by Ilze Hugo
“Are you kidding? Dumb luck? That’s like saying Ronaldo was just a random guy who happened to kick some balls around for a living! It’s not luck. It’s your brain. It’s wired differently. Everything’s a puzzle to you. You have a way of picking things apart and putting them together again. Making connections where others don’t.”
“Now you’re making me sound like some kind of savant. Like Rain Man. Or that guy who memorized the backs of all those cereal boxes.”
“Cereal boxes?”
“Never mind.”
“Fine. Call it what you want, sister. But the fact is, the world is going tits-up crazy. This city is losing the plot. Weird things are afoot. Strange things. Things I couldn’t explain away if I wanted to. The Laughter might turn out to be the least of it. And if there is any truth out there to find, any truth to anything, I can’t think of a better person to find it than you, Faith September.”
- 27 - SANS
After seeing that crazy trip of a girl-child thing, whatever it was, with the eyes and the flowers and the buildings falling like blocks, who had looked just like his unicorn—and then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, passing out like a spaz on the sidewalk—Sans really needed another drink.
So he went back to the café, the all-night, all-day place near his apartment. The booze was cheap and he needed to think.
The door was closed but there was a sign behind the glass in Gothic type: WELCOME TO THE KNIGHT OF THE SAD FACE CAFé. WE’RE OPEN. Sans hadn’t noticed the café’s name before. He wondered what the owner had been smoking to come up with it.
He pulled at the door. Down the street, a guy with a crew cut and a sports bag slung across his shoulder was staring at him. He gave the guy the stink eye and the guy got lost quick.
He chose the same table as before and began doing calculations in his head. He could clean out his piggy bank ten times over and pay a visit to every scumbag who’d ever owed him a cent, but that still wouldn’t make him enough cash to stave off his pissed-off gangster chums. He could dust off his knife and go on a ponyjacking spree, sure, but it would take forever to rack up enough quality locks. No. He needed to find Lucky, chop-chop.
The same waiter was still on duty. He brought Sans a spiked coffee that slopped into the saucer. Nice and strong, though. Nice and strong.
Yes. He’d phone and text every single number on his cell, everyone he’d ever done business with. Someone must have seen the kid. Thanks to the quarantine, the city was pretty damn compact. A person couldn’t hide out forever. But just in case finding the little backstabbing bastard didn’t pan out . . . well, there was another option. A plan B, so to speak. Plan unicorn.
He’d done the math, and hair like that—Holy Grail hair, One Ring to Bind Them hair, Maltese Falcon hair, Deathly Hallows hair, that suitcase in Pulp Fiction hair—was worth a mint. If one single average-to-good pony was worth three thousand bucks, then oh, baby, phew, he could easily pay off his suppliers with hair like that. One unicorn pony could do the trick. Fix everything. Yes. He drained his cup, liked the sound of that.
He caught the waiter’s eye and ordered another drink. Lose the coffee this time was the silent message, instantly received. While he waited, Sans turned his attention to the wall beside his table. Something had caught his eye there earlier and he wanted to get back to it. He scanned the images, one by one, from left to right. A mishmash of copies of archive photos, paintings, drawings, prints. Dates scribbled underneath, like pins in time’s moldy corkboard. He spared a thought for each face as his eyes scanned past. Wondered what these sad-faced bastards’ lives had been like. What it had felt like for them to die. Where their bones were today and how many times he’d walked over them on his way to here, there, or somewhere else. Were they turning in their unmarked graves at what the world above Sick City’s pavements looked like now?
Then—he found it.
Found her.
And the café, its tables, the chairs studded with limbs, the waiter revving up the coffee machine, all went poof. All he could see was that oval shape. The eyes—one green, one brown, even though the drawing was in sepia—the brows, the mouth.
The hair.
Fuck a duck. His unicorn. His chest was hurting something fierce. He noticed he wasn’t breathing. So he sucked in some air, took another look. Her face, her hair, but something about the hair wasn’t quite right. The artist hadn’t done it justice.
