Quote:
"Fear is the lengthened shadow of ignorance." – Arnold Glasow
The sobs that wracked Thembi's body were dry, heaving things, devoid of catharsis, each one scraping her throat raw. They were the sounds of a system in total failure. She knelt on the floor, the rough carpet fibers pressing into her knees, staring at the two still forms that now defined her existence: Lerato, crumpled and bleeding by the door, and the spectral presence of Kagiso, a silent queen holding court in the bathroom.
The muffled music from above changed again. The deep bass thudded on, but a high, whining synth note now coiled around it, a snake of sound that seemed to slither directly into her ear canal. Thump-thump-wheeee… thump-thump-wheeee… It was maddening. A soundtrack for the insane.
Then, a new sound. A heavy THUMP from the ceiling, directly above her. It was a solid, deliberate impact, like someone had dropped a dumbbell. Thembi flinched so violently her teeth snapped together. Her head jerked up, her tear-blurred eyes fixed on the white plaster. A fine shower of dust motes, illuminated by a slash of sunlight, drifted down.
They know. The thought was immediate, paranoid, and absolute. The person upstairs had heard everything. The scream, the thud, the crying. They were stomping in warning. Or in celebration.
She held her breath, her entire body rigid, waiting for the next sound. Would it be footsteps heading for the door? The sound of a phone call being made? But nothing else came. Just the relentless, wheezing music and the phantom echo of the thump.
Silence could be a lie. She knew that now.
The initial, paralyzing wave of grief and horror began to recede, not into calm, but into a colder, more dangerous sea: pragmatic terror. She was kneeling in a crime scene that had just doubled in size. Lerato's phone, still lying on the console table, was a ticking time bomb. It would ring. Sbu. Lerato's mother. Campus security. Each ring would be a hammer blow on the fragile glass bubble of her isolation.
She had to move. The thought was abhorrent, unthinkable. But it was also the only thought that held any logic.
"Lera?" she whispered again, a pathetic, hopeful sound. She crawled the short distance to her friend's body. The warmth of the vetkoek in the paper bag seemed to radiate a cruel, living heat compared to the growing stillness in the room.
With a trembling hand, she reached out and touched Lerato's cheek. It was still warm. Soft. This was Lerato. The same Lerato who had plucked her eyebrows for her before her first date with Sbu. Who had smuggled a bottle of champagne into their dorm to celebrate her law school acceptance. Who had known the secret, shameful nickname her father called her when he was truly angry.
Thembi's fingers trailed down to her neck again, pressing deeper, more desperately this time, searching for any flicker of life she might have missed. She held her own breath, trying to feel a pulse beneath her fingertips. Nothing. Just the yielding softness of skin and the unyielding stillness beneath.
A fresh tear escaped, tracing a clean path through the grime on her face. This was her doing. This was her hand. The crystal award lay nearby, a glossy, blood-smeared testament to her damnation.
You're so busy running from becoming him, you're turning into him anyway.
Lerato's last, brutal truth echoed in the chamber of her mind. Her father's rages were legendary, cold and verbal, but she'd once seen him smash a porcelain vase against a wall when her mother had mentioned a male colleague's name. The destructive impulse was there, in the bloodline. She had just upgraded it from pottery to people.
The panic began to mutate, hardening into a sharp, crystalline focus. Survival. It wasn't about innocence anymore; that ship had sailed. It was about not getting caught.
She looked from Lerato's body to the hallway leading to the bathroom. She couldn't leave them here. They were evidence. They were… company. The idea of spending another hour, let alone a night, with these two silent witnesses was enough to make her vomit.
But where? How?
The basement. The thought arrived fully formed. The building had a basement, a low-ceilinged, dusty space filled with forgotten exercise equipment, tenant storage cages, and the groaning, industrial boiler. It was rarely used, a damp, concrete underworld. If she could get them down there… buy herself time…
The logistics were monstrous. She was strong—she went to the gym, a vanity she now saw as grotesquely prescient—but Lerato was dead weight. Literally. And Kagiso… she hadn't even dared to look at her again.
As if summoned by her thought, a soft click came from the bathroom.
Thembi's head snapped around. Her heart seized. It was a small sound, the kind a loose tile might make under pressure, or a… joint settling.
She's not dead. The thought was a lightning strike of pure, undiluted hope, so powerful it was painful. She's alive in there. She moved.
Without thinking, driven by a desperate need for one single, redeemable fact in this nightmare, Thembi scrambled to her feet and rushed down the hallway. She shoved the bathroom door open, her eyes wildly scanning the scene.
Kagiso was exactly as she had been. The same awful angle of the head. The same vacant stare. The same dreadful, absolute stillness.
The hope curdled into a new, more sophisticated terror. Had she imagined the sound? Was the apartment itself now playing tricks on her? Or had it been… something else?
From the living room, Lerato's phone erupted into sound. The ringtone was a popular Amapiano track, a joyful, rhythmic beat that was a violent obscenity in the silence. Thembi jumped, a full-body spasm of fright, her shoulder slamming hard against the doorframe. The pain was bright and shocking.
She stumbled back into the living room, her eyes fixed on the glowing, vibrating rectangle on the table. SBU flashed on the screen. The cheerful music played on. It felt like he was in the room with them, watching.
She had to make it stop.
She lunged for the phone, her fingers fumbling over the screen, swiping to decline the call. The silence that rushed back was even heavier than before. She stood there, clutching Lerato's phone, her own breath loud in her ears. She looked down at the device. The screen showed her missed calls, her notifications. A little green WhatsApp icon had a 127 next to it. The world was pressing in. It was no longer a question of if they would come, but when.
