The last hill of the day is at the same time the easiest and the most difficult. When Ryker reaches the top of the hill with his Avalance 21 speed Conqueror mountain bike, he knows he has just enough energy left to reach the nearest village. He had been cycling the whole day.
This was the holiday that he planned since he was in standard five.
A holiday where he would just cycle. So far he had cycled over 800 kilometers. Cycling from village to village. He would sleep in the last village of the day and the next day explore it and converse with the inhabitants, thus at the same time learning about the area.
He knows it is all the way downhill now, straight to the village, at the bottom of the hill, where he will spend the night.
He pulls the the little sunvisor tighter over his eyes as he now looks straight into the setting sun. He really hates it to cycle or even to drive while looking into the late afternoon sun, but he has no choice.
He goes off the main road onto a route of about ten kilometers of what seems to be an old farm road snaking through tall and very dense trees. The road is tarred, but one can see that it is used very seldom nowadays, because it is full of potholes and there are even grass growing from cracks in the ancient tar.
Despite the trees, the sun still shines straight into his eyes through the tunnel that the trees make. He sees on his right hand side what looks like an abandoned farm house. He simply loves old buildings and is already studying it as he approaches, because he would like to take some photos of it.
Then it happens…
From concentrating on the house he rides straight into the biggest pothole in the road, his momentum making him shoot straight over the handle bars and coming hard down onto the tar. Luckily his echo is hurt more than his body. He had been riding bike since he was seven years old and can count on the fingers of one hand the times that he really fell from a bike.
The bike is damaged though, and he sees immediately that he won't be able to ride with the buckled front wheel. Luckily the accident happened right in front of the abandoned farmhouse and he can get assistance from there.
He turns to look at the house and...
...straight into the most horrible face he had ever seen in his life. It is a young boy, about ten or eleven years old. The boy is not actually ugly, but has the most horrible wound in his face, that seems to be struggling to heal.
The boy must have stood behind him, just outside the gate of the farmhouse, the whole time, but he didn't see him in the shadows. The ugly black, red and blue scar runs down the left side of his face. It looks like a wild animal or something tried to take a huge bite out of his face.
"Hello, boy," Ryker greets the youngster, hoping the boy didn't see how he startled him.
"Hi." the boys says in a very matter of fact manner. So as if he is not really interested in Ryker or the dramatic accident he just had with his bike right in front of him.
"Do you live in this house?" Ryker asks the boy as he points at the house.
"Yes", the boy answers in his cold manner, which seems to be his natural way of conversing with someone. He just stands where Ryker saw him the first time and doesn't even make an effort to come closer.
Ryker moves closer to the youngster and asks him: "Have you got a phone?"
"No, we never had one." The boy looks straight up at Ryker, and this makes the scar even more pronounced and ugly, so as if the one eye wants to jump out of the face.
"Are you parents home...is there anyone here who can give me a lift to the village?"
"No, mother died a years ago and Father is away. There's really no-one here."
Ryker sees as the last orange rays of the sun sinks away behind the mountains in the distance. Although the glow is still there, the area is instantly filled with a chill that even brings up a light mist from the ground. Light is systematically sucked away and dusk makes everything into a barely visible form.
"Well, I won't be able to ride with this buckled wheel tonight and there is no other civilization close by. Can I stay over at your house tonight, I will pay you well...", he asks the boy.
"Makes no difference to me..." the boy states in his usual pragmatic manner.
With his backpack on his back, Ryker pushes the limping bike towards the gate.
"Come open the gate for me." he asks the boy.
"Open it yourself." the boy, who still stands in the same spot, tells him.
Although the boy's words sounds harsh, Ryker notes that there is no malice in the boy's tone. It is just said in his usual matter-of-fact manner.
Through his travels, Ryker had noted that the peoples of the rural areas of the country is very warm and friendly. They are mostly very poor and always very interested in Ryker and his bike and everything surrounding him. But this boy is an exception. He is answering all Ryker's question and doesn't seem to be unfriendly at all. He is just cold and really uninterested.
