The Night Market

by Rawlins, Zachary

  “Disgusting.”

  “Sorry,” Jenny said, mouth already full with the next bite. “Not used to company.”

  “How long have you been out here, Miss Frost?”

  “In the Waste?”

  Jenny didn’t say that exactly, of course, because she had her fork wedged in her mouth when she spoke. Yael nodded her affirmation.

  “Not sure,” Jenny said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, her eyes distant. “A couple weeks? All I remember was the last place I found enough water to take a bath. I was probably mostly walking in circles. Me ‘n Fenrir tripped over this area last week and we’ve been hanging around ever since. A few people come through, a trade route or something. How did you get here, anyway? No way you crossed the Waste with clothes that clean...”

  They were far from clean, but that was all relative. Jenny’s clothes were uniformly coated with a layer of dull white dust the consistency of chalk. In any other context, Yael would have thought of her own clothes as embarrassingly filthy, but by comparison, she was no more than dusty, thanks to the frictionless surface of her tights and windbreaker.

  “I came up from the Underworld,” Yael said, trusting that honesty was the best policy. “I was brought across the Vale of P’nath by a very brave cat named Tobi, who stayed back to fight a monster that was chasing us. He is a very strong cat, so I am certain that he won – though the monster was rather large, and I expect it was quite a battle. After we parted, I climbed a long stair to the surface, and partway up, an Eater-of-the-Dead told me about you...”

  “Eater-of-? Oh, you mean a ghoul. Yeah,” Jenny said, hunkered over her bowl. “I remember that guy. Seemed like the nervous type.”

  “You might just have that effect on people. Well, ghouls and people.”

  “Didn’t understand a word of your story besides that.”

  “I am not surprised. Why did you come here, Miss Frost?”

  “God, you manage to be polite and a bi – a brat at the same time. Back off, I said brat. Besides, I thought you already knew. I’m going to that city, wherever the Unknown Kadath Estates are.”

  “Unknown...?”

  “Yup.”

  “What... what is that, exactly?”

  “It’s an apartment building.”

  Yael shook her head in disbelief.

  “Oh.”

  “Why is it ‘Unknown’?”

  “Dunno,” Jenny said, shrugging with an absolute lack of interest. “Ain’t been there yet.”

  “...oh.”

  “I don’t even think it’s that nice,” Jenny said, flopping back on the sleeping bag with her hands folded behind her head. “You ever notice how they always call shitty apartment buildings ‘Le Chateau’ or some sh-”

  “Miss Frost!”

  “Huh? Oh. Right. Sorry.”

  Yael stared at Jenny suspiciously, but she betrayed no indication of noticing.

  “Why are you going there?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  Yael glanced up at the sky, and wondered if there would have been any stars on the other side of the angry clouds that scarred the darkening sky with a baleful red luminescence.

  “Because we are travelling companions, Miss Frost. And to pass the time, companions exchange stories across the campfire.”

  Jenny laughed. Actually, it was more than that. She made a scene, rolling in the dust and slapping the ground with her palm. Yael glared at her until she regained a semblance of composure.

  “Where did you learn that stuff?”

  “My brother.”

  “He travel a lot?”

  “Every night.”

  “You mean dreams? That doesn’t count.”

  Jenny tossed the empty stew tin over her shoulder and Fenrir appeared from nowhere to nose over it hopefully.

  “Nothing is real, Miss Frost,” Yael said charitably, shaking her head at Jenny’s ignorance. “All experience is relative.”

  “You are a spooky little girl.” Jenny pulled the yellow pack of gum from a pocket and shook a foil-wrapped piece free, glancing at Yael’s hopeful face without a trace of pity while she pocketed the remainder. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “More than once. I propose a deal, Miss Frost.”

  “Another?” Jenny leaned forward, her eyes reflecting the light of the fire like two mirrors. “You do love bargains, don’t you? Last one left me stuck walking your ass across the Waste. Not sure I’m interested in another.”

