Nightscript 2

by C M Muller

  When Rafi got sick, his lungs black and rotten with emphysema, Hector visited him at the nursing home on Eldridge Street after school. He would sneak Rafi plastic water bottles sloshing with rum, given to him by the man at the bodega counter, who smiled sadly and waved away any offer of money. They played dominos with NY1 blaring in the background, and they never once spoke of the Aycayia again.

  He thought often of his abuelo, that summer at the Gowanus Canal.

  One day, Hector was walking up the ramp of a jetty on 8th Street. He hoisted his box of glassware up to his chest, when he heard a small splash behind him. He wheeled around, careful not to drop the box.

  At the edge was the lost flask that had fallen into the canal so many weeks before. It wobbled in the sunlight, tossing discotheque colors in irregular little circles.

  He felt like he was watching himself in a dream, terrified and enchanted by the canal’s secrets, by its strange, kaleidoscopic power. Slowly, he put down the box and inched toward the flask. He wanted to stop himself, to pull away and keep from seeing what hid beneath the buckling jetty. He could only move closer and closer, until the edge loomed before him. He stooped to pick up the flask. He leaned out over the canal, some part of him knowing just what he would find.

  The boards creaked and the insects sang and a thing with the face of a woman floated in the shallows below.

  She stretched out just beneath the surface. Her black hair rippled around her head like seeping crude oil. Her skin was opalescent and seemed to sparkle in the sun—the mottled shade of oyster shells and gasoline. Her small breasts rose and fell with the rhythm of her respiration, as if she breathed air.

  Her eyes seemed carved into her face, like black voids. They stared up at Hector, curious.

  She pointed to the flask, which Hector clutched to his chest. He let out a dry, choked yelp. He fell to his knees and felt a battery of splinters stab him.

  Yours. Her lips were motionless but he still heard her voice hiss in his ear.

  He kept his eyes fixed, careful not to let them stray below her bare, jutting collarbone, down to her breasts. He mustered up the courage to ask her the question that had been nibbling away at the back of his mind all summer.

  “Are you the Aycayia?”

  She cocked her head.

  “A mermaid? A nymph?”

  The expression on her face was blank.

  “What are you then?”

  I am one who guides the water.

  Her black eyes bored deep into Hector, who sat, paralyzed, on the jetty. It seemed like she was sizing him up, measuring him like a coiled snake.

  You steal the water. I have watched you.

  She wrinkled her nose. The creature rose from the canal, revealing herself below the waist. Hector gasped.

  Her lower body was a single, fanned tail, covered in dense plates and spines. Slender, jointed legs flared from her sides and scrabbled at the air. She clawed her way towards him, hoisting herself up out of the water, her movement a grotesque, writhing puppet show.

  She was not as Hector had always imagined her, as Rafi had described her.

  She sat on the jetty and adjusted her position so that her armored tail dangled out over the water. She reached out a slimy hand. Her fingers were monstrously long and webbed, like the vestigial digits of a bat’s wing. She grazed Hector’s trembling chest, down to his belly.

  You don’t understand, she said. I have watched this water for so many of your lifetimes.

  There are memories in the canal.

  A girl walking along the edge, a boy beside her. Legs swinging out in the night. Fabric billowing. Warm overcoats.

  There are words and ignored warnings; paths lit by the brightness of the moon, breath steaming.

  She speaks of the canal and her love for the belching ships that chug and chug down the canal and out to the harbor and then on to strange ports, strange places nobody has ever heard of, where strange people look strange and speak in strange sounds, worshiping strange gods. The boy reaches and brushes blushing cheeks and she bristles but does not pull away.

  Then, she turns, drawn by the glow of the big city, way out there on the horizon, towers shrouded in fog.

  Then, she slips.

  She flaps and he yells, leaping forward, scratching her wrist with dirty fingernails, grabbing at wind with calloused fingers. She falls and she sees his face, eyes wide against the moon.

  There is darkness, then.

