Kill Baxter (15 page)

The rest of the day happens around me like time-lapse photography. I’m a complete magical failure, a single, solitary point that exists outside of everything else. I have one thing, and only one thing, going for me in this place. I wait until early evening and then slip away and find a quiet spot in one of the corridors; an alcove that houses a small stone gargoyle. I give it the middle finger as I sit down with my back to the wall.

The Witch’s next lesson is scheduled for tomorrow morning and I seriously need to make some progress. I take a deep breath and weave the beads between my fingers. The world shimmers and I dive into unconsciousness.

‘You’re getting the hang of the beads, daddio,’ Tyrone says. ‘Nice going.’

‘Still got a long way to go,’ Richard drawls, pushing back his Stetson. ‘Best we get started.’

‘Long way to go to where?’ I look around. The dreamsaver this time is a peaceful meadow.

‘To there, honey,’ Junebug says, gesturing with her ever-present cigarette.

I look to where she’s pointing. There are mountains in the distance, with a city in front of them. From the middle of the city a pagoda rises like something out of a samurai movie. ‘What’s that?’ I say, shading my eyes.

‘That’s where you go to meet your True Self, honey,’ Junebug says. ‘He’s the one that sent us here to help you.’

‘My True Self? Aren’t
I
my True Self?
’

‘You’re the Conscious Self,’ Tyrone says, and Cabales grunts in agreement.

‘So I’m like the king around here?’

Richard lifts the collar of his rhinestone jumpsuit and shakes his pelvis a little. ‘Ain’t nobody but the king is the king, baby.’

‘The king?’ Tyrone says. ‘Get a load of this kid. No, you’re not the king. You’re the poster boy, the figurehead. You have very little executive power. I mean, technically we’re ALL Baxter, you’re just the one that tells yourself that in the mirror in the morning. The only way to unlock your magical potential is for you, the Conscious Self, to meet your True Self.’

‘So let’s get going,’ Richard says. ‘We’re wasting time. We have to cross the underworld of your unconscious to get there.’

‘OK,’ I say. ‘That’s not going to be too much of a problem, is it? I mean, it is
my
mind.
’

Tyrone chuckles. ‘If only it were that simple. Think of your unconscious as the browser history of your psyche. All your secret desires, taboo images and unhealthy intentions exist here.’

‘Shit,’ I say.

‘Yeah,’ Tyrone agrees. ‘Exactly.’

We follow a winding gravel path through the meadow, me in the centre of the group of funksters and Chester, my Freudian latency-phase chihuahua, trotting along behind.

After a long time we reach the edge of the city. The path becomes pavement and we follow it along a winding street. As we walk, the neighbourhood grows increasingly dilapidated. ‘This is where your prejudices hang out,’ Tyrone whispers to me. ‘Play it cool.’

‘I’m not prejudiced,’ I say defensively.

Tyrone raises an eyebrow. ‘Of course you’re not.’

The neighbourhood becomes a sprawling slum. Groups of people hang in doorways and look at us as we pass. ‘Hey, toots,’ a big skinhead guy shouts to Junebug. ‘Quit hanging out with those homos and come and hang out with us.’

She gives him a friendly wave and we carry on walking.

‘It’s your mind, remember?’ Tyrone says. ‘They won’t be a problem unless you make them a problem.’

We pass an old house with a fat guy sitting on a couch on the porch drinking beer. The stench of Cheetos, sweat and farts wafts from him.

‘That’s your toxic masculinity,’ Junebug says.

‘Fuck you, bitch,’ the fat man shouts. ‘Why don’t you come over and have a ride.’ He gestures towards his sweat-stained crotch.

‘No thanks!’ she calls back. ‘But thank you.’

‘Nice guy,’ I say, as we hurry past.

She laughs. ‘He’s not so bad once you look past the impotent animal rage.’

I focus on staying calm. It’s my mind. It’s my mind. It’s my mind. I keep repeating that until we exit the slum.

Tyrone pats me on the shoulder. ‘You did well. They could have torn us apart.’

‘What?’ I say.

He smiles. ‘Like I said, you did well.’

The slum opens up on to a big park. It looks like an outdoor music festival has been happening here. There are empty beer cans scattered everywhere. People are wandering around aimlessly, depressed, make-up smeared, perpetually trying to piece together what happened the night before. They’ve run out of cigarettes, but they keep searching for packets that never appear. They look at each other with disgust.

