‘Steady, steady,’ the big, bald man warned the backhoe driver, who was controlling the levers.

‘Yes, down slowly. That’s it.’ A skinny, dark man was on the other side of the backhoe, also directing.

The backhoe driver operated the levers swiftly, and the dark, rotten coffin that was hinged on chains, descended to the ground. It landed with a thud.

‘Hey! Slowly!’ the big man shouted at the backhoe driver. ‘This thing could fall apart any second, can’t you see how old it is?’

The driver signalled to his ear with his hand and shook his head.

‘Oh, great. He can’t hear me.’ He turned to the skinny man who was on the other side. ‘Let’s unhook these chains so we can finish and go to sleep. It’s late as it is.’

The men worked the chains and within minutes, they had unfastened them from the coffin. They signalled to the backhoe driver that they were done.

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! The backhoe reversed and went to the other marked grave on the other side of the cemetery, near the exit.

‘OK, how should we lift it?’ The skinny one asked the big man

‘Obviously, the handles on this thing are useless now. I think we should lift it from underneath.’

‘OK, that sounds good. Let’s go in three.’

The two men bent down and stuck their hands under the muddy coffin.

‘One, two, three—go!’ they both lifted the rotten, muddy coffin off the ground.

They turned and prepared to load it on the flatbed of the bakkie when the coffin started shaking.

‘Hey! Stop it.’ The big man shouted at the skinny guy.

‘It wasn’t me,’ the skinny man cried.

‘It definitely wasn’t me, so who was it?’

‘I…I don’t know,’ the skinny man stuttered. He was clearly scared of the big man.

‘This thing is heavy, let’s load it and stop arguing about nonsense,’ the big man said, dismissively.

The coffin shook again.

‘Ah!’ the skinny man let go from his side and the coffin fell to the ground with a bang!

‘What the hell?!’ The big man was ready to punch the skinny guy. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘It moved!’ the skinny man said with a shaky voice.

‘Yeah, it moved because you were shaking it.’

‘No, I didn’t. It did that on its own.’

The big man was seething. He retrieved a torch from his overalls’ back pocket and shone it at the skinny man. He approached the skinny man as if he was going to hit him.

‘How can a coffin move on its own? Does that make sense to you—huh? There is a corpse in there, and corpses don’t move because guess what, they are dead. Dead!’

‘Stop it, you are blinding me!’ The skinny man cried. ‘I’m telling you, there is something in there.’

The big man breathed in and out, calming himself before he could do something he would later regret. He shifted his torch from the skinny man and directed its light to the coffin

The lid was askew.

‘Great—look—you destroyed it. Now we will have to patch the lid because we can’t move the coffin like this. And that means extra work.’

The skinny man had his eyes on the coffin that was on the ground. His eyes were bulging. He was convinced that the coffin had shaken on its own.

‘Take this while I try to nail the lid shut.’ The big man handed the skinny man his torch.

The skinny man was trembling and the light kept gyrating.

‘Stop shaking, I can’t see properly!’ The big man’s voice was filled with annoyance.

He adjusted the lid and prepared to nail it back in place.

The coffin jerked.

‘What the hell?’ the big man fell backwards on his buttocks.

‘See? I told you. It moved on its own. There is definitely something in there.’

The big man wasn’t paying attention to the skinny man’s ramblings. He had his eyes fixated on the rotten wood of a coffin that was on the ground. Did he just imagine that or did the coffin actually jerk? What’s in there? An animal? It couldn’t be. They’d just dug this grave and removed the coffin instantly. When did the animal get in? Plus, what kind of an animal would get inside a coffin where there was an old corpse inside?

‘Yes, there’s definitely something in this coffin,’ the big man whispered.

He stood up from the ground and snatched the torch from his shaking companion beside him. He adjusted the brightness level to the maximum, and the coffin was illuminated in yellow.

The big man approached the coffin with small steps.

‘There’s something in there, there’s something in there,’ the skinny man was muttering.

‘Just shut up!’ The big man shouted.

It was like he’d made whatever was inside the coffin mad because the coffin was definitely shaking now, there was no mistake about it.

‘Holy Jesus.’ The big man quickly made a cross across his chest.

That’s when it came out.

Its head—if you could call it that—was small and covered with big and thick dreadlocks that were somehow glistening with dirt. Its eyes were dark, and where there were supposed to be lips, there weren’t any but bare, rotten teeth, most of them missing.

It turned to look at them.

The big man had his torch directed firmly at this menacing creature.

‘Saaa-haaa!’ it hiss-groaned at them, and that’s when the senses came back for the big man.

He did a quick U-turn and ran for his life.

The creature jumped at the skinny man; whose feet were rooted to the ground.

‘Mama! Leave me alone,’ the skinny man wailed.

The creature stuck its teeth in his neck and tore at it. Blood was spraying everywhere. The skinny man’s feet kicked at nothing, then stopped moving. He was dead.

‘Saaa-haaa!’ the creature released that sound again deep from its throat, facing the sky, like a wolf does when it is howling at the moon.

It moved its head and saw the light that was moving fast further and further away. It let go of the skinny man and chased after the light. It was jumping the graves in the cemetery like they were nothing.

‘Run! Run! It’s coming,’ the big man shouted at the backhoe driver who was busy fastening the chains on another coffin.

‘What? What’s coming?’ The clueless driver stared at the big man who ran past him.

When he turned to look what he was running from, that’s when it jumped on him.

The driver fell to the ground and the creature stuck its teeth on his neck, too, and shook its head left and right like a voracious pit-bull. Blood was sprayed everywhere.

The big man exited the gate of the cemetery and headed for his car. He fished for his keys in his pockets. The torch fell from his trembling hand. ‘Jesus!’

He found the keys. He quickly separated them and aimed the right one at the lock but kept missing the hole. ‘No, no, no, come on.’

That’s when he saw its reflection in the window. It was at his back, glaring at him.

The big man quit trying to unlock the door. He turned and faced it. His hair all over his body stood on its ends.

‘No, no—please, Jesus, no!’ He pleaded, but the monster ran up to him.

It slapped him across the face, drawing blood from his cheek and nose. It grabbed his head like it was a ball and exposed his neck. It ravaged it like it did the other two.

The big man screamed like he’d never done before, but he was met with the sounds of crickets and dogs barking in the distance.

The creature stood back and let go of him. He fell on its legs like a sack of potatoes.

It looked up and hiss-groaned, ‘Saaa-haaa!’

‘No!’ She woke up from slumber, shouting.

Her face was glistening with sweat and her whole body was hot, like, really hot. She threw the blankets to the side and shoved her small feet inside the slippers beside her bed. She stretched before taking slow steps to the bathroom.

She splashed herself with cold water from the tap and looked at herself in the mirror.

‘It was just a nightmare, Kganya, a nightmare, nothing real,’ she told herself.