When I press her against the wall of the shower, however, she lets out a small shriek. “The tiles! They’re freezing!”
At this point we both break down into helpless laughter. Something tight within my heart snaps and I realise it’s good to be human, to be clothed in flesh and to indulge in the senses. The Inkarna of Per Ankh are too uptight.
* * * *
Much later, after allowing our carnal natures free rein, Marlise and I lie, half-drowsing in her bed. I must have nodded off, replete in every sense of the word, when a faint buzzing starts on an almost subsonic level. All the hairs on my nape stand on end but Marlise senses it at the same time. Her hand, which had been lying so casually on the soft skin above my hip, tightens, the fingernails digging painfully into my muscle.
We lock gazes simultaneously.
“Ash?” Ragged fear tinges my name.
I sit up, Marlise mirroring my movement but pressing herself to my side. The clock’s digital display tells me it’s twenty past six, after sunset, and I don’t like the way my breath mists before my face. The room hasn’t been that cold naturally, despite it being midwinter. The bedside lamp’s illumination doesn’t quite push aside the murk. It’s as if the air is denser, somehow, not just with the cold but also a tangible darkness that seeks to extinguish visibility.
“Marlise, I want you to put on your clothes and go to your parents. Go make tea or watch TV or something. I don’t want you to see this.”
“No. Don’t try to cut me out. What part of ‘we’re in this together,’ don’t you understand?”
A sound like fingernails scratching down a chalkboard starts, a sound that crawls down my spine. Marlise’s death grip on my upper arm hurts.
“While I appreciate your loyalty, I don’t want y—”
Faint laughter rings out, as if from a great distance, lending the sense that the room in which we’re sitting is, in fact, an illusion, and we’re situated in some giant cavern.
Extricating Marlise’s fingers from my arm, I rise and face the corner where the darkness seems to be the most tangible. I stretch out my arms, palms held up. “You miss this, Ashton? This flesh you didn’t seem to care enough for when you still inhabited it?” I need to make him angry, so his emotions will cloud his intent.
The laughter stops and, instead, an icy wind begins to sough outside, the branches of the plantain scratching against the window.
“Oh, you think you’re so clever. That time beneath The Event Horizon, when you gathered enough energy to knock me flat with your first pitiful attempt. You think I’m scared, Ashton? Think again. You’re trapped here and the way I see it, I’m quite enjoying your body without you in it. I get to taste food, feel warm or cold. Hell…” I laugh, even though I don’t feel it. “I can go take a piss or a crap whenever I want to. I get hungry, I eat food. And, you know what? It feels really good. You can’t do that, can you?”
The air grows thicker. Marlise hasn’t moved a muscle behind me, and the shadows in the corner bulge and distort. An intense longing reaches me, tendrils shooting off from the darkness, but stopping short about a metre or so from where I stand.
What’s the worst thing I can say to this disembodied spirit? A slow smile spreads across my lips and I close my eyes, feeling rather where Ashton is. His presence is an angry buzz, like a hive preparing to swarm. I am ready for his attack. The ember within me flares, increasing my pulse and my breathing. Slow fire crawls outward from my belly, igniting my blood, making my phallus harden.
“Even better, Ashton, is that I fucked your woman today. I fucked her long and hard, three times already, and she was more than willing. In fact, she says I really know how to make a woman feel good about herself.” I cringe inwardly as I speak these words out loud. They are how I imagine Ashton to be in this very situation, cocksure and arrogant, enjoying someone else’s torment for the pure kick it lends his ego.
These last few words have the desired effect, though. With a roar more like a storm wind than that of a man, Ashton launches himself, his fury concentrated on me. Every inch of my being screams at me to shove up some sort of shield or at least jump out of the path of such mindless fury, but I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek and hold.
Ashton hits me, a tsunami of daimonic force, and I stagger back to land on the bed. An intense polar chill invades my limbs and my flesh quivers and jerks spasmodically.
“I’ve got you now,” Ashton whispers. His triumph is abrasive.
