Beachfront Starter Home, Good Bones

Credit: Matt Keeson Photography
https://mattkeesonphotography.wordpre...

My winning entry for Bloody Parchment 2016.

Beachfront Starter Home, Good Bones

No one thought it was weird when the realtors started buying out warehouses and empty shops in the scummier part of Observatory, down towards Salt River.
My brother Jason said it was about time. Gentrification was the way forward. Half the suburb was lousy with students, and everyone knows money attracts money. It didn’t seem right to me, but he just said, “Yeah, and what about the Biscuit Mill?”
I left him watching TV, went to the fridge and poured myself another glass of milk. Things were getting pretty heated in my guts. My mom hated it when I belched or gulped milk.
“Service delivery protests in the small intestine,” I told her in my newscaster’s voice.
When I asked her what she thought about the people buying up all that property, she said it’d be Cape Town’s first dedicated red-light district. They’d ship in women from Albania and the Ukraine and deposit them in glass-fronted display cases up and down Lower Main.
“I don’t think that’s on the agenda for this financial year, Mom,” I said, and she shooed me away with a hand-knitted tea cosy.
I met Dad for dinner at an Indian place, and he said it was bound to be a big property name moving in, buying out all the little guys to put up huge residential complexes. He asked who the buyers were, but their trademark was just a black crab in a pentagon on a white background.
“Why are you so interested in this anyway, Kat?” he asked. “I thought you were planning on a literature major.”
Mom met him in Botswana but they fell out of love. I saw him for dinner only once a month, but even his warm smile and my butter garlic naan couldn’t distract me. There was something weird about the crab people and I had to know what it was.
So, on a warm April afternoon, I left Jason in front of Top Gear and set off down Station Road. I had a banana in one pocket and mace in the other one. I went barefoot. We lived on the south side of the road, and no estate agent in crab gear had come to ask about our single-storey cottage with a red stoep. If they did I’d beat them off with one of the knobkerries that stood in a bucket by the front door.
At the robots I hung a left and started down Lower Main. The crab signs started showing up right away. They’d bought the whole block where the old Italian guy used to make pancakes, and the glass was papered over from the inside. It was always quieter this side of Station Road, but I didn’t remember it being this quiet. The bottle store was shut down too, and there were only one or two cars parked the length of the street. Something moved up in the second-floor windows of the bought-out block, but when I looked up it was gone.
I was beginning to wish I’d brought a knobkerrie.
As I walked, tar hot under my soles, I looked up at the warehouses. They were all shut up tight. I passed a rocking-horse manufacturer with a fading sign, a business on a corner offering home repairs, and a row of rolled-down sheet-metal shutters. The day had darkened imperceptibly until nothing cast a shadow, and the buildings hunched grimly in the flat grey light.
The names of companies occupying the warehouses grew stranger. Here was Rend Inc, in flaking red paint, and Shub-Niggurath and Sons, and half-legible signs in weirder scripts like Cyrillic. The suburb I’d grown up in had become strange to me, and when I turned to look back, the Station Road intersection was a distant twinkle of red and green lights. How had I come so far?
Cold and clammy in shorts and T-shirt, I went as far as the next road to the right, and looked down towards Malta Road and the train tracks. Either the odd light was messing with my eyes, or this road was also a lot longer than it should have been. A newspaper headline strapped to a streetlight read, in big bold letters, THE ADVENT IS NIGH. Nerves made my mouth dry and my palms itchy. I turned quickly and hurried back up the road, wincing as I trod on a sharp stone. The warehouses crowded in, and the road seemed to narrow. I nearly died from relief when I heard people laughing. Five or six primary-school kids had found a stretch of whitewashed wall and were spray-painting it, passing the can from hand to hand. They wore the grey pants and skirts and white shirts of any local school, and their chatter was normal and safe. I felt a bit silly for freaking out.
I slowed down as I went past, to show the sullen buildings they didn’t frighten me. It took me a moment to notice the children had fallen silent. The back of my neck prickled and I looked at the wall out of the corner of my eye.

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD
AND THE WORD WAS WITH GOD
AND THE WORD WAS

The kids stood staring up at their work, dead still. Then they turned around to face me.
