Eric hates hotels, even one such as this, where Femi Alaagomeji has the air pumped full of antifungals whenever he is around, and she is slick with similar cream all over her body. The psychic residue of the previous occupants persists like the smell of a poorly cleaned urinal.
He is looking at a painting of the British sacking of Benin City in 1897. He knows this because of a caption underneath the painting, which is an odd decoration for a hotel bedroom, two feet above the headboard. Both of Femi’s legs are on his shoulders, and his hands are on her thighs, as she wishes. She is the kind to give instructions, although as suggestions, not orders. It would be nice if, I might like it if you, why not, and so on. He finds her softer in love than in her work. Looking around the room, at the decor, helps him last longer.
He is losing his grip on her when the headache hits him like lightning, flashing through his consciousness, sending him sprawling off the bed onto the carpet. Every part of his head is in pain, even his ear lobes. It feels like someone has taken hold of each nerve ending and is pulling with all their might.
When he opens his eyes, the two bodyguards are in the room and Femi is naked by his side.
“I thought you’d had a stroke,” she says. “Do you know where you are?”
Eric nods. “Kaaro is dead.”
Femi exhales, a sharp, shallow breath. “You’re sure.”
“Yes. That was some feedback thing. I don’t know what. But I am sure that he is dead, hey.”
“Do you know how he died?”
“Ag, I don’t know. I need something for… Analgesia.”
As soon as he opens the bathroom door, the tentacle throws itself at him and attaches, sensing his distress. Earlier, Femi had licked the insertion slits, commenting that they only smelled like honey.
He leaves the hotel to take a walk. Femi is talking on the phone in urgent whispers and does not even wave. She has slipped back into her work persona. A few minutes outside and the xenosphere has grown back to full bloom. He sits and allows himself to drift into it. Kaaro fiddled with Eric’s brain before, and he knows there is a residue. He finds gryphon feathers and picks one up. It feels glossy, and even in the crepuscular light that fails to illuminate, moving it this way and that produces iridescence. He licks the feather, but gains nothing for his trouble. He follows the rest of the fallen plumage to a meadow.
There are distant hills, and the grass is chest high. In the distance, to the west, a dead giant hangs inert, standing, head missing from the nose up in a jagged, bloodless line, arms dangling, bent forward, on its knees.
The grass thrashes this way and that, but Eric never sees what animals might be creating the movement. There is no smell. He walks towards the giant as it is the only thing to aim for. He must have underestimated the distance or how large the giant is, because no matter how long he walks for, it seems the same size and is still covered by that blue haze you get when looking at something really far away.
“You might as well stop walking,” says a voice behind him.
Eric whirls. Usually it’s impossible to creep up on him because of the tentacle, but it did not follow him here. His mental image does not even have the skin slits.
A woman stands there in a print wrap held in place just above her breasts. She has an orange bead necklace and her head tie is Ankara. On her bare arms and shoulders she has tattoos that move. She clocks that he is looking.
“They are temporary. I’m trying them out to see if I’ll keep them. My daughter’s idea,” she says. “She’s at that age.”
Eric nods agreement. “What is this place? Who are you?”
“I’m Nike. This,” she spreads out her arms, “this is what is left of Kaaro.”
“So he really is dead.”
“He is, my son. How did you know him?”
“You seem a bit young to be calling me that.”
“I’m older than I look.”
Eric senses something in her then, a sturdiness, a maturity. “We were… colleagues, I suppose. I don’t know. He was a fucking idiot.”
Nike laughs. “That he was. I’m the reason he wasn’t a total fucking idiot.”
“Are you his mother?”
This makes Nike guffaw. “I’m just an old sex worker who met him when he was young and gave him the benefit of a lifetime of experience.”
Eric spies the wedding ring on her finger.
“Retired,” says Nike. She sits in the grass. “Now we wait.”
“For what?”
“Not what. Whom. We wait for the others.”
She does not explain further and he does not ask, but people begin to arrive, persistent personalities within the xenosphere, ghosts, former sensitives. He supposes he is now the last of his kind still alive in the physical world.
He does not know these people, or rather, has never met them, but he feels kinship and an absence of threat. Nike keeps looking this way and that.
“Who are you looking for?”
“My daughter and my wife. Both of them get up to mischief.”
Eric catches the impression of an impish girl with a smile containing love and naughty behaviour, and a serious-faced woman in Afro puffs. She is familiar to him from his training. A dissident of some kind. Bicycle Girl.
Nike’s tattoos cavort faster. Eric sits beside her, both of them facing the direction of the statue.
“When the time comes,” she says, “try to say something nice about Kaaro.”
“Why? He wouldn’t have minded honesty.”
“No, he wouldn’t, would he? But try all the same. Funerals aren’t for the dead. They’re for the people attending.”
“Is that what this is? A funeral?”
“Maybe. Sort of. I don’t know. It’s a remembrance.”
“I have work to do,” says Eric. “I have to find out who killed him.”
“It must be nice to have friends who will avenge you,” says Nike. “To take up the banner for friendship.”
It’s not for friendship, but Eric has the presence of mind to keep that information to himself. After all, he does not know if this Nike person killed Kaaro.
“When does this start?” he asks.
Nike looks back and says, “It already has.”
The people present begin to talk about Kaaro, and Eric sees a thin amount of smoke rise from the statue.
“I was with Kaaro on the day I died,” says Nike. “No, he did not kill me. I was dying before we met…”