Animosity

By Natasha Danzig

A grisly tale from the dark woodlands of Alaska, ANIMOSITY plays host to the black magic of the obscure Ursai and their Bear Mother who are unleashed onto the town of Heathenn. Veterinarian and taxidermist, Chase Kodiak, will soon have his skepticism challenged.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 18, 2019
• ISBN: 9780359643844

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Animosity

ANIMOSITY

Natasha Danzig

Copyright © 2019 Natasha Danzig

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN 978-0-359-64384-4

Thanks:

Anushka & Ivan, my two cubs – for always thinking I am cool

Clair and Doreen – for always wanting more of my madness

This novel coincides with the latest album release by LadyAxe:

IN THE LAIR OF THE BEAR MOTHER ©2018

This is a work of fiction that runs concurrently with characters

and concepts reflected throughout the album and features

principals and stories encapsulated within some of the songs.

My thanks to the bands featured within this novel for supplying

the atmosphere in places.

Full House Brew Crew

Bobaflex

Sepultura (first line-up)

Tito & Tarantula

Prologue

Written testimony of Alhaadi ‘Lukas’ Kamau

Maasai Mara Reserve Ranger Office – 4 August 1972

It is never less than infirnal in Kenya, especially for lighter skins, yet the draw of Kenya’s rich array of animals make it easy for them to hire us to get the horns to the Chinese and Serbians. Sometimes other richer countries good at hiding involvement. Others supply other parts of the world and they specialize in other species, like elephants, for the ivory. I have dabbled in the ivory trade, but the trafficking of that speciality have showed me much violence. I did not spend years in Egypt, Morocco and England for schooling to end up at the wrong end of some wahalifu’s panga.

This is why I moved to rhino contraband, by a hair. Let nobody tell you that a nationality does not hold a hostile trait. They all have it. They all have their own hells that they visit on people and animals, but just because one hell is different from another, does not make it less of the devil that rules it.

My statement here is informal, but I submit this as my own account for court record purposes. They have found me guilty of the murder of a colleague and friend, even as I tell them I am innocent. With this, I do not expect exonoration from the authoritise, but I must tell the truth, no matter how absurd it sounds. Please excuse the wrong words or bad spelling. I am educated but not a man of good grammar. I trust you will understand my words anyway.

On 28 March 1970, my unit collected the last rhino horn from the calf we found at the water hole near the border of the reservation. It was a relief, as we had been struggling to get the calf in the past days and the local rangers got help from a South African preservasion organization to track us down and arrest us. It was time to get across the border to Tanzania before they caught up with us, but we had to rest at camp one more night before we crossed the next morning. Our employers from Asia had people waiting in Tanga’s port for our bounty and that was where our money was normally paid.

That night, four of us were camping near the border, because one of our men refused to remain there with us. He was the last hunter who killed the calf, but after he removed the horn, a strange mood came on him. We thought he feels guilty, but he was a veteran hunter, not easily shaken. He told us that he would travel to Tanga so long, by himself, because the wind was wrong. That did not make sense to us, so we just laughed, but he was serious. Mlamba Masego left us that day, shaking his head and talking about wrong winds and black magic that came from nature. My friend, Chege Mwagi, made jokes about Mlamba’s superstition from his family business. Chege said Mlamba’s mother was a witch doctor and she taught him to fear all kinds of things, so we did not care what he believed.

There is no place for beliefs when you have to do a risky job like ours. We called ourselves ‘guids’ but we were not guids, we were hunters for hire to take trophies. Police and rangers always chase us and we have little time for worries about ghosts and imps.

By nightfall, I was making fire with Absko Okoye and his brother, Barasa Diya, because Chege was not strong enough to carry the heavy logs of wood we gathered. He was my friend, but he was a lazy man. Even when we harvested the horns, he never did any of the hard work because his hands hurt and his feet hurt and his back was sore. But we knew he never liked hard work. Chege could hardly lift a rock from the river bank.

When it was very dark we knew it must be late, because it was much colder than before. Even in Kenya in the summer months, the nights are quite frigid when midnight turned his back and the morning hours come. Around the fire, me and Chege, Absko and Barasa ate some wildebeest meat and potato while we drank local beer, but we were not drunk. While we talked, we heard a laughing in the distant dark, but we were used to night sounds on the flats. Lions hardly came to the fire and the laughing was night birds and hyenas, so we did not care for the noise.

Now and then, we saw the red eyes in the dark, just out of the light of the fire. We had guns, if anything would come to hunt us. Barasa drank a lot and he told us about the hyenas that learn our language while they listen in the dark. I have heard the stories many times, even from my own mother. They scared us as children to make us behave. I could not help but think of those tales, that hyenas wait in the dark around the camp, learn our names and call us when we sleep.

