Mami Wata
SIMON KURT UNSWORTH’S STORIES have appeared in the Ash-Tree Press anthologies At Ease with the Dead, Exotic Gothic 3 and Shades of Darkness, as well as Lovecraft Unbound, Gaslight Grotesque, The Black Book of Horror 6, Creature Feature, Where the Heart Is and Black Static magazine.
His story “The Church on the Island” was nominated for a World Fantasy Award and was reprinted in The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19 and The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror. His first collection, Lost Places, was recently issued by Ash-Tree, to be followed by Strange Gateways from PS Publishing.
“When I was first asked to contribute to Exotic Gothic 3 (which was to feature Gothic-influenced stories in non-Gothic environments), I agreed without really thinking about it,” Unsworth explains, “and then spent a long time struggling, trying to work out how, precisely, I was going to manage it or quite how to make a start.
“I knew what I wanted to do, sort of, but not exactly how to do it, so one day alarmingly close to the deadline I did a fun thing: I freewheeled through Google. Using a small document about Zambian myths and cultures I found online (I set the story in Zambia for no reason other than an old family friend lives there and it seemed exotic in Gothic terms), I used one Zambian word from it as a search term and read what came up, took one intriguing Zambian term from the search results and searched for that, etc, and disappeared into Google’s merry depths.
“I ended up with an academic paper about a particular myth, a travel blog about a sort of beer made from corn and a weird little ‘my God’s better than your God’ blog by a kid in Africa, and somewhere in the middle of that, the story appeared.”
THE HEAT WAS like a brick.
Thorley had never seen shadows like it; they seemed edged in gold and darker at their centre than pitch. Even indoors, they pooled at his feet like glorious ink, gathering around his ankles and under the tables in the chibuku tavern. They even reflected themselves in the sweat that gathered on the brow of Chilongo, Thorley’s companion seated on the other side of the table.
“This is a good place,” Chilongo was saying. “An honest place. Sure, we have our problems, like anywhere, but we’ve always worked hard. I don’t know why they had to send you.”
“They sent me,” said Thorley, “because the mine’s production has fallen by over half and they want to know why.” Behind Chilongo, bottles glittered on the shelves lining the bar, throwing their own shadows across the mural painted on to the wall. A mermaid, golden haired and naked, had her back to the bar’s interior but looked over her shoulder into the room. Her tail was splayed out in front of her, half hidden by her body. Beyond, painted smaller so that they looked insignificant and weak, were rows of men. They looked awe-struck, frightened.
Actually, Thorley hadn’t been sent, he had chosen to come, even though he didn’t need to. The loss of production was a financial concern but it could have been sorted out by phone and email with the onsite managers. It was Chilongo’s voice that had done it in the end, its rich musicality dancing down the telephone line and making the already grey British day greyer. Thorley had heard the sun in Chilongo’s voice, heard the rhythms of African speech, heard something brighter than the drear that faced him through the window, and it had called to him, irresistible and powerful.
“Every mine has runs of luck, good and bad,” said Chilongo. “We’ve just hit a bad period.”
“Indeed?” said Thorley. “And yet the last report said shaft four had hit a new seam, was promising great dividends.”
“It didn’t play out,” insisted Chilongo. “It looked good, but then it turned out to be nothing. We’ve had some flooding in the deepest shaft, some machinery problems. Nothing to worry about. You know how it goes.”
“No,” said Thorley, “I don’t,” and as he said it he thought to himself, but I know when someone’s lying to me. What I don’t know is why.
Thorley had decided not to stay in one of the large hotels. Travelling in from Kitwe, the town nearest to the mine, would have been a waste and besides, he wanted to see what industrial Zambia was really like. He had seen the brochures that sometimes came across his desk, glossy things filled with pictures of wild animals and wide, sweeping plains, telling prospective investors about the landscape and the abundant workforce and the stable government, and about mines that produced yield after impressive yearly yield of copper or nickel or cobalt, but he had never visited. He had never needed to; previously, things had run smoothly and the local managers had dealt with things.
