Witches & Fantasies!

Kindles are jumping out all over the place and screaming, ‘Read me, read me!’ Everywhere I look, eReaders are there, surging alongside iPhones ‘n BlackBerries. And why not; they are what they say they are – damn good pieces of kit. Their pages remain un-gunked; the edges clean and crisp, without smear or thumbprint or folded corners. Know we’ve talked about this before, but the e-race is really hotting up; now it’s more about selling words than clawing back costs for the paper they’re written on. As long as eBook prices stay lower than those expected of their hardcopy brothers, sales will climb. The truth of the matter? No one can stop them...

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Boyhood – from stream to raging torrent...

COWLING HOUSE

Often, people ask me what it was like at boarding school. The short answer is pretty straightforward – for the first year at least, I hated it; a period of intense trauma that I would rather forget. Being locked in a building that ranked somewhere between Alcatraz and the workhouse from Oliver Twist did little to strengthen my faith in humankind. Not so much the schooling itself, but the aftermath of hostel life. A white, austere building of high walls and red tin roofs with doors that, at night, were always securely locked, bolted and spied upon by beaky housekeepers; not as a guard against ‘things’ that might get in, but as barriers that would keep us little darlings from sneaking out and wreaking havoc on the town’s fruit trees and chaste daughters. We were as the housemaster put it, ‘a rabble that needed to be contained for the financial and moral safety of the community.’ And so it was that a hundred or so little boys planned and plotted their way through their first year of tutorial incarceration; a nest of little vipers that crept, crawled and spied on the ‘spy-ers’ about the dark halls of Cowling House, the boarding school from hell...

At meals, it was expected of Mister Arlers, one of the more senior teachers to say grace. Small guy, bony hands, mean administrator of the cane; his jowls shook, same as a St Bernard’s, always rung his hands at prayers – one eye left open to watch for dissidents.

‘For what we are about to receive...’ He paused to work his single eye around the hall; satisfied that all was well he carried on; ‘may the Lord make us truly thankful.’ Then after a further, pointless ten second silence... ‘You may all sit.’

So we sat; and waited for the day’s delicacies to be brought from the kitchen, ate whatever slop the cook had invented and then went to prep (homework) for an hour and a half. Maths and Latin – I detested both. Could never fathom how learning to speak like a Roman gladiator might one day enhance my life.

Being forced to go to bed at eight o’clock was a welcome release. The switch was flicked and forty chunnering boys were plunged into darkness. Forty iron-framed beds, forty tent-sized mosquito nets hung like gossamer church bells from the ceiling, forty little erections like forest mushrooms pointed up at it.

‘Are you doing it?’

Strained, ‘yes’s’ from further down the bed-line. No embarrassment, no clandestine rustlings from beneath the sheets, just forty furtive squeaks from pubescent boys harnessing their fantasies. We were determined self-achievers all working in perfect harmony.

Driven solely by professional dedication, Miss Saxon soon worked out what we were up to. Her room was just outside the dormitory, she was ‘the gatekeeper’. Her hostel duties included the monitoring and suppression of any subversive activities, an occupation she carried out with an unnaturally keen interest.

Miss Saxon had a torch, a powerful torch; I was convinced it doubled as a searchlight for anti-aircraft batteries during the Blitz. She was our very own Lady with the Lamp, but for different reasons to those of a more temperate Florence Nightingale. We feared her. Her attacks were rigorously executed, her stealth second only to that of a leopardess. Her application to duty knew no bounds, neither did her excitement when, with her face still smeared in night cream she would lunge amongst our rocking beds with Gagool-like fervour; eyes flashing, stick raised,  torch beam blasting back the dark; forty teenage libidos fluttering to a standstill.

‘Bloody little perverts!’

As the punitive sword of Damocles, her stick rose and fell, but with little effect; all of us had disappeared beneath our beds and stayed there; waiting for her to drool off back to her room. Strange how she always singled out where the bigger kids were before switching on her torch...

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Sons of Africa; an extract:

... ‘Prepare yourself. On your life, do not try to use your rifle. What you see will be beyond your understanding, but no harm will come to you, Rex Kumalo.’

Alone in total darkness, a faint orb of wavering light rose up to him from deep in the hillside – then movement; as dry leaves over a wooden porch.

‘I see you, Rex Kumalo.’

