"The piece of drywall fell away when she withdrew her hand from the opening she made, and she ate it. Who would have thought we would have had to post a sign, 'Not for human consumption'? The drywall, like everything else around here, belongs--oh, shall we say--elsewhere. That little chunk of drywall had to find its way out of her, and it tried the most immediate way, but she swallowed her vomit back down. Mena was to gather up every drop--not Guert, you can't trust her not to eat it--and stuff it back in the hole. Mena failed, and Caroline left with it inside her. That's when we--and I say we because none of us work alone, not even me--were sent after her.
"Eva couldn't allow any of it to leave the country. When Caroline went to the hospital we were forced to follow. Now that we've collected the last of it, including what the lab took, our job is almost complete. I see that there is some dust on your trousers from where you wiped your hands. Those trousers--I'll take them unless you don't mind me licking that dust off like I used to do on Caroline's stomach." It gave a giggle that sounded like a cat's cry. "She's dead. Eva couldn't keep her around; they shared too similar a gene pool. She didn't want anything from her sister other than Jeffrey. Jeffrey's seed is what Eva's after. Our darling Eva's going to have Jeffrey's baby, then die as she delivers. With Eva's dying breath the baby takes her first. Always a girl, born as herself--Lamia. You see, for a woman as old as Eva, she has to be careful of what she adds to her genetic ladder. One mistake, like the one made many years ago, has already leaked into her DNA. Now, she needs Jeffrey, with his dominate gene, to wash it out. It may take more than one bath, if you get my meaning."
"More than one child?" Nkumbi asked.
"She may need him for a generation or two."
"Edward?" he asked.
"Her husband, then her father," Granger replied. "He drank too much, lived too much, and damaged what was left of his DNA. But it's not her style to tell a person how to live his or her life. Someday doctors will be able to remove her defective gene. For now, we won't rush progress--otherwise it's rushing, not progressing." Mr. Granger exhaled with a throaty gurgle. "We knew the eventuality of biotechnology and she cannot risk leaving her body to be found and experimented upon. It has forced her to live as a recluse, to destroy her own dead body."
"How?"
"You do have a lot of questions." Mr. Granger paused, the eyes rotating in their sockets as it scanned the room. "She embraces her body's death--consumes it. Baby food." Granger fixed its reptilian eyes back on Nkumbi's face and lowered its voice. "She fears death, too--its finality and hopelessness. What does death have to offer her? If you believe in the devil, and I think you do, then you, too, should have done your best to avoid what you fear most."
"The book?"
"You shouldn't have read it," Granger sang. "She knew you would. So did I. I can see the wonder of what you read in your green eyes."
Nkumbi put his hand over his eyes. "Green? Not like them," he said with a cry.
"Like all of them. Like Eva. She's expecting you. The book was written for this specific time period. Timing is essential to her. The economy is her game and precious metals are her pieces. If she can ruin the economy, she can take down governments, countries, people. Mass destruction."
"Turning lead into gold," Nkumbi said, as if he had figured out an age-old conundrum. "She has the Philosopher's Stone."
"No," Granger said. "She has the tree."
"Howzit," said someone from behind. Nkumbi turned quickly and Eva stood over him, her warm breath heating his face. Blisters spattered like flecks of red and white paint across her face. Her eyes, round and green like marbles, bore into him. The loose skin under her eyes drooped and her lips parted to reveal a black hole.
Nkumbi turned to face Mr. Granger, to throw blame at it, but the demon had disappeared. Nkumbi plunged his fingers in his pocket for the vial. His pocket was empty. A fresh coating of sweat covered his forehead. His lips were cracked and he swallowed and coughed, incredibly thirsty and lightheaded.
"I got here just in time," Eva said before Nkumbi blacked out.
78--EVA
Eva had the garden organized down to the last crumb of dirt. She pushed Nkumbi's body aside with her foot. "Mr. Granger, why do you make more work for me?" she asked, taking the broom from against the wall.
Granger's job was to make sure no one ever got inside. It had guided the man at her feet into her garden, and the arrogance of the creature concerned her greatly. There were others like him, but none as reckless. Nkumbi was a police officer, and a well respected one, too.
