The Herd

shhhk… shhhk… clop… shhhk… clop… 

Planting its hooves into the gritty asphalt, the goat stiffened into a mannequin as it was being pulled by its horns.

The sky was a deep cobalt when Vusi, a 40-year-old man with a stern face, dragged his gift from Lupane; proof that the village had been nice to him. 

He led the stubborn creature into an empty storeroom at the back of his Rhodesian four-bedroom house, bleating mournfully as though going to the slaughterhouse. Not today. The animal’s glassy eyes implored him as he shut the door. Clang!

***

In the morning, he awoke to his wife, Vuyo, her broad nose, high cheekbones and full lips close to his, shaking his shoulder in the predawn darkness. Her face was ashy, eyes loud with angst, protruding like they had seen a poltergeist. 

—Vusi, there’s another goat in the storeroom. She said grimly, rousing him out of the climax of his sleep.

—Another goat? What do you mean? He dragged himself out of bed, the blankets trailing after him.

—I mean, there are now two, Vusi! She sounded like an oboe. Come and see.

He was in disarray as he stepped outside into a night so dark and cold it razored his skin.

After Vuyo pushed open the door to the cement-smelling cube of a storeroom, his eyes popped in terror. Feet spasmed. Two goats sat side by side, identical down to the smallest speck of brown on their heads. They turned their heads to look at him. Eyes unblinking.

—It can’t be…I only came with one goat yesterday. One goat! His voice thinned like paper. He sounded like a little child.

She left to get his phone from the bedroom. 

He was left alone staring at the abomination, entrapped by silence despite the crowing of the cocks outside. 

Having no words, he quavered.

His fingers fumbled as he scrolled for the number the stranger had given him. It rang once, then twice, before a mechanical voice announced, “The number you have dialled is not available.” 

—Ah! His jaw dropped. The bastard won’t answer me!

Vuyo stood behind him, clutching her arms.

—What kind of goat is this? She asked, perturbed.

The goats shifted; their eyes never left them, gleaming a yellow light in the dimness around, and for the first time, Vusi felt regret.

***

Every dawn and dusk to come, the goats would split into new pairs, hooves clattering against the ground as they joined the ever-growing herd. By the end of the week, the yard was swarmed, their joint bleating an incessant haunting discord. 

Vuyo stopped sleeping. 

Vusi stopped counting. 

***

Tap, tap, tap. As the sun began its slow orange ascent, a wraith of a man knocked at their metallic gate dressed in a white kaftan, his face etched by wrinkles caused by years of trekking under the sun.

Prophet Mwelo from Malawi, the kind that could make a whole country disappear off the face of the earth, popular among folk in the neighbourhood, clutched a Quran without a hardcover. 

—There is a heavy darkness looming here. He said, looking up at the sky. His pea-sized eyes saw a dark dome covering the yard. He tilted his head and squinted his eyes as he scrutinised it. It was unlike anything he had seen before.

Vusi and Vuyo nervously allowed him inside, where he sat on the edge of their threadbare couch.

Taken aback by his visions, he looked at the cursed pair.

—The man who gave you that goat was marked by a witchdoctor for greed. And now, it seeks to take from you in return.

Vuyo wept silently. Unseeingly, she stared at her quivering lap.

Astounded. Vusi’s jaw tightened, coccyx tingling with fear.

When the prophet finally closed the Quran, the room became darker.

—You must undo this. Vusi managed to say.

—I will return in three days to help you, Mwelo said, rising to leave.

But the moment his feet touched the yard, to exit, the goats, grazing lazily moments before, paused. Their heads turned as one, their glare locking onto him.

Before he could step back, the goats charged. 

The air filled with the cacophony of dins and thuds of hooves and frantic bleating as they tackled and stamped him with their heads, bowed to the ground, only lifting to locate him, and continuing to stomp him.

—Stop! Vuyo shrieked, her voice breaking as she tried to pull one of the goats away. But it was no use. 

The prophet’s cries softly receded. What was left of him was the sickening pulp of flesh against the earth.

When the goats finally stepped back, their heads tilted innocently, and they continued on their usual routine.

Vuyo dropped to her knees, sobbing and heaving up bile. 

Vusi staggered backwards, his face draining of colour as the chilling realisation hit him. 

He wanted to speak consoling words, but something else came out of his mouth.

—We can’t leave him here.

Vuyo looked up, her tear-and-mucus-streaked face contorted with horror. 

—What have you done, Vusi? What are these things?

He didn’t answer. 

Two spades scraped against the hard earth. The goats were silent. Vusi and his wife worked in the dim light, digging a grave behind the house. When the body was lowered into the shallow pit, Vuyo couldn’t bring herself to look.