How in every-single-damn-deity-in-the-dictionary’s name could this be? Was he hallucinating again? Or did his unicorn have a long-dead relative who looked exactly like her? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That must be it.
He took out his phone and snapped a pic of the pic. Noticed there were another five messages blinking. As he lifted his hand to beckon the waiter again, a crazy thought snuck into his brain. His grandmother (his real one, whom he’d met only a few times, long after his real mother had kicked it) was a big believer in communing with your ancestors and all that stuff—what she called the veil between the worlds. Growing up, he hadn’t bought it for a second. But he didn’t know anymore. In the last year, he’d seen and heard some unbelievable shit. Things that made him feel like his head would break just thinking about it.
For instance, he meets this chick at a bar about a month ago. She’s drunk. They’re both last-rounders. He’s sitting there at the empty bar, watching the roaches climb the walls and this chick starts telling him these tall-ass tales about how the Down Days has brought all sorts of unholy supernatural shit out of the woodwork. That the lines between life and death were thinning and the city was splitting at the seams with spirits trying to commune with the almost dead.
Sans used to be the kind of guy who prided himself on his skepticism. Still was. It was what kept him afloat. But now, well, maybe . . . What if there was something to all of those crazy stories?
He turned the thought over in his mind.
Held it up to the light.
Put it down on the table and poked it with a finger.
Nah. What was he thinking? No way. He didn’t believe in spirits. At least, not those kinds of spirits.
The waiter stuck his head out from behind the coffee machine and Sans lifted his hand. “Another double.”
When his pocket vibrated, his whole body jumped. The cup left his fingers. The shards scattered across the checkered floor like one of his grandmother’s bone readings.
“Wait.” He called to the waiter, who was already unscrewing the bottle cap, shot glass at the ready. “Why not make it two? Thanks.”
- 28 - FAITH
The one-armed bleach seller across the road was building a plastic Tower of Babel. Above his head an LED government sign spouted statistics and soundbites on repeat: “The Laughter is real. Denialists kill with words / Hiding infected family members is a crime / Remember to wash your hands / A healthy city is a happy city. The Laughter is real . . .”
The gray sky had turned to a persistent drizzle, but outside the dirty window of the Knight of the Sad Face Café, the world continued its business as always. A woman was selling apples to an old man in a T-shirt and jogging pants while the baby on her back was making eyes at a stray dog peeing against a lamppost. Two suits were trying to push through a trio of street kids who were jostling them for cash.
The owner of the bar across the road was standing on a ladder, scrubbing his front window while a young boy, his son, perhaps, sat on the bottom rung playing with a wind-up robot, tugging at his red Spider-Man mask. The bar owner yelled something to the boy, who stopped tugging and ran inside.
A hipster with a bird’s nest beard rode past the café window on his fixed-gear bicycle. Seeing Faith watching him through the window, he winked, almost smashing into a street kid with wild curls who was speeding past on her skateboard. “Hey, kid!” yelled the hipster, but the kid just flipped him the bird. With a couple of deft moves, she came to a dead stop right outside the café door, picked up the skateboard and yanked the door open. The bell jingled. Drops of rain flew off her hai
r. She shook her head and looked around. Then she strode past the waiter, who was busy scooping glass shards into a dustpan with an all-purpose cloth, muttering something about drunk pony assholes under his breath, and stopped beside Faith.
“Faith, right? We talked over the phone?”
Faith tried to keep the surprise out of her voice. “Yes, that’s right. Pleased to meet you.”
They rubbed elbows and the kid propped her skateboard up between the wall and the table and sat down. She was wearing an oversized white T-shirt with the words BLOOD B GONE CLEANING on the front and, in smaller letters, WE DO IT SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO. Faith must have been staring, because the girl pinched the fabric between her fingers, pulling at it so she could read it properly.
