Mammoth Books Presents Mami Wata

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  Mammoth Books presents

  Mami Wata

  by Simon Kurt Unsworth

  Taken from The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volume 21, edited by Stephen Jones

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  55–56 Russell Square

  London WC1B 4HP

  www.constablerobinson.com

  Stories taken from The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Volune 21, edited by Stephen Jones,

  published by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2010

  Collection and editorial material copyright © Stephen Jones, 2010, 2012

  MAMI WATA copyright © Simon Kurt Unsworth 2009.

  Originally published in Exotic Gothic 3: Strange Visitations.

  Reprinted by permission of the author.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in

  Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978-1-47210-240-9

  Simon Kurt Unsworth’s stories have appeared in the Ash-Tree Press anthologies At Ease with the Dead, Exotic Gothic 3 and Shades of Darkness, as well as Lovecraft Unbound, Gaslight Grotesque, The Black Book of Horror 6, Creature Feature, Where the Heart Is and Black Static magazine. His story “The Church on the Island” was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19 and The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror. His first collection, Lost Places, was recently issued by Ash-Tree, to be followed by Strange Gateways from PS Publishing.

  “When I was first asked to contribute to Exotic Gothic 3 (which was to feature Gothic-influenced stories in non-Gothic environments), I agreed without really thinking about it,” Unsworth explains, “and then spent a long time struggling, trying to work out how, precisely, I was going to manage it or quite how to make a start.

  “I knew what I wanted to do, sort of, but not exactly how to do it, so one day alarmingly close to the deadline I did a fun thing: I freewheeled through Google. Using a small document about Zambian myths and cultures I found online (I set the story in Zambia for no reason other than an old family friend lives there and it seemed exotic in Gothic terms), I used one Zambian word from it as a search term and read what came up, took one intriguing Zambian term from the search results and searched for that, etc, and disappeared into Google’s merry depths.

  “I ended up with an academic paper about a particular myth, a travel blog about a sort of beer made from corn and a weird little ‘my God’s better than your God’ blog by a kid in Africa, and somewhere in the middle of that, the story appeared.”

  SIMON KURT

  UNSWORTH

  Mami Wata

  SIMON KURT UNSWORTH’S STORIES have appeared in the Ash-Tree Press anthologies At Ease with the Dead, Exotic Gothic 3 and Shades of Darkness, as well as Lovecraft Unbound, Gaslight Grotesque, The Black Book of Horror 6, Creature Feature, Where the Heart Is and Black Static magazine.

  His story “The Church on the Island” was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19 and The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror. His first collection, Lost Places, was recently issued by Ash-Tree, to be followed by Strange Gateways from PS Publishing.

  “When I was first asked to contribute to Exotic Gothic 3 (which was to feature Gothic-influenced stories in non-Gothic environments), I agreed without really thinking about it,” Unsworth explains, “and then spent a long time struggling, trying to work out how, precisely, I was going to manage it or quite how to make a start.

  “I knew what I wanted to do, sort of, but not exactly how to do it, so one day alarmingly close to the deadline I did a fun thing: I freewheeled through Google. Using a small document about Zambian myths and cultures I found online (I set the story in Zambia for no reason other than an old family friend lives there and it seemed exotic in Gothic terms), I used one Zambian word from it as a search term and read what came up, took one intriguing Zambian term from the search results and searched for that, etc, and disappeared into Google’s merry depths.

  “I ended up with an academic paper about a particular myth, a travel blog about a sort of beer made from corn and a weird little ‘my God’s better than your God’ blog by a kid in Africa, and somewhere in the middle of that, the story appeared.”

  THE HEAT WAS like a brick.

  Thorley had never seen shadows like it; they seemed edged in gold and darker at their centre than pitch. Even indoors, they pooled at his feet like glorious ink, gathering around his ankles and under the tables in the chibuku tavern. They even reflected themselves in the sweat that gathered on the brow of Chilongo, Thorley’s companion seated on the other side of the table.

  “This is a good place,” Chilongo was saying. “An honest place. Sure, we have our problems, like anywhere, but we’ve always worked hard. I don’t know why they had to send you.”

  “They sent me,” said Thorley, “because the mine’s production has fallen by over half and they want to know why.” Behind Chilongo, bottles glittered on the shelves lining the bar, throwing their own shadows across the mural painted on to the wall. A mermaid, golden haired and naked, had her back to the bar’s interior but looked over her shoulder into the room. Her tail was splayed out in front of her, half hidden by her body. Beyond, painted smaller so that they looked insignificant and weak, were rows of men. They looked awe-struck, frightened.

  Actually, Thorley hadn’t been sent, he had chosen to come, even though he didn’t need to. The loss of production was a financial concern but it could have been sorted out by phone and email with the onsite managers. It was Chilongo’s voice that had done it in the end, its rich musicality dancing down the telephone line and making the already grey British day greyer. Thorley had heard the sun in Chilongo’s voice, heard the rhythms of African speech, heard something brighter than the drear that faced him through the window, and it had called to him, irresistible and powerful.

