by Phil Tucker
Maribel rose to her feet once more. She felt like a great tuning fork that had been struck a blow and that now vibrated soundlessly in the crystal air. She held her purse before her with both hands and fought to master her repulsion, fear, and awe.
The goat man pushed aside the last branch with one lean, gray arm, and came to a stop on the other side of the hawthorn tree. If the forest beyond was its natural realm, than the hawthorn stood right on the border between its world and her own. Its eyes, she saw, were milky white, large and unblinking with but the faintest hint of vertical gray pupils.
“Hello, Maribel Martel,” it said, and she couldn’t help but shudder. There was something unutterably carnal about its nakedness, its gentle gaze, the great shock of hair that seethed between its legs. Repulsion stirred along with something else inside her.
“What are you?” she asked, and was surprised at how clear and still her voice seemed to be.
“I am a phooka,” it said with a voice like suede leather, a voice laden with old wisdom and quiet power. “A herald of your coming, though you are not yet aware of your own imminence.”
The phooka was tall, taller than herself, at least six feet, but the great segmented horns rose up another three and swept back another two. It was as if it carried an august crown above its head, without which it would have appeared base, bestial, foolish. But its twin horns instead imbued it with a gravity that caused its voice to sound in the chill air like the calm, sonorous tone of a bell calling a town to prayer.
A thousand questions were drowned by the only one that mattered. “Do you know Kubu?” she asked.
“I can open the ways that will lead you to it,” replied the phooka. “I can part the barriers and ford the distances. If you wish it.”
Maribel found her gaze held by the milky white orbs. The faintest intimations of gray pupils that gazed unflinchingly into her own eyes. “Yes,” she said at long last, an exhalation, a sigh. “Yes, that’s what I want.”
The phooka bowed its head, a slow gesture that caused its great horns to swing through the air. Then, with an air of finality, it reached out with one darkly creased palm to the hawthorn as it rounded its base, and placed its feet on Maribel’s side of the park. Its feet were large, human, and Maribel felt a twinge of surprise, wholly bizarre given the nature of the apparition before her; but the part of her that had drunk deep of myths as a child had fully expected the phooka to have the legs of a goat, to step on delicate hooves. Instead, it walked with feet made rough by hard usage, nails dark and thick and splintered.
“I can open the doors, but cannot show you the path,” said the phooka. It was standing but a yard away from her, towering over her, looking down its goat’s muzzle at where she stood. She saw that the long hairs that fell from its chin and the length of its jaw, that rode up its cheeks to just below the pronounced lower ridge of its ocular cavity and then swarmed up around its large goatish ears were so dark as to appear black, but were in reality a mixture of bitter chocolate browns, run through with the occasional white hair or burnished copper thread. This close, it smelled of dirt and musk, the odor thin and attenuated by the cold air.
“You can’t show me the path,” repeated Maribel. She felt lightheaded. No matter how much she stared, the phooka refused to disappear, to blink away and leave her alone in a park with her shattered sanity. “What do you mean?”
“I can make your approach possible,” it said, “But another will have to guide your steps.”
“Ms. Silestra,” said Maribel. The phooka bowed its head, the wide mouth that curved up alongside both sides of its muzzle like the cut of a slit throat pulling into a smile. “She could show me. She found it once already. She could take me there.”
The phooka stood silent, watching her, and then gestured with its arm for her to lead the way. There was something mocking about the way it did so, but how was she to read the face of a goat? Maribel took a step back, and for a moment everything hung in the balance. Then she turned and strode down the path toward the gate and out onto Hudson Avenue. She looked back but once; the phooka followed, and the forest from which it had come was gone.
Ms. Silestra’s shop was closed. The glowing palm was dark, and the curtains drawn, the place quiet. Maribel paused, bit her lower lip. It made sense after yesterday’s ordeal that she would take the day off. But somehow Maribel had failed to foresee it. She turned and looked to the phooka, who stood across the street, watching her over the heads of the other pedestrians.
