Do Not Read This Journal

If you ever find the missing hiker’s journal, leave it be. Step away, turn back, and bury the memory of it in the depths of your mind, where reason may yet shield you.

Let the wind scatter its pages and the earth consume its words, for no good will come from knowing what is written. Turn away now, while you still can.

But if your fingers have already brushed against its cracked leather binding, if your curiosity have already pried open its damp and curling pages, then I am sorry.

I was once like you.

I first heard the story in a tavern on the outskirts of Stellenbosch, where the air was thick with the scent of woodsmoke and wine, and old men spoke of things they should not. The tale was told in hushed voices, whispered between sips of brandy, half in jest, half in trembling belief.

A hiker had gone missing some years ago, one of many, really, as the mountains had long been known to swallow the unwary.

He was never found, but his journal was.

A lone traveller stumbled upon it in the craggy folds of the Jonkershoek Valley, wedged deep in the hollow of an ancient hard pear tree.

And then he, too, was lost.

Another was found. Another lost. The cycle continued. The story repeated itself like a poisoned tale passed from tongue to tongue, from hand to hand.

I was once like you.

I, too, stood at the edge of reason, my hands quivering as they traced words that should never have been written, let alone read.

I, too, found the book, or perhaps it found me, lying in the hollow of an ancient yellowwood tree. The scent of damp earth and salt hung heavy in the air, the same scent that clings to the wind before the rains roll in from the Atlantic.

Its pages were swollen and curled like the brittle husks of fallen protea petals. It bore ink that had seeped too deeply, dark as old blood, spreading in feathered veins through the parchment.

And I, too, was foolish enough to read.

Madness does not seize you in an instance. No, madness would be easier if it came crashing like a wave.

Madness is more like a tide that creeps in, grain by grain, until you are ankle-deep, knee-deep, drowning before you have learned to be afraid.

At first, you will laugh.

It is just a silly mountain legend. A story that curls around the firelight and dissolves with the dawn.

And yet, somewhere between wakefulness and dreaming, the journal will call to you.

Its thrum will linger in the stillness before the rain, in the slow roll of mist over the mountains, in the distant call of the hadeda as the sky softens into dusk.

You will dismiss it. You will push it aside.

And then, you will return.

Not by will, nor conscious thought, but by something greater, something that pulls at the marrow of your bones.

You will find yourself standing there again, though you will not recall why, nor how, nor when. The path you followed has unravelled behind you, your feet carried you so far from the safety of the known.

The mountains, wise and winking, have shuffled themselves about. Their peaks have shifted, their valleys have deepened, their rocky faces grinning wider than before. They watch you close like gossiping grannies, their whispers bouncing between the ravines.

“Oh, look who’s back!" one peak seems to say. "Took their time, didn’t they?" another murmurs with a knowing little chuckle.

The trees have tipped their hats in greeting. They lean in, craning their twisted necks, milkwoods and wild olives bending at their waists, their leaves turned away as if parting the way. The fynbos sways, curling toward your boots with prickly fingers of silver and sage.

The wind knows you well. It flits between the rocks, skips and spins, it circles your ankles and tugs at your sleeves. It sings your name, soft and round, then thinner, then stretched and spun and knotted into something different altogether.

And there the book will be waiting.

Right where you left it. Right where it left you.

And you will read again.

Ah, but the words, they do not behave. They will wriggle and writhe, tumble over each other, dancing like ants across the page. They dash up the margins and skitter down the spine, until the letters slip and curl into the familiar curves and loops of your own hand.

You never wrote these lines, never traced these words, never described the ghostly fog folding like a shroud over Table Mountain. You have not stood where the mountain pride butterflies flick their golden wings, like little laughing lanterns in the light. You have not walked beneath the moon where the Cape chirping frogs sing their mournful song. And yet, the words will say you have.

You will wake in the night, mouth thick with the taste of salt and sea, with sugar bush leaves tucked between your teeth. You will find dirt beneath your fingernails and pine needles in your sheets. You will check your boots and find them muddied and damp with morning dew. Red sand trails though you haven’t been to the mountains in weeks.

You will try to bury it, burn it, lock it in a chest with a hundred locks and keys. You will tie it up in twine, weight it down with stones and throw it into the hungry sea.

But you will feel the weight of the journal even when it is nowhere to be seen.

You’ll find it in the lining of your coat, nailed to the wall where a picture used to be and one sleepy morning, with the light still soft and your thoughts still slow, you will open the fridge and there, amid the milk and the butter it will be.

One day, someone will find your footprints leading into the forest.

And only leading in.

They will see where you danced, arms flung wide, bare feet skipping deeper into the green. Oh, how joyful you must have been, how weightless, how free.

They will see where you leapt, where the wind caught you, where you soared long enough to forget the world behind you.

The forest will have tucked you in with a blanket of moss and weeds. It will have kissed you on the cheek and sung you to sleep in the hollow of an ancient ironwood tree.

So, if you find the missing hiker’s journal, put it down. Walk away. Forget you ever saw it.

If you had already opened it, I am sorry.

For I was once like you, and now I am not.