Apocalypse Now Now (15 page)

We peer inside through the shattered wall. Several dozen sets of strange shining eyes blink up at us.

‘Hell in a handbasket, why can’t things just be simple for once?’ Ronin says with a sigh. ‘Looks like we’re going to have to call Dr Pat.’

Seven sprites sit on my lap and peer up at me with saucer eyes, their warm, furry little bodies rising and falling as they breathe together in unison.

When you’re faced with too many reality-bending things, your mind goes into a kind of stupor, a weird blank funk that can do nothing but stare dumbly while deeper levels of your consciousness try to process the information and spit out something resembling sense. So far the output is less than satisfactory. Magic bounty hunters, electricity monsters and now sprites.

Sprites, the latest introduction to the alternate reality that I’ve stepped into. They’re grey and squat, like square-headed, chubby little rabbits that stand upright. They have huge black eyes that make them look like they’ve taken copious amounts of LSD. They stare at me with unwavering eyes. One puts out a little paw
that looks more like a tiny, pink human hand and pokes me in the stomach as if trying to figure out what I’m made from.

I’m in the passenger seat of a yellow VW van. The driver, Dr Pat (I’m not sure if she has the same approach to qualifications as Ronin does), turns her curly white-haired head toward me, causing her long crystal earrings to jingle.

‘It’s a good thing Jackson called,’ she says with a smile that crinkles the corners of her almond-shaped eyes. ‘These little dears are in need of some good food and rest.’ Ronin has taken the rest of the sprites in the Cortina and is meeting us at Pat’s house.

I look down at the creatures on my lap. One is chewing on an old car-freshener.

‘And how have you come to be in the dubious company of Jackson, dear?’ she asks as we turn onto the highway.

‘I’m looking for my girlfriend,’ I say.

‘Ah, well, if she can be found, Jackson will find her.’

‘How do you know him?’ I ask.

‘Oh, we were in the agency together, my dear,’ she says. ‘Until the incident,’ she says, pursing her lips. ‘But you should ask Jackson about that, dear,’ she says. ‘He wouldn’t want me talking about it. He’s still a little sore about that.’

I try to press her further about Ronin and this agency but she remains tight-lipped. We pull into the driveway of a smallholding in Philippi. The land is wildly overgrown and it takes me a second to pick out a canary-yellow farmhouse peeking out through a blanket of vines and creepers.

‘Welcome to the Haven,’ Dr Pat says with a smile.

I open the door and the sprites on my lap move as a single unit to hop out of the car. They stand together in formation and continue looking up at me and blinking. ‘Stop it,’ I say to them. ‘You’re creeping me out.’ They break into a perfectly synchronised smile which shows the sharp little teeth in their mouths. I take a step backwards.

Ronin pulls up next to us. He gets out and takes his pack of cigarettes from his trench coat, taps one out and lights it. ‘Get some of your guys to fetch these little bastards and we’ll be on our way,’ he says.

Little furry bodies and huge saucer eyes press up against his rear window, their synchronised breath misting up the glass.

‘Jackson!’ Pat says with a stern look. ‘Since when have you been blind to the plight of the Hidden Ones?’

Ronin rolls his eyes, but opens the door and grabs an armful of sprites. ‘Come here, you little fuckers,’ he says. ‘Bite me and I’ll kill all of you.’

Two guys come out of the farmhouse with wheelbarrows and help us to unload the sprites from the vehicles. ‘What are the Hidden Ones?’ I ask Pat as we wheel the sprites toward the farmhouse.

‘Jackson Ronin takes you hunting elementals but doesn’t explain the supernatural ecosystem?’ she asks. I shake my head. ‘Disgraceful,’ she says and gives him a dirty look as he passes us on his way to grab more sprites from his car.

We hit a bump on the driveway and one of the sprites catapults into the air and lands with a thud on the gravel. The sprites wince in unison. ‘I’ll get him,’ I say and jog over to him before gingerly picking up the furry little creature.

‘Let’s get these little darlings inside and then I’ll explain some of the things that Jackson has obviously neglected to tell you,’ Pat says.

‘This is a veterinary clinic?’ I say as we wheel the sprites around to a barn at the back of the farmhouse. ‘In a sense,’ Pat says. ‘We cater for the needs of a rather different kind of animal.’ She keys a password into a keypad and then flings open the barn doors.

