by Paul Finch
“Alright,” Laura said grudgingly. “I was in bed, but we’ve got some books with stuff like that. Ring you back in five.”
Berni had no sooner hung up than she heard another noise upstairs: a dull clunk followed by a heavy grating sound. When she went back into the hall this time, she kept the phone with her, though it could only have recharged sufficiently to give her a few extra minutes.
Again, there was only darkness and silence above.
She climbed stealthily. At the top, Miriam’s door was closed. When she tapped on it, there was no response. When she pushed it open, she saw Miriam lying in exactly the same position as before. Again, Berni backed onto the landing. She knew she’d heard something. Most likely there was a humdrum explanation, but she still felt horribly scared, and after what Don had said on the phone, not a little bewildered.
That was when she happened to glance down to the lower landing – and saw the alcove curtain twitch.
Ice spread through her veins.
The curtain twitched again.
When Berni finally descended to it, there was scarcely a breath in her body. She didn’t want to do this, but she had no option – she had to get close to the curtain just to pass it. But she was going to look behind it as well, because a morbid fascination dictated that she must. This could not be what she feared. It could not. There had to be a rational explanation. She was directly in front of the curtain when the phone trilled in her pocket. Wordlessly, she put it to her ear.
“I presume it’s a horror novel,” Laura said cheerfully. “Because check this out.” She began to read. “‘A small humanoid being of tribal African mythology. The Tokoloshe is still widely feared in rural parts of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and, most specifically, the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa. The Tokoloshe is said never to have lived a natural life, but to have been constructed by a shaman, usually from the body parts of other creatures, in order to cause harm to his enemies. Though childlike in stature, it is believed capable of terrible destruction …”
Laura’s voice fizzled away as the phone’s half-charged battery gave out.
Berni didn’t care. With a pale, sweaty hand, she took hold of the curtain.
… they were brutally strangled, their necks totally busted.
She drew the material back.
The wooden dais was empty. Tok was nowhere to be seen, which was a monumental relief. Though of course this didn’t last. The stained glass window stood ajar. Berni peered numbly at its scrolled iron handle, which no doubt had made a heavy grating sound as it was turned. Another breeze blew in, causing the curtain to twitch. She retreated in a daze. When a curved claw alighted on her shoulder, she gave a hoarse shriek before spinning around.
Miriam was standing one step above her, her hooked hand still proffered.
“For three nights it went on,” the old woman said, her eyes like yellowed marbles as she stared without blinking into a distant, dreadful past. “Noises in the bush around our home. Harsh voices, cruel laughter. Mother was terrified. Father tried to calm her. He said there were squatters on our land. It was inevitable after the deprivations suffered by the Kikuyu. But he knew there’d be oath takers among them. That’s why he loaded his gun, why he battened the windows at night and locked all the doors …”
“Miriam …” Berni tried to interrupt, but Miriam clutched at her, sinking rheumatic fingers into her shoulder.
“By the third day our servants had fled,” she said with a shudder. “Mother begged Father to send for help. We were only a few miles outside Nairobi, but it was too late. By then the Emergency was in full swing. The police and soldiers were spread too thinly. That third night they finally attacked, banging at our windows and doors with their pangas and machetes. Screaming the most terrible threats. Father shot a couple of them, but that enraged them more. When they dragged him and Mother outside … oh my God, I saw it … from my bedroom window …”
Again, Berni tried to speak. “Miriam …?”
But Miriam merely tightened her grip, her eyes glistening with tears, yet her mouth twisted into a strange stiff smile. “I was alone after that. Except … except for Tok. Mother had hated him from the moment Jana gave him to me. She’d wanted Father to burn him, but I’d pleaded with her not to. Jana had said he would protect me if I kept him close. In the end, Mother had allowed me to keep him so long as he was locked in the cupboard. Well … now I took him out again.”
