Black Static Horror Magazine #1

by TTA Press Authors

  Mama died.

  "João!” I felt someone tug on my arm. I looked down. It was Sortudo. Blood hung like a mist in the air between us. Sortudo's face was covered in it. It stained the cloth of the canopy above us, around us, everywhere I could see.

  I looked down at my own hands. Something, somewhere, snapped. I pulled away from Sortudo. And I screamed. “Hiro!"

  "Mama, it's me.” Sortudo had left my side and crossed over to my mother's corpse. She had fallen back across the circle of candles. But the explosion of blood from her body had already quenched the flames.

  "Mama, it's me,” Sortudo said. I stumbled towards them, flanked by the blood-soaked figures of Mama's congregation. The drums had been stilled. The air was filled with the sound of sobbing, of retching, and wailing. Iyálorixá Souret appeared at my side. She mumbled a prayer. At least, I saw her lips move; my mind told me that it was a prayer.

  "Mama, it's me,” Sortudo said, over the corpse of my mother. I hadn't seen her in fifteen years. How old she looked. How thin. “Mama, it's me,” Sortudo said. “I've come to take you home."

  * * * *

  The morning of the day before New Year's Eve, the people of Rio woke up to find that the storm had passed. The floods were gone. A layer of glittering silt dredged up from the storm drains, and washed down out of the mountains, covered the whole city. Diamonds carpeted the streets. Diamonds hung in the air. Diamonds danced between the buildings, across the windswept squares.

  Rio, cidade maravilhosa. Rio, city of wonders.

  The climb up from the lake to the top of Cantagalo was made easy by the road that the Swiss had cut into the side of the mountain. Trucks thundered past Sortudo and me, as we walked single-file up the mountain road. Work had restarted now that the storm had passed. Everything was returning to normal.

  Sortudo and I crested the rise and carried on along the road balanced on Cantagalo's narrow spine. The gate in the new security fence was thrown open to allow the trucks through. We walked past a pair of security guards: boys in poorly fitting uniforms, high-school dropouts armed with guns.

  They didn't see us.

  The sun blazed down; steam rose up from the surface of the road, from the rocks, the earth. The mountain groaned and shifted as it dried out in the heat of the morning sun.

  We reached the gates of the construction site, high on Pavão, at a little after eight a.m.

  Mama had been dead for nearly five hours.

  We found Paulo Marin sheltering from the sun in the shadow of one of the radio-masts, consulting a humidity meter. He glanced disinterestedly at us as we approached, then jerked his head up and took a step back. “Watanabe!"

  "Sortudo,” I said, conversationally, “this is Paulo Marin, head of AliTel Brazil."

  Marin's eyes narrowed. “Mr Watanabe, what ... what are you doing here?"

  "Dr Marin and I met in Angra,” I went on in the same conversational tone, “four days ago now. He came to offer me a job. AliTel were experiencing—how did you put it...?"

  * * * *

  "...some unusual local opposition to one of our construction projects."

  "Religious opposition?” There was no other reason for a man like Marin to seek me out. I separated a 50-centavo piece from the pile of change on the table in front of me and began to idly flip it up into the air: flip-catch-flip.

  Marin tipped his head to one side—his way of saying that I might call it ‘religious', he never would.

  "One of the African sects?” I said. Flip-catch-flip.

  He was much more comfortable with this label, it said outside of the mainstream to him, black people and their superstitions. He jerked his head up and down. “One of the African sect leaders, yes. I spoke to Alex Page of Travis-West; he told me you handled a similar situation for them down in Paranaguá."

  Flip-catch-flip. “The trouble at the docks was hurting us too—much more so than the Americans. We couldn't land our fish. If we don't sell our fish, the banks take our boats."

  Marin nodded: he accepted the distinction. “Times are hard. I understand that catches are down?"

  It was an obvious lure. I ignored it. Flip-catch-flip.

  Marin smiled: he saw that I wasn't going to play his game. “Mr Watanabe, AliTel is willing to pay you 5,000 reais to come to Rio and handle a woman called Mama Axé for us."

  Flip-catch-flip.

