Bane

Bane

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MFUNDO M

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

© Mfundo Mpofu 2023

 

The right of Mfundo Mpofu to be identified as the author of this publication has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Act 98 of 1978.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author.

 

 

“Bane” is a work of fiction.

 

From South Africa, With Love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To The Ordinary Person:

You Wonderful Reader

 

Enjoy these amazing stories, and prepare yourself for the next part when it comes. Though the stories are fictionalized, I have actually based them on the real works of goteism that make you curse the day goteism was born.

 

Enjoy the stories.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To The Extra-Ordinary Person:

The Gote

 

 

As a gote reading this, don’t take it personal. Don’t loathe the stories, embrace them. Most importantly, don’t loathe me, don’t curse me, and don’t seek to begote me. If God can let you be, who am I to condemn you? You do what you have to do. You are here for a reason; to maintain the balance. Where there is good, evil must exist. After the light comes darkness, where you thrive. That is why your practice is endless. If you cease to exist, as an individual, you leave behind your kind to carry on.

 

With these stories, I’m trying to get that across to the readers who abominate you, who blame God for your existence. Hopefully, after reading these amazing shorts, the good readers will learn to accept your existence as a must, and your practice unavoidably endless. As a gote, enjoy this booklet more than the ordinary reader because it neither condemns nor condones goteism. It only tells it like it is to make readers understand that goteism will never die. You do the things you do because you have to.

 

 

Have fun reading about your things.

 

Contents

 

Introduction 7

Reject 12

The College 26

Exposed: One 33

The Window: One 47

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to “Bane”

 

 

Introduction

 

You are now entering the

wicked world of gotes

 

Let me start by saying, instead of using these words, “Witch or Witches, Witchcraft, Bewitched and Witching” I’m going to use these words, “Gote for a witch, Gotes for witches, Goteism for witchcraft, Begoted for bewitched and Goteing for witching throughout this introduction and the stories. Gote is an acronym for, ‘gods of the earth.’ If you seriously think about it, the witches are the gods of the earth. They can do anything they want. There is no one powerful enough to stop them. Whatever means and efforts the people make to stop them is only a drop in the ocean. It has been like that for thousands of years.

The people of the world have tried to destroy gotes. They have failed. They are still failing to this day, and will continue to fail for another thousands of years. That is the truth, whichever way you look at it. By the time you are done reading this introduction and the stories, especially the first story, you will agree that the witches are gotes. But that is not the only reason for my decision to change the name ‘witch’ to ‘gote.’ Bane is a work of fiction. But you will spot some resemblance to some of the true-life experiences of the victims of goteism that you know or have heard about. Hopefully, for that reason, you will enjoy these stories.

As a dark genre buff, my efforts were based on my desire to tell entertaining dark stories of goteism. As we know, there are 2 opposing sides to everything. In goteism, there is one side for evil known as the black magic in the left-hand path, and the other side for good deeds

 

known as the white goteism in the right-hand path. Because goteism is magic, it knows no side. It is the heart of a gote that knows sides. Therefore, it is the gote that chooses a side. The evil side of goteism is so common that, to the other person (the one who miraculously survived the abominable acts of goteism, or whose family member never survived), it’s the only side that exists, hence goteism is bad.

For many generations our knowledge of goteism has been that of the evil side. Now that the whole thing is messed up so badly, we will never change our attitude towards goteism, so long as we don’t accept the good side of it. If we won’t accept the good side of goteism, then the bad side of goteism is inevitably the part of our lives. And that is one big fact we can never escape.

I’m not on the side of goteism. I’m only telling you what I see, which I believe is what you see as well, though we may not see it the same way. More than that, I’m merely a fan of the dark genre who once wished to write dark stories one day.

The evil side of goteism exists to oppose divinity because the balance of nature is set in opposites. To the other person, goteism should never have existed from the beginning of time. If that is the case, holiness should never have existed either to maintain the balance. If goteism is bad, and if God has such divine control over everything, why doesn’t He destroy goteism in a single heart beat? That is the big question. It will remain the big question until the end of time because goteism can never die.

As part of my research, the people I conversed with mentioned goteism in many different ways, which will follow shortly, after these words: Not all deaths that occur through natural causes are natural. Not all deaths by accident are accidental. Not all sicknesses and diseases are real. Gotes interrupt their course and take over. Because gotes are human beings too (which makes it harder to separate the wicked gotes from the good people, except suspicions. Most of the time those suspicions turn out to be false, after the damage has already been done. And the suspect pays the price for looking suspicious, yet innocent), it is very hard to tell the difference between the true course and the course created by gotes, which take-over results in the innocent people being the victims of goteism.

This introduction refers to life in the black townships and the villages of Mzansi, where goteism is so common that the people are not scared of it anymore. They talk about it as if it means nothing to them, as if it is harmless. Yet it makes our lives a living hell. They talk about it so casually that even children as young as 10 years often joke about it. Yet they are the ones who are most vulnerable to goteism. I have often heard people cursing at others out of anger calling them witches, not meaning it at all, just to embarrass them. To me it meant if such a serious word with such a bad meaning could be used so lightly, just to embarrass a person, the word, in all likelihood, has lost its real meaning. That made me realize if I’m going to write dark stories of witchcraft, I can’t use those common names in my stories, the names that I have changed. I told myself I have to come up with a name that has never been used before, yet ugly enough to restore, in my stories, the common name of witchcraft to its bad old meaning that should not be taken lightly.

 

If you live in the township or the village, or you have lived there before and you are reading this, the things that will be mentioned here will be familiar to you because they happen right before our very own eyes. And that is no fiction. One of them is my own experience. I survived

goteism in the forest many years ago when I went for a traditional circumcision (the rite of passage), to become a man. My parents were quick to seek traditional help seeing it was not a matter for the western medicine, unlike many parents who shun witch-doctors, traditional healers and traditional medicines. They stick to western medicine when it is absolutely unnecessary and end up sending their loved ones to hell, where gotes happily reside, because they are not suffering from the real sickness or disease in the first place. They are only suffering from gotes’ programming, just like my sickness many years ago was programmed by gotes, so I would not be cured by western medicine so I would die, not the real death though, but the death created by gotes and be buried because the unknowing people would think I was really dead. I owe my survival to the remarkable work of the true witch-doctors and the flexibility of my dear parents. Had they been stubborn, I wouldn’t be here telling you all this by now.

*

As part of my research, the people I conversed with made me realize they acknowledge goteism as purely existing to make our lives miserable. And therefore, the fact that it is part of our lives is inevitable, whether we accept it or reject it, somehow it makes no difference. They talked about goteism in many different ways which are neither pleasant nor soothing. Here is just a few of them below:

You are a shameless womanizer. In the process, 1 or 2 of your girls fall pregnant. And because you are only using them for sex, you deny that it is you. The girl/girls swear to get you. Then suddenly you go insane. You eat dirt and walk the streets half naked, laughing at yourself all the way up or down the street. You have been begoted.

Sometimes you do not have to be a gote to be full of malice. Out there, there are some very unscrupulous witch-doctors who are capable of performing the same dirty acts of goteism, for a price. Like gotes, it is nearly impossible to separate them from the good witch-doctors, because, for all we know, the very same witch-doctors we know to be the very good ones could be the most destructive ones there are.

 

And the one most unfortunate unscrupulous one, who miraculously gets exposed and destroyed, once in a blue moon, his death makes no difference because they are out there in their thousands. And the people who secretly consult with them for obvious malefic purposes keep the secret of their consultation to their graves.

 

The girl/girls that the casanova has impregnated might not be a gote at all, might even not have a gote in her/their family/families (sometimes those who knowingly have gotes in their families bury that knowledge in their hearts and will die with it), who would have helped her/them out to begote her/their casanova boyfriend. She/They might simply have contacted the very bad witch-doctor.

Or, if you are rich, don’t show it off, and don’t look down on others because there might be a gote in your family, unknown to you, who will drag you to rags, driven not by jealousy, but by your disgusting vanity. And we, the observers, knowing nothing about a gote in your family, will laugh at you and say you have squandered your fortune.

 

Or, don’t excel in your class because your desk neighbour’s mother/father might be a gote, or even your teacher might be very jealous because he/she might have a child in your class who is a dolt. And she/he would make sure you remain in the same class until his/her child is ahead of you. You just suffer from an incurable sickness (a kind of sickness of unknown origin that cannot be cured by any other means whatsoever, except curing itself according to its programme by gotes), each year the final exams approach and be unable to write, and then get well after the final exams, in time to go back to school at the beginning of the following year. Then you get sick at the end of the year, and again be unable to write final exams.

Or, owing to goteism, there are countless widows who live in mansions and drive flashy cars. The wife chances upon her husband’s fat bank balance and then suddenly greed overwhelms her. She can’t wait for him to die naturally because he might out-live her. The husband suddenly dies and all of his cash in his healthy bank balance goes to the wife. Goteism has worked wonders for her.

Or, you are madly in love with someone who is just so disgusted by you. Then all of a sudden, she/he goes crackers about you. He/She has no clue what she/he is doing, why he/she has suddenly fallen head-over-heels in love with you. She/He can’t help himself/herself.

She/He is blinded by the spells of goteism.

Or, in a workplace, you get promoted to the position she/he has had his/her eyes on for so long. Then of a sudden, hardly 2 weeks later, you get so sick that your sickness comes between you and your new position. Then she/he replaces you. He/She has used goteism on you.

Or, a terrible accident takes place right before the terrified witnesses. The accident is so fatal that none of the passengers should have survived. Yet they all survive but one. At the time of the fatal accident, the victim was not a human being. She/He was a dummy (body two, so to speak), something that looked and behaved like a real person and sent out by gotes to the community as a person so he/she would die in an accident created by gotes, so the accident and the victim’s death could be taken for real by the witnesses. The real person has been taken by gotes earlier, preferably at night, while she/he was asleep.

Or, you are a boy and you are old enough to become a man. You must become one, traditionally as is the case with any transition from boyhood to manhood in the townships and the villages. If you go out there without any form of protection, you become an easy victim of gotes’ diabolism because you undergo the most important change of your life, in the forest in gotes’ territory. You will never come back. The protection comes in the form of consulting a good witch-doctor who will prepare the right mutis, and the works, for you to use during your stay out there to keep you out of reach of gotes.

*

From fake accidents to fake illnesses and deaths to spell feeding of the victims in their sleep who think whatever they eat, they are only eating it in dreams, when they are actually eating it for real while they are in dreamland, because gotes have come to them for real to feed them their pernicious spells, and many other wicked ways of victimizing the unknowing people, it’s all goteism. Therefore, being the victim of goteism is not a curse. It’s only bad luck. If you know how, protect yourself. In my language we say:

Ziqinise!

 

Don’t sit back and stick to what you were once told that you are under the strong and powerful protective wing of your ancestors, therefore you are immune to goteism. Sometimes gotes find ways to penetrate that barrier.

 

You could be reading this for the very last time.

 

 

REJECT

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The story is set in the former homeland of Transkei. The year of the story is 1989. The place is a village called Qunu, and the other place called Gwadana. The name Gwadana in this case does not refer to the name of the village around that small town called Idutywa, 90km from Umtata. It refers to the forest in Gwadana. The forest is believed to be one of the many bases of gotes in the country.

The forest looks normal like any other, day and night. But some bizarre things are happening in that forest. And the servants of the Devil are pretty good at leaving no traces behind as to the dark activities that take place inside the forest. The main characters in the story are Wendy Cengani and Viwe Skhonyela. Viwe lives in Qunu. Wendy lives in town and only studies in Qunu. She is the one who experiences the vicious grip of goteism by Viwe’s mother. Her name is Gladys. Wendy tells the story of how she becomes the victim of goteism. She is taken by an act of goteism to Gwadana from the hut she is renting and sharing with another girl by the name of Zowi Soyizwaphi.

But for reasons that make up the story, Gladys has no other choice but to bring Wendy back (contrary to what is general knowledge of the victims of goteism who get taken and never to be brought back again, though in some very rare cases the victims can be seen roaming in the night and avoiding as best they can the physical contact with humans, because they are not really there. They are still in gotes’ captivity).

Though Wendy’s home in Umtata appears briefly, the things that take place there, lead to the discovery of Viwe by Wendy to be the daughter of a gote. When Wendy tries to get a confession out of Viwe by threatening to do something about what she has discovered, she suddenly finds herself in a place she has never seen before to keep her mouth shut. And she is there in her sober senses (contrary to the victims of goteism being begoted by the spells of gotes and be recreated on arrival at the forest to become dummies). But she discovers that leaving the place is just not possible. Though the place looks ordinary, like a small town, it is by no means an ordinary place, for it is silent. There is not a faintest sound, in spite of the people that walk up and down the streets engaged in some conversations as the movement of their

lips show, and the cars that are silently speeding on the streets. Overhead, there is no moon, no stars, no clouds, nothing but a terrifying infinite blackness. The buildings and the street lights provide no clues. When Wendy is brought back, she takes her father there, in the company of the police, on police helicopters. They get there and hover above the forest. They see just an ordinary and quiet forest that shows no signs of any kind of activities. Believing that something convincing might happen at night since Wendy was there at night, they decide to go back at night. When they get there, the helicopter flash lights show nothing out of the ordinary. It is the same old forest they saw earlier. But Wendy is not going bonkers. She knows what she saw. She was there.

 

 

 

REJECT

 

 

In 1989 I met a friend at school, Milton Mbekela high, in a village called Qunu. I was renting a hut in a house that was among the houses that lined the main road from Umtata to East London. I was doing Std 8. We were in the same class. Her name was Viwe Skhonyela. Some students advised me to keep away from her; she was the weirdest girl in school. They told me about her chat with someone none of them could see, at the back of the school, during recess and at the shop opposite the school, after school. She would chat like at the back of the school, leaning on the wall that was facing the school. They even went as far as suggesting that she was weird because her mother was a gote. I found that very hard to believe. They couldn’t supply me with evidence of her mother being a gote other than her chat which I never believed because I never saw her chat. The poor things were simply jealous of her. She was pretty and brilliant.

 

▫

 

The time went by. Our friendship grew stronger, in spite of the fact that we never invited each other to our homes for weekends. And I was thinking about inviting her to my home for the weekend of the following week when she gave me a relief of my life. It was on a Wednesday. She said,

‘Wendy, I have been thinking. I live around here and you live far. If I don’t do it first, how are you going to invite me to your place? I’m inviting you this weekend.’

‘I would really love to.’ I said, thinking now it was time to prove the other students’ crazy gossip wrong, that no one was ever seen go to Viwe’s home. Friday came and after school we went together. We got to her home and her mother was there. She was nice and beautiful, almost like her daughter. On the outside, the house looked fairly beautiful. But inside, I was struck dumb by the beauty of the interior.

Unlike almost all the houses there, they had a huge generator. I was angry with everyone now. If no one ever went into the house, then obviously no one knew the inside of the house. And the generator was all the evidence of the beauty of the inside of the house. I thought how wicked they were, those who would not stop talking, to even suggest that Viwe’s mother was a gote. And that was what got me angry. Gotes are supposed to be poor and suffering, that is what people say. I mean its general knowledge. And I also knew, all along, what everybody knew, that gotes live in poverty, until that fateful night. Gladys asked me if I was related to Simon Cengani. And when I said he was my father, she got so excited that Viwe got lost. You see, I don’t brag about my father being what he is because it’s him who is what he is, not me, though it was precisely because of what he was that I survived to tell my story. When Viwe and I were introducing each other, we never talked about our parents. The friendship was between us, not our parents, though it would eventually come out what our parents were doing and who they were. When Gladys asked Viwe if she knew who my father was, or what kind of a job he had, Viwe said no.

‘Well dear, her father controls all the police stations and their police, here in Transkei.’

‘Really? I didn’t know. Wendy, how could you not tell me?’ Viwe asked. She was excited too. I just shrugged and said nothing. When Gladys asked me why Milton Mbekela, I could have gone to the best school in Transkei and outside, I told her that was the same question my parents asked. I told them I simply wanted to experience the village life since we had no village home.

The house had 2 garages because there used to be 2 cars. There were 3 bedrooms; Viwe’s parents’, Viwe’s and the 3rd, whose user was not in the house at the time I came. In all those 3 days that I spent there the 3rd bedroom was cleaned just like the other rooms in the house. It was my first visit. I couldn’t be nosy enough to ask whose bedroom it was. It was obvious it belonged to someone, a member of the family, probably out for the weekend.

On the wall of Viwe’s parents’ bedroom there was a large photo of the house-hold. In it was Gladys, Viwe’s father, Viwe and her brother, whom I took to be the user of the other bedroom. Her brother, according to Viwe, died a year ago, had a car accident. The father was a little bit taller than the mother, with broad shoulders, very light in complexion, very bright eyes, retrousse nose, a trimmed mustache and a double chin with shaved beard. All the father’s features were on the boy. A boy resembling a father, a girl resembling a mother, they must have been the happiest house-hold, as the photo showed. The weekend at Viwe’s home was so wonderful I enjoyed every minute I spent there. But Viwe never lived to see the Christmas of 1989.

 

▫

 

At the end of May Viwe was terminally ill and bed-ridden. By then she was abominable to me. But in all that, something I could not describe dragged me to her home. Since morning of that last Thursday of May, I had been waiting for break time to go to her home. When break time came, I left. On the way I was feeling sick for doing this, but I went. When I got there, I found her in bed, a frightening living corpse she was, all beauty gone. She told me her mother was gone and didn’t know where she went. She told me her mother was ignoring her, and that she would not see the coming of dusk of that Thursday. She told me she owed me the whole truth.

