Deception of the Damned

by P C Darkcliff

  The nurse said, “We’ve done a lot of testing, and you’re in complete health, apart from hypothermia and certain malnourishment. The doctor says that if everything goes well, you can be discharged tomorrow after lunch. That way you can spend Christmas with—” The nurse’s cheeks turned white when she recalled the condition they’d brought the patient in.

  Jasmin had been wrapped in a bizarre, reeking attire that might have been made from animal skins and potato sacks, and she was filthy, cut, and bruised from head to toe. Her clumsy pockets contained neither money nor identification. On top of that, she had been found in the region’s most hated and notorious part of the woods. The couple who had come across her said they’d only strayed there by accident and that they’d felt vague terror as they carried her back to the river.

  “Do you have a place to go, honey?” the nurse asked.

  Jasmin bit her lower lip. She’d left her backpack with all her belongings at her hostel, and the owner had said she could stay for a few days when she came back for them. But that was two years ago, and she’d promised she’d return in a year. For all she knew, the hostel and its owner could have been long gone. “I’m not sure,” she said.

  The nurse wrapped her warm, soft fingers around Jasmin’s cold and coarse ones. “You probably don’t remember me, do you, Jasmin?”

  For the first time, Jasmin wondered how she could know her name. Had they broken the string and read the scroll? They’d have to think she was insane!

  The nurse continued, “Some two years ago, or a bit more, I spent a few days at the hostel where you worked. I’d just got the job here, and you were really nice to me and helped me find a place to live.”

  Jasmin nodded when she recalled taking this girl apartment hunting. “I remember now. It’s Iveta, right?”

  “Renata,” the nurse said, smiling back. “But close enough. Look, I’m off tomorrow and the day after. I’d go back to my hometown, but since my parents are vacationing in Thailand this year, I’m staying in Turnov. Would you like to spend Christmas with me, then?”

  Jasmin was lost for words. A few seconds chased each other in utter silence.

  Seeing the embarrassment on her face, Renata continued, “I know you’re having some rough times, Jasmin. I’m sure it’s not your own fault, though, because you seem to be a really good person, so I’d be happy to help you out.”

  Jasmin felt her face burn with shame. Renata was right about the rough times, but Jasmin wasn’t sure if she could still consider herself a good person. Her heart was full of dormant rage and resentment, and she’d made a murderous pact with a fiend. “I don’t want to be a burden,” she whispered.

  “And I don’t want to be lonely,” Renata replied. “Nobody should be alone at Christmas, don’t you think?”

  Jasmin felt close to tears. At last she said, “Thank you, Renata. I’d love to spend Christmas with you.”

  “Perfect.” Renata’s excitement seemed genuine. “We’ll have a great time, you’ll see.”

  Fatigue began to close Jasmin’s eyes again, but then she opened them wide in panic. “My clothes! Where are they?”

  “Right here.” Renata bent under the bed and took out a full plastic bag.

  Jasmin rummaged through it with a trembling hand, and she only relaxed when her fingers touched the scroll of paper. It was damp around the edges, but otherwise unscathed. The string still held it rolled up against curious eyes. Jasmin sighed in relief, thanked Renata, and asked her not to let anyone take the bag away. She was asleep before Renata had a chance to tell her not to worry.

  JASMIN FOUND HER BACKPACK at the hostel. But she couldn’t find Hrot.

  She deemed it more than probable he’d spent some time of his new life in Turnov. She hoped that in such a small place, his strange accent and pronunciation, and his strange ways in general, would long linger in people’s memory. Nevertheless, nobody seemed to remember him, and Jasmin was starting to despair.

  Mid-January found her without a clue and still living with Renata, who convinced her to stay even after the holidays. Then she met a former crack whore.

  She was known as Mother Marie, and she was a local celebrity. Mother Marie had prostituted herself from her early teens until she was about fifty when she had married an older man who’d helped her beat her drug addiction, and who’d left her a vast fortune in his last will.

