Shadow on the Wall: Superhero | Magical Realism Novels (The SandStorm Chronicles | Magical Realism Books Book 1) (12 page)

Thick, hot ozone filled Recai's lungs, choking his humanity.

The men lunged at each other, falling in the wet silt that shifted beneath their feet with every step. Recai kicked the man's knee, bending it backwards, causing him to cry out and fall to the ground.

The man looked up, his face distorted in a snarl of hatred. Recai watched as he struggled to stand. With a grunt of pain the man finally stood upright before him, allowing Recai to take in his full appearance for the first time.

The snake.

Recai's hold on sanity shattered as he peered into the same two black eyes that had mocked him as Rebekah lay bleeding across his lap.

A scream rose into the night, competing with the sky for the very ear of God. 

Part III

"If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you."

The Gospel of St. Thomas (Dead Sea Scrolls) verse 70

"How is he?" Maryam asked cautiously, sticking her head into the small concrete room.

In a moment of charity she had invited the aged bartender back to her small apartment when she saw him fleeing the hotel despite the looming kum firtinasi. The floor in the building she lived in was designated for women only, but what harm could there be in sheltering an old man in the basement utility room during a storm?

The main entrance had been locked and barricaded against the looting that sometimes occurred in the aftermath of a storm such as this, so Maryam and the bartender had walked from the hotel to the small alley her apartment backed up against, where a maintenance door allowed access to her building to either descend to the basement or head up to the floors full of rooms rented by the week.

With a sigh the old man looked up at her and responded, "Sleeping now. Lunatic clamored around up there and screamed most of the night. I don't understand how no one heard."

"I told you no one lives above the utility room; it's just a grocery up there. No one was even there last night."

Maryam pushed the heavy door open the rest of the way with her hip and set the tray she had brought on an orphaned box sitting lonely in the middle of the room. The room was stuffy, full of the building's inner workings: hot water heater, AC unit, electrical box. Tools were placed haphazardly on shelves lining the wall next to her. The air conditioner's humidifier attachment wheezed as it leaked cool water, which evaporated before the fluid even reached the ground.

Maryam sat on the dusty floor, avoiding the obvious stains. She pulled her abaya over her legs and eyed the large metal door hidden in the darkness at the far end of the room. The locked storage closet, which was used by the building manager to store tools and other valuable items, had become a prison for the berserker they had found the night before.

She was glad to be back in her own clothes instead of the blouse and long skirt that had served as her uniform at yesterday's event. As a single woman living alone in the city, Maryam found more than enough reasons to adhere to wearing a hijab; without it she felt she might as well have been walking through the crowd naked, her ears and neck cold against the open air. Some days she resisted covering, but in the end she always found comfort and strength beneath her scarf.

"Effendi…"

"No, I am not. Stop calling me that. I'm not owed your respect, I'm just a stupid old man," Hasad shook his head wearily. "I owe you an explanation. You invited me to your home so I wouldn't be stuck in that hotel during the storm, and instead of thanks I gave you a big festering boil of trouble."

"Not how I would have phrased it but, yes, you did."

Maryam smiled. Something about Hasad calmed her and even made her trust him, though they'd just met. Her father died when she was a teenager, leaving her at the mercy of her five older brothers. Her sister, the eldest, had already married by then. Having been raised more by her brothers than her mother Maryam learned that a bit of rough talk didn't equate to a rough soul.

"Effendi, the man we found last night, you recognized him."

"I did, I do. He's not someone I ever expected to see again, but I can't say it's an unwelcome surprise."

"He was going to kill that man. When we found him in the alley, there was so much blood! Why did you save him? Why leave the other out in the storm?"

"I don't have answers about what happened. We'll have to wait and hear it from him, but I have no doubt that whatever happened, Recai was only protecting that woman."

"Sabiha…" Maryam murmured.

"Was that her name?"

Hasad's face softened. Staring down at the dirty concrete floor he wrung his hands.

"Yes, she's gone home now."

"Did she tell you what happened?"

"No; she only told me her name, then she fell asleep as soon as I got her to my room. When I woke up she was on the phone with someone. I think her father or brother. Someone was going to meet her and take her home."

He stood suddenly, panic evident on his face.

"Do they know where we are?"

"She was going to meet him in the tea house across the street. But, obviously, she knows where I live."

"No, I mean, does anyone know I'm down here? That he's down here?" asked Hasad, jerking his head toward the closet where Recai was hidden.

"
Effendi
, what is going on?"

She looked up and stared hard at the old man. The beating they had broken up last night; the man they had pulled inside, crying and screaming as they went; the girl who had come so near to being another in a long tradition of ruined women—it all proved to be more than she could process.

"My full name is Hasad Sofear and three years ago my daughter…"

His voice cracked as he pushed out the name sitting lodged in his throat.

