This Is How You Die

by Matthew Bennardo

  6

  Kira had three strips of paper taped to her office wall now. Hooft Security had been called in only after the first three murders, when authorities realized there was a pattern and it was official: Zimbabwe had its first serial killer. Hooft Security had been founded by Kira’s father in the seventies, and now it did much more than just home security. Often, when expatriates did not want to leave investigations in the hands of Harare’s notoriously corrupt police, they hired Hooft.

  Kira had no army or police training. All things being equal, she would be teaching physics at a university somewhere. When her father had left her his business in the will, he had probably expected her to sell it, but in 2007 she had reached a point where she hated everything about her life. Her father’s final gift to her had been more than a lump of money. It had been a new beginning.

  She had packed up her things and left England. Everyone had called her insane. Especially because that was back when Robert Mugabe was still in power and as far as the British media was concerned, he was the personification of evil. It had been nowhere near as bad as she had imagined. What chaos there was had meant Hooft was never without work.

  Now things were significantly better. James Ndlovu was the current president. People had expected Morgan Tsvangirai to become president when Mugabe died, but when James Ndlovu’s Death Machine forecast was leaked to the press, he immediately became the front-runner. RESCUING A CHILD. How could anyone compete with that?

  Kira was cautiously optimistic about James Ndlovu. He clearly loved his country, but as much as he had done to regenerate the economy, his intolerance of opposition was worrying. Tourism was one of his priorities. That was why he had called Hooft personally and brought her into the investigation of the White Shroud Killer. He wanted the story out of the press as soon as possible.

  To be honest, she felt totally out of her depth. As much as she hated Detective Inspector Mudarikwa, he was right about her. She didn’t know the first thing about investigating a murder. She had her two best employees helping—Qabaniso Tutani, an ex-soldier, and Maria Gahiji, an ex-policewoman, ex-nun, Rwandese immigrant. Kira maintained that if she ever found someone to dictate it to, Maria’s history would make a best-selling novel. Not that Maria’s or Qabaniso’s inquiries were going well. Nobody was turning up anything.

  Kira had got the idea to test the forecasts of the victims’ blood after the fourth victim was discovered. She hadn’t even been sure a Death Machine would spit out a prediction when the blood of a person who was already dead was put in it. It had worked, but none of the victims’ forecasts so far had been helpful to the investigation. She hoped a forecast might reveal something about where the victim died before being moved. Some tiny detail about the killer perhaps. Anything traditional forensics would miss.

  Instead all she had from victims five, six, and seven was:

  CHOKE ON BLOOD

  SCREAMING, CRYING, ALONE, AND AFRAID

  HE WILL LAUGH WHILE YOU CRY

  She looked at the three strips of paper helplessly. They were like snippets of morbid fridge poetry.

  7

  FROM “NECROLINGUISTICS”

  By Marcus Chantunya

  Nostradamus’s predictions of the future were all entrenched within four-line poems. Academia maintains that he must have obscured his meaning to avoid charges of heresy. Skeptics take the view that his predictions were vague so that they could be bent to fit whatever happened. But imagine these hypotheses were wrong. Maybe Nostradamus had no choice but to write his predictions in cryptic quatrains because that is how they came to him. Consider the cryptic language of Death Machine forecasts. Maybe it is something inherent in the nature of prediction. A man who looks in the face of God is blinded.

  8

  Jabu had been having a bad day. An angry woman armed with a rolling pin had come by in the morning. Apparently, the fertility salve Jabu had given her to rub over her husband’s genitals had made him break out in a rash. The other market vendors had been delighted, laughing and pointing as Jabu leapt to and fro to avoid her angry swings.

  That was the last time he would sell a fertility salve. Better to go with an incantation or potion. Following this, Jabu had not had any customers. The market was abuzz with life, but everyone looking for a traditional healer had gone to his competitors. After three hours of waiting in the heat, he saw two women enter the market and sighed with relief. His blond-haired mzungu of the many predictions was back.