Skin had grown over the places where their eyes used to be. The eyeballs twitched and rolled blindly underneath. They opened their mouths, and they were red Cheshire grins that split each face from ear to ear, full of spines.
My throat clamped shut with fright and I pushed off into a staggering run. It was dream-running, weak, disjointed, the clotted air resisting at every step. At the moment I thought I would collapse, a car hooter blasted like the last trump, and I was standing bang in the middle of the Station Road intersection. The van behind me hooted again, angrily, and I tottered onto the pavement. There was no sign of mutant schoolchildren, and as I watched three cars came up Lower Main and drove past me, their occupants quite unremarkable.
“You okay, girlie?”
It was Colin, resident Obs bergie, his crusty beanie pulled low on his forehead. His eyes were scrunched up against the sun, and his sour wine smell set my mind at ease.
“Hi, Colin,” I said. “Yeah, I don’t know, something weird going on down Lower Main.”
We both looked down the road. There was nothing weird about it now. A pair of factory workers strolled down the way I’d gone, and cars were coming and going.
“Weird how?” asked Colin, but I couldn’t tell him. I decided I was feverish, muttered apologies, and headed home.
My guts were on fire. I screwed the top off a bottle of milk and chugged like a thirsty first-year on jug night. Mom caught me at it and got dramatic.
“Really, Kat, we must take you to see a doctor. A gastroenterologist. It could be an ulcer.”
“Mom, you know they checked last time and it wasn’t! It’s just—thing—dyspepsia.”
“Well, it’s not better. And this thing you do with the milk, it’s... ugh.”
I rolled my eyes, poured myself a tall glass and went to my room. I switched on my PC and went online, trying not to think of skinned-over eyeballs and gaping maws. I was going to make bloody sure I’d hallucinated that afternoon’s events, and Google Maps was going to help me. It was simple: either Shub-Niggurath and Sons was plying a grisly trade on Lower Main, flanked by weirder signs and sigils, or I was running a temperature.
Loading, loading, loading. There was the map of Obs, seen from above. Station Road, and just there, my red stoep. Lower Main extended to meet Malta, cutting right through a rough pentagon made by Durham, Victoria, Station, Liesbeek and Malta. The realtors housed their crab trademark in a little pentagon. I wondered if the correspondence was deliberate.
I went to street view, plonking down my avatar as close as I could to the place I thought I’d seen the children. I clicked hard and a little too quickly, swallowing my fear. Of course the image took forever to load, appearing in smeary blocks and snippets, but when it was complete there was nothing to see but a white wall. Of course, the Google car images were months or years old. I pivoted around. The rocking-horse sign was still there. As I skimmed further down the road, the signs stayed perfectly dull and ordinary: Faizel’s Workshop, South Peninsula Office Supplies. No peculiar names at all. Reassured and confident, I turned the image again for a last quick scan and stared right into the red mouth-wound of a blind child. Pale grub-like nubs or paws were frozen up close. The image was a silent scream.
“Jason!” I yelped, getting up so fast I knocked over my chair. “Jason!”
“What, Jesus,” he said, stamping in sleepy-eyed, but when he saw the image he grimaced. “The fuck is that?” His dark hair, Mom’s straight mop, flopped over his eyes. He was bigger than me, meaty, four years older, a software developer and still living at home.
“It’s real, and I saw five of them today up close on Lower Main. Those crab realtors are fucked up. I think they’re doing something weird to the whole area down there.”
We had a special sibling relationship. He gave me kak when I couldn’t find my browser or lost a file, but when I told him things for real, he listened.
He sat down at my computer and took a look at the hideous thing from different angles.
“It’s dangerous?” he asked.
“What does it fucking look like?”
“Chill out, chill out.” He leaned in closer. “Fucked up,” he murmured.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Let me think about it.” He pushed his hair out of his face and pursed his lips. “Don’t tell Mom. She won’t get it.”
When he went to bed, so did I. I lay in the dark, wide awake, watching the light on my computer tower blink red. The unreality of it tugged at me. I tongued it like the sucking raw gum of a lost tooth.
At some point in the endless night, I heard a scraping and pulled aside the curtain over my bed. A handsome young realtor stood in the dark, feet in the flowerbed below my window, looking down at me. A strange calm suffused me. He put one hand on the glass, poised on the fingertips, and pressed his forehead against the window. His body heat gave him a murky halo. The burglar bars were on the inside, and chopped his face into quarters.
