by Pasha Malla
It’s coming from up there, said Adine.
Raven had reached a walkway that traversed the cliffs — a path dug out to allow easy maintenance on the drainpipe twenty feet below the Vista. He strolled across, was at last discovered and spotlit, the crowd below howled, he waved and curtsied and flourished his whip, and kept going across, illuminated in cameo.
It’s getting louder, said Adine.
Beneath the crowd’s hysterics the whispering had thickened into the gentle roar of surf. It seemed, Debbie realized, to be coming from inside the cliffs. Adine confirmed it: Something’s in that sewer, she said. Look, his helicopter’s moving.
It was, juddering slightly on its skids. The whole cliffside was shaking.
Raven, a hundred paces away, stopped.
The crowd went quiet.
The drainpipe rumbled and shook, the helicopter jostled to the platform’s edge, nudged against the railing — and the railing tore free and came tumbling down. The crowd at the base of the cliffs bolted. With nothing to secure it, one of the chopper’s skids slipped off the side of the platform, began to tip, and as the rumble within the cliffs swelled into thunder, the helicopter was knocked from the Scenic Vista. It dropped, end over end, in almost exquisite slowmotion, and crumpled at the base of the cliffs.
People dove for cover, expecting an explosion. There was none, just a little plume of smoke. And the drainpipe kept rattling, the roar now deafening, cameras zoomed in, everyone — including Raven — watched and waited, hushed.
The drainpipe hitched. From it poured something thick and dark.
Is that sewage? said Debbie.
No, said Adine. People.
It was: all in black, bursting by the dozen from the end of the pipe. And the sound wasn’t just the thunder of their footfalls. They were screaming.
So many people, said Adine.
The noise intensified as the mob rode little avalanches of sand and rock, hundreds of them tumbled down the banks. Raven fled. Still more and more figures surged out in a great phantasmal mass, the air electric with their screaming. They were like the shadow cast by a sudden violent storm, or an eclipse, or a creature, huge and black and hungry, and they swept down the path after Raven, over Raven, inhaling him — a flash of white and he was gone.
And the mob kept coming, scorching the air with their voices, sweeping down the cliffs in a vast dark wave, out onto the beach, where we could only stand and watch as they fell upon us all.
o
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ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
House of Anansi Press was founded in 1967 with a mandate to publish Canadian-authored books, a mandate that continues to this day even as the list has branched out to include internationally acclaimed thinkers and writers. The press immediately gained attention for significant titles by notable writers such as Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, George Grant, and Northrop Frye. Since then, Anansi’s commitment to finding, publishing and promoting challenging, excellent writing has won it tremendous acclaim and solid staying power. Today Anansi is Canada’s pre-eminent independent press, and home to nationally and internationally bestselling and acclaimed authors such as Gil Adamson, Margaret Atwood, Ken Babstock, Peter Behrens, Rawi Hage, Misha Glenny, Jim Harrison, A. L. Kennedy, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, A. F. Moritz, Eric Siblin, Karen Solie, and Ronald Wright. Anansi is also proud to publish the award-winning nonfiction series The CBC Massey Lectures. In 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 Anansi was honoured by the Canadian Booksellers Association as “Publisher of the Year.”