The Father Of Ants

An adventure for Mombasa PCs, working for Hassan’s Emporium.

Shadrack Muranga. Itinerant preacher of the Arathi religious movement.

Shaved head. Long white robe. Ritually burns money. Prays facing Mount Kenya. Shouts “The Holy Spirit greets you!” while robustly shaking hands. Believes Kikuyu are descended from Israel’s lost tribes. Predicts all Europeans will soon be swallowed up by a big hole. Heals the sick by laying on hands and calling on Mwene-Nyaga (God).

Fixture on Nairobi streets. Lives in the Swahili Town slum district, in a shack made from flattened paraffin tins. Refuses to wear his kipande identity papers. Carries sword and poison arrows. Colonial police have been keeping an eye on him for some time.

Currently rotting in dank jail cell. Charged with homicide. Refuses to defend himself - loudly prays in the courtroom.

Frank Williams. Wasteful second son of aristocratic family. Thin. Pale. Patchy beard. Rheumy eyes.

Drug dealer to “the Happy Valley set” - rich British settlers notorious for parties. Traffics in cocaine, morphine, heroin, taduki, black lotus, Mombasa elephant honey. Flies own Gypsy Moth plane. Supplies Aberdare bungalows and Moorish-style mansions on the shores of Lake Naivasha.

Found dead in locked room on second floor of Norfolk Hotel by stern proprietress “Auntie”, bulky woman with a rolling pin who’s said to run the town. Skeletonised. Just bones with a few scraps of fabric. No sound heard. Drug supply untouched.

Shadrack preaching on nearby street corner. Picked up in random police sweep. Said “yes” when asked if he did it. Also said “yes” when asked if he killed the King of England and walked on the Moon.

Thought to have used rare African poison. Crown Counsel barrister thinks it’s an open-and-shut case.

Johnstone Kenyatta. General Secretary of Kikuyu Central Association.

Born into traditional polygamous family in rural village. Grandfather a respected prophet and magician. Educated in mission school. Carpenter’s apprentice - took variety of jobs. Worked as shop clerk and meter reader. Lived with Maasai to evade Great War draft.

Seen by British settlers as dangerous agitator and possible witch doctor. Travels around highlands on motorbike establishing new KCA branches. Edits Kikuyu-language newspaper Mũigwithania. Demands land rights, lower taxes, better education, abolition of forced labour, permission to grow coffee, release of political detainees and freedom to practice Kikuyu cultural traditions, such as polygamy and female genital mutilation.

Charismatic. Friendly. Full of energy. Spends far too much money. Loves talking about Kikuyu stuff - likes to compare collectivist Africa to the individualist West.

Knows Muranga is innocent. Wants your help.

Josslyn Hay. 22nd Earl of Erroll.

Blond Adonis. Scornful. Lazy blue eyes. Old family. No money. Seduces everybody - married women preferred.

Asked to leave Eton for escapade involving rabbi and motorbike that nobody knows the details of. Passes Foreign Office exams - ditches diplomatic post to abscond to Kenya with twice-divorced Lady Idina Sackville-West.

Builds thatched mansion named Clouds with dozens of guest bedrooms in Wanjohi Valley, beneath Mount Kipipiri, on rainy slopes of Aberdare Range.

Bamboo forests. Moorland. Elephant. Buffalo. Leopard. Hyena. Bushbuck. Black rhino. Bongo antelope. Colobus monkeys. Giant forest hogs. Moss. Cold mist. Small Kikuyu sugarcane and banana farms. Cattle thieves raiding settler estates.

Throws massive parties. Play sex games - blow feather across table to determine who sleeps with who. Champagne, whiskey, gin fizzes. Drugs supplied by Williams. Quiet African servants calmly study whole affair. Idina only happy if everyone’s swapped wives by end of night. Guests often trapped by rain - have to stay for weeks.

Old Githinji. Kikuyu morogi - poison wizard. Lives by himself in bamboo grove hut on escarpment above Clouds. Cast out from village society - known to local farmers as individualist and freak. Bald head. Hooded eyes. Skeletally thin.

Keeps poison dust made from dessicated human genitals and reptile flesh in calabashes, banana-leaf parcels and hollowed-out gazelle horns. Carries brass rogambi bell to frighten off good spirits. Meets other morogi in wizards’ anonymous mountaintop councils, naked, faces painted black with white dots.

Impersonates mondo-mogo healer to entrap and secretly poison victims. Will be burnt alive or crucified by Kikuyu elders if caught.

Meets Josslyn in 1925. Shows him gigantic cavern under Mount Satima’s black volcanic crags. Introduces him to Father of Ants - avatar of Nyarlathotep that has dwelt in these caves since time immemorial. Quivering house-sized mass of protoplasm. Moist orifices sprout in flesh. Births millions of inch-long driver ants. Whole cavern crawls with them. Wriggles in ecstasy as they eat it alive.

Josslyn seduces it. Gets it pregnant. Has Thule Society connections - anticipates his son will be perfect blonde Aryan messiah and preside over eternal Anglo empire. Must supply proper nutrients to bring baby to term.

Introduces new wrinkle to sex games. Pregnant Happy Valley settlers brought to Satima cavern. Delightful drug-fueled subterranean orgies. Ants enter their wombs - eat embryos right out of their bodies. Feed Father with pieces of half-formed infant souls.