Damn Mr. Granger. Nkumbi could have plucked or uprooted anything. She became angrier as she thought about what might have happened had she not appeared when she did, and swiftly kicked Nkumbi in the stomach out of spite. She picked up a terra cotta pot and threw it lethally at his head, smashing his skull. A slivered shard dropped to her feet and Eva bent to pick it up, intending to use it on the rest of Nkumbi.
"There you are," she said to the grey skinned thing as it slithered past her. "I've told you to stay out." She threw the shard at it, missing her target.
There would be an investigation for sure, and a lot of publicity. This mess would not be easily swept into a corner. Phone calls and favours would have to be made.
"You did this on purpose," she said as she worked, sweeping up the pot slivers, hair flinging around her head as she tossed the bigger chunks into an empty bucket nearby. "You've put us all in the terrible position of exposure."
"We only wanted to scare him," Mr. Granger said from behind its hiding spot. "You had to take that from us by showing him your face."
She reflected for a moment. "Yes," she said, "I'll have to be more careful about what I show people." Eva picked through the broken pottery around Nkumbi's head, throwing them into the bucket. "Jeffrey's mind is like this broken pot--it won't hold anything I put into it. I assigned you to Caroline and you worked too slowly, bringing out Jeffrey's pity. Had you paid more attention you would've had a better grasp on their relationship. And now this."
"You were going to kill him anyway," said Granger.
"Not in my garden." She peeked through the branches along the base of the red fruit tree. The creature leaned against the trunk, its skin blending in like a chameleon's. Arms were snaked around the tree and its forked tongue slipped in and out of a sliver of a mouth.
"I see you," she said. "You want to eat the fruit. One bite, and its addiction will have you hungering for more, like a starved tick, and you'll gorge until you burst."
The hairless creature waited, contemplating its next move. Eyes circled inside its sockets, searching for an escape.
"I'll tear those eyes out so you can never find your way in here again," she said, leveling with the base of the tree like a trip wire against the floor. Mr. Granger grunted and shot past her towards the door. It slithered over the door's threshold leaving a trail of ooze. "Stay out!" she yelled.
Eva had come to the garden not only to deal with the intruder, but also to gather more seeds for a second book printing and to pluck a flower for Jeffrey's drink, his aphrodisiac. Its healing qualities drew Jeffrey back for more. Now that he'd had a taste of it his body was dependent and he'd die from a simple cold without the flower to nurse him back to health.
She cut Nkumbi's throat with her fingernail, watering the base of the tree with his blood. The Gorges swelled and blushed a deeper shade of red. The electrolytes and platelets would nourish the fruit, making it sweeter. Her household ate from the Tree of Life. It didn't make them live forever. Accidents, murder, disease, cancer: those were the enemy--not time; not age.
She picked a Gorge from the ancient tree that had grown in the Garden and ripped a yellow flower from the branch. Opening her hand to release a blackened and shriveled lump from her palm, Caroline's eye, she plopped it into a wooden bowl. She tore the red fruit in half, seeded it then slid the seeds onto the shelf to dry. Her fingers crushed the flower and mixed it with Caroline's eye. Guert would stir the finished muti into Je
ffrey's drink, just as she had at the party, the night Jeffrey first met Eva. The eye mixed into that drink had belonged to Jeffrey's father; the man had desired every thing and every woman he saw.
Eva had told Jeffrey's father that she would escape with him to London and they packed hurriedly. Phred drove them to the airport. She held a briefcase filled with Rand. His packed satchel sat at his feet. As the Rolls came to a stop outside the airline entrance, he clasped his satchel and reached for the briefcase. "Do you have our tickets?" he asked, sweat dripping from his forehead. Eva moved the briefcase aside, handed him the tickets and leaned in as if for a kiss, reaching up to stoke his cheek with her hand. She dug her fingernail into his eye and plucked it out then pushed him out of the car before he had a chance to scream.
She had predicted his heart attack, smelling it in his sweat. She let him go home to die.
Since it became obvious that the plant's effect waned over time, Eva had given Jeffrey the necklace. The magnet within its copper center attracted particles from the flower into his arteries and heart, providing a longer lasting effect which made Jeffrey see what she wanted him to see: herself and her house as desirable and feasible.
