Chapter 5 - At Shakpana
You snap,
“That’s fucking enough, Argyll!”
Argyll stops. He gazes at you, apparently amused by your intervention, and holds up his hands.
“All right,” he says, “all right. Only having a bit of fun. We have to take our pleasures where we can, don’t we?”
Seizing his opportunity, Fowlesworth scoops the clothing back up into his arms. Directing a feeble kick in the direction of Argyll’s shins, he turns, and scurries madly away towards the hidden doorway.
“Oi!” Argyll snaps after him. “Come back! Come back here, you little prick! I’m not done with – did he just try to kick me?”
The door slams.
After a few seconds, Father Nicholas pokes his head out from the entrance to the apse. He raises a finger to his lips, frowning.
“Yeah, yeah,” Argyll calls, waving a hand in his direction. “We know, we’re making too much noise. Piss off back into your parlour, padre.”
He grins toothily at you, as if hoping for a reaction. When you simply stare back at him, he spits, and turns.
“Fucking humourless bastards,” he mutters, not quite under his breath, and stalks away after Fowlesworth. The door slams, a second time.
The old ghoul gives you a sympathetic look.
“You all right, girl?” he asks.
You nod.
Father Nicholas smiles.
“Drink?” he says.
*
You take a seat in the cramped office. A tattered portrait of Christ, standing over the swine at Gerasene, hangs on the wall. The curtains are drawn.
Father Nicholas fumbles at the heavy padlock of his cupboard.
“The Regentia has me keep a couple of blood bags in here for emergencies,” he explains. “I used to have nightmares that I’d pour it out during Communion, instead of wine. So I locked it away.”
He yanks the cupboard door open. Inside, surrounded by blue ice-packs, are three translucent bags bearing the St John’s Ambulance insignia. The vitae sloshes as he pours it out into a small china mug.
He slides it across the desk to you; you take a small sip, and then a second, hungrier mouthful.
“I’ve seen Mr Fowlesworth walk in and out of this church for the past forty years,” he says. “And my predecessor knew him too. Told me he’d be gone soon. And do you know, one night he was being mocked by a young Kindred by the name of Samantha Eames, and he sat up here in one of the pews. Quivering like a child. And I came across to him, and asked him how he was – and he struck me right here, on the cheek. Told me not to presume to speak up to my betters.”
You remain silent. His eyes are shimmering with sadness.
“Don’t waste your compassion on the insulted and injured, child,” he whispers. “They’ll know you’re weak, and they’ll know they’ve found someone else to put themselves above.”
A scrabbling, from far above. Something is making its way across the roof of the church.
“It’s that damned…thing,” Father Nicholas says. “Blackheath. God, I wish it’d fall off and shatter.”
He finds a cigarette from somewhere in his jacket, and lights it with a battered Zippo.
“Guess you miss cigarettes,” he mutters, and breathes out. “Or gin, or skunk, or whatever you used to hunger for. I couldn’t live without cigarettes. Even if the Regentia offered to Embrace me…no, I could never.”
“Do you still believe?” you ask him, suddenly. “In God, or heaven, or whatever?”
“Not for the past forty years,” Father Nicholas says. He grins. “Though I can still whip up a grand sermon, you know. This Sunday it was about communities. What we can do for our fellow man, even in a place so broken as London.”
He stares at his fiery cigarette end for a moment, with sudden disgust. Then he stubs it out, against the wood of his desk.
“You ever need someone to talk to, girl,” he tells you, “you come to me, and I’ll listen.”
*
A night passes. Eames, much to your irritation, is in all evening, and tasks you with finding records of an obscure clause in Kindred property law in the 1700s.
“Oh – and tell me, did you have fun at the Whiplash, dearest?” she asks, hesitating in the doorway.
“Very pleasant, Regentia,” you tell her.
“Did you happen to see anyone in there,” she says, “drinking a strange sort of blood? It would have had a powder in it, a scarlet powder.”
“No,” you reply, pretending to consider. “I mean, I wasn’t looking – people could’ve been drinking it, sure. Do you want me to look out for it in the future, Regentia?”
“Interesting,” Eames says, to herself. “No, leave it. I’ll need that information by dawn, yes?”
*
The night after, Eames leaves the chantry. You wait for an hour, and then slip a hooded jacket on and head out yourself.
The Tube is airless, and empty. You slip down the escalators in the too-bright, unreal light, the advertising screens flashing message after message at you as you go.
Two stops to Brixton.
On the first train, you sit opposite gnarled, ancient Asian woman, wrapped in a hijab, who rocks backwards and forwards, eyes closed, moaning at nothing.
The train rattles through darkness, and back into light.
*
It’s where you go if you don’t want anyone else to know what you’re up to. That’s how the whisper tells it. Heading to the Whiplash, or the P-N-P? Forget it. The Harpies know your name; and they’ll know who to pass it on to.
If you’re sure of yourself, and confident you won’t end up in a back alley, drained of vitae to be sold on, you make for the dingy, foul-smelling bar known as Shakpana, and you ask to speak with Francois Osazema.
You find it, in the end, down an alleyway south of the station. The sign is handpainted, in a whirlwind of colours, drawn across the back of a wide-eyed crocodile that appears to be consuming a man. One crudely-daubed hand protrudes from between its teeth.
There’s no bouncer on the door; you suppose there doesn’t need to be.
As quickly as possible, reckoning on a sharp, discreet entrance, you push open the door and step inside.