‘My mother is a gote.’

‘I know that.’ I said simply and care-free.

‘I know that you know. But there are things you don’t know….’

‘Who cares?’ I said cutting her, but she ignored me and continued.

‘…. which I thought you ought to know because your presence is helping a lot of people living here. My father died a year before last and….’

‘I know that. And don’t tell me your father and your brother are dead because they are not. I have seen them. You know damn well what they are.’ I said cutting her. She said nothing and instead continued.

‘.... this house and everything in it, father did it. My mother never bought a spoon. She never worked all her life because my father was always there for her. Then she took him. To those who knew nothing, it was an accident. And those who witnessed saw the car capsize. But my mother and I knew it was a taking. And you know it too now. She sold the second car. And the money he left her, she is going to use it all up and then the camouflage will disappear. Then she will live in that much talked about impoverished state like the rest of them. But I will be gone by then. My brother died last year. I mean he didn’t die as you know it. And I lied to you on that weekend when I said he had a car accident….’

‘Whatever.’

‘This year it’s me. 2 weeks after his …. taking, I began to talk with him. No one else could see him. I was always chatting with him behind the school and the other wall at the shop.

Those 2 places were, his favourite hangouts. The bell that you see near the shop on that plain opposite the school belonged to the church that used to be on that plain. On the vigil of the Pentecost, we were supposed to go to church, all of us as we would every year. But only mother and my brother went. I never slept that night. I waited until she came back alone very early in the morning. We slept for a few hours and woke up for the Sunday service. You can imagine the shock they got when the people went to church only to find the church gone. My mother and I were there. But we dissembled as best we could. And anyone who tried to be bold enough to investigate the whereabouts of the church would die, not the real death as you know it, but just to keep them quiet.

‘Now the other gotes are torturing me before they take me, just to feel the pain. They are getting at mother for refusing to ask me to tell her where you stay because they wanted to take you. And because of what you said, there was no way they were going to take you. And if they did, they would be in a whole lot of trouble. That was what my mother was preventing….at any cost. That is why you see me sleeping here….’

Then there was silence.

‘Hey! I’m listening.’ I said shaking her, but she was gone. It was obvious she was going to say more. Well, one I could figure it out by myself. The gotes of the village had begoted the entire village not to see the church. It is still there, I’m definitely sure about that. Why it is in 2 places at the same time, maybe that was one of the things Viwe was gonna tell me. I stood up and left, not caring a tinker’s cuss about her. Well, about some of the things, I knew like for instance, that her father and her brother were not dead, and that there would be no more takings for as long as I remained there. But unfortunately, for the people of the village, I would not stay at the village forever. Now, about my encounter with Viwe’s father and her brother and back to the weekend at Viwe’s home.

 

▫

 

The weekend at Viwe’s home was so wonderful I enjoyed every minute I spent there, in spite of the fact that on Sunday we never went to church. I understood why. They were not the only ones. Those who went chose to walk long distances because there were no churches in the village. On Monday we went to school. I felt so great knowing I had gotten the nosy students where I wanted, to make them realize their weightless accusations were nothing but their crazy imagining.

 

Now my turn to invite Viwe to my home came. Fortunately, the coming weekend was a long one. She was so excited she could not wait. Thursday came and the school came out earlier than usual. Zowi, my roommate, lived in Southernwood. Every Friday we would go together by taxi if we missed the school bus, which was very often to miss it because after school we would go to our room to fetch our things. By the time we left the room the bus would be gone. That Thursday was no exception to Zowi. She missed the bus. On that same day we went to the movies. All those 4 days were exceptionally hot. We spent Friday and Saturday at the swimming pool. After the fun on Saturday, we went back home, where trouble began. Thursday and Friday were fine.

On Saturday after we came from the swimming pool, Viwe started to behave weird. She was calling my folks her mother. I asked her to take it easy, if she had never been away from her mother for so long, if ever 3 days was that long. My parents understood when I told them she had never parted with her mother.

At night we watched all the interesting programmes and the time was 23:50. It was time to go to sleep. My folks had long gone to sleep by then. When I asked her to come to the room, she asked me to give her 15 minutes before she came to the room.

‘Well, you know where the room is.’ I said and went to turn off the lights. Then I checked her in the sitting room. She asked me if she would be disgusting if she turned the lights on, the ones I had just turned off. I told her to feel free to do anything and not worry about my folks. She thanked me and stood up grinning. She turned the lights of the whole house on, including my folks’ bedroom. When they asked why, she said she couldn’t sleep in a house with one dark room. My parents, so determined to show their kindness, said it was alright. Then she came to the sitting room.

‘Wendy, your parents are very nice. Can I open the curtains?’

‘The curtains. Why not? Help yourself.’ Now she was disgusting. I followed her again going from room to room opening the curtains. My folks complained. She said the curtains were blocking the penetration of the moonlit into the house. She said she couldn’t sleep without it. And she couldn’t sleep if there was one room that was deprived of the moonlit.

Viwe was my visitor and dear friend. My folks did not want to disappoint me. Then she told me she was ready to sleep. We went to my room. But she did not sleep. She just sat on the bed and kept asking me every 45 seconds about the terrible noise of a whistle. I kept saying no, so disgusted, asking myself what the hell was happening to her. She then asked me if I didn’t mind. I asked her what was the point of minding, she was damn welcome to do any damn thing. I could not believe she was really going crazy in my home. She rushed to the sitting room and turned the hi-fi so loud it could have been the whole volume. I went to my folks and explained. They said it was alright, they would endure the madness just for my sake, what a freak I had brought home. Viwe said she was suppressing that terrible noise. And now that she stopped hearing it, she was ready to go to sleep. I didn’t give a damn what she was ready for.

Somehow, I must have drifted to sleep because I was woken by her in the morning at 7:30. After we ate the breakfast we went to church. In church, only 4 lines of the hymn were sung and everybody stopped singing and all looked at us. Viwe just passed out. One minute I was singing, and so was she. The next, without warning, she suddenly clutched her hands to my neck so strong I dropped the hymn book. I thought she was strangling me. Then she violently jiggled and fell on the floor and fainted. I thanked that my parents were spared that kind of humiliating spectacle. They were on the left, down in the first row. She was taken to my father’s car and we rushed her home. But she recovered on the way.

 

Monday

 

In the morning we went to school. On the bus I didn’t sit with her. I was angry, everyone could see. During break I was so preoccupied with the nasty things that Viwe did I had to be shaken to get back to myself. Somebody did. They saw the way I looked on the bus and immediately realized something awful had happened between us. They used the situation to show me proof of Viwe’s strange behaviour. The person who called me asked me to come and see. At the back of the school Viwe was chatting. Now it dawned on me why I never saw her chat. At break time she would head straight home for lunch while I remained in class because I always carried lunch. When she came back, she would go straight to the wall to chat. And I would always think she was still at home.

I got it figured out later why she always went home to eat lunch. She had no problem carrying lunch like I did. Going home to eat lunch was her way of getting away from me so I wouldn’t see her go to chat when she came back. And no one could show me because she was my friend. I came closer to her and called her. She didn’t seem to have heard. I called her loud enough and that brought no change. I shook her and it worked. Then it dawned on me why they never tried to stop her from her chat before they told me about it. One student must have done it and got in front of many students what I got. The strength she possessed at that moment was incredible. She vigorously pushed me away as if she was pushing a weightless object, without

looking at me and stopping to chat. I shot backwards towards the wall, hit it and fell. I stood up so humiliated and staggered back to the class swearing. I was determined to ask her and get something out. I was more than willing to help her. To me she was clearly unconscious of whatever was happening to her, though she might know something about it, but was just unable to help herself. I gave myself hope that she would not hide it from me, of all people, not after what happened at home and in the church. The school eventually came out and I came up to her and got to the point.

‘Viwe, what is happening to you?’

‘To me, why?’

‘I don’t know. Something is happening to you. I want to help.’

‘Nothing is happening to me. I’m fine.’

‘No, you are not.’

‘But I’m telling you I’m alright. Why would something happen to me? And what makes you think I would hide it from you?’

‘You did already at home. Look, I’m really concerned.’

‘I appreciate it thanks, but there is nothing wrong with me, really.’

‘Viwe, I’m not a baby. Look at what you did to my arm. Where did you get the strength? Who were you talking to? Why did you faint in church? Why did you do all the nasty things you did at home? You call all those nasty things nothing? The students were right from the beginning. You are the weirdest girl in school. Never mind, don’t effing tell me. But you must know. I will find out about your filth by myself. I will know everything, mark my words.’ I said. Unbelievable. She said nothing. She folded her arms, stood in an insolent poise, dropped her head to one side and smirked at me, indicating that she was not threatened by what I said. She asked me if I was finished and, without waiting for an answer, turned and left, implying that the students were right from the beginning. I froze with disbelief and watched her walk away.

 

4 Days Later, Friday

Zowi and I were going to our homes for the weekend as usual. We went to the road for the taxi. I was carrying a big black plastic stuffed with garbage. I was gonna ditch it on the other side of the road, where there was nothing but the undergrowth and tall dense trees that made it impossible for anyone down there to be seen by someone up there on the road. While Zowi waited for me on the other side of the road, I went down to the forest to ditch the plastic bag. I got there, put it down, turned preparing to leave, and then I stopped. It was a hot Friday afternoon with clear sky. But ahead of me was a dense fog. Then I turned around to find it everywhere circling me. I couldn’t see beyond it. Then I heard a voice that came from around me within the fog. It was Gladys’ voice. She said they were watching me. She said they were in a position to do anything to me first to prevent me from doing anything to Viwe. Then a portion of the fog cleared ahead of me and beyond and revealed a narrow open space.

‘Nobody comes out of there.’ The voice said. The fog swiftly vanished and all was back to normal. I believed what she showed me was Gwadana, gotes’ base somewhere around that small town called Idutywa, so they say. But where was it exactly? It couldn’t just be an open space, there was no way.

Despite the fact that Gwadana was not the only gotes’ base, I strongly believed the open space I was shown was definitely Gwadana. The reason I was seeing an open space was that I was not there yet. Gwadana was the name that was mentioned most. In fact, nothing has changed. There are many other forests that are used by gotes as their bases, here in Transkei alone. But Gwadana tops the list. I don’t know why. It’s not even that big, according to the

people who know the forest, who live nearby it, to be notorious like this. There are big forests, like Bhijolo, that should top the list, forests that are frightening to walk through even during the day. But it is always Gwadana, Gwadana, Gwadana.

That weekend I was restless. I couldn’t wait to confront Viwe. Monday came naturally and I went to school. The first person I would open my mouth to was Viwe. And I saw her approaching the main gate. I went to meet her halfway.

‘Here I am Viwe. I have some very bad news for you. Turning on the lights, opening the curtains in the middle of the night and turning the radio to a maddening volume, what the hell were you thinking? No one could have tolerated that kind of madness. But my folks did. Well, they did because they love me. God knows how much. Your mother is really a gote. She even had the balls to show me where they intend to put me to prevent me from being too nosy. So, I told my parents. My father said should a grain of anything happen to me, you and Gladys will be responsible. And Gladys will name her friends. So, just try him.’ I said and left her there. After school I went to the hut feeling like I had never felt before. I studied from 7pm to 10pm as usual, and then I went to sleep.

 

2 Hours 25 Minutes Later

 

When I woke up the night was still in its fullest reign. The only reason I pinched myself was to make sure I was alright. When I felt the pain, I grinned. But I couldn’t stop telling myself I was in a dream, not only dreaming it. I remembered clearly that I was in the hut when I slept, and that I had studied for 3 hours before I went to sleep. But when I woke up, I was in another place. I thanked my habit of sleeping with my watch on my wrist. When I woke up, I was on the ground and in my sleeping dress. The time was 25 minutes after midnight. The place I was in had everything but the sound. There was silence everywhere. And the phantasmagoric illusions of dreaming were not changing, as supposed, proving that I was not dreaming, I was actually there, wherever that was.

As I was going down a certain street that I thought was familiar, but couldn’t recall where I had seen or walked on it before, I went past a group of boys and girls in school uniforms, standing on the side of the street, silently and cheerfully talking and laughing. The only indication that they were talking was the movement of their lips that produced no sound.

I was walking towards a traffic circle when my eyes rested on her, about 15m ahead. I could not mistake her for anyone. I called her. She stopped and turned around to look at me. Then she silently startled and stared agape at me, as if she was seeing a ghost. Then suddenly, she turned away and ran like hell, as if she was running away from a ghost that was chasing her. I ran after her calling her to stop. She was incredibly fast for her over-weight body. But I kept my distance. She turned left into another street I was certain I had walked on before but couldn’t remember where and when.

There were few people on that street. It formed a T-junction with the street we were approaching ahead of us, where among other things was a church on it with its door opened. She went right in and went down to the first row. When she came in nobody looked back. I came in, everybody turned their heads and looked at me. It was obvious I had ruffled their concentration on the service. For a moment I stood there panting, staring at them. I was determined to sit on one of the benches at the back so that when the service came to an end, she would not escape me.

Then suddenly, my heart pounded and my breath tightened as I was staring at the people on the benches. I became scared and excited, at the same time, by what I had just discovered. On my mind I still had Viwe’s family photo on the wall of Viwe’s parents’ bedroom. Among the people on the 3rd bench was Viwe’s brother. I moved forward and sat next to him. When people saw me sit, they looked in front and the service went on. I greeted him in a whisper. He just

 

looked at me and said nothing. All the time I spent there I never heard the priest’s voice. But his lips were moving, indicating he was preaching. Sometimes he would lift the bible in the air and wave his hands in all directions, indicating the peak of his preaching. The same was happening on the benches. Not a faintest sound came out of the people’s mouths. But, their

lips were moving as well. 3 times they knelt down for what I took to be benediction and prayers. I looked at Viwe’s brother and greeted again. He said nothing. I told him I was Viwe’s friend. He just stared at me as if he had no idea who I was talking about. I thought this was ridiculous. I went outside to wait for the girl.

The service came to an end. Not a single one of them came out except her. Before she stepped outside, she stuck her head out and peered in all directions. When she did not see me, having hidden in a safe place where only I could see her, she stepped outside and remained motionless for a moment, trying to decide which way to take. Then I jumped at her. We were in the middle of the street. She was never even startled by my leaping at her.

The only thing we did was to struggle; I, for a tight grip; she, for freeing herself. Obviously, she was angered by my unexpected jump at her. Her face said it all. Though no sound came out of her mouth, the quick movement of her lips suggested that she was swearing at me. And finally, she overpowered me and I let go. But she did not run. She just stood there and stared at me with angry eyes.

‘Don’t you remember me, Thandi? It’s me Wendy your next-door neighbour. You died in 1985, struck by lightning.’ I said shaking her. Nothing came out her mouth. But her lips were moving. She turned her back to me and walked away. I bowed my head and remained still, in the middle of the street, so dumb with disbelief.

Then the flickering lights of a car that was coming towards me brought me back to my senses. It stopped right in front of me, so very close for the hit. The car had obviously hooted. But I had heard nothing. The window was wound down and I was never surprised by the rapid movement of his lips that produced no sound. I knew he was shouting at me, wildly moving his hands in all directions. His eyes were bright, his retrousse nose, his double chin, his complexion, all his features. He was Viwe’s father. What could I do? Nothing. He was dumb to tell me anything. I badly needed someone to talk to. If everybody was as dumb as they were, where would I find someone who could talk and tell me where I was? I badly wanted to get out.

Everything about this place was abominable. But the thing was, beyond was darkness so terrifying it seemed endless. And when I looked up, I saw nothing, no stars no moon, no clouds, nothing. But I was definitely on the surface of the earth. But the huge volume of empty blackness overhead hinted that I might have been somewhere else other than the earth’s surface, in space or something, if there were stars overhead, or underneath the surface of the earth, if there were no streets, no cars, no people where I found myself in. I sat down and wept. I was the only one on that street and around.

With the hope that the people in the church might come out now, I looked across the street. Then I started up with a shrill, looked around and back where the church was supposed to be. Next to where the church was, there was an unfinished construction work of some kind of a building. I saw it vanish right under my nose. I burst out screaming as other things were disappearing too. My turn was coming. A car that was speeding down the street that formed a T-junction with the street I was sitting on disappeared as the street was disappearing, coming my way. All around me the frightening darkness was depriving the place of its illumination. By then I had shut my mouth because screaming was useless. Then there was darkness all over. Suddenly I felt very drowsy, and very quickly I fell asleep.

I woke up the following night. When I looked at my watch, it showed it was midnight. Everything was back to normal and silent. I felt very hungry and thirsty and knew this was the way I was going to perish because there was no way out. Then I realized it was useless to look

for food. The people of this place never got hungry nor thirsty. At the moment I had some strength until I figured something out, if ever I could. On the 3rd night, when I woke up, I could barely raise my head. The only indication that I had woken was the opening of my eyes. The biggest effort I made, which was the only thing I could ever do, was to lift my arm to look at

the time. It showed it was just after midnight. The same thing happened as before. When I closed my eyes sleeping, not of my own volition, there was darkness all around me. On the 4th night I was certain I was dying. The same thing happened. When I woke up, the first thing my eyes rested upon, though slightly blurred, was the clock on the wall across the room. I had been sleeping on solid ground and now I felt the difference. I was on the bed. Though my sight was foggy, I could make out what time it was. It was 9:15 in the morning. Straight in front of me, in the same wall on which the clock hung, the door opened and a white figure came in. It was a nurse. Then a female voice asked if I could hear it. Then another male voice called my name and asked if I was feeling any better. The voices sounded like my folks’.

