The Night Market

by Rawlins, Zachary

  The Unknown Kadath Estates Books

  The Night Market

  Paranoid Magical Thinking

  The Mysteries of Holly Diem (2014)

  The Floating Bridge (TBA)

  Other Books by the Same Author

  The Central Series:

  The Academy

  The Anathema

  The Far Shores

  For my mother, for teaching me to love writing.

  Copyright © 2013 by Zachary Rawlins

  Cover photograph copyright © Özgür Donmaz

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Published by ROUS Industries.

  Oakland, California

  spook_nine@yahoo.com

  978-0-9837501-3-0

  Cover design by Dahlia & Poppy Design

  Second Edition

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  1. Diary of a Young Girl’s Disease

  2. How Like A Fallen Angel

  3. Some Girls Wander by Mistake

  4. The Young Lady’s Guide to Wasteland Etiquette

  5. Theoretical Inedita

  6. Cosmic Horror Slumber Party

  7. Upon the Influence of a Trade upon the Form of the Hand

  8. The Cat it Was Who Died

  9. The Sleep of Monsters

  10. My Voice is Dead

  11. The Generous Enemy

  12. The Mad Tryst

  13. The Restoration of Yael Kaufman

  1. Diary of a Young Girl’s Disease

  Six millimeters of nanotechnology extract oxygen from dense air, humid and tainted with the odor of burning paint. Leaping playfully from one puddle of rain to another, the analytic software in the mask’s lenses tag the spray with a rainbow of hypertext toxin identification. The sky is the color of a three-day-old bruise.

  Dawn began to reluctantly bloom in the poisoned glass sky over Roanoke, while Yael shivered and tried to hide from the frigid wind that blew in from the harbor. She had selected her windbreaker and her thickest pair of stockings, the canvas cut-offs she wore to garden that frayed below her knees, a pair of flower-print plastic rain boots and her brother’s old gas mask.

  The rain stopped a few hours earlier, but the back alleys she traversed were flooded with a thin layer of polluted water, droplets of water pooling on the hydrophobic fabric of her tights, forming droplets that rolled down into the soles of her squelching boots. The strap of her duffel bag cut into her shoulder, forcing her to periodically pause and switch sides. Yael tried to limit herself to only that which would be strictly necessary, but she didn’t have any previous experience, so she wasn’t sure exactly what to bring.

  She had rushed her departure, her thinking heavy with the weight of the previous night’s dreams, which had been troubled, though she could not recall them precisely. In fact, she could not even remember waking to stumble out into the early morning cold.

  Though she clutched her arms tight across her chest, her fingers were numb inside her damp wool gloves. The galoshes she wore were too large, and there was a blister forming on the ball of her left foot, but her only alternative footwear was a pair of canvas sneakers that would have disintegrated in the flooded streets.

  After pausing to check a battered street sign with her miniature flashlight, Yael turned onto Drough Street, glad that she had committed the first part of the map to memory the night before. Though the streets were deserted at this hour, she wanted to look as if she belonged, as if she were supposed to be precisely where she was. She did not want to appear to be lost.

  This was, in a sense, the truth of the matter. Yael had a destination, but only the vaguest ideas about how to get there.

  Shivering beneath the impervious fabric of her jacket, Yael splashed her way through the empty streets, not going anywhere as much as she was leaving something behind.

  Yael followed railroad tracks through the flooded industrial district, the elevated tracks raised above the level of the water that covered the streets and undermined the buildings. The vast pools of standing water diminished the further she moved from the bay, until they were little more than scattered puddles. Berkshire was built on a ridge above the docks, so a splashdown in the bay didn’t affect the neighborhood. Accordingly, there were more people about, warming their hands above steam gratings or smoking Azure, the crushed leaves that bring dreams from other worlds. The curtains of the fenced and gated houses would occasionally move aside, nervous residents eyeing aimless youths gathered on the corners with obvious suspicion.

