Deno
did not think of his dead uncle until he passed Kasoli slum. He knew
of the late through only one surviving photograph, a black and white
picture of a man with hair shaped like a bowl, and with a smile that
exposed a nice set of teeth. The image brought him to a sudden stop
at the top of the hill.
He
stared down into the valley, where the body had been found. The road
plunged into the darkness of a thick mango forest, which lay on the
ground like a shadow. A colonial agent, Semei Kakungulu, had planted
it over a century ago, to mark the territory he had gained as he
helped the British expand their bloody rule. It had at first been
just a line of trees beside a seasonal stream, but it had ballooned
into a small jungle. Twenty years earlier, it had been a popular
place for government soldiers to dump the people they had murdered.
Headless bodies had choked the culverts. Some boulders beside the
stream still had blood stains. When his uncle went missing, his
father had at once searched the forest, and identified the corpse
from the clothes they had last seen him in.
It
happened long before Deno was born. The government had changed.
Soldiers no longer killed people. Thugs no longer waylaid victims on
this road. Deno had nothing to fear. He had walked through the forest
many times in the night, though always in company of other students
with whom he had sneaked out of school to watch movies. This night,
he was alone. The sight of the jungle, with the stream cutting
through it, gleaming in the moon light like a set of teeth, filled
his head with the stories his father had told him about the place.
Sweat trickled down his nape. A hot breeze blew, as though it were
noon, and not two hours to midnight.
He
looked around, hoping to see another person, maybe another student,
anyone who could give him company. Being a Saturday night, there were
bound to be many students still in town, drinking, or dancing in the
disco clubs. If he waited, one would soon come along. But sitting at
the roadside at night, very close to a haunted forest, did not seem
like a wise idea.
It
had been a mistake staying out late. He should have returned to
school with the other students earlier in the night. They had sneaked
out to visit a video hall in town. They planned to return to school
at six pm, but there was a film starting at seven thirty. Totsi. The
poster captivated Deno. It promised gangs and crime in South Africa,
lots of gun fights and violence. He wanted to see it. His friends
refused. The film would end well after nine pm, and that meant
missing supper at school. They had already watched three films, one
about ninjas, one about commandos, and one about vampires. They did
not have to watch another one. But Deno wanted to see this African
gangster film. He could not let the chance go, even if it meant
missing supper. He had assumed the road would be full of people, and
that he would not have any problem crossing the bridge.
He
would have still been able to cross it, if only the picture of his
uncle had not cropped up.
Dogs
howled in the distance. He thought he heard gunshots. He jumped, only
to realize they were memories from the movie. He could go back to
town, a mile away, and spend the night at home. He would have to
suffer the wrath of his father, who would demand to know why he had
sneaked out of school, but that would be better than plunging into
the forested valley where thugs might slit his throat for the few
coins in his pocket.
Before
he could turn around, he saw a cigarette glow in the shadows ahead.
Frogs kicked up a terrified chorus. Crickets screamed. He took a step
backward, and would have fled if the smoker had not let out a drunken
howl.
“Tee
Cee Oyee!”
The
tension inside his chest broke. Coolness spread to every inch of his
body, relaxing his muscles. It was a fellow student howling the
school’s slogan. He might be drunk, but at least his company would
be reassuring.
“Oyee!”
Deno screamed.
“RAA!”
the drunk boy acknowledged Deno's scream.
Deno
broke into a run, going down the steep slope toward the drunk, who
staggered into a patch of light and walked to the bridge, not
bothering to wait for Deno. He was much closer to the bridge than
Deno had imagined.
“Wait!”
Deno screamed as he ran. “Wait for me!”
Deno
covered the hundred meters in less than twenty seconds. He caught up
just as the other boy plunged into the shadows of the forest.
“Do
you want a cigarette?” the other boy said, not breaking his pace.
Now
that he was not shouting, Deno recognized the voice. It belonged to
Rude Bull. Deno stopped. His mouth went dry as though filled with
salt. When he first arrived in the school, he had imagined freedom
and fun. Other children’s tales had glorified the all-boy boarding
school. The administration being weak, boys easily sneaked out to go
dancing, or drinking. At thirteen he was too young for that. He loved
movies, and being in boarding school gave him the freedom to watch as
many as he liked during weekends. He enjoyed the school until Rude
Bull walked into his dormitory, one Sunday morning. Deno would have
stomached the beatings. He would have not minded Rude Bull taking
away his food. It would have been okay, for students like him in
Senior One class, nyongos, had to endure bullying until they reached
higher classes. But then, one night, Rude Bull had crept into his
bed, stuffed stinking stockings into his mouth to muffle the screams,
and shoved a huge penis into his anus.
