The Liminal People Read online

  “I don’t want your money, Yasmine.” I’m trying not to sound hurt by the offer.

  “What do you want?” The question takes me by surprise. “I’ve told you what I can’t give you. You don’t want what I can give. I know why I called you, Taggert. What I don’t know is why you answered.”

  “Because I said I would.”

  I’ve met about twenty people like me. Three before I ran into Nordeen. My brother, Yasmine, and the kid from the Mog. Including Nordeen, that’s sixteen or so I’ve met in the six years I’ve worked with the old man. Some of them have been old but young in their powers, others babies with the ability to dominate the world. Nordeen’s approach to them is as enigmatic as it is decisive, and in most cases I am his messenger. So when Yasmine says she thinks this whole mess involves people like us, I gain more confidence than I’ve had since I left Morocco. If it’s powers, I’ve probably got some experience with it.

  When the boss figured out that I could hurt people, he began to use me as a smart gun. With a little practice I realized I didn’t have to touch people to affect their bodies. All I needed was to be in range, to feel their heartbeats. My first kill using my power was in Agadir, a small costal city in Morocco. A supplier was threatening to break the distribution line. Nordeen sent me in first, to drink tea in the man’s café. When he was assured I was there, Nordeen made the call. The dealer made the mistake of underestimating the boss. I squeezed his heart with my mind until it collapsed into a bloodied clump of muscle and vein. When I felt no remorse, I knew a line had been crossed. So did the boss when I returned.

  “Now you are ready for the serious work.”

  “You’re saying what I just did wasn’t serious?”

  “Killing one of them is as easy as swatting a fly. Taking out one of ours requires a steel of will and skill that I’m beginning to suspect you might have.”

  He sent me to India, just outside of Bangalore. He told me to find the most powerful one like us there, and to kill them. It turned out to be a six-year-old Jain boy who spoke to the dead and animated their bones for limited amounts of time. His power had made him insane, and his sole desire was to turn the entire town into a necropolis so he’d always have people in his mind to talk to.

  “I can’t do it,” I told Nordeen over a cell phone.

  “And why not? Is the death dealer too much for you?”

  “He’s six years old.”

  “Would you rather face him or me?”

  I compromised and gave the kid an aneurysm. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t utilize his power, but he was still alive. It was the same thing I did to my brother, but with far more subtlety. Nordeen greeted me upon my return with a reluctant welcome. He knew the boy wasn’t dead but accepted my compromise despite the potential threat against his will. I was banished from his sight for three months.

  He sent me throughout the world to meet other people like us. Sometimes he’d just have me identify the person. Other times he’d tell me to bring gifts, books that held the smell of antiquity, or fruits I couldn’t identify. All the ones who I met and spoke with knew of Nordeen. Some spoke of him in hushed tones, others dismissed me and gave dire warnings for “my master.” From dropped sentences and silenced thoughts, I got that I was not the first of Nordeen’s emissaries. After a while I realized that the whole hash-dealing business was just a cover, a way of financing his true passion. Us.

  After my exile, Nordeen took a trip with me. Johannesburg. An old woman whose skin looked like it was petrified and who kept roots and barks in multicolored glass jars suspended in the air had sent him an invitation in a dream. On the private plane ride down, I somehow felt that Nordeen had been injured and healed . . . by someone else. I kept that knowledge to myself, as he seemed anxious for the first time in my experience.

  The elder woman laughed when she saw me. “Old man, do you carry your healer with you everywhere these days?” Her voice broke the night sky above the tarmac, and small bits of fire jumped from her lips.

  “I bring him as a courtesy to you, should I lose my temper and break off a part of you that even I can’t fix,” he replied with a honeyed voice. “Keep your sparks to yourself woman and guide me to our master.” In an old cargo container, on an ancient rusting freighter, the two powers made ablutions for each other and walked into a darkness that no light would penetrate. Even the sparks from the old woman’s tongue didn’t emanate outward. I waited for twenty-four hours in a car on the dock wondering what power in the world existed that could cow my boss so. At the beginning of that second night, Nordeen emerged alone. He seemed revitalized physically, standing taller, his cane for ornamentation alone. His eyes shone brightly. And when he spoke, small sparks of fire came from his mouth.

