Jackal, Jackal, page 11
Some habits are hard to get rid of. Having spent five years married to Esan, having gone to bed everyday with her sleeping on the left side of the bed while I sleep on the right, I’ve found it hard to break the habit even one month after our divorce. The four-poster bed in Palm House is huge and every night I curl up on the right side, my unconscious mind expecting my wife to slip into bed next to me.
When I toss that night, and find someone lying next to me, it takes my sleepy mind a moment to register the wrongness of it.
Lara puts a finger to her lips, giving me a coy smile.
“Lara,” I gasp, when my brain finally catches up to what my eyes are seeing. “What are you doing—you shouldn’t be here!”
“I’m right where I’m meant to be,” she says in a voice which sends all the blood in my body rushing down south.
I lick my dry lips. “This is...wrong.”
“Is it? I see the way you look at me.” She rises slowly to her knees, and begins to unbutton her dress.
“I have to look at you when I paint you!”
Lara gives me a sultry look, and I fall into those brown eyes. She owns me then, her eyes pinning me to the bed as she climbs over me and begins to dance a slow, sinuous dance. Lara hums as we dance, never breaking eye contact with me. It is a disturbing, haunting song which strangely drives me to the edge of ecstasy. When I explode, I discover with a mixture of shame and disappointment that it is only a dream.
I curse softly at the wetness in my thighs, curse my traitorous mind for conjuring the dream. I stand up to go clean myself, then freeze.
My door is ajar.
The door has no lock, but I closed it before going to bed, I am sure of that. And the door is made of heavy mahogany, one which won’t be easily blown open by the wind. That leaves only one other option.
Someone has been in my room.
Then I hear the sounds. Thump...drag...thump...drag. It sounds like someone is moving something particularly heavy across the floor. Heart in my mouth, I cross the room to the door and peer out.
There, at the end of the hallway, is a figure dragging something shrouded in white...and is that blood?
“Who’s there?” I croak.
The figure pauses only slightly before disappearing around the corner. I stand there frozen with fright, tracing the sounds up the stairs and to the third floor overhead where they stop abruptly.
My first instinct is to fetch the caretaker, to alert him that there is somebody dragging what I hope to God is not a dead body around the house, but then I realize I have no idea where he sleeps. Lara. I can fetch her. She will know where to find her father.
The only problem is that her room is on the third floor.
After some deliberation I fetch my spatula—it is sharp enough to puncture an artery should it come down to it—and make my way, slowly—deliberately to the third floor.
At the top of the landing I find the white blood-stained cloth—only it isn’t blood but oil paint, and the cloth is what I used to cover my works-in-progress to keep dust off the surface. The pieces fall into place in my mind as I fly down the hallway and into the drawing room where I find Lara standing in front of the easel, looking at the half-finished painting of herself.
I curse, angry. “Lara what is the meaning of this? Didn’t I tell you to wait until it’s done?”
I feel cheated, angry. I hate when people seek to spy on my work when it isn’t done. I hated when Esan did it. And here is Lara, stealing into my room in the dead of the night to look at the painting. But why drag it up here?
“Lara? Did you hear me?”
She doesn’t turn, doesn’t even acknowledge me. She just stands staring at the painting. I stride across the room and yank her around.
Her eyes are glazed and unseeing, her breathing deep and measured. “Oh,” I breathe softly. “Oh, a sleepwalker.”
A fine sheen of sweat coats her skin from the effort of dragging the canvas all the way up here. I wonder vaguely how she managed to mount it on the easel.
I carry her out of the drawing room and down the hallway to her room, where I place her gingerly on the bed and tuck her beneath the covers. She mutters, turns over, and continues her sleep.
I begin to laugh hysterically, ramming a fist in my mouth to quiet the sound. What a bizarre night! While I had been dreaming about making love to Lara, she had been dreaming of the painting. Well at least she hadn’t seen it.
That’s all that matters.
The next morning, I drive into town for some more paint. This is the last batch I will buy, as I am almost done with the painting. What’s more, I am immensely pleased with my progress. Palm House is located far out in the mountains, so it takes me some forty-five minutes to drive down the single dirt road to town.
“Good morning, Kelechi,” I say brightly as I slip into the shop. “I’m here for some more paint. The painting is coming along just—”
A wiry old man is sitting behind the counter, frowning into a newspaper while an old transistor radio sputters out juju music behind him. He doesn’t look up as I come in.
“Ah, sorry, I thought you were Kelechi,” I say. “You must be his uncle. He’s mentioned you quite a few times.”
The old man turns a page, content to ignore me.
I purse my lips and slip into the aisles. I am not about to let anyone sour my good mood. A few minutes later, laden with two buckets of red and white paints, I walk up to the counter. The old man casts his newspaper aside—if a little irritably—to attend to me.
“What do you have?” he asks, then starts violently when he looks at me.
“What?” I snap, starting to get annoyed. He gapes at me, milky eyes wide. It’s like he’s seen a ghost.
“It’s just...” he clears his throat. “So, you’re an artist, eh?”
