Shadow on the Wall: Superhero | Magical Realism Novels (The SandStorm Chronicles | Magical Realism Books Book 1)

by Tyler, P. K.

  "Recai…"

  The voice from his dream called to him, and the wind rushed past, making it impossible to breathe. The oxygen pushed out from the eye of the storm, creating an emptiness around him. Only sand and heat filled Recai's lungs as he struggled for breath, his eyes watering as the reality of the danger around him solidified.

  "I am with you, always."

  Recai fell to the ground as he struggled for breath. The voice that haunted him whispered as his eyes streamed tears and the sand built up around him. So much sand swam in the sky it was as if the earth itself were being ground to powder.

  A crack rang out, sounding like the gates of Jahannam had broken open, and the devils themselves were rushing toward him, surrounding Recai with their hellfire. Lightning blazed in the sky and the electricity of the atmosphere intensified until it coalesced into one final thunderbolt, which blazed with the hottest fire and trailed pillars of black smoke. Recai called out to the angel Malik to release him as a thunderbolt rocked through the storm and struck true.

  Part IV

  "Things are not what they appear to be: nor are they otherwise."

  Surangama Sutra

  Darya slammed the phone down after reaching her uncle's voicemail for the seventh time.

  Two hours!

  She had waited for two hours for him to come meet her. He had requested this meeting; he had insisted they discuss the current "structure" face-to-face. All along she worked in the background, twisting and manipulating the leaders of the RTK with various pressure points. Some had weaknesses to exploit, while others had ambitions of their own. The last two years had been dedicated to finding and using every leverage she had.

  The money was the final stage. She had been slowly siphoning off the investments into an account in the name of her pseudonym, Dayar Yildirim. There was a second set of documents, a second set of accounts, a second life, all in the name her uncle gave her to hide his need for a woman to run things for him.

  Uncle Mahmet was weak, just like the rest of them. Sex, power, greed, shame—with men it was always something. The trick was to find the soft underbelly and strike with precision.

  The longer she waited the more agitated she became, anticipating his arrival. She busied herself with email and other tasks, but checking on the various accounts and investments she had only occupied so much time. All of the work she had to do required a kind of dedicated focus she didn't currently possess. She itched to leave her small downtown office and not be here when he finally arrived. That's what she would have done to anyone else who had the audacity to keep her waiting, but this altercation was overdue. It was time for her to receive some respect and compensation for the work she did. It was time for the power of Elih to know that Dayar is Darya.

  Perhaps she would call Recai. His green eyes hadn't left her mind since she'd first met him at her uncle's party. He was different from the others she knew in Elih. They were all either philanderers parading as pious men, or bound to the outdated concepts of sexuality and modesty her religion dictated. The proper and expected behavior was to wait: wait for Recai to call, wait for him to inquire about her to her uncle or his friends. He would never contact her directly. Or perhaps he would. Recai was a man even death couldn't contain, so perhaps he wasn't interested in the rules of society. But then, why hadn't she heard from him?

  A caged animal desperate for release, she prowled her office restlessly. She yearned to claw and rip at the world that kept her confined. This is why she'd never been a good daughter, or a good Muslim, and why she'd never be a good wife. Dreams of escape occupied her every thought. It was wrong, but she couldn't fight her nature.

  The evening sun filtered through the blinds that blocked passersby from seeing into the back room of her office. Even here she was hidden. The front room was a façade; no one worked there or staffed the desk elegantly labeled "Reception." Darya spent most of her days alone, though occasionally she would meet with an investor or a client.

  In the corner of her office stood an ornate screen that hid a small desk behind it. She would sit there during meetings, and act as Dayar's secretary, adding another layer to her humiliation and isolation. She couldn't speak with them as herself when the mere presence of a woman in business meetings was so offensive she had to hide herself. At first clients had insisted on speaking with Bey Yildirim in person, but soon they came to accept Darya as his emissary. Millions of dollars passed through her hands as easily as sand sifted though the fingers of a child, and still, her face could not be seen.

