Year's Best Weird Fiction, Volume 5 Page 7

  Too soon, Mama had stomach pains, or child pains, or some pungent infection Baba would not explain. When Baba was at work, Mbuyi and I would play in Mama’s room even though it smelled so bad I couldn’t keep my face from curling when I opened the door. Mbuyi wanted to play outside with the other kids, and sometimes he would, but often he would keep me company in Mama’s room and make wire cars and men for us to play with from the rug next to the bed. From Mama’s bed, where I curled against her as she slept, I would reach down and make the men dance and sing for us, make Mbuyi’s eyes light up as he held in laughter. We used the figures to tell Mama’s familiar stories. Sometimes, when she woke up, she pulled me and Mbuyi close and said, Did I ever tell you the story about—and we would say no and beg her to tell it even if we knew it already, and she would smile through strained eyes and stroke our arms and murmur tales about the wider world.

  *

  My first long wait was for my mother to recover her health. That wait was the shortest. It lasted a year. Her death brought my own.

  Mbuyi is at the neighbor’s house, where I am supposed to be, but I snuck home before Baba. I hear him from my bed.

  “You think he is a witch?” Baba’s friend says.

  “He refused to leave her, and now she is dead. He must be a witch.” Baba’s voice is cold. He is always cold now, when he speaks of me. When he speaks to me. I do not know how to make his voice change back.

  “He is only a child—and a twin! He is good fortune! How can he be a witch?”

  I am not a witch. Mama knew. Mama loved me. It hurts, always, now she is gone.

  “You have seen the way he looks at people. How he moves his hands when he thinks no one sees. And now he speaks to no one!”

  “It is suspicious … ”

  I talk to Mbuyi. I talk to Mama. Mama knew I have restless hands. She used to hand me things to toy with—spoons, sticks, dolls. She knew it calmed me. Now I have only my fingers. I move them and remember her. It calms me.

  “I will not take him with us. I will have enough trouble with just Mbuyi anyway. What kind of father keeps a murderer with his son?”

  My heart freezes in my chest. No. He would not leave me behind.

  “No one will take in a witch.”

  “And no one should. He killed my wife—let him lie in the bed he has made.”

  No. I would never hurt Mama. I love Mama.

  I want Mbuyi. I want my Mama.

  No.

  After Mama cut our hair, she burned it in the fire. After we cut our nails, she burned those in the fire. Mama said, Be careful whose gifts you accept, and be careful who you give gifts to. You never know when a witch will use a gift to curse you, sacrificing your life to gain more power. A twin’s death is powerful magic for a witch. So Mbuyi, watch out for your brother. And Kanku, take care of your brother. People come and go, Mama said, but you can always rely on your family.

  “Do not cry, I said!”

  “Baba, don’t leave me, please!”

  “Oh, so now you talk?”

  “We are all going to the new house in America, you said—”

  “Don’t you cry to me, Kanku! You killed your mother—I would not take you to a dog’s house.”

  “I did not! I promise, I tell you the truth!”

  Baba’s big hand cracks, and I fall.

  “You are a liar and a witch. Stay here.”

  “… but Baba—”

  “Let go of me!”

  “Baba, please, Baba—”

  “Do not try to follow us. You are not my son—you are no one’s son.”

  Glass breaks. Mbuyi cries out. The car horn shrieks and shrieks.

  No one took me in, not even a witch to make a sacrifice. I was seven years old when I realized Mama was wrong, that Mama lied.

  *

  It is important to know where you come from. It is important to remember your roots. As I wait for dark power to swallow the air, as I wait while Baba and that girl fritter away downstairs, as I stand in Mbuyi’s room picking maggots out of my cheeks and hips and squishing their wriggling bodies, I remember with religious fervor the distance that I have come, and fuel my rage.

  The second long wait spanned the end of my life and lasted most of my death. For almost two decades, I waited for my family to come home.

