Inkarna Page 6

  It’s only when I’ve stumbled far enough to put a few blocks between me and the incident that it occurs to me I’ve started swearing like a sailor. Lizzie never used to do that.

  Chapter 4

  Picking up the Pieces

  How I manage to reach Marlise’s house, I don’t know. The blessed thing is I don’t run into any further trouble along the way. On a whim, I try my powers on the gate’s mechanism—I don’t want to be ringing the bell to alert the entire household to my arrival—but it remains stubbornly locked. This would never have presented a problem to Lizzie. For a while I stand in the damp night, staring stupidly at the barrier. There’s nothing to it. I depress the button and pray Lizzie answers.

  The connection crackles and a man’s voice bleats through. “Hello? Who’s there?”

  Damn. “It’s Ash. I’m sorry to bother so late, but it’s a bit of an emergency. I really need to see Marlise.” I’m resigned to the fact that they’re not going to let me in.

  After about a minute the intercom crackles again. “Ash?” Thank goodness it’s Marlise. She sounds as though she’s been sleeping.

  “I’m sorry to be doing this to you, but there’s been trouble back home and I rea—”

  The gate unlocks.

  “Come ’round the back like last time,” she says.

  I don’t need further invitation. A male figure is silhouetted in the warm light spilling from the lounge window, and I hurry around the side the house, away from prying eyes. Hell, I don’t know what Marlise’s parents look like or, indeed how many siblings she has, but I know I’m not welcome here. Damn you, Ashton Kennedy.

  She waits for me on the veranda and I have to stifle a smile at her cartoon kitty-cat pyjamas. It makes her look like she’s a teenager, mussed-up hair and sleepy expression included. Her breasts strain against the fabric, and I look away, focusing on her face instead. I’m uncomfortably aware of my maleness, of how tall I am compared to her. I almost stumble on the top step.

  “You look like you’ve gone through hell,” she says. “Have you been fighting with someone?”

  “No… I mean, there’s been some trouble.”

  “Come inside.”

  I hesitate, and she offers me a sharp glance.

  “You used to sleep over all the time. It didn’t bother you going into my room then.”

  “Your parents…” I gesture at the kitchen door.

  Marlise raises a brow. “That knock to your head’s turned you into a real prude.” She turns and vanishes inside, leaving me with no choice but to follow.

  If it wasn’t an issue for Ashton, it shouldn’t be one for me and, to be perfectly honest, I’m more than just a little relieved to be out of the damp and the cold. My head throbs in time with the beat of my pulse. Her bedroom is toasty, but I can’t stop shivering and my extremities are numb. To my relief, she’s pragmatic about the situation, bidding me use her en-suite bathroom while she disappears into the house to make me something to drink and, I can only hope, to eat.

  Ashton had left behind a pair of old jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt emblazoned with some metal band’s name. It reads Slayer and features a heraldic eagle with a reverse pentagram. It smells faintly of Marlise, and I realise then, as I shrug into it, warm after a very welcome shower, that she’s been sleeping in it.

  Ashton’s reflection glares back at me. Almost a week without shaving has left the body with a beard. The hair is wet and tangled, and I twist it into a rope that falls across my left shoulder. My appearance fills me with revulsion and I turn away, hating the way the stubble feels beneath my fingers and how nothing is neat and tidy, as it should be. At some point I need to do something about the way I look, but not now, not tonight. A bone-tired weariness tugs at me. The thought of having to do anything beyond eating and sleeping fills me with horror.

  Marlise waits for me in the bedroom, seated cross-legged on the bed and watching me while I wolf down the toasted cheese-and-tomato sandwich she has made.

  “Thanks,” I say, wiping crumbs from my mouth. The food is nowhere nearly enough, but I’m not going to complain. The hot chocolate will give the illusion of satiety, and I lean back on the rickety office chair while I sip between giving Marlise the barest details of my recent misadventures. For obvious reasons I leave out any mention of knocking Stanley backward or stunning the thugs with a daimonic blast.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t get injured with those skollies.” Marlise shakes her head. “Three against one, that’s quite something.”