I made an effort to look to my right where, with my vision becoming better, I saw my folks looking at me. Then it flashed on my mind that I was in hospital. On the left side of the bed Zowi’s voice greeted me. I looked to my left and saw her smiling. That was Friday morning. Tears flowed down my mother’s cheeks at seeing that I was alright. My father kept wiping his forehead. I closed my eyes and tears slipped down the corners of my eyes, knowing I was back in the real world with the real people and out of that stupid joke that nearly took my life. On Tuesday of the following week, I was back at school. The first thing my eyes rested on was Viwe. And the next thing, hardly knowing how, my hands were all around her throat squeezing it. But the students intervened, just in time.

 

▫

 

According to Zowi, the howling of the dogs was for the first time since she came to study there. She said she would have ignored the howling as the dogs were doing it when they were seeing strange things. But the closeness of it to the door of the hut made her suspicious. The time was just after 4 in the morning. She opened the door and jumped back screaming. There I was, lying on the ground in front of the door like a lifeless object hopelessly breathing. A few minutes later the people in the house were on the spot where I was. Fortunately, there was a car at the house next door. I was rushed to the hospital. Zowi called my parents. They came and waited hopelessly. On Thursday, just after break, and that was going to be my 4th night at that place of evil, a police car pulled up in front of the principal’s office. 4 policemen got out and went to the office. Viwe must have seen it from the distance and known what it meant. When the police were taken to my class, Viwe was nowhere to be seen. She had, in a very discreet way, run away or otherwise, because the students all said they could have sworn she was in the class with them. How she got out, no one knew and no one cared.

Viwe must have thought I was lying on that Monday morning when I told her that I told my parents what her mother said to me, and what my father’s response was. She must have urged her mother to bring me back from that damned place. The following day I was brought back though in a very bad way. Of course, there would never be a better way of rejecting a person from a bad place.

 

▫

 

The gotes have this evil power that makes them so abominably bad. They take their victims and replace them by things that will look, behave and act like the real people. The people-look-alike-victims will live for a short time and then they die. While the victims’ families and

 

 

 

relatives are sobbing on their burial the real people are held captive by gotes in their bad places like the one I was in. That is what the story would have been about. It would have been about an imperfect replacement; about taking the wrong person, me that is, and bringing doom to them and their bad place. Gladys was the key. She would be forced by my father and his men to take them to the real Gwadana, if ever the replacement had been done on me. But they could never do it because of my father.

 

▫

 

I’m saying this now, 2 years later, in 1991, because I’m looking back, recalling, with disgust, those 4 deadly nights in that hell place. I think about other people who are not lucky enough to have fathers like mine, not only the people of Qunu, but the people everywhere because goteism is everywhere. I’m saying this now because a relative of mine has just died a very suspicious death. And that has reminded me of my own experience that I’m telling you about right now. So, back to my own experience.

 

▫

 

When Zowi woke up in the morning of the following day Tuesday and discovered that my bed was empty, she thought I had woken earlier than usual and did everything and left. When she discovered that I was not at school, she got worried. She thought I would get back later. But when she slept alone and woke up to find my bed empty, she went straight home and on the following day the police came to school for Viwe. And the next day I was brought back. When they took me, they never replaced me. And it came to my mind later why they never replaced me. Gladys must have thought the only way of finding out whether I had really told my father or not about her was by just taking me without replacing me.

If I was lying to Viwe, they would take me forever. I would reappear as a semblance and die on the same day or the next. But if they had taken me and discovered, afterwards, upon my semblance’s death, that I had really told my dad, Viwe, her mother and others involved would die.

It also crossed my mind that the only reason they wanted to know where I lived was to take my dad because he had the power to prevent them from taking me. If Viwe knew it was about taking my father first, she would never have hesitated to tell Gladys where I lived. The reason they never told her it was about taking my dad first is known to them.

 

▫

After the students separated me from Viwe, I embarrassed her in front of the whole class. I said anything that happened to anyone in the village, she and her mother, who would name names, would be responsible. I told the excited students to spread it to the entire school and out to the village. She kept quiet like she wasn’t there. I embarrassed her on Tuesday. When I recuperated on Monday, I couldn’t go to school. My dad and I took a visit to Gwadana, accompanied by police on 4 helicopters. When we got there, we hovered above. It was an ordinary forest with no life. Nothing moved down there. All the things I had seen were not there. My father saw I was really furious. When I said I didn’t like the stupid joke they played on me, he suggested that we come back at night, obviously something convincing would happen since I was there at night.

 

 

▫

Now, here is something really convincing about the forest we hovered above which is widely believed to be the gotes’ bad place, where my relative is held, apparently. My coming back from that small town is solid proof that the real Gwadana is not where people point it. If Gladys showed me an open space, where I was taken, as the real Gwadana, then the actual forest called Gwadana in Idutywa is not the real gotes’ Gwadana, but a spurious Gwadana. When my father and I went back at night with 5 helicopters, we saw nothing strange. The helicopter flash lights revealed the same ordinary forest we saw earlier. The open space I was shown by Gladys, which is the real gotes’ Gwadana must be somewhere overhead the forest or somewhere underneath it. But no one will ever locate it. I say that because I was there. And that goes for all the other gotes’ bad places in Transkei and beyond. They are magically hidden, the same way that the one I was taken to is hidden.

 

And that is how my harrowing experience ends.

 

Now, this is what my experience revealed to me about gotes.

 

▫

 

I have often been asking myself why is it that gotes live miserably, under some damning poor conditions when they have awesome powers, they can use to enrich themselves, instead of hurting and destroying people’s lives. Well, one popular belief is that gotes destroy people because they are extremely jealous of other people’s well-being and healthy lifestyles. Having come back from that hell town (I call it hell town because it only comes alive when there is darkness), I realize now, that is one belief that is not entirely true. Gotes are not driven by jealousy to destroy people’s lives because they are not poor and they are not suffering.

Most importantly, gotes don’t destroy people’s lives. The gotes that can create the entire town without laying a single brick are certainly not poor. They have everything in their world. They appear to be living in poverty because it’s their plan. To create a place, you need people to occupy it. That is exactly what gotes do. They take people from here, in the real world, to their magical world. They are doing it their way; the goteing way. Why their way? Because if they did it our way (the talking, the asking, the begging way), no one would ever go there.

That is why their appearance is so fatally deceptive. You see a ragged old woman or old man or an impoverished little child (gotes come in all sizes and shapes). You are over-whelmed with pity. You feel so sorry for them that you give your heart out to them. And they take it. It’s the worst thing that can ever happen to you because they take you whole. You have fallen into their trap.

And because human beings cannot be manufactured nor built, gotes use their powers to take the people they begote from the real world to their own. And since they are merely transporting their victims from one world to another, the transportation takes a form of death of the victim to the unknowing people of the real world, who become witnesses so the victim-look-alike can be buried in the real world while the real victim is alive and kicking in gotes’ world, the magical world of gotes. Sadly, the people will forever be inclined to help the old and the frail, the poor and the needy (it’s human nature), unknown to them that they are, unfortunately, filling up gotes’ own Mdantsanes and Durbans, gotes’ own Umtatas and Queenstowns, etc by being the victims of goteism through their mercies and compassions. Being the victim of goteism is not a curse. It’s only bad luck, at a time when you thought you were doing good. Under these circumstances, it’s only fair to say to you: Be very careful who you help. You won’t know that you have been victimized by the very same person that you have helped, just 24 hours ago. So, whatever you do, don’t be fooled by the sickly looks of some old people and some poverty-stricken young people and children in their filthy and torn clothes with pale faces. Not all of them are innocent.

If you are so touched by some people with such appearances, beyond your control, do it at your own risk. In case of a misunderstanding, I’m really not cold-hearted nor spiteful, and I don’t encourage you to be. Just be careful, that’s all. I do take risks myself from time to time, by helping the needy who truly deserve to be helped. So far, I have not had any bad luck, though I sometimes wonder how long before I fall into a trap, get taken and never ever come back again. And this time it won’t be about taking me to check whether or not I told my father about Gladys, because next time (if ever next time comes, which I pray it doesn’t) it won’t be Gladys. The risks we take by being compassionate towards the other people are unavoidable, because we cannot tell the fakes apart.

 

▫

 

While I was in that hell town, the situation I found myself in enabled me to figure something out because I was there in my sober senses. Why was the entire town in a silent state? I was brought there, by black magic of course, in my sober senses. Therefore, I couldn’t be one with those that were there. There had to be a barrier between me and the people I found there. The barrier was sanity; my sanity versus theirs. To them everything was normal, they were in the real world. To them, I was the one they saw as the victim of goteism, the one who was stupefied by the spells of gotes, the one who came from the world they did not know, the unreal world of gotes.

That was why Thandi ran away from me. She was seeing the walking dead, the ghost of Wendy, me, who was struck by lightning in 1985. That was why Viwe’s father appeared, to me, to be angry at me when he nearly hit me. Everything he said to me, he said it on top of his voice and was hearing himself shouting at me. Otherwise, he would never have bothered to open his silent mouth.

That was why Viwe’s brother, in church, could not hear a damn thing I said to him. To him I was the creation of goteism that did not belong to the real world, to his world, to the church-goer’s world. When my dad and I flew to Gwadana and hovered above the forest and saw nothing, it was because we went there on our own. We were not taken by gotes and brought to their world by black magic, whether in our sober senses or stupefied by their spells.

The fact that on my first night there, everything started disappearing before my eyes did not mean to the people of that town as well everything was disappearing. To them life was going on. The death of the night brought a new day, with gotes creating their own daylight on the town so that the people there wouldn’t tell the difference between gotes’ world that they were in and the world I am in right now. In all likelihood, the place I found myself in might have been the replica of Grahamstown, if only I had ever been to Grahamstown before to recognize it as a town I had been to before. Take a look around. Do travel the country and discover something worth discovering.

The biggest portion of the country is unoccupied. It’s filled with seemingly endless forests, plains and barrens. That is more than what gotes need to replicate every city, every town, every township, every village and every other place that is currently occupied by populace. In spite of where you are, in or out of gotes’ world, life doesn’t stop. All the good life you have

 

enjoyed so far, in the real world, could be reaching its untimely end by tonight. Tomorrow, you could be living another life in gotes’ world and not know the difference. That is the most unpleasant and cruel reality of gotes. Is it really cruel? Or is it just a reckless way of filling up their bad places with natural humans? Are they even evil places? Whatever different thoughts and opinions we might have about gotes, there is nothing we can do to change their plans. They are in control. They are the gods of the earth.

 

 

 

 

THE COLLEGE

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The story is set at Umtata Technical College. The year of the story is 1986. The college is separated from the town by the forest that narrowly runs alongside the road that goes to the college. The college is a boarding school. The narrow forest has in it a stream with dense undergrowth, shrubs and bushes and a narrow bridge that has a steel passage that is used by the students to cross the forest to school from town.

It is there at the bridge that the main character meets a girl under some strange and scary circumstances. They meet at the bridge, in the middle of the night. The name of the main character is David Malgas. He comes from Butterworth and is a new comer at the college this year. The girl’s name is Sylvia Bala. She came to the college 2 years ago.

She is so beautiful that one look at her sends David’s body shuddering and his heart pounding so hard against his ribs at the thought that she is fearless enough to take the unnecessary risk to cross the bridge alone at that time of the night. According to David’s dormmates, no one dares to cross the bridge alone at night. A bridge that is about 30m in height and about 80m long, between tall and dense trees that rise above it, looks scary enough even during the day.

When David, on a certain weekend, after 10pm, rushes to school from the places of fun in town, he finds he is the only one going to school. And because no one ever crosses the bridge alone, you have to be 2 or 3 at least, he decides to wait for others on the other side of the street, under the street light about 60m from the forest. The forest looks scary even from that distance. Across the street from where David is waiting, the ground is sloping towards the footpath that goes to the beginning of the bridge. Anyone going down the slope to the footpath is bound to disappear out of sight from where David is standing because of the height of the slope. Because it’s the weekend, David knows he is not the only one in town who must go back to the hostel. Which is why he waits hopefully.

Soon he is rewarded for waiting. Out of the corner of his eye, down the street, a girl is coming up towards him. She is wearing a long white dress. As if David is invisible, the girl goes past him, down the slope and disappears. David runs after her telling himself he has a partner to cross the bridge with. He ignores the scary fact that it’s a girl, and she is wearing a white dress. The colour of her dress could attract to her anything unpleasant in the forest. He goes down and finds her, to his surprise, waiting for him at the beginning of the bridge. That girl is Sylvia.

 

 

 

THE COLLEGE

 

My name is David Malgas. In 1986 I came to study at Umtata Technical College. I came from Butterworth. When I came, I had no friends. The only person I knew in Umtata was my uncle. In my dormitory, there was no one who came from Butterworth. Since it was the beginning of the year, the hostel rules were not yet applied. We were given a chance to orientate ourselves with the new school, and were allowed after school to go to town. The way to town went through a stream with dense undergrowth, shrubs and bushes with very tall trees. Across the stream, about 30m high, was a sewerage pipe about 80m long. Alongside the pipe was a small passage way that was used by the workmen to fix the pipe and its steel suspension. That passage was used by the students to walk across to school.

The old students called it the bridge, and we, the new comers called it the bridge as well. About 60m to the right of the main stream there was an extension of the stream. It was so tangled and so dense it was very difficult to walk through. On the other side of the bridge was a gravel road that formed a T-junction with a tarred road that went into the school premises.

My first use of the bridge was such a horrible experience. Though I could not see anything down the bridge because it was frightfully dark at night, just knowing the height of the bridge, I would have some horrible imaginations, like what if the bridge broke apart while we were in the middle, or what if 2 unimaginable entities blocked the exit and the entrance.

No one ever crossed the bridge alone at night. If I was going back to the hostel alone, I would wait under the light at the T-junction between Leeds and Chartham streets for other students. Looking ahead at the dark forest knowing I was waiting to cross it would make me think twice, though I would have no choice. On weekends we would go to town and come back to the hostel at 10pm.

 

4 Months Later

The time for the application of the hostel rules came. We had experienced freedom for a full 4 months. According to the old students, it was a lot compared to the previous year’s 4 weeks. The previous boarding master was so unfair the students were forced to boycott for his transfer. The next boarding master would know what to do, which he did. When the rules were applied nobody griped. We were not allowed to come to the hostel after 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays. The other boarding master, not after 9pm. Studying in the hall at 7pm on Fridays was optional. The other boarding master, it was compulsory.

Now I was used to the bridge, but not to cross it alone. It went for each and every student that was using it. On Saturday I was in town like the previous day to ease my mind, with 3 of my dormmates because we had all become acquainted with one another. Then I discovered later that my dormmates were not getting back, they had the permission to stay out for the weekend. The time when I discovered that was just after 10pm. I had less than an hour to get back to the hostel before the roll-call. I left them. On the way to the junction there was no one going my way. When I got to the junction I waited under the street light, leaned on the pole, and frequently looked at my watch. The time was going on and nobody was appearing. Before me on the other side of the street a footpath that we used began and went down the slope to the beginning of the horrifying darkness. I was staring at the darkness and beyond the forest at the lustre of the boys’ hostel, wondering if anyone was coming at all. I had 15 minutes left.

Out of the corner of my left eye down Chartham street, a girl was coming up the street alone. She was wearing a long white dress. She passed me and went down the slope on the footpath. She did not seem to have seen me, or I thought she did not see me. She went down and disappeared from sight as the slope was high. She was going to the bridge. I told myself I had a partner. And a partner she was, she got me thinking. I thought no student ever crossed the bridge alone at that time of the night. I was definitely sure she did not see me under the light. Or if she did, which turned out to be, why did she ignore me as if I was not there at all? The least she could have done was to stop and ask if I was waiting for others to cross the bridge with.

That way she would have known if I was waiting for other students, so that we would have gone to the bridge together, rather than risking her life by going to the bridge alone. If she didn’t see me as I had initially thought, where did she get the guts to cross the bridge alone? I was a male, yet I was scared out of my wits to go down the slope alone. She was wearing a white dress. The colour could attract anything bad camouflaged by the darkness. I ran down the slope after her and found her waiting for me, so it appeared. Before I even greeted her, she said something weird and scary too.

‘I thought you didn’t see me.’

I was wearing dark coloured clothes under the glaring light. It was supposed to be me who thought she didn’t see me. She greeted me and we walked. I told her my name and that I was a new-comer. She told me she was Sylvia Bala and that she came to the college two years ago from Lady Frere. When we got on the bridge the time was 10 minutes before 11pm. If I did not hurry, I was going to miss the roll call. But I could not pass her. The bridge was too narrow to pass anyone in front. The bridge was not longer than 80m. We could not have taken more than 2 minutes to cross it. But we took 10 minutes. And in the middle of the bridge, I heard echoes of voices down under the bridge. But she didn’t seem to have heard anything. And I didn’t want to scare her by asking some frightening questions.

Every time we crossed the bridge in groups or more than 2, we never heard a wind whistle. And I was dead certain I heard a medley of different voices talking indistinctly, saying things. The passage was made of steel and was resounding every footstep that walked on it. But I was only hearing my footsteps. I might have created some kind of logic to my thinking that the reason I was hearing those voices was that I was crossing the bridge alone, that Sylvia had somehow vanished before we reached the centre of the bridge, if she was wearing a black dress.