It had followed her, but not closely. Drifting through the crowd some ten yards behind, it had been like an attendant ghost, a haunting presence whose pale eyes were always on her when she turned to check on it. Nobody else seemed to notice it walking amongst them. It ignored the cars that roared by, crossing the streets without gazing to its sides. Maribel’s eyes had widened as traffic had rushed past it, each car missing the phooka by a hair’s breadth as it strode across the lanes. As if the cars were the apparitions, and not he.
Looking now, she resisted the urge to shrug, to indicate that she was at a loss. Would it understand such human gestures? Before she could act, however, the phooka raised one fist, and then uncurled the fingers in a rippling motion. Maribel heard the distinct report of the lock to Ms. Silestra’s shop popping open. The phooka lowered its hand, and said nothing.
Reaching out, she opened the door, and peered inside. The entry lounge was as she had last seen it, but in shadow now, the lamps turned off. All was neat, and a faint odor of incense still hung in the air. Moving forward, Maribel let the door swing closed behind her. It snicked shut. She moved to the window, opened the curtain, looked out across the street. The phooka was gone.
Frowning, Maribel crossed the waiting room and moved to the hall that led down past the kitchen to the consultation room. Everything was silent, but somehow it didn’t have the feeling of abandonment that an empty house manifests. Maribel tapped her fingers on the door frame, and then stepped into the hallway. The first door was a linen closet, stuffed full of books, towels, blankets and snow globes. The second door opened to a set of stairs the color of espresso that had lightened to cream at the edges and led up. The faintest sound of music wafted down.
“Ms. Silestra?” Maribel called, “Isobel?”
“What?” called down a voice, startled. Maribel heard the thump of somebody standing up quickly on the ceiling above her head. “Maribel?”
“Yes, it’s me, Maribel Martel,” she yelled back, surprised at being so quickly recognized. The sound of feet stepping quickly across the floor, and then Ms. Silestra was at the top of the stairs, staring down at her. She was dressed in a thick blue bathrobe, her hair spiky with water, her eyes hard and wide.
“What are you doing in my house?”
“The door was open. I called out, but you didn’t answer.”
Ms. Silestra—Isobel—frowned down at her and then crossed her arms over her chest. She didn’t seem convinced. “The door was open? If you say so. Are you alright?”
“Yes, I mean, I don’t know. I’m sorry, this very forward of me. I should have called ahead, but—my thoughts are still jumbled up from yesterday. Do you mind if I talk to you for a moment? I don’t want you to do a reading for me, but just, well, talk.”
Isobel stared down at her, jaw hard. Finally, something in her gaze softened, and she reached up to rub briskly at her wet hair, sending a fine, almost invisible spray of water into the air. “Fine, all right. I’ve been meaning to check up on you anyway. Could you get some tea going? Mine’s gone cold. I’ll be right down as soon as I dress.”
“Thank you, Isobel,” said Maribel, and felt a rush of gratitude and warmth towards the woman. She realized then just how unnerved the phooka had made her, and how welcome tea and company would be. Isobel gave her a lopsided smile, and disappeared from view.
Entering the kitchen, Maribel set the kettle to boil, fished out some tea bags, rinsed out a couple of mugs and found herself humming as she did so. Movement, action. She
was doing something, going in some direction, no matter how mad or improbable or insane such movement might seem. She was working toward her goal. Sofia. She stood still, relishing the feeling, and then whipped around as something tall and gaunt and dark stepped past the door, long legs carrying it out of view just as quickly as it had appeared. Heart hammering, she stuck her head out the door, but there was nothing outside. The phooka, she told herself. Just the phooka. Relax. But she didn’t hum again.
Isobel joined her in the entrance room, where Maribel had set the two mugs to steam by themselves on the coffee table. She was waiting for the psychic on one of the couches, her legs tucked up under her, one elbow on the arm of the couch, chin propped on her hand as she gazed out into the middle of the room and there lost her focus. Isobel descended the stairs on her heels, jarring her way bonelessly to the bottom till she spilled out into the room and stood, looking at Maribel. She had pulled on an overlarge black sweater, leather patches on the elbows and over the shoulders, along with a faded pair of jeans.