Thick, twisting smoke hangs in the semi-darkness. Two dreadlocked Kindred, one of them with a sickly-looking Kine girl draped across his lap, are playing at cards. Near the small, unoccupied stage, a long black curtain has been drawn across some continuation of the room. A battered jukebox in the corner of the room appears to be broken, emitting the same throaty, scratched snatch of tune, over and over,
Oh, the earth died screaming…
As I lay dreaming…
Oh, the earth died screaming…
As I lay dreaming…
And at the bar, a tall man in a baggy pink polo shirt is deep in conversation with the barmaid.
You stand beside him, ignoring the glances in your direction, and wait.
A small bowl of shimmering yellow liquid stands on the bar before you. You hesitate, and then lower your face to sniff at it. A sharp, unpleasant tang. Urine. Ugh.
“-didn’t you hear me, girl? I want to speak to Francois Osazema.”
You glance to your left.
The tall man in the polo shirt is leaning forward, across the bar. There’s a growing anger in his tone.
The barmaid snaps back,
“My God, man, weren’t you listening? I already said there ain’t no Francois Osazema here. Why don’t you go bother somebody else?”
The man slams his fist down on the tarnished wood.
“I know he’s here,” he says, with exaggerated calm. “He knows I want to speak with him. So why don’t you go and tell Francois Osazema who’s fucking here to see him?”
The girl hesitates. Her gaze drifts towards the long black curtain.
Then, without a word, she reaches over to the little brass bell hanging over the bar, and rings it once.
A moment of silence; and then, from somewhere beyond the curtain, a single peal responds.
The tall man grunts, apparently satisfied. Glancing contemptuously at the card-players, who are now watching him intently, he strides across to the curtain and slips through it.
A single second later, you hear a low, startled grunt. Something heavy seems to fall back against the curtain, and then slide downwards. The card-players return to their game.
Beneath the gap, a single line of blood is working its way across the floorboards. A rustling sound, as the heavy object is apparently dragged back from the curtain.
The barmaid gives you a sweet, unconcerned smile.
“Yardie,” she says. “We don’t like Yardies in here. What can I do for you, princess?”
For a second, you simply gape. After all, you tell yourself, she did at least give him a second warning…
“I…I’d like to see Francois Osazema,” you venture.
She gives you a wink, which isn’t immediately encouraging, then leans across and rings the little brass bell three times.
Three rings in reply.
“I’d give him a moment,” the barmaid advises. “He likes to clean up when he’s seeing guests.”
You nod weakly; and after a moment, steeling yourself, you step out behind the curtain, and into blackness. The noise and light of the bar seems to shut out instantly, as if cut off by an external force.
You keep walking forward. Your hands stretch out, feeling for the walls, but you find nothing. After what seems like far too long, you halt, considering the possibility of turning back.
“Keep going, daughter,” whispers a voice, low and rich with the smell of peat-bogs, into your very ear.
You freeze.
“Nothing to be fearing, daughter,” the voice hisses. “Come on, now. Don’t keep me waiting.”
So you take another step forward through the pitch. And another.
“That’s it. Not far now…”
And a noise rises out of the darkness, shrill and chaotic, a hundred different voices, crying out at once.
Your fingers brush up against a wall of stringy, damp cloth. Brushing it gratefully to one side, you step forward, into the light.
From their cages, filling the walls of the little stone room to the very roof, the chickens shriek, pounding their wings desperately against the mesh containing them.
“Good evening, daughter,” says Francois Osazema. His rotting, corpse-grey face spreads wide, into a grin.
You knew he’d be a Samedi, of course. But you weren’t prepared for this; the caved-in mess where his nose once was, the long fingers which extend into raw bone. The revolting creature sits, at a small workbench, spectacles balanced precariously over the stumps of his ears, dressed in what appears to be a brown patterned cardigan.
“Go on, stare,” he continues, mildly. “I do not mind.”
With a flourish, he holds up a baggy pink polo shirt, and gives it a long, critical gaze. It’s been torn, from collar to base; and blood has seeped into the material.
“This can be sewn up,” he declares, “but the blood will never come out. A pity; it will have to serve as bedding for my chickens.”
He drops it, carelessly.
It occurs to you that you really should be speaking.
“Mr Osazema,” you say, after a moment, “I’ve been told you’re the right man to ask about…finding items that can’t be traced. That you’re discreet.”
Osazema responds, bone-fingers tapping against the edge of his own iron vice,
“And all of that is true, daughter.”
“I need a bug,” you continue. “Something tiny – small enough that it’ll be very hard to find. I don’t need to buy it – I just need it for a couple of nights. A week at most.”
The Samedi exhales. Snatching away his spectacles, he sits back, and gazes at you. A globule of loose skin is hanging from his right cheek.
“I know of such a device,” he says, “and without boasting I may say that I will have little trouble procuring it for you. It will be cheaper than through a Kine gadget-man, and far more reliable. But I will require payment in advance.”
“I can give you as much as two-hundred and fifty pounds,” you tell him. “I don’t have much other than pocket-money-”
He smiles, and shakes his head.
“Double it,” he says, “and you may have an idea of the product I am thinking of. But this was not my intention, daughter. No. You Tremere do not value money. You value secrets, yes – and tricks? Well, then…it is a trick I want from you, daughter. I wish a Kine to disappear. Do you think you can make a Kine disappear?”
You watch him closely.
“What do you mean by ‘disappear’,” you ask, “Mr Osazema?”
Osazema shrugs.
“Exactly that,” he says. “I wish her no longer walking and talking in London. Poof! Gone! Nobody famous, you understand, nobody important, simply an ordinary woman…but I want her gone, and I want her gone for good.”
What’re you thinking?
A) Agree to make this Kine disappear, one way or another.
B) Perhaps it’d be easier to steal the money and give that to him instead.
C) His asking price is absurd. You’d be much better off just going to a gadget shop.
