I recently came back home from a weekend visiting my parents in Ohio. We got talking about childhood memories and I had a box of things in my old room I wanted to go through, to see if there was anything I could take with me back to college. I found some old photographs and some letters I’d written to a friend from our time living abroad. Reading through those letters brought back some memories of something that happened long ago and I thought this might be a good place to share that story.
You see, I’m what people call a third-culture-kid.
My parents are expats, so we spent most of my childhood living abroad. I don’t remember much of the early years because I’d only been a baby when we left the US. The years I remember most are in South Africa. My dad had a job with a large business in Cape Town and my mom worked from home. I’m the youngest of four older siblings – two sisters and two brothers. You can imagine the ‘fun’ our parents must have had raising us while constantly changing countries and environment.
We lived a short drive from Cape Town, in a relatively rural small town. In the states, we’d always lived in the countryside back in Ohio and so my parents just couldn’t see us kids living in a city like Cape Town, which wasn’t really safe anyway. Now, people often think the African landscape is just one big scarce desert and while this is partly true in some parts of the country, it wasn’t the case where we lived.
Our little town was famous for its wide stretching vineyards and luscious green hills, with mountains far off in the distance. It was a hidden paradise which had once been a sleepy country retreat, mostly inhabited by the ancestors of Dutch settlers from colonial times. During the summer season, rich tourists flocked to sample a taste of the famous wine which provided the town with its reputation and financial boom.
During that first year when we lived in our new home, I made friends with a local boy called Friedrich. He was around my age and his family lived on a farm a short drive from our town.
His family owned an old estate and acres of farmland. His family had lives there for generations and I always remember how much I loved staying weekends and being able to explore with Friedrich. We were basically allowed to do as we pleased, as long as we always made sure to be back by dinner. His family had workers who lived on the farm with their own families so there were always adults looking after us and making sure we didn’t get ourselves into too much trouble. Boys will be boys after all.
Soon, Friedrich and I became inseparable companions and I would spend almost every weekend at his farm. When my parents asked if I was ever going to see them, I’d just say that it was too noisy, and my siblings were annoying.
At the farm, we were like kings of our own little kingdom where we could climb the trees, hike up the hills and pretend we were explorers from long ago.
One night in early summer, we ended up being invited to join one of elder workers, Solomon, for dinner with his family. The sun was just starting to set outside and no matter how many times I’d seen it, the starlit African night-sky is a sight that I will always remember.
In the middle of dinner conversation when some Solomon’s friends were settling a friendly argument, we were all interrupted by a sound I’ll never forget.
If you’re familiar with African mammals, you’ll know that hyenas are notorious for being scavengers and can be found almost everywhere on the continent. I’d just never heard them before up until that night. It was like hysterical human laughter. Their cackling was echoed around us and as I met Friedrich’s eyes, I could tell that he was scared too.
“Best hope they’re not hungry tonight.” said Mhambi, one of the other workers “They only shift when they feed.”.
I felt a lump in my throat as I swallowed “What do you mean shift?”
“Don’t listen to him boys,” said Solomon in a broken accent. He was an old man, with chalk-white hair and who always walked with a bit of a limp after a fall some years earlier.
“Ssh,” Friedrich hushed and looked around “Dad says we’re not supposed to talk about it.”
“It’s okay.” Solomon shot his friend a stern look. “He is just trying to scare you.”
“But what are they,” Friedrich was quick to say. I felt my stomach churn a bit as I’d always been something of a scaredy-cat and never liked ghost-stories. Solomon looked at me with his amber eyes and smiled widely as a he put a reassuring hand on my shoulder.
“They say that long ago, when our ancestors walked these lands and long before your people,” Mhambi gestured at Friedrich, “A small group of hunters had made their home amongst these mountains.”
As Mhambi told the story, I stared into the fire in front of us. It projected long shadows on the surrounding area. The light cast by the flames dances across the dark trunks of trees, twisting and curling in eerie shapes and providing only a small radius of light. The fire itself was pulsating, its glowing embers moving in rhythm with flames almost hypnotically. I could still hear the hyenas laughing in the distance. Sometimes it sounded as if they were around us but far away at the same time.
