Hapi by Cari Waites

Hunger wasa low ache in Jayden’s gut, but thirst burned. He crept to the door of the shed again, curling his fingers around the edge to wet them and then bring the water to his mouth. It wasn’t enough, but the gap in the door was like a bottle trap for a raccoon. If he cupped his hand to catch the rain, he could no longer bring it back through the gap. The sheer torture of not being able to drink the water he held in his hand was too much. Dry sobs wracked his body and his eyes burned.

He lapped what water he could off his hand over and over again and then stumbled back to the mattress. His mouth was already dry again by the time he reached it. He sat and felt under the edge of the mattress for the tent peg to check that it was still there.

He dozed.

He had no idea how much time had passed when the shed door squealed open at last.

Hapi loomed in front of him, and Jayden acted on instinct. Holding the tent peg like a stake, he put all of his strength into the attempt, pushing himself up on his knees and aiming hard for Hapi’s gut.

The punch to his head left him reeling on his knees, and Hapi’s fingers dug into his wrist. Jayden felt the bones scrape as the tent peg fell from his grasp and clattered to the concrete floor. Hapi snorted and kicked it away. He let go of Jayden’s wrist and punched him again, a glancing blow on his chin that left Jayden flat on his back gasping for breath.

His head hurt and his jaw throbbed, but it wasn’t the pain that made him sob, it was his failure. He’d thrown his one chance away without even leaving a scratch on Hapi. When Hapi slung a leg over him and straddled his thighs, Jayden squeezed his eyes shut and let out a despairing noise.

The familiar sound of cracking plastic caused him to open his eyes again.

Hapi tossed the cap of the water bottle on the concrete and held the bottle so that Jayden could see it. “Lift up.”

Jayden, pinned down as he was, struggled to get his elbows underneath him. He was so fixated on that bottle that he didn’t even flinch when Hapi slid his free hand under his T-shirt and rubbed his abdomen. Hapi lowered the bottle slowly, and Jayden opened his mouth like an eager poddy calf waiting to be fed.

The angle was wrong, and half the water spilled out over Jayden’s face, slipping down his throat and behind his neck like a cool caress, but Jayden didn’t care. He didn’t even care that it hurt to swallow because his throat was bruised and swollen. The water was such a relief.

“Good,” Hapi said, tilting the bottle away again despite Jayden’s whine of protest. “Good boy. You can drink more soon.”

Jayden nodded, gaze still fixed on the bottle. He didn’t want to… he couldn’t look at Hapi. He didn’t want to panic again or fight and be beaten. He didn’t want to have to see him, because seeing meant acknowledging that this was real, that this was happening to him. If there was a tiny sliver of denial for Jayden to cling to, then he wanted to hold onto it for as long as possible.

Hapi rubbed his thumb under the waistband of Jayden’s boardshorts, and Jayden sucked in a rattling breath.

Hadn’t he done this his whole life? Trained himself to live in the moment and not dwell on the past, and to not hope for the future? If he’d done it before, if he’d made all his dreams small drawn, just big enough to fill the hours and the days instead of the uncertain weeks and months and years, then could he do it now? Could he pull his existence back into seconds alone? If he couldn’t bear to think of the minutes ahead, if he couldn’t imagine surviving the days, then the narrow spaces of seconds were the only places his mind could exist.

He kept his gaze fixed on the water bottle as Hapi set it down on the concrete. There was a picture of a waterfall on the label.

Hapi made a pleased sound and pressed his other hand to the side of Jayden’s face. “Come,” he said, lifting his weight off Jayden at last. “My brothers want to see you.”

Seconds.

Jayden lived in the seconds. He was still safe in the seconds.

Numbly, he allowed Hapi to pull him to his feet.

* * *

The house was a wooden place,raised on stumps, with a tin roof. From the outside the building looked like countless others that Jayden had driven past on his way here: lived-in, working-class, probably built in the fifties or sixties before everyone had air conditioning. Houses like this were designed to allow for the climate, not to lock it out.