  * * * *

  "He had no idea what he had just said. I could tell by the fall of the coin,” I said to Sortudo, on top of Pavão, the day before New Year's Eve. “But, it wasn't chance that sent him to me, any more than it was chance that governed the fall of the coin."

  "The saints,” Sortudo said, “guide the hands of all men."

  The saints, the old ancestor-gods of my father's homeland; they were all the same, all pulling at me. I was a half-breed, doubly cursed. I was never more certain of that than the day that Marin came to Angra dos Reis.

  "What is this about?” said Marin. “Why are you here?” He was looking past me, trying to catch the eye of one of his men. They didn't see us. “Why are you here?” said Marin.

  I fixed my eyes on his. “Mama Axé was my mother."

  The blood drained from Marin's face.

  "I turned Dr Marin down,” I told Sortudo, my eyes still fixed on Marin's face. “I didn't tell him why. He left. And I tried to forget that he was ever even there. I left Rio to escape my mother and that world."

  "Mr Watanabe, I'm sorry. But—"

  "I didn't want any part,” I said, talking over Marin, “of anything involving my mother."

  My mother's marriage to my father, Milton Watanabe, had been a political one, an attempt to bring peace to conflicting African- and Japanese-Brazilian communities by joining in marriage two of the most influential members of the two factions. The attempt succeeded: peace reigned—for a generation at least—but the marriage itself was a failure. My father left Rio and returned to the family home in Angra three years after I was born. As soon as I was able to choose my own path, I followed him. I had thought then that that would be the end of it.

  "But the saints,” Sortudo said, “they wouldn't let you go."

  The saints, the old ancestor-gods, my family, my curse. “Yesterday, I heard the rest—about Cantagalo, the demands for compensation. Yesterday, I found out that Dr Marin had hired someone else.

  "Hiro,” I said, staring at Marin. “You hired my cousin in my place."

  "Mr Sukura came to us,” Marin said. “He told us he could ... advise us on how best to stop Mama Axé exploiting the coincidence of the storm to stoke up further opposi—"

  "Where's Hiro, Marin?” I said, quietly, calmly, cutting off his attempts to rewrite history, to deny the true nature of the job that he had hired Hiro to do.

  "I ... I don't know where Mr Sukura is."

  I opened my mouth to argue, but Sortudo said, “João.” I looked down at him. He was stroking his scars. “He's telling the truth."

  "I can't help you,” Marin said.

  I stared at him, not speaking.

  "You should go,” he prompted.

  "João,” Sortudo said, tugging at my arm, “he's right: it's time to go.” His eyes bored into mine. “It's time to go."

  He was trying to tell me something. I nodded. We started to walk away.

  Marin called out, “I wish things could have turned out differently, Mr Watanabe, but it is over now. Understand that."

  I stopped. I turned. “Over, Dr Marin? Listen. Feel.” I stooped down. I laid my hand flat against the earth. It was trembling. “Your flood defences have been overwhelmed; the ground is waterlogged. And now the sun is heating the exposed rocks. You're the engineer, here, Dr Marin: what does that add up to?"

  Marin shook his head, dismissing my words. “Mr Watanabe, please, just leave."

  We were just fifty metres down the road when we heard it: the crack, the shattering of the rock, the low rumble, the dull roar of shifting earth. The ground beneath our feet shook and the air filled with the s
tomach-churning sound of wrenching metal. I spun round and saw, like the balling of a fist, one by one Marin's radio-masts fold up, topple over and disappear.

  * * * *

  "I have to go,” Sortudo said. “There are things I have to do."

  This was at back the foot of Cantagalo, on the street, while the police cars and ambulances screamed by.

  I shook my head. “I need your help to find Hiro. I need you to cast the shells."

  Sortudo shook his head. “Your cousin belongs to the East. He's out of the reach of the saints. Only when he comes to us, stands on our ground, can we know him; only then can we reach out and touch him."

  "Then what can I do?"

  Sortudo studied my face. “Tomorrow night is Iemanjá's night,” he said. “Mama's people will go down to the sea to honour her memory, to ask the orixá-mother to be her guide.” Sortudo fixed his eyes on mine. “Your cousin will come. He has to: he knows you'll be there."