I start to smile. Back in the day I had been a fairly famous painter. I hadn’t expected anyone to recognize me this far out from civilization; Kelechi certainly hadn’t. But apparently this man does. “Yes,” I say, a radiant smile on my face. “My name is Sesan Williams, you may have heard of me...”
He nods slowly, watching me cautiously. “And are you painting a portrait right now, that of a young lady?” He swallows. “Lara.”
“As a matter of fact, I am! Did Kelechi—”
“Chineke,” he curses, sliding off his stool so forcefully that I jump. He limps around the counter and grabs me in a terrifyingly strong grip. “Run.” He growls. “Get into your car and drive back to where you came from. Anywhere but that damned house.”
I struggle to pry myself out of his grip. “What are you talking about?”
“Her!” Something in his voice makes me pause. “You must not complete that painting.”
“But—”
He slaps me. “When you went up to that house, did you feel like you were ready to die?”
My mouth is dry. “Yes.”
“Did you look out the window of your room and feel a burning desire to paint the mountains?”
“Yes...”
“Did you lose track of time painting and were ultimately frustrated with the result?”
I am starting to become frightened. “Y—yes...”
“The first time you saw her, did you think she was the most beautiful creature you’ve ever seen?”
“Yes, but how could you possibly know all this?”
He seems to shrink as he finally lets go of me.
“Sir?” I ask, struggling to keep my voice steady. “Please, what is going on?”
“Palm House,” he says finally. “That place...doesn’t exist.”
“That is ridiculous.”
The old man looks up at me. “How long have you been in that house?”
I search my mind. I have been painting Lara’s portrait for...five days, a week? And before that I spent a few days painting the landscape, so that makes it...
My voice cracks. “I’m not...I’m not sure. I could ask the caretaker...”
He gives me a pitiful look. “Son, have you ever seen this caretaker?”
“Yes, he—” I break off, trying to conjure the image of Lara’s father. I sink against the counter as realization washes over me. “No...no I have never seen him.”
Silence descends over the small shop, broken only by the creaky swinging of the rusty fan blades, stirring the stuffy morning air.
“I will say, judging by your appearance, that you’ve been in that house with her for no less than a month.”
“What do you mean, judging by my appearance?”
He takes me gently by the arm and leads me to an inner room, past rows of dusty art supplies and to the cracked mirror next to the hunting rifle. I scream at the sight of my reflection.
I am completely emaciated, like a desiccated corpse. My eyes are sunken in, my cheeks hollowed out. My bones stick out at sharp angles, covered only by flesh. My clothes hang around me, three times oversize. I am a stick in a sack.
Worst of all, my hair is pure white.
Like Lara’s.
Half an hour later, the old man—Obi—and I are seated at a low table in the backroom, poring over old newspaper clippings. Obi has turned the mirror to face the wall, for which I am immensely grateful. I can’t bear the sight of that ghost staring back at me.
“Palm House used to be a colonial manor,” says Obi, tapping an arthritic finger on the black-and-white picture. “Belonged to Lord Frederick Lugard—not the Governor-general at the time, but one of his distant cousins. You know how the Brits like to repeat names. Anyway, when they left circa 1960 it passed to a family of aristocrats, the Kalejaiyes. They had a daughter, but no one ever saw her.”
“Lara,” I breathe.
Obi nodded. “Rumour had it that she was a truly hideous child, so her parents kept her hidden. But she had the sweetest voice. Now my grandfather used to be an amateur portraitist, and he was employed by the Kalejaiyes to paint a family portrait. Lara was made to pose between her parents, wearing a long black veil over her head. It...bothered my grandfather that he had to paint Lara like that, but they were paying him a lot and there was little he could do about it.” Obi takes a deep, shuddering breath. “On the last day of painting, grandfather walked into the drawing room to find Mr. and Mrs. Kalejaiye seated in pose, with Lara between them. Only...they were dead. Strangled to death. Their eyes bulged out of their sockets and their tongues stuck out of their mouths. Lara sat between them, for the first time without a veil, singing as though it was the most natural thing in the world.”
I felt gooseflesh erupt all over my skin.
“When she saw my grandfather, she said, ‘we are ready, painter man. Look at me, aren’t I pretty?’ He fled from the house and called the police. When they arrived, they recovered the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Kalejaiye. Lara was never found.”
“How come?” I croak.
Obi shakes his head. “No one knows what became of her. But son, fifty years has passed since that day and yet...”
“She’s a ghost.”
Obi places both hands on the table. They shake ever so slightly. “She is...something else,” he says quietly. “And I think her parents knew it. It’s why they kept her hidden.”
“Possessed, then.”
“That is a possibility. I believe she is an entity. Every year, on August fifth—which is the date my grandfather started that original painting—she lures an artist up to Palm House, usually one so broken that they wish for death, trying to get them to paint her a portrait.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why does she so badly want to be painted?”
“I have come to believe that painting her will free her, cement her place in this world.”
I shudder. To think that I had spent a month alone with that...thing, dreamed about making love...
“When I asked her,” I say, “she said she had never been painted. But you say she lures artists up there every year. What happens to them?”
“Most realize, sooner rather than later, what she is and flee before completing the painting.”
“And the others?”