Ryker struggles to open the rusty latch of the gate. Once the gate is unlatched it is still hard to open it and it takes a while before it turns inwards on its two rusted hinges.
Once on the footpath on his way to the front of the farmhouse, Ryker sees for the first time how dilapidated and run down the whole place is in reality. He couldn't see this from the road.
What must once have been a very beautiful garden is now overgrown with weeds, with here and there a flower still struggling against the weeds. Some of the vegetables that must have been planted there in the hey-day of the place,is now growing wild and pumpkins and squashes are all over the place. The trees stands like giant guardians over everything. Weeds are also growing all over the concrete footpath where he is walking towards the huge stoep.
On the big stoep it is even worst. Many of the plant pots have fallen down and are broken with their contents still growing to the best of their ability in the little soil still left. The few pieces of wooden furniture on the stoep is weathered to such an extent that some are beyond any hope of repair. Spider webs are everywhere. It is clear that no one takes any care of what he saw of the premises so far.
"For how long has your father been away?" he asks the boy who is now behind him as he parks his bike against the stoep railing.
"Father is gone for quite some time now."
"Are you alone here?"
"No, my sister is also here."
Then for the first time, Ryker sees the little girl in the shadows of slightly ajar front door. Never in his life had he seen a little girl that looks so sad. She is about four or five years old with a neat little dress and a dolly in her hand. She looks up at Ryker and before he can talk to her, she runs towards her brother and go stand behind him, holding onto his shirt.
"Who takes care of you, then?"
"I take care of us." the boy says bravely as his sister peeps at Ryker from behind her brother.
Ryker immediately decides to inform the authorities about the two children when he goes down to the little village the next morning. He can't understand how their father could just leave them here on their own, although the boy looks very capable, he is still very young and won't be able to do everything even if he wanted to.
Despite the derelict look of the place, both children are very neat and clean. Ok, clean as a child will be after a day of hard play.
"Where can I sleep tonight?"
The boy leads him into the house, followed by the little girl, who is still holding onto the back of his shirt.
Inside the house there is an odd damp smell, as if the house is never aired. The mouldiness has seeped into every crevice and hole of the house and it seems to have driven out all life and whatever was good in the place. How the children can live in such a dank place is anybody's guess.
They walk down a gloomy passage and then the boy enters a room which he point out to Ryker as where he can sleep for the night.
The bedroom seems even worst than the rest of the house. There is a bed against the one wall, closest to the door, neatly made up. He knows that these rural people always have a guess room, and this must be it. There is a big table and cupboard against the other wall. He throws his backpack on the bed and then tries to open the window to let the damp, musty air out, but the window is stuck as if it is glued shut.
The children doesn't offer any assistance and just stand in the doorway looking at him. In the gloominess of the house the boy's ugly face is even a little disconcerting.
Ryker takes his smaller cooler bag out of his backpack and ask the boy where the kitchen is.
The children take him there. As it is getting dark outside, it is even darker inside the house and since no one seems to be in a hurry to switch on the lights, Ryker asks:
"Have you got electricity?"
"No, we never had any electricity in the house."
Ryker takes out his All Weather electric lantern and switches it on. The bright light immediately fills every gloomy corner of that dank kitchen with light.
He takes out his food, which consists of cold meats, bread-rolls, some tomato salad still left over after his hard ride and some cool-drink. He puts everything on three plastic plates and invite the children to come eat with him.
"No, thanks, we had already eaten." the boys says very politely, but still with the usual coldness in his voice.
Ryker finds this very strange. Never in his whole life had he met any child who wouldn't eat anything at anytime whether he had just eaten or not. Even the little girl, who still peeks out from behind her brother seems disinterested in the food, whose nice smell now takes over in the kitchen that seems to not have been used in ages.
Ryker starts eating the food on his plate, leaving the other two plates there for if they change their minds later. The two children once again just stand there watching him.
The little girl stays behind the boy, with just a part of her face visible, looking at Ryker. Ryker smiles at her, but she just look back at him with that enigmatic, sad look on her little face.
