Kill Baxter (10 page)

‘Hey, cool, you’re with us,’ Nom says as I rattle my suitcases into Malpit.

Malpit is a shrine to teenagers left to their own devices. Hundreds of posters line the walls. There’s a big one of Gandalf with a big dick drawn on the front of his robe. There’s one of Harry Potter with his eyes gouged out and his wand transformed into – yes, you guessed it – a big dick. Beer bottles are piled up in the entrance and a water fountain featuring a statuette of an old wizard has been turned into a giant ashtray.

Stevo is sitting on a dirty couch covered with cigarette burns. He points to the ceiling, where DO WHAT THOU WILT SHALL BE THE WHOLE OF THE LAW has been spray-painted in gold. ‘We take that to heart.’

‘How was the welcome speech?’ Nom asks.

‘Not very welcoming,’ I say, slumping down on to a beanbag next to Stevo. ‘What’s her problem?’

‘Life, I think,’ Nom says with a grin. ‘But seriously, she’s part of the Blood Kraal, the council that regulates supernatural affairs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Just stay on her good side.’

I sigh, and Nom smiles. ‘Here, let me show you around.’

Malpit is an anarcho-commune, an ongoing squat party with its own internal logic. ‘There aren’t really any proper beds left,’ Nom says. ‘But there’s a mattress on the floor over there that you can use.’

‘Great,’ I say.

‘This is our kitchen. Cleaning roster on the fridge, although some of us take it more to heart than others.’ He gives Stevo a look.

‘Dude, I said I would clean it later. Get off my case,’ Stevo says.

A bunch of kids are playing video games on a huge TV. I recognise the goth and the cheerleader, the conjoined twins who saved me from Hekka on the train.

‘Faith and Chastity,’ Nom says. ‘This is Baxter.’

‘I’m Faith,’ the cheerleader says. ‘And my sister here is Chastity. It’s a bit like calling a big guy “Tiny”.’

‘Screw you, ho-bag,’ Chastity says.

‘Biologically impossible, otherwise I’m sure you would have tried already,’ Faith replies.

‘Thanks for helping me with Hekka,’ I say.

‘She’s the one that wanted to help,’ Chastity says. ‘She whines when she doesn’t get her way. It’s not like I can get away from it.’

‘Nice to meet you, Baxter.’ Faith smiles.

‘Oooh, she likes you,’ Chastity says. ‘Why don’t you two kiss? I don’t mind. I’ll let you use my half of the body. I may even try to get in a grope myself.’

I blush, which is unusual for me. Faith rolls her eyes.

‘Game of Sanity later?’ Nom says.

‘Damn straight,’ Chastity replies. ‘I’ve been practising. Oh, and bring the newbie. I want to see what he’s made of.’

She gives me a wink and they return to their video games.

I dump my stuff next to my mattress as the Shadow Boer comes in. ‘Newbies,’ he barks. ‘Time for your tattoos.’

Nom gives me a half-hearted thumbs-up as I follow the Boer down the long stone staircase.

I’ve always thought about getting a tattoo. My dad has a tribal band tattooed around his unimpressive bicep. I guess at the time he thought it looked cool, but now it looks like he accidentally spilled the nineties over his arm. But as I stand in line and watch an old guy with greasy hair permanently mark adolescents, I decide that my body is not a temple that needs to be decorated. The old guy wields the tattoo gun like he’s in an action movie, and causes almost as much bloodshed.

‘Does it have to be there?’ I ask as he touches the gun to my forearm.

‘Oh no,’ the old guy growls. ‘Perhaps you’d rather have a nice Chinese symbol for freedom on your lower back?’

‘Well no, it’s just that—’

‘Shut the hell up, kid,’ he spits. ‘Or this is gonna hurt even more.’

I’m sitting outside dabbing my arm with a tissue when the reality of my situation hits home. I look down at the gruesome prison-style rendering of a mouth full of smashed teeth. It’s still bleeding, which adds to the effect. I’m away from my friends and family in a place that’s on no maps and where they freely tattoo minors with magic ink.

‘Now you’re one of us,’ Chastity says, holding out her arm to show an equally mutilated mouth. ‘Thankfully we only needed to get one,’ adds Faith with a smile.