When you hear your name in the dark, do not go! It is the hyenas calling you away from your tribe, from your people to kill you. I remember we thought this was why Mlamba left not to camp here, but I was wrong.

I did not kill Chege that night. I heard them call his name in the darkness, but I thought I was dreaming. They called his name many times, softly, so that others will not awake. Finally, I looked around from my blanket, but I could not see any eyes flashing and there was no hyena calls in the grasses. Usually they made their whoop sound (that is what we called it as children) or cackled like fat tribal women at the pots (they laugh loud) but that night I know there was no hyenas around us. If I lie, I can still not blame the hyenas because people do not believe that they can learn our names and call to the weakest one.

Even if people believed that, they would still think I killed Chege that night because I will not stop saying that we heard Chege’s name clearly. All three of us sat up to hear the soft name coming from all sides around the camp, but Chege was already walking out into the grasses when we woke up. They called him and he went. We only heard his screams eco through the darkness, the crunch of his bones when he stopped screaming, but we were too late.

With our rifles and pangas we ran into the night, but we found no hyena tracks and heard no laughter from them as they did when they fed on something. Chege’s carcass was a mess of blood and meat. Only his head looked like him.

Absko and Barasa still believe the hyenas learned Chege’s name and called him into the night. The police believe that I hacked up my friend over shares of the money for the horns. I do not know what I believe apart from that the animals who called Chege were not hyenas.

They were much much bigger, like giant lions walking on their hind legs, making the sound of his name. Giant lions walking like men killed my friend Chege.

This is my statement and even though nobody believes me – I stand by my story.

CHAPTER 1 – The Unbeliever

From the bowels of the earth, it seemed to emanate, the low chafing grunt of a devil voice possessing all within earshot of the canyon. If not for the soil being still, Chase would have thought the earth had shuddered in her orbit. Just slightly, for below him the growl had grown louder now, pushing itself through the surface of the ground he stood on, shivering under his weight. He fell to his knees as the bison calf violently tugged at once, forfeiting him his footing, but he maintained his grasp on the rope and grabbed onto the wiring that had trapped the poor beast before he had come to free it.

He understood the restlessness of the animal. It was nature to escape the claws of death, no matter what breed of beast concerned. Wildly and without relent, the calf bucked and screamed, pulling the veterinarian erect once again. Chase rather absent-mindedly stared up to the heavens now as he realised whence the furore had come. Above him, the sky darkened hastily. A sudden gust ripped his hat from his crown and whisked it away so swiftly that he knew he had no way of retrieving it. Ever.

The mad din reminded him of the flapping of wings, the sound an eagle of considerable size would lend to its flight, were it the dimensions of the entire Alaskan sky that mounted the rolling darkness of the wilderness where he lived. Where he breathed. The breath he now held. Chase inhaled deeply to salvage the rhythm of his wary heartbeat. Now the dusty twist of the devil wind had crept up on him, smothering him in her battery of sand, almost rendering the infant animal by his side invisible to the cowboy's blind control.

How heavy it roared! Chase elected to merely stay alive in its onslaught, rather than risk his life to escape the whirling threat he found himself trapped in. It keened about his ear, his eyes pinched under the protection of his right arm bent over his brow. Its fury was remorseless and it whipped and battered the man and the beast into submission, where it left them both on their bellies in the dirt. At once, as if it never was, the roar subsided and took with it all the clamour it had birthed a few minutes before.

Like a scolded lover, she left, furious and content with the destruction left in her wake. On Chase's tongue the grains of sand lay fixed, like those between his gritting teeth, as he still lay facedown in the dirt. He heard the bellowing animal affirm its survival. With great endeavour, Chase pried open his lids, like a new-born seeking its first light, cautious of what he might find. Dusk filled his sight at first, and then coming to view he saw the hovering black snout snorting against his face, wetting his forehead with calf snot and mud.

Babysitting, hoss? he heard a rasp in his immediate vicinity.

Chase spat irefully as he groaned in defeat. He knew that voice like he knew his mother's name. It was familiar and comforting, even in its mocking.

Yes, Jason, Chase managed with great unease, dusting off his clothes, rope still in hand, ...babysitting your dinner, I suppose.

A rough snicker came under the breath of the Aleut guide as he watched, amused, how the veterinarian dusted off the bison. Jason was youthful enough to act juvenile, yet old enough to know what his fathers knew. He stood six feet and five inches tall in his snakeskin boots, his denims straining over his overweight frame, but he carried his cargo well. Chase measured him up with a menacing gaze, still shaking off the dust and watching the remaining breeze lashing the native’s raven hair like a halo around his shoulders.

