The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 20

by Stephen Jones (ed. )

  All he found was precise neatness, a well-made bed, and ironed shirts in the closet. Not even any photographs, although there were slight tacky marks on the walls of the second bedroom as if perhaps pictures of some kind had been stuck up until recently. He’d stared at those marks for a long time but they refused to speak to him.

  Eventually he went out on the balcony. The sun-baked tiles burned his feet through his shoes and shading his eyes with his hand, he looked out over the ocean of the desert that filled his view. Was this why Cartwright had moved? Simply to be closer to the desert? He stared at the dunes which looked flat even though he knew better and bit the inside of his cheek. But why? What was so special about the desert? The desert glared back at him.

  Clift had picked him up at 5:00 pm, just as the heat of the day was turning its rage inwards, and they’d driven in almost silence to the club. Fanshawe was sure there had been a slight edge of smugness in Clift’s expression as he’d peered over and asked, “Everything in order?” Fanshawe could hear the unspoken words echoing underneath the louder ones. Sometimes heart attacks just happen. Maybe it was just the heat addling his tired brain, but experience told him that smugness like that normally came from someone who thought they’d got away with something.

  He wiggled his glass at the barman who nodded and waited for Clift to finish the last mouthful of his food before he spoke.

  “So why did he move from the first house? Omdurman’s a good forty-five minutes drive from here. It doesn’t seem practical.”

  “He got an infestation of ants. Red ones. Those bastards really sting when they bite.” Clift pushed away the remains of his chicken and chips in a basket so that it sat next to Fanshawe’s, ready to be silently cleared away.

  Fanshawe stared at it, as he mulled over Clift’s words. Meat still hung uneaten from the tiny half-skeleton; just more greasy Western waste in a starving country. No one would boil those bones for chicken stock. Fanshawe idly wondered how the local men that worked at the club continued with their benign smiles and nods of subservience. Perhaps one day someone would drive by the Sudan club to find confused white heads stuck on poles at its gates, mimicking Gordon, brows still furrowed. What did we do?

  “He moved out while it was being fumigated. And just never moved back.”

  Fanshawe looked up from the basket, firmly back on his very Western business. “There was no mention of ants in his file. That just shows that he requested a move. To that particular house, in fact.”

  As if appearing to support Clift’s argument, a small black ant industriously carried an impossibly unwieldy crumb over to the far edge of the bar. It seemed to Fanshawe that ants and flies were a way of life in this part of the world. Ants wouldn’t bother Cartwright, however painful their bite was. And he would know better than to draw attention to himself, even in a minor way.

  “Paperwork isn’t one of our strong points.” Clift shrugged. “Not on the admin things like housing. The Embassy’s too small for a dedicated housing officer.”

  The barman replaced Fanshawe’s empty glass with a fresh, full one. Around them the room was relatively quiet apart from a fat man sitting further down from them who was laughing loudly, either with or at, a much thinner middle-aged man and his rather bored-looking pale wife. Fanshawe thought that perhaps Khartoum was not the best place for the pale-skinned to find themselves. He had a feeling you could burn in the shade here if your skin was so inclined.

  “What’s a haboob?” he asked suddenly, and was sure Clift twitched.

  “Haboob?” The twitch again; a small tic in the man’s cheek. “Where did you hear that word?”

  “It was something the tea boy said.” Cartwright changed after the first haboob. That’s what the chai wallah had implied.

  Clift lit a cigarette. “It’s the local name for a desert sandstorm. We’ve had a few over the past couple of months. The season for them really starts now. You can feel the potential for one in the air most days.” He drained his glass; almost half his drink gone in one go. “They’re quite a sight.”

  Fanshawe thought he could make out the first beginnings of a bead of sweat on the younger man’s hairline, even within the cool embrace of the chugging air-conditioning. He lit a cigarette of his own.

  “The tea boy said Cartwright was quite fascinated with them.”