We step into a zoo. Animal enclosures line the walls and there are sounds of shrieking, snuffling and gobbling as well as more unpleasant sounds of ripping, tearing and biting.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ Pat says, seeing my face. ‘They’re all really lovely in their own unique ways.’

‘Lovely’ isn’t what I’d use to describe the creature sitting on a perch next to the doorway chewing on a piece of raw meat. It’s a lynx with a jagged scar across its face. Long white tufts sprout from his ears and large white wings sprout from his back. Just your average flying lynx, then.

‘What the fuck?’ I whisper.

‘Language, dear,’ Pat says. ‘This is Tony Montana.’ She pats the hybrid creature on the head. ‘Say hello, Tony.’

The thing bares sharp teeth and hisses at me. I’ve never really liked cats and one with the ability to swoop down and rip out your eyeballs seems like it’d make a really terrible house pet.

‘He’s a bit shy,’ Pat says. ‘Our city has been cruel to its unusual inhabitants, and they’re wary of humans.’ The flying lynx looks like it wants to bury its teeth in my jugular.

Pat takes my hand in hers and leads me over to a cage where a little goat-like creature paces behind bars. It is small, stands upright on two legs, is covered in coarse brown hair and is very, very ugly. It has slitted pig eyes, horns that rise like two jagged spirals from its head and a huge grey penis which it drags around on the floor like some kind of deformed python. I recognise it from creature porn, back in the good old days when I thought they were midgets in fancy dress. The reality makes me feel ill.

‘That’s a
tokoloshe
,’ I say. It glares at us through its slit eyes.

‘Quite right, dear!’ Pat says. ‘Isn’t he gorgeous?’ I make a noncommittal sound. ‘There used to be ninety-four different species of
tokoloshe
,’ Pat continues. ‘Now there are fewer than seven. Can you believe they have been captured to make pornographic films?’

I make another sound. The creature in the cage snarls and makes lewd gestures and grotesque pelvic thrusts in her direction. ‘Fukfukfukfukfuk,’ it chants.

I’m glad when she takes my hand again and leads me gently
away from the cage. We walk around to the pens and Pat names the creatures they hold. There’s Nevri, a black-and-red, double-headed viper that can repeat words like a parrot, and the Jepsen, a small orange-haired monkey with three eyes and twelve arms.

We stop in front of a cage that holds a naked woman standing in a clay pot. Her breasts jiggle as she moves and she stares at me with bedroom eyes. ‘Nymphang,’ Pat says matter-of-factly, ignoring the fact that the woman has begun to writhe in ecstasy in front of us. ‘Indigenous Hidden Flora distantly related to fynbos, I believe.’

I stare at the woman running her tongue over her lips. ‘You mean that’s a plant?’

‘Oh yes, dear. What you see is an adaptation designed to lure humans.’ Pat picks up a thin wooden rod and pokes it through the bars of the cage. The woman’s body splits in half like a giant mouth, revealing a row of serrated fangs. The mouth lunges forward and snaps the stick in half. ‘You see why we have to keep it in a cage, dear; I’ve lost more farm workers than I’d care to admit.’

‘You keep talking about the Hidden,’ I say as we continue through the barn.

‘The Hidden Ones,’ she says. She walks over to the Nevri cage and gently lifts the double-headed snake from it. The dark viper wraps itself around her neck and contemplates me with lazy eyes. ‘Broadly speaking the term refers to all of the magical races that exist on the fringes of human society. It includes the so-called intelligent Hidden races, as well as our animal friends here. Both have been subjected to torture and genocide at the hands of humans, although the Feared Ones have also helped to destroy them, of course, but one can’t really blame them. That’s just their nature.’

‘The Feared Ones?’ I say.

‘Also known as the Murder, they’re religious assassins, black of feather and of heart,’ Pat says. ‘Zealots dedicated to their god,
with the sole purpose of releasing him from his prison. Or so the story goes. They have inflicted such atrocities upon the Hidden that it beggars belief. But that’s who they are.’

‘What about an Obambo? Do you have one of those?’ I say.

