Shooting Butterflies (12 page)

The dream had been so real.

He had been back there, reliving it once again.

He sniffed the air and couldn't smell horses.

He listened.

Silence.

He took a moment to move from his nightmare back into reality as he looked around. He was in his chair, the TV station had ended for the night and black and white snow filled the screen. There was no sound. Not even static came from the small box in the corner. No champagne frogs croaked in the dam. No jackals called in the distance.

Something else had woken him.

It was too quiet.

He stood up, and his forgotten trophies fell to the floor. He walked to the window. It was dark outside when he moved the curtain. He ran his hands over his face and down his chest, patting his pocket to look for his tobacco pouch.

He took a little and slipped it into his mouth.

The familiar action of chewing his tobacco calmed him, slowed his racing blood. He moved his head from side to side, stretching it out. His neck made an unhealthy clicking sound, loud in the stillness of the night.

It had been a few years since he'd had that particular nightmare, although his sleep was constantly plagued with vivid nightmares of other times.

At first when he was transferred from the Grey Scouts to the PSYOPS unit, he'd had that day replay itself in his head every night. Followed by the bitter disappointment he'd seen in Mike's eyes. The total horror in Nick's and Enoch's eyes at what he'd done to the dead
ters.

But PSYOPS had sorted all that out, and made him feel special.

Different.

Needed.

Gradually, the day that forced the memories to return, his last day as a Grey Scout, faded into oblivion, and was replaced with a recurring nightmare of the day they had found Impendla cocooned in the tree. Only in his nightmare it was the voice of the dead and bloodied Impendla who called out to him. Begged him for help. Some nights it would be other faces, others he'd killed and tortured during the bush war who called out to him, but he never woke up startled from those dreams. He felt nothing for those people. They were just black
kaffirs
whose path of death and destruction had crossed over with his.

They were not his friends. He cared about his dreams when he dreamed of Impendla.

The others were just a waste of a peaceful night's rest.

The power the
sangoma
had over the minds of the majority of the black population was incredible. Just a short time ago, before the new Zimbabwe, he'd preyed on that fear, duplicating the ritual, the
sangoma
's dark magic to ensure the black population were scared, were controllable.

Once he'd remembered the ritual.

Now that he remembered, he never wanted to forget again.

He needed to make up for his memory blank, for the time he did forget and for not helping Impendla earlier.

But none of his sacrifices had helped Impendla.

Sure, they had kept the black population from misbehaving at the time, but it hadn't eased the sorrow of the dead children from his childhood.

He needed to silence the children in his head, who still called to him for help alongside Impendla.

Only when he'd got the ritual perfect would Impendla's soul be saved. Only when he found Tara Wright would it be completed.

He knew it wasn't perfect yet, despite all the practice he'd had during his PSYOPS years.

The butterfly held the secret to unlocking Impendla's cocoon … she could help him.

One butterfly.

He needed one butterfly on the edge of maturity to complete the ritual …

He frowned.

Tara Wright was out of his reach for the moment.

Perhaps he could find another girl with blonde hair and deep blue eyes.

For some reason, there were no children who lived on his farm. The workers all chose not to live with their children. It was a strange set-up, but he thought it was just as well, because if too many children were taken in one area, suspicions might begin to turn to why the
sangoma
was doing so many ritual killings, and the real
sangoma
might come looking for who was really responsible. He shuddered
at he thought of a real
Karoi
visiting him. As an adult he was more afraid than he'd been as an innocent child.

He knew that in most tribal trust lands where he had once been active as a PSYOPS operative, the people now kept their children watched closely. No child herded the goats and cattle alone anymore. No child went unaccompanied, and even the newer white-influenced practice of having the children sleep in their own bedroom had quickly stopped. People had gone back to their traditional sleeping arrangement of the family group in one large room. Everyone under the same roof.

Because of that, he would need to go further if he was to collect his butterflies.

Hunt in new territory.

But the trust lands didn't hold angels with blonde hair. Those were few and far between on the farmlands, too. He'd need to look in the cities.

He was due to go to South Africa to fetch his new Dorper rams for his breeding sheep. Perhaps he could kill two birds with one stone.

Once he had a blonde-haired, blue-eyed replacement for Tara, he'd see if his ritual would help Impendla's soul.

He peered into the darkness.

‘Shilo,' he called out. ‘You walking around out there?'

No answer.

Then he remembered he'd fired Shilo.

He had driven him away.

Anger burnt deep down in his stomach at the betrayal he'd felt.

Panic rose in his throat that he was now alone and would have to deal with many things that Shilo had said. And it was all starting again with the return of his nightmares.

He still couldn't quite believe what had happened. He'd trusted Shilo, and Shilo had let him down.

He shook his head as the darkness threatened to crush in on him.

It was Shilo's fault that his butterfly had got away. He had blamed himself, yet it turned out Shilo had been there and saved Tara from his trap against the fence line.

The gate had been opened and closed. Someone had let her and her herd of horses free.

It could only have been Shilo. Yet, when confronted, Shilo had never denied that he had been there. Instead he had started yelling at him that that he was in the wrong, not Shilo.

He was a monster.

He was
penga.

He thought of the tracks again. No other African on his farm had the skills or the strength and stamina to run in the bush, and to almost perfectly cover his tracks. When he'd happened upon the old footprints, deeply embedded into the mud near the river, Buffel had known.

Had known that those footprints belonged to Shilo. Known when they were made.

He remembered the first time he'd seen footprints like these, years ago, on their first mission together into Mozambique. Three sets of prints doubling back and stopping to watch him at the school. But only Riley had confronted him. He knew then that two other men had witnessed what he'd done.

He hadn't had to wait long to find out who.

