The Shining Girls

by Lauren Beukes

  He is drawn up short by a map of stars, actual constellations. The little boy standing behind the table starts reading from a card in a shy monotone. ‘Stars are made of balls of fiery gas. They are very far away and sometimes by the time the light reaches us, the star is already dead and we don’t even know it yet. I also have a telescope—’

  ‘Shut up,’ he says. The boy looks like he might burst into tears. He stares, lip trembling, and then bolts into the crowd. Harper barely notices. He is tracing his fingertip over the lines drawn between the stars, transfixed. Big Dipper. Little Dipper. Ursa Major. Orion with his belt and sword. But they could just as easily be something else if you connected the dots differently. And who is to say that is a bear or a warrior at all? It damn well doesn’t look that way to him. There are patterns because we try to find them. A desperate attempt at order because we can’t face the terror that it might all be random. He feels undone by the revelation. He has the sensation of losing his footing, as if the whole damn world is stuttering.

  A young teacher with a blonde ponytail takes him gently by the arm. ‘Are you all right?’ she says kindly, in a voice meant for children.

  ‘No—’ Harper starts.

  ‘Can’t find your child’s project?’ The chubby boy is standing next to her, sniffing, his hand clutching her skirt. Harper holds on to the reality of that, the way he rubs his nose with the back of his sleeve, leaving a smear of snot across the dark fabric.

  ‘Mysha Pathan,’ he says, as if coming up out of a dream.

  ‘Are you her…?’

  ‘Uncle,’ he says falling back on the explanation that has always worked so well.

  ‘Oh.’ The teacher is thrown. ‘I didn’t know she had family in the States.’ She studies him for a moment, puzzled. ‘She’s a very promising student. You’ll find her project near the stage by the doors,’ she points helpfully.

  ‘Thank you,’ Harper says, and manages to tear himself away from the star map that is only a useless fetish.

  Mysha is a little girl with brown skin and metal in her mouth like a miniature railroad, not unlike the wiring that once held Harper’s jaw together. She is bouncing slightly on her heels, although she seems unaware of it, standing in front of a desk lined with potted succulents and a poster behind her head with numbers and colors that mean nothing to him, even though he looks at it very carefully.

  ‘Hi! Can I tell you about my project?’ she says, full of sparking enthusiasm.

  ‘I’m Harper,’ he says.

  ‘Okay!’ she says brightly. This is not part of her script and it throws her. ‘I’m Mysha and this is my project. Um. As you can see, I grew cacti in, um, different kinds of soil with varying acidity.’

  ‘This one is dead.’

  ‘Yes. I learned that some soil conditions are very bad for cacti. As you can see by the results that I marked up on this chart.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘The vertical axis represents the amount of acidity in the soil and the horizontal—’

  ‘Do me a favor, Mysha.’

  ‘Um.’

  ‘I’m going to come back. Right away. As soon as I can. But it won’t feel like that for you. You have to do something for me, though, while I’m away. It’s very important. Don’t stop shining.’

  ‘Okay!’ she says.

  Back at the House, it seems that all the objects are on fire in his head. He can still trace the trajectories, but for the first time he can see that the map leads nowhere. It folds in on itself. A loop he can’t escape. The only thing left to do is surrender to it.

  Harper

  12 JUNE 1993

  He steps into the early evening 12 June 1993, the date displayed in the post office window. It’s only three days since he killed Catherine. He is pushing up against the edge of things. He already knows where to find Mysha Pathan. It’s printed clearly on the last remaining totem. Milkwood Pharmaceuticals.

  The company is on the other side of town, deep in the West Side. A long, squat, gray building. He sits inside the window of a Dominos in the strip mall across the way, picking at the stringy cheese, and watches and waits, observing how the parking lot is mostly empty on a Saturday night, how the security guard is bored and keeps stepping out to have a cigarette, carefully disposing of the butts in one of the yellow fliptop trash cans at the side of the building. How he uses the tag around his neck to swipe himself back into the building.

