From the Dark Creep the Tokoloshes

By Susi Kay

Ben Bentley and his sister Kate are on holiday in Africa with their parents. When they play some tricks on Samson, a highly respected local African Game Ranger, he reacts angrily and puts an ancient curse on them. When the two children return to their home in England at the end of their holiday, they are not alone. Two evil little creatures from the dark world return with them, to teach them a lesson! Getting rid of the strange uninvited visitors will not be easy and while the tokoloshes are around anything can happen – and it does! Will Ben and Kate manage to rescue their much loved pets from the tokoloshes' gaping, hungry mouths and will the children get through their terrifying night time encounters with the magical creatures from Africa?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susi Kay
• Release date: Apr 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301986385

Susi Kay

Susi Kay has worked teaching both children and adults and has been writing short stories for many years. 'From the Dark Creep the Tokoloshes' is her first full length novel. She is currently working on the sequel. Susi has lived in the UK and Spain and is currently living in the north of England with her husband who is South African. Both Southern Africa and Spain are big loves in her life. She can be contacted on her email address [e-mail].

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From the Dark Creep

the Tokoloshes

by Susi Kay

Published by FNS Publications

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Susi Kay 2013

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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For

My four nieces

Emma, Lucinda, Laura and Catriona

From the Dark Creep the Tokoloshes

Beware the night, take good heed,

From the Dark creep the tokoloshes.

Revenging wrongs, with evil deeds;

Summoned, slowly creeping, no sound,

Sometimes their victims are never, ever found.

Raise your beds and set your traps,

From the Dark creep the tokoloshes.

Only the sangoma can send them back;

Witch doctor, milk and magic muti,

Might just work if you’re very, very lucky.

Chapter 1

Sarah Bentley looked towards the small, oval-shaped swimming pool where her two children were splashing about noisily in the slightly murky but clean, jade green water. Her son Ben had grabbed hold of his sister’s left ankle and was dragging her around the pool, lapping just out of reach of the poolside to avoid giving his captive any means of escape.

Initially, Kate had tried to alternately hop and then lung kicks at her brother with her free leg but complete exhaustion had rapidly set in so she had resorted to screaming instead. She struggled to keep her head above the surface of the water and every time her face re-emerged from the splashes Kate opened her tightly closed mouth, took a deep breath of the warm African air and shrieked.

Her screeching was at such a volume that even the small herd of elephant, which had been drinking at the edge of the watering hole just beyond the pool in Mbombo Camp, had only hung around long enough for one trunk full of water each before lumbering off again into the bush. Kate sounded like a prey animal in the last throws of life; sounds that even a ten ton elephant instinctively avoided.

You know, I hadn’t realised how badly behaved our kids were until we came here, Paul Bentley said to his wife as he turned another page of the thick, paperback book he was reading. Why haven’t I noticed before? he continued, frowning with exasperation at the constant background noise. He pushed his metal-rimmed aviator sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose and lowered his eyes back down onto the open pages of his book.

Because you’ve got tunnel vision and if something isn’t affecting you directly, you don’t see it! responded his wife, smiling. Voices do seem to carry more here, she muttered, grasping for an excuse for the racket coming from the pool. I think it’s the African air.

His older sister’s yells only fuelled Ben’s enthusiasm, each scream merely making him more determined to continue tormenting her. It was so easy to wind Kate up, he thought, as he continued his backward lap around the shallow pool with a wide grin on his sun-tanned, freckled face.

Sisters weren’t much use for anything except for bugging as much as you possibly could. If they played football or liked looking for snakes and spiders they wouldn’t be so bad. Ben regularly wished that he’d had a brother instead of a wussy sister. But he was stuck with Kate and there wasn’t much prospect of any brothers arriving now that his parents were so old. So he might as well make the best of it!

The elephant weren’t the only creatures to be frustrated by the noise. Several of the other guests at the bush camp had made a hasty exit from the pool area when the children had arrived. After five days there, the ‘Bentley Brats’, as the rest of the guests had named them, were testing the patience of most people including the staff.

Unfortunately the rest of the guests were couples who had come to Mbombo Camp in the Olifants River Valley of South Africa to experience the ‘real Africa’. Screaming children hadn’t been on anyone’s must-see list and the Bentley Brats were the noisiest children any of them had ever met.

The tourists had booked into Mbombo Camp, named after the African word for baboons, to go on open-topped Land Rover game drives through the wild African bush to see running cheetah, rare black rhino and hopefully a lion pride feasting on a kudu or a warthog. They had looked forward to staying in rondavels, the traditional round huts of Africa, and falling asleep to the continuous background music of crickets clicking and frogs croaking. They had expected a restful, tranquil experience.

Ben wasn’t particularly worried about having a tranquil experience; he just wanted to have fun! Apart from bugging Kate, there were quite a few other things that were fun at Mbombo, not least the frogs.

He very quickly came to the conclusion that small frogs had very small brains, which seemed common-sense really because there wasn’t a whole lot of space to fit a brain into. Loads of them had to be rescued from the swimming pool every morning with the nets normally used for scooping out leaves. The really stupid ones didn’t make it to daybreak and ended up looking like little green-brown, bloated rubber balls with rigid arms and legs, floating around on the surface of the pool.