‘The Asphodel Meadows,’ Richard says, and he puts a hand on the huge revolver at his hip. ‘Dangerous place.’

We walk through the dismal end of the party. I feel I’m coming down from a drug I didn’t take. The further we go, the more the world is drained of colour.

‘Fight it, honey,’ Junebug says, stroking my cheek. ‘Just keep going.’

I feel like the air has become molasses. I fight against it, every step a struggle. Esmé is going to leave me for Troy. I can see that now. The rest of my life is going to be this terrifying battle against my need to manipulate. I may eventually succeed at acting like I’m good, but I’m never going to feel good. The self-loathing is always going to be there.

I stumble and sit down in what looks like a chill tent at the end of a party. Dirty beanbags and empty plastic bank bags are scattered everywhere. It smells of incense, sex and stale beer. I grab a beanbag and lie down.

‘You’ve got to get through this,’ Junebug says, sitting down next to me.

‘Nooo,’ I whisper, burying my face in the beanbag ‘I can’t go on.’

Cabales, my surrogate anal-phase shaman, squats down and stares at me.

‘What does he want?’ I murmur into my beanbag.

He starts talking in Spanish, punctuating each point by prodding me in the arm with a hard finger.

‘He says the great feathered serpent god will eventually destroy the world in a hail of cosmic fire. All your problems are nothing. Until the end comes we should all just do what we can.’

I turn my head and look at him. His dark eyes bore into me.

‘OK,’ I say with a sniff ‘Let’s go.’

I let the shaman help me up and he puts an arm around my shoulder. He utters a couple more words of Spanish.

‘He says you smell like shit,’ Junebug says with a smile. ‘He’s right: that beanbag was really dirty, honey.’

I wipe the side of my face with my sleeve and follow them out of the chill tent.

‘Almost there,’ Tyrone says, pointing to the pagoda that juts up a few blocks away from us. ‘You’re doing really, really well.’

‘Thanks,’ I murmur, and I let them lead me the rest of the way out of the park. As soon as we are out on the streets again, I feel better. Much, much better.

‘That was horrible,’ I say. ‘I never want to go back there.’

‘You don’t have to, honey,’ Junebug says with a smile.

The streets are clean and wide here and there’s a refreshing breeze blowing. Up ahead a fire hydrant has burst and the street has flooded. We splash through the water. ‘The shallows,’ Tyrone says. ‘Try not to look at it too long.’

I glance down as I walk, and I can see thousands of online articles: Wikipedia entries on Marxism, pieces about Syrian politics, radical feminism, nutrition; half-articles that I didn’t finish, things I skimmed. I stare into them, the colourful ideas, ideologies and opinions streaming past. I’m mesmerised. ‘Whoa there,’ Tyrone says, grabbing my shoulder. ‘I said don’t look too long. You can still drown in the shallows.’

I force myself to look ahead as we walk. ‘Almost there.’ Tyrone points to the pagoda. ‘We’re really almost—’

‘Hey! Bax. Wake up!’

I open my eyes. ‘What? What’s going on?’ I look up groggily to see Nom standing over me, shaking my shoulders.

‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you,’ he says. ‘Why are you lurking in an empty corridor?’

‘Just getting some peace and quiet,’ I say, trying to massage the kinks out of my neck. ‘I was kinda busy, man. What’s up?’

‘I want you to come check something out.’ He hauls me from the alcove and up the stairs to Malpit.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘I’ve got stuff to do.’ I need to visit Esmé’s dreams. Or at least give her another call.

He drags me to the window and points out into the night. At first my eyes find it difficult to focus, but gradually they adjust and I see the unmistakable form of Gigli slipping from his cage.

‘What is that slithery bastard doing?’ I whisper.

Nom shrugs. ‘Maybe we should follow him.’

‘What the hell for? He almost took my hand off earlier.’

‘Find out where he’s going. Maybe it’ll help you to figure him out. You need to do something, Bax.’

I rub my eyes. ‘You think so?’

He shrugs. ‘Beasties of any kind, humans included, just want to be understood.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Come on,’ he says, throwing me my hoodie. ‘We’ll just check it out and then you can come back and do whatever you have to do. What do you have to lose?’

