Free Camdeboo Nights by Nerine Dorman

village?”
    “Enough.”
    “Okay, well, I’ll be off then.”
    Arwen often wondered why her father had settled on marrying the woman that she had the misfortune to call mother. Molly was short, brown-haired and hazel-eyed, and tended toward plumpness, which was always at odds with the rest of the extended Wareing clan who sometimes blew in and out of their lives. Her complexion screamed “outsider.”
    Tonight was the perfect night for going out, though there was no pub in Nieu Bethesda she’d bother frequenting. Some folks would be hanging at Clive’s Bistro, where Clive and Bonny served up home-brew, but the patrons would mostly be strangers, from Cape Town or Jozi, or even as far afield as the UK. There weren’t many others her age, with her inclinations and, even then, they were so unutterably dull she preferred her own company. Helen would be an interesting diversion, if she could tap into the potential she suspected. To think her father hadn’t noticed the girl was special. Or if he had, he’d shut up about it.
    The stars glinted across the blue-black sky, the Milky Way a dusty trail from one end of the sky to the other. If she stood to gaze for some time, Arwen would be bound to see a shooting star but she’d spent enough time doing that as a child.
    Every two houses were dark–holiday homes. This time of the year, Nieu Bethesda would be a ghost town until Easter weekend. No moon yet, and no streetlights either, so it was very dark. Arwen knew her way and hugged her bag to her body, pleased at herself and breathing deep of the Karoo vegetation–a herbal tang that never failed to make her shudder with delight.
    She checked her cell phone. Half-past eight. A dark figure detached itself from the hedge outside Anabel’s house. Arwen started, worrying for a minute that it might be...
    There were no monsters in Nieu Bethesda.
    “Hey,” Helen said.
    “Hey,” Arwen scuffed her sneaker’s toe in the dusty road. Why was she feeling shy all of a sudden? “You ready?”
    “Yup.”
    “Damon?”
    “He’s watching that Chuck Norris action movie Etienne was bitching about.”
    “Pity.”
    “So, what’re we actually gonna do tonight?”
    “Shhh, you’ll see,” Arwen said. Helen didn’t need to know they were performing a witchy ritual until right at the last minute.
    The two walked the few blocks to the edge of the hamlet, where a low, white wall separated the land of the living from the land of the dead. They entered through a high, round arch, by a gate made from black wrought iron, which did not close properly.
    “Why the graveyard?” Helen asked as they walked down the rows of granite and marble pushing up like some macabre crop.
    “’Cause it has more atmosphere. Plus, we won’t be disturbed. The people here, especially in the township, are very superstitious or, as they like to say it, bygelowig .”
    Helen snorted softly, as if stifling a laugh.
    Arwen sought one grave in particular. Actually, it wasn’t where the person was buried–so far as she’d heard, the body had been cremated and the ashes scattered–but people liked having some place they could visit, to remember, where they could leave flowers or burn candles.
    The cement owl looked almost incongruous among the polished granite blocks.
    “Oh, my. I didn’t know,” Helen said.
    “Not many people have any idea this is here. Cement is flaking a bit. Not the most permanent afterthought for posterity but it was still made by Koos Malgas’s relative back in the day. He used to have to dress Miss Helen when her arthritis became too bad. There’s another marker like this, facing west in the Pienaarsig cemetery, on Koos’s grave. Very romantic, don’t you think? They’re always looking toward each other. A forbidden friendship acknowledged in death.”
    Arwen traced the contour of the handmade marker’s shape. She’d come here many times, but never at night, alone. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught flickers of movement,