The Down Days

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The Down Days Page 21

by Ilze Hugo


  So she’d managed to get this new freelance gig at the Bree Street therapy bar. Three nights a week. She still couldn’t believe the manager had hired her. (It was pretty obvious that she wasn’t the employable type.) But no matter, ’cause it turned out not a lot of folks wanted to patch up other people’s bloody wounds these days. Too risky.

  At first, Piper had thought about not going in tonight. Three days without a fix and she was ready to tear the skin off her face. But there was always a chance she could score if she pitched, that Denny would be there. Denny was a regular—she could always count on him to be there on a Thursday night (half-price moonshine and karaoke after twelve), and he was still not answering her calls. Why? What the hell? Maybe he’d lost his phone? Whatever it was, if he wasn’t dead or dying or living it up in some upper-end quarantine zone in Hout Bay with a new sugar mommy, he’d be there tonight, she was sure of it.

  When she got to the therapy bar, first thing she did was scour the crowd for Denny’s face. She couldn’t spot him, but the damn manager spotted her. Came over and made a scene, wanted to know where she’d been, why she wasn’t in the booth patching up suits. So off she went with her tail between her legs. Obedient as always. Perfect little pushover.

  She was sitting there when this guy, one of the fighters, came in wearing a Stormtrooper suit, blood pouring from a laceration to the face. She was stitching him up, doing a pretty decent job, considering the way her hands were shaking. But she was itching so much she could scarcely bear it. So she asked him if he’d mind if she took her mask off for a sec.

  Lucky for her (or unlucky, take your pick), he didn’t care one way or the other. He was that type, real macho, didn’t give a rat’s ass about the rules or the Laughter, thought he was invincible—always cracking up to show you how unfazed he was.

  He offered her a cigarette and the two of them started talking while she stitched. He was cracking jokes and they were both giggling like two schoolgirls at a slumber party. It felt good to laugh without caring. So good. She couldn’t remember when last she’d laughed out loud like this. Then he told her he had some smack—did she want to have a taste? ’Course she did.

  So they shared a needle, and for the first time since Monday, the whole world righted itself again. Everything was A-OK.

  FRIDAY

  - 55 - THE DAILY TRUTH

  SPIRIT SOUP FOR THE SOUL

  By Lawyer Tshabalala

  Everyone’s talking about the recent spate of spirit sightings sweeping the city. You know my view on the whole thing (read yesterday’s column if you don’t), but to mix it up I asked Dr. John Samson, a psychologist and author of two bestselling books on grief and trauma, for his take on it all.

  Dr. Samson, rumors are rife that the postbox injections are inducing hallucinations in some, and that this is behind all the ghost sightings sweeping the city right now. Others say it is proof of the existence of the supernatural and the afterlife. Then there are the members of the public who believe it’s a sign of the end times. But you have a different theory? Yes, I do. To understand what’s behind this phenomenon we have to take into account that we are living in an unusual time in Sick City’s history where death is a daily occurrence for most of us. We are a city in mourning. And this has to have certain repercussions for our psyches. A measure of post-traumatic stress during an epidemic like this is inevitable.

  But how does post-traumatic stress tie in with ghost sightings? There are many documented examples of cases where people have claimed to see the spirits of their deceased loved ones after they have passed on. Most psychologists regard these kinds of hallucinations as a perfectly normal response to grief. A mechanism for dealing with the trauma of the situation. Visions of loved ones are often a great comfort to those who experience them.

  But surely what we’re experiencing right now is different? This isn’t just one granny seeing her dead husband brushing his teeth in the bathroom. The scale of the sightings we are experiencing is quite something. It is actually not that unusual. Mass hallucinations like these have been known to occur in the aftermath of traumatic events. We saw exactly the same kind of mass ghost sightings in Thailand after the 2004 tsunami. People are always eager to ascribe these kinds of psychological manifestations of grief as proof of the existence of the supernatural and the afterlife.

