“So, this the place,
gvidi?” The place was a part of the District which is called St. Frank’s House.
The question was asked by a man in a gray suit and addressed to a guide.
This
man in the gray suit had given his name as Grijs and the guide was simply known
as The Jamaican.
“Yes, mistah, this the place. C’mon, the hour is getting
late. I have a woman to return to. The one you seek lives there. Sako Damo, they call her.”
The Jamaican led the way through a forest of nondescript
houses. The wind that blew through them reeked of poor and pestilence. The
Jamaican was soon knocking on a square black door.
The door was opened by a servant who led them into a chamber
devoid of anything of interest. There was a smaller door at the other end and
from where Grijs stood he could see a room full of old, diseased books with
jaundice of the paper. The servant returned and pointed towards the door he had
come from.
It was a dining room. A humble one. A gentleman sat at the
end of the table. There were no other chairs. The gentleman wore nothing but a
top hat and an astonishingly curly beard. Grijs liked beards and this was a
particularly fine one.
The gentleman cleared his throat and said one word.
“Ok.”
The servant told them that they would find what they sought
in the last room to the left. The Jamaican refused to come up. Grijs picked a
candle and traipsed up the stairs. The staircase was one of those spiral ones
that is made of shadows. Grijs counted a hundred stairs before he came to a
door.
Grijs stepped out into a dimly lit corridor that had several
doors along it and one door at each end. He turned left and began walking the
long walk. The doors were all crumbling and incompetent shields against the
general cold that pervaded the District. They were all empty. Grijs knocked on
the last door.
No one answered.
So, he went in. The room, and it is called thus loosely, was
very small and it had a bad odour. An odour of age, poverty and frenezo. Everything in the room was in
various stages of disrepair. The room was coloured in grey. There was one
window through which Grijs could see a sliver of moon.
Near the window was a rocking chair and in that chair was a
woman. The room was full of bags of all kinds and colour. Grijs had heard about
this woman. She collected bags.
The woman seemed incapable of motion or speech. Her arms
were bony and her fingers curved to talons. Her skin was like old leather and
looked like a wrinkled spider’s web with prominent veins that are often the
signs of old age. Yet, her face was young and her bosom was full. She had eye
sockets but her eye sockets had no eyes.
“I am afraid you have something that belongs to me,” said
Grijs. There was no reply from the lady. Grijs had come here looking for a bag.
Grijs, candle in one hand and courage in another, stepped
forward. The lady did not move. He spotted his bag and picked it up. He
thought it wise to open the bag and check if the contents were secure.
The moment Grijs opened the bag several things happened at
once. An owl screeched, something fell with a loud thud and the lady jumped at
him. Grijs was quick to avoid her but he managed to drop the candle. It landed
right on one of the bags which caught fire. The lady let out a ghastly wail and
attempted to put out the fire with her hands which promptly caught fire. Grijs
stumbled on one of the bags and fell.
The door opened and The Jamaican, who was
already cursing fluently, caught hold of Grijs and dragged him out the door and
they ran for their lives.
The fire spread soon and it spread thick. Grijs and The
Jamaican observed it from a distance, crouched in a silent, dark doorway. They
could never go back.
“Wow, you done screwed pretty. What were you thinking, mon?”
“Who said I was thinking.”
*gvidi = guide
frenezo = madness
sako damo = bag lady