“A good investment,” he said, clearly. “It’s a good investment. Healthy interest rates. Healthy.”
His fingers grew long, curved claws, and began a rhythmic tapping.
“Adjustable rate mortgage,” whispered the realtor, pleadingly. “Fair market value. Fair. Fair.”
Two soft pops, a few seconds apart, marked the protrusion from his eye-sockets of glistening crab claws, which inscribed neat circles on the glass.
“Right of ingress. In...gress. Ingrrress.”
For minutes, or hours, he whispered jargon at me and scratched thin white patterns onto my bedroom window. At some juncture, I opened my eyes, and it was morning and my window was entirely scratch free.
Jason came in carrying a plate of scrambled eggs and a mug of coffee.
“Up,” he said. “Eat. We’re going back to take another look.”
“Jason, I can’t. I really don’t think I can.”
“If this is real, it’s serious shit, Kat. We have to know what we’re up against.”
I nearly moaned with fear.
“I already know! It’s horrible. It’s awful. It’ll drive you mad.”
“Look, we won’t go far, okay? Just to the first or second street. I want to see what happens if there’s two of us.”
Somehow he persuaded me. This time I kitted up in my springy running shoes, jeans, T-shirt and a dark anorak. I took my mace, a few energy bars and the stoutest knobkerrie in the bucket. It was one of Dad’s, carved and ferocious. I smacked it into my palm and tried to work up some courage.
I walked out into the light of day feeling seriously dumb and post-hysterical. Jason had on his huge clumping skater shoes and his red Arsenal shirt. Under its long tails, his knife was tucked into his pants. He was a bit ridiculous, but I felt safer with him. Anyway, I felt the onset of the calm certainty that Lower Main would just be Lower Main, bland, treeless, just pale, semi-detached houses and frowning offices. Jason wouldn’t laugh, but I’d feel silly, and everything would be all right.
Above Station, Obs was thronged with people getting their morning cappuccinos. Below, it was bright, flat and silent. The spray-painted wall was clean again. Someone had nailed up a Crab Realty sign right in the middle of it.
“Let’s go down to Gandalf’s, and if there’s nothing we’ll come straight back,” said Jason. He was relaxed and easy, swinging his arms as he walked.
We passed a couple going in the opposite direction. The sky darkened.
“Jason,” I hissed.
“Shit.”
Our shadows dried up and vanished. My hand was slippery with sweat on the knobkerrie.
“Katlego? What are you doing this side, girlie?”
It was Colin. He sat in the corner of a stoep piled with discarded planks and rubble, his beanie tugged down almost to his nose.
“Colin, man,” I said, my voice cracking a bit, “I don’t think it’s safe down here, hey. You should probably go back up by Stones and Armchair there.”
Colin winced, knees clicking as he pushed himself up. As he came towards us, I smelled his stink, but it wasn’t papsak anymore. Now he stank of brine and tar.
“Not safe? Fokken right it’s not safe. Not safe for you.” His hand came up, dirty fingernails and knuckles bunching as he pulled at his beanie. Something swelled and pushed against the stained wool. He fumbled to free it, like an erection from a tight pair of jeans.
“Jesus, what—” I heard Jason say. Colin pulled the fleshy thing free and it was a thick stalk planted between his eyes, dragging his features towards the centre. Liberated from his hat, it sprouted into an arch and thrust out a glowing sac that bobbed and swayed.
“Look what the Lord has given me,” said Colin, advancing. “And He said unto them, Come, follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”
We ran blindly, bumping into each other, footsteps bouncing off the buildings. It was only when we looked back, found him gone, and stumbled to a halt, that we realised we’d run even deeper into crab territory. On our left, the goth club Gandalf’s was shut up tight, its walls the colour of old blood in the un-light. I turned and the old Bijou Theatre reared over me, two portholes cut into its walls under the angular red letters: BIJOU. The brown concrete façade gave the place the look of an abandoned castle, with strangely spaced cathedral windows, crevices, ledges and long dark stains.
“Okay, we can find another way back,” Jason was saying, testing the point of his knife with shaking hands. “Or maybe we should go straight down to Malta Road and get into Salt River. Lots of people round there. Like by the train station.”
