by Ilze Hugo
There was a lift, but it didn’t make sense to take it, what with all the power cuts, so up and up the stairs they went to the tenth bloody floor, and down a corridor to the thirteenth door. It was open. Fred stepped over the threshold and Faith followed suit.
Pinky was a pixie of a thing, twentysomething, wearing high-top sneakers and a yellow dress streaked with neon lightning bolts. The only sign of her profession was the goatskin bracelet she wore around her wrist and the string of white-and-red beads circling her throat.
Her apartment was an IKEA catalogue, all clean lines and Scandi design. In one corner of the slick screed floor was a worn red Persian carpet. Pinky was sitting on it, cross-legged, the carpet’s intricate flowers curling out in cursive rays from underneath her bare brown knees. The cords of white earphones dangled from her ears, one end connected to a skinny laptop. Behind her back was a floor-to-ceiling shelf, stocked to the brim with a curious collection of jars all labeled in black-inked letters.
“Have a seat, please,” said the sangoma in a throaty voice that rose and fell like a song. She motioned towards a couch in an adjoining room. “I’ll be just a sec. Just finishing up an online consultation.”
“This new generation of healers are quite high-tech,” said Fred as the pair of them waited on the sleek gray couch. “It’s all Factbook and SwipeRight and all that social media hocus-pocus. That’s why she lives so high up. The internet is better here. Me, I prefer to kick it old school, thank you very much. Keep things face-to-face. But Pinky is incredible. You’ll see. Talk about hearing voices, though—I’ve got nothing on that girl. The kid’s brain is as crowded as they come, with her, her dead mom, her grandmother, and her uncle all vying for space in there and helping with the work. Talk about keeping it in the family. Don’t know how she does it, hey. I can’t even bear to share a house with my family, never mind a brain.”
The sin-eater picked up a glossy tome from the plywood coffee table and thumbed through it, while Pinky murmured to the screen in the next room and Faith studied the print on the wall: a woman was sitting in a red car next to a man in a suit. The man was watching the woman with shady eyes, but the woman just stared straight ahead. The collar of her fur coat was pulled up, the tip of it grazing her pearled ears. Faith was certain she’d seen the print before, but she wasn’t sure where.
Fifteen minutes ticked by before Pinky popped her head in through the doorway. “All done,” she said. “Good to see you again. Come, sit.”
The big man heaved his bulk onto the carpet and Faith plopped down beside him. “How are your knees, Fred?” asked Pinky.
“Much better, thanks, Pinky darling. That stuff you gave me helped a bunch.”
“Glad to hear it. So, what brings you here?”
“Ag, Pinky dear, Faith here has a spirit problem. And it seems to be above my current level of expertise. So I thought I’d better call in the big guns.”
“I see.” Pinky took a yellow candle from the shelf behind her and lit the wick. She clutched a tangle of a dead bush and dried yellow flowers above the dancing flame. Smoke spiraled up towards the ceiling.
“Impepho,” said the sin-eater. “Holy incense.”
“Right,” she said. “First I’ll respectfully invite my ancestors and other spirit mediums into the room. Then I’ll introduce them to you. Okay?” Faith nodded.
The syllables rolled from Pinky’s songbird tongue as she held out her muthi bag. “Please blow,” she told Faith.
Faith blew. Pinky tipped the bag. Bones and stones and shells and dice and dominoes scattered on the mat. Her fingers sifted through them. She looked up. There was a weird look on her face. Like she was in pain or something. Then her face went blank.
Faith was so focused on the scattered bones, and on Pinky herself, that she almost missed it at first, but something was moving on the wall, right behind the sangoma’s back. Her shadow. While Pinky herself was sitting rock still, almost catatonic, her shadow was doing something else. Was Faith imagining it—was it a trick of the light—or was the black shape against the wall growing, stretching, spreading out, transforming, into four distinct humanoid shadows that danced on the wall, bucking and swaying and bowing silently to the rhythm of their own silent beat, before slowly shrinking back into one, much smaller, singular shape again? Faith shivered.
