Midnight Thesis is a Historical Ghost Story and Existential Horror I am developing based on an old short story. I work up a chapter once a week and then our writing group gives me feedback I use to improve on it. I am publishing the chapters here as a serial novel. Here is Chapter 3: A Veiled Arrival.
Early 1970s, Griqualand-East/South-Western Natal: Jochem Kok was doing research on a forgotten literary figure, or so everybody thought. Unearthing a tragic past opened up a conduit to an ancient horror that demands a price for being called to the present.
What came before…
A Veiled Arrival
Jochem woke slowly and with slumbering regret. Sunlight slashed across his face.
The hole in the corrugated iron roof let in a bright shaft that fell diagonally across the shaded inside of the rugged stone cottage. How long had it been there? Long enough for the ragged edges to be rusted.
He slept on a canvas camp bed with a grey blanket twisted around his legs. It was a cocoon that held him captive. His mind was trapped in a dream. Still on the other side of the veil.
The morning was hot. The air did not move at all. Too hot for this early in the morning and Jochem was already sweating. He wiped his brow; gritty, like dried mud smeared across it.
The camp bed groaned under him when he moved to shift his legs. He kicked free from the snagging blanket. It landed on the floor and threw up a cloud of dust in a gust that shuffled the nearby papers.
The floor, littered with loose sheets—a sacred ground. He shouldn’t step on it. The dust shone like blessed gold as it drifted slowly up through the shaft of sunlight.
His bladder forced him into full wakefulness. Must the carnal always intrude?
With a twist of his body he swung his legs over the edge and brought his feet to the ground. The camp bed squeaked in protest. He got up and left a nest of papers plastered by sweat to the canvas of the camp bed.
His legs were stiff—dull stumps. He hobbled over to the door. Beside it there was a bucket which he used to relieve himself. The smell from it stale and acidic. He slid the lid back on.
If he wanted coffee, he would have to start the primus himself. His mother had not appeared from her room yet. He could only make it black and bitter and he was not ready for that yet.
Instead, he opened the front door and walked outside into the full morning sun. In front of him the stone hills rolled away into the haze. The southern Drakensberg was out there, too far to see.
The cicadas screeched loudly. And a lone bush cricket. There was another noise, a low drone. An engine. A motorcar on the road; down in the valley. The sound changed pitch as gears shifted. It was getting closer.
Only one road coming here. Nowhere else to go to. They had to be coming here. But the motorcar was still a distance away, both from the end of the road and the cottage.
The surrounding landscape was rugged and the stony nature of the hills had prevented the carving out of a road. What road there was did not come up the hill and it was not possible to drive all the way here.
There was only a footpath winding between the koppies up to the saddle where the cottage sat between twin rocky outcrops. The remoteness of this place was the point. A journey out here was not happenstance.
The engine whined loudly a last couple of times and then stopped. The two-track road ended in a dry river bed that gave a false promise of a way out the other side. They would have to leave the car.
It was more than half an hour’s walk up from the drift. If you walked at a brisk pace. And if you were used to the terrain and the heat.
Thorn bushes would assault you all the way while you were traversing loose rocks along the path. You also had no idea if you were getting closer or not. Not until you were right on top of the cottage.
It would be a while. Long enough to make that coffee.
Then, when whoever eventually arrived, he could tell them they were not welcome here, and could go right back to where the hell they came from.
Back inside the floor was an aftermath of nocturnal cataloguing. Papers strewn from corner to corner, stacked in heaps. Looking down it was a papered landscape with rectangular contour lines. He understood it all last night, in his dreams.
The sunlight cut his understanding to shreds. It was still there if he looked at it furtively, obliquely—delicately. No, it was gone.
His mind was raked raw from the struggle, grasping at the edges of knowing, his abilities not sufficient to grab hold of that one single theme.
It was here on the floor in front of him. Every piece of paper he had sorted in the night, that each referenced a salient point dependent on the evidence on another sheet and supported by facts on a third.
The argument flowed in multiple directions and could be seen if the papers were sorted according to topic, line of thought, thrust of proposition; with shifts indicated by the perpendicular turning of papers and the thesis revealed by the mapped landscape.
The clarity eluded him. In the light of day it was chaos again. Confusion spread out in the dirt.
Jochem picked up one and smoothed the creased paper over his knee trying to straighten out the meaning. He squinted at the squiggles on the paper. He had only managed to smudge the writing with sweaty streaks from his palm.
The spidery scrawl had a tenuous hold on what it meant to be words. Partly pencil and partly fountain pen, and mostly illegible, even though he had written most of it himself.
He placed the paper back on a pile where three other pages had managed to cling together. He could read no more. Coffee might help.
Once he’d made his cup he returned to the front door of the cottage to wait for the interlopers.
Two people came slowly up the hill. Jochem stood in the doorway as he watched their approach.
Professor Truter walked out front. Of course he did. He had taken off his jacket and his hat was pushed back on his head. His shirt had sweaty patches under the arms and he peered intently ahead to see how much further he needed to go. He was breathing heavily.
Behind him came Ariadne Papadopoulus. She was much younger and should have found the hike much easier. Her handbag kept slipping off her shoulder, wobbling on heels and wearing a mini dress. Why would she come here dressed like that?
They must have left Pietermaritzburg before sunrise to be here this early.
They topped the last rise and walked onto the flat piece of ground in front of the cottage. The professor stopped short when he spotted Jochem. He hesitated, like a man at a garden gate not sure if the dog was friendly.
He was too out of breath to talk and lifted his hand in half a wave. Ariadne caught up with him and stopped by his side. She smiled at Jochem.
Jochem took a sip of his coffee.
Professor Truter gathered enough breath to talk again. “Mister Kok, a good morning to you.” He sighed and took another deep breath. “Though I am afraid that it will not remain a good morning for long.”
“Professor,” said Jochem.
“I never expected to have to come out here,” said Truter. “But there… unforeseen circumstances, you see.”
Jochem tossed the last dregs of his coffee out on the ground. “No, I don’t.”
Professor Truter lifted his hat to scratch his head. “Well, to get right to the point then. It is concerning Doctor Marais. He is no longer with the department.”
“And that was unforeseen?”
“Listen, young man,” said Truter, “can we possibly step inside and out of this sun? I could do with a drink of water, and I expect Miss Papadopoulus as well.”
Jochem slowly pushed himself away from the doorpost and stepped aside.
Truter walked forward to enter but stopped an arm’s length from Jochem. He looked him up and down. “Are you well, young man?”
“I’m fine,” said Jochem.
Hat in hand, Truter nodded slowly and then entered. Ariadne followed the Professor. As she passed Jochem she spoke in a hoarse whisper. “Morning Jochem.”
Jochem pushed past them and through to the back of the cottage. “There’s some water in the kitchen,” he said.
© 2025 Gerhi Janse van Vuuren
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