–
Sheila thumbed around a number on her phone, stretched out on an old couch in a near-empty room. Rafters and bare trusses stretched out into darkness, high above her head. She tapped her foot against the coffee table, and frowned silently at the phone screen.
Don’t call him. You have no idea why you’re calling. That was a lie. She knew exactly why she wanted to call him. Why she would want to speak to him. But it wasn’t as simple as that. She couldn’t think about it, or talk about it, so why call? Why put this man through all of this? How could he ever understand?
He is in danger. It didn’t matter. You’ve got to call him. She held the phone out in front of her face and stayed on it, dead still.
-
At the Gaol, Crink was sitting at the bar with a much drunker Ruth, who had been getting progressively louder as the evening wore on.
“Thembisa understands, and he’s the only one here who does, aren’t you Thembi?”
Thembisa was the bartender, and he was delivering a flawless straight man to the not-very-endearing bout of drunken shouting from his customer.
“He gets it, even if only by prox...proxy. Oppression, man. Right? Oppression, because of shit that isn’t your shit, you know? The past. Assholes in...the past! And when you decide to have the balls to say some shit, you get tagged as some fucking...liberal college...rabble-rouser.”
Ruth climbed up on her chair. “And the funniest part of all?”
Crink reached up to pull on her hand. “Ruthie, I think maybe you should calm down—”
“Oh can it, man! Ha! Man!” Ruth stuck her tongue out at him, and carried on. “The funniest part of all, as I was saying, is that, while you may understand rep...ap...oppression, Thembi!”
Here it came, Crink thought.
“You don’t know the kind of scars a patriarchy can really cause on a woman, do you? Huh? How could you? Your old society of male rulers, all high and mighty. Do you even know what things a woman in that kind of a system feels? Do you?”
The room had gone morgue-quiet, people still milling around, no one talking, until Thembi said, quite calmly from behind the glass he was polishing: “I’m Irish-Catholic, Ruth, and I think you’ve had enough.”
As if on cue, the back door swung open and Alex and Jules arrived, talking in harsh, but hushed tones. The room started up again as they crossed through and grabbed two stools at the bar. Crink, meanwhile, realised he was now stuck between a fight and a drunk place, as the couple sat down next to him and angrily ordered two beers.
A few minutes later, Ruth got up and left, without saying anything. Crink felt pretty confident she’d gone to throw up in the bathroom sink.
–
Cynthia woke with her head on her mother’s shoulder, credits flickering at her from the TV. She shut it off, pulled her comforter up to her chin and mounted the stairs to her room, leaving her mom under a blanket on the couch in the dark. The image of the TV had burned a blue ring of light into the back of her eyes.
Climbing into her bed that night, Cynthia felt like she could feel Frank—Frank, of all people. He was Alex’s friend, she didn’t even know the guy, but she was sure he was there. Somewhere. As she fell asleep, she felt sure some other people were around as well.
–
Ruth sat next to Alex on the low wall outside the Gaol, drunk and swaying. Neither of them was talking to the other. Julie’d stayed inside with Crink, fuming as she stacked coasters on the bar top. It had been sketched clear to everyone by this stage that, at some point in the evening, Alex had mentioned Sheila, precipitating a near-tangible tension that spread through the rest of the group, murdering words before they left anyone’s mouth. This was their own private, invite-only nightmare.
Crink came out, looked up and down the street, and jogged over to where they were sitting. “Listen, dude, Jules wanted me to let you know she’s leaving. Sorry man.”
Ruth sighed as they watched Crink retreat inside the bar. She put her head on Alex’s shoulder. “I love you, Alex,” she slurred.
Alex thought he heard a crackle in the air, and looked around to see if there were any storm clouds out. It was clear.
“You love me.”
“Yes. I just...wanted to let you know, I guess.”
The two bounced the backs of their tekkies against the concrete wall, across from the university residences, as cars and students passed by in the night. The campus frogs had started croaking.
