The Claw

Twenty-two

Port Harcourt was a ghost town surrounded by flames. There wasn't a soul in the streets down by the docks. Alan felt as if he were walking through residential streets that had become deserted overnight, an urban Marie Celeste. Those windows that weren't bricked up gleamed darkly, lifelessly. Long straight streets, glossy with rain, led into the town, where presumably there was life, but nothing moved on them except the flames of the oil refineries beyond the town. Giant cranes laboured up and down the nearby wharf, carrying crates and sacks and steel drums from the dazzling, floodlit ships, but they were the only sign of activity in the maze of docks and warehouses.

The houses had used to be lived in before the trading companies took them over, that was all. He was exhausted and shaken up by the journey – three hundred miles or so from Lagos, and forty miles inland. His whole body felt parched, thirsty even for the tropical rain, his eyes prickly and hot. No wonder he felt on edge – except that he knew that these weren't the reasons at all.

Isaac had brought a flashlight and a map, neither of which seemed much help in the shadowy streets. As he peered at the map, the flames of the refineries sent huge vague shadows of the warehouses staggering toward the two men. 'Don't worry,' Isaac said, his voice low as if he, too, was affected by the strangeness of the place, 'we'll find it.'

Alan was hardly reassured. They'd have more to worry about when they did find it. So far he'd let Isaac lead, but sooner or later he wouldn't be able to hide behind him any longer. Isaac was invaluable because he could speak all the languages and for many other reasons, yet by helping, he was putting off the moment when Alan would have to act for himself. The eyes of the old man in the hut had told Alan that his nightmare of the jungle glade was real, and waiting for him.

Isaac sensed his mood, but mistook its cause. 'We'll find out what we want to know,' he said. 'We mustn't take no for an answer, that's all.'

'I can't see what we can da if he refuses to help. It's not as if he was ever a Leopard Man.'

'His father was.'

'That's no reason why he should know anything, though, is it?'

'I think he does. I'm convinced that David learned something from him.'

A shadow as tall as the warehouses crept over a building, and it took Alan a moment before he was sure it was the shadow of a crane. 'But you said he sounded scared when you told him we were coming.'

'Then we should be able to scare him into talking.'

It seemed grotesque to Alan – himself and a University man, stalking along the rain-blackened crime-movie street like cops or private eyes. Cranes lumbered about the wharf, darkened buildings dripped loudly and shrilly. He wondered if Isaac was as apprehensive as he was. Or didn't Isaac suspect what lay ahead? 'But it isn't us he's scared of,' Alan said.

'True,' Isaac admitted. 'He's scared of the Leopard Men, of what they might do to him if he talks. I think he has nothing to fear – but it may be in our interest to behave as if he has. If there are any Leopard Men left in a place like this, I think they'll be anxious to disown their past, for fear of the police.'

Alan wished he could feel as confident. Hadn't Isaac seen the eyes of the old man in the hut? If the power of the Leopard Men could still possess someone as senile as that, how could any others deny what they were? Warehouses loomed over him, shadows roamed the lifeless streets. Suddenly Isaac halted. 'This is it, I think.'

He was pointing at yet another tall house. The upper windows were glazed and blank, but the windows on either side of the front door were bricked up. The name of a tyre manufacturer clung to the wall above the door; some of the letters were losing their grip, leaning on one another. When Isaac knocked on the door, Alan thought he saw one of them shake.

After a while Isaac knocked again. The house must be full of rubber, and Alan could hear how the knocks were swallowed up at once. He heard several huge mechanical gasps on the wharf, and the rattle of an enormous chain. Isaac knocked once more, long and hard, then he gazed at Alan in the silence. 'Perhaps there may be a side door,' he said.

There was. When they found the way to it through the remains of a garden suffocated by grit and dust, they discovered that it was open. Presumably, since Isaac had written to prepare him for their visit, the night-watchman had left the door ajar for them. As Isaac pushed open the door and raised his flashlight, an overpowering smell of rubber greeted them.

