L'Ombre pourpre
(Les Cités intérieures -3)
(Les Cités intérieures -3)
Natasha Beaulieu
(Excerpt, p. 42-51)
The night was very dark, but it was perhaps always so. Since he'd come out of the Sensastrip, Jimmy was walking with no particular purpose. He was preoccupied.
He'd taken an interest in Keen at first glance. Of course with his fedora, the man was different from the others patrons. Still, how to explain the precognition Jimmy had experienced just before the private eye talked to him? It couldn't be a mere coincidence. There had to be some link. Could he have seen Keen before? If he had, where? Was it his first visit to Penlocke or had he already come here, and retained no memory of it?
His steps took him to an alley that opened on a vast lot enclosed by a chain link with barbwire on top. At regular intervals, panels had been attached to the fence. On each a warning could be read: "Temporary Installation. Forbidden Zone." In the center of the enclosure stood an enormous rectangular structure, low, black and smooth as marble, with no apparent opening.
Intrigued, Jimmy decided to take a closer look. He went towards the fence, but as he approached, a sickening feeling inside grew stronger and stronger. Less than a meter from the fence, his muscles tightened and he stood stock-still, looking up at the huge black mass. What was inside?
Curiosity had awakened. Evil too. The evil and violence that were part of Jimmy Novak. That special kind of violence which overwhelmed him, and that he had nicknamed "the black violence." With experience and time, he'd learned how to control this defect, but right now, he could see he no longer had what it took to keep it from exploding.
He suddenly turned on his heels and strode away. It was imperative that he avoid this place.
He decided to go back to the Tumono House. After a whole day walking under a bright sun, a few hours of rest would do him good.
It took him about fifteen minutes to find the whorehouse. He glanced at the sign swinging slowly under the iron bar:Tumono House
By Invitation OnlyHe pulled the ring in the center of the heavy wood panel. A bell rang inside. A few seconds went by, then Oriental eyes appeared above the ring in the wire screen of the window.
"Mister Sing Song?" Jimmy asked.
"That's me."
"I am Jimmy Novack. Shandra told me to ask for you."
Mister Sing Song opened the door. A small and fragile-looking man, he was dressed in a black tumono. With a quick wave, he invited his guest to follow him. Jimmy entered the labyrinth behind him. The Chinaman went up a spiral staircase, then pushed a door open and turned to Novak.
"Do you find it agreeable?"
The room was a bit larger than Shandra's living-room, and very different. It was all done in black, the wood floor and ceiling, the stone walls, the gauzy drapes in front of the narrow windows, the satin sheets of the bed, in the center of the room. On one wall hanging from a hook, were one black tumono and one white, the only patch of light in that inky environment.
"Yes, very much so."
"Then it is yours as long as you need it."
"Thanks," Jimmy said, surprised by this generosity.
Mister Sing Song made as if to leave.
"You are the owner of this establishment?"
"Yes."
"I'd like to apologize. I 'entered' by breaking the lock on the basement door."
"I've repaired it," the Chinaman said, closer to the door.
"What exactly is the 'temporary installation'?" Jimmy asked.
"Nobody knows."
"Someone must know who built it?"
"Maybe."
Jimmy realized he would get nothing more on that subject and he didn't insist. Mister Sing Song bowed and left.
The spare decor of the black room soothed Jimmy. There was a positive energy in there, an energy that almost felt familiar. It was exactly what he needed, a pleasant place to meditate and to think about what he would have to do in the days to come.
There was a knock on the door. He opened. It was Shandra.
"My room is just next to yours," she said.
Jimmy gestured for her to come in. She flattened the folds of her mauve tumono, decorated with golden threads, and sat at the foot of the bed. Jimmy stood, his thumbs hooked into the belt loops of his jeans.
"The room is OK with you?" the young woman asked.
"Better than I could have hoped for. Whose room is it, usually?"
Shandra hesitated briefly before answering:
"No one's. It's a guest room."
"A room for strangers that come out of nowhere like me?"
She avoided his eyes and didn't answer. She said instead:
"I must warn you about the Violencers. You look like someone who is able to take care of himself, but if you ever meet men with chains, be careful. They don't hesitate to attack anyone whose face they don't like. They often beat people to death."
Jimmy couldn't help smiling.
"Thanks for the tip, but if I meet one of those Violencers, I'll make him eat his chain."
Shandra smiled back.
"You've learned how to defend yourself?"
"Yes, rather well, and I even have a natural knack for violence."
He noticed the fleetingly worried expression in her green eyes.
"Don't fret, I don't assault pretty girls."
Flattered, she ventured a question.
"Over there, in England, is there a woman waiting for you?"
"Yes."
She made a face. Jimmy thought she was pretty and very sweet, but no woman would rival Tura's beauty and depth of character.
"Why is Penlocke surrounded by walls?" he asked.
"To protect it from the sand storms."
"That's the only reason?"
"I don't know any other," the girl said, lowering her eyes.
"And the temporary installation, do you know what that is?"
"No."
Obviously, he would get no more satisfying answers from Shandra than from Mister Sing Song. Seeing the young woman's discomfort, he desisted. After all, perhaps she couldn't tell him everything. He didn't want to cause her any trouble.
"I must go now," the prostitute said, standing up.
"Thank you, Shandra. Without you, I wouldn't have got this room."
"I'm glad you like it."
As soon as she was gone, Jimmy lay on the bed, intent on getting some rest.***
A few minutes later, Jimmy was sitting on the floor, his back against the cool stone wall, breathing with difficulty. His body was sickly hot, and his temples were throbbing. Those were symptoms of a pain he knew too well, even though he hadn't experienced it in a long time.
