For 22 years, she thought she was crazy. She was wrong.
Kat Ndlovu has spent her life swallowing pills to silence the voices, sketching spirit creatures from her "hallucinations," and dreaming of escape to Tokyo where maybe—just maybe—she can be normal.
Then one of her rideshare passengers commits a shocking murder while something dark whispers in their ear, and suddenly Kat's carefully medicated world shatters. She's a suspect with 72 hours to prove her innocence, and the only person who can help her is Harrison—a charming MMA fighter with secrets of his own.
To clear her name, Kat must stop running from the power pulsing beneath her skin. Because when the visions call, ancient spirits answer. When danger strikes, her ancestors rise. And when enemies finally reveal themselves, Kat discovers the "madness" she's fought her entire life isn't a curse—
It's a weapon.
But awakening her true nature may be exactly what her enemies have been waiting for. The question isn't whether she's strong enough to survive. It's whether she's ready for what she'll become.
For 22 years, she thought she was crazy. She was wrong.
Kat Ndlovu has spent her life swallowing pills to silence the voices, sketching spirit creatures from her "hallucinations," and dreaming of escape to Tokyo where maybe—just maybe—she can be normal.
Then one of her rideshare passengers commits a shocking murder while something dark whispers in their ear, and suddenly Kat's carefully medicated world shatters. She's a suspect with 72 hours to prove her innocence, and the only person who can help her is Harrison—a charming MMA fighter with secrets of his own.
To clear her name, Kat must stop running from the power pulsing beneath her skin. Because when the visions call, ancient spirits answer. When danger strikes, her ancestors rise. And when enemies finally reveal themselves, Kat discovers the "madness" she's fought her entire life isn't a curse—
It's a weapon.
But awakening her true nature may be exactly what her enemies have been waiting for. The question isn't whether she's strong enough to survive. It's whether she's ready for what she'll become.
The world began in shadow.
Darkness lay upon the void like a cloak, vast and unending. Ithunzi, guardian of this perfect silence, was as a shadow—everywhere and nowhere, his essence the fabric of eternity. In the absence of all things, there was neither sorrow nor joy, neither life nor death. Only the endless peace of nothingness.
And then there was a spark—a tear in the shadow’s cloak. From it burst forth the spirit flame of creation.
Fire bloomed where no fire could exist, its hungry light devouring the darkness wherever it touched.
The Goddess Ma had awakened.
Where her flames licked and danced, possibility blossomed. Time itself was born in that first brilliant moment, and with it came the end of Ithunzi’s timeless reign.
Enraged, the shadow spirit gathered his darkness like a storm. Black tendrils wove around the blazing heat, seeking to smother it. Darkness flowed like water, like wind—relentless in its desire to reclaim the stillness that had been lost.
But the Goddess Ma would not be extinguished. Her fire dissolved the shadow, consuming it like ash in a tempest. For each and every one of Ithunzi’s assaults, she answered with light more fierce, more determined.
Thus began their deadly dance, over the ages, between light and darkness. A battle without victors, a war without end—the first conflict from which all others would be born.
* * *
The images of flame and shadow burn in her retinas. Vividly real images which come for her most nights for as long as she can remember.
Voices, distant and overlapping. The steady pulse of machines. Something chemical in the air—sharp, wrong.
Pain, white hot and searing.
“—twenty-three year old female—”
“—BP dropping—”
“—need to intubate—”
“What are these burn marks?”
Heat. No—the memory of heat. Her palms burning.
Someone was saying her name. Not Kat. The other one. The one her father used to whisper.
She tries to speak. Her throat is sand.
“—burn pattern is consistent with—”
“—no accelerant on the clothing—”
“—we're losing her—”
“—doesn't make sense—”
The present dissolves. The voices fade. She hears her own voice call, small and frightened.
* * *
“Dada!” Six-year-old Kat’s voice pierces the darkness.
A door opens and light spills into her childhood bedroom where pink elephants dance across the walls. Little Khethiwe “Kat” Ndlovu sits upright in bed, her honey-colored face streaked with tears, small hands clutching the covers to her chest. Her father, Lovemore, moves swiftly to her side, his tall frame settling on the edge of the mattress with practiced gentleness.
“Dada—” Kat’s voice trembles in the half-light, her small brown eyes wide and haunted.
“Thula, thula, ‘mntwana wam.” Lovemore’s soft accent wraps the words in tenderness. Hush, hush, my child. “It’s just a dream.”
Dark fingers, long and elegant—a scientist’s hands that never lost their connection to older traditions—reach out to stroke his daughter’s wild curls.
