town called Webuye which, thankfully, has not been attacked by the Italians. They are led by a small but commanding man named Arthur Blackwater with a long vertical scar above his left eye, like someone or something had tried to claw it out. He had more than a thousand troops at his command, most of them bearded and moustachioed Indians. A few even had turbans tied above their heads instead of helmets. Among their number were a smattering of British officers and natives, in like appearance to my company. The entire group made for an impressive sight. I handed over the lorry to Arthur and put myself and my company at his disposal. That night, at the strategy meeting, he gave us our orders. He confirmed that the Italian forces have gathered and fortified themselves at the coast behind artillery and air support. Our task is to fan out in a circle through the bush and flank them. We will receive air support from the Royal South African Air Force who will bomb their fort and then, once signalled, we are to attack.

  The men are excited for our first true battle. They had dinner around a large campfire, exchanging stories with some of the natives from other platoons in rough English. When I passed by and heard one of them talk about a creature that had killed a group of Italians as they retreated from his village, I stopped to listen.

  “When we find them, all the geni, their body scatter pieces like say animal chop them,” a thickset man said, his face glowing in the amber light of the campfire.

  “Ngoloko!” someone shouted. They all began to laugh nervously.

  A cold feeling coiled in my belly as the man continued his story. I began to sweat and retreated to my tent. Emeka came to me, his eyes still full of confidence and asked me in his broken English what started this big war that was eating the whole world. He wanted to know why Hitler wanted to take over so many lands, as I had told him back in Port Harcourt, by way of explaining the war in a simple enough way that he would understand through our broken communications. Now he wanted to know what drove such men.

  “Because he is obsessed with power and he believes his people deserve more land and resources,” I replied. But Mother, I must confess that as I continued to give him the answer which had seemed clear in my mind, it occurred to me that I could have been describing our empire too. The doubt must have crept into my voice because Emeka’s eyes narrowed, and his lips became a line and when I was done, he simply said, “I understand,” and left, the moon bright above him like God’s own lamp. As I watched him leave, I thought I heard a hyena laugh in the distance and saw the dark shape of the creature from my dreams move behind the tree line.

  I shall finish this letter and go to bed now, but I fear I will not sleep well. Dark dreams and strange shadows await me and I shall sleep fitfully.

  I miss you and Father and Stephen and though I love this land and its people I am no longer certain of what I am doing here.

  I hope you are safe,

  Kenneth.

  SIX

  31 October 1940

  Dearest Mother,

  If this letter should ever reach you, you must know this by the time you read till its conclusion: I am not insane. I will write down everything with as much lucidity and detail as possible so that you may understand.

  This is what happened:

  We were advancing southeast through Kakamega Forest as was our command, the second day of our march. It was dawn, and the sky was still dark with thin beams of golden light stabbing through the canopy of treetops. There were enormous trees unlike any I’d ever seen, their leaves bright green and their branches heavy with fruits the size of a child’s head, and birds singing to the sky. There were animals too. Monkeys constantly swung past us, zooming through the treetops, making the branches flex and quiver and rain down their leaves. Wild pigs bounded out of clearings when we approached. The insects were more or less the same as those we’d encountered on the march here, their chirping never-ending. There was wet soil and sedge underfoot, as we navigated the gentle undulating slopes of the trail. It was proper forest, as we’d gotten used to, with all the attendant sights and sounds and smells.

  I had asked the British officers to march ahead of the company with me, the natives following behind. Phillip did not like this. He said he did not trust that they would not shoot us in the back just as Serge had said back in the Congo. I ignored him because I knew we had to lead by example. We had to earn the trust of the men we were leading to war on behalf of our King, leading to a possible death, and now that we were advancing on an enemy position, it was more important than ever.

  Just as the last traces of darkness in the sky disappeared, I noticed that a deep and abiding silence had descended upon us. The birdcalls had stopped. The insects too. The monkeys had ceased worrying the treetops.