He also didn’t want to stay with the expats, although several of them had offered him accommodation when they discovered he was coming. He had never liked expat communities, which seemed to him to fall too easily into patterns of casual racism redolent of colonialism. They were a necessary evil as Thorley saw it, useful for the skills pool they provided but claustrophobic with nostalgia and boredom, and he certainly didn’t need to expose himself to it any more than was strictly necessary. Instead, he had chosen to stay in a workers’ motel on the outskirts of Kitwe, not far from the mine.
Thorley could have been in a room anywhere; the bed with nondescript covers and sagging mattress, the cheap sideboard that doubled as a television stand, the shower room created by partitioning off one corner and installing a plastic cubicle and shower, the chair on which he hung his clothes.
He placed his underwear and shirts in the sideboard drawers, seeing as he did so a Gideon’s bible. It was old, bleached by the heat, and its spine cracked painfully when he lifted and opened it, the imitation leather dry and brittle. The drawers were lined with newspaper, he saw, aged to the colour of sand and as brittle as the Gideon’s spine. He lifted out a sheet and tried to read it, but the print had faded so that he could only make out some of the words. The headline on the page read FOUR DEAD MEN and below was a date in July, three months previously. He put the sheet back in the drawer and decided to work.
Even after sundown, the heat was oppressive. The motel had no air conditioning, and Thorley soon found that the only way to stay even close to comfortable was to strip to his pants and fan himself with the papers he was supposed to be reading. It was impossible to concentrate anyway; he knew most of the facts already, about how the mine’s production had fallen off dramatically in the previous five months, down from around 450 tonnes to less than 300, how there was no official explanation (apart from Chilongo’s “bad luck”) for this drop in output. Much of the explanation, Thorley saw, would lie in the significant drop in workforce numbers that had occurred over the previous months. The mine still operated, of course; they had not lost that many men, just more than was normal or usual, for reasons that weren’t clear.
Thorley could hear the mine workings as he lay on his bed, a distant throatless rumble peaking occasionally into dull booms or percussive echoes. Closer to, someone was playing a radio loud, the signal fading in and out so that the music and voices seemed to sway about Thorley. He was exhausted and hot, his eyes gritty from tiredness and the dry air, his sweat loosed across him like a second skin. The tap water was only lukewarm and did not quench his thirst, no matter how much he drank. He was wondering about dressing and going in search of ice when he must have, finally, drifted into slumber.
When Thorley awoke it was still dark, and not much cooler. He sat up, realizing as he did so that some of his papers had stuck to his body. They peeled off with a sound like kissing, leaving the ghosts of letters on his flesh that rubbed away under his fingers. In the distance, he heard sirens, or one siren echoing, it was hard to tell, and men shouting. He went to the window of his room, picking up his glass of tepid water as he went, and pulled aside the curtains.
His rented car was a grey shape in the darkness, and the flat apron of the car park beyond a smooth shadow segmented by painted lines. Despite the noises, which seemed to be getting closer, he could see no movement except the distant shimmer of thorn bushes moving in the slight breeze.
Actually, that wasn’t quite true. The far edge of the car park bordered the road to the mine, and now he could see someone walking along it, heading away from the motel. Shadows from the buildings on the far side of the road swept across the figure as it walked, an alternating, dappling pattern. It was a woman, Thorley saw, tall and thin and white with straggly blonde hair that fell down her naked back.
Naked? No, that couldn’t be right. She must surely have some backless top or dress on, something cool for this stifling heat. He couldn’t see her lower half, so shrouded in shadow was she, but he thought he could hear the swish of material as she walked.
Just before she walked out of view, an ambulance went past heading away from the mine, its swirling light illuminating her fully for a moment, showing Thorley her long arms and splayed hands with dark nails. In the moment of her disappearance, she turned her face to him and smiled, her teeth white as alabaster against the surrounding night. She was young, and very pretty.
The next morning, Thorley ate breakfast and waited for Chilongo. The motel had no dining room, so he had walked over the road to a tavern that had a sign outside advertising GOOD FOOD FROM EARLY TIL LATE and ordered himself a coffee and the fruit plate. Although it was before eight, the sun had already cast itself hard across the ground, creating more of those shadows that seemed so dark.