  Located in the high-priced Safak district, the small space was situated on the ground floor of one of the more elegant buildings in the city. Everyone who passed by either to shop in the high-end stores or dine at one of the many international restaurants saw the sign on her door: Dayar Yildirim, Investment Manager. Every day she entered through that same door and every day her resentment and anger grew.

  From behind the screen she negotiated the deals and intimidated the men who now answered to her above their families, above Allah. She held the keys to the kingdom. Today her uncle was coming to try and snatch them back.

  Darya glared at the phone, more determined than ever. She held her head high and grabbed her hijab from where it was draped over a guest chair. Wrapping her hair and face in the thin black veil, she swore to herself she would never wait for any man again.

  "Here!" Hasad cried when he spotted Recai's half-buried Marussia.

  His arthritic finger pointed to the left from the passenger seat, reaching in front of Maryam's face, causing her to flinch back in surprise. The vehicle they rode in was large, but he was still close enough for the motion to temporarily block her view. Swerving, Maryam steered the Hummer they had requisitioned from Recai's garage in the direction Hasad pointed. Sand spun under the wheels for a moment before they found traction and sped forward.

  The Marussia B2 looked more like a cartoon than a car to Hasad. It was covered in sand. The storm had moved an entire dune from its original place to directly on top of the vehicle. The back end was buried but the front and driver's side protruded from the edge of the dune's incline.

  Premature relief flooded through Maryam. If his car is here, perhaps he is as well.

  Living in Recai's house was uncomfortable for the old man, who was accustomed to making his own way. The house sat eerily still without Recai's presence, making Hasad even more uncomfortable. Hasad found himself spending the time in the senior Osman's office sorting through newspapers, looking for a chink in the armor of the RTK. But his worry mounted when he realized just how long Recai had been gone.

  Finally, he had called Maryam, too early to yet be considered morning, but it was as late as he could stand to wait. The television had no reports of anyone notable having been injured, and he didn't dare call hospitals and risk alerting anyone of Recai's disappearance. The nurse who placed so much faith in them—for no reason Hasad could conceive—proved to be the only person he trusted.

  Hasad's mind wandered to his unlikely partner in the driver's seat of the Hummer. She was a Muslim and he a Jew, and yet he felt protective of her and impressed by her open heart. She had treated him as an equal despite his age and religion. She had helped Recai and Sabiha despite the risk because it was the right thing to do. Too many people take the easy path. If Maryam could see the goodness in people and work to make things better it really didn't matter by what name she called her God.

  "The boy is stupid. There's no reason to doubt it. Been trying to kill himself since the first time I met him."

  Hasad had been ranting for hours, his concern and annoyance with Recai growing in direct proportion to the amount of time the man was missing.

  "He's not stupid, he's… impetuous," Maryam defended Recai.

  "Stupid."

  "He's just prone to the dramatic."

  Hasad stepped down from the passenger's side once Maryam stopped the car and stormed toward the sand-filled vehicle. Her heart stopped in her chest for a beat as she took in the
sheer magnitude of the dune before them. She didn't spend much time in the desert. Having grown up by the water, the sight of so much sand without a sea made her feel exposed and panicky. She worried that at any moment she might disappear into the expanse around her and no one would ever know.

  "Besides, his theatrics sometimes work to his benefit," she called after Hasad.

  "Stupid. Look at this, the windows are down! Stupid!"

  Hasad thrust his hands into the driver's window and began searching in the dry sand. It drifted out the window as he pushed his arm deeper within. Scooping out armfuls of sand, Hasad let it filter to the ground at his feet before reaching in further. Its dry grains stuck to his wrinkled hands and sucked the moisture from his skin. His heart clenched with each handful that passed through his fingers.