“It’s a work shirt. We wear it underneath our suits. I’m an aftermath technician. You know, cleaning up all the blood and stuff after someone dies? I mean, off the books. Or at least I was. I kind of just quit. So I thought I’d go and ask at the Sanitation Church, see if they’ve got anything for me. My housemate talked to this girl who works there and she said they need someone to pour chlorine baths for ritual cleansings. Sounds like a pretty decent gig. With dental and everything. You need to be really clean to work there. Regular tooth-whitening sessions is part of the dress code, which makes absolutely no sense, considering no one sees anyone’s teeth anymore anyway, but whatever. I’ll have to tie my hair back, too, maybe even cut it, which isn’t ideal, but hey.”
The girl’s hands mimed little explosions as she talked—boxes, grapple hooks, church spires. A peacock spreading its feathers, a bowl, a book, a rock, a gun. Faith felt herself smiling at this strange, animated little creature.
“Sorry,” the girl said. “I’m rambling. I guess I’m nervous. I’ve been told I talk too fast when I’m nervous. I need to find Elliot and I’m motormouthing on and on.”
The waiter plopped down two cappuccinos.
“No worries,” said Faith, tracing her pinky through the hot foam. “I talk a lot when I’m nervous, too. Say, have you ever thought about trying your hand at data running? You already seem to enjoy skateboarding. It might be a good fit?”
“Hey, that’s true. I never considered it before. But now that you mention it, it sounds lit,” the girl said, and Faith noticed her posture slackening.
“Tell me. How old are you, Tomorrow?”
“Fourteen.”
“I see. So how old are you really?”
“Hey! I’m short for my age, okay? Anyway, what does my age have to do with anything? Can we get on to business now?”
“You’re right. On the phone you said that your brother was abducted from the market in the Company’s Garden? The one inside the old museum? That you were shopping for ingredients for your birthday cake?”
“That’s right. I was buying some sugar.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“Hold on,” said the kid, knotting her nose into a pretzel. “I have a question first.”
“Shoot.”
“Your ad says you do this pro bono. That means free, right?”
“Right.”
“So what’s the catch?”
“No catch.”
“Seriously. I mean, what do you want in return? You’re not some kind of perv or something?”
“Not a perv. Nope.”
“What, then? Why are you doing this?”
“Call it charity.”
Frowning, the kid bounced her knee against the underside of the table, setting Faith’s coffee cup clattering, spilling brown liquid into the saucer. “Sorry.” She clamped her leg down with one palm as if the limb had a life of its own. “No. Not buying it. No such thing as charity. Not really. Next?”
“Fine. Let’s call it penance, then. Would that work?”
“Penance for what?”
“Something. Personal. Something that happened a long time ago.”
“Something like what?”
“I don’t talk about it.”
“Why not?”
“I just don’t.”
The knee started up again. “So you’re really, really doing this for free? For real? No bullshit? You’re not going to pull a fast one on me later? My dad, when he was alive, dragged me to this thing once, this meeting where these guys in suits and pointy shoes told him he’d won a competition but they just wanted to sell him shares in some crappy seaside bungalow next to a sewage treatment plant. This isn’t anything like that, hey?”
“No,” Faith said. She leaned forward on her elbows. “It isn’t like that. I’m really doing this for free.”
“And you’re not going to ask for anything back?”
“Not a thing.”
“Well.”
“Well?”
“Well, you were asking about the market?”
“Yes. Where were you standing when your brother disappeared?”
“I was at the back. You know, next to that muthi stall with all the animal bits strung up like laundry? Looking at buying some sugar.”
“And where was your brother?”
“He was in the trolley. Right behind me.”
“And then?”
“I turned around for a second and when I turned back he was gone.”
“The cameras. There are still a few cameras there, aren’t there? Did they pick up anything?”
“Yes. There was a woman. But I couldn’t see her face. She bent over Elliot when he was sitting in the trolley. The security guard thinks she took him.”
“Which security guard? The one with the hyena?”