“The boy,” said Pinky, finally. “The ghost. He’s just a manifestation. Nothing but cold, hard grief. But you know that.”
“But the girl,” said Faith. “She’s so sure her brother’s ghost is real. She’s not going to believe me when I tell her that.”
“No. Not the baby. The other one. The boy.”
It was like she was hearing a song, but her brain couldn’t make out the lyrics. Didn’t want to. No. Not the baby. The other one. The boy.
“You know what I mean,” continued Pinky. “You’ve been hiding from the hurt for too long. It’s consuming you. You should let him go before it’s too late. Before it kills you. Or worse.”
“I don’t think I can,” said Faith, her face a mask.
“Huh?” said Fred. “The baby’s not real. Case closed. So why the drama? The Nile-long face? All this talk about killing? Am I missing something here?”
“No,” said Pinky, still looking at Faith. “The baby is real. Or at least I think so.”
“Huh?”
“Is he at the convent?”
“I think so.”
“Is there a way to help him?” asked Faith.
“The baby?” asked Fred.
“Yes.”
“I’m asking my ancestors, but I’m not getting a clear answer. They say you will find him if you let him go.”
“Well, that’s really useful. Thanks a lot.”
“I know you’re angry. And I might not have all the answers for you. I can only tell you what my ancestors are telling me. And they’re telling me that you need to hand over that bottle in your pocket before it consumes you.”
“What bottle?”
“The one in your pocket you’ve been stroking this whole time that we’ve been sitting here talking. The one that you took from the convent while Fred here was feeling up the cross-eyed caretaker.”
Her heart was banging against her ribs, rearing to run. Her throat was crammed with words she couldn’t get out. Mount Vesuvius was stirring again. Jacob, she’d seen him at the train station—she wasn’t imagining things! If ghosts were real, if Tomorrow’s brother really was dead and at the convent and there was a way to find his ghost, then why not her Jacob? Why couldn’t she get him back, too? Why did she see his face? The orb? No, no, no.
No.
She just couldn’t bear to believe what she was hearing. Just couldn’t even start to try to consider it. The sangoma had to be lying to her. People lied all the time, right? For all sorts of reasons. People spread all sorts of alternative facts . . . There had, there just had to be, a way to get Jacob back. “This is . . . this is all bullshit,” she screamed at them both. “This whole damn thing is bullshit. You! Fat man! This is all your fault. I can’t believe you talked me into coming here! Sangomas. Real ghosts, fake ghosts! What a crock of shit! I’m getting out of here. I’ve had enough. Enough! I’m letting myself out!”
The sin-eater opened his mouth as if to say something. Then he seemed to catch himself.
Faith jumped up. Running to the door, her hip hit a side table, and a white vase printed with pale blue flowers crashed, spitting out shards onto the cement floor.
“I guess it’s true what they’re saying about those postboxes making folks crazy,” she heard the sin-eater tell the sangoma before she fled.
SUNDAY
- 70 - THE DAILY TRUTH
THE MAYORS OF CRAZY TOWN
By Lawyer Tshabalala
I don’t know about you guys, but it seems to me the whole bleddie city is going crazy. This is crazy town, folks, and we are all its mayors. The way things are going, we’re all going to be walking around wearing tinfoil hats soon, I tell you.
While many are blaming the government-mandated postbox meds for the spate of spirit sightings or hallucinatory visions sweeping the city, some have other ideas.
Laughter denialists stand fast that this is just another example of mass hysteria or folie à plusieurs (that’s “madness of many” in French, folks).
Others are saying it’s a plot by the government or the West or some other nebulous force to gaslight us. To those of you not familiar with the term, gaslighting, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is: “to attempt to make (someone) believe that he or she is going insane (as by subjecting that person to a series of experiences that have no rational explanation).”
