James Jenkins - The Valancourt Book of World Horror Stories. Volume 1

Tamason.

I push the cabin’s door open, Knysna Lake purling softly behind me. The stagnant odor hits me like an accusation. The dust must be at least two centimeters thick and I notice more than one thing scurrying.

I’m happy to be back. I’ve always seen Tamason as ‘back’ and the apartment in Stellenbosch as ‘away’, although I spend my days in that student town. Here I always feel whole again.

That’s why I’ve fled here.

I inherited Tamason from my parents. From the beginning there was a bond between me and the cabin; I was the one who gave it its name when I was little. We were sitting on the porch and my mom pointed out the sunset to me. When those red fingers, a woman’s fingers without any doubt, drew silky stripes through the clouds, I said one word: ‘Tamason’. What I tried to say was ‘tomato sun’, but at that stage, tomato was still either ‘mato’ or ‘tama’, depending on the sentence or my mood. And so was my beloved house christened.

It takes me the rest of the afternoon to make the house reasonably clean, ‘every nook and cranny’, as my mom was so fond of saying. In the process I discover all kinds of filthy creatures that had come to breed and mutate happily in mankind’s absence, and everything gets summarily bugsprayed and massacred; I have no conscience when it comes to insects.

With the dust and corpses cleared away and my airways sneezed clean, I go and sit with a can of Castle on the porch swing. I look out over the water. The ripples look so calm, but the surface is a dark veil.

I start up a fire and grill a whole package of sausage. By the time it’s ready there are three more empty beer cans beside the barbecue. I eat half of the sausage along with a roll and go sit down again on the swing, my second-­to-­last Castle in my hand.

I become conscious of hands. Soft hands, women’s hands, touching my forehead carefully. I open my eyes, confused and disoriented and startled.

But she’s already five steps away. Her eyes are large and dark like the lake, her cheeks dull white and smooth in the light of the gas lamp, her mouth slightly open. Dark hair hangs down to her shoulders. She has a loose white dress on, something that folds over her body almost like a sheet, and her bare feet are close together. She holds her hands in front of her.

I open my mouth to say something, but she is already gone.

Just gone. Like a drop of rain on the lake.

I rub my face and wonder if I’m awake. I still feel her cold fingertips against my skin.

I stand up and step on my empty beer can beside the swing, lose my balance and topple headlong.

It’s one way of making sure you’re awake. I remain lying on the wooden porch and wonder about her. Was she real? Or was it just a dream?

The morning sun is shining on the lake when I open the door. I walk into the mineral-­rich water, swim out towards the depths and then back to shore. There are a lot of boats on the lake, some with sails, like paper flowers floating in a myriad of colors on the brownish water, others without sails but with powerful engines that cut through the silence. The lake feeds the village, and in a way the village feeds the lake.

Really in more than one way.

After breakfast I grab my guitar and go sit on the swing. It’s somewhere during ‘Polly’ when I feel the clammy thing against my hip, where the T-­shirt must have slid up. At first I’m startled, but then I see the animal who has pressed his muzzle against me, laughing and excited, low on his forepaws, rear end in the air and tail wagging.

I can’t resist the big golden retriever. I set the guitar down and sink onto my hands and knees, a mimic of the dog’s posture. His mouth gives a bigger laugh and he shuffles closer. I slap on the plank, and when he jumps I push him to the left. He pulls back and comes again. I turn him away. So we try to outwit each other until he finally jumps around and licks my face. I push his head away but can’t stop him from laughing.

When I finally stand up, I look around but don’t see anyone. There’s no collar on the dog’s neck, but his fur is clean and it’s obvious that he’s well cared for.

‘Where’s your owner?’

He just laughs and sinks down again on his forepaws.

After lunch – we shared a can of Vienna sausages, mine with mustard, his without – I take him out onto the sand, in the hope that he’ll head home. But he just sits and looks at me. He pays no heed to my encouragement. He follows me left and right along the lake. I try to chase him off, but he plays dumb and makes a game of it.

Finally I give up and walk back towards Tamason. I write my shadow’s description and my address on a sheet of paper and walk towards the café. The dog is well trained too, because he doesn’t go in with me.

Old Tolla is behind the counter and he smiles when he sees me. ‘Hey, Tommie! Man, it’s been a long time since I saw you last. How’s it going?’

‘Good, thanks.’ Does it count as a lie if you don’t think about the answer? ‘And you?’

‘Young man, if I complain, the wife says it’s my own fault for wanting to sit and read the newspaper.’ He holds up his hands and grins.

I used to come and buy sweets from Tolla when I was waist-­high. He always let me have them at a discount. But old age has crept up on him; the gray has completely overtaken his lush forest of hair, the cracks around his eyes and the corners of his mouth are deeper and folds have appeared in the skin of his neck. Yet the lines on my forehead are deeper too.

‘Are your parents here too?’

‘No, they passed away.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘Yes, it’s been almost two years.’

‘So long?’

I nod. ‘My mom had a stroke and two months later my father’s heart went out. They could never make it without each other.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, man.’

‘Thanks. Have you seen that dog before?’ I motion to where the dog is sitting with its rear against the window.

‘No. I thought it was yours.’

‘No. He came sniffing around at Tamason. We played a little and ate and now he doesn’t want to go home.’

Tolla laughed. ‘That’s what happens when you feed a dog.’

‘Well, would you maybe hang this up somewhere?’ I give him the paper.

‘Sure thing.’

In the early evening I start another fire and meanwhile open a package of chips and a Castle. Sebastian comes to sit beside me – I’ve decided to give him a name, because how are we supposed to have a relationship if I think of him as The Dog? – and we watch the flames.

Sebastian snatches a couple of chips out of my hand when I make the mistake of holding it too low. After that he wants more and more. But he’s not getting any beer. I found an old margarine tub in one of the kitchen cupboards and filled it with water.

After the meal, I’m back on the swing. Sebastian comes to lie at my feet, buries his muzzle between his paws, closes his eyes and gives a contented sigh.

I look towards the lake. When the water is as still as it is this evening and it’s a new moon, a person can almost forget it’s there. But of course it’s there.

Just like Deloris Mouton.

It’s hard to run away from yourself.

Deloris Mouton, with her tidy hair and razor-­sharp eyes. The devil in a skirt. Could I still save my soul, or had the transaction already gone through?

Before the faculty party she was Professor Mouton, the head of the Afrikaans-­Dutch Department. And I was just a lecturer, new to the university. But that evening we really talked for the first time. When I’d gone outside to get some air. What a cliché. I thought it was a coincidence but of course she’d followed me.

As people do at such times, we shared our interests and quickly discovered that we both had a predilection for Romantic poetry. And it’s hard not to enjoy the attention of a beautiful woman. The light touching started that evening.