[Tito & Tarantula – Back to the House]

You look like a Las Vegas Indian, you know, Chase mocked.

I am that lucky too, Doc, came the wit, quick to the draw.

It was true too. Jason sported a beautiful scar over his left eye that meandered to meet his jaw line and proceeded decoratively onto his throat where it split in a forked tongue to die in his upper torso, just shy of his shirt's placket. He never told anyone how he got it and the locals were quite aware that anyone who dared ask would wear his Bowie’s blade by night's end.

Jason was a mean son of a bitch, but his laughter and jovial nature lied all over it. It was understandable that strangers who called his bluff on threat found themselves unable to even utter surprise before they would meet their doom, swiftly. No guessing what that was exactly. The man was a hunter, guide and butcher by trade. Enough said.

There he stood, sucking in God knows what through his ivory pipe. Jason smiled slyly through the billows of smoke as if nothing odd had occurred here at all. His hunting knife gleamed in the slivers of a dying sun that had reared itself onto the cold land as his eyes followed Chase. The veterinarian walked his new pet calf toward his truck with immense patience. The animal was understandably difficult, but the veterinarian was not a small man either. His robust chest proved that he was capable of wrestling large animals and men alike, but unlike Jason, Chase was tediously nice. Civilized.

Did you not see that...that...whatever anomaly that was? Chase asked his old friend as they stood under the deceptively clear sky, suddenly bare of the ominous clouds that haunted it not a few minutes before.

Yep, came the answer. Nothing more.

Well? the alarm in the veterinarian's voice manifested for the first time. His calm manner always kept him in control, but in front of Jason, Chase could freely lose that control just a little. Besides, what had just happened was unnatural enough to shake the cage of most people’s sensibilities.

For a short time they remained in complete silence, save for the occasional eagle's cry from the forest around them. Chase grew impatient, but, kind a man as he was, took great care to press his friend as gently as possible. Finally, the quizzical native drew his pipe and flashed his wicked black eyes at the animal doctor.

"You know what that was," he finally said, unleashing the cynic in his childhood friend as always, when he started on his primitive folklore and superstitions. Chase breathed hard. His discontent at the trivial explanation was clear in his disappointment.

Oh, for God’s sake, Jason, Chase grunted, shaking his head. He knew he should not have entertained his friend’s opinion. Still? Really?

Yeah, go ahead, Jason muttered. Grunt, puff. You wanna know what it was, but you know what it was.

"The Urse Curse? Do you honestly believe that?" the veterinarian winced as he laboriously loaded the wounded bison calf onto the caged bed of his F150. Jason shoved his pipe halfway into his back pocket to assist the animal doctor.

I am thinking that, yes, he told Chase, affirming what the vet hoped was just a jest on the Las Vegas Indian’s part.

Reluctantly, Chase Kodiak recalled the tale of the devil winds that would come from Kodiak Island's direction, brought by the so-called Bear Curse to vindicate bears from poachers and lay waste to unsettled grudges. It was some sort of ancient tribal revenge on the Russian hunters of the mainland, when they exploited the old tribes for the fur trade. That was the story. Quite honestly, Chase secretly had to admit that he had never seen Jason’s tribe, but he did not want to interfere on things his Aleut friend did not bring up himself.

It was a spook tale that was eloquently woven by elder tongues around many a fire when he was a child, complete with witchcraft and warning. As a child, the foreboding stories had always scared him witless when the other children would tell him that he was doomed because of his last name. No man was allowed to be called Kodiak. Only bears had the honour of the name of a demon bear. Thankfully, growing up seems to erase the easy naivety of childhood when the power of logic and realism kicks in. Thankfully.

It's not even a real story. Never have I once heard it told the same twice over, he argued as he strained under the bucking animal’s efforts. Loud clangs clapped against the steel cage as the bison baby’s hooves kicked out. It's hogwash created to scare Russian hunters and trappers into avoiding the Kodiak furs, man, he retorted nonchalantly.

Without success, Chase tried to hide his bewildered beliefs in the unseen, barely hidden coarsely to the sharp eye of the native man who knew him better than anyone.

All right, kola. Jason mounted his horse and, without another word, took off in the direction of Heathenn, the small town where the two friends grew up together since they were teens. He left Chase with only a fleeting salute in his gallop and diminished into a mere memory as the forest ate him up.

