The Gatekeeper

by Nuraliah Norasid

  The silence between them was thick. Eedric stood rooted in front of the airman, exposed in the dusty light, feeling ready to run—to fight. He watched the sleek shiny bodies of her snakes glide over one another, past her shoulders. Their movements were strangely hypnotic, sensuous against the earthy burnish of her skin, forked tongues of some flicking at the corners of her lips. He saw that her dress appeared many times washed and mended. Beneath its frayed hem, her bare shins were mottled with welts and picked-at scabs, some of which oozed with dark blood. The blood forced him to look upwards again, to the blood that marked her upper arms. The wounds from which they bled were shapeless gashes that resembled the mauling bite of an animal more than injuries caused by Human— once Human—hands. Clenching his teeth, he struggled to speak, only to snarl instead.

  With one more unintelligible word drowned in a glob of saliva, he turned and started for another tunnel.

  “No!”

  There was only dark, on and on, and blooms of orange halos at intermittent distances. Then, after a long time, it all opened into a vast space, to the sound of a heavy latch being lifted, followed by a door swinging on a hinge. He ran towards this door and, with a lunge, threw his shoulder at it. There was a crack, the pinprick of splinters in his skin, before a blinding brightness.

  The impact of a large hurtling body brought him to a stop. There was a roar, a grunt and jarring pain when his head met hard ground as an arm came down the back of his skull. When the ringing stopped, he heard the rising furore and that single dreaded question, “Ibu, what’s that?”

  He lifted his head slightly to see the gathered crowd. There was little distance between him and the first set of feet, and the eyes that stared at him with fascinated fear. There were children peeking at him from around the fence of adult legs and bodies. Anir children— rock-textured, furred, scaled, all kinds. Somehow, the children were the ones who humiliated and diminished him with those unfiltered stares of theirs.

  He escaped the lock of the man who was holding him down and lunged out at one of them: a girl in a short white lacy frock. She screamed. Her mother tried to keep her away. A booted foot met the side of his face and Eedric was on the ground again.

  “Binatang!” he was called, the Sce’ ‘dal word for “animal”.

  More would have descended upon him but for the medusa he had seen earlier dashing into the circle. She stood between Eedric and the man who was about to attack him. Every strand of her hair stood on undulating end. His assailant, a large Cayanese, coloured over in grey, beginning from his face, spreading over to the rest of him.

  The medusa turned around and the two men who had been holding him down released him instantly. The crowd was dispersing quickly now. No backing away or further staring. Just the running of a terrified mob.

  The medusa was a petite woman, probably no more than a metre and a half in height. Yet, in that moment, there was no monster who stood taller than she did.

  Perhaps save for himself.

  The medusa stood deathly still for a few beats before she approached him, still sprawled on the ground. When she knelt beside him and gently touched a hand to his shoulder, he was shaking. He scrunched up his eyes as if needing to unsee. What a mess he was. What a fucking mess.

  “It’s fine,” the medusa said.

  He dared to look at her then, eyes smarting a little. She was not smiling at him. Her expression held no pity; it held nothing. As if she herself were made of stone. In an odd way, it quieted him.

  She made as if to speak when three new figures came up over the slope that led down to the houses. He had not realised how the slum sat in a massive bowl. He did realise that one of the figures approaching them was another medusa, tall and model-slim, dressed in a flannel shirt tucked into jeans. Her expression was both maddened and worried. When she was near, she dashed towards the shorter medusa and started to pull the other away from him. The two men with her were an older Tuyun and another Cayanese with very wolf-like features.

  Her eyes widened at the wounds on the first medusa’s arms before snapping her gaze to him and asking harshly, “Who are you, Changer? What did you do to her?”

  He had never heard that word used before but from the way it sounded, he knew it meant nothing good.

  “I—”

  More footsteps came from behind him and then he was restrained again. Two Scereans this time, one built like a bulwark and the other spindly. Eedric struggled against their hold.

  “He came running through the door, Kak!” one of the Scereans informed the medusa. “Someone from the surface. A spy!”

  “No!” protested Eedric, able to form words again. “I’m not—”

  The old Tuyun grimaced at him. “If he didn’t come with one of the feelers, we cannot have him leave here. He will tell and then what will we do?”

  Eedric struggled.

  “Changers are always trouble. Look at what happened with the last one,” one of the Scereans spoke.

  “Locking her up in a container and giving food and water in a pet bowl was not looking after her,” the violet-eyed medusa snapped. “Her family left for the surface. Let it be.” She turned back to Eedric, her frown deepening. “How did you find this place?”

  “I was trekking. I saw the entrance.”

  The medusa narrowed her eyes at him. “Dressed like that?”

  Eedric forgot that he appeared about ready to trek as a woman in a dinner gown was to climb a mountain.

  When he could not answer, the Tuyun made to approach him, but the golden-eyed medusa stopped him with a low and steely “Don’t.”

  The Tuyun paused and she said, “You will agitate him again. A man can decide that he needed to clear his head and many have made big discoveries on less.” To the other medusa, she said, “He was in the keramat, likely found it by accident. He saw me and ran.”

  “And the wounds on your arm?” the other medusa demanded.