But the white dress was visible in front of me, meaning she was there.

Now we were walking on the street to the school premises under the lights. I got a good chance to take a good look at her. She was beautiful beyond description. I had sworn I would never mix books with girls. But it just happened, unavoidably. I took my chance and talked to her. She took me by surprise. She told me she was attracted to me. That was why she waited for me.

Looking at her, I told myself all the things I had thought on the bridge came to my mind as a result of feeling unsafe for having a company of a girl, whom I was responsible for her safety on the bridge. It now crossed my mind as we walked hand-in-hand that I might have heard the reverberation of her footsteps, that I might have made a mistake back there under the light when I was looking at the time. Or even better, it had to be the work of the bad things in the dark, so I would run away from her, so she would become easy target for them to snatch. When strange things were happening in the dark, the occupants of darkness would doubtless be

responsible. Clearly, there was nothing wrong with us. I was telling myself how lucky I was when she gripped my hand and suddenly paused, the kind of reaction when seeing something unexpected.

‘David, I can’t go to the hostel. It is closed and the watchmen are patrolling around the hostel. If they catch me trying to sneak in, I will be in deep shit. Our hostel is not like yours. You have 3 entrances with unlockable doors and there are no watchmen. Can I sleep in your dorm, please?’ I said sure. I told myself the last thing I needed was to ruin the special thing we just had by asking her where did she hope to sleep if she knew it was impossible to get to the hostel at that time of the night, if she had not met me. It was obvious, if there was no way in, she would have to take another risk and go back. And this time, really alone on the bridge, she would not escape the occupants of darkness. We would have to wait in a safe place where we would see the boarding master take the roll-call before we went in. I told myself the excruciatingly painful ten latches on my butt that I would get for missing the roll-call on Monday was nothing compared to what I got.

We sat there and after a short while we saw the boarding master. Then suddenly, without any reason, she changed and looked very serious, I got confused. I asked her why. She said the boarding master was reminding her of the previous boarding master. When I asked her why she was bothering herself, the man was a fiend, the look she gave me, if she was a bad girl, she would have broken up what we just had that instant and left me. She half barked at me saying she was missing him because he was her grandfather. I truly apologized. She realized she was the one at fault, I really didn’t know. She apologized too.

 

▫

Every Sunday morning the church service was held in the hall. Sylvia was sitting in the front row. My heart leaped with joy. On this Sunday too, as I was looking at her, I caught a glimpse of her casting a deep look at the boarding master. Now it dawned on me that all along she had been giving the boarding master the same look. It was just that I never noticed because I didn’t know her then. I truly sympathized with her. After the church we went to the movies in town.

Late in the evening I was in my dorm and the following day would be Monday. The awaiting punishment frustrated me. I calmed myself down by telling myself it would be over the moment it started.

Monday came. I woke up earlier than usual. The idea was to go to the principal’s office alone and not wait for my name to be called out at the lines and be embarrassed like others in front of the whole school.

I hurried down the passage that went past the lines. And I was the only one going to the principal’s office. I went past the fresh pairs of wet foot prints of 4 people. The foot prints didn’t go all the way, as if the people who were making those foot prints had suddenly stopped walking and then vanished into thin air. In the office, the list was on the table. I told the principal my reason for being there. He took the list and looked at it and stopped and then looked at me. He asked me what did I want in his office. Before I opened my mouth, he thrust the list to me. I looked at it and saw my name and surname. I went back to my dorm. When I passed the spot of wet footprints they were gone. I asked myself how long did it take for wet foot prints to dry. I didn’t spend more than 2 minutes in the principal’s office. I thought there was some kind of a mistake. My name was not supposed to be on that list.

▫

 

That month went by perfectly, with me and Sylvia seeing each other every day. I had brought attention and envy to myself. I was the first guy in her life since she came to the college. My dormmates never stopped to ask me how our love affair came about. My classmates were talking about it. I always told them it was the way we met, a very odd way to bloat the relationship, like that.

On Friday after school, my dormmates and I went to ease our minds in town. We enjoyed ourselves immensely and left at 10pm. We were so drunk we made a lot of noise we could have ruffled anything under the bridge. When we got to our dorm we spent some time before the roll-call was taken. After the roll-call, I sat silently on the bed for a while. Then I felt an irresistible urge to go to the girl’s hostel. I felt it was my turn now to go and sleep in Sylvia’s dorm and give her a wonderful break she deserved.

All along she had been risking getting caught sneaking out at night, coming to my dorm, and returning to her dorm very early in the morning. I was quite aware of the fact that I would be kind of invading her privacy because we never talked about me going to sleep in her dormitory. My actions, fuelled with liquor, were those of a guy who did not trust his girl, who wanted to catch her with another guy. But I was only looking on the bright side. Giving her a wonderful surprise with my unexpected visit was the bright side for me. Without saying anything to anyone, I left. I went out through the back entrance. I went past the first block and turned round to the back of the hall.

Once I was at the back, I started to prowl, very watchful. On the first floor of the girls’ hostel, there was an unlockable window which had resulted in many boys getting caught and kicked out of the boys’ hostel, and sometimes getting kicked out of the entire school. I climbed up the water pipe into the window and made my way through to her dorm. When I got inside, I was confronted by 13 empty beds and the 14th occupied by Sylvia. I thought about waking her. But I decided not to. If she didn’t feel my presence next to her which was very unlikely, whenever she woke up in the course of the night it would be a wonderful surprise. But there was no way she was not gonna be woken up even by my lifting the blankets. But when I lifted the blankets getting in bed, she never woke up. I fell asleep shortly.

Then something that had never happened to me before happened. In my dorm I would sometimes hear some muffled cries and guttural sounds coming from those who were experiencing it. They called it incubus. I struggled and made my way through to waking up. I violently raised my head and looked around. On the window sill a naked girl was sitting looking out the window. And next to me Sylvia was dead sleeping. I couldn’t see who the naked girl was. Her back was turned to me. I returned to sleep very fast, not of my own free will, just when I was about to wake Sylvia. I woke up at 4 in the morning before anyone woke up. The beds were occupied. Now I made up my mind. I decided to go back. And this time I would be sober.

I spent the whole day in my dorm and kept away from temptation as best I could. I waited for the same time that I left the previous night. When the time came, I left. In Sylvia’s dorm, the beds were empty, save hers. I got in the bed and she never woke up. The plan was to pretend to be sleeping. I would face the window so that, unlike before, I would only open my eyes and make no indication that I had woken, like raising my head and sitting up straight. The moment I did, I would see the window sill on which the girl had sat. It was not the girl I was interested in, but the empty beds. It had crossed my mind that the reason I slept so quickly was because of the beds. I had woken up at a time when the girls were coming to their beds. Because I was not supposed to see them come, I had to go back to sleep the way I did. If I made no indication that I had woken up, I would see them come.

 

2 Hours Later

 

I opened my eyes. The girl on the window sill was sitting in the same position. I watched for 15 minutes and the door opened. The girls walked in, stark naked. Then the girl on the window sill turned around and looked at them. The only difference between the girl on the window sill and the naked girls was that the naked girls were bald. Otherwise, they were all naked. I thought if the girl on the window sill found out I was awake, I would die instantly, in spite of the fact that the girl on the window sill was Sylvia, because I had seen something I shouldn’t have seen. And Sylvia beside me was in dreamland. The other Sylvia on the window sill went through the window, leaving it intact, and rocketed away out of sight. I stayed awake until I left at 4 in the morning.

In my dorm, I thought deeply. The empty beds in Sylvia’s dorm, the naked girls, Sylvia’s double on the window sill, the wet foot prints of the invisible people on the passage to the principal’s office, my name that appeared on the roll call list, which was not supposed to be there because I missed the roll call, the time we took to cross the bridge, the echoes under the bridge and Sylvia’s silent footsteps, all led me to an investigation about Sylvia and the previous boarding master.

On swearing that I would never talk about it, some old students believed there was something nasty about the previous boarding master. Whatever they saw they told themselves it was not their business. Since that night, the night they refused to mention its day and date, as if mentioning it would bring back the previous boarding master, they feared him and detested him like hell. Where I saw those wet foot impressions, the previous boarding master was seen there at midnight so attentive, waving hands in the air, he might have been engaged in a serious conversation with the people none of those who saw him could see. A girl who saw him come out of Sylvia’s dorm after midnight got dumb. The only girl she confided in was her cousin and her best friend. She wrote to her where and when she saw him and asked her to tell no one. But her friend couldn’t help telling her brother. Then the best friend of the brother’s sister was never seen again. The brother told me because no one had ever made that kind of enquiry about the previous boarding master and Sylvia before.

 

Sunday One Week Later

On the first Sunday of our relationship, when it was all good, we had gone to the movies. After the movies we had gone back to the college. I had stopped in the middle of the bridge and gazed down at the stream. She had asked me why. I had told her it was reminding me of the stream back at home where I used to spend Sunday afternoons. It made me feel relaxed and at peace with myself. She had asked me I would be spending those afternoons with whom. Expecting that kind of question, I had told her and told her I had broken up with her long before I came to the college. I had told her how much I would love us to spend one Sunday afternoon down there. She had passionately agreed and added that as many Sundays as I wanted. When we met on Saturday she agreed excitedly when I asked her about spending Sunday at the stream. So, we were going to spend that Sunday there.

After the lunch I waited at the hall for her. After a short while she came looking more stunning. While others went to the movies and to Independence stadium to watch soccer, Sylvia and I went to a more tranquil and romantic spot. We got to the stream and sat under the tree. We looked at each other and smiled. Then we gently kissed. I paused and gently pushed her away.

‘I just remembered. It’s something I used to do with my ex before we kissed. It does more than just enhance passion when kissing. We used to whirl, about 40 times with our eyes closed. The giddiness would send us to the ground. And then we would kiss. Kissing with our heads spinning…. it is a totally new experience. You just feel like you have never felt before. But if you don’t like it, it’s fine, we won’t do it.’

 

‘Let’s do it. I love to try new things.’

‘Okay. Because it’s new to you, we are going to do 20.’

‘Okay.’ Sylvia said closing her eyes. I counted to 3 and we began. I only whirled once and stopped and watched her. On the 9th count I reached behind the tree, in a flash, for the brick and slugged her at the back of her head. She burst out in a short scream and dropped to the ground unconscious. Next to where the brick was, I removed the soil that I buried the rope with and bound her hands and feet together and then gagged here. I carried her near the water, put her down and sat next to her. Coming to the stream was not for fun, for me. Sylvia didn’t know that I had gone to the stream alone late Saturday. I had put the brick and stashed the rope behind the tree. Whirling 40 times with her eyes closed was all part of my plan to kill her unexpectedly. I had never whirled with anyone before. I had specifically chosen that tree because it was totally concealed from the bridge above.

She regained consciousness. She opened her eyes and discovered she was tied up and gagged. I pushed her into the water with one hand and held the rope with the other. She drifted to the centre and stopped. The length of the rope couldn’t allow her body to drift any further. I knew she was a little gote. It was the most fortunate thing for me that her case had plainly presented itself to me, though the discovery was accidental. Or was it? But I had to convince myself. She was a gote together with her grandfather. But that was not for me to find out because I did not know where he was. To break their contact which was enabling them to do unkind to the college students, was the best thing I could do.

It was highly possible that at the time I discovered her dark side, those 13 girls in her dorm were not the only ones she had victimized. And it was just a matter of time before I joined them, as a gote’s boyfriend. If she came to the college 2 years ago, then obviously she had freely been picking her victims each year, with the help of her grandfather. If her grandfather could be seen roaming the passage of the girls’ hostel after midnight, when he was no longer working at the college, it would come to a point where the entire college students became the victims of goteism. For that reason, Sylvia had to die, so that those who had not yet become victims and the new students of 1987 would be safe.

 

My investigation about Sylvia and her grandfather had included some visits to the library where I read about goteism and everything I thought would help me. Gotes who practised ‘black’ working or black magic were hunted down and destroyed. To gotes, goteism is a religion. Therefore, religion has no end. What was done by gotes in the 16th century could be done by present day gotes. And what was done to gotes then, could be done to gotes of today.

If anyone accused of practicing black goteism then, was thrown into the water and they drowned if they were not gotes or floated if they were, wouldn’t the same method apply to the present day gotes because nothing has changed? Of course, it would. Sylvia floated. I pulled her out of the water and dragged her by the rope to the tree. I tied the rope around her neck and threw it over the bough. It went over and came down. I pulled it down. As I did, she lifted until she hung in the air. Then she jiggled and jiggled, the veins in her temples swelled out and her face bloated. When the jiggling ceased, I let go of the rope. She dropped to the ground lifeless. I pulled her back to the water. When her body got in the water, it drifted downstream with the slow current of the water. I followed it along the bank of the stream until it got tangled in the density of shrubs and bushes that narrowed the width of the stream. The undergrowth in the water made it impossible for the objects as big as Sylvia’s body to float through. When her body stopped drifting, I looked around. We were completely shut out from the open. Not even the bridge was visible. Smiling to myself, I turned around and headed back to the college.

 

 

 

EXPOSED: Part One

 

INTRODUCTION

 

The story begins at Umtata Technical College in 1986. The main characters, Bongani Baleka and Manyano Ntsasa, meet at the college and become friends. Bongani comes from Mdantsane and Manyano comes from Butterworth. At this college, there is a big fuss about the new-comers being ill-treated by old students. The worse treatment goes to the boys. The men are fairly treated. Bongani and Manyano decide to use the winter holidays to go for manhood – ukwaluka (traditional circumcision), so they too can be treated fairly and be able to enjoy the 2nd half of the year like human beings, and not like nothings from nowhere.

Before any boy can go for ukwaluka, he must first go for a traditional check-up and have mutis prepared for him and have himself strengthened against goteism during his initiation process at the forest.

In Butterworth, the witch-doctor that Manyano goes to for a check-up and protection tells him he is surrounded by the shadows of evil circles. He tells Manyano he is going to help him be a man. But after the completion of the initiation, he must go to Port St Johns because his part ends here, with the initiation. This means even if Manyano did not go for ukwaluka, what was going to happen to him at the forest would still happen to him outside the forest.

In Mdantsane, the witch-doctor that Bongani consults with makes a shocking revelation about his family. The friends successfully complete the phase. They go back to school as men now. At school, something strange happens to Manyano. It forces them to go to Port St Johns. There, they are taken to the darkroom where they are given brown papers to look at. They are told to recite the words:

 

‘Show Yourself Gote So I Can See Who You Are.’

 

As they say the words, square screens about 15cm x 15cm show up at the centre of the papers in full colour. On Bongani’s screen, a naked female figure is lying on the floor. It’s Gempy, his mother’s sister. The figure on Manyano’s screen is a man. Manyano has no idea who the man is. The voice in the darkroom tells Manyano that the real gote is hiding behind the innocent man. The voice tells Bongani that the woman on the screen is the real gote. But Bongani does not want to destroy her. Manyano must find out who is really begoteing him, the one behind the innocent man.

 

 

EXPOSED: Part One

 

Bongani Baleka and Manyano Ntsasa met at Umtata Technical College. They shared the same dormitory. Bongani came from Mdantsane - N.U.2. Manyano came from Butterworth - Ibika township. They were the new ones in dorm 13, and that made them friends. They had no girlfriends. They had no choice. Freshmen couldn’t have girls on the first months. They would wait until the old boys had chosen first. That was one of the rules set out by the old boys.

The old boys were giving the freshers such a rough ride. The only thing that made things so unbearably worse was the fact that the old boys were men. The “Old Boys” term was just an expression. The freshers who were men were treated fairly compared to the boys. That made Bongani and Manyno decide to become men by undergoing a traditional circumcision (ukwaluka), so they would be treated fairly. They decided to use the winter holidays.

 

A Few Months Later

 

The time came for the freshers to choose the girls. Bongani and Manyano found theirs; Tracy Mpela, for Bongani and Vuseka Mbotyi, for Manyano. The girls were in different dorms, though they were always together. Tracy was in dorm 16 and Vuseka in dorm 20. They understood the period their boyfriends were going through. Many freshers didn’t mind the year- long oppression rather than doing something they were not ready for.

David Malgas, who came from Butterworth, who had a special liking for Bongani and Manyano thought it was time to talk seriously with them. He told them he was just as prepared for the year’s suffering. He besought them not to go for manhood and stated his reasons:

 

• Winter holidays were short. The holidays would be over before they made any significant progress in their healing process.

 

• The risk they were putting themselves at was high and unnecessary.

 

• The reports he had heard about boys going missing from their places of initiation, in the course of their phase, had all taken place in cold winter holidays.

 

David begged them like they were his own brothers. They were not going to change their minds, David realized. They told him those who went missing did not prepare themselves well enough. They told him going to the Point (Entabeni or Ehlathini) was a matter of life and death. Anyone going out there had to be pretty sure about coming back.

Seeing that their minds were made up and that their girls were behind them, David wished them good luck. It was only a few weeks before the schools closed for the winter holidays. And their girls were invited to both the Going and Coming ceremonies (Umguyo and Umgidi). They would only call their respective places – Uitenhage and Port Elizabeth – and tell their parents why they would not come home. Bongani and Manyano decided to do it on the same day, so that they would go to the Point on the same day and come back on the same day.