She had to move. Now.
Bending down, she hooked her hands under Lerato's armpits. The body was limp, heavy. A low groan escaped Lerato's lips.
Thembi froze, her blood turning to ice. She stared down at her friend's face. Had she imagined that? A death rattle? An expulsion of air?
"Lerato?" she breathed.
There was no response. The face was pale, the eyes half-lidded and unseeing. But… had her chest moved? Just a little?
Thembi didn't know. She couldn't trust her own senses anymore. All she knew was that she couldn't be here when the next call came. Or the next knock.
Grunting with the effort, she began to drag Lerato's body backwards towards the front door. It was a horrifying, clumsy process. Lerato's head lolled back, her shoes scuffing trails in the carpet. Thembi's muscles screamed in protest. She was so focused on the gruesome task, on the feel of Lerato's warm, yet inert body, that she didn't notice the small, dark shape on the floor until she was almost upon it.
It was a cricket. A common, black cricket, its body crushed. It hadn't been there before.
As she stared at it, a flicker of movement in her peripheral vision made her gasp. Another cricket, alive this time, leapt from the baseboard near the kitchen and disappeared behind the refrigerator.
Thump-thump-wheeee… from above.
Click. from the bathroom.
The apartment was alive. It was breathing, whispering, bleeding insects. It was turning against her.
With a final, heaving pull, she got Lerato's body into the hallway outside her apartment door. The corridor was empty, thank God. The only sound was the hum of a vending machine at the far end. She propped Lerato into a sitting position against the wall, as if she had just slumped there, drunk or tired. It was a pathetic ruse, but it would have to do for the thirty seconds it would take to get Kagiso.
She turned and re-entered the tomb of her apartment, closing the door but leaving it unlocked. The walk to the bathroom was a march to the gallows. Each step was heavier than the last. The air in the hallway felt thick, resistant.
She stopped at the threshold, forcing herself to look at Kagiso. The sequins on the top seemed to twinkle in the low light, mocking her. Taking a deep breath that did nothing to steady her, she stepped inside.
The smell hit her first. It was faint, but unmistakable now—a coppery, organic scent underneath the Dove soap and stale air. Death had its own perfume.
She reached for Kagiso's ankles, her hands hovering just above the designer sneakers. This was it. The point of no return. Touching her would make this real in a way that seeing her never could.
Just as her fingers were about to make contact, a deafening CRASH came from the living room.
Thembi screamed, a short, sharp sound of pure, shattered nerves. She spun around, her heart trying to burst from her chest.
There was nothing there. The apartment was empty.
Then she saw it. The empty Hunter's Gold bottle, which had been lying on its side on the carpet, was now in the middle of the room, rolling in a slow, lazy circle. As if it had been kicked.
Thump-thump-wheeee… The music drilled into her skull.
She was not alone. Something was in here with her.
Driven by a terror that surpassed all previous fear, she grabbed Kagiso's ankles and pulled. The body was colder, stiffer. It slid off the bathmat with a terrible, dry rustle of clothing. Thembi pulled, backwards, out of the bathroom, down the hall, not caring about the noise, not caring about anything but getting out, getting away from the whispering, thumping, bottle-kicking presence in her home.
She dragged Kagiso into the hallway, next to Lerato. The sight of the two of them sitting side-by-side against the wall, one bleeding from the head, the other from the nose, was a tableau from a hellish art installation. She had to get them to the basement.
Frantically, she stabbed at the elevator button, then thought better of it. The cameras. She turned to the stairwell door, a heavy, fire-proof thing. She propped it open with Lerato's shoe, then began the Herculean task of dragging the bodies down one flight of concrete stairs. It was a nightmare of grunts, scrapes, and the awful, limp weight of the recently alive.
The basement level was poorly lit, the air thick with the smell of damp concrete and diesel from the boiler. It was a landscape of shadows and forgotten things. She dragged them past the unused gym, past the rows of locked storage cages, towards the darkest, furthest corner, where the boiler roared like a sleeping dragon.
In the dim light, her eyes fell on something she'd never paid attention to before: a rusted, metal door, set into the concrete wall, almost obscured by stacks of moldering cardboard boxes. It was painted the same grimy grey as the wall, but around the edges, where the paint had chipped, she could see older, brighter colours. Graffiti was scrawled across it—a faded tag, "JHB UNDERGROUND," and a crude arrow pointing down.
The underground train line. The old rumor every student heard but never believed. A ghost line from the city's past, sealed off for decades.
A final, desperate plan clicked into place in her frantic mind. A place where no one would ever look. A true void.
As she turned to position the bodies for this last, grim journey, her hand brushed against the pocket of Lerato's jeans. Something crinkled inside. Without thinking, driven by a reflex she didn't understand, Thembi slipped her fingers into the pocket and pulled out a small, folded square of paper.
It was a receipt. From a pharmacy. Dated last night. Time-stamped 01:55 AM.
Long after she had left the club. Long after the Forgotten Hour had begun.
The item purchased was listed in stark, black print: EMERGENCY CONTRACEPTIVE PILL.
Thembi stared at the paper, the roaring of the boiler fading into a distant hum. Lerato had been at a pharmacy in the middle of the night. She had bought the morning-after pill.
Why?
The answer, when it came, was a whisper in the dark, a truth more terrifying than any ghost.
She didn't come here to comfort you, the whisper said. She came here to confront you about something else entirely.