“Could we please stay like this?” I asked, barely whispering, though my voice sounded very loud to me. “Just for a little while?”
Sumire looked as I expected she would. She looked like she had won.
“Okay,” she said, covering my bruised forehead with her small, calloused hand.
***
“Here.”
Josh just managed to get the door open before I pushed my way inside and shoved the paper bag into his chest with a bit more force than I had intended.
“Rough trip?”
He seemed genuinely curious, but I was not in the mood.
“Josh – is anybody looking for that?” I nodded at the bag he was busy stuffing in the refrigerator. “Enemies? Law enforcement?”
“I doubt it,” Josh said, laughing. “It’s dinner for the next week, Preston. I have special dietary needs…”
“Okay, whatever. Forget I asked.”
“Already forgotten,” Josh said, with an expression that made me doubtful. “Did you decide how you wanted to be paid?”
“Yeah. You were right. There are some things I need to know.”
“My kind of man,” Josh said eagerly, rubbing his hands together. “What are you interested in?”
“Holly,” I said flatly. “Who is she? And what is it that she is doing?”
Josh made a dismissive noise, as if I had asked a stupid question.
“Oh, that’s easy. Holly Diem is a witch, as well as the owner of the Kadath Estates,” he said, chuckling. “And she is intervening in the fates of people who interest her. I won’t charge you for that, because I really don’t know why certain people attract her attention. Witches aren’t human, Preston – we can’t understand their motivations. I suggest you don’t bother to try. Humans are easy – people want sex, fame, or money. Holly, though? Who knows what she wants? Let me know if you need some information on real people, okay?”
In the end, I settled for a folded and refolded fifty-dollar bill and headed back downstairs, my head buzzing with potential questions for Josh, so occupied with the events of the day that I never even thought to check my phone.
This makes everything that happened next my fault. I was late.
I do not hold April responsible. I abandoned her, after all, to the questionable mercies of The Institute. The blame is mine, thank you very much. Compounding that, I missed the check-in system that I myself had insisted on, causing her to fall into a panic. April had sent a series of increasingly frantic text messages to my phone throughout the course of the day. The cable company, who made an extremely untimely maintenance decision that rendered our television useless, exacerbating the situation. Paper and charcoal pencils were scattered about the bedroom, scribbled evidence of her last stand against what was probably inevitable.
In the five years that I abandoned April to the Institute, I had learned a few things. One of them was how to restrain someone without hurting them. I pinned her to the ground as gently as possible, then wrapped my arms and legs tight around her. Even in this position, she wasn’t rendered harmless, but I let her do her damage.
I deserved all of it. My pitiful expiation. Nevertheless, when her teeth sunk into my forehead, a little bit of the guilt was mitigated, as long as the blood flowed.
5. Tropospheric Scatter
The maps were all wrong. We lost the curvature of the Earth. We lost the horizon.
“April bit you in the head.”
“A normal person would ask a question. You know, something like, ‘Did someone bite your head?’”
“That seems unnecessary. She takes one bite from her toast and leaves the rest every morning. I know who bit you. What did you do to her?”
I had debated wearing a baseball cap to cover the mark on my forehead, the same way a long-sleeved shirt covered the bruises and scratch marks on my arms. Honestly, though, who wears a baseball cap to breakfast? It would have looked even more suspicious. I glanced over at April, but she was busy watching television in the other room with Sumire. At least she was completely untouched; otherwise, I don’t think Kim would have waited for an explanation before calling the cops.
“I blew it,” I admitted, poking half-heartedly at my cooling eggs. “I worried her yesterday. If her stress level is overly elevated, April has occasional fits. She had a particularly bad episode last night. I had to restrain her to prevent her from hurting herself. In the process…”
Kim huffed, gave me a doubtful look, then returned to her breakfast. She would interrogate April later, I knew, scanning her body for minute signs of abuse. I thought that Kim probably knew what to look for, reflecting cynically on Sumire’s story, wondering if there was any truth to it. I would not have been surprised. The kind of suspicion Kim displayed comes naturally to the mistreated, suffering an injury so encompassing that it never fully heals. I know all about that sort of thing.
“Kim, I appreciate everything you’ve done for us. You have been a big help, and we are neighbors. Is there any possibility of convincing you that I am not taking advantage of April?”
Kim frowned and then moved to collect the empty plates. I glanced over at April’s place at the table and realized that Kim was right – April had taken a single bite from both pieces of toast, the outline a dead ringer for the mark on my forehead.
“You aren’t taking advantage of her right now,” Kim said with withering contempt. “You have before, though, haven’t you?”
I lied by reflex. Or maybe not.
“I haven’t always lived up to my responsibilities, where April is concerned. That was a long time ago, though, and a lot has changed. I’m trying to make it right, you know?”