It was worse inside the tavern, where the large glass windows, cataracted with dust and dirt though they were, magnified the heat of the morning far beyond anything the slowly turning ceiling fan could cope with. Flies buzzed across the trays of wild mango, plum and sand apple, the owner flicking a red cloth at them half-heartedly, making the insects rise and fall.
Thorley sat at the table farthest from the windows, hoping to find some respite from the light. At a nearby table, two men stared with undisguised interest at him. He smiled, nodded, broke eye contact by looking down at the papers he had brought with him.
The coffee was poor, weak and gruel-like, but the fruit was excellent, fleshy and juicy and, to his palate, exotic, and he enjoyed the sensation and taste of it in his mouth. As he ate, he looked around the tavern. The other diners were mostly men, workers from the mine, he assumed, some coming off nightshift, others going on. The men going on shift, cleaner and fresher, ate fruit and spoke to each other; the men coming off shift ate plates of vegetables and meat in silence. Most of the men looked over at him during their meals, eyes sullen and wary.
Behind the counter and counterman, painted on the rear wall, was a mural. This one showed a dark-skinned woman with long hair confidently facing into the room, with a comb in one hand. She was naked apart from a snake, draped around her shoulders, its tail and head covering her breasts. The artist had painted her well, and she glowed with large, expressive eyes and a ripe, full mouth. The landscape behind her, however, was cruder, showing only the barest of detail. Hills and a vast plain stretched out, the plain full of what Thorley first thought were apes or horses but then realized were men. There were hundreds of them, mostly barely more than stick figures, all facing the woman. Some appeared to be kneeling, others had their arms raised. It was an odd mix of primitive and modern art styles, although an impressive one.
Chilongo appeared late, stressed but apologetic, and with some of the dancing cadences gone from his voice. He was tired, Thorley saw, the bruised flesh under his eyes sagging and dark. The man was rumpled, his clothes creased. Rings of sweat, dried and fresh, gathered under his shirtsleeves. He smelled anxious and sour.
“I am so sorry,” he said. “It has been a difficult morning and I was unavoidably delayed.”
“Problem?” Thorley asked.
“No. Well, yes,” said Chilongo. “There was an incident last night, and one of the men died. One of the miners, I mean. He was in another motel, like yours, and he was found dead.”
“Not an incident at the mine? An accident, I mean, onsite?”
“No.”
“Then why should that be a problem for you?” asked Thorley.
“Because,” said Chilongo, “I am the man in charge of the miners and of the visitors to the mine. I am responsible for them.” He sounded angry, indignant, and Thorley raised a placatory hand, motioning Chilongo to sit.
“Sorry,” he said, “I meant no offence. Now, we have a long few days ahead of us. Please, take me to the mine and you can tell me what’s been happening on the way.”
“We like to keep visitors away,” said Chilongo, noticing Thorley wince as they bounced across yet another rut over the deteriorated track that led to the small mine, a smaller site, specializing in the deepest seams. “Originally, it was to keep ourselves insignificant in the eyes of others, so that they would not bother us. The larger companies are not above having their trucks deliberately break down to block access, or staging the accidental shedding of loads of trash in awkward places, if they perceive you as a threat. Now, however, it stops the inquisitive attempting to get onsite. Reporters and the like.”
“Reporters? Why reporters?”
“Because of the deaths.”
The mine, even though small by comparison with some of the others scattered across the copperbelt, was still huge. As they juddered along the road, and through two security checkpoints, Thorley waited to see the investment he was here to protect.
He wasn’t sure what he expected, exactly; a series of sheds around a caged lift-head, possibly, or a carved expanse of parched earth hollowed out from the ground, but in reality it was neither. It was a complicated, layered series of huts and prefab buildings, of varying heights, built in the centre of a vast, dusty plain. The separate structures were clustered together, creating the impression of a huge, ever-expanding castle, sprawling its way across the earth like some creeping, cancerous thing.
