Camdeboo Nights

by Nerine Dorman

  Oblivious to the mood, Damon rushed in to answer, “It’s cool, ’cept for some of the rugger-buggers who are too pushy.”

  “You shouldn’t let the bullies get to you. In any case, you are both here now and while you are under my roof I don’t want you slacking off. I’ve drawn up a duty roster and have pasted it up on the fridge. I expect you to pull your weight. That way we won’t get under each other’s noses and God knows it’s hard enough with your mother.”

  Wow, that didn’t take long! “Fine,” Helen said, not looking up.

  “Didn’t hear what you said.”

  “It’s fine,” Damon answered but from the way he straightened his shoulders and shifted about he did not appreciate Anabel’s tone, either.

  All things considered, being stuck out here was still better than being sent up to Joburg or having to live with their aunt and uncle.

  Dinner was a formal affair but Anabel surprised Helen by allowing her and Damon each a half-glass of wine with their meal.

  “It aids digestion, and I’d rather you learn to drink moderately than end up raging binge-drinkers because you feel like you have to rebel,” she said, before lapsing into silence.

  Mother stared at the fork in her hands for a long time before deciding what to do with it. Damon had to keep nudging, reminding her to eat the rapidly cooling fish, veggies and boiled potatoes.

  All the while, Odin stared at them from the doorway, forbidden to enter the dining room. A thin sliver of saliva slipped from his muzzle to moisten the wooden floor. It was the same ritual every night.

  Anabel broke the silence. “What are you children planning this weekend?”

  Helen almost dropped her knife. Children?

  Damon answered. “I’d like to go hunting for snakes.”

  This statement, clearly designed to provoke, didn’t shock their grandmother. Was that twitch at her lips almost a smile?

  “Just watch out for the puffadders. There are plenty up in the kloofs. They’re lazy snakes and apt to strike first before trying to get away from you. However, you may want to meet the Prof then. He’s back from his overseas trip.”

  “The Prof?” Damon asked.

  “Professor Du Randt. He’s a herpetologist. Retired. Used to lecture at Wits. He built that house that looks almost like a castle.”

  Damon looked as if he were about to choke with excitement, the way his eyes bulged.

  Helen wasn’t sure yet if she should be relieved that her brother had an activity to keep him busy. She did need to work on the template for a fabric pattern...

  And, there was Arwen. She wasn’t sure how Anabel would react to the intended outing. It wasn’t always easy figuring out whom their grandmother approved of.

  Arwen, with her penchant for black, lace-trimmed clothing and too much eyeliner might just be too over the top. But, then, what was stopping Helen from simply telling her grandmother she’d go out this evening, regardless? Part of her certainly felt reckless enough.

  Anabel fixed her granddaughter with her basilisk glare. “And you, Helen?”

  “I’ve a friend from school–”

  “Arwen,” Anabel finished for her. “She comes from a family of hereditary witches, you know. Such a pity her parents chose that name for her. I’m sure she also gets teased a lot at school by the other children.”

  Helen had to force shut her mouth for fear of swallowing one of the gnats hovering around the candles. “What?”

  Damon leaned forward and put down his knife and fork. “Well, that witch thing certainly explains why Odette and the others are forever picking on her and the dwarf.”

  “Little person!” Helen snapped.

  Anabel smiled, and dabbed her mouth with a napkin, before sinking back into her high-backed chair. This forbidding woman’s mood became mischievous in a blink of an eye.

  “The whole lot of them, they’re all witches. The father too.”

  “And you’re okay with this?” Helen asked, incredulous.

  “Why not?” Anabel replied. “Your grandfather and Arwen’s grandfather were cousins.”

  “We’re family?” Helen asked. Okay, this was getting a little too much information, too fast.

  “Distant, yes. I’d hardly call it family now, the blood is quite diluted but, as you can see, Nieu Bethesda is a small place.”

  “So, you don’t mind if I hang out with Arwen?”

  “Why should I? You’d only go about it behind my back, in any case. Do I look stupid, child?”

  Helen flushed, much to her brother’s evident amusement.