  So, say I’ve been seeing weird things lately. My dead mother-in-law’s head in the fridge between the mayonnaise and the cauliflower, for example. Does this mean I’m going crazy? Not at all. As I’ve explained earlier, visual hallucinations like these are normal manifestations of grief. One study found that 80 percent of elderly people were visited by a hallucination of their dead partner about a month after they had passed on. Other experts put the percentage of people experiencing some kind of grief hallucination after a loved one has passed on at 50 percent. So this is perfectly normal, and generally not a sign of psychosis.

  Phew. Thanks, Dr. Samson. That’s a relief.

  Do you hear that, folks? We’re not crazy. We’re grieving. I’ll leave you with that lovely thought for now. More to follow on all of this as soon as I have the scoop. Winter’s icy teeth are beginning to bite early this year, so bundle up nice and tight, folks. Till tomorrow for another dose of cold, hard Truth. Love you long time. Over and out.

  - 56 - SANS

  It was the same damn bar. And he was sitting at the same damn table ringed with the same galaxy of stains. But it was too early. Too bright. The place had just opened up and the emperor didn’t have his clothes on yet, the air thick with broken dreams and empty promises. And that smell. That smell.

  The ring-browed barman was polishing a row of glasses to “Girls Just Want to Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper, shaking his bony hips and lip-synching while rubbing up a beer glass with a tartan dishcloth. In one corner, a janitor was cleaning up vomit in a hazmat suit. A lone roach was walking the line up the wall. There was nothing to bring you back to reality quite like an empty bar in daylight, the morning after a good time.

  Sans had told the bow-tied waiter that he was here to see the librarian, just as the dead collector had told him to do. And now he was waiting, nursing a beer, staring up at the same graffiti-streaked painting of “Jan van Riebeeck.” You could say what you wanted about him, but the guy had damn fine hair. And not a bad moustache, either.

  Two beers later this old guy shuffled up to Sans, wearing a velvet jacket with the elbows worn out. Wispy white hair with a streak of black.

  He was holding a creased A4 sheet, which he slammed down onto the table in front of Sans.

  “That your girl?”

  His eyes zoned in on the copy of the photo of the painting of his unicorn. “Where did you get this? Who is she? Wait—who are you?”

  “Why I am the librarian, of course.”

  “Okay, fine. Just checking. And the girl?”

  “This is Anna de Koningh. Founder and very first librarian of the Society of the Down.”

  “The society of the what?”

  “Never mind that.”

  “So she’s real. She’s a real person.”

  The man gave Sans a dubious look. “Ye-e-es,” he said. “A real person.”

  Sans studied the photocopy, holding it up to the light.

  The librarian frowned. “You’re not one of those krokodil addicts, are you?”

  “Do you have her number?”

  “Her number? My boy, they don’t have phone numbers where she is right now. That woman’s been worm food since 1720.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She’s dead, man. Dead. Has been for forever and a day.” Sans’s brain felt thick with fever. He could feel the sweat pooling at the back of his neck. He inched his back closer to the wall, praying that no one in the bar would notice him dripping like a broken tap. He rubbed his palm dry against his jeans, took another swig of beer while one hand wiped at his neck.

  The man gave a slight frown. “Ow,” Sans said quickly. “Damn neck. Hurts like hell. Mus
t have slept in a funny position.” The librarian nodded.

  Sans rubbed his sweaty palms against his jeans again. He needed to think. He needed to process this. His unicorn was real. His unicorn was dead. Long dead. The fat man. Was that crazy charlatan onto something? Was he?

  The fog of fever was making it harder and harder to think. There was a maze in his brain and he was trapped inside it—didn’t know which way was out. He rubbed his fingers against his temples like he was thinking, which he was, but also to erase the sweat.

  “Are you sure?” he asked the librarian. “That this woman in the painting is dead, I mean?”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Okay, okay. No need to get snarky. What’s her story?”

  “I’m a busy man, you know,” said the librarian, drumming his hand against his leg like a tambourine. “I don’t have time for chitchat.”

  “Fine.” Sans sighed. “What if I buy you a drink?”