As a child, he had developed an aptitude for drawing. As a teenager, he'd spent hours on end trying to render some hazy images that frequently came into his head. Never satisfied, he'd given up. Years later, he'd met with an unknown woman who had awakened those images, now more precise. So precise, in fact, that he had been able to paint them on the walls of his apartment.
The mural depicted an urban landscape, gothic and macabre in appearance, dirty, ugly, with dilapidated houses and streets where mountains of refuse were piling up. The doors of several houses were marked with a big red X. Corpses with festering sores were rotting in the alleys. The people still standing were gaunt and wan, with an anguished look. It spoke of illness, of madness, of despair... Jimmy had named this work "The Plague City." And when recalling the people he had drawn in that City, he could very clearly see a man with a scarred face half hidden beneath a fedora.
The woman who had dredged up the City so long buried in Jimmy's mind and helped to make it so real was named Tamara. Not only was she his female double, but she was the twin sister he'd never known he had. She'd died strangely not long after their encounter. Considering the violent acts she'd committed, it was for the best. At the same time, Jimmy had also learned that Robert Novak, whom he'd always thought of as his father, wasn't. Of his, and Tamara's, natural father he knew nothing, except that he had a very white skin, with Chinese-like eyes and that he had invented koftee.
If there was koftee in Penlocke, could Jimmy's father be here too?
He suddenly left the room and went down the spiral staircase, coming across patrons and girls he barely noticed. But he asked one of the girls where he could find Mister Sing Song. She began explaining which staircase and which corridor to take, but she wasn't too sure and ended up suggesting he follow her. She brought him to the door of the old Chinaman's private boudoir. Jimmy entered without knocking.
Mister Sing Song was reading tarot cards spread in front of him. He didn't show any surprise when Jimmy came in.
"Sit down," he said calmly.
Jimmy chose one of the three empty chairs and, leaned forward, his elbows on his knees.
"Who was in the black room before me?"
"A man named Stick."
Mister Sing Song was searching Jimmy's blue eye. Nothing indicated Jimmy had heard that name before.
"What does he look like?"
"Taller and thinner than you. An androgynous look. His skin is very white and contrasts with his long hair that he sometimes fastens on the top of his head..."
"...with a leather cone pierced by two fluorescent green sticks," Novak concluded.
The Chinaman's eyes narrowed.
"You have seen him?"
"Yes. I imagined him, and I painted him."
Mister Sing Song, gathered the pack of cards.
"Who invented koftee?" Jimmy asked again.
"Jack Tee."
"And what does he look like?"
"Not so tall, lean, but muscular. Very white skin. The ends of his black hair are white too. And his eyes looked Chinese. They nicknamed him the White Chinaman."
"Are Stick and Jack currently in Penlocke?"
"No, but they sometimes come here."
"Where do they live, the rest of the time?"
"In the City without a Name. It is a deserted city somewhere in the desert, he said before Jimmy could ask. I already told someone to go get them. They should know soon enough you're here."
"So they have a connection with me?"
The Chinaman nodded.
"Jack Tee is my father, isn't he?"
"Yes, he is."
"And Stick?"
"He's also Jack's son, your half-brother."
Mister Sing Song looked at Jimmy's face, which was getting more and more tense. Jimmy seemed to be fighting against a mysterious force that was gnawing at him from the inside. He was in obvious pain.
If Novak was plagued with the same incomprehensible violence as his twin sister, the owner of the Tumono House thought, it was better to know where he was at all times in order to control him. He must do all he could to keep Novak where he was. However, without Stick's and Jack's help, Mister Sing Song knew that the task would be next to impossible for himself alone.
It was urgent that the two men come to Penlocke.***
Lying again on his bed, Jimmy could feel the Black Violence flowing inside him.
The events and revelations of the last hours were so intense they were hard to take for a man as emotional as he was. His daughter lost, his wife far away, his arrival in a City that was unknown to him, but which he had already "seen" in his mind, which he had already painted, the possibility he would soon meet his true father, all this was causing him to lose his grip. And there was also the fact that in his mural depicting the Plague City, he had painted his half-brother and Keen the private eye without knowing they really existed. That in this City, his precognitive power had awakened. And that there was in that City a "temporary installation" inhabited by an unhealthy presence that was certainly the source of the reawakening of the Black Violence...
Jimmy Novak then understood that if the Plague City and Penlocke were one and the same, then his Plague City wasn't merely a work of art but the prophetic vision of Penlocke's fate.
As his mind was full of horrible visions and his body invaded by the Black Violence, Jimmy knew it was too late to stop the inevitable.***
Shandra's next client still hadn't shown up. Sitting on her bed, she was mending the hem of a tumono when she wondered what tumono color Jimmy would prefer her to wear. She pushed the thought away: she had no chance against the woman who was waiting for him over there, in England. Just as she was piercing the fabric with her needle, she heard a long, guttural cry. She froze. It was coming from Jimmy's room.
She put down her sewing. What to do? There were other rooms on this floor. Was she the only one who'd heard this moaning? Moaning? Why did she think that cry was a moan?
Leaving her room, she went and knocked at the door next to hers. She heard nothing.
"Jimmy?" she called.
She knocked again.
"Jimmy? It's Shandra. Are you all right? Do you need help?"
Finding the silence unbearable, she went in. Novak was lying on the bed. A large, bloody wound gaped in his left arm.
Shandra ran over to him...
© 2006 Éditions Alire & Natasha Beaulieu
To find out what happens next...