  “Nice girl,” Mother said, as the phone began to ring shrilly from the kitchen.

  “I’ll get it!” Damon shouted. He pushed his chair back with so much force it almost toppled over.

  “Careful with the furniture!” Anabel exclaimed, half rising herself.

  Helen’s stomach lurched. She’d nearly gotten sick every time she’d heard her cell phone ring this past week. Was it her father? Somehow the disappointment hurt more than she’d expected. Anabel had been the last–and that was only because she had called him last week to let him know his children had arrived safely. Even now, her memory of that conversation smarted.

  No wonder Damon took his chance now to reach the phone before their grandmother did.

  A wild hope transformed her mother’s face, momentarily dispelling the defeated slump in her shoulders, an attitude that tore Helen the most.

  “It’s him, isn’t it?” she asked of Helen as she tried to rise.

  “I’ll go find out,” Helen said. “You sit down, Mom.” The last thing she needed was for her mother to have another fit of hysterics.

  The times she’d watched her mother tear at her hair while weeping hadn’t been particularly great. Then that night when her mom had run half-naked and wailing into the garden so that the entire neighborhood had heard. Pure mortification. Black helplessness.

  These negative thoughts flared to the surface. At school it was easy to pretend things were getting better, that the medicine helped Mom, but the reality was far, far different at home–Anabel’s home–where Helen could see things were still the same, if not worse.

  With a gentle touch, she pushed down on her mother’s shoulder, feeling how bony it was beneath its thin layer of skin.

  “Sit, Mother.”

  Helen’s mother obeyed. Anabel nodded and settled down to continue eating. Damon had been gone long enough, he could only be speaking to someone he knew, most likely Father. They hadn’t yet given the landline number to any of their friends from Cape Town, who kept in touch via social media, in any case.

  She did not expect to find Damon blinking back tears when she reached him. Wordlessly, she squeezed his arm.

  “Okay, okay...well, Helen’s here. I’m sure she’d also like to talk to you.”

  He tried to sound brave but then Damon thrust the receiver in her hands and pelted upstairs. His slammed bedroom door resounded with a heavy boom that reverberated through the house.

  “Dad?” Helen asked. She did not want to have this conversation but couldn’t kill the call either.

  “Hey, my girl. I’m sorry I haven’t called earlier but it’s been...well...you know how Joburg is.”

  The welter of hot and cold roiling in her belly made her want to shout at him but, instead, Helen said, “Hey Dad, I miss you.”

  She did miss him. He may have been absent for the past six months but she couldn’t deny that she did love her father, and her love for him was a hollow ache in her chest.

  “I miss you too, Helen. How are things down in the middle of the Karoo? I spoke to your grandmother last week, but...”

  They both laughed. “Anabel has this way with words, doesn’t she?” Helen asked, despite the tears clouding her vision.

  “Oh God, just pray that you never find out.”

  “Mother misses you,” Helen blurted. Damn him, he needed to know.

  A pause hung between them then he inhaled sharply. “I know. Helen. It’s compli
cated. Please don’t discuss this. I want to talk to you, about what’s going on in your life.”

  Fuck it. “This is what’s going on in my life, Father. I feel like you’ve just thrown us all away, that you’re more interested in this other woman than us.”

  “I’m not throwing you away. Not you, not Damon. I just need some space so I can gain perspective and, anyway, things are not that great here in Joburg, either, in case you’re wondering. I’d rather you and your brother go to a good school out where you are now, in the country, and it is a good school, right?”

  “Yes,” Helen mumbled, sullen.

  “I love both of you very much.”

  “But not Mom.”

  “I love her too, but not in the same way like when we first met, if you can understand that. People fall in love and sometimes that love changes because the people change.”

  “And you’ve met someone else.”

  Another pause dragged between them, followed by another shuddering breath. “Yes.”

  Helen had run out of things to say. Her anger deflated and all she could do was stare blankly at the Grecian postcard tacked onto the cork note-board above the phone. Too-blue sky. Too-blue water.

