Camdeboo Nights

by Nerine Dorman

  Most of the garbage had already compacted with his entry, so there was not point trying to stack stuff to aid in his escape.

  “Jesus, Etienne, you should think before you act, sometimes,” he said, darkly. Deeply annoyed, he was about to toss the movies out while hoping for the best when a loud bang reverberated through his metal prison, followed by another. Unsure at first and dazed by the racket, it took him a few heartbeats to figure out that someone beat the oil drum which contained him.

  His ears rang with each strike and even when he pressed his hands over his ears, it did little to relieve the agony.

  They must have waited to see what he would do. Stupid, stupid, foolish Etienne!

  All he could do was crouch in the garbage to wait out this latest assault, until they grew bored with their dismal sport. He longed for that moment to come. After what felt like an eternity, the blows stopped. Hands clamped to his head, he crouched for a while longer, hardly daring to breathe or stir.

  He waited until the laughter grew distant then decided on the lesser of the evils facing him, throwing the discs so they landed on the grassy verge. Etienne scrambled out after. He grabbed the DVDs and ran, grimacing at the stench clinging to him.

  Two showers later, the water having stung his raw skin like acid, he was still convinced he reeked of the interior of the rubbish bin. His sneakers were almost a dead loss. Auntie Miriam who worked in the kitchen took pity on him when she caught him scrubbing them with some green Sunlight soap he’d pilfered from the laundry, and offered to find him a bucket so he could soak them.

  “You’re not going to wear those tekkies while they’re stinking like that,” she said, her brown face crinkling with concern.

  “No, Auntie.”

  “It’s those kids again, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, Auntie.”

  “You should report them.”

  “It doesn’t help. I tried that when I first started here and they laid off for a week before bog-washing me. After using the toilet first.”

  The woman tutted. Auntie Miriam had a way of making him feel better, no matter what. Her kitchen and the small vegetable and herb garden attached to her domain were the safe places where he could retreat to lick his wounds.

  She wouldn’t hear of him eating supper with the other students this evening. Instead, they ate their fish and chips while sitting on the steps, watching the sun bleed red into the horizon, and he listened to Auntie Miriam’s tales of growing up in District Six during the sixties.

  Sensibly he kept to his room on Sunday. He had meant to sneak into the common room to watch the films while the others went to church but he’d lost his taste for this. Instead, he tried to read, do homework, but found himself staring at the posters on his wall, instead.

  Perhaps he should have gone with Arwen this weekend. In her typical fashion, she had not replied to a single text message he’d sent.

  * * * *

  Etienne was only too glad when Monday brought the distraction of what he hoped would be a normal school day, even if it promised to be a real scorcher. At the breakfast table, he listened to the chatter, hoping Arwen, Helen and Damon would be there. Of course, they wouldn’t. The Wareings had some sort of special arrangement to bring their daughter through on a Monday morning just before school started, instead of the Sunday afternoon that applied to the rest of the students who went home weekends. By default, that honor now applied to Helen and her brother as well–more reason for some of the others to be jealous.

  He didn’t have much chance to speak to Arwen before assembly, gaining only a noncommittal “it was cool” before she clammed up to concentrate on text-messaging someone–illegal during school hours. When Helen slipped into the desk next to him during mathematics, he couldn’t help but smile. She returned his smile, looking happy enough.

  “How was the weekend?” Etienne asked.

  “Fine. Yours?”

  “Crap.”

  “Ah, no. What happened?”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary.” Etienne spared a dark look for one of his tormentors, who sat with his back turned, yakking with Jean-Pierre.

  At that point, before he could say anything further, Mr. Bayly entered and surveyed the class with his gimlet eyes. The buzz of chatter died away fast, as if someone had flipped a switch.

  Their teacher paced the width of the class. “I appreciate that you all had fun drinking and fornicating this weekend but you won’t be discussing your conquests in my class. Open your textbooks on page...”

  Etienne’s eyes glazed over. Why he had decided to study mathematics all the way to grade twelve was beyond him. He was in no mood for any of this today.