  As if to make amends for her shameful past, Mother Marie often visited the hospital with bags of toys for the pediatric ward, which was how she’d earned the moniker. She’d also converted one of her garages into a food bank and built an animal shelter right behind her suburban mansion. Jasmin decided to visit her as soon as she’d heard about the food bank.

  As Jasmin passed through the front gate, she heard a faint rattling of metal as the excited dogs leaped against their backyard kennels. A volley of barking ushered her up the unshoveled driveway.

  “Over here!” a pleasant female voice came from a detached garage. “The side door is unlocked.” Jasmin went to the garage and opened the door.

  With its well-stocked shelves standing along the sidewalls, the garage looked like a village store. The only thing that was missing were price tags and a cash register. Mother Marie was sitting behind a small desk, examining a pile of bills through a pair of large glasses. Her plump body was decked in a gray tracksuit. No jewelry shone on her pale skin; no makeup covered the deep wrinkles on her face. She hardly looked like someone who had used to sell herself for crack and who was now one of the richest people in the region.

  The barking slowly ceased, and Marie gave Jasmin a warm smile. “Welcome, darling. Just pick whatever you want.”

  “Actually, I didn’t come for food,” Jasmin said, but she feared she did look like someone who was hungry. Although she cooked every day and fed Renata copiously, Jasmin had little appetite and was quite thin.

  “So what brings you here, darling? Would you like to adopt a doggie?”

  “Not right now,” Jasmin said with a deep blush. “But I’m looking for someone who might have come to your food bank. His name is Hrot.”

  “Hrot?” Marie was suddenly on her feet, and Jasmin’s heart thumped in a wild gallop. “Of course, he came quite often for a few months, some two years ago it was. He also volunteered at the animal shelter. Such a darling he was, though a bit strange. Oh, and clumsy, very clumsy! But would you believe that one day he simply disappeared?”

  “Disappeared?” Jasmin repeated. The word burrowed deep into her stomach.

  Marie frowned and nodded. “One day he failed to show up for volunteering, and I haven’t seen him since. And as he didn’t have a cell phone, I couldn’t even contact him. And, I thought, what a thankless, ungrateful person he is!”

  That’s exactly like him, Jasmin thought bitterly. He is a thankless, ungrateful person. But where was she to find him now? The first month in her times was dashing to an end, and she was utterly clueless.

  The dogs began to bark and jump against the kennels anew. A minute later, a young woman entered the garage, carrying a baby in her arms. When she saw Jasmin, she blushed and blurted out, “I’ll come back later.”

  Mother Marie walked around the desk and called, “Please, stay!” The woman was already at the gate, however, and Marie sighed. “This happens all the time. Even when they’re starving, some people are too proud to take free food when a stranger is around. I don’t understand why people still think that poverty is something to be ashamed of. I, for one, have learned it’s much more shameful to be rich and not to share.”

  Jasmin said, “I’m really sorry I scared her away. I should probably be going, too. Thank you for talking to me.”

  She turned around and made a few steps toward the door when Mother Marie called at her back, “You know, Hrot turned out not to be as ungrateful as I first thought.”

  Jasmin turned back so fast her head spun. “What do you mean?”

  “He sent me a short letter about half a year ago,” Marie said with a knowing
smile. “And I bet you would like to read it.”

  Jasmin nodded happily, and Marie led her out of the garage. They walked to the house and climbed a flight of stairs to an airy living room. Having shown the visitor into a leather armchair, Marie rummaged through the drawers of a large mahogany chest. “Oh, here it is!”

  Jasmin held her breath as she took the envelope. The stamp was from Spain. The date was July 17 of the previous year. She took a deep breath as she pulled out the letter and read:

  Dear Marie,

  Guess where I’m writing from? Barcelona! Can you believe it? And I’ve hitchhiked all the way here.