  He could wait. Until she comes out. Take her at home or en route. He could break into her car. The compact blue one that is the only one left, parked right next to the entrance. Hide in the back seat. But he is feeling edgier than ever, the headache burrowing through his skull and down into his spine. It has to be done now.

  At 11 p.m., when the pizza place closes, he walks round the building, a slow circuit, timed to coincide with the guard’s smoke break.

  ‘Do you have the time?’ he says, walking up to him fast, already unfolding his knife one-handed, hidden behind the swish of his coat. The guard is alarmed by Harper’s pace, but the question is so innocuous, so ordinary, that he automatically looks down at his wrist and Harper stabs the blade into his neck and yanks it across, shearing through the muscle and tendons and arteries, at the same time spinning the man around so that the gush of blood splatters over the cans and not on him. He kicks him behind his knees so that he topples forward between the trash cans, which Harper pulls forward to hide the body. He snags the security tag and wipes the blood off on the man’s pants. The whole thing takes less than a minute. The guard is still gurgling slightly as Harper walks towards the glass doors to swipe the keycard.

  He takes the stairs, up through the empty building to the fourth floor, letting the feeling lead him, like a memory, past rows of locked doors, until he comes to Lab Six, which is standing open, waiting for him. A single light is on inside, above her workbench. She has her back to him, singing loudly and badly, half-dancing to the tinny music leaking from the earphones half-tucked under her headscarf: ‘All That She Wants’. She’s pulverizing leaves and then delicately transferring bits of the mush with some kind of plastic syringe to conical tubes filled with a golden liquid.

  It’s the first time he has had no understanding of the context. ‘What are you doing?’ he says, loud enough to be heard over the music. She jumps and fumbles the earphones off.

  ‘Oh my God. I’m so embarrassed. How long have you been watching me? Oh jeez. Wow. I thought I was the only one in the building. Um. Who are you?’

  ‘The new security guard.’

  ‘Oh. You’re not wearing a uniform.’

  ‘They didn’t have my size.’

  ‘Right,’ she says, nodding tightly to herself. ‘So, um, I’m working on seeing if I can grow a drought-resistant strain of tobacco, based on a protein from a flower in Namibia that can resurrect itself. I spliced in the gene and I’ve been growing the tobacco for a month, and now I’m checking to see if the protein I’m looking for is in there.’ She carries the conical tubes over to a flat gray machine the size of a suitcase and opens the flap to insert them into the tray. ‘Pop it in the Spectrophotometer for analysis…’ She taps at the controls and the machine starts whirring. ‘And if the protein has been expressed successfully, then the substrate will turn blue.’ She smiles at him, pleased. ‘Did I explain that well enough? Because we’ve got a group of tenth graders coming in next week and – oh.’ She’s seen the knife. ‘You’re not a security guard.’

  ‘No. And you’re the last one. I have to finish it. Don’t you see?’

  She tries to move so that there is a bench between them, scanning for things she could throw at him, but he has already cut her off. He has become efficient. He does what he needs to. He punches her in the face to get her down. He ties her wrists with the cords of her earphones because he has left his binding wire behind at the House. He stuffs her headscarf in her mouth to muffle her screaming.

  But there is no one to hear her and it takes her a long time to die. He tries to be more
elaborate to make up for the lack of joy this brings him. He unspools her intestines in a spiral around her. He cuts out her organs and places them on the desk where she was working under the lamplight. He stuffs tobacco leaves in the gaping wounds, so it looks as if the plants are growing out of her body. He pins the Pigasus badge to her lab coat. He hopes it will be enough.

  He washes off in the women’s bathroom, soaking his coat and stuffing his blood-soaked shirt into the feminine hygiene products disposal bin. He pulls a lab coat over his bloodied jacket and walks out of the building, wearing her name-badge turned around so that the ID is obscured.

  By the time he is done, it is four in the morning and there is a different security guard, standing behind the desk, looking baffled and talking into his radio. ‘I told you, I already checked the men’s bathroom. I don’t know where—’

  ‘Well, good night,’ Harper says cheerfully, walking out straight past him.

