by Layton Green
Lucky kneeled next to him, grinning as he shoved his perfect white teeth and his musky cologne into Grey’s face. Lucky savored the moment, matching the hatred that poured forth from Grey’s eyes with amused nonchalance.
He snapped his fingers, and one of his men handed him an elongated brown syringe. He ordered his men to hold Grey tighter, so that as Lucky methodically pushed the needle into the flesh of Grey’s shoulder, Grey could only seethe in silent rage, twitching as the drug forced him into unconsciousness.
45
Grey woke to acute pain in his wrists. He was slumped forward, hands and arms suspended above his head. He tried to lower his arms, but they wouldn’t move. He straightened, which relieved some of the pressure, and then he understood the source of his discomfort.
Someone had manacled his hands and feet to the wall behind him.
He surveyed his prison. A light bulb, suspended from a thin cord hanging in the middle of the ceiling, lit the room with a jaundiced glow. Concrete walls and floor lent the room a solid, entombed feel. He didn’t see any doors or windows, but a narrow set of stairs in the opposite left corner ended at the ceiling. There must be a hidden exit above the stairs.
The chilling contents of the room disturbed him far more than its dismal appearance. A gurney, covered with a plain white sheet, waited in the middle of the room with that unsettling anthropomorphic presence that inanimate objects obtain when they’re associated with the extreme end of human behavior. The haunted house, the torture museum, the suicide note… the mad doctor’s operating table. Grey couldn’t take his eyes off it.
The room smelled of formaldehyde and dank earth, of vivisection and misery. On the far wall hung an assortment of stainless steel surgical tools. They cast an eerie gleam in the dingy light, the meticulous attention given to their care incongruous with the dungeon-like setting of the room. A multi-tiered shelf on the wall to Grey’s right contained racks of glass jars and vials, unlabeled and resting in silence, waiting to be quaffed by helpless victims.
He knew whose house he was in.
All in all, Grey thought with a hysterical flash of irony, he couldn’t think of a more fitting waiting room for Doctor Fangwa. He glanced down at the floor. Darker hues purpled the floor surrounding the gurney, stains and spatters from a substance he didn’t need to guess at.
Grey yanked on his bonds. Iron rings set into the concrete wall anchored the chains, and he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. Damn. He had to think, he had to figure something out. Perhaps he’d be moved to the gurney. If he could free himself for one tiny moment, he could… the thought of what he’d do to whoever had imprisoned him sustained him.
But the longer he waited in the dungeon, alone and helpless, the more apprehensive he became.
He worried even more for Nya. Had she suffered the same fate? For some reason he didn’t think Fangwa would kill Nya, but the cliché that there were fates worse than death seemed to have been created specifically for Doctor Fangwa.
He pulled on his chains again. If Fangwa had touched one hair on her head, then he swore to whatever dark god the Doctor worshipped that it would have one less mortal servant to do its bidding.
He heard a creaking near the stairs, and whipped his head around. Brighter, healthier light flooded into the room as a hinged trap door opened in the ceiling, above the stairs. Fangwa’s servant boy climbed down the stairs, glossy eyes unblinking.
“Hey,” Grey whispered. “Over here. Help-”
His words died in his throat as Fangwa stepped onto the stairs behind the boy and pulled the door closed, returning the room to its sickly saturation. He’d exchanged his linen suit for the white robe of the babalawo.
The boy moved to stand in front of the operating table, arms at his sides and staring off to the left of Grey. Fangwa sprang down the stairs. He stopped at the bottom, fingers working the air in front of him. As he walked towards Grey his head moved from side to side, as if he couldn’t contain his excitement.
“You found my first secret last night.” He stopped a few feet in front of Grey and swept his arms around the room. “But not my second. What do you think?”
Grey turned his head to the boy. “You don’t have to do this. Free me and I’ll help you. I’ll take you back to your home. To your parents.”
The boy didn’t answer, gave no sign he’d even heard Grey. Fangwa made a dry, high-pitched emanation somewhere between a cackle and a gasp. “He is quite beyond your reach. He has been sent to another place.”
