Uganda—present day
"Get on your knees," a cold voice commanded.
Eden Matthews sank to her knees. Half a dozen men and women next to her did the same. One woman was sobbing, and a man was begging for his life. But Eden saw no mercy in the eyes of the man who stood in front of her holding a gun to her head.
All around them the jungle was quiet. Even the animals and insects seemed to have sensed the danger and elected to stay still. She stared at the barrel of the gun, her gaze fixed on the circular black hole, then forced herself to look her soon—to—be—murderer in the eyes. The man was unshaven, mid—forties, his clothing splattered with blood and mud. Behind him were four other men with stony, empty black eyes, all armed. They were a mix of white and black men, and the heavy weapons they carried meant they were most likely rebels. Or worse—poachers.
"We were supposed to be safe," one woman whispered to herself. "This is a national park. We have permits..."
Permits didn't matter to men like these—these were the true monsters of the jungle.
"Keep your mouths shut," the leader snapped. She didn't dare take her eyes away from him. His gun swung a few inches to Eden's left at the older woman who'd spoken.
Eden's heart was beating so fast she was amazed she hadn't had a heart attack. These men wouldn't let them go. They were going to kill them and leave their bodies in the Ugandan jungle, never to be found. The gorillas she had come to photograph had fled before these men had arrived, as if they had sensed the danger. If they were poachers, and the gorillas had been their intended target, Eden at least hoped the majestic creatures were far away and safe.
"Cash, what we gonna do with them, eh?" one of the men asked their leader.
"Shut up—I'm thinking," he growled. His eyes swept over the group of visitors and their two Ugandan guides.
"The boss wouldn't like witnesses," the other man added.
"True." The one called Cash stroked his beard, and then, with terrifying slowness, he swept the gun to the forehead of the man at the far end of the tourist group and fired. Eden jerked as his body fell face—first onto the leaf—covered ground.
Several more bangs echoed in the small clearing, and more bodies fell.
Eden wasn't able to close her eyes. Fear had so immobilized her that she simply couldn't move, couldn't breathe. She could only watch.
"Maybe we keep one alive?" Cash volunteered to his men with a cruel laugh. "These other bitches were old. But this one, she's fresh and young. We can have our fun with her first. The boss would never need to know."
Lungs burning, Eden sucked in a breath, her back aching from being stiff on her knees.
"Yes, I think we'll keep her." Cash lowered his gun, but Eden didn't relax. Whatever hell was about to come next for her would be far, far worse than a quick death.
Blood roared in her ears, so loud that the trees actually seemed to tremble and the ground to vibrate.
Wait, no. That sound wasn't in her head. It was coming from somewhere else, somewhere distant, but near enough to frighten the men closest to her.
"What the fuck was that?" Cash demanded.
"Mnyama," one of the men murmured in Swahili. "Mnyama Anakuja!"
Eden didn't speak much Swahili, but it sounded like he said, The beast is coming.
"A silverback?" Cash asked.
The man shook his head. "No. The pale ghost."
"Pale ghost? What the fuck are you talking about?"
Two of the men exchanged glances and just ran. They vanished into the moss—covered hagenia trees that formed the canopies high above them.
Cash spun around, firing shots in their direction before he turned back toward Eden. The roar echoed again, sending birds into flight and small monkeys in the trees scampering away.
"We should go!"
The other men clambered away at once, but Cash shouted at them. "Not until I kill this one." He pointed his gun at her again.
Eden closed her eyes tight. She imagined her parents' faces back in Arkansas, could see the door of her childhood home. She choked down her despair and longing to be there in that moment and not here—anywhere but here.
The gun went off. Eden experienced a second of stunned surprised because she still felt the jungle air thick with moisture and smelled the heavy scent of sweat around her. She was dead, so why did she still smell the jungle?
"Ah!" Cash's scream came a millisecond later, followed by a sickening crunch.
Eden didn't dare open her eyes as she heard the sounds of violence—screams and snapping bones.
The beast was here. Her stomach churned as she swallowed down the rise of bile in her throat and her breath escaped in rapid pants of terror. She would be next. The long silence that followed made her brave enough to open her eyes, slowly taking in the scene of carnage. Cash lay dead a dozen feet away, his neck twisted right around. That was something.
The other tourists she had come with were all dead, but they had been left untouched by the beast. She swallowed hard as tears blurred her vision.
The sound of footsteps behind her and a huffing noise caused her to flinch and close her eyes again. Body heat and hot breath on the back of her neck sent a chill down her spine and stirred her hair. The beast was still here. She was next.
Please, let it kill me quickly.
A grunting noise, similar to the ones made by the gorillas, came from behind her. Something touched her ponytail. She gasped and threw herself to the ground on pure instinct, her hands crunching into the leaves beneath her. The beast moved somewhere in front of her. When she dared to look, her lips parted but no sound escaped.
A man crouched in front of her, ten feet away. His tan skin was covered with blackened, drying mud, making him look more monster than man. His long dark hair hung in loose tendrils down around his shoulders. His eyes were a vivid dark blue, and they narrowed on her as his full lips pressed into a hard frown.
