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Adrian pushed his way through the hippy communes and flea-markets. Pedlars were selling their wares, barking at him as he passed. The bazaar was fiendishly busy and the crowds bustled and swirled, wriggling under the sun like maggots. Three or four men were standing around cattle, haggling, mopping their brows with handkerchiefs in the stifling heat. Near a Red Cross makeshift hospital (a yellow, ugly building on the corner where they treated the likes of leprosy and malaria), a pale-faced man leaned over a stall of spices: huge archaic pots of red chilli powder and ground yellow turmeric. The spice seller smiled, but he didn’t have any teeth. Adrian quickly turned away and pushed on through the crowd.
Finally, he turned down a street which was half-quiet, and the tall walls offered merciful shade. He swatted at the Devil Flies with the back of his hand. There were more stalls down the end of the street, but the crowd seemed to stay away. The stall-keepers lurched over their wares and watched Adrian like vultures might watch a dying man in the desert. A few muttered to themselves as he neared. He caught sight of the strange paraphernalia that was being offered – ouiji boards, monkey paws, corpse-candles, ancient books, goat-skins. One trader stood behind a stall scattered with polished human skulls and bone. He ran his hands together, smiled, and said something foreign that Adrian didn’t catch.
Then an old woman came out of a doorway. She was hunched, a bundle of bones as fragile as earthenware. She saw Adrian and shouted something incomprehensible to him. He looked at her and she beckoned him into her house. He looked to the traders but they turned away. A disembowelled goat flapped in a sudden gush of wind from a butcher’s hook. Adrian wasn’t sure what to do but he followed the woman anyway; Goa’s streets were too alien and hostile and seemed merely to accentuate his nagging depression.
He entered the doorway and climbed stone steps, the passage dark and full of dust. He could hear her calling him up the steps. He didn’t understand a word she was saying but she spoke quietly, as if she had something important to say. He carried on ascending, smelling sambhar and fish.
He entered a narrow passageway. Either side of him were walls of stacked, antiquated books. He caught some of the titles (Unaussprechlichen Kulten, The Revelations of Glakki, The Necronimicon) and shuddered. The books seemed to rattle and hiss in the freak wind that howled up the passageway.
Then he entered a claustrophobic little room, perfectly round and stiflingly hot. The cupboard was open and had wire mesh sides to protect the food from rodents and flies. The cupboard legs stood in bowls of water to prevent insects crawling inside. Water, yoghurt and milk were kept cool in earthenware pots, the tandoor hissed in the corner. The old woman was hunched over a pot, stirring the thick, dark-red contents.
“English?” asked the old woman. She turned from the pot and scratched at her face with broken fingernails. Adrian nodded. “They can’t help you,” she said.
Adrian looked confused. “Who?”
The old woman pointed to the window. “Them.”
He presumed she was talking about the pedlars. “Oh.”
The old woman began to cackle. Adrian, vaguely irritated, thought to leave, but as he turned the old woman called out, “I can help you.”
Adrian stopped. He could smell something coming from somewhere inside the dirty kitchen, something that overpowered the rich spices, the fish, the vegetables. Something foreign, dark. “What do you mean?”
“You sad.” The old woman’s face broke into a grin, but her eyes gave nothing away. “I know. I help.” She seemed to be searching for a word. She muttered Indian to herself, then looked at him. “You alone,” she whispered.
Adrian shuddered. The woman was grinning. “I have to go,” he replied. The woman pulled something out of the rags of her dress, a black vial which she shook up in a bony fist.
“Take it,” she said. “Cure. It will help.”
“What is it?”
“No more loneliness.” The woman laughed. “Take.” She extended her arm, offering the vial. “Drink.” He took it from her. She smiled, satisfied. “Drink. Go home, drink.”
He looked around. He noticed the charms and amulets on a table in the corner. He noticed rat skulls in the cupboard.
“Go.”
He nodded and left, taking the stone steps down to the market. He stepped into the sunshine and saw the traders were watching him from behind the shade of their turbans. As he looked up, they averted their gaze.
He rejoined the crowd. The sun climbed over the mouldering yellow buildings and decaying shanty towns. The air was thick with spices, sweat and Devil Flies. He pushed past the screaming pedlars, the children who seemed to laugh at him, the rag and bone men collecting waste paper and empty bottles stacked outside black doorways. The heat was draining. Adrian felt his shirt stick to his flesh.
Finally he made it back to the hotel. Inside, the landlord’s daughter was sitting in a chair by the reception. He closed the door behind him and half smiled at her. She sat quite still, her small dark hands in her lap. As Adrian climbed the stairs, he heard her talking to herself, and he saw that she had roaches crawling about inside her hair.
His room was hotter than ever. He walked to the window and opened it. The noise of the bazaar filled the room, but he was past worrying about Goa’s flying pests. The hotel was itching with bugs; creeping about in the wallpaper, underneath the floorboards. Sitting on the bed, he caught sight of his own reflection in the mirror in the corner of the room. The depression was coming back, crushing his spirits, draining the life from his body. He stared at the bottle of Prozac on the bedside table, began to massage his eyes with his fingers.
It would be easy to construct a noose from the bed linen, to hang himself in this remote corner of the world. He couldn’t run any longer and he was rapidly running out of places to go. He thought about the time spent haunting the Paris Metro, the rain-swept streets of London, the ancient maggot-pits of Cairo; recalled the hollow and haunted walk-ways of Venice. He climbed to his feet and looked down at the vial he was holding.
For a minute the world seemed to stand perfectly still.
He took out the stopper and drank. It didn’t taste of anything. But then, suddenly, it burnt the back of his throat and he was convinced it was poison. He lay on the bed, thinking about the old woman in the house at the end of the market. He could see her grinning at him, rubbing her crumbling fingers together, watching him with black, lightless eyes.
Outside, the noise of the bazaar seemed to fade, as though he was drifting away. He rubbed his eyes again, then closed them. The world slowly began to lose all shape, structure and colour.
Take it. Cure. It will help.
“Adrian.”
He opened his eyes. The sun was melting. The last light put up a desperate battle against the closing darkness. He sat up and rubbed his head. Perhaps it hadn’t been poison after all.
“Adrian.”
The voice sounded like steel knives being scraped together. The windowpane rattled as the wind picked up, growling through Goa’s dirty, disease-ridden streets. Adrian looked around. There was nobody in the room with him.
“You’ve got your wish. It’s you and me now, friend.”
Adrian stood up and walked to the window. The market had long finished, the streets were deserted. An empty bottle rolled in the gutter.
He sat back on the bed, the closing darkness making him shudder with a fear he had never felt before. The voice seemed so near… “Don’t be scared. This is what you wanted. Remember?”
Adrian trembled. Something didn’t feel right. He looked to the floor and saw the empty vial. He scratched at his face, felt the sweat beneath his fingertips.
“I’m here, with you, inside. We’re together now.”
Adrian began to panic. He could feel something opening inside his skull. Something crawling out of its chrysalis. Unfurling black wings.
“You’ll never be alone again…”
As the voice began to laugh, Adrian screamed.
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