“What’d you do to him?”
He grinned. “A babalawo never reveals his secrets.”
“Do you realize what you’ve done?” Grey said. “Kidnapped a United States government agent? I’ll be found. Soon.”
“As you found William Addison?”
Fangwa clapped his hands and snapped a command. The boy moved to the shelf, selected a squat jar filled with a rust-colored substance, opened the jar and carried it to Fangwa.
Fangwa extracted a swab from a pocket on the inside of his robe and dabbed it into the jar. Grey thrashed as Fangwa reached towards him.
Fangwa smiled, thriving on the negative energy. “Soon you won’t move at all. But first we must talk.”
He reached up and swabbed the front of Grey’s left arm with the viscous substance. It took a moment for anything to register, but a second later the place where Fangwa brushed his arm burned with excruciating intensity.
Grey yelled and stared at his arm in horror; a piece of skin had melted off where the substance had touched it.
Click-clack.
“You bastard! What the hell is that?”
“Her name is of no importance. What is important is that unless we have an illuminating conversation, you will bathe in her.”
Grey flailed against his chains, then composed himself, his breath coming in heavy pants. “This is how a babalawo acts? This is the shining example of your religion?”
“Religion?” Fangwa intoned, amused. “This is not religion. It is torture. It is true my religion has certain rituals that make what I will do to you this evening seem kindly. It’s your fortune my purpose tonight is not ceremonial.” His eyes roved over Grey. “Although I suppose I might harvest your attributes.”
“Then what is your purpose?”
“To make sure you and Ms. Mashumba,” his eyes gleamed with obscene pleasure as he said her name, “don’t interrupt my search. Although I have a different purpose in mind for her than for you.”
“Where do you have her? I swear if you’ve touched her-”
“That is what you’ll help me with. That is how you’ll escape a most protracted death. Tell me where she is, and you’ll die without pain.”
A shiver of relief coursed through Grey. He didn’t have Nya yet. Questions, and a brittle hope, hung on the coattails of relief. If Fangwa didn’t have her, then where was she? Why hadn’t she contacted him? Was it possible she’d find him here?
Then the full import of his words hit Grey. “Lucky implied she was here.”
For the first time since Grey had met Doctor Fangwa, he seemed taken aback. His fingers stopped twitching, and he put his stretched face right next to Grey’s. Grey tried to recoil, but he had nowhere to go.
“What did you say?” Fangwa said softly, holding the jar in front of him.
Grey eyed the jar. “You had Lucky bring me here, didn’t you? Lucky works for you.”
“Lucky works for himself. I utilize his services at times.”
“He’s your headhunter?”
Fangwa didn’t reply, but his hands started to twitch again.
“What do you care?” Grey said. “You’re going to kill me.”
Without hesitation, Fangwa extracted another swab and dabbed it into the jar, then swathed it across Grey’s forearm. Grey screamed as his flesh boiled in reaction.
“What did Lucky say?”
Grey tried to laugh, but he could only gasp. His skin felt like it was swimming in hydrochloric acid. Part of Jujitsu tra
ining was learning pain management. Grey could take pain. But this was another level, the executive suite of pain. He struggled to get his words out. “Are you so twisted you think I’d help you find her? Do you realize she thinks you’re a monster?”
“Aaah.” He took a step back and his eyes lingered on the boy, still standing motionless and silent. “But that can change.”
Grey felt his hope seep away at the thought of Nya standing, mind crumbled and will shattered, before the altar of Doctor Fangwa.
A thought hit him. Maybe he’d misjudged the situation. Perhaps Viktor had been wrong; perhaps Lucky was the N’anga. Though that didn’t explain why Grey had been brought here. Did Fangwa do Lucky’s dirty work for him, instead of the other way around?
“Lucky isn’t your headhunter, is he? He’s the N’anga.”
Grey thought at first he’d scored a victory. Fangwa looked strangled, his eyes and mouth opened wide. Then Grey realized he’d been mistaken.