  Yael kept off the main streets and the mixed crowds of suited businessmen, Visitors wrapped in outlandish regalia, Public Security officers in pressed blue uniforms, and drug-addled squatters. Occasionally, a zeppelin showed overhead, probing the streets with halogen spotlights. Yael froze and pressed herself against a wall, holding her breath until it passed. She took care to avoid the occasional pair of mounted Public Security on patrol, their horses still dripping and wet to the fetlocks from scouring the lowlands for refugees fleeing proxy wars in the Yucatan and Cuba, or poverty and starvation behind the fences of Suanee.

  At the heart of Berkshire was a park with manicured grass and fountains, in wild contrast to the drab neighborhood. In the center of the park, the Government Lethal Chamber stood, the etched bronze door polished to a brilliant sheen. The flowerbeds surrounding the Chamber were exquisitely maintained and brilliantly colored and the sound of the water spilling from the fountains was soothing. Around the door there was a cluster of statues that Yael recognized as Yvian’s ‘Fates’, both lovely and disquieting. It took an effort for Yael to keep herself from shuddering as she hurried across the park.

  Berkshire gave way to one of the rings of post-industrial slums that radiated out from Roanoke like blight, the kind of neighborhood that Yael visited only with a local guide. She found herself wishing for Elan and Carlos, for their friendly faces and rotting teeth.

  Despite the isolation of her gas mask, Yael felt the stares of the emaciated men who watched her from beneath huddles of rags, hollow eyes tracking every movement. Flustered, she made a series of turns at random, spoiling her route, but panic would not allow her time to check the signs. She couldn’t make herself stop long enough to determine if the footsteps from behind her were more than echoes, or whether she could hear the sound of voices through her own panting.

  Yael made a wrong turn.

  The street ran directly into the hillside ahead of her, a dead-end surrounded by decrepit warehouses and factories dormant for so long that she couldn’t guess what they might have produced. Yael risked a glance behind her and promptly wished that she had not. At least three men followed her, with the slack features and nervous hands of Azure addicts, cracked and bleeding lips mouthing cultic gibberish. One of them clutched a shard of obsidian like a crude knife, blood dripping between his fingers from where the stone had cut him. Another raved and shouted at Yael, spittle dripping from his grey beard.

  “Thirty six pillars hold up the sky! The Pallid Mask! Fragile as flesh and bone...”

  Blank warehouse walls hemmed her in on either side. Yael examined the slope behind her. Halfway up the hill, the mouth of a tunnel yawned out at the poisoned sky like a perfect concrete orifice.

  She ran for the tunnel as fast as she could manage, mud squelching beneath her galoshes as she fought her way up the sodden hill. Thorns and sticker
s broke on the impervious surface of her tights, the wet ground threatening to swallow her feet with every step. She was forced to clamber on all fours, her hands sinking into the mud up to her knuckles, one glove disappearing into the black ooze. Her breath fogged the lenses of her gas mask and sweat burned the corners of her eyes.

  Yael braced herself the entire climb up the hill, waiting for a hand to grab one of her boots and drag her down into the mud. Yael couldn’t tell if she was being followed or if she was hearing the sounds of her own struggle up the slope. The ground was frigid against the skin of her bare hand and her fingers stung.

  The darkness of the tunnel swallowed her and she was grateful. Yael didn’t stop until the light from the outside had faded away entirely.

  Yael used the thin beam of her flashlight to pick out a winding path along the tunnel. The tracks were rusted and broken, but she remained leery of the third rail. Trash was piled to her waist and she had to hold her duffel above her head, grateful for the mask. The concrete walls were layered with graffiti murals, vivid and ornate, entirely illegible messages left under the earth where no one but the artists and the destitute would see them.

  Signs of life diminished gradually while the trash expanded, until she reached a place where the tracks cut off completely. The wall caved in on one side, leaving only a narrow space perhaps a foot wide, the faintest breath of air from the other side cool against her face.

