“Skrik” is a collaborative short story. Edited By Thomas Carnegie Jeffery

Skrik

Jaco Gardiner looked out over the cornfields that were his life. These dry stalks, all that remained a�er the harvest,

were the source of his family’s food, their shelter, their life, all that they held dear. Home. The fields seemed dead

now, their summer-green and the fat yellow kernels gone. The land was barren, empty, only the stubble le�, wai�ng

for the plough that would begin the process of renewal. Empty, but for old Skrik the scarecrow on the cross that Jaco

had made for him all those years ago, hanging from the rusted nails that held him through hand and foot. The

harvest was over, there was nothing to scare away, nothing for Skrik to be bothered about. No ma�er now if the

birds swooped down; no ma�er if the locusts arrived in their cloud-swi� swarms. Skrik hung through the wind and

dust, storms and rain, hail and scorching sun and never u�ered so much as a whisper of complaint.

Jaco looked out at the scarecrow and remembered how as a young boy he used to visit Oom Louwtjie Louw on

the neighbouring farm, Verblyden. It wasn’t far, if you fol lowed the road to the dam, through the bluegums and past

the once-yellow Bedford truck which had long ago lost its will to live, and hopped the fence where the labourers’ old

stone graves lay parched in the dry winter sun. Young Jaco always slowed at the graves , not so much as a sign of

respect for the departed souls, but to listen. Some�mes, as the wind blew down from the surrounding hills, it

seemed that the stones where whispering, trying to tell a story. Some�mes, Jaco thought that if only his heart would

beat more so�ly, he would be able to make out what the voices were trying to say. But then he would tell himself

that it was just the grass sighing in the wind, or the distant rumbling of the tractor, or the gruff mu�ering of the crow

perched on the fencepost.

It was here, among the graves, that Jaco found the piece of wood that would become the backbone and the

heart of Skrik the scarecrow. It was thick and heavy, nearly as tall as the boy, with a fine grain twis�ng around its

tapering length. The grain was overlaid with marks as if the wood was worm-eaten, but the surface was smooth to

his touch. It seemed to young Jaco that these marks must be the whispers of the stones, their grave tales somehow

inscribed on the surface of the wood in a language that perhaps only the long-dead labourers could understand.

The boy picked up the wood and struggled home with it slung like a yoke across his shoulders and neck, every

step a calcula�on in the balancing of its weight. His forehead was soon covered in perspira�on, and he could taste

the salt that collected in the corners of his dry mouth. With every step the branch became heavier. The salt taste

intensified to a metallic sharpness which reminded him of the taste of blood, and his eyes burned with the

determina�on of a man on his way to some personal Calvary. The voices in the wind seemed to urge him on and now

they carried across the years of faded memory to where Jaco sat on his stoep and looked out over his fields towards

Skrik the scarecrow. For all the se long years he had given hardly a thought to those days or to the unusual wood

from which he had made Skrik, but now with the image of the curious markings once more clear in his mind and the

long-forgo�en whispers echoing through his memory, he felt a compulsion to cross the fields and renew his

acquaintance with the old scarecrow.

Jaco sat forward, gathering the will to li� himself out of the wicker r ocking-chair he loved so much. Years spent

in it watching crimson sunsets, violent thunderstorms, and blazing mirages of midday heat had moulded the chair to

every contour of his body so that when it was empty it was like a nega�ve of the portly farmer. It seemed to hold

onto his belt when he tried to stand up, and as he rocked his weight forward, pushing on the arm-rest as he tried to

break its grip, the couch’s creaking mocked his struggles.

His cell phone rasped against the glass top of the table next to the chair, startling him.

Shit!

He looked down at his trusty old Nokia, ba�ered and worn, with its cracked screen and the numbers long-since

rubbed off the keys.

‘Ten �mes more reliable than these bloody smart phones the kids stare at all day,’ he would say to those who

looked at the ancient instrument with amusement or contempt.