Obi meets my eyes. “They are usually too far gone.”
“What do you mean, too far gone?”
“She mates with them, bonding them to her will.”
I swallow the lump in my throat. I can hear the creaking fan from the main room, the faint crackle of radio static between short bursts of reception.
Obi’s milky eyes bore into mine. “Did you mate with her, Sesan?”
“N—no!”
He reaches slowly for the hunting rifle, cocks it. Trains it on me.
“No, I swear! It was only a dream!”
“No, son. That’s where you’re wrong.” He fires. A can of paint explodes next to my head as he misses. I dive across the small table, tackling him to the ground. Granted, I am little more than bones and flesh, but Obi is an old man and I easily overpower him, wrestling the rifle out of his hands. I turn it on him, breathing hard as he lay there staring up at me, tears in his eyes.
“Is this what you do, then?” I ask, rifle trembling in my hands. “Kill the artists?”
“Only those too far gone.”
“I am not too far gone!” I scream. “I can—I will get in my car and drive back to the city!”
Obi merely shakes his head, a pitiful look on his face. “She won’t let you leave, not when you’ve mated with her.”
No. I do not want to believe it. Granted, these past few weeks have felt like a dream, one I only escaped when I saw my reflection in the mirror, but now I feel much more in control of my faculties than I have ever been.
“I tried to burn down that house,” Obi says. “Twenty years ago. I thought it would destroy her, but there’s no getting rid of her. Every year you all keep coming.” Fat tears pour down his wrinkled cheeks. “You have...you have to let me kill you.”
I give a single bark of mirthless laughter. The irony is that I came to this town to die and now that death is before me, I realize I don’t want to die after all.
I am sitting alone behind the counter, my eyes tracing the old grain of the countertop. Obi has taken my Beetle to the petrol station to buy two full jerrycans of diesel. We have decided to burn down Palm House. Really burn it this time. Lost deeply in my thoughts, I don’t immediately notice the change in weather. It isn’t until the highlife music from the radio peters out into a static hiss that I look up.
It is raining. I slide off the stool and walk to the window, cupping my hands around my eyes as I peer out. The rain has turned the dirt road into a roiling river of mud. Trees sway, bending dangerously in a terrible wind.
This is no ordinary rain.
The static hiss from the radio cuts off abruptly and from the old speakers come the warbling, chilling tune of Lara’s song.
“Oh, God...”
I tear out of the shop and out into the rain. Each raindrop feels like a sting on my skin. The road is a river and it tugs at me, trying to sweep me off my feet and in the direction of Palm House. I latch onto an electric pole, clinging on for dear life when I see my yellow Beetle floating by. A massive tree branch has punctured through the windscreen, piercing Obi in the neck. He never stood a chance.
A nearby tree snaps into two with a resounding crack. The last thing I see is the top half of the tree falling in my direction.
There is a splitting ache in my head when I come to.
The rain has let up, though the clouds still churn and flash with lightning. The mud has deposited me just outside Palm House. My yellow Beetle is wedged between two trees a little farther down the road. I stagger to my feet, muddy and slightly disoriented, and look upon that house of doom.
It is burnt alright. How could I have missed it before? The wood is black beneath the crawling ivy, the east wing caved in from many years of rot and neglect. Still it stands like some great eldritch monster, perched atop a world it is about to consume.
I see Lara through the floor-length windows of the drawing room. I see just her silhouette, floating, waiting.
I am no longer in control of my body. I move, making my way through the jungle of the first floor (now overgrown with vegetation as they reclaim the space), past the second floor and my room (which is a gaping hole, a haven to a bloated tree trunk) and up the stairs to the third floor.
The drawing room is as dark as a tomb. Slivers of light filter in through the windows, illuminating several floating canvases. They float in concentric circles, in varying stages of completion. Strangely I don’t see Lara in the paintings; I see different men instead, holding her pose.
I make my way to the very centre of the circle, where my portrait stands on its easel, and scream at the sight.
Mr. and Mrs. Kalejaiye are dressed impeccably, their dead eyes bulging, grey tongues stiff outside their mouths. Most horrific is the person between them. It is a face which is alien, yet familiar. Though the face is missing a mouth, the patch of unpainted canvas stark, the shock of white hair is unmistakable, as are the hollow, haunted eyes. It is—
It is me.
“Hello, painter man,” says Lara behind me. “Aren’t I pretty?”
HERE SITS HIS IGNOMINY
To the king across the Blue Sea,
in his Hall of Stone.
Your Insufferable Majesty,
I know this letter did not find you well—it being in the excavated abdomen of your emissary. You should know that disembowelment is a savage punishment Great Nubia abandoned 600 years ago, but one we thought to revisit to best illustrate our point.
Your governor-generals are dead. The insolent lot lie now in their various estates and keeps with bellies yawning open and brimming with ungodly humour—a state not dissimilar to that of the emissary sprawled on the impeccable floor of your throne room. I imagine you find this knowledge worrisome. Are you incensed, your majesty? Do you tremble with rage?
Do you feel the urge to unleash your righteous army upon us “godless heathens?”
Good. Very good.
But first, a lesson in what these heathens can do.