“One day, driven by hunger after a tough drought season, the hunters came across a pack of hyenas. They knew this land was blessed and sacred but through desperation they slaughtered the hyenas, except the babies whom they left to fight each other. This angered the great God Chiuta. He cursed the hunters, stripped them of their human skin and turned them into hyenas.”
I felt a shiver run down my spine as I turned to Friedrich. Suddenly, I longed for the comfort of my family house far from the hyenas who were still calling out amongst each other.
“They say that now, the hyenas are cursed to wander this land, only feeding on human flesh because if they don’t they’ll die and without being reborn.”
Mhambi stopped speaking and the air fell silent. The hyenas could no longer be heard, as though they had been listening to us all along.
Solomon cleared his throat and stood up, his old back cracking and Mhambi let out a laugh which seemed to break the ice.
“Come on boys, I’ll take you back to the house.” Said Solomon “Do not listen to what this old fool is telling you.”
“But dad says there are lots of stories like this.” Friedrich said, up until then he had remained silent
“Yes, there are, not just about hyenas”
“Will you tell them to us one day?” I could tell Friedrich was full of anticipation and almost longed to be frightened.
“Yes,” Solomon nodded. “Another day.”
I remember we got back to the house and were sent to bed. Friedrich fell asleep instantly, but I lay awake all through the night thinking about those hyenas. Because as I thought back on the evening there was one detail that stood out to me and something I haven’t been able to shake until this day. You see, the moment Mhambi stopped telling the story and the hyena cackle died out, in the moonlight, I noticed Mhambi’s eyes were suddenly a different shape, something between a feline and a dog.
Almost like a hyena.
That night, my parents and I stayed up for hours talking and I’d honestly never felt as close to them as I did that night. We’d always been a fairly close-knit family but my college was a few hours drive away from their home and because I did two part time jobs in-between my studies, I barely had time to visit. That night, the wind howled and I thunder rumbled in the distance and bolts of lightning cracked the midnight blue sky in two.
“This storm reminds me of the weather back there.” my dad said as he reached for the glass of brandy. He got this look in his eyes as if he was reaching for a distant memory.
“You know kid,” my dad slurred and I could tell he’d had one drink too many “I decided to stay in the States and never take you to Africa.”
This was something I’d never heard before. “Why?”
“Hmm…” the old man muttered as if he was trying to decide whether or not to continue.
“It was because of the night stalker.”
Now, my parents have always been scientifically minded people. My dad especially is an “everything has a logical explanation” kind of guy. Every creaking floorboard, slamming doors and flickering lights could usually be put down to old houses and bad wiring. But, I’ve never seen him as visibly shaken as when he told me about what he called the night stalker.
Before the whole family moved out to the farm, my dad spent a couple of weeks there by himself. He wanted to check out the area, get to know the people a little bit and see if the house needed any work to be done. To be honest with you, I also think he just wanted some time alone to chill without three young kids to wreak havoc everywhere. On his first night there, he met Mhambi and Solomon - two of the workers who lived on the farm, a bit further out. They introduced themselves and invited my dad to eat with them and meet their families and my dad accepted. Time just flew by a my dad realised he had better get going because the African bush could get absolutely freezing at night so he made his way back towards farm house.
It was already getting dark and the path back to the house took my dad past a long since dried up lake. He remembered feeling very annoyed because he kept slapping his arm and it came away red. Then, to his horror he realized there wasn’t just one mosquito but there were hundreds…maybe even thousands of them. His eyes darted from one limb to the other, each of them was a host to a tiny army of the winged pests. My dad decided to make a run for it, through the bush landscape and followed the path he thought would lead him back to house.
