It is a very dark night, and Mbulawa sees himself exiting a gate near a big thorn tree. A few steps away there is a streetlight, and a woman in a flowing black dress is standing under its weak light, looking in his direction.
He wants to turn around and walk in the other direction, but it is too late as she has already seen him. The street is deserted, and a sudden gust of wind sends dry leaves skittering across it like imbibers not so steady on their feet, out for a late night.
Don’t be afraid, she says as he gets near her. Her face is serene, and her voice is soft like the rash of stars in the sky.
I am not afraid, Mbulawa replies, but there is a tremor in his voice. He walks past her, pretending to look aside, as if minding his own business. His limbs feel unusually stiff, in fact his entire body, as if his skin wants to crack, and there is a smell he cannot figure out, like something burning, that seems to be hovering over him – maybe a careless somebody has burned their cooking in the houses that line the street, the thought crosses his mind.
But this one thing is confusing him, almost making him panic – he cannot remember what he is doing outside in the night, or even where he is coming from besides that he had seen himself exiting that gate. Before that his mind is a blank slate.
A few steps away he looks back over his shoulder, and his mouth opens. The woman has disappeared from under the street light, just like that – poof. He looks around, but she is nowhere to be seen, not in the street, not anywhere near the houses, or the shadows.
A man is walking on the other side of the street. Dressed in a suit and a tie, he seems to be in a hurry, as if he doesn’t trust the night, and he keeps casting glances over his shoulders, now this one, now the other. Then Mbulawa sees the woman again. She has miraculously appeared behind the man, and is so near to him that if she were to reach out, she can touch his shoulder.
The woman looks across the street at him, and he hears her voice as if she is speaking right inside his ear. He knows I am following him, she is saying, pointing at the man in front of her. But he can’t see, or hear me.
But I can see and hear you, he replies after some hesitation. He still cannot stop his voice from trembling, the tremors seem to be riding it like a chameleon on a branch in the wind. And the man the woman is following makes no sign that he has heard this conversation – he just continues walking forward, and behind him the woman follows.
Of course you can do that, her voice wafts over to him, as you are now in my dimension.
He stops walking, trying to make sense of what she is saying.
You look confused, she says. She is now walking beside him, although he had not seen her cross the street. But that is normal, you will soon get used to it, she adds.
Get used to what?
In reply, she presses a finger to her lips, her eyes across the street.
The man on the other side of the street is now heading towards the gate of a yellow painted house that has a wire fence around it. He reaches it, there is the jangle of keys and a chain, and taking one quick look behind him, the man opens the gate, steps inside, the jangle again, and the gate is closed and locked. A streetlight in front of the house lights up its yard in a yellow light. The man walks to the front door, unlocks it, and taking another look over his shoulder, he steps inside the house. The door closes.
Where are you going to? The woman asks him, her eyes on the door across the street. You seem lost.
I – I don’t know. A stammer slips into his voice. I – I have forgotten.
Please don’t be worried. Her voice is soothing. You are not alone.
What do you mean?
You will soon know.
But why can’t I remember anything?
That’s normal. You will get over it too.
He is now watching the house across the street with her. He doesn’t even know why he is doing that – something must be wrong with him, maybe he should go to a doctor in the morning for a checkup, that is if he can escape the woman without anything happening to him.
Across the street, when the door had closed, he had seen the curtain on the single window that faced their way part, then fall into place again. A light has now come on in the house. There is another gust of wind, and more dry leaves skitter across the street.
The woman looks at him and smiles, but he keeps his gaze fixed on the lit window. From the corner of his eye, he sees her look at two small rocks on the ground beside her – and they launch into the air as if from a catapult. They arc into the sky towards the house they are looking at, and dropping on its roof, they rattle several times, the sound so sharp in the brooding evening as if it is inside his head, and then it dies away. He sees the curtain jerk, and the man’s face stares out, silhouetted by the light behind it.
A light tries to come on in Mbulawa’s confused mind. He is sure he knows the man, but he cannot remember his name, or how he knows him, just as he cannot remember anything else, but as he looks at the man, a strong smell of petrol assails his nostrils, although no car has passed by, and for an inexplicable reason he feels terror bubbling inside him, leaving him almost breathless.
Are you okay? The woman is looking at him.
I – I’m fine.
Across the street, the curtain closes, and the face of the man disappears.
The woman looks at another stone, and it too catapults across the street, there is the tinkle of breaking glass at the lighted window, and a moment later the door is hurled open and the man comes out, now without his suit jacket and tie. He is screaming:
‘Please leave me alone! Please go away!’
Then the lights in the windows of the houses on either side of the man’s house simultaneously come on, as if from a single switch. A woman in a skirt and white bra steps out of the door of the house on the left, and a moment later, a shirtless man from the one on the right.
‘What’s going on?’ the woman calls out, and two children, both naked, appear from behind her, but she pushes them back. ‘Please get back into the house and close the door,’ she says to them. The children disappear behind her, and the door closes, snuffing out the shaft of light that had been streaming from it.