  “Hello again.” He held out his hand. Kira reluctantly shook it.

  “And this your friend?” He pointed at the towering behemoth of a woman beside Kira.

  “This is Maria. She works with me.”

  “You have another blood?” he asked.

  Kira reached into her purse and pulled out a test tube. Jabu took it and opened the chest that housed the Death Machine. He placed two drops of blood into the machine, turned it on, then picked up his skull. He began his incantation, gibberish, of course. As Kira was his only customer of the day, he put a little more oomph into the performance. He shook more, swayed more, and undulated his voice more frenetically.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see the woman Kira had come with shaking her head disapprovingly. Clearly a nonbeliever. A few other people walking through the market paused to watch him. If he was lucky, one or two of them might be his next customers. Jabu spun and spread his arms.

  He heard the Death Machine beep twice, so he flung aside the skull and picked up the sliver of paper it had spat out. He made a mental note to self to check if he needed to refill the spool. He picked up the prediction. STABBED, THEN HE WHISPERS TO YOU.

  He shook his head. Again. He perused the expectant Kira. She puzzled him. Should he keep quiet? She was a source of steady business, so he should probably just shut up and thank his lucky stars, but his curiosity was too much.

  “Why?” he asked, handing her the slip of paper.

  “Why what?” Kira replied.

  “Why again the same one? Like the other ones.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “What you doing? Why you bring me blood the same one again. Like first, then again. Like second again. What you doing?” She didn’t understand him. He grappled for the right English words. He switched languages, addressing the giantess beside Kira. “You speak Shona?”

  Maria, still looking at him with unconcealed disgust, nodded.

  “Tell her I want to know why she keeps bringing me blood I’ve already tested. This one here is the blood of a woman who came by on Tuesday. Also the ‘LAUGH WHEN CRY’ one, the ‘SCREAMING’ one and the ‘CHOKING’ one. Is she following my customers and getting a blood sample? Why? Is she trying to show I am a fraud? Why retest?”

  “Wait a second,” Maria said, grabbing hold of his shoulder. “All the forecasts you did for her; the blood was from customers who had come to you for a prediction?”

  “Yes.”

  Maria translated. Kira was stunned. “Every victim?”

  Maria nodded. “That’s the first connection we’ve found between victims. You don’t think he…” She pointed at Jabu.

  “Why would he tell us if it was him? Maybe someone like those Christians who call Death Machines devil worship is targeting his customers.”

  Maria switched back to Shona. “Listen. You must help us. There is a man who has killed eight women. The police have found nothing, but all the last four women this man has killed had forecasts from you. Maybe the ones before that too. Are these the only forecasts you have done in the last few weeks?”

  “No. I have done many. A few every day.”

  “So it’s not just a case of someone watching who asked him for a prediction and killing them.” Maria translated.

  Kira considered a possibility. “Ask him what some of his other recent predictions have been?”

  “Yesterday, NO MALARIA MEDICINE and CAVE IN.”

  When Maria translated, Kira explained her suspicion. “Maybe it’s not someon
e who disapproves of Death Machine use killing customers. Maybe they are just using the predictions to choose victims. The killer would know that if he went after NO MALARIA MEDICINE or CAVE IN he would fail or be caught. But for SCREAMING, CRYING, ALONE, AND AFRAID…”

  Maria crossed herself; her past as a nun reared up on occasion. “He’s killing people because the machine predicts he will kill them. It’s weird. ”

  “It’s like a Möbius strip.”

  “The killer,” Jabu asked in English, understanding enough of their conversation to get a picture, “he has seen my bloodreads? He kill them because of my bloodreads?”

  “Yes,” Kira confirmed.

  “I know who killer is,” Jabu said. “Is him. Marcus.” He pointed at Marcus’s kiosk. He was the only person who had seen Jabu’s bloodreads. “He is writing book about Death Machine, so I show him my bloodreads. He come and ask me whenever he see me do ritual. Only him. Nobody else.”

