The Other Four

by Nsununguli Mbo

  The day before his birthday, his father collapsed and never woke up. Just like that. The grief had never really left Damon. He still clung on to some of his father’s clothes. He clutched them against his chest and cried sometimes.

  He kept reminding himself to stay strong. Then one day, while out there looking for his cattle, he bumped into a younger woman fetching firewood. A mutual spark instantly developed between the two and a romance begun. Eventually he convinced her to move in. They decided to have a family. They tried, but she wouldn’t fall pregnant. Each blamed the other for the fertility problem. As if that was not enough, he suddenly became impotent. Their relationship became increasingly strained. They slept in separate bedrooms. He became even more reclusive.

  One day he woke up with a renewed resolve to mend his relationship with the wife. He went over to her bedroom and tentatively knocked. She wouldn’t answer. He was tempted to just go in without permission, but the thought of her temper tantrums kept him at bay. But then he thought this was a bit strange. She would usually be up by now. Tentatively, he pushed the door open. She lay peacefully in bed. He suddenly felt guilty. She looked so innocent. She deserved better than him. He stood at the end of the bed, watching her as she slept peacefully, fighting the temptation to wake her up and give her the best love. He was just about to lean over and give her a shake when he noticed she wasn’t breathing. She was dead.

  Her family stigmatized him. They blamed him for her death. They believed he had poisoned her. They’d known about his regular fights with her. They accused him of being a witch, what with the fact that he lived alone in a secluded bush.

  He became even more socially withdrawn. At around the same time his cattle started dying. He became poor and desperate.

  Then one day he befriended a man. He never found out his real name because the man changed names all the time. One day he was Rraabo. The next day he was Mr. James. The latest name — which had stuck for longer than the rest — was The Boss.

  The Boss lived somewhere in the next cattle post, but Damon wasn’t sure where exactly. The two bumped into each other at the farm of a white farmer who sometimes came down to buy cattle from this side of the country. The main difference between Damon and The Boss was that the latter still had many cattle. Lots of them. Damon had never seen where he lived. But he knew the guy was stinking rich. He changed cars like they were clothes.

  As the friendship between them grew stronger, Damon had felt it safe to reveal his sorrowful life to The Boss. The Boss was a good listener. He had listened throughout, with no interruptions. When Damon had finished his story, The Boss had, in a calm voice, told him he could bring back all the wealth Damon had lost. But he would need one thing: a sacrifice.

  It was getting dark and Dumani was getting more impatient by the minute. The van’s speed was worse than that of a scotch cart. Thabang had once again fallen asleep and the smell of urine had intensified. His gums were exposed to the maximum and one or two were bleeding. His breath stank. Stank like faeces. Dumani stole a few glances at Thabang and saw all sorts of stuff stuck to Thabang’s gums. The gums had probably never had contact with a toothbrush. Dumani took pride in his own hygiene. He had a toothbrush that had seen to the cleanliness of his teeth for the last five years.

  Dumani’s annoyance was slowly being replaced by hope. They had a victim. It wasn’t the victim, but he was sure the guy would do. Dumani was looking forward to getting rich. Despite the slow progress of the van, each time it inched forward it brought him closer to wealth. Closer than he had ever been. The annoying thing was that Damon hadn’t given Dumani the specifics of how he was going to make him rich. Dumani would have done the job alone. Should have, now that he thought of it. But he had thought it was risky to venture into such a dangerous adventure on his own. Plus, Damon had advised him against doing so. So, he had rung Thabang. He was too excited at the time to think that the guy was a moron. And now the moron was asleep and on his way to get rich, too, and for no other reason than that he had come along. The moron couldn’t even stay awake long enough to prevent a vagabond from slashing the tyres of the van. Dumani didn’t believe Thabang’s story at all. Dumani checked before he went off into the bush looking for their victim. The tyres had been okay when he left. Or Thabang actually slashed them. That was the problem with working with morons. You just could never trust the way they thought.

  Dumani wondered how he was going to get paid. In cash? Or beasts?

  He didn’t know Damon, but judging from the isolation he lived in he guessed the guy must have some livestock. Dumani wasn’t a farmer, so if he got paid in, say, cattle, he would sell all of them to the Botswana Meat Commission (BMC). He could get a lot of money. Enough for him to relocate to the capital city.

  He would simply disappear into the night. He might even change his name just for the heck of it. Find himself a name that suited a city guy.

  Dumani was just not good enough. There were too many people out there named Dumani, herdsmen and criminals included. He needed a unique name, one that could appear in the newspaper and people wouldn’t confuse him for some nonentity.