  “You will like this one, I believe. A question for a question, a story for a story. For the duration of the journey, Miss Frost. Unless you are frightened?”

  Jenny shook her head slowly, her expression impossible to read in the advancing shadows encroaching on the dying fire.

  “Why?”

  “Because we are on a journey, Miss Frost,” Yael explained gravely. “Everything is permitted.”

  “I think maybe you’re just hungry,” Jenny said, tossing a candy bar at her with no warning. Yael didn’t manage to get her hands up in time and it hit her in the cheek. She was forced to scramble in the dirt after it.

  Yael tore the wrapper open with utter disregard for civility, cramming her mouth full of the sickly sweet mess of nuts and chocolate. Her stomach briefly threatened to rebel as she choked it down, but Yael clamped down on it, determined not to embarrass herself further. She could not prevent herself from licking her fingers.

  “Miss Frost? Thank you.”

  Jenny lay on her back, staring at the darkened, featureless sky, and said nothing. Yael tucked her knees underneath her windbreaker and listened to the crackle of the diminishing fire and the faraway roar of the wind.

  Gradually, the fire died and night began to creep into the camp, but Yael did nothing to hurry Jenny along. She had done what her dreams had told her to do, after all, and Yael’s dreams were never wrong.

  “Okay,” Jenny said abruptly, rolling to face Yael and scratching her side lazily. “I go first, though. If your answer doesn’t make sense, then it doesn’t count. Deal?”

  “Deal,” Yael affirmed.

  “Why did you run away from home?”

  Yael sat up on her hands.

  “How did you – ”

  “Easy there,” Jenny chuckled, feeding more sticks into the ashes of the fire. “Save the questions for your turn.”

  Yael hesitated, not because she planned on evasion, but because she hadn’t yet articulated her motivations inside the privacy of her head. To her surprise, Jenny waited in silence, coaxing the fire back to life.

  “My brother is gone. They took him, and they took his name and his face. And no one knows but me.”

  Jenny paused in the act of pulling a blanket around herself.

  “Wait. I don’t get it. Who took your brother?”

  “Them,” Yael said, annoyed at the interruption. “The Visitors. You know.”

  “No. I have no idea. Who are they?”

  Yael smiled bitterly.

  “That is a different question, Miss Frost.”

  Jenny swore. Yael let it pass.

  “Fine. Go ahead and finish.”

  “My brother was a very experienced dreamer. Much of his time was spent sleeping, mapping the country of dreams and beyond. When he was awake I would listen to his stories and help him make sense of the things that he saw. Sometimes he would have objects clutched in his hands or lying next to him on the pillow when he woke, artifacts that he brought back from his dreams. One afternoon the whole house heard him cry out in excitement when he woke. He came straight to me to show me what he had brought back.”

  “The Silver Key,” Jenny said, endearingly enthusiastic. “Right? It was the Key, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. That was the last day. He said that he had made a bad deal, a bargain with the wrong party. I tried to calm him, to tell him that he was safe in our home, but he did not believe me...”

  Yael remembered the clammy skin of his forehead resting on her shoulder, his body trembling with anxiety. Her
arms barely reached around him, and she held on tight as if she were afraid that he would drift away. Maybe she was.

  “The next morning his bed was empty when I woke. That afternoon, no one seemed to understand why I was worried. By the evening his room had become a guest room, and my stepmother was annoyed because I kept crying. The next morning I couldn’t remember his name, his face... all sorts of things. Then I noticed something hanging from my mirror – the Silver Key dangling from a piece of a string. He left it to me before they took him. If he hadn’t, I’m not sure that I would be able to remember him at all.”

  “Wow.”

  “I know.”

  “I still don’t get how that led to you running away...”

  “That’s just it. I’m not running from anything, Miss Frost. I want what was taken from me. I’ve mean to take it back.”

  Yael found an unflattering satisfaction in Jenny’s surprise.

  “I misjudged you, Princess. You’re crazier than I thought.”

  Yael caught herself staring longingly at the empty candy bar wrapper and forced herself to look away.