I grabbed his shoulder and twisted him to face the side street that ran east past the theatre, to show him the gang of eyeless kids strolling up to meet us. They crept out of holes and corners. We were quickly surrounded. My guts boiled and churned; they were chivvying us towards the theatre. The doors swung open and we hurried through into the noisome dark.
In the gloom, I could make out the high-ceilinged foyer. It had been repurposed as an art gallery after the theatre had shut down, and odd bits of waste and rusted metal had been piled and strung up everywhere. My scalp felt as tight as a shower cap and my back was wet with sweat.
“Up the stairs,” I choked out, and we jinked right and up. Nothing, not even mutant children, could force me into the hollow black interior of the theatre proper.
“Look for a fire escape,” Jason said, panting.
We came out into a long windowless hall, grey-lit and bare with a linoleum floor in hospital checks. A child’s giggle floated up the stairs behind us, and we fled. Soon another corridor crossed ours. I couldn’t see where either one ended.
“Way too big...” I whispered.
“Shh!”
There was a flopping, flapping sound, like wet washing being slapped on the linoleum, and a gurgling breath. It cut off with a retch almost like a bark, and resumed its liquid grind. In absolute silent terror, we ducked down against the wall and kept very, very still. The sounds intensified, and then a blunt muzzle of a head came into view, vaguely human, eyes skinned over and jaw pushed grotesquely out. The thing heaved and flopped forward. Its hands had fused with its sides, and its elbows poked out like flippers. It heaved again and we saw the feet, bloodily merged into a kind of tail. Barking and spasming, it continued its wormlike progress down the corridor, leaving a trail of pinkish froth and a fishy stench.
We crept away, following its back-trail without a word’s consultation. Further from the seal-man was better.
“I don’t think we’re going to find a fire escape,” I whispered. “I don’t think this is a real place anymore.”
“Shut up,” said Jason. His eyes were wide and staring. “Shut up, shut up.”
Then there was a fire escape sign, the white stick-man on green with a downward arrow. Jason went for it with the heavy steps of a sleepwalker.
“Wait,” I said, “wait.”
The sign hung skew, marked with bloody fingerprints. Someone had moved it. Jason pushed through the door and I followed him, my throat and stomach on fire.
The stink of rotting fish hit us like a wall. We saw four white bathtubs, evenly spaced on the floor, and a drift of empty tins filled one half of the room to the ceiling. Each tub was filled to the brim with red. My blurry brain recognised the tins as Lucky Star pilchards in tomato sauce—every single one of them—the red background with thin yellow stripes.
“What is...what...” slurred Jason, and I knew he’d lost his grip on sanity. I hefted Dad’s knobkerrie in my hand and swallowed the vomit rising in my throat. If Jason couldn’t look after himself, I’d have to protect him.
Noticing a flight of stairs at the back of the room, I dragged my brother that way. As we passed the first tub, a red-slimed figure with a woman’s shape reared out of the decomposing pilchards. It appeared to have been partially eaten. I turned my brother’s face away until her tortured limbs and spine subsided, then hustled him past and up the stairs.
We came out on the flat rooftop of the Bijou. It had grown immensely in height, and the whole suburb was laid out beneath us. I could see the train tracks, the Foreshore, the brooding sea.
The sky had gone black as night, and billowing greenish storm clouds massed overhead, circling. Holding Jason by the hand, I looked out over the district. The wind gusted and nearly knocked me off my feet, and all along the lines of the pentagon I’d traced on Google Maps sprang up green flames, lit by crab people. The sea frothed with whitecaps. On the roof with us stood a ring of robed realtors. They ignored us, stoking a webbed and latticed brazier with coals and powders. Over the roaring wind I heard snatches of chanting, “Ia ia... fhtagn...”
Then, all together: “In the beginning was the Word...”
I pulled Jason closer, my intestines tied in acid-bathed knots, and watched the sea shrug its shoulders.
“...and the Word was with God...”
The waters heaved and a shape emerged, a shape...
“...and the Word was...!”
It stretched its manifold tentacles out over the foreshore, crushing cranes and snapping pylons and reducing warehouses to rubble.
His home had been prepared, and He came to claim right of ingress.