Inkarna Page 4

  We stare at each other for a while before Marlise gives a loud sigh. “Look, do you want a cuppa tea or something?”

  I nod. Anything to distract from the sheer uncomfortable situation we are in, at present.

  “It’s probably best you stay here and wait for me. The last time you were here, you weren’t exactly welcome.” Marlise shoots me a meaningful look before she turns and leaves, shutting the door behind her and plunging the room in gloom the bedside lamp doesn’t quite dispel.

  Ashton, what in heaven’s name did you do with your life?

  I seat myself on the edge of the bed, my fingers threaded together on my lap. What a fine mess. Part of me wants to get up and get the hell out of here. I’ll walk to Simon’s Town if I have to but I suspect it could be so much easier if I look to Marlise for help. She’s an anchor I’d be foolish to ignore. Just the thought of going back to where the Kennedys are lodged fills me with a vague sense of dread. To endure all that silent suffering…

  What’s worse is that I don’t have a cent to my name.

  When staring at my hands loses its appeal, I turn to study Marlise’s bookshelves in an attempt to get to know her better. There’s a lot one can tell just by being aware of a person’s reading tastes. The titles appear to be mostly horror-orientated, and authors I don’t know anything about: The Awakening, Dead in the Family, Queen of the Damned, Interview with the Vampire, Twilight… Clunky books featuring a boy-wizard on the front cover make me laugh. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows…

  Such fanciful notions.

  Her film collection reveals more of the same and I come to the conclusion that if a quarter of these titles were available when I’d been her age, I’d have amused myself to the point where I’d gotten nothing done. And I wouldn’t be standing here right now. I’d be dead, as in really dead.

  I grimace, putting yet another thin plastic case back on its shelf.

  House Adamastor—immortal librarians. That was the running joke bandied about by some of our allies, according to Richard, though our libraries back then were nothing compared to what must be available to people today.

  We are just lucky that, while we are out of the material plane, we can still access the memories of the Blessed Dead before they sink away in the Sea of Nun. Call the Inkarna of House Adamastor stodgy, but it’s better to plunge into the unknown armed with knowledge rather than try to figure it all out after a few years have caused massive cultural shifts. And, hence, another reason why a young child’s Kha was the better option. Catherine’s Kha would have given me the time to grow into the culture, to not wander about like an alien recently arrived from another dimension. Essentially, that’s what I’ve become.

  Marlise returns and I help her with the tray. She flinches when our fingers brush. I take the tea things from her and place them on her desk.

  “You never used to drink tea.” She watches me stir a spoon of sugar into the steaming brew. She’s brought a small plate of biscuits too, and I take two Lemon Creams. My stomach growls ominously, and I hope she doesn’t notice.

  After I swallow the first bite, I speak. “I’m not the person I was. I’m a clean slate and I need your help.” There, that’s about as much as I can say without spilling a story so bizarre and convoluted she’d no doubt run screaming and call for the cops to have me removed.

  I seat myself on the edge of her bed again, sipping at the tea while watching her watch me. She seems to realise she’s staring and, after shrugging to herself, prepares her own mug. When she sits on the bed, Marlise makes it obvious that she’s keeping a degree of space between us, so our limbs don’t accidentally touch.

  “What do you want me to do? You haven’t exactly been forthcoming over the past few days. How’s that supposed to make me feel about the situation and want to help?”

  My face grows warm and I stare into the cup, intensely aware this is not the kind of posture Ash would have held or the type of behaviour in which he’d engage. Even the act of finishing a biscuit is a poor substitute for giving an answer. For all I know Ash would probably have her on the bed and gasping for more; not nibbling on baked treats nor sitting here hunched like someone afraid of his own shadow. “Tabula rasa,” I mutter.

  “What did you say?” She leans closer and her minty perfume reaches me.