‘Why?’ I say. ‘Why do we have these?’

‘If you try to leave, it hurts like a chemical burn,’ Chastity says. ‘Like nothing you’ve ever felt before. They got tired of kids escaping so they made a plan.’

‘Fuck.’ I touch the bloody mouth gingerly.

‘Come on,’ Faith says. ‘First class of the semester.’

‘We’re all in the same class?’ I whisper as I sit down at a desk next to Nom.

‘Well, yeah,’ he says. ‘No funding, very few teachers. We’re all in it together, baby.’

We’re in a classroom in the stony belly of Hexpoort. I’m expecting a military instructor, someone with a crew cut and a bad attitude to put us through our paces. What I’m not expecting is a giant bipedal tabby cat wearing a kaftan, Buddhist chanting beads and little circular steel-rimmed glasses.

‘Good morning, one and all,’ he says in a low, musical voice. ‘Many of you know me already, but for the benefit of those who don’t, my name is King and I’m the curriculum director here at Hexpoort. And before any of you newbies freak out, let us cut to the chase: I look like a cat.’

He picks up a piece of chalk and scrawls the letters CAT on the board.

‘What I am, however, is a Nunda, an ancient race with its roots in Central Africa.’ He opens his desk and pulls out several sheaves of paper and holds them up. ‘Lolcats, Garfield or Grumpy Cat pinned on my office door may seem like juvenile hijinks, but it’s seriously uncool, people.’

There are sniggers from the class.

‘I take offence at this specific brand of humour as it only serves to further entrench human privilege.’

He clears his throat. ‘Now that we’ve got that unpleasantness out of the way, I’d like to extend a warm welcome to the new members of Hexpoort. In today’s class I’ll be assessing the abilities of our new recruits. When I call your name, please come through to my office and I’ll administer the tests. The rest of you start reading John Lilly’s
The Center of the Cyclone
and think about how it relates to Timothy Leary’s ideas about the eight-circuit model of consciousness.’

King calls a kid’s name and ushers him to the office adjoining the classroom. I start reading the book.

‘Hey, asshole.’

I don’t turn around.

‘Asshole!’

Something hits me on the back of the head and I swing around.

‘You settling in?’ Hekka says. He and a bunch of his dumb jock friends are sitting at the back of the classroom. Hekka has his feet up on the desk and his hands interlaced behind his head. ‘What abilities do you think the kitteh will find in you? The ability to suck dick?’

I turn back to the book but I feel Hekka come up behind me and lean over my desk.

‘I’m the Chosen One, fated by birth to save the world. You know what you are?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘Please enlighten me.’

‘You’re fucking nothing.’

Time slows down. I feel the Hulk rage build. I could twist him around, squash him like a fly. Destroy him completely and entirely. But I don’t. I am Zen. I am a calm pool reflecting the moon. I am gouging out his eyes with a rusty spoon. No. I’m not. I am Zen. I am a calm pool reflecting the moon.

I just nod and continue to flick through my textbook.

‘Like I said,’ Hekka says, slapping the back of my head so hard that my glasses fall off. ‘Nothing.’

‘Baxter Zevcenko?’ King sticks his large head round the door.

I get up and follow him through, dodging another projectile that comes sailing from the back of the class.

The office smells of incense and cat. There’s a large desk made of dark wood, and a sprawling red Persian rug carpets the floor. I brush hairs from the seat in front of the desk and sit down. Several Egyptian-style paintings of cats being worshipped hang on the granite walls.

‘Bastet, the cat goddess,’ King says with a smile when he sees me looking at them. ‘Among the Nunda it’s a symbol of empowerment, similar to the black fist.’

‘Is it really so bad out there for them? The Hidden, I mean,’ I say.

‘“Them”? I’m going to stop you there, compadre. Exoticising the other is primary in the discourse around the Hidden Ones. The community is so fragmented and there is a lot of interspecies conflict. I’m considered by many to be a traitor. Working for the Man, quite literally in my case.’

He sits back, places his hands on his generous belly and contemplates me with his strange yellow eyes. ‘Besides, your unique history means that speaking of “them” is not really accurate. I know you’ve got both Crow and Siener blood and that it’s not exactly a happy mix. Am I right so far?’

‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘So what?’

‘Well, it’s a very interesting combination, and I am eager to test what abilities you may have as a result.’

‘OK,’ I say. ‘Knock yourself out.’

He fits a series of electrodes to my head and connects them to a laptop. ‘Now I want you to clear your mind and just look at the pictures I show you.’ He flashes me a series of images: a phrenologist’s diagram of a human head, a scarab beetle, the
Dark Side of the Moon
album cover, sugar skulls, ice cream covered with ants, a sword dripping with honey, a samurai committing hara-kiri, a collection of teen boy-band posters.

‘Hmmm,’ he says as he taps at the laptop keyboard. ‘Very interesting.’

He puts a series of cards face down on the desk and asks me to draw what I think they hold. I quickly sketch the first things that come into my head: interlocking triangles, a house, a sailboat, a smiley face.

‘Ah.’ He taps the keyboard again. ‘And now we’re going to play a story-telling game. I’m going to give you prompts and I want you to flesh out the story. Just let your mind go and use your imagination.’

He clears his throat. ‘There is a man named …’ I stare at him blankly. ‘Whatever comes into your head, Baxter,’ he says.

‘His name is Herbert,’ I begin. ‘He goes on a yacht and gets into a breakdance battle with penguins …’

We continue like this, and as we talk, his voice begins to lull me.

‘You’re walking down a passageway,’ he says. ‘You’re looking for a man called Whitey Valke. That’s right, Baxter, deeper and deeper …’

And there go my eyes, flickering like dragonfly wings.

‘What do you see, Baxter?’

‘A child …’ I murmur. ‘Very scared, in a red room.’ It’s true. I can see the faint hazy outline of a child in a room.

‘Good,’ King says. ‘Deeper and deeper, Baxter.’

The vision spins out of control and cleaves through my skull. I see a horrible dark figure approaching the child and attacking him.

‘Stop!’ I scream. ‘Stop.’

My eyes jerk open and King is standing over me with his hands on my shoulders. ‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘You’re safe. It was just a vision.’

He pours me a glass of water and I gulp it down gratefully.

‘Whitey Valke was a serial killer in the eighties. I took a chance on you, Baxter. What you saw was probably his infamous red-room abduction. The last child he took.’

‘I probably heard about it somewhere,’ I say. ‘Read it online or something.’

‘I seriously doubt it.’ King smiles, making his whiskers twitch. ‘It was never released. Whitey Valke was a goblin.’

‘So I got a small glimpse of something,’ I say. ‘I’ve seen things before …’

‘What it means is that I believe you have skill in both Seeing and Dreaming. Remarkable.’

‘Well that’s good, right? I thought I was here to learn about this shit.’

He taps one of his claws thoughtfully on the desk. ‘Well, yes. But it may cause … problems for you. Dreamwalking is an ancient skill that not many have the aptitude for any more. You have a high degree of potential for it. But your other magical abilities seem … blocked.’

‘Blocked?’ I say.

‘From what I can gather, you’ll have difficulty performing even the most basic spells.’

‘Great.’ I sit back in the chair.

‘Don’t be despondent. Dreamwalking is a powerful skill. You’re a wildcard, Baxter, and if there’s anything I’ve learnt, it’s that the MK6 establishment does not like wildcards.’

‘Story of my life,’ I say.

‘I will instruct you as far as I can. But further than that we have to approach a specialised teacher.’

‘You have a specialised teacher for this stuff? Well that’s great.’

He shakes his head, which gives the impression that he’s chasing a laser pointer. ‘Not exactly. She herself is a bit of a … wildcard.’ He scratches his chin. ‘I’ll speak to her. In the meantime …’

He reaches into his desk and hands me a black hard drive with a fraying smiley face sticker on it. ‘The entire school info dump is on there, our “library” for want of a better word. That’s everything we have clearance to give to students. It’s not organised in any meaningful way so you’re going to have to sift through it on your own to find mention of Dreamwalking.’

‘OK,’ I say. ‘I can do that.’

He chuckles. ‘Easier said than done. There may be a few mentions of Dreamwalking. It may also be referred to as “surfing mercury” or “aethernautics” or simply “exploring”. Most often these things are talked about obliquely.’