From the five men left in the paratroopers, Shilo and Kwazi had been unable to look at him the next day when everyone was called together to tell the company that Sergeant Riley had died. He knew then that they had been the ones. They couldn't stand to be near the PSYOPS maniac.

So he'd insisted on having them with him constantly, arranged for them to become PSYOPS so he could keep an eye on them and keep them bound to him. They had learnt to serve their Captain above all else. They became part of 1st PSYOPS. They learnt that their motto of ‘
Tiri Tose
' – ‘we are together' – was forever. The acknowledgement that they were all responsible for what happened within the unit ran strongly within them. It was likely that ‘there
is no escape' became more of their motto than ‘we are together'. No one within PSYOPS would ever tell a soul about their work, as bringing shame to someone within your own company would bring shame to the whole unit.

They were brothers in arms.

You never spoke of what you had to do in the name of protecting your country. If you ever spoke about it, the others in the unit would hunt you down, and silence you.

The war had ended soon afterwards, only two and a bit years later, but by then Buffel knew that Kwazi was never going to be a problem to him and would never talk. He'd built up too much wealth that he didn't want to lose. He was a strong man mentally, clever, but his weakness was his wealth. Threaten that, and Kwazi would do whatever he was told.

But Shilo was different.

Silent. With no family, no wealth. He knew with certainty that Shilo had to be kept close to him, because Shilo possessed a moral compass bigger than that on a Portuguese exploring vessel, and he'd always shown compassion in the end. He was a natural born hero.

If there was ever a war commission for reconciliation, Buffel suspected that Shilo would be the troopie talking and helping to ease the masses. Calming the people, making things seem right when they were wrong.

Shilo was now a loose cannon, because Buffel had tossed him out into the world in a temper tantrum that even a two-year-old would find it hard to rival.

He'd made a huge mistake making Shilo leave.

But Shilo had wanted to leave.

Buffel shook his head at his own confusion, not sure where the truth was. He walked to his television and turned the knob slowly to the off position. The loud click in the quiet night was foreign and intrusive. In the dark he made his way to his bedroom.

He dragged an old rucksack and his duffel bag out the cupboard and began packing.

He had work to do if was going to save Impendla's soul.

But first he needed to track down Shilo, and silence him forever, because unlike the military massacres that were forgiven under the new regime that now ran Zimbabwe, leaving a credible witness to his shooting of two civilians was a different kettle of fish.

Only after that could he again search for the butterfly Tara Wright, with the white hair, whose mother had taken her from Zimbabwe, and moved her into South Africa.

He would find her.

He would save Impendla.

7

Shilo's Freedom

Nyamandhlovu, Zimbabwe

1982

Shilo walked into the train station. Self-consciously he patted the dust from his tatty blue overalls, and curled his toes inwards in an attempt to hide that he wore no shoes. He carried no luggage, and sported a bruised eye that bulged slightly outwards, but he was smiling.

He was emerging after hiding in the bush for three weeks, since the day
Baas
Buffel Kirchman Potgieter had fired him. Thrown him his wages on the dry
goosie
sand and turned his back on him. The PSYOPS Captain had had enough of his black paratrooper being underfoot.

When the unit was being disbanded, it had been his idea to stick to Buffel for a while, to make sure that he didn't continue his killings in his civilian life. He thought that perhaps when they returned to his farm and continued with a normal life that the killings would be over. Kwazi had disagreed, his thoughts were that Buffel had gone
penga
and would continue the killings and the ritual.

Kwazi had been right.

But it had only started after almost a year, with the shooting of the brothers.

Only after Buffel's fated tea with his neighbour's wife Maggie and the child Tara.
Imbodla.
The child with the golden hair.

It was as if having the youngster so near him had rekindled a deep violent urge. Only luck had allowed Shilo to save the girl that first day. Keeping Buffel away a second time, when Gabe had called to say they would be at the farm paying their respects and their goodbyes, had been torture.

He'd sabotaged Buffel twice before he was found out.

He was lucky he was just fired, and not dead.

Buffel had concealed his rage and anger well from the police who visited, and from the community as he attended the funerals of those same men he'd killed.

From everyone except Shilo.

Shilo had seen the beast re-emerging, and had been terrified he wouldn't be able to help the next time he decided to kill a child.

Getting away was a bittersweet freedom.

Now that he was fired, there was no reason to hang around Buffel.

Now that he was fired, there was no way for him to stop Buffel going after more children.

Now that he was fired, he was free.

He cursed that he hadn't covered his face when he'd had to reveal himself to Tara Wright. He realised afterwards how much the promise he'd asked the young Tara to make would plague her and how hard the secret would be to keep.

Being around Buffel put Shilo in more danger than not being around him for the time being, so he'd been trying to leave ever since. He had tried.

He'd resigned.

Buffel had not accepted it.

They had quarrelled.

He had left in the night. Gone into the bush, and only emerging once he hit the tarmac of the main road that could be walked
on with very little sign of his presence. He had almost reached the town siding, where he had hoped to catch a train and leave.

But Buffel had driven up next to him in his
bakkie
, and told him to get in the back. His home was with Buffel.

He'd told Buffel that his mother had died and he needed to go to her funeral. Buffel said she'd died during the attack on Shilo Mission at the start of the war. Buffel's memory was longer than the wiry hair on his beard. Buffel had seen through his excuses, pressing him as to why he suddenly wanted to leave.

Shilo closed his eyes at the torment when he realised that Buffel genuinely didn't want him to go, but he couldn't work out why.

Buffel lacked the basic emotions of someone who could be a friend. Shilo wondered if in some small way, Buffel didn't want to be alone with what he'd become. Perhaps deep down he couldn't live with what he'd done, and having Shilo around helped him. Perhaps he felt that, still being with someone from his PSYOPS unit who shared the guilt of war crimes, he could live with what he had done.