Mindf**k (12 page)
Authors: Fanie Viljoen
Shit, shit, shit!
There was only one way of being certain: I had to go back to Aldam. And this time I couldn’t just look at the flat piece of earth, I’d have to dig it open. Until I found her.
Or not.
I had to beg for some money to catch a bus back to the garage where the car was. It was the first time in my life that I’d had to ask strange people for money. And I hated it.
I made my way into the city centre.
That’s were the most people were. I didn’t look them in the eye when I asked.
And they were either stingy or bloody deaf – the whole lot of them. Mind you, if I’d have come across myself in the street, I wouldn’t have given me money either. I looked like the facecloth a whore uses to wipe herself clean after each customer, I noticed in a shop window.
I tried a story about my-poor-
mom-who
-suddenly-fell-so-terribly-ill-at-
home-and
-i-had-to-get-to-her-very-quickly-
to-take
-her-to-the-doctor.
And eventually it worked. I got the bus money.
Bus stops are the gathering places of the city’s abandoned, lost and other choice assorted people. Every one of them seemed to be on a vibe from the diesel fumes that clouded out from the black bus exhausts.
I found a seat at the back of the bus, avoiding the scrutinizing eyes alongside
the pathway.
Our driver was Mad Max reincarnated; Bloem’s streets were his Thunderdome.
The car I stole at Aldam was still parked at the garage. As if it was waiting for me to take it back.
I got in and started it again with the loose wires sparking between my fingers. I noticed the petrol gauge shivering at the bottom of the red. I hoped the car would make it back to the house. I needed to get some money to fill it up with petrol. I adjusted the rear-view mirror absentmindedly. Searching for Kerbs’ car.
Kerbs doesn’t exist, said my inner voice.
And Partygirl? I asked him.
He didn’t answer me.
I didn’t know what I wanted. Did I want her to be alive? Or did I want her to be
dead? Really dead, because that would have meant that she truly was there. A light at the end of the tunnel that would prove that I wasn’t completely fucked up.
I didn’t know.
The car thankfully reached the house.
Kelly wasn’t back yet. She’d probably gone to my mom’s workplace. I had to hurry before they found me there.
I went straight to my mom’s room. I knew where she stashed away money for emergencies. And this was definitely one. How much did I need? About a hundred and fifty for petrol, sixty for the toll gate, thirty to enter the resort. And a little extra for in case. I took three hundred rand and placed the box in exactly the same spot where I had found it underneath my mom’s clothes.
I grabbed a shovel from the garage. It would speed up the digging. And a flashlight if I had to dig in the dark.
After filling up the tank, I took the N1 North.
At Winburg it was as if the clouds reached closer to the road. Dark, blue grey. That was where we’d picked her up. I glanced back in the rear-view mirror as if I could still see her running up to the car. Her black hair waving behind her.
I could still imagine hearing her voice as I rolled down the window. But her words had already vanished. It was only the sense of her voice that remained.
I switched the car’s lights on. It was getting very dark. Moments later the first drops exploded against the windscreen, at first only a few dotting the glass and distorting the view; then it poured down. The sharp smell of water on tar rushed in through the air vents. The car wipers cleared away the raindrops but it didn’t help very much. The world before me was now white and misty.
I only noticed a bunch of traffic cops
packing up their gear and scrambling to their cars when I had almost passed them. If it hadn’t been raining then, they would surely have pulled me over – the car’s needle had been tripping around 140, 150 all the time.
A good sign?
The brown road sign indicating the Aldam exit was barely visible on the side of the road. The car’s lights drifted to the right. I made my way along the curving road to the holiday resort.
It was a terrifying moment. I was nearly there but I wished the road could have been longer. For in the postponement of the moment there was a weird liberation. Maybe a way out.
The high thatch roof of the gate towered in front of me. The giant stop sign forced me to stop. I waited for the security guard to come. The windows of the cubicle were steamed over. So he had to be there. Perhaps he was sleeping. I rammed down
on the horn and drove forward until I was underneath the thatched roof. The sleepy guard emerged from the cubicle. He had a clipboard in his hands and he frowned.
‘Day visitor,’ I said.
‘Ntate?’ he said questioningly. Which actually meant: What the fuck are you doing here? Can’t you see it’s raining?
Get moving, won’t you? I wanted to order him; I didn’t want to sit there all day. But I bit back the words; this was the place where I stole the very car I was sitting in. He might know about it by now.
He started writing down the car’s number plate.
I should have changed the damn thing but I thought of it too late.
