He gets in the back of the panel-van and opens the secret door.
The girl is lying curled up in a bundle in the small hole like he left her. She looks up at him with her green eyes. Her eyes sparkle like green diamonds in the darkness. Her naked body shivers with fear and cold.
Then it happens…
For him it is as if something is being shifted. He feels his perspective changing. He is looking up now, instead of down...and he is looking up now at Judy’s face. Her face is looking down on him, with the dark sky behind her. He tries to get up, to grab her, but he can’t move. He is tightly hog-tied and he can’t move. God! What is happening? And he feels so cold...so damn cold.
The realization slowly takes hold of him. He is inside the secret compartment and she is looking down on him. This is not possible. He must be dreaming. He must still be dreaming.
But the pain of the nylon rope eating into his flesh and the difficulty of breathing, because of the small hole he is forced into can’t be a dream. But how could his almost two metre frame fit into that little hole?
What he sees next make sanity flee from him like the wind before a thunderstorm. Judy slowly changes into him. Right in front of his eyes she takes on his features. He saw morphing like this in movies hundreds of times, but seeing it in real life is the scariest thing ever. To see someone taking on your shape is nerve racking, to say the least. He desperately fights against the ropes, but he can’t move a muscle. And the coldness makes him feel weak.
‘This is not a dream, Nasim. This is real...’
“Help...help...help...help...help...” he silently screams. Is this the way all these children - he kidnapped over the years - have screamed as he took them away from their normal lives into a life of hell?
The trapdoor clicks shut on top of him and then he hears the side door sliding shut before the van moves off.
What seems like hours later, but couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes he hear his contact talking. The darkness of the little compartment is suddenly filled with light as the trapdoor is opened and the contact and Judy - who now has his features - looks in. He feels dirty and cheap as he is being looked upon as nothing but an item. Something that can be bought for money.
“She’s a beaut...” the client says as he looks down at him. Then Nasim feels the gag being removed from his mouth. He immediately starts to scream and shout.
“No...no...Moegamat, it’s me...it’s me, its Nasim...she’s an impostor...no...”
“Scream as much as you want little girl...” the client says as he picks him up by the ropes and carries him like a suitcase to the corner of the warehouse.
He sees the briefcase filled with two hundred rand notes being handed over to Judy. Five hundred thousand rand. She strolls over to where he lies naked on the cold concrete floor.
She holds her mouth close to his head and whisper in his ear: “Have a nice life, Nasim...remember that I am waiting on you on the other side. So don’t pray for death, whatever they do to you.”
He feels ashamed as he involuntarily pisses himself. He knows now that Hell came to him and that it is payback time.
Forever...
Always look under the bed
The last hill of the day is at the same time the easiest and the most difficult. When Mason reaches the top of the hill with his Avalance 21 speed Conqueror mountain bike, he knows he has just enough energy left to reach the nearest village. He had been cycling the whole day.
This was the holiday that he planned since he was in standard five.
A holiday where he would just cycle. So far he had cycled over 800 kilometres. Cycling from village to village. He would sleep in the last village of the day and the next day explore it and converse with the inhabitants, thus at the same time learning about the area.
He knows it is all the way downhill now, straight to the village, at the bottom of the hill, where he will spend the night.
He pulls the the little sun visor tighter over his eyes as he now looks straight into the setting sun. He really hates it to cycle or even to drive while looking into the late afternoon sun, but he has no choice.
He goes off the main road onto a route of about ten kilometres of what seems to be an old farm road snaking through tall and very dense trees. The road is tarred, but one can see that it is used very seldom nowadays, because it is full of potholes and there are even grass growing from cracks in the ancient tar.
Despite the trees, the sun still shines straight into his eyes through the tunnel that the trees make. He sees on his right hand side what looks like an abandoned farm house. He simply loves old buildings and is already studying it as he approaches, because he would like to take some photos of it.
Then it happens…
From concentrating on the house he rides straight into the biggest pothole in the road, his momentum making him shoot straight over the handle bars and coming hard down onto the tar. Luckily his echo is hurt more than his body. He had been riding bike since he was seven years old and can count on the fingers of one hand the times that he really fell from a bike.
The bike is damaged though, and he sees immediately that he won't be able to ride with the buckled front wheel. Luckily the accident happened right in front of the abandoned farmhouse and he can get assistance from there.
He turns to look at the house and...
...straight into the most horrible face he had ever seen in his life. It is a young boy, about ten or eleven years old. The boy is not actually ugly, but has the most horrible wound in his face. The wound fills the one half of his face and seems to be struggling to heal, giving the boy a short of zombie look.
The boy must have stood behind him, just outside the gate of the farmhouse, the whole time, but he didn't see him in the shadows. The ugly black, red and blue scar runs down the left side of his face. It looks like a wild animal or something tried to take a huge bite out of his face.
