Wednesday 1 February 2012

The Vampire's Funeral-Gomani Returns

It was pouring heavily. There was thunder and lightning. All villagers stayed indoors. The night was as dark as when you have closed your eyes firmly. Teacher Kadamulendo shut the doors, locked the windows and told everyone in the house to go to bed. The three children of his Pheee, Mantha and Nkhalo obeyed their father's orders and changed into pyjamas and slept. In the middle of the night there came a dribbling sound. The sound went drip drip drip and everyone was awoken. Teacher Kadamulendo asked his wife Mrs Zangauone Kadamulenge, ' kodi madam, did you turn off the taps?' Zangauone rose up, ' I surely turned off the taps.' Teacher Kadamulendo said, ' but I can hear the water running.' The wife walked to the kitchen and indeed the water was dribbling drip drip drip. She turned off the taps. There was no more sound. Everyone slept again. In about an hour’s time there came a sound of water as if someone was bathing. Everyone woke up. Teacher Kadamulendo thought it was his son Nkhalo having a bath. Nkhalo had no manners and sometimes he would wake up at night just to cause trouble. Mr Kadamulendo rushed to the bathroom, indeed there was water running and the bath tub was getting fuller and fuller. He turned and headed to his son's bedroom. He wanted to tell Nkhalo off that, ' don’t bath in the middle of the night.' What surprised him was that Nkhalo was fast asleep. So who could have been running a bath? Anyway he made sure all taps in the kitchen and in the bathroom were shut. He even locked all doors leading to the kitchen and bathroom to make sure no one could enter. He then told his wife Zangauone, ' now we can sleep beautiful darling. I have locked the kids’ bedroom so that no one comes out and plays fool games with us, especially this boy Nkhalo, he could be doing this and then pretend to be fast asleep.' Teacher Kadamulendo cuddled his wife and everything was perfectly normal. Tomorrow he would be going to work and there was no more time to waste, he wanted to sleep. The night was still enveloped in thick clouds that only owls could be heard from the distance. After about half an hour there came a sound of water running from the kitchen, a sound of plates being washed, a whistling sound and a sound of radio turned on with full volume. Everyone woke up. The children shouted, ' mum we are still sleeping, please put the radio volume down.' And the parents as well shouted at the same time, 'Nkhalo our son , what the hell is going on into your head tonight? We need to sleep!' Teacher, Mr Kadamulendo furiously dashed to the kitchen and to check who was this silly child running taps but to his surprise, all plates looked like they have just been neatly washed and the tap water was still running. The children were still in their bedroom and the bedroom door was locked, there was no way Nkhalo could have done this. Teacher, Mr Kadamulendo told his wife Zangauone,' shut the taps I will shut the radio,' and they did. They decided to stay awake on the sofa to witness what was going on. Suddenly, they heard a noise of a man talking to somebody from outside the house through the window. Mr and Mrs Kadamulendo pressed their ears against the window to listen. The voice said, ' I never wanted to return but it's just that they buried me wrongly , near my neighbour and Mr Teacher Kadamulendo is the one who made the final decision. I will never be happy with his decision, so I have returned to resolve our disputes.' Fear was everywhere in the house.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Very terrific

mzondi lungu said...

Was written with aim to cause fear like the way our grandmothers made us go to bed terrified .