by Ilze Hugo
“Denny?” said the voice on the other side of the line. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you. What the hell?”
“No. Hi. I—”
“Who is this?” A splutter on the other end of the line. A clang, like something falling.
“I got your number in my coat pocket? You said to call.”
Nothing.
“I’m sorry. I think maybe I have the wrong number.”
Another strange splutter. A cough, perhaps? “Shit. Oh. It’s you. No, no. I did. Put my number in your pocket. It was about the boy. You said you were looking for a boy?”
“How did you . . . ? Yes. Do you know something?”
Another clang. Another kind-of cough. “I’m late. I have to go. I don’t know if I can help anymore.”
“Please,” Faith said quickly. “He has a sister. She’s worried sick.”
For a second Faith thought the line had gone dead. Then, “Okay. Meet me in the Company’s Garden in an hour. But don’t be late. I don’t have much time left.”
- 58 - SANS
Blink, blink, blink. Bloody phone. All dressed up in disco mode, spitting out a Tourette’s stream of strong words and lights. Blink, blink, blink. Most of the blinking things were from the Ones Who Shall Not Be Named, but those ones he had long stopped reading. Now it was Major who kept leaving messages, reminding him that his problems hadn’t gone anywhere, that in fact they were piling up, one on top of another. Major was running out of angles to spin to his boss who wanted to know why this week’s load of ponies hadn’t been picked up yet. Please, please, please, could Sans at least come around for a drink and a chat and reassure Mother that he was not reneging on their little business deal?
So he went to see the old bag in her office that smelt like mothballs and rancid potpourri. Switched on the charm, did some smooth bargaining, and kept his tail between his legs. Begged for more time. Please, sir, can I have some more and all that. Maybe the nun was distracted by the pretty sister who was busy massaging her gnarly old feet, but she actually seemed less full of shit than the caretaker himself and eventually just waved him off. Afterwards he went to sit outside and watched Major paint a vision of the Virgin Mary onto the convent’s garden wall, using a mixture of yogurt and moss that stood waiting in a bucket at his feet. Marian apparitions were a new thing the Sisters of the Holy Hair Cult were trying in order to attract more donations.
He was watching the caretaker do his thing, feeling thoroughly emasculated from his recent begging session, when a blue-turbaned sister came walking past, all pious with her eyes downturned, but with a smoking-hot body and generous ass that molded to her robes as she moved.
“Maybe I should get my hair shaved,” he said to Major as he watched the girl disappear into the convent’s new high-tech cafeteria. “As penance, I mean. I’ve stolen enough ponies in my life to rack up quite the black list with the Big Guy. Maybe it’s time I gave some back to even the score.”
“What are you talking about?” said Major, pausing to recoat the brush with mossy yogurt glop. “Which big guy?”
“You know, God, Allah, whatever.”
The caretaker stepped back from the wall to survey his handiwork, then stooped to dip the brush into some water. “I thought you didn’t believe in all that stuff? I mean, you know as good as I do that none of these ponies ends up with God. I’m sure some of the rich yuppies who eventually buy them have a God complex or two, but that isn’t the same thing, now, is it?”
“Well, sure. It’s not like we send it all up to heaven in a glass elevator or anything, but the intention must count for something, right? The fact that the hair meant something to the head that offered it? And that they gave it up in good faith, even though it might have been hard?”
The caretaker folded his tattooed arms and frowned. “What’s up with you today, brother? Have you started smoking again? You know you shouldn’t touch that stuff. It makes you all Eeyore. I’ve told you this.”
“Nah, it’s nothing like that. I just feel, I don’t know, like all these ponies I’ve taken these last few years must have left a mark on me. Like the universe has been keeping track. And decided it’s time I got my own back.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but if you ask me you’re sounding like that naked guy who hung around on top of the Absa building last year saying if we all dropped trou the aliens would see it from space and come and rescue us. Ha! That guy was a piece of work. Remember him?”
“Yeah. Sure. He was hilarious. Wonder where he is now.”
“Didn’t you hear? He caught the Joke and succumbed.”