“Miriam …”
“When they came into my room, they were in a fury. Drunk, shrieking. They always shrieked when they were about to kill you. But then they saw Tok, and in one go the anger left them – suddenly they were the ones who were afraid.” Miriam’s smile became a grimace. “They hung back until one of their captains came in. He pointed a gun at me and ordered me outside, but he didn’t touch me. I tried not to look at Mother and Father’s bodies as they marched me into the bush. They weren’t shrieking any more. They were mumbling, muttering … like the simple-minded peasants they were. Deep in the bush, they put me in a hut and lit a fire outside. They talked all night. I was only nine years old, but I knew Swahili. I heard what they were saying. They wanted to kill me too. But now they didn’t dare. Two of them, KAU members who had been imprisoned by the Colonial Government and were unimpressed with folk tales, said they would do it, and that they would do it quickly in honour of my youth and innocence. Their captain was slowly being swayed, but it was late and he decided they would talk more in the morning. But when morning came, those KAU men were dead, their throats torn, their necks broken. And whereas before I had kept my arms around Tok, now his arms were around me … and so they remained for the next six months, while I was a captive, and all that time I was never mistreated. They fed me, clothed me. Didn’t dare try to separate me from my protector.”
Several seconds passed before Berni realised that Miriam had finished. The older woman treated her daughter-in-law to a beatific smile.
“Miriam, what in God’s name …?”
“Tok knows everything I know, Bernadette. He fears everything I fear. And as these good-for-nothing people, prolific as cockroaches, have come to besiege us once again …”
“Miriam, no-one has besieged you!”
“It is happening just as it happened before. But this time the outcome will be different.”
Berni shook her head. “Miriam … you surely don’t believe this insanity.”
“Of course I do, dear. And so do you. A self-centered creature like you wouldn’t doubt her own senses.”
“Then if it’s true, call him back.”
Miriam’s smile became scornful. “You stupid, foolish girl! I can’t call him back. This is juju … a curse. It can only be lifted by the sorcerer who invoked it.”
“If you won’t stop it, the police will.” Berni decided she’d heard enough. She headed downstairs. “They’re out there somewhere.”
“You’d be advised not to side against us, Bernadette. Tok won’t like it.”
“I’m siding with no-one. I’ll just tell them what you told me.”
Miriam laughed. “And will they believe that … will they believe the word of poor old eccentric Mrs Presswick?”
Berni reached the bottom, and glared back up. “They won’t need to. When that monster of yours returns, I’ll show it to them … I’ll show them the teeth it’s been collecting.” Miriam’s smile slowly faded. “They may not believe that Tok’s the perpetrator, but they’ll know that someone in this house is. They may decide that poor eccentric Mrs Presswick is a touch too eccentric.” Berni fiddled with the front door lock. “You may finish in a psychiatric ward, Miriam. Unless they look at Don, of course … he does everything Mummy tells him, after all!”
Miriam looked stunned. She tottered downstairs. “You traitorous little …”
The door swung open, and Berni hurried out. “And it wouldn’t be a hospital for him!”
“You’d endanger your own husband!” Miriam shrieked from the doorway.
It was so dark in the enclosed garden that, rather than thread through the trees to the main gate, Berni opted to follow the drive around. Even so, she stumbled a couple of times, and when she reached the gate, she found that she had another problem. The gate could only be opened from the other side with a key, of which Don had a copy on his keyring. On the garden side it was a simple latch, but in this depth of darkness she fumbled futilely.
There was a loud thump as the front door was closed.
Berni glanced around. The trees were jet-black stanchions framed on the gloomy outline of the house. The few leaves left on their interlaced branches blotted out the stars.
She gave up with the gate and took the phone from her pocket – but it was still dead. A hint of movement dragged her attention to the parapet of the north wall.
Had something just vaulted over the top of it?
You’d be advised not to side against us, Bernadette.
