In the Midst of Wolves Read online

  IN THE MIDST OF WOLVES

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  By Any Means (2014)

  IN THE MIDST OF WOLVES

  Kurt Ellis

  Published in 2019 by Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd

  Company Reg No 1953/000441/07

  The Estuaries, No 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, 7441, South Africa

  PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000, South Africa

  www.penguinrandomhouse.co.za

  © 2019 Kurt Ellis

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical or electronic, including photocopying and recording, or be stored in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.

  First edition, first printing 2019

  1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

  ISBN 978-1-4859-0389-5 (Print)

  ISBN 978-1-4859-0427-4 (ePub)

  Cover design by Fahiema Hallam

  Text design by Fahiema Hallam

  Set in Minion Pro

  For Melanie

  Homo homini lupus.

  Man is wolf to man.

  – LATIN PROVERB

  Contents

  1994

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Part 2

  1995

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  Chapter 96

  Chapter 97

  Chapter 98

  Chapter 99

  Chapter 100

  Chapter 101

  Epilogue

  Note

  Acknowledgements

  Other Books by

  1994

  The Durban heat was sweltering. It was like a thick soup, dense with humidity. That afternoon, it felt as if someone had taken a large wooden spoon and stirred the air. It swirled around the boy’s head and hung on his shoulders. Each step and every movement was like dragging a dead weight around. His grey T-shirt stuck to his back and made him itch. In the distance, he could see darker grey clouds rolling in over the horizon like army tanks, threatening to open fire, unleashing a volley of raindrops.

  The rain on the east coast was never cold. It would be a welcome relief; a lukewarm shower to wash away the grime and sweat coating his skin.

  Nick Creed, eleven years old and barefoot, grabbed the middle of the sugar-cane stalk and wedged his foot at the base of the stem. He pulled hard until it cracked. Milky fluid squirted from the splintered bark and sprayed his ankle. With a twist, he pulled the stalk free and dropped it on top of the four he had picked already.

  To his left, Junaid, Dillon and Brendon were doing the same. He looked to his right to see his nine-year-old brother Joshua losing the battle with his own stalk. Nick shook his head.

  He had wanted to leave him at home that day, but Josh had overheard Nick and his friends planning the trip to the sugar-cane fields. ‘I’ll tell Mummy if you don’t,’ he had threatened, and Nick had had no choice but to take him along.

  Ever since the first body had been found in the Newlands East bush, their mother had been paranoid about their safety. They were no longer allowed to play outside after dark, no longer allowed to walk to school on their own, and certainly they were not supposed to be in the sugar-cane fields. Not with Rumples on the loose. Rumples. What a stupid name, Nick thought. He had no idea where the name had come from.

  Two other corpses had been found in the bush and the sugar-cane fields since the discovery of that first boy’s body, with no arrests made. In fact, the community were meeting with the police at that moment in the town hall to air their frustrations. Angered by the lack of effort from the cops, they believed the brown skin of the victims meant the police didn’t give a damn. His mother Rebecca was there, leading the charge.

  Joshua was getting frustrated. He began to pull wildly at the stalk.

  ‘Stop that,’ Nick said, walking over. ‘You’re going to cut yourself on the bark. Let me do it.’

  He tried to take hold of the shoot but Joshua pulled it away from him. ‘Leave it! It’s mine.’

  ‘I’m trying to help you.’

  ‘I can do it.’

  There was a soft rumble in the near distance, warning shots from the clouds.

  ‘I’m not taking it from you, Joshua. I’m helping—’

  ‘I don’t need help. I can do it.’

  The rumble became louder. It wasn’t the growl of fresh precipitation, Nick realised, but that of a motor engine.

  ‘Shhh.’ Nick clasped his hand over his brother’s mouth. The vehicle was closing in. ‘Huletts!’ he called out to his friends.

  Upon hearing the warning, the boys to his left ran into the thicket, crashing through the stalks. But Nick and Joshua didn’t have time to run. Nick threw himself into the sugar cane and pulled his brother down into the black soil with him.

  ‘Shut up,’ he ordered.

  They lay hidden among the sweet brown stalks. His heart raced with fear, and with excitement. The risk of being caught by the workers of the Huletts sugar company on their patrols was part of the fun of stealing sugar cane.

  Every boy and girl in Newlands East knew the stories of what would happen to you if you were caught. For each internode of cane found on you, they’d give you o
ne strike with a sjambok. Nick had never met anyone who had actually been caught though, but he didn’t doubt the truth of these stories.

