Midnight Taxi Tango

by Daniel José Older

  The old empty brownstone seems to get warmer as I march up the rickety staircase toward the top-floor library. None of the lights are on—I’m sure the power got cut decades ago—but a gentle glow emanates from above. I wonder what it was like for Carlos in those early days of his new life. He must’ve learned to walk again on these dusty planks, must’ve felt that first surge of emptiness at having no memory, no past, in these same corridors.

  “Kia!” Mama Esther grins down at me when I walk in. A soft saxophone melody wails from an old radio. Her smile fades. “What’s wrong?”

  Where to begin . . . “Carlos’s kids are in trouble.”

  Mama Esther boggles. “Carlos’s what now? Wait . . . Never mind. How can I help?”

  “The Blattodeon Trinity. Need to know everything about them. But, like . . . quickly.”

  Mama Esther squints. “That could take more time than you have. Any additional questions to add along with your initial inquiry, young lady?”

  “Yes, but I don’t know how to say it.”

  “Try.”

  Carlos kept saying a piece is missing. Gio said they don’t act this way. We need to know what’s going on. “Why . . . now? They’ve changed their pattern. We want to know why.”

  Mama Esther nods, whirls around, and it’s like a tiny hot tornado has entered the building. Books scatter, replace themselves, turn on their sides. About ten great tomes fly open simultaneously; pages whip past. I hear Mama Esther’s voice muttering different languages all around me.

  “Cantari . . . eloquis . . . baronti . . . quan quan quan . . . eji . . . eji . . . oko . . . oko . . . cantari . . . septimus . . . l’vailche. . . . siguroy . . .”

  The hell kinda incantation . . . ? Downstairs, something thuds loudly against the outer wall. Mama Esther’s face whirls back around toward me. “Shto etta?” she demands, in what I can only guess is some Russian-type language. She must still be immersed in whatever she was reading.

  “My cousin and his boyfriend and this hit man are downstairs guarding the door.” Words I never thought I’d say. Strange days, these. “Those guys we’re researching are after us, so I’m guessing they’re here.”

  Mama Esther snorts and turns back to the books. The air heavies up, and her murmuring voice gets louder, drowns out the saxophone ballad and the occasional honks and growls of traffic passing along Franklin Ave. “Cantari celosis meji bara meji qui pantosa quel’arte befoulo chi barra chi oji chi meji chi sotano bara mi bara si obasi . . .”

  Another thud and then yelling from downstairs. My heart screams in my ears. Gio. What if . . . ? Gio. “Can I help, Mama Esther?”

  “Thank you, child.” She halts her chant, and I hear more yelling downstairs, the shuttle train rumble past, the sorrowful sax. “This one,” Mama Esther says after a few seconds, “is in English. Ignore that it’s kitschy. There’s something in there for us. Try page three seventy-eight.”

  A slender, faded orange book hovers through the air and lands on a stack in front of me. “Cantari celosis,” Mama Esther mutters. “Bara si bara o bara questiquanticus palacio teneriscow pajoli.” I flip open the book, trying to ignore the fighting sounds getting louder below us.

  Lore of Yesteryear, the book is called. It’s from 1904, all frayed edges and tattered binding. On page 378, woodcut illustrations show an amorphous shadow whisking across the night sky over a moonlit meadow. Two figures gape up at it; one of them seems mangled somehow, his body bent over and twisted all wrong.

  The threscle hain, the caption says. But the facing page is all about crop shortages and some kind of fungus. I flip to the back, holding the place with one hand. According to the index, threscle hain shows up eight times, including on 378. They’re clustered around 250–255 so I flip there. Which begins again, for mine uncle has seen this with his own Eyes, he reports to me. ’Tis dark and fluttering, almost not there but Unmissable in the Sky against a moonlit cloud. The threscle hain can be seen only every seven years, ’tis said. My uncle was never the same since that night; he took to the Drink and could be found Babbling about the Shadow that Flies. Luther was never seen again, but it wasn’t only Luther. It was after that night too that the children of Shallow Brook began to Vanish, one by one, until the Town was full of mourning, only the wailing of Mothers and drunken rants of Fathers as Funeral after Funeral Procession took to the sullied streets.