  I’m working on my Spanish and looking for a job. It would be nice to have some money, even though I’m in need of nothing right now. I’m living downtown and beside a four-star hotel, totally free of charge! The people I live with are really nice—outcasts, in a way, just as I am. When we are hungry, all we need to do is to go behind a supermarket at night and pick the expired products that have been tossed away. Sometimes we have a real feast: last week we found a large box of king shrimps which were expiring that day, but which were in a perfect condition. I can’t believe they throw so much food away instead of hauling it to orphanages or homeless shelters.

  The Catalan nationalism is ubiquitous and extremely annoying. All the flag waving, angry speeches, and nationalistic rallies make me think of the book you once lent me on 1930s Germany.

  It’s really hot here, too, and the humidity is hard to get used to. The sea, though—the sea makes up for all the vexation. I’d never seen the sea before I came here, and it’s just amazing. I go for long walks along the beach, and I’m even learning to swim!

  I suppose I could say that I’m almost happy. Traveling and seeing the world has always been my dream, and living a free and adventurous life was what I needed. And yet, I cannot stop thinking about my beautiful Jasmin. At times, I miss her to the point of being physically sick.

  Well, I guess that’s all for now. Take care of yourself, Mother Marie.

  Hrot

  Jasmin’s hand trembled as she folded the letter and put it on the coffee table. Marie took her by her hands and asked, “You’re Jasmin, aren’t you, darling?”

  Unable to speak, Jasmin only gulped and nodded.

  “He spoke so much about you, Jasmin. He said he’d done something terrible to you, but he hoped that you’d forgive him.”

  First tears dripped down Jasmin’s cheeks.

  Marie said, “I don’t know what happened between the two of you, and I’m not going to pry. But you do look ready to forgive him.” Jasmin cried even harder, and Marie took her in her arms. “I guess you’ll have to take a trip down south, won’t you, sweetheart?” she asked, running her wrinkled fingers through Jasmin’s hair. Marie kept hugging her and stroking her hair, but Jasmin felt more and more miserable.

  Marie obviously thought that if they reunited, Jasmin and Hrot would reconcile and live happily ever after. If she only knew what dreadful things loomed past them, between them, and ahead of them! If she only knew what would happen if Jasmin failed to hunt down the traitor!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Staring at the strange, moldy ceiling above her head, Jasmin was trying to remember where she was and what might have severed the thread of her sleep. The mattress underneath her was much harder than the one in Renata’s guest bedroom, and the air was musty and stuffy.

  When she heard a baby cry, she finally woke up enough to remember that she was in a hostel in downtown Barcelona, sharing a bunk bed with a Moroccan woman and her little boy. Jasmin had stumbled into the hostel last night after a morning of flying from Prague to Barcelona and an evening of roaming the city’s Gothic alleys and wide avenues in a fruitless search of Hrot.

  The warm, subtropical sun was already high in the sky. Most of the ten women who had spent the night in the dormitory were already gone. The baby on the lower bunk stopped crying when Jasmin climbed down. His gentle, dark eyes contemplated her as if she were an apparition, and then his chubby cheeks dimpled in a welcoming grin.

  Jasmin smiled back, but the sight of the beautiful boy filled her with sorrow. She knew he would most likely die prematurely, in a war that nobody won. Was there a way to stop this? Should she warn people against the impending cataclysm? But who would ever believe her? At least, she still had a few decades to think about it—provided that she fulfilled the pact with the Emissary.

  Jasmin put her backpack on her bunk and rummaged in it for her toiletry bag. When she returned from the shared bathroom, her cell phone beeped. The message was from Mother Marie:

  I asked around, and I’ve found a girl who used to live in Barcelona. And she says she dated a squatter who lived in an abandoned building on Plaza Espana, just beside the Majestic Plaza Hotel! It was three years ago, so she couldn’t have met Hrot. You should check out the building in any case. It could be the place Hrot wrote about in his letter. Good luck, darling!

  Jasmin’s heart punched her chest like an ape’s fist. With sweaty hands she yanked a Barcelona map out of her backpack and spread it over her bunk. She finally had a tangible clue. The next winter solstice was still eleven months away, and she was already so close!