79
The necklace had been a gift from Adam. Lamia's first husband had created it in the Garden, manipulating the soft gold, plucked like a delicate buttercup from the grass, into a thin cord. The red carnelian and blue lapis along with the magnetic bronze disc pushed up and out of the earth's core into Adam's expectant hands. The disc had a power of attraction that was innate and irresistible and the magnate worked in the literal sense. Adam possessed the positive element, Lamia possessed the negative. Adam gave it to her to draw her heart to his. Free will was a gift from YHWH, and Lamia had not yet chosen to love Adam. The necklace was not made to be worn on the skin, but under, and that was where it always sought its resting place.
After Lamia's expulsion, YHWH created Eve out of Adam's rib. Eve retained his positive, as did each child they conceived together. The magnate had remained under Lamia's skin and she took it with her when she left. She retained the negative element, and that is how the necklace worked with anyone she gave it to, attracting his positive element to her negative.
King Thutmose III, her usurper and stepson, born to a woman of the harem, had commanded his soldiers to kill Hatshepsut and all her servants and loyal supporters. The pregnant Hatshepsut escaped, but Sennemut--father to her unborn daughter--was left behind and at the moment of her murder, Sennemut's skin opened to release the necklace she had given him. A soldier found the necklace around Sennemut's neck but did not give the necklace to Thutmose to be destroyed as he was ordered to do. He took the beautiful strand home and presented it to his wife.
His wife died two days later with a noose around her neck. Suicide. Her surviving daughter removed her dead mother's jewelry with care. The daughter did not wear the necklace, but it became a keepsake, and she left it to her daughter. This went on for several generations until one woman decided it was too beautiful to leave in a box. She wore it to dinner with her husband. Two days later, she drowned her infant son in the bathtub.
The necklace wound up in a box with all her other possessions in a jail locker. She died in jail after continuously banging her head on the concrete floor. At her death the necklace became the property of a sticky-fingered police officer. That officer became a victim that night when a thief broke into his car and stole the necklace, amoungst other items.
From there the necklace journeyed with the thief to an antique market in France. It was bought and resold to another antique dealer who took it to Iraq. In Iraq it was sold one more time, making its way to Cairo where it remained in a museum.
The demon was supposed to baby-sit it for as long as she needed. A nice young man walked by and desired the necklace so much--the imps temptations would be much harder without desire--that the demon decided it give itself to the young man as a consolation. The demon returned to Eva inside the man.
"Go get the necklace," she had ordered.
It flew back to the museum where it had abandoned the necklace. There, an open-minded tourist admired the jewel and became entranced in its sparkle. The demon leapt into the tourist, broke the glass protecting the display, grabbed the necklace and swallowed it before a guard approached.
The tourist arrived back at Eva's door. She smelled the necklace on his breath and gutted him on her stoep. She felt no disloyalty robbing the demon of its host. Had the demon not been disloyal to her?
Smiling with victory, she closed the door on the dead man. No one felt the house tremour as the snakes etched into the foundation turned their heads and blinked. Shadowed demons took form and began pulling and ripping apart the body, tearing out organs and fingering the entrails as armies of snakes from underneath were already on the move, hungry for their feast.
A slight rumbling vibrated under the garden's grass-covered floorboards where she stood. "So, you've made your home underneath," she said to Granger. "What are you doing under there?"
It was digging in the dirt with its claws. "Are you burying something? A trinket you stole from Nkumbi? Give it to me." The demon continued to scurry and dig. "You're like a dog." Her foot came down in a single stomp and split the board. It hit Granger's bare back, quieting the rumble.
80
"I can't replace some of these plants you've destroyed from sneaking around in here. Keep at it and you'll kill what you desire the most. Ever hear of irony?"
"The thing you thought would pull Jeffrey closer has frightened him away. Yes," it said, "I've heard of irony."
Eva had to admit the necklace was backfiring. Lindsey saw to that. Eva had thought Lindsey would have washed her hands of him, since Caroline was dead, when instead, it was Lindsey's house he'd walked to, seeking solace, which she gave. Solace and forgiveness had been Nkumbi's advice.
