Crowned (39 page)

His eyes widen and lock on mine. They’re shining, great blinding orbs in his skull. His barrier has crumbled. He knows what I’ve done! Somehow, although the toxic flood I planted is burning a path in his brain, destroying him as it goes, he
knows
.

Guilty tears spring to my eyes. I had to do it. I know that. Even so, I think I am only now starting to understand how brilliant he is. Was. He can see what is happening to his brain even as Ntatemogolo’s spell deletes his consciousness. He’s watching from the outside, a detached observer. It’s almost inconceivable that anyone could reach that level of skill. My guilt gives way to sadness, and then a numb dullness spreads through me.

Despite his intelligence, there are many things that the Puppetmaster doesn’t see. That he can’t control everyone. That the only power that matters is the one we all have – the power of choice. Things I know. Things I take for granted.

His head jerks to one side. He blinks.

“It’s working,” Rakwena whispers beside me.

“I know.” It’s designed by the smartest man I know. It’s foolproof.

The Puppetmaster’s top lip curls in a feral snarl. I flinch. It wasn’t supposed to be painful – it was supposed to be humane. But destruction is never humane, and it was naive of me to expect it to be. “Con…yza.” It’s a desperate gasp.

“I can’t undo it.” It’s taking all my willpower to remain where I am. I want to crawl to him and make it stop, but I can’t. “I’m sorry. You gave me no choice.”

“I…know.” His head jerks again, snapping backwards, and he lets out a shrill scream. He’s fighting it.
That’s
why it’s hurting him – he’s fighting it, the crazy fool! It’s not the spell. The spell is a simple memory wipe, pure, painless.

I feel relieved, and I’m immediately ashamed of it. He’s still breaking, and I’m still the one who made it happen.

Rakwena grabs my arm. “Let it run its course.” He pulls me against him. “You don’t have to look.”

I shake my head. Of course I have to look. I’m not going to close my eyes and pretend my hands are clean. I had to do it, and I have to see it. This is the burden of those who choose: to take responsibility for every thought and every action.

The Puppetmaster falls to his knees, clutching his head in his hands. I want to tell him to stop fighting, to just let it happen, but I know it would be futile. He has to fight. He has to make one last stand; it’s who he is.

The babbling begins. A stream of words pours out of him, completely incoherent. He convulses and grits his teeth, and the babbling stops. His eyes snap to mine.

“Clever…clever…girl,” he whispers. “Subtle…elegant.” He wheezes and cries out, his nostrils flaring with exertion. “Everything…I knew…you…could…be.”

I feel the tears slide down my face. I thought I could be tough in the face of this. I thought I could be stoic, but I was wrong. I can hear it in his voice – he’s
proud
of me. In spite of everything, in his last moments of clarity, he is proud. And I see him clearly now, in all his grandiose arrogance, all his viciousness, all his cruelty. In another world, a simpler world, he might not have been my enemy.

He smiles. It’s a fleeting thing, lasting a fraction of a second before his facial muscles begin to spasm. Then the last glimmer of sanity fades from his eyes, and he’s gone. All that is a left is a mass of confusion, a figure lying dazed on the floor, staring uncomprehendingly into space.

Now that all the mental tricks that stretched out his life are gone, his body does what it should have done about a hundred years ago. It falls apart. His skin shrivels before our eyes, growing wrinkled and wizened. His body shrinks, his spine curves, his hands become gnarled and twisted. He ages decades in seconds, then he opens his mouth, exhales slowly and dies.

For a moment the world is utterly still. It’s over. The Puppetmaster is gone. I can’t quite believe it. I stare at him, half expecting him to get up and laugh at my stupidity, but he doesn’t. He lies still for a several minutes, then his body crumbles into dust.

Only then do I allow myself to unravel in Rakwena’s arms. We’re both so weak that all we can do is cling to each other on the cold ground. The staircase is gone. The Loosening is gone. We’re in the bush with stars shining down on us, and four other people lying unconscious on the ground.

We’re OK. We’re alive, and we’re still us. Slowly Rakwena’s energy seeps into me. Solace. Strength. And then, in the distance, I hear the wail of sirens.

* * *

The aftermath is, in some ways, more gruelling than the actual event. The police are relentless, desperate to make some headway in the unsolved case that has gripped the country for over a month.