  I shrug, watching her watch me. It’s not the recent encounter with lowlifes I want to discuss. “Surviving one altercation is still not going to help my present situation. I need to start rebuilding my life and don’t really know where to start. Hell, I don’t even know if I can go back to what I did before.”

  She nods slowly at my words. “You used to work at a club called The Event Horizon. The money was okay. You didn’t do too badly.”

  Does she mean for me to go back to being a barman? I pray my face doesn’t betray my distaste. Still, it’s a start. How difficult could it be? “Could I get my job back, or did I bugger that up as well?” Bitterness creeps through in the tone of my voice, and she flinches.

  “You could try. You could go tomorrow. The place is easy to find.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “I’m still studying.” She brightens at my questions, her posture less tense. “I’m going to be teaching pre-schoolers next year.”

  Ashton probably teased her about this, no doubt, or made some sort of horrid comments from time to time. I smile at her, in an attempt to offer a genuine reaction. “That’s really good!” Then I look away. This sounds stupid, me getting to know this girl when she already walked so far with Ashton; knows more about his quirks and misadventures.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Facing her, I say, “I just feel peculiar, like I’m getting to know you as a person when you already know more about my history than I do. Everything is unfamiliar. It’s that whole cliché of a stranger in a strange land.”

  She laughs. “It’s kinda cool, don’t you think? Getting to start over again.”

  I grimace. I can’t help it. Is she implying that we’re rekindling the relationship? I swallow hard, trying to imagine seeing her in a more than sisterly way. A shudder runs through me. I can’t. She is pretty, though, a bubbly young woman. What the hell was she doing mooning over a bastard like Ashton? She deserves better.

  I laugh with Marlise, however. “Baby steps, baby steps, hey?”

  Her expression turns serious and she gazes at me speculatively.

  “I don’t want to rush anything, okay? Friends?” I extend a hand.

  Marlise squeezes my fingers, her grip uncertain but her sense of relief, love and joy very obvious before she lets go.

  We talk deep into the night and I quiz Marlise about Ashton. The picture I put together is even less to my liking than my initial opinion of the man. All that is certain is that she’s pathetically grateful for this apparent change in attitude. I can only wonder how all his fair-weather friends at The Event Horizon are going to feel about his return, because before I can pick up the threads I dropped in 1966, I’m going to have to repair the mess this man made of his life before it reaches out to stab me in the back.

  * * * *

  “Ash! Ash! Wake up! You’re dreaming!” Someone’s shaking me and repeating these words over and over again. I’m wrenched from the clutching miasma of terror, where I’m mired in the nameless horror swirling in the Sea of Nun.

  “Aaah!” I sit bolt upright, for the first time grateful for the warm arms thrown about me, for this softness of a woman’s unconditional love.

  “Hush,” she whispers in my ear, rocking me as though I’m a child. Her hair smells like fresh herbs and I lean into her, allowing my body to slacken.

  “What time is it?” I won’t be going to sleep again.

  “Half past five.”

  “May as well ge
t up now,” I mutter, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed.

  “We could lie in if you like.”

  That old, horrible restlessness pricks at me. “I can’t.” It’s bad enough that we shared a bed. It took me ages to fall asleep knowing another person lay next to me, a woman.

  We haven’t made any solid arrangements, but I’m grateful Marlise will help me. At any rate, she’s offered me a place to sleep until I’ve enough cash to find lodgings elsewhere. Anything is better than having to suffer the silent misery of Ashton’s parents and their sacrifice to an ungrateful son. There’s no way in hell Ashton’s uncle is going to allow me to set foot over his threshold again. Not after what happened yesterday. The more I consider their predicament, the less I want to have anything to do with Ashton’s relatives, though I do owe them a lot for having given so much to keep their son alive.

  This particular guilt I shelve. One day, when I sort out the man’s life and I’m back on track again, I must repay them. At present there is very little I can do to ameliorate their troubles except stay the hell away from them until such time it’s clear their efforts weren’t wasted.

