Throwing the bones…
Of course I laughed. “It`s that skeleton you keep in the closet, Joan, give it a day or two, he`ll be sleeping on your bed.”
Although this happened some five years back, the horror of my story still hangs heavily on my mind. I was delighted when my sister in the UK told me she was paying me a visit. Although she had come to Africa before, that was in Zambia and at last she was coming to the land of sunshine, South Africa.
She turned to me, “I want to go in and get my fortune read, Geoff… Please?” To tell the truth I wasn`t at all keen. “It`s getting late lovey, and we have to be at the airport two hours before the departure.” I said, hoping to put her off.“But…” Then she saw a strange array of packets, potions and paraphernalia in the shop window. Among them a small hessian bag containing “the bones, all ready for throwing”. Of course, she just had to have them, just as they were and going cheap for R50, she popped it in her handbag and we set off for home, almost.I couldn`t find my car! Even though I had made a careful note regarding its location, it just wasn`t there any more? Being elderly didn`t help, and asking around made things even more frustrating. “I could have sworn I left it to the right of that fish-and-chip shop over there.” Everyone shook their head thinking I had lost my marbles. “It’s a silver Toyota Yaris with the number plate…”
A kid of seven or eight found it eventually, tucked well out of sight outside a barber shop. I tipped the kid handsomely.
Getting home, Joan completed her packing and without opening the hessian bag containing the set of bones, threw the package into her suitcase without giving it another thought. As always, OR Tambo was awash with overseas visitors either arriving or departing, and I sat with my sister waiting for the announcement of her waiting room for the departure to be announced. Instead, they called her name, “Ms Joan Howard on Flight SAA 768 to customs counter please.”
After a battle with a few members of the airport staff, we eventually found the customs counter and made an enquiry. “Ah yes, Ms Howard, come through please, we have found a suspect article in your baggage that we would like you to identify.”
There was Joan`s sleek new multicoloured suitcase behind an X-ray machine, now focussed on a small group of unidentifiable rubbish… Those bones! All three of us stared at the items, seven in all. A drumstick chicken bone, three pebbles, a four-inch nail, one coin and what looked like a key ring when Joan made the announcement, “Oh! Those must be what`s in that bag of bones I bought this afternoon in Soweto.” We all roared with laughter of course, and the customs officials apologised profusely, “Sorry about that ma`am, but we can`t be too careful.”
We said our goodbyes and Joan went through to the departure lounge, not knowing that she would encounter a series of unexplainable calamities that started with the plane, a Boeing 767, being delayed for three hours with engine trouble.
I had been home two hours when she phoned. “I`m still here Geoff, the plane has engine trouble…” Well, it seems that Joan got to Heathrow eventually, but Uncle Jack who was to pick her up was delayed, leaving my sister high and dry for over five hours in the freezing cold terminal.
Getting home again after a month’s vacation was pure joy, until she inserted the Yale key in the lock and tried to turn… No joy. The lock was jammed and wouldn`t move. An hour went by before a locksmith was found and she was able to enter her house at last! This was strange, because the lock had never given trouble before. What was more than strange happened shortly after Joan picked up her dog, Ruff from his stay in a local kennel.
Of course Ruff was delighted to see his mistress again and bounded into the house sniffing every nook and cranny before settling down. Come night time, the dog slept in his mistress’ room on a specially prepared bed made for him in the corner. Tonight, for some reason, Ruff would not even enter the room. He stood in the doorway cowling, hackles up and growling. Joan made an attempt at dragging him into the bedroom by the collar. Ruff tore himself away and ran downstairs in apparent terror. That’s when Joan lifted to phone and called me.
“It`s Ruff, Geoff, I don`t know what’s got into him, but he just won’t go in my bedroom.”
“Heavens no, Geoff!” she replied. “He won`t come near my bedroom, not even for a piece of raw sausage, he sleeps down in the kitchen now.” “Ah well, it’s probably healthier for you that way lovey. So everything is all back to normal now?” There was a slight pause then, and I thought Joan had gone off the line. “You there, sis?” I called.
“Yeah Geoff, but… but there is something else now.”
“Something else? How do you mean?”
“There`s a smell,” she said abruptly.
“A smell?”
“Yes, coming from my bedroom. It’s… er, it’s getting worse.”
I thought this mighty peculiar. First the dog, and now a smell. “What kind of smell?” I enquired.
“Death.”
“What?”
“It`s that awful smell when something dies,” she said.
“Oh sis, no… Really?”
“It`s awful, I can`t sleep in there anymore, I am in the spare room and you know how uncomfortable that bed is.”
“Have you looked for something under the bed in your room?”
“How do you mean?”
“A mouse perhaps died, or a rat. I dunno love, it must be something.”
At that moment for some obscure reason I thought about that tiny hessian bag that contained the bones that Joan had purchased. “You don’t think it might be…” I began,
Joan finished my sentence, “Those bloody bones, especially that chicken one, perhaps there was still meat on it and…”
“Get rid of them love, take them somewhere, hide them outside… Er, anywhere. Leave them in a bus. Yes, that’s a good idea.”
“In a bus?”
“Yes,” I said, thinking about it quite deeply. “Just leave them tucked down the back of the seat. No one will notice, and then get off at the next stop.”
Two days later I was watching BBC World News on the television. It was a news flash that chilled my spine to the core.
“Horrific crash of a London Transport Number 84 Bus headed for Barnet kills all twenty passengers, plus the driver and conductor. Safety probe proceeding.”
I wept.