Kiki Preston. “The Girl with the Silver Syringe.” Wealthy socialite. Openly shoots up at dinner parties. Cheerful when high. Morbid when sober. Brags about affairs with Rudolf Valentino and Prince George.

Williams makes special trips out to Lake Naivasha to see her. Gets her pregnant. Vague plans to marry her and get his act together. Finds her no longer pregnant, weeks later. Demands to know what happened. Gets whole ant story out of her.

Told everyone in Nairobi who’d listen that Josslyn’s been procuring back-country abortions from African witch doctor. Getting the girls high. Convincing them it was a supernatural experience.

Made no secret of his plans to expose scandal to press. Githinji, at Josslyn’s instigation, magically dispatched ant swarm to eat him alive. Few dead ants remain on hotel room carpet. Screaming heard. Acrid stench.

Muthaiga Country Club.

Hub of Nairobi social life. Highly exclusive. Africans only allowed in as servants. No Jews - piano once lit on fire to protest their admission. Bar reserved for men between hours of six and eight. Golf course. Squash court. Croquet lawn. Ballroom. Cell-like bachelor bedrooms. Payment in chits - no money changes hands. Drinking starts before lunch.

Coffee farmers. Bush pilots. Magistrates. Army officers. Horse breeders. Yankee debutantes. Bored wives of millionaire industrialists. Dazzling socialites - gowns changed by the hour. Nightly balls. Royal visits. Syd Zeigler’s Red-Hot Jazz Band on Saturday nights.

Interminable safari stories. Racetrack gossip. Impromptu boxing matches. Wagers with obscene forfeits. Ape impersonations - dangling by arms from rafters. Sexual conquests bragged of. Strip musical chairs. Plates thrown at servants. Gramophone records hurled through windows. Furniture routinely wrecked. Fines levied by staff for ungentlemanly behaviour paid without complaint.

Ali. Dignified Somali maître d’hôtel. Gold-braided uniform. Master of genteel invisibility. Long-suffering observer of European shenanigans. Presides over dining room. Can get anyone a table. Knows all servant gossip. Leaned on by Josslyn to not spread Williams’ story around.

Other club regulars more or less know what’s going on.

Lord Delamere. Unofficial leader of Kenya’s European community. Grandfatherly. Twinkle in his eye. Fond of schoolboy pranks.

Stories of lion hunting in British Somaliland - travelled with warrior poet Hussain Hasan and his famous horse Mangalool. Life saved from mauling by gunbearer and right-hand man Abdullah Ashur - still walks with a limp.

Dairy pioneer. Raises ostriches. “Wheat laboratory” on Gilgil River farm. Likes to live in Maasai-style grass huts. Rides horse into Norfolk Hotel dining room. Hits golf balls onto Muthaiga roof - climbs up to retrieve them. Local British intelligence head in WWI. Much younger fiancee Gwladys likes to pelt him with bread.

White supremacist. Paranoid about any hint of scandal that might undermine British rule. Doesn’t care about the details of any specific case as long as imperial prestige remains undamaged. Respected among Englishmen - word goes a long way.

Count Frédéric de Janzé. Heir to old Breton family. Le Mans racing driver. Fought Berbers in Rif War. Friends with Marcel Proust. Collecting short character sketches for his memoirs. Married to Alice de Janzé, bipolar heiress to meatpacking fortune with pet black panther and suicidal tendencies from Buffalo, New York.

Met Josslyn and Idina in Paris. All sleeping together. Alice subject to fits of black rage and melancholy - constantly has to talk her down from using her gun.

Raymond de Trafford. Remittance man - paid by grand Lancashire family to never return home. Former Coldstream Guard. Raconteur. Amateur boxer. Drunk driver. Picks fights. Nurses grudges. Clumsily seduces women - frequently rebuffed. Sets African huts on fire as pranks - has to be bullied by friends into paying compensation. Also sleeping with Alice - jokes about how badly she wants him dead.

Bror von Blixen. Swedish nobleman. Big-game hunter. Lives on coffee plantation in Ngong Hills. Terrible farmer - losing money. Womaniser. Notorious Muthaiga binges. Running joke about fictional Doctor Turvy, who sends him telepathic messages urgently prescribing gin. Recently divorced from ghost-story writer Karen Blixen - gave her syphilis first.

Denys Finch-Hatton. Hunter and bush pilot. Aristocratic family - uncle gambled away fortune. Sleeping with both Karen and aviatrix Beryl Markham, who makes her living spotting elephants from the air. Conflicted about it. Friends among the Maasai. Wears Somali shawl. Planting mango trees among Arab ruins at Takaunga Creek, north of Mombasa. Lives on Karen’s farm - never quite feels at home.

Mungai. Muthaiga dishwasher. Dirt poor. Lives off charity and scraps. Made deal with Githinji as young man. Renounced all claim to land and cattle in exchange for sexual success. Stood in hyena hole, vowing to pursue love with a hyena’s gluttony, while the wizard hit his buttocks seven times with a magic bag.

Spent his youth having sex with countless women instead of building wealth. Now bitterly regrets it. Wants to track Githinji down and get revenge.