The Man Who Screams At Nightfall

By Rush Leaming

"A powerful, gritty, and exquisitely written anthology —not to be missed." – J. Miller, Reader's Favorite

 

Thailand. The Congo. Greece. Spain. America…Four continents and forty-plus years in the making.

 

The Man Who Screams at Nightfall is a landmark collection of short stories depicting a young man on a classic voyage of self-discovery, wandering the earth in search of some purpose in life.
From childhood to parenthood and everything in between—these tales are raw and unflinching; at other times, poignant and moving.

Get ready for a literary journey unlike any you've experienced before.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rush Leaming
• Release date: Jan 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215340615

Rush Leaming

RUSH LEAMING has done many things including spending 15+ years in film/video production working on such projects as The Lord of the Rings films. He was also an Adjunct Professor at the University of South Carolina. His first novel, Don't Go, Ramanya, a literary thriller set in Thailand, was published in the Fall of 2016 and reached number one on Amazon. He is currently working on his next novel, to be published in Fall of 2018, entitled The Whole of the Moon, set in the Congo at the end of the Cold War. His short stories have appeared in Notations, 67 Press, The Electric Eclectic, Lightwave and 5k Fiction. He has lived in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Zaire, Thailand, Spain, Greece, England and Kenya. He currently lives in South Carolina.

Book preview

THE MAN WHO SCREAMS AT NIGHTFALL

AND OTHER STORIES

RUSH LEAMING

CONTENTS

Warning

The Man Who Screams At Nightfall

Parade

Alphabet City

Happy Hour At The Pub Madrid?

Ella, La Loca

Agora Dogs

A Little Patch Of Sunshine

Robo-Cop Rides Again

Ashes

Here

A Way To Go Home

About the Author

Also by Rush Leaming

BRIDGEWOOD

Copyright 2022 Rush Leaming

All rights reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Some of these stories previously appeared in different form in: Notations; Green Apple; Lightwave; 5K Fiction; Electric Eclectic; Broken Skyline.

ISBN (paperback): 978-0-9997456-7-0

Book design by Bad Doggie Designs

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Hi,

     Most of the stories in this collection (except for A Way to Go Home) were written independently of each other during the 1990s and early 2000s. It was only while choosing pieces for this collection that it became blazingly clear what I had really been writing about all along.

     These stories depict a young man on a classic journey of self-discovery, wandering our planet looking for some meaning in life. They also depict a young man who, unknown to him at the time, was living the first thirty-five plus years of his life with undiagnosed and untreated (misdiagnosed and mistreated?) borderline personality disorder.

     That man eventually grew up, became a father, and found a lot of the answers he was looking for. But not all of them. He still likes to scour the face of the earth for whatever shreds of enlightenment he can find, because, if you ever stop doing that, life would be pretty damn boring, wouldn’t it?

     Hope you enjoy these…

- R.L.

(P.S. I recommend reading them in order, but it’s up to you.)

WARNING

Some of these stories contain strong language,

depictions of sexual situations, and graphic violence.

THE MAN WHO SCREAMS AT NIGHTFALL

Kachamba could fix anything.

In the village of Kitengo, in what was then called Zaire, there stood a large mango tree that was rumored to be five hundred years old. Beneath the tree, in the shade, beside the main avenue that ran through the village, Kachamba would sit on a small wooden stool and calmly fix whatever was broken. The people of the village always had something for him to do. They would bring him a cracked pot, a bent machete, a dead radio, a broken shovel—whatever it was didn’t matter, for they knew that he could fix it.

When I lived in Kitengo, I used to pass by Kachamba every day on my way to the valley. He always had a smile and a wink for me, sometimes even two. It was a very soothing sight to find him beneath the mango tree. He was somewhere near forty years old and had fine, weathered features in his face. He was bald up top but had long, thick sideburns that were steadily turning gray, and he was lean and muscular despite all the hours he spent just sitting in one place. He always wore a pair of rust-colored cut-off shorts, never any shirt or any shoes, and he liked to bury those bare feet in the sand of the road, creating two perfect little triangular-shaped mounds. A small wooden toolbox sat below him to his right, and he liked to hum to himself (always the same melody) while he worked to breathe life into whatever dead thing lay before him. I once asked him what song he sang all day long, and he told me it was no song at all; it was just something he had made up to pass the time.

It was on my second day in the village that I first met him. I had been sent to Kitengo to help the farmers of the area raise fish, and as I was walking toward the edge of the savanna, I passed the mango tree and Kachamba looked up and winked at me for the first time. He had a flashlight in his hands, and he was busy scraping off rust from the coils of the battery tube. My assistant was traveling with me, a friendly young man named Pumbu who told him my name was Michael Shaw. Pumbu explained to me that Kachamba was the cousin of the village chief and that if I ever had anything that needed fixing, he was the man I should see.

It was at that moment that Kachamba began to study me, in the same way that he studied each item the villagers brought him. His eyes tightened, and for a long time he did not say anything. I remember feeling a bit uncomfortable. But then he relaxed, and a smile crept across his face. He winked at me again.

Bring me something to fix, he said.

I said I couldn’t think of anything I had at the moment that was broken.

Everyone has something that is broken, Kachamba said, and then winked at me for the third time.

I immediately liked him. I told him that I would look around and if I found something, I would most certainly bring it to him to fix.