  I straighten. Hell, why is a mere slip of a girl making me want to cringe into myself? Maintaining eye contact is probably one of the most difficult things I’ve had to do in a while. “I’m completely lost, Marlise. You have no idea what it’s like. Whoever I was before…before the accident… That man is dead. I find myself surrounded by complete strangers. I’m sorry if I was so rude to you when I first came to. You must understand how overwhelming this situation can be. Just stop and imagine yourself in a similar predicament.”

  The cup pauses halfway to her lips and she closes her eyes, her hand trembling so I worry she’s going to spill her tea. A stray tear rolls down her cheek before she looks at me again. “I can’t imagine, but what can I do to help you? I don’t even know where to start. Everything has been so fucked up this year.” She pouts as if she wants to add to the sentence then shakes her head.

  “I need to piece things together. I’ve had…” It’s time to lie. “I’ve had some really peculiar dreams. I need to connect the loose ends. I may need to go to places that…seem odd to you, places I would never have gone before the accident, and concepts I’d discuss that are—”

  Marlise frowns. “You don’t even talk like you used to. You’re using words in a way I’ve never heard. Hell, you’re not even swearing.” She shudders.

  I laugh; cover my face with a hand. If she had any inkling… After a deep breath, I continue, “Can you drive me somewhere today? It’s vitally important. I’ll find a way to make it up to you. I feel awful having to ask you, but if you can’t, I’d have to walk or ride the trains without a ticket.”

  “Not far?”

  “Just out to Simon’s Town?”

  Her expression turns to one of disbelief. “Why there?”

  “I can’t explain, just that I need to see someone there, someone who may be able to offer me some answers as to why things are so messed up.”

  For a moment I think she’s going to refuse, but she puts her mug down and stands. “Okay. Let’s go. Now.”

  * * * *

  It’s becoming clear why Ashton was able to treat Marlise like a piece of dirt. She’s obsessed with him. She’ll do anything to keep him happy. It’s pathetic, really, and here I am, continuing with this sick, co-dependent relationship, yet I’m quite serious about finding some way to thank her. I’m aware of her looking at me with such longing, however. How can I explain that Ashton really is dead?

  She plays a recording of the band in which Ashton used to perform. The music is filled with heavy electric guitars, like the rock music of the sixties but just…growlier, dirtier—for lack of better description—and slower than what I’d heard before. I didn’t like the contemporary music back then and I certainly don’t like this gothic metal, as Marlise happily calls it. The lyrics sound awfully like the titles of the novels the woman enjoys reading so much. Ashton has, no had, a very deep voice and a definite flair for the melodramatic. I don’t know if I could sing like that, though I’m grateful for its use. Some of the low notes remind me of the Tibetan-style chanting I’d heard at another House’s open meeting. At least my present gender orientation would be good for something—the chanting, that is.

  “You don’t like the music?” Marlise asks. “You guys were fantastic! You were going on tour regularly and there was even talk about you going to the States. That was until…”

  I sigh. “The accident, I suppose?”

  “Ja, that. They got someone else to sing for them, though.”

  “That’s good.”

  “He’s not as good as you. Doesn’t have nearly as much stage presence.”

  “I don’t like the music.”

 
That shuts her up. She sniffs and turns the volume down, keeping her eyes on the road. This state doesn’t seem to please her either, and Marlise pushes another button. A radio station crackles into life with some awful music featuring some guy talking over an electronic beat and a woman wails in the distance as if she’s being tortured on a rack.

  I peer at the buttons on the car stereo interface until I identify the one I suspect may be the power button, which I promptly jab. Blessed silence reigns, underpinned only by the Toyota’s rumbling engine.

  My forehead pressed against the glass, I watch the landscape flash by. Marlise takes Ou Kaapseweg, a winding mountain pass that brings us into the far south. It wasn’t here when I was last walking and breathing, though I did occasionally walk the trails in and around the peaks. Where have all the pine trees gone? I don’t remember the summit so naked, so covered in heath. It’s difficult not allowing my surprise to show when we come down onto the Noordhoek side. Where before there was mostly wilderness shrouded in Australian acacia an entire neighbourhood has sprung up, bounded on one side by windswept Long Beach and, on the other, a Fish Hoek of monstrous, sprawling proportions.

