“It is not an animal,” the African said finally. “It is something else. A tourist, really. She has come like a snake from one of the lakes, Kashiba or Namulolobwe perhaps, is merely enjoying a change of scenery. It has happened before. She never stays long. It is nearly over and she will move on soon, find somewhere new to be. It’s said Mobutu kept her, or one like her, in the Congo, and she gave him strength and jewels for thirty years.”
“She? It’s a woman?” asked Thorley.
“Not a woman, no,” said Chilongo. From over his shoulder, another painted mermaid stared at Thorley. Even here, he thought, although this picture was like cave art. In it, the mermaid, with a fat serpent wound around her body, was grinning widely and holding up a hand upon which a stick figure danced. The figure was male, had swollen genitalia but no facial features. The mermaid’s breasts were exposed, full and rounded and with dark, prominent nipples. She was pale, almost white, with red hair.
“If not a woman, then what?” asked Thorley.
“Mami Wata,” said Chilongo. “A water demon.”
Thorley finished his whisky while making the call. Yes, the mine had suffered some local staffing problems, he said, but they were on their way to being sorted. Production would rise again soon. Chilongo and Rowe had been the very essence of helpfulness, showing him what he needed to see. All was well in Zambia . . .
He didn’t believe it.
He wasn’t sure what was happening here, but he knew he would never get to the bottom of it. He saw it in the suspicion on the faces of the mineworkers, heard it in the voices of the others eating in the taverns, felt it in the heat and in Chilongo’s deferential touch to his shoulder as he got out of the car. “Go back,” Chilongo had said. “Go back and leave us to finish this. It is nearly over, she has almost all she wants. Things will be well again soon.”
Thorley could see no other course of action; demon or animal, imagination or reality, he had no way to understand what was happening here and no strategy for dealing with it. His own places were calling him now, where the shadows weren’t so dark, and the streets were slick and definable and dull. He wanted to go home.
It was late on Thorley’s last night in Zambia. A frantic scratching was beckoning him from a heated sleep, as he lay on top of cheap blankets that stuck to his skin. Clad only in his shorts, he went to the window and drew back the curtains.
The woman was on the other side of the glass.
She smiled. Thorley’s original suspicions were right; she was naked, her breasts pressed flat against the pane. One hand was also flattened against the glass, the fingers scratching at it slowly. In the darkness, her skin seemed to shift from a rich, lustred brown to a pale pink, and her hair to shimmer from black to blonde. Her smile showed teeth as white as milk, her eyes dark and feral and inviting.
Thorley stepped away from the window, uncomfortably aware of his stiffening erection. Her incisors were long, gleaming against pomegranate-red lips, the nails on the end of her fingers curved into wicked hooks. Her areolae were perfect circles and he knew that if he stepped close enough and looked down, he would see that her legs were long and shapely, meeting in a delta of musky hair. He stepped towards the door, pulling off his shorts as he went.
Outside, a slight breeze blew air that was warmer and dry against Thorley’s naked flesh. The woman came to him, holding her arms out, naked as he’d expected and hoped, her tongue poking out slightly from between enticing lips.
Thorley stepped into the cage of her arms, feeling himself tremble. She made a noise like a hissing snake and her smile widened so that it seemed to crawl around her entire face and her mouth opened and that tongue came out, long and red and black and curling and tasting the air, tasting him and then Chilongo rasped, “Leave him be.”
He was standing just out of the woman’s reach, holding a shotgun and pointing it at her. “He is muzungu. Taking him will mean trouble. Find another.”
The woman hissed again and Thorley suddenly wondered how he had seen her as attractive. She smelled wild, of earth and urine and spoiled meat and her tongue was longer than any had a right to be, her only sound a hiss, instinctive and vicious. He stepped back but she moved with him, stepping to follow him, staring at him.
Chilongo moved forwards, pushing the gun barrel into her belly and saying, “No. Fingi! Go into the town, there are men there who will only be missed by us, not by anyone else.”
Her tongue was on his skin, wet and warm, slipping against his neck.
Chilongo pushed with the barrel and she moved, opening her arms and releasing Thorley. She glared at Chilongo, who gestured briefly with the shotgun towards the road.
Away from her, the smell of her dissipating, Thorley was aroused again as he looked at her breasts, at the way her lips were parted and her breath came in tiny gasps.
Chilongo looked across at him and said, “Go. She is not for you, nor you her.”
As if in reply, the woman sibilated, low and venomous, and her tongue appeared again, lapping at the air. Revulsion washed across him and he backed away.
Thorley managed to stumble to his room as the woman, the thing, remained motionless, staring at Chilongo. He met her gaze without moving, the gun barrel’s black maw hovering at the height of her belly. On the far side of the car park a car sped past, horn braying. Chilongo, distracted, glanced away and in the briefest moment that his eyes were averted, the woman moved.
She covered the distance to Chilongo incredibly fast, dropping low as she went and shrieking like wind across glass bottles. As the car moved along the road, Chilongo’s shadow shifted around him, dancing with the moving headlights, and the woman went with it. Her face brushed the ground, the scraped-porcelain noise of her teeth grinding across the pavement making Thorley’s own teeth ache in sympathy. Her tongue lashed at the ground ahead of her face, writhing and lapping at Chilongo’s shade, sucking violently. Chilongo let out a scream, high and thin, and took two steps forwards, wobbling. The woman darted away from the African, rising as she did so, licking tendrils of blackness that dangled from her mouth and dripped across her breasts.
Chilongo fell to his knees and gave a last, weak exhalation. He looked across at Thorley, and Thorley saw tears glittering in his eyes as he fell forwards, his head cracking against the floor. Thorley slammed his room door shut, backed away further until his knees hit the bed and he fell across it. Ignoring the terrible, liquid sucking sounds coming from outside, he pulled the blanket around him so that it covered his head and thought about home.
The sounds carried on for a long time, impossible to avoid, too audible, slithering into his ears like old grease. Thorley curled up, pulling his knees into a foetal position and wrapping his arms around his legs. The rough grey blanket prickled against this skin as he prayed for the noises to stop.
In the morning, Chilongo was still there. Thorley hadn’t slept; dressing quickly, packing and leaving the motel room early before anyone in the rooms around him stirred, he saw the man’s body was in the same place, legs on the road and head towards Thorley’s door.
Kneeling beside Chilongo, he looked into his glassy, dead eyes and said a silent thank you. The low rising sun glared into his face as he rose, and he saw that Chilongo was the only thing in the car park not casting a shadow. He went to his car, throwing his bag in the rear seat, and drove away quickly.
He did not look back, but he did drive to the mine. The smelting works and storage units and the spiderweb connections of conveyor belts and ramps twisted around him as he wound to the front of the main building and parked.
Thorley got out of his car, sensing the difference in this place. He walked out to the centre of the open space, looking around him. The air burned hot with the acidic scour of industry. All was busier than it had been on his previous visits despite the early hour. Two men, crossing the dusty apron to the lorries parked on the far side, laughed. Machinery roared, its volume shivering the dust hanging in the air. The mine pulsed with energy and movement and life.
Whatever she was, whatever darkness had been deep in the belly of the mine, had gone. Suddenly exhausted, Thorley turned and moved back towards the car. It was time to go.
As the rental limped down the road, he saw in the rear-view mirror the towering battlements and turrets of the mine, the chimneys spewing ropes of smoke into the morning air, curled like snakes against the sun.
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