“So,” she said, walking over to sit heavily on the couch. “How are you? How are you holding up?”
Maribel frowned, not wanting to examine herself, look too closely at what was going on in her mind, her heart. “I don’t know. Not well?” She trailed off, unsure of how to continue.
“I’m sorry, that was a dumb question.” Isobel hiked her feet up onto the couch, knees coming up beneath her chin, and looked moodily at where Maribel sat. “But ever since you left I’ve been haunted by what you’re going through.” A fine line appeared between Isobel’s brows. “I think you’re incredibly brave and strong to keep going like this, to keep fighting. I would have curled up and not left my room for a year.”
Maribel stirred uneasily in her seat, not wanting to follow this line of thought, to probe those areas of her soul. Instead she nodded and pushed on, returning to her original intention. “Thank you. I came to see you because I really need your help.”
“Hmm,” said Isobel, reaching out for her mug. The temperature in the room was chill, and Isobel clearly relished the heat baking off the mug. “My help. And you don’t want another reading. Maribel, if you need a friend, if you’re looking for somebody to talk to, then I’m happy to listen—“
“No,” said Maribel, cutting her off. Isobel raised an eyebrow and Maribel rushed in to apologize, “I mean, thank you, but that’s not why I’m here. I don’t—I don’t need a friend, or anything for myself. I need your help with Sofia. With this Kubu.”
“Kubu,” said Isobel, and then looked down into her tea. “I wish I hadn’t plucked that name out of the dark. It’s an evil name, evil in a way I can’t explain. In a way that doesn’t even make sense any more today, in our modern world.” She actually shivered, and held her warm mug closer. Looked up. “Maribel, we’ve just met and I already care for you, feel a connection with you—something strong ever since our reading—but I don’t know if I can help you in that way. I don’t know if I would even want to if I could.”
Maribel sat up a little straighter. Need brought out her strength, “I know this isn’t your problem. She isn’t your baby girl. But she’s all I have in the world, I’m all she has, and I can’t leave her down there alone. She’s down there right now, this very moment, and I have to get to her, I have to.” Tears had sprung into her eyes, and she rubbed them away impatiently. “So please. I’ll pay you whatever you want. Just take me to the place where you sensed Kubu.”
Her words hung in the air. Isobel stared at her, and then set the mug down. “Take you to Kubu.”
“Yes,” said Maribel, suddenly frightened that the woman would say no. “Please.”
Isobel shook her head slowly, “Go down into those tunnels. Just you and me to find that thing. Maribel, you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Yes I do,” snapped Maribel, “Or, more accurately, it doesn’t matter what I’m asking because I need to do this. No matter what it takes. I am going. I want your help. I need your help. But if you don’t go I will still try it alone.” She realized she was sitting on the edge of her seat, glaring at the psychic, who was matching her gaze with a soft and compassionate look that unsettled her.
Isobel took a deep breath. For a long moment the two women simply looked at each other, and then Isobel took up her mug once more. “Ever since our reading, my… my ‘senses’ if you will, my psychic awareness has been awake in a manner I’ve never experienced before. It’s as if I was a lock and you were the key, and your visit opened something inside me, and I…” She trailed off, looked down into her tea. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you. Or dreaming about… that thing down below us. What you’re going through seems more real, more urgent, than anything else. I was scared that you had already gone below by yourself, and the thought of that, of my still being up here, safe and sound while you tried by yourself to face that thing…” Isobel looked up, eyes bright now with her own tears, “Of course I’ll help you, in any way I can.”
