The Mall Read online

  ‘I didn’t hear you complaining.’

  ‘Well, you’re the one with the street experience, aren’t you? You should know what’s normal in this sort of situation.’

  Rhoda spits out a laugh. I can’t tell if it’s sarcastic or genuinely amused. ‘Normal? Okay, tell me. We’re lost underneath a mall that keeps on changing direction, buying food from a grey woman in a ghost parking lot, being chased by a screaming monster and getting texted by the marketers from hell. What “sort of situation” do you call that? Sounds more like a normal day in your neck of the woods, shop boy. What’s normal in my life is having a hit and chilling the fuck out.’

  ‘Well, I’m not eating that crap. Look, this bread is covered with mould,’ I say as we sit down.

  ‘Bit of penicillin never hurt anyone. Fact, it’s good for you,’ she says as she unwraps the greasy brown whatever-it-is, folds the sides of the wrapper up so that it doesn’t ooze all over the table, and dunks the bread in it. ‘Yum yum,’ she says.

  I’d better follow suit or lose all credibility and I smear a hunk of bread into the sauce. I raise it to my lips.

  ‘I can’t believe you were going to fucking eat that!’ Rhoda peals as she flips her bread onto the floor.

  She leans back and lights up one of her prize cigarettes, then another, and passes it to me. I take it without saying anything. I don’t smoke, but, Christ, if ever there’s a moment… The first drag makes me gag, and Rhoda smirks at me. The nicotine coats my tongue, the taste acrid and unfamiliar. I take another tentative pull, cough, and try again. This time I hold it in, dragging it deep into my lungs far more easily than I thought it would be.

  ‘Glad to see the asthma’s cured, Dan,’ she says.

  ‘Whatever,’ I mumble.

  ‘You’re quite a sick puppy,’ she chortles to herself.

  ‘Fuck you,’ I say.

  Rhoda sits quietly, puffing, watching the three hobos lurking by their fire as if she hasn’t a care in the world. I want the illusion that I’m on some seaside holiday to last, but the silence, broken only by the occasional snap of the fire, is freaking me out.

  ‘I can’t believe she took your phone instead of mine,’ I say. ‘It’s a piece of shit.’

  She smirks, but doesn’t say anything. She takes another long drag and the smoke seeps out of her nose. I try that myself.

  ‘So, Rhoda Hlophe, huh?’ I venture, remembering the surname on her last phone message.

  ‘What’s it to you, Dan?’ Her tone is light.

  ‘That’s not a British name.’

  ‘No.’

  I wait. She offers nothing more. ‘Where are you from?’ This is officially the longest conversation I’ve ever had with a strange woman. I try not to concentrate on my smoking style.

  ‘Jesus. Quizzy boy, aren’t you?’

  I look at her arms, the array of scars ranged along them. I don’t know what to say, but I want to carry on talking. ‘I’m confused, that’s all.’

  ‘How a black woman with a South African name gets such a whack accent?’

  ‘Ja.’

  ‘Ever heard of exile in your lily-white suburbs?’

  ‘No way you’re an exile. All the real exiles are old. Dead or dying.’

  ‘True. But shit has a way of filtering down through generations. Anyway, I need to take a piss.’

  She walks off to the shell I pissed in earlier. I watch her go, then I start fretting again. Of all the things to obsess about, the thing that’s bothering me most of all is how I managed to take a wrong turn outside Only Books. I’ve walked that way a thousand times. If I had just got us out of there then, none of this would be happening.

  Jesus. My mom will be really worried by now. Maybe she’ll call the police. Maybe they’ll come looking for me. Rhoda comes back, wiping her hands on her jeans.

  ‘What now?’ I ask.

  ‘I need to get my phone back.’

  ‘How?’ But she’s off already, striding across the parking lot. I trail behind her.

  The three hobos are standing around the brazier, holding sticks into it, mumbling in low tones. The woman looks up from the fire as we approach, and the men shift their heads with their shoulders, following their ears. Up close, their eyes are scarred pits, and by the way they murmur, I realise they’re probably half-mute too. Jesus, what would a blind mute do upstairs in Joburg? Stand by a traffic light, get pulled around to car windows by some con artist who’ll take all their money at the end of the day? They’re probably better off down here.