‘Unknown caller’ flashed on the screen, and though he knew that it might as well say ‘Bloody irrita�ng sales call’

he could never quite get over the hope that maybe for once he had won something. He let out a sigh as he gave up

his struggle with the chair and let himself plonk back into it. He reached for the phone with one hand and his pack of

Stuyvesant Red with the other. With a prac�ced flick of his wr ist a smoke appeared in the corner of his mouth. He

pressed the green phone and rasped ‘What?’ It was someone trying to sell him life insurance. He took a long drag on

his smoke and blew the fumes into the phone. That seemed to get his point across because the drone on the other

end hung up.

Jaco took a moment to finish his cigare�e, staring across the fields at Skrik. Sharp fingers of cloud reached up

over the horizon behind the scarecrow, grey -white against blue. He heaved his frame up once more, finally achieving

escape velocity from the chair, and approached the edge of the stoep. He slipped the cigare�es into the breast

pocket of his two-tone green and khaki shirt, picked up his ivory-handled pipe from the wooden rail that bounded

the veranda, adjusted his khaki bush hat, and stepped out into the late a�ernoon sun.

‘Marta!’ he called out to his wife, his voice barrelling down the house’s long passage. ‘Put some coffee on. I’m

going for a walk.’

Roger the Labrador had been snoozing but his ears pricked up at the magic word and he quickly joined his

master, happy tongue lolling from his mouth. Man and dog crossed the strip of lawn, the buffer of domes�city that

separated the farmhouse from the labourers’ co�ages and the fields, and walked out into the stubble. They had

gone barely a few paces when something caught Jaco’s foot and he stumbled. He cursed, and looked down to see

what had tripped him. The toe of his boot was coming away from the sole, leaving a gap of which a mielie stump had

taken advantage. Jaco glanced surrep��ously towards the labourers’ co�ages to see if any of them had seen him

stumble and was relieved that none of them were si�ng on the worn, hand -me-down chairs that looked out over

the fields. He looked at his boot in disgust.

‘Chinese kak,’ he spat. He remembered when a pair of Hi-Tecs would have lasted two years of walking the fields

and tractor driving. Now you got a few months if you were lucky. ‘Everything is just Chinese kak these days.’

He sighed, and carried on over the fields towards Skrik. The sun hung in the sky behind the scarecrow so that

Jaco could not see him through the star’s light and the haze of dust picked up by the freshening wind. Squin�ng

against the glare and the grit, he paused to light his pipe and realised that he already had another cigare�e dangling

from the corner of his mouth. He shook his head.

‘Jusses, I got to cut down.’

His Pa had died smoking two packs of Gunston plain a day and though Jaco feared this suffoca�ng death more

than any other, yet he found it impossible to leave either his pipe or his smokes behind in the morning, and o�en

caught himself trying to smoke both at once like this. Marta could not understand it, as could nobody who had never

smoked. He spat the cigare�e out and ground it beneath his disappoin�ng shoe, and then notched the pipe’s stem

into the tooth that had worn to its shape. He drew a deep puff from the flame of his lighter, and the smoke went

down smooth and easy. Despite the memory of his father smothered by death he could not believe that something

so good could ever be his end.

Skrik watched Jaco approach. A frayed straw hat, bri�le and bleached by years of weather, shaded a roughly

stuffed hessian face that sported a big, fake smile. Two duffel-coat bu�on eyes gave the scarecrow a strangely Asian

appearance. He wore an old tweed jacket, a pair of khaki trousers, very worn out brogues and a pair of pigskin

gloves. His s�tching was crude but over all these years he had not once stooped or bent, an eternal and unflinching

sentry. His core, that special piece of wood, kept him upright, held him together, and ul�mately g ave him the

commanding presence that drew Jaco out of his dusty recollec�ons of his father’s dying. The scarecrow towered

above the aging farmer, the man of straw somehow exuding a youthful confidence that he would outlive his creator.

Jaco stared up at Skrik. Something was strange.

How is this possible?

