by Paula Guran
She passed a group of young men. They stared and she stared back, zapping and taking. Their ravenous looks grew blank. Philo smirked knowingly. She felt amazing. She strolled into a booth where a man sold hundreds of Nollywood movie DVDs. She glanced over the array of colorful dramatic covers where women and men scowled, wept, grinned, pointed, accused, laughed. “I’ll take this one,” she said, picking a DVD at random. She’d watch it. She’d enjoy it. She loved Nollywood. These days, she enjoyed everything. The world was hers. Soon it would be, at least.
She tucked the DVD into her purse and left the booth without paying. No one stopped her. As she stepped into the sunshine, she turned, absolutely loving herself. She knew everyone was looking at her, just as she knew she was sucking the life from them as they stared. Her wig’s heat increased and her brown eyes glinted a bright green as she smiled at any man who caught her eye. By the time she left this market, she’d be weighed down with naira given and life juices taken. Market by market. It was like this every day.
Her cell phone went off. A male voice happily drawled, “Hellllo Moto,” and then upbeat music began to play. Everything about Philo rattled as she stopped and lifted her purse—the jangling bangles on her arms, her jingling earrings and her three gold chain necklaces. She was clicks and clacks, shines and sparkles.
“Oh where is it,” she said, digging in her purse, mindful of her long nails. “Where, where, where.” She pushed aside her lipstick, her unnecessary wallet, tissues, compact case, a pack of gum, wads and rolls of naira. Her cell phone continued going off. She laughed. She already knew who it was. Rain, the weakest link in the chain. She could tell by the ringtone. However, she could also tell by more than that. In her mind’s eye, Philo could see Rain standing outside her compound, next to some flowers, holding her cell phone to her ear, waiting. Philo found her phone, flipped it open and held it to her ear. It clicked against her long gold earring.
“What?” she said, grinning with all her teeth. She heard nothing. “Rain, I know it’s you. Say someth . . . ”
She felt it before she saw it. A coolness that contrasted horribly with the heat of her wig. She frowned as the phone made an odd beeping sound. She held it before her just as the phone glinted a deep green similar to the one her eyes flashed when she sucked psychic energy from those around her. Her phone buzzed, an electrical current zipping across it before disappearing. Green smoke began to dribble from it.
“Chey!” Philo exclaimed, staring at it. If she were smart, she’d have dropped it. But Philo was never really that intelligent. Just greedy. Rain didn’t know that before, but she knew that now. A text message appeared on the screen but Philo could make no sense of it. It was a series of nonsensical symbols, rubbish. She dropped the phone, pressing a hand to her wig. “That bitch,” she snarled, looking around with wide, enraged eyes. “How dare she even try.” In the sunshine, her canines almost looked pointed.
Right then and there, Philo disappeared in a flash of green.
His House
Coco had just lit a cigarette. She leaned back on the plush white leather couch and crossed her legs. She held her glass of champagne up to the photo of her husband on the wall. He was out. He was always out. Working. For her. She laughed, scratching under her itchy wig with her long-nailed index finger. Scritch scritch. It was spiky, dark red and short and no one in his or her right mind would wear it. She got up and looked at her reflection in the glass that protected her husband’s photo. Her skinny jeans and T-shirt fit wonderfully snug. Her face was flawless. And her hair was power.
“Mwah,” she said, blowing herself a kiss.
She ambled into the living room, where two fans were blasting. She stood very still between them, her wig’s “hairs” blowing about her face. It felt secure, despite the blowing air. She shut her eyes and inhaled deeply. Behind her eyelids, she could see. Then she began to draw it in from . . .
The busy street. People sitting in bustling bush taxis and perched atop hundreds of okada motorbikes. Market women walking alongside the road. The mishmash of old and modern buildings of Lagos. Disabled beggars in the road. Boys playing soccer on a field.
When she opened her eyes, they glowed a deep green and the wig glinted an electric blue. The blowing fans made the heat from her wig more bearable. Her cell phone went off and she nearly jumped. “Hellllo, Moto,” it said as it played its dance music.