The necklace was supposed to attract him to Eva, to lead him to her. When Jeffrey had refused to wear the necklace Eva slid under the table where he dropped it and snatched it off the floor. On her stomach, she slithered into the dining room doorway. Jeffrey had already reached the front door, hand on the knob. She paddled herself down the length of the hall and Eva pounced, landing on his back. He dropped to the ground under her weight. She crouched over him and flipped him around, her calves holding him in a vice-like grip. One hand dangled the necklace over his head, the other hovered over his chest. She ripped his shirt and slit his bare chest with her fingernail, and released the necklace. The medallion slapped against his open wound and sunk under his skin. The cord crawled inside after it, making its way up and around his neck. Once the necklace had burrowed underneath, his wound closed leaving rippled scars as evidence of what lie beneath.
With his fingers around his neck, Jeffrey dug at the cord wrapped forever under his skin. His was crazed, pawing at his chest and neck. "Stop," she said. "You'll never get it out." But he wouldn't listen, and he kept pawing at his neck, sniveling. "Wear it well," she said, and released her legs' grip on him. She left him in the doorway. The drink would work whatever healing magik it needed to make him forget the necklace and how it got under his skin, if that's what it took to keep him under her roof.
"Jeffrey has become a challenge," said Granger as Eva continued to work on her concoction, mashing the muti--Caroline's eye mixed with the flower.
"He's wearing the necklace," Eva said as she stirred.
"Flawless, how he came to wear it," said the demon. "Those drinks Guert and Mena serve have done wonders on his memory. He thinks his memory loss is from all those pills he takes; you've made his addiction work to your advantage, you clever one. But," it said, as it liked to get in the last word, "you tend to want what you can't have."
"There isn't anything I've wanted that I haven't gotten," Eva said, defiant as she smashed and stirred.
"Oh, I can think of a few things," it replied. "Eden. Life beyond Africa. Love."
That last word resonated with her and she stopped what she was doing
. Jeffrey didn't recognize her, which was painfully evident. He hadn't recognized her five lifetimes ago, either, when her name was Mona and his was Stephen. She'd lured him from America and he had eventually come to remember her. Seventeen lifetimes ago, he was Vladimir from Prussia and even then his eyes were becoming more vacant upon seeing her for the first time.
Samiel imprinted himself in the host's memory, once a genetic match had been found. Yet a human body was easier to inhabit than a human mind, and as humans had progressed throughout the ages, Samiel's ability to make a firm impression weakened.
She wondered, when meeting him again, whether it be after two or twenty more lifetimes, would he still know her? A tear welled in the corner of her eye. Was it love, or remorse, or loneliness? She had thought herself incapable of such feelings. Apparently she was becoming more and more human over time, and the realization horrified her. She resumed her mashing and said, "I never wanted those things."
"Denial?" Mr. Granger tisked. "It's beneath you."
"Yes," she said, regarding the demon between the floor cracks. "It is." Eva scooped the mush into her hands, rolled it into a wet ball and dropped the ball back into a pot. "Jeffrey will eventually come back. He will eat and drink the muti. He'll pop a few more pills, forget most, and deny the rest. He'll belong to me for as long as I need."
She lifted Nkumbi and heaved him across her shoulders, wearing him like a neck wrap. "Thought I'd leave him for you, didn't you?" she asked. Gathering her pot and seeds and locking the door behind her, she headed back to the house.
81--JEFFREY
I squatted in the corner of the cell, rocking on my feet. Five other prisoners I shared the room with kept their distance. No one spoke, besides me. I mumbled to myself as I went over the last few months of my life. I couldn't believe that Caroline was dead, but at the core of my disbelief, was anger. I tried to imagine her as she was now; colder, and stiffer. In a coffin. Underground. Was the coffin pine or mahogany or steel? The bedding soft, like silk, with her curled hair spread around her head? Even though I didn't know where the gravesite was I pictured a majestic headstone flanked by winged angels, or would Lindsey have chosen gargoyles? Then I tried to remember the last thing I had said to her, but couldn't.
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