A huge black dog rested on the front veranda as Hapi led Jayden toward the house. It was sleek and short-coated, with large pointed ears. It had to be as big as a Great Dane, but Jayden had never seen a dog that looked like this one before. It lifted its lip and growled as Hapi approached, his hand clamped around Jayden’s wrist, and Hapi said something to it in a short, sharp language that Jayden didn’t understand. The dog quieted and settled its massive head on its front paws again, ears twitching as it watched Hapi haul Jayden up the steps.

Jayden’s wet feet slipped on the boards of the veranda as Hapi pulled him through the open front door of the house.

There was nothing ordinary about the inside.

Instead of a front room that in some other house might have held a lounge and a TV, or maybe been remodelled into a bar or entertainment area, this room was empty of furniture. The floorboards had been painted black, but the colour had faded, leaving them patchy. The walls were yellow and there were strange symbols painted on them in gold-and-black and brown-and-white. Figures stood out here and there with the heads of birds and dogs and crocodiles. In the central panel a figure with what looked like the head of a hawk stood in front of four shorter figures that didn’t have arms or legs. They had bodies shaped like vases, each one a different colour: one had the head of a man, one a long-eared dog like the one Jayden had seen on the veranda, one what looked like an ape, and one that looked like a bird.

“The sons of Horus,” Hapi said in Jayden’s ear. “My brothers and I.”

The pictures stirred the memory. That’s where Jayden had heard the stuff about the heart being weighed before. It was from Ancient Egypt. He’d made a paper-mache pyramid once for school, with the chambers inside. A girl in his class had drawn a scene from the Book of the Dead—the heart weighed against a feather to discover if a man was worthy of being rewarded in the afterlife.

Was Jayden here to be judged by a madman who thought all that was real?

The flooded river, he thought wildly, the crocodiles, the cat, the ibis…Maybe you didn’t have to be totally crazy to see it. Maybe you just had to squint.

“Hapi,” he whispered, his throat aching. “It’s not real. It’s—”

“Shh.” Hapi reached out and gripped his throat gently, and Jayden froze. “Quiet now.”

Jayden’s heart stuttered as Hapi’s thumb pressed against his pulse point. He jerked his head in a nod—he would be quiet, he would be anything Hapi demanded, if only he didn’t hurt him again—and the pressure turned into a faint caress. He held Hapi’s gaze, trying to read something in those dark depths and failing.

Old floorboards creaked, and Jayden turned his head and saw three men appear in the doorway that led from the front room to farther into the house. The three of them had tanned skin and dark eyes and dark hair. They all looked enough like Hapi that there was no mistaking they were brothers. One had a shaved head. One was taller than the others. One had a thin scar from the edge of his eye down to his mouth. The scar tissue pulled his lip up at one corner and made him look like he was sneering. For some reason Jayden’s mind seized on that scar. These men weren’t gods. They could be hurt.

The thought came with a rush of relief followed quickly by a wave of self-derision.

Jesus, of course they weren’t gods! What the fuck was wrong with him? If he wanted to get out of here, he couldn’t start believing the same bullshit these guys did. Just because they’d painted some shit on their walls didn’t mean it was real. The slight pressure of Hapi’s grip on his throat kept him from voicing any of that aloud. Instead, he watched the three brothers warily as they entered the room, unconsciously shifting closer to Hapi as the brothers drew nearer.

The bald one said something in a language Jayden didn’t understand, showing his teeth in an unfriendly smile.

“I found him.” Hapi’s grip on Jayden’s throat tightened, and for once Jayden didn’t think it was a warning for him. “He’s mine until judgement.”

The taller brother put his hand on the bald one’s shoulder and led him from the room.

The one with the scar remained, his mouth tugged up at the corner. He withdrew a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans and opened it. A shower of tobacco flakes scattered across the dusty black floorboards. He put a cigarette in his mouth and then offered the pack to Hapi.

Hapi grunted his refusal.

The scarred brother lit his cigarette and exhaled smoke. Then, in that same strangely accented English that Hapi used, he said, “Duamutef wants more than the stomach.”

“He’s mine,” Hapi repeated.

“I’m just telling you.”

Hapi growled. “He’s mine.”

The scarred brother’s shoulders rippled in a shrug. “I don’t care. Fight over it all you want. It’s all meat to me.”