“But I saw him, dada.” The certainty in her voice, her features—a perfect blend of her parents—set with conviction. “Ithunzi, attacking the Goddess Ma!”
“What did we say about these stories before bedtime?”
They both look up to find Andrea Robbins-Ndlovu in the doorway, arms crossed over her silk robe. The precise diction of her words betrays her East Coast upbringing despite years in California. Her blonde hair pulled back in a hasty ponytail, she stands with a familiar mix of concern and disapproval.
“I’ll get the meds,” she says, already turning.
Kat’s stomach sinks. She doesn’t like the medicine. Its cherry sweetness can’t hide the bitter taste underneath.
“Andrea.” Lovemore’s voice is quiet but firm.
“The ancestors aren’t here, Love.” Her voice softens. “We are. And she needs her medication.”
“I’ve got this.”
Kat’s body tenses slightly as they stare at one other, years of the same argument hang between them. Finally, Andrea shakes her head. Disappears from the doorway, her quiet footsteps fade down the hallway.
Lovemore watches her go, something unreadable in his expression, before his gentle eyes return to Kat. As he shifts on the bed, his gaze catches something on her nightstand—a piece of paper covered in waxy crayon marks.
“What’s this, ‘mntwana wam?” He picks up the drawing, studying the dark scribbles and jagged lines.
“It’s Ithunzi,” Kat says, her small voice gaining confidence.
Lovemore’s expression softens as he traces the childish rendering—a mass of sharp angles and shadow Kat had pressed into the paper with such force the crayon had nearly torn through.
“Clever girl,” he murmurs. “Sometimes we must face our fears to master them.”
He sets the drawing aside and reaches for her curls. “But for now, let me help another way.” His fingers find her hair, delicately pinching a single strand and pulling, not enough to hurt—just enough to tug slightly at the scalp. He moves to another strand. And another.
The familiar sensation sends tingles down her scalp, through her body. Drawing her back home. Rooted.
“There,” he murmurs. “All the bad dreams.”
“All of them?” Kat’s voice steadies, finding comfort in their shared ritual.
“All of them.”
She settles back against her pillow.
“Did he die? Ithunzi?”
Lovemore tucks the blanket around her small shoulders. “Weakened. But how do you kill a shadow?”
She considers this, brow furrowing with the impossible question. The one building inside her ever since the shadows first started reaching for her.
“Dada. Why is there evil?”
A smile touches the corners of his mouth, sad and knowing. “Because you cannot have good without it. They are two sides of the same coin.”
He continues gently pulling on her hair, one strand at a time. His voice drops into a gentle chant, the words carrying across years and oceans.
“Thula, ‘mntwana wam. Thula, thula.”
* * *
Twenty-three-year-old Kat sat in her parked car on a side street in East LA, one hand absently pulling at the threads of her hair. The childhood gesture had transformed into a comfort ritual—one of the few traces of her father that remained.
Her makeshift studio filled the car’s interior: sketchpad balanced on the steering wheel, reference images clipped to the sun visor. She sketched as she listened to a Japanese lesson on her phone, the app’s mechanical voice filling her private cocoon—green tea air freshener and graphite pencils masking the lingering odors from this evening’s passengers.
Neon from the taco truck across the street cast shifting patterns across her amber-brown features—features that never quite fit into convenient categories. Faint bass and muffled laughter cut through the otherwise stillness. Its comforting presence provided distant but welcome company—like an unwatched television or unseen neighbor through a shared wall.
Through the windshield, late night revelers laughed and ate. A couple fed each other, the guy wiping the girl’s chin with his thumb. She playfully slapped his hand away.
“Oshigoto wa nan desu ka?” the app intoned. What do you do?
“Watashi wa geijutsuka desu,” Kat responded, the syllables still awkward on her tongue. I am an artist.
In Tokyo these words would become real, not just aspiration.
Her pencil traced the Goddess Ma’s fierce features, flames curling from her fingertips, Ithunzi’s shadow form threatening from the margins. Panel after panel, their eternal battle was rendered in the clean lines of manga style. A graphic novel took shape in the stolen moments between fares—her father’s stories, now preserved in ink.
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
Familiar words appeared on her phone screen. Crazy Time.
She reached across the art supplies on the passenger seat, pulling an orange prescription bottle from the glove compartment. Olanzapine. 10mg. The label worn from years of careful rationing.
She tapped the contents into her palm—broken pill fragments spilled out. At the fully prescribed dose, the voices stayed silent, but so did her creativity.
She selected a quarter, rolling it between her fingertips. Just enough to keep the shadows at bay, not enough to dull her pencil. A gamble—she was two hours past her regular evening dose. But—
She glanced at the half rendered panel. Forty-five minutes more. That’s all she needed to finish.