And I let him penetrate to my core, right down to that little ember I always nurture as my essential concept of Akh-hood, that which makes me Inkarna.
In the distance Marlise cries out my name. She shakes the Kha, but all sensation is dulled. The angry ghost floods through my veins like a shot of morphine, and everything grows unimportant.
Hold on in there! A wash of memories try to override my own.
The lights are bright in my eyes and I cavort around on a stage with a host of writhing bodies before me. My voice is thunderous as I let loose into the microphone, my black hair a banner as I throw myself around in time to the music, the grinding guitars—a dirty sound that sends my pulse racing.
A line of white powder leads me down to a glass-topped coffee table, the rolled-up fifty rand note in my hand damp from my fingers. My stomach clenches in painful anticipation as I stick the paper tube in my right nostril and Hoover up the white powder. It’s going to be a great night tonight.
So what if I don’t remember her name. I glance at the blonde comatose in the bed next to me. Where the hell am I? I get up, pull on my jeans and part the curtain. Fuck. How the hell did I end up in Panorama? Table Mountain is blue in the distance, its characteristic “tablecloth” boiling off its flat top. How the hell am I going to get back to Obz?
The motorcycle roars between my legs and I give the bike more juice, taking pleasure in watching the speedometer creeping up from a two hundred and twenty to two-sixty. The world blurs past and it feels like I’m flying. Nothing can stop me.
Memory after memory spills over me as Ashton tries to overwrite me. Hot and cold flushes grip me and I’m aware of ragged breathing—my own—my muscles cramping. All the while Marlise calls my name and I would reply if it weren’t for the occasional strangled moan I offer her instead.
It would be easier to let go. I’m aware of that. I can slip into limbo, cut loose my ties, and none of this would hurt anymore. Let go, it’s easy, c’mon man, you’ve got the wrong body. The grey Sea of Nun beckons.
I’m privy to all Ashton’s memories, of him growing up in the relatively affluent suburb of Claremont, of him going to school, getting bullied until he got his first growth spurt and started beating up on the kids who’d tormented him. It’s surprising that he did love Marlise, because those first tender emotions bloom. Only with time did the rot set in, that arrogance of a man who believes he is immortal, infallible. The problem with Ashton Kennedy is he believes the world owes him something.
His anger flashes when I maintain this thought, holding up a dark mirror.
You’re a child, nothing more than a spoilt brat everyone’s been pandering to, humouring because you’re so god-damned charming. And when you don’t get what you want, you have the sulks, throw a tantrum. Grow up, Ashton. You’ve messed up one time too many and now it’s too late.
It grows darker and a great pressure pushes down on my chest so that I’m gasping for air. I’ve got to rally against this spiral into oblivion and it really does feel like I’m a leaf caught in an ever-decreasing eddy, spinning faster and faster to reach the singularity where I’ll…
Memories of grey limbo reach their clammy hands to envelope me. Perhaps I was a fool for thinking I could welcome Ashton back into his body. After all, I’m nothing more than a rider at the end of the day. He’s had a score of years to really know every inch of how this Kha works. But that nothingness! How can I return there, especially with so much unfinished?
I stand in a maelstrom of cloud and air, my feet firmly on f
rozen shale, the rock sending its chill through me. This can’t be it? It’s heartening to know I can visualise an actual setting, though now I’m cut off from the sense of being in the Kha. Something tugs at my chest, above my heart chakra—a silver cord. The hand I reach out to pluck at this string glows, long fingers—not quite male or female. Translucent skin shimmers, like that of an Inkarna resident in Per Ankh. This is a good thing. I smile with grim determination and tug. The rope isn’t slack, it vanishes into the boiling cloud a mere five metres from me.
Pulling harder, I meet resistance. I grip with both hands, centre my will and yank, hard. The world turns black, and it’s as though I’m dragging myself through a viscous liquid and all sense of holding onto a physical form vanishes save for the determination to progress, to return to the material.
A terrible wailing rises into a high-pitched whine until all blurs into a rush of falling through an endless void, great bursts of electricity buzzing through me in a longitudinal explosion.
