Midnight Thesis is a Historical Ghost Story and Existential Horror. I finish one chapter a week and let our writing group give me feedback. Then I publish the chapters here as a serial novel. Here is the eight installment: Another Proceeding.
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…
Another Proceeding
The veldt enveloped Jochem as he went downhill into the folds between the koppies. The day pressed down with the Natal summer heat, the air thick and damp as the sun baked the crests. Only in the valleys was there a sluggish hint of shade.
He hadn’t meant to walk out. He hadn’t meant anything really, just needed to move, to put distance between himself and Professor Truter’s abrupt message—that brutal economy of words.
Doctor Marais was dead. Had been dead. Would always be dead now.
He walked because stopping meant thinking, and thinking meant accepting what he could not accept. A haze clung to the horizon where dark clouds were gathering.
Marais had left him without guidance—unless he had left all he wanted to say written down. There would be nothing in the letter that had not been said before. Why had he taken the time to write a letter, seal it? And then what? Sat in his study and—
Use a gun?
No. Jochem shook his head violently. He wouldn’t think about that. Couldn’t.
The bent over thorn trees on the tops of the hills shuddered in a first gust of wind. A storm was coming. A secretary bird stalked through the distance, too far away to be anything but a wavering silhouette.
His foot caught on a stone and he stumbled, catching himself with his hands in the dirt. The impact jarred through his wrists. He stayed there, on all fours like some evolutionary throwback, breathing hard. The red earth was close to his face, dotted with tiny stones and the desiccated husks of beetles.
What’re you doing? Up. Get yourself up.
But his body had other ideas. His arms gave out and he rolled onto his side, curling himself into a ball.
Why hadn’t he opened it? Because you don’t want to know, a voice in his head whispered. You don’t want his last words. His final confession.
But Marais was dead and couldn’t say anything.
Jochem’s eyes felt heavy, gritty with dust and exhaustion. His tongue was thick in his mouth. The horizon was faded, smudged by a bank of gathering clouds. The endless view bounded. World’s end.
Jochem closed his eyes against the glare. Just for a moment. Just to rest.
There was breathing in the veldt.
Not his own shallow gasps, but a deeper, slower rhythm—vast and patient. Jochem’s eyes snapped open but he couldn’t move, his body lead-heavy and unresponsive.
The breathing continued. In. Out. In. Out.
A shadow fell across him, blessedly cool in the sticky heat. Jochem rolled his head to the side, his neck protesting.
The beast stood over him.
Like it had always been there waiting. Its bulk blocked out the sun, horns silhouetted against the too-bright sky. When it breathed, wisps of vapor curled from its nostrils despite the heat.
“Why?” Jochem croaked. His voice came out barely above a whisper.
“Still a man who possesses the instinct to run at the sense of threat, I see,” said the creature. Its refined voice was absurdly incongruous out here in the raw wilderness. “An attempt not achieved.”
Jochem tried to sit up but managed only to prop himself on one elbow. “Leave me alone.”
The beast made that rumbling sound that might have been laughter. “Is that what you tell yourself? How convenient. Will you tell me to go back as you told your two visitors from Pietermaritzburg?”
“I—just go away. Voetsek, man.”
“You’ve become his pallbearer. You now carry the weight of words that crushed him.”
“Don’t. Don’t talk about him.”
“Why not? Because speaking of death makes it real?” The creature shifted, its hooves leaving deep impressions in the earth. “You carry now what he no longer could. What he never should have. And he left you his final words and you refused to read them. Tell me, Jochem Arnoldus Kok, what are you afraid to find?”
Jochem’s hand scratched in the dirt. “It doesn’t matter now. He’s dead.”
“The dead speak louder. Clearer than the living, or have you forgotten your own research?” The beast leaned forward, its massive head tilting. “You seek Verneuk’s voice from beyond the grave but silence another correspondent who could reach you. Curious.”
“That’s different—”
“Is it?” The creature’s eyes fixed on him, unblinking. “Or are you simply afraid that Marais knew who you are? That he at last saw where you were heading. Did he perhaps try to warn you before he stepped into oblivion?”
Jochem’s chest tightened. He strained and lifted his head off the ground. “I don’t need warnings. I need information. Verneuk was real. The method is true. Marais understood that, he encouraged my work—”
“He knew.” The beast’s voice dropped lower. “Until conviction failed him. Until he wrote you that letter you refuse to open. You assume you know what he wrote. How very certain you are.”
The veldt spun around Jochem. Or perhaps it was just his head. “What’s it to you? Damn animal… Can you even read?”
The creature’s smile was terrible in its knowingness. “I would not. I have no care for the way Marais went. I am here for what you locked inside yourself.”
Jochem rolled over so his back was to the beast. He slowly got back on his knees, his palms pressed into the dirt.
“Pray tell, are you ready?”
“Ready for what?”
“Does it matter what?”
“Dammit, yes,” said Jochem. “Yes, it bloody well matters.”
The beast stood, its full height monstrous against the sky. “Then open the letter. Face what your mentor tried to tell you. Read the words he left before he chose silence over speech. Or continue to wander this veldt until the sun finishes what your denial began.”
“What if—” Jochem swallowed hard. “What if it says I was wrong? That Verneuk is nothing but fantasy, that I’ve wasted myself chasing shadows?”
“Then you will know.” The beast settled back onto its haunches. “Is ignorance truly preferable to knowledge, even painful knowledge? You claim to be a scholar.”
“Well?” said the beast. “Is ignorance preferable?”
Jochem looked up at the creature. “Marais knew all I did. Whatever he wrote, I know already. He had nothing new to tell me—only doubt, and I’ve no use for that. He knew Verneuk had the answers. It didn’t kill him.”
“Not quite,” the beast corrected. “It opened him. As I told you on the night we made our first acquaintance. Some minds cannot bear what they find inside themselves once the doors are unlocked.”
“And mine?” Jochem’s voice was barely audible. “What will I find?”
The creature’s smile was terrible. “That, Jochem Arnoldus Kok, is precisely what you’re about to discover. The question is whether you have the courage—or the foolishness—to proceed.”
Jochem struggled to his feet. He turned back toward the cottage.
“I’m going back,” he said.
“That, Jochem Arnoldus Kok, is not a question but a certainty. You will proceed. The only question is whether understanding will come before or after the breaking.”
When Jochem turned the creature had vanished, leaving only the empty veldt and the marks of massive hooves in the red earth.
© 2025 Gerhi Janse van Vuuren
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Midnight Thesis will be completed and published in 2026. To be notified when it is available please subscribe to my newsletter.