It was not the voice of the man who had led him there. This was stricken with age, emanating from lungs that were filled with viscid fluid from the breathing in of foul air. Rex waited for the wraithlike figure to materialise in front of him; when the creature turned about in the narrow passageway the full horror of the harridan’s affliction flung him back against the sidewall.

About her shrivelled waist was tied a simple belt of leather. Hung from it, on sinew stripped from the limbs of the Vervet monkey were the sickening tools of her wizardry; slivered body parts, bone and teeth from venomous forest vipers, charms and ancient powders searched from a hundred secret places. Ashen body hair stood out from the juncture of her legs, the skin about her groin and upper thighs transparent enough for Rex to see the veins and arteries that for more than a hundred years had kept her living. Above the darkened pits that were her eyes, verminous colonies scurried to hide from the lamplight.

‘Follow me, Rex Kumalo, there are many things for you to see. Do not fear your destiny – you are both the destroyer and the father of our nation.’

Without warning she raised her lamp to the granite sidewall.

‘Behold the mothers of Kagubi and Muroyiwa, the bewitched ones! Messengers from beyond the wall of death. Eaters of genitals and lovers to dogs.’ Like steel on glass her voice keened inside his head; her eyes glittered and threads of silver spittle drooled from her lower lip. Rex suppressed a sudden urge to dash out her brains on the sidewall.

‘Touch them, Rex Kumalo – touch the ancient guardians of this fallen city of stone.’

Ghostly insects skittered inside his shirt. Alcoves had been fashioned into the living granite; the grisly remains of what once were living beings were held in place by hand-forged iron pegs. Dry air and skilled hands of their embalmer had held off putrefaction – the victims’ jaws set in that final grinning rictus of an agonising death.

‘My own child.’ Perverse pleasure thickened her voice, willing him to gaze upon the handiwork. Shrouded in swirling dust she appeared to float above the ground. ‘My own mother drew off the child’s blood and stuffed its belly with balm to hold off the maggots.’

Rex’s eyes bulged in their sockets. He felt trapped by the ancient rituals and superstitions of his own race. The harridan’s strength of mind held his feet to the earth.

‘How did the child die?’

‘From the bite of the mubobo, the black mamba,’ her voice a sibilant hiss in the quiet. With a skeletal hand she reached out and caressed the tiny, shrivelled neck. Then her lips parted and for a brief moment Rex caught the reptilian flick of her tongue. ‘Here, where the child’s blood was hot and close to the heart.’

The powerful neurotoxins in the snake’s venom had caused the child’s spine to arch backwards. The head had been drawn with it, forcing the mouth wide open. Rex turned away and fought to hold his voice steady.

‘What of these things, old woman? Why do you show them to me?’

Mutiswa held the lamp to his face.

‘As this flame takes life from the oil on which it feeds, so will the sons and daughters of the new order take life from the strength they find in you, Rex Kumalo.’ Her eyes narrowed. For a hundred years, this was the moment she had lived for – the resurrection of a people whose voice once held sway over an entire land. Again the bull bellow of the Matabele would be heard above the whine of their Shona underlings.

‘Was it not the power of the past that brought you here?’ Again, she shuffled forwards and raised the lamp to the sidewall.

‘Behold the magic that has brought your bloodline back to its rightful place beneath Zimbabwe, the birthplace of our nation.’

‘Another child.’ His voice heavy with revulsion. ‘Killing you now would not rob me of a single minute’s sleep, old woman.’

Mutiswa reached out for the corpse, touching, prodding, testing the softer parts with her finger tips.

‘The balm is not yet at its best, only when it hardens will the pup be safe from the fly. Come, son of Mashobane, we must hurry. The ghosts of your ancestors grow tired of waiting.’

So frail were the old woman’s limbs that they hardly cast a shadow. Rex watched her move from light to dark, scuttling forwards, roach-like and bent at the waist, more akin to a wild animal than any human being.

 The passage opened; changed to some dark and limitless void, the lamplight now too weak to reach beyond.

‘What is this place, old woman? What good has this done, bringing me to this stinking pit beneath the ground?’

Mutiswa turned to face him. Now the light, held close to her hairless skull showed the full horrors of her afflictions. Dark ophthalmic holes leered up at him and the advanced malignant cells of a deep and virulent melanoma clung to the ruined stump of her nose. In the living light, the canker appeared to Rex as some grotesque and separate beast upon her face, so that he reeled from the horror of it and almost lost his footing...

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