With a snap I’m back in Ashton’s Kha, straddling Marlise, pressing her down into the bed, my hands wrapped around her throat.
“Shit!” I fall back as though I’ve been trying to throttle a live snake.
Marlise scuttles to the edge of the bed, gasping for air, her face pale. She coughs.
A wall of pain smashes into me and I curl into a foetal position, as wave after wave of pure agony blazes through me. My head wants to explode and, for a brief moment, I entertain a morbid vision of my skull bursting, spattering my grey matter all over the bedding.
This doesn’t happen. As abruptly as this attack started, it ends, and my body uncoils. Only a terrible ringing in my ears remains. My skin is slick with a cold sheen of perspiration. Then the shivering starts, my teeth chattering. But after this violent decompression of daimonic energy, it’s just me here in this room with Marlise, whom I’ve just tried to kill.
The horror of that outcome chills me and I sit up gingerly. Marlise watches me, everything in her posture screaming wariness from the other end of the bed. The duvet is kept pulled around her as she massages at her throat with her left hand.
“Ash, is that you now or is it…” She shudders.
“No, it’s me. Or at least the ‘me’ that I hope you prefer.” I knee-walk toward her, slowly holding my palms toward her to show I mean no harm. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Marlise bites her lip. “He said the most terrible things, Ash. He said he was going to kill me.”
She allows me to pull her into my arms and I hold her, pressing kisses to her neck and the top of her head. “It’s okay now, I think. I’m so very, very sorry.”
The depths of my shame at this unfortunate spin on events makes me wish I could curl into a tiny ball, that Marlise would at least be angry, that she’d lash out at me kicking and punching. She doesn’t. Instead she pulls me closer, as though we could somehow meld into each other. The storm has passed. I hope.
Tentatively I push with my daimonic self, slowly increasing my awareness to fill this room. Nothing. Not a whisper. Ashton Kennedy’s unquiet spirit is either locked deep within me, or I’ve sent him howling back into limbo. I can only pray he stays there. It’s too soon to tell.
* * * *
By unspoken agreement, we drop any discussion of the Inkarna, the now-hidden stele and Ash’s attack. We share silent moments where we stare into each other’s eyes, haunted by what we’ve experienced, but we focus instead on the mundane world.
My return to The Event Horizon on Thursday morning is an anticlimax to say the least. Lisa’s off so it’s just me and Davy, and we fall into easy banter. If he notices that I move with care, he says nothing. I wear long sleeves to cover any of the scratches on my arms. Once or twice he makes hints that Marlise and I are keeping each other up late nights. I let him think what he will, even playing along with a few sly winks.
Of Ash’s spirit there is not a whisper, though if he expended so much energy in his attempt at a hostile takeover it’s quite possible he’s biding his time until such point that he can unleash another attack. For now it’s blissfully quiet.
Smiling at the patrons is easy; concentrating on their drink orders gives me a focus. So too is calling up to the kitchen for another basket of fries or just losing myself in such tasks as packing bottles into the fridge. I don’t have to think too hard. I have one bad moment when I go down to the basement to fetch a crate of beers, but it passes after I take a deep breath and force myself to take that first step into the gloom-ridden area.
Marlise comes through to The Event Horizon after her classes finish and Davy raises a brow when I embrace her and plant a lingering kiss on her lips. It’s clear to everyone that something has changed in our relationship. The old Ash’s memories, I find, wriggle just beneath the surface, hinting that he may not have been so demonstrative in his attentions.
And that is odd, because if I push just a little below the surface, something gives, some sort of pliant barrier, and I can access the barest whispers of a past that isn’t my own. It’s not like when I access Blessed memories, which only requires a slight shift in perception to that part of me that is Inkarna. No. If I think about what has changed since the past night, it’s almost as if I’m superimposed. It takes a little more effort, but the old Ashton is very much there, just dormant. Exactly how dormant, I don’t know.