  Instead, he tore off a leaf of paper from his examination pad and wrote to Helen. So, what did you guys do this weekend?

  He took care checking that Mr. Bayly’s back was still turned to the class while he scribbled in blue and red on the whiteboard. Even from where Etienne sat, the chemical stench of the markers reached him and he suppressed the urge to sneeze.

  Helen gave a sharp intake of breath when Etienne slid the paper over onto her desk. Their fingers met, sending warm shivers up his arm. To have a nice girl like Helen treat him as if he were more than... Well, that was damn exciting.

  She bit her lip as if to suppress a slight smile. Etienne made pretense of following the teacher’s lesson, all the while straining to keep from looking to the side at what Helen wrote.

  A nudge. Once again their fingers fumbled together and Etienne retrieved the folded paper. He froze when Mr. Bayly swept the room with a glare. Fortunately, the man rarely bothered him.

  When he was certain that Mr. Bayly had focused his attention entirely on Jean-Pierre, who positively glowed with pride at having been singled out to blather on about the figures on the board, Etienne unfolded the note, taking care not to make it rustle.

  Helen’s script was small, angular and precise, not flying about like his scrawl.

  Arwen had some weird-ass idea to go to the cemetery. When we were there, some boy showed up.

  Etienne’s heartbeat faltered. What in hell was Arwen thinking? The tone of Helen’s reply seemed unconcerned, however. A boy? He’d never heard Arwen say anything much about the locals’ kids their own age. Pieter and his sisters were all younger than them. Jenny was in grade twelve this year and didn’t talk to the likes of Etienne, or Arwen, for that matter. Some of the others went to a boarding school in Port Elizabeth and only visited home every quarter during vacations. They didn’t talk much to Arwen, either.

  Most likely, the boy was a visitor’s son.

  OMF! WTF! He scribbled. What did U do? The boy, where’s he from? He local?

  Helen’s reply came, Arwen had this idea about some sort of witchcraft thing. Nothing happened. Just felt a bit weird and stupid standing there with all the mumbo-jumbo. The boy says he’s local, from what I’ve managed to find out. He said his name’s Trystan. Kinda cute. I think he’s about our age. Has long hair so I don’t think he goes to school here. Probably home-schooled.

  Etienne scribbled back, So, he just walked up to you? What about the ritual? Arwen was telling me about it. Never heard Arwen mention the boy, tho. Part of Etienne felt disappointment that Helen was interested in another guy.

  But, then, it sucked being honest. What girl would find a little person attractive? Another little person, perhaps, but he’d met and disliked two other little people in his life. It was better to dream.

  “Etienne Labuschagne! What are you doing?” Mr. Bayly’s voice cut through his reverie.

  He jerked upright and slid his notebook over the paper he’d been reading. Mr. Bayly’s gaze flickered at the movement, traveling up to meet Etienne’s eyes.

  “What are you doing, Mr. Labuschagne?”

  Someone giggled.

  “Helen and Etienne are passing love-notes, sir,” came a taunt from behind Etienne. The emphasis was placed on “love,” making it sound like “lurve.”

  “No, sir–” Etienne sta
rted.

  “Give it here.”

  “It’s nothing, sir.”

  “You can’t lie to me, Etienne. You always go pasty when you lie and you swallow reflexively, like you’ve got a cockroach stuck in your throat. Don’t think that my NLP classes haven’t paid off. Give the note to me.”

  A dozen equally implausible solutions occurred to him, but, this wasn’t the first time he’d been caught not paying attention in Mr. Bayly’s class. To feign ignorance of his behavior would be worse than handing over the offending slip of paper.

  Helen’s gray eyes were wide, horrified. She shook her head, almost imperceptibly, but he could do nothing to prevent the inevitable.

  With trembling fingers, Etienne folded the paper over, slid to his feet and tried to ignore the poorly stifled giggles while he waddled to the teacher’s desk. Mr. Bayly glowered, tapping the whiteboard marker in his palm as if it were a cane.