A sharp knock on the window shattered her concentration. The bottle and pills fell over her sneakers.
“Shit,” she muttered, scanning the floor mat for the scattered fragments.
Another impatient knock. She looked up to find the couple from the truck outside her car, tacos in hand, motioning for her to open the door.
“The app,” she said, pointing to the ride-share decal on her windshield. “You have to use the app. This isn’t a taxi.”
The guy motioned for her to roll down her window. Rolling her eyes, she complied.
“Look, I’m not on duty.” Though she hadn’t made her self-imposed quota for the evening, she was done driving for the night. Her pencil was bursting with ideas—new techniques she’d learned online. And she needed to get it down before the medication dampened everything.
“You need to call for someone else.”
“Phone’s dead,” he said with an apologetic smile.
“And that’s my problem how?”
Through the window, between long painted nails, a hundred-dollar bill caught the neon light. One hundred dollars. One day closer to Tokyo. One day closer to escape. The mental calculus was quick.
The doors unlocked. The couple climbed in, giggling, almost spilling their food and drinks.
“Hey, careful,” Kat bristled. “I just had the mats cleaned.”
She quickly pulled down the clippings, elbow bumping the rearview mirror. In the backseat, the guy sprawled comfortably—olive skin, dark hair styled, his tight tee showing off a gym physique under a sports coat. His fingers traced a small medallion at his neck. Religious, maybe. The girl beside him adjusted her leather mini skirt, checking her reflection in the window while reapplying gloss to painted lips.
“You don’t carry a spare charger?” The girl asked, settling into the backseat as if she owned it.
“Too much EM,” the guy stated matter of factly.
The girl’s brow furrowed.
“Electromagnetic radiation. My body’s a temple.”
“Amen to that,” she murmured, eyeing him appreciatively.
Kat’s alarm beeped again. She reached for the pill fragments scattered on the floor, her sense of control scattered with them.
“Are we just gonna sit here or what?” Painted Lips demanded.
“You gonna tell me where we’re going?” Kat responded, fingers still searching for the lost medication.
A sudden slam against the hood startled them all. Kat looked up—
A disheveled sketchy looking dude appeared in front of the car, fists pounding on Kat’s hood.
“Fucking bitch!” he shouted, eyes locked on the girl.
“Just drive! Go go go!” she urged, panic in her voice.
Kat’s foot instinctively connected with the gas. She swerved around Sketchy Dude, pulling away. He receded in the rearview, shouting obscenities into the night.
“You never said you had a boyfriend,” the guy said, glancing back at the diminishing figure.
“Just some rando from the club,” the girl replied with a dismissive wave.
“He looked pretty pissed off.”
“Maybe because I took these.”
She dangled a little baggie of pills triumphantly.
“You can afford a hundred dollar ride but you steal your drugs?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“Here.” She offered him one of the pills.
Kat watched the exchange. The casual way the girl handled the pills, the freedom of it all.
“Nope. Don’t do molly.” His tone was light but firm.
“It’s not molly. It’s way better. Mine’s already starting to kick in.”
She pressed it towards his palm.
The easy smile faded. “I said no.” His tone firmed, Temple Boy suddenly showing some backbone.
“Fine. Be boring.” She tossed the pill back into the baggie.
In the awkward silence that followed, the guy’s gaze wandered to Kat’s sketchbook on the armrest. His eyes widened at the fierce female warrior emerging from flames. He picked it up. An application form and an envelope fell out.
“Put that down please,” Kat said, sharper than intended.
He ignored her, flipping through pages. “These are good. Really good.” He looked up. “You a professional?”
“You gonna tell me where we’re going?” Kat asked, deliberately changing the subject.
“Downtown. Arts district,” the girl answered, then reached for her seatmate. She pulled his face to hers, her eyes flicking briefly to Kat in the rearview. Back off, bitch.
As they kissed in the back seat, Kat returned her attention to the road. She noticed the streetlights overhead began to pulse slightly. Colors leaked beyond their boundaries—the red of taillights smearing across her vision. First sign.
With renewed urgency, she reached again beneath her seat, fingers searching for scattered pill fragments. She had pushed her luck too far.
Her fingertips brushed against the jagged edge of a fragment. There. She needed it now, before the whispers started, before the shadows began to move.
She managed to pinch a couple of fragments when—
A flash in front of her.
She slammed on the brakes.
The haunted face of an older woman stared back from the middle of the road, eyes locked onto Kat’s. Donned in a simple black dress and leopard print cardigan, she pushed a shopping cart filled with mysterious bundles. Her weathered features bore the same urban hardship of the unhoused people Kat passed every day. But there was something else in her eyes and posture—something that reminded Kat of the elders her father spoke of.