Marlise accompanies me to Sunrise Lodge and it’s the dump she said it was. She’s thin-lipped as Karin, the owner, shows us a few of the rooms that are available. The place reminds me of the stories I’ve heard of California’s Winchester Mystery House, with obscure rooms, angles that are slightly off and passages that terminate for no logical reason. It appears that bits of it were tacked on over the years, without giving much consideration to architectural aesthetics or practical considerations. Though the place is hardly as grand as the old lady’s eccentric mansion, Sunrise Lodge definitely dates back to a similar age.
Two storeys tall, it boasts scuffed and often holey Oregon pine floors and high ceilings. The carpets, where the place still possesses such luxuries, are threadbare and covered in unidentifiable stains. I assume it was built initially as an upmarket boarding house, but whatever grace the property once had is long gone. Where the paint isn’t mouldy, it’s peeling in great swathes. The other tenants, such that we do pass while clomping down the echoing dark passages, all hail from central Africa, if the snatches of overheard French suggests anything. Contrasting cooking smells compete for dominance, here braised meat, there a curry of some sort, or burnt toast. None of it, however, can mask the underlying old house smell, of dust and something darker and somehow sentient. Here be ghosts aplenty, and worse.
Karin, a dowdy woman with short curly white hair, seems oblivious to the state of the premises, marching determinately ahead of Marlise and me. Every so often, between viewing available rooms, Marlise shoots me a doubtful glance, raising her brow as if to say, I told you so and you wouldn’t listen.
At least half a dozen of Karin’s mangy canines follow us, nearing to sniff at our shoes only to shoot back with bared teeth when we turn to look at them. I have severe misgivings about making a decision, my hand often travelling to the bundle of cash Leonora gave me. There are better things I could spend my money on, my inner critic chides. Yet if I stay longer with Marlise in her parents’ house, I may also put them in danger, should House Montu cotton onto my return. That’s if they haven’t already.
Perhaps Sunrise Lodge is a good enough option. Here I’d be anonymous, in a place where no one asks too many questions. As for safety? Who’d want to mess with a man who’s more than six feet tall who, although he doesn’t carry a gun, still packs enough punch to put someone through a wall, literally. The way I look at it, Sunrise Lodge is the last place on earth anyone who knew of Lizzie, or Nefretkheperi, would look.
Eventually I settle for a room near the fire escape on the first floor—I have to remain prudent, after all—that is more an afterthought than a room. Technically, I susp
ect, this used to be a stairwell leading down to the ground floor, but was walled off, creating a very awkward space featuring an extremely high ceiling, and a spot where I can make my bed beneath the stairs. A little additional cover never hurts. Anyone entering by the top won’t see me around the curve, which gives me time to react.
Another reason I’ve chosen this is the door on the ground floor which, although it has been boarded up, can be broken through at a moment’s notice. It’s always good to have an emergency exit. It’s too bad for the person who lives in the unit next door if that eventuality occurs. I pray it won’t.
The only major problem with this set-up is that I don’t have a bathroom. In fact, I cringe at the very idea of having to use the communal facilities in this building. I’d already spotted six massive roaches during our tour.
With Marlise rolling her eyes, I pay the deposit of four hundred rand plus a week’s rent of four hundred, and we leave after Karin gives us the key. I still have about six hundred left, and plan to purchase a few assortments before I move in tomorrow.
“Is this really such a good idea?” Marlise asks the moment we step outside the gate and into the night and a thin drizzle. She stands more than an arm’s length from me, her shoulders hunched.
“No, but neither is the current status quo.” The streetlights paint her face in a wash of orange and I can’t help but consider how young she is. “Come here, silly.”
Marlise obeys and I draw her into my embrace.
“I’m going to miss you at night, but let’s get through the mess, okay? Then you and I can think about something better.”
She murmurs something, but I can’t quite make out the words. It feels so right holding her, another of Ashton’s memories of a similar night bubbling up from the depths. The gods know I don’t want any harm to befall Marlise. Some deeper connection tugs at me, an echo of Ashton’s older feelings for this woman mirroring my own.
Her phone rings then. She answers. “No, ma’am, I’m sorry. This is the wrong number. My name is not Lucy.”
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