  Marlise’s classes only start at nine and she agrees to pick up Ashton’s things on my behalf while I wait in the car. It’s pure prudence on my part that I don’t set foot over the threshold there, at least not for a while. I’m lucky they haven’t called the cops on me. But then, how would Stanley explain me hurling him down the stairs without even touching him? When Marlise exits with the remainders of Ash’s life packed neatly into one box, I suppress a shudder. He hasn’t left behind much of a legacy.

  He had a motorcycle, Marlise explains, but the Kennedys had to sell that. He’d been staying in a digs with some people in Observatory who couldn’t have been the most honest around, because by the time Marlise and Ashton’s mother had pitched up to collect his things, the housemates had nicked most of his CD and DVD collection and valuables, including what musical equipment he’d owned. So much for friends.

  I walk with Marlise to her classes at the college in Rosebank. At the entrance she shoves two twenties into my hand and, when I protest, gives me such a hard look that I shut my mouth.

  “I’m sure you can find the train station. Go speak to Gavin at The Event Horizon. It’s in town on the corner of Long and Shortmarket. He’ll be glad to have you back, I’m sure. You were good at what you did.” She gives a soft laugh. “You didn’t take any kak from the patrons and could hold your own if there was trouble. My classes finish at three. See you then.”

  She doesn’t offer to lend me the car, which is a relief. I think she suspects I don’t know how to drive or, rather that Ashton’s forgotten. Before I can protest, she stands on her tiptoes and presses a chaste kiss to my left cheek before dashing through the doorway.

  I’m too taken aback by the gesture to do anything more than raise a hand to my face and stand, staring after her departing figure for a few heartbeats. It’s just a kiss. Why am I rooted to the spot? Then I shrug and turn, making my way back onto the main road to wend my way to the station.

  The clouds are closing in again when the train pulls in at its platform and I join the hustle of passengers disembarking and shuffling through the very new and unfamiliar station building. Pigeons still flock in the eaves, their droppings making a mess of the super-sized white tiles that must be hell when wet. It’s easier to allow the press of bodies to sweep me along, headed toward the subterranean part of the Golden Acre shopping centre. Some of what I see I recall from snatches of memories gleaned from the Blessed Dead but mostly it is complete and utter culture shock.

  I don’t think I’d ever truly understood that Cape Town was part of Africa. Richard and I had toured the central parts of the continent, but that had been more than a hundred years ago and always with a degree of separation between us and the masses. Now I am immersed, just one of many nameless strangers. Cape Town never seethed with so many different languages. I pick up smatterings of Xhosa, French and Arabic, as well as the local Cape Coloured patois.

  The only blessing I have is that I’m not completely ignorant of all that has changed since Lizzie’s passing, although the accessed memories are often fuzzy and tinged by the opinions of the persons who passed. This experience can only be likened to visiting a new destination after having read about it in a travel guide. The only recollections I earnestly wish I could access are those that belonged to Ashton. If I probe, it’s almost as if the missing information has left behind an imprint, a blank space in a gum where a tooth used to be.

  It is with a sense of relief that I take the escalators up to the ground floor again, pleased to see how some of the old art deco buildings have had their façades preserved, though many of them have been painted garish colours. So many tall structures stab at the sky that were never here when I last set foot in Adderley Street. I watch as pedestrians ignore the lights at the crossing and elect to wait rather than allow myself to be flattened by a truck or minibus taxi. I’m surprised when I hit St George’s Mall. This used to be a busy road but now it has been paved with red brick. Plantain trees and white stinkwood form an avenue along its length. Myriad stallholders peddle an assortment of African curios—beadwork, masks and ugly paintings, among numerous odds and ends I don’t pause to gawk at.

  Cape Town has become, in my mind, a veritable melting pot of cultures. Distantly I recall the times when it was unheard of for a black person to think of setting foot in the city centre. Much has changed. Richard would have had a fit. He hadn’t liked people of colour much.