  “What is it?” Marcus yelled from his stall. He’d seen Jabu pointing.

  Kira reacted immediately: she whipped a gun out. “Don’t move.”

  Marcus dove out of view. The market was too crowded to shoot. “Stop him, stop him,” Kira yelled. “Thief!” she continued, hoping someone would grab him. Her exclamation just served to create chaos. She saw Marcus emerge from a cluster of people, and she followed, weaving between people. Maria had less finesse; she simply shoved people out of her way.

  There was only one entrance to the market grounds, so even though she had lost a direct sight line to Marcus, Kira ran to it. She bumped into a fat man, apologized, and kept going. It took a few minutes to work her way through stalls, kiosks, and people. When she reached the entrance, she scanned the area outside the market. She caught sight of Marcus sprinting north and she followed.

  She glanced back. There was no sign of Maria, who must still have been working her way through the bedlam. It was up to her. Once, Kira had been a runner, waking daily and jogging for a few kilometers in the quest for that mythical perfect body. That had been a long time ago. She was no longer in the least bit athletic. Her muscles groaned in protest. Marcus was too far ahead of her.

  “Stop him, stop him,” she called out.

  Ahead of Marcus, a group of men responded, blocking his way. He changed direction, darting into an alley. The group of men did not pursue him. Kira followed him into the alley, panting heavily. She slowed down, surprised. Marcus was not running anymore.

  He had stopped about twenty yards down the narrow, squalid alley and was staring at some graffiti on the wall. Beside boisterous declarations of “Dumisani Rules!” and “East Side Posse Suxx!” there was a spray-painted caricature of Jesus wearing oversized boxing gloves.

  “Don’t move,” Kira said, drawing her gun.

  Marcus wiped away sweat from his brow with the sleeve of his suit jacket. He looked at Kira with a strange expression on his face. He looked serene.

  “When it came to it,” he said, pointing at the graffiti, “I did not know how I would react. Would I struggle? Would I be terrified? I’m not.”

  “I know you killed eight women,” Kira said.

  “Eleven,” he replied, his pride visible. He reached into his jacket’s inner pocket.

  “Stop,” she instructed.

  “THE LORD STARING AT YOU FROM A WALL,” Marcus replied. “A fitting end for a servant of God.”

  “You are no servant of God.”

  “In this moment, right now,” Marcus said, “you are the instrument of his will.”

  Slowly, leisurely, he began to pull his hand out of his jacket.

  “Stop,” Kira repeated.

  Kira saw the glint of the sun on metal. She squeezed the trigger.

  9

  FROM “NECROLINGUISTICS”

  By Marcus Chantunya

  The question remains, “Why?” Why has God chosen to speak to us through the Death Machines? Why predictions of death? Why not tell us of the moment we will fall in love, the moment of conception when a new life forms? My analysis of the language that God uses is revelatory. The subtext of his predictions is clear. He longs for our return to him. Death Machine predictions are God’s hopes. The Death Machine gives voice to God’s own prayers, and the only way that… [Manuscript unfinished]

  10

  The next morning Kira returned to Jabu’s kiosk. She found him shaking beads over a young boy’s shoulders while the boy’s mother watched. When he was finished, the boy’s mother handed Jabu some money and half dragged her unruly son away.

  “Hello again,” she said.

  “No blood today,” he said.

  “No. Never again.”

  “Good.”

  “Thank you for your help.” She began to leave; then Jabu stopped her.

  “Wait,” he declared. He began rummaging through his wares until he found a small jar in which there was a large dried mushroom.

  “What is it?”

  “Add water and leave for night. Is for infidaleyes.”

  Kira burst out laughing. “Infidelity.”

  “Yes.”

  “How much?”

  “For you, free.”

  “Thank you,” she said, taking the jar. She wondered what her ex-husband would think if he received a dried mushroom in the mail. Come to think of it, she might just send it.