“Ah ah, what now?” she muttered. But she was smiling. The wig. It always left her feeling so good. Minus the heat, which left the actual wig feeling like a burning helmet. She ran to her cell phone on the couch. It was Rain. What did she want now? In her mind, the wig showed Rain standing outside her compound looking worried. The woman always looked so worried; she should have been at the top of the world.
Coco held the phone to her ear as she brought out some lipstick. “Hello?” she said, smearing on a fresh coat. She grinned, sure of what she’d hear. She frowned. “Hello? Rain, what is it? Speak up.”
But she heard nothing. She held the phone to her face when it suddenly became like a chunk of ice in her hand. “Iiieeey!” she exclaimed, throwing it on the couch. As she stared at it, appalled, the cell phone began to dribble green smoke. A text box opened on its screen. Coco squinted, trying to read it. It looked like rubbish. But, like Philo, Coco understood what was happening.
“Oh,” Coco said, out of breath. “You want to play now, eh? Okay.” She threw her lipstick on the leather seat, the lid still off. It left a smear on the pillow. “Someone will die today, o. And it will not be me.”
She disappeared.
I have made my choice. That’s why I am still here, standing in these lilies. I run my hand over my shaved head. Waiting. The sun shines bright and happy in the sky, unaware of what’s about to happen to me. Unaware of what I have done and will soon suffer the consequences for. Unconcerned.
Philo appears. She is standing on the lilies, mere feet away from me.
“What is wrong with you?” she shouts. She looks beautiful and ghastly in her tight brown dress, which probably cost more naira than a market woman makes in two years.
“I’m . . . ” Fear pumps through my veins like adrenaline and blood.
“Why is your wig off, eh? You look horrible.” Her wig flashes as the digital virus tries to cripple it. Notice I say “tries.”
“I took it off,” I snap. “This is wrong, o! This is wrong! Wake up!”
Philo chuckles. “And what is wrong about it? We have everything we want.”
“Stealing from people is not what I made these for! I made them to help us give! To cure the deep-seated culture of corruption by giving people hope and a sense of patriotism. Remember?”
She looks at me as if I am crazy. The wig has made her forget. Na wao. Tricky tricky things, these wigs.
“Put it back on,” she says, pointing a long nail at me.
“No,” I say. “It has made us cruel witches. Look at you!”
Coco appears behind me. She hisses like a snake. She is in no mood for words. Her wig flashes. The virus is not working. When you mix juju with technology, you give up control. You are at the will of something far beyond yourself. I am done for.
See how it all ends? Or does it begin? I am watching them approach me now. I tell you while my life hangs on its last thread. I am putting my wig on. It is so hot. I should have paid more attention to the cooling system when I made these. I hear the heartbeat of everyone around me now, including the irregular rhythm of Coco’s and Philo’s. But oh, the power. It rushes into me like ogogoro down the throat of a drunk.
See Philo bare her teeth. They are indeed sharp like those of a bloodsucker. The virus is working through her wig now. But something has gone very wrong. They are both smiling. For a year, we have been psychic vampires, but now as they come at me, mouths open, teeth sharp, I see that they have become the bloodsucking kind.
I feel my own teeth sharpening too as I prepare to defend myself. This is new but I can’t think about that right now. I te
ar the wig off and throw it aside.
“Come then!” I shout. Then, I . . .
Nnedi Okorafor’s books include novels Lagoon (a British Science Fiction Association Award finalist), Who Fears Death (a World Fantasy Award winner), collection Kabu Kabu (a Publishers Weekly Best Book for Fall 2013), Akata Witch (an Amazon Best Book of the Year), Zahrah the Windseeker (winner of the Wole Soyinka Prize for African Literature), and The Shadow Speaker (a CBS Parallax Award winner). Her adult novel The Book of Phoenix was released in 2015 as was her novella Binti, which will be republished in The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Novellas: 2016. Her young adult novel Akata Witch 2: Breaking Kola will be out this year. Okorafor holds a PhD in literature/creative writing and is an associate professor at the University at Buffalo, New York (SUNY).