  I don’t think I have a choice whether to like or dislike a particular race group. I’m just glad to be alive. Truly at the bottom, I’m no better than anyone else here. Richard’s absence does cause a pang at this point. He would have loved to have returned in this time. The other Inkarna told me they thought he’d somehow become trapped in the Sea of Nun, in grey limbo. He could return to Per Ankh tomorrow or he could remain lost for another thousand years. Such are the perils of our existence. I can’t help but shudder. It could have been me. Now I’m here.

  The Event Horizon is unmistakeable, operating out of one of the Victorian-era buildings in a largely historical area off Greenmarket Square and its profusion of curio stalls. I pause outside the tobacconist opposite, just observing my destination. The last time I saw the place it had hosted a restaurant on the ground floor with offices on the first and second storeys. Now it’s painted black with purple edgings on the windowsills. Even though it’s early morning, loud music blares and a heavily muscled blond man, easily as tall as I am, stands at the door. He leans against the lintel, deep in conversation with an overweight biker who lovingly strokes the saddle of a chopper.

  None of the Blessed memories recall this place. I’m on my own here.

  After drawing a deep breath I approach, my stomach contracting. I have to remind myself the people here see Ashton, not Lizzie, though the gods know I’m so far out of my depth here it’s going to be murder giving the impression I’m a six-foot-something man on the inside as well—one with a bad attitude to boot and an ego the size of a small planet.

  The blond man turns to face me as I approach. His scowl is enough to freeze lava.

  I stop, close my eyes and breathe deeply before I make eye contact with him. He’s slightly shorter than I am, though bulkier. We stare at each other for longer than is comfortable.

  I clear my throat then speak, but I trip over my tongue a few times. “I-I’ve just recovered from a four-month coma and, as bizarre as it sounds…am suffering from amnesia. Whatever I did before the accident, I’m sorry. Marlise sent me here, said I need to talk to Gavin about getting my old job back.” The words sound so pathetic I have to force myself not to cringe visibly.

  The look the doorman gives me suggests I’ve just spoken the biggest load of horse droppings he’s ever heard in his life. The fat biker laughs. I don’t break eye contact, willing the blond to see the truth in my words. I need him to believe me. Something in reality shi
fts, a slight pressure at my forehead, and I pray this subtle twinge in daimonic energies won’t result in another nosebleed. Not here. Not now.

  He narrows his eyes, rubbing his stubbly chin with one hand. “You’re not talking kak, are you? I heard they took you off life support and that you didn’t croak it.”

  “I may as well have died for all the good waking did me,” I say. Good, he’s talking. I don’t allow the relief to sag my posture. Be firm but non-threatening…

  He raises a brow at my words, the biker next to him now silent. “You’ll find Gavin on the first floor, the office that’s in the turret.” He points to a window.

  I wish I had some memories of the winding stairwell I take upstairs so I’d know what awaits me at the top. The place reeks of overfull ashtrays and years of incense burning, and from below the beat of a rock band reaches me with the dim fuzz of male voices.

  Gavin proves to be a weasel of a man in his mid-thirties, sideburns shaved to points to accentuate cheekbones and somewhat greasy brown hair scraped back into a ponytail. When he glances up from his laptop, it is at first with a grimace of annoyance. He pales when he registers who’s standing at his door then all but falls from his chair.

  “Ash! I thought you died!” The small man leaps to his feet and rounds his desk to stand before me. At least someone is happy to see me, for a change. He clasps my hands and doesn’t let go until I’m seated before his desk on an office chair with only three wheels.

  I give him the abbreviated sorry spiel I’m beginning to suspect I’ll gain a lot of practice in retelling. Gavin listens without interrupting, until a sticky silence descends and I find myself gazing out the grimy window at the building opposite.

  “Beer?” he offers.

  This early in the morning? The man must be a loon, but I just shake my head and turn back to him. “No, thanks. Have to keep a clear head for a bit still. I’m still on medication.” A lie won’t hurt here.

  Gavin nods but dials down and orders a beer anyway, for himself. He puts down the receiver and gives me a good once over. “You look like shit.”