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knees, elbows,
neck and waist. He was occasionally dipping fingers from one hand
into a bowl he carried in the other hand, and drawing strange
symbols on the body with Marik’s blood.
    It seemed like every time Marik moved where
he could see, the shrunken figure in front of him moved directly
into his way. When the boy tried to ask questions, the shaman
ignored him. He had been warned to stay out of the way, but was
frustrated at not being able to see what was happening.
    “How am I supposed to take over after you
when you won’t show me or tell me anything,” Marik asked under his
breath as he gave up and sat down irritably.
    The shaman seemed to have finished his
application and stood over the body, straddling the chest with his
legs, facing the head. He continuously bent at the waist, and then
straightened up again with arms over his head, as if he were
fanning someone with a large leaf. He was chanting something Marik
could not understand, slowly increasing in volume with each passing
moment.
    Marik started to feel something strange, but
he could not easily describe the sensation. Pressure started
building in his ears, but it was building from the inside, as if
air were being forced out from the inside of his skull. The life
force sustaining his body was being pulled from inside him and he
started to feel faint.
    The shaman had a different bowl now and
brought a flame which had appeared from the tips of his fingers
towards it. The dark liquid within caught fire with a dull blue
flame and a stinging deep black smoke drifted in all
directions.
    Tanis put both hands on the chest of the dead
man and pushed down hard. His chanting reached a crescendo as he
pressed. Suddenly he stood straight up. The smoke meandering around
the hut gathered into a steady swirling stream which was being
sucked into the corpse. The air itself seemed to be losing
substance and power.
    When it seemed to Marik there was nothing
left to breathe and the chest of the man chained to the floor was
filled to bursting, an overwhelming exhalation of foulness escaped
from the body. All at once the air inside the hut returned and
Marik found himself once again able to breathe.
    The man’s blindfolded head snapped upwards
and he struggled mightily against the bonds holding him down. The
struggling form was inhuman with uncontrollable convulsions.
Muscles bulged with monstrous effort.
    Its lips peeled back and bright teeth lunged
towards the shaman. Tanis quickly jumped out of reach, just
avoiding a bite. The teeth came together like a handclap, and then
the jaws worked repeatedly, opening and closing violently as the
head tried desperately to stretch closer to the old man on a
straining neck. The body moaned loudly with unsatisfied
longing.
    Marik stood stunned.
    “The food,” the shaman said loudly to be
heard over the noise. “Bring it to me.”
    Marik snapped awake. He pulled strips of meat
from a squirrel caught earlier in the day out of a bag and brought
it to the shaman. The old man produced the green bottle Marik had
seen earlier from one of the pockets in his pouch. He opened the
bottle and pulled out a long twig from within. He carefully placed
a drop of the liquid onto a strip of the meat, and then lowered it
towards the snapping jaws.
    Once the teeth had a grip on the meat they
ripped it from the old man’s hand and whipped it from side to side.
It was pulled into the mouth and there ground relentlessly between
the teeth until there was nothing left to chew.
    It did not take long before the contents from
the bottle took effect and the man on the floor stopped struggling.
The creature continued panting and wheezing from the exertion for a
time, but eventually that stopped as well and he lay there
calmly.
     
    ~ Chapter
XIV ~
     
    Many days passed. Marik had started to refer
to the mad man as ‘the monster.’ The shaman referred to is as ‘the
undead’ or ‘Jombi,’ which was the traditional name. In reality, as
long as the monster was