  He started to back away from me. Then he turned and crossed the pavement towards the street. He reached the kerb, started to search for a gap in the traffic.

  "Sortudo,” I called out. He turned. Our eyes met. “Who are you?” I said.

  "Tomorrow,” he said. “On Copacabana."

  Thousands came, a silent, solemn mass of people, their drums silenced, who gathered at the water's edge, while behind them, all around them, millions laughed and danced and drank and sang. The old man, the taxi driver, and his wife probably watched it all on World TV. I kept my distance. I watched from Atlantic Avenue amongst the crowds of revellers. Then, when it was over, I walked down to the water and, for the first time in fifteen years, drew a circle in the sand.

  A voice started to whisper in my head, calling me out of the circle. Sortudo came. He had a gun. He pulled the trigger, unleashing a thunderstorm.

  Unleashing a thunderstorm.

  A thunderstorm...

  * * * *

  COPACABANA, NEW YEAR'S EVE

  I spun around, tracing the path of the bullet. But all I could see was the sand and the waves and the dark backdrop of the sea. The voice crawling around inside in my head whispered, “Run. Run to the sea."

  Sortudo fired again.

  The bullet struck the air somewhere in front of me.

  The air shivered. It began to smoke and hiss, like fresh meat thrown on a fire. Sortudo kept firing; bullet after bullet struck home in the smoke. After the fifth shot the air behind the smoke darkened and began to solidify.

  And a human figure crystallised out of the night.

  It was Hiro. He was naked; his bare chest splashed with steaming blood and shot through with bullet holes. Long steel needles hung loosely from his skin in five curving lines radiating out from the area over his heart. Blue sparks leapt and played around the needles. Our eyes met. He hissed at me. Six more needles hung like cats’ whiskers from his cheeks. Smoke and steam swirled around him. He advanced a step, then another, raising his right arm. In his hand he had a machete, its blade encrusted with dried blood. He advanced another step. I was trapped in his gaze.

  Sortudo drew alongside me and cocked his revolver. Hiro's eyes shifted. Sortudo called out to him, in a voice hot with blood, “I think maybe I should introduce myself. I am Exú. I am the saint in-between. I am Death. And I've come to take you home."

  Hiro opened his mouth, smoke poured out. Sparks played around the needles hanging from his cheeks.

  "Hiro,” I said. He turned towards me. But, this time, there was no recognition in his eyes.

  "Hiro...?” But, before I could say anything more, Sortudo—Exú, the saint in-between inside the child—reached out and took him home.

  * * * *

  The gun-smoke cleared, carried off on the sea breeze, to reveal Hiro's body lying tossed back onto the sand still wreathed in its own sinewy white smoke, still steaming.

  Somewhere someone was screaming. Shouts for the police mingled with cries for the Lord and Holy Jesus.

  Sortudo laughed. I turned towards him. He coughed, spitting up blood. Then his legs crumpled, and he sat down heavily on the sand. I rushed over to him, putting my hand out to support his back as he started to topple over. Blood was still streaming from his nose and mouth. His head fell forward. He laughed again, and spat out more blood. “He was a tough one to reach, him,” he said, throatily. “He fought hard."

  I looked over at Hiro lying dead on the sand. A wave tumbled up the beach and washed over him.

  "The banks were going to take his boat,” I said.

  The sky exploded; two million voices began to roar; it was twelve o'clock midnight.

  New Year's Day.

  Copyright © 2007 Jamie Barras

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  INTERFERENCE—Christopher Fowler

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  * * * *

  Chris is currently writing the award-winning Bryant & May books, dark tales of death and detection set in London. The latest volumes, White Corridor and Ten Second Staircase are out now from Transworld Books. His latest collection of short stories, Old Devil Moon, is out at Christmas from Serpent's Tail.

  * * * *

  COMFORTABLY DUMB

  Why did I choose ‘Interference’ as the title of this new column?

  Running interference is about going against the natural order of things, and that, according to J.G. Ballard and many other intuitive futurologists, is where we're headed, into a zone where the only fun left is enforced by corporations, and the fate of the world doesn't matter so long as we get a thousand channels of hyperintense presenters desperately trying to make us believe they exist. Ballard reckons the future has ended, and we now merely inhabit the rolling detritus that represents the present. Luckily our virtual cages are velvet-lined, so we hear little and feel nothing except the warm, soothing relief of everlasting micturition.

