Strange Encounters

By Jacob Aliet

What happens when a living person is slapped by the hand of one that has crossed over into the spiritual realm? What happens to the endemic species of fish in a Lake when a rapacious predatory species is introduced in it? Is it true, as the Luos believe, that a snake must cleanse itself by licking the fresh grave of the victim it has killed or be crushed by the weight of the departed soul? And what happens when the snake is waited upon? The book explores how messengers of death are sometimes treated by the Luos and how the news of death is often received. What is the interaction between witches and witchdoctors and how do witchdoctors handle evil spells? What happens when a brazen night runner intent on spooking a lone traveler stumbles on a savage soldier returning home on a dark night after an assignment at the battlefield?

These questions are explored through five short stories in this book and the readers are taken through the dramatic events and spellbinding experiences in these strange encounters, to their breathtaking conclusions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacob Aliet
• Release date: Dec 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386071631

Jacob Aliet

Jacob Aliet is a project manager and business analyst with a great interest in Philosophy, Science, Filmography and Metaphysical Naturalism. He has written several articles in academic journals and newspapers and this anthology is his first published book or eBook. He grew up in Nairobi and Kendu Bay and in this collection of short stories; he explores some traditions of the Lake side people and the tales that are told around fires and dinner tables by communities at the lake. He lives with his family in Nairobi, Kenya. Email: [e-mail]

Book preview

THE LAKE PREDATOR

It was the thirteenth of November 1965. The afternoon breeze swept across Lake Victoria, gently bending the reeds and papyrus vegetation on the winam gulf shoreline. Gentle waves rolled on the water surface to the beach, leveling out at the feet of the solitary figure that stood at the edge of the gulf like a dark tower. On that day, all the fishermen were back at the village, huddled together in groups with worried expressions on their faces, waiting nervously.

Odera Akango stood at a clearing along the forested shore of the lake. Below his tree trunk legs, his wide feet were submerged in water up to his ankles, his gorged veins snaked across his calves and muscular arms like giant climbers. Blades of twisted mud grass peeped at the water surface at his feet. His red eyes darted across the surface of the water, monitoring every movement, assessing every ripple. His large nostrils flared as he smelt the water and the lake vegetation.

There was something in the lake. A monster. A ferocious subterranean creature was ravaging the endemic fish and other aquatic life in the lake to extinction.

Shaken fishermen had reported about an explosively powerful creature that had torn out of their kira traps with the savagery and strength of a wounded hippo. Nyabwa, a seasoned kira fisherman, had narrated how he had cornered the strange fish in his reed trap at dawn, and just after spearing the fish, it broke the spear as if it were a match stick and tore out of the kira as if it was made of grass and disappeared into the lake in a blast. Even the biggest kamongo fish could not be so powerful, he said. He remembered how Nyabwa’s lips trembled as he narrated his encounter with the frightening predator.

He had never seen Nyabwa so afraid. From the descriptions, he knew it was not a crocodile and it was not a hippo or monitor lizard.

Odera Akango felt an itch at the injury on his big toe and he lifted it out of the water and his searchlight eyes clamped on it. Two black leeches were hooked on his wound and were gorged with blood. His blood. Leeches aided in the healing of wounds by sucking away bad blood.  He dipped his foot back in the water and looked at a shadowy section of the shoreline where thick papyrus vegetation was hanging overhead, blocking the sweltering sun above.

He swiftly lowered his muscular bulk to the water and retrieved a mudfish stuck in the mud amidst the twisted grass and then he drove the metal hook through it. He was going to use it as bait to lure the monster in the water and then spear it and drag it out of the water.

Since this monster appeared in the lake, the fishermen complained that tilapia population had dwindled and obudi fish and mud fish had all but disappeared. They believed that the predator must have been a monster fish with a rapacious appetite that fed on all the fish and zooplanktons, eliminating the fish and forcing the survivors to migrate elsewhere to seek food and to escape predation.

The village had tasked him to go and trap the monster and kill it. He was to use his hunter’s instincts and combine with his knowledge of fishing to find and kill the lake predator. He accepted the honor and relished the challenge.

He firmly tied the iron hook at the end of a sisal rope and picked up his spear then with the agility of a cat, he leapt up and perched himself on top of a heap of reeds just under the cover of overhanging papyrus. Then he gently lowered the bait and waited.

As he waited for his quarry, he witnessed a black mamba fight with a monitor lizard at the foot of the reeds and after a spirited battle, the monitor lizard chewed on the mamba, tearing off its head, then eating it up. It then staggered off and collapsed a few meters away, overcome by the effects of the venom the mamba had injected during their battle. He remembered how he had seen many strong wrestlers lose matches after expending their energy recklessly without proper strategy and ending up losing to less worthy opponents.

He sat patiently, swatting away mosquitoes and lake flies. He waited for several hours and evening came with no sign of the predator. The seagulls started their evening cries and migration to their nests and cattle left the grazing fields. Hippos would soon start approaching the shore in readiness for their nocturnal forages. Odera sat still in the approaching dusk. As a hunter, withstanding lengthy moments of stillness was a skill he had mastered. A few feet away, a thick green mamba lay coiled quietly in the papyrus leaves, probably waiting for him to leave its nest. Man and snake faced off still like wooden statues. Each waiting. The evening breeze softly rustled the reeds and the tide was coming in, he could smell the decomposing vegetation in the water.

Suddenly, there was a violent tug at the bait that threatened to cut the rope. The tug was so powerful that it threw Odera Akango into the water. The predator bit on the hook and twisted away from Odera Akango, splashing water wildly. He pulled the trapped monster toward him and thrust his spear at it with tremendous force. He pulled his spear out for another thrust but the thrashing predator broke it, and knocked him out of balance. The water was becoming red with blood as it thrashed savagely. Birds fled from their nests in this pandemonium and the green mamba fell in the water. He pulled the rope above his head and tried to fling the predator on the reeds. But it was too heavy. Its spread out dorsal fin scratched his stomach as it twisted away from him. Blood dripped from his wound and he created some distance from it and pulled the rope harder.

He quickly darted toward the shore and started