Died Ndembo

Lower Congo, February 1884. A mother walks into Seke station with a bone wrapped in a cloth. The forest doctor has told her it is all that is left of her son, and that the ghosts took him.

Masanja, the station's East African headman, can see it is a goat's bone.

Boys keep dying into the forest lodges, and their mothers keep paying the fees. With Mpemba, a woman who died there once herself and came back under a new name, Masanja starts counting who never comes back.

Following the missing boy risks exposing Masanja's own years raiding caravans and selling captives, and losing the men who obey him.