Читать книгу Real Monsters, Gruesome Critters, and Beasts from the Darkside - Brad Steiger - Страница 31

Since this is a book about all kinds of monsters, we should not leave the subject of mysteriously appearing and disappearing large cats without mentioning the possibility of creatures from other dimensions popping into our own or the theory that some of these black panthers may be shape-shifters, skilled shamans or initiates of some secret magical society.

The Khonds are an aboriginal tribe of India who inhabit the tributary states of Orissa and Andhia Pradesh. Essentially, they are hunter and gatherers, but those who are land-owners and attempt some aspects of agriculture are known a Raj Khonds. The ancient traditions of the Khonds include a kind of voluntary shape-shifting which utilizes as its imagery a tiger deity.

Some years ago, an Englishman, whom we shall name Perkins, claimed that he had actually witnessed a Khond transforming himself into a weretiger and swore that his account was true. According to the Englishman, he had spent a good deal of time in India, especially among the Khonds and had frequently heard stories about the ability of certain individuals to transform themselves into tigers. When he persisted with a number of questions regarding such beliefs, he was informed that there was a place he could go to actually witness such metamorphoses.

Once Perkins had secreted himself at the designated spot in the jungle were such magic was alleged to transpire, he soon began to wonder if he had been played for a fool and was left to spend the night with snakes, wild boars, big cats, scorpions, and a host of other poisonous vermin. But as things turned out, he didn’t have long to wait before the transformed tiger man appeared.

The individual was hardly what the Englishman had expected. Not at all fierce in appearance, the man was very young and almost feminine in his mannerisms. Once he reached the edge of the sacred circle, he knelt down and touched the ground three times in succession with his forehead, looking up all the while at a giant kulpa tree opposite him, chanting as he did so in some weird dialect that was unintelligible to the spying Englishman.

Suddenly the jungle seemed to become unnaturally quiet. For some reason he could not understand, Perkins was filled with a penetrating dread of the unknown. For a moment he wanted to turn and run, but he seemed unable to move. The silence was broken by an eerie half-human, half-animal cry, and there followed the sound of something very large crashing through the jungle.

Whatever the thing truly was, the Englishman saw it manifest before the young supplicant as vertical column of pure, crimson light about seven feet in height. The slim young man knelt before it and scratched a symbol of some kind in the circle and set within it a string of beads. As he began once again to chant, the column of crimson light shot forth a lightning-like bolt of energy to the beads, which instantly began to glow a luminous red. The boy put the beads around his neck, clapped his hands together, and began to chant in a voice that deepened and became more and more animalistic in tone. There was a shattering roar from the young supplicant’s throat and the crimson column of light vanished.

And then Perkins beheld the young man staring directly at him from the circle, not with the eyes of a human, but with the yellow, glittering, malevolent eyes of a tiger thirsting for human blood.

Werewolves are familiar to moviegoers, but there is also such a thing as a weretiger (iStock).

The Englishman ran for his life toward a tree about fifty yards away. He could hear the tigerman growling behind him. When he reached the tree, the nearest branch was eight feet above him. Resigning himself to his fate, he slumped against the tree trunk as black, gleaming claws came toward him. Then, to his amazement and relief, the tigerman gave a low growl of terror and bounded away in the jungle.

Not bothering to speculate why the tigerman had spared him, Perkins ran as quickly as he could back to the village.

The next morning he learned that an entire family had been found in their home, mutilated, torn, and partially eaten. The horrible manner in which they had died indicated that a tiger had attacked them. Significantly, the Englishman learned through village gossip that they had been blood enemies of the young man that he had seen transform himself into a weretiger.

When Perkins asked a village elder why he thought the weretiger had spared him, the old man asked him for an exact description of where he stood when the beastman attacked. Listening carefully, the elder explained that Perkins had unknowingly sought refuge at a holy tree that bore an inscription of the name of the god Vishnu’s incarnation. Merely touching the tree would protect anyone from attack by animals.

Perkins concluded his account by stating that he inspected the tree later that day and found upon it an inscription in Sanskrit. He never returned to that village again, but he swore that his witnessing of the weretiger transformation was true.