Officially a total of eight people were abducted by the Puppetmaster. This includes me and Rakwena – there was no other way to explain our presence – but excludes Duma, since his kidnapping was never reported, and the woman with the fancy shoes, whose abduction can’t be confirmed now that she’s gone for ever. Two are home. Six are here, and five are dazed but unhurt. Three of us still have our gifts; two lost theirs before the Ultima stopped the Loosening. One lies on a stretcher, still unconscious as paramedics carry him into the waiting ambulance. I don’t know whether Thuli will make it. There’s no way of knowing how much damage was done until he’s been examined at the hospital.

I watch them take him away, and wait for the sense of elation. It never comes. All I feel is hollowness in my gut. I hate how he behaved, but in spite of everything I don’t hate
him
. I pity him. The guy had everything handed to him on a platter and it wasn’t enough.

We’ve given our statements, which consist of the same information as everyone else’s. We saw nothing. We know nothing. We woke up to find ourselves here and we have no idea what happened. Soon they tire of hassling us and agree to let us go. There’s only one obvious conclusion – the kidnapper was frightened off, left everyone here and fled. They might never catch him.

“Conyza Bennett?”

I turn, expecting to see another police officer, but instead my gaze falls on a young woman in a long coat and leather boots. She’s polished and glamorous, with a determined look on her face. I suspect she meant to look intimidating but the effect is slightly ruined by her diminutive size.

“Victoria Miyandazi,
GC Chronicle
,” she says curtly, holding out her hand.

I stare at the hand, then at her. This reporter is far too persistent for my liking, but I’m too weary to be annoyed.

She lowers her hand. “Can you tell me what happened here? Where is the kidnapper? How did he get away?”

“Leave her alone,” Rakwena growls, putting a protective arm around my shoulders.

“You must be Rakwena Langa. Are you a couple?” The recorder in her hand is on. Its red light reminds me of the Loosening and I turn away. “I realise you must be a little upset after all this, but this is a huge story. If you can tell me anything that might help the public understand what’s going on–”

“Hey!”

Victoria glances over her shoulder and sees the policeman hurrying over. “Just one quote. One sentence to describe your ordeal. Anything?” She thrusts the recorder at me.

I shake my head. I don’t care what conclusion the newspapers reach. I don’t care what the cops decide. I just want to go home.

“What are you doing harassing my witnesses?” the cop demands.

Victoria gives him a saccharine smile and leads him away, recorder still on. I guess one source is as good as another.

After a few more minutes of waiting the police suggest we drive to the hospital to get checked out, but we decline. We offer a ride to two kidnap victims, the elderly man and young boy, who also seem reluctant to be probed and prodded. None of us speak during the drive, other than to exchange names and ask after each other’s health. What is there to say after an experience like this? After dropping them off Rakwena takes me home. Dad and Ntatemogolo are waiting, armed with tea and innumerable questions.

“She needs to sleep,” says Rakwena.

“Of course,” says Dad. “I’m sure you could do with some rest, as well. The guest room’s free.”

Rakwena starts to argue, but Dad insists. I’m not sure what happens next. There’s a lot of hugging, and then I’m in bed, safe, and sleep takes me.

* * *

I’m woken by the scent of something burning, and my first thought is that Dad hasn’t gone to work. My second thought is that he should have stuck to sandwiches. It’s only after I’ve rubbed the sleep from eyes and sat up in bed that I remember what today is. The first day of life after the Puppetmaster.

It’s late morning. It takes me a minute to recall the day – Friday. I get out of bed, take a quick shower and then wander into the guest room in my bathrobe to check on Rakwena. He’s not there. He’s in the living room, dead to the world as expected, and untroubled by the cloying aroma of burnt breakfast.

I leave him to sleep and head to the kitchen to rescue my father from himself. He’s standing over a pan of what might have been bacon and onions in a former life, but now resembles something scraped from under a zombie’s foot.

“I looked away for a second,” he says in confusion. “One second!”

I sigh and take the pan from him. Reluctant to throw out food, even when it’s beyond help, I carry it outside and throw it under a tree. Something will eat it. I return to the kitchen and help him fry up some more, along with a stack of toast and hot chocolate.