  I remember the scratch of bramble against my trousers, the line of sweat that had developed on my lip. I remember the pause in pulse of the morning, so full of heat and silence just before it happened. I remember everything, Mother, so please you must know that I have not lost my mind when I tell you that I saw a massive shape that was twice the size of the largest man I’ve ever seen move between the trees just before I heard someone shout “Fire! Fire!”

  The crackling sound of burning hit me suddenly and I turned round to see the ground vomit up a towering wall of fire that separated us, the five British officers, from the rest of the men. Phillip and Andrew, a stocky, quiet boy from Newcastle, started screaming. James and Nigel pointed their rifles at the wall of fire as if it were an enemy solider. Our native comrades could hardly be seen through the flames.

  Swallowing, I turned back to the place where I had seen the shape. My breath caught when I realized that it was the shadow from my dreams. It took a step out from between the trees, into a clearing, and I was greeted with the most horrific sight I have ever come across standing underneath a yellow ray of young daylight. The shadow was no longer a thing of dreams. It was a mostly man-shaped monster that stood at least twelve feet tall, with leathery skin that looked like a bat’s wing. Illumination from the wall of fire danced along its skin in arcs and lines. Its head was a senseless dark mass of spikes and tusks and horns. Some curved, some straight, some jagged. Its face was a mask of bone, like it was wearing another animal’s skull. Everything about it was a perversion of nature. A caricature of creation. It stood there, several feet away, observing me as I observed it, and I swear now before all the host of heaven that I saw pulses of green beneath its skin. As I looked on in horror, the line where its fiendish mouth should have been curled into something like a smile to reveal a mouthful of teeth like knives.

  I am not ashamed to confess that I lost control of my bladder in that moment. The fear and the heat from the wall of fire pushed me down onto my knees. When I hit the ground, I gathered enough of my senses to scream.

  My companions finally tore their eyes away from the fire to see the abomination that stood in our way.

  They too began to scream until I remembered my rifle and pointed it at the beast with trembling hands.

  The only words I could make out as I fired were, “Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!”

  That seemed to jolt the others out of their panic, and they too drew their weapons and opened fire. But the bullets did nothing to the creature. It simply stood there, snarling, and then it pounced upon us.

  Dear Mother, my hand is shaking with pain and the memory of it now, and I cannot bring myself to relay in all their graphic detail the horrors which I witnessed but I will try.

  The creature killed all my officers.

  It killed Phillip first, snatching his rifle and using the barrel to pull him into its gaping maw. The terrible cracking sound it made when it crunched down on his skull will echo in my mind for however much longer I live. The creature swiped at Nigel and James with one hand, disembowelling them with claws like scimitars. Then it advanced upon Andrew and I. Andrew continued to fire until it gripped his throat and squeezed, severing his head. And then it stopped and stared at me, the reflections of fire dancing orange in the blackness of its eyes. I cannot explain how I felt in that moment, like I was being sucked into a whirlpool of emotions I could not explain. I shook my head, jumped to my feet, turned and ran. Yes, I am a coward, but I ran, God help me. I ran right through the wall of flames like I was running through hell itself to flee the devil.

  My clothes were burning, and I could feel the evil fire biting into my skin like a horde of ants, but I did not care. I continued to run.

  And then, there was a sound like a gunshot had gone off inside my head and lights exploded in my eyes. The ground fell away from my feet and my ears started to ring and the last thing I remember hearing was an inhuman roar.

  When I came to, it was dark, loud rain was pouring down and I was lying in a cave beside a warm fire. I shot up, the memory of burning still fresh on my skin and I spit out blood and two loose teeth. My head and arms were covered with strange leaves and dirty bandages.

  I only relaxed when I saw my boy Emeka rush over to me with a towel and a cup of warm liquid. What a sight he made.

