Читать книгу This Thing Called the Future - J.L. Powers - Страница 10

CHAPTER FOUR

DREAMS

I try to forget about what happened with the old woman and the drunk man, focusing instead on Little Man, my rescuer. But that night, nightmares flood my mind.

The worst is the one that finally wakes me, sweating and shivering and hot-cold all at the same time.

I’m flying high above Imbali, looking down through the smog at dozens of zigzag streets, twisting here and there, house after house after house crowded together, stair-stepping their way up and down hills and all the way to the city of Pietermaritzburg. An ambulance flashes its lights as it speeds around bends in the roads, goes down a wrong street and hits a dead end, backs up and turns around to try again to get out of the maze that is Imbali.

And then I see her. A witch—my witch, the woman who lives at the top of the hill—as she sneaks through the winding streets, as she passes each sleeping house, observing them all briefly until she comes to ours. And then she stops, staring right at the bedroom window where I sleep with Mama.

Though she doesn’t say a word, I know she’s daring me to come out and challenge her. I can hear her cackly voice speaking in my head: Hah! So! You think good always defeats evil, eh? Well, why don’t we find out, Nomkhosi Zulu?

Don’t do it, I whisper, but my body ignores my brain. It gets out of bed even while I scold it, even as I shout Stop! It walks to the window, and there I am, looking outside, watching that witch walk around and around and around the perimeter of our house, digging small ditches, scattering a white powder on stones, placing the stones in the holes, refilling each ditch with dirt, then stomping down until nobody can find the spot where she dug.

Muthi. She’s scattering a potion around our house, one that will harm anybody who steps into our yard.

No no no! Stop. I try to speak the words out loud but my voice strangles against the muscles of my throat.

She pauses to look at the bedroom window again, spreads her lips into a thin grin, and provokes me with her wordless taunt. What are you going to do about it? How are you going to protect your family from this muthi?

What did I do to deserve this? I ask. Why am I your target?

She laughs. You think you and your family are innocent? Ah, but there was an opening to evil. You invited me.

I didn’t invite you, I argue.

Somebody in your household did. And now I’m daring you to come outside and we’ll see who’s stronger. You or me. Hah!

Who invited evil into our lives? I can’t imagine Mama or Gogo or Zi doing anything that would cause this attack. Did I do something? I think back back back, months back. Of course, there are always these things that we should do for the ancestors, to ensure their protection over us. My family is not as faithful as we should be. But surely, our omission isn’t so big that it would open the door so a witch thinks she is perfectly welcome in our home.

Our eyes meet. My fear collides with her hatred, like two khumbis in a car accident. I start to shake and shiver.

There’s no way I’m going outside and facing her, alone.

And she knows it. She knows I’m a coward. That’s why she laughs, her mouth open wide, gold glinting on her front tooth. She laughs and laughs and laughs. At me. But it’s the strangest thing. There’s no sound anywhere, like God opened my eyes and plugged my ears.

She puts her fingers in her mouth and whistles until a baboon lumbers over from the shadows and kneels. She climbs on and rides away, still laughing.

Mama shakes me awake. “Khosi,” she’s shouting, “vuka! Wake up!”

I’m standing next to the window, the same window in my dream.

“You must have been sleepwalking,” Gogo says. She looks like she wants to ask more, but respects my privacy too much.

Zi isn’t so respectful. She’s sucking her thumb, the scarf we managed to tie on her head last night clinging to a single knotted plait. “Were you having a nightmare?”

“No!” I deny it quick quick. But I know this much: dreams don’t come out of nowhere. They are signs, sent from the ancestors as warnings. They’ve bothered me for two nights in a row now. What is it they’re trying to tell me?

I close the door to the toilet and sit on the edge of the bathtub, looking down at my feet, following the cracks in the linoleum from one end of the room to the other, trying to forget what I saw.