 

 

3 Weeks Later - Tuesday

The schools closed and the students left. On Saturday of the same week, Bongani and Manyano would go to the Point. The Going ceremony would start on Friday and end Saturday morning when the boys would be leaving for the Point. They had agreed on going for the traditional check-up on Thursday. The witch-doctor would tell them what lay ahead for them during their stay at the forest.

 

Thursday

 

Bongani and Manyano called each other about the time of leaving. Though it would be impossible to be seen at the same time, to be close to the same time was better. The moment they hung up, they left. The person Manyano was visiting, who was called Bhunga Mhlophe, famous for getting the job done, lived in the village called Ezazulwana, not very far from where Manyano lived. Mveleli Gugu, the man Bongani was visiting, also famous for doing a good job, lived in N.U.6.

 

In Butterworth, Manyano sat before Bhunga in an empty room with candles that were steadily burning. He took a long muse at Manyano and then spoke.

‘Boy, you are surrounded by the shadows of evil circles. I can’t see very clearly. But I know what to do. I’m gonna help you be a man. But you must know something about your stay out there. It’s part of my job. The going ceremony is going to be fine. But wait….’ The man said. He went behind Manyano and took a big calabash. It was half filled with a dark liquid. He asked Manyano to dip his face. The oily dark liquid covered Manyano’s face. Bhunga looked at Manyano’s face for a short while and spoke.

‘That is better. You will be at the Point. But I only see you for a week then you go missing. There is a lot going on. But my concern at the moment is to get you back from the Point. What we normally do with boys like you is that we fill your body from head to toes with tiny razor-slits and close them with our mixture. This method is primary. It can work wonders alone. But the thing with you is that you are surrounded. So, I can’t risk it. You need other things to go with it. You see, even if you didn’t go for manhood, you would still go missing. And it was a matter of days. Now, after the Coming ceremony you must go to Port St Johns because I will have done my piece by the end of the phase. You see boy, this business of going missing does not end there, at the Point. It goes on forever, in and out of the Point everywhere. You just have to keep protecting yourself. So don’t think you are safe when you are out. The real danger is in the settlement at large. These freaks are unstoppable. But we can prevent them. A just and simple prevention is not enough. If there is anyone to blame, definitely, it’s God. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not irreverent. If nothing is above Him, not even gotes, why doesn’t He terminate the damn things, all at once?’ Bhunga said, sounding a little bit disgusted.

 

2 Hours Later

 

Manyano was back at his home. He went to the phone to call Bongani but didn’t find him. He thought he must have been delayed. He decided to call after an hour. He told his folks about

going to Port St Johns after the completion of the phase. To them it was good news. They told him he would have their unwavering support all the way. 40 minutes later Bongani called. He told Manyano he just came and got his message. Manyano told him what he told his parents.

‘Well, I’m lucky I’m not surrounded and I was not gonna go missing because gotes don’t want me, at the moment. Mveleli is not just a witch-doctor. He is a seer as well. He looked back in my past and saw something, not about me, but about my entire family. He asked me when did Mavis have a still-birth. I couldn’t believe my ears. You know how close we are, me and Mavis. She could never hide something as serious as this one from me. But Mveleli knew what he was talking about. And guess what? Seeing that I was hearing something new, he said I was kept in the dark on purpose, and that I must pretend to be still in the dark. This is unbelievable. My younger sister, Nolitha, is not the last born, but the 2nd last born. Until now, I only knew her to be the last born. To be made a damn stupid like this is so damn crazy. I thought I had a wonderful family. How long are they planning on hiding it from me? I’m gonna be their moron until when? It’s making me sick. Whatever happened at home, I deserve to know. And that is another big question. What happened at home that is so bad they have kept it a deep secret even from me? You know what, they can keep their damn secret, I don’t give a cold shit. But I know one thing. The day of the truth will come. So, my friend, a fine Going ceremony. See you on the 11th.’

‘Same to you.’ Manyano said and they hung up.

 

The Next Day - Friday

 

Everything went according to plan. At 3pm the area elders started to arrive at Bongani’s home. The youth sang the Going songs. The elders and the suitable middle-aged men gathered in the makeshift kraal, with Bongani in the centre covered with a new Going blanket. A goat was slaughtered inside the kraal.

The ceremony lasted the whole night until morning. Bongani left for the Point in the company of a few elders, middle-aged and young men. At the Point, the main and final stage of the ceremony took place.

 

One Week Later, At The Point

 

Manyano was feeling great for being a man, though it was starting to become painful. Fortunately, they went there knowing the greater part of the phase would be nothing but pains. That enabled them to pluck up guts to stand up to the hardship of the phase and not do something stupid in order to escape the painful experience and end up with the brand of being an Incomplete man (ilulwana), where the consequences are unbearably hostile to the branded man, imposed on him by the Complete men. On the following week, Manyano would be gone and would never be heard from again, despite the boys - amanqalathi - who stayed with him throughout the phase. On the 2nd week, it would have happened as Bhunga had said it would, if Manyano had not contacted him. On the first night of the 2nd week signs of activities outside were visible and audible. Flashes of different colours of lights were illuminating the exterior of the hut and the surrounding area at intervals. By the time the signs came alive, the boys were snoring.

The next thing, Manyano heard a medley of indistinct female voices all talking at the same time in whispers around the hut so close Manyano might have even heard what the commotion was about, if only it was intended for him to hear. He knew it was about him. But what were they saying that they did not talk about before they left wherever they came from? That was

bound to be until the last day of the phase. Their efforts would be as useless as their mumbling and muffling.

 

▫

Their girls would not stay to see the Coming ceremony. The schools were opening on Monday of the 5th week. On the weekend of the 4th week, Bongani was ready. But he couldn’t leave the Point because Manyano had to be given another week. The Coming ceremony had to be just like the Going ceremony. At school, their coming late would be understood.

Their girls would surely spend the opening week in anxiety because it had come of a sudden that they would miss the Coming ceremony. There was nothing they could do because they would have no excuse for being late. The weekend of the 5th week came, and on Saturday the Coming ceremony took place. On Monday Bongani met Manyano in Butterworth and they left for school.

At dusk they arrived at school and received a warm welcome from their dormmates. On the 1st and 2nd weeks, the tradition of the rite of passage from boyhood to manhood forbade them from talking much, or at all, in public, or to move about anywhere. Going to school and coming back and going to the dining hall was the only moving about they could do. The following day they would attend classes.

The clothes they wore (Khaki-coloured clothes with a cap and a jacket, worn under all weather conditions) were bearing the sign of the phase they had gone through (which were to be worn, day in and day out, for a period of no less than 2 months). As it was a known case, the principal and the boarding master accepted it. The latter did more than that. He appreciated it.

David couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw them back and safe, and having done it. Now they would spend the remaining half of the year like human beings, and not like low-life scums.

 

The Next Day

 

They went to school in their clothes, which were attracting too much attention as if they had done something that had never been done before. It was because they were the only ones in the entire school who had done it. They had decided not to see their girlfriends in those 2 weeks because they would have to tell everything about the Coming ceremony.

 

2 Weeks Later

 

The following day was Monday and the day to start talking to their girls. On Monday morning Bongani and Manyano went to the hall for breakfast as usual. After the breakfast they decided to wait outside at the entrance for their girls. 10 minutes later David came out of the hall to meet them. When they told him who they were waiting for, David told them he would love to wait with them but the time was short. So, he excused himself and left. They waited another 5 minutes and their girls did not appear. They realized they were going to be late if they waited longer. They got back inside to look among the few girls who remained finishing up. When they did not see their girls, they thought they did not come to the hall at all. They left hoping to see them during break.

 

Break Time

 

 

Bongani and Manyano didn’t see Tracy and Vuseka where they thought they would see them. The only person they saw was David.

‘We are still looking for them.’ Bongani said, and suddenly, David appeared to be in a hurry. He said he had not seen them and rushed off. Bongani and Manyano looked at each other and just shrugged. They thought Sylvia might help them. Sylvia was David’s girlfriend and Tracy’s dormmate. All of Sylvia’s dormmates including Vuseka were eating together in the hall and sharing the same table. If David didn’t know where Tracy and Vuseka were, which was understandable, Sylvia would know for sure. The thought that seemed to have occupied Manyano and Bongani’s minds was that since Tracy and Vuseka did not spend the holidays at their homes, they might have decided to go home for the weekend. Because they were not sure, they went to Sylvia’s class. The date was the 1st of August, 21 days after the schools were re-opened. In Sylvia’s class Bongani and Manyano found a few girls. They said Sylvia was last seen in class on Friday 29th, 18 days after the schools were opened. Bongani and Manyano thought she might have gone home. But they had to be pretty sure. They decided to ask Sylvia’s dormmates and Vuseka’s dormmates after school. They left for their class.

 

After school they went to the hall. In the hall they took the front table to be able to see every girl that came in. And they did see Vuseka’s dormmates but Tracy’s dormmates. They thought they might get something about Tracy’s dormmates by asking Vuseka’s dormmates about Vuseka and Tracy. And if they did not go home, where Vuseka was, Tracy was there. They finished their meals and went to wait outside. They did not wait long before Vuseka’s first dormmate came out of the hall. They greeted her and told her they were looking for Vuseka.

‘I don’t know where she is.’

‘Didn’t she say where she was going?’

‘She did not go anywhere.’

‘What do you mean? Where is she?’

‘I have no idea. I think that is what we would like to know in the dorm. She spent the whole Saturday in bed saying she was not feeling well. But she did not want to go to the hospital saying it was nothing serious. The following day when we woke up her bed was empty. She has not been seen since. We are all baffled.’

‘And Tracy, do you know anything about her?’

‘I really wouldn’t know.’ The girl said. Bongani and Manyano thanked her. They looked at each other.

‘Do you believe her?’ Asked Manyano.

‘Why would she lie? Of course…’ Bongani paused. Two more girls were coming to pass them. They greeted the girls and asked the same questions they asked the other girl. The girls told them the same thing and added that Vuseka’s friend’s dormmates were all gone. They told them they heard it from the matrons who were checking every dorm looking for the occupants of dorm 16. Bongani and Manyano thanked them. They found it exceptionally strange that the entire occupants of dorm 16 suddenly disappeared without clues. Then they remembered: David. The way he looked when they asked him about Vuseka and Tracy and the way he hurried away.

‘He is hiding something.’

‘So, let’s go ask him.’ Manyano said. In his dorm, David was resting on his bed looking up at the ceiling. He appeared to be absorbed in thoughts. He sat up straight when he saw Bongani and Manyano walk in.

‘You see David, we came late. So, we don’t know anything. Tell us what you know about our girls, and Sylvia too. No use denying. You know something.’

 

‘But….’

‘No buts. They are our girls.’

‘Not anymore.’

‘Tell us about it then.’

‘Where am I gonna start? Well, Sylvia was my girl. Last year, there was another boarding master who, according to her, was her grandfather. Through my investigation, I discovered that though he is no longer working here, Sylvia’s grandfather comes here at the college in the darkest hours of the night when everybody is asleep. He thought everybody would be asleep. He has been seen twice in different parts of the college, down at the classrooms and up here in girls’ hostel. He comes to the college to join forces with his granddaughter. My investigation came about as a result of some nasty things that I saw in Sylvia’s dorm the first time I went to sleep in her dorm. Add to that were other nasty things that took place the very first time I met her on the bridge, which I never believed because there was no way they could be true, as I thought at that time. I’m sure you don’t want me to go through all those bad things. I would have to start from the beginning. It’s a long story. It won’t help you with anything right now.’

‘What is the bottom line?’

‘She was a gote. I hanged her and dumped her body into the stream. So, her dormmates, and Vuseka as well, went with her to wherever she went because her dormmates’ whereabouts remain a mystery. Since I killed her, nobody has seen them. They just vanished because they were actually not the real girls. If you go now to where her body is, you won’t find any girls there. So, what are you going to do?’ Asked David. Manyano looked at Bongani and said,

‘This weekend Bongani we are going to Port St Johns. What do you think?’

‘I think it’s a good idea.’

‘What about me?’

‘You can’t come with us David. Our girls are gone, there is nothing we can do. We are going there for something else.’ Manyano said. They left David stunned. They were going to go on Friday after school. If they got there late to be seen, there were rooms available for visitors because people from as far afield as Johannesburg and Cape Town were visiting this incredible specialist, Bhunga had told Manyano.

 

Friday Afternoon

 

The time when they got to the bus rank was 2:12pm. The bus took them and left full, with other passengers standing on the passage. In spite of the fact that the bus broke down, apparently, due to overloading, and that they had to wait another stretch of time before another bus came for them, they arrived in Port St Johns fine. They were taken to the guest rooms and were shown their room. They were going to be seen in the morning at 11am. But what they did not know was that the moment they went through the gate, everything about them was known. It went for everyone who came.

 

The Next Day

 

They woke up at 8:15am. At 10:05 the breakfast was brought to them. By 11:00 they had to be in the other room where other visitors would be. There were 6 other visitors. 2 came from Durban and 4 from Port Elizabeth. The rooms where everything was done were in the house known as the Work House, written on top of the main door. This house stood in the middle of 2 blocks of flats and were all separated from the main house by 2 large waiting rooms. On the

left of the Work House the block consisted of 5 adjoining flats. Manyano and Bongani had occupied the first flat. On the right the block had 8 adjoining flats. Manyano and Bongani finished their breakfast in time to see others go. They got out and closed the door. There was a man at the door of the Work House. When he saw them, he called someone inside. He let others in but Bongani and Manyano. They got confused, and while in that state of confusion, a young lady came up to them.

‘Take them to the Darkroom Sisanda.’ The man said.

‘Come with me please.’ The lady said. They followed her inside. They took the passage and went past several rooms and stopped at the door of the closed room. The door opened and Sisanda beckoned them in. Bongani moved aside to let Manyano in. He was only accompanying him and was going to wait outside the room. But Sisanda told him to get in as well. Bongani walked in hesitantly and the door closed behind him. The windowless room was frightfully dark. On the left side of the door were two chairs that leaned against the wall. Before the chairs were 2 dimly lit lamps. Next to the lamps were 2 square brown papers about 35cm x 35cm. Next to the papers were 2 white cups filled with semi-thick dark liquid. A male voice that filled the whole room greeted them. The voice said the person talking could not show himself to them.

‘I’m not here in the room materially. I don’t allow myself to be seen by those who come for my help. It is the way I work. That is why I’m impenetrable by gotes or anyone with evil intent. Now, pick the cups up and drink what is inside. I’m gonna give the mixture 3 minutes to penetrate your bodies. You will know the mixture has worked on your bodies when I ask you to touch your faces. You will tell me you can’t feel them. Then I will ask you to pick the papers up, blow out the lamps, lift the papers in front of your faces and stare at them. I will ask you to recite the words:

 

“Show Yourself Gote So I Can See Who You Are.”

 

Repeat the words 10 times. But you will see what you want to see before you get to ten.’ The voice said. They did what they were instructed to do. When they said they couldn’t feel their faces, the voice asked them to pick up the papers and put out the light. They held the papers before their faces and stared at them and started to call out the words. On the papers, square screens about 15cm x 15cm in the centre of the papers were faintly and slowly showing up until they were clearly visible in full colour on the 4th call.

On the 7th call figures popped up into view on small screens. On Bongani’s screen a naked female figure was lying on the floor in the sitting room between the sofa and the coffee table. She was lying on her stomach, her head raised to reveal her face. Bongani gaped involuntarily, his eyes goggled with horror and disgust. It was Gempy, his mother’s sister who loved him most. She lived in N.U.3 in the area of 87. She was a widow. Her husband died ten years ago, when she had just come out of the nursing college, having completed her nursing diploma. She had no financial constraints because she had no children. Why goteism? Bongani was thinking, his face wrinkling with anger. The more he stared at her, the more she seemed to be mocking and scorning him.

 

The figure on Manyano’s screen was a man. His chin was hidden behind a shaggy beard. He was between sturdy and fat with average height. He was sitting in a blue velvet sofa looking up at Manyano, with sadness in his face. When he was appearing on the screen his head was bowed and rested on the palms of his hands which were supported by his elbows that rested on his laps. Then as if he was responding to a call, he looked up.

‘Do you know this man?’ The voice asked and Manyano shook his head. Though he was trying so hard to recollect, he didn’t stop to wonder whether or not the immaterial being was

seeing him shake his head in that horrifying darkness. The immaterial being was seeing him shake his head because he asked another question.

‘You sure you have never seen him before?’

‘If I had I would remember.’

‘Then take a look around the room you are seeing him in. It’s a sitting room of a house. Tell me you have never been in that sitting room before in your life, you have never sat in those sofas?’ Manyano didn’t answer. Instead, he took a long look at the sitting room. Nothing formed in his mind. The memory about the whole sitting room was dead. He spoke and said no.

‘I know who this man is. And most importantly, I know who is behind him. You are looking at the wrong person, at the innocent man. Your job is to go and find out who this person behind this man is and then come back. I can’t tell you now, not before the most crucial moment. It’s the procedure. You are not the first one. They always find them and come back with the decision. Some gotes have become aware of this art of discovering them on the paper. And so too, they have devised a plan to elude their seekers. They hide behind the innocent people who will be taken for the real gotes and be destroyed. Now, when you come back you will have to choose between the 2 things that I will have to do to keep you safe. The first one is to remove the person behind the man and bring them before the man. The removal automatically destroys the person you are looking for. By the time you see them, they will be dead. But the innocent man you are looking at right now will not be affected. The 2nd choice is to let the person victimizing you be and only make their spells useless and keep them away from you. That will be in case that person is someone you don’t want to destroy. As for you Bongani, anything you want to do to her because she is the real gote.’