  On two previous occasions, Nick and his friends had almost been caught themselves. Thankfully, the old, rattling engines of the Isuzu trucks had been loud enough to give them ample warning of Huletts’ presence, and they’d had enough time to escape, laughing as they ran.

  But not that day.

  It occurred to Nick that this wasn’t the sound of a truck engine he heard around the corner, but that of a car. The Huletts sugar company patrolled the fields on the back of trucks, with sticks and sjamboks. Not in cars. The motor vehicle came into view between the green stalks.

  Nick felt danger crawling over his skin like ants. He slunk back an inch or two on his belly.

  The car stopped right in front of them. Nick froze where he lay, his belly flat on the dark soil. With his finger to his lips, he gestured to Josh. Thankfully, his brother understood and remained silent.

  The car was an old white Ford Escort. The back left tyre had come to a halt just to the left of Nick’s head, within arm’s reach.

  He heard the car door opening and the suspension of the vehicle protesting as someone stepped out. The engine was left idling. Earth crunched underfoot as the driver’s Nike takkies came into view. A rusted creak of hinges as the boot lid was opened. A man groaned loudly: the sound of someone picking up a weight. His feet turned and he began to approach Nick and Josh.

  The temptation to creep an inch or two further back tugged at him, but Nick resisted. The man let out another grunt.

  Silence. Then a crash. Nick looked at Joshua, who had buried his face in the dirt. Good, he thought. Don’t look.

  Nick turned his head to see what the man had dumped. A face looked back at him. The face of a boy, with cold, vacant eyes. Dead eyes. He wore a white T-shirt with red shorts and orange underwear that were bunched between his knees and ankles. Nick’s throat was dry but he dared not swallow. Slowly, he turned his face away from the corpse and back to the pair of Nikes in front of him. They had not moved. The man was just standing there.

  Nick was struggling to breathe. He realised that he was holding his breath. As softly as he could, he inhaled slowly but a speck of grime got sucked into his nostril. It irritated his nose and willed him to sneeze. Clamping his teeth together, he fought that urge.

  Hot tears streamed down his cheeks. Just when Nick thought he couldn’t fight it any longer, the man turned and walked back to the car. The suspension groaned once more and the door slammed shut.

  There was a grind of metal on metal as the driver forced the car into gear and it began to creep forward. Nick finally allowed himself to breathe freely.

  As the car moved away, Nick realised who he had just encountered. That was Rumples. It had to be.

  He looked again at the dead eyes of the boy to his right. He was about Joshua’s age. The victim could so easily have been his baby brother. Tomorrow, it might be.

  ‘Keep your eyes closed and don’t move,’ he whispered.

  With new courage, he leopard-crawled out of the safety of the sugar-cane stalks and popped his head out into the open. Exposed.

  A cloud of reddish dust was kicked up by the rear tyres of the car, but not enough to hide the licence-plate number. ND677233. Nick memorised it.

  Part 1

  ‘Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster.’ – FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

  1

  2019

  Monday, 10 June

  Lorraine heard the scratching outside her door just after 1 a.m. The sound of sharp fingernails digging into the wood was soft, but in the early-morning stillness of her flat in Ennerdale, south of Johannesburg, it sounded like the first rumblings of thunder.

  Outside her apartment and on the streets below, the silence was shattered by the wild barking of dogs, both stray and owned. A broken harmony of canine warnings carried upwards by the bitter winter wind. She could hear the fear in their yapping. Perhaps they too could smell her terror.

  She sat rigid in her bed, her back resting against the cold wall, her fingers gripping the comforter so tightly to her chin that they felt numb. Light seeped in through a crack under the bedroom door.

  Since the previous week, she had been sleeping with the lounge light on. Ever since the noises started. Ever since It had first come. This evening, It had returned. She was convinced she had seen Its shadow breaking the cut of light beneath her door a minute earlier. A quick shadow. If she had blinked at that moment, she would have missed It. But she hadn’t blinked. She had seen It. It was there. Right there.

  The barking outside had become more agitated. Her block of flats, the only apartment building in the road, loomed over the other houses.

  The image of the small yellow house where she had lived her entire life flashed in her head. Why did I leave the house in Orange Farm? Why did I have to be so damn pig-headed? She had thought she was better than that house. She’d wanted her independence and freedom from her controlling mother. She was eighteen years old and out of school. Old enough to vote and drink. The world was open and available to her. The partying, the boys, the good times. But this world also had nightmares and shadows to offer.