  Maryam watched the old man's frantic search, unsure how to help. If Recai had come out here alone during a kum firtinasi, the chances he'd survived weren't strong. But she believed in him. His arrogant, indulgent and dramatic ways aside, she believed Recai was a good man, and after what she had seen at the hospital over the past few weeks she questioned how many good men there were left in Elih. Rapes were common in the city, but the past few weeks it seemed there was another every day. It was all she could do to keep her faith intact.

  Wherever Recai was, he had to be alive; her faith in humanity depended on it.

  "Well, there doesn't seem to be a body behind the wheel anyway," Hasad snorted, pulling his torso out of the window and looking up at the sky. Desperation filled his eyes with tears.

  Where could he be?

  "He's fine," Maryam insisted automatically for the seventy-thousandth time.

  "He knows how to survive in the desert; he knows how to get away from the winds."

  "If he wants to…"

  Hasad's tone was desperate; he feared he'd lost the only person who understood his pain—his son by death and guilt.

  The desert muffled all sound, an arid void within which it was easy to forget who you were or where you were going. Maryam looked around, imagining how easy it would be to disappear here, to lose herself into the nothingness surrounding her. She was thankful for the colorful hijab she had donned this morning; the contrast against the sand might make her body easier to find.

  "He's fine," she said again, more to herself than Hasad.

  With a grunt and a pass of the hand over his face, Hasad headed toward the edge of the dune. He had spent the better part of the last twenty years out here in the desert. He understood how to avoid an avalanche and navigate the drifts. His body moved to the shifting rhythm of the sand.

  "You Muslims aren't supposed to try to kill yourselves are you?" Hasad's tone was mocking, but waves of grief emanated from him.. "Why does this idiot-boy insist on doing every stupid thing he can think of?"

  Maryam followed Hasad without responding, imitating the man's steps as she moved across the sand. Her own concern ate at her from within. Had she been wrong to place so much faith in a man she didn't know? Had she been wrong to dream of change?

  Plodding forward, the two rounded the curve of the dune. The expanse before them was massive and empty. Sand flowed before them in all directions. They were at the center of the earth. Everything that had ever existed coalesced here. Time seemed to stand still in the desert.

  After twenty minutes of hiking through the shifting terrain, Hasad stopped and slumped down to the ground, setting his weight in the sand. His back curved forward and for a moment Maryam stood in front of him and could see the old man Hasad really was. Years of pain and grief shone in his eyes as he peered out into the distance, searching for everything he'd lost.

  "Effendi…"

  "Stop calling me that," he grunted without looking up at her. He shouldn't have called her. She was another attachment, another emotional investment he could not afford. Perhaps he was the reason for all this pain, perhaps simply by knowing her he would predetermine her death.

  "No."

  "Why do none of you listen to me? I'm not Turkish and I'm not Muslim and I'm not someone you should look up to! Don't call me that."

  "You are Effendi to me," Maryam stated as she curled her legs beneath her and sat next to him.

  "We're never going to find him like this."

  "He's survived out here before."

  "Barely."

  They sat in silence as the sun rose higher in the sky, assaulting the desert with its unforgiving heat.

  Ali Kalkan sat at his desk, staring at a picture of his three daughters. Aysel had been his youngest, the sweetest of his girls. He had called her ‘Tatim' and held her on his lap when she was young, reading her stories about the Prophet's daughter Fatimah and the Israelite Asiyah. And now she was gone.

  Aysel's death was as certain to Ali as was the fact that his office door was closed and that the street lights would come on at sunset. He had raised her to be honorable, to have pride in herself. Any woman of moral character would make the right decision after such disgrace. While mourning, he was also proud of her. That she may not have taken her own life never occurred to him.

  The timing between her attack and his investigation into the missing funds was not lost on him. Nor was the veiled threat he'd received from the bank manager in Nigeria when he'd called. His inquiries into the identity of the account owner were not received well, and somehow the man had known his daughter's name.