  Another thump shakes me from the words. The fighting’s louder now, just one floor down.

  “The threscle hain,” I say out loud. “A shadow that flies through the night sky every seven years.”

  “¡Eso mismo!” Mama Esther yells, startling the shit outta me. “Bring it here.”

  I walk down the corridors of stacked books. The air is prickly and thick. Below, there is silence, and I can’t decide whether that’s good or ominous. I place the old book on top of three much older, much larger ones on a claw-foot wooden table.

  “What are we looking at?”

  “Seven years,” Mama Esther says. “This is from what is now Belarus. Describes the smlechnya, a kind of rabid locust swarm that destroys acres of crops every seven years.”

  “Ooh . . .”

  “And here, in Venezuela, reports of a monastery on a hill whose hooded acolytes would emerge to massacre the villagers below, also every seven years.”

  “I see the pattern,” I say.

  “And your threscle hain.”

  “Seven years.”

  “And now this.” She reaches down from either side of me and places another book open on the table. “The roach.” A careful ink sketch of one of those hideous pale water bugs takes up the entire page. Half its body has been removed, and its filthy innards are visible, complete with pointers explaining various parts. The facing page shows the monster viewed from above, just the shell-like wings and awful little antennaed head.

  “This is a natural science book from Hungary, the 1790s. Says they’re a rare, endangered breed of parasitic land arthropod.”

  “Hmph, not endangered enough.” I scowl.

  “Parasitic because they rely on a human host to survive. They lay eggs inside the stomach, lungs, and esophagus generally. The males leave and burrow in the actual flesh of the host human, become a second layer of skin, basically.”

  “Yep, seen that.”

  Another bang from downstairs. My heart flails and pitter-patters. Then a yell, but I can’t make out whose voice it is.

  “The females though,” Mama Esther continues, “are removed while still in the pupa stage and deposited inside a singular host, a living host, creating what’s basically a hive in the esophagus and abdomen. This is known as the Master Hive, and the whole operation functions with some kind of groupthink-type insectoid telekinesis, hormones, and whatnot. Yadda yadda. Let me see . . . Ah! Here we go: an unusual, spectral kind of cult has emerged around the creatures, the Blattodeons. The singular living host with the Master Hive inside is known as the High Priest. The Blattodeon acolytes, their skin made up of the male roaches, lie in wait, tending to their own foul affairs. That is, except for a bloody series of months, every seven years. Then the entire cult flurries into a kind of homicidal rampage.”

  Three illuminated figures appear in the dusty air above me. The one in the middle is hunched over with long, creepy arms and fingers.

  “The cult revolves around three central roles: the Petari Vox, the Petari Gi.” The two upright figures on either side light up. Mama Esther is providing audiovisual enhancement, and I love her for it. They wear long robes and complicated hats with lowered face guards. Miasmas of power swirl around their raised arms. “The Petaris act as kind of consiglieri, or a support team, using necromancy and manipulation to protect and preserve the High Priest, and ultimately, the Master Hive.”

  The long-armed figure lights up. “Jeremy fucking Fern,” I whisper.

  “The High Priest cultivates the Master Hiv
e within his or her body for a period of seven years, at which point the entire hive must transfer to a new High Priest, which can only happen if the original High Priest expires.”

  “Ugh.”

  “They can only survive outside of a host for a few hours, so in olden days, the transference of hosts became a sacred sacrificial ritual. In modern times . . . Hold on . . . In modern times, this would be accomplished by a complicated series of conspiracies ending in the murder of both Petaris and the High Priest and the abduction of whoever was deigned the new host body for the Master Hive. The Petari Vox and Petari Gi transfer their spirits into new human bodies in an act of phantasmagoric mimicry that shadows the Master Hive’s transferal to a new host.”

  The figures vanish, and Mama Esther’s furrowed face appears above me. “Ah, this is important. The Blattodeons do not believe in suicide. According to their cosmology, self-destruction is a cardinal sin—part of the whole roaches-can-survive-anything theme, I suppose. These three figures, the Blattodeon Trinity, are like ancestral archetypes, still surviving in spirit form. That’s why the septennial ritual becomes such a bloodbath and must end with their murder.”

