Tiger of the Night

By James Brian King

I carefully examined the prints I'd found in the soft soil near the spring. They were definitely the marks of a cleft-footed animal, possibly those of a small deer. I was, at least, fairly certain that the tracks were too far spaced to be those of a wild pig. Excitedly, I acknowledged to myself that the tracks were the right size to be those of the very object of my hunt, a musk deer. The musk were smaller than their antlered cousins, but of far greater value due to a gland near their genitals that produced a dark, viscous musk that was a primary ingredient in perfumes all across the world.

It wasn't musk deer that had brought me to Manchuria. The Boxer Uprising of 1900, supported by China's dowager empress, had been brutally supressed by an allied force comprised of troops from all the great western powers and Japan. The result of the war was the International Protocol of 1901, which gave the western powers substantial concessions in China. The last eight years had brought about significant foreign investment in economic and resource development. It had also brought European and American developers, adventurers, and thugs to China by the thousands. I had been called all three, though I fancied myself as an adventurer.

My vocational pursuits included a number of employers; I was usually a railroad construction engineer, but at that moment I was an agent for the firm of Wilson and Company of Tientsin, purchasing and overseeing the shipment of thousands of animal hides from dealers scattered across Manchuria. Acting as an agent allowed me one of my passions: hunting large game on the heavily wooded slopes of the Manchurian mountains.

I followed the spoor along the spring with a rising anticipatory glee--and stopped short when I broke from the trees to discover a small cultivated field cut out of the forest. Large, beautiful flowers of red, orange, and white blanketed the field: opium poppies. I had on occasion heard rumor of opium outlaws who cultivated their illegal crop in the deep Manchurian woods. Harvesting the milky fluid of the poppies was a crime punishable by death, but growers could make a nice living selling it on the black market as long as they didn't consume too much of their own product.

I was about to withdraw back into the woods--bad place to be seen by the local outlaws--when I observed the generally poor condition of the poppies. The field had been planted by the spring for ease of watering, but the poppies had obviously not been watered in days. If I found that observation of interest, the next caused a shiver to crawl up my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck to rise: running along the edge of the poppy field were the unmistakable four-toed prints of a big cat, and, in these parts, that meant tiger.

The wizened, wrinkled old opium farmer had a harried, wild look in his bedraggled countenance. The man was apparently some kind of village elder, though, judging by his soiled, cheap, frayed cotton clothing, the position provided no favor or priviledge. "Master, please deliver us from the creature." The old man raised his hands in supplication, then bowed so low that his queue of long, braided hair dropped over his shoulder. "It hunts the people of our village. It kills every fourth night and will return on this very night! Oh, master, it is mo-gui-wu, and against it we have no protections."

Mo-gui-wu--demon tiger. I could well understand why the villagers would think the beast a demon. The Siberian tiger is the largest of the big cats everywhere in the world--nearly twice as big as their southern Chinese and Indian cousins. The western world knew hardly anything about them until the last years of the nineteenth century when white men pushed the encroaching Trans-Siberian Railway across the territories of the big hunters. The beasts fed so voraciously on the Chinese workers that Russian troops were sent in to protect them. This tiger was further south than I understood them to roam; perhaps its prey had become scarce in the northern wilds. Perhaps it had developed a taste for human flesh.

The facts of the situation were simple. There was no one these people could turn to. And, in a land of little opportunity, there may very well be no where else for them to go. They could hardly approach the authorities. They were outlaws. If they were discovered, every male older than a young child would die an unpleasant death. Which left me.

"I will hunt this beast," I assured the gathered villagers in my mediocre use of their language, which appeared to offer them no solace, but for a solitary boy, perhaps fourteen years of age, who stepped forward.

"Master, they do not believe you can kill it. I fear they may be right." The boy breathed deep, an act which seemed to bolster his resolution. "But this mo-gui-wu is owed a great vengeance. If you will hunt it, I will help," the boy spoke firmly, but was not entirely successful in masking the dread that slipped from his behind his brave, young face.

