by A. D. Flint
He sniffed and found his nose blocked. He reached up and felt the blockage, pulling out a wad of cotton wool from a nostril. A glob of congealing blood came with it. And then something small and gristly dropped into his lap. He rolled the bloody morsel in his fingers and then folded it in the wad of cotton wool. His nose was falling apart. He got up and went to the bathroom mirror. His nose was changing shape; he had noticed it before, the slow collapse. Pedalling open the lid of the small plastic bin, the wad joined others in it, all soaked in blood and snot.
He pulled the glass vial from his pocket and flipped the lid. Tapping it out on the back of his hand, he got only a dusting. The vial was empty. He licked the harsh chemical taste away along with the salt of his sweat. He didn’t have any more coke in either vials or wraps, and neither did his soldiers by the front door. He’d already asked.
But he had to act like the boss before he could go hunting for more coke. He had to get a grip. He strode out of the bathroom, shouting at his soldiers, “I can’t wait around all day for Franjinha. Let’s go.” He hustled the group out of his house, pushing them up the hill ahead of him. He didn’t want guns at his back with everyone so jumpy. This bunch was the pick of his lieutenants, older, more level-headed. Some of his most trusted. And a couple he didn’t trust so much.
“Hey, man,” Franjinha called out behind them. “Wait up.”
He was coming around a corner of the narrow concreted alley that jinked up the hill. The steep path was cracked and uneven and had a step or two every few metres. It was hard work and Franjinha was sweating in his regular gangster uniform with the bandana he had adopted to cover the burns on his head. A couple of kids were following him. All three of them had their handguns drawn.
“Where have you been?” Anjo shouted down to him. “I was trying to get you all night.”
“Come on, man, I had business with a woman,” Franjinha said lightly. “You know you’ve got to keep them happy.”
Anjo didn’t know. Women filled a need for him every so often, but there was not very much that he understood about them. He didn’t know about keeping them happy. They didn’t make him happy; they mostly made him nervous and unsure of himself.
“You two stay here on sentry duty,” he instructed the kids who were with Franjinha.
The two kids looked to Franjinha and he nodded. They took up their posts at the front door of the house.
It rankled with Anjo that they had deferred to Franjinha. No one should be questioning his orders. He didn’t have time to deal with this right now, but he would come back to it later, that was for sure.
Franjinha drew level with him. “Sorry, man,” he said quietly to Anjo, clasping his shoulder.
“You got any powder?”
“No, boss.”
That irritated Anjo more.
It was a slog to the top of the favela, the sun frying the back of Anjo’s neck. The concrete path started to break up, shrubs and coarse grass sprouting everywhere. The houses were thinning out and the build quality declining. The concrete gutter at the side of the path, stained a greenish–brown, came to an end. There were only houses on one side of the path now. They had come to the outer edge of the favela. The gutter at this point became a shallow, overgrown ditch, diverging from the path. It had once been a stream before getting choked with rubbish.
There was something in the ditch ahead. A body, the top half hidden, the bottom half barely visible in the long grass and thorns.
The point man, a short, garrulous twenty-year-old named Pato, trained his handgun on the body. The others checked all around them, like they’d just stepped into a haunted house.
“Is it him?” Anjo asked, hating the tremor in his voice.
“Don’t know, boss.”
“Well, go take a look, asshole.”
Pato approached fearfully. Filthy legs poked out from the undergrowth, ruined flip-flops hanging off feet that were just as filthy, but rubbed a little cleaner on the balls and heels. The tee shirt and shorts were almost black, the top half of the torso in the ditch, obscured beneath tangled, thorny shrubs and long grass. There was an almost-empty bottle of the cheapest cachaça lying next to the body.
Even with the caked-on dirt, the skin wasn’t dark enough to be Vilson’s and the legs weren’t nearly skinny enough.
“It’s just one of the alkies, boss. That albino one, I think,” Pato said, relieved. “What the hell’s he been doing to get like that, though? Can’t tell whether he’s dead or just passed out.”