“Fuck. Must have missed it. Makes sense, though.”
“Hey. There you go looking all Eeyore again! When last did you have a bit of a stukkie, brother? Some tail? To keep you warm at night? You look like you’re in need of a serious dose of womanly love, my friend.”
“Ag, what’s the point in getting a cherry, man? She’ll only die anyway.”
“Sho,” said Major, dipping his brush into the water and sending a spray of it towards Sans sitting cross-legged on the grass. “Ray of sunshine alert!”
“Sorry.”
“Listen, I don’t know what’s gotten into you all of a sudden. You said it yourself, it’s just hair, right? You chop it off, it grows right back. It’s not like you’re jacking cars or mugging people for their hard-earned money, right? So I don’t see what you have to feel oh-so-guilty about.”
“Mmm.”
“Know what?” said the caretaker, picking up his buckets and brushes. “I think the Virgin here is done for today. Let’s leave her to simmer. Most of the sisters should be off shift already, too, so we can go to my office. I’ll pour us some moonshine. The good strong stuff. Cures all ills. My nephew brews this one. The kid has real talent. What do you say?”
In the processing room here and there the odd sister was still at work, sorting ponies or threading them into weaves, but for the most part the hall was empty, quiet. Major led Sans to his office, a doorless enclave at the back of the hall. The caretaker had strung an old yellow curtain onto a plastic cord with clothes pegs to cordon it off. Inside this makeshift tented barracks was an old couch and a side table adorned with a blue cloth. A broom, a mop, a few empty plates, an enamel mug, and a smattering of other tools and personal effects were scattered around the space, along with one lone copy of the Daily Truth, open at the sports section.
“Your leg?” said Major as Sans bent down to sit. “It looks like it’s really bothering you today. You keep grimacing.”
“Nah, it’s fine. No big deal. I’m okay.”
“Hey, know what, brother? I’ve known you for so many years and I’ve never asked you what happened to it.”
“Gunshot wound. Gang thing. Don’t like to talk about it.”
“Thought so. No sweat. I’m just popping out to the kitchen for an extra mug. Be right back. Make yourself at home so long, okay?”
- 59 - FAITH
There was a protest boiling in the street at the edge of the Garden. Faith threaded her way through the bodies and placards and onto the green. She found the woman from the convent with the bottle-red hair next to that gnarly old last breath of a pear tree, the one that was crutched up with metal poles. Lawyer once told her that the tree was more than four centuries old. The oldest living thing in the whole bloody country. Still holding on. Still surviving. Still breathing.
The woman was scratching like the devil. First her cheek, then her arm, her thighs, and pacing about left, right, like a manic ping-pong ball. She was wearing the same white dress with the cats, and had a canvas duffel bag slung across her chest.
“You’re late,” she said.
“I’m sorry. There’s protest action back there—”
“I’ve got to go. I’ve got to go now,” said the woman, tugging at the sleeves of her cardigan.
“Just a sec. Please. You said you knew something about the boy? I need to make sure: Which boy were you talking about?”
/> “Take your pick,” the woman said. “Take your pick. I’m talking about all of them.”
“Sorry?”
“I’m the one who’s sorry. So sodding sorry-sorry. But I have to go now.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I really have to go . . . The convent. The old woman. She found this book. The thing is supposed to contain the cure for the Laughter, but it’s written in code and she’s only figured out parts of it. Or maybe none of it. I’m not sure. Anyway, something convinced her the Laughter has a spiritual basis, so she’s been experimenting. Vaccinating some of the nuns with dead kids. She thinks their spirits can give the sick power, heal them or something. I don’t know. It all sounds kind of cracked, if I say it out loud. I’ve been hallucinating some stuff, I think. Withdrawal. Must be the withdrawal. It’s not common with opioid use but I’ve been using some other stuff, too, lately, before Denny ran off. But this is real, I promise, I’m not making it up. I mean, I’m pretty sure, I think, that I’m not.”
This woman was off her rocker.
