Chapter 1
” No good stories ever begin on an empty stomach,” said the fat man, and took my father’s seat at the table.
That was as subtle as he would get, and Mother nodded to Aida, who rushed to the kitchen and came back balancing two copper trays in each hand. One tray was filled with treats and pastries. A silver coffee pot with two cups and condiments was balancing on the other.
“Oh, you shouldn’t have!” the man cried as his mouth watered at the sight of empty calories, he was about to stuff his face with.
We sat in silence as the guest was putting one pastry in his large mouth after another, licking his fingers and making a face like he was listening to an exquisite piece of symphony in his head.
Mother, being the good host, poured him a cup of rich scalding hot coffee before pouring one for herself. The guest took of sip of the coffee and erupted in a satisfying moan.
Mother was tapping her foot rapidly under the table, the sound of her tension absorbed by the soft carpet.
“Well, compliments to your baker, Madam Seberi!”, the man said when he licked the tray clean.
He then took the coffee cup in his pudgy powdery fingers and leaned back in the chair. It creaked under his weight.
“You family is truly blessed.”
“You are too kind, Captain.” Mother smiled, “But it has not been easy for us in the last few months.”
“I understand, Madam Seberi . When the head of the family abandons his duties, leaving a woman to care for two young children –“, he gave Aida a look that somehow made my skin crawl. She looked away, “Your family will need all the help you can get.”
He turned his eyes back to Mother and said in a voice that was both saccharine and full of authority,
“It’s good to have friends in the right places.”
Mother smiled broadly, but it wasn’t her smile.
“Tell me, Captain. Is there any news of my husband? Where did the militia take him?”
The man downed the cup and put it on the table. He leaned forward, the hedonistic smile now gone and replaced with a grim, unkind expression which, I had little doubt, was a much more accurate reflection of the man’s soul.
“It pains me to bring you this news, Madam Seberi, but your hospitality must be rewarded with honesty. You husband was taken to Qanau City. He will stand trial there.”
Mother’s face gave away no emotion. Aida looked down and bit her lip.
“Do you know when the trial will be, so we can be present?”
“This is a closed trial, I am afraid. The charges your husband is facing are of the most serious nature.”
Mother seemed to consider this information, and the silence weighed on the room like a storm cloud ready to burst. I was watching the man as he shifted in the chair, making it creak loudly, painfully. He poured himself another cup of coffee, with unsteady hands.
“You know, Qanau City is a place where, if you have a friend on the inside- “
He stopped short and looked at Mother with an almost childlike bewilderment. His eyes grew large like dinner plates, and a horrible strangled sound clawed its way out of his throat.
“You – “, was all he could say before tumbling on the table, hitting his face in the empty copper tray.
I dared not to look at Mother, so I kept my eyes fixed at the open eyes of the dead man.
“Adil!”, Mother said in a voice that was reserved for adult conversation, “go to your father’s office and bring me his emergency kit! You know which one I mean.”, she handed me a brass key, and turned her attention to our dead guest.
I didn’t say anything. I was glad to get out of the room.
Behind me, Mother was giving orders to Aida who was following them in perfect silence.
My father’s office had been on lockdown since the raid. I turned the key inside the old rusty lock and pushed the heavy door open.
The room was just as the thugs from People’s Militia had left it: heaps of papers on the floor, broken china and glass, overturned furniture, and satin cushions gutted like chickens. My father had always kept his office so tidy. The raid was a violation of his very being, of everything he stood for.
There was a light switch on the wall. I found it and flicked it on an off in a rhythmic succession, having memorized the sequence months ago. That was when the large mahogany book case on the far wall slid open with a tired creak, revealing a second book case that was built directly into the wall.
Books in languages I couldn’t read. Trinkets and antiques from civilizations long turned to dust. All of it smuggled, stolen, gifted to my family by grateful customers. Priceless.
I approached the book case slowly, measuring each step and wiping the sweat from my hands. If I broke anything on these shelves, gods help me! What I was looking for was an object so unremarkable that it got lost among the all glimmering metals and gilded book covers. You wouldn’t find it if you didn’t know what to look for.
A little wooden box with an engraving of a two-headed snake wrapping itself around a chalice – the sign of the Healer. There was a time, not so long ago, when this symbol was the beacon of light in the darkest street corner. A Healer’s house was a sanctuary for anyone who sought it, at a negotiable price. Then the Crimson Wolves came. Their militia breaking in doors, purging the land from “charlatans” and “enemies of the people”.
I took the little wooden box carefully – my father’s life depended on it – and put it on the desk. I flicked the light switch on and off again in a different sequence and watched the fantastic book case vanish behind its ordinary twin.
When I came back, wooden box in both hands, Mother and Aida had already made all the preparations.
The table was cleared of all the dishes and the white linen cloth was lying in a heap on the sofa. On the table lay the fat man. He was tied to the table with thick black ropes; his head was propped up on a small cushion. He was completely naked.
I had seen naked bodies before, in books my parents didn’t know I knew about. But this was different. His white flesh was sagging, with dimples covering his large thighs; his stomach was spilling over on both sides, almost touching the table surface. His gender was lying flat and sad like a jellyfish washed up on sand. His moonlike face was turned up, eyes mercifully closed.
I handed mother the wooden box.
“What took you so long?”, she said without looking at me and took the box.
She placed it on the table above the dead man’s head. I saw now that his chest was rising and falling – very slowly.