The Nightside lies deep within the city of London. It’s always three A.M. there, the dark hour that tries men’s souls. Its atmosphere is so saturated with magic, weird science, and general strangeness that even ghosts tend not to haunt it.
The Spirit of the Thing:
A Nightside Story
Simon R. Green
In the Nightside, that secret hidden heart of London, where it’s always the darkest part of the night and the dawn never comes, you can find some of the best and worst bars in the world.
There are places that will serve you liquid moonlight in a tall glass, or angel’s tears, or a wine that was old when Rome was young.
And then there’s the Jolly Cripple. You get to one of the worst bars in the world by walking down the kind of alley you’d normally have the sense to stay out of. The Cripple is tucked away behind more respectable establishments, and light from the street doesn’t penetrate far. It’s always half full of junk and garbage, and the only reason there aren’t any bodies to step over is because the rats have eaten them all. You have to watch out for rats in the Nightside; some people say they’re evolving. In fact, some people claim to have seen the damn things using knives and forks.
I wouldn’t normally be seen dead in a dive like the Jolly Cripple, but I was working. At the time, I was in between clients and in need of some fast walking around money, so when the bar’s owner got word to me that there was quick and easy money to be made, I swallowed my pride. I’m John Taylor, private investigator. I have a gift for finding things, and people. I always find the truth for my clients; even if it means having to walk into places where even angels would wince and turn their heads aside.
The Jolly Cripple was a drinker’s bar. Not a place for conversation, or companionship. More the kind of place you go when the world has kicked you out, your credit’s no good, and your stomach couldn’t handle the good stuff any more, even if you could afford it. In the Jolly Cripple the floor was sticky, the air was thick with half a dozen kinds of smoke, and the only thing you could be sure of was vomit in the corners and piss and blood in the toilets. The owner kept the lights down low, partly so you couldn’t see how bad the place really was, but mostly because the patrons preferred it that way.
The owner and bartender was one Maxie Eliopoulos. A sleazy soul in an unwashed body, dark and hairy, always smiling.
Maxie wore a grimy T-shirt with the legend IT’S ALL GREEK TO ME, and showed off its various bloodstains like badges of honor. No one ever gave Maxie any trouble in his bar. Or at least, not twice. He was short and squat with broad shoulders, and a square brutal face under a shock of black hair. More dark hair covered his bare arms, hands, and knuckles. He never stopped smiling, but it never once reached his eyes. Maxie was always ready to sell you anything you could afford. Especially if it was bad for you.
Some people said he only served people drink so he could watch them die by inches.
Maxie had hired me to find out who’d been diluting his drinks and driving his customers away. (And that’s about the only thing that could.) Didn’t take me long to find out who. I sat down at the bar, raised my gift, and concentrated on the sample bottle of what should have been gin; but was now so watered down you could have kept goldfish in it. My mind leapt up and out, following the connection between the water and its source, right back to where it came from. My Sight shot down through the barroom floor, down and down, into the sewers below.
Long stone tunnels with curving walls, illuminated by phosphorescent moss and fungi, channeling thick dark water with things floating in it. All kinds of things. In the Nightside’s sewers even trained workers tread carefully, and often carry flamethrowers, just in case. I looked around me, my Sight searching for the presence I’d felt; and something looked back. Something knew I was there, even if only in spirit. The murky waters churned and heaved, and then a great head rose up out of the dark water, followed by a body. It only took me a moment to realize both head and body were made up of water, and nothing else.
The face was broad and unlovely, the body obscenely female, like one of those ancient fertility goddess statues. Thick rivulets of water ran down her face like slow tears, and ripples bulged constantly around her body. A water elemental. I’d heard the Nightside had been using them to clean up the sewers; taking in all the bad stuff and purifying it inside themselves. The Nightside always finds cheap and practical ways to solve its problems, even if they aren’t always very nice solutions.
“Who disturbs me?” said the sewer elemental, in a thick, glutinous voice.
