Be My Victim and other Strange Tales from the Cape

by Andre Beerwinkel

  "I think she is here to protect me, but despite that, I sometimes still have nightmares at night."

  "What kind of nightmare?" Mason asks as he listens with more interest to the boy now. The little girl's features are now completely hidden by the dark mist where she sits on the lower step.

  "I dream that I am sleeping in my bed and then this mongrel dog jumps onto the bed. There is a huge dark figure standing behind the dog, close to my bed. I can't see who or what it is in the darkness of my room...I only see the mongrel with its bared teeth. The dog then start eating my face. The more I try to get away from it, the more I can't move. The dark figure says something, but I can't understand it. He laughs with a sort of guttural voice. That is when I usually wake up and find myself entangled in my bedding."

  "Do you have this dream often and is it always the same dream?"

  "I'm not having it so often anymore. I seem to be having it less and less as time goes by. It doesn't bother me anymore, though, I am used to it by now..."

  "Do you know why you dream of this dog eating your face? Did you have any real life experiences like that?" Mason asks as he thinks of the ugly wound on the boy's face.

  "Only once, when some Kaffirs came here looking for work. They had a mongrel with them. I was very scared of it, because it looked like an animal that would just attack without warning and once it attacked no one would be able to stop it. But the Kaffirs kept it on a lease."

  The wheel is basically fixed now and he will be able to reach the village the next morning with it. Luckily it will all be downhill.

  The darkness is getting so intense now, that it makes the boy almost indistinguishable where he sits on the step. The little girl is completely lost in the darkness. It seems as if the light of his lantern can't reach to where the children are sitting on the steps of the stoep. Mason just assumes that it is the thick mist that swirls around the place that enhances the darkness. With nothing else to do, he decides to go to sleep, so that he can be on his way early the next morning.

  "Ok, then, goodnight..." he greets the children. Then he thinks of something and tells the boy: "Come to my room before you go to bed, so that I can give you the money. I am leaving early tomorrow morning and you may still be asleep when I leave."

  "Just leave it on the table in the morning." the boy says with a voice that now seems to come from far away in the mist. Mason can just make out his shape through the haziness of the fog.

  This is the type of trust that the rural area of South Africa is still known for, he thinks to himself as he walks down the damp, musty smelling passage way to his room. His footsteps sounds loud and hollow as he walks on the wooden floor. He sees there are other rooms further down the passage way, but they are all dark. He wonders if the children sleep there and when will they ever make some light for themselves in the house.

  On inspecting the bed, he discovers that although the bed is neatly made up, the sheets and blankets are moist and mouldy and not suitable at all to sleep in. Mason thinks that the fact that the window is never opened that causes everything to be moist in the room. There is also a possibility that the sun never shines into this room, because of the rows of huge and thick trees that stands on the outside.

  For a self-contained traveller like Mason, the moist bed is not a problem. He unhooks his sleeping bag from his back pack and quickly jumps into it, pulling the zip close up to his neck, because the chilliness seems to have penetrated everywhere by now.

  Just before he falls asleep he hears the children giggling as they walk past his room on their way to their beds. Their bare feet is barely audible on the wooden floor.

  Suddenly...

  ...there's a loud crash and tumble and then a scream. Afterwards there is only silence. Deadly silence.

  Mason jumps up and...

  The passage is deserted. But there is now an almost unnatural quietness in the house.

  "Is everything all right," he shouts towards the children's rooms.

  "Yes", the boy answers. "The case fell from the cupboard and my sister got startled. Go back to sleep."

  He thinks of going to inspect, but decides against it. These children have been looking after themselves all this time and he is not going to make any difference to their lives tonight. Let the social workers sort it out when he brings them tomorrow.

  He goes back to the cosiness of his sleeping bag. He sinks away into sleep almost immediately. A full day's cycling will do that to any man.

  When he starts dreaming, he has the exact same dream that the boy described to him.

  He sees himself sleeping on the floor, in his sleeping bag, next to the moist, musty smelly bed. Then dark figures, which he can't make out enters the room. A big, ugly looking mongrel dog rushes to where he lies asleep in his sleeping bag and immediately tries to get to his face. The more he struggles to get the dog away from his face, the more he can't move. He hears the dark figure speak. It sound as if the figure is talking to the dog, encouraging it, but he can't make out what the figure is saying.

  He hears the boy, somewhere in the house. It sounds like he is saying: "You see, I told you so...Let me get to them..." It sounds like the boy is running towards him, but he can't see the boy.

  Next thing he sees the dog's huge open mouth coming down on his face. Still unable to move, he screams himself awake.

  He finds that the sleeping bag is completely over his head. He quickly unzips and looks around. Everything is still the same. The house is quiet and a slight wind is actually blowing outside the house. He is also surprised to see that the moon is actually shining through the dirty window.

  He falls asleep almost immediately again. It is not long before he starts dreaming again.

