Sunspot Jungle

by Bill Campbell

  How do I know I’m a true New Yorker? I actually believe the city goes quiet at night. Sonia used to have trouble sleeping because we lived next to the BQE and all night she heard the trucks and cars speeding by, but by the time I had her, I’d long learned to tune that stuff out. It was only if I got in bed with her, like if she’d woken up and couldn’t get back to sleep, that she’d point out the noise and I’d finally hear it.

  Dinner done, I wash the dishes and pop the cork back into the wine. I can’t even claim I tasted the food. The apartment has one long hallway with rooms branching off from it. I pass Sonia’s old room. The door is shut. I never open it anymore. In the bathroom I take a slow shower, putting in the time to wash my hair, a nice way to slow myself down. My bedroom is at the end of the hall. I get in bed and turn off the lamp by my bedside, and I listen to the sounds of this city.

  “It’s too dark in here.”

  The words came from the hallway, but I don’t even roll over. I know who it is.

  It wasn’t a week after Sonia died that I started hearing from her. She only ever says the one thing. When it began, once I decided to believe it was happening and not just something caused by my grief, I had her body exhumed. I thought that might be what her words meant. She didn’t like being buried. But it didn’t help. She kept on talking. I begged her to tell me what she meant, but I couldn’t get her to say more. I kept longer hours at the storefront because I wanted to be around other people. When I’m alone, I can’t drown her out.

  “It’s too dark in here.”

  She’s come down the hallway now and joined me in my room. She’ll go on like this all night.

  A week later, I get a walk-in first thing. It’s a middle-aged white guy, which is pretty unusual for me. He’s standing on the sidewalk when I show up at nine. He asks for me by name. I bring him in and ask him to wait. I slip in the back, but when he’s looking at the bookshelf, I take a moment to part the curtains and snap a photo of him with my phone. At least if he kills me, the cops will find his picture. This might seem paranoid to some, but I don’t care. It strikes me as a completely rational thing to do. I’ve had more seeing-eye dogs in here than lone middle-aged men strolling in.

  I look at myself in the mirror, but this time I don’t chant, not trying to charge myself up for a fine performance. Maybe he’s a cop, that’s the kind of energy he’s emitting. They still do undercover operations on storefronts. Two years ago, a guy gave away over $700,000 to a pair of psychics in Times Square. I won’t put on a show for this one, that’s what I decide. No scarf draped across my head and neck. He won’t see Cleopatra, only me.

  When I get to the table, he’s already laid out the ten-dollar bill. There’s something insulting about seeing the cash before I’ve done anything. It looks new. Maybe he went to the ATM right before he showed up. Immediately, I wonder how many more fresh notes are waiting in his wallet, then I feel angry at myself for being so easily enticed.

  His hair is white and thinning and slicked back, and his sharp nose slopes down until the tip hovers right above his top lip. He doesn’t seem to blink even as I sit there quietly watching him. There’s something predatory about him. Like he’s a bald eagle and I’m a fish. I’m used to people looking at me like I’m a fraud, but not like I’m a meal.

  “You’re an early riser,” I say, trying to be chatty.

  He holds my gaze. “Where’s the cards? Don’t you people use cards?”

  “We can,” I say. “We will. But I like to talk first. It puts my visitors at ease.”

  He hasn’t moved. Still hasn’t blinked. His hands are flat on the table, but that doesn’t make me feel any safer.

  “What kind of things do you say? To put visitors at ease.”

  I look up and count how many steps it would take me to reach the front door. Seven maybe and I can’t say I’m in any shape to run. The backroom has a bathroom, but there’s no emergency exit. I could lock myself in the bathroom and call the police, but how long would it take for him to smash his way in?

  “What did you say to Abby, for instance?”

  He says the name with emphasis, but I admit I don’t know who the hell he’s talking about. Do you know how exhausted I am? I hardly sleep at night. At this point I just lie there with my eyes closed listening to Sonia. How am I supposed to think of anything else?

  For the first time he moves, crosses his arms, and leans forward in his chair.