Kim shrugged, piling dishes in the sink.
“How do you make something right? You failed her before. Why would this time be any different?”
I walked across the kitchen to stand directly behind her. I don’t make a lot of noise when I walk, so Kim didn’t realize I was there until she turned around with a little start. She shrank away, but I did not leave her anywhere to run. Unkind, I know, but I wanted her to listen to what I had to say.
“I need you to understand something,” I insisted. “We both know that you see through me, okay? I won’t pretend you are wrong. It doesn't matter, though. I promise you that I will die before I let anything happen to April. That is the only reason I am alive. I would be as happy to be dead as you would be to see me gone, Kim, but not until I have paid my debts. So, do not trust me. Worry about my intentions if you must. I should warn you, though – of the two of us, she is far more dangerous. Forget that and you will regret it.”
“Is that supposed to make me think better of you? Or is it supposed to be some kind of threat?”
I shook my head.
“No. I just wanted you to know we aren’t working at cross-purposes. Feel free to hate me. I really don’t care.”
Kim pushed her way passed me and resumed clearing the kitchen table, but she did not appear quite as suspicious as she had before. She seemed unnerved and annoyed instead, so I chalked that up as a victory.
“Holly has work for you,” Kim said over the clatter of the dishes. “Be at her place in an hour.”
I nodded. This seemed like a truce between us, which was probably as good as it was going to get. I collected April over Sumire’s protests and walked her back to the apartment. I was happy to hear the sounds of the bolt and chain.
I lay on the floor and watched her rebuild her walls, a fortress of paper, charcoal, and a very private language.
“Hey, April? Are we safe?”
April paused in the process of stapling one of her creations to the wall to give me an oddly grave look. The shape she had drawn had elements of Kanji and the letter Q, but was evocative of something that I could not place, something that made me nostalgic and a little sad. It reminded me of something that I had loved and lost, then somehow forgotten. I shook my head and looked away with difficulty. It isn’t a good idea to stare too hard at April’s language. There really are things man i
s better off not knowing.
“Nobody is safe in this city. But we aren’t in any immediate danger.”
“Wait a minute. What does that mean?”
April shook her head and went back to work.
“What happened yesterday, Preston? What did you do?”
The train station. The woman with the reflecting sunglasses and an expensive brown coat. A broken thing leaking fluids onto the steel tracks. Uncertainty.
“Nothing,” I said quickly, studying the carpet in front of me.
“Is that so? Can you tell me what happened last night? I’m afraid I don’t remember anything after you missed our second check-in.”
I realized I was rubbing the mark on my forehead and stopped.
“Nothing I want to talk about.”
April smiled unhappily, her face smudged with charcoal.
“You took the words right out of my mouth.”
***
When I arrived at Holly’s door, I found Lovecraft sunning on a convenient eave, his black tail swaying lazily in the afternoon breeze. There was a note informing me that Holly had run out for a moment, and I could either wait or meet her at the coffee shop near the train station. I can always use another cup of coffee.
Along Leng Street I counted the steps between street lamps and tried to picture Sumire leaping from one to the next in nocturnal pursuit of an albino toad-creature. Leng Street was an unsettling place even in the light of day, and I found myself entertaining some strange ideas.
I cut through a tangle of alleys north, to the district surrounding the station. As usual, it seemed boisterous in comparison to my lonely neighborhood, though it was sparsely crowded. The coffee shop was busy for midmorning, but I had no trouble spotting Holly, resplendent in a white-and-blue dress with a pattern reminiscent of fine china. She waved me over to an empty seat, two cups of coffee waiting on the table.
“Morning, Holly,” I said, sitting down, trying to avoid noticing the presentation of her rather ample bosom. Not that she would have minded. I am not certain that Holly recognized a distinction between good and bad attention.
“Good morning Preston,” Holly said with a crooked smile. “Whatever happened to your head?”
“Nothing particularly exciting,” I said, sipping my coffee to discover it was exactly how I liked it. I tried not to over-think that. “What’s the agenda for today?”
“I need to go to the neighboring district, Ulthar Heights, on the other side of the river. I have some business there.”
It was really more of a channeled creek on a concrete-lined bed running through the city, which had once, at least in theory, been a river called Skai. I had sat with Sumire the other night beside the same refuse filled canal. As Holly explained it, the Skai served as an important navigation landmark in the city, cutting it roughly in half, with the neighborhoods of Sarnath, Ulthar, and Thran on the side opposite our own.
“There aren't many bridges, so we will have to walk uptown a bit.”
“Huh? There was five feet of water in that river. How can it be so hard to find a place to cross?”
“Old neighborhoods,” Holly said, finishing her coffee. “Like Kadath, or Yian to the north. There hasn’t been much new construction in fifty years. You are lucky. The train only made it here eight years ago.”