  He told me I’d hit my head on a branch when I fled through the fire and that he found me and carried me to a nearby cave to rest. He told me all the native men in my company had scattered once the fire stopped raging and they saw what remained of Phillip, Nigel, Andrew, and James. But none of them had been harmed. He told me they were not afraid to face the Italians, but they could not fight spirit-creatures like the Ngoloko.

  That was when it all finally made sense to me, the dreams, the stories, the creature. I came to a realization and decided to write you this letter and hand it over to Emeka along with all my other letters, to ensure they reach you if I do not make it so you will know what really happened to me and maybe you will understand. Understand why I must go back and face the Ngoloko.

  You see, the question plagued me. Why had the creature first isolated and then killed only the British officers and left the natives? Why had it first appeared to me in dreams? Haunted my waking hours as I approached the warfront? Stared at me when it could have killed me? Is it a spirit of this place as the natives in Ubangi-Shari had claimed? An embodiment of this land summoned by blood to seek vengeance against us foreigners for what we have done here, just like that farmer shooting at us from the bushes? I believe it is. And if so, then I must trust in my dreams and go to it in order to know myself. My heart is African. I am of this land, born here even though I am not born of its people. It is why Father hates me. Or at least the part of me that does not hate this place and its people as he does. I cannot go back to Oxford; I think deep down I have always known that. I have been yearning to truly be one with this land, and when its spirit tested me in the shape of the Ngoloko, I fled from it. Just as I fled from Father, from Oxford, from myself. My cowardice is what holds me back from my true self. I see that clearly now. But no more. No more running. It cannot be that it will come to nothing, the yearning in my heart that made me leave you all and the comforts of home to come to this land where the trees are always green, and every path runs out into the silhouette of a beautiful sunset. Facing the Italians would have been a war for England but facing the Ngoloko is a war for my soul.

  If you are reading this, then it is likely that I have been tested by the Ngoloko and found wanting, undeserving to live in this land. Cut to pieces like a wild animal or consumed, like Phillip. It is also possible that I have been accepted by the land and am a part of it, subject to its power and no longer able to leave. If the stories of the Ibagere and the unquiet spirits of Bonny are true, then even if the Ngoloko accepts me as African, I may still have to answer for what I have done in being a part of empire. If so, then so be it. At least I will come to finally know myself.

  In either case, you should know that it is a rational choice I have made. I am not insane. We must all answer for what we have done, in the end. No matter who we are or where we come from. I am prepared for whatever comes next.

  Please do not tell Father of this if I do not return. Simply tell him what the army will, which will be mostly true. That I was lost in the war, on the East African front. And please say goodbye to Stephen for me. I never truly knew him, but I think I understand him a bit better now and I wish I had been a better brother. I am sorry for burdening you with this knowledge and that both your sons existed in their own worlds, separate from yours. At least Stephen’s is in his head, invisible to us all. Mine is here on another continent, where my dreams and fears call to me with a question. I must answer.

  With love,

  Kenneth.

  SEVEN

  Military Records Office,

  Whitehall London,

  c/o The Secretariat,

  Enugu, Nigeria, West Africa

  12 November 1940

  Dear Madam,

  It is my painful duty to inform you that a report has been received from the war office notifying us of the death of Second Lieutenant Kenneth Lockwood (3490/447012) on the 31st of October 1940. The report is to the effect that he died of heart failure while in action on the East African front.

  By his majesty’s command I am to forward the enclosed message of sympathy from their Gracious Majesties the King and Queen, and I wish to also express the regret of the Army council at this brave soldier’s death in his country’s service. His remains will be returned upon the good ship HMS Mercy at the soonest possible opportunity.

  Finally, if I may take the liberty. The captain of the brigade that found his body instructed me to let you know that he was found quietly sitting on the wet earth against a tree staring into the distance. There were no signs of injury or distress upon his person except burns suffered prior and the doctor tells me his death was swift and he could not have suffered long. In fact, the captain believes you will be grateful to know that there was expression of calm on his face, almost a smile, as though he was happy when the end came.

 

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