Chapter 6 - Chapter 31 – The New Key, New Hunger

The sale closes on a Tuesday that smells of diesel and hot iron.The buyer wires R1.1 million from an account registered to "Drennin Holdings Ltd, British Virgin Islands." No human ever steps inside the bank. The estate agent, Johan van Vuuren, forty-three, divorced, two DUIs, meets the proxy at the Shell garage on the N14. The man is thin enough to slip through keyholes, charcoal suit hanging off him like a scarecrow's Sunday best. He smells of myrrh and something hospital-sweet. He never gives a name. He only takes the ring of antique keys, each one blackened with age and something darker, and drives away in a white Corolla with no plates.That same afternoon three bakkies arrive: white, unmarked, windows tinted funeral-black. Six workmen in orange overalls unload industrial heaters the size of coffins, drums of bone-white paint, and a single crate stencilled in red: DO NOT OPEN UNTIL SUNSET. They work without speaking. One of them has eyes the yellow of old piano keys. When Johan tries to film a final walk-through for his YouTube channel, the phone dies in his hand and the screen cracks in the exact replica of the serpent carving that used to coil around the front door.By dusk the house is stripped.Every serpent, every sigil, every blood-brown stain is sanded, filled, painted over. The workmen install smart lights in every room: sleek black globes that pulse gently like sleeping hearts. They programed to "learn your mood." The proxy walks the corridors once, trailing his fingers along the fresh walls. Where he touches, the paint bubbles and darkens, as though the house is blushing.At 03:17 the smart lights wake up for the first time.They cycle through every shade of red a fresh bruise: plum, liver, arterial crimson. Then they settle on a steady, hungry glow the color of an open wound.The proxy smiles with too many teeth, locks the front door from the inside, and is never seen again.But the house remembers his scent.It will wear it like cologne when the next tenants arrive.