I studied his face, his eyes for a whim of recognition …
He kept on writing.
Nothing.
He approached the open window again and handed me his clipboard. ‘Please write your name there, sir.’ He indicated a blank section on the paper.
I jotted down a false name.
He tore loose my copy, handed it to me and walked away to raise the barrier.
I drove through and waved at him. Past the first obstacle.
In the rear-view mirror I saw him aiming for his cubicle, but then he stopped and turned around again. There was another car approaching.
I adjusted the rear-view mirror.
The rain lifted slightly, enough for me to see the black car coming up the road.
I’d recognise that car anywhere. In rain, hail or wind. Or even if flames came down from the heaven, I’d recognise it.
It was Kerbs.
So, he’s back, my heart raced. I gulped. The anxiety shot from my spine to the tips of my fingers. My hands trembled on the steering wheel.
It couldn’t be him, you are imagining things! something screamed inside of me.
But look! Fucking look! shouted another voice, even louder.
It felt as if every nerve in my body was being carved up with a deadly sharp Minora blade. Stay calm, just stay fucking calm. Go do what you came here for.
He’ll go away, he doesn’t exist. You know that by now, don’t you?
I tried fixing my gaze on the road ahead of me, but my eyes unwillingly shot back to the rear-view mirror. Time and again. Searching.
And the questions flashed through my mind. The same questions over and over. Quick, just like rush-hour traffic on a highway in Jo’burg. Where was he? Did he take another road? Did he know what I came here for? How long has he been following me? All the way here my mind was caught up in other things. I was thinking about Partygirl.
He was out of sight now. It was all your imagination, said the voice.
I drove down the hill to the caravan
park. Over the speed bumps. The trees hung droopingly wet beside the road. Then the tar road ended and the gravel road started. It was still raining but not as hectically as before. I followed the gravel road for a while, and then stopped to try and find the spot where we had pitched our tent. Everything seemed different now.
I drove closer to the dam, then followed the curve of the water. It had to be around there. Perhaps I should get out, I thought. I stopped the car and got out in the rain, glancing back over my shoulder to see if the black car was approaching. It didn’t look that way.
I strode forward. The ground was muddy beneath my feet. My eyes scanned over the dark brown earth. Puddles of water started forming, fresh green grass had emerged out of the mud.
And then … an area where the ground had given way. A subsidence in the form of a grave where the ground started caving in from the rain.
My eyes blinked uncontrollably while I paced up and down, up and down beside the sunken earth. My eyes were glued to the ground. It was here.
I swung around and darted back to the car. I got it going and quickly drove nearer, the thought of possibly getting stuck in the mud not even crossing my mind.
When I stopped, I leaned forward onto the steering wheel for a second. My body wanted to keep on going but I knew I had to calm down. It was the only way I could think clearly.
I felt sick now. And empty. The moment of truth.
Who are you, Burns?
Totally fucked up? Or would a girl’s body be proof that I sometimes still had my senses together? That I too was alive.
And that she had lived.
I got out, opened the car’s boot and took out the shovel.
The slamming of the boot still echoed in my mind when I turned the first sod. The mud sucked back on the shovel blade. I heaved the wet sandy soil aside and stuck the shovel back into the ground. Again and again. It was as if every shovel of dirt got heavier. I was becoming short of breath. But I kept on digging. I tried to quiet down the noise in my head. I needed calmness. As I imagined it would be like in the middle of the dam.
A deep silence.
When I straightened up after the umpteenth shovel to catch my breath I heard the rumbling of an engine. The black car came driving along the embankment, heading straight towards me.
It was as if he did it on purpose: driving slowly.
Because he knew what I thought, how I felt. And the longer he could postpone the meeting, the better it was for him. The more the anxiety would tighten my chest; fight-or-flight reactions play up against each other.
He stayed sitting in the car for a while. I saw him moving behind the tinted windows. I couldn’t see his face, but I knew that he was watching me.
The door opened. Kerbs got out. Black
jeans, black T-shirt. He slammed the door shut, swaggered closer, really full of himself.
‘Burns,’ his voice grated. ‘What are you doing, buddy?’
‘Kerbs.’
‘Surprised to see me?’ he smiled. A treacherous smile. Like one would imagine a snake would smile if it could.
‘What … what are you doing here?’
‘Ah, you know, I was a bit bored, so I thought I’d come see what the fuck you are doing with yourself these days.’ He looked at the pile of dirt, smiled again. ‘If you kept your side of the bargain. Same old shit. You know.’