  “Caitlin Fern,” I say. “That’s why she . . . asked Carlos to . . . She must be one of the Petaris. It’s not an ambush. It’s worse . . . But who’s the other? And who’s the new host?”

  “Says here two of the new hosts tend to be children—one for the High Priest, one for the Petari Vox’s spirit, and preferably related.”

  “Caitlin and Jeremy. They were both teenagers that night, seven years ago . . .”

  “While for the Petari Gi, the Blattodeons seek out a mastermind of some kind that will be able to protect the other two while they develop into their roles.”

  “Someone else that they will try to have Carlos kill, so they can send the spirit into . . .” Clarity, partial clarity anyway, comes like a blinding ray of sunlight after a night of partying. “Jesus,” I whisper. “Gregorio made a pact with the Blattodeons and kidnapped Carlos’s twins . . . They must’ve promised him the role of Petari Gi and the . . .”

  Mama Esther takes her eyes off the page and gazes down at me. “What?”

  “The twins!”

  The library door flies open and Gio tumbles through it. He’s covered in roaches. Rigo bursts in and starts swatting him with his jacket. Rohan backs in behind them, gun pointed at the door.

  “What is this?” Mama Esther booms. “There is no combat allowed in Mama Esther’s house!”

  A roach man appears in the doorway. Rohan’s gun pops with two silenced shots, and the man falls backward even as two more crawl over him and run into the room. Rigo spins into the air with some kind of flying Mortal Kombat tornado kick and smashes one of them. Two more burst in.

  “STOP THIS!” Mama Esther’s voice is an earthquake between my ears, but of course, they can’t hear her. She’s suddenly directly over the fray, her wide face tensed, eyes half-moons of fury. She shudders, and the whole room shudders with her; I expect the foundations of the building just moved. Rigo, Gio, and Rohan collapse and roll out of the way. The Blattodeons must sense her presence above them. Who knows what the fuck those walking abominations can fathom? All four of them look up at the same time. They pause for a half second, then rear backward, I guess about to hurl their collected roach swarms at her.

  I wonder, briefly, how that would go: ghost versus evil death roach. Then I find out: Mama Esther hollers. It’s a terrifying, guttural thing. I’m pretty sure my liver and spleen are on the verge of rupture when it’s over. Her wide-open mouth takes up the whole upper part of the library. Then her giant ghost hands come crashing down from either side of the room. The roach guys have enough time to be startled, and then they explode, utterly obliterated between Mama Esther’s giant palms.

  It sounds like four bodies hitting the pavement from ten stories up. Shards of bone clink against the glass windows along with the singular wet splatter of entrails and blood exploding across the room. Thousands of crinkled roach bodies lie motionless in the puddled gore.

  “What . . . the fuck . . . was that?” Rigo gasps.

  I’m the first one standing. I hadn’t even realized that I fell, but—I feel alright. I don’t seem to be bleeding from any orifices, so that’s a plus. “That was Mama Esther.”

  “Can we bring her with us?” Rohan says.

  “If only.” I stumble toward Rigo and Gio. They’re both sitting up, dazed. “You okay, cuz?”

  Gio nods, but he looks more shaken than I’ve seen him since his return. Rigo stands, and we both help Gio up. “We have to go,” I say. They start getting themselves together, sidestepping the giant splatter in the middle of the floor. “Mama Esther?”

  She appears above me. “Did I scare you, child? I hate fighting.”

  “I’m okay. And you saved our lives! I’m sorry we can’t stay to help you . . . clean up.”

  “Don’t worry ’bout that, dear. Did you find everything you need?”

  “Yes,” I say. “But it’s worse than we thought.”

  • • •

  Five minutes later we’re barreling up Bedford in the Crown Vic. Rohan is still picking roach guy innards out of his goatee.

  “Drive faster,” I say as I wrestle my hair into some semblance of a bun and then secure the whole situation with pins and a du rag. It’ll have to do; I’m pretty sure we’re all about to get wet.

  “I am,” Rohan grunts. “But we also need to not get pulled over and whatnot. Makes things more difficult, if you know what I mean.”