“Come
on,” Rude Bull said. “Smoke.”
Rude
Bull was so drunk he swayed like a tree in the wind. He had pissed on
his pants, and vomited on his shirt. Deno was a scrawny child, and
Rude Bull was a boxer in Senior Six, maybe eighteen years, or even
twenty. But Rude Bull was drunk.
Deno
forgot about his dead uncle, he forgot about the ghosts in the
forest, and snatched up a stick from the roadside. A huge stick, as
long as his arm.
Rude
Bull had turned away from him, and was now walking on the bridge,
staggering, talking to himself. He had probably already forgotten of
Deno's presence. Deno struck Rude Bull on the ears. The bully yelped,
his cigarette fell. The second blow crashed into the bully’s face.
Deno heard something crack, and felt blood splash on his face. The
bully jumped away. The bridge had no protective railings. As Rude
Bull tried to flee, he slipped off, and plunged into the river twenty
feet below.
It
was the dry season. The stream was down to a trickle, its bed full of
rocks. There was no splash when the bully hit the water. Just a dull
thud.
Deno
peered down into the stream. Rude Bull lay face down, his body dark
against the water. He was still, as still as the rocks. The water
darkened as a shadow blossomed out of his head. Blood.
#
“Gwe
Deno,
Wake up!”
Deno
opened his eyes. The sun came in through the broken window panes,
blinding him. For several seconds he mistook the smiling face to be
that of Rude Bull. The same smile he had seen that night, just before
Rude Bull stuffed stockings into his mouth and raped him. He rubbed
his eyes. It was his best friend. Gumo.
“Wake
up!” Gumo said. “We are going to celebrate with a bucket of
porridge!”
The
images of the night exploded in front of his eyes. The body on the
rocks. The water darkening. Had it been just a dream?
“Celebrate
what?”
Gumo
leaned in, looked around to make sure no one was within earshot, and
whispered, “Rude Bull is dead!”
Deno
sat bolt upright on his bed. It
was
not just a bad dream. Gumo grinned, as though he had just announced
the results from a football game. Deno scoured the dormitory. There
were about forty double-decker beds. His, and that of other nyongos,
was nearest the door. The Senior One boys had clustered in groups of
two or three, and they were all grinning broadly.
“Rude
Bull?” Deno said.
“Yes,”
Gumo said. “Let's go to the kitchen and get porridge. We have a
party in class! Come on, wake up.”
Deno
collapsed back onto the bed. He buried his face in the pillow to hide
the tears that filled his eyes. Gumo and the other nyongos would
never understand why he was crying. They would think he was mourning
Rude Bull.
“I'm
sick,” he said, his voice croaking with thirst. “I have a bad
headache. I’ll sleep for a minute.”
“Oh,”
Gumo said. “I’ll get you panadols.”
That
day, Deno did not leave the bed. He ate nothing, and drank nothing.
Nobody noticed. They were all too preoccupied with Rude Bull's death.
The nyongos were delirious, holding secret celebrations. The demon
that had terrorized them was dead. The older boys were in mourning,
unable to believe that one of the most popular figures was gone.
Traders heading to town from Nyangole village had discovered the body
at dawn. They knew he was a TC student from his dressing, oversized
jeans, a baseball jacket, and sneakers. They thought it was an
accident. Nobody thought of murder.
Still,
day mares beset Deno. Every time he heard the name, his muscles
froze, for he expected them to figure out it was a murder. Someone
would see the bruises his stick had left on the corpse. A clever
detective would see that the welts on the face were not made by the
body crashing onto the rock. Maybe somebody had seen him. Any minute
now, the police might walk in to arrest him.
He
lost his voice. His friends remarked that he had a vacant look in his
eyes. They took him to the sick bay, and the nurse examined him.
Though lab tests did not reveal plasmodium falciparum, the nurse
insisted it was malaria.
“Look
at your eyes,” she said. “They are completely white. It means you
are anemic. Look at your lips. They are cracked. It means you are
dehydrated.” She gave him iron tablets, and oral rehydration salts,
along with an anti-malarial injection.
The
medicine worsened his fever. He vomited through the night. The sound
of the body smashing onto rocks kept playing in his ears. He saw
visions of the skull splitting open, blood splashing onto the water,
brain oozing onto the stones. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw a
headless corpse sitting on the bridge, a cigarette burning between
its fingers, and a disembodied voice spoke, “Do you want a smoke?”
He woke up screaming each time he heard that voice.
“You
have to go back home,” Gumo said the next morning.