As they drew close, Thorley saw the individual huts were huge, boxy structures painted green and brown and coated in sand and dirt, their fronts open to allow trucks to drive in and out. More trucks and dirty buildings lined the perimeter, these stranger shapes with sloped roofs or walls that were missing entirely, all of them linked by rumbling, moving multi-layered conveyor belts like arteries. All over the site, chimneys pierced the air, stretching up from the ground and loosing spiralling coils of dirty grey smoke at the sky.
Thorley enjoyed the size of it, could feel the vibration of the machinery even in the car. Even with the windows closed, he smelled the sharp stench of acid and machinery and burning, could hear the lupine growl of the conveyor belts and smelting units. He turned to Chilongo, wanting to say something about the sheer immensity of what he was seeing and hearing, but saw that the other man was looking at the approaching mine works with a strange expression on his face; he looked scared.
Thorley spent the day going through the mine’s records, interviewing the managers and supervisors. He soon realized that there was a distinct split in attitude between those staff who worked solely overground, mainly the expat managers, and those who went underground, mostly locals or supervisors brought in from other areas. The managers put the fall in production down to worker greed, blaming miners who had slowed down or left in the hope of getting higher pay, shorter hours or more benefits. They showed him lengthy technical reports, most written by the same expat managers that were showing them to him, full of technical dialogue and graphs and phrases like unexpected seam depletion and shaft misalignment, none of which told him anything. In one he came across the phrase enviro-cultural factors having an impact upon workforce cohesion and permanence, but it was not clear what this meant. The workers who went underground all reported variations on a theme; that the mine was simply “unlucky”.
That night, Chilongo took Thorley to a different tavern to eat, this one closer to Kitwe. It looked to have been built out of an old barn, although the inside was nicely decorated and the tables were large and spaced far enough apart that Thorley didn’t feel overlooked or overheard.
The meal was pleasant, and although he had little inclination to talk to Chilongo, the other man seemed to have recovered some of his energy since the morning and spoke enough for both of them. Thorley listened only partially, chewing his food and glancing around. This was a place couples came, and although it was only early evening, there were several pairs dining around the room. Most looked at him, some fleetingly, some with longer, more intense stares. The couple nearest to him held a fierce, whispered conversation, clearly about him. Thorley caught the word muzungu once or twice. He had heard it this morning at breakfast as well, and the previous day, never spoken to his face.
“It means ‘Westerner’,” said Chilongo. “That word you keep hearing. We are used to foreigners here, of course, but you are clearly not a mine operator and you have arrived at a bad time. It makes people nervous.”
“How can you tell I’m not a mine operator?” asked Thorley, intrigued.
“Ha! You are soft-looking, as though you have spent your life behind a desk. Mine operators, underground or overground, tend to look like the thing they mine eventually. Hard, in the case of copper. Even when a miner is clean, he looks crusted with dirt, no?”
Thorley nodded; it was true. He had met miners ten years into their retirement and they still appeared as though their skin was grainy with cinders and grit.
“You aren’t dirty. To miners and the people that know them, you don’t look as if you’ve ever been dirty in your life.”
“Why is this a difficult time? Because of the deaths?”
Chilongo didn’t answer straight away, but took a sip of his pulpy elephant orange drink, what he called muhuluhulu, crunching on an ice cube. “The deaths are part of it,” he said eventually. “A small part. It’s not easy to explain. This isn’t a happy place now, or at least, not as happy as it was. But working towns are never that happy, are they? Always worried about production or closures or being undersold, or accidents, or death. There’s no one here who isn’t related to a miner, or to a trucker or a boss or a guard for the mine. The expats tell us to get on with the work, but they don’t understand either.”
“Understand what?”
“Are you still planning to come underground tomorrow, to see the mine in operation?”
Thorley nodded.
“Then maybe you’ll see then.”
His motel room was no cooler that evening, although Thorley had managed to get a bucket of ice from reception and had dropped two bottles of water into it in the hope that they would stay chilled for the night. He had also bought himself Scotch whisky and drunk several shots after returning from his meal.