  The sun is not pretty anymore. It burns like their eyes, always watching. Warning me away. Throwing stones at the witch. Only the dogs are not afraid. They smell death. They are starved as me, their ribs showing and spines poking and dry tongues dragging from their mouths. I talk to them, but they are not friends. Their fur is spiked with ticks. They are waiting.

  I stole food. I sheltered with and ran from other “witch” children cast out on the street. I grew boney with hunger, and bitter, and mean. I knew I was going to die. And where were my ancestors, who I prayed to? Where was Mama’s comforting warmth to my spirit? How much of what she said was wrong when she told me of death and the afterlife?

  As death knelt close, I knew I was truly alone in the only world that mattered.

  I made a choice.

  And Mama was right: the death of a twin is powerful magic.

  They are no longer waiting.

  They gorge their feral stomachs.

  The people turn their eyes away.

  As I hovered over my body, I waited:

  … Mama? … Ancestors? … Anyone?

  … No.

  They ate me. Tore into my body like jackals. They ate me …

  But … they are only dogs. This is not their fault.

  Mama left me.

  Baba killed me.

  Mbuyi let him kill me.

  I’ll show them a witch. They will come back home.

  I am waiting.

  The first body I took was a witch boy I ran from once. He was twelve, an adult to my seven-year-old eyes.

  When I was alive, he found me eating chicken and foufou I stole from a table when a missionary stood to hug his friend. I ran with heart in my throat through the streets until the shouting died. Then I huddled with my stolen food, my first meal in days, under an awning on a quiet street of shops. I ate like the street dogs, quick and brutal and wary. The witch boy still surprised me. He pulled me up by my wrist, stole the chicken from my slick fingers, and shoved me hard onto the ground. These are my streets, he said as I skittered away. He sucked the rest of the meat into his mouth as I seethed with wretched hatred. He noticed my fist, cradled to my chest. But before he said, Give me that, I was running.

  While I lived, alone on the streets, I ran and I hid. As a dead boy, I explored my hometown fearlessly, in the open, though I could travel only a few kilometers from where I died. Whenever I got too far, my consciousness narrowed and fluttered like a fish gasping for breath. I found the witch boy again as I explored. I wondered if I could hurt him now. I meant to burrow into his chest, try to squeeze his heart. Instead I felt his spirit quail against me. I thrashed it with glee and shoved it out.

  The sudden wall of sensation knocked me flat, and then his memories assailed me. I lay in the street like a drunk. It took most of the night for me to master his body. The next day I stole and I ate. I had longer legs. My new body was weak, but stronger than mine had been when I died. I survived for two glorious days in his body. Then it began to rot.

  I stole more bodies while I waited for my family. People who wronged me in life. People who should have stood up for me, taken me in. People with hands in my death. Always they began to rot after a few days. I discarded them quickly so no one suspected a witch. I learned one other thing during these experiments: while cloaked in a body, my tether was gone.

  More than a decade passed before Mbuyi came home to visit our old house. I watched him walk through town, ask after me, come away angry. I wanted his body, but I hesitated. In all of my memories, Mbuyi loved me, took care of me. I watched him plant his feet in the ghosts of Baba’s footprints and look down the road. He did not feel my presence as he apologized to a dead boy.

&nb
sp; If he is really sorry, I thought, he will not fight me too much.

  *

  The last wait I spent trapped in my Baba’s house, in a bedroom that should’ve been mine: I waited for the day I could finally kill him for killing me.

  I sifted through Mbuyi’s memories enough to get to the airport, get to Baba’s car, get to Baba’s apartment without him suspecting. It was the second day, the last day I had before Mbuyi’s corpse started rotting like all the others. Baba asked me about my trip and I struggled to find Mbuyi’s memories in time to answer. Twice the cold look returned to Baba’s eyes as we spoke, and he showed me a necklace that made me recoil. I wanted to kill him then, but he wore it and I couldn’t get close, not even with a knife. He cut my hair for me, as he did when I was a child, and tottered off to his office. I was woozy from the necklace brushing against my neck as he cut. I fell asleep in the chair. When I woke, he helped me walk up the stairs, my consciousness reeling with every step. I felt like power had gone out from me, like I was trapped in a cage, someplace dark and small. Somehow, while I slept, he had taken my power. I was a child in a corpse-shell, and Baba my master.