“Yes. He was really nice to me. We looked through all the footage together. Talked to some of the stall holders. But no one really saw much. The muthi vendor did remember the woman—said she was quite hot. A real firecracker. But he didn’t see her pick up Elliot. Didn’t remember Elliot at all, actually.”
“That’s weird, isn’t it?” Faith studied the girl’s face. She was half turned away, looking out the window, the leg jigging again.
“I don’t know, hey. Maybe he just doesn’t like kids.”
Faith tried to read her expression. The girl was being defensive, but why? What was there to be defensive about? She was the one who’d called Faith, not the other way around. Did she want her help or not?
“Is there anything else you can tell me about this woman from the video footage?”
“Well, I think I might have seen her before . . . when I was entering the market, I mean. But I’m not sure. There was a woman who said hello to Elliot. Said he was beautiful. I think she might have been the same woman as on the video. Well, I thought so anyway. But the more I think of it, I don’t know.”
“This woman who said hello to Elliot, what did she look like?”
“Well, she had red hair. Real bright red, like a fire truck.”
“Great. That’s great. Anything else?”
“She . . . There was this tattoo. She had a tattoo. On her wrist. A snake on a stick, I think.”
“Good. That’s great. Did she have any other defining features? What color was her skin?”
“White. She was very pale. Now that I think about it, I could see her veins showing through her wrist.”
“Was she tall or short?”
“Tall, I think.”
“What about her face? What did her face look like?”
“I don’t know, I . . . I was distracted. I really didn’t get a good look.”
“Anything else? Did she have a particular way of walking, for example?”
“Um . . .”
“Close your eyes. Try to picture her.”
“I . . . I really can’t remember. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. You did good.” Faith brushed away a stray dread, and one finger accidentally skimmed the bruise above her eyebrow. She winced. Still tender.
“Hey, what happened there? Are you okay?” the girl asked.
“Ag, hazards of the job, is all. Did you notice anything or anyone else around at the time of the incident?
Anything suspicious? Did anyone else talk to you or look at Elliot?” The girl shrugged. She was being downright sullen. Why? She splayed her fingers, gripped the rim of the table, and arched her back against the chair, bending her neck this way and that. Faith noticed that her nails were chewed to the quick, the skin around the edges bracketed with shredded skin and clotted blood.
“There was a guy who almost bumped into me,” she finally said. “He had a mullet and was holding a can of air freshener. But I don’t think . . .”
“That’s good. Is there anything else you remember? Anything at all?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“One more thing,” said Faith. “Do you have a photo of him? Your brother?”
The kid took out her phone, scrolled down, held it out to her. A chubby little boy with stick-out ears and dimples smiled back at her.
“I gave the mousta—I mean, the cop a copy of this pic as well.”
Faith downed the last of her cold coffee and studied the girl. Her chin was up defiantly but it was wobbling and her eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“So do you think you will find him? He’s all . . . I mean . . . Just find him, okay?”
* * *
Faith was adrift. Above the abyss, the rusting engines, she walked across the dark glass bridge to her front door. Her thoughts were bottomless. Her head was down. Her mind so far away that she didn’t even feel the familiar vertigo, the French tightrope fears.
Until.
Something moved at the end of the hallway. A noise, a breath, a cough. Her heart was a ball clogging up her throat. She swallowed the urge to scream.
A trio of shapes materialized out of the darkness. Three silent figures. They must have been standing there all along—she’d just been too preoccupied to see them—waiting for her in the dark. A woman, a man, and a young girl, around six or so. The man was wearing a bright red tie and the woman and girl were wearing coats and ankle-length skirts. The girl, who was looking down at the glass floor while sucking in her lips, was holding a pack of yellow pamphlets, her delicate fingers clasping them to her chest like a bridal bouquet. Faith had seen the woman and the girl before once or twice, working in the house’s vegetable garden downstairs or scooping water from the swimming pool after it had rained. But she’d never spoken to them before now. Didn’t know their names.