‘A ghost was following me when I was coming home a few minutes ago,’ the man replies. He has stopped screaming. ‘Now it is throwing stones at my house!’
They are all bathed by the light from the streetlight, almost as if they are characters on a stage.
‘I didn’t hear anything,’ the shirtless man says. ‘You have started again!’
‘I’m telling the truth! Some of the stones broke my window!’
They all look at the window.
‘Your window is not broken,’ the shirtless man says. He has dreadlocks that are tied back. ‘This has to stop. Every night you scream you are seeing ghosts, and when we come out we don’t see anything. Then you say stones are being thrown at your roof, but we don’t hear anything. Now you are saying somebody broke your window, but it’s not broken. I have just about had enough of this. I’m now beginning to suspect there is something wrong with you!’
‘But, Mkhize,’ the woman in the bra says. ‘If he says he is being haunted we cannot dispute that. Maybe he is seeing the ghosts and we cannot because whatever they want to do is not directed at us.’
‘Haunted by what, Rebeca?’ Mkhize says ‘We are just wasting our time being sympathetic towards him when he is just being crazy and preventing us from sleeping.’
The man who is the subject of the conversation is now standing silently, as if he is listening to something that no one else can hear.
‘But what can I do when I am being haunted?’ he finally says. ‘I swear by the name of my dead grandmother that there is a ghost tormenting me. I could sense it walking behind me just after I had passed the cemetery.’
‘If that is the case then you must go inside the cemetery and tell it to stop following you,’ Mkhize says.
‘Did you go and see that sangoma whose address I gave you last week when this all started, Siziba?’ Rebecca addresses the man by his name, which does not sound familiar to Mbulawa.
‘I did,’ Siziba replies. ‘She gave me some herbs to burn in the house, but that has not stopped what is happening.’
‘Then you should go and see her again,’ Rebecca says. ‘Please tell her it didn’t work and she might try something else. Now I am afraid for my family, what if the ghost decides to start haunting us too since we are your neighbors?’
‘I’m not going to lose any sleep over that,’ Mkhize says. ‘I am going back inside to sleep, I have to wake up early tomorrow morning for work.’ He steps into his house, and a moment later the light in his window is switched off.
****
But what is happening? Mbulawa asks the woman in the black dress. They are still standing across the street, their eyes on Siziba and Rebecca
What is happening is what you are seeing, Mbulawa.
He does not reply for a moment. There is a now a flutter in his heart, and he realizes he is panicking. I need to go home, he finally says.
I will show you your home in a moment, the woman replies. I know you don’t remember anything just now, and no, you are not in a dream.
Why is it that I am able to see you? He asks. Is something about to happen to me?
She places a finger across her lips, and points across the street.
****
Rebecca is still talking to Siziba, who appears to have calmed down.
‘I think you should go inside the house now and try to get some sleep,’ Mbulawa hears her say.
‘But what if it tries to do something again?’ Siziba replies.
Rebeca walks to her gate, which is also closed, and she looks up and down the street. ‘I don’t think anything is going to happen.’ She looks across the street, right in the direction of Mbulawa and the woman, and he is sure she is seeing them. ‘I don’t see anything.’ she looks at Siziba again. ‘Do you have any salt?’
‘It’s all finished,’ he replies. ‘I have been sprinkling it around my yard ever since the herbs the sangoma gave me ran out. Please tell me, Rebecca, do you think I am losing my mind?’
‘You are not, Siziba,’ she replies, then her voice lowers. ‘Unlike our other neighbor,’ she nods her head across the fences towards Mkhize’s door. ‘There is no reason why I shouldn’t believe what you are telling us. Please wait here, I will get you some salt.’
She goes into her house, and a moment later she is back holding a cup.
‘There,’ she says. ‘Use this.’
Siziba steps to the fence and takes the cup, and pouring its contents into his hand, he sprinkles salt all over his yard, first following his fence, past the gate, the middle of the yard, then finished with this, he hands the cup back over the fence and wipes his hand on the seat of his trousers.
‘I can come over and sleep with you tonight,’ Rebecca whispers as she takes the cup, and Mbulawa can hear this too as if she is speaking in his ear. ‘The father of my kids is working night today.’
‘Not tonight, Rebecca,’ Siziba whispers back. ‘My mind is too full of other things. Maybe tomorrow night.’
She leans over the fence and kisses him on the mouth.
‘Please be strong,’ she says. ‘This might end up making it not to rise when we need it.’ She laughs lightly.
With that they part, each going back into their houses, and their doors close.
****
You said you wanted to see your home? The woman is asking Mbulawa. Please follow me and I will show you.
But why is it that I can’t remember anything? His fear of her seems to have melted away, at least for the moment.
You will soon find out, just follow me.
