The Clay and the Cinder

I grew up in the Karoo, in a town that had forgotten its own name. My family’s farmhouse, ‘Rooiklip’, stood on a stretch of land that had been in our family for over a century, but the house itself was older, built by a long-dead farmer who had claimed the land from the scrub. When my grandparents passed, my parents moved us from the coastal city to this dusty place, and I, a child of the suburbs, was thrust into a world of creaking floors and sun-bleached walls.

The house was a monument to time. Its thick walls were made of clay and stone, and the roof was corrugated iron that sang with the heat. I soon learned its rhythms: the way the floorboards groaned near the kitchen, the flutter of a window latch in the afternoon wind. But what unsettled me most was the basement. It was a root cellar, really, dug under the kitchen, with a heavy wooden door that had a bolt on the outside. My father said it was for storing vegetables, but the smell that seeped from it was not of earth or potatoes. It was a smell of burnt sugar and old metal, and it made my stomach turn.

One day, while exploring, I found a crate of my grandfather’s things: letters, photographs, and a tarnished brass key. The key was small, with a ring of tiny teeth, and it fit a lock on a small door in the basement wall that I had never noticed, hidden behind a shelf. When I turned it, the door swung open to reveal a narrow stairway leading down into darkness. I had never been this far down. The stairs were steep and dusty, and I had to crouch to avoid the low ceiling. At the bottom, the air was cold and still, and I found myself in a small room with walls of packed earth. The only thing in the room was a set of clay pots, each sealed with wax, and a single photograph on a small table. The photograph showed a man and a woman, both dressed in old-fashioned clothes, standing in front of a house that I recognized as ours, but with a strange addition: a small brick building to the side, which I had never seen.

When I showed the photograph to my father, his face went pale. ‘That’s the old kiln,’ he said. ‘My grandfather built it to make bricks. But there was an accident. A fire. He never spoke of it.’ I asked what had happened, but he changed the subject. My curiosity, however, was piqued. I began to search the house more intently, and I soon found in the attic a bundle of letters written by my great-grandmother. They were in Afrikaans, but I could read enough to piece together a story. She wrote of her husband, Pieter, and his obsession with brickmaking. He believed that the clay on our land had a peculiar quality, that bricks made from it were stronger and had a strange, reddish glow. But there was a cost. The kiln would sometimes fail, and the bricks would come out warped, with faces pressed into them. She wrote of ‘the ones who linger’ and of a night when she heard screams from the kiln, and found Pieter standing before it, his hands covered in ash, and the kiln door open, revealing a pile of bricks that looked like a human form.

I was chilled, but also fascinated. I decided to find the kiln. The photograph showed it to the east of the house, but there was only open veld there, covered in low scrub and termite mounds. Yet, as I walked that direction, I noticed a patch of ground that was oddly bare, and the soil there was darker, as if it had been burned. I crouched and dug with my hands, and soon my fingers hit something hard. It was a brick. And another. And another. I uncovered a small section of a wall, and I realized that the kiln had been buried, or had collapsed, and had been covered over. I felt a strange excitement, and I worked to clear the debris. After an hour, I had exposed an opening large enough to crawl through. The inside was dark and smelled of soot. I lit a match and saw the interior: a circular chamber with a low ceiling, and in the center, a firebox. The walls were lined with bricks, and they seemed to faintly glow with a reddish light, as if they were still warm. I touched one, and it was cool, but there was a vibration, like a low hum.

Suddenly, I heard a sound from behind me. A soft shuffle, like footsteps on ash. I spun around, but there was no one. The match burned low, and I lit another. I noticed that the bricks on the opposite wall were arranged in a pattern, and I moved closer to see. They were not random; they formed a shape, a rough outline of a human figure, but with elongated limbs and a head that was too large. As I stared, the figure seemed to move, the edges of the bricks blurring. I blinked, and it was still, but the hum grew louder. I felt a cold dread, and I scrambled out of the kiln, my heart pounding. I ran back to the house, and did not speak of it.

But the kiln had awakened something in me. That night, I dreamed of the woman in the photograph. She was in the kiln, and she was stacking bricks, but each brick had a face, and they were all crying. I woke with a scream, and I heard an answering cry from the basement. I gathered my courage and went down, and the small door was open, the stairs gaping. I descended, and the room with the clay pots was colder than before. The pots were all cracked, and from one, a fine grey dust seeped, forming a thin line on the floor. The line led to the wall, and I saw that there was a mark on the clay, a handprint. I touched it, and it was damp, like fresh clay. I looked up, and the ceiling was covered in that same dust, and in the dust, there were writing, words that I could not decipher, but they seemed to move.

I felt a presence behind me. I turned, and there was a figure, made entirely of grey clay, with no face, but it had the shape of a person. It stood there, motionless, and then it raised a hand and beckoned. I was frozen with terror, but something in me wanted to follow. It turned and walked through the wall, and the wall seemed to become liquid, and it vanished. I stood there, trembling, and then I heard a voice, not in my ears, but in my mind. It said, ‘You have come. We have been waiting.’ I ran up the stairs, and I locked the basement door, and I shoved a heavy table against it. I did not sleep that night.

The next day, I told my father everything. He listened, his face grim, and then he said, ‘I know. I have heard them too. They are the ones who died in the fire. They were workers, brought from the town, paid in drink and whispers. My grandfather made a pact with them, to keep the kiln burning, but they turned on him. They were not human. They are the clay, and they are the cinder.’ He led me to a shed behind the house, and he opened a chest. Inside were more photographs, and a diary. The diary was written in a spidery hand, and it described rituals: mixing clay with blood, firing bricks at midnight, and placing a brick with a human face at the corners of the property to protect it. But the last entry was different. It said, ‘They have come to claim us. The house is theirs. We are only borrowed.’

My father burned the diary, and we covered the kiln again, and we prayed. But the house is old, and the clay remembers. Some nights, I hear the humming from the basement, and I see the outline of a handprint on my window. I am writing this because I know that I cannot leave. The clay is in my blood, and the cinder is in my lungs. The kiln will always be here, waiting for another fire.

I live now in a small town near the coast, a world away from the Karoo. But last week, I received a package with no return address. Inside was a brick, slightly warm, and with a face pressed into it. It was my own face.