Outbreak

Dum, dum, dum, da-da-da-da.

The eyes of all the men were trained on a figure Ben could not see clearly. It was positioned on the other side of the fire, so all he could make out was a silhouette of what appeared to be a man, fairly tall and, as far as Ben could make out, naked, at least from the waist up. He was dancing in time to the rhythm of the drum, not in a wild, frenetic way, but making short, jerky movements.

Ben found himself transfixed by the sinister sight. How long he watched before Halima interrupted his trance he could not have said. 'It is a dance for the ancestors,' she told him.

Ben blinked and turned to look at her. 'What?'

'A dance for the ancestors. The man you see dancing has great power.'

'I don't understand,' Ben whispered. 'Who are the ancestors?'

Halima gazed into the middle distance. 'The dead. Those that have gone before us. It is our duty to ensure that they should not be disturbed.'

'What do you mean, disturbed? How can you disturb dead people?'

Halima gave him a sidelong glance. 'You asked me before why everyone seemed so scared of this village.'

Ben nodded. 'I think I'm already beginning to understand,' he said. 'I know what the red crosses on the doors mean. I know that lots of people are dying here.'

'But do you know why?'

'Suliman told me it was malaria. We were warned about it before we left England.'

Halima smiled faintly. 'Malaria.' She nodded. 'Yes. That is what everyone in the village will tell you. But it is not what they believe.'

'But you told me yourself that your parents died from malaria.'

Ben was puzzled, and Halima clearly understood that from the look on his face. 'You have to understand,' she told him quietly, 'that things are not always what they seem to be in Africa. You are a stranger, so people will not always tell you what they really believe.' She was looking at him intently now. 'I have seen many people die, and I nursed my parents to their graves. What killed them was not malaria. Similar, maybe. But not malaria.'

'Then what was it?'

Halima gazed towards the fire once more. 'My father worked in the mine,' she told him. 'When the mine-owners came, people were worried. They wanted to dig near the burial grounds sacred to our ancestors. But there was nobody to stop them, and besides, they offered jobs and money. We are very poor here, and the village elders welcomed them. To start with there was no problem. But not long ago they extended their excavations, and that was when the mine-workers started to fall ill.'

'All of them?' Ben asked, his attention rapt.

Halima shook her head. 'No. Not all of them. My father and two others first. Then my mother.' Her voice was expressionless as she explained what had happened. 'He woke up one morning vomiting and unable to stand up. His head ached so badly that he could barely speak, he was hot all over and I could hear the breath rattling in his chest. He could eat nothing. My mother became ill the following day. They both died on the same night, eight days after my father fell ill.'

'I'm sorry,' Ben breathed, his expression of sympathy seeming desperately inadequate.

'At first I too believed it was malaria. Even after they died I was not sure I wanted to believe what is so obvious to me now. But it cannot be ignored. Two thirds of the men who have gone down the mine have succumbed to the same illness. Of those people, three quarters have died. In addition, certain members of the mine-workers' families have started to succumb. Everyone in the village knows somebody who has died.'

Ben felt a trickle of sweat drip down the side of his face. The night was warm enough as it was, but the fire was sufficiently large for him to feel it against his skin, despite the fact that they were perhaps twenty metres from it. 'Why have you brought me all the way here to tell me this?' he asked, his voice cracking.

Halima nodded towards the scene in front of them. 'What you are watching is a ceremony to appease the ancestors.' She smiled at him again, and Ben noticed for the first time the orange of the fire reflected in her dark eyes. 'You haven't asked me yet how it is that I speak English.'

This was true – it was something that Ben had wondered, but he hadn't yet had the opportunity to ask.

'I have a radio in my house,' Halima explained, 'one that I listen to as often as possible. There is much to be learned from your World Service.'

Ben remained silent – it wasn't something he had ever listened to.

'So I know something about your culture. No doubt you think that these ideas are stupid. I brought you here to show you how deeply my people believe in them. And to urge you, if you value your life, to leave this place as soon as possible. It is cursed.'

C'est maudit. It was not the first time somebody had told him this.

Ben looked fearfully back at the ceremony. There was no denying that these people certainly looked as if they were taking it extremely seriously. The beating of the drum was more frenzied than ever now, and the village elders seemed to be in a trance-like state of intense concentration. All eyes were fixed on the jerking movements of the silhouetted dancer. Ben suppressed a shudder – here in the darkness of the African night, what Halima was telling him seemed far from improbable. 'So the man dancing,' he whispered, 'is he a-?'

'Yes,' Halima interrupted. 'He is what you would call a witch doctor, but it is not a word we would use. To us he is a healer, and tonight he is trying to heal the rift that exists between the villagers and the ancestors.'

As she spoke, and as though drawn to them by his discussion, the dancer traced the course of a semicircle round the fire. As he came into the light, Ben became aware of his own breath, heavy and trembling. The healer was tall and bony, his skin bare apart from a short cloth skirt. Round his neck he wore colourful beads, and the top of his head was covered by an intricate headdress made of feathers and other things that Ben could not make out.

But it was not his attire that commanded attention; it was his face.

The skin was impossibly wrinkled, so much so that it barely seemed human. Occasionally he would open his mouth into a sinister rictus grin; even from a distance Ben could see that his teeth, such as they were, were bent and decayed. It was the eyes, though, that Ben knew he would never forget. They rolled in their sockets like marbles spinning across the floor; they were yellow and bloodshot.

And then, suddenly, they were looking directly at him.

He shouted a harsh, monosyllabic word and immediately the drumming stopped. The healer raised his arm and pointed precisely in the direction of where Ben and Halima were hiding; as he did so, Ben heard his companion gasp, and then forcefully whisper a single word: 'Run!'

The two of them turned and sprinted their way back through the thicket, all pretence of secrecy obliterated by their blind panic. As he ran, Ben felt a sharp branch whip across one side of his face; it stung, and there was the telltale feeling of moistness on his cheek that told him he had been cut, but he couldn't let it slow him down any more than he could risk looking behind to see if he was being chased. Halima ran by his side – they were well matched in terms of speed – and soon they found themselves at the treelined pathway down which they had sneaked only ten minutes before. Now they hurtled up it like their lives depended on it. Ben didn't even fully know what he was running from; he only knew that it was the right thing to do.