  “Never forget, little healer. There are powers stronger than ours in this world. And they do not always favor us.”

  Those words are on my mind as I think about how to hunt down this girl, this Tamara. The really powerful ones of our type attract others. Those others are so far above us they make us seem like the normals. If one of those others is involved in this, I’m screwed. But if not, I can do this.

  The moderately powerful ones like us alienate our families. As my brother did. As I did. But the most powerful of us are always alone. So she can’t be that powerful. Plus, she had to make a choice to read her teacher’s mind. That means she either doesn’t have the power to do it casually or she has that much control. Doesn’t matter. Point is she’s living a normal life. A normal life means normal boundaries, normal friends, normal schooling. And our kind of power among the norms always leaves trails.

  I leave Yasmine and hit a hospital. Scrubs are easy enough to find, and I need the right costume for what I’m about to try. I change clothes in the attending doctor’s bathroom. Then I change physically.

  It’s difficult, but when I focus I can change the melanin count in my skin. It’s the hardest transformation for me. Nordeen says it’s because my self-image is rooted in being black. I say it’s because melanin is a hard substance to transmute. But I need to be less black to pull this off, so I focus until I can tell that I probably look mulatto. I close off my hair follicles and pull the thick mats that I have out and flush them down the toilet. Then I focus on slick black hair, coated in oil. I let it grow until I can fix a small rubber band at the base of my neck. Since I’m at a toilet I vomit up sixty-five pounds, making sure to check my discharge for too much stomach acids. I just need to lose the pounds, not my voice. When I step out I look like a sexy young intern that works too hard. I look at my watch. It’s eleven. Almost time for lunch.

  Chapter Eight

  Catholic schoolgirl uniforms had to be designed by pedophiles. It’s the only thing that makes sense. And that’s the only partially normal thought in my head as I exit the tube and head for Atkins Road. This is Tamara’s school. An all-girl’s school. An all-girl’s Catholic school where they’re made to wear the pedophiles dream-uniform. Half a block away and I already smell the adolescent hormones. I try to respond in kind.

  I did a lot of things on instinct during my cross-Africa trek that I later had to learn the specifics of. Keeping the animals from attacking me, for instance. In my delusional state, I thought it was simply because I was different. Over time I realized it had more to do with the manipulation of my scent. I call it stank. I sent out non-fear hormones. This confused the animals enough to make them leave me alone. Humans react to stank as well. It’s obvious to me, but of course most people are unaware of which sensory input they are reacting to. We’re a little more subtle about it than animals, but that person at work you can’t stand? That girl whose number you just have to get? Stank. I read an article that said there’s no evidence of pheromones existing. I really wish I could tell them about what I smell.

  Teenagers are the worst. They reek of pheromones, like baby skunks that unleash all their odor at once, or adolescent rattlesnakes, full of venom. Human children spray their pheromones everywhere. Catholic schoo
lgirls are the worst of the worst.

  I hit the playground exactly at noon, but I hold back a little bit, across the street from the bricked yard. The younger girls come out first. They go for balls and jump ropes. Then the older girls descend from their high tower of protection, hoping to take on whatever dangers the real world may have to offer. I keep my senses open for seared lungs. When I feel it, it comes from behind the playground, on the other end of the school. Makes sense. That’s where the cool girls go to smoke. Tamara is either a cool girl or a freak. All of our kind are. We either lead the pseudo-outsiders, or we truly live the outsider experience. I’m banking on her mother’s desire to make her “normal” affecting her enough to at least try for the outcast friends.

  I take my time getting over to the girls but increase my perspiration rate and kick the “I’m sexy” hormones into overdrive. I’m making sure I’m downwind of the nuns, scared of what they’d do if they caught a whiff of me now.