"…Rebekah… my daughter Rebekah was killed."

Maryam blinked in surprise and pulled her
abaya
over her feet, seeking the security of her covering to keep her strong.

"Did he . . . ?!" Maryam exclaimed, instantly assuming the bloody man with the vicious eyes locked in the closet more than capable of such an act.

"No, the RTK, they killed him, too…or they tried."

Hasad held out his hands, uncurling them painfully to show the striated scars along his flesh, all the way up to his elbows.

"When I got there she had been… she was dead already…there was a fire…"

"I'm sorry."

"The things they had done to her…she was gone and the man locked in there was lying with her, close to death, protecting her body with what strength he had."

"Inna lillahi wa inna ilahi raji'un," she whispered against the horror of the world. Man was perhaps a worse threat to humanity's soul than any devil.

"He was bleeding and unconscious and the house was on fire. The sirens hadn't sounded yet and everyone was still asleep. For anyone to find them, wrapped around each other… What a disgrace it would have been!"

Hasad folded his hands one over the other and stood up. He looked at the metal door that locked Recai safely away. It stood in silent judgment.

"I should have helped him. I should have made sure he survived. Instead I dragged him outside, lifted him onto my camel and left him in the desert with my water canteen. It was the best I could do by him then; I had to get back to Rebekah. When I returned to the house the fire had consumed everything. I never knew what happened to him. I always assumed he survived and returned to his world. When I recognized him at the party—"

"He was there? At the hotel?" Maryam interrupted in surprise.

Her eyes watched him. She was like a child listening to a ghost story, mesmerized but unable to turn away.

"He was there. He didn't recognize me, but I knew him. The scar on his cheek was fresh and raw when I first met him, and the hue of his beard is easy to recognize."

"Laa ela-ha el-lal-la," she prayed softly to herself, closing her eyes and shaking her head.

"Last night he was one of them…" Hasad continued.

"When we found him in the alley, he was not one of them."

"No. I don't imagine he ever will be."

"Siktir lan," he swore, spitting out thick, dried blood that had mixed with the sand in his mouth.

The pain in Isik Mosafir's head was rivaled only by the intense throbbing of his leg. Looking down, he half expected it to be gone; amputation being the only thing he was able to think of that could cause so much pain.

"Who was that got veren mother-fucker?"

Reaching out, Isik grabbed the edge of a dumpster and pulled himself up. His knee couldn't bear weight, but he was determined to get back home before anyone found him here. The last thing he needed was to be questioned by the RTK.

He'd left them a few years back and had been able to stay under the radar thanks to the friends he still had in the ranks. He also spent most of his time doing errands for the right people, people he knew by being kin to some of those same
right
people. But now his clothes were saturated with blood and he could barely walk; no way he'd get away without having to answer some questions.

What is your name?

Who is your family?

Isik snorted.
Who, indeed?

Blood had dried on the ground around him into the remnants of last night's sandstorm. The oozing red congealed with dry particles to create a gory landscape. Isik wondered how much had come from his body. Overhead the sky was dark and threatening, the air thick as a rainstorm moved in.

The rain would keep the sand down for now. Rain after a kum firtinasi was a mixed blessing. Isik needed to get inside before the silt under his feet turned to sludge and made walking even more treacherous.

Carefully, Isik placed one foot in front of the other, leaning against the dumpster and then the wall for support. He noticed the bloodstain on the cement where he had thrown his attacker from last night, and the empty spot where Sabiha's body should have been.

The memory was too confusing. He couldn't wrap his mind around what had happened. It didn't make any sense. Who would have come after him like that over some whore walking at night alone? Who would care enough to take him on? And, most concerning, who would be strong enough to have beaten him this severely?

He'd only been carrying out his order—to make the sister of RTK officer Fahri Kaya pay for his offense against Darya the night before. That's the way it was. Women paid for everything; they were the evil at the core of a rotten apple.

His whole life, Isik had fought for everything he had. Son of a Turk whose family had disowned him for marrying a Jewish woman; he was the dirty little secret of his extended family, but he made sure they would never brush him under the rug like they had his father. Once he was old enough to walk he started studying Karakucak, the Turkish form of wrestling, and he would grapple with the neighborhood boys. When they were old enough to learn they shouldn't be friends with a Jew, especially one whose father died and whose mother lived alone, he was already bigger and stronger than they were and he made sure they knew it. He fought to stay alive, he fought to defend his father, and he fought to prove who he was. He was still fighting.

Today, he fought against the nausea threatening to take over as he hobbled to the end of the alley where he had hidden his car.

The concrete floor was cold. Below ground the temperature is the same everywhere—an even 10 degrees Celsius—even in Elih, where the sun beats down with a relentless heat. A shiver shot up Recai's spine, shaking him awake. He was slow to open his eyes, his mind still blurry.