We leave most of it for Rakwena and move to the dining room to eat.

“How are you feeling?” Dad whispers.

“No need to whisper – he’s out,” I assure him, sipping my hot chocolate. “I’m fine. Tired.”

“Well, you should probably know that you shook the world.” He picks a sheet of paper off the pile in the corner of the table and slides it towards me.

It’s a printout from the internet, a news article dated this morning. “Mysterious lights puzzle citizens” is the headline. It seems red and green flashing lights were spotted in each of the nine locations around the world where the markers had been buried. They glowed for almost two hours and then went out, and no one can explain them.

“That’s not all,” says Dad. “There was a huge apparition over that space where you were found – a red circle of light with green light coming down from it. It was visible as far as Broadhurst. People are calling it Gaborone’s first UFO. Phones were down all night, the power kept going on and off and everyone was in a panic.”

I sigh. “It could have been worse, right?”

“I suppose.” He leans towards me. “So what exactly happened?”

I sigh again, and then it all tumbles out, the strange tale of how we killed the Puppetmaster with a planted spell.

“We knew the only way to defeat him was to target his mind,” I explain. “His body was as good as immortal. But getting into his head wasn’t enough. We had to find a way to attack him. I realised that if I could plant something in his mind that would damage his memory, he would lose the ability to control his powers. But I couldn’t do it by halves. If I was going to damage his brain, I had to damage it completely. To do that, I’d need more than a thought. I’d need a spell.

“A spell is basically a set of instructions that causes fields of psychic energy to behave in a certain way. Once you set it in motion, it unfolds on its own. Ntatemogolo created a set of instructions disguised as a basic memory wipe.”

“But it wasn’t just a memory wipe,” Dad ventures.

“It was, but it was a full wipe rather than the usual partial one. It was the supernatural equivalent of pouring acid into his head. It would destroy not just the Puppetmaster’s memories, but everything. It would run right through his brain, pulling all those threads of thought apart as it went. He wouldn’t be able to fight, to keep up a barrier or any of his other illusions. He would crumble. But there was no way I could get past his barrier in order to plant it. Which is where Rakwena came in.

“Rakwena targeted a spot at the base of the Puppetmaster’s head. In a normal person applying pressure there would render him unconscious, but it would only weaken the Puppetmaster, giving me a chance to get past his barrier. I took the spell from Ntatemogolo’s mind and planted it in the Puppetmaster’s. For a while I thought I’d done it wrong because it took so long to work. Eventually it set in. In seconds he had forgotten everything he knew; all his power, his skills – gone. And without all those tricks to keep his brain functioning, it did what it should have done a century ago.”

“It atrophied,” Dad whispers.

I nod and swallow the lump that has suddenly formed in my throat. “His body caught up. At the end all that was left was dust. Not even a skeleton. Which is a relief, because I don’t know how I would have explained that to the cops.”

Dad frowns into his coffee.

“Thank goodness their response time is so slow, or we’d have been in big trouble.” I nibble my food. My stomach lurches, as though unsure about this business of digestion. “They turned up when it was all over and everyone was starting to wake up.”

Dad lets out a low whistle. “I’m just glad you kids are OK. And I’m glad the bastard’s dead. He is dead, isn’t he? He’s not going to come back in a creepy doll or something?”

I smile, but there’s a painful pang in my chest. “He’s dead.”

“Good.”

I finish my food, then get up. “I’d better wake Rakwena. His family will be worried.”

“Oh, your grandfather said he’d let them know you were both back safely,” he announces, stacking the dishes. “He also said he’d be coming by to check on you. Speaking of which, Malebogo might pop by as well. She called about five times while you were gone.”

I grin, thinking fondly of my friends.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” Dad picks up an envelope from the pile of papers. It’s addressed to me.

I open it quickly. It had better be good news. It is. I look up at Dad, wide-eyed with amazement. “It’s an acceptance letter from UB. I got into the Psychology programme!”

“Congratulations, love.” He rises and leans over to kiss my forehead. “You deserve a little good news.”

“But…” I turn the paper over, looking for a sign that it’s a prank of some kind. “There must be a mistake. Maybe they confused me with someone else.” Although I put Psychology down on the application as my first choice, I never thought they’d take me. My grades were good, but not that good.