It flooded him with shame to admit this, but he’d always known. How could he not? She was one of the fiercest, strongest personalities he’d ever known, and she had never so much as tried to take him on in any way. Never a real word said in real admonishment for anything, and he was so far below perfect it gave him headaches. She’d taken every step to be what she was to him. So careful, these little games we play. And now that she was bringing it up, in the middle of all this other stuff, when he needed answers, what shamed him the most was how put out he felt by it.
“You know, I think I’m going proper insane.” Alex didn’t look at her as he said it. On some level, saying it out to the street in front of him, loud enough for her to hear, he felt as if he’d said it to the whole city.
“What do you mean?”
Alex inhaled. “Well, one of the only lecturers I’ve ever actually liked has gone missing. Like, off-the-face-of-the-planet missing. And the guy who’s replaced him thinks he’s always been here, like, for years and years. He thinks he’s got this history with me that I can’t remember, but everyone else can. Including multiple failing grades and a relationship of Grade-A ground beef hatred. Which, once again, everybody but me seems to remember. I have nightmares three or four times a week. I’m ruining my relationship with the love of my life because this stupid Australian stranger is giving me the super wiggins and I want to know why.”
“Oh.”
“Oh, and I have an imaginary friend, but I’ve known Frank for years, so that’s not a major thing.”
Silence. Then Ruth said, “I believe you. Whatever’s going on in your life right now, I think I get it. For some reason. I understand, and I believe you.”
Alex looked at her, and, though he believed what she was saying, he was sad to realise he did not feel any lighter. This weight he’d been carrying lately, it seemed so stupid to him, still, like something he’d figure out soon enough and realise he’d been overreacting to this whole time. What difference did Ruth believing in him make if he could still be wrong, and even he wasn’t 100% sure he wasn’t? He drew in a breath and smiled, then looked back out to the street.
“So, how about that local sports team, am I right?” he said, simply to fill up the air.
Perhaps it was Alex first. Maybe it was Ruth, but in the moment that followed, the friends rolled quickly into a fit of laughter that rang in and out of the suburbs.
Then Ruth kissed him on the mouth.
“What— No! No, Ruth. That’s not what’s happening here. I...I’m sorry. I know it’s what you want, but I...I don’t.”
She pulled back, with her hand to her lips, instantly ashamed, drunk on the fence next to him. He locked eyes with a lamppost across the street and waited for her to say something. The office-grey seriousness of everything in the world hammered a nail into the bench between them.
She sat there for a moment, trying to collect the event back into her sad mouth as she looked down into her own lap. “I know,” she said under her breath, punching her friend lightly in the shoulder as she stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“Home, to start my hangover. You’re a good man, Alex van der Haar.”
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled and ruffled his hair. “I get that.”
As he watched his friend walk away from him, Alex breathed deeply and hunched his shoulders. He couldn’t, for all his trouble with it, even really put what had just happened into context for himself. Were there words for this kind of thing? Should he be more worried than he was? He knew
he’d never lose Ruth as a friend, and that things like this happened to other people. It was at times like this, though, that he wished most Frank was real. And infallible. And omnipotent.
“I only wish you’d do the right thing and make all of my decisions for me, buddy,” he said, out loud, to nobody at all.
From the Gaol door to his left, Jules walked out to find him sitting alone. “Crink said you were out here.”
“Yeah, I figured I’d set up a drama deposit box here on this wall for Grahamstonians in need. How much can I chip you in for?”
Jules giggled, ambling up close to her man. “Take me home now and forget I started a fight with you, and I’ll show you what you can chip me in for.”
He smiled at her. Then Sheila’s call came through on his cellphone.
–
Five minutes later, Crink’s car was rounding the corner post at the nun’s chapel parking lot. Alex was in the passenger seat. “So, Julie just...left?”
“Well, I mean, she told me she was going home, and that she’d see me there ‘whenever’.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“So, why’re we here then?”