Maribel took a deep breath, a sudden weight lifting from her, and for a moment she felt almost dizzy. Then she smiled, a broken smile, the best she could manage and nodded her head, unable to speak, to convey her gratitude. Isobel laughed and came forward, off the couch, to hug Maribel tight, and after an awkward moment of indecision, Maribel hugged her back, feeling the psychic’s wet hair against the side of her face, the fresh smell of her shampoo. Looking up, she felt her stomach suddenly clench at the sight of the phooka standing in the hallway, watching them both, great horns curling just below the ceiling, a knowing smile on its saturnine face. Maribel stiffened, and after a moment Isobel pulled back, searching her features. Maribel tore her eyes away from the phooka even as it stepped back into the shadows of the hall and gave Isobel a tight smile.
“Ok,” said Isobel, sitting down on the rug before Maribel and crossing her legs “Well, just because I’m helping you doesn’t mean this isn’t crazy. Where are we going to start? What are we going to do when we find it? Do you have a plan?”
Maribel reached up to wipe her face dry once more and nodded, “Yes. All you have to do is find the way in. I’ll do all the rest.” She felt a flicker of hesitation as she thought of telling her about the phooka, and then discarded the idea. “Can you do that? Find the way in?”
“A couple of days ago I would have probably told you no, but now? Maybe. Just thinking about that thing makes me feel uneasy, so maybe if I focus on that unease, I’ll get a sense of where to go?” Isobel paused. “But… what’s your plan when we’re down there? It’s… this thing is terrifying. It’s not something you can intimidate, or talk to. It’s just a raw, physical, emotional need. A hunger. How are you going to force it to do what you want?”
Maribel pursed her lips grimly, “Leave that to me. I’ll take care of that when we get there.”
Isobel shook her head, “Alright. I can’t believe we’re doing this, but fine.”
“Thank you,” said Maribel, reaching out to take Isobel’s rough hands in her own, “I can’t say that enough. How much should I—what do you want to charge for all this?”
“If helping you stops the nightmares, I’ll do it for free,” said Isobel with a grin. “However, let’s leave talk of money till later. When do you want to start?”
Maribel nodded, and with sudden energy stood. “Now, of course.”
The psychic gave her a lop-sided smile, “How did I know you were going to say that?”
Half an hour later they both stepped out into the cold. The haze that had so engulfed the city these past few days had grown thicker, so that the far end of the block was barely discernible. A yellow taxi hove into view, and then faded away as it drove off, the red brake lights floating eerily for a moment after the main body of the car had become obscured. Maribel pulled the broad belt around her jacket tight about her waist, and slipped her hands into the fur-lined pockets. Isobel gave her a nervous look, and then settled her shoulders, raised her chin.
“Okay, be quiet for a bi
t, I’ve got to concentrate.” She closed her eyes, then allowed them to half open so that her irises were but a glimmer of darkness between her thick lashes. A couple of deep breaths, and then she nodded. “I can feel it. It’s faint. And awful, but there. All right. This way. I’m just going to walk in the direction that feels most wrong.”
They walked. Isobel moved ahead at first with hesitation, but then with growing determination, taking corners and heading deeper into the West Village. At one point she paused, the sound of a bar close by flooding the murky air with 80’s music, a crowd of teenagers laughing and shoving each other as they swarmed past the pair of them. An old man was pushing a wheelbarrow in which a large viola rested, and across the street, a number of men were shouting at each other as they unloaded a U-Haul truck.
“This way,” said Isobel, shaking her head. They ducked down a side street, residential and still. Ivy snaked up the brick walls of the townhouses, each sporting a distinctive front door at the top of five or six shallow steps. Close to her own apartment, Maribel realized. Black lacquer, bright red, ornate and pensive green. Windows were lit and shone with yellow light; looking up into them as they walked past Maribel saw libraries, kitchens, living rooms. Angles of bookshelves, the top corner of a flat screen affixed to the wall, pots and pans hanging from hooks attached to white ceilings. Glimpses of lives going about their business, far removed from her own.
The street was short, elbow shaped and soon they reached the other end. Isobel stopped again, frowned. “I’m losing it. Here, let’s try again.” They walked back, slower this time, and two thirds of the way through Isobel slowed to a stop once more. She turned to Maribel, and gave her a shrug. “I’m sorry. It’s here somewhere, but I can’t pinpoint it.”