He thought about Chilongo; the man was hiding something, that was for sure, and the mine managers had no idea of what was happening. Despite all the reports and conversations today, he was no clearer about why this mine was losing staff, had falling production figures.
They paid well and were generous employers, the conditions were no worse than any of the other companies working in the area and better than some, and yet people were walking away from their jobs. Six per cent of the workforce last month, four per cent the month before, seven the month before that, and few were being replaced. The positions were being advertised, but there were few if any applicants. It made no sense. None.
The car park was fuller tonight, Thorley saw. As well as his own rental Toyota, already picking up a thin layer of sand and dust after only a day’s disuse, there were two jeeps with mine company logos and three or four other cars.
The radio was playing again, its indistinct tones tonight accompanied by singing, although whether by a man or woman Thorley could not tell. People were drinking in another of the rooms, he knew; there had already been one shouted argument, the voices slurred, and a bout of raucous laughter that ended in the sound of a bottle breaking. Thorley sipped his whisky and waited for the world to cool.
At just before midnight, the woman appeared again. She walked into Thorley’s view on the far side of the car park, this time coming from the mine rather than walking towards it. In the sodium orange of the streetlights, her skin seemed the colour of mocha and her auburn hair gleamed like the copper he had spent the day investigating. She walked across the road to the edge of the concrete apron and then stopped, appearing to stare at him even though she was surely too far away to see him. There was something enticing in her gaze, even at this distance, something feral and erotic.
Thorley became uncomfortably aware that he was standing at the window wearing only boxers and with a growing erection. Stepping back into the shadows of the room, he continued watching. The woman began to walk across the car park, and although he couldn’t see her lower half because of the cars and jeep between her and him, he suddenly became convinced she was naked. He could see the sweep of her clavicles and neck, her hair framing a rounded, attractive face and dropping away down a chest he was suddenly sure was bare. He could see no T-shirt neckline or blouse collar, no thin vest straps or bandeau top.
When the man came into view and saw the woman, he was as surprised as Thorley was. Drunk, he swayed as he walked, was scrabbling in his pockets for something, head down and oblivious. The woman turned towards the new man, with his skin dark and sweating in the humid night, and smiled broadly. He, seeing her, took two stumbling steps back and then turned and staggered back the way he had come. With a last look towards Thorley, she shifted direction, following the other man.
Thorley watched her go, somewhere between disappointed and glad; his visit here was complicated enough without adding a woman into the scenario. Finishing his whisky, he went to bed. It was only later, as he drifted towards sleep, that Thorley realized that the woman had been blonde the night before.
She could easily have dyed her hair, he thought the next morning. People did, after all. It wasn’t unusual. Looking around the tavern, he saw that of the two of the women in there, one had plaits woven into her hair, making it a tangle of straw blonde, red and black that framed her dark face like a halo. Thorley lifted another piece of papaya into his mouth, gazing again at the mural.
“She is beautiful, yes?” said a voice. Thorley looked around to find Chilongo standing at his side. “Mami Wata. Water mother. You will find her in most of the bars and taverns in the copper-belt. Across large parts of Africa, really.”
“Are they all pictures of her? All the different women in the murals?”
“They are all versions of her. She lives in our bars because she attracts men, and where men come, they want to drink. She likes the noise and the attention.”
Thorley raised his eyes to Chilongo; he was staring at the woman on the wall with a look on his face that Thorley could not completely recognize, a mix of fascination and anger and something else. Lust, maybe. Looking again at the mural, he realized that the mermaid reminded him of the woman from the midnight street.
Outside, the dusty pavement glowed a heated yellow in the glare of the early morning sun. The road, a strip of darker tarmac, glinted as Thorley and Chilongo walked across it. It was already hot enough to create ripples in the air that Thorley could feel, warm pulsations that tickled his ankles. Crossing towards Chilongo’s car, Thorley saw a crowd gathering in a loose, mutating cluster a couple of hundred yards away.
“What’s happening?” asked Thorley.
“Nothing,” said Chilongo. He kept his eyes fixed on the car, and it seemed to Thorley that his companion was deliberately not looking at the crowd.
“Nothing?” he asked.
