The Other Four

by Nsununguli Mbo

  Dumani looked. Towering above him was a guy who looked like Thabang.

  “Why are you saying that?” Dumani said.

  “Because I thought that guy killed you.” “Which guy?”

  “The guy we captured.”

  “I never captured any guy. What are you talking about?”

  Where the hell was he? He had thought he was in his little creaky bed with his neighbour’s wife. But towering over him was an ugly face that looked like Thabang’s. And then he remembered.

  “Shit, Thabang, you just tried to kill me!”

  “No, you tried to kill me. We need to catch that guy again.”

  “Which guy?”

  “The guy we were sent for. He escaped.”

  “He escaped! How did that happen?”

  “Look what he did to me,” said Thabang, baring his teeth.

  Despite all the pain Dumani was experiencing, he laughed. Thabang looked eighty or thereabouts now.

  “You think this is funny, huh?” Thabang said, coming closer to Dumani, his hands made into fists. Before Dumani could react, Thabang was on him with his fists, pummelling him. But Dumani was ready for him. He kicked him in the mouth. Two more teeth out. As soon as the teeth hit the ground, Thabang looked at them in seeming disbelief. Dumani stood up quickly and pushed Thabang against the van.

  “Look, you fool. Let’s stop fighting or else Damon is not going to pay us. We need to find that guy.”

  “Who is Damon?”

  “The guy who sent us.”

  “I thought you said it’s The Boss who sent us?”

  “No, it’s Damon. Damon works for The Boss. Damon is the one who sent us and as soon as we give him the guy he will hand him over to The Boss. But by then we'll have done our part.”

  “I’m confused. I…”

  “You’ve always been confused. You are…”

  “No, you told me The Boss sent us. But now you say it’s Damon.”

  “They are the same people. Let’s go and find this fool.”

  I was out of breath, bruised and crying. I could feel death running after me. Those bastards could be chasing me right now. The only problem was I had lost my sense of direction. The stream where they'd found me wasn’t far from home and I should have been home by now if I was travelling in the right direction. But I wasn’t, from the look of things. Every sound scared me. Could be those guys chasing me? I took out my cell phone from my pocket. No network coverage. I had to find a way of contacting someone. Call the Police, or ask someone to call the Police. I wanted to scream for help but was afraid I might alert those bastards if they were chasing me. I was running out of energy. I had to rest. I jumped into a little copse and hid in there, my heart beating so fast I feared those bastards would hear it should they venture this way. I lay as low as I could, trying to control my breathing.

  Then I heard voices arguing. Those bastards were here. I crouched low into the bush. The argument grew more heated. As the voices got closer, I realised they were different from those of those two bastards. One belonged to a woman and one to an angry young man. Unless the bastards had found themselves a female victim, it couldn’t be them. I started hearing what the voices were saying, “I’m going to teach you a lesson today,” the male voice said.

  “Let go of me, you fool!” yelled the female voice. I heard what sounded like a slap. The female screamed.

  “Somebody please help me!” she yelled.

  I heard what sounded like a punch.

  “Why are you doing this to me?” said the female voice.

  Another slap. “You know why. But you’re going to pay dearly today. I’ve let you get away with it for far too long, but not anymore.”

  I wanted to take a peek, see who they were, step in and help, but then the thought of the trouble that was out there for me kept me crouched in the bushes.

  A bloodcurdling scream emanated from the woman.

  “Somebody please help me!”

  I heard a thud, followed by the sound of bashing. The screams from the woman grew louder and more desperate. A crackling sound followed. The woman’s screams slowed down, became fainter and fainter until they disappeared, like someone was chopping wood.

  “I warned you, bitch!” said the man. Three more crackling sounds in quick succession.

  I couldn’t help myself. I took a peek. What I saw will remain in my memory for as long as I live. Cruel. Gruesome. Something I’d thus far only seen in a horror movie. The woman’s head had been bashed open. The man was holding a bloodied axe. I had seen him around in Tsebeyatonki before. I was just about to crouch back into the bushes, acting as if I hadn’t seen a thing, but I was too late: he had already seen me.