Then crossing the street, she leads him around the block of the house they have been looking at. And he cannot explain to himself why his fear of her has gone away. They are now walking down the line of houses this side of the block. Things are now beginning to seem familiar to Mbulawa, as if he has been here before. The woman has stopped in front of a house that is behind the yellow painted one, this one with brown bare bricks, and without a fence. There is no light on its front window. The woman points at it.
This was your last place of residence, she says. You used to rent a room here with your family, but someone else lives there now.
He looks at the house. There is a familiar feeling about it, and a sudden surge of memory overcomes him, but it is all garbled up like the tape of a cassette that has become twisted. Suddenly the tight feeling on his skins seems to have intensified, and that smell of something burning has come to his nostrils too. His knees have become weak, and he wants to sit down, but the woman touches his elbow.
And don’t worry about your family, she says, her hand still on his elbow. Your wife and child are safe with your parents in the rural areas. The boy is now grown up. You have been failing to ascend from your final sleep for about two years, but today is your day when you fully awaken and join us.
***
She is leading him away from the house, walking in front of him, and they are both silent. They are back across the street again, looking at the yellow painted house.
I have one more thing to do before we go away to where everything will be explained to you, the woman says
And then she disappears, and where she has been standing are now two black cats. They run across the street, and coming to the yellow house, they leap effortlessly over the fence, and while one heads for the front door, the other goes to the window. Standing there, they start howling, almost like distressed kids. A moment later the door bursts open, and the man comes out running, this time naked. He is screaming again, now louder than before. He runs to the gate, tries to vault over it but his foot gets caught and he tumbles on to the other side and rolls on the ground, he quickly leaps up and flees into the night, still screaming and arms flailing.
***
Everything is now dreamy. The darkness has become a thick fog, and it is convulsing and continuously shape shifting. The houses and the street have all disappeared, and the street lights are blobs of yellow floating moons. The woman in the black dress, barely visible, is walking in front of Mbulawa, and he is following. Then the whirls of fog start to change into recognizable shapes, people, animals, and something that looks like a terrifying monster looms ahead, but it quickly changes into a tree – it is the thorn tree at the side of that gate that he had exited from when he had become aware of himself. Now looking at it from this side, he sees that there is a tall steel arch over its entrance which has a sign on it written MAGWEGWE CEMETRY. The sign is broken in the middle with the CEMETRY hanging downwards, and swinging like a pendulum as if a finger has touched it. The woman walks in under it and Mbulawa follows. He cannot think of anything else to do.
This is your new home, the woman is saying, your final resting place after you were killed.
That was part of the memory that had assailed his mind as they had been looking at the house a while ago, the one the woman had described as where he used to live. A new feeling has come over him: acceptance.
I remember everything now, he says. They are walking between graves, some with tombstones, and some just anonymous mounds. The fog is intensifying, and he can now barely see the woman. It was that man, Siziba, who poured the petrol over my body after they had shot me, thinking that I was already dead. It was in some place far in the bush after they had abducted me from the street that day after the demonstration in the city. And after dousing me with the petrol Siziba used his lighter to set me on fire.
It is his last day today with a clear mind, the woman says. We were waiting for you to ascend from the first sleep after death so you could see what happens to him. He will never know any peace from now onwards, and so too his colleagues who are going around abducting and killing those whom they perceive as enemies of the state. We are now ready to visit the next one from his team, and this time it will be you taking the lead. Your body is all charred up from the burns you suffered, and that should be enough if the target sees you. We mean no harm to law abiding citizens, we are their spiritual guardians who have decided to make it their duty to protect them from those who act with impunity.
As she says this, she melts into the dark fog, which suddenly lifts, and Mbulawa finds himself standing at a bus stop. It is night, and a full moon is scrapping the sky. He is watching a man in jeans and a white shirt walking out of the ramshackle gate of a car park on the other side of the street, after briefly chatting to a night guard holding a lit torch and giving him something. He remembers the man. He is the one who had been driving the car after they had abducted him, whom he had briefly seen before they had thrown the sack over his head. There had been four men in the car, two in front, and two at the back. The ones at the back had forced him to lie face down on the floor of the car, their shoes pressing hard on his head and back.
Leaving the bus stop, Mbulawa walks across the street and follows behind the man, so close he can almost touch him, but the man keeps on walking, showing no sign that he has sensed what is behind him in the deserted street, for there is nothing to see for the human eye, not yet.
-End-
Christopher Mlalazi is from Zimbabwe and the author of the three novels, Running With Mother (2012) which has been translated into German, Italian, and Spanish (HarperCollinsMX), They Are Coming (2014), The Border Jumper(2019), and the short story collection Dancing With Life: Tales From the Township (2008). He is the co-winner of the 2008 Oxfam/Novib PEN Freedom of Expression Award for the play The Crocodile Of Zambezi, and an alumni of the Caine Prize Workshop, Iowa Writers Program (IWP), Feuchtwanger fellow (USA), Nordik-Africa Institute (Sweden), Hannah-Ardent Scholarship(Germany), Casa Refugio (Mexico City). He has an Associate Degree in Computer Science from the University of the People(Online study).