  “I am not at all crazy. Miss Frost, if your brother went missing, wouldn’t you at least want to be able to remember him?”

  “Is that your question?”

  Yael shook her head hurriedly.

  “Forget I asked. How did you find yourself in the Waste, Miss Frost?”

  There was something subtly off about the proportions in Jenny’s face, Yael decided, an unusual contour that was obvious only in the firelight.

  “Long story. Short version – I had to get a job. I suppose everyone does eventually, though I never figured on it. I’m here with Fenrir on business.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. I was trying to spare you a story that people seem to find upsetting. It’s not like I mind telling the story if you wanna hear the details...”

  “Let’s not,” Yael snapped. “Ask your question.”

  Jenny laughed, wedging herself between Yael and the fire.

  “How did you expect this to work? Assuming you didn’t bump into me, how were you going to survive the trip?”

  “I have confidence in myself, Miss Frost,” Yael said, wishing her voice sounded surer.

  “Well, that ought to do it.”

  “What are you trying to say?”

  “In my experience, people who say they are confident – as a rule, they aren’t.”

  Yael tried to ensure that she looked as indignant as she felt.

  “I invite you to consider me as an exception, Miss Frost.”

  Jenny laughed again and Yael liked it even less the second time.

  “I just might. Anyway, my turn again...”

  “What! No way! You just went!”

  “And then you asked me to explain myself,” Jenny crowed, poking absently at the burning embers near the edge of the campfire with her fingertip. “Which was a waste of a question, but that’s too bad.”

  Yael ran her fingers through her tired, greasy hair.

  “You are not as stupid as I thought, Miss Frost.”

  “Don’t give me any chances. I will disappoint you.”

  “Ask.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “What about them?”

  “You haven’t said word one about your dad, and barely mentioned your stepmother. How do they fit into this?”

  “My father is busy,” Yael said, the words turning bitter in the air in a way that took her by surprise. Yael did not think that she resented him. It was something she had accepted long ago. “My stepmother forgot her stepson and was probably pleased to do so. I would imagine neither of them misses me too terribly. What more do you need to know?”

  “What about your mom? Your real mom?”

  The smile was perfect. Yael had many opportunities, after all, to practice it, given the number of times she had been asked that question. She might never feel good about the situation, but at the very least, it didn’t have to show – a sentiment that she had learned, oddly enough, from her stepmother.

  “She died when I was a baby. I don’t remember her at all.”

  “Won’t your parents call the police? Put your face on the back of milk cartons?”

  “What?”

  Jenny gestured in the air in the shape of a box.

  “You know, milk cartons. The paper kind that comes with school lunch. Pictures of missing kids on the back. Any of this ring a bell?”

  Yael shook her head slowly.

  “That seems weird; a world without milk cartons. Or, maybe – hey, are you rich?”

  Yael might have been spending too much time wearing a mask. Because her face didn’t seem to want to disguise anything.

  “Cool,” Jenny said with satisfaction, lying back on her elbows. “Bonus answer. That must be great. I always wanted to be rich and never have to try at anything.”

  “My turn,” Yael snapped defensively. “What about you, Miss Frost? What did you leave behind?”

  Jenny blew a large pink bubble, then popped it, the routine so graceful and thoughtless that it must have been the result of long practice.

  “Bad experiences. That is just the kinda place I grew up. Nobody stays in Lost Creek if they can figure a way out.”

  “And you ended up here by accident?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “That is pretty vague,” Yael said, yawning and taking her own sleeping bag from her duffel.

  “You didn’t exactly write a novel yourself, Princess.”

  “Fine. I’m tired, anyway,” Yael said, scarcely able to believe it herself as the lids of her eyes grew heavy despite her alarming companion and her own anxieties. “Is it okay to sleep outside?”

  “You kidding? Oh, I keep forgetting you just got here. In the Waste you wanna be undercover when the moon is full. Damndest thing, but I would swear that it gets bigger as the month goes on. Anyway, no. We sleep under there.”