He clearly remembered the day that he and his mother, long dead now, put Skrik together, scratching in Oupa

Willem’s trunk of old clothes and then s�tching, stuffing and tying the bits together. Ma went to so much t rouble

with Skrik’s face. She even coloured his cheeks with some of the blush Tannie Gert le� behind a�er her last visit

from Namaqualand. That colour had faded less than a month a�er they had given Skrik his spot in the middle of the

field. Rain, wind and dust had made sure of that. But here, today, as Jaco stood in the scarecrow’s shadow, the

cheeks were bright pink, glowing as if Ma had just finished pu�ng it on.

Jaco stared at the colour, these two small patches of impossibility, so innocuous yet so disturbing . Had someone

come out here and done this? If so, why? There were surely easier ways to mess with a farmer’s mind. And how

could they know, how could they know that this would s�r his memory in such a distressing manner, how could they

know that this simple gesture would transport him back in �me? And how could they know that it would fill him with

such fear? For the impossibility of those two patches of colour had rooted violently within him and filled him with

the same cold dread he remembered from when as a child he had walked past the graves of the nameless labourers;

and now he heard within him those long-forgo�en, whispering voices, those same voices that had driven him to

carry the strange piece of wood back to the house. Skrik stood above him, arms outstretched on his cross, and even

as Jaco told himself that this thing was made of no more than straw and rags, yet as he looked up at it he felt such a

sense of awe and terror that he was barely able to stop himself from falling to his knees before it .

A shrill call penetrated his dread, Marta summoning him for the coffee. Ordinarily he would have shouted back

impa�ently, and he wanted to respond, to make contact with her and escape this suffoca�ng terror, but Skrik

seemed to be daring him to, and he could not help but wonder what would happen if he did.

‘Jacooooooooo, coffee is ready!’

He felt a stab of regret at how he had treated Marta. Her ability to shrug off his gruffness had diminished over

the years, along with the smile that used to brighten her eyes when they were young and in love. She had become a

sensi�ve soul, easily brought to tears and prone to long bouts of silence, and under the scarecrow’s gaze Jaco saw

how it was his own rough nature that had worn at her and eroded her happiness.

Skrik appeared to be smirking at him, at this show of inner weakness, and the rush of compassion Jaco felt for

his wife turned to anger.

I should burn this stupid scarecrow.

Roger gave a low growl, his ears flat against his head and his fur standing upright from his neck all down his

back.

What the bloody hell?

The dog was staring at the scarecrow, and Jaco felt the hairs prickle on the back of his neck. The feeling of

unease became overwhelming as Roger crouched, looking up at the wooden watchman, growling, whining, and then

u�ering a gu�ural groan the like of which Jaco had never heard him make before.

Jaco had had enough of this shit.

‘Roger!’ Jaco shouted, his tone a few notes higher than his regular gruff voice. ‘Come!’

Roger, tail between his legs, scurried to his master’s side. Jaco turned towards the house and the wife for whom

he felt a renewed rush of the affec�on that the years had dulled. He picked up his pace, resis�ng the urge to run,

trying to ignore the sense of long, wiry fingers just inches from the scruff of his neck, reaching out to crab at the

collar of his shirt. He felt a dark presence, faceless and without a decent soul, clawing at his back, and he picked up

his pace as he headed for the farm house and his coffee . A taste filled his mouth, but it was not that of the

an�cipated brew. It was something metallic, something thicker and that flowed more slowly, something that he did

not at first recognise. What it was came to him as the dense salt tang of it filled his mouth – blood. He gagged, his

hands rising to his throat. He tripped on the kak Chinese shoes again, twisted as he recovered, and involuntarily

turned back to face Skrik. In that moment everything stopped, the choking, the wind, the dust, Roger’s growling. For

Skrik was no longer there. The cross was empty. The ragged pieces of rope that had held the straw man hung limp,

dry tendons torn from desiccated flesh. Jaco stared at the cross, then he looked fran�cally around for the scarecrow,

trying to reason, trying to find where the wind that must have wrenched him free had dropped the hollow man in a

shapeless heap. But there was no heap, nothing but the rows of mielie stumps rising like peg -teeth from the earth’s

brown and gaping maw.

A scream cut across the field and into Jaco’s stunned mind.

Marta!