  The old guy shrugged and slid his thin frame into the booth. “I am not impartial to a good gin and tonic. Hold the lime.”

  Sans lifted his hand to the waiter. “So, this Anna chick?”

  “Well, she was a slave, for starters. Came to the Cape from Bangladesh—back then it was Bengal—as a child. But her fate turned around when she caught the eye of a Swedish captain, name of Oloff, who freed and married her. When he passed away, she inherited all his money and his land, including his farm, Groot Constantia. She was an interesting woman. Very unusual for her era. On top of starting the Society and its library with her inheritance, as a way to give voice to the voiceless, she was also a talented seer.”

  “A seer. Like telling fortunes? Visions and whatnot?” What the actual fuck? He rubbed his palms dry against his jeans again. Rubbed them until they burned. This was sounding more and more like what the fat man was on about. The maze inside his mind was growing corridors, with no exit in sight, fog swirling every which way like a goddamn smoke machine.

  “Yes,” continued the man, still drumming on his leg. “Legend has it she possessed the gift of the third eye.”

  “No shit.” Sans couldn’t believe his fucking ears. The fat fuck had actually been onto something.

  “Yes, indeed. Although that was a big secret back then. The society ladies she associated with probably wouldn’t have approved of anything that smacked of the occult. There were still lots of paranoia doing the rounds during that time about witchcraft and the powers of Malay witchdoctors or Doekums. The Dutch were always suspicious that the slaves would try to poison them or work their magic on them. The slaves far outnumbered the Europeans so they were constantly alert to uprising or rebellion of any form. All this was before the occult revival of the late 1800s, when being psychic became all the rage abroad.”

  “Yes, yes. Whatever. What kind of shit did she see?”

  “Language, young man.”

  “What kind of visions did she have?”

  “Beats me. Her diary containing her prophecies is supposed to be somewhere in the library collection, but I haven’t been able to find it myself. Before I came along in ’75, the catalogue system was a mess. Unfortunately, my predecessor had a habit of looking too far into the bottle instead of tending to the shelves, if you catch my drift. It’s taken me years to organize the place.”

  “Wait. Back up. What library?”

  The old man lifted his hand off the table. Whirled his fingers in the air like he was changing a lightbulb. “All this, of course.”

  “What are you talking about, old man? This is a bar.”

  “Yes. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to, as they say.”

  “Please. Just stop with the games. Always, everybody with the games! Library, my ass. Tell me, old man: is this Fuck with Me Friday? Or are you a fucking charlatan, too, like everybody else in this town? Who set you up to mess with my head? Was it the fat man?”

  The librarian downed the last of his G-and-T and stood up slowly, one hand steadying himself against the table as he did so. “Fuckin’ joints,” he muttered to himself. “Always have to ruin my chances for a dramatic exit, don’t you?”

  “Language,” muttered Sans under his breath.

  “Ha! Tell the dead collector I am done doing her charity work,” said the man. Then he drummed his palm against his leg—three quick taps, like Morse code or something—and gave one side of his head a quick two-fingered farewell tap.

  “Wait a second,” called Sans as the man swiveled around to go. “I’m sorry. Just one minute. Please.”

  “What?”

  “Do you know what was inside it? The diary?”

  The librarian turned back to face him, slowly. Sans watched as the old man looked him up and down like he was sizing him up and finding him wanting. “Wouldn’t know.” He sighed. “As I said, I’ve never seen it.”

  “Thank you. I’m . . . I’m . . .”

  “But the story passed on by Society members is that the journal predicted the Laughter itself. And that it contained a cure. If that’s true, it could be quite a find indeed.”

  - 57 - FAITH

  “No woman, no cry,” crooned the busker with his eyes closed, one hand curled up in a fist, holding his imaginary mic. His friend on the guitar was smiling at the patchwork people threading in and out of the quilted square like he meant it, his skintight jeans rolled up to show off his skinny calves.