My dad grew up in the US pacific northwest and had always been surrounded by vast forests and countryside. He wasn’t afraid walking alone in the dark, even though the African wildlife unsettled him a little bit. He told me that as he kept walking, he heard a sheep baaing. It didn’t strike him as unusual at first, because on the surface, hearing a sheep in the country didn’t seem out of place. Then he heard it again, directly from the shadows on his left, two things hit him at once. One - this was the deep African bush and we didn’t have livestock on our farm. Two - the baaing sounded too perfect. It sounded, as my dad described it, like somebody doing a really good impression of a sheep but when he heard it again he realized it was using the same pitch and length each time. It was like a recording. The more he heard it, the more unnerving it became. My dad decided to quicken up his pace and as he half jogged through the past, he drew even with the sound. As he walked past it, he caught a glimpse of a figure crouched in the bushes just off the trail, and a flash of teeth (he assumed) as whoever or whatever was there just grinned at him. My dad did not stop until he was safely inside the house, with all doors locked and window shut.
Now, my old man’s not one to carry firearms and is a pacifist by nature. But that night, he said he slept with a hunting rifle by the bed, practically clutching it as he fell asleep.
The next day, there was this strange atmosphere in the air. When he went to find Mhambi to tell him about the night before, he hushed my dad and all the other workers seemed pretty rattled. Mhambi gestured for my dad to come with him and so he followed him past the house, up the path he’d taken the night before and stopped just a short bit from our house. The beautiful valley was surrounded by rocky hill-tops and the midday sun was scorching hot. As my dad and Mhambi walked, there was a horrible, nauseating stench of rot and iron blood.
It was the smell of a dead antelope that lay on its side, eyes open but unseeing, its mouth slightly open and a fat tongue hanging out. Flies buzzed around its corpse, a swarming mass of insects nearly covered its whole body. My dad said it lay at an unnatural angle, legs splayed out and it’s back painfully arched. It looked as though someone, or something had just tossed the poor animal aside like an unwanted ragdoll. In that position, it looked almost like an inanimate object.
“They’re very clever, these creatures.” said Friedrich’s dad, Ross, who’d been standing there, “It was watching you, calculating your moves and weaknesses. This was a warning kill.” My dad said that Ross talked about it like it was the most natural occurrence in the world and that’s what scared him the most. Friedrich and his family had lived in the area for generations, so my dad just assumed that random animal kills happened from time to time.
“What was it?”
Ross didn’t directly answer but he continued talking. “This land is ancient and the people who live here, Mhambi, Solomon and their families. They know it better than anyone. I’m going to lend you Max, he’s a good guard dog a good judge of character.”
That was the end of the conversation as far as my dad was aware. Max the German Shepherd became his trusted companion for the remainder of his stay. My dad never felt unsafe in the house or on the farm in general, he loved the town and got to know some of the local people pretty well. Mhambi would frequently come and visit to make sure everything was okay and so would Friedrich’s dad.
There was only one other night which my dad said made him seriously question whether or not bring us over. He’d been sitting in living room, reading by the fireplace. Max was resting by his feet and my dad said he remember it clearly because he’d just gotten to the part of Treasure Island when Jim first sets foot on the Island. He’d heard a frantic barking outside that sounded incredibly similar to Max’s barking. But Max had been by his side all evening and when the dog heard the barking he stood up, his ears on alert and sniffing the air. My dad knew immediately that something wasn’t right, so he went to the front door and locked it. As far as he was aware, Max was the only dog on the farm and as he grabbed the gun for some reason, his attention was brought to the kitchen window.
The way my dad explained it was that everything suddenly went silent and incredibly still. The hairs on his neck were standing and my dad had to force himself to look directly at the window.
That thing was there. Staring back at him from the bushes and through the window. My dad stood there, completely frozen until a gun shot in the distance made him snap out and when he looked out again the thing was gone. He didn’t sleep a wink that night and said he almost considered selling the house and moving elsewhere. But something compelled him to stay.
The weird thing is, as a kid I’d walked from Friedrich’s house to mine many times as I got older and never realised until now how often I would hear sheep baaing in the middle of the night, where there were no sheep to be found.