Following the beam of light through the doorway, Alan could see nothing but tyres: tyres lined up on the racks or piled on the floor, rank upon rank of them, extending in every direction until they merged with the darkness. Narrow aisles led between them. The stench of rubber was so thick that it seemed to darken the air, as if the rubber was soaking up the light. It also seemed to prevent sound from travelling far, so that as Isaac advanced, calling 'Mr Ogunbe', it sounded as if he were calling into fog.

Alan hoped they'd find him soon. Now that he was inside, the warehouse didn't seem at all like a house; he suspected there were no longer any rooms. The rubber aisles closed in on him, and he was afraid of upsetting the piles of tyres, bringing them crashing down on him. Much like a ghost train, the interior of the building seemed considerably larger than the exterior. The narrow aisles might go on for ever; the dark made it impossible to see where they ended.

Suddenly Isaac halted. A light was flickering in the distance, illuminating an intersection of aisles. In the shaky glow, the segmented piles of tyres looked as if they were stirring, like grey worms rearing up. 'That must be our man,' Isaac said, and hurried forward. 'Mr Ogunbe!'

If it was, then it seemed he'd changed his mind about helping. The light darted to the left, and they glimpsed a man with a flashlight crossing their aisle; then he disappeared and the intersection was dark again. Isaac strode toward the point where they'd glimpsed him. Alan hurried in pursuit, more afraid than ever of bringing down the rubber walls; he could smell how it would feel to suffocate under them. The jerky light kept making them seem to wobble, an unnerving joke. Had the man at the intersection been white? Surely Ogunbe wasn't a white man's name? Really, whoever it was had crossed too quickly for Alan to see.

When they reached the intersection, there was no sign of the other man's light. Isaac shone his beam along the left-hand aisle, where hundreds of grey segments squirmed with shadows. There were several intersections, and no way of knowing which route the man had taken. Isaac put his finger to his lip for quiet. He looked determined but bewildered.

In a moment they heard two things. Far off in the dark – perhaps it would have seemed closer in the daytime – a door closed. Alan recognized the sound from having heard it a few minutes ago. It was the side door. Had the watchman left the building? No, for to their right, where the man with the flashlight had come from, they heard someone moaning.

Isaac swung his light that way. Tyres came swelling out of the dark, looking fattened. It was an aisle of larger tyres, that was all. Isaac went forward, taking the light away as he searched for the source of the moaning. Why did it sound so muffled? Alan kept pace with him, so as not to be left behind by the light. He wasn't sure by any means that he wanted to find whoever or whatever was giving out those agonized moans.

They had reached the second intersection when he saw light down the left-hand aisle. In a moment he made out an office door. Of course, it was the night-watchman's office; the maze had brought them to the front of the building. 'Mr Ogunbe,' Isaac called^ and started toward the lit door.

He stopped almost at once. Someone was crashing about in the office. They heard a chair fall, and a tin mug; then the light beyond the frosted glass began to sway as someone's hand collided with the shade. They saw the hand, a huge blotch that loomed on the frosted glass of the door. In a moment they saw the silhouette of a man as he stumbled against the door. His face was a dark blur pressed against the glass, which vibrated with his desperate moaning.

Suddenly he fumbled the door open. Had his face left dark stains on the glass? Before Isaac could turn the light full on him, he reeled forward into a pile of tyres. They toppled, blocking the aisle, rolling and swerving. Some rolled toward Isaac, who retreated, bumping into Alan, shoving him against a rack of tyres. For a moment he thought the whole place was about to fall on them.

Isaac had dropped the flashlight. It rolled in a circle, its beam stuttering over tyres, slowing. In the light from the doorway they saw that the man from the office had fallen. He was crawling toward them over the tyres, still moaning. Isaac retrieved the flashlight and shone the beam into the man's face.

At first Alan thought he was wearing a mask and that perhaps that was why his moaning was so muffled. Looking at his face, he found that he was thinking – so incongruously it was horrible even before he understood why – of a rag doll with stitches for mouth and eyes. Then the man crawled, closer to the light, and Alan stumbled backward, retching. The mask was the man's face. He would tell them nothing, even if he could see them. Someone had sewn up his eyes and his mouth.