Later, much later that day, she would remember the prophet’s mauled face.

The tang of metal in the air.

His Quran turned crimson.

As they packed the last mound of soil, Vusi stopped.

—This dies with us. He said.

As they turned to leave, a sharp bleat cut through the stillness. Their eyes darted to the edge of the yard. Another goat had appeared, its fresh frame glistening in the moonlight.

Vuyo’s sobbing resurfaced in irregular intervals. She mourned. The herd stared at them.

***

Later, when she came in with a plate of sadza and meat, he had curled himself into a fetal knot on top of the unmade bed. He whispered to himself:

S’phatheleni? S’phatheleni?

(What have you brought? What have you brought?)

S’phathe amabele! S’phathe amabele!

(We’ve brought sorghum! We’ve brought sorghum!)

S’phatheleni? S’phatheleni?

His lacklustre eyes made her want to shed a tear. 

Vuyo was past horror and surprise. She was now stuck in numbness, yet wanted to be free. It didn’t help that sometimes her mind left her, imagining packing a small satchel, leaving Vusi behind, headed to Tsholotsho, her village. The only thing that tethered her to this place was the fear of possibly dying alone.

She stepped closer. The metallic clink of cutlery against the kango rang a bit too loudly, as if to remind them of their emptiness. 

Also, the smell of blood still lingered. She was not sure if it was now just a memory of it or if it indeed was still trapped within their atmosphere.

A shiver wormed up her spine, and she nearly dropped the plate. At that moment, she felt terrified by the man before her. She could no longer tell if he was himself at all.

Then a thought struck her: If he was not himself, then who was he?

She stepped back slowly. Her lips parted, but no sound came out, only cold tears.

She couldn’t stay in this room. Not with him. Not with it. At a time like this, she wished he would just say something, even if it would not make sense, just to confirm that he still was him.

Outside, the goats bleated again, their fragmented cries echoed as if the sound came from beneath the earth. 

Vuyo walked out and sat in the kitchen, pressing her back against the cold floor. Her eyes darted to the calendar on the fridge, hanging by a bunch of ornamented fruit magnets. She didn’t know what day it was or what month. 

Later that night, when the goats had receded into their uncanny sleep, she returned to the room. Vusi hadn’t moved, but had simply frozen asleep in that position. She placed herself next to him, their foreheads and knees touching. 

***

The next day:

Mrs. Moyo, the neighbour, appeared at the wall. A sleazy old woman with a hunched back, probably a witch.

Her gaze lingered too long, her watery eyes squinting over the wall that divided their properties. She stood on a stack of piled pallets. Vusi wished she could fall and die.

—You know, I saw the prophet enter your yard. She croaked.

Vuyo’s saliva almost took the wrong passageway. She coughed.

—But he never came out. His wife has been looking around for him everywhere.

Vusi stood at the doorway, his hand resting on the frame. Vuyo stood just behind him, her eyes narrowing.

—And I heard you two screaming. And the goats—my, my goodness—the bleating was enough to drive the whole city mad. Your goats are increasing; soon you will be able to feed the whole of Zimbabwe. 

She let out a hideous laugh. 

Mrs. Moyo leaned in closer to the wall, peering past where the goats were grazing, watching them with a knowing curiosity.

Vuyo, possessed by an impulse, stepped forward.

—Come in, Mrs Moyo. I have some leftover scones. Let us have some tea. She forced politeness, arching the quivering corners of her mouth.

With a creak and crack of joints lacking synovial fluid, Mrs. Moyo’s calloused hands turned the metal bar of the gate, and she stepped inside, sniffing the air. The smell of the goats filled her with morbid eagerness. 

Vusi watched her as she trudged deeper into the yard. She was close to the herd now. He and Vuyo stood silently.

Without warning, the goats shifted. Their heads whipped around, eyes wide and unnervingly still. 

And then, they charged.

With feral strength and ravenous disposition, the goats surrounded her. Their hooves swiped and pounded the earth. The sound of bones cracking and muffled screams filled the air. Vuyo’s hand shot out to grasp Vusi’s arm. 

Mrs. Moyo never stood a chance.

She was gone.

Once again, silence engulfed the yard as the last of the goats receded from her battered form, plastered onto the earth’s crust. Both of them stood at the edge, watching. No one spoke. Vuyo glanced at Vusi, her face white with cracks. He didn’t meet her eyes.

They buried Mrs. Moyo later that night.