  She awakes frigid. The bright moon faded, flickering. Oily tendrils wrap around her, tickling her legs, caressing her breasts, weighing her down, deep in the muck and the sludge. She can’t breathe or scream and blackness devours her, down there in the muck, in the sludge.

  Above her: shouts, dim flashes.

  The girl is alive, down there in the muck and the sludge. Clothes and skin fall away until there is nothing but nerves and burbling muscle wrapped around a skeleton. Patches of chitin erupt across her flesh like some medieval rash. Legs fuse into a whipping tail. Legs burst from her sides. Fingers grow long and teeth grow sharp, and her soft, green eyes glitter black.

  Her new body jitters and pulses with life. She crawls to and fro, over centuries of wood and stone and metal, over slimy bones of all manner of beast and man, over history layered in the sediment. She feels the canal flowing and leeching.

  Memories creep along in the muck and the sludge. They slink towards her like a cat. They speak without words and she understands.

  There were others before. When the waters ran sweet and clear and men and women waded through the shallows with sweeping nets. When the waters ran red with blood. When the waters ran brown with filth.

  Even now, there are others—a lumbering turtle in the bay to the east; a monstrous eel, curled in the mud of the harbor. Sleek but dull fish in the tributaries to the north, patrolling their trickling little streams like sentinels.

  There will be others after her.

  But for now, she belongs to them. And everything in the canal belongs to her.

  “Everything is polluted,” the words escaped Hector’s mouth in a hoarse whisper. “They’re trying to clean the canal—I mean, the water. That’s what the Superfund is.”

  She glanced toward the harbor, which lay fat and heavy in the distance.

  And what is clean?

  She turned back to him and gazed deep into his eyes. Slowly, her mouth curled into a smile, wider and wider until it stretched across her face like a gash.

  Hector’s stomach lurched.

  Her massive jaws snapped open and she cackled, revealing rows of razor teeth that looped down her throat like a spiral staircase. Her laughter echoed out across the canal, shrill and metallic. Bony fingers clutched at ribs. He threw his hands over his ears, falling backwards.

  She scuttled across the dock, faster than Hector would have ever expected, still shrieking with laughter. Hector inched back, cowering under her shadow.

  You have no idea what you are doing, she roared. You are nothing. You are less than nothing.

  She reached out spindly arachnid fingers and stroked his face. His cheeks were hot and red, and as she touched him, he was overcome with her aroma. The creature reeked of fish markets on Mott Street and sweating piles of garbage on Houston. She reeked of the rat traps in the basement and the rusty sewer main that had once burst in Tompkins Square Park.

  It was every awful smell that had ever emanated from his city, from his Gowanus Canal—the shit and the chemicals and the brackish corruption; the unmistakable stench of death.

  He tried to push her away, to clamber out from under her heavy carapace, but her spiny legs held him down with the expertise of a shrike. She wrapped her hands around his throat and squeezed. He clawed at her with feral desperation. Teeth hung inches from his face, and her tongue shot out and brushed against his cheek.

  These waters are mine, she whispered. You and your masters will never take it.

  Pain exploded as her jointe
d legs pierced his flesh, spreading him out across the wood like a frog under dissection. Her bare breasts pressed against his chest and he felt, to his disgust, a peculiar stirring. He tried to scream but her grip on his throat was too tight.

  The story came back to him in flashes: his abuelo in the stream, under the stars. The woman standing before him, kissing his neck.

  “My…my blood,” he croaked. “Mi sangre.”

  Her fingers relaxed for a moment.

  He tried to nod. “Please.”

  The creature loosened her embrace. She pulled him to a sitting position. His arms and legs were pinned, and he felt a sickening pop as his shoulders jerked upwards. She caressed his hair, squeezing and kneading the contours of his skull.

  Shhhhhhhh…Shhhhhhhh…

  Her breath tickled. He thought he was going to throw up.