He spun around and glimpsed a shadow, an awkward thing, lurching through the front door into the house. Jaco

began to run, something he had not done for many years, and he felt his body protest at the unfamiliar demand. H is

muscles felt leaden and his fat surged with his mo�on, tugging him from his desired trajectory like some trickster

gravity that wanted him to stay in the fields and play. The smoke had felt smooth, too smooth, but a�er a few

metres his breathing was harsh, ragged, his heart labouring to supply his great totality with blood and oxygen as he

pushed towards the house and the thing that he could not yet believe that he would find there.

Jaco’s pounding footsteps finally brought him to the house, and as he rushed through the door and into the

passage the wide yellowwood floorboards creaked in protest at the sudden weight. He rushed through the house

looking into the rooms to le� and right, un�l he reached the kitchen. And there he found them. The kitchen table,

with its aluminium edge and blue-speckled melamine surface, was a relic of the seven�es. Marta was si�ng on one

of the mismatched chairs that surrounded it. She was as bulky as Jaco, corn-fed. Arms like badly stuffed pillows

drooped from a floral tent, and her bulging, pasty cheeks were streaked with the tears of terror that flowed from her

small eyes. She sat in the scarecrow’s shadow. Skrik loomed over her, and Jaco’s mind was overwhelmed at the sight

of this monster that had lurked so near. Skrik did not move, did not speak, just stood there as mo�onless as if he was

s�ll fixed to his cross, but there was no denying what he was now, no denying the poten�al contained within that

ragged body, and Jaco was certain that it would be mere seconds, an instant, before the scarecrow went about the

business of murdering them. What else would a monster do?

Skrik stood dead s�ll, his straw hat shadowing his face so that all Jaco could see below its rim was the line of

rough s�tches that were his mouth. Neither Jaco nor Marta dared to move a muscle in case they set the monster off.

They waited for seconds that stretched into unbearable minutes, and Jaco started to hope that the scarecro w was

inanimate a�er all, that this was all the work of some demon that God had destroyed before any real damage could

be done.

Skrik’s arms burst into mo�on. Jaco stumbled backwards, falling on his padded arse, and Marta let out a

scream. But Skrik did not a�ack them. His weathered pigskin hands went to his face and gripped the eye-bu�ons. He

tore off one then the other, and stems of his straw stuffing poked through the ragged holes where the bu�on s had

been. He picked at his mouth, found the end of the thread and ripped the s�tches open. He opened his mouth wide

and shook his head as if he had been freed from some constric�on.

‘That’s much be�er.’ He held one of the bu�ons up between thumb and forefinger. ‘Do you have any idea how

hard it is to see through these li�le holes?’ He tossed the bu�on to Jaco where he sat on the floor. It hit the farmer’s

chest and tumbled down his body, then rolled off under the kitchen table. Skrik clapped his hands, business-like.

‘Well, we have a lot to talk about,’ he said, his voice jovial, friendly … normal. ‘We should get comfortable.’

He opened the fridge and took out one of Jaco’s beers. Broad, brown teeth bit down and popped the top off the

bo�le. He drank, and as his cheeks moved Jaco saw that his face had a different texture too, s�ll rough as hessian

but fleshy and substan�al. His lips were dark as though he had bled from the torn s�tches. He moved fluidly, there

was no sign of the lurching thing that Jaco had glimpsed before. He turned to look at Jaco where he sat

dumbfounded on the floor. The straw-filled holes where his bu�on eyes had been had become two wheat-golden

orbs, and they filled with amusement as Jaco floundered around trying to gain purchase on bits of the house so that

he could haul himself to his feet. He lost the fight to preserve his dignity, rolled himself over onto his prodigious

stomach, got to his hands and knees, and scaled his own north face in a few more awkward stages. Eventually he

was up, and he turned to face the scarecrow and his wife. Skrik was si�ng at the table with a broad grin on his face .

Marta watched him with sheer incomprehension as he raised the beer to his lips and took another swig. Skrik

gestured to the chair across the table.

‘Come, sit,’ he invited Jaco. He waved in the general direc�on of the fridge. ‘Beer?’