“You have to get them out,” said the woman, waving her arms around like windmills. “The kids. You have to help them. Lucky. The one with the manga tattoo. You have to help that one. You need to get him out.”
“I want to.” Lucky. Where had she heard that name before?
“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault. I didn’t even know what the hell it was all about at first, didn’t know they were dead. I thought they were just normal kids. Mother says I see them better because the drugs make me liminal, that you lose your inhibitions when you’re strung out. Sounded like bullshit to me, but she paid well and I needed the money and she promised she wouldn’t hurt them, that she was helping them find the light. Like they do in the movies, you know? I believed her. I really did. I mean, how can you hurt someone who’s already dead, right?”
“What about the caretaker? Could he see them? The kids?”
“Sometimes. Not every kid, every time. But when he’d been looking into the bottle, he seemed to notice them more.”
“The kids. Are they at the convent?”
“Yes.”
“Will you help me?”
“I can’t. I can’t. I really can’t. I’ll kill them. I’ll kill you. This is as far as I go. I’m done. Done. I’m going up the mountain after this. You’re my last stop.”
She put her hand in front of her mask, bent over, and began to cough. No, it wasn’t coughing, it was something else. Faith thought about reaching a hand out to her but stopped herself. “Slow down,” she said. “I’m trying to understand, but you’ve got to explain.”
“I’m dead. I’m as good as dead. I’m a walking skeleton. I’ve been spiking a fever since yesterday. I think I’m done for it. Done. It’s time to pay up. Time for the reckoning. But I’d rather go up the mountain and die where there’s a view, you know? Watching the clouds. It’s beautiful up there. Have you been?” The woman bent down again, spluttered. “I’ve heard there’s a death cult hiding up there in the old café on top of the table who does euthanasia rituals. So that’s where I’m heading. I’d rather go on my own terms.” Another spluttering fit. No, not spluttering—laughing. She was trying not to laugh, doubled over, clutching at her mask. “Sorry,” she cackled. “That’s not funny, not funny, I know, but I can’t help it, I can’t stop. Best keep back. Don’t come too close, okay?”
Two men on horseback trotted up the path. Virus patrollers.
“Shit,” said the woman. “I have to go. Here—”
She thrust something into Faith’s open hand and Faith caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the inside of her wrist. A snake on a stick, Tomorrow had said. A serpent entwined around a staff. The rod of Asclepius.
“Stop!” she called. “Wait!”
But the woman who had taken Elliot had already vanished into the fray of the protest.
Faith opened her fist. Lying across her palm was a key. Big, solid, heavy. The kind you used to open a gate. She slid it into her coat pocket and followed the vanishing junkie out of the green and into the tar-black street.
When she got back into the van she looked at her phone. Five messages from Tomorrow. Please call me.
She thought about texting, but decided to try her luck. The phone picked up on the first ring. The girl must have been waiting at a signal sweet spot.
“Faith. Have anything? Please tell me you have something.”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“Maybe what?”
“I’m working on a lead. But it’s a long shot. No point in telling you yet.”
“Just tell me. I’m dying over here.”
“You know that hair cult? The one you took Elliot to?”
“Yes.”
“There’s a chance the head nun has been kidnapping kids, or the spirits of kids, to use in some kind of experiment. But I don’t have any real evidence yet, and the more I think about it, it just sounds too over the top. So let’s not get ahead of ourselves, okay?”
“But you’ll follow up on it, won’t you?”
“As we speak.”
“When will you phone again? I’m going crazy in this house. Waiting. I can’t stand it.”
“Tomorrow morning. First thing, okay?”
“Cross your heart and hope to die?”
“Promise.”
- 60 - SANS
While waiting for Major to come back, Sans sat on the couch and thumbed through an old copy of the Truth. He couldn’t believe how many people, Major included, spent money on this gossip rag. What were they thinking? Had the whole damn city lost its collective mind?
He thought he’d go into the hall to have a look at the day’s fresh ponies, but the last trickle of sisters had packed up and left, and the long tables stood empty and smooth, hairless to the max.