  * * *

  Story by Daliso Chaponda

  Illustration by Greg Ruth

  APITOXIN

  I HAVE OFTEN WRITTEN OF my friend Sherlock Holmes’s taste for the outré—for all that is bizarre or grotesque or that otherwise stands outside the ordinary course of human affairs. For this reason, many of our cases together have been committed to paper only with the gravest of reservations; at times, the duty of propriety or the threat of scandal have restrained my pen. That I feel at liberty to recount this present tale is due solely to the personal intervention of Mr. Mycroft Holmes, who, being connected to certain vital organs of state, has prevailed upon me to produce an official statement. It is to him rather than The Strand that this account will be delivered, and whether these words shall ever be read outside of Whitehall, I do not know. All that I can say with certainty is that the affair of Dr. Locarde and his Machine of Death is among the strangest and most terrible in its implications to ever trouble the mind of the Great Detective.

  It began one grey October morn with the arrival of a ruddy-faced gentleman of late-middle years, who bustled into the sitting room at 221B Baker Street clutching a small, cloth-draped parcel beneath one arm. “Mr. Sherlock Holmes?” he asked between heavy breaths.

  Sherlock Holmes uncurled his long limbs and arose from his basket chair. “I am he. And this is my associate, Dr. John Watson.”

  I set down my breakfast fork and moved to take the gentleman’s coat and hat… a simple operation that was complicated by the fact that he took care to retain a firm grip on his parcel. “Thomas Noakes,” the stranger said at last. “I am very happy to find you at home, Mr. Holmes. I hope you are not too busy to see me.”

  “Not at all,” said Holmes, ushering the gentleman to the settee. The man sat with the parcel in his lap, clutching it tightly with both hands. “As it happens, I have no pressing investigations. You have travelled by hansom from Chancery Lane, I perceive.”

  Noakes looked up in sudden surprise.

  I cleared my throat. “The mud on your boots, I would wager. Probably street repair going on, yes? I can assure you there is nothing supernatural about Mr. Holmes’s methods, although he is a brilliant observationist.”

  Holmes clucked. “It is a question of attention to detail. The distinctive traces of ink about your fingers, for example, when combined with your street of origin and manner of dress, suggest that you are a barrister… and a successful one, at that.”

  The man’s look of bewilderment eased. “I am indeed a barrister, sir, at Marshall and Dodds, which is close enough to Chancery. And it is true that I have, until recently, had no reason to question my financial security. I must
say that you hearten me greatly, Mr. Holmes. For if a man may read the past in another man’s appearance, perhaps he may read his future as well.”

  Holmes returned to his chair. “Do not presume to take me for a fortune-teller, Mr. Noakes. When reliably informed, I am capable of making reasonable projections. But perhaps you had better elaborate on what it is that you require of me.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Noakes. The man took a deep breath and settled himself on the settee. “It happened like this, Mr. Holmes. I was invited yesterday to the home of Frederick Merton, a bond trader of my acquaintance. He had sent out invitations to perhaps a dozen guests, promising a unique entertainment—‘Silas Gould and His Amazing Prognostication Device.’ Have you perhaps heard of this man?”

  Holmes’s eyes narrowed above his hawklike nose. “The streets of London swarm with numberless charlatans, mediums, magicians, and ‘entertainers’ of every description. I cannot possibly be expected to know them all. Pray continue.”

  Noakes blanched slightly. “Yes, well… he was a thin man with broad features and a heavy beard. He entered the room pushing a wheeled cart, which housed a large object concealed beneath a bloodred cloth. It resembled the outline of two typewriters, if you can imagine them stacked one atop the other. Mr. Gould then proceeded to circle the room and make private introductions. When he finally addressed the group, he spoke in a high and piercing voice.

  “ ‘Gentlemen,’ he began, ‘I am Silas Gould, and I am the inventor of the extraordinary device that you shall witness in operation today. On your invitations, it was referred to simply as a ‘Prognostication Device.’ In truth, the machine makes only one type of prediction. And yet, that prediction is infallibly accurate. Please allow me to demonstrate.’