“You sure it’s the albino?”
Pato bent down, trying to peer through the undergrowth without getting too close. He recoiled, holding his nose. “Oh Christ, the dirty old bastard – he stinks of shit.”
Pato picked the least filthy part of the torso and dug a toe in the ribs. The body shifted with a distant grunt.
“It’s alive. Smells like a fucking drain, but alive,” he called back to Anjo.
“Is it the albino?” Anjo said irritably.
“Hey, Osso, that you?” Pato called out.
Some mumbled unintelligible thing came back. He dug his toe in again, harder. Another grunt. More mumble.
“Yeah,” Pato said to Anjo. “He’s out of it. Looks like he’s had a skinful. You want me to shoot him?”
“No, leave him,” Anjo said. “Let’s go.” Most of the drinkers also bought product from the Red Ants, but he wasn’t always so considerate to his customers. He was hoping that the ghost might prefer the easier pickings of this pathetic heap rather than coming after him.
They moved on upward through the scrag-end of the favela until they saw Vilson’s shack in the shade of the treeline. The soldiers ahead of Anjo faltered, staring at the dark, open doorway.
Anjo shoved the nearest backmarker. “Move. Act like the soldiers you’re meant to be.” He brought the Beretta up by his shoulder, barrel pointing skywards, showing he was ready for whatever was coming their way.
They crowded to one side of the doorway. The sun struck a clean edge on a shadow cast just in front of the shack, and with the intensity of the sunlight it was hard to make out what lay beyond the doorway.
Anjo steeled himself, pushing through his soldiers. He crouched by the door jamb, gripped his Beretta in both hands and fired six shots through the darkness in an arc. The holes he blasted in the thin walls let a little more light into the shack. He moved in, still at a crouch, making brisk sweeps with the Beretta in the dusty gloom, like he’d seen in the movies. He was showing them all proper soldiering and it bolstered him. He felt a little braver now.
His eyes started to adjust. There was a heap in a corner – his heart skipped and he fired two more shots at it, the muzzle flashes blinding. When his eyes came back again he could see it wasn’t big enough to be human. Just sacks.
There was nothing else, no one else, other than an innocuous pile in the middle of the shack that Anjo had almost stepped on. He hadn’t noticed it – he had been concentrating on finding something human-sized.
But the others had seen it and, having crowded the doorway after Anjo had entered, they were now backing away, looking around to make sure nothing was coming for them. They crossed themselves and mumbled prayers.
There was a collection of burned-down red candles surrounded by sprigs of leaves, some stuck in the pool of hardened wax. There was also a plastic toy soldier and a small fan of feathers. Peering closer, despite his instinct to run, Anjo saw that it was the wing of a small bird. There was a tiny pile of something twisted and fleshy, bloody and fatty yellow: probably the guts of some small animal. And there were dark blots in the earth around it. An involuntary shiver went through him.
He straightened up and turned on them. “Get a hold of yourselves. This Macumba crap is just for simpletons and old women.”
Only Pato had remained at the doorway, rooted, unable to take his eyes away from the offering. He shook his head. “No, man, that’s the black magic – it’s the heavy shit. Christ, this is bad. It’s really bad.”
<
br /> Pato’s words spooked the others even more.
Macumba was the regular stuff, it came in and out of all their lives. Old folks and sick people, and people with nothing better to do. Getting together, swaying and praying with candles and drums. A spirit might come into someone, often an old woman or an old man. Growing up, Anjo had wandered along to these kinds of evenings when he was younger. They joked about it in the Red Ants; most of it was make-believe to scare little kids or bring some meaning to a shitty life. But, under the bravado, they had a healthy respect. Some of the old women knew what they were talking about. They could see things; they had a connection with the other world.
Anjo had said Macumba to stop them panicking. But that thing inside the shack wasn’t an offering, it wasn’t someone praying for better luck or better health or for love. It was Quimbanda. The dark stuff. You went down that path and there wasn’t a way back. You might get your revenge, you might reach the place you wanted, but it would tear out your soul and feed it to the Devil.