‘At the moment there is nothing I want to do to her.’

‘Anytime you decide to come back, don’t hesitate. Now you may leave.’ The voice said and the darkness cleared up to reveal an empty room. The door opened and revealed Sisanda standing at the door waiting for them. She led them back to their room.

‘Will you be staying for today?’

‘We would love to, but we have permission for Saturday only.’

‘But you must eat something before you leave.’

Sisanda said and they agreed at the same time.

 

2 Hours Later

 

Bongani and Manyano were on the bus back to Umtata.

‘I don’t believe this. How can I see someone I have never seen before this way in a room I have never set foot in before?’

‘He is the master of the thing. So, he knows.’

‘Where am I gonna start? How am I gonna find out?’

‘I don’t know Manyano. I have problems of my own. Maybe you should start with your ex.’

‘My ex-girlfriend?’

‘Obviously you are not getting me. I’m talking about her relatives. I mean, you might have been seeing one of her relatives’ sitting rooms. You know her relatives. Remember you told me how your ex loved to show off, as if she had never had a boyfriend before. One of her relatives got so jealous she could be the one begoteing you. And also, don’t forget to check out your friends in Butterworth and their relatives.’

‘If I couldn’t remember it on the paper, do you think I will remember when I see it?’

 

‘You were seeing it on the paper, magically, many kilometres away. Maybe your presence in the sitting room will do the trick. If you fail there, I think there is one thing that will guarantee your success. Head straight to Bhunga and have him throw bones. Bones are almost 100% accurate.’

‘That is exactly what worries me. Bhunga was the first person on my mind when the voice said I must go and find out by myself. He would make it easy for me by throwing bones and tell me who I’m looking for. Like you just said, the bones are almost accurate. That tiny percentage of the bones’ inaccuracy makes a big difference between life and death of the real gote and the innocent victim. So, I don’t want to be one of those people who kill innocent people because of their belief that the bones are always right, thinking they are killing the actual gotes.’

‘You know, you could be right. Try the hard way then. I know you will succeed. Otherwise, the voice wouldn’t have sent you to go and find out by yourself if it would be impossible. You heard what he said. You are not the only one. They always find them and come back. And there is no better way than taking the witch-doctor route. I bet that is what they choose because, unlike you, they don’t think about the bones’ possible inaccuracy.’ Bongani said. Manyano agreed with Bongani when he said on Friday, they were going to Butterworth to check out his ex-girlfriend’s relatives’ sitting rooms.

 

2 Days Later - Monday

 

Bongani and Manyano were in class. They had only 3 days left. The weather was fine and hot. Feeling any hot was understandable, but not to sweat. Nobody in class was sweating, except Manyano. He was dripping wet, as if his body was doused with a bucket of water. He kept wiping sweat from his face like water coming from the shower overhead. Not only were all the students including Bongani surprised, but the teacher himself. He stopped talking and came closer to Manyano. He asked him if there was something wrong, if he wanted to go lie in his dorm. Manyano said he was fine, in spite of the fact that he was not looking fine, anybody could tell.

Then from behind the teacher a dragonfly emerged. It flew right up to Manyano and stopped in front of his face and hovered. It was only visible to Manyano. It was so frightfully big it might have been 20 times bigger than its normal size. Manyano was not horrified by its size, but was horrified by the fact that its face was that of the man he saw on the paper in Port St Johns. The teacher thought Manyano was staring at him. He retreated to his table. Deep furrows lined the dragonfly’s little brows as it smirked at Manyano. It crossed to the right of Manyano’s face and to the left, still in the same distance from his face.

Manyano followed its direction with his eyes. Then suddenly, it flew in a flash past Manyano’s face to the right so swiftly that Manyano twisted his neck, when too, in a flash, he followed its whisking with his eyes. The neck twist sent him on the floor unconscious. He ejected a clotted semi-yellow scum through the corners of his mouth. The teacher spurted out and came back in no time with another who had a car. Bongani with other students carried Manyano to the car and was rushed to the hospital with Bongani next to him. They only dropped him and went back. Bongani would come back after school.

 

After school, Bongani went straight to the hospital. Manyano had regained consciousness. He was lying on the bed on his back. He was staring at the space before him. He was so transfixed Bongani had to shake him to get his attention. He only responded by talking and never took his eyes off in front of him.

‘The dragonfly. It’s staring at me. Can you see it?’

‘How can I see it now when we didn’t see it in class?’

 

‘Its lips are moving. It’s saying something. But no sound is coming out. Bongani, I’m sweating and sweltering.’

‘I can see that. What do you want me to do?’

‘Go back to PSJ. Tell the voice I want the person behind the man removed at once. I don’t care who it is. Tell him about the dragonfly, that it is unusually big, that it has the face of the man on the paper, and that I can see it with my eyes closed.’

‘Okay I’m going. But what if the voice will want you to do it yourself like before? Or what if he will want you there when he does it?’

‘Maybe you are right. Isn’t it gonna cause problems? It is going to go wherever I go.’

‘Meaning taking a bus won’t do. I just remembered something. David was willing to help. I’m going back to the hostel to talk with him. Just relax…I mean try to relax. Keep staring at each other. I won’t be long.’

‘Don’t be. My eyes are sore.’ Bongani left him hopeful. At the hostel he went straight to David’s dorm. David jumped out of bed when he saw Bongani.

‘Is he alright?’

‘He will be, only if you help us.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘We need to go to PSJ.’

‘But what am I going to do there?’

‘We need transport.’

‘You want me to talk to uncle to take us there?’

‘Yes.’

‘That won’t be a problem. We just have to be at Botha Sigcawu before 4:30pm.’

‘Manyano is gonna be so grateful to you.’

‘Life is at stake. So, let’s go.’

On the way Bongani was silently praying that David’s uncle would not be so hard. But David knew his uncle. He would not have agreed to talk to him. 15 minutes later they were in the building, in David’s uncle’s office. David told him everything that would make him realize coming to him was absolutely necessary.

‘You need my car to go to Port St Johns?’

‘Yes uncle. And we don’t have time.’

‘This….eh, dragonfly, how can it have a man’s face?’

‘It’s one of those things…. of goteism.’

‘If Manyano dies in your hands, before you even get halfway?’

‘Well…. we have not thought about that. We will take that chance. At the hospital he will die for sure because he is not sick. He is merely begoted.’

‘Drive carefully. When can I expect you back?’

‘Well…. I think….’

‘We will be back tomorrow.’ Bongani said helping David. They drove to the hospital and found Manyano in the same staring state.

‘We both have not moved our eyes. It’s talking and it’s serious. But there is no sound coming out of its little mouth. It knows the gap it must leave between us.’

‘Alright Manyano, we are hearing your point. But it’s time to go.’ Bongani said and David nodded. David was driving. Manyano was in the back. It was a Toyota Cressida GLi6, a good car for the road. It was entirely up to David to get them there.

 

25 Kilometres Later

 

The car suddenly went off the road. Fortunately, the ground on the sides of the road was flat. David appeared startled, as if he was not aware of the way the car was taking. When the car

came to a dead stop, Manyano tipped over, hurt his neck and groaned. Bongani flared up at David. David sincerely apologized and said he was so preoccupied for a minute he forgot he was driving. The dragonfly at the back was never interrupted. It remained staring at Manyano. Manyano climbed back to the seat and lay on his back.

‘I’m sorry. I was trying to picture a dragonfly with the face of a man, say my uncle’s face, staring me in the face talking.’

‘That is crazy.’

‘Bongani, I think you should drive. My mind won’t come off it. Next time we won’t be lucky.’

‘Okay, if you can’t help yourself.’ Bongani said and moved to the driver’s side and started the car. He was cautious and not as fast as David, thinking about Manyano in the back. The night was beginning to fall when they pulled up in front of the gate in Port St Johns. A boy got out of the house to open the gate. The car got in and the dragonfly disappeared from the car. Manyano looked around wondering where it was. In the house they were given something to eat and then they went to the rooms.

 

Next Day - Tuesday

 

When they woke up in the morning Manyano was already in the Darkroom listening to the voice.

‘You know, I’m glad that you came to me at all in the first place. You would be gone by now. That thing out of my yard has been trying so hard to get to you. I held it off. When it emerged from behind your teacher it was coming to get you. Your classmates and your teacher would see something they have never seen before. You would dissolve into thin air. That thing, as small as it looks to you, was gonna swallow you and take you to wherever it was unleashed from because it is not the way you see it where it came from. Now, let’s begin. You know what to do. Everything is in front of you.’ Manyano did what he did 3 days ago with Bongani. The man appeared on the little screen in the same sitting room.

‘Above your head is a horn needle attached to the wall. Grope for it.’ Manyano did as he was told and found the needle.

‘You are going to pierce the man on the neck 10 times reciting the words, “Get Out, Of This Man’s Body.” But before you get to 10 you will see what you want to see.’ The voice said and Manyano started.

 

▫

Stephen was working nightshift on that week. Whenever he was working at night, he never woke up before 1pm. But on that Tuesday, he had woken up at 8:30am even Dorothy, his wife was surprised. At 9am he was in the sitting room not looking well. Dorothy tried to get him to tell her what was bothering him and why he woke up so early, but in vain. He kept telling her it was a bad dream. When she wanted to hear about it, he told her he would rather not talk about it. The only thing he asked her to make for him was a cup of tea.

The last time he had the dream was 3 weeks ago. He had had it for 7 consecutive nights. And now the dream had recurred and worse, which was worrying him most, it had recurred in the morning. Reverend Paul Tyesi of Anglican, of which Stephen was a devout member, and to whom he went for his problem on the 5th day of his unchanging dream, told Stephen to live for the day his dream came true. Rev Tyesi was multi-gifted. He was an oneirocritic, a natural weather forecaster, a fortune-teller and a religious healer.

 

When Stephen stated his problem, rev Tyesi told him to tell no one as long as he lived, because he might tell the wrong person and end up begoted. He was referring to Dorothy as the dream was about her. They were the opposite of each other. Stephen was an altruistic God-fearing man. Unknown to Stephen, before rev Tyesi’s revelation, Dorothy was a wicked Devil-fearing woman.

When in the dream Stephen woke up to find her sleeping facing downwards, it was because they couldn’t face the same side of the bed because of certain repulsive elements of good and evil between them. When he tried to wake her, before he could even touch her, he was punched, slapped and kicked by things he couldn’t see, but could hear their terrifying voices, telling him to stay away from her, they did not belong to each other, and told him to go to his Devil-forsaken father, Jesus Christ.

When on the next part of the same dream he woke up to find Dorothy sitting before the dressing table looking in the mirror, her reflection replaced by that of her long-dead mother, by whom Dorothy was introduced to the sect of gotes, it was because they were talking. She was advising Dorothy on how to get rid of Stephen. In the mirror, another reflection of Stephen’s dead father, who was the rev, appeared next to Dorothy’s mother. Their heads turned to look at each other. Then without warning, they had flown away from each other to the opposite directions, their bodies diminishing to the size of a 2-year-old child, simultaneously with the walls of the house on opposite sides, to which they flew, opening up or disappearing. The wall on the left of Stephen’s father vanished into horrifying darkness that looked like the gateway to hell. On the right the wall revealed whiteness so beautiful it looked like the gateway to heaven. Then the 2 voices that came from the 2 sides talked at the same time with clashing tones, hoarse and mellifluous. The hoarse voice from the dark told Stephen’s father to get out of the house to the white, and the mellifluous voice from the white told Dorothy’s mother to get out of the house to the dark. As they flew, the white and the dark voids appeared to be receding at a speed that was proportional to their motion, so that it would take them longer to enter into the darkness and the whiteness.

Then suddenly, they had paused for a second and hovered in space apart, and had then vigorously flown towards each other and whisked past each other, screaming at the nauseous motion of their bodies. Into the dark and white voids, they disappeared. Stephen’s father into the white, Dorothy’s mother into the dark. It was the screams that had woken Stephen up.

Rev Tyesi had told Stephen that his wife’s sinister deeds would one day boomerang on her. And only Stephen would be the witness. Stephen loved his wife dearly. She was kind beyond description. Sometimes it was hard to believe the rev. But the rev’s work was genuine. Stephen lived in anxiety but never stopped to pray that Dorothy would wake up one day and realize it was all wrong from the beginning.

 

▫

Dorothy came to the sitting room with a tray of tea for Stephen. She only took 4 steps from the doorway and the tray dropped to the floor and startled Stephen who had been preoccupied. Dorothy suddenly clutched her neck and gaped her mouth gasping for air, goggled in space displaying hopelessness. She lunged in all directions and wrestled with might and main to pluck out of her neck whatever was choking her. She was violently thrashing sideways trying to scream, but only a distant gurgle was audible. Stephen was cool and calm, telling himself the day had come.

 

▫

 

 

Manyano pierced for the 5th time calling the words with excitement as the man continued thrashing about, his hands stuck to his neck. Manyano went for the 6th time but stopped before the needle touched the paper. The man separated into 2 identical men. One moved away from the other on the screen. He sat on the sofa, bowed his head and rested it on the palms of his hands and supported them with his elbows and rested them on his laps, as if he was avoiding to see his double. The one that was standing was slowly changing appearance. His beard was slowly disappearing, his short hair slowly growing, his cheeks slowly moving inwards, his chin slowly extending down, his arms slowly increasing their length, his stomach slowly moving inwards, his legs slowly increasing their length, his clothes slowly changing to a short sleeved long blue dress. The change was taking place simultaneously. The changed man then suddenly dropped on the floor, like a pole that suddenly lost its support to keep it erect. The man that changed to a woman lay flat on her back. Manyano pierced for the 6th time.

 

▫

Even the next scene never changed Stephen’s deadpan, as if he was expecting it. He watched Dorothy’s skull and all her bones implode, her flesh making deep lacerations as she lay flat on the floor, on her back.

 

▫

As if he was responding to a call, the man who sat on the sofa stood up and came to where his double had stood. Manyano parted his lips and dropped the needle horror-stricken. He recognized, with a pounding heart, the hideous sight of a dead woman on the floor.

‘Mother! Father!’

‘Your mother is the wicked gote that was begoteing you, using your father, her own husband, as a shield. But now, she will never bother you or anyone else again.’ The voice said. Not only did the removal of Manyano’s mother behind his father destroy her, but it also removed the spell from Manyano which resulted in his total loss of memory about his home and his father when he looked at the paper the first time.

 

 

 

 

 

THE WINDOW: Part One

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Philmon Ntanga is the main character. He lives in Mdantsane N.U.8 in the area of 36. It’s December 1992. He has a friend who lives opposite his home just across the street. His name is Jack Filtane. Philmon and Jack enjoy spending weekends at the places of fun. Their particular spots are Maxi’s Tavern at N.U.1 in the area of 24, and Mdantsane Sun Entertainment Centre. On this particular Sunday morning, just after 3am, they are coming from their favourite places of fun, drunk as ever. The taxi drops them at the beginning of their street. They go down the street to their homes. Philmon goes to his room which is facing Jack’s home. He goes to the window to close the curtains. But before he touches the curtains, something so incredible catches his eye. It’s a car, a Mercedes Benz, 1985 model. It is moving in space. It’s coming from down the street going up. It stops above Jack’s home and hovers. The front windows of Jack’s home light up for a few seconds before the car rockets away at an incredible speed and disappears.

The following day Philmon doesn’t ask Jack anything about what he saw. They go out to the tavern. From the tavern they go to Mdantsane Sun. After the fun they go home very late. In his room, Philmon goes to the window to close the curtains, and sees something else. Between the front door and the dining room window, somebody emerges from that small part of the wall and comes out. It’s a woman. She gets out of the gate and goes up the street.

Another weekend comes. Philmon and Jack go out to enjoy themselves. Philmon meets a girl at Mdantsane Sun. Her name is Margaret Myeni. After the fun, Philmon and Jack go home. Halfway down the street in their area, Jack disappears right in front of Philmon. The following day Philmon tells Margaret. She takes Philmon to N.U.13 to her aunt, Nancy Myeni. Jack is the victim of goteism. Nancy promises to bring him back. She prepares the stuff to be used by Philmon. He must use the stuff where Jack disappeared from, on the night and the time he disappeared, which is next Saturday night.

Saturday comes. Margaret calls Philmon in the afternoon and tells him she is sent by her folks to her aunt. When she returns from N.U.13 she goes to Philmon. She has brought him something incredible. Nancy herself has disappeared. That is not possible. What is going on exactly? The time to go to the spot of Jack’s disappearance comes. Philmon goes to the wardrobe for the stuff he got from Nancy. The stuff is gone too. It is unbelievable.

 

 

Nancy’s weird disappearance has taken the story further, much further, in its sequel, beyond anyone’s wildest imagination.

 

 

THE WINDOW: Part One

 

Theday is Sunday 2oth, December 1992. The time is 4:17 in the morning, just 3 minutes after the dream that woke me up. I dreamed about Nancy coming home on a bus. As if I knew she was coming, I went up the street to the bus stop on the main road. I waited for the bus which came shortly. It had tinted windows which made it impossible to see anyone inside from outside. When it stopped, the door opened but nobody got out. When I got inside, my jaw suddenly dropped and my eyes lost sight for a second. One single giant pound of my heart sent a pang on my spine.