Jaco automa�cally glanced at Marta.

Too early.

Then he realised that if anything counted as a special occasion, then this was surely it.

‘Uhm … Ja, thanks.’

He took a cold Windhoek Draught out of the fridge. Even now he could not help but feel a flush of pleasure at

this treat.

Skrik held out his bo�le.

‘Cheers.’

Jaco hesitated, but then he came forward and clinked the bo�les together.

‘Cheers.’

Skrik looked at Marta.

‘Nothing for the lady?’

Marta looked shocked at the sugges�on. Her hand came to her gizzard and a couple of folds of skin draped

themselves over it; but then she realised that it might be impolite to refuse and there was no way to predict this

thing’s reac�on.

‘Ok, ja, thanks, I’ll have a li�le hanepoot then.’

She soon clasped a �ny glass of honey-golden liquid between her hands as if it were a relic of some vintner

saint. The three of them sat at the table, and all was quiet. Skrik was studying his beer bo�le intently, even

expectantly, and Jaco felt an awkwardness growing in the silence, as if he was si�ng here with Marta’s sister

Marietjie. He found himself fishing around for something to say. He almost started talking about the weather but

then he remembered Skrik’s cross in the field and it seemed inappropriate as a topic of conversa�on.

Jaco realised how ridiculous this was. He cut straight to the point instead.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

Skrik looked up from his bo�le but Jaco could not read his eyes. Then the scarecrow leapt to his feet and flung

the bo�le, smashing it in the corner where the dried mielie cobs to light the stove were piled. He turned on Jaco and

Marta as if he would tear them with his teeth, and Jaco once more asked the ques�on that was all he could think to

say, though this �me his voice was higher and the words came out faster.

‘What do you want?’

Skrik stopped. Nobody moved.

‘What … what do you want?’ Jaco stammered his ques�on a third �me.

‘What do I want?’ Skrik looked at Jaco with accusa�on in his eyes. ‘You were going to burn me.’

His voice was filled with hurt, and Jaco felt a pang of guilt.

‘I didn’t know … I didn’t know you were alive.’

‘That’s because you look at me but you never see me. I have worked for you and your family for years, keeping

the seed safe from the birds, protec�ng the land and the crops . You saw me when you were a child, but only for a

short �me and then you took me for granted, as if I was nothing. As if I was only there to serve you.’

‘But, I made you. I made you so that I could put you there and not worry about the birds. I made you so that I

wouldn’t have to stand in the field and scare the birds away from my land.’

‘No, you were in here, drinking your beer with your wife. I had no wife out there in the field, all by myself. It was

lonely.’ Skrik moved around the table and behind Marta, and put his hands on her shoulders. ‘Very lonely. So lonely,

that even this is star�ng to look good. Hey, sweetness? You want to have a li�le fun?’

Jaco watched in disbelief as the scarecrow stroked Marta’s cheek with his pigskin hand. She shuddered and her

�ny eyes hid beneath their beds of flesh. A wave of indigna�on washed through Jaco.

‘Don’t touch her! Get your hands off her! Get out of my house! Get off my land!’

Skrik’s golden eyes stared at Jaco, hard and flat, all lust and humour gone.

‘Your land.’

He came around the table towards Jaco, and the farmer paled and retreated before the straw man.

‘Your land.’

Jaco could retreat no further as his calves bumped against the carved kist in which Marta’s trousseau had once

lived. Skrik stood before him, so close that Jaco could smell the hops on his breath, and other scents, dirt and dust

and the unmistakable smell of rain on hard-baked earth, and a sourer note beneath, death and rot.

‘I have watched over this land. My eyes have touched it, I have lived on it and worked it and felt it run hot

between my fingers, blistering them and burning them as I laboured. I have nurtured it, tended it, kept its heart

bea�ng slow and steady. It is mine because of the way I have lived with it, lived on it, lived because of it.’

‘But I own it. It has been in my family for genera�ons.’

‘As it has been in mine.’

