a sharp jolt, it was gone.
Brent wasn’t moving towards me any more. He was floating, his arms and legs spread-eagled and his eyes frozen open in shock.
I breathed in and out and in, before the water-muffled screaming that always woke me from this nightmare filled my ears.
Sunlight pierced the darkness of the dream as I forced my eyelids open angrily. I knew I should expect the nightmare. It had been happening for years now, but it always started so happily, and it was the only way I could remember what my adored older half-brother had looked like.
It took me a few moments to remember where I was. The unfamiliar smell of lavender and mothballs and the alien sound of a cockerel crowing jogged my exhausted mind. The Van Heerden’s, Dad’s oldest friends’ farm.
I’d been so excited to spend almost two months in the Drakensberg with Dad for my summer holidays, but, as inevitably seemed to happen with Dad, he’d changed the plans at the last moment, abandoning me instead with friends as he rushed off to do business in Namibia.
I took a shuddery breath, still trying to calm my pounding heart. Cold misery clouded my thoughts, in sharp contrast to the buttery sunshine seeping between the gaps in the curtains of my bedroom.
The day stretched interminably long before me. As much as I liked Maryka and Allan, their two sons hadn’t been overly enthusiastic about my forced appearance into their lives.
Luke’s begrudging inclusion of me in some of his holiday activities – mostly fishing and shooting – was odd. We’d been good friends as children and I’d been surprised by how sulky and resentful he’d been, until I happened to overhear a conversation he was having with his mother, two nights into my stay.
The heated conversation had been crystal clear as I’d stopped in the passageway that led to the lounge where they were sitting.
“But Mom,” he was arguing, “I organised to go on that youth camp months ago, and all my friends are going and…”
“Luke,” she’d interrupted him quietly but firmly, “the camp is full. If there was another spot, she could have gone with you, but I’ve spoken to David and there’s nothing we can do about it. I know you’re disappointed, my boy, but you can go next holiday.”
Luke had tried to argue again, only to be lambasted by an impressive guilt trip and quietly threatened with grounding if he didn’t at least try to include me in his now forced holiday on the farm.
Blood had rushed into my cheeks, as I’d listened to him trying to get rid of me, embarrassment and rejection burning in equal portions.
I’d had a fleeting moment of hope, somewhere at the very beginning of the holiday, that maybe, just maybe, these kids would be kids I could get along with. That perhaps the easy friendship we’d shared when we were younger would have somehow survived the avalanche of hormones that had transformed Luke, at least, into the shadow of the man I could see he would one day be.
I’d been surprised when he’d appeared out of the kitchen just after we’d arrived at the farm. He was taller than I remembered and his lean frame, clad in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, had displayed sharply defined muscles that hadn’t been there the last time I’d seen him.
We’d had so much fun as kids. My memory of those days was filled with carefree laughter. I’d been happy, content and confident in who I was. I’d been comfortable in my own skin. The five of us – Luke, Josh his best friend, Matt, Luke’s brother Brent and I – had always been out finding adventures.
My heart squeezed at the thought of Brent. Some days, after the dream, I was angry with him. Angry for having a heart attack at eighteen, angry because every time I saw his face in my dreams it reminded me how vital and full of life he’d been, angry because his sudden and untimely death had changed everything – our parents’ marriage disintegrating, the cruel and snide comments about him at school and finally, in this last year, Mom and Dad’s divorce and my subsequent and very unhappy move to Johannesburg.
The kids at my new school were completely uninterested in a quiet country girl with little in common with them. I had to admit that I found their constant obsession with the latest fashions, and admiration of the muscle-bound, image-conscious rugby team, exhausting.
It hadn’t helped that puberty had hit me with the force of a wrecking ball, my body changing almost daily until eventually, to my great relief, I’d found in the last month a semblance of equilibrium.
I’d been assured dozens of times by the myriad of counsellors I’d been sent to, that it was these changes and my new school that was the real reason behind the terrifying sleepwalking that had started a year ago, and that the sleepwalking – a new and horrible habit – had nothing to do with the recurring nightmare that had haunted me most nights since Brent’s death.
I sighed, relief silvering my black mood a little. I’d stayed in bed last night. I was sure of it. It was either the nightmare or the sleepwalking, never both.
This had of course put a spanner in the counsellors’ explanation of what was going on with me. Their reassurances that I was a perfectly normal teenager working through some tough times had fallen a little flat; that I was not responsible for Brent’s decision to dive into the pool straight out of the Jacuzzi, that this was the cause of his young and healthy heart seizing up.
And then the dream would resurface, or I’d find myself standing outside the front door, my feet wet with dew, and deep beneath the anguish and fear I knew there was something wrong. That there was something else that I just couldn’t put my finger on, something frighteningly alluring just at the very edge of my conscious thought that always slipped away from me when my eyes sprang open in fright.
I pushed at the despair that had clouded my thoughts, prodding it sullenly back into the prison I’d created for it, and refocusing on the potential for a normal teenage friendship that still lurked in the days ahead. The friendship I’d hoped to nurture with Luke hadn’t been helped by the almost claustrophobic tightening of parental supervision that my presence had caused. Luke was usually allowed to explore the farm and some of the surrounding bush freely, but my Dad had pushed Allan to keep us close to the house.
The conversation had been so odd. We’d been sitting around the fire after dinner, the adults reminiscing about past holidays they’d had on the farm…
“Do you remember that one trip we did up Injisuthi when we found those pools?” Dad had asked Allan.
“Yeah, we spent hours shooting down that rock slide into that big moss-covered one,” Allan had joined in.
“The jade pools,” Maryka had murmured, her eyes glazing over.
“I’ve never come across anything like them again,” Allan had commented, “they were so deep, almost black in the centre.”
Maryka had shivered slightly in the warm evening air.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been up there looking for them again,” Allan had continued, his face wistful and slightly puzzled at the same time, as he relived some long-ago memory.
“How old were we?” Dad had asked.
“Sixteen,” Allan had said with certainty.
“It was the year you dated…” Maryka’d paused, her expression anxious, as if she’d started a sentence she didn’t want to finish. “Talita,” she concluded awkwardly.
Allan had whispered something under his breath to her and she’d looked away from the group into the night, her face taut.
“Oh yes, I remember now,” Dad had muttered as he’d become suddenly preoccupied by the bones and scraps of bedraggled salad leaves on his plate.
“I’m not surprised you couldn’t remember how to get back,” said Maryka, her voice falsely cheerful as she changed the subject, directing her comment at Allan. “You boys spent more time sampling the local’s homemade beer than you did mapping out the routes.”
Dad