  ‘Hey, wena!’ A man’s voice shouted in annoyance from the darkness outside. ‘Voetsek, man!’ he scolded the dogs.

  It was the old man from across the street. The one who fixed cars in his driveway and who greeted her warmly whenever the taxi dropped her off in front of his house.

  The dogs continued to bark. ‘Thula, damn it!’ he yelled. ‘Shut up.’

  Lorraine wanted to cry out to him for help, but her voice was trapped in her tightening throat. She could barely move. She looked from the door to her cellphone charging on the dressing table beside her bed. The black cord was like a long animal tail. It was no more than a lean and a stretch away, but there may as well have been an ocean’s breadth between her bed and the table.

  If she could just reach it, she could call someone for help – like Clifton. Clifton, who had howled with laughter when she’d told him two days ago that she was being haunted by something. Maybe a tokoloshe. He’d told her she was being a paranoid and acting like a scared little girl.

  But she wasn’t. Sweat coated her face, despite the cold. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she listened. Then silence once more. The break in the slip of light was like an eclipse. She heard the scratching on the door panels again. The knob started to turn. The door began to creak open. Then … nothing.

  She saw no shadow enter the room, but she could smell It.

  The stench of decay. Like the smell of the small, polluted river near her mother’s home in Orange Farm. Mummy. A cold, tiny hand with strong fingers grabbed her ankle. It was enough to loosen her throat and return her voice to her.

  Lorraine screamed. Only the dogs answered.

  2

  Nicholas Gabriel Creed sat straight up in his bed, gasping for breath. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t … He managed to suck in a chestful of air. Then another, bigger breath. So big that his lungs hurt. Swallowing hard, he pushed himself up from the bed and swung his legs over the edge. His pillow was damp and cold from sweat. Beads of perspiration meandered from his temples over his cheeks. More rivulets slipped down his forehead; the salty drops burnt his eyes. He buried his face in his hands and roughly wiped off the moisture.

  He checked the time on his phone beside his bed. 04:33. Just under three hours of sleep – the most sleep he had managed in a single night for months. His head was heavy and full, and he knew the headache would soon arrive.

  He stank of whisky, marijuana and tobacco. There was a slight shift of weight in the bed behind him. Lucy, or Cody … or was it Tiffany? Whatever her name was, the sleeping girl had turned her head on the pillow. The heater in the corner was still on and the covers had been flung aside in the night.

  Like Creed, she was naked. She was lying on her stomac
h, her round, twenty-something buttocks exposed. She was a beauty. Definitely worth her fee for the evening. He took one more deep breath, then got to his feet.

  The floor ebbed gently beneath him. He was still drunk. Warily, he trudged to the bedroom door, opened it quietly and stepped into the passage. Two sets of eyes were waiting for him.

  The scratching of claws on the wooden floor as his dogs, Shankly and Paisley, scrambled to their feet at the approach of their master. They looked at him, hoping to be petted, and he obliged by rubbing their heads.

  He made his way down the passage with the dogs at his heels, one a Jack Russell, the other a mongrel. Past the locked door of his second bedroom on the left; further down, and past a third bedroom on the right. To his left was a guest bathroom and the kitchen.

  He turned right at the end of the passage into the lounge, his entrance greeted by three more pairs of eyes. Three more dogs stirred as he plopped onto the couch.

  Creed reached for the remote on the coffee table and turned the channel to the Crime and Investigation Network. It was a rebroadcast of an episode he had seen many times before: the re-enactment of how the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit tracked down the American serial killer Alain Joe Mooney.

  The show had been on repeat every few hours over the entire weekend. The previous Friday, Mooney had managed a daring escape from the psychiatric hospital in which he was supposed to spend the rest of his days.

  Creed placed the remote back on the table. He picked up his lighter and lit the ready-rolled joint beside it. The flame illuminated the entire room and he inhaled deeply. His heart finally slowed to a regular, steady beat.

  ‘That’s what I see, Red,’ the man on screen said to the other, in a jarring attempt at a South African accent.

  ‘Signs of a split personality. This unsub has multiple personality disorder. I’m sure of it.’

  As he slowly expelled the smoke from his lungs, Creed said to the dogs around him, ‘That’s a load of bullshit.’

  At the sound of his voice, a small, three-legged mutt waddled up to him. ‘I never said that, Tripod. Firstly, it’s dissociative identity disorder. No one calls it multiple personality disorder any more. And we didn’t know or suspect that Mooney had that disorder. And that fucking accent? I don’t sound like that, do I?’