  The man snatched the paper from Etienne, scanned it then spoke. “You and Helen will not only complete exercise twelve point one and two. You’ll do the supplementary exercises up until those points in the test section as well, then hand it in tomorrow with the rest of your homework.”

  “Yes, sir,” Etienne muttered through gritted teeth.

  If Mr. Bayly had bothered to go back to read through the offending exchange properly–clearly he hadn’t–the consequences would have been far worse for Helen and him. Apart from being the school’s mathematics teacher, Mr. Bayly was also the head of the Student Christian Union.

  Chapter 15

  An Unholy Alliance

  Trystan was polishing Rose when he caught a hint of the other vampire. The chap was walking down Nieu Bethesda’s main drag as bold as brass.

  The jagter, for Trystan had no doubt as to the vampire’s purpose, had succeeded in keeping his presence secret, and had held his Essence close, except for a moment.

  It could have been a dog barking or a sudden movement in the shadows. That brief, careless flash was enough to have Trystan padding into the streets, hugging the dark places so he could slip behind the intruder.

  The jagter was a short man, balding and portly during life–qualities that had not been improved upon once he’d joined the ranks of the undead. Like a moth to a lightbulb, the fellow had been drawn to the cemetery, where flickerings of the Wareing girl’s attempts at magic still eddied, days after the event.

  Who wore pince nez glasses nowadays? The intruder’s clothing seemed out of place with the present age. Trystan had no doubt the vamp’s ivory-knobbed cane hid a blade, and the chap wasn’t anyone he recognized. The vampire paused by the gate, pale nostrils flaring as if he would capture an elusive scent.

  All the while, Trystan remained close, flexing his fingers while wishing for a weapon other than teeth, and undecided as to whether he should let the guy be or consider a more permanent solution.

  The faint electric hum of Essence resonated. It could be so easy to...

  The interloper was bound to be missed, though.

  But, if allowed to investigate, the jagter would also return to his elders, report on the disturbance, and share what he’d found, even if there had been no concrete evidence. He could make recommendations. This hamlet could be placed under surveillance.

  Trystan was screwed either way. What would the lesser of the two evils be?

  Inspector Poirot–for Trystan couldn’t help but think that the chap resembled the fictional investigator–paused by Helen Martins’s grave and removed a shiny calfskin glove so he could trace the owl-shaped profile. He brought his finger to his nose and sniffed audibly.

  “You can come out now,” the vamp said, his voice thin and nasal, with traces of a colonial accent. “I know you’re only ten feet to my left, hiding behind the wall.”

  Not to be caught hesitating a second time in a week, Trystan rushed the vampire. His suspicions regarding the sword cane proved correct, when a foot of steel flashed, sliding with a hiss into Trystan’s abdomen. The pain lanced fire through his flesh. He dropped to the ground and feigned serious damage. Then, when the vampire withdrew the weapon for another stab, Trystan twisted up, pushing against the ground hard so he flew into the other vampire.

  To give the jagter some credit, he’d moved fast in the end, but not fast enough.

  The momentum of Trystan’s attack carried both undead several meters before they knocked over a particularly large, angular black granite headstone. The object caught Trystan a glancing blow against his head that had him seeing stars.

  Desperation gifted him with the determination to finish his attack. The jagter could not have been older than eighty–his flesh was still soft with the last vestiges of his humanity.

  He gave a soft groan when Trystan’s teeth found their mark, at the sweet spot just under the chin. The interloper clutched at Trystan’s hair, pulling hard enough to almost remove clumps of it. The flood of Essence caused convulsions in both.

  For Trystan, the stolen blood was living fire that gushed down his throat to flood to his extremities.

  A momentary stirring in his chest could be ascribed to the sudden flutterings of the ghost of a heartbeat. When the last of the Essence left the now still jagter, Trystan fell back, heedless of his vulnerable situation.

  A ragged breath imposed itself on his lungs, unused muscles burning. A force coiled and pooled in his belly.