  Mothusi tried hard to fight against a mixture of anger and guilt for the murder he had just committed. He had just been about to take out a little container from his jacket pocket when he saw a man’s head disappear behind the bushes. Somebody had undoubtedly seen him. Fear jumped into the mixture of anger and guilt. He had come all the way here because he had thought nobody would see him. Nobody was ever going to know he was the one who had killed this bitch. But now someone had. He wasn’t going to let that somebody get away with it.

  He charged into the bushes, his axe at the ready, where he had seen the fellow disappear. He was going to chop the man’s head off straight away. But when he got to the bush where he had seen the man, there was no one. I looked around. He heard the sound of footfalls. He listened closely and detected the direction they were coming from. He charged that way, ignoring the thorny trees that were brushing against his legs. He wore shorts and this didn’t make things any better. The man appeared on a clearing and was very fast. But so was Mothusi.

  Mothusi increased his speed. The thought of hurling the axe at him crossed his mind, but he dismissed it immediately. If he missed, the man could take the axe and use it on him instead. The distance between them was closing up quickly. He was a few metres away. The man took one look behind and Mothusi could see the panic on his face. He lifted the axe high above his head, about to bash the man’s head, but he tripped and fell, his head hitting a rock in the process. The last thing he remembered was his axe flying out of his grasp.

  “He couldn’t be too far from here,” said Thabang. Dumani was stifling a laugh because Thabang’s speech had worsened since the latest loss of his teeth. At least the bleeding had stopped.

  Poor guy. “Definitely. We'll find him. We have to,” Dumani said, trying hard not to laugh.

  They were walking, no rush. Dumani was adamant that they’d find him. Only problem was, he was sobering up. When doing this sort of job, he needed a bit of booze in his system, because whenever he sobered up, he felt tired. His legs were getting weak.

  “What if somebody steals the van?” said Dumani.

  “Are you crazy, how can they when you have the keys?”

  “I left them there.” He was lying. He just wanted to get back to the van, and when they got back there, he would suggest a shebeen.

  “You never change, do you? Always a fool. How can you leave the keys in the van?”

  Fool or not, at least Dumani still had all his teeth and no speech problems.

  “It’s all your fault. If you hadn’t fought me, we wouldn’t have lost this guy. And that means we wouldn’t have to worry about the keys. Come on, let’s go get the keys.”

  “Nxa,” said Thabang as he followed Dumani back to the van. The two were not talking the rest of the way as they walked.

  Dumani sped up as they approached the van, quickly jumped into the driver’s seat and shoved the key into the ignition. “Oh, thank God the keys are still here,” he said as Thabang caught up with him.

  “So take them and let’s go find this guy.”

  “Look man, I’ve a headache. Remember, you hit me?”

  “So what the hell do you want me to do? You hit me too and I’m not whinging about it. Let’s go find this guy.”

  “What I’m trying to say is, I need some pain killers,” D
umani said and started the van. The good thing was, Thabang didn’t know how to drive. If he refused to come along, Dumani would simply leave him there.

  Thabang clucked his tongue in annoyance, jumped in and said, “But how can you go to the shops smelling of shit like that?”

  Dumani ignored Thabang, searched behind his seat, retrieved a little rucksack, searched inside and got a pair of dirty pants. He changed into these while Thabang looked on with obvious disgust. He put the smelly pants in a large paper bag, which he then folded several times, chucked it into the rucksack before throwing it back behind his seat.

  I continued running despite being out of breath. I summoned whatever little energy I had left. I didn’t know where to run to. But one thing was for sure: if I was going to die, I would prefer to see my family first.

  The image of the dead woman rammed into my mind. I had never seen anything like that in my life. Like I said, I’d seen the murderer in Tsebeyatonki before but didn’t know his name. But who was the woman that got killed? Assuming I didn’t get kidnapped again or killed, I had witnessed a murder and I had to give some sort of information to the authorities. At least if I could find out who the woman was, that would be more useful. I had to find a way of going back to where the woman was. I had seen the murderer fall while chasing me, and he didn’t get up, so he could very well be dead. But what if he wasn’t? From the look of things, he had intended to do something with the body after he killed that woman. If he was still alive, he was most likely going to return to the body. But still I had to find out who the woman was.