  Faith was watching the two-man band doing their thing with the same buzz of joy and longing and regret that always burned through her when she heard this song. As she watched, a kind of chasm opened up in the sky, the clouds were drawn to the side like a curtain, and she could see the past rolled out like a reel of film or a red carpet, until it wasn’t just two men standing before her singing this song but every single soul who had ever sung it. Then Bob himself joined the party, tilting his head back and shaking his chin while remembering that government yard in Trenchtown while his natty dreads twirled around the mic with a life of their own like some kind of mythical squid.

  Bob was drying his tears now with one palm while a trio of angels were swinging their skirts and chorusing by his side.

  “Hey, you, woman! Shit or get off the pot, please,” a voice yelled from somewhere close, pulling the plug on Bob. It was Ash, and he looked pretty pissed.

  “Fine, fine,” said Faith and chucked a ration coupon into the pot on the boot of the car. The game continued, and Faith tried to keep up. The buskers were doing “Redemption Song” now: “Old pirates, yes, they rob I, Sold I to the merchant ships . . .”

  A blood hawker pushing a worn ice-cream tricycle made slow progress across the cobbled stones. “AB negative, some lovely ice-cold AB negative,” he shouted to whoever would listen while ringing his bell. The Dairymaid ice-cream cooler on the back of the bike had seen better days. The paint was faded.

  The wobbling cart scared a fat pigeon, which whipped itself into the sky like a pebble from a slingshot, bringing Faith back to earth. Her thoughts reversed back to the night before. She noticed that the ponyjacker with the limp was AWOL again, probably out hunting his dream girl somewhere. At least she wasn’t the only one losing the plot. The poor kid was seriously losing it, too, along with a screw or two. She had felt sorry for him after listening to his blind-drunk ramblings in the comedy club. Having that kid Lucky run away with all his cash and then meeting and losing the love of his life all in one day sounded rough. But the guy wasn’t exactly a Boy Scout, so the way she figured, he had it coming. And besides, everyone had crazy problems these days. She wasn’t feeling particularly sane herself, what with hanging out with Parow Arrow psychics and planning séances with Casper the Friendly Ghost. Right now it felt like the only sane people in her life were Ateri and Jamis, and the latter wasn’t even technically a person, so . . .

  Faith tossed another card onto the pile. The wind was being a poltergeist. Her coat nipped at her knees. She scrunched up her shoulders and shoved her cold hands into its pockets. And felt something. There, inside her left pocket. The back of her hand bru
shing against something.

  Smallish. Rectangular. Firm, but bendable. She closed her hand over it and pulled it out. It was a piece of paper, folded into a rectangle. Her fingers unmade the folds. Smoothed out the creased square. A flyer. Around A4 size. For the Bree Street therapy bar, the one where Lawyer liked to get beaten up for extra pocket money. At the bottom, someone had written a phone number with a red pen and the words, “I can help.”

  How had this note gotten into her pocket? She certainly hadn’t picked up any flyers and she wouldn’t have folded it up and put it in her coat pocket anyway. In fact, she knew her pockets were empty. When she was waiting for the caretaker at the convent’s gate and her hands were freezing, she’d stuck them in her pockets to keep warm. They were empty. So someone had put it there—but who? She couldn’t imagine the caretaker slipping her anything but the finger.

  Wait. That woman with the red hair and the scratch on her face and the grinning cats on her dress. The one who had bumped into her at the convent’s gate. She was the only one who had come close enough. Except for Ash.

  “Hey, Ash?”

  Ash looked up.

  “Weird question, okay?”

  “Okay, but make it quick. I’m in the zone. You’re messing with my mojo here.”

  “Did you slip a flyer for the new therapy bar into my pocket for some reason?”

  “A flyer? What are you talking about, woman?”

  “This one.” She held it up. “Bree Street.”

  “I know where Bree Street is. No. No way. Not me. Why would I do that?”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Now, shoo. I’m trying to win over here.”

  * * *

  The first twelve times she phoned the number on the flyer it went straight to voicemail.

  Lucky number thirteen.

 

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