“That has been bugging me,” I admitted, after returning our empty mugs to the sullen girl at the counter. “What’s up with our neighborhood? Why all the abandoned buildings? Why doesn’t anybody live in Kadath?”
Holly grabbed my arm and wrapped her own around it as we left the shop, steadying herself on her unwieldy shoes.
“You are going to learn a great deal today. All sorts of things. Though I think you will find the knowledge will simply raise more questions. No fixing that. Life would be boring if you knew all the answers.”
I can handle boring, but Holly wasn’t paying me to disagree.
I had never previously followed the canal further than the split near the edge of Kadath, one branch creeping on through downtown, the other crawling out to the black sea. Holly led us in the direction of the water, and when we crested the crown of the nearby hill, I could see ships moored in the harbor. I could even make out the strange black flags that they flew, belonging to no nation that I recognized.
We stopped at a fish market built in the shell of a former cafeteria, staffed by Japanese men who handled their wares with care that bordered on reverence. Holly spent a long time examining salmon and tuna before picking the very best of each. While the butchers carefully carved, measured and packaged, I ogled the prices and went pale at the thought of paying. As usual, though, no one asked Holly for anything. After exchanging a deep bow and pleasantries in Japanese, we were off again.
We cut across a tenement on the edge of our neighborhood, then took a long right turn, following the edge of the concrete embankment lining the river. Our path took us through a set of old wrought iron gates in severe disrepair. On the other side I could see nothing but very strange trees.
“What the hell?”
Holly laughed, the sound bright and comforting and completely out of place in our surroundings. The trees were old and the branches that crowded together and blotted out much of the light looked more like roots than anything else. The air was thick with a strange smell that reminded me of a fruit I could not recall. Free from its concrete channel, the Skai burbled slowly over stones worn smooth by the passage of years.
“We call it ‘The Enchanted Woods’.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I am completely serious. There was a fairytale themed playground here at some point. You can find bits and pieces of it if you look carefully. The playground was called ‘The Enchanted Woods’, and because of the Moon Trees, it just kind of stuck…”
“Moon Trees. Right,” I said, as if that made any sense. “Why are we here?”
“This is a shortcut,” Holly said confidently, leading me along a path worn in the mossy ground. “The nearest bridge is on the other side of the forest. And don’t worry; it isn’t as big as it looks from the outside.”
I touched the trunk of one of the trees as we passed it, running my hands along bark with a furry texture that reminded me of suede. The foliage had an unusual phosphorescence, and instead of green, the predominant color seemed to be a deep and unfamiliar violet.
“It’s like a different world,” I said, not sure why I was speaking so quietly. The atmosphere was hushed, as if we walked through a church. “What kind of trees did you say these were?”
“Everyone calls them Moon Trees, and they aren’t exactly native to the area,” Holly said, looking amused.
“Weird. Do you ever answer a question directly?”
“Not if I don’t have to,” she said, her eyes sparkling mischievously. “How about you, Preston?”
Our walk through the wood was quiet. Occasionally, between the bizarre old trees I could see remains of painted wood displays and play structures. Many of the ruins had rotted back to the earth, into the thick black loam that nurtured the strange trees, stripped of form and function. The trunks of dead trees were everywhere, covered by a layer of luminous moss that turned them into stumpy violet candles. Holly released my arm to hunt around the base of one of the largest trees, returning with two perfectly formed red and white toadstools the size of my pinky. She took a cloth napkin from her purse and wrapped them carefully, then stowed them away in the murky depths of her bag.
“What are those?”
“You will find out eventually.”
“What?”
Holly smiled her unreadable smile, and continued through the silent forest. I could not escape the feeling of being watched from behind those great tree trunks in the deep purple shadows. I was glad when the canal reappeared, an aging steel and concrete walkway stretching across to the colorful ancient homes and towering spires of Ulthar on the opposite bank. The trees gave way reluctantly to broken concrete and a neglected strip of
asphalt, empty fields on either side covered with trash. We were at the very edge of the woods when I noticed a person standing on our side of the bridge, next to the entrance ramp for the spiral stairs. Holly must have noticed as well, because I felt her stiffen, then she gave me a squeeze and released my arm. Whoever it was, then, Holly did not like them. More than likely, that was going to be my problem.
It was a girl in her twenties with blond hair pulled back in a short ponytail and an oversized red hoodie. She was leaning against a burnt-out light post with a dog lounging at her feet. Or maybe not a dog, but rather the great-great-grandfather of a dog – an impossibly huge wolf, as tall as a full-grown St. Bernard, lean and feral. Cruel eyes glistened and sharp yellow teeth peaked from a mouth that looked as if it were laughing.
Paranoid Magical Thinking (Unknown Kadath Estates) Page 9