‘Sleep,’ I mumble as I follow him down the Malpit staircase.

The night is cool. I pull my hoodie up as we slip across the courtyard and past the gallows, which is even creepier at night-time. We trek up through the canyon, following the vague pink shape of Gigli against the purple, dark blue and black of the night. The moon is full and bright and I can see the landscape stretching out down below us as we climb. An English teacher once tried to tell our class about the tradition of describing the landscape in South African literature. Man, was that a boring lesson. I guess the Sieners saw this landscape as their spiritual homeland. The rugged hills and rasping scrubland chipped and filed away at the European to form the Afrikaner. The fact that that is all part of me is as strange as having the oil-spill of Crow blood in my veins.

‘What was it like growing up with the bok-people? I mean really,’ I ask as we walk.

‘The Ndiru is what we call ourselves,’ he says. ‘It was good. Bit weird for me now, though, because I have to consciously shift between the human world and that world; it’s like having two parts of myself.’

I laugh. ‘Yeah, I can sympathise with that.’

‘My people don’t understand why I came to Hexpoort,’ he says. ‘They think I’ve joined the enemy.’

‘Really?’

‘Humans haven’t exactly been good to the Ndiru. Even now my family is forced to live in a designated area and can be killed if they leave it.’

‘What?’ I say. ‘That’s bullshit.’

He shrugs. ‘That’s the way it is. But that’s why I came to Hexpoort. Maybe I can change things.’

‘Yeah, maybe.’ I shove my hands in my hoodie pockets.

‘Well, we’ve got to do something,’ Nom says. ‘It’s bad and it’s getting worse.’

Along the path we come across an old rusted tractor that a family of badgers had made into a badger mansion. Nom barks a greeting and the male badger chitters something in return. The female immediately attacks him ferociously. After a quick one-sided fight, the male limps off into the scrubland.

‘Jesus, what was that all about?’

‘Little bastard tried to sell me one of his kids. Badgers, man. They’ve got some serious issues. Now otters, on the other hand, those guys have things sorted.’

I follow Nom past the dam at the top of the canyon.

‘We’re getting close to the perimeter,’ he says. ‘If he goes past it, we’re going to have to call it a night.’

But Gigli stops just short of the Hexpoort perimeter. There’s a small cave in the side of the canyon and he ducks into it. A soft mewling sound emanates from within. We creep closer, crouch behind a rock and peek round into the cave.

‘The old horndog,’ I whisper. Gigli has his pink form wrapped around a female leopard in a loving embrace. In front of them three weird little cubs mewl and play with each other.

‘They’re tiny. So cute,’ Nom says. ‘A Draken mating with a leopard. Who thought that’d be possible?’

‘God, imagine what they’re going to look like when they’re older,’ I whisper. ‘They’ll make some fugly safari pictures. What do we call ’em? Drakpards?’

‘Leodraks,’ Nom replies.

‘Yeah, that’s better.’

We watch the little cubs frolicking while their proud parents look on.

‘So damn cute,’ Nom repeats. ‘Wish I had my camera …’

A snuffling sound comes from the path leading up the canyon.

‘What was that?’ I whisper.

Nom shrugs and puts his finger to his lips.

Gigli heard it too, because he’s up and standing protectively in front of the cave. A low hissing erupts from his throat and is answered by a deep rumbling growl.

‘Oh Jesus,’ Nom says, scrambling backwards and almost knocking me over.

‘What?’ I ask. ‘What is it?’

Six creatures emerge into the rocky area surrounding the cave. They’re big and muscled, with hunched shoulders, hyena snouts and two long canines jutting from their jaws. They circle around, their huge mouths dripping saliva on to the ground.

‘Kholomodumo,’ Nom whispers.

‘Wonderful. What are they doing here?’

‘Goblins sometimes use them as dogs, but right now I’d say they’re looking for a snack.’

The Kholomodumo prowl around, sniffing and slavering and looking at the cubs like they’re on a buffet table. Gigli coils and uncoils, his piggy eye fixed on them and his mouth curled in a snarl. He’s a mean motherfucker for sure, but I’m not convinced even he can take on six of the things at the same time.

‘We have to help him,’ I say.

‘Yeah.’ Nom sighs. ‘We do.’

We scrabble around in the dirt and find two decent-sized sticks. Nom sets them alight with a spell, because I can’t even do that yet.