text: An unexpected knock on a window mesmerised Mr Gombwe as it is unusual in any African rural setting, in two shakes of a lambs tail, a parliament of owls alighted on roof tops and trees with a variety of muffled sounds and then there was a successive intermittent dying down of flapping wings, instilling a macabre aura in Mr Gombwe’s homestead because superstition had labelled owls to be associated with witchcraft in his society. Then in an instant, as if some director of music had signaled an eerie beat for a horror movie, the wide-eyed nocturnal birds launched a series of ear-splitting hoots. It was irksome. It was spooky. The gods might have been awakened from their slumber. It was noisome, repulsive and nauseating. The old man could not absorb the intrusion of the ‘horned’ birds, the invasion of his air space and the atmosphere they projected. Mr Gombwe looked shaken, his profile, a portrayal of a painting in progress, changed to similarly varying shades of obscure hue colours resonating the flickering flames of a dying fire. He had been so much taken aback that he could not enhance the lustre of the fire let alone speak. Being absorbed in thought, he took the form of a statue until a pair of courageous voices from without shooed the tormentors away. The voices had successfully dispelled the seeming clamour, accompanied by stone throwing and counter-spell mantras. Mrs Gombwe had also been quiet all this time but nervously fidgeting, with a twig in her hand and sitting cross legged opposite her husband, facing the fireplace and enjoying the comfort of their ramshackle hut. A heavy knock repeatedly hit their disjointed door and before they could respond, their visitors were already indoors. As the second visitor was closing the door behind them, the first one tumbled and fell headlong behind the old man, hitting hard with his mouth on a metal tripod stool thereby breaking one of his front teeth simultaneously saving the two beer bottles he was holding in his hands. When he rose to a sitting position, holding tight to his bottles of beer, he said, ‘I appreciate the safety of my beers; how I saved the bottles from shuttering, I can’t tell, but I have them intact. That’s all that matters, the safety of our beer.’ He kissed the two bottles then spat the fragment of his broken tooth into the fire. Deafening silence ensued for a significant moment only to be dismissed by pop, fizzy and guzzling sounds. The first visitor’s demeanour seemed radical. Everybody in the hut maintained their silence in deepest amazement. The drunken fellow suddenly stopped his continuous guzzling for a moment then took an unsophisticated swig that made him belch, sending off a foul smell across the small hut. “Mr Gomwe,’ he came again, ‘I’m your beloved son though I might be as drunk as a skunk; why do I say so? You might not know me very well but I did my grade one together with your son, Cain, the one in Australia, I guess. My name is Nabal Kudakwa, I stay two villages away from here, in Masembura village. The old man, awestruck by nothing in particular but by just everything, neither affirmed nor denied knowing the stranger although he knew the village and the surname, as if humming an unfamiliar tune, stammered and mumbled, agreeing with misgiving. He was confused. Everything appeared quite unusual and he was so uncomfortable that he seemed besides himself. All he needed was a monitored recollection lest he should go haywire. ‘In my company is Jah Kento as he is popularly known by his myriad of fans in the neighbourhood. I think you know him too because of his famous drum beating skills,’ Nabal continued as he took another gulp that choked him to excess in so merciless a manner that both orifices of his digestive system treated him unfairly by letting loose. ‘Excuse me,’ he apologized but soon burst into an uproarious laughter. He daringly took another gulp and resumed, ‘Those witches we shooed away just now are nonentities. They wanted to wreck spiritual havoc at my father’s place but we nipped their intentions in the bud.’ He looked up as if he had seen something then roved his eyes across the room and held his peace by another swig. The mesmerized old man calmed his nerves, cleared his throat and began on a composed note. ‘I don’t know what all this means but something ominous has already brewed. His squinting eyes pierced the googled eyes of his wife. Though he couldn’t clearly see the erstwhile pretty eyes, it didn’t matter the least because he already knew them, he had seen them countless times, he had seen them in various expressions, he had seen them by his soul and he could easily interpret whatever they conveyed at any given time. When the old man stayed put, with his eyes fixed on his wife as if looking for answers to a whirlpool of non-verbal cues, she telepathically hove a sigh, gleaned her repositories of thought and then simply uttered, ‘Hard times are hovering above.’ Jah Kento kept his head down while he sat on a cement bench but being very close to the door. It appeared he had nothing to say. An onlooker would have described him as a man with a blank mind, passive or ignorantly indifferent to what reality depicted now. One would think he was a skeletal being devoid of a heartbeat. His soul might have traversed or travailed in the width and breadth of the universe to an extent where either proceeding or retreating was a daunting task. He was there but not really there. Only that he was in a sitting position otherwise one would have assumed him dead. Maybe he had taken one too many. Or the drumbeats were giving birth in his weary soul. All of a sudden Jah Kento whispered something to himself, jerked himself up, grabbed the handle of the door and energetically pulled it wide open as if to take in or out something the size of a double bed. He walked out hysterically leaving the door in the state he had suggested and not the way he had found it. Footsteps could be heard retreating into the gloomy night. They were continuous and regular. Nabal rose to his feet, wobbled towards the wide exit, made his way out but missed his step after the doorstep and a heavy thud followed, nonetheless neither clinking nor shuttering of glass was heard, the man loved his bottles. Whether he remained on the ground or rose and walked away, the duo could not tell because there was just silence. A fusion of silence and the nightly air apprehended the moment. Silence looked eternal. The old man froze in his entirety. His mind was under siege, enmeshed, and unable to respond in haste to the mysterious environment puzzling him. Mrs Gombwe began to tap on the floor with a twig, trying hard to suppress her thoughts, her imaginations, and her fears. She tried to cough but she didn’t have enough strength so she ended up clearing her throat. Having gathered adequate courage, she finally broke the silence, ‘Don’t you think it’s wise to check if those strangers have really gone?’ Instead of responding, he kept his eyes on the fireplace with a murderous look. His eyes looked as if they had been squeezed out of their sockets. She couldn’t bravely meet the stare when those bloodshot eyes deflected from the glowing ashes to her eyes. The gaze was weighty, she could feel it and she felt very naked. She bowed her head until she could no longer withstand the spinal strain and began to surreptitiously raise her head to see if the wild stare was still scanning her being. It seemed like the spirit of an owl, that continually opens wide the eyes, had entered him. He appeared not to blink whatsoever. ‘Did you hear what I’ve just said?’ She mustered the audacity to make those eyes blink or close up if they wouldn’t pop out. Her fear had stretched to the limits. She was like a cornered cat which could only get away through a head on with its tormentor. Out of rage, the old man forcefully stamped on the floor with his walking stick, rose to his feet, and slouched towards the doorway. It was now darker in the hut than it appeared outside, the fact being that the fire had almost died down; as the old man strolled, she trailed the three tier sound emanating from his dragging feet and the poking sound of his walking stick, until he presented himself as a two-dimensional torso in the doorway. He stood there, undecided on whether to proceed or to retreat, so to speak. The old man moved out of the doorway and his wife could hear his footsteps fusing into the silent night. An hour passed; the old man had not returned. Mrs Gombwe revived the fire as she waited for him but there wasn’t any least sound hinting footsteps. She called out but her voice disintegrated away into the hollow night. When another hour had passed, she walked out to the gate, to the fowl run, cattle pen, into the toilet, the old man was nowhere near. Confused, she walked back into their hut only to find the two strangers by the fireplace, drinking like fish. She cried out loudly as she turned on her heels. Her panic-stricken voice abruptly filled the air much to the disturbance of neighbours who quickly equipped themselves with axes and knobkerries and came to investigate the hysteria. When neighbours got to her place, she wasn’t there, the strangers had also disappeared but her screams continued in the direction of the woods. The worried neighbours took their dogs and pursued the phenomenon. There was pandemonium throughout the night as more villagers joined in the chase and search, with the screaming voice intensifying but getting elusive all the time. As luck would have it, a few villagers identified three figures running towards the river in the wee hours of the morning, the screaming figure being held side by side. A furore by the villagers shook the woods. There was a sudden increase of speed, galloping, clamouring, and an intensified rustling of leaves. All the effort couldn’t stop the figures from progressing to the river. Robust young men began to vehemently fling their weapons towards the relentless figures. The frantic shriek by one of the figures wouldn’t stop until the three figures plunged into the deep-end of the river. Silence enforced itself upon all the villagers; a thunderous lightning struck and a short-bearded man was seen on the edges of the water and he said, ‘This is what happens to you when you break the rules of the game. I did great things for this family.’ Another streak of lightning dismissed the crowd into a tumultuous divergence.