  This time he is on his bike and is being chased by these same dark, faceless figures of his previous dream. He pedals furiously, because the dog is also there and he just knows it will eat his face, if they catch him this time.

  He has to cycle uphill, while the figures and dog runs at full speed, he has to struggle to gain speed. Then he reaches the top and can suddenly freewheel downhill. The wind rushes past him as he goes at an enormous pace down the steep hill. But no matter how fast he goes downhill, his pursuers seems to be gaining ground on him. This makes him pedal even faster. With him concentrating on getting away from the faceless figures and the angry dog, he doesn't see the dark, gaping chasm in front of him. He is already in the air when he becomes conscious of it. He feels himself losing all control as he free falls through the air.

  All he can do - as the abyss starts sucking him in - is to scream his lungs out...

  He screams himself awake. This time he is shaking with fear. The shock of going over the abyss seemed so real.

  Luckily it is morning already. The sun is not up yet, but the whole house is filled with the silver morning light. He quickly washes his face outside under the tap, before brushing his teeth. He takes a snack from his bag and eat it as breakfast.

  He leaves two twenty rand notes on the table for the boy who must still be asleep, because there is no other movement in the house. The moist, mouldy smell is also not there anymore.

  With the heavy backpack on his back, he is on his bike and off to the little village.

  It is only a little uphill and the bend wheel can make it. From then on it is downhill and he has no problem controlling the bike, despite the buckled wheel.

  The closes he can come to a bicycle shop in the little village is the local motor mechanic, who is just opening up his doors as the first rays of the sun hits the high roofs.

  He greets and tells the man about his accident with the bike.

  "Yes, we can fix it. We work on cars and bikes here, this being such a small village." the man laughs in a friendly manner. "Where did it happen?"

  "Just there by that old farmhouse right next to the road."

  "Wow, you can be glad you didn't pass there in the evening."

  "It did actually happen in the evening... last night." he tells the man. He sees ho
w the man's face changes as he stops in his tracks.

  "What?"

  Mason sees all colour draining from the man's face as he looks for something to sit on. "Where did you spent the night then."

  "I slept in that farmhouse. The boy gave me permission to sleep there for the night."

  "What boy?"

  Now that the man asks, Mason suddenly realize that he never ask the boy or his sister for their names. The boy also never asked him who he was.

  "The boy and his sister who lives there. He told me their mother died about a year ago and that his father was away."

  "My god, man." the man says as he quickly sits down on a crate that stands against the wall. "There have been many stories floating around that the place is haunted, but I never really believed it. Sit down and let me tell you."

  Mason sits down.

  "The boy is right about his mother. She and his little sister, was killed by those dirty Kaffirs about a year ago. It was one of the most horrible farm murders ever. The father was away on business and only the woman and the two children were at home. They raped the mother and even the little girl, those monsters. Then they sliced them open and allowed their mongrel dog to eat their entrails, right in front of the boy, whom they forced to watch everything."

  "What happened to the boy?"

  "They also killed him. The police who found the body said he must have fought like hell at the beginning to protect his mother and sister. What distressed even the toughest policeman on that scene was the fact that the dirty bastards allowed their dog to eat on the boy's face. Since then nobody goes to the house anymore and it has been abandoned..."

  ROOM FOR ONE MORE

  It was one of those intense dreams where she actually knew she was dreaming, but the dream still seemed to be real. It even seemed more real than real life.

  She was in this big house. Very big. It was one of those type of houses that you read about in the old tales. It was more a castle than a house. Long candles were burning everywhere, throwing eerily, dancing shadows on the damp looking walls. She was alone in this room. In the dream she was visiting the people of the house. This was now after the big dinner and she was in her room ready to go to bed. Before she could get into bed, she heard the clacking of horse hooves on the paving of the court yard just outside her room. She look out of her window and down onto the shadowy courtyard.

  A big black coach had just arrived. One minute she was up in her room, the next she was standing next to the coach – like it usually is in dreams. The coach was big, but not big enough for all the people in it. There were so many people squeezed into the coach that their body parts were sticking out the windows of coach. From the other side she could see even more people scrambling to get in. They were squeezed in tighter than sardines in a small tin, but everyone was still trying to get in. Although she knew she was dreaming, a cold fear washed over her whole body filling her with an icy dread and making her hair stand on end.

  And then the coachman looked down at her. She had never seen anybody with such big, intense eyes as this coachman. He had the thickest lips she had ever seen on a man. His skin was black, but pale at the same time. A type of juxtaposition that she just couldn’t describe or comprehend.

  As he looked at her his voice came from all sides of the dream without his mouth moving once. His intense eyes were looking straight at her as she heard his voice say: “THERE IS ROOM FOR ONE MORE…”

  Her instincts told her what to do. She just walked away into the pale shadows of the dream. Away from the evil coach.

  When she woke up the next morning she could only remember the part where the coachman told her there’s room for one more. The rest of the dream was sitting on the outer edges of her memory and she couldn’t remember the details.