  “Okay, Dad, I’ll take good care of us.” She could try. She couldn’t promise anything when she wasn’t even sure she could look after herself.

  “I’m glad to know that. It’s crap when you’re suddenly lumped with...”

  He couldn’t finish the sentence. A movement out of the corner of her eye told Helen her grandmother stood in the doorway leading from the dining room, listening. She was too wound up to get angry that the woman eavesdropped so obviously. Too much was going on right now.

  Helen wanted to say, “Like your father ducked out when you were little,” but didn’t. A snippy comment like that may push him away from her. She wanted to hate him. No, she needed to hate him, but couldn’t. Helen swallowed her negativity instead and babbled, summoning anecdotal bits from her first week at the new school.

  She neglected to mention Odette and the others, or Arwen’s family. Helen certainly did not tell her father about the mysterious boy who’d climbed onto the balcony. Hell, she didn’t even want Anabel to know about that.

  Helen pretended she was an ordinary teenager and pitched a false smile in her voice as she babbled. Lying was easy. If only she could believe her own lies. If only her mother would pull out of the fog shrouding her mind. If only she could see a way forward out of this mess.

  Chapter 11

  The Cemetery

  “Where’re you going, Arwen?” her mother asked after they finished drying and packing the dishes.

  “I’m going to visit the new kids.” She couldn’t hide her smirk.

  Her mother did not suspect a thing. “Well, be good dear, and don’t be too late.”

  Szandor said nothing, but eyed Arwen from where he sat at the kitchen table, pretending to read his magazine.

  He knew perfectly well she was up to something but wouldn’t do anything about it, not if he wanted to have her tell her mother about his visits to Aunt Sonja’s house whenever there was an Esbat or some sort of celebration.

  What Mother didn’t know couldn’t hurt her. Arwen had packed her sling-bag with all her tools earlier and had hidden it in the bushes by the front gate. If her mother did suspect anything, she never let on and, since these things were never discussed in her presence, Arwen assumed they shouldn’t be.

  “I’ll be good, I promise,” Arwen said. “We’re watching some National Geographics we took out at the school library.” There was no reason her mother would ever talk to Anabel.

  Arwen wanted to laugh.

  Szandor frowned at her, tugging absently at his goatee. “Don’t get into trouble.”

  “Come now, Szandor, what could we possibly get up to here in this little village?”

  “Enough.”

  “Okay, well, I’ll be off then.”

  Arwen often wondered why her father had settled on marrying the woman that she had the misfortune to call mother. Molly was short, brown-haired and hazel-eyed, and tended toward plumpness, which was always at odds with the rest of the extended Wareing clan who sometimes blew in and out of their lives. Her complexion screamed “outsider.”

  Tonight was the perfect night for going out, though there was no pub in Nieu Bethesda she’d bother frequenting. Some folks would be hanging at Clive’s Bistro, where Clive and Bonny served up home-brew, but the patrons would mostly be strangers, from Cape Town or Jozi, or even as far afield as the UK. There weren’t many others her age, with her inclinations and, even then, they were so unutterably dull she preferred her own company. Helen would be an interesting diversion, if she could tap into the potential she suspected. To think her father hadn’t noticed the girl was special. Or if he had, he’d shut up about it.

  The stars glinted across the blue-black sky, the Milky Way a dusty trail from one end of the sky to the other. If she stood to gaze for some time, Arwen would be bound to see a shooting star but she’d spent enough time doing that as a child.

  Every two houses were dark–holiday homes. This time of the year, Nieu Bethesda would be a ghost town until Easter weekend. No moon yet, and no streetlights either, so it was very dark. Arwen knew her way and hugged her bag to her body, pleased at herself and breathing deep of the Karoo vegetation–a herbal tang that never failed to make her shudder with delight.

  She checked her cell phone. Half-past eight. A dark figure detached itself from the hedge outside Anabel’s house. Arwen started, worrying for a minute that it might be...

  There were no monsters in Nieu Bethesda.

  “Hey,” Helen said.