"Hello, boy," Mason greets the youngster, hoping the boy didn't see how he startled him.
"Hi." the boys says in a very matter of fact manner. So as if he is not really interested in Mason or the dramatic accident he just witnessed right in front of him.
"Do you live in this house?" Mason asks the boy as he points at the house.
"Yes", the boy answers in his cold manner, which seems to be his natural way of conversing with someone. He just stands where Mason saw him the first time and doesn't even make an effort to come closer.
Mason moves closer to the youngster and asks him: "Have you got a phone?"
"No, we never had one." The boy looks straight up at Mason, and this makes the scar even more pronounced and ugly, so as if the one eye wants to jump out of the face.
"Are your parents home...is there anyone here who can give me a lift to the village?"
"No, mother died a years ago and Father is away. There's really no-one here."
Mason sees as the last orange rays of the sun sinks away behind the mountains in the distance. Although the glow is still there, the area is instantly filled with a chill that even brings up a light mist from the ground. Light is systematically sucked away and dusk makes everything into a barely visible form.
"Well, I won't be able to ride with this buckled wheel tonight and there is no other civilization close by. Can I stay over at your house tonight, I will pay you well...” he asks the boy.
"Makes no difference to me..." the boy states in his usual pragmatic manner.
With his backpack on his back, Mason pushes the limping bike towards the gate.
"Come open the gate for me." he asks the boy.
"Open it yourself." the boy, who still stands in the same spot, tells him.
Although the boy's words sounds harsh, Mason notes that there is no malice in the boy's tone. It is just said in his usual matter-of-fact manner.
Through his travels, Mason had noted that the peoples of the rural areas of the country is very warm and friendly. They are mostly very poor and always very interested in Mason and his bi
ke and everything surrounding him. But this boy is an exception. He is answering all Mason's question and doesn't seem to be unfriendly at all. He is just cold and really uninterested.
Mason struggles to open the rusty latch of the gate. Once the gate is unlatched it is still hard to open it and it takes a while before it turns inwards on its two rusted hinges.
Once on the footpath on his way to the front of the farmhouse, Mason sees for the first time how dilapidated and run down the whole place is in reality. He couldn't see this from the road.
What must once have been a very beautiful garden is now overgrown with weeds, with here and there a flower still struggling against the weeds. Some of the vegetables that must have been planted there in the hey-day of the place, is now growing wild and pumpkins and squashes are all over the place. The trees stands like giant guardians over everything. Weeds are also growing all over the concrete footpath where he is walking towards the huge stoep.
On the big stoep it is even worst. Many of the plant pots have fallen down and are broken with their contents still growing to the best of their ability in the little soil still left. The few pieces of wooden furniture on the stoep is weathered to such an extent that some are beyond any hope of repair. Spider webs are everywhere. It is clear that no one takes any care of what he saw of the premises so far.
"For how long has your father been away?" he asks the boy who is now behind him as he parks his bike against the stoep railing.
"Father is gone for quite some time now."
"Are you alone here?"
"No, my sister is also here."
Then for the first time, Mason sees the little girl in the shadows of slightly ajar front door. Never in his life had he seen a little girl that looks so sad. She is about four or five years old with a neat little dress and a dolly in her hand. She looks up at Mason and before he can talk to her, she runs towards her brother and go stand behind him, holding onto his shirt.
"Who takes care of you, then?"
"I take care of us." the boy says bravely as his sister peeps at Mason from behind her brother.
Mason immediately decides to inform the authorities about the two children when he goes down to the little village the next morning. He can't understand how their father could just leave them here on their own, although the boy looks very capable, he is still very young and won't be able to do everything even if he wanted to.
Despite the derelict look of the place, both children are very neat and clean. Ok, clean as a child will be after a day of hard play.
"Where can I sleep tonight?"
The boy leads him into the house, followed by the little girl, who is still holding onto the back of his shirt.
Inside the house there is an odd damp smell, as if the house is never aired. The mouldiness has seeped into every crevice and hole of the house and it seems to have driven out all life and whatever was good in the place. How the children can live in such a dank place is anybody's guess.
They walk down a gloomy passage and then the boy enters a room which he point out to Mason as where he can sleep for the night.
The bedroom seems even worse than the rest of the house. There is a bed against the one wall, closest to the door, neatly made up. He knows that these rural people always have a guess room, and this must be it. There is a big table and cupboard against the other wall. He throws his backpack on the bed and then tries to open the window to let the damp, musty air out, but the window is stuck as if it is glued shut.
The children doesn't offer any assistance and just stand in the doorway looking at him. In the gloominess of the house the boy's ugly face is even a little disconcerting.
Mason takes his smaller cooler bag out of his backpack and ask the boy where the kitchen is.