  Clift’s eyes slid away. “Yes, I suppose . . . although he only saw his first one a couple of months ago. By the end of the season I’m sure he would have got used to them.” He sucked almost a centimetre of the Marlboro into blazing red and orange.

  Fanshawe watched him. How old was the first secretary? Thirty maybe? He suddenly looked younger. Clift may well go far within the ranks of her Majesty’s Diplomatic service, but he would never make MI6. Not with that tic telling in his cheek. He sipped his drink. It really was very good.

  “Perhaps,” he said softly, “he moved to be nearer to the desert?”

  Clift stared at the bar. “Maybe.”

  Behind them, the thin man and his pale-skinned wife said their goodbyes and headed out into the night. The fat man stayed where he was, a fresh drink placed in front of him. He smiled at the barman.

  “Shookran.”

  “Afwan.”

  “Afwan yourself.”

  Over Clift’s shoulder, Fanshawe could see the barman laughing along with the man’s English/Arabic joke, but there was a sense that he’d heard it far too many times before. He took the tip though, before returning to cleaning and polishing glasses.

  The bar paused in silence for a moment and then Clift pushed his stool away and stood up. “I think I’ll head home.” He busily picked up his wallet and car keys, avoiding eye contact. “Do you want a lift to the Hilton?”

  Fanshawe shook his head. “I’ll get a taxi later. Think I’ll enjoy the air-conditioning for a little while longer.”

  Clift nodded. “I’ll pick you up in the morning then.” As Clift moved, Fanshawe caught a glimpse of shoelace around his neck. Thin, black and local.

  “I’ll be there.”

  Sliding his glass round in his fingers, enjoying the cool condensation, Fanshawe watched him go. Heart attack. Haboob. Omdurman. Sahara. All of those words were wrapped up in the tic in his young colleague’s face. But what was he hiding? Cartwright going mad? Maybe he was poisoned with a slow-acting agent. Maybe that’s why he changed. After his first haboob. And why was Clift wearing a pendant like the one they’d seen this morning?

  He turned back to the bar and found that the fat man was watching him, sharp eyes peering out from sockets dragged downwards with the weight of his cheeks. Despite the jowls, he managed a grin.

  “Jasper Vincent. Freelance journalist.” He raised his glass as a welcome. “How are you finding Khartoum?”

  “Is my newness that obvious?”

  Vincent laughed, and although it was loud and brash, there was an earthy warmth there. “Your skin doesn’t look like leather yet.”

  “Fair enough comment. Alan Fanshawe. It’s a flying visit for me. Just checking up on some things at the Embassy. Routine paperwork stuff. Freelance, you say?”

  Vincent nodded. “Even the BBC doesn’t keep a man out here full time anymore. Not now things have calmed down. I started out with them, but then went native and couldn’t face heading back to London anywhere else for that matter.” He paused. “I presume you’re here about that British dip that died.”

  Fanshawe carefully sipped his drink. “You heard about that?”

  “It’s a small town. Where ex-pats are concerned, word travels.” Ice that clung to the last hope of solidity clinked within his glass. “And I was in here when that chap that just left and the doctor came in afterwards. They seemed pretty shaken up. They drank a lot at any rate, and neither of them was laughing.”

  Signalling the barman to replenish their glasses, Fanshawe was far too well trained to push for more information. It would come soon enough he suspected, from a man like Vincent. And asking was often the very best way of not
finding out.

  Vincent stood up, sweat holding the creases and crumples in his linen trousers from where he’d been sitting. “Let’s take these onto the terrace. It should be pleasant out there now.”

  They left the cool brightness of the bar and Fanshawe followed the fat man out to a metal table and chairs on the red dusty tiles. Yellow bulbs gave out a warm glow above them, and although the air was hot there was just the lightest touch of breeze. As he took his seat Fanshawe listened for a moment to the loud calling of the crickets and other insects who, in the gloom of the lawns and cacti and bushes, seemed determined to drown out the generator’s soft thrum.