Sick City sin-eater Fred Mostert says the spate of spooks is a sign that strange times are afoot. That the Down Days have upset the balance of things. “The lines between the living and the dead seem to be thinning. And the dead are circling the drains like rats abandoning a sinking ship. Or maybe the living are the rats? Anyway, I digress—the result is that the city is becoming a liminal, in-between place, where normal rules of reality don’t apply anymore.” Mostert believes things are only going to get worse, and that the living and the dead will just have to learn to live together to make things work.
Some would call this the beginning of the apocalypse, but Mostert is a fairly pragmatic man for a sin-eating ghostbuster, who, in contrast to his comments to the Truth earlier this week, now says he doesn’t really believe in “all that apocalyptic hoodoo any more than I believe in vegans or the tooth fairy.”
John Pistorius, spokesperson for the Church of the Four Horsemen, offered a different slant: “It’s a sign of the apocalypse. It says so right there in the book. Isaiah 26, verses 19–20: ‘Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a dew of light, and the earth will give birth to the dead. Come, my people, enter your chambers, and shut your doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until the fury has passed by.’ ”
Let’s hope the postbox protesters are right, folks, otherwise we might soon have dead folks selling us insurance, teaching our kids interdimensional post-terrestrial geography, and asking for equal rights and seats in parliament. Now wouldn’t that be a gemors?
- 71 - FAITH
Faith stood in the hallway, locking her front door. Her phone felt heavy in her pocket. Its blinking screen was weighing her down. All those messages. From Ash, asking where she was, why she didn’t pick him up for work this morning. From Tomorrow, wanting to know why she wasn’t hearing anything from her about the case.
Faith left the blinking phone there to marinate. She’d get to it eventually. But not right now. She was having a sick day. A break day. A think day. The messages would have to wait.
Her hand brushed against her pocket. There was another thing in there, weighing her down. She took the vial out, rubbed the glass with her thumb for the millionth time, tried to concentrate, tried to make it glow. Hoping to see Jacob’s face again. Nothing happened. So she stowed it back in her pocket and turned around. Saw Ateri and Jamis floating above the Porsches, probably getting back from the hyena’s morning walk.
“Hi, Faith. Guess what?”
“What?”
“I got the job! That freelance job I told you about. I’m starting today. Looking forward to it, actually. Will be nice to get some fresh air for a change. And I think Jamis will enjoy all the space to roam. Might as well take him off the chain, let him stretch his legs properly for once. He’s generally more of a city mutt. Prefers the feel of tar under his paws. But I think a change of scenery could do us both some good. Things have been mad around here of late.”
“That’s great, Ateri. I’m happy for you.”
“Thanks. Hey, Faith.”
“Yup?”
“You got any sunscreen on you I could borrow, perhaps?”
- 72 - SANS
Purgatory. This was purgatory. Pacing up and down on a windy roof. Holding out his cell like a dowsing rod. Waiting, hoping, half praying for a signal. With not a single damn bar in sight. (Talking about bars, he needed a drink.)
The roof was deserted. But it wasn’t empty. Almost every available space was lined with plastic crates planted with vegetables. In one corner stood two rabbit coops and a chicken coop. Sans looked at the puffs of rabbit fluff huddled against each other in their coops. His stomach was growling. He hadn’t had breakfast yet. He had some rabbit meat in the fridge at home that he could fry up in the pan when he got back, but nothing much else. He wasn’t a fan of rabbit meat at the best of times—too many tiny bones—but he was flat-out broke and beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Two hours before the morning signal rush. The sun had barely reared its head and the mountain was undercover, going full vigilante in a smoking gray cape. The urban farming collective who tended the animals and crops were still fast asleep. So, it was just him, a down-and-out one-man show without a cent in his pocket. Just the clothes on his back, his phone, a dusty old book, an urge, and a hope. The urge? The same damn urge he always got when he stood on rooftops, clifftops, balconies, bridges (and on airplanes, too, back when). That urge, almost uncontrollable, to jump. Not a suicidal urge. (Sans didn’t have a suicidal bone in his body.) This was something else. More like he was drawn to the edge like a moth to a lightbulb. Drawn to fly. The French had a phrase for it—this instinctive urge to jump from high places. L’appel du vide The call of the void.