  Jenny pointed, and Yael could barely see what appeared to be an outcropping. The fire provided inconsistent light, so it took a moment to make out the small tent made from a drab plastic roughly the same color as the ground. The narrow end of the tent was wedged into a small space covered by an angular ledge, hardly enough room to fit, so low she would have to crawl.

  “Might as well turn in,” Jenny grumbled, kicking dirt over the ashes of the fire. “God I hate this place. So boring.”

  “Miss Frost, why do we have to sleep in there? It seems warm enough, and I have my sleeping bag...”

  “You’ll see,” Jenny said grimly. “I couldn’t describe it if I tried.”

  6. Cosmic Horror Slumber Party

  The night is very long and the dawn phosphorous bright, like taking a bite from a lemon. Warm and fragrant darkness in the bedroom, hands moving as if disembodied, driven by their own volition. The smallest kind of betrayal, the wind that dries her cheeks and stings her eyes.

  Jenny’s cigarette lighter gave Yael enough light to crawl through the door of the concealed tent. Yael fumbled with zippers for a moment, then climbed inside a small, warm space with a blanket lining the bottom. The air inside was stuffy and it smelled like dust and Jenny. Yael remembered the little battery lantern they had looted and pulled it from her duffel. After a brief search, she found the nub that activated the power supply. The LED flickered to a brilliant blue-white glow. Jenny’s eyes glittered strangely in that light, her pupils shrinking to compensate for the unexpected brilliance.

  Yael stretched out her sleeping bag as far from Jenny as possible, which wasn’t very far. The tent was too low to stand in, and barely long enough to allow her to lay flat. She killed the lantern before she changed into her nightshirt, unable to shake the feeling that Jenny could see, though it was too dark to tell which direction Jenny was facing. Yael wrapped herself in the fabric of her sleeping bag though it was too warm. Only the ghost of a breeze limping in from the front door of the tent kept it from being suffocating.

  “This is h
orrible,” Yael moaned. “It is so hot in here!”

  “It pretty much sucks, yeah.”

  “Do we really have to stay inside all night?”

  Jenny sighed and Yael heard a rustling as she rolled over in her sleeping bag.

  “If I think it isn’t safe then you know it’s gotta be bad, right?”

  Yael pressed her face into the blanket beneath her. The logic was inescapable.

  The night crawled by.

  Yael’s sinuses were dry and her throat was sore from the dust. Jenny couldn’t hold still; Yael felt her tossing and turning, her sleeping bag whistling as it brushed the tent wall. The ground was hard and Yael could feel the rocks beneath her despite the blanket.

  Yael tried to remember how tired she had been a few moments before, next to the fire, barely able to keep her eyes open, but it didn’t change a thing. The harder she tried to fall asleep, the more her mind spun in circles and her heart pounded in her chest.

  She wondered if Jenny was right – if her family, or anyone for that matter, had noticed her absence. Yael’s mind rejected the idea. She could only picture herself disappearing as seamlessly as her brother had; falling through cracks, turning the corner and evaporating into dust motes in the sunlight, a tragic sleight of hand. Yael tried to picture her stepmother crying, sitting beside a telephone, anxious for word on her stepdaughter, but her mind rejected the scenario as implausible.

  Yael wondered what her parents would do with her room.

  Yael worried about Tobi, though she had promised herself that she wouldn’t. The cat had been so brave and kind – she could not imagine a world in which such inherent nobility could fall to darkness. Every time the thought came bubbling to the surface of her turbulent mind, she forced herself to think of other things.

  A guest room?

  No. Her parents already had a guest room on the second floor.

  Maybe a sewing room for her stepmother?

  That seemed more likely.

  Her father smoked, so Yael recognized the distinctive sound of a lighter striking. Jenny’s features glowed momentarily, harsh and tired in the transient glow of the lighter. She leaned forward to blow the smoke out the tent door, but Yael caught the scent – a combination of mint, synthetic rose, and bug spray.