  He had been to Gaborone before, that was last year. He had swung by this other place at night, bored, you know. Wanted to see what Gaborone nightlife was like. Somebody had told him you could even get yourself a light-coloured woman there. He hadn’t gone there to find one though. He knew he wasn’t good enough. He didn’t even go in. He had heard it was expensive to go in there. The drinks too, were expensive, he had heard. He went there just to satisfy his curiosity, see for himself what people were talking about. He had taken a taxi, told the taxi man to drop him off there. After the taxi had left, he had wandered around. Thought of going in, but when he counted the coins, they were not enough for even one beer. He had been tempted to break in even and rob the place, but he knew that was a stupid idea. Even thought of raping a girl or two. These were not just ordinary girls, he saw. They were the sort of girls you only saw on TV. Young things that moved like cats. He had finally managed to fight all the temptations, got into another taxi, went home and masturbated like never before, the images of all those girls he had seen stuck in his mind like magnets, right next to his wife while she snored away. She’d stirred just when he was at the height of things and he had got out of bed and went out to finish things off out in the cold.

  But he was getting closer to being able to afford to go in there. And the girls. Not break in. No. Pay and go in. Find himself a young thing, get her a nice ring in Johannesburg and get married in a quiet place like he had seen on TV.

  His wife would never find him. Not even if she tried.

  He would turn his pay into business. Open a store or something. He would see. He peered into the rearview mirror and smiled to himself. The ugliness would be gone soon.

  Thabang stirred and ground his gums in his sleep. Freaky shit. Now he was facing Dumani and drooling like a dog. As if the annoyance he was causing Dumani wasn’t enough, he opened his mouth and snored loudly.

  Dumani was finding it hard to maintain his patience. But he would have to if he wanted to get rich. He would have to tolerate Thabang. Only for a few minutes. An hour, max.

  Mothusi had tried to open the door to the back of the van and had now given up. Whoever had made this car had meant it for criminals like these ones. Abductors. There was no way he could open this door, even if it wasn’t locked. You could only open it from the outside. He wanted to pee real badly. He had gotten used to the smell of pee in the back of the van.

  His only hope was that when the van came to a stop, he’d escape. He counted on fate. He would be prepared, despite his injured foot. He would push against whoever was going to open the door and kick him hard. He would have to be quick and take advantage of the element of surprise. But he couldn’t bring himself to be optimistic in regard to this idea. He was only capable of limping. Running was out of the picture. If he was going to kick whoever would open the door, he would have to run. And that was impossible.
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  A feeling of hopelessness assailed him. He could feel death descending upon him, squeezing against him. He had no chance. He was a dead man.

  “I’m sure it was here when I left earlier on,” I said, indicating where I’d last seen the van. I was hundred percent sure this was the area. The fact that the van was now missing made me cringe. It brought to mind the possibility that the guys who tried to abduct me could actually be witches. Maybe they were capable of horrible things such as flying or repairing a slashed tyre without need for equipment that would normally be needed for such a job.

  “Maybe you got the directions wrong?” said Volume Two.

  “No. I’m sure the van was here when I left.” I could sense a great deal of scepticism. Not just

  from Volume Two, but from everyone else. No one believed me. Could all of what had happened really be a figment of my imagination? No way.

  I peered closer to the ground.

  “See the tyre marks here?” I said, pointing. Somebody pointed the beam of a torch onto

  where I was pointing. The tyre marks were clearly visible. And I was sure they belonged to the van because the tread marks of one undoubtedly belonged to a flat tyre.

  “Oh, yeah, I see the marks,” somebody said. Everybody looked and concurred that they were

  indeed tyre marks.

  “But these could belong to any car. This is a

  common road for many people travelling to their

  farms,” said somebody.

  As if on cue, the lights of a vehicle appeared up

  in the distance. My hopes just about picked up. Could

  be the van we were after. But the hopes dropped

  almost immediately when I noticed that the vehicle

  was not a van. It was a smaller car. A Corolla or

  something.

  It slowed down as it approached. I could make

  out the driver. Definitely not any of my abductors. A

  woman sat next to the driver. In the backseat were

  two young children.

  When the car reached us, the passenger window

  slid down and the car stopped.

  “What’s going on?” asked the driver in a

  feminine voice. I could be wrong, but this was

  definitely not the voice of a ritual killer. Plus he had

  children.

  Children.

  What if the driver had actually abducted the

  children and the woman? Which reminded me of my

  wife. Although I could see the children were much

  younger than mine, I moved closer to the car and

  peered into their faces. And the woman’s. A tinge of

  disappointment attacked me. They looked nothing like

  my family.

  A gregarious type stepped up from amongst the

  search party and explained the situation. He gave

  away too much information, I reckoned. This could still be one of the ritual killers. The woman’s eyes widened in obvious fear as she listened to what I'd been through earlier on in the day. So did the man’s. Suddenly he was in a hurry to drive away. This could mean two things: either he was genuinely scared of what he was hearing or he was one of the killers and was afraid of being found out. But the children looked relaxed. At ease. Not the sort of look you’d expect on

  a child who’d just been abducted.

  “That’s scary because our farm is not too far from

  here. We could get killed,” said the man. The fear on

  his face was evident.

  “We’re trying our best,” said the gregarious man.

  Couldn’t remember his name. Joseph or John —

  something like that.

  “I hope you find them.”

  “If we do, we will take the law into our own

  hands,” said Joseph or John, brandishing a knobkerrie

  at the same time.

  The man slid the window of his car back up and

  drove off.