“Nothing. Come, we have to get you underground.”
The lift cage was empty, but it smelled of men, muscular, sweaty, exhausted. Chilongo and one of the mine engineers, a dark-bearded expat named Rowe, checked each other’s equipment one last time and then closed the doors for descent.
“We’re going to almost the deepest point in the mine, to one of the newer shafts, so that you can observe the operation and maybe talk to some of the men,” said Rowe as though this was news to Thorley, as though he hadn’t been the one who requested this excursion. Take me deep, he had said, and let me talk to the miners. I need to know what the problem is.
It was clear Rowe didn’t like him, or didn’t trust him. Thorley could see it in the looks that were even now surreptitiously coming his way. He had the impression that Rowe and Chilongo didn’t like each other, but now Rowe was talking to Chilongo as though they were friends, pointedly excluding Thorley. Thorley didn’t really mind; it gave him a chance to look around.
It was several years since he had been underground, but he found he still enjoyed it. The temperature drop as they descended was satisfying, an escape from the raw heat of the day above, diving into some cooling swathe that refreshed rather than chilled. He liked the sound of the lift, the metallic clatter dancing above the rumble of the motor and the fainter sound of the mine’s working belly. He even liked the feel of the clothes he had changed into and the weight of the helmet on his head.
When the descent was over, the lift opened out into a wide shaft that went in both directions, sloping down and echoing with voices and the clank of machinery. Lights were strung out in cabled lines along the tunnel, the air around them haloed in dust and hanging moisture. Two conveyor belts, one above the other, ran along the centre of the tunnel. Both were currently motionless, the heavy rubber belts empty apart from streaks of crushed earth and dry, friable rock fragments.
Down here, the change in air pressure made Thorley’s ears ache slightly. The smell had changed, from the strong male odour of the lift to one of burning rock and the heavy, tarry scent of oil and exhaust fumes. The three walked down the tunnel, passing under ribs of wood and tight cabling. The noise grew louder as they walked until talking to each became almost impossible. At one point, Chilongo stopped Thorley and pointed down an unlit side tunnel.
“It is the flooded one, the deep one,” he shouted. “It did not play out, and we had water problems. It is why our production fell so far.”
No, thought Thorley, it’s not. One failed excursion should not have affected output that dramatically, despite what Chilongo said. The mine was always sending out exploratory shoots, some of which played out and some of which did not. It was normal behaviour. But something else was going on here.
They came upon the man about ten minutes after passing the abandoned deep shaft. He was positioned under one of the lights, peering intently back up along the tunnel. Under his covering of dirt and sweat, it was near-impossible to tell if he was black or white. Only his eyes, gleaming white against the grime on his face, showed clearly. When he saw them, the man started, stepping back away from the light and into one of the shadowed areas between the bulbs.
“You! Come here! What are you doing?” Rowe demanded.
“Watching,” said the man.
“Watching? For what?” Rowe shouted and Thorley could feel the anger coming from him, fury that showed itself in his bared teeth and reddening face.
“Watching,” repeated the man. Chilongo nodded at him and drew Rowe aside, leaning into his ear and speaking too fast and low for Thorley to hear. Feeling his own anger build, he stepped after them, trying to discern what the Zambian was saying.
Chilongo, seeing him, broke off and shouted, with forced cheerfulness, “Let us go. We are almost there.”
The large gang of men was working on a new shaft, operating a huge excavator. Water sprayed against the rock-face, massive blades chewing into it and spitting the savaged chunks out behind where they were taken by smaller belts to be sorted and disposed of. The noise, nearly unbearable even through Thorley’s ear protectors, was a constant roar of tortured stone and the grind of machinery and the gearshift crunch of an engine labouring under huge pressure merging with the reptile hiss of the water and men calling to each other. The sound was a physical thing, the air vibrating and beating against Thorley’s clothes and exposed skin in a tattoo of industrial rhythms.