  “You don’t even remember her,” he says. He almost sounds happy about it like I’ve confirmed his worst intuition.

  “Abby,” I say. Then I repeat it. I’m trying to get the gears of my memory to catch. When they do, I snap my fingers. Maybe I look like a child who’s happy to have passed a quiz. “She came into my store a few weeks ago.”

  “One week ago.” He breathes deeply, and his crossed arms rise and fall.

  His eyes lose focus, and he stares down at the table; and the posture is exactly the same as Abby’s had been. That’s when I recognize him. It’s not their faces but the way they hold their bodies.

  “Who is she to you?” I ask.

  “One week ago,” he repeats.

  I calculate my path to the door again. Maybe I could make it in five steps. This old girl might have one more sprint in her.

  “What did you say to my daughter?” he asks.

  I don’t understand where this is headed. Is he back to ask for her fee? All this over a few dollars? The story of an overprotective father scrolls before me, the kind who won’t ever let his child become an adult. I’m insulted on her behalf.

  “She’s a grown woman,” I tell him. “What I said to her is confidential.”

  He drops his arms and slips one hand below the tabletop, so I can’t see what he’s doing. Reaching into his pocket maybe.

  “You’re not a lawyer,” he says. “You’re just some scam.”

  The words settle on me heavily, a lead apron instead of a slap. I find myself needing to breathe deeply, so I do, but it hardly helps.

  “Did she report me or something? Are you here with the cops?”

  He pulls his hand out from under the table. He’s holding a tiny flashlight, like a novelty item, a gag gift. There’s a bit of fog on the inside of the protective glass where the bulb is.

  “I gave this to her years ago,” he said. “It was still on her key chain when her body was recovered.”

  The blanket across my chest feels even heavier now. I think I might get pulled down, right off the chair.

  “What did you say to my daughter!” he shouts, and he throws the flashlight at me. It flies wild, goes over my shoulder and into the back. As soon as it leaves his hand, he looks horrified and chases after it. He sends his chair flying sideways, and it knocks into the shelf. A few of the books fall to the carpet. He hurtles through the curtain and he’s in the back and suddenly I’m alone. I get up to run for the door. I’m sure I can flag down a cop car on the street. But then I hear her.

  “It’s too dark in here.”

  Now I plop right back down onto the chair, can’t move my limbs. My mouth snaps shut and so do my eyes. What did I say to his daughter?

  Yes. There is more.

  He steps back through the curtain, and he’s got my scarf in one hand, Abby’s flashlight in the other. I wonder if he’s planning to strangle me with the scarf and, for a moment, consider that I’d deserve it. The death of my child was already my fault, so why not his as well?

  “I thought you would’ve run,” he says quietly. He stands over me, holding up the scarf and the flashlight as if he’s weighing the two.

  “There’s nowhere for me to go,” I say.

  He sits on the ground right there beside me. It’s strange to see a man my age cross-legged on a carpet.

  “I won it for her at the Genesee County Fair,” he says of the flashlight. “It’s funny what kids hold on to.”

  Now I understand why he grabbed my scarf. He’s patting at his face, his tears.

  “Maybe I said something t
o her?” he asks. The words come out so quietly that my first instinct is to lean in closer, but he isn’t talking to me. I need to get an ambulance for him. I rise up from my chair and slip my cell phone out of my pocket.

  “I’m going to call someone for you,” I say, and he nods softly. Now I’m surprised I thought he seemed angry when he’s only delirious with despair.

  After I call I crouch down beside him and wait for the sirens. This makes my knees start hurting instantly, but I can endure it. I grasp one of his hands between two of mine, and I remember the way I touched his daughter when we spoke. They have the same delicate wrists.

  I’m afraid to tell him what I said to her but not because I fear for my safety. Instead, I wonder if Abby thought I meant something hopeful when I told her there was more to existence. If she lost her mother, if she missed her mother, maybe she thought I meant the woman waited for her across the veil, that they’d be reunited in a better place. Why wouldn’t she think that? It’s the story people prefer. What if I told her father the same thing now? Would he be tempted to try and join Abby? I couldn’t be responsible for such a thing, so I say nothing and simply hold his hand.