He was on his way back into the garden, in the hopes of spotting a glimpse of the hot young sister with the pert but pious ass, when he spied movement out of the corner of his eye. Did Major’s yellow curtain just move, or was he imagining things again? Wind probably, right? He looked towards the wall, checking for any open windows, but they were all shut tight.
He was about to turn back when he saw it moving again. The curtain. There was a sound, like shuffling footsteps, and a loud crashing thud. So he did what any idiot, shark-bait, horror novice who didn’t know he was in a story would do—he went closer to have a look.
A flash of indigo, oil, charcoal, raven, ebony, midnight black. It was her. It had to be. He catapulted himself towards the curtain. It rippled and billowed. He grabbed at it, yanked it open. The yellow fabric tore off the pegs and dropped to the floor.
But behind it, nothing. Not a damn thing. The caretaker’s office stood dead and empty like before.
Wait.
Something was different. The side table that had stood next to the couch was gone. The tablecloth lay tossed aside and the stacked books that he now saw had made up the base of the table were scattered all over the floor. Some of the books looked old. Really old. Like they could be worth something. He wondered where Major had found them. The caretaker wasn’t the kind of guy who spent his weekends scouring the city for antique books. Hell, all Sans had ever seen the guy reading was the sports section of the Daily Truth.
He was picking up the books and shaping them into a table again when he noticed that one of them, a fat leather-bound thing that looked way older than his gran, had this weird glow about it. All around the edges. Kind of like a halo. What the hell? Was he hallucinating again? No. Enough of this. He scrunched up his eyelids until he saw stars. Opened them up again. And the glow was gone. Thank fuck. It was just a book. Old, certainly, but just a book. He looked for the title and realized that the writing on the cover was handwritten, the letters faded. Ama. No. Wait. Anna. A space. And a D-something. D.U. Konh. De Kongh? No. That wasn’t it. De Koningh? De Koningh. The wheels in his brain rewound, back, forward, every which way. Could it be?
The diary? The diary? No fucking way. Not
a chance. It had to be a setup. He wasn’t one of those suckers who believed in signs and coincidences. The planets aligning and all that hippie mumbo jumbo. And his tenuous grip on reality had already been stretched to the max this week. He didn’t want the last dregs of his sanity to snap like a twig. He wouldn’t allow it. No. This had to be some kind of scam. A trick.
But he hadn’t told the caretaker about his unicorn, had he? So who had he told? Who knew about all this? The dead collector knew some of it, along with her hyena-muzzling beefcake. That fat bloody faker. And the librarian, the guy who gave him the information about De Koningh in the first place. Maybe the trio was in cahoots and this whole thing was some kind of elaborate gaslight plot set up to make him crazy? But why?
Hold on. Who had told him about the charlatan sin-eater in the first place? And who had told him about that librarian? That blue-haired, fast-talking dead collector. And where had he met the unicorn first? When he was hanging out with Faith on the square, playing cards. What if she was behind all of this? No, it didn’t add up. What was her motive? What kind of axe did she have to grind with him? He hadn’t spoken more than ten, maybe twenty words to her before Monday, if you didn’t count poker talk, that was. Was she working for someone else? His gangster chums, perhaps? Or was she some kind of undercover pony activist? She’d known about his job, yes. (All the dead collectors on the square did. It had come up while they were playing cards a few times. Some of the guys in the card ring sometimes brought him dead ponies on the side.) And she didn’t approve. He could see it on her face. Chicks rarely did anyway. Except the gold-digger types who were hoping to score free weaves.
What if the dead collector was a pony activist and she was driving him crazy as some kind of whack revenge plot? That was why she’d cornered him in the comedy club, bought him drink after drink, and asked all those questions about the convent and what the security was like there. What had he told her, exactly? That evening was still hazy. All he could remember was the chicken on the stage and that grinning hyena licking his ankle. But the processing room was always locked, bolted, burglar-barred, and buttoned up like Pollsmoor and Alcatraz had gone and had a baby. Not even he could break in without help. So how would she have gotten in?