  According to the map, Plaza Espana was a large square just a few blocks from her hostel. But what if he was really there?

  Jasmin folded the map and looked out of the window. Suddenly she felt like running far away. But all she had to do today was to go and find out whether he really lived there, wasn’t it? She had months and months to watch him and decide what to do next. That thought calmed her down.

  It took her about twenty minutes to reach the square. The hotel stood on a corner, near a former bullring that had been converted into a shopping center. Jasmin hid her face and wished to be invisible as she walked past the hotel. However, all she saw beside it was an empty lot.

  Only the back wall was still standing like a sad monument of the building that had once stood there. The lot was fenced and strewn with debris. The squat was no more.

  Relief and disappointment washed over Jasmin, drowning her heart in two synchronous currents. Her head spun, and she had to sit down on the curb. Burying her face in her hands, she waited for the dizzy spell to pass. She hardly noticed all the shoes slapping behind her back: locals rushing to work and tourists going to snap a picture of the large fountain in the center of the square or to climb the Montjuic hill that overlooked the city. A pair of feet halted beside her.

  “They are bastards, aren’t they?” She heard above her head.

  “What?” Jasmin looked up and saw a young man who had a stubble of a beard and long, dark dreadlocks. “Who are bastards?”

  “The councilors who decided to knock down the building,” he said in slightly accented English of a Spaniard who had spent some time in the States. He spoke fast, and his voice was sad and resentful. “The cops who emptied the squat. The whole system . . . they are all bastards.”

  “So, what happened?” Jasmin asked, scrambling to her feet.

  “They fucked us up, that’s what happened. The building had been empty for years, and so we simply moved in. But the city decided to kick us out and tear the building down so that nobody could live here without paying rent. The whole system is a bitch: a greedy, unjust, fascist bitch.

  “Just look around you, will you? Who can you see in the best buildings in the city? Bankers and politicians, alias the worst scum and biggest thieves who plunged this country into a crisis and made so many people homeless. And these same thieves prefer to demolish a perfectly sound building rather than—”

  “Hold on, hold on, please,” Jasmin held her hands up, feeling that her dizzy spell was coming back. “Are you saying you used to live here?”

  “Yeah, used to,” he said with a bitter smile. “But only for a few months. Then the cops came, and I went to live with my sister. I found a job near here, so I have to walk past this disgrace every day. It still pisses me off to see these ruins. And it still gives me the
shivers to recall those sadistic police bastards. They just stormed the place like the Gestapo and started breaking our stuff and beating us up, though we made no resistance. Anyway, why were you sitting here, all miserable? You looking for a place to stay?”

  “No, but I am looking for a friend of mine. His name is Hrot.”

  “Oh yeah, that Czech,” the youth said, an amused smile passing over his lips. “A strange one. Clumsy, eh? But a really cool guy!”

  “So you know him? And do you know where he is?”

  “No idea,” he said with a shrug. “I don’t think he ever had a cell phone, and I haven’t seen him for a long time. Anyway, the group got really fragmented after the cops kicked us out of here. Most of the squatters were foreigners, so I guess some of them went back to their countries. The others found other places to squat.”

  “So where are they staying now?”

  “You can check out Casa Selva. I was there last week for a concert, but I don’t think I saw him. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t live there, though.”

  “Can you show me where it is?” Jasmin asked, taking out her map.

  “My work’s about halfway there,” he said, nodding in the direction of the shopping center. “You can come along if you want.”

  “Thanks, that would be great.”

  As he told her along the way, Casa Selva was an old, three-story building that stood between a gas station and a park. There was a giant room downstairs, probably a disused mechanic’s shop, which served as a concert hall. The two stories above were fully occupied. More than ten people lived there, mostly Europeans but also a few Latinos. They organized concerts downstairs almost every weekend.

  Those who didn’t have a job got free bread from bakeries that were about to close for the day and free salads from a vegan restaurant where an ex-squatter worked. They had an old stove and a fridge in the concert hall. A large heater kept them warm in a communal living room on the second floor.