"Oh, master," the village elder wailed, his voice a fear-tinged wobble, "this is my only son. Please do not take him. He will fall to the mo-gui-wu!"

I nodded to the boy. "Your courage is exemplary. But your father is right. Tonight, I must lie in wait alone."

Silence, stillness, and vigilance; those were the rules when lying in ambush for a tiger, for the tiger is among the most dangerous of God's creatures upon the earth. It moved with the most remarkable stealth and cunning that its prey seldom knew of its doom, and it pounced with such lightning ferocity that the prey was often dead before it could register the danger. If there was one more rule it was this: don't hunt by the tiger's rules, for it would always have the advantage. With that in mind I had constructed a concealed position in the boughs of a large tree at the northeast edge of the village clearing, that being the direction the villagers indicated the tiger dragged off its kills.

I glanced down at the goat I had staked not more than forty yards away. The moon was only a day away from being full, so its soft light was more than enough to show me that the young buck had settled on his belly and was contentedly chewing his cud. I would have prefered him prancing about and bleating in alarm. Well, if the tiger came anywhere near, I knew I'd get all the noise I wanted from the trapped little animal--and at that point I hoped my Mannlicher rifle, with its seven-point-nine-two millimeter hollow-tip bullet, would be enough to mortally wound the big cat. I preferred the Mauser rifles, but the Austrian-made Mannlicher was in use by a number of Chinese Army units, and I could acquire ammunition from Chinese soldiers for a few cigarettes, which I often found myself in supply of as a sometimes agent for the British-American Tobacco Company.

I repeatedly and keenly scanned the village clearing and the forest edge. The tiger would have all the natural advantages; its stealth was made more effective by its camouflaging striped coat. If the goat didn't smell the beast, a disturbance in the tall grasses was likely all I would see to indicate the big cat's passing. And if it came after the moon set during the wee hours of the morning, I wouldn't see anything at all--

The shrillness of a woman's scream reached me even in my position two-hundred yards from the village huts, followed by a mounting pandemonium. Damn. The tiger must have eluded my observation and had likely already made a kill. I stayed in my tree, figuring that I may yet get a sight on the predator.

The buck suddenly sprang to his hooves and pulled against the stake that held him fast, bleating in evidence of his agitation.

There--movement in the grass! In the glow of the waxing moon I could make out the dark silhouette of a running animal--it would come right past me! A s it approached I observed something odd about the creature's gait. Something...good Lord!--it wasn't the tiger at all--it was a man! Horror swelled within my bosom as the shock of the apparition coming toward me collided with my shaken sense of reality. The man did not run, but was carried along by another's force. His feet dragged through the grass, his hands bouncing and skipping from frequent contact with the ground. He was being dragged away, his head apparently trapped in the maw of a large beast...only there was no beast--nothing but the man, carried away as if by a supernatural creature not visible to the eye--as if by--a demon.

The villagers cowered together, some clutching at children, many prostrate on the ground, most of them weeping and wailing in terror or grief.

"Answer me, old man--have you seen it? How do you know it's a tiger?" In the back of my mind, I knew the old man wasn't worthy of the sharpness of my anger, but the horror of what I had seen still pulsed through my veins like blood.

The elder thrust a hand toward me as if my words were blows he hoped to deflect. "Yes, oh yes, I have seen it. My wife--" a sob broke his answer, then he continued. "--she was the first. That night, the door burst inward as if by a great force. The lantern was burning, and I could see that the open doorway was empty. Then, in the full light of the lantern, it just appeared. My dear Mingzhen screamed, and the mo-gui-wu took her."

There was wild panic in my mind that urged me to fly--save myself. But a saner element in my soul convinced me that I could not condemn these simple villagers to the predation of a demon--or whater it was. I was a hunter. I had to believe that if the creature could be seen, it could be killed. And it had to be killed.

"How many has it killed?" No one answered. "How many?" I demanded with rising impatience.

"Seven," the old man answered with great despair. "It has taken seven."