  She yanked back his head. His eye caught a patch of rusting scaffolding, an advertisement for a long forgotten neighborhood business. An odd landmark for the area, but one he saw every day during his rounds up and down the canal. It served as a milestone for him, a point by which he could judge how far along the canal he had traveled.

  The creature’s face pressed against his own. She licked him once more, drawing salty tears and sweat from his cheeks.

  She pushed his head back and latched onto his neck, her mouth sharp and sucking like that of a lamprey. The pain was excruciating, but he could not scream, could not will the sound out. She moaned softly as she suckled at his throat.

  Shhhhhhhh…Shhhhhhhh…

  He thought of Rafi, of his mother and aunts. He thought of mermaids and his abuelo’s Puerto Rico and the Aycayia. He thought of dominos and the DEP and the Gowanus Canal and his Loisaida, drifting rudderless.

  His eyes glazed over, staring up at the bright, blue sky, while high above an airplane whined.

  The White Kisses

  Charles Wilkinson

  Norvin sold everything and went down south. His new apartment was fully furnished and every item in it, including the plates, cups, bowls, and cutlery, even the toaster, had been designed by Korcorvian himself. Before leaving Norvin burnt his clothes in the back garden and bought new ones, close in appearance to those worn by the architect and designer in the one surviving photograph of him. For many years, Norvin had studied Korcorvian’s work and thoughts; now was the time to live like him, without excess and superfluity of emotion.

  He drew back the living-room curtains and looked out: no sign of the albino sitting on the bench that faced the sea. Then it happened for the third time that week. There wasn’t a pattern, aside from its occurring only when he was in the apartment. Could he think of a simple way to describe it? It was as if a presence had “signed into” the space around him. Not like being possessed by a spirit or an alien entity; nearer perhaps to knowing one was stored on a computer. The metaphor of “signing in” was, he decided, the most appropriate. Whatever was interested in him had something akin to electronic access, which could be used at will. Yet the analogy was also apt since it was not like being viewed remotely; he felt as close as he would be at breakfast to another guest who’d signed into the same hotel.

  He knew he would find nothing but checked every room. All was as he’d left it before going down to take his morning walk on the beach. Outside, the sky had been flat and white, apart from a wash of pale blue high in the heavens. In the middle distance, orderly small waves dissolved on the shingle.

  There were no pictures on the walls of his apartment, which was painted magnolia. The white covers on the chairs and the beige bed-spreads, the steel and chrome in the kitchen, the pale ceramic tiles in the bathroom were all consistent with Korcorvian’s aversion to bright colors. Norvin kept a few possessions out of sight in the pine wardrobes and chest of drawers. It was a privilege to be living in the last surviving building designed by Korcorvian. The least Norvin could do was to try to live as Korcorvian had done, eschewing the decorative and the clutter of conspicuous design.

  Whatever it was that had been with him in the flat had gone. Signed out. He went into the tiny kitchen. There was no change in the light, only a suggestion that something had closed; he was no longer open to observation, his emotions legible. Norvin considered making toast and a cup of coffee, but instead poured a glass of cold water from the jug in the fridge. Since coming to the apartment, his appetite had been poor. He took his glass back to the living-room and gazed out the window at the bleached sky, the sea with its thin metallic waves and the sheen of the shingle beach. In the foreground, on the other side of the road from the apartment block, there was a lime tree and a bench. The albino was still sitting on it, at exactly the spot where the shade would have fallen had the day been sunny.

  Supervised by an overweight woman with dyed orange hair, the concierge put out the last of the metal chairs. The communal space on the ground floor of the apartment block was one Korcorvian had intended should be used for lectures. Most of the time it was empty. Light through the tall windows stamped white rectangles on a floor of polished hardwood. The area was used for the infrequent meetings of the Korcorvian Foundation. As a resident of the block and a member of the Korcorvian Society, Norvin was entitled to attend. He took a seat at the back. The concierge, an abnormally tall and thin man, worked speedily; just for a second, it was as if he enjoyed the benefit of an extra arm. The front rows began to fill up. Norvin recognized a few of his fellow tenants. After a whispered consultation, the concierge retreated with swift long strides in the direction of his office. A hush descended. Three men came through the front door; two of them made their way to the front, but the third peeled off and sat down next to Norvin, even though all the other seats in the back row were empty.