***

Pssssss. The shower hissed. Blood trailed the mini-tiles, streaks that marred and twisted like mini snakes on the floor. Vuyo sat crouched in the corner, knees drawn to her chest, as the burgundy pooled around her. Vusi statued himself directly under the shower. Blood cascaded from his body. 

***

–Vusi. She whispered. 

He turned with an expression that was a bit familiar, maybe remorse, maybe hunger. She felt a bit at ease.

–We have to go. Run. Leave this place.

–Run where to?

–I don’t know, just anywhere. We can’t stay and rot here.

He got up and took a peek at the window. Trypophobic dozens of yellowish eyes reflected in the moonlight, like a seraphim from Hades.

–Do you think we can outrun them? He asked, as he scratched his head, then his arms. 

–Yes. At dawn. Let’s not talk about it. I think these things can hear us.

Vuyo packed a small bag with water, a few cans of tinned food and a knife. They would wait until the herd slept. Then, they’d jump Mrs. Moyo’s wall and cut across the old footpath to the quarry. From there, it would be six kilometres to the next township, if anyone was still alive. 

The plan was a beacon in a time of desperation.

Vuyo sat and watched as the hours crept towards dawn, spending most of the time peering through the window. 

***

Dawn cracked. 

Vuyo’s eyes were bloodshot, haunted by the need to escape. Vusi didn’t speak. He simply rose and reached for the storeroom keys. It was hard to tell if his silence was a result of reluctance or incapacity. But it was obvious that his mind was as gnarled as hers.

His sunken face showed no trace of anticipation. It felt like a veil had fallen over him and was hiding the man she once knew.

They went into the misty yard, forcing themselves between the goats in a peristaltic motion. The sound of their feet was muffled by the dew and the warm bellies of the goats.

In the storeroom, Vusi pulled out a half-full jerrycan of paraffin. 

He poured the cold liquid over the goats, each splash releasing a nose-biting smell that stung their eyes. The goats did not flinch. 

Vusi struck a match. The flame trembled in the breeze.

He dropped it. The match hissed.

Nothing.

He tried again. This one flared orange and dropped onto the glistening fur. A small flame licked at the hair, then snuffed itself out, as though soddened by some invisible force.

On the third try, as the flame touched the goats, they began to bubble, wobble and split. Each one sizzled open like an overripe fruit, plopping into existence. 

When Vusi realised this, he began to frantically dig into the ground with his fingernails, bleeding and wailing as he collected soil, then threw it at the goats to put out the fire.

Thick, black smoke seeped from their eyes, nostrils, and mouths. It coiled in the air in search of Vuyo, entering her lungs. 

She coughed violently, eyes watering, as she held her throat, retching for clean air.  

He got up to run to Vuyo, but his foot caught on soft and threaded flesh from the body of a half-formed goatling. He dragged it and lunged to help Vuyo, shaking her back to consciousness. 

Dark clouds began to rush and gather in the sky, and the goats began to encircle them, glaring at them with unwavering ferocity that felt like deja-vu. Vuyo sobbed in her husband’s embrace, but it would not stop the goats from closing in on them.

***

They woke up on the cold kitchen floor, coughing up tufts of hair, and trying to remember how they had gotten there.

***

A harrowing silence. Inside it, the graveyard in their backyard had grown crowded now. Each mound of earth marked people who had wandered too close, drawn by the ceaseless bleating. 

Yard by yard, Vusi and Vuyo began tearing down the walls, letting the animals spill into the streets, blanketing the roads in tablets of defecation, fur and hooves, spoiling the air with a pungent musk of dung, the acrid tang of their breath, the oily scent of their sweat which clung to the couple’s clothes, their hair, their skin.

All grocery stores stood eerily quiet, their shelves ransacked by Vusi and Vuyo in frantic raids. 

They didn’t bother with money anymore—who was left to enforce payment? The street lights flickered faintly at night, their buzz the only noise beyond the faint bleats of the goats.

Electricity still coursed through the wires, powering the television they watched in their empty living room. The news played on a loop, broadcasts reporting on vanished neighbourhoods.

No one came to check their meter.

No one came to cut the power. 

The goats were everywhere, pressing against the windows, their glossy eyes reflecting the flicker of the television screen. 

Vuyo didn’t speak much anymore. She sat in the corner, gnawing absently at her fingernails—nails that had thickened and darkened, curving unnaturally like claws.

***

One morning, Vusi and Vuyo woke to an unusual stillness in the air. When they stepped outside, the goats—hundreds of them now—stood still, their bellies grotesquely swollen, taut as overripe fruit ready to burst. Their sides heaved with laboured breaths, eyes glazed, tranced. The yard smelled foul, and a thick, cloying scent of decay mixed with the earthy musk of the animals. 

