Lux Esoterica (Nifiluz)

The Khoikhoi peoples of southwestern Africa — the herders of the hard country where the Kalahari's red sands run down toward the Namib's mountainous dunes — kept in their story-hoard a man-eater built around the strangest anatomical decision in the whole world's ogre-literature. The aigamuxa (the collectors of the old Nama and Khoikhoi tales wrote it many ways) are giants of the dune country: huge, man-shaped, dreadful of strength, with the long teeth the office requires — devourers of travelers, haunters of the thirstland tracks, everything an ogre of the wastes ought to be. And they have no eyes in their heads . None at all. The aigamuxa's eyes are set — the tellings deliver the detail flatly, as a fact of natural history — in the tops of its feet : or, in some versions, in the heels; and from this one placement flows the entire comedy, terror, and philosophy of the creature. For consider what it means in practice. An aigamuxa at rest — standing still in the lee of ...

On the last night of the year, on the snowbound Oga Peninsula of northern Japan — a fist of mountains punched into the Sea of Japan from Akita, one of the snowiest coasts on earth — the ogres come down from the hills and knock on the doors. Not metaphorically. The household hears them coming: the stamping in the snow, the clash of wooden blade on bucket, and then the roar at the threshold, in the broadest dialect of the north, the two questions every child of Oga has dreaded and treasured for centuries: "Nakuko wa inee gaa?!" — Are there any crybabies in this house?! — "Namakemono wa inee gaa?!" — Any lazy ones?! And into the lamplight burst the namahage: huge figures in demon masks — one red-faced, one blue, horned, wild-haired, mouths full of fangs — their bodies shaggy with great straw coats, a wooden knife in one hand and a pail in the other, stamping, bellowing, searching the room — behind the screens, under the kotatsu quilt — for children who cried too mu...