“What the fuck?!” the girl shrieked from the backseat.
She turned to see her passengers—the girl’s perfectly curated outfit now drenched in beer, the guy pitifully mopping up with a couple of paper napkins.
“What is wrong with you?” the girl demanded, glaring at Kat.
Kat turned back to the road—The Elder had vanished, leaving only empty asphalt in the headlights’ glare. But a cold certainty remained—those eyes had seen her. Had known her. And somehow, she had known those eyes too.
* * *
Kat pulled into a brightly lit gas station, its yellow-green glow casting harsh shadows across the pavement. Gas fumes cut through the night air, sharp against the smell of spilled drinks.
“You better fucking hope beer washes out of leather,” Painted Lips snarled, yanking the door open and stepping out. Her movements were already unnatural, jerky—like a marionette with too many loose strings.
The guy followed, shaking his head apologetically at Kat through the window before they disappeared into the convenience mart.
Alone, Kat scanned the floor mat for scattered pill fragments. With trembling fingers, she picked up three and quickly popped them into her mouth. The bitter taste made her wince as she dry-swallowed. It would be twenty minutes until she felt the effects. Twenty minutes that couldn’t come fast enough.
Nearby, a late night customer was refueling. The metallic clank of the gas nozzle being removed from its cradle made her flinch—the scrape of metal as it was inserted into the car’s tank—each sound striking like a hammer against her heightened senses.
Kat winced, burying her nose in her jacket sleeve. The fumes were everywhere now, triggering flashes of memory she’d spent years trying to suppress. The hospital roof. Diesel cans. The striking of a match. Her father’s gentle smile.
It was too much. She needed air.
Kat fumbled with her seatbelt and made her way toward the convenience mart. The ground shifted beneath her feet, signs and logos pulsed with unnatural luminance. Each step felt like wading through water, her body both too heavy and too light. Second sign.
Inside she found a lone clerk manning the cashier. Overhead fluorescents assaulted her senses, battling the neon glow from refrigerator cases. She blinked hard, trying to adjust as she made her way toward the restroom at the back.
In the bathroom, Kat splashed cold water on her face, avoiding her reflection. The medication wasn’t working fast enough. Shadows moved at the corners of her vision, stretching with unnatural purpose. Her hands found the edges of the sink, its cool porcelain providing a momentary anchor. Get a grip girl. You can do this.
She took a deep breath and stepped back into the store.
The light was streaked now, colors bleeding beyond their boundaries. Then the whispers came.
At first indistinct murmurs, just below the threshold of comprehension. Barely distinguishable from the hum of the refrigerators or the whoosh of the air conditioning. They came from everywhere and nowhere. Third sign.
She heard giggling.
Kat’s male passenger stood by the drinks fridge, a roll of paper towels in hand, attempting to dry his companion’s dress while she swayed unsteadily, browsing the open cooler.
“Can you hold still?” he asked, irritation edging into his voice.
The girl stumbled against the display. A bottle slipped from her fingers. Smashed on the floor, the sound magnified tenfold in Kat’s perception. The spilled liquid bubbled and hissed like acid.
“Don’t worry, she’s paying for it!” the girl announced, pointing at Kat.
“Maybe we should just get you home,” the guy suggested, concern replacing annoyance.
She pushed him away. “Don’t be such a loser.”
The guy raised his hands in defeat and headed for the bathroom, passing Kat with a glance of shared exasperation. In another life, this might have been a scene from one of her manga—two strangers united in dealing with a difficult third. But this wasn’t a story. This was real.
The whispering intensified. Kat turned to locate the source—only empty air. Shadowy forms moved at the periphery of her vision, there and gone in an instant. The shadows along the walls elongated unnaturally, taking on depth and substance they shouldn’t possess. Transforming into looming figures, a mass of undefined shifting features.
Kat closed her eyes. Continued the exercises Dr. Gardezi had taught her. Fingernails pressing into her palms, feeling their sharpness. This is real. I am here now.
The girl slammed down a six-pack next to the clerk, her movements becoming more erratic, less coordinated. The sound rattled in Kat’s skull. She opened her eyes to find she was no longer alone in witnessing the scene.
A man in an immaculate suit stood in line behind the girl. His slicked-back hair gleaming under the fluorescents, his face turned away from Kat.
He leaned in and whispered into the girl’s ear.
Kat couldn’t hear the words, but their effect was immediate. The girl laughed—sharp, brittle—and knocked over a display stand. Candies scattered across the floor. Bouncing and dancing on the linoleum tile.