“John Taylor,” I said. Back in the bar my lips were moving, but my words could only be heard down in the sewer. “You’ve been interfering with one of the bars above. Using your power to infuse the bottles with your water. You know you’re not supposed to get involved with the world above.”
“I am old,” said the elemental of the sewers. “So old, even I don’t remember how old I am. I was worshipped, once. But the world changed and I could not, so even the once worshipped and adored must work for a living. I have fallen very far from what I was; but then, that’s the Nightside for you. Now I deal in shit and piss and other things, and make them pure again. Because someone has to. It’s a living. But, fallen as I am . . . no one insults me, defies me, cheats me! I serve all the bars in this area, and the owners and I have come to an understanding . . . all but Maxie Eliopoulos! He refuses my reasonable demands!”
“Oh hell,” I said. “It’s a labor dispute. What are you asking for, better working conditions?”
“I just want him to clean up his act,” said the elemental of the sewers. “And if he won’t, I’ll do it for him. I can do a lot worse to him than just dilute his filthy drinks . . . ”
“That is between you and him,” I said firmly. “I don’t do arbitration.” And then I got the hell out of there.
Back in the bar and in my body, I confronted Maxie. “You didn’t tell me this was a dispute between contractors, Maxie.”
He laughed, and slapped one great palm hard against his grimy bartop. “I knew it! I knew it was that water bitch, down in her sewers! I just needed you to confirm it, Taylor.”
“So why’s she mad at you? Apart from the fact that you’re a loathsome, disgusting individual.”
He laughed again, and poured me a drink of what, in his bar, passed for the good stuff. “She wants me to serve better booze; says the impurities in the stuff I sell is polluting her system, and leaving a nasty taste in her mouth. I could leave a nasty taste in her mouth, heh heh heh . . . She pressured all the other bars and they gave in, but not me. Not me! No one tells Maxie Eliopoulos what to do in his own bar! Silly cow . . . Cheap and nasty is what my customers want, so cheap and nasty is what they get.”
“So . . . for a while there, your patrons were drinking booze mixed with sewer water,” I said. “I’m surprised so many stayed.”
“I’m surprised so many of them noticed,” said Maxie. “Good thing I never drink the tap water . . . All right, Taylor, you’ve confirmed what I needed to know. I’ll take it from here. I can handle her. Thinks I can’t get to her, down in the sewers, but I’ll show that bitch. No one messes with me and gets away with it. Now—here’s wh
at we agreed on.”
He pushed a thin stack of grubby bank notes across the bar, and I counted them quickly before making them disappear about my person. You don’t want to attract attention in a bar like the Jolly Cripple, and nothing will do that faster than a display of cash, grubby or not. Maxie grinned at me in what he thought was an ingratiating way.
“No need to rush away, Taylor. Have another drink. Drinks are on the house for you; make yourself at home.”
I should have left. I should have known better . . . but it was one of the few places my creditors wouldn’t look for me, and besides . . . the drinks were on the house.
I sat at a table in the corner, working my way through a bottle of the kind of tequila that doesn’t have a worm in it, because the tequila’s strong enough to dissolve the worm. A woman in a long white dress walked up to my table. I didn’t pay her much attention at first, except to wonder what someone so normal-looking was doing in a dive like this . . . and then she walked right through the table next to me, and the people sitting around it. She drifted through them as though they weren’t even there, and each of them in turn shuddered briefly, and paid closer attention to their drinks. Their attitude said it all; they’d seen the woman in white before, and they didn’t want to know. She stopped before me, looking at me with cool, quiet, desperate eyes.
“You have to help me. I’ve been murdered, I need you to find out who killed me.”
That’s what comes from hanging around in strange bars.
I gestured for her to sit down opposite me, and she did so perfectly easily. She still remembered what it felt like to have a body, which meant she hadn’t been dead long. I looked her over carefully. I couldn’t see any obvious death wounds, not even a ligature round her neck. Most murdered ghosts appear the way they did when they died. The trauma overrides everything else.