  ‘I need my phone,’ says Rhoda, mincing no words. The woman watches her cautiously, keeping one eye on the skewer hidden in the brazier.

  ‘I’ll give you, uh,’ Rhoda says, casting around for something of value to exchange for her phone, ‘his watch.’

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘Dan,’ Rhoda hisses. ‘We need our phones in here. We don’t need your watch. I’m asking nicely now. But I’m not fucking around.’

  ‘You’re crazy, you know that?’ I give up the watch. Truth is, it’s a piece of shit and doesn’t keep time, but the woman takes the deal. She obviously knows that a phone with a disabled SIM card and a flat battery is of no use to anybody.

  She rests her skewer on the makeshift crate-table next to the fire and digs through her plastic tote bag while Rhoda and I try not to look at the two skinned and charred rats steaming in the dank air.

  As Rhoda takes her phone she spots something red at the neck of the woman’s shopping bag.

  ‘What the fuck?’ She lunges at it. A little red toy robot. ‘Where did you get this?’ But the woman is scurrying back into their shelter. Rhoda runs to catch up and grabs the woman by the throat. ‘Where did you get this? Tell me!’

  Rhoda’s about to hit the woman, but she hesitates. The woman musters enough strength to stop gibbering and talk. The quicker she speaks, the quicker we’ll be gone, and right now that’s all that is important to her.

  ‘People leave things. Here. Or there. I gather things. That people leave.’

  ‘Where?’ shouts Rhoda. ‘Where did you find it?’ The grey woman points to the far end of the food court, the same area she was eyeing when she first spoke to us. ‘It will follow you.’

  Rhoda and I look at each other. She pockets her phone and the toy and goes off in the direction the woman pointed.

  ‘She says she found the toy here, so the kid must have come through here. If he didn’t come back the way he came – which is highly fucking unlikely – he must have gone through here. There’s got to be a door here somewhere. Where would the fire stairs have been built?’

  We trace our way past all the empty shop-shells and find a narrow opening partially covered by a stack of scaffolding planks. The door leads to a pitch-dark stairwell.

  Rhoda feels her way into the darkness. I wait for a worrying moment then hear a crumple and a meaty, cursing thump. ‘Jesus motherfucking Christ! Who puts a fucking brick wall at the top of the fucking stairs?’ Rhoda comes limping out, rubbing her forehead. I bite my tongue not to laugh, and she goes hobbling around the food court, searching for another exit.

  My phone beeps. What now?

 

  I put my phone back in my pocket as Rhoda comes back, ‘Nada,’ she reports. ‘There’s definitely no way through here. The kid couldn’t have come this way.’

  Just then, her phone beeps. She shows her message to me.

 

  chapter 7

  RHODA

  Fuck.

  Only four cigarettes left.

  I know I should really ration them, but I sit at a food court table, light up and take a deep drag. My lungs ache from breathing in this foul smoky air, and my throat’s itchy and sore. I nip the fag an
d slide it back into the box. Checking that Dan isn’t about to emerge from the rancid hole of the ‘men’s’, I pull out the envelope and snort a pinch of blow, which should help sort out the headache that’s been festering. Nothing like a healthy diet to keep the system in check.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Dan says from behind me. I jump guiltily and fumble to hide the envelope. His eyes drift to my pocket and it’s obvious that he knows exactly what I’ve been doing.

  ‘What’s it to you?’ I say.

  ‘Chill. I’m just asking. I thought we’d decided to call a truce.’

  For a second I feel slightly guilty. But ‘being nice’ isn’t one of my strong points. ‘Dan, don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like utter fucking shite.’

  He runs his hand self-consciously through his hair, which is almost entirely matted and grey with dust, like those freaky hobos back there. His pores are clogged with pinpricks of black dirt, as if his face is teeming with blackheads, and his clothes are rumpled and stained. I’ve done my fair share of sleeping rough, but I can’t remember the last time I felt this disgusting. Even though we’ve only been in this maze for probably a few hours – I can’t tell exactly because that hobo witch seems to have fucked the time on my phone – the dust and dirt have eked their way deep under my nails, my eyes feel as if they’ve been sand-blasted and my teeth are furry and gritty. I would do almost anything for a shower right now.