Fangwa had not been stunned by secrets revealed. On the contrary: the way Fangwa’s papery body shook with silent convulsions, lips peeled back, eyes dancing in devilish glee—this was how this monstrous being laughed.
46
Pure silence has a sound. A soft, dull ring arises first, somewhere deep within the mysterious ether that breathes life into the human body, in the places science has yet to reach. As one tries to concentrate on the puzzling manifestation, it evolves into a faint buzzing, slowly inundating the mind with a steady hum, until eventually the sound of silence crawls out of the body and infests the very air.
This symphony of the mind, this maddening and inexplicable resonance: it was the only companion available to Nya, and she embraced it as it rose out of the blackness in which she found herself. This sound did possess one benefit: it revealed her continuing mortality, it announced that she was not adrift in purgatory, or some other void for lost souls.
Or was she?
No. She bit her tongue for sensation; she babbled to herself. Unless her body had traveled to the void with her, she remained in this world. She tried to wiggle her toes, her fingers—and panicked. Nothing budged.
What had happened to the rest of her body? Had she been paralyzed? She couldn’t rise, but she could feel, just barely, something soft, a cushion, supporting her head. She wasn’t sure what it was. She couldn’t even tell if she was lying down or standing up.
What had happened to her?
A suffocating, all-consuming panic rose inside her—another sign of her continuing mortality—and spread like wildfire. She couldn’t take this uncertainty. She struggled with all her might to lift her head—there, had she done it? She couldn’t be sure. Exhausted, her mind slumped.
How long had she been there? Hours? Days? The darkness, the aloneness, provided no barometer of time or space. She tried to remember how she’d arrived, but that only contributed to her frustration. She remembered the terror of the ritual, the fog, the feeling of a presence—and then nothing. It was as if her mind had snapped, gone to another place, retreated within itself in response to whatever had occurred.
And what had occurred? Had she been taken captive by some beast from the netherworld, something called forth by the N’anga? Was she imprisoned within her own mind, was she imagining the sound of her own voice, the salty taste of her blood when she bit her lip?
She moaned. She couldn’t remember.
Her mind began to wander, perhaps a survival mechanism, a peripatetic journey to the places that could salvage her soul and lift her embattled psyche above the quicksand of despair in which this darkness had mired it.
Her house. Dawn. So many birds calling out to her, sweet creatures, drifting lazily on the chill in the air, her favorite family of weavers puttering in and out of their nests that hang from the branches like straw mangos. Chongololos creeping through the wet ground after fresh rain, treading softly under pawpaw and granadilla. Biting into fresh lycee, juice tumbling playfully down her chin, feasting on boerwors and sadza.
Her father. Watching her in the garden from the kitchen window, a sublime smile on his face. No—there she cannot linger.
The Eastern Highlands. Beloved, ancient Nyanga. Shaggy green hills rising above flat-topped acacias, clouds that touch the ground, Mount Nyangani glowering in the distance, smoldering with the dying light of the sun like a primeval forge. The road a thin cracked ribbon leading deeper into the highlands, deep monkey forest on the uphill climb, reaching towards Vumba, the place of mist. Sitting on top of the world after a day of hiking, breathing the freshest air on earth, tranquility falling as soft rain. Riding horseback over bubbling brook and tangled hedge, virgin copse and knightly hill, through forests so luminescent green she wonders if God accidentally spilled too much chlorophyll. Mounds of granite like slumbering gods with arms and legs folded in loom above lush meadow and crown ageless mountain. Waterfall and gushing stream, apple orchard and rose garden, footpaths and waterbuck and kudu, umbrella trees under Punch Rock, acacia avenue.
Her eyes watered.
Zimbabwe holds her in its hands, cradles her. A place in the vastness of Africa where she feels some semblance of control, of protection—more than just because it is her home. It is truly special. Sunrise on Lake Kariba, gin and tonics at the Vic Falls Hotel after game drives, canoeing down the Zambezi, the magic of Mana Pools, basking humbly in the spirituality of Matobo Hills -
A light.