And it killed every four days. Which meant we had four days of safety. Of course, going after it might very well cause it to change its routine, but there seemed little point in waiting for it to kill again.

"I need men to help me. I need beaters to drive the tiger into the open, where I can shoot it."

The wailing grew louder, the men hiding their faces with their hands. I would get no help. The creature had already conquered the souls of these people; all that remained was to take their bodies.

I was wrong. A boy rose from the ground, the same boy who had offered help earlier in the day. He carried in his hands a spear, for what good it would do him if he were set upon by the creature. "I will help, master. If no one else will, I will stand alone with you." As before, the boy was clearly frightened, but just as clearly intended to conquer that fear.

"What is your name, boy?"

The youth lifted his chin, as if I honored him simply by asking--which, considering the arrogance of westerners in China, was pretty much true. "I am Shihao."

"It means 'hero'," his father added in a voice clouded by sadness, shaking his head as if he regretted the very name he had given his son.

I placed my hand on the boy's shoulder. "All right, Shihao. As soon as we have light, we hunt the beast, you and I. Oh--but don't call me master. Mister Crawford will do." I didn't much go in for that white superiority thing; a bullet would kill a white man as easily as a Chinaman. A tiger would hardly be discriminating, either.

The mo-gui-wu left no mark of its passage, so we tracked the victim's spoor for three to four miles before the four-toed prints of a tiger's paws suddenly appeared in the soil. The sun had been up for two hours. I figured that was how far we were behind the beast and its victim. So: when the rays of the sun touched the beast, it became part of the material world, just as it did in the full light of the lantern. All my hopes of killing the beast lay in my supposition that, when in the light, it became real flesh and blood, like any other mortal creature. I fervently prayed to my maker that the reality of the beast's existence would make as much sense as my supposition did; I was staking mine and Shihao's lives on it.

We tracked the beast for another mile through a shallow valley then up a gradual slope of lightly wooded terrain where the tracks disappeared into a particularly heavy thicket of small trees and underbrush. That's where we'd find the creature--if it behaved like other tigers; they liked to hide away in heavy cover to consume their kill until they were full, after which they usually slept nearby to protect the remainder of the carcass from scavengers. With luck, and the hand of providence, the laws of the natural world might work to my favor and I would find the creature in a somnolent state.

I glanced at the boy; he had apparently picked up from me that we were close, and he literally quaked with fright. If we had caught the beast napping, the last thing I wanted was noise or--worse--a panicked outcry, so I motioned to Shihao to stay where he was and remain silent, then tossed some strands of grass into the air to check wind direction. At that moment the breeze was from the front left, but there were a number of small hillocks in the area, the kind of terrain that caused wind patterns to shift frequently and abruptly, so I prayed the wind would not change and alert the beast to my presence, released the safety on my rifle, then cautiously entered the thicket, careful to push aside any twigs and dried grass with the toe of my boot before committing to each step.

It was a slow and uneasy business. I had to watch for any hint of movement, listen for the slightest noise, and check the ground before taking each step. If the tiger became aware of me before I was aware of him, my chance of sur vival was slim.

Then I saw what I was looking for--flies, a great swarm of the bothersome insects, maybe forty yards ahead. I watched the swarm for many long minutes, but the swarm hovered about steadily, which meant that the tiger--if it was there--was asleep rather than restlessly batting at the buzzing torment... assuming that a mo-gui-wu sleeps after it feasts.

So far the breeze was holding steady, so I swung wide to the right to position myself fully upwind from the spot, then carefully approached, stopping frequently to listen for signs of movement or for the tell tale sound of the large cat's breathing, insecure in the knowledge that the flies could be hovering over the carcass while the creature was stalking me.