Suddenly very wary of his solitude, Dr Chase Kodiak felt that the trees seemed to be whispering in their waltz with the breeze and he hastened to lock the cage gate properly, so that he could flee the suddenly ominous vibe of the clearing. He spared no time in his urgency to reach home before he might endure another supernatural event he did not believe in.

As his truck pulled away and snaked in unison with the dirt road that led him home, Chase could not help but ponder on such things as curses and devil winds. The absurdity of the phrases aside, he had to concede to the teeth in that bite. Although the supposed curse had chosen prominent hunters from Heathenn before, he simply could not allow the retrospective incidents to get the better of his reasoning. Still the historical accounts remained, ludicrous as they appeared – those of shapeshifting or death visiting the unfortunate shortly after anomalous weather behaviours around here.

‘The unexpected cold wind over the land means that someone left the door open.’

Moments of brute fear passed through him like the cold currents of the Bering Sea as he remembered the fearsome totem poles revering bears with their savage jaws agape. As a teenager, it was the fabric of his worst nightmares, because totems were supposed to be etched in wood. These were not. They would mysteriously appear when the wind blew with a voice, and Chase recalled their beady eyes bulging and the frightening echo of roaring men imitating the beasts when he was a mere boy.

Surprisingly, these tales never caused him to fear bears more than he should. He was quite fond of them. In fact, he had saved and healed a great many bear cubs and mature ones alike through his years as a wildlife veterinarian. The horizon darkened as his truck clattered along the gravel, forcing him to exchange daydreams for concentration while the dwindling thoughts lingered in his mind. He scoffed at Jason's ill attempt at exciting his nerves as he pulled into the narrow road that led to his home.

Hetwich – the name of the property bequeathed to him by his mother, some relic from her own past he never knew of until she died.

The jewel that centred his modest patch of farm was this large, six-bedroom stone house. It lay secluded in the patch of trees and shrubs that hid it from the untrained eye. Flanking the road, lush vegetation danced through the ditches and shrubs. Chase felt safe once more as he ran his eyes across the grassy tips and looked forward to his beloved wife's warm embrace, even though it was usually accompanied by a vodka-rich breath.

From the mountain came an unholy gale once more, slithering in its course toward town, unsettling all that grew in its path. It watched the animal doctor in its journey, breathing hard on the submissive spruces that stood before it. As Dr Chase Kodiak and his calf vanished beneath the roofed enclosure, the living wind exhaled its cold demonic growl over the land of ice and teeth, killing the sun beneath the horizon and ushered in the dawn of night.

CHAPTER 2 – Encroachment

Somewhere near Heathenn – same night

Under the shelter of the dense black spruce population, Chen and his two fellow hunters stalked the giant animal. The thing was exceptional, even upon first sight, the size of a car and rather unaware of them. A perfect prize, which would no doubt fetch a handsome profit for the team, the black brute snapped tree branches in its way like the bones of rodents under a heavy boot. It seemed careless, almost relaxed, as it rambled through the thick brush while the night grew older. Chen motioned to his colleagues to flank out and take up in the tree stands nearby. The three men, a skeleton crew of a larger hunting party, were professionals at this trade and they swiftly took their positions while Chen stole forward with a keen eye on the Kodiak bear ahead of him.

Owls warned sporadically, but the men had a quota to fill and little time to do it in. The night was their only cover and its hours their only comfort from being discovered. This was the fourth bear they trailed in a stretch of two weeks, but it was by far the biggest. It would take all their tranquiliser before they would have to transfer the animal to their truck, further down the ridge toward the Overbite, where their associates had made camp.

From here, they would have to load the bounty onto the truck, make it over the rough terrain to Larsen Bay, where they would part company. Chen would take the animal via trawler onto the Bering Sea to moor at the island of Nikolskoye, where his employer’s men would collect the animal and load it onto an Antonov AN-12. Chen and his group of poachers would get their money and the bears would be flown to mainland China for bile farming.

This was the way for more than three years and it had been working out well for all parties involved. Tonight, however, Chen and his men felt ever so slightly uncomfortable, though none of them could place a finger on the origin of their apprehension. Perhaps it was the old wives’ tales they were so familiar with by now, although none of the three were particularly superstitious.

It was just uncanny that one of the legends, one of the most obscure, visited their reality in the past days since they arrived via Kodiak Island. The foul-smelling gusts of wind that really did sound like a sub-human voice of sorts had been crawling through the forests and whipped at the hair on their necks. But there was no time for such ponderings. There was a very dangerous animal to hunt and money to be made. No doubt the stories were spread by the natives to keep unwelcome visitors at bay and away from their wildlife, but to be so persistent as to cover themselves for the creeping devil wind,