Jaco realised, then, that it was not just his life but his land that was under threat , that this thing had come to

take his home from him, the land that his family had owned for more than two centuries. Rage snuffed out his fear,

and as Jaco looked at the straw man it came to him that surely this thing of wood, string and stuffing could not be

stronger than he was? Surely he, a man of flesh and muscle and bone and significant weight, could defeat this thing?

It was terrifying to see, no doubt, but what was there to say that it should necessarily be more powerful than a man?

Jaco dropped his bo�le as he sprang to his feet, and more glass and beer spread over the floor. Even as he

launched himself he realised that he was too slow, too heavy, that he was not going to overwhelm the scarecrow as

he had planned. He was lumpen and clumsy, obvious. But he could not give in to the certain knowledge of failure, he

could not stop now. He willed himself forwards with every gram of his being, dragging his fat around the table. The

scarecrow showed no surprise at the a�ack, and no fear. He did not move, not un�l Jaco came at him with his fists

flailing. Skrik had arms and legs of cloth and straw and was home to beetles and the eggs of moths but he caught

Jaco’s wrists and held the big man as easily as if he was an overgrown baby. Jaco tried to struggle but he could not

match Skrik’s strength. Fear rose through him in a greasy wave. He stu�ered, desperate to say something, anything,

to persuade the scarecrow to forgive the a�ack. Skrik loo ked at Jaco and cocked his head. A smile painted his face

with the an�cipa�on of terrible things and s�lled Jaco’s stumbling search for words. Skrik’s eyes darkened, their

wheat-gold turning to copper. Marks began to appear on his face and arms, the twists and spirals that had covered

the wood that Jaco had carried from the graveyard all those years ago. He had been certain then that th e script told

tales of misery and death, and now he saw that his story was to become part of that collec�on. Somewhere deep in

his being he understood that he had been wai�ng his whole life for this moment, wai�ng for the end of this story

ever since he had read its first words on the wood which he had made Skrik’s backbone.

Jaco watched as the wood shook off the shabby facade in which he had clothed it and began the revela�on of its

true nature. It was a tree, but like no tree he had ever seen before. It was black, and crusted with hard, old, gnarled

knuckles and bones of bark from which roots, branches and ques�ng tendrils sprang at a terrifying rate, new growth

twis�ng and curling, sniffing out anchors and food. The tree creaked and groaned, its wood bending and warping as

it sent thick roots into the house’s founda�ons, pushing them aside with casual power, and tore as easily upwards,

pushing aside the corrugated iron roof sheets like some apocalyp�c jack in the box. Suckers delved into the couple

cradled in the bough, drawing the life from them, and Jaco’s head filled with a blinding pain. Marta had long since

retreated into insensibility, unable to deal with this final miracle, and was oblivious to the creeping things that

molested her un�l something s�rred within her, nudged by pain, and consciousness flickered across her face. She

was suspended, held by the roots and branches that writhed in celebration of their release into the world once

more. As the tree revelled in sensa�ons forgo�en aeons since, Marta, uncomprehending, turned her head and

stared into the eyes of her husband, her high school sweetheart, her friend, her once-upon-a-�me lover. For as long

as she could remember they had slept in single beds, separated by a bedside table, a tacky li�le lamp, the Holy Bible

and years of emo�onal isola�on. Jaco stared at her, his eyes full of ques�ons, his Calvinis�c upbringing denying him

any means to comprehend the events of this day. He would have screamed even as Marta did, but his voice was

blocked by the root that had found its way into his mouth, burrowing down his throat to occupy the emp�ness

inside him. The pain was excrucia�ng but even through its bright, white grip he heard the sound of strange voices

speaking words that he remembered from all those years ago. At first he heard the mul�tude that had whispered to

him as a child, and it was impossible to tell how many there were, ten or twenty, maybe a hundred, thousands even.

But then a new voice rose from deep within the trunk of the tree, and terror filled Jaco as he heard it make a

promise to him.

‘I was the first. I have been here longer than I can remember, longer than I can make you understand. But I will

help you to begin.’