  “This place has chang—” Too late. I’ve said too much.

  Marlise glances at me sharply. “What do you mean? You’ve been here hundreds of times. How can you say it’s changed?”

  “Nothing. Just a weird dream I had, okay?” If I could shrink into the seat, I would. If Marlise gains the slightest suspicion I’m completely unhinged, I’m absolutely lost. As it is, her worry is an almost-tangible presence.

  We drive in silence for the rest of the way, shooting up a highway where no such road existed the last time I was here. So many houses… The Glencairn area, a narrow valley with a few homes near the river mouth where a dairy farm used to operate, now has homes that extend almost the entire length of the glen. How long will it take me to get used to the way things are?

  “Some disorientation is normal,” Ahmose had told me in Per Ankh. “Try not to dwell in the past. Give yourself time. You’ll have a young Kha in which to explore.” He couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Getting to know this present age is easier said than done, and this sense of dislocation bedevils me all the way to Simon’s Town, where many of the original Victorian buildings remain. That much is heartening, but the soul, the very character of the place has changed so much I hardly recognise it. I frown at the shop fronts with their myriad African curios.

  “What’s with you trying to make holes in my passenger seat?” Marlise remarks. “Lighten up.”

  Without realising it I’ve been digging my fingers into vinyl upholstery. Instead I cross my arms over my chest and clutch the flesh of my upper arms. “It’s nothing.”

  “Doesn’t look like nothing, if you ask me.”

  “I’m not asking you. Just drive, will you?” There. The bastard is back. I’d dearly love to kick myself right now. If I could crawl into myself I would, and my face grows warm at my mortification. Lizzie would never have displayed such impatience. “Sorry.” The word is glue on my tongue, barely audible.

  She says nothing to that and I direct her to the street running parallel to Main Road, a narrow, cobblestoned byway from my memories. Most people would never think to turn down into the nameless cul-de-sac terminating off Chapel Lane. It’s not much, really, just enough space for someone to park a car.

  That Marlise drives right past the entrance gives some credit to the compulsion I laid upon the turn-off all those years ago.

  “Stop,” I tell her.

  She obeys but sits with white-knuckled hands clasping the steering wheel. Although I make it obvious that I’m observing her, she keeps staring dead ahead.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” I mutter then get out.

  I’ve forgotten about the wind in Simon’s Town. It cuts me to the quick and takes me straight back to that last day in Maitland cemetery, when I paid my respects to Richard, Leonora at my side. When will these memories stop looping?

  With a hiss I slam the car door and pull my jacket to me as tightly as possible. The zip must have broken ages ago, so there’s no way I can close it properly, and I’m beginning to suspect Ashton was more concerned with how clothing made him look rather than any practical purposes, like keeping warm, for instance.

  The chapter house is still here. I suppose I should be grateful for small mercies. To the casual eye it’s one of many double-storey, semi-detached homes in the town. What is worrying, though, is that the place doesn’t appear to have received a lick of paint for a decade and the bougainvillea has run rampant, swamping most of the veranda so I can hardly see the front door or the shuttered bay window for the dark foliage.

  Leonora would never have allowed the property to fall into such a state of disrepair. Sweet Amun, let her not be dead.

  I approach with halting steps, careful, and push aside the creeper’s thorny branches, mindful of how one wicked hook could easily take out an eye. The boarded-up door stops me in my tracks.

  “What in…” With my index finger, I wipe up a thick layer of dust coating the latch, which has been welded shut.

  Moving to the window, I press my face to a crack in the louvers. The interior, or as much as I can discern in the dim lighting, is empty, and appears to have been so for a very long time. The disappointment is bitter at the back of my throat.

  “Leonora, where are you?”

  “Who’s Leonora?” Marlise has crept up to stand next to me.

  “No one you’d know. And she wouldn’t know me either, but I need to speak to her.”

  “Why?” Marlise’s voice is brittle with suspicion.