There were about 40 seated women on the bus. They were all Nancy, smiling at me revealing their toothless gums. Before I could throw myself out of the bus, the door slammed with a startling noise and the bus took off at an incredible speed. Realizing now that I was being taken by the wicked gotes, I screamed. Then I woke up. Now I know what really happened to Nancy.

Though it is just not possible, the servants of the Devil have taken her. I may not know it now, but the dream, in an obscure way is truly telling me there must be a way to bring her back and that it must be found. She couldn’t do it by herself. Her powers are useless now because she is already a victim. And that should never have happened in the first place. Where did gotes go right this time?

 

⁌⁍

 

My name is Philmon Ntanga. I live in Mdantsane, N.U.8 in the area of 36. My home faces the street that enters into my area. It’s the 20th December 1992. The story began 3 weeks ago in November, Sunday morning after 3am, when we came from the tavern and Mdantsane Sun, and ended just after 9am in the morning of Sunday of this month on the 13th. The story took 2 weeks. And I’m telling it a week later. It’s the worst experience of my life.

3 weeks ago, I had a friend who was my neighbour, who lived just across the street opposite my home. His name was Jack Filtane. His family comprised his 2 younger sisters, his mother and his granny. She was so old she could have been over a hundred years old. She was good for bed and basking in the sun. She never missed a single day’s scorcher. She couldn’t walk by herself. Her granddaughters always helped her out to the lawn. She had a sofa that was always on the lawn but would be taken inside at sunset. I liked her like she was my own granny. She was the nicest of all the grannies I had ever met. I would ask her about old stories and mysteries she remembered. She always remembered and always loved to tell me. There were some occasions when the afternoon church services were held in the house because she had been a devout member of her church in her best days. But scary enough, she would tell me up to that age, which she never told me, she never believed there was God and would never believe in the tricks of the bible. The only reason she was once a serious church-goer was to get respect. I just could not believe granny, of all people, could say such blasphemous words, about God. I wondered if anyone in the house knew about this. But I never asked even Jack.

 

⁌⁍

 

 

There is a popular tavern at N.U.1 in the area of 24. It is called Max’s Tavern. And there is another very popular place at Highway. Highway is the township’s BDC. The place is called Mdantsane Sun Entertainment Centre. It’s everyone’s favourite place, whether you drink or not. In the afternoon of Saturday 28th November, Jack and I went to Max’s Tavern and spent the whole day there, not drinking nonstop though. We left at 8:25pm for another load of fun at Mdantsane Sun.

The time when we left the entertainment centre, having enjoyed ourselves immensely, was just after 3am Sunday 29th. We took a taxi home. The taxi dropped us about 400m into the zone. We went down this eroded street of ours to our homes. When I got to my room, I went to the windows to close the curtains. I started from the left side of the room and went to the right side above my bed. Before I even touched the curtains, something breath-taking caught my eye. It was a car, a white Mercedes Benz, 1985 model. It was incredibly moving in space, as silent as a grave, coming from down the street going up. It stopped above Jack’s home and hovered. The front windows of Jack’s home lit up for a few seconds before the car rocketed away at an incredible speed and vanished. I closed the curtains and slept.

 

The Following Day

 

I woke up thinking about what I saw, but would not dare ask Jack, unless he talked first. I made myself some breakfast. After the breakfast I left my folks preparing to go to church. When I got across the street, Jack was washing himself. I went to granny to chat. We started talking. She started asking me about the demons, what I knew about them. I took it she was cracking up a subject. But unfortunately, I knew nothing about the demons. But I was so interested in hearing what she knew. And she was going to tell me, had I not interrupted her. It’s common for grannies (though not all grannies. It depends on the conditions the grannies in question live under), as old as she was, to have lice on their bodies. Even if we don’t see them, we can see traces of their infestation indicated by tiny blood spots on grannies’ clothes.

I suddenly turned my attention to the sofa. Between the cushion and the base of the sofa on the right side, just near her knee, 2 big fat lice emerged. They were turgid with granny’s blood, so big they might have been 5 times bigger than their normal size. I slowly out-stretched my arm to snatch them. Seeing where I was looking, granny wriggled in her sofa and asked me what it was. I looked up and told her there were 2 lice just below her knee. I looked down preparing to grab them, but they were gone. Well, I had no idea what I did. Granny glowered at me.

She was so formidable I couldn’t be brave enough to look her in the face while she snarled and barked at me, calling me by all names that came to her mind first. She asked me who did I think I was, what the hell made me think there was anything like a louse near her.

I just couldn’t believe it. I saw the lice and tried to take them away so they would not suck anymore blood from her. I thought I was saving her. I tried to speak for myself between sentences while she was flaring. Then she hiccupped, but never stopped to bark, asking me what did I want from her. I stopped talking because the hiccups could be disastrous. Fortunately, Jack came out ready to go. He told me in front of her to ignore her, it was useless arguing with her. Granny gave Jack such a bad look and shook her head. We left her furious as ever and went up the street. Halfway up Jack said,

‘Tell me Phil, what the dickens was that all about?’

‘Well, there is one thing I understand about grannies. They are supposed to be short tempered and grumpy. But that was not what I expected. I did not do anything wrong to deserve that kind of reaction. I only saw lice on the sofa. I don’t know how she took it.’

‘She is like that to everyone. Sometimes I have such a hard time believing that some of the things she says really come from her. And there is one thing I know too about grandmothers.

They regress to childhood. Now she is a baby.’ Jack said. I never told him the lice disappeared in a split second and that they were unusually big. We waited 15 minutes before the taxi arrived. It took us to Highway. From there we took another taxi to N.U.1. The time when we got to the tavern was 10 minutes after 12pm. The place was packed already. The people were all talking at the same time, others talking without the remotest idea what they were talking about, others making weightless suggestions, others sticking their long noses in other people’s businesses and getting punched in their faces and thrown outside.

And me too, I stuck my large ears in other people’s business who were sitting next to us. I listened to their conversation. Seeing how curious I was, Jack joined me. The 3 guys, especially the talking one, didn’t give a damn, due to the state they were in. He was saying he forever owed his unwitting escape from death to his love for drinking. He had decided to spend that weekend with his uncle’s family in N.U.14. He arrived before sunset and spent some time before he left for fun in the shebeen. It was dark when he left and everyone in the house was watching TV. He only took one step on the street and the house exploded into blazes. He was supposed to hear screams from the house, but there was none. By then the people had gathered to watch unable to do anything as the heat was unbearable any step closer. A siren of a fire extinguisher was heard approaching, and a short while later it stopped at the spot.

 

The Man Then Kept Quiet Briefly. He Shook His Head, And Continued.

 

The fire was unbelievably inextinguishable, blazing high. The firemen, changing turns, spent 2 hours making not a tiny difference. They gave up and left, so stunned. The fire ceased, on its own, 40 minutes after the firemen had left. When the burnt house was rummaged for bodies, none could be found. I looked at Jack and asked him if he believed it. Jack shook his head and said hardly. We spent the whole day there, at times leaving the place to get some food and coming back.

We left almost at closing time. From the tavern we went to the entertainment centre and spent some time until we were left with a few coins in our wallets, enough to take a taxi home. When we arrived in our area we parted at the gates. I got to my room, never turned on the light and went to the window, like I was dragged to it. I looked across at Jack’s home. That small part of the wall between the front door and the left window, somebody emerged from it and got out. The figure walked down to the gate and got out.

Until it got to the street, I couldn’t make out who or what kind of a person it was. As it went up the street, I was able to see it was a woman with a hunched back. She went up so briskly I had my doubts. That small part of the wall from where she had emerged was part of granny’s room. I closed the curtains and went to sleep.

 

The Next Day

I woke up in the morning, opened the curtains and looked across the street. Granny was on the lawn already. In spite of what I saw the previous night, I wanted granny to tell me about the demons. She was going to tell me something because she brought the subject up. You know grannies, just like babies, they get angry this moment, and the next they have forgotten the whole thing. Granny would have forgotten she ever said some bad things to me the previous day.

 

⁌⁍

In the afternoon I went to granny. I greeted her. She was so friendly I told myself there is no better way of getting to know about the demons than now. I asked her about yesterday’s question and told her I was very interested. Then she took me by surprise. Like yesterday, a minute angel and a minute shrew. Suddenly she changed. My heart pounded in such a disgusting way. She said people like me with visions like the one I had the previous day didn’t deserve to know about such things. I asked her why. She said I would begin to visualize like yesterday the moment she started talking. When I said it was not true, she told me to go to Jack if I didn’t have anything else to talk about. And I had nothing else to say. I went to Jack so disappointed.

On the night of the same day, I slept right through and woke up once, in the morning of Tuesday. And that got me wondering why I never woke up in the middle of the night and looked out the window. On Tuesday night I never woke up. On the following night too and the next night I never woke up. I began to ask myself what if this was happening only when I was drunk. If only I could wake up when I was sober and look out the window. I knew it was not about waking up because whenever I looked at the window and saw, I would be coming from the places of fun, intoxicated.

Because I did not go anywhere, I would have expected to wake up at the same time that I would be coming from the places of fun. In spite of that, I never stopped to chat with granny and she never stopped being nice as long as I would not raise the subject of demons. I was beginning to regret what I did thinking I was trying to help. After all, it was only lice. It made me sad to think she was making such a big deal out of it. If I had not said anything, she was on the verge of letting me in on a secret, a bad secret, apparently. Otherwise, she would not have thought I would start seeing things. Maybe…. just maybe, I would have discovered the cause of her disbelief in God, the bible and the church.

Late Friday

We went out to start the weekend as usual. We went to the tavern, then to the entertainment centre, then back home. And I was drunk as expected. So I went to the window, looked across at Jack’s home and saw. There were no front windows, no front door. It was only a straight wall. I was wondering where the door and the windows were when the wall became aglow. But I could not see anything inside. I looked down asking myself what the hell was going on in there. If Jack knew, he had his reasons for not telling me. Just because I was his friend didn’t mean I was the member of the family. Maybe it was a family thing, if ever he knew. A minute later I looked up and the house was back to normal. I closed the curtains and went to sleep.

 

The Next Day Saturday

 

At 8:25 in the morning, I opened the curtains and my eyes rested on granny on the lawn. She was looking in my direction….at me, in a way that made me feel unreasonably guilty. I moved away from the window.

 

⁌⁍

 

We spent the whole day at the tavern until closing time, and left for Mdantsane Sun. On the way Jack nagged me with an odd question. Because of the state we were in, I could not jump to conclusion. He asked me if I realized we were inside a certain kind of wind, seeing that I didn’t seem to notice anything strange happening. I said the wind was ready to take us home,

what a flight. He urged me to be serious, and I urged him to be joking. I just wanted him to change the subject, but he would stick right to it. He said he was sweltering, the wind that had engulfed us was hot. We had gone half the distance when he grabbed my hand and told me to stop.

‘Philmon, we are in a ball of hot wind. When we left the tavern, we stepped outside to a cool weather. We walked and then somewhere on the street the weather changed to what it is.’

‘To what it is to you. I’m still feeling cool because that is what the weather is. I don’t know what you are talking about. Stop joking. Let’s just go.’

‘I’m not joking. I don’t know why you don’t feel it.’

‘Because there is no hot wind. If you are just gonna stand there, I’m going.’ I said and left him standing there. I looked back and saw him follow. Only when we passed the Empolweni Cinema did he pat me and sighed. He said he was feeling cool again. I asked myself why now that we have arrived.

The place was wild. And I met a girl. Her name was Margaret Myeni. She lived in N.U.9 in the area of 6. We joined her with her 3 friends. We stayed until closing time. I promised to call her first thing in the morning. We took a taxi to N.U.8.

It dropped us at the usual spot. We went down our bad street talking. I was specifically talking about Marg and her beauty. Now we had about 150m left and our homes in view. Then I heard a voice…. Jack’ s voice calling me to help. The voice went like this:

“Phil, Philmon…. Please! Help Me…. Help Me! Please… It Is Here….”

 

The voice started from around me. I looked beside me and there was no Jack. I turned around, there was no Jack. The voice trailed away in front of me. I ran after it, but I barged into an invisible object. I moved to the right. The solid invisible object was there. To the left it was there, blocking the way, to prevent me from following Jack’s voice until there was complete silence.

I moved forward and the invisible obstacle was gone. I shivered with a pounding heart at the thought that Jack was really not joking. He was really in the hot wind. It was a bad sign that something unpleasant was coming to get him. During the trailing of his voice, I had called out loud enough to wake everybody nearby. But the night was silent and not a single house nearby was lit. I began to panic. The reason was being responsible for Jack not getting back home when we left together. Only the lunatic would ever believe my story. Why was I left behind?

I decided to report this strange thing to Jack’s family first thing in the morning. I could not wake them up only to tell them the bad news. I got to my room completely sober. I went to the window and stared across the street until 7 in the morning. Not a faint strange sight had leapt into view. Then I saw Jack’s sisters helping granny out to the lawn. She saw me and waved a hand. She was calling me. I thought, God! Why? She never called me before.

When I got there, I sat on the lawn next to her. The person who scared me more than granny was Jack’s mother. She greeted me cheerfully. Why didn’t she ask me where Jack was? Jack’s sisters too never showed any signs of worry. Judging by those inexplicable sights that I had been witnessing through my room window, it did land on my mind that they might be seeing Jack in the house. In spite of that, I chatted with granny.

We were in the middle of our chat when I was called at home. I had a phone call. I ran down to the house. It was Margaret asking a bit disappointed what kind of a person I was. I said I would call and I kept her waiting. I apologized and told her everything. She said she was sorry, she didn’t know. She urged me to come right away. I hung up and went back to granny. I told her I was going somewhere. She surprised me by not asking where Jack was. I went inside to

Jack’s mother who surprised me too. On the way to Margaret, I told myself to get a grip, there must be a good explanation for their weird behaviour. When I got to Margaret’s home, she was alone waiting for me. She stood up and said,

‘Let’s go.’

‘Go? Go where?’

‘N.U.13, to my aunt, Nancy Myeni. There is something I did not tell you because we had only just met. You see my friends you found me with, the dark and tall one, Andiswa Makani? Something similar to Jack’s happened to her cousin sister by the name of Busi, 15 days ago. She came from King William’s Town for a weekend. On that weekend there was a music show in town. Andiswa, Busi and my other friends you found me with last night went to the show. I was in Dimbaza on that weekend. After the show they took a taxi home. On the taxi they sat in the back. Busi sat in the right corner and Mandy next to her. Andiswa was in the left corner. The taxi arrived here. Andiswa stood up and went out.

‘The one next to her followed and was followed by Mandy. She stood up and bent forward leaving. But she felt something solid landing hard on her right shoulder and lap pulling her down on the seat. She looked beside her as she bounced on the seat, only to find Busi’s place empty. She made an outburst of a startling scream and the force of the invisible entity ceased to hold her. The following day we went to my aunt. She said she could only help if there was another person opposite Busi. As you said Jack was dragged down away from you, Busi was here. So, they are in opposite directions. I promise you my aunt will bring them back from the deepest chambers of goteism. She will never let gotes win.’ Margaret assured me. What else did I want more than to see her aunt? So, we left. When we got there, she seemed to know we were coming. After the introduction I got to the point and told her everything. When I finished, she said,

‘You know Phil, simple ways can achieve such colossal things. You know why you didn’t go? Because you are under the protective strong wing of the spirits of your ancestors. And because of your courage and fearlessness, you will bring them back. This coming Saturday at the time Jack disappeared, you must be at the spot where he vanished from. Marg, you will be the witness.’ Nancy said and excused herself. She went to the other room. Whatever she was doing she took 40 minutes, and how I wished I could see what she was doing.

When she re-appeared, she was holding a stick so long it doubled my own height.

‘Now Phil, you follow my instructions, nothing will go wrong. This is no ordinary stick. You see here? It’s a blue powder and this one here is a red ointment. You wake up 10 minutes before the time he vanished. And Phil, please, don’t talk to anyone about this before Sunday morning. If you do, it might drift with the dirty wind and end up in the wrong ears. You see this, it’s a mixture I have prepared to clear you out. And I’m thinking, don’t sleep at all, because if you wake up late it won’t work. Jack is on the right side and Busi on the left. You go to the spot of Jack’s vanishment at the right time. You swallow half of the mixture before you step out of your room. When you get to the spot you draw 2 parallel lines across the street about 90cm apart with this stick. Then you pour some drops of the remaining mixture on both lines. You smear the ointment on both ends of the stick, about 30cm, from the ends.

‘Then you sift the powder on top. The ointment will rise up to 10cm after sifting the powder on it. Make sure you don’t touch the ends. Before you start, Marg you must be as far away as possible. Otherwise Busi will come out and you will get in, and you will do it involuntarily. And you will not be able to do anything about it, Phil because the preparations I have made are for Busi. After you see the rise of the ointment, put the stick down between the lines. Step out

of the lines to your right and grope in the space for the invisible wall. It will be there so very close. The lines will draw it to them. When you touch the wall, jump back inside the lines. Jack will be behind it. Pick the stick up and hold it in the middle. Poke the invisible wall with the

other end. After several poking the stick will go through the invisible wall. Then step over the right line to the right side. Stick the stick out for a couple of seconds. When you feel something gripping, that will be Jack. Then step between the lines and pull. Jack will appear. The moment he grabs the stick he will never let go. All the things you did on the right, do them on the left to Busi, with Jack poking and pulling with you because he cannot take his hands off the stick. Same thing will happen to Busi. Only I will separate them from the stick. You take them to your room and call me first thing in the morning. If there is anything you don’t understand, ask now.’ Nancy said. I told her I understood everything.