In one hand the man held a blade. His other hand was curled into a fist. She watched the corded muscles of his forearm ripple as he shifted and moved. There was a lithe grace to his nearly naked body as he shifted back and forth on his bare feet. A loincloth of animal skin covered his groin but left his legs bare to her view. He chuffed at her softly, like a jaguar. But the strangest thing, perhaps, was a band of gold that rested on his brow like a crown, the precious metal shaped into small leaves like a laurel wreath.
He gestured with his balled fist to the man on the ground and grunted again.
Eden blinked, unsure what to do or say. This man had saved her. But who was he? Where had he come from? Why was he grunting instead of speaking?
"Hi," she whispered, and he halted in his gestures. "Do you understand me?"
The man tilted his head to the side, and his nostrils flared. It was hard to read his face with the mud streaked across it.
"Hello?" She tried to greet him again. The word hello was also used in Swahili, in case he spoke that rather than English.
He slowly straightened to a towering height, and she got to her feet as well. Eden kept her distance, not knowing what to expect with this wild man.
She tried some Swahili and continued to stare at him. "Kiswahili?"
Suddenly his head turned, and he scanned the forest. It was still eerily quiet. Eden knew his attention was focused elsewhere, yet she had a sense he had missed nothing, including her movements. The man threw his head back and let out a roar, the same roar that had sent Cash's Ugandan men running for the hills. They had known the danger of whoever this man was.
She asked him if he spoke Swahili. "Unaongea Kiswahili?" Unfortunately, she didn't know enough of the language to truly have a conversation.
Her savior shot her another distracted look before he grunted again at the forest and whistled sharply. There was an answering whistle far to her left. The man turned her way, and with lightning—quick reflexes, he grabbed her.
Eden screamed, but a second later the air was knocked from her lungs as he threw her over his shoulder. He began to run, dodging through the trees and leaping over the taller bushes and vegetation like an Olympic hurdler. The impact of his feet jarred her and sent a punch to her stomach. She was going to throw up if he kept this up much longer.
Where was he going? What was he going to do to her? Why didn't he communicate? He acted... well, he acted more like an animal than a person. A wild man. It made no sense.
Eventually he stopped running. He rolled her off his shoulder and onto the ground. She couldn't stop it—her stomach emptied its contents, and she lay gasping on the ground at the base of a particularly thick—rooted hagenia tree. She clawed at the ground, trying to catch her breath and stop the shaking of her arms and legs.
Her head spun, and she gazed up at the distant light, barely able to make it out through the trees above. She saw something jutting from the base of the tree, going all the way up. Small pieces of wood, like tiny steps in the trunk, created a path all the way up the tree. The wild man grasped her hand and pulled her to her feet. He then gestured for her to climb onto his back. Was he kidding?
She shook her head violently. "No, no, I'm not—"
He lunged for her, and she shrieked, holding up her hands.
"Okay!"
He pointed at his back, and he faced the tree, waiting patiently.
It was weird climbing onto this stranger's back, but she did it. He used the wooden steps the way a mountain climber would use footholds. She nearly closed her eyes as they reached ten feet and kept on going. The tops of the trees looked to be another ten or fifteen feet away.
As they reached the heavy foliage above, the man pushed upward, and the foliage moved away in a nearly perfect square shape, just large enough to accommodate their two bodies. He continued to climb, and Eden gasped.
The tree went up another fifteen feet, through a hole in the roof that was sealed with mud. All around them was wood—chopped timbers worn smooth into planks, forming a structure around her and the man like a tree house.
A tree house? Here?
He crawled across the floor and tapped her legs. She slowly let go and touched her feet down. The wooden floor was as solid as a rock. Eden stared around at the tree house. It had to have been built nearly twenty feet off the ground. The bottom of it was completely camouflaged from below.
"What is this place?" she asked, mostly to herself. She saw a wooden door with a simple flipped latch made with thick rope. A small window—like opening allowed for some minimal light.
The man grunted at her and pointed to a corner of the little structure. Eden saw nothing there. The man moved toward her, and she immediately backed into the corner he pointed to. She fell back, landing on her bottom, and he held up a palm and made that soft chuffing noise again. Did he want her to stay there? He opened the trapdoor and started to climb down the way they had come up.
"Wait! Where are you going?" She started to move, but he grunted and huffed at her, and she halted. He pointed to the corner, and she shifted back to the corner wall, clutching her camera to her chest. He gazed at her a long moment, those blue eyes solid and inscrutable as he watched her. Then he disappeared from view, pulling the trapdoor down behind him.
Eden wasn't sure how long she sat there staring at the door. After what felt like forever, her muscles relaxed and the tension in her body slowed and seeped out of her. She slumped onto the floor on her side. Her body trembled, and a rush of tears came hard. She cried as the recent events all came back to her. The dead faces of the men and women who'd traveled deep into the impenetrable forest with her. Everyone eager for the experience of a lifetime.
Sweet Maggie, humorous Harold, and all the others whom she'd formed a bond with in so short a time. All dead. Their lives had been snuffed out because they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
And what about her? She was alive, but was she ever going to get out of the jungle? And who was the beast of the forest who'd saved her? Who was the pale ghost?