  “Don’t mind if I sit here, do you?”

  Norvin turned to examine the newcomer, whose face hovered next to him. One of the man’s eyes was a pale blue; the other discolored: the broken black egg of the pupil had leaked into the iris.

  “The seat was vacant,” said Norvin, looking away.

  The man leaned even closer. “I’m a man that likes to have company. That’s not a problem for you, is it?”

  Norvin smelled an antiseptic mouthwash that failed to disguise the underlying odor of dental decay. At the front, a man who introduced himself as the treasurer began a detailed account of the Korcorvian Foundation finances. Norvin stared straight ahead, with what he hoped was an expression of rapt concentration.

  “Member, are you? Of the Foundation,” continued his neighbor.

  Norvin gave a barely perceptible shake of the head.

  “That’s good. Neither am I. I just live here. Like you.”

  The treasurer was talking about an expense that might or might not prove to be tax deductible. Norvin craned forward, as though eager to hear the denouement of this fiscal adventure.

  “No, we’re both residents. That’s what we,” muttered the man. “Tenants of the Korcorvian Foundation. Tenants together. And what could be better than that? Eh, Mr. Norvin.”

  Norvin swung round.“How do you know my name?” he said, just managing to keep his voice down. The man had a pale slithery face, the color of a bar of toiletry stuck to a basin in a fly-blown hotel; his mousy hair was unwashed.

  “You don’t mind me calling you ‘Mr. Norvin’? I mean that’s not a difficulty for you, is it?”

  “I merely want you to explain how…”

  “I see he’s not here.”

  “Who?”

  “The albino, of course. You must have run into him.”

  “As a matter of fact, I have. Who is he?”

  There was muted applause for the finance officer and then the woman with red hair asked a question about the lift.

  “Don’t you worry, Mr. Norvin. He’s not my type,” replied the man, standing up. “Well, I must slip away now. But we’ll meet again. And oh, by the way, when you’ve the time to listen to it, I’ve got a message from your wife.”

  To Norvin’s lef
t the night sky was uniformly black, indistinguishable from the hidden sea. Although there was a faint hiss of water on the shingle, he could see little further than the bollards on the promenade. Even the beach huts below had vanished. In front of him, a row of cast iron street lamps leaked yellow light. On the other side was the coast road; beyond that a cliff top with a terrace of houses, which tonight had a papier-mâché fragility. Slightly further up, there were modern hotels and blocks of flats. The Korcorvian apartments occupied the highest point and stood out against a navy-blue sky, the horizon flushed with inland light. More substantial than the surrounding buildings, the apartment block had a glow of nautical impermanence, as if about to lose its moorings and drift away down the wide river of the night sky.

  Korcorvian had often drawn on marine design, even for projects far from the coast. Norvin was reminded that the lost abbey the architect had built for a silent order had combined traditional cloisters with the suggestion of a ship at the moment of leaving harbor on a spiritual voyage.

  As he was about to turn back, Norvin saw something, perhaps fifty yards ahead, almost at the end of the promenade. At first, it resembled the head of a white owl with drooping wings; it remained stationary, as if painted onto a backdrop.

  “No harm in getting out,” said a voice from behind him.

  Norvin spun round. A pair of stilt-legs and a gleam of long leather shoes. Then the concierge stepped into the light noiselessly as a spider.

  “No, it’s a change.” Norvin agreed. He didn’t know the concierge’s name. It seemed rude to ask after having been in residence for months.

  “Taking the night air?”

  “Yes, indeed. What do you think that is?” said Norvin. But as soon he turned to point in the direction of the white shape it was no longer there.