  ‘Good night, sir,’ the guard says, distracted, registering only the coat and the badge and raising his hand in automatic greeting. The uncertainty kicks in a second later, because it’s really late and how come he didn’t recognize the guy and where the hell is Jackson? That will shift to crushing guilt in five hours’ time when he is sitting at the police station, reviewing the pharma lab’s security-camera footage, after the young biologist’s body has been discovered, and he realizes that he let her killer walk right out past him.

  Upstairs in the lab, a bloom of blue is spreading through the gold in the conical tubes.

  Dan

  13 JUNE 1993

  Dan spots her crazy hair right off the bat. Hard to miss, even in the clamor of the arrivals hall. He seriously thinks about getting back on the plane, but by then it’s too late, she’s spotted him. She half-raises her hand. It’s almost a question.

  ‘Yeah, okay, I see you, I’m coming,’ he grumbles to himself, pointing at the conveyor belt and miming lifting a suitcase. She nods, vigorously, and starts navigating the hordes towards him; a woman in a chador, like her own personal palanquin with the curtains drawn, a harried family scrambling to keep themselves together, a depressing number of obese travellers. He’s never understood the thinking that airports are glamorous. People who believe that have never had to route through Minneapolis–St Paul. Taking a bus is less tedious. Better view too. The only miracle of flight is that more passengers don’t strangle each other out of boredom and frustration.

  Kirby materializes at his elbow. ‘Hey. I tried to call you.’

  ‘I was on the plane.’

  ‘Yeah, the hotel said you’d left already. Sorry. I had to talk to you. I couldn’t wait.’

  ‘Patience never was your strong point.’

  ‘This is serious, Dan.’

  He sighs, heavily, and watches a dozen not-his-bags inching past on the conveyor. ‘Is this about the junkie artist girl from a couple of days ago? Because that was an ugly thing, but it’s not your guy. The cops already nailed her dealer for it. Charming fellow called Huxtable, or something like that.’

  ‘Huxley Snyder. No history of violence.’

  Finally his suitcase emerges from the plastic curtain and thumps down the chute onto the belt. He scoops it up and shuttles Kirby towards the exit to the El.

  ‘History has to start somewhere, right?’

  ‘I spoke to the girl’s dad. He said someone had been phoning the house asking for Catherine.’

  ‘Sure. I get people phoning my house asking for me all the time. Most of them are insurance salesmen.’ He starts digging in his wallet for CTA tokens, but Kirby has dropped enough for both of them into the slot.

  ‘He said there was something sinister about him.’

  ‘There’s something sinister about insurance salesmen,’ Dan retorts. He’s not going to encourage her.

  There’s a train waiting, already packed. He lets her take the seat and leans up against the pole as the doors-closing bell goes. Hates touching the thing. More germs on hand rails than toilet seats.

  ‘And she was stabbed, Dan. Not in the gut, but— ’

  ‘Have you enrolled for the new semester?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Because I know you’re not talking to me about this shit again. You’re practically under a restraining order.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake. I didn’t come here to talk to you about Catherine Galloway-Peck, although there are similarities and…’

  ‘I don’t want to hear it.’

  ‘Fine,’ she says coldly. ‘The reason I came to meet you at the airport was because of this.’ She swings her backpack round onto her lap. Battered, black, anonymous. She unzips it and pulls out his jacket.

  ‘Hey, I’ve been looking for that.’

  ‘That’s not what I want to show you.’

  She unfolds the jacket like it’s some sacred bloody shroud. He’s expecting proof of the second coming at least. Jesus’s face imprinted in a sweat stain. But what emerges is a kids’ toy. A plastic horse, the worse for wear.

  ‘And this now?’

  ‘He gave it to me when I was a little girl. I was six years old. How was I supposed to recognize him? I didn’t even remember the pony until I saw a photograph.’ She hesitates, uncertain. ‘Shit. I don’t know how to say this.’

  ‘Can’t be worse than anything else you’ve said to me. All the crazy theories, I mean.’ Not the moment when she turned on him in the Sun-Times boardroom, raw with the betrayal that ripped right through him, leaving a residual ache every time he thinks about her. Which is all the time. ‘This theory’s the worst one of all. But you have to hear me out.’