The children take him there. As it is getting dark outside, it is even darker inside the house and since no one seems to be in a hurry to switch on the lights, Mason asks:
"Have you got electricity?"
"No, we never had any electricity in the house."
Mason takes out his All Weather electric lantern and switches it on. The bright light immediately fills every gloomy corner of that dank kitchen with light.
He takes out his food, which consists of cold meats, bread-rolls, some tomato salad still left over after his hard ride and some cool-drink. He puts everything on three plastic plates and invite the children to come eat with him.
"No, thanks, we had already eaten." the boys says very politely, but still with the usual coldness in his voice.
Mason finds this very strange. Never in his whole life had he met any child who wouldn't eat anything at any time whether he had just eaten or not. Even the little girl, who still peeks out from behind her brother seems disinterested in the food, whose nice smell now takes over in the kitchen that seems to not have been used in ages.
Mason starts eating the food on his plate, leaving the other two plates there for if they change their minds later. The two children once again just stand there watching him.
The little girl stays behind the boy, with just a part of her face visible, looking at Mason. Mason smiles at her, but she just look back at him with that enigmatic, sad look on her little face.
Seeing the way the house is and the fact that almost nothing in it works he asks the boy" "Aren't you afraid to be alone at home, while your father is away. Is there no-one who takes care of you?"
"No, we are used to being alone at home. I must stay here to look after my sister and protect the house against the Kaffirs." he says in that pragmatic tone that seems to be his trademark. This one will make a good lawyer or politician one day, Mason thinks to himself.
It is also very strange to hear the taboo word - Kaffir - flowing so easily over the boy's lips. For many years now this has been a forbidden word and he didn't even know that youngsters knew the word anymore.
The Blacks have taken over control of the country in 1994 and since then black criminals have been systematically murdering people who live in the rural areas. This is the first and foremost reason why the rural areas have become mostly deserted. There are even claims that these criminals are sponsored by the government, because they are very well equipped and will mostly commit the most horrible murders and not even take something from the house.
But how would the boy protect the property against these blacks, who usually comes in groups and are well armed.
"How will you protect the place against these Blacks if they attack you?" he asks the boy as he bites into a roll.
For the first time the boy smiles and with that deep gash in his cheek, it is definitely not a beautiful sight. Even the little girl seems to be smiling, in a short of malevolent way now.
"OH, I have my ways and they will find out if they ever come this way again...” His eyes seem to glow as he says this.
Mason knows it is not polite to simply asks, and maybe the boy won't like it, but he just have to try: "What happened to your face?"
"We don't talk about that." The boy doesn't seem to be insulted by the question and Mason decides to just leave it at that. When he informs the social workers tomorrow, they can investigate this matter.
Mason washes his dish in the sink with the water coming out in a trickle from the ancient tap.
When he is done, he goes outside to the stoep to see if he can make any repairs to his buckled front wheel, so that he can be mobile the next morning. He just need to bend it more or less back in shape again, so that he can at least reach the village. The village is way too far to walk to.
The children sit on the steps looking up at him where he works on the spokes of the wheel. The little girl sits on a step lower, just behind her brother.
"You know, people say that this place is haunted..."
Mason takes note of the fact that it is the first time - since he met the boy - that he speaks out of own accord. He usually just answered the questions Mason asked him.
"Haunted?" Mason says as he feels the unnatural cold creeping in under his clothes. "
Did you ever see any ghosts?"
"No, never. But I can sometimes feel them and late at night I hear them moving about outside the house." the boy tells him in his usual pragmatic manner. The way that the boy talks, it seems as if the most bizarre things are just ordinary and even a bit boring, to him. Mason notes the little girl looking intensely at him from behind her brother, as if studying his reaction.
The last natural light has now been driven from the area and it is just the pool of light generated by his lantern that lights up the place. The mist is also getting thicker and there is an unnatural iciness settling in everywhere as if this is the norm of the area and not the bright warmth of the sunlight.
Mason feels something that feels like spider webs lightly brushing over his face. He brushes it away with the back of his hand, but it keeps on coming back.
He sees the boy looking up at him with his horrible face and the little girl smiles.
"That is one of the ghosts." the boy says.
Mason jumps up from where he is busy with the spokes of the wheel.
"What!" he says as he desperately brushes the invisible spidery things away from his face. For the first time the little girl actually laughs. Her laughter sounds like a little bell in a dark cave.
Now that is on his feet, the spidery things are gone.
"Yes, that is one of the ghost swirling her veil over your face. She does that to one if she likes you." the boy says as he looks far into the swirling mist, that now comes to the bottom of the stoep. "I think it’s my mother."
Mason goes back to working on his wheel, now feeling cold rings running down his back.
Be My Victim and other Strange Tales from the Cape Page 3