Pat looks at me and for a moment I see more than just a kind old lady. There’s a taut readiness to her stance and I feel like she’s ready to punch me. ‘What do you know about the Obambo, young man?’

I give an awkward shrug, trying to deflect some of her intensity away from me. ‘Not much.’

Pat brushes her curly hair delicately from her eyes. ‘Obambo are one of the casualties of the Feared Ones,’ she says, stroking both heads of the Nevri simultaneously. ‘Wiped out completely. Extinct.’

‘Feared Ones,’ one of the snake’s heads whispers in an eerie, guttural voice.

Pat lifts the head up to her face and kisses it on the lips. ‘Yes, my precious little darling, but I won’t let anything happen to you.’ I avert my eyes. I didn’t think there was anything worse than cat people. Until I met my first monster person.

‘Nevri want a cracker,’ one of the snake’s heads says. ‘No, dear,’ Pat says. ‘You eat small rodents. I really wish Elias hadn’t taught you that.’ She unwinds the Nevri from her arm and gently puts it back in its cage. ‘Sleepytime,’ it hisses as it snuggles down into the sawdust.

We make our way to the back of the barn and watch as the last of the sprites are unloaded into a spacious pen. They stand around blinking at one another.

‘They don’t really do much, do they?’ I observe.

‘Well, they don’t really need to, dear, they’re telepathic,’ Pat says.

‘They’re –’ I start, then stop and peer at the furry little beasties.

‘Telepathic, dear – they’re apparently more intelligent than
dolphins. Although you’d hardly know, bless them.’ I stare at the blinking saucer eyes. They stare back.

We exit the barn and Pat resets the alarm code. ‘Come and have some lemonade,’ she says. ‘You must be exhausted after the day you’ve had.’

Exhausted is not exactly the word for it. ‘Stunned’ is closer, but it also doesn’t quite convey the sense of confusion, wonder and abject terror I’m feeling about the world behind the looking glass I’ve just stepped through. I know I should be freaking out more, but in a way I feel it’s a homecoming.

I’ve been bathed in the warm glow of supernatural fantasies ever since I can remember. The fairy tales my parents read me as a kid, TV, video games, it all kinda feels like they’ve been preparing me for this moment. It feels somehow natural and the other world, the one with taxes, life insurance, twenty leave days a year, cancer, and the realisation that you’re never, ever, going to be a celebrity, is the shadow, the fantasy and the delusion. The world is as I always intuited it to be: weird, fractured and full of monsters.

The farmhouse is actually two buildings: the old yellow house that I saw from the driveway and a newer set of apartments that have been built next to it. We’re walking down the path between the two buildings when a boy pops his head through an apartment door.

‘Shhh, Big Ones,’ he says sternly. His hair is long and brown and he wriggles his nose as if sniffing the air.

‘Baxter, meet Klipspringer,’ Pat says with a smile.

They boy sticks his head around the door again. ‘Pleasuretomeetyouthankyou,’ he says.

‘A pleasure,’ I say. ‘He … works here?’

‘Oh God no,’ Pat says. ‘Trying to get him to tidy his room is trouble enough.’

Klipspringer walks out from behind the door. ‘Whoa!’ I say, stepping away quickly.

He chuckles with delight. ‘Whoa!’ he mimics, jumping backwards, his little hoofs clattering on the driveway.

Klipspringer is about twelve years old and has the body of a springbok and the torso and head of a human. His little white tail wags with delight as he trots up and down looking slyly at us, his nose twitching with happiness.

‘It’s OK,’ Pat says to me. ‘He won’t hurt you.’

‘Won’t hurt you, Big One,’ Klipspringer says. ‘Duh, Big One, duh! You smell funny.’

‘Now,’ Pat says, putting her hands on her hips, ‘what did we say about being polite?’

‘Alwaysbepolitenevertellpeopletheystink,’ the boy recites dutifully.

‘That’s right,’ Pat says as she tries unsuccessfully to comb back his wild hair with her fingers.

Klipspringer tries to wiggle away.

‘Hey!’ he says brightly. ‘Want to see my room, Big One?’ He trots up and down on the spot excitedly. ‘Want to see my room?’

‘No thanks,’ I say. ‘Ronin probably wants to go and –’

‘Baxter,’ Pat says, ‘do I have to give you the speech about being polite as well?’