He was standing on the edge. Hearing the call. His toes against the low parapet wall. Looking out. At the ant colony below. When he heard something behind him. A rustle. A click.
Not again, he thought. Not again. Damn visions. Damn unicorn. Damn crazy fucked-up fever bullshit. He was about to turn. To face her. To tell her and her holy hair to fuck off once and for all. When he felt a hand on his shoulder. Gripping, pulling, tearing at him. Shoving him to the ground.
A struggle. His back kissed concrete and his face came face-to-face with another face. So close he couldn’t make out its features, just cratered cheeks, stubble, and teeth. Then the head pushed back and the face came into focus. The blue-bag man. Pushing him down onto the cement. His eyes were throwing knives, but his breath smelt like strawberries.
“What do you want?”
“The money. I’m here for the money,” Blue Bag said. “My bosses. You’re not answering their calls. They’re tired of waiting. It’s time to pay up.”
“I don’t have it. I lost it.”
“Ever wondered what it would feel like to fly?” said Blue Bag, gripping his throat.
Not anymore, thought Sans. But he kept his mouth shut.
Blue grabbed him by the collar. Lifted him up, like he was nothing. “You see all those horsebacked Veeps down there? Thanks to yesterday’s postbox protests, the city is swarming with them this morning. They’re coming out of the woodwork like cockroaches on a sinking ship. Which isn’t so great for you, is it? See, I’ve been watching you, ponyjacker. Since Tuesday. Saw you sweating up a storm. Saw that girl with the gumboots knock on your door. She wasn’t knocking on package day, so I’m guessing it’s not the latest Netflix show she had in that envelope she gave you. Saw your pathetic postbox panic attack later that same day. So it wasn’t that difficult to put two and two together. Hand it over.”
“Hand what over?”
“Don’t play coy with me. This isn’t a blind date. Your wallet.”
Sans pulled his wallet from his pocket, handed it to Blue, who opened it up. Took out his fake medpass. “I’m pretty sure if I take this card down to those two guys below, ask them to have a look—I mean really look—they’re not going to be too impressed. Should we do it? Go down? Have a little chat with them? Wha
t do you say? If you don’t feel like taking the stairs, we can take the short way down.”
“I don’t have the money. I’ve told you.”
“What a pity.” Sans felt his feet leave concrete again.
“Wait. I have something else. Five minutes. Give me five minutes to explain.”
The grip against his Adam’s apple slackened. “Okay. Five minutes. But if I don’t like what you tell me—” Blue’s arms let go of Sans’s shirt. Then he lifted them up to form a cross. He was swinging them around now like a kid playing fighter jets. “It’s liftoff.”
- 73 - FAITH
She was falling. No. Wait. She was walking. No plan. No aim. No inkling. She needed to think. And she did her best thinking on her feet. So she let them carry her along. Braiding them through the tide of bodies and breaths, getting lost in the crowd. The street was covered in trash from yesterday’s protests. Bins were lying on their sides, their contents strewn everywhere. As she walked, she passed quite a few boarded-up shop windows and the smoking remains of at least two petrol-bombed postboxes. She noticed there weren’t a lot of stalls trading this morning, either; the traders were probably worried about all the action.
Down the street she spotted one lone ironing stall. The vendor was filling his iron with coals. He lifted his hand to her as she passed. She’d helped him with a case once—someone kept breaking into his chicken coop at night. She’d caught the kid and in return he now ironed her clothes for free each week.
Next to him a busker was crooning the blues on his beat-up guitar. The busker recrossed his beaded ankles and winked at her, rippling the rail-track line of tattoos that traced the edges of his eyes like a superhero mask. She could do with a good caped crusader right now. She could do with a good saving. Not a knight, though. No shining armor, thanks. And no horses, either—they made her think of virus patrollers.