  I could not shove him away, down the spindly staircase. I could not reach for his neck to choke the life from it. I could not curse his name with a witch’s power. He dropped me in Mbuyi’s room and he told me, face ugly with rage, “I always knew you were a witch.” He slammed the door shut.

  Mbuyi’s corpse didn’t rot after two days, or after seven, or after two years. In that time I learned Baba’s house, walking it in the night when the dark power crests with the chime of the clock. I couldn’t go far into Baba’s office. The necklace was somewhere inside the desk, and it sickened me to get close. He hides my power in there, I am sure. While he slept I paced like an anxious dog. I was tired of waiting. In the third year, Mbuyi’s body began to rot, and the girl started visiting Baba. In the fourth year, the body grew weak, its stink thick, and the girl settled in to spend the summer with Baba. She slept in the office, Baba’s necklace hanging from the door, warding me away.

  But tonight the air is thick with promise. The girl closes her door. Baba starts climbing the stairs—and the clock strikes twelve. I twist the door in my scarred right hand and step into the dark.

  I am done waiting.

  *

  My spirit surges with the memory of adrenaline as I reach the top of the stairs. Baba puts the necklace at the office door—his only protection besides his locked bedroom door, which can’t help him now. I grin at him stuttering up the stairs, and take a step down.

  Baba looks up, eyes wide. His body shakes. I step closer, closer, and his face contorts. He grips his chest. He stumbles down to the landing and sits on the stairs facing the wall.

  He cannot face me. He cannot face what he has done. He cannot face the death that is coming. I step beside him and run a loving hand over his shorn hair, the balding crown spattered with gray and white. Baba is old now. He has lived longer than I ever will. His time has come. I step down again and slide my hand, just strong enough, around his throat. I step down onto the landing and bring my face close. I want to watch him die, let him feel the peace it brings me. Baba is panting already, his dark face pale and pained, beginning to sweat. He slaps at my hands, but even against this body he is weak. My thumb presses into his windpipe.

  My thumb presses in.

  My thumb …

  Baba huffs and twists his head just enough. He is laughing at me. I cannot press in. I cannot kill him. He still has my power, somehow. I cannot kill him—still! Cannot even shove him into the steps where he slumps. My half-rotted face twists in so violent a snarl a maggot drops from my cheek onto Baba’s heaving lap. I turn in disgust and disappear in the shadows. I need a new plan, but what can I do that I haven’t tried already, many times?

  “Uncle?” the girl’s voice quivers through my rage. She opens the door, calls again. “Uncle? Are you all right?”

  Is this the answer?

  I tear through Mbuyi’s memory, call her to mind. The strongest memory is half-rotted, the details corroded. They are in Mbuyi’s room, my prison, but the blinds are open and sunlight gleams on a mancala board. She is much younger than him, but his memory of her is fond, like his memories of me.

  Hurry up and go already!

  Shut it, Mbuyi, I’m thinking.

  You’re gonna think until bedtime. You just don’t want to lose.

  I refuse to lose this game.

  I know. That’s why you’re my favorite cousin.

  Why? Because I always beat you?

  You only wish that were true.

  So why am I your favorite cousin then?

  Because you don’t give up.

  Perhaps her mind will think of something I cannot? It is worth a try.

  She finds Baba, a brave little mouse until I approach and she screams and she runs. I leave Baba to catch her.