  “Any of you know a girl named Tamara?” I say, standing in front of five girls out of a bad eighties punk video. Two try to hide their cigarettes. Two take long drags and stand, looking at me with a scowl. One blushes. Girls respond to “I’m sexy” in different ways.

  “Who wants to know?” A girl with a Southie accent. One day she’ll be fat and bloated, like her mother; I can already feel a slower metabolism than normal. Which is why she smokes, so she doesn’t have to eat and so she doesn’t have to work off those calories. It’s all unconscious for her, and that’s what makes her the cause of stains on many teenage boy’s sheets right now. But her cavity-ridden mouth and pockmarked face make her tough-girl impression almost laughable. Only I’m not playing games right now, so I give her the respect she thinks she wants. She doesn’t realize she’s standing so close, or that she’s pressing down her skirt with her free hand, trying to make a good impression.

  “Look, I’m not a cop, OK? I’m an intern down at the hospital. I know she’s been missing for a while, but look, she’s sick, OK? I can’t say what. I’ve just got to find her.”

  “A bit much, the personal attention, enn’it?” the blushing one says, still not standing and not intrepid enough to look in my face. She’ll grow to be gorgeous, provided she deals with the ulcer eating away at her intestines.

  “We were . . . are . . . friends. I’m not trying to get her in trouble or anything, I promise. Look, if she’s run away I won’t tell anyone.” Heart rates go through the roof on that one. Not sure what that means, but they’re focusing on my words.

  “You some kind of perv?” the second unabashed smoker is asking, leaning on her friend’s shoulder, glaring hard, trying not to lick her lips. She tries for a posh accent, but her Brixton roots won’t let her go. Although she’s five shades lighter than me, even now with me at my lightest, one of her parents came from the Caribbean recently.

  “Listen to me. She’s sick. Really sick. But she doesn’t know it. She could die. Plus, she’s contagious. If you’ve seen her, if you shared drinks with her or ate from the same plate of food, you could be sick, too.”

  “How come the news hasn’t said anything?” the blusher asks. She believes every word from my mouth.

  “The news doesn’t know. I’m sitting on it for as long as I can. Her father’s a politician, and Tamara wouldn’t want to be part of anything that would ruin his reputation. . . .”

  “So, who’s she to you, then?” Again, the brash smoker. Not as brash this time. Investigating. She wants to believe me.

  “Like I said, we’re . . . friends. She means a lot to me. She was acting weird before she disappeared. Came to the clinic where I work, all the time. We started talking, went for coffee. Oh God, I just realized how that sounds. I’m not attracted to her. I mean she’s a beautiful girl, but I’m not . . .” They make my excuses for me, eating out of the palm of my hand. To them I’m a sexy but shy intern who’s fallen in love with a girl too young for him. They’d kill their own mothers for me now.

  “Awright, luv,” unabashed Southie smoker says, patting my cheek. “We’re all right here, yeah? An’ none of ours been in spits breath of her since she disappeared yeah? But if you want to find her, it’s that one over there, been looking at yaw since yaw come over here, yaw got to talk to, yeah?” She points past the park to the corner where I’d been standing. Another girl, not in uniform but around the same age, holds up a wall with her shoulder. She’s frail, not more than one hundred and ten pounds, and dressed like she just raided the cool kid’s store. Green button-up blouse, half-open, with a gray wifebeater underneath. She’s wearing leggings of some sort, and a black trench coat three sizes too big for her. And she’s got yellow sneakers that look like boxing shoes laced on to her feet. When she sees me looking, she starts walking away.

  “You shouldn’t smoke” is all I leave the Catholic girls with, taking the cigarette out of Ms. Brixton’s mouth. I fix her asthma at the same time. I turn, marching toward my first real lead, suddenly feeling stupid in my scrubs.

  When she rounds the corner, out of eyeshot, I reach for her body with my senses—and find an electrical storm in her brain. She’s like me. I quit faking nonchalance and begin to run. I hit the corner hard and spot her at the end of the street. She’s tensed and ready for a fight. Whatever she’s got going doesn’t block my skills. I could take her out in a second if I wanted to. But she knows where Yasmine’s daughter is, so I play it smooth.