  ‘You’re not exactly Angelina Jolie yourself,’ he says.

  ‘Yeah, well, I’m not going to win a beauty pageant any time soon, am I?’ I snap.

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Forget it.’ I hold out my hand. ‘Give me your phone.’

  ‘Can’t you at least say “please?”’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Dan. I didn’t mean to offend your delicate sensibilities.’ I put on a girly-girl voice and flutter my eyelashes. ‘May I please, pretty please, borrow your phone if it isn’t too much of an inconvenience to you?’

  Good Christ, is he blushing? Without looking me in the eye, he hands me the phone. I scroll down to the messages and read them again. ‘What’s this shit about a market? What kind of market?’

  ‘Fuck knows.’

  ‘I tell you something, this is not spam, Dan.’

  ‘You’re a poet and you don’t know it.’ He lets out a giggle that verges on hysteria. Not good.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I say. ‘You’re not going to lose it, are you?’ Although I wouldn’t blame him if he did.

  He rubs his face with the palm of his hand, looking about twelve years old. ‘I just can’t get my head around all this.’

  ‘You and me both.’

  ‘I mean, what the fuck is going on?’

  ‘It’s like we’ve both taken some really bad acid or something,’ I say. He shoots me a loaded look. ‘Don’t worry, shithead. I haven’t slipped you anything. I wouldn’t waste my stash on you.’

  He holds my gaze for several seconds and then nods as if he believes me. ‘I did have one idea,’ he says.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘The kid.’

  ‘What about the kid?’

  ‘What if… you know… he was snatched and the people who are fucking with us are trying to put us off the scent?’ he says. ‘You know, like people-smugglers – paedophiles or something.’

  ‘But you said you didn’t see him with anyone.’

  ‘Ja. But I’m just saying. It’s possible.’

  ‘We’re not in a Bruce Willis movie, Dan. Don’t be so fucking stupid.’ I wait for him to fire back at me, but he remains silent. ‘Look,’ I say, softening my voice, ‘if they were badass human traffickers they’d just kill us, wouldn’t they? Besides, that doesn’t explain how they know our names.’

  ‘So what is this, then? Blind homeless psychos, tunnels and corridors that don’t seem to lead anywhere, mannequins in bondage and text messages from someone who not only knows our names but sounds like the spammer from hell. Seriously, Rhoda. I’m beginning to think we’re in the twilight zone here.’

  ‘I’ve seen worse.’

  ‘You have?’

  I haven’t – not even close. And I’ve been in some pretty fucking hairy situations in the past. But I’m not going to tell him that. ‘We’ve just slipped through the cracks of society, Dan. Plenty of people opt out of working for the Man and paying their taxes.’ But most of them don’t eat rodents and live under malls.

  ‘You really believe that?’

  ‘Sure,’ I say. Fortunately lying is one of my strong points.

  ‘And the text messages?’

  ‘Some psycho hacker. Probably works at Vodacom. Has access to customer accounts. Must be.’

  ‘I’m not with Vodacom.’

  ‘Whatever. Something like that. I’m just saying.’ It’s clear that he doesn’t believe me, but what other explanation is there? None that either of us wants to dwell on right now.

  ‘So, what’s the plan?’ he says, trying to sound game.

  ‘If the kid’s here we need to find him. That’s top priority. He could be in serious shit if he bumps into a nut-job like that freak of a woman back there. There’s only one other way he could have gone.’ I point to the far end of the lot. It stretches back into the gloom, and it’s impossible to make out any details at that end, thanks to that same disturbing pitch-blackness we met in the dead-end stairwell. ‘And for that we need a proper light. Any ideas?’

  ‘Hey! That old woman’s got a paraffin lamp in her stuff. I saw it when she was getting out the food.’

  ‘She’s never going to give it to us, and we won’t be able to nick it without her noticing.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to trade.’

