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    The Warnings
    The Warnings
    The Warnings
    Ebook79 pages1 hour

    The Warnings

    By Andrew Pender-Smith

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Why is an old farmhouse slowly crumbling away in the middle of the African bush veld? What became of its owner who went fishing one hot and sunny afternoon, and why do the people who live nearby now refuse to set foot on the farm? 

    Those who travel on foot along the stony paths of the Zululand countryside, who sit and rest beneath the thorn trees or spend time with its rivers and streams, need to be constantly alert for what they may encounter in nature. Most days, life is pleasant and much that is good can be encountered. There are some occasions, however, when one has to deal with the unpredictable and even the highly dangerous. That is why it is always wise to stay alert, because to ignore nature's warnings could bring severe injury or even inescapable death. 

    There is also another world behind and within the one you see. It is the world of the spirits, those that are good and those that are bad. They offer signs and warnings wherever you go, and you need to recognise these things. Rejoice if you are sent a mark of good fortune such as the finding of the egg of an eagle. Live in fear of what may come riding through the night on the back of a baboon. Think many times before venturing close to a cave curtained by a waterfall. If you do not, somebody may find your body on a lonely path with your brains sucked out. There again, they may never find it at all. 
     

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreen Monkey Publications
    Release dateDec 5, 2018
    ISBN9781386584223
    The Warnings
    Author

    Andrew Pender-Smith

    Andrew Pender-Smith lives in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. He has written and published lots of poems as well as stories for children and adults in different genres. When he is not writing, the author enjoys dog training, raising tropical fish and gardening. 

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      Book preview

      The Warnings - Andrew Pender-Smith

      The Warnings

      a novella

      ––––––––

      By

      ––––––––

      Andrew Pender-Smith

      ––––––––

      Published by

      Green Monkey Publications 2018

      ––––––––

      All rights reserved

      Without limitation, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, translation or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

      You may not circulate this book in any other binding or cover, and must impose the same conditions on any acquirer.

      The Warnings

      ‘There is no hillside without a grave.’

      ––––––––

      Meaning: Death is unavoidable and will find you wherever you go. (Old Zulu proverb.)

      *

      No one visits the old property anymore. They dare not. The locals keep away and tell children and newcomers to do so too. It is a place inhabited by some of the worst demons they have ever known. Those ones that can live in a rock, a tree, a bird, a buck, and even a river. These things may look innocent, as if they are simply part of the everyday, but they are not. What could be living within them is too terrible to contemplate. When people talk of what they believe happened and is still there, waiting on the farm that is no longer a farm, they look at the ground and speak in a barely audible voice. They tell of the black presence that is felt but not seen. They warn against taking the dusty paths amongst the thorn trees that lead to the deserted property. Evil is waiting there, silent and hidden, and it can come out at any time and in any way. You could quickly be gone from your world into another, snatched into a realm from where the wicked ones come and go in ways that you would fail to understand. The farm that was once called ‘Valley View’ by those who owned it, is now to be left alone.

      The sugar cane died long ago and the fruit on the citrus trees remains unpicked. Over-ripe oranges fall from the trees and rot in the rank grass. The baboons and the monkeys, as well as a few buck and several smaller creatures, have ‘Valley View’ to themselves. Those who have seen and heard them, as well as those who haven’t, say the baboons on ‘Valley View’ are large and aggressive. The baboons see the property as now belonging to them and chase away anyone who comes near with loud barks and bared canines. Their teeth, so the rumour goes, are longer and sharper than those of other baboons.

      It has happened before that a person will not come back from visiting an area such as this, and it will happen again. There are bad ones amongst the world of the living dead. They will take you for their evil purposes if they catch you. Do not cross the boundaries which separate this forbidden farm from the other farms and wild spaces nearby. You could end up in a realm of bad spirits and swallowing blackness.

      The worst of things could occur if one wondered alone here at night. The umthakathi, the witches that ride baboons and hyenas, could smell you out and come galloping through the dark. They could roast your flesh and eat it, or they could enslave you in the hidden places visited only by the living dead. You would never return.

      It is because of what the local people say, though they do not like to talk about it, that what was at one time a magnificent homestead now lies crumbling amidst the encroaching bush veld. Much of the roof has caved in. A lot of the windows are missing and so are the front and back doors. They were carried away years ago by those who did not know of the turmoil that ended everything on what was a farm called ‘Valley View’. Had they known, they would not have touched the items they thought they could take from what they believed was simply an abandoned farmhouse. As it is, when they were spotted carrying them a while later in the veld, they dropped the doors and windows and ran off sweating and screaming into the dust and heat of a particularly hot day.

      At one point during its long years of desertion, the roof of the stone building tilted inward and then crashed down. Grass and weeds flourish among piles of cement, old bricks and rotten beams. A stunted thorn tree now grows just to the left of the ruins. A grey loerie often rests on its crown of twisted branches, small leaves and long white thorns. When it is there, its distinctive call of ‘’Go way! Go way!’ rises loudly from its feathered throat. Long moments after, ‘’Go way! Go way!’’ echoes from the otherwise silent valley.

      Today there is no sign of the polished wooden floor on which the man who owned it once walked. Blaine Martins was proud of the farmhouse he inherited from his father. He often started the day on the wide front verandah with its stone pillars. He would stand with a mug of hot coffee in his hands and look contentedly over his land, part of which consisted of natural bush veld and the rest of sugar cane and citrus.

      When his father was alive, it had been their daily ritual to drink coffee on the verandah while they watched the dawn break across the valley.

      ‘’This is where it all happens for us,’’ his father would often say, while making a broad gesture with his right arm. ‘’I can see everything from here. It helps me understand so much of the farm, and us. I find peace when I look out over the valley every morning. It reinforces my belief that our family was right to put three generations of work and care into ‘Valley View’.’’

      After his father died of a heart attack one night, it was just Blaine who stood and drank coffee in the early morning on the stone verandah of ‘Valley View’. He was an only child whose mother had died when he was six. His father had never remarried and Blaine had little memory of the woman who had given birth to him and raised him until cancer killed her. He’d got his blond hair and blue eyes from her. She’d also read to him in a kind, melodious voice every night before he went to sleep. She’d instilled a love of reading and stories in him and, to this day, he’d never found it easy to fall asleep at night unless he’d spent time reading.

      After she had died, his Zulu nanny, Doris, who had helped look after him from the time of his birth, became the mother figure in his life. Like many of her generation, Doris had

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