  Under the glow of one of the lamps, a small sea of black lay in the pool of light. He tossed an abandoned bottle top into it, and the mass rose as one for a moment before fragmenting, the huge flying ants clattering their wings into each other as they hovered before settling back down, drowning the discarded metal disc. Fanshawe shivered a little in disgust. The place was all wrong; dark, alien and wild.

  “How on earth could you choose to stay here rather than go back to London?”

  Vincent stared out into the darkness, his stomach and arms overflowing from the metal confines of the chair.

  “Africa is a strange place,” he said, eventually. “And maybe Sudan is one of the strangest within it. Some people view it as a kind of terra media, lying between and linking Africa and the Arab world. Others see it as lying on the fault line between two peoples, torn between them and unable to unite. Maybe it’s both of those things. They certainly have their share of problems with the South. That’s what brought me here in the first place, reporting on the civil war. But Sudan is more than that. In the face of the white man its peoples are all one. The Dinka, the Arabs and the Nuer and the other smaller tribes, they can do what we can’t begin to – they all understand the land. They understand the power and truth of living on the edge of poverty and with the vast Sahara challenging them to survive it.”

  He paused, and Fanshawe smiled. The man had a way with words. He could have made a good career for himself away from this filthy hellhole. “And you fell in love with that challenge?” Fanshawe was cynical. With his wide girth and the ruddy face of someone destined for an early grave due to far too much enjoyment of the finer things in life, Vincent did not look like a man that wanted the challenges of living on the edge of poverty. In fact, he looked like a man a year away from a heart attack. Fanshawe would believe that death of this man with as much conviction as he couldn’t believe it of Cartwright.

  Vincent grinned. “No. I fell in love with a Dinka woman. A tall, ebony beauty full of the strength and quiet promise of the desert. You don’t get women like that back in England. Trust me.”

  Fanshawe watched Vincent’s chubby wrist as it reached for his glass and his own smile fell a little. Around it hung ivory and battered metal.

  “What is that bracelet? They seem to be everywhere. Some damned local tried to sell me one today and even Clift’s wearing one.”

  Vincent’s chubby fingers teased the charm for a moment. “Ah, my magic charm. The wife gave it to me. She insists I wear it in haboob season, and I’m not going to argue with her.”

  That word again. Haboob. Fanshawe’s jaw clenched. “I don’t understand the fascination with the bloody desert and the sandstorms,” he muttered, the gin not strong enough to relax him.

  Vincent’s convivial appearance had melted away. He looked thoughtful. Almost pensive. “Your man lived out in Omdurman, didn’t he? I heard stories about him, you know. Wandering out in the desert in the full heat of the day, taking photograph after photograph of the dunes.”

  Fanshawe sighed. In his years in the service he’d learned there was no point in being secretive with information that was already out there. “It would appear that he had become a little obsessive about the desert in the weeks before his death, yes.” It’s all in the sand. He paused. “After his first haboob.”

  Vincent nodded as if all the things that were leaving Fanshawe so confused, were making perfect sense to him. “Yeah, the natives said the spirits in the haboob had got him.” He sat back in his chair, comfortable in the heat.

  “People think that Sudan is a Muslim and Christian country, most of its people one or the other. And in some ways that’s true. It seems so the Western world anyway, where we have a habit of only seeing the people we think matter. But the Dinka and the other tribes from the south, they have their own religions. Older ones. And maybe darker and more powerful ones too.”

  The crickets roared louder and Fanshawe could help but wonder if they were trying to silence the journalist who considered himself native, but was so obviously not of this land.

  “Haboobs are amazing to see.” Vincent looked up into the night sky around them. “You might see one tonight if this wind holds to its promise.” Fanshawe lifted his head. The other man was right: the breeze was getting stronger.