  “I just want to talk,” I say, closing the distance between us by half. Her respiration is through the roof. Her eyes are dilating. She’s using her power. But not on me.

  “What did you do?” Her voice betrays her youth. She can’t be more than thirteen.

  “Nothing. I’m just looking for a friend.”

  “You felt me. You touched me.” The distance makes yelling the only way to communicate. I try to come forward, and she raises her hand. I’m half expecting fire or ice to flow from it. When nothing happens, I continue walking toward her.

  “Yes. I did. I’m like you. Do you know Tamara?” Why are all the dogs in these houses barking?

  “Stay away.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you.” Only a manhole cover separates her and me now. “I’m just looking for Tamara.”

  “Stay away from Tamara. She’s ours now.” She’s trying to sound tough, but her fear is evident. But so is the squall of heat from her mind. I’m about to push her heart into calming down when I hear a window behind me shatter. I turn. A fucking dog, a big one. German shepherd. Big teeth, all showing. He’s mad at me. I get it now. She talks to the animals.

  I turn to face the girl. She’s gone, but she’s left a few dozen surprises. Rats the size of overweight cats swarm up from manhole covers with the same fury as the dog. Shit.

  On instinct, I beef up my leg muscles, jump over the rats and away from the dog. For a second, I hope that the dog and the rats will get into it and leave me alone. Of course not. Three more windows break, and now there are four dogs. Great. Plus more rats every second. I hate rats. I hate little Pied-Piper-of-Hamlin girls that talk to rats and dogs. I run. No real strategy except to get to higher ground. I’m like a demented Dr. Doolittle, with a band of enraged house dogs and street rats forming a vicious tail behind me. Usually I’d just outrun them all. But I expended so much energy on my morphing that it’s all I can do it keep the rabies babies from making a lunch out of my Achilles tendons. Since when do rats attack people? She does something to these animals. I’ll figure it out after I get to surviving.

  That may be harder than it sounds. Every second I have more enemies and fewer options. Ten dogs now. Can’t count the seething mass of bouncing brown and black rodents. Too many. Is this how I go out, a feast for the vermin of London? I survived walking across Africa, damn it! Lions didn’t touch me!

  Right. Lions didn’t touch me. I adjust my pheromones quickly, but I’m tired. Running, changing, Yasmine—too much in one day. I bump up my pheromones again, until I reek of predator, of the biggest, most vicious animal
these city-dwelling creatures have ever had nightmares about. I’m what makes them want to grab their babies and run. I’m the biggest dog on the block.

  By the time I round a corner into an abandoned construction site, my own face is back—I’ve got no energy to keep up the illusion—and I smell like Mr. Big Critter. But they just keep coming.

  Somewhere nearby, that girl is still driving these creatures. They’ve slowed down, they’re afraid of me—the pheromones. But she’s pushing them to keep coming; I can feel their brains near seizing from her electrical storm.

  I’m just about out of options. But not quite . . . someone’s done me the solid of leaving a lead pipe here. I grab it. The first rat is a dead rat. The first dog is a wounded dog. After that, I can only promise I’ll go down swinging. Too bad my powers don’t work on animals. . . .

  But they’re not just animals, are they? This girl’s got them on puppet strings. I can even feel them, through her. And if I can feel them, maybe I can hurt them. I reach out with my senses. Affecting them is going to be like trying to give a back massage with a catcher’s mitt, but I think I can do it.

  Fuck it. It’s them or me. I raise my free hand and slam them all with my power. Half the rats die of heart attacks. Three of the dogs let out yelps of pain and spasm on the ground. I do it again. Another quarter of the rats go into spasm. Two dogs go down. If I were stronger, maybe . . . But I’m so tired. Some of the other animals scamper away. Not all. I use the last of my strength to beef up my muscle and reflexes, and bang the pipe against the outlines of a building that will never be constructed.

  “Come on, you varmints!” Pathetic epithet, but it’s all I’ve got. They come. I swing. Three rats first. I kick one back, stomp another’s head, and dodge the third.