  The EMTs arrive and help Abby’s father to the ambulance. After taking some information from me, they drive off with him, then I go back inside the store. For the first time I can see the place like so many others must: the silly dim lighting, the bookshelf of mystic texts. It’s such a cliché. No wonder my visitors viewed me as a fraud.

  I go to the back and make myself some tea. While the water boils, I lift the chair Abby’s father knocked over. I gather the books that fell, but instead of putting them back on the shelf, I go in the back and drop them, one by one, into the trashcan. I find the scarf and leave it in the garbage with the books.

  My work changed after Sonia died. There is an afterlife, and it’s worse than the world we live in. That’s what I know. I don’t understand why I kept the news to myself.

  “It’s too dark in here.”

  The kettle whistles in the other room, but I can still hear my daughter. I suppose that will never stop. I make my tea, then I sit at the table and wait for visitors. From now on whoever comes to see me is going to hear the truth.

  A Model Apartment

  Bryan Thao Worra

  Yam zoo ntshai tsam tau me.

  Yam phem ntshai tsam los ze.

  Something good, you fear you’ll get too little.

  Something bad, you fear it will come too close.

  —Ancient Hmong proverb

  I.

  The elders believe the tragedy that befell Kazoua Vue in New England was avoidable. As incontrovertible evidence of this position, they repeat the ancient Hmong folktales and modern news stories of those who live too far from their families and the horrific fates those foolish people meet.

  Her funeral was conducted with singular quietude in her hometown of Milwaukee. Few of the gentle young painter’s remaining family wished to discuss the details, an understandable position given the disquieting nature of it all. But a reasonably consistent picture of the events in Arkham emerged for those who pried deep enough into the dark matter.

  At the behest of her family, the last of her effects are scheduled for a discreet incineration next week in a remote corner of the city. After this, none will speak of her, and it will be as if she had never been.

  Arkham is one of those changeless places of Earth—a quiet, almost mythic city in New England. The sleepy Miskatonic river cuts through the centre of the city directly to the coldest fathoms of the Atlantic if one follows far enough.

  It is home to Miskatonic University, which over the years, weathered innumerable bizarre incidents and scandals, survived devastating fires, even the great flood of 1980 that swept away so many of Arkham’s oldest architectural fixtures.

  It was here that fabled figures like the alleged hag, Keziah Mason, had fled during the frenzied witch hunts of old. Those of a scientific mindset may recall that the tragic Pabodie Expedition to Antarctica had its beginnings in Arkham’s shining halls.

  Morbid turn-of-the-century painter, Richard Upton Pickman, best known for “The Lesson” and his ghastly “Ghoul Feeding,” often visited Arkham in his early years when he wasn’t in Boston. This was well before he became an enigmatic recluse who went the way of Ambrose Bierce and Federico García Lorca.

  Kazoua always had an unnatural, almost unhealthy, attraction to Pickman’s work. It could have been worse. She could have been ogling Warhol, or even Kadinsky, or that hack Pollack.

  Fleeing the war in Laos, she and her family came to America in 1984. There was some brief time spent in the Thai refugee camp of Ban Vinai beforehand.

  While lingering in the squalid compound, they met an idealistic young USAID worker who’d been an art history minor fond of Bacon, Goya, and Dali. Through him, Kazoua first saw many of those bizarre images that scholars believe were so influential on her and her style.

  Her family began their American odyssey in Providence. There were several other Hmong clans present there as well, including Thaos, Khangs, Hers, and several branches of the Yangs. Though accommodating enough, Rhode Island and her non-Hmong residents were still as alien to them as the moon.

  Many Hmong converted from their traditional animism to Catholicism, but it is worth noting the Vatican permitted them to still practice a select few of the traditional rituals of old, particularly funerary and marriage rites.

  In the spring of 1986, Kazoua’s parents journeyed to rejoin her father’s brothers in Milwaukee. There, the families could support one another as during the war and long before. They established a modestly successful Asian grocery store, Lao American Market, near Vliet Street, and many remember when she became the first in her family to attend college.