Early on his first morning in camp Ben had thought the frogs looked really funny. "Cool! he shouted, running around the pool to examine the contents of the gardener’s long handled net, as it was lifted out onto the poolside. Can I have one?" he asked excitedly.

What for? replied the gardener, eyeing the ten-year-old with suspicion.

Just to look at - I do science in school, said Ben, smiling. He could still look angelic when necessary.

The gardener pushed the net from below with one of his huge, spade-like hands and nodded downward at the three or four lifeless fatalities glistening in the sun.

Ben picked out the largest one. Thanks, he said, grinning again. He then backed up slightly and without thinking about the consequences immediately hurled the frog down onto the hard stone flags surrounding the pool, to see if it would bounce.

To Ben’s enormous disappointment he discovered that frog balls definitely didn’t bounce, but the result was pretty impressive anyway. The dead creature landed with a sploshy, thudy sound as it burst open, resulting in a horrible green and brown slimy, slippery mess of water and frog guts that had to be cleaned up by the not very amused gardener. Those of the other visitors and staff who hadn’t witnessed the event had heard all about it by breakfast time.

Unlike her brother, Kate didn’t think the frogs looked at all funny. She couldn’t stand seeing anything dead and refused to go near the pool every morning until she had been reassured by her mother, because her father was not very reliable with that sort of thing, that all the corpses had been fished out and thrown out of view into the surrounding bushland.

"Why do they jump in?" Kate wailed continuously on her first morning in camp. She repeated the question all day – to her parents, to the gardener, to Samson the Head Game Warden and to anyone else who could be bothered to listen to her.

That night Kate had nightmares about swimming with bloated little frogs bobbing all around her. She had woken up sweating and lay awake for a while wondering if she should go out and save some lives. She thought of all the scary things out there in the strange African darkness and decided there was absolutely nothing she could do.

Now in the pool with Ben, on the last day of their holiday, she was going to end up looking like a bloated dead frog. Kate could definitely feel herself filling up with water. "Daddy!" she screamed at the top of her voice.

I think it might be an idea if you go and rescue Kate before she drowns, said Sarah Bentley to her husband, sighing heavily.

Paul Bentley had up to now remained steadfastly unresponsive despite his daughter’s continued pleas for help. He stood up with an audible sound of annoyance at being dragged away from his Wilbur Smith novel. He strode towards the edge of the pool and without hesitation squatted down with one arm resting across his knees. Beckoning his two children towards him with a quick backward and forward flicking motion of the fingers of his right hand, Paul Bentley remained silent.

Ben kept tightly hold of his sister’s leg, reluctant to give up his position of control. More often than not it was he who came off worse in fights with Kate but only because she was two years older than him and ten centimetres taller. Grandpops kept telling him to wait for his ‘growth spurt’ and then Kate would stop picking on him but this ‘growth spurt’ thing didn’t seem to want to happen and waiting for it was very annoying.

Ben, said his father quietly, staring straight at his son’s grinning, impish face.

Despite the low volume of the request Ben knew that his father meant business so he immediately let go. "That’s not fair dad, she’s been doing it to me for ages and you didn’t stop her!" he said crossly.

Well you didn’t ask me to stop her, replied Paul Bentley, raising himself back up to his full, towering height.

Only because I’m not a wuss like she is! responded Ben.

Okay then! His father sighed. Kate leave your brother alone as well.

I wasn’t doing anything! shouted Kate through a series of short, distinctly put on sounding coughs. Ben was trying to kill me!

Well next time try and die quietly; I want to finish reading my book before we go home tomorrow, replied her father.

Ben laughed loudly and pulled a smug face at his sister until he turned and caught the look on his father’s face. Dad shouldn’t make jokes about Kate if he didn’t want him to laugh, he thought, as he swam across the pool.

Kate quickly waded through the chest deep water until she reached the edge of the pool. Placing both of her palms face down on the stone surround she managed to pull herself out of the water gracefully, despite feeling just about ready to explode.

She looked straight ahead, deliberately snubbing her father, and marched over to where her mother was watching the entire proceedings with the expression of someone who had seen it all before, many times.

Mum, she said, in the most grown up sounding voice she could manage, "why do boys always back each other up even when they’re in the wrong?"

Sarah Bentley shot a look of amusement at her husband as he followed his daughter back to the seating area shaking his head slowly from side-to-side. They have to sweetheart because boys know that they can never win an argument with a girl! said her mother, smiling.

Very true! agreed Paul Bentley. You remember that son, he continued, turning towards Ben who was swaggering up from the pool, you’ll never win an argument with a girl so you’re better off being nice to them instead!

Ben screwed up his face at the gross thought of being nice to girls. No way! he declared, throwing himself down onto his father’s cushion-covered sun bed.

Get off there now! groaned his father, at the prospect of lying back down on the soaking wet cushion. Do you know what, Paul Bentley said, as he lowered himself down onto the soggy wet bed vacated by his son, "life would be a whole lot better for everyone else around you if you two stopped squabbling all the time. In fact, I want both of you to go back up to the hut and sit quietly for half an hour and think about your behaviour. Kate you can sit in our room. I don’t want you going near each other; I don’t want you talking, shouting or anything else. Do you both understand?"