I politely excused myself. Pumbu and I went on our way and spent the afternoon down in the valley speaking with farmers. A group of four men was interested in setting up a small fish farm, so I spent the day hiking around in the thick, hot forest trying to locate a creek or spring that could be used as a potential source of water. It was a full day’s work, and by the time evening drew near and the light in the sky had begun to finish its own work in a flourish of scarlet, orange, and gold, I found myself walking back along the main avenue toward my home, and back in front of the mango tree, where Kachamba still sat, humming, and working, and winking at everyone that went by.

And it was not long after that, when night finally fell, that I heard him scream for the first time.

Pumbu and I had just finished a supper of ground squash seeds cooked with hot pepper and oil. The sting of the pepper was still on my lips as the two of us sat behind my house and began to pass a bottle of Johnnie Walker back and forth. There was no electricity in the village, so we relaxed by the light of a small petrol lantern, looking up at a night sky that seemed low enough to touch and held twice as many stars as I had ever seen before in my life. The whiskey slid down my throat as I counted my first shooting star. A steady breeze moved through the palm and banana trees that lined my yard, and it was such a perfectly relaxing scene, that it was even more shocking when our little cocoon of serenity was suddenly ripped wide open by the sound of loud, violent shouting from down the road.

It sounded at first like a whole group of people in an intense argument. The voices tripped upon each other so fast and furious that I would never have guessed they all came from one man.

What is going on? I asked as I twisted my body in my chair. Pumbu took a sip from the bottle and said nothing. Then came a horrible, anguished, banshee-like scream, slicing through the air like an arrow from a bow, and flying straight into my ears and to my brain. It made the hair on my arms stand up.

Pumbu, what is going on?

It’s Kachamba, Pumbu said.

Kachamba? I said, taking a moment to remember whom he was talking about. The fix-it man?

Yes, said Pumbu.

Is he okay? Is someone attacking him? Should we go there?

No, no one is attacking him. He is only attacking himself.

Another scream pierced the night.

Pumbu, I want to go over there. I want to make sure he is all right.

He is all right.

He doesn’t sound all right, I said and stood up. Are you coming?

Pumbu reluctantly agreed, and the two of us circled the front of my house and went back out onto the main avenue. The voices (for again, though they came from one man, there were many) rose in volume and pace as we drew near.

I could see the glow of a fire up ahead of us, and as we reached the mango tree, Pumbu motioned for me to stay low and follow him along a small wall of honeysuckle bushes. We crouched down, and from our hiding place, I saw Kachamba furiously pacing back and forth in his yard in front of a small bonfire. He swung his arms wildly in the air as if he was fighting off something that was falling on him. He dropped to his knees and then suddenly sprang three feet off the ground. Then he began to dance, swaying and spinning his body so close to the fire that I was certain he was going to fall in. All the while he screamed and shouted deep into the empty black night.

He spoke in a dialect that I couldn’t understand, so I had to ask Pumbu to tell me what he was saying. I asked him many questions: Why was he doing this? Who was he speaking to? Was he drunk? What was going on? Pumbu patiently explained to me that no, he was not drunk, and that he really didn’t know who he was speaking to, but that Kachamba’s wife had left him a few years ago, run off with another man and taken their children, and that ever since, he had not been right in the head. He was not from this village and had been kicked out of all the other places he had lived. He came here only because Kachamba’s father, the chief of Kitengo’s uncle, had once saved the life of the chief’s father (Kachamba’s uncle) and so the chief had to let him stay to repay that old favor. It was all very complicated, Pumbu said, and he didn’t fully understand it himself.

I was hardly listening, instead transfixed and horrified by what I saw. Spinning, swirling, shouting, and screaming—Kachamba’s face, so calm and happy as I had seen it earlier that day, was now knotted and twisted like a grotesque carnival mask, like some gargoyle sprung from the lowest depths of hell. The glow of the fire cut fierce shadows and gorges in his face, adding to the haunting vision that I saw.

For a long while, Pumbu and I hid behind the honeysuckle bushes and watched Kachamba shriek and wail and try to push back the night, until suddenly, all at once, he just stopped. Suddenly, he just stood still and quiet and stared at the sky. I followed his gaze and saw another shooting star. When I looked back, Kachamba had disappeared.

Is that it? I asked.

That’s it, said Pumbu. He usually only does this for an hour or so.

And he does this every night?

Almost, said Pumbu and yawned. Mmm. I’m tired. I think I am going to go home.

We left the bushes, went past the mango tree, and said good night. I walked home alone, both exhilarated and troubled by what I had seen.

I entered my room and prepared for bed, but long after I had extinguished my petrol lantern, I lay there staring into the darkness. I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned. It wasn’t that unusual—I noticed that it had been happening a lot lately, that I couldn’t sleep. I got up and found the bottle of Johnnie Walker and knocked back a tall glass until at last I was floating, and at last, my eyes did shut.

* * *

The next day, I went to the valley and walked past the mango tree. I found Kachamba humming his tune as he worked on cleaning a kitchen knife. He looked up and winked at me.

So, when are you going to bring me something to fix? he asked.

The difference in him, as they say, was like night and day. It took me a moment to put in perspective which Kachamba I was now talking to.

I’ll bring you something tomorrow, I said.

Good, he said. I’ll be here.

He winked at me again and then went back to work.

That night, I heard him scream again, and as I did, I searched through my things for something to give to him. I finally found an old pocketknife that I had had since I was twelve years old. It was rusted and dull (it could barely cut water) and I never used it, but instead carried