  Much to their dismay, she majored in art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, insisting she could make a good living at it.

  When her macabre painting, “Yer’s Family, A Tiger’s Perspective,” sold for a considerable sum to a prominent Milwaukee art collector, most of her critics were silenced although many elders continued to insist a proper Hmong girl would simply get married and forego such useless luxuries as a college education.

  II.

  On September 17, 1999, Michael Stuczynski, one of her closer associates, opened his art gallery, Diabolica, near Murray Avenue. He invited her to showcase her work there for a month. Entitled “Despair-Diaspora,” it was an ambitious solo show featuring 42 canvases, including her oil paintings and mixed-media projects. Her ostensible theme was traditional Hmong folklore and the role of memory.

  By the most generous accounts, it was something of a disaster when it opened in November.

  Most non-Hmong viewers dismissed it, largely from a lack of familiarity with the figures being referenced. Others more familiar with the Hmong expected something more akin to the Kohler Center’s earlier exhibition of traditional textiles and silverwork and not the gory spectacles Kazoua Vue presented.

  Hmong audiences, on the other hand, abhorred its fixation on the spirits and demons of the past, such as the Dab, the dreaded Poj Ntxoog, and the terrifying Zaj in all its reptilian glory.

  “Despair-Diaspora” was taken down in December without much fanfare, and if the harsh critical reception of her work had any effect on the sensitive young Kazoua, she did not outwardly show it.

  There were two significant outcomes of the exhibition at Diabolica.

  The first was her new resolve to return to the New England she remembered so fondly to undertake an artistic rejuvenation. She would study the work of artists like Pickman there and find peers who understood her vision. The second outcome was meeting Tou Ger Khang, a dark-tempered young man with whom she fell hopelessly in love.

  What she saw in the dour, sullen boy remains anyone’s guess, but academically he was promising, demonstrating a particular aptitude for high-level physics and mathematics. The two married in Milwaukee in the traditional fashion not long after they met, and Tou Ger was amenab
le to completing his studies in New England with her.

  They were accepted into Miskatonic University for Fall 2001. It seemed a positive turn in her fortunes.

  III.

  Their move to New England occurred without incident. There were the usual best wishes and tears but nothing beyond the ordinary. They drove a small U-Haul from Milwaukee, taking I-90E most of the way, passing through Cleveland, Buffalo, and Albany, where they stopped to visit a few distant relatives, happily catching up on news and family gossip.

  Ordinarily, the trip is a fast 18 hours; but the two took their time, and it became a four-day trip to the East Coast. There were numerous photographs taken then, but most are lost.

  It was raining heavily when they finally arrived on Wednesday, March 7, 2001. They’d come early in order to acclimate to the city’s nuances before beginning their classes in earnest in September. As most will remember, it was a very cold, wet month for the entire region then.

  Some might have been deterred by the gloom. For Kazoua, she took it as an uplifting sign, a symbol of rejuvenation, regeneration, and reconnection with things she felt missing in her life. She remembered it raining when she left New England the last time, so it felt like coming full circle.

  Ever an efficient one, Kazoua had inquired ahead of time of possible living quarters on campus and was informed that the official dormitories were still filled with students, but many reputable landlords in the area could easily accommodate them.

  Happily, there was a recent opening in the White Rose Apartments nestled conveniently a few blocks from the central campus. The landlord, Janos Dombrowski, informed her a tenant had to relinquish his apartment unexpectedly to return to Vienna. However, in his haste, he left behind several fine furnishings that seemed a pity to discard with the weekly rubbish.

  Dombrowski noted that the apartment was nearly immaculate considering the neighbourhood—an excellent deal. If they wanted, Dombrowski would leave the furniture for them to spare them the expense of refurnishing it.

  Upon hearing Kazoua was an artist, he also waived the security deposit for them in exchange for one of her paintings when she arrived, being an amateur artist himself who understood such circumstances. He expressed hope that she would join the local art club for they always sought fresh voices. Things were looking up for the young couple, and it seemed the stars were truly in their favor.