  But then my kidnappers were out there too. A thought hit me. I always carried a little burlap sack in my pocket. I wished I still had my knobkerrie. Oh, I had my Okapi knife as well. I stopped, regained some breath and looked around. I found what I was looking for: a perfectly rounded little rock. I unfolded the burlap sack and threw the little rock in there. Perfect weapon. All I had to do if any of those bastards chasing me came near was swing the burlap sack around and the rock would get one of them on the head.

  Some things Dumani would never understand. A guy loses his teeth, and a few minutes later he falls soundly asleep in a moving, noisy van. His head rested sideways against the seat and there was a blood stain trickling down his chin.

  Dumani fumbled with the old radio of the van, found Radio Botswana and a barely audible sound came from the broken speakers. No use. He switched the radio off.

  His favourite shebeen was full by the time they got there. He left Thabang in the van and joined a group of noisy drinkers sitting at the corner of the yard. He bought three cartons of Chibuku with coins he’d found in the van. He was just about to leave when he saw the last person he had wanted to see this very minute.

  Damon walked towards Dumani just as he was about to walk back to the van, hoping Damon hadn’t seen him.

  “Dumani, you are back?” said Damon when he caught up with Dumani.

  “Yes, but…”

  “Where is he?” said Damon, smiling, exposing bad dentition. He was an old man and, unlike Thabang, had a reason to have missing teeth. Five of them.

  Dumani didn’t like the guy. In fact, Dumani didn’t like people. But Damon had promised Dumani unbelievable wealth, which was going to accumulate over a period of a week. All Dumani and Thabang had to do was bring that guy in. But now the guy had escaped.

  “He…look, we had him, but he…”

  Damon suddenly looked serious and worried. He said, “But?”

  “He escaped.”

  “What do you mean he escaped?” Damon said incredulously.

  Dumani was starting to shake a little. He put down the Chibuku and said, “We stopped the van and he ran away.” He was tempted to tell him that he had a fight with Thabang. But then he might get into some serious trouble because he was the one who had found Thabang. Damon gave him the job and said he’d need a second person. Then Dumani went out to find a second person, and the second person ended up being the ugly bastard named Thabang of all people, a guy with more missing teeth than an old man like Damon.

  “Why did you stop the van?”

  Just then the passenger door to the van opened. Thabang stumbled out, wiped his mouth and came to join the two.

  “What happened to him?” Damon asked.

  With sleep still evident in his eyes, Thabang said, “He,” indicating towards Dumani, “beat me up and knocked out my teeth. We had a fight. Then when that guy escaped, he hit me and knocked out one of my teeth too.”

  Dumani felt like punching Thabang.

  Damon shook his head incredulously.

  “You guys are worse fools than I thought. That guy is, like, what, half your height and bulk, yet he managed to escape from you?”

  “We are going to find him.”

  “Find him? You thought it fit to come and buy alcohol before you could even finish the job?”

  “We thought he may have come this way. We came down looking for him.”

  Thabang looked at Dumani incredulously, but thankfully didn’t say anything.

  “And did you find him?” said Damon, looking around mockingly.

  “No. We are going back to the bush to look for him.”

  Damon looked around like a robber, lowered his voice and said, “I give you one day to find him. If you don’t, I’ll worsen your poverty and something really horrendous will happen to you.”

  With that Damon left.

  “But you said we were coming back here to get pain killers?” said Thabang as soon as the two were back in the van.

  “These are the pain killers,” said Dumani waving at the three cartons of Chibuku, which he had placed on the floor of the van, in front of Thabang.