  “Every mine has runs of luck, good and bad,” said Chilongo. “We’ve just hit a bad period.”

  “Indeed?” said Thorley. “And yet the last report said shaft four had hit a new seam, was promising great dividends.”

  “It didn’t play out,” insisted Chilongo. “It looked good, but then it turned out to be nothing. We’ve had some flooding in the deepest shaft, some machinery problems. Nothing to worry about. You know how it goes.”

  “No,” said Thorley, “I don’t,” and as he said it he thought to himself, but I know when someone’s lying to me. What I don’t know is why.

  Thorley had decided not to stay in one of the large hotels. Travelling in from Kitwe, the town nearest to the mine, would have been a waste and besides, he wanted to see what industrial Zambia was really like. He had seen the brochures that sometimes came across his desk, glossy things filled with pictures of wild animals and wide, sweeping plains, telling prospective investors about the landscape and the abundant workforce and the stable government, and about mines that produced yield after impressive yearly yield of copper or nickel or cobalt, but he had never visited. He had never needed to; previously, things had run smoothly and the local managers had dea
lt with things.

  He also didn’t want to stay with the expats, although several of them had offered him accommodation when they discovered he was coming. He had never liked expat communities, which seemed to him to fall too easily into patterns of casual racism redolent of colonialism. They were a necessary evil as Thorley saw it, useful for the skills pool they provided but claustrophobic with nostalgia and boredom, and he certainly didn’t need to expose himself to it any more than was strictly necessary. Instead, he had chosen to stay in a workers’ motel on the outskirts of Kitwe, not far from the mine.

  Thorley could have been in a room anywhere; the bed with nondescript covers and sagging mattress, the cheap sideboard that doubled as a television stand, the shower room created by partitioning off one corner and installing a plastic cubicle and shower, the chair on which he hung his clothes.

  He placed his underwear and shirts in the sideboard drawers, seeing as he did so a Gideon’s bible. It was old, bleached by the heat, and its spine cracked painfully when he lifted and opened it, the imitation leather dry and brittle. The drawers were lined with newspaper, he saw, aged to the colour of sand and as brittle as the Gideon’s spine. He lifted out a sheet and tried to read it, but the print had faded so that he could only make out some of the words. The headline on the page read FOUR DEAD MEN and below was a date in July, three months previously. He put the sheet back in the drawer and decided to work.

  Even after sundown, the heat was oppressive. The motel had no air conditioning, and Thorley soon found that the only way to stay even close to comfortable was to strip to his pants and fan himself with the papers he was supposed to be reading. It was impossible to concentrate anyway; he knew most of the facts already, about how the mine’s production had fallen off dramatically in the previous five months, down from around 450 tonnes to less than 300, how there was no official explanation (apart from Chilongo’s “bad luck”) for this drop in output. Much of the explanation, Thorley saw, would lie in the significant drop in workforce numbers that had occurred over the previous months. The mine still operated, of course; they had not lost that many men, just more than was normal or usual, for reasons that weren’t clear.

  Thorley could hear the mine workings as he lay on his bed, a distant throatless rumble peaking occasionally into dull booms or percussive echoes. Closer to, someone was playing a radio loud, the signal fading in and out so that the music and voices seemed to sway about Thorley. He was exhausted and hot, his eyes gritty from tiredness and the dry air, his sweat loosed across him like a second skin. The tap water was only lukewarm and did not quench his thirst, no matter how much he drank. He was wondering about dressing and going in search of ice when he must have, finally, drifted into slumber.

  When Thorley awoke it was still dark, and not much cooler. He sat up, realizing as he did so that some of his papers had stuck to his body. They peeled off with a sound like kissing, leaving the ghosts of letters on his flesh that rubbed away under his fingers. In the distance, he heard sirens, or one siren echoing, it was hard to tell, and men shouting. He went to the window of his room, picking up his glass of tepid water as he went, and pulled aside the curtains.

  His rented car was a grey shape in the darkness, and the flat apron of the car park beyond a smooth shadow segmented by painted lines. Despite the noises, which seemed to be getting closer, he could see no movement except the distant shimmer of thorn bushes moving in the slight breeze.

  Actually, that wasn’t quite true. The far edge of the car park bordered the road to the mine, and now he could see someone walking along it, heading away from the motel. Shadows from the buildings on the far side of the road swept across the figure as it walked, an alternating, dappling pattern. It was a woman, Thorley saw, tall and thin and white with straggly blonde hair that fell down her naked back.

  Naked? No, that couldn’t be right. She must surely have some backless top or dress on, something cool for this stifling heat. He couldn’t see her lower half, so shrouded in shadow was she, but he thought he could hear the swish of material as she walked.

  Just before she walked out of view, an ambulance went past heading away from the mine, its swirling light illuminating her fully for a moment, showing Thorley her long arms and splayed hands with dark nails. In the moment of her disappearance, she turned her face to him and smiled, her teeth white as alabaster against the surrounding night. She was young, and very pretty.

