When things go bump in the night

The hush that fell after the scream was almost worse than the woman’s shriek that woke me.

Where was I?

The second scream jolted me completely out of my sleep, my memory tumbling out after me. We had left Cape Coast earlier that day, taking a cheap taxi for the long, straight drive to Kakum National Forest in the south of Ghana. We planned to sleep in a tree fort in the forest and after arriving we were led about ten minutes past the jungle’s edge to a wooden pallet with a tin roof, a mosquito net hanging lamely from the roof’s center. Taking off our backpacks we packed in under the net, making our bed for the night.

I opened my eyes, or maybe I opened them wider, or closed them, the dark was so absolute that I couldn’t tell the difference. It was a blackness without static or clouds or movement.

She held back nothing, screaming with no regard to the nighttime silence that her voice had killed. My mind sped through different scenes, trying to imagine where the woman could be, why she was screaming, but my thought-process was interrupted by yet another terrified yell.

I was stiff with alertness, afraid to wake up the three other bodies apparently still sleeping around me, afraid to make noise and attract whatever was causing the woman to be screaming. She was being attacked, I was sure of it.

Again. It was an urgent scream, a scream for help. I jerked upright, holding my breath and listening hard, my body ready to react to any decision I eventually made. Only then did I fully realize my helplessness. There was no getting out of that jungle to help anyone in blackness like that and nothing I could do if I was out. The disturbing recognition washed over me.

I wanted to cover my ears from the noise, ignore the cold sweat that had beaded across my skin, imagine myself in a warm suburban bed or even back in my sleeping bag in the compound bunk beds. Just then I heard the scream again. Then again and again and again. Not just one shriek but a second and third, many, coming from unknown locations and distances. I was overwhelmingly relieved.

I’ve never seen an African monkey in the wild but in the blackness I’d have to be happy just to hear them.