I swallowed, didn’t answer him.
‘And it seems like I came at just the right time. What the fuck are you doing, Burns?’
‘What do you think?’ I stuck the shovel in the ground, felt the mud sucking back the blade.
‘Sky said you would come back to her again. Somehow he knows these things …’
‘Leave Sky out of this.’
‘Can’t. He’s just as much a part of what happened as you and me.’ Then he shouted over his shoulder: ‘Aren’t you, Sky?’
The door on the car’s passenger side opened up. Sky got out. Head lowered, but with his blue eyes staring out from the shadows of his eyebrows.
‘Sky?’ I asked.
‘Burns. What’s up?’
‘It’s like a family reunion, hey?’ laughed Kerbs. ‘Oh no, wait, wait. Someone is missing. Wait, let me see who it is … Partygirl!’
His words were blades slashing open the arteries in my arm.
‘So, what do you think, Burns? Who’s behind door number three?’ He shot a glance over his shoulder to the car.
I looked at Sky. He avoided my eyes. I knew that he knew.
‘Come on, Burns … Where’s Partygirl? Is she lying underneath your feet? Or is she sitting in the car, waiting for you? Where do you want her to be?’
I stared at the car, then at the hole in the ground.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Crap, Burns, you do know!’ cried Sky. ‘Listen to yourself. What is screaming out the loudest? Your head or your heart? Your heart wishes for her to be in the car, wishes for her to be alive, sort of alive … like Kerbs and I.’ For a moment it seemed as if Sky’s face expanded outwards. ‘Your head
wishes for her to be dead. Stretched out in the ground below your feet and genuinely dead. It would mean that you’re not really as crazy as Kelly and all the other people say you are.’
Kerbs’ smile broadened. ‘Profoundly poetic what Sky said, isn’t it, Burns? I couldn’t have puked it better myself. So what do you say, Burnsie?’
‘I don’t know.’
I paced up and down alongside the pile of dirt. Again flooded with the rush hour traffic of muddled thoughts. I could feel my brain throbbing, feel it growing bigger and bigger, the pressure increasing inside my skull. And any minute now it would explode and I would collapse into this shallow grave. Then it would be over.
‘What’s it gonna be?’ taunted Kerbs’ voice.
‘I don’t fucking know, okay?’ I shouted.
Now Kerbs and Sky were both laughing out loud.
‘Allow me to help you then, Burnsie,’ hissed Kerbs. And then he cried out in a booming voice that rolled over the wet earth and the water, resounding somewhere in the distance and came echoing back. ‘Partygirl! Partygirl! Get up! Wake up, girl! Come on, come on!’
I shut my eyes tightly, felt my body tearing in two.
Then I opened my eyes, my terrified gaze fixed on the black car. Searching for movement inside the car, behind the tinted windows.
Minutes went by, by, by.
There was nothing.
The car’s doors stayed closed, nothing happened.
‘Mind magic, Burns,’ said Sky. ‘You
know what you want. You want to be sane. You want people to like you. And when that didn’t happen, you created us.’ Sky’s voice was like the waves lapping on the edge of the dam. ‘Look there, Burns.’ With an outstretched finger he pointed at the hole I had been digging.
A piece of fabric showed. The sleeping bag, now wet and muddy.
I got down on my knees. Started to wipe away the dirt, bit by bit. And with every handful of dirt that I wiped away, more and more of the sleeping bag was revealed. It was clear that there was a human body inside. I zipped open the sleeping bag.
It was as if Partygirl was being born out of the earth.
‘You did it, Burns. You alone,’ rustled Sky’s voice. ‘It could have been so beautiful. Like in the movies. You could have loved her. And she could have loved you. She did say that, didn’t she? But no one had ever told you that before her, right? And you
thought that you didn’t deserve it. Because she was like an angel. And angels don’t love people like you. You thought she only said it because she didn’t know you; after all you had only been together for one day. And if she found out who you really were, she would change her tune. And you needed to prevent that, right, Burns? You didn’t want to show her who the real Chris Burns is. The guy with the darkness inside his head. The guy who creates people like he sees fit and then carries them around with him. Conjuring up stories about them so that it seems as if he at least has a life …
‘All of this you realized when you rolled off her. After the two of you had sex and you looked at her. Your Angelgirl. And then you bashed her head in while she stared at you with her angel eyes that grew fainter and fainter with each blow. And her blood running down your fingers. And her love that would be yours forever and ever and ever, like in the movies.’
