Lodges of Terror

Lorna screamed and hysterically thumped her jungle boots on the dusty promontory. The tour guide hit the black Mamba with a stone to immobilize it before crushing its glaring head with the tough sole of his left safari boot.

“Did it bite?” asked the concerned tour guide, a sincere tone of concern in his husky voice.

“No,” she was breathing heavily. “Just slid over my boots.”

On realizing it wasn’t a serious cause for panic, Steve and Jane openly laughed at a petrified Lorna who stared daggers at them.

“Did he come to your room?” the guide inquired, walking towards the green land rover.

“Who?” Jane shot back.

“The man with a clunky cloth cap.”

“You mean Shaban?” Steve asked, adjusting his seat belt.

“Yes.”

“You know about him too?” Jane was perplexed.

“What are you talking about?” wondered Lorna, prompting Jane to try to demystify the puzzle for her. How interesting, she thought. It was an unbelievable tale, better described as a cock and bull story.

Now, according to the tour guide, Shaban was supposed to be a ghost roaming in the dark—dead and buried for the past seven years. It happened that, seven years ago, a youthful Croatian couple was on holiday in the game reserve and they were assigned Shaban as their guide. He was quite handsome and soon got entangled in a nasty love triangle that eventually wound up in three lifeless bodies. You see, Shaban, working in cahoots with the lady, strangled her husband in his bed at night using a sisal rope. A few days later, while still celebrating their new found freedom and illicit love, she accidentally shot him in a drunken stupor and later got mauled by a pride of lions as she tried to make good her escape, that same fateful night.

“Poetic justice at its best,” Lorna expressed her thoughts loudly. The way things happen in this world!

“I suppose so,” the guide answered back as he brought the all terrain vehicle to a halt outside an old wooden lodge in Mara.

“So why does he bedevil innocent people who had nothing to do with his killing?” asked a bemused Jane, who presumed the guide to be a mine of cockamamie.

“The reasons are unfathomable….”

“Excuse me,” Lorna interrupted. “But does the management of this hell on earth know about this?”

The guide smiled wryly and shook his head. “Apparently, yes.”

“And what action have they taken so far?” Steve pressed on. This could make an interesting magazine feature, he thought.

“I don’t know,” replied the guide supinely, his hands raised in a sign of surrender. But there was something he apparently knew but didn’t want to disclose—a closely guarded secret that was as old as the lodge itself. A secret about a mysterious man whose tales sent cold shivers down the spines of many who over the years had had an unfortunate encounter with him. Some shaken tourists had once claimed to stumble on a headless man mowing the lodge’s lawn in the dead of the night. But majority of the people simply dismissed his case as yet another addition to the endless string of urban legends that curiously, made the lodge as popular as ever, because controversy always sells. But did he really exist?

“I am scared,” said Jane in a mocking low sad tone as the petrol engine died down outside the lodge. The rest exchanged worried glances and climbed out of the vehicle’s seats.

“Perhaps we can request for another room?” Steve tried to console the ladies, having learned from the guide that theirs was the haunted room.

The guide watched the trio saunter and disappear into the lodge’s bushy entrance. He slouched into the driver’s seat and lit an unfiltered cigarette that he pulled on and puffed thoughtfully, before a sudden knock on the side window disrupted him. It was Steve.

“I forgot to ask, can we start shooting tomorrow?”

“I wish we could, but the animals are yet to start swimming across the river Mara.”

“Come on. Haven’t they even assembled at the banks?” Steve asked, looking desperate. “You know, we can force them to move.” He thought he sounded stupid.

“How?”

Steve exhaled heavily and shrugged. He could feel exasperation slowly but surely setting in. If you must know, he wasn’t fond of ghosts. He really wanted to get out that creepy place and so did the girls, or perhaps he thought.

“So when do we commence business?”

“Friday,” replied the guide without looking at Steve or giving his answer a thought. Friday was five days away. Steve scratched his head furiously.

“But you understand the girls are spooked out?”

“Yeah.” The guide released a cloud of white smoke. “But no need for panic,” he said. “If anything, do you believe in superstition?”

“Save that crap for another day!”

The vehicle’s engine sprang to life. The guide took a prolonged stare at Steve walking away in a huff and felt he didn’t like him at all.

He took a final puff, then pressed the cancer stick between his thumb and index finger to extinguish the burning end and threw the stub out the window before driving off….

(to be continued)