Jaco glimpsed the sky, dark and starless, a void, an abyss. Outside, beyond his dying sight, the air was dry and

hot, whirlwinds swept up dry husks from the mielie fields and flocks of birds huddled in the safety of the bluegum

trees. The air was electric with their sharp, frightened cha�ering and the energy of Skrik’s becoming. In the kitchen,

though, it was cool, and the air was mo�onless. Suspended, helpless, unable to move, Jaco stared at his wife,

searching her eyes for some sort of recogni�on or commisera�on. There was none. Her eyes had turned to cracked

rock, a reflec�on of what both she and he had become as the years rubbed against them, hard and dry. Jaco’s mind

filled with images of his youth: tractor rides, harvesters, catapults and kleilat and the taste of soil. Teaching cheap

labourers how to plough, how to harvest and how to obey orders. Farming was in his blood. Discipline was in his

blood. Jaco remembered, or maybe the thing that Skrik had become showed him. He could no longer tell where he

ended and the tree began, its flesh joined deep within his own, clawing into the darkest recesses of his body and his

mind.

Uncle! I found Klaas sleeping behind the shed! I think he is drunk!

Fetch my sjambok, Jaco, I’m going to teach him a lesson.

Jaco remembered.

Jaco remembered his cousin, Ansie. She had taught him things about anatomy in the milking shed.

Aaah! Nee, baas! Jammer baas! The crack of the lash punctuated Klaas’s begging. Nee, asseblief my baas! My

groot baas!

The begging ended before the cracking of the whip. Oom Louwtjie instructed Klaas in the error of his ways from

midday un�l the early evening, and Klaas did not survive the lesson. Oom Louwtjie came inside, swea�ng,

sunburned, his arm lame from exer�on so that the flagon shook as he raised it to his lips. Soon a�er, Jaco heard the

women begin their wailing and screaming, and it lasted through the night as Klaas the labourer, the husband, the

father, the brother, the uncle, was carried home and buried next to the other graves.

Inside Jaco the voice dissolved into many once more. They were alive, they were living in the wood, in this thing

that had taken possession of him. Jaco could no longer move his head. Out of the corner of his eye he saw his right

arm, wrapped in the branches, and it was of stone, the same ancient and cracked Karoo stone that he saw when he

looked at his wife, or rather, what remained of her.

What is this? Why am I s�ll conscious, why am I alive?

He could see, he could hear, but he could not speak and could not move. He was made of bri�le stone and

wrapped in roots, and he could make no words. The roots whispered the end of his tale to him, whispered to him

what fate it was that he had carried with him ever since he had found the strange and beau�ful piece of wood that

long-ago day in the graveyard. He would be together forever with the voices that would make him remember, the

voices that would live inside him and, second by second, force him to live the lives of those who had lived beside

him, the lives that had been invisible to him. As the voices came for him, he had one final coherent thought.

There is no end.

Nobody was ever able to explain where Jaco and Marta had gone. Nobody was ever able to explain where the tree

that had destroyed the house had come from. Locals would not speak of it to outsiders. Because the farm was a

place that could not be understood, it was abandoned, the fields le� to the crows and the house to occasional

passers-by who happened upon the ruin with the great tree rising through it like the spear of some ancient god. The

ground was sca�ered with stones and bricks and bits of wood; and among them lay one par�cular piece of wood,

covered with intricate and unusual marks that looked almost as if they must be some sort of script, as if they must

tell a tale. It lay there, wai�ng for a curious hand to pick it up.

About ‘Skrik’

‘Skrik’ was an experiment in collabora�ve story telling. It started on my Facebook page. I shared an idea for

a story, wrote the first paragraph, and invited anybody who was interested to add their piece. It quickly

grew too big for a Facebook post, so I gave it a home on my website. What you have here is the complete

story. We hope you like it.

Contributors: Thomas Carnegie Jeffery; Morné Terblanche; Jonathan Price.

Cover art by Morné Terblanche

© 2014 Thomas Carnegie Jeffery, Morné Terblanche and Jonathan Price.

NEXUS PUBLISHING

www.thomascarnegiejeffery.com