Both Mother and Aida had painted their faces in red and black streaks. Intricate patterns the significance of which I could only infer. I flinched when Aida smeared my nose with that same smelly grease.
The lights were dimmed but no candles were lit. This was not a healing ceremony.
“You could have told me – “
“Quiet!”, Mother snapped, and Aida gave a warning look.
I had never seen this ritual performed before. What I had read about it, didn’t make my staying in the room any easier. But I was a part of this now. Sooner or later I was going to take my place in this world. I just always thought it wouldn’t happen for a few years.
I was eight.
Mother took her place at the undead man’s head. Aida stood by his right shoulder, and I by his left. Mother opened the little wooden box and retrieved a small glass vial. It was half filled with a clear liquid that seemed to move inside, trying to escape the glass walls.
“Open his mouth!”, Mother commanded, and Aida pushed down his jaw and tilted his head backward.
Mother opened the vial and pipetted a tiny drop of the elusive fluid. Her slender fingers were working with the speed and precision like that of a seasoned Healer. She poured that drop in the undead man’s open mouth. The room smelled like late November.
“Close!”, and Aida snapped the jaw shut.
I watched silently, hardly allowing myself a breath as the woman I called Mother performed the rest of the ritual, methodically, with surgical precision.
Sweat was pouring from my every pore. Cold sweat, like when I had the flu. I looked first to Mother then to Aida for some signal that it was going to be alright, but their sole focus was on the undead man. Their eyes were not in this world. They were consumed by the energy they were channeling through them.
I was getting tired. It was way past bedtime. Just as I was about to close my eyes, to daydream about my warm bed and my stuffed cat, the undead man opened his eyes. Then he opened his mouth, and the most horrible, inhuman scream erupted from deep within his chest.
All the world’s pain, all its cruelty suffered by every human soul was in that scream. Every murder, every rape, every life lost to a devastating earthquake.
As he continued to scream, his body started twitching, spasming like it was trying to eject the poison running in its veins. He was strong. The ropes were tightly wrapped around him, but the big dining room table was beginning to creak and moan under pressure.
I started inching away from the table, my whole body begging me to run, to get out of the room and hide under my bed and never come out. Mother and Aida were standing still now, hands on their sides, waiting out the storm.
I swallowed hard and clapped my hands over my ears. Closing my eyes was not an option. I heard my voice – tiny and hysterical somewhere inside this nightmare.
Just as it started, the screaming stopped. The undead man’s body went limp and his voice died out. The room was now silent, save for the ringing in my ears – that agonized scream echoing in my mind.
Mother leaned over the undead man’s face and asked in a low, measured voice,
“Who are you?”
“I am Serge, captain of the People’s Militia of the Crimson Wolves.”, his voice was monotonous, devoid of emotion.
“Do you know where your people took my husband, Serge?”
“They took him to the state prison in Qanau City.”
So, he was telling the truth.
“How long has he been there?”
“Two months.”
Mother pressed her lips, thinking about the next question.
“Is he alive?”
“Yes, he is.”
“Do you know what his charges are, Serge?”
“He has been charged with charlatanism and endangering of public safety.”
“We are going to set him free.”
“Yes, we will.”
What followed was nearly an hour-long conversation (if you could call it that) in which Mother asked vital information about the prison in Qanau City and how long until Father’s trial. In exchange, she gave the undead man his instructions, going over the plan to free Father from prison step by dangerous step. It was like watching a human talk to a wound-up doll.
When Mother was done, she made the man repeat every step. He did, and when she was satisfied, a shadow of a smile crossed her grave face.
“Now, Serge, who to you answer to?”
“I answer to you, Madam Seberi.”
We left the man lie on the dinner table for the night. Mother locked the door and ordered Aida to bar the windows from the outside.
“He will sleep through the night. We need to let the essence work its way into his mind, his soul.” She said.
She looked tired, and for the first time I saw something resembling fear in her eyes.
“All goes well, we will send him on his way in the morning.”
Then she turned to me and took something from her pocket.
“Take this, Adil!”, she put a silver coin in my outstretched hand and I closed my fingers tightly around it, “Go to your room. Lock the door and don’t come out until we come and wake you. Put the coin under your pillow. Do you understand me, Adil?”
I swallowed hard. My throat was bone dry and it hurt.
“Yes, Mother.” I managed a whisper.
She didn’t have to repeat herself as I ran upstairs and locked myself in my room.
I spent the following night with the all the lights in my room on, clutching my stuffed cat. A silver coin with an engraving of a two-headed serpent wrapping its body over a chalice lay under my pillow. I could feel the weight of it on the bed, drawing what little comfort I could from its charged metal.
I knew now, having been witness to that ancient ritual, why the Healer’s snake had two heads instead of one.
The undead man was downstairs. I was listening to the night, fearing – or maybe hoping to hear his voice once again. His scream. My heart was pounding so hard I thought it was going to leap from my mouth. I wanted to cry but was too exhausted and dehydrated.
Somewhere, in the deepest recesses of my numbed mind, a voice told me that this undead man – this fat naked monster was going to help us get Father back. That this whole night had been for a good reason.
But I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep and never wake up. Or to wake up when it was all over. When Father was already home and the undead man dead for real and buried so deep that I could never hear his screams again.
I fell asleep in the wee hours of the morning. If I had nightmares that night, I don’t remember.
The end