  He stared at the picture. Continuing his investigation into the money missing from the Osman accounts would put them all at risk, but what kind of man would he be if he didn't? There was no easy answer and his commitment to his family was stronger than his allegiance to the Osmans, no matter how much he owed them.

  Ali sighed and opened a drawer on the left side of his desk. He took out the heavy weight monogrammed paper his wife had bought him when he'd been promoted to Head Accountant and wrote one name. The name that would lead Recai to his answers. The name that would haunt him as long as he had daughters living in Elih.

  Dayar Yildirim

  It was midmorning on the day after Darya's scheduled meeting with her uncle and she still had not heard from him. The confidence she'd felt when she'd walked out of her office the evening prior waned as she sat before her laptop at the small desk she used at home. Analyzing the numbers from last week's investments allowed her mind to focus on the task before her and avoid her emotions, which vacillated between outright terror at his silence to exuberance at the upcoming confrontation.

  She stood and stretched, enjoying her tired muscles after the women-only yoga class she'd attended that morning. It was one of her rare public activities. Generally, Darya did not get along with women. Because they are weak.

  Grabbing her cooling cup of coffee, she opened the large doors leading out to the patio. The sand from the kum firtinasi had settled, burying those unfortunate enough to live at the bottom of the world. Here, in her penthouse, Darya could breathe and enjoy the sprawling city beneath her. In the distance, a single lightning bolt lit up the sky over the desert.

  Residual electricity sparked in the air.

  Change comes unexpectedly in times of high pressure.

  Dehydration motivated Maryam. It was almost noon and they had been sitting watching the dunes for hours. No movement, other than the occasional bird-of-prey overhead. As they sat, Hasad aged and Maryam worried.

  "Effendi, let's go. We can come back with supplies and search."

  "No."

  "Sitting here isn't going to help him or help us find him. We can't walk farther out into that," Maryam said gesturing toward the expansive desert.

  A crack of thunder and single bolt of lightning burst from the sky, landing within feet of where they sat. Maryam jumped back with a scream, moving her hand to her heart.

  With a steadying breath, Maryam tried to reassure herself. Just another storm. The flash of lightning had been close and the atmosphere tasted burnt in her mouth.

  "An electrical storm?" she asked.

  "No," Hasad stood and su
rveyed the sky. "There are no clouds."

  He stepped toward where the air had sparked.

  "Those don't happen often here, and never with only one thunderbolt. There should be more flashing in the sky. But now it's quiet again . . ." his voice trailed off as his eyes unfocused, taking in the vast emptiness.

  Maryam's nerves were heightened. Her fear for Recai combined with the freak lightning and threatened to push her into a panic.

  "Let's go," she said with a shaking voice.

  "No."

  "What if it happens again?"

  Maryam's tone was nervous, pleading. She didn't like being out here in the open; the stillness of the air made her anxious.

  Hasad took a step forward, and then another. He wandered out farther, not hearing Maryam's pleas for him to come back with her. He ventured out toward the gentle slope of a small dune. A song in the sizzling air called him forward, beckoning him to the place where the sand was singed from the lightning's contact.

  "Hasad!" Maryam called, chasing after him clumsily on legs unaccustomed to walking on a moving landscape. "Where are you going? We have to go back!"

  Wind gusted over them, chilling their skin as their sweat evaporated. Then the gust ended as suddenly as it had begun, but the sand it swept up still moved in the air around them. Each particle drifted sideways against gravity, circling the two unlikely allies. When Maryam reached Hasad he pulled her to him protectively.

  The air quivered as the sand hung suspended.

  Standing together, surrounded by the impossible reality of magic, the two held one another tightly. The young woman allowed herself to be sheltered from the djinn dance around them, fearing that this may be the moment she submitted to death.

  Above them the sky cracked open with a deafening boom. The reverberation of the sound hit them like a wave, taking the dancing sand with it as it spread over the desert. Lightning flashed again, blinding them with its light. Their skin sizzled with the heat.