Deno
wanted to tell them what had happened, that he did not intend to kill
the bully. Still, he could not find his voice. The dormitory captain
promised to talk to the headmaster for a van to transport him back
home, but Deno barely heard it.
The
bell rang. Being a Monday, all students were required to gather for
an assembly in front of the headmaster's office. Deno knew what the
headmaster would say. Stop drinking, you are too young to drink. He
would then fix the holes in the school fence to prevent students from
escaping. The boys would desist from sneaking out for a few weeks.
But eventually, it would all return to normal. New holes would appear
in the fence and the headmaster would do nothing as the boys escaped
to the video halls, to the disco clubs, and to the bars with crude
alcohol in Kasoli slum.
As
Deno lay in bed, all alone in the dormitory, waiting for the van to
take him back home, he heard a creak on the other side of the room.
He peered through the row of beds, and saw a pair of sneakers
dangling in the air. They were covered with mud. The trousers were
soaked wet. The owner sat on top bed of a double-decker. As he
watched, Rude Bull climbed down and sat on the lower bed, at the far
corner of the room. He stared idly at a newspaper cutting of Britney
Spears. He was smoking. His skull split open. Blood coated his hair.
Strands of his brain oozed onto his shoulder like dreadlocks.
He
turned to Deno, and held out the cigarette. “Do you want a smoke?”
Deno
scrambled out of bed and dived out of the door.
He
raced for the broken school fence, only one thought in his head.
Home. He would confess, he would tell his mother what had happened,
that he had not intended to kill Rude Bull. He dared not look over
his shoulder, for he knew he would see Rude Bull behind him, smoking.
He sped past the clinic, past the basket ball courts, past the school
kitchen, and dived out of a hole in the fence, straight into the
road.
He
became aware of the roar of the motorcycle when his feet touched the
tarmac. He turned, and saw the bike a few paces away. He heard the
blare of a horn, saw the look on the riders face. He tried to stop.
The biker tried to swerve. Too late.
#
Deno
tried to open his eyes. He could not. Something covered his face. He
tried to remove it, but he could not feel his hands, or any other
part of his body. He could not tell if he was breathing, or if his
heart was beating.
Am
I dead?
“Is
he awake?” a voice said. It was sonorous, feminine. “He moved his
head?”
“Denis?”
another voice said. It was roughened by alcohol.
“Yes,”
Deno replied.
“Can
you hear me?”
“Yes,”
Deno said louder.
“He
can’t hear us,” said the feminine voice. “But he is awake.”
Am
I dead?
His
grandma once told him that when he died, he would not feel, or talk,
or see, but would be able to hear. That was why it was not advisable
to talk ill of the dead person at a burial.
Rude
Bull is dead,
Deno
thought. I
killed him. I am going to meet him in hell. Surely, God won't allow
me in heaven, not after what I did.
“Is
he crying?” the feminine voice said.
“He
must be in pain,” the male voice said.
Finally,
Deno could make them out. They were like shadows, hazy figures as
though he was seeing them through a wet glass.
“I'll
tell his mother,” the female voice said.
He
heard her feet as she hurried out of the room.
No,
Deno
thought. I’m
not dead. But I’m going to die.
He
closed his eyes. The thought of meeting Rude Bull in hell scared him
more than the thought of spending an eternity in the lake of fire. He
was certain he would end up in hell, the same place as Rude Bull.
They were both bad people. Rude Bully certainly knew who had killed
him. He had come to the dormitory for revenge. He had sent that biker
to kill Deno. He would not stop there. He would want to revenge and
keep revenging and never getting satisfied with the pain he meted out
on Deno.
“Denis!”
a voice said. His mother. The tears cleared from his eyes. She wore a
blue dress, the same dress she had worn when she visited him at
school, just a few weeks back. There were tears in her voice. “Denis,
oh Denis.”
She
sat beside the bed, and finally Deno found his voice.
“I
didn't mean to kill him, mummy,” he said. “Please tell God not to
send me to hell. I didn't mean to kill him.”
He
saw his mother's mouth opening. He thought he heard what she was
saying, but they were too faint for his ears. He hoped she was
praying to God on his behalf. God would surely listen to her. She was
an adult. A darkness slowly gathered, and swallowed her up, as he
went back to sleep.
~~
Jonathan
Ojok makes
his living as a film editor and graphic designer. He lives in fear of
the sun and so keeps indoors behind a computer all the time. He
thinks he is a vampire. The Death of Rude Bull is his first published
short story. He has lived with the story since his days in St Peter's
College Tororo, where he hit a bully with a chanku and got expelled.
He is working on his first novel, which he started writing ten years
ago.
~~
~~
Also in this Issue
Short Stories
Poems