  The next morning, Thorley ate breakfast and waited for Chilongo. The motel had no dining room, so he had walked over the road to a tavern that had a sign outside advertising GOOD FOOD FROM EARLY TIL LATE and ordered himself a coffee and the fruit plate. Although it was before eight, the sun had already cast itself hard across the ground, creating more of those shadows that seemed so dark.

  It was worse inside the tavern, where the large glass windows, cataracted with dust and dirt though they were, magnified the heat of the morning far beyond anything the slowly turning ceiling fan could cope with. Flies buzzed across the trays of wild mango, plum and sand apple, the owner flicking a red cloth at them half-heartedly, making the insects rise and fall.

  Thorley sat at the table farthest from the windows, hoping to find some respite from the light. At a nearby table, two men stared with undisguised interest at him. He smiled, nodded, broke eye contact by looking down at the papers he had brought with him.

  The coffee was poor, weak and gruel-like, but the fruit was excellent, fleshy and juicy and, to his palate, exotic, and he enjoyed the sensation and taste of it in his mouth. As he ate, he looked around the tavern. The other diners were mostly men, workers from the mine, he assumed, some coming off nightshift, others going on. The men going on shift, cleaner and fresher, ate fruit and spoke to each other; the men coming off shift ate plates of vegetables and meat in silence. Most of the men looked over at him during their meals, eyes sullen and wary.

  Behind the counter and counterman, painted on the rear wall, was a mural. This one showed a dark-skinned woman with long hair confidently facing into the room, with a comb in one hand. She was naked apart from a snake, draped around her shoulders, its tail and head covering her breasts. The artist had painted her well, and she glowed with large, expressive eyes and a ripe, full mouth. The landscape behind her, however, was cruder, showing only the barest of detail. Hills and a vast plain stretched out, the plain full of what Thorley first thought were apes or horses but then realized were men. There were hundreds of them, mostly barely more than stick figures, all facing the woman. Some appeared to be kneeling, others had their arms raised. It was an odd mix of primitive and modern art styles, although an impressive one.

  Chilongo appeared late, stressed but apologetic, and with some of the dancing cadences gone from his voice. He was tired, Thorley saw, the bruised flesh under his eyes sagging and dark. The man was rumpled, his clothes creased. Rings of sweat, dried and fresh, gathered under his shirtsleeves. He smelled anxious and sour.

  “I am so sorry,” he said. “It has been a difficult morning and I was unavoidably delayed.”

  “Problem?” Thorley asked.

  “No. Well, yes,” said Chilongo. “There was an incident last night, and one of the men died. One of the miners, I mean. He was in another motel, like yours, and he was found dead.”

  “Not an incident at the mine? An accident, I mean, onsite?”

  “No.”

  “Then why should that be a problem for you?” asked Thorley.

  “Because,” said Chilongo, “I am the man in charge of the miners and of the visitors to the mine. I am responsible for them.” He sounded angry, indignant, and Thorley raised a placatory hand, motioning Chilongo to sit.

  “Sorry,” he said, “I meant no offence. Now, we have a long few days ahead of us. Please, take me to the mine and you can tell me what’s been happening on the way.”

  “We like to keep visitors away,” said Chilongo, noticing Thorley wince as they bounced across yet another rut over the deteriorated track that led to the small mi
ne, a smaller site, specializing in the deepest seams. “Originally, it was to keep ourselves insignificant in the eyes of others, so that they would not bother us. The larger companies are not above having their trucks deliberately break down to block access, or staging the accidental shedding of loads of trash in awkward places, if they perceive you as a threat. Now, however, it stops the inquisitive attempting to get onsite. Reporters and the like.”

  “Reporters? Why reporters?”

  “Because of the deaths.”

  The mine, even though small by comparison with some of the others scattered across the copperbelt, was still huge. As they juddered along the road, and through two security checkpoints, Thorley waited to see the investment he was here to protect.

  He wasn’t sure what he expected, exactly; a series of sheds around a caged lift-head, possibly, or a carved expanse of parched earth hollowed out from the ground, but in reality it was neither. It was a complicated, layered series of huts and prefab buildings, of varying heights, built in the centre of a vast, dusty plain. The separate structures were clustered together, creating the impression of a huge, ever-expanding castle, sprawling its way across the earth like some creeping, cancerous thing.

  As they drew close, Thorley saw the individual huts were huge, boxy structures painted green and brown and coated in sand and dirt, their fronts open to allow trucks to drive in and out. More trucks and dirty buildings lined the perimeter, these stranger shapes with sloped roofs or walls that were missing entirely, all of them linked by rumbling, moving multi-layered conveyor belts like arteries. All over the site, chimneys pierced the air, stretching up from the ground and loosing spiralling coils of dirty grey smoke at the sky.

  Thorley enjoyed the size of it, could feel the vibration of the machinery even in the car. Even with the windows closed, he smelled the sharp stench of acid and machinery and burning, could hear the lupine growl of the conveyor belts and smelting units. He turned to Chilongo, wanting to say something about the sheer immensity of what he was seeing and hearing, but saw that the other man was looking at the approaching mine works with a strange expression on his face; he looked scared.