On that same Sunday I had to go to the tavern, especially now that there was hope of seeing Jack again. I went to the tavern full of hope. I stayed and left at 10pm, feeling Jack’s absence. I went to the entertainment centre and stayed until closing time.

On the way to Mdantsane Sun, I had heard Jack’s voice 4 times asking me to help him. The voice was so close it left me with a question. If Jack’s voice was that close, which Jack was, wouldn’t I reach out and hold him? Of course, I would, I thought. I groped beside and around me. My hand touched nothing. I said to myself:

 

“Don’t Worry. This Time Next Week We Will Be Together.”

 

When I got to my room I went to the window. I thought: What An Obsession! This time it was on the lawn where the sofa stood. It was a figure, and I could tell by the long dress it was a woman. Only thing was, I couldn’t see the face. It could be granny it could be Jack’s mother. Or it could be anybody, for that matter, or anything that took on a shape and appearance of a woman. She stood still like a fixed pole. I watched for 10 minutes and decided this was ridiculous, I just couldn’t watch all night. I knew one thing. She was seeing me. I closed the curtains for a couple of seconds and opened them. As I had expected, she was gone.

On the night of the following day, Monday I slept right through and never woke up until Tuesday morning. On all the week days until Friday, same thing was happening. The window showed me nothing. I kept visiting Jack’s family who behaved normal, which thing I found to be disgusting. How long would they remain unaware of Jack’s absence? More than that, what would happen when Jack came home? Definitely, the other Jack would disappear when the real Jack came, if ever they were unconscious of his absence.

 

It was Friday. I was feeling a lot better because there was only one day between me and Jack. I went to the tavern at the usual time. From the tavern I went to the entertainment centre. From there I went home. As I went down my street, I thought about what I would be doing this time the following night. When I got to the spot of Jack’s disappearance I stopped and gazed in the direction of Jack’s voice ahead of me. I thought by this time the following night I would risk my life to save my friend and Marg’s friend’s cousin. From what would I save them? The question made me realize something with a pounding heart. Not that I was scared. I was not prepared. What if something was watching me ready to engulf me and was only waiting for me to make the wrong move? I thought the only way of getting away from the spot before whatever might be watching me got tired of waiting, or before I took the wrong step, was to run, which I did, full speed. I ran down the street and stopped at the gate of my home panting. I looked back. There was not a dim movement. I looked at Jack’s home. It was just an ordinary house. There was not a single house that was lit in sight, except for the street lights. I was the only one awake. I looked at my room. It was dark too like the rest of the houses. Then suddenly, I felt the hair at the back of my heard bristle up, and my heart hammered. It was such a reasonably scary beat. I had suddenly heard someone panting behind me. Swiftly, I whirled and looked

around me, but there was no one behind or next to me. I sighed and grinned. It was Jack. I thought:

My God! Jack Has Run With Me!

 

Then I said,

‘Tomorrow we will be together.’

That pause at the gate had miraculously opened up my eyes. While I was panting at the gate, I had time to look across the street at Jack’s home. It was a normal house like my home. I got to my room, went to the window, looked and saw. And this had been happening all along. Every time I went down the street and looked at Jack’s home, it would look normal. But when I looked at it through my room window, I would see something.

Then I thought about this window. The window might somehow be possessing a certain kind of power which exposed to the watcher any odd occurrence facing it. But then I told myself whether I was right or not, it would not help with anything because there was a question of weekends and alcohol.

If only I could see just once, one odd thing through my room window on weekdays, when I was sober, I would believe whole-heartedly that somehow the window was phenomenal. I would then find out how, when and why it had all of a sudden begun showing me the nasty things it was showing me. But I couldn’t because it was revealing nothing at the right time when I was sober.

So, I looked out the window and saw. Jack’s home was cut in the middle. The left side of the house which included granny’s room was gone. In its place was an empty dark space. From the other side of the house which was visible, 11 figures of dimly glowing naked human beings, 4 females and 7 males, appeared from the corner and went past the wall and disappeared into the dark space, one after another, in a single file. I told myself that was the worst and probably the most disturbing act of goteism happening in Jack’s home that I had witnessed so far, from my right room window. I knew the side of the house that was gone would not reappear while I watched. I closed the curtains and got under the blankets. 30 seconds later I heard a cough inside my room, on the chair near the left window. It was Jack. I grinned.

 

The Following Day, Saturday, The Return Of Jack And Busi.

 

I woke up in the morning and went into the house to call Marg. I called her early because I didn’t want her to make any plans like the previous day. I wanted us to spend the whole day and night together until the time came for me to go up there, to the spot of Jack’s disappearance. She said she would love to stay with me until the time. But first she was gonna go to her aunt. I told her I would wait at Jack’s home and chat with granny. We hung up. I made some breakfast. After the breakfast I went to granny. Granny was eating her breakfast. She asked me to join her. I politely declined and told her I had just had my breakfast at home.

I only asked to leave when I saw Marg. I waited at the gate of Jack’s home and we went to my room. In my room she sat on the bed, sighed, looked down, shook her head and then looked up at me.

‘I don’t believe it Phil. My aunt is gone.’

‘But she will be back, won’t she?’

‘I don’t think so. She is gone, gone, gone. The house is empty, bare. She didn’t leave a sock. Why would she just take off like that, without telling anyone?’

‘But Marg, are you sure?’

 

‘Nooo Phil, I’m not sure! I’m not even sure you are asking that question…. of course, I’m

sure! There is more. The house number is gone too.’

‘But Marg, that is totally crazy. Just how can a house number disappear?’

‘Ask me, you will find out.’

‘Does it bother you, Marg?’

‘Well….no…. yes. Why? Shouldn’t it?’

‘I know it should. But Marg, not before tonight.’

‘I know Phil. It’s just that I can’t quite figure it out. It’s not like aunt Nancy. It doesn’t make sense Phil. Something is just not right.’

‘I know Marg. I understand. Let’s worry about it after tonight, okay?’ I said. She just nodded. If I let her mind dwell on her aunt’s disappearance, she could spoil the whole thing. I thought to myself the only thing that would take her mind off it was granny. We went to granny to chat.

 

Sunday Morning 2:40am

 

The time for me to go up there came. My mind was telling me Nancy was not gone. She couldn’t leave, not before I brought Jack and Busi back. She was somewhere up there waiting to help me. The stick, the powder, the mixture and the ointment couldn’t do it on their own. Or even better, I could not do it alone. Maybe the process involved a transient state of her body being non-existent, along with everything that would leave traces of her residence behind so that she could not be traced by gotes to where she was, which was obviously the spot of Jack’s disappearance. Maybe she put a spell on her neighbours. Maybe they were seeing her house normal. Maybe…. possibly they were seeing her go in and out of the house, like any other day.

Now I was thinking further:

Maybe it was she who was watching me the other night, so wishing I would get out of there before I attracted anything undesirable before tonight. Maybe I was running away from her, because she got her wish across to me. There was very high possibility that my speculation was true.

Marg asked me if I remembered the instructions. I told her like I remembered my name. I went to the wardrobe for the stuff. I opened the wardrobe and just stared agape, in disbelief. I called Marg. The things were gone. They had been there all along because I had been checking them from the very first day I brought them from Nancy. On the previous night, before I went to the window, I checked them. They were all there. We looked everywhere in the room.

‘Marg, did you tell anyone, your friends?’

‘Nooo!’ Obviously, she didn’t like the question. Her response and the look she gave me said it all. I sat on the bed and thought. Nancy had warned us to say nothing to no one about Sunday morning. What could have taken the things I was going to use? It didn’t matter what. The things could only be gone by talking about it.

If Marg didn’t, who did? It was obvious I did. Marg’s aunt never specified the ways in which talking about it would ruin it because there was one obvious way; to tell someone. I have this problem which does not often take place, so my folks say. I talk in my sleep. I must have sleep-talked and blabbed what I was expressly told not to talk about. I must have explained everything to Jack on Friday night, since he was invisibly in my room as I heard him cough. I lay on the bed and stared in space not knowing what to do. Then I jumped out of bed and startled Marg. The wooden ceiling was replaced by the concrete ceiling. I looked around and the door was gone, only the wall was there. I rushed to the window and opened the curtains

and was confronted by the wall. Now I panicked, especially when Marg started crying like a small child. When she wanted to scream, I stopped her and told her nobody would hear her scream, we were in the confines of solid walls. I begged her to calm down, we had about 2 hours before dawn cracked. We sat on the bed. She asked me what had she gotten herself into. I told her it went for me as well. I bowed my head, thought….and remembered. Considering the things that I had been seeing across the street from my room window, this could be granny’s doing. I called out granny’s name so loud that Jack reappeared in a flash, like a flickering light, and in less than a second returned to invisibility saying 2 words.

His words were:

“Grandma’s Sofa.”

When he reappeared and disappeared, he was standing next to the chair, on which he coughed the other night. Then we looked at each other and Marg smiled. The door was back. Everything was back to normal. So, granny’s name worked, I thought. I told Marg I was going to take a look at that sofa in the morning. She asked me how granny would be sitting in it. I told her I would come up to her as if I came to chat. Then I would pull her out of it unexpectedly. By the time she tried anything, I would have seen what Jack wanted me to see. Maybe it was gonna do the trick as well and bring Jack and Busi back from the abyss of goteism. Marg asked me a question that sent my heart pounding against my ribs.

‘Say Phil, if you couldn’t remember to call granny, what would happen?’ I told her I didn’t know. She said she did.

‘Same thing that is happening to Jack now. We would be locked in this airless room until we died. In the morning your folks and everybody else would see your normal room and the normal us, to them, while the real us are kept in this dungeon-like confinement until we became bones.’ I told her she was right and told her she had just made me realize something that could terribly be true. I could have been friends with the 2nd body of the real Jack made by gotes when they begoted Jack, whenever that was, and never knew because nobody could tell the difference, as the case is, in general, as I speak.

3 And A Half Hours Later

 

When I woke up at 7:30am, the sun was sizzling already. Granny would be out in the sun. I left Marg in the room and crossed the street. When I got there, she was alone. She thanked me for coming because they forgot to take her out. I took the sofa to the lawn first. On the lawn there were 4 small patches of dry grass the size of the legs of the sofa. I put the sofa in its usual position and took a muse on it. It was slightly curved in. I lifted the cushion, jumped back and stared horror-stricken. There were 1000s of fat lice. They writhed at the glaring sun. I quickly replaced the cushion and ran home. My father always kept a petrol in the garage. I poured a 750ml bottle, hid it in my jacket and rushed back to the sofa. I opened the cushion and the lice moved. I felt an irresistible urge to dip my hand into them. I swallowed hard staring down at them. They were lice alright, and they nipped. But I had no choice. I wanted to reach the bottom and discover what lay beneath. This was what Jack wanted me to do. I took off my jacket and rolled my shirt sleeve up to the shoulder joint. I dipped my arm and quickly noticed something. As my arm went down through their congestion, I was supposed to feel some kind of formication as they writhed. I felt nothing, like my arm was not there. I went deep down and made another startling discovery. I was not reaching the bottom of the sofa and I had reached the shoulder joint, and couldn’t go any further than that. The lice were supposed to cling to my arm and spread right up to my neck and inside my shirt down my ribs. But they did not cling. I pulled my arm out. There was not a single louse on my arm. But there was something else. My arm was coated with a rancid dark blue slimy substance that made me puke. I took my

 

shirt off and wiped the thing off my arm. My arm turned pale. I poured half of the bottle on the lice and set them alight. I watched the sofa burn. Black smoke came from the sofa as it burned. I looked up at the window of granny’s room wondering if she was seeing the smoke, and would call me if she was. But she could not see the smoke. Her window was dark and misty. That surprised me because the smoke from the burning sofa was blowing to the opposite direction. The sofa burned to ashes and suddenly, where the sofa was, a hole, which was not there before, about 60cm in diameter, opened up and the ashes went inside the hole. I threw the remaining half of the petrol into the dark hole, lit the match stick and threw it inside.

A moment later, as I watched the fire surfacing in small fragments, black smoke shot out of the hole into the air and headed the same way the Mercedes Benz took. Along with the smoke were screams of mixed voices of people so loud that everybody nearby, who had since been watching, looked up in the sky expecting to see people flying in the air. But the only thing they saw was the shooting smoke.

Jack’s mother and the girls arrived. When she asked me what was going on, I told her I saw Jack the other night. I told her what happened. She asked where her mother was. I told her she was in her room. She rushed in and I followed. When we got inside, a beautiful woman was lying on granny’s bed. She was so pretty and so very dead. While I was in a state of real confusion, the girls frightened me. They jumped to the bed at the same time screaming, calling the dead woman on the bed their mother. I thought they had undergone a sudden transitory state of a fit of some kind. But when I looked at their real mother, she had bowed her head as an indication of some kind. Where was granny? Without a doubt, Jack’s mother had the explanation. So, I demanded it.

That white Mercedes Benz I once saw through my room window hovering over Jack’s home belonged to the reverend of Meridian church. The rev’s mother died 2 years ago. Jack’s mother was the daughter of the reverend. The reverend’s mother died at the same age as granny. Granny was the younger sister of Jack’s mother who had taken up the reverend’s mother’s appearance when she died in 1990.

The reverend’s only wish in his entire life was to become a reverend, and be recognized as a qualified reverend, who had studied theology. But his lack of education disadvantaged him. He would do anything under the sun to become one.

Jack’s real mother was his mother’s younger sister whom I had taken to be granny. Jack’s real mother’s sister never had children in her life. To have one, at least, was something she always prayed for. But God would not give. Under the reverend’s mother’s spells, Jack and his sisters would know their real mother’s sister as their mother, the greatest reward she could ever ask for, for keeping quiet. And she did keep her mouth shut until the last moment. The reverend’s mother could easily make her son the reverend he always wanted to be, and get him the highest respect of the real reverend, on one condition; that he would continue her darkest practice; the goteing practice.

For her son to be able to continue, the reverend’s mother would transmit her powers to her son’s younger child which would transform her into her own self, the granny that I always liked. That way the reverend would be able to do all evil, like his mother. As long as they saw their granny, Jack and his sisters would remain begoted.

The reverend would really do anything to become the reverend he was, including becoming a gote. That explained why no one else other than granny ever sat in that sofa. It housed the concomitance of granny’s grandmother’s evil powers, without which the revelation of granny’s other real self, occurred. But then it did cross my mind while I was listening that Jack knew something his aunt didn’t know. He mentioned granny’s sofa and the whole thing fell apart. But what else did Jack know besides his granny’s sofa that his aunt didn’t know? No one would ever know because Jack himself was gone.

 

That explained why he became the victim of goteism. Our friendship was growing stronger by the day. The reverend feared that Jack would one day wake up feeling like spilling the beans. Or he would feel as long as he didn’t let me in on a secret, we were no best friends. That meant I had been friends with the real Jack. Either way, I was not too sure.

By the time Jack’s aunt finished, my mind was made up. I left her sobbing and the girls crying on their mother’s chest. Outside there was a crowd of people that included my folks and Marg. I went home for another petrol. I filled the bottle once more, hid it and went out, and up the street to the church. The reverend’s house was inside the church premises. Inside the church was the reverend’s wife kneeling before the altar praying. She didn’t see me as her back was turned to the entrance. I backed off not wanting her to see me. She was not the one I wanted. I went to the house.

The door was opened. I got in and checked the reverend in all the rooms, and found him in their bedroom, lying on the bed not looking well, his eyes closed. I poured the whole bottle around the outline of his body and set the bed alight. I spurted out and locked him inside.

There was no other way out. All the windows had burglar proofs. I stepped out of the house and slowly walked to the gate, expecting to hear an outburst of the reverend’s hoarse scream. I walked halfway, stopped and looked back. No scream came out of the house, but the fire had come out of the house spreading. I asked myself what the hell did I burn in there. I didn’t burn a corpse. He was alive when I got in his bedroom.

Then I heard a wild scream coming from inside the church. I saw the reverend’s wife running out berserk saying there were screaming voices of invisible people that were shouting the reverend’s name inside the church. She ran towards the house, but suddenly stopped. The fierce fire was leaping sky high.

 

⁌⁍

 

Remember that story I overheard with Jack at the tavern? That must have been the rev’s doing. As for Jack, he totally ceased because from the following day Monday, to the next Monday, I never heard him breath next to me nor do all the things that convinced me he was always with me. Maybe his voice was one of those that came screaming out of the dark hole. Busi too could never come back because I destroyed the reverend, the person who knew their whereabouts. As for Nancy, nobody knows anything about her. It’s been 8 long days since she vanished off the face of the earth. It would have been the nicest thing, considering, if ever my speculation turned out to be true, that Nancy had gone to the spot of Jack’s disappearance to help me bring Jack and Busi back, having felt that I could not do it alone. She would return any moment as I had failed, though I did something important as well, by destroying the reverend. But if, for some strangest reasons that could not be explained, as Nancy was known to be immune to goteism, she really did become the victim of goteism and her voice was among those that came screaming out of the hole, or she was among the invisible people that were screaming inside the church, there was no hope of ever seeing her again. But what about the dream I just had about her coming home? If I had the dream a week after what I thought was the end of the story, then without a doubt the story has not yet ended.

 

Impressum

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 03.07.2023

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