  ‘Can’t wait,’ he says.

  She lays it out for him. Her impossible pony, which ties in to the impossible baseball card on that World War Two woman, which somehow ties in to the lighter and a cassette tape Julia wouldn’t have listened to. He struggles to hide his mounting dismay.

  ‘It’s very interesting,’ he says, carefully.

  ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘What am I doing?’

  ‘Pitying me.’

  ‘There’s a reasonable explanation for all of this.’

  ‘Fuck reasonable.’

  ‘Look. Here’s the plan. I’ve had six and a half hours in airports and on planes. I’m tired. I stink. But for you – and really, you’re the only person in the world I would do this for – I am going to forego heading home to have the simple and very necessary joy of a shower. We’re going to go straight to the office and I’m going to phone the toy company and clear this up.’

  ‘You think I didn’t do that already?’

  ‘Yeah, but you weren’t asking the right questions,’ he says, patiently. ‘Like, for example, was there a prototype? Was there a salesman who might have had access to them in 1974? Is it possible that the numbers “1982” refer to a limited edition or a manufacturing number rather than a date?’

  She’s quiet for a long time, staring at her feet. She’s wearing big clunky boots today. Half the laces are undone. ‘It is crazy, huh? Jesus.’

  ‘Totally understandable. That’s a weird set of coincidences right there. Of course you want to try to make sense of them. And you’re probably onto something big with this pony. If it turns out there was a salesman with a prototype, that could lead us straight to him. Okay? You done good. Don’t sweat it.’

  ‘You’re the one who’s sweating,’ she says with a small tight smile that doesn’t make it to her eyes.

  ‘We’ll sort it out,’ he says. And until they get to the Sun-Times, he actually believes it.

  Harper

  13 JUNE 1993

  Harper sits at the back of the Greek diner, under the mural of the white church and the blue lake, with a short stack of pancakes and crispy bacon, watching passers-by through the window and waiting for the stoop-shouldered black man to finish with the newspaper. He takes cautious sips of his coffee, which is still too hot to drink, and wonders if this is why the House would only allow him as far as this day. Because he never goes back
to the goddamn place. He feels remarkably calm. He’s walked away from everything in his life before, too many times to count. He could be a drifter just as easily in this age, even with its crush and fury and noise. He wishes he’d brought more money with him, but there are ways and means to come by cash, especially with a knife in your pocket.

  The old man finally gets up to go and Harper fetches another little packet of sugar and snags the newspaper. It is too soon for them to be reporting on Mysha, but perhaps there will be something on Catherine, and it’s this bite of curiosity that lets him know that he is not done. He could stay here, but eventually he would find other constellations. Or make up his own.

  It’s only because the Sun-Times is folded over to the sports pages that he happens to see her name. Not even a real article, but a list of the Chicagoland High School Athlete of the Year awards.

  He reads it carefully, twice, mouthing the names like they might help him unlock the glaring obscenity at the top: ‘By Kirby Mazrachi.’

  He checks the date. It is today’s paper. He stands up slowly from the table. His hands are shaking.

  ‘You done with that, buddy?’ A guy with a beard to hide the fat around his neck asks.

  ‘No,’ Harper snarls.

  ‘Okay. Relax, man. Just wanted to check the headlines. When you’re done.’

  He walks carefully across the diner to the payphone by the toilets. The directory hangs from a grubby chain. There is only one Mazrachi in the phonebook. R. Oak Park. The mother, he thinks. The fucking cunt who lied to him that Kirby was dead. He tears the page out of the book.

  As he walks towards the door, he sees that the fat man has taken the newspaper anyway. He is overtaken by fury. He strides over, grabs the man by the beard and smashes his forehead into the table. His head ricochets back up, into his hands, his nose gushing blood. He starts whining in disbelief, a strangely high-pitched sound for such a burly man. The whole diner goes quiet and turns to stare as Harper shoves through the revolving door.