Vuyo searched for Vusi’s hand with shivering fingers.

—Vusi. She whispered

—What’s happening to them?

—They are all pregnant, it seems. He said, staring at the bulging bellies, some twitching as the creatures within churned to escape.

By evening, the rain pelted the windows and roof.

Vuyo looked at the TV. Her eyes were distant, and her hands pressed hard against her ears, but it did little to muffle the noise. Vusi stared at the blank screen.

They might have well been strangers, both flung into a tight match of primal shrills and animalistic cries from the goats. It was the kind of noise that burrowed into your skin and became one with you. 

The walls quaked with the force of the goats’ labour.

Loud cries of the goats grew more desperate, each one ending in a wet, sickening splat! Vuyo gagged.

She rocked back and forth on her chair, her face tucked between her knees.

—Make it stop. Vuyo mouthed, but no sound came out.

—I wish I had never met you! I hate you! She knew that every argument was a kettle of tea most likely to just fizzle out rather than result in a full-blown fight, a dusty road with mouthless corpses, an iceberg that needed more than heat to thaw, and Vusi was always at the end of it, zombified. 

He did not respond.

Instead, his hands fell to his sides. He stared at the thready shadows that played across the surface of the cracked, dying wood of the door. Then came a nauseating wave of iron and afterbirth that seeped into the house, scalding their nose like missiles, vibrissae falling into ash. Vuyo retched. The goats screamed.

And then, all at once, absolute silence.

Vuyo looked at Vusi. 

—Is it over?

Vusi unsteadily rose and walked to the window. He peered out, his breath fogging the glass. 

—They’ve multiplied again, he said, looking at the newly born goats, bursting out of the wet and rubbery sacs.

***

The next day.

Horizontal slits blinked in the mirror, dissecting the morning light of the bathroom into warped bands, unable to anchor the twisted image before it, periphery blurred. Slicing Vuyo’s coarse jawline, little sprouts of hair like bristly fur, his skin gaunter, nose sharper, mane coarser. He blinked again, and the reflection mirrored the motion, yet the hollow eyes sent him into a panic; his own face—his true face—was lost in the distortion,

He ran his hands over his arms and shuddered; the skin beneath his fingertips felt rougher; something else was surfacing from within.

The transformation was slow, insidious. Their feet began to ache, the bones restructuring until their shoes no longer fit, 

hair began to fall out in clumps, completely replaced by wiry patches of greyish fur. 

***

Sitting on the roof of their house became a daily routine, gazing out over the endless herd that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Untalking.

The silence between them wasn’t born of anger or resentment but of a loss of the very need for words.

Subtle at first. Vuyo would open her mouth to speak, but would stop, her lips trembling. Vusi had tried once, too, but his voice only cracked into strange gibberish. It was easier not to try at all.

But soon, Vuyo let out a loud bleat. Vusi froze, the spoonful of porridge halfway to his mouth clattering back into the bowl. He stared at her, but she didn’t look up; her shoulders twitched as the noise leapt from her throat again.

—Baaa…

She briskly clasped her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide with panic, but the bleating continued, muffled and desperate. 

Vusi burst out laughing, his sore voice grating his throat.

After some moments, a strange vibration rose unbidden from his chest too, forcing its way past his tight lips.

—Baaa…

Vuyo looked at him, her eyes lit with grim laughter. 

They both bleated in laughter, hysterically, until they rolled on the floor, bodies aching with pain. 

***

It was a summer night, where gusts of hot air lightly swirled in and out of abandoned houses in the ghost town. The place itself longed for something other than silence.

With their hooves resting against the warm asbestos, Vuyo and Vusi sat side by side on the roof, as the last of the dusk’s orange streaked the horizon. 

A restless tide of bodies of the goats tightly shifted below them, yearning for just an inch of space. 

Vuyo twitched and lifted one of her drooping ears, blinking as she swatted the flies that buzzed about her head away. Vusi, beside her, fought the same affliction.

A quivering bleat came from somewhere within the mass.

—Baa… (“What was that?”) 

Vusi’s gaze remained fixed on the horizon.

—Baa baa…(“Just another kid.”)Vusi replied.

They continued to sit in silence until the sun finally set and a consuming darkness descended upon them once again.

—The end

 

In a spiritual context, the Zimbabwean Shona word “kurasirira” refers to the act of passing a spell, jinx or curse onto someone else; a transference of spiritual burden or misfortune from one individual to another. It is an intentional act, often veiled in secrecy, where the victim unknowingly inherits the weight of the supernatural affliction.