  The first one considered her and then said, rather quietly, “I am not harmless either.”

  “Ria…”

  The other medusa looked at this…Ria, who was the very opposite of cheery despite her name, with an expression that bordered on confusion and concern. They could not appear any less related, with Ria’s black cobras and the other’s olive-and-brown vipers; the former’s petite build and burnished skin a contrast to the latter’s tall form and fairer complexion. However, given how few medusas were out there, Eedric thought these two could well be sisters.

  Ria shook her head. “Enough.”

  For a few moments no one spoke, until one of the Scereans stammered, “S-she—J-Johan, there.” He pointed his chin towards the stone form of the petrified Cayanese.

  That was when the violet-eyed medusa’s face sank.

  Ria remained impassive. “He was a rapist, a thug and a wife abuser. I did this place a service.”

  “Even so…” the Tuyun spoke, “he deserved a trial.”

  “When have your trials ever done anything around here?” Ria shot back.

  Not caring for a debate, the Tuyun turned to the other medusa. “Barani?”

  Barani’s jaw tightened. “Leave it for now. Johan had it coming and you know it.” She looked at Eedric and then turned to Ria. “This Changer doesn’t come back.” It was more a command than a statement. “Nothing comes back.”

  Ria only swept her eyes over the Tuyun and the Scereans, who jumped away from Eedric, releasing him. “As long as none of you leave.”

  Barani gave a single nod and turned to walk away, the Tuyun following suit with an unconvinced glance back at Eedric and Ria. Eedric heard him say to Barani, “He will bring bad things on us.”

  Ria waited for them to descend the steps before helping Eedric up. She did so rather matter-of-factly, as if she didn’t want to draw attention to the action. She gave him a brief and indifferent once over, then said quietly, “We can’t stay here.”

  She started to lead him away and he was aware of her hand around his arm. His eyes fell on the wounds
, red and angry even though the bleeding had stopped.

  “You should take care of that,” he said, guilt washing over him.

  “Later,” she replied, her voice hard. He saw that a small group had gathered below the steps cut into the slope. Every eye was focused on him, anger burning cold in each one.

  The two Scereans parted as Eedric and Ria re-entered the tunnel. Eedric half-expected someone to follow them, to make sure that Eedric found his way out and was convinced never to return. However, no one did. Ria continued her hold on his arm and her snakes didn’t fall from their aggressive stances until they were well back in the central chamber where Eedric made an effort to speak to her.

  “Thank you…for…saving me,” he tried, the words feeling strange on his tongue.

  She cracked a smile. “Saving you? Maybe.”

  “But I mean it… Thank you.” He recalled the way the people had regarded him—those in the pool and the ones from just now. He felt disgusted at himself, humiliated. Angry.

  Ria looked up at him. “I believe you,” she said. Quietly, she added, “And I know what it must be like.”

  “Have you met a lot of survivalists?”

  “Changers? Some. They were coveted frontline soldiers during the war because they were hard to kill.”

  Eedric stared at her, wary suddenly.

  “But I have had enough of that,” she told him as if by way of assurance. She studied him for a while before saying, “Now you’re here, and you shouldn’t be.”

  “I found the entrance and thought…”

  She sighed. “That entrance really needs to be resealed, but no one seems to be working any more.”

  She then reached into her pocket and drew out a strange-looking tool that resembled a small sickle on a short handle. With the point, she began tearing long strips from the dress she wore, cutting just above the hem.

  The dress itself was likely a vintage piece, the skirt flowing over and encasing part of her legs in a bell below a black waist. It was ridged and tight around the torso, reminiscent of the days when a woman’s body was different: breasts pushed high and stockings on legs, held up mid-thigh by garter belts; when a “bikini bridge” was a non-existent idea.

  He watched her split the strip into two, take one end of the makeshift bandage between her teeth, and begin the process of winding it around her arm. Already blood was soaking through, adding new red blooms to the patterned cloth. Her movements were deft and purposeful, as if seeing to her wounds was something she had been doing all her life.

  Nevertheless, he moved closer to her and said, “Let me.”

  Her answer was to shrink away from him.

  He took an awkward step back, never feeling more useless in his life. He stared down at his hands, feeling dirty and pathetic. As if she knew, she relented and turned so that her other arm was angled towards him, the wound a puncture that had gone right through. She stretched another strip to him. “You can do the other one.”

  He took it hesitantly, hoping the rudimentary first aid training he had received in national service would prove to be useful.

  “Tie it around the arm as you would a ribbon around a tree. It’s the same thing,” she directed him patiently.

  “Okay.”

  He started to tie the strip around her arm, going a few rounds before beginning to knot. His hands were shaking embarrassingly and he found himself apologising a lot, as he tried to get over the sight and smell of the blood.

  “Tightly, boy,” she said.

  He redid the knot and pulled the bandage in tight. When he was done, he found her face close. The snakes were within striking distance and he ought to pull away. But he didn’t. Instead, he remarked, “Your scars—”

  Ria replied, “A bullet that didn’t meet its mark.” She made her fingers into a gun and aimed it from the bottom of her chin up. “Young soldier. Crouching and shot up from below.”