  Thabang looked at him and said nothing. Dumani leaned over, picked one carton, shook it vigorously and took a loud sip, then offered it to Thabang. The bastard wouldn’t even decline. He took a longer sip than Dumani. Dumani found it difficult to stop himself from laughing as the liquid leaked out of Thabang’s gums and spilt on his worn-out tee shirt. But the guy wasn’t bothered. He continued noisily sipping the booze. When he was done, he sighed heavily while patting the wet part of his tee shirt at the same time.

  Dumani started the van and headed towards the bush. The van stopped just when they reached the periphery of the village. Thabang had always claimed to be a mechanic. Dumani had always been sceptical about the claim until today. Thabang deemed the reason why the van had stopped was because it had run out of petrol. The thing was, the little needle that gives an idea of how much petrol was left in the van wasn’t working. It remained stuck at EMPTY all the time.

  Thabang fetched a container full of petrol from the back of the van and filled the tank up, then came back into the passenger seat.

  The two rode in silence, although they continued to share the booze.

  I decided I wasn’t going to run anymore. I was walking and listening out for any signs of those bastards. I decided to pass by the spot where the killer had fallen. He wasn’t there. His axe wasn’t there either. This wasn’t good. He could be anywhere. The thought of that axe catching me on the head unawares made me even more vigilant. Although I had been lost earlier on, this time I wasn’t. I knew where the murdered woman’s body was. Sometimes I would stop and listen, and every time I heard a sound I would hold my rock weapon out, ready to swing it.

  I found the body just as a vulture was descending. I shooed it off and approached the body carefully. One look at the body and I couldn’t control my emotions. It looked worse than I had thought. But why did he kill her? I knelt by the body and peered into the mutilated face, hoping I’d be able to identify it. But I couldn’t. The mutilation was too much. The murderer was most likely one of the guys who were out there looking for me. This woman could have been me. I could easily end up like her. I was dealing with ritual killers.

  M

  othusi had a headache and a bump on his forehead, and was feeling dizzy. He had started searching the bushes as

  soon as he regain
ed consciousness. Initially he couldn’t remember why he was there, but things quickly came back to him. He had to find the man who’d witnessed him commit the murder before he came back to finish what he had begun, which was to delve into the real reason behind the murder. How did he let himself be seen? How stupid of him!

  He looked for the witness all over, but he was nowhere to be found. This wasn’t good. He could already have gone back to the village to report what he had just witnessed. Mothusi was faced with a dilemma. He could head back to the village and hunt for the witness. But what if by the time he got there he had already reported the murder? At the same time he needed to complete his mission and hide the body. Bury it in a place where it will never be found. The latter idea sounded better. If he buried the body, even if the witness reported the murder, he might not be believed if the body wasn’t found. Even if somebody discovered the body, Mothusi had mutilated it beyond recognition.

  Mothusi trotted through the bush, found a little stream with water, washed his axe and headed towards the direction where he had left the body. He hid in the copse where the witness had been hiding earlier and peered towards the body. He was too late.

  Two men were already there, looking at the body and discussing something in hushed tones. They were big men and Mothusi wasn’t going to risk trying to take them down.

  That would be a foolish idea.

  He watched them from behind the bushes, wishing they’d just leave the body alone. He wasn’t worried about them reporting the murder. All they could do was go back to the village and report the sighting of the body. They didn’t know who the murderer was. What worried Mothusi was that he hadn’t done what he was meant to do to the body. If he didn’t do it, then what he had done so far was nothing but wasted effort. He had a mission to complete. Life was tough these days. Surviving is done at the expense of other people. That’s why he had no shame killing that woman. She had what he is looking for, and he had to get it.

  Unfortunately to get what he was after, he had to kill her. It was her fate. But now he worried that he may not be able to take what he wanted from the woman. He had to shoo off the two men in one way or the other. That way, while distracted, Mothusi was willing to take the risk and rush to the body, collect his prize and run. By the time they turn back to the body, Mothusi would be far away. They wouldn’t be able to chase him. They were too fat to. Besides, they were drinking alcohol and seemed drunk from the sound of their loud voices. Mothusi wondered which way fate would lead him.