  In the dark kitchen I burn through the weak little blessing of Baba’s, buzzing like a busybody on her forehead to keep me out. My power is mostly gone, stolen by Baba, but I have enough left to break this. The blessing’s light crunches and winks out. I push myself from Mbuyi’s corpse into my cousin. Rage and hope propel me. Her spirit leaves like a moan. The corpse smells stronger in my cousin’s body, but I pay little mind, even trailing its juices in my bare feet. My strongest hour is wasting, but this body has been in Baba’s office, has touched the necklace without fear. When I break it with my woman’s bare, weak hand, my new body shivers with triumph.

  I tear through the desk, quick and vicious, touching everything in sight. Paperweights, folders, things I have never seen except in Mbuyi’s memory—stapler, computer, tape recorder, cordless phone—I shove my way in and out of Baba’s treasured things, touching and rejecting it all. These things are not mine, not my power that he stole, and so I treat them like trash, I break them on the floor, just as Baba has treated me all of my life. I can feel my energy in the desk, but could never get close before.

  When it is not in the drawers, I claw at the walls, the inside of the desk. I may have to break it apart. But on an inner drawer wall I find a hidden compartment. My back hunches and stills: this is mine. Slowly, reverently, I peel open the compartment. Slide my fingers inside, caress and find and pull out: a homemade, brown rag doll. It has a twist of black, curly hair sewn to the top of its head. A blackthread smile and black-thread eyes cut across its rough face. A scrap from Mbuyi’s blue pinstriped dress shirt is sown onto its torso and back.

  Baba has trapped my power in a doll of me, an ugly doll tied to Mbuyi’s body and my spirit. For four years I have waited to kill my Baba, thwarted by his chains lashed to me by this doll.

  I doubt Baba will handle chains nearly so well.

  I take the doll and the knife and some rubber bands into the living room. Baba looks up. “Kanku,” he rasps.

  “Witch,” I correct him, bending over him with the knife. Baba strains for me with the hand not clutched to his side, but his arm barely moves. I yank through Baba’s beard, ripping out skin as much as I cut through hair. I slice a patch of Baba’s shirt at the sweat-damp collar.

  “Don’t,” he whispers, pleads. His face is a rictus of pain.

  “Because of you, I died like a dog,” I snarl.

  I’ll make fire on the stove in the kitchen, I decide, and leave him to wait.

  “Kanku—don’t … ”

  The clock strikes half past. I turn on the kitchen light, turn the knob of the front burner. The fire lights with a pop. Carefully, I pull Mbuyi’s hair from the doll’s head and burn each piece in the fire—just like Mama.

  Something in the living room crackles. The house abruptly smells like rot and cooked meat. Baba gurgles like an infant. I ignore him and burn the shirt too.

  The rubber bands are not needle and thread, but Baba’s hair and shirt stick to the doll just as well. In the living room, Mbuyi’s body is gone. Only the smells are left. Baba looks pained. I am glad.

  Baba’s eyes go w
ide when he sees I have trapped him. He tries to speak, but only breath sounds come out. His eyes roll to face me, and he grimaces. I savor the moment. I reach for his throat, and my thumb presses in. “Look at me,” I tell him.

  For a moment, Baba does. Then he looks over my shoulder, and his grimace turns up in the corners. It is almost a smile. I push at his windpipe, a warning. He mouths something that I can’t catch. His mouth closes, and he slumps. His eyes lose focus. Baba’s whole body goes still.

  I have barely started. I had barely started. I check him for breath, but there is none. This cannot be. Baba is toying with me. He is alive, he will remain alive until I kill him at last.

  I shake him and shake him, slam his back into the stairs, but Baba flops like a rag doll until I fling him with a shout.

  What right has he to look so peaceful?

  I laugh. I laugh like a crazed, bitter thing.

  A thing robbed of its prize the moment it was within reach.

  My Baba abandoned me in his life. Why should he change in the moments of his death? I waited for him. I hoped, and I waited, and I thought maybe, maybe …

  But no. I was wrong.

  And all I can think of is: I killed my brother for this.

  MBUYI:

  WHITHER THOU GOEST