Yes dad, replied Ben and Kate in unison.

The pair picked up their towels in silence. Kate slipped her feet into her pale pink flip-flops, which were lying on the stone tiles next to the chairs, before setting off up the slight incline towards their rondavel. Ben started up the stone path behind her kicking each of his black flip-flops alternately as he went.

"Pick them up!" shouted his father after him.

Ben bent down and picked up the rubber Haviaanas one at a time using the index finger of his left hand hooked through the thongs. The ten-year-old never did anything the simplest way; everything had to be a challenge. He followed his sister up the path, past the first two African huts on the left, to the third one, which was theirs.

The large timber framed circular hut was far from basic. Huge, shiny wooden timbers formed a rigid external frame with vertical walls and a steeply sloping, straw thatched roof, which ended in a point. The external walls of the hut had been made solid by daubing the logs with a mixture of straw and the deep rich ochre-coloured clay earth taken from the nearby riverbed.

From only a few hundred metres away the rondavels were invisible against the African bushland. In any direction you looked the view appeared to be just a mass of deep orangey-redness, dotted by the scattered green-blue blobs of stunted acacia trees and the strange spooky pale grey-brown shapes of the almost leafless baobab trees with their swollen, bulbous trunks and branches. The huts were an example of eco-tourism at its very best; not like some high rise concrete hotel scarring the wild landscape.

The external walls of the rondavels had holes left for windows; just two in each hut, positioned in each of the bedrooms. There was no glass in the holes; only a fine metal-mesh designed to keep the multitude of crawling and flying insects out, meanwhile still allowing a cooling breeze through at night. Each window frame had a pair of wooden shutters which could be closed together, but as they served no real purpose most guests didn’t bother to shut them and left them folded open against the inside walls on either side of the windows instead.

From the main timbers of the external walls smaller polished rich brown-coloured logs and branches sub-divided the inside of the hut into separate rooms. The dividing walls between the rooms were filled in with interlaced bamboo and reeds, through which every word said, even a whisper, could be clearly heard by whoever was in the room next door.

Each room had a heavy solid wood door, timbered flooring and walls covered with African carvings and framed pictures of elephant, lion, giraffe and Kate’s favourite, warthog. ‘They’re ugly cute,’ she had declared on first inspection. ‘And I bet they don’t eat other animals either, so I like them best.’

Each rondavel had a small lounge area without a television, a shower room and two separate twin bedrooms. Their parents shared the larger of the two bedrooms and the children the other.

On their arrival neither Ben nor Kate had known what to be more horrified about – the thought of having to share a room, or the lack of satellite TV and broadband for five whole nights. Neither of them had realised just how tired they were going to be at the end of each fully organised day. Television was not remotely missed and most amazingly they were surviving sharing a room, relatively unscathed at least.

After game drives, horse trekking and even walking through the bush, the pair of them had fallen asleep every night as soon as their heads had hit the nice fat squidgy, cotton-covered, sausage-shaped, duck down pillows. There was none of the usual annoying conversation and missiles being thrown through the air, which inevitably occurred whenever the two of them had to sleep in the same room.

Kate had been disturbed by creatures a whole lot scarier than her younger brother. On their second night in camp she had been awoken by loud noises only to find several hippopotamuses a few metres away from their mesh covered bedroom window. She wouldn’t have minded but because there was no glass Kate felt like there was nothing between her bed and the huge, waddling, snorting black shapes outside.

She imagined a hippo getting through the mesh window or even the hut walls and chomping her in her bed. Samson had told them that more African people were killed by hippos each year than by lions or crocodiles even though hippos were more or less always vegetarians! And they could run at thirty kilometres an hour, so Samson had said that running away was a bit pointless. Right then hippos had shot straight to the top of Kate’s ‘scary animal list’.

That night Kate had ended up swapping beds with her father. ‘So you don’t mind me getting eaten by a hippo?’ he had said, yawning and tucking his daughter in.

‘Daddy,’ she’d replied, ‘you know the hippo would be scared of you!’

He had stroked her long auburn hair away from her face and bent to kiss her forehead. ‘Sleep tight Katy Boos,’ he’d whispered.

Chapter 2

Ben and Kate did as their father had told them.

Ben sat on his own bed in his still soaking baggies, swinging his dangling feet backwards and forwards at an ever increasing speed because there wasn’t a whole lot else to do. He thought about what might be for dinner because his stomach was rumbling viciously.

Kate sat on a dry towel on her mother’s bed and examined the pale pink nail polish on her finger and toe nails. The polish was all chipped along the edges and needed re-applying but they were going home tomorrow so really there was no point. She wouldn’t be allowed to paint her finger nails again because it was against school rules; although Rachel Poulson always had her finger nails painted and the teachers never did anything about that!

Earlier, from the entrance of the food hut, Samson had watched the two children running towards the pool shouting loudly to one another. The wise, elderly African’s eyes had seen a