  “And sandstorms are all haboobs had been for maybe centuries, until the Dinka started fleeing from the south, crossing the desert and bringing their old religions with them. It was as if perhaps they woke something with their steady march across the sand. Something that had slept for too long and was happy to be woken.” He smiled. “The true religion of the desert dwellers.”

  Fanshawe wondered for a long moment if the journalist was slightly mad or maybe had a touch of sunstroke or was just plain drunk. Perhaps there was no real information to be had here. The flying ants shifted a little in the pool of light and he fought a ripple of revulsion.

  “What did the doctor say was the cause of death?” Vincent asked.

  Fanshawe peered over at the fat man. “Heart attack. Why? What else could it have been?”

  Vincent laughed a little. “Well, that would depend on whether you believe in the spirits in the desert.”

  “I don’t understand.” Fanshawe wondered if perhaps he was just being lured into a game with the jaded ex-pat; some old public school trick of getting one over on the new boy.

  “The Dinka believe a great God lives in the hot earth beneath the endless layers of sand. Most of the time he sleeps in the coolness of the ground away from the sun. But for two or three months of the year, he’s restless and sometimes wakes and reclaims the land, striding through the desert and leaving a huge rolling storm of dust in the wake.”

  Vincent looked over at Fanshawe. “The Dinka say that when he walks the desert so do the spirits of those that died in it, all of those that fell or are buried there. They can revisit the living, carried in the cloud. That’s why some of the locals bury their loved ones out on the edge of the city – they hope that they’ll return.”

  Fanshawe sniffed. Bloody native hokum-pokum. “That’s an appealing legend.” Perhaps he should have got a lift back to the hotel from Clift. “But you don’t expect me to believe it, do you?”

  Vincent grinned, his cheeks squashing his glinting eyes. “No, I don’t. But I’ll tell you this, just so you know.” He leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. “It wasn’t Clift and the Doctor that buried him out in the desert. It was Mahmood, his servant.” He paused, Fanshawe was sure for effect, before continuing.

  “The story goes that your man wandered out in that last haboob, right into the middle of it, to see if the things he thought he’d glimpsed and heard were true. He came back hours later, a walking dead man; his eyes and ears full of sand and muttering incoherently.”

  Fanshawe stared. If Vincent hadn’t used Cartwright’s houseboy’s name he’d have been laughing and on his way to find a taxi. As it was his mind was racing. Could Vincent be in the pay of the Russians? And why would the Russians create such an elaborate story when he’d already been told by his own people that Cartwright had died of a commonplace heart attack? Around him it seemed that the hot black night crept closer, threatening to smother him.

  “How do you know this?”

  “I told you, word travels. And I’m married to a Dinka. The white man who thought he saw the dead wa
lking in the haboob has been the talk of the Dinka for a few months. They take these things seriously.”

  Fanshawe appeared smooth and relaxed as he leaned back in his chair, despite the edge in his nerves. “Go on.”

  “Mahmood wanted to call the Faquih to purge the spirits, but the Englishman collapsed on the floor and filled with sand, gripped his arm and wouldn’t let him go. He held him like that for a full five minutes until the desert really claimed him and he died. They had a pact you see. Mahmood had promised that if anything happened to him, he’d bury him in the old traditional ways out by the desert. He called the Embassy man out and when he saw the state of the body and went for the doctor and was in a panic about a bloody coffin, Mahmood took the body to the edge of the desert and buried it before disappearing with whatever money your man had given him.”

  “Isn’t Mahmood an Arab name? Why would he believe any of this?”

  “Arab father, native mother,” Vincent shrugged. “Most Sudanese have a healthy respect for all the religions. When you live in poverty and with disease and death always ready to grab you, it’s advisable to keep your options open.”

  They sat in silence, and behind them a light bulb flickered but kept its hold on the rare stream electricity. The outside of Fanshawe’s gin and tonic glass was damp under his fingers as he finished his drink.

  “So, you think Cartwright really believed that the dead walked in the haboobs and wanted to become like them? And you believe that?”