Finally, I silently parted the last of the tall grass--to reveal a gruesomely horrifying sight. I have seen many big cat kills, the carcass stripped of every thing, even the internal organs, leaving little but the bloody bones of the skeleton, though the head was almost always entirely undamaged, the eyes fixed on the surprise of death. I've even seen human kills, where the perfectly undamaged hands, feet, and head were still attached to the bones of an empty skeleton. This kill was not like that at all. The carcass of this poor Chinese villager was scattered over an area of matted and bloodied grass that was thirty feet in diameter. Skin, flesh, organs--it was all here. It didn't appear that any part of the victim was actually consumed, only mutilated, torn, and rent in the worst possible way. Even the face was mutilated and the eyes clawed from their sockets. In my time I had seen much of death, and I was much hardened to it. But this, this scene of unnatural depravity, left me sickened.

This beast--this mo-gui-wu--did not hunt for food. It hunted and killed for pleasure--it revelled in the complete riving of its victims. Where in all of God's creation could such a sadistic, black-hearted perversion have been spawned? How could the powers of heaven--

--my distressed thoughts were interrupted by the slightest sound of brush crushed underfoot, a sound that came from close behind me. The hairs on the back of my neck and on my arms seemed to stand up as a surge of terror grasped at my heart and stomach. I spun around--and there it was, not ten yards away. I lurched away from it, but my legs seemed as lead, and I fell back onto my buttocks.

It was a tiger, all right. And it was massive--the largest I had heard of among Siberian cats, six hundred pounds I would guess. But the eyes: they were not the eyes of a tiger. Instead of a tiger's yellow tinted orbs, this creature's eye sockets revealed nothing but blackness; a blackness to match its purpose.

The rifle! I thought frantically. Aim and shoot--aim and shoot! Yet I could not; it was as if those black wells of evil held me in a snare from which I could not break free.

The creature slowly approached me, its black eyes never leaving mine. I was about to die, yet I could make no movement, no attempt to avoid my fate. Somehow, that sure knowledge dulled the panic that pounded angrily in my bosom.

The beast loomed over me, then settled one heavy, massive paw on my thigh. A sharp pain accompanied the creature's flexing claws, followed by the warmth of freely flowing blood. The beast lowered its head and sniffed deeply, drawing in the scent of my blood.

I shook away a sudden befuddlement that clouded my conscience, to discover that the tiger was gone! A rapid scan of the surroundings confirmed that the beast was not in sight. Awkwardly I struggled to my feet and moved away from that horrible place as fast as I could on my injured leg. I was alive, but no elation lifted the heaviness of my heart, for I could not shake the sense that I had been marked. Shihao's father had said that the beast killed every four days. I fully believed that this tiger--this demon, for it could be nothing else--was coming for me next.

I found Shihao where I had left him, but hardly in the same mental state. He was curled up in a fetal position, weeping and shaking violently. Blood flowed freely from multiple lacerations in the boy's thigh.

The four days melted away like a puddle of water in the hot summer sun. I had considered running, but I somehow knew with a surety I could not explain that the demon would find me, would come to me wherever I made off to and do to me what it did to that poor villager in the wooded thicket. So I, or rather we, Shihao and I, chose to make a stand at the village, though I expected Shihao would prove of no value when the creature came for us; the boy attempted courage, but I truly believed he was as defeated as all the others of his village.

I limped to the door and stood in the same doorway that the creature had entered when it had killed Shihao's mother weeks ago. The sun was disappearing behind a wooded mountain slope, its last rays skimming across a golden-tinged wilderness that would soon be plunged into the shadows of darkness; the very shadows that had spawned this supernatural terror, this tiger of the night.

It was time. For the third time that evening , I checked the load in my rifle and in the single-action Peacemaker holstered on my right thigh, then returned inside the rickety, wood-framed hut and began lighting the dozen lanterns and candles Shihao and his father had gathered and placed around the room. We had already removed most of the scant furniture to allow us maneuvering room.

Shihao entered, spear in hand, ashen-faced, frightened. "We will die tonight, Mister Crawford." His words were a whisper with little life in them.

"Yet we will fight, Shihao, fight to live." The boy nodded, though I could hardly think he was convinced the outcome could be different than that he expressed. I had considered giving him my Colt revolver, but he had never fired a firearm and was as likely to hit me as he was the tiger.