Dust was hanging in the air, reducing the light to a murky yellow gleam punctuated by bright spotlights on the excavator and the paler eyes of the helmet lamps. Rowe, leaving Chilongo and Thorley, went to find the supervisor, going from man to anonymous man to locate him. He was on his way back towards them, pulling a smaller man with him, when the man from the main tunnel reappeared. He was running, banging into Thorley as he dashed past, leaping up onto the running board of the excavator and screaming at the operator. In a moment, the machine fell silent and still, the men shouting and rushing around. Lights clicked off, the sudden darkness shocking in its intensity.
Thorley heard Rowe shout something and then Chilongo was at Thorley’s side and reaching up to turn his helmet lamp off. Thorley went to speak, to reach up and switch the lamp back on, but Chilongo gripped his hand tightly and said, “Leave it. Stay silent. Please.” Rowe shouted again and as the last of the lights went off, Thorley saw one of the miners wrap a hand around his mouth and drag him to the floor. “You will be safe if you stay silent and still,” said Chilongo. “Please, trust me.”
The darkness, now complete, brought with it silence. Thorley tried to move but Chilongo pulled him back against the rough wall, tightening his grip on Thorley’s hand as he did so. Thorley, recognizing that he was powerless, submitted and remained still.
The first sound was a frictional rustle. It was initially very faint but grew rapidly louder, a constantly shifting, moving sound that made Thorley think of heavy drapes in a breeze or a taffeta ballgown wrapped around a dancing woman’s thighs. Under it there was something else, a clink like stones being tapped together or teeth clicking. Surrounded by the blackness of the absolute, Thorley could not help but populate the darkness with shapes, although what shapes he did not know.
Something was even now slipping around the corner, heading towards them, he was sure. The noise was growing louder, sounding less like material, becoming more like paws stepping delicately over uneven ground or scales rasping against stone. A new scent came to Thorley’s nostrils, foetid and sour like water that cannot flow.
Something moved in the darkness before Thorley’s face. He felt the air shift as it went past, and his face prickled with fevered heat.
Towards the excavator, one of the men whimpered and the thing in the darkness darted away, snapping like a whipping canvas sail in the feverish air. Something skittered away from him, the chitinous clatter not quite covering a noise like some subtle beast scenting the air.
Another man whispered something before being shushed, and the air shifted once more as the thing moved, swift and invisible, among the group. A third man let out a stifled cry and then a fourth (Rowe, Thorley thought) moaned. Another movement, another displacement of air and a hollow, terrible sucking. Rowe groaned again and one of the other men shouted. Someone screamed, the panic echoing as the sucking came again, and Rowe let out a rattled breath. Thorley realized that Chilongo was pulling at him, that he had stepped forward without knowing why, and then the air moved again and the burning heat caressed his cheek once more. Chilongo yanked him once and he was falling, banging, careening into the darkness as a something wheeled back towards the main tunnel.
“What was it?”
Chilongo did not answer, but merely shook his head.
“An animal? A lion in the tunnels?” asked Thorley, insistent. The sun caught in the sweat on Chilongo’s face, birthing shadows around his eyes.
They were in the workers’ canteen, above ground and alone. The rest of the shift had gone, and Rowe had been taken home. Their exit from the tunnel had been frantic and confused, all shouts and pushes and pulls, carrying the half-conscious Rowe and looking around as they ran, stumbling across uneven floors and past side tunnels that yawned like expectant mouths.
They had not turned on the main lights before fleeing, using only the lamps of their helmets, the hazy beams crossing and criss-crossing in the wide tunnel, illuminating men running gracelessly on all sides of him, heading back up the slope. Even in the lift, claustrophobic and full, Thorley couldn’t relax, but stared through the lattice of the closed door as it began to rise, half-expecting to see something appearing from the darkness to snatch them back into the gloom.
Nothing came.
Rowe was not injured that Thorley could see, although he seemed exhausted and dopey, as though he had heat-stroke. One of the other managers had agreed to drive him home and Thorley had watched as the supervisor was taken to the car, walking like an old man. He seemed thinner, somehow, as though being underground had wasted him in some way. Even his shadow looked old, grey and brittle and shrunken and not the depthless and expansive black of the shadows of the man who escorted him or the surrounding cars and buildings.
“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.