Anjo’s mouth was watering. He felt like he was going to throw up. He was standing at the precipice, staring down at a yawing black space. He had to hold his nerve. “Search around this place,” he blurted out.
They picked about in the undergrowth above the shack like nervous hens. Just going through the motions, ready to fly back down the hill the moment Anjo gave them the word. Like Anjo, they spent more time scanning the deep shadows in the undergrowth beyond than sifting through the ground directly in front. None of them voiced it, but they were all convinced that something was watching them.
Anjo counted the seconds, taking deep breaths and swallowing away the acid vomit that had risen in his throat, before he decided that enough time had passed to show that this stuff hadn’t got to him.
They needed no second bidding, and it was as much as they could do to stop themselves breaking into a run to belt back down the hill. It felt better to be out in the sunlight but Anjo moved into the middle of the group now. Franjinha stuck to his shoulder. He hadn’t said a word since they’d got to the shack. Usually so quick to assess and give advice, he didn’t have the stones for this, Anjo realised.
Approaching the area where the path drew closer to the ditch, Anjo could see that the drunk was no longer there. This was the right place; he could see the impression the body had made in the long grass. They all kept moving. No one mentioned it. No one wanted to talk about anything out of place. And Anjo was now beyond shows of strength. He just wanted to get back inside his house, pull the heavy bolts across the door and send someone off to get him some powder.
The point man stopped so suddenly that they almost piled into him.
“What the fuck are you playing at?” rasped Anjo. He’d really had enough of this shit for one day.
They parted to let him see. Crossing themselves, more prayers.
There was a black cat lying on his raised doorstep. The two kids they’d left on sentry duty were nowhere to be seen. Anjo felt his stomach lurch and heave again. He had to force his legs forward to take a closer look.
The cat was dead. Ribs sticking out from the emaciated body, limbs rigid, the fur matted and mangy. It looked long gone, save for the thin line of frothy, yellowish–green puke running from its mouth and down the step.
“That thing only just crawled there and died,” Franjinha whispered, the only one who would dare. “I mean, like, seconds ago. That’s the Quimbanda shit, I’m telling you, man. We’re fucked.”
He was right. Signs didn’t get any darker than this. But Anjo screamed in fury, letting all the fear fly with it. “The next one who mentions black magic or voodoo or ghosts or any of that shit is a dead man. You either grow a pair or you can eat a bullet right now. Which is it?”
He had finally caught hold of himself. His black eyes glittered as he looked from one to the other.
A slot in the front door slid open and they saw eyes peering through the spyhole, before the door opened and one of the sentry kids poked his head out. “What’s going on?”
“I’d like to ask you that,” Anjo said quietly. “You were meant to be on sentry duty.”
The kid noticed the cat and recoiled, but he was a lot more scared of Anjo’s tone.
“I’m sorry, boss,” the kid stuttered, “it was so quiet we just went on the PlayStation for a bit.”
Anjo’s arms and legs were twitching, the need for a line of coke scrubbing away behind his eyeballs. He really wanted to kill someone.
Chapter 47
Jake
He was wearing the filthy clothes that had got him back to Rio. Stopping at a minimart, he bought a cheap bottle of cachaça with money borrowed from Padre Francisco and doused himself in it. He swilled a mouthful of the harsh spirit before spitting it out. Then, as an afterthought, he took another swig and swallowed. Dutch courage.
On the walk to the favela he climbed into a large drainage ditch running alongside a dual carriageway. A pristine, white egret took flight, startled, rising up from the stagnant, rubbish-filled water. There was more rubbish embedded in the soft greenish–black mud at the water’s edge. Jake smeared the foul-smelling stuff all over his skin and in his hair, before noticing a concrete pipe poking out of the bank further up the ditch.
Trying to get closer, he lost a flip-flop in the sucking, stinking mud and had to dig around in it up to his elbows to find it. From there, he carried his flip-flops to get to the pipe. When he got closer, he saw that it was pushing out globs of raw sewage. The stench was overpowering, making him retch as he rubbed a handful into his shorts.