  Yael paused to consider the opening. It was at waist height and constricted so that she would have to crawl to fit, pushing the duffel ahead of her. She shrugged, stripped off her windbreaker and gas mask and shoved them in her bag.

  She picked her way up through the rubble to the opening, pausing to shine her flashlight in to confirm that it went through. It was narrow, but after a moment of consideration, Yael decided that she could manage. She took a deep breath, stretched out both shoulders, then clenched her flashlight between her front teeth.

  The duffel went first and then Yael followed, her arms extended in front of her and her legs extended flat behind. There was enough space when she lay flat, but every time she moved, her shirt scraped against the uneven rubble above her. The air in the opening wasn’t entirely stale, but it was warm and dusty, which made it difficult to breath. The flashlight rattled between her teeth and sweat dripped down her face and tickled her nose.

  Yael crawled forward, making progress by inches, pushing with her toes and digging into the loose soil beneath her with her fingers. She had trouble maintaining the position she needed her neck to be in order to keep her face above the dust stirred up by the duffel bag but below the jagged roof. It caused the back of her neck and the muscles across her shoulders to cramp, forcing her to pause and rest, but the longer she stayed in the narrow space, the more her shoulders ached.

  Halfway through, Yael told herself, not at all certain that it was true. She pushed with the toes of her boots and tried not to worry about the things she felt scurrying in her hair and across her back. She had to negotiate a hump in the middle of the passage, a swelling of the ground that had no corresponding change in roof level. Yael’s shoulders and neck had cramped too badly for her to think it over.

  Yael forced her shoulders through the space by brute force, sucking in and then holding her breath until her ribcage cleared the swelling. She was seeing stars by the time she finally gasped for air, her stomach pressed against the bump on the floor. Yael scrambled for purchase for what seemed like a long time and then spent even longer twisting until she found an angle she could manage to fit her hips through. Even then, she tore skin everywhere the tights had rolled back.

  She made good progress for a little while, then the duffel stuck on a protrusion or narrowing of the passage and all Yael could do was press against it with her hands and trapped arms, wondering if she would have to leave everything behind, wondering if there was even enough space for her to attempt to go back. Her sweat pooled on the dusty rock beneath her face. Yael found herself obsessed with the idea that she would die that way, confined and unable to move from the position.

  The bag dislodged like a cork from a bottle. Her heartbeat was so loud that she could have sworn it echoed in the tiny space like the reverberations of an enormous drum. Yael felt air on her face from the opening in front of her and lost any sense of caution. She wriggled forward frantically, ignoring the outcroppings and sharp areas that tore at her hips and arms, snagged her hair and bruised her shins. She didn’t care. Nothing, at the moment, could matter more than the ability to move freely.

  Her head emerged into oily darkness, stale with years of inactivity. Yael was almost overwhelmed with gratitude. Muttering a half-remembered prayer under her breath, she finished the process of extracting herself from the opening, mangling the Hebrew as badly as she did the skin of her lower back.

  Yael didn’t climb down the few feet to the tunnel floor. She fell, collapsing in a heap at the base of the rubble, waiting for her heart to stop pounding and the adrenaline to dissipate from her shaking body. She rubbed her hands together as they came painfully back to life, numb from being extended for so long, wondering if she would be sick before the dizziness subsided.

  It was only after she regained her bearings that she admitted to herself that the space was the smallest, by far, that she had ever managed.

  Her bag hit a rail and she tripped over it in the darkness, spilling into an open tunnel on the other side. The space was huge relative to where she had been, big enough to fit a subway car. Yael paused to examine with the thin beam of her flashlight the various scrapes and bruises she had earned, before digging her jacket and mask out of her duffel bag. She felt better with the mask on and her hood up, despite the heat. She continued down the tunnel, elated with her own bravery. Yael had become very nearly optimistic, despite the length of the tunnel and the sweat collecting above her upper lip underneath the mask.