  He almost felt alive. Trystan smiled, licked blood-smeared lips, and reveled in the metallic taste coating his tongue which offered the illusion of well-being. Vampires’ blood could be compared to the difference between surviving on tea, or truly living on a heady liquor. Above, the stars spun and pulsated in a dizzying explosion of light.

  Gradually, the need to breathe left him. He lay still, simply enjoying the warmth suffusing him. How he’d managed to hold himself back, walking with Helen the other night... His actions had been foolhardy, but he’d gone for so long convincing himself that Essence wasn’t the be-all and end-all of his existence.

  Who was he kidding? Mantis was right. Junkie.

  He rose, hunching by the drained corpse, about to search its pockets, when he realized he’d made a worse miscalculation. Filled with so much stolen Essence, he’d likely glow like a flaming beacon for months on end.

  “Stupid git,” he muttered. He’d not be pulling stunts like the one with Mantis the previous week. He was almost as loud as...as Helen.

  He rifled through the corpse’s pockets. An inventory of his finds included three razor-sharp throwing knives, a needle-thin stiletto, a wad of cash and a drivers’ licence issued in Gauteng, in the name of Brent East.

  None of this helped much, save for alerting him that it was the elders in Jozi who were curious enough to send one of their jagters to the middle of nowhere to investigate a disturbance.

  There has been a disturbance in the Force, mocked the line from some science fiction movie he’d once seen.

  A dozen expletives leapt to his tongue but he stifled them. He’d have to do something about the body.

  “You!” a man exclaimed not far behind him.

  Trystan wheeled around with a hiss, canines extended, crouching low to strike.

  Szandor regarded him with icy eyes, hair wild and a sword leveled at him. Flickerings of light along its blade told him this was no ordinary weapon but he doubted it could do any real damage. At least it wasn’t a fucking shotgun.

  “I wouldn’t do anything stupid if I were you,” the human said.

  A low growl escaped Trystan’s lips. All his muscles bunched. Years of careful deceit had been blown in less than a month. He stared back at the witch, fixing the man with the kind of glare that would make lesser vampires flinch. Szandor gave no sign of discomfort, however, and maintained eye contact.

  Trystan had been monitoring the Wareing clan for years now. He’d even turned it into something of a hobby. He had never revealed himself, had never given these magic-sensitive humans any cause to suspect they were not alone out here in the middle of the cou
ntry.

  The game was up but he did not want to kill them. They were too familiar–not that he could consider them friends, though. They had been a constant for him, although he had never imagined talking to them.

  “Are you trying to stab me with that?” Trystan relaxed his stance and straightened. He allowed his hands to fall to his sides. Let the man see he bore him no ill will.

  Szandor frowned, took a step back, and lowered his blade, although his knuckles were still white. He mimicked Trystan’s posture. Good.

  “It’s better than trying to beat you off with my bare hands,” the human said. “I never thought to meet one of your kind out here.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “What about him?” Szandor pointed at the fallen jagter. Already the body was putrefying–definitely a young one, then.

  Trystan crinkled his nose at the ripe stench. “The others know about us, suspect something. There will be more, thanks to the other night.”

  The man stiffened and brushed a trembling hand through his hair, which stood out in wild pale tufts.

  “Don’t tell me that you don’t know anything about the other night.”

  “Fuck it,” Szandor said quietly.

  “You could say that. No ceremonial sword will stop them when they come. None of your moonlight rituals will prevent the jagters from tearing your precious family to bloody ribbons.

  “The elders won’t suffer a witch to live, Szandor, not when you witches have access to real Essence, and I don’t mean the paltry flickerings you manage to raise during your sabbats.”

  A lost look entered Szandor’s eyes. “We’re tired of running. Mother was tired already when she came back. It wasn’t like that two hundred years ago. Your kind are parasites who suck all the Essence out of the world.”

  “We just want to live, like you do.”

  “Well, standing here debating unnatural history isn’t going to help one whit. What are we going to do about that?” Szandor inclined his head at the body.

  “Drag him up one of the ravines, I suppose. The sun will finish the job.”

  Szandor raised a brow. “Then what about us?”