  ‘With what? Apart from my phone and your crappy watch she didn’t want any of our stuff.’

  ‘Yeah. But what about the other stuff?’

  ‘What other stuff?’

  ‘You know.’

  ‘Oh fuck off, Dan.’

  But there’s no other option.

  ‘That thing stinks!’

  ‘Trust me,’ Dan sighs, ‘if the old witch had a torch I’d much rather have taken that.’

  Oily black smoke billows out of the top of the lamp, which looks like one of those old-school oil lanterns you see in BBC adaptations of Jane Austen or whatever. It clearly hasn’t been cleaned for a while and the fuel smells more like petrol than paraffin. Still, at least it’s providing enough of a glow so that we can walk without braining ourselves on the jagged pipes and concrete pillars that loom out of the darkness every so often. And I guess it was cheap at the price. I’d given the hag the ketamine in exchange, and I was only going to sell that on anyway. It’ll probably do her and her cronies some good.

  We’re making slow progress, but even so, the parking lot seems to be stretching on further than it has any right to. But at least there’s no debris scattered around, just the occasional loose wall panel spilling the severed worms of thick conduit wires. A rat scuttles past my foot, and it sounds like it’s dragging something fairly heavy behind it. Thankfully Dan doesn’t wave the light its way. Neither of us really wants to know the details of that particular scenario.

  ‘We’ll have to find an exit or something soon,’ Dan says. ‘This thing’s getting almost too hot to hold.’

  I unwrap my hoodie from around my waist and hand it to him, and he balls it around his hand. ‘Thanks,’ he says.

  We shuffle along for a few more metres and then Dan stops abruptly.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look!’

  To our left, I can make out the shadowy edges of a wide concrete ramp, which presumably leads down into the deep darkness of the floor below.

  ‘Oh great,’ I say. ‘Down another level. What the fuck were they thinking going down this deep?’

  Dan doesn’t answer.

  As we get closer, a large laminated sign that’s stuck onto the wall in front of us emerges. Dan holds the lamp up to it, and the red plastic letters shine in the lamp’s glow. He re
ads it aloud: ‘“Level X. Authorised personnel only past this point. Danger; Gevaar; Ingozi.”’

  ‘Level X? That’s like ten or something in Roman numerals, isn’t it?’

  ‘Hang on, there’s something else written below.’

  He waves the light along the edge of the sign, but the print is too small for me to make out the words.

  ‘Well?’ I say. ‘What does it say?’

  ‘You don’t want to know.’

  ‘Of course I bloody well want to know! What does it say?’

  ‘It doesn’t make sense. It reads: “Do not attempt to enter under any circumstances. All trespassers will be corrected.”’

  ‘What the fuck do they mean by “corrected”?’ I ask.

  There’s a long pause before Dan answers. ‘It makes me think of getting caned at school. Or corrective surgery.’

  I don’t really want to consider either of these options, but now Dan has put some seriously gothic imagery in my mind. I try to shake it out. ‘Oh for fuck’s sake. This is totally mental.’

  ‘So what now?’

  I pull out the stompie and light up. I take a couple of drags and watch the thin grey smoke melding and dancing with the black emissions from the paraffin lamp. ‘We don’t have a choice,’ I say. ‘Trousers down it is.’ Dan smiles at me for the first time, and even though the yellowish light makes his too-white skin seem ghoulish, he actually looks like a different person. ‘I mean,’ I say, nipping the butt and leaving one last drag for later, ‘after what we’ve already been through, how bad can it really get?’

  This floor seems to extend even further along than the one above. Enough parking for all the cars in Joburg. The ceiling is lower down here and I’m starting to feel the walls pressing in. And the cigarette and blow aren’t helping to calm my heart or soothe my stomach, which is bunched into a tight knot of nausea.

  Dan pauses and holds the lamp out to me. ‘Can you hold it for a while? It’s burning my fingers.’

  He passes the lamp to me, and even through the hoodie’s layers I almost drop it when I feel the heat. He must have really struggled to hold it for so long. ‘Fucking hell, Dan! You should have said something earlier!’