  Somebody suggested following the trail of the

  tyres, but this was quashed by the majority, the

  reasoning being that the wrong trail might be

  followed.

  The most elderly of the crew approached me,

  shoulders hunched, and said, “We do understand the

  distress you must be going through. But stay positive.

  Jumping to conclusions can only jeopardize our

  chances of finding your wife and children, who may

  very well be safe somewhere. I’m not saying you’re

  over-reacting or anything, but maybe it’s a bit too

  early to be concluding they are missing. They may very well have visited. As people we tend to forget sometimes. So there is that slight possibility that your wife may actually have told you she was going somewhere with the children and you just forgot. Plus, it’s getting late and dangerous. If there are indeed ritual killers — not that I don’t believe you or anything — they’re most likely to attack us in the darkness. I know this may sound disappointing to you, but I think it’s time to call off the search. We’ll

  continue tomorrow.”

  I knew this was not just the old man’s idea. The

  idea had been discussed and agreed upon, probably

  long before we got here, or while I was carried away

  in thought.

  I could feel tears stinging my eyes. I wished I

  could plead with these people, tell them I needed their

  support and help, but I could still sense the

  scepticism. Some of the crew members were already

  retracing their steps.

  Even under the setting darkness, I could see the

  fear on their faces. They were protecting themselves.

  They didn’t want to end up victims of ritual

  murderers.

  My wife and children meant little to them. But

  they meant a lot to me. And I wasn’t giving up the

  search. I was going to make sure I found them. Alone.

  Damon had been waiting all the day, nervous about the whole thing. The Boss had said the sacrifice had to happen within twenty-four hours. And only twelve hours were left. After that the sacrifice wouldn’t bear any results. His spirits were dropping by the minute. So were his hopes. He sat in front of his aging five-bedroom house, by the fire. He had run out of firewood and the fire was dying slowly, bringing about a familiar melancholy. He was running out of everything, including groceries, the motivation to venture into the bush and fetch firewood.

  The house had become dilapidated over the years. It was badly in need of paint. The roof was threatening to give in. The last storm took off part of the roof. And he couldn’t afford to repair any of these. His funds had dried out, stolen through witchcraft.

  He suspected the house was haunted. Sometimes he heard strange sounds on the roof at unsocial hours, sounds of owls, even.

  But he was prepared for whatever fate had in store for him. He had to be. And so far, things didn’t look good. He had thought of moving to a different location at one point, and had deemed it unnecessary. Fate would still follow him wherever he went, he reckoned. His only hopes rested with The Boss. The Boss had promised to tamper with fate and bring back his wealth. But he was running out of time. He peered into the darkness, hoping against hope to see a car approaching. Nothing but just discouraging darkness that only intensified the melancholy.

  Damon hardly cooked. This was not only because he was lazy. No. He simply had no interest in food. He had lost the interest a long time ago. His trousers wouldn’t fit him anymore. But sometimes he went hunting just for the heck of it. Sometimes he would come home with a rabbit, which he would leave to dry then throw away as soon as insects and flies found it. He’d killed one the other day and it was hanging from the clothesline, drying. For some strange reason he felt pangs of hunger when thinking of it. Maybe The Boss had already begun reversing his fate even before the act
ual sacrifice. A ray of hope seeped through.

  He stood up to go and get the rabbit, roast it maybe. Or even just boil it, let it get really tender then grind it. That way it would be easier to eat and he wouldn’t need much of an appetite to do so.

  He was just about to stand up to go get the rabbit when lights pierced through the darkness. They were approaching. They definitely belonged to a vehicle. It must be the vehicle that he had been waiting for all day, judging from the single headlight. He smiled to himself and walked towards the gate.

  Dumani was smiling as he pulled up in front of Damon’s yard. He was a little bit worried though. The old man had promised them wealth yet he seemed to live in absolute poverty. The fence to his large yard was falling.

  The thought of leaving Thabang in the van, taking the victim to Damon, getting paid and disappearing into thin air crossed Dumani’s mind, but he dismissed it.

  Dumb as he was, Thabang might eventually find him and the meeting might turn nasty. Besides, what if Mothusi overpowered him? He needed Thabang. Thabang was strong physically, although Dumani was aware that the guy was much less so in his current state. The guy wouldn’t even wake up all through the bumpy ride to here. Dumani nudged the bastard who in turn startled and released a frightening fart. Dumani hoped he hadn’t shat himself.

  “We’ve arrived,” said Dumani while opening the driver’s door at the same time. Thabang looked around, yawned, winced in pain and said, “That took forever. Did you stop for more pain killers on the way or something?”

  Dumani ignored him and tracked around to the back of the van.

  Thabang ambled out of the van. Dumani winced and pinched his nose. The moron’s urine smell was nauseating.

  Dumani carefully unlocked the back of the van while Thabang stood there like a pole, yawning repeatedly. Dumani shone a large torch that he had on him into the interior of the back of the van. Mothusi sat up there in the corner like a deer in headlights. Dumani smiled to himself. Thabang moved closer. At least the guy had a bit of sense, everything else aside. Enough sense to know that Dumani needed reinforcement.