She blinked. It was still there. A tiny pinprick of illumination in the distance. The sudden glow looked like the birth of a universe.
The light flickered and bobbed, as from a torch or lantern, changing enough to convince her it was not a figment of her imagination. It grew brighter, steadily filled more of the void, and it was moving towards her.
She vacillated between relief and apprehension—was it a human being? She tried to sit again and failed. Why couldn’t she move?
She started to call out, then decided against it. She would wait and see what happened. She could always call out if the light started to move in a different direction.
It grew closer and closer, until she could see the shadowy outline of a person behind the light, perhaps carrying it. It looked as if the person had emerged out of a… tunnel?
The outline of the bearer came into focus with maddening slowness. Nya’s eyes strained towards the figure, roved up and down the upright form, until they finally stopped, agape in frozen recognition, unable to tear away from the curved spires of wickedness sprouting out of the misshapen mask.
47
Dr. Fangwa snapped another command. The boy glided to the rack and selected a different jar, then handed it to Fangwa and replaced the previous one. An amber liquid swirled within, thinner than the other substance.
Grey swallowed. Sunbursts of pain from the last jar still flared up and down his arm, burst across his skin like popping blisters.
Fangwa click-clacked and opened the jar with a rapturous sigh, stirring it with another swab extracted from his robe. “This little spirit represents the purest pain you will ever feel. When you meet her you’ll beg me to return to her sister, you’ll plead to watch your skin melt from your bones rather than feel her sting.” His hand paused in midair, drops of the liquid falling off the swab. “Are you ready to discuss what Lucky has told you?”
If only Fangwa would try to move him to the table, Grey could try something—but he knew the Doctor was smart. He would incapacitate him first, in some unthinkable manner.
Grey took shallow breaths to sedate the pain. No matter what Fangwa did to him, he wouldn’t go out whimpering. He’d learn what he could, though he doubted he’d live long enough to use it. He looked Fangwa in the eye. “Lucky said the only person who will suffer more than me is Nya, and that someone has unfinished business with her.”
Fangwa’s thin lips tightened, and he began to tremble, eyes dancing with rage. “I’ll torture both their souls for this!” His hands ran over each other, fingers twitching, two spiders at play. “I must find her be
fore he takes her.”
“Take her where? Who has her?”
Fangwa’s head snapped back towards Grey. “The N’anga.”
Grey forgot for the moment his pain, his imminent torture. He forgot everything save one thing.
He waged a futile war with his bonds, almost weeping with frustration. But if neither Doctor Fangwa nor Lucky were the N’anga, then who was he?
His attention lurched back to the Doctor, who was staring at him with sadistic glee. He called out once more to the boy. The boy came and replaced the jar, and then went to the wall with the surgical tools. He selected a long, slender knife and carried it to Fangwa.
“The topic of conversation has changed,” Fangwa said.
“If you care about Nya, let me go,” Grey said. “Tell me where the N’anga is, and I give you my word I’ll kill him.”
And then I’ll come back and kill you.
Fangwa’s face stretched into a sneer, and he let out a sharp giggle. “The only thing more preposterous than your release,” he rasped, “is the notion that you would kill him. He will take your mind and—”
Both Grey and Fangwa turned in shock towards the trapdoor, which had just creaked open. Light poured into the room, and then a black cloud smothered the light. The cloud swept down the stairs and stood upright, and Viktor’s presence filled the room.
A dagger with an asymmetrical, wavy blade sprung into Viktor’s hands before he reached the ground. He moved towards Fangwa without hesitation.
Fangwa eyed the shelf with the jars, but Grey could tell he wouldn’t reach it before Viktor closed on him.
Fangwa rattled off something to the boy, who moved towards the shelf faster than Grey had ever seen him move, although still with the motions of an automaton.
Fangwa held his knife delicately, more akin to a surgeon than a warrior. Viktor tyrannized his weapon. The hilt of the knife disappeared in his large hands, an extension of Viktor’s fierce will.