  Interference is also a form of intervention and obstruction. When I was a kid it had an additional meaning: getting your inner thigh touched by a man in a gabardine mackintosh at the Odeon.

  So it's a nicely loaded word that allows free range across a variety of subjects like culture, media and society. Let's touch on those for a start, as if we were all at a dinner party, whatever that means these days. (Do you honestly know anyone who has dinner parties? Do you even know anyone with a dining table?)

  Sorry to come on strong. Perhaps we should just chatter about cocaine or the latest handbags. Everyone says the British are becoming ruder, but all I hear is people saying sorry. Blair's retirement speech was filled with the drizzle of appeasement instead of fiery pride. In bars and buses, private individuals can't wait to offer an apology. When served inedible food—'sorry, but there seems to be broken glass in my eggs,’ when poured a bad drink—'sorry, is there any vodka in this?’ It's a triumph of environment over heredity. Overseas visitors acquire the habit within seconds of arrival. The only people who don't believe their own apologies are corporations. They're happy to let you know that they only care about your ability to generate revenue, and when things go awry they'll get you to pay again, preferably on the internet by credit card, so they can charge you extra. They know that you know it's wrong, and yet it doesn't matter.

  This is a new development brought about by a society that realises we are only vaguely disgruntled when service deteriorates and promises collapse. We expect failure, because we don't even believe in the future. Fractured and disjointed by the very processes that were intended to make our lives easier, we now behave like Russians in the 1950s, half-heartedly patching and repairing just enough to see us through, without a thought for anyone coming after. Or before, for that matter, because we have no true remembrance of the past beyond those Hitler and Marilyn Monroe documentaries they endlessly show on cable.

  My grandfather said the trouble nowadays is nobody wants to work, but he was wrong. The workforce is retiring earlier, so that many meetings I attend are now made up entirely of twentysomethings, which has the effect not of granting them p
ower at a younger age but of rendering them powerless no matter how many hours they put in, because all major decisions are made somewhere else by people they will never even meet.

  Nothing does what we thought it would.

  Who'd have thought that advancing cinema technology would simply be used to release identical franchised segments of stylised violence? Scripted entertainment is in its death-throes. Every corporation from furniture to computers forces you onto the treadmill of upgrades, clothing stores lead you to believe their latest items are for you when in reality they're only made for trade shows. And you don't really mind.

  The only time we ever fought back is when we were teenagers, but now that particular demographic has been satiated with shiny objects, although what we consume isn't even as good as it was thirty years ago.

  Examples? Cheap audio devices once allowed you to mix tracks and create music with a wide sound range. Now mp3s have reduced audio quality, removing depth, cross-fades and sampling without specialist equipment. Books are so demographically niche-marketed that you can no longer be surprised by something you just picked up. The book released without press quotes or a celebrity author is dead in the water. The author has become confused with the word, as if that person has to live the story in order to write about it.

  The other day I saw some test footage for a new action movie. It was created on a computer, and showed robot figures diving in hyper slow motion through windows firing guns and throwing bombs. The footage will then be edited, and finally the actors will imitate the movement of the computer figures. This means that film-making is now doing the opposite of what it did. Once the artist rotoscoped the movements of the actors to make lifelike animation. With films costing so much, the suits want all elements of chance removed from performance so that everything can be predicted, meaning it is marketable and contains none of the disturbing surprises that proper acting can throw up.

  Cinema is now about turning actors into objects, which can then be sold. Ideally they should also be holding, riding or wearing other objects which are also for sale. By preplanning highs into their films, companies eliminate the kind of spaces that let you think, keeping you reactive and receptive. The more relentless a film is, the duller it becomes, until it is so action-packed that it stops altogether, becoming a meaningless flypast of colour and noise that you can tune in or out of at will. Try watching Crank or Underworld without periodically zoning out into an alpha state that involves thinking about the weather, your laundry, or nailing some corporate drone's living flesh to a post.