Berni felt a chill down her spine, which had nothing to do with the dank wind. She walked back towards the house, this time veering between the trees rather than taking the longer distance around the drive. All the time she scanned the open spaces between herself and the north wall. They were buried in blackness. Something could be creeping towards her, and she wouldn’t see it until the last second. Her nerve broke, and she ran the remaining twenty yards, banging loudly on the door.
“Miriam! Miriam!”
“Today is a special day, Bernadette,” came Miriam’s response, sounding hollow and muffled. She must be standing just on the other side.
“Miriam, please!” Berni glanced over her shoulder; there were all kinds of scurryings and rustlings as the wind lashed the leaves.
“Today is October 20th … Heroes Day, on which the Kenyan people honour their so-called ‘freedom fighters’. Through the waning of every year I’ve watched this date approach with trepidation. But not this year. This year, I decided, it would be different. This year we will be the ones to mark Heroes Day. Tok and I. And we will take a fearsome toll …”
“Miriam, let me in!”
But Miriam was no longer there. Berni listened with disbelief as footsteps dwindled away into the house. She swung around to face the garden, her thoughts racing. She could scream and shout. If there were any police in the vicinity they might hear, but that was unlikely given the wind. The back door was locked, as were all the ground-floor windows. But then she remembered the alcove window. That should still be open.
She darted for the corner of the building, certain that a shapeless blot detached itself from the darkness close by and came hurrying in pursuit. Suppressing squeals of terror, she scrambled around the exterior, clattering through the dustbins, spilling their contents – even grabbing up a lid and hurling it behind her – until she sighted the stained glass portal. It was still open. What was more, an apron of luxuriant ivy descended beneath it.
Berni began to climb – hand over hand, refusing to look down. Clumps of vegetation tore loose in her hands, but she was of slight build, and it held. Soon she was on level with the window. Still refusing to look down, she hefted her right leg over the sill, and, pushing the panel so that it opened properly, thrust her body after it, falling through the alcove and onto the small landing, which brought the entire curtain down on top of her. She struggled out of it and leaned back through the alcove, pulling the window shut and hammering its bolt into place with her fist.
Gasping for breath, she retreated up onto the top landing. Only then did she notice that the entire house was now in darkness. She gazed around, helpless. As her eyes attuned, she saw again those black apertures denoting bedroom doorways; she focused on Miriam’s. Someone was standing there. Berni tried to cry out, but it was too late. Miriam came across the landing with a screech. Above her head, glittering in the moonlight, Berni saw the steel of the sewing shears. She threw herself aside, but the blades still ploughed down the back of her right shoulder, inflicting a burning wound.
Berni gasped as she tottered away.
“You dare invade my home?” Miriam hissed, her moonlit features crazed beyond recognition, streaked with sweat-soaked hair. “You hooligans dare come in here, after everything you’ve already done!”
She slashed with the shears again. Berni, still off-balance, crashed hard against the banister and, unable to help herself, twisted and toppled over it. Her breath caught in her throat as she cartwheeled downwards, but somehow her left hand caught the banister rail and clung to it for dear life. Agonised, she swung over the abyss by one hand.
“Miriam …” she stammered. “Miriam, it’s me.”
The banister groaned as if ready to buckle. She tried to find purchase with her other hand, but the mangled shoulder prevented her lifting her arm more than a couple of inches.
“I know who it is,” Miriam tittered, her jack-o-lantern face appearing overhead. “But you are as much one of them as Kenyatta himself. You’ve always been a trespasser in our lives.”
Berni felt cold steel as the sewing shears were inserted around the little finger of her left hand. “For God’s sake, Miriam! If you’re the one responsible for these crimes …”
“You know who’s responsible. But you’ve locked him out. Therefore I must take his place.”
“Miriam, no …”
SNIP!
Berni screamed as white fire lanced down her arm, but still she hung on.
When the shears clamped around her second finger, her anguish turned to rage. The blades sliced home again, and she fell, but not without lunging through the spindles, catching hold of those voluminous skirts. Miriam squawked as she was dragged against the flimsy banister, which sagged beneath their combined weight, and with an explosive CRACK, gave way.