  So she got up and prepared herself for work. Outside on the rainy street it was a typical Mitchells Plain winter’s morning with people rushing through the lamp lit streets to bus stops, taxi pick up points and train stations. In the township every part of life is dangerous and one continuous struggle just to survive. In the iciness of a Cape winter life is even more unforgiving.

  At the town centre she waited in the cold and wet amongst the other, indifferent people, and then her taxi arrived. With this taxi she will ride into town to her place of employment where she worked in a jewellery store in Quay Road. This is a routine she follows every morning for the last eight years now.

  The taxi quickly filled with people and when she had to get in she saw there was one seat open.

  And then she saw him.

  The same man from her dreams. Intense eyes with dark rings around it that looked as if he didn’t sleep for years. The thickest lips she had ever seen on a man…and that pale black skin. This is what sin must look like if in human form she thought to herself.

  And then the words rolled over his thick lips: “COME GIRLIE, THERE IS ROOM FOR ONE MORE.”

  The words made the terror from the dream streamed over her whole body like ice cold water. It was an intense dread that just wanted to make her run as fast as she could. It was as if she was being pulled under a stream of cold, dark water and not being able to escape.

  She quickly walked away from the man and his taxi and the town-centre. Something told her to just go home and forget about the day.

  That evening as she sits in front of the television to watch the soap operas she sees it on the news. Several minibus-taxis tried to cross a flooded road near the golf course, but got swept away when a wall broke and a rush of water came out. Everyone in all the taxis where drowned.

  As the camera sweeps over the dead bodies she sees the pale skin black man staring at the camera with his intense eyes wide open, even in dead.

  Wherever sin is there is always room for one more.

  SINISTER DWELLING

  In 1967 we moved to a small village on the South Coast called Niewedorp. I was only five years old, nearly six, and this whole “great trek” was a huge adventure to me.

  Now if I say Niewedorp was small, I mean SMALL with capital letters. The inhabitants living in that little village could actually be called a family, because every day, everybody came into contact with everybody else. There was simply no way that you could avoid meeting everybody every single day in that village. The other thing was the fact that every location was walking distance from any other location in the village. I thought many times that it would actually be possible to meet yourself in that village – that was how small it was.

  I quickly made many new friends, both old and young, because everybody around there was very friendly and talkative; and they especially liked it when new blood entered their domain.

  This is how I met Jeffrey Donson. For the next two years he would be my best friend. He was two years older than I, but despite this we soon became best friends. I especially liked the neat stuff that he made from pure junk, while he on the other hand was in love with all my wonderful store-bought toys, which I, frankly, found a bit boring.

  For example he had this old cotton thread reel. He put a bend wire into the holes of the reel. On this wire – inside the reel - he wound some elastic. So all you had to do was to wind the cotton thread reel up and put it down and then that thing would ride on the ground out of its own accord. To me this was pure magic - that such a neat toy could be made from something I would have thrown away.

  Jeffrey's yard was full of stuff, mostly what other people would call junk, but to me it was magical things that he and his father and brother could change into something I haven't even thought of. Old bicycle wheels, rusted zinc basins, old pieces of rusted fence wire, five litre paraffin drums, smaller motor oil cans, old bicycle frames, etc.

  “All these stuff will come in handy one day,” Jeffrey's father used to say whenever he brought stuff like that to the yard from one of his many wandering through the little village.

  Jeffrey, Peter and their father could take a five litre oil can, a plank and some fish gut and within an hour you would have a guitar tha
t one could actually play tunes on. It was wonderful to watch them make stuff like that and then also play a tune on it, to show that it actually works. Before meeting them all that I had was bought in a store and I never actually knew that one could actually make stuff like that with your own hands.

  So these pieces of junk was in their sheds, on the roof of the shed and on the roof of the pigeon pen. They just knew that someday they would be able to turn it into something useful.

  In the evenings I would sit with them outside on their magical yard. They would then make a fire in a 20 litre paraffin drum that Jeffrey's father made some holes in. This wood-fire in the paraffin drum or galley kept the cold away while we roasted sweet potatoes on the open flames. And then I would listen to their stories. Although Jeffrey was only eight years old, he knew almost as many stories as his father and Peter.

  These stories were so interesting to me, that I only left that fire, unwillingly, I must add, when my mother called me from across the road - where we lived - and instructed me to come home immediately.

  According to Jeffrey's father the place where the village was established was an assembly place for witches in ancient times. I never thought of asking him where he came on his information, but at the time I could see no reason not to believe him. He would then tell us the terrible things the witches did over there in that coven of theirs, one of which was catching children - like us - and roasting us over a galley – like this very one – and then eating us with sharp sticks – like this very stick that he is holding the sweet potato over the fire with.

  Many times, I think he was just adding onto his story as he saw us believing him and becoming more scared by the minute. It must have been great fun for him, but sometimes it was really scary and I would look over my shoulder into the darkness to see if one those ugly witches was not approaching.

  Then Peter would add on to tell that he actually saw one of those witches one evening when he went to the shop over the little ford.