  “I can’t tell you. Not now. And, before you start thinking along the lines of the obvious, it’s not that.” I’d like to add that Leo’s much too old for any physical kinds of affection, but hell, she’s most likely long gone.

  This place feels dead, not just abandoned in the physical sense, but in an other sense. It could just be the chapter house’s familiarity to that undefined daimonic extension of the senses Inkarna possess that allows me to detect this subtle difference.

  “You’re doing that thing again,” Marlise says.

  “What?” I turn to glare at her.

  “Staring off into space.”

  “It can’t be helped.” I bite back an expletive. Some damnable impulse has me take a swing at the door. Such a stupid, futile gesture, but one that will offer me some outlet for this smouldering rage just beneath my skin. I expect my fist to bounce back, my knuckles grazed, but with a faint implosion of energy I punch through one of the horizontal planks. My fingers tingle and I fancy that small sparkling motes swirl about the fingers. I blink and the effect vanishes, followed by a sharp twinge somewhere in my sinuses.

  Marlise squeaks and stiffens next to me.

  “Board’s rotten,” I mumble, though I know that’s not the case. Maybe my powers are returning after all, though not in any predictable manner. The beginnings of a migraine stabs at my temples.

  I turn to Marlise and she steps back, her expression that of horror.

  A horrible thought occurs to me. “Did he, I mean, I…ever lift a hand to you?”

  She shakes her head, but the slightest hesitation before she does so suggests she’s hiding something from me. Temper-temper, Ashton?

  “Never mind.” I turn and place both palms on the door. On a whim I trace a winged scarab in the dust coating the peeling enamelled paintwork. “I’ve got another headache starting up, Marlise. Can you take me home, please?”

  Maybe it’s out of guilt or a sense of wanting to do something to please the woman, I ask her to play Anubis’s music. While we return to Newlands, I close my eyes, not just to cope with my sudden photophobia but also to filter out the visual overstimulation. Breathing deeply also helps to keep the migraine at bay—slow measured inhalations and exhalations, though my belly roils with incipient nausea. And I do try to listen to the music. I need to understand this man, this stranger I’ve beco
me, but I can find nothing to relate to him. I’d like to rip out the remaining jewellery, shave this creature’s hair, but it seems almost sacrilege, as if I may, too, be cast adrift without these reminders of another person’s life.

  While the semblance of Ashton walks and talks, I feel safer. There is an identity, however tenuous, to cling to. It is some time after lunch when we pull up outside Uncle Rodgers’s house and we sit still in the car.

  “I don’t really want to go in,” I admit to Marlise. “I don’t feel as though I belong here.” It brings comfort to admit this and I don’t flinch when she places a warm hand over my own. The human contact feels good, right.

  “You’ll be okay, Ash.”

  “I wish I could believe you.”

  “Despite everything, they love you very much.”

  A pained laugh escapes me. “That’s just the rub. I’m gaining the distinct impression I’ve done some pretty heinous stuff in the past and I’m too scared to find out what exactly, just in case I die of embarrassment.” Part of me wants to grab her by her shoulders and demand that she tells me every lurid detail, but I hold back. By equal measure ignorance is bliss.

  Marlise’s eyes shine with unshed tears. Gods, does this woman just cry all the time?

  After a deep breath, I say, “Whatever it is that I did to you, however horrid it is, you have my promise that it’s not going to happen again. I’m not that person anymore.” She can take that metaphorically or literally, it doesn’t matter.

  “Thank you, Ash. That means the world to me.” She gives my hand another squeeze.

  Our close contact grows uncomfortable. I don’t want her to jump to the wrong conclusions, so I undo the safety belt and open the door. “Right, I must go.” I pause. “Thank you, Marlise. I will speak with you soon. I just need…some time, okay? I’ve a lot to figure out right now and I…value your…friendship.” I can only hope she understands that I’m not in any way interested in resuming a physical relationship. For the briefest moment I wonder what it must be like, to be on the other end of a sexual partnership, the one doing the impaling. I shove that thought far away.