They dropped for an eternity. At the bottom, Berni hit the stair rail with her back; it was a brutal blow, which seemed to knock the very life out of her, though even as she somersaulted away from it and caromed against the wall, she saw Miriam land headfirst on the stair itself.
The next thing Berni knew, the carpet was resting against her cheek and there was a thunderous knocking on the front door.
“Police!” a voice boomed. “We’ve had a report someone was seen entering through an upstairs window. Open up, or we’ll force our way in!”
Splinters erupted as some heavy object was weighed against the door. Dank air and cold moonlight plumed through as burly shapes filled the hall. Electric torch beams swept back and forth, before someone hit the main light switch. The glare half-blinded Berni, but soon a male voice was speaking gently into her ear, and a foil blanket being laid across her. The last thing she remembered before drifting out of consciousness was seeing Miriam’s bloodstained hand hanging limp between the spindles on the staircase.
Berni’s dreams were no respite. She was climbing ivy again, though it stretched above her to an infinite distance. Meanwhile, something was climbing after her, something that moved with simian speed and grace …
Her eyes flirted open, and she found herself in an enclosed space, her neck fixed in a brace. A man and woman in green boiler suits were busying around her. There was a rumble of wheels; the enclosed space was juddering.
“It’s okay,” the woman said in a soothing tone. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
Berni wasn’t sure how, but she had a strong suspicion that nothing was going to be okay. “Miriam …” she stuttered, “not …”
“Try to rest.”
Berni winced as a needle punctured her arm.
She’d only been taken to Accident and Emergency once before, when, as a child, she’d fallen from a climbing frame. It was much the same experience now: rapid movement as she was wheeled beneath clusters of dazzling lights, lots of people around her exchanging views, but basically ignoring her when she tried to speak to them. She knew there was something she had to tell them, but she couldn’t think what it was.
“Not … Miriam …” she murmured.
“Relax, Bernadette,” someone said. “You’re going to be fine.
”
She was lifted onto a bed, and they drew curtains around her. They removed her clothes and probed the lower parts of her body, particularly her legs.
“Can you feel anything, Bernadette?”
“Miriam …” she mumbled, “not …”
When something sharp pressed into the sole of her foot, she reacted, her leg jerking.
“Good,” someone said.
“Alone …” Despite her grogginess, Berni felt increasingly panicked, and now she was beginning to remember why. “Miriam … not …”
“Don’t worry about Miriam. It’s you we need to concentrate on.”
Another needle was applied to her arm, and darkness swirled in, blotting out her vision in pieces as though she was being buried under a deluge of leaves.
The ivy again reached up an impossible distance, but now she could see a window above. Two figures were leaning down, watching her progress. She clambered towards them, but her body was aching, in particular her back. The figures became clearer; they were Don and Miriam, and they were smiling as though to encourage her. But they didn’t offer a helping hand, not even when she was close. In fact, when she was close she saw that they weren’t smiling at all – they were laughing. She risked a glance downwards. Skulking darkness was rising after her. She climbed all the harder, though the ache in her back was unparalleled with anything in her prior experience. She’d almost reached the window when she saw Miriam and Don withdrawing.
She tried to scream, but no words came out.
As the window closed, she reached up despairingly – and a hand caught her arm.
It was thin, dirty, covered in coarse hair.
The nails on its fingers were black hooks.
Berni would have leapt up from where she lay, but that was impossible given that she was bound into her bed with a framework of straps and orthopaedic supports. Her eyelids fluttered in the dim light. Somewhere to one side, a machine was bleeping. She heard footsteps, and a face appeared above her. It was pudgy and unshaved, with a mop of greasy black hair combed over the top of it.
“Hello Bernadette,” the face said. “Remember me? I’m Detective Sergeant McAllister. I used to drive the fast-response car with your Don.”