The clerk stooped down to clean up the mess, sighing with the weary resignation of minimum wage retail. His nametag read “Anwar.”
The Whisperer leaned close to the girl again, lips moving in rhythmic patterns. Words Kat couldn’t hear but could somehow feel—malicious vibrations in the air between them.
With sudden clarity, Kat watched the girl throw herself over the counter and reach underneath. She pulled out a revolver.
How the fuck did she even know it was there?
The clerk stood, finding himself staring into the barrel. His hands rose slowly, eyes wide. “Please…”
The Whisperer’s lips formed the same words over and over: Shoot him. Shoot him.
Kat willed herself to move, to scream, to do anything—but she could only watch, paralyzed by something deeper than fear.
“No,” Kat breathed, the word catching in her throat. “Don’t—”
BANG!
The gunshot exploded through the small space, ricocheting off glass and metal, ringing in Kat’s ears.
The clerk slumped to the floor, a red stain blossoming across his shirt.
The guy emerged from the bathroom. He froze in the doorway, taking in the scene: the gun in his date’s hand. Blood splatter on the counter. Kat pinned, motionless against the wall.
Foam formed on the girl’s painted lips. Frothing. White bubbles against crimson. The gun clattered from her fingers as she crumpled to the tile in a boneless heap.
The guy looked to Kat, horror in his eyes. Then he backed toward the exit, glancing at the CCTV camera recording it all.
All sound drained from the world.
Kat stood paralyzed as The Whisperer turned to face her with unnatural stillness. For the first time she saw him clearly—aristocratic features carved from cold marble, eyes like polished obsidian that contained nothing. Not just vacant, but the deliberate absence of all feeling.
Their eyes met—his gaze penetrating, almost violating, and he smiled with terrible familiarity. Recognition without warmth, acknowledgement without empathy. He straightened his immaculate suit jacket, adjusted his cuffs with perfectly manicured fingers, and walked unhurriedly toward the exit—stepping over the girl’s comatose form with the indifference of someone avoiding a puddle.
At the door, he paused and looked back. His lips formed words meant only for her:
Until next time, Khethiwe.
Her true name. The name only her father had used. How could he possibly know?
He stepped out and disappeared into the night like ink dissolving in water.
Kat slid down the wall to the floor, legs no longer able to support her.
The store’s alarm began to blare, but she hardly heard it. Soon there would be police, paramedics, questions she couldn’t answer. But for now, there was only the expanding pool of blood on the linoleum, the clerk’s labored breathing, and the absolute certainty that whatever had just happened was only the beginning.
Amadlozi's Child: The Calling is a short novel about Kat, a young woman of South African descent who lives and works in Los Angeles, USA. She has struggled with mental health her entire life and is desperate for a normal life, one in which she doesn't rely on others and can focus on her art. However, a scary event at work means she may lose everything, her future as a paid artist being one of them. When she's looking for answers, trying to prove her innocence, she starts to wonder whether her visions are what they seem – what if what she's seeing is real?
What I liked
I don't think there was a boring moment in The Calling. The characters felt real; dialogue was realistic: angry, sad, witty; scenes flowed well; and it kept me wondering what would come next and how things would evolve.
Carl stood frozen, a witness to the fracture of something he couldn't repair. The medication fragments lay scattered on the carpet between mother and daughter like physical evidence of their broken relationship.
There was a lot going on with Kat, both internal and external, and there was enough tension to keep me flipping pages. Great use of imagery had me picturing scenes like I was there, and the action scenes were gripping.
Kat burst onto the main floor, heart hammering against her ribs with such force she feared it may crack bone. Adrenaline flooded her system, heightening everything—too much, too fast, too real.
The spiritual beliefs of the AmaMuthala people (Kat's ancestors) mixed with modern-day beliefs made for an interesting read. I was fascinated by the different spirits/entities, their background, and how Kat would fit into this seemingly forgotten but very much present world.
What I didn't like
I feel like the blurb of The Calling promised more than it delivered, resulting in mixed emotions when I finished this first instalment* of Amadlozi's Child. Trying to explain this without giving away too much is tricky, but where The Calling ends, and the next instalment begins, is what I expected to be the main focus of the plot, not the end.
* Please note I'm presuming, based on the novel, that this is a series and not a standalone book.
Conclusion
Nonetheless, Amadlozi's Child: The Calling is an exciting book to read, and I recommend it to people who enjoy shorter reads**, drama, action, and a different take on mainstream supernatural.
And know that when you reach the last page, you will be wishing for the next instalment. I can't wait to see what's next for Kat.
** I think it took me about three and a half [3.5] hours from start to finish.