It was dark by the time he reached the favela, and the mud was beginning to dry, cracking as it tightened on his skin. Marinho had directed him to the quietest entrance to the favela, which provided a fairly direct route to the top of the hill where Padre Francisco had described the location of Vilson’s shack. Marinho hadn’t come up with a better idea than Jake’s filthy-drunk disguise. Jake psyched himself up, another quick slug on the cachaça. It wasn’t easy, picking his way up through the favela in the dark through this less densely populated side, with scrubland and rubbish tips amongst the hollow-brick homes, but Marinho was right: the place seemed deserted.
He had assumed that the top of the favela would be a defined line of homes. It wasn’t; it was a broken, confusing hotchpotch that didn’t match Padre Francisco’s description. He spent half the night going up and down the hill as he navigated his way around, and the rest of the night trying to identify Vilson’s shack. He could only risk a tiny torch, which he used sparingly. He passed Vilson’s shack two or three times before he decided that it was the one. It was the only one that didn’t have a door. He peeped inside, switching on his torch for only a few moments. Empty.
He hid himself in the undergrowth up behind Vilson’s shack and waited with the biting insects for the sun to come up. When there was enough light he crept back to the shack and took a more thorough look inside. It was a broken-down patchwork of planks, corrugated iron and blue polythene. Garden tools were better housed than this back in England. He saw the candles and bits in the middle of the dirt floor. He didn’t know much about Brazilian voodoo, but he knew that they were some of the accessories that went with it. Maybe they were Vilson’s; maybe they were someone else’s. There was nothing else in the shack that gave him any useful information.
Jake’s memories of survival training in the army consisted mostly of wet, cold nights on a Welsh mountainside, but the tracking day had stuck, even though he had only learned the basics. There were paths leading away from the area behind Vilson’s shack: a small, well-worn animal path and a couple of wider paths made by humans, neither of them new. He tried the furthest path, looking for signs of more recent activity along it: freshly broken plant stems, trodden-down clumps of grass that were beginning to spring back up. The path ran up the hill into the jungle for fifty metres or so before ending at a dip that was filled with rubbish. Rotting, crumbling and rusting, it wasn’t a regular dump, and it didn’t look like a
nyone had walked up here in the last day or so.
Still, he took a good look around before walking carefully back down the path, making sure he hadn’t missed anything.
Someone had definitely been up and down the other path in recent days. On a section of bald earth there was scuffed dirt where a foot had slipped. Further up, a weedy shoot was folded over, the tip crushed underfoot, bruised leaves trying to raise themselves from the ground. The path eventually branched in several directions toward clumps of fruit trees, avocados and jaboticaba, the purple–black, grape-like berries covering the trunks and branches.
Any number of people probably came up here to pick the fruit. He retraced his steps back down. He stood next to a strangler fig tree. Something caught his eye in the undergrowth off the path this time, something he’d missed on the way up: the vaguest suggestion of another path.
He stepped off into the jungle and followed. It ran diagonally to the main path. It was old, hardly used. The newly trodden part departed after a few metres, zigzagging and circling. Jake moved slowly, examining everything closely and then stopping every few metres to straighten and scan the bigger scene around him. Trying to picture Vilson here, trying to figure out what Vilson would be thinking, what he was doing up here.
It took him half an hour to find the sapling with the knife mark on it. He had walked past and around it several times before he noticed. He concentrated his search within a five-metre radius of the sapling and it took him only a minute or so to find an area of disturbed ground beneath a shrub. There was a dirty, roughly folded sheet of polythene lying on the ground. He unfolded the sheet carefully and examined it but there was nothing other than dirt and leaves. Jake dug gingerly in the ground with his hands, the freshly dug earth shifting easily. He made a small pile of it, soft and dark, until he reached harder-packed earth, the limit of the hole that had been dug. The sheet and the hole told him that only something relatively small would have been buried here.