Alex hesitated for a second before responding, as he considered the list of events that led to them driving out to the old abandoned nun’s chapel behind the Eden Grove building.
When Sheila had called him, she had sounded drunk and scared. What was that? Why was there always something with this fucking woman? She hadn’t wasted any time telling him to come out and meet her. And, against his better judgement, like a fucking idiot, he had hung up the phone and told his girlfriend, “I’ve got to go help a friend.”
He was completely hopeless.
“Who’s in trouble, baby?”
He’d hesitated, taking a deathblow of a pause.
“Sheila.”
The automation of what she did next was the most pointed thing he’d ever seen. Without a second’s waiting, she’d leaned over, kissed his cheek, grabbed his keys and left for the flat. Leaving him to do whatever it was he needed to do with the rest of his night.
“Which is to drive up to the nun’s chapel and spend time with the girl who’s obviously got your woman’s hackles up?” Crink asked as they pulled into one of the empty parking bays.
“She said it was an emergency.”
“Uh huh, and I’m the one who’s single.”
“Just shut up and park, man.”
The car idled for a second or two, as the two sat there in the front seat, staring dead ahead.
“Dude, you don’t seem to perceive the shitstorm brewing here.”
“Look, what else am I supposed to do? I can’t just leave her here.”
Crink nodded, looking at the face of the old building from over his steering wheel. Three floors high, the chapel sported an upside-down cross of St Peter motif. Ringed as it was with fynbos and non-indigenous ferns, a Roman Christian thumb in a sea of varsity building digits, the chapel stood blank and empty in the night. “At least it’s got character.”
“Yeah.”
“Because you’re going to die here.”
“You’re not coming in with me?”
Crink narrowed his eyes in frustration at his friend, not looking away from the creepy old building. “I hate you for being basically the only person I like.”
Alex smiled, opened his car door, and climbed out.
–
Daedalus sat in his cell at St Albans after lights out. He was cross-legged on the floor next to his bunk bed, his back up against the cold steel frame. It was quiet, and late. He hunched, sleepy and alone on the pockmarked floor.
In his hands were Karl’s pen and pad. He was working slowly at an old photograph, pressing lines with the pen nib by the filtered glow of the yard floodlights. He scrawled in slow, deliberate strokes, not looking, as he circled and circled. A sepia snapshot of one, lonely man, out in a dusty field somewhere, with his gun hoisted to his shoulder, became slowly overcome with concentric pencil lines. Swooping, spinning, lines, which laid waste to the past.
His cellmate was nowhere to be seen.
From under the bed, a black pool was beginning to grow outwards across the cell floor. Wide. Sticky. Elemental. Chuck mumbled and muttered under his breath, shifting away from the wet evidence and smiling through gritted teeth, as his hand circled again and again.
–
Alex and Crink pushed open the unlocked chapel doors, which hung solid above the dark tile work. The doors sliced a monstrous screech through the night air. The two friends headed inside, sharing a silent look that, for Alex, translated as, Well, let’s get busy.
To Crink, it likely sounded more like, What the fuck would you go into this building for at this time of night, you freaking headcase?
Three steps into the main hallway, Crink sighed and mumbled to himself: “No. No, I’m the fucking headcase for following you up here.”
They headed in through the doors, down into the narrow slivers of darkness towards an open door across a shitty-looking pinewood floor. In the bright contrast of the next room, a turquoise kitchen set and custard wallpapering shone out to them, as they emerged into an unused kitchen area. Sheila was waiting there in the peach glow of a stained lampshade. She sat at the cheap, four-person camping table in the corner of the room, smoking, as if she’d been waiting hours.
Aside from meetings of the Grahamstown neighbourhood watch and miscellaneous university societies, the building was unused for most of the year. There was no need for it. When the university expanded and enveloped it within its campus grounds, the building had become another piece of well-preserved, underused history.
“Who the fuck are you?” Alex asked, confrontational, annoyed and overtired as his friend slumped his shoulders against the doorframe behind him and pulled out his phone to check an incoming message.