  “Don’t you have PD bought off, or whatever it is you guys do to get away with shit?”

  He shoots me a look that lets me know I’ve crossed a line, so I settle back and watch Bed-Stuy fly past.

  “What are we telling Carlos?” Gio asks.

  “He was right,” I say. Rohan screeches around a corner onto Myrtle Ave. and zooms toward Bushwick. “The Caitlin thing is a setup. But not the kind he thinks. They’re not trying to kill him. They need him to kill Jeremy and Caitlin and someone else I haven’t figured out yet.”

  “That’s my kind of setup,” Rohan says. “Anything that involves those two getting got, I’m with.”

  I shake my head. “You don’t get it. It’s not about them. It’s about the roaches. Jeremy and Caitlin are just the conduits. They’re . . . they’re allowing themselves to be used. And that includes being sacrificed so that the roaches can live on. In another body.”

  “Whose?” Rigo asks.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be Gregorio,” I say. “And . . . Carlos and Sasha’s twins.”

  Rohan drives faster.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Carlos

  Garrick! Tartus!”

  I’m sitting on the steps of the Ferns’ creepy safe house in Bushwick, smoking. Pretending that a thousand pinpricks of fear aren’t doing the wave inside my gut. Pretending to be the indomitable badass I’m supposed to be. Those two perfect pudgy, brown faces surface in my mind and I shake them off. I can’t get caught up. Sasha’s worried eyes—what did Ol’ Ginny show her that frightened her so damn much?

  I hate not knowing shit.

  I shake my head and pull my unimpressed mask back on. The ruse is both for my own sake and Caitlin’s. I can’t look all freaked-out when she shows up.

  If she shows up.

  If I’m not just sitting here waiting to die. Seems unlikely. Why drag me all the way out here to murk me when she could send her baby demons to murk me any ol’ place?

  Or try.

  “Garrick! Tartus!”

  The old ghost hangs in the air beside me like he’s suspended from a clothesline. His sad bulging eyes gaze out into the night. His bottom lip quivers. Tears still stream steadily down his cheeks. I shake my head, pull long and deep on the Malagueña, and sigh a smoky mountain toward the sky.

 
“Garrick!”

  “I get it, man!”

  “Tartus!”

  “Garrick Tartus. I know. I’m happy for you.”

  If she doesn’t show soon, I’ll have to figure out a plan B. Go in myself and try to find Jeremy and off him? Seems iffy. Iffier even. Riley and Squad 9 should be lurking around the premises, hopefully well the fuck out of sight.

  I stand, stretch, exhale more smoke.

  “Garrick! Tartus!”

  I shake my head. “Garrick fucking Tartus.”

  “Oh, just ignore him,” Caitlin says. She strolls up the block looking cool as can be, a bodega coffee in one hand. I wonder if her chill is a ruse like mine. If so, it’s overplayed, considering the circumstances.

  “You seem pretty calm for someone about to have her brother killed.”

  She shakes her head. “That’s my defense mechanism. Been doing it since I was sixteen. I’m terrified.”

  I study her tired face, frayed hair. Try to picture her radiating with joyful light instead of worn-out and prematurely sullen. Doesn’t take.

  She sips her coffee. “You ready?”

  “No. I don’t know a damn thing about what’s going on. I don’t know where we’re going or how we’re supposed to do this. I don’t know anything about you. I am not ready.”

  “Garrick! Tartus!”

  Caitlin narrows her eyes at me. “That’s fair. We don’t have much time though—Jeremy is down there now doing one of his rituals, but he won’t be for long. They’re supposed to go out tonight on some mission. I stopped keeping track. I just know this has to end, Carlos. This has to end. It’s gone on too long. Let’s walk as we talk.”

  I imagine her saying this to some coworker in the adoption industry: “Let’s walk as we talk,” and then fast-strutting along a well-lit corridor in their Manhattan offices, files and photographs stuffed under their armpits and coffee thermoses in their hands, a whole world of data, names, geopolitical connections, and intrigue cluttering the air between them. I wonder if the agency has any hint about the monster that lurks in their midst.