We settled onto the stools we had placed in the middle of the hut. When the demon attacked, the boy would be useless. Which left our lives in my hands, and in the five rounds in the Mannlicher rifle which I firmly grasped. But what if the creature ensnared me again? What if I were bound, unable to employ the rifle? It was a pointless question to consider. We would be dead.

The hours after sunset were an excruciating eternity. I wanted them to pass to get the confrontation over with, yet I feared their passing.

There--on the other side of the wall--a low, throaty growl. The demon had come!

Shihao and I tensed, weapons ready, waiting for the beast to smash through the door.

A crashing noise rent the thick tension of the room as the rickety wooden construction of the wall to my right exploded inward. Some of the timbers slammed into me and a sharp pain flared in my right arm.

The creature suddenly appeared, just inside the well-lit room. I could almost feel the cold touch of a foreboding malice as the hulking menace stepped further into the hut. The bloody beast had a greater intelligence than the cunning instinct of a tiger; it had known we'd be waiting for it.

The eyes settled on me, and it slowly approached, emitting a low growl with each breath. So: I had been marked first and would die first. As the beast came on, the eyes rapidly changed. They were no longer black wells of nothingness, but glowing orbs of fire.

Shihao collapsed to the floor and covered his face with his hands, rapidly uttering some form of prayer. Damn. That left just me.

I backed away as I tried to move my right arm and received an excruciating shock of pain--the arm was useless! I tried to handle the heavy rifle with my left hand, but in my frantic haste and off-hand fumbling I dropped the heavy long arm.

"Shihao!" I cried out. "Help me--spear it from behind! I can't fight it alone!"

I reached my left hand across my body for my revolver, but before I could even clear the holster the beast sprang at me and slammed me to the floor, knocking the wind from me and causing great waves of pain to emanate from my right arm. Worse, the blow momentarily stunned me, and the revolver skittered off behind me.

The demon-tiger straddled my legs and dipped its snout to sniff at the healing enjuries to my leg, as if to identify me as its intended victim.

"That's right, you bastard, I'm your man." Again, the assuredness of death emboldened me, and I stared back into those glowing eyes with all the anger and spite I could muster.

The beast moved over me, the fangs of his massive jaws only inches from my throat--suddenly it sprang into the air, a heart-stopping growl issuing from its lungs. As it did, one of its paws swiped along my ribs, tearing through cotton fabric and flesh with ease and causing yet more pains to stab at me.

But my pains were suddenly of little consequence. The tiger writhed in agony near my feet, a spear protruding from between its shoulders. Shihao had struck true and deep, and driven his weapon through the heart.

The growls quickly subsided, as did the the creature's thrashing. It became still, and its fiery eyes faded to embers, then to blackness. Then, before our very eyes, the tiger--the mo-gui-wu--began to decompose at a rapid rate. The hide fell away in tatters to reveal shriveling flesh and putrifying organs. Within moments, only the stained skeleton remained, then even that deteriorated to dust.

It was done.

We were alive!

Shihao bent to retrieve his spear, the weapon of his victory, his face revealing only the awe inspired by what he had seen.

"Shihao," I said, "that must have been some prayer."

The boy nodded once, slowly. "The ancestors gave me strength. All honor goes to them."

"Honor them all you like, Shihao, but it is you who are a hero. Even more, you're a demon-slayer." We had destroyed a demon, Shihao and I, yet surely the boy's greatest victory was the conquest of his own fear; I had discounted him, and he had proved me wrong.

The boy appeared to abruptly come out of his shock and rushed to my side. "Mister Crawford, you are injured."

I waved the boy off with my left hand--the only part of my body I could move without experiencing a lot of discomfort. "No, no, please, don't move me. It hurts."

Shihao looked upon me with firm indignation. "I will get help, Mister Crawford, then you must be brave enough to have your wounds treated." The boy took off through the hole in the wall, which gave me a few minutes to consider how I would convince Shihao's father to let me hire the boy. Surely there were better things for a hero demon-slayer to do other than cultivating opium poppies.