Seeing the way the house is and the fact that almost nothing in it works he asks the boy" "Aren't you afraid to be alone at home, while your father is away. Is there no-one who takes care of you?"
"No, we are used to being alone at home. I must stay here to look after my sister and protect the house against the blacks." he says in that pragmatic tone, that seems to be his trademark. This one will make a good lawyer or politician one day, Ryker thinks to himself.
For many years now this has been a forbidden word and he didn't even know that youngsters knew the word anymore.
The Blacks have taken over control of the country in 1994 and since then black criminals have been systematically murdering people who lives in the rural areas. This is the first and foremost reason why the rural areas have become mostly deserted. There are even claims that these criminals are sponsored by the government, because they are very well equipped and will mostly commit the most horrible murders and not even take something from the house.
But how would the boy protect the property against these blacks, who usually comes in groups and are well armed.
"How will you protect the place against these Blacks if they attack you?" he asks the boy as he bites into a roll.
For the first time the boy smiles and with that deep gash in his cheek, it is definitely not a beautiful sight. Even the little girl seems to be smiling, in a short of malevolent way now.
"OH, I have my ways and they will find out if they ever come this way again...". His eyes seem to glow as he says this.
Ryker knows it is not polite to simply asks, and maybe the boy won't like it, but he just have to try: "What happened to your face?"
"We don't talk about that." The boy doesn't seem to be insulted by the question and Ryker decides to just leave it at that. When he informs the social workers tomorrow, they can investigate this matter.
Ryker washes his dish in the sink with the water coming out in a trickle from the ancient tap.
When he is done, he goes outside to the stoep to see how far he can repair his front wheel, so that he can be mobile the next morning. He just need to bend it more or less back in shape again, so that he can at least reach the village.
The boys sits on the steps looking up at him where he works on the spokes of the wheel. The little girl sits on a step lower, just behind her brother.
"You know, people say that this place is haunted..."
Ryker takes note of the fact that it is the first time - since he met the boy - that he speaks out of own accord. He usually just answered the questions Ryker asked him.
"Haunted?" Ryker says as he feels the unnatural cold creeping in under his clothes. "Did you ever see any ghosts?"
"No, never. But I can sometimes feel them and late at night I hear them moving about outside the house." the boy tells him in his usual pragmatic manner. The way that the boy talks, it seems as if the most bizarre things are just ordinary and even a bit boring, to him. Ryker notes the little girl looking intensely at him from behind her brother, as if studying his reaction.
The last natural light has now been driven from the area and it is just the pool of light generated by his lantern that lights up the place. The mist is also getting thicker and there is an unnatural iciness settling in everywhere as if this is the norm of the area and not the bright warmth of the sunlight.
Ryker feels something like spiderwebs lightly brushing over his face. He brushes it away with the back of his hand, but it keeps on coming back.
He sees the boy looking up at him with his horrible face and the little girl smiles.
"That is one of the ghosts." the boy says.
Ryker jumps up from where he is busy with the spokes of the wheel.
"What!" he says as he desperately brushes the invisible spidery things away from his face. For the first time the little girl actually laughs. Her laughter sounds like a little bell in a dark cave.
Now that is on his feet, the spidery things are gone.
"Yes, that is one of the ghost swirling her veil over your face. She does that to one if she likes you." the boy says as he looks far into the swirling mist, that now comes to the bottom of the stoep. "I think it is my mother."
Ryker goes back to working on his wheel, now feeling cold rings running down his back.
"I think she is here to protect me, but despite that, I sometimes still have nightmares at night."
"What kind of nightmare?" Ryker 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?" Ryker 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. Ryker 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. Ryker 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. Ryker 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 Ryker, 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.
Ryker jumps up and...
The passage is deserted. But there is now an almost unnatural quietness in the house.
"Is everything allright," 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 loosing 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 past there in the evening."
"It did actually happen in the evening... last night." he tells the man. He sees how the man's face changes as he stops in his tracks.
"What?"
Ryker 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, Ryker 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."
Ryker sits down.
"The boy is right about his mother. She and his little sister, was killed by those dirty blacks 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..."