  Until she saw the rat.

  “Nice… Well, nice rat, I suppose…”

  The tracks running down the middle of the tunnel were mangled and overgrown with a thick layer of purple moss, but she kept clear of them, one gloved hand running along the stained and moist cement of the wall. The LED bulb in her miniature flashlight was particularly intense in the permanent dark of the underground. It cast a brilliant white circle on the bend in the tunnel in front of her. In the center of the pool of light, the largest rat that she had ever seen blinked lackadaisically at her.

  “Please don’t... Or, should I say... I’m sorry,” Yael chattered nervously. “This is probably your home, isn’t it? I’m just passing through. You don’t mind, do you?”

  Yael pressed herself against the wall of the tunnel, her hair in a tangle of spider-webs, doing her best not to breathe while the rat walked by on the rusted rail, hairless tail waving in agitation. She counted the seconds as it walked past, sparing her the occasional glance but never stopping. She watched the rat continue on the way to the tunnel entrance, only able to move again when she could no longer see its eyes reflecting the glare of her flashlight.

  The tunnel stretched onward into the darkness, the air growing staler and warmer as she descended. The rubber mask stuck to the side of her face, but Yael didn’t trust the air enough to risk taking it off. The slope was slight, but the trickle of water running in the gutter in the center of the tunnel showed that she was gradually heading deeper, amongst the smell of iron and burning plastic. The concrete was covered with a mosaic of brightly painted images, words so ornate that they seemed to be part of another language, something much more brilliant and vivid than spoken words. There were light fixtures at infrequent intervals, but the bulbs were incandescent and maintenance was hardly rigorous. Perhaps one in three survived to flicker and hiss. It was warmer than on the surface and the air underground was old and tainted with volatized solvents.

  The tunnel she walked was not a straight line. Instead it curved for no perceptible reason, making serpentine progress through the dark. Every so often the tunnel split with t
wo or three passages of varying sizes heading off in multiple directions. Yael’s unanticipated flight into the tunnel had rendered her map useless. She could not understand why a tunnel so extensive would be abandoned, or how it could run for such a distance and not connect with an active system. As often as she could she held to the main corridor and walked along the tracks, but sometimes cave-ins forced her to use coffin-shaped maintenance corridors, bored from surrounding sandstone and lined with rusting utilities, or worse, storm drains and air vents. These were so confined that she had to crawl, dust and spider webs collecting on her mask and in her hair. Sometimes Yael needed to turn sideways to wriggle through narrow spots, or painstakingly climb over fallen rubble and obstacles.

  Yael was not dissuaded. Though sometimes she held her breath, she did not let herself stop. There was no going back, after all. Therefore, she reasoned, there was no purpose in being afraid of what was to come.

  It was a change in sound that told her that the tunnel had opened up to her right, a subtle difference in the echoes of her footsteps. Her flashlight revealed a small indentation in the tunnel wall, a few inches shorter than Yael and filled knee-deep with trash. It smelled horrible, even through the nanotech filters in her mask, but she pushed the trash aside and ducked beneath the concrete rafters. She had to shuffle along, careful to keep her knees off the ground, dragging her duffel bag behind her.

  Another change in the space around her that she heard rather than saw, blind in the impenetrable darkness. When Yael activated her flashlight to confirm, she discovered that she had clambered up out of the trash-filled culvert and into a small space, probably a forgotten maintenance room. It was split into two levels with an oil-stained loft and a broad lower room covered in garbage and debris. A rusting staircase led up to a catwalk, attaching the loft to the ground floor, though it was enclosed in a locked metal cage. On the other side of the catwalk was a green-painted door that looked as if it had not opened in a long time and a dead fluorescent lamp. The lower room was bisected by a low concrete wall about half the height of the ceiling. Yael surveyed the scene thoughtfully and then hefted her duffel onto her shoulder. She aimed carefully and then threw the duffel over the railings and onto the catwalk overhead.