  “Hey,” Arwen scuffed her sneaker’s toe in the dusty road. Why was she feeling shy all of a sudden? “You ready?”

  “Yup.”

  “Damon?”

  “He’s watching that Chuck Norris action movie Etienne was bitching about.”

  “Pity.”

  “So, what’re we actually gonna do tonight?”

  “Shhh, you’ll see,” Arwen said. Helen didn’t need to know they were performing a witchy ritual until right at the last minute.

  The two walked the few blocks to the edge of the hamlet, where a low, white wall separated the land of the living from the land of the dead. They entered through a high, round arch, by a gate made from black wrought iron, which did not close properly.

  “Why the graveyard?” Helen asked as they walked down the rows of granite and marble pushing up like some macabre crop.

  “’Cause it has more atmosphere. Plus, we won’t be disturbed. The people here, especially in the township, are very superstitious or, as they like to say it, bygelowig.”

  Helen snorted softly, as if stifling a laugh.

  Arwen sought one grave in particular. Actually, it wasn’t where the person was buried–so far as she’d heard, the body had been cremated and the ashes scattered–but people liked having some place they could visit, to remember, where they could leave flowers or burn candles.

  The cement owl looked almost incongruous among the polished granite blocks.

  “Oh, my. I didn’t know,” Helen said.

  “Not many people have any idea this is here. Cement is flaking a bit. Not the most permanent afterthought for posterity but it was still made by Koos Malgas’s relative back in the day. He used to have to dress Miss Helen when her arthritis became too bad. There’s another marker like this, facing west in the Pienaarsig cemetery, on Koos’s grave. Very romantic, don’t you think? They’re always looking toward each other. A forbidden friendship acknowledged in death.”

  Arwen traced the contour of the handmade marker’s shape. She’d come here many times, but never at night, alone. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught flickers of movement, people who had been and were no more. If she tried to listen, she could even hear their whispers, like dry leaves stirred by the wind. But it was better to tune out the dead. Once they knew a person could see them, they sometimes be
came pests.

  When I die...I don’t... She suppressed that train of thought. No ghosts tonight, thank you.

  “You scared, Helen?”

  “No!” her companion answered, a little too quickly. Helen turned, rubbing her arms.

  “I guess your mother named you after her,” Arwen said.

  “Who?”

  “Helen Martins, you twit.”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  Helen hunkered down next to Arwen. The lettering on the cement marker was difficult to make out in the starlight, but they weren’t here to read gravestones. Arwen busied herself unpacking her tools.

  She had the dagger that Aunt Sonja had given her for a yuletide gift the previous winter. It wasn’t very sharp but it was pretty. The handle had been molded out of a hard resin twisted to resemble an animal horn. The blade wasn’t straight, but wavy–a kris.

  Next was a small flask of red wine and a silver goblet. The goblet she’d pilfered from Szandor’s workshop.

  A small cloth drawstring bag contained salt. She had matches and five fat beeswax candles. She checked off the matches, incense sticks and an offering of dried herbs–mostly from her mother’s garden she’d tied together with black satin ribbon.

  “What’s all the stuff for?” Helen asked.

  “It’s what we’ll be needing. Now’s not the time or place for Witchcraft one-oh-one.”

  “What are we actually going to do here?”

  “I want to summon the genius loci of Nieu Bethesda.”

  “Why?” To give Helen some credit, she didn’t ask what a genius loci was.

  “To see if I can.”

  “What if we get caught? Aren’t there laws against witchcraft and stuff?”

  “What?” Arwen asked. “Are you scared of getting caught?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I’ve done this a million times before.” She wasn’t about to tell Helen she’d only practiced this in her bedroom.

  “Why do you need me then?”

  Because my Wyrd told me, was not going to be a good answer. Arwen paused, thinking of how much she should say. Sometimes some of the truth was better than none.

  “You’ve got the vibe, the sparkly bits about you that I need. Sure, I can see stuff, know stuff and do stuff but you’ve got potential to have the power. All the big dudes throughout history tended to work in pairs. One guy would conduct the summoning while the other would be the sensitive.”