Death's Other Kingdom

By Sharlene Naidoo

Ellen Dora has returned to her home town after a long absence. Her return is triggered only in part by the death of her mother; more important is that she must finally deliver a letter that she has had in her possession for over ten years. Walking through the town brings back childhood memories of her dead mother and aunt...and a specific event; the death of the town pastor ten years earlier. Jon's death sparked a chain of events that had far reaching consequences in Ellen’s life. At the time, there were questions that she never dared ask and much remained unanswered about his death; did he die or was he murdered? Ellen suspects that her mother and aunt may have had something to do with it. Her aunt (Rachel) mysteriously disappeared the day they found the pastor’s body; and was never seen again. Otto, a man secretly in love with Rachel, committed suicide shortly after by drowning himself in the river...something Ellen blames herself for. Her return forces her to relive that day and as she journeys deeper into the past it becomes evident that everything is not as it seems; are the people around her dead or alive; why does it never stop raining and why is she suddenly afraid of what the truth might mean?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sharlene Naidoo
• Release date: Jan 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9780620556972

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Death's other kingdom

By Sharlene Naidoo

Copyright 2013 Sharlene Naidoo

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Death's other kingdom

Chapter 1

I had forgotten how flat the land was…and that on a clear day you could see all the way to Rustenburg. I watched a storm unfold on the horizon; the clouds devoured the emptiness and drew my eye onwards and upwards, it was the land of the Bushmen; it was its own world and I was just another traveller on my way to the mountain and the small town it held in its shadow. I’d been waiting in the middle of nowhere…with only a photograph for company when Jannie appeared and let me ride with him in his bakkie…I watched now…from the bakkie, as the round feet of the mountain loomed. He clicked his tongue; ran a wrinkled hand over his wrinkled face; a small wrinkled coloured man with misty grey eyes; his thick fingers on the steering wheel told of a life time of digging graves and burying the dead. I’d known him all my life and still believed he was a sorcerer because he lived alone in a shack on the outskirts of the graveyard and no one remembered when he’d arrived; only that he had always been there. Once, I thought I saw him change into a crow during that most dangerous time of the day between dusk and nightfall…and he was the one, all those years ago who had a premonition of Jon’s death. Strange that it was him that I should see first…because I had been thinking about death as I looked down at a photograph, soft from over handling. Everyone was dead now.

He wanted to know; why have you returned Ellentjie?

The crows cawed above filling up the silence. Inside my pocket the letter rustled and grew hot against my skin. The mountain looked smaller than I remembered; the road narrower. This place, I knew, had its own laws. Mother said; don’t ask for more than what you have…the truth is over-rated.

Jannie said; it’s still the same this place, nothing ever changes.

I had not been back for so long that I had forgotten the wind; it screamed at the sky and rocked our little bakkie. The letter was exactly ten years old; the ink almost completely faded.

We drove into the mountain’s shadow on a deserted road.

Jannie pointed at a newly painted building; Jon’s wife still runs the orphanage…not for long though, she’s dying from cancer.

Rain fell from a clear sky…and then I remembered that it always rained here. Children played outside the orphanage, ran around the big tree and raced for the swings at the back. There were three painted red, blue and yellow; and just beyond that was the old rusty see-saw.

Jannie clicked his tongue again; how’s your mother?

She died last year.

She died on a Tuesday when the Jacaranda trees where in full bloom; I lay my head on her chest and heard her heart stop. I promised her that she was still beautiful while her eyes sank into her skull and grew dim. She warned me to stay away from the past because it was barren; a dry wasteland of stony silence.

He sighed then; she should be buried here…this was her home…I remember her, she was a quiet one.