That Night in Lagos
One does not require much supernatural experience to appreciate why one should endeavor not to anger a giant Praying Mantis, unless of course duty requires it. Even then, prodigious care should be taken so as not to lose one’s head in the process, for of what use is a headless body to anyone?
In hindsight, I reflected I would’ve been best advised to avoid the precarious situation altogether by refusing to follow the dictates of my curiosity. Or better yet and by all rights and logic, I could have told my employer, the Director of the Society for Paranormals & Curious Animals, that I couldn’t possibly abandon my domestic post to gallivant around the world without so much as a chaperone. After all, what would the neighbors think of that?
But as per usual, rights and logic had little sway in the matter and that wily old werewolf had his way. Thus I found myself in the unenviable position of hiding in a ship off the coast of Lagos, wondering how I would survive long enough to submit my report, while my outraged aunt fended off nosy neighbors back in London. And it had all started with the little people.
It resembled a routine investigation into the smuggling of Brownies, but I knew the moment Prof Runal called me into his office that I was in for a spot of trouble.
“Beatrice, my dear, do sit down, my dear, do sit down,” he huffed as he pushed himself upright and gestured to a plush chair facing his oversized desk.
Everything about Prof Runal, the Director of the Society, was oversized: his voice, his build, his beard that covered his large jowls, and his nose. “All the better to smell you with, my dear,” he would joke which, coming from a werewolf, wasn’t really a joke.
Before I’d taken my seat, he set one of the pendulums on his desk swinging. As the five bronze balls clicked against each other, noise from outside the office faded into a background murmur. I knew our conversation would be impossible to listen in on. At the time, I really couldn’t imagine whom he was so concerned about. Whenever those balls started ticking, I knew I would be presented with an unusually arduous case involving dead or disappearing bodies. That morning, I was not disappointed.
“What do you think about this Brownie case, Beatrice, what now?” he asked in his booming baritone.
I cleared my throat and avoided inhaling too deeply through my nose. As dear as the man was to me, and as much as he had done for me, he had a most noxious bodily odor. In a word: he stunk. That had nothing to do with his habits of hygiene but rather it was the unavoidable wet dog stench associated with his being a werewolf.
“Well, sir, I heard we’ve tracked the smugglers to a foreign owned shipping company. It’s based out of Lagos, of all places,” I updated him.
“Good,” he nodded, his mane of hair flopping about his heavy set face. “Very good. And so that’s where you’ll be off to then. It’s part of Her Majesty’s Empire, so it shouldn’t be too taxing, not at all.”
“Sir?”
“To Lagos, my dear, you’re going to Lagos,” he said, except from him it was at a near yelling volume.
“You’re sending me to Lagos,” I said, resigning myself to my fate but hoping he’d realize the silliness of such a decision and change his mind.
Werewolves seldom do change their mind. In addition to being smelly, they are wholly and utterly stubborn.
“My aunt has just announced my somewhat delayed coming-out party,” I reminded him, on the off chance he might be persuaded to send someone else.
“Yes, and I have provided my congratulations,” he boomed. “This case shouldn’t take too long, and you’ll be back in a jiffy.”
I very much doubted a round trip to Lagos would be completed in anything remotely resembling a jiffy, but I was curious. Any information we had on African paranormals was almost exclusively about West Africa. Even still, my knowledge was theoretical, as I
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