“Always a good question to ask someone you’ve already met.”
He sat down across from her. “Cut the shit, Sheila. What’s the game, with all the showing up, all cryptic, then disappearing for weeks at a time? Why’re you always where shit’s going wrong? Nobody knows a goddamned thing about you, Kingston, and now you call me up all frantic in the middle of the night?”
“Uh huh.”
“It’s like you’re a cartoon, man. What the hell is your deal?”
“Isn’t your friend going to take a seat?”
Crink stepped up behind Alex. “Dude, that was Ruth messaging. I gotta go help her break into her apartment. You gonna be all right here?”
Sheila looked up to see his response, finding Alex staring directly at her. He spoke, without breaking eye contact. “I think I’ll be fine. Go help Ruth.” As Crink left, Alex put his head down on the table in front of him.
“It’s been a long night, Sheila, so can we just skip the fuck-assery and you tell me what you need?”
She stubbed out her cigarette. “You do much baking, Alex?”
“Or you could just keep this as vague as possible, that’s cool.” He chuckled at her through the ashtray haze, but wrestled himself into seriousness quickly. “You know what I think, Sheila? I think you know exactly who Albion de Villiers is or was.”
“I don’t.”
“Well, then you’re lying! God dammit, why should I trust anything you say, you enigmatic clown wig?”
“God, Alex, because clearly I know some shit you don’t. Maybe you want to know what’s happening to you, I don’t know. Maybe you want to know more—more about Frank?”
That stopped him, icy and marbled in a sudden frieze of realisation. “I never told you about Frank.”
“Maybe one of your friends did.”
“None of them speak to you.”
“That’s true. Maybe him and I are both figments of your imagination.” Sheila got up from the table. “Or maybe I know a thing or two and you should stop sassing me long enough to learn something, Van der Haar.” She got up slowly and exited through a side door, as Alex followed, without
prompting. The building’s innards were a grandmother’s handbag of randomly placed knick-knacks and vinyl flooring, cracked mirror frames and the scent of old varnish. Clean, like a mausoleum. Dead, old, and imposing.
They took the stairs up into the inside of the steeple, where Sheila broke the spines of two glow sticks and tossed them into a fishbowl full of water on a coffee table. The room became instantly green, from corner to corner. Looking around at the books, forms, clothes, sheets, shoes and cigarette cartons, it was clear to Alex now that she’d been living here for a while. All around him were Polaroid snapshots thumb tacked into the old wood. Candle nubs bubbled their still-life remnants onto the holder dishes underneath them.
The room was humid. Sheila stood by photos Alex couldn’t make out in the flickering dark.
“All right, I’ll bite. Tell me more about Frank. Why can’t I remember who he is?”
“You know that saying, ‘The spirit’s willing, but the body’s weak?’ Did you ever wonder how willing could a spirit be if a body was too weak to carry on?”
Alex sat down on a one-seater sofa in the small, glowing room. “How long have you been here?
Sheila looked at him, puzzled, then seemed to realise what he meant. “Couple months. I like to think of this place like General Kurtz’s compound. It’s always hot in here. Brings the blood out in your face. There’s no ventilation. All old air.”
“Kurtz.”
“Another man who felt he had the good of a people at the heart of his actions.” She sat down across from him, atop a milk crate. “The real issue isn’t being handed the power, but knowing how to handle the idea that you might have had it all along.”
“Yeah, well it’d be fucking nice if you could drop the pretence and give me a few answers, considering I came out here to meet your cryptic ass in the middle of the goddamn night. Jesus, why the fuck do you have to be like this? You know something? Then tell me! Give me an answer!”
Sheila leaned back in her chair, kicked off a shoe in the green glow, and lit another cigarette. “I can’t tell you yet. I don’t know who Frank is, that much I can tell you. Not exactly. Someone from your past, definitely, but I don’t know him. I only have an idea, and...that has to wait, until I’m sure.”
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