  “Did he—”

  “They all did.”

  They were quiet. Eedric leaned back and looked about him for something to comment on or talk about. He was aware that this situation he was in was not typical: meet a monster girl, get into a scuffle and then talk through calm. Nothing could change what he’d done. Yet, where others had treated him like a gone case when they found that there was a possibility of him being like his mother, this medusa, whom he’d attacked, had stood up for him and spoken to him kindly.

  “You have—you have quite the collection here.”

  She turned to look at him and he wondered what sort of first class idiot he was being. But he felt he needed to talk. To keep talking. “Two-Half?” he asked.

  She regarded him steadily and he wondered if this—him feeling strung by the ropes of both fear and hope—was what the last moments of her victims looked like.

  Finally, she said, “After.”

  It wasn’t much to go by but he thought there was a shift in the medusa’s air.

  He swallowed, then asked, “Soldiers?”

  “Mostly.”

  Eedric had never thought he would meet a woman who spoke so little. He glanced at the other doorway, the wider one on the far side of the chamber. “Do you—are you lonely here?” He’d meant to say “alone”.

  Before he could correct himself, the medusa moved, as if uncertain, before shifting her gaze to the statues. After a while, she nodded. “It does get so.”

  “Do people ever come here?”

  She smiled again. The dark shadows under her eyes made her appear like a case study for drug addiction, or severe insomnia, whichever was the country’s bigger problem. However, he also noticed the radiance of those dangerous eyes accentuated by her rather unusual features, which were as alien as they were intriguing.

  “No. This is a place for the dead. When someone dies, they are left in a small chamber for me to collect and do my work.” She gestured towards the statues. “But I have them.”

  “Not exactly very conversational though, are they?”

  At that, she threw back her head and laughed. The laugh changed the very make of her: it softened edges, added rounded dimensions and caused her to erupt in violent energy that was so contagious he found himself joining in—nervously at first, and then just as heartily.

  When they stopped, the wounds on her arms drew his attention once more. He was back in a world of guilt. He made as if to touch her, then stopped when she snapped her head and gaze to him.

  “You need to stop feeling guilty,” she said. “There is nothing for me to forgive, especially when I was the one who tried to change you at the beginning.” She thought a while, then smiled again. “I guess you can say that we’re even now.”

  Her smile dropped and she appeared confused by the situation that she now found herself in. She looked at him a number of times, before turning to the skylight above. Finally, she told him, “We need to go. This is no place for a surface creature like you.”

  She led him through the tunnels and he followed in silence. She stopped just before the final stretch of tunnel and pointed up to where bits of light came through in little gaps of the leaf cover. She pointed at it, saying, “There,” and didn’t follow him as he made his way up.

  He didn’t look back until he was well on the paved pathway of the reserve; up at the quarry that loomed as the largest natural structure in the whole of Manticura. He felt a strange sense of incompleteness.

  Hours later, after he had explained his absence to Adrianne— “I…uh, went hiking”—he found himself recalling the way the medusa had spoken to him and accepted him so equitably despite everything that had gone down.

  He thought of her for days afterward while trying to convince himself that he had no good reason to return, before preoccupation and obsession drew him back. He found himself pushing past the leaf cover once again and retracing his steps, frequently glancing over his shoulder for anyone from the settlement, before he had his back pressed against the wall by the entrance to the main chamber, peeking in only to end up shocked when she appe
ared behind him.

  Her voice was that breathy, old-timey timbre that had played in his mind for days, one that he thought only actresses in black-and-white films possessed. And with that voice, her face lit in the flame of the oil lamp she was carrying, she asked almost with a touch of fear, “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to ask about the statues,” he told her. “The paintings and the carvings. This whole ruin.”

  He had with him a camera, hanging from his neck by a thick strap like he was some bloody tourist. He held it up—DSLR, multiple lens changes and all that good stuff he didn’t quite understand but wouldn’t admit to anybody—grinning excitedly, nodding his head in quick, sporadic taps as if he was trying to convince her. He was quivering a bit from nervousness. He hoped that she wouldn’t notice.

  She glanced down at the camera warily, before looking back up at him.

  “What do you want exactly?” she asked.

  He paused, wondering how he would tell her of the nights he’d lain awake, wondering about her, what she’d seen, been through, cared for… More than anything, he wanted conversation; he wanted to hear her laugh. He wanted to be around another person besides Miz who treated his condition like it was as unremarkable as him breathing. More than that he wanted to—

  “To know more about…” he trailed off. You, he didn’t say.

  She turned her head and gazed past him into the chamber she resided in, considering it for a long time. Finally, she moved into it, beckoning him to follow her.

  “Okay. But no photographs.”

  Matahari (sun)

  She had never wished to be friends with the boy. It would have been so much easier to just let him die. For while she didn’t know him, she knew what his kind could do. So much time had passed since anything had taken her by surprise— and then he had come along, an overly friendly and helpful type of surface dweller, all perfect skin, stiffed up hair and clean everything. Orang suruh pergi, he don’t want to go. Mati-mati must try to help. As if he were the model product of a courtesy campaign; at risk of becoming irrelevant if he didn’t meet his good-deed quota.