A breath shuddered out of Jayden, and the scarred brother’s mouth quirked even higher for a moment.

Hapi made a sound and tugged Jayden closer to his side.

The scarred brother inhaled and the end of his cigarette glowed more brightly. His dark gaze flickered up and down Jayden. “You should feed him,” he said at last. “Or he won’t last until he’s judged.”

Hapi made a sound again and removed his grip from Jayden’s throat. He closed his fingers around Jayden’s wrist and pulled him from the room.

The rest of the house was normal. Jayden was drawn down a hallway with scuffed white walls and closed doors to a rundown kitchen. Hapi pushed him into a seat at an old laminate-top table, and then he wrenched open the creaking refrigerator. The bottles and jars in the door rattled against one another.

Jayden stared at the kitchen door. There were windows beside them, and he could see the rain outside. Just that single door, then, between him and freedom, but when he shifted on the chair the cracked-vinyl seat squeaked, and Hapi straightened up to look at him.

“The dogs would bring you down before you even found the road,” Hapi said, his expression stony.

Jayden nodded, his heart pounding and his hands, folded in his lap, shaking. He watched as Hapi pulled ingredients from the refrigerator and set about making a ham and cheese sandwich. Hapi didn’t bother with a plate. When the sandwich was made, he just set it down on the table in front of Jayden.

“Eat,” Hapi said. He sat down opposite Jayden.

Jayden reached for the sandwich and took a bite of it. He chewed and swallowed, and his stomach growled for more. He was thirsty again and the sandwich was dry; it hurt to swallow and to force the food down his swollen throat. He watched Hapi’s hands as he ate, and the bruises on his throat throbbed with the rhythm of his pulse.

“Why me?” he asked softly. At least on the other side of the table Hapi couldn’t grab his throat to keep him quiet.

Hapi’s fingers twitched on the scratched tabletop, but his gaze was steady. “You crossed the river.”

I fell in the river, Jayden wanted to say, but he thought that if he argued Hapi might get angry, and he certainly wouldn’t answer any other questions. He nodded and tore a crust off the sandwich. “What does that mean?”

Hapi tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “It means you’re dead, Jayden.”

Jayden swallowed a piece of crust against the sickening thrill that rose in him at Hapi’s words, so matter-of-fact. If I was dead, he wanted to say, you wouldn’t be feeding me a sandwich. Except he doubted a rational argument stood any chance against not just Hapi’s delusion, but his brothers’ as well. If there was a way out of this, it wouldn’t be by using logic against them.

“And you judge the dead,” he murmured.

Hapi inclined his head, his mouth twitching as though he was fighting a pleased smile at Jayden’s understanding or at his acceptance. “I do not judge you. My brothers and my father, we prepare you for judgement.”

Jayden swallowed another piece of crust. “When?”

“When Horus returns.”

Jayden opened his mouth to ask when that would be and closed it again when Hapi shook his head.

“Shh,” Hapi said. “Eat.”

Jayden ate.

* * *

The dogs movedlike shadows in the rain as Hapi drew Jayden back through the trees to the shed. It was dark. The clouds pressed low and swallowed all the stars. Jayden blinked up at the sky, the rain stabbing his face. If I had died, maybe this is what it would be like.

He didn’t want to go back in the shed, but he knew better than to resist.

He didn’t want to go quietly, but what other choice did he have?

He shivered as Hapi pulled the chain free from the door.

“Wait,” he said and turned. “Why me?” He lifted his hand to touch Hapi’s face, and Hapi’s eyes widened at the contact. “You said it was because I drowned in the river, but that’s not all. That can’t be all.”

His fingers trembled against Hapi’s wet cheek, and Hapi pressed his mouth into a thin line.

“Because,” Jayden said desperately, “when you came into Barry’s office that day, there was something there, wasn’t there? There was something.”

It had scared the hell out of him at the time, but after everything else that had happened? Jayden thought that maybe he could use that strange connection now. He wasn’t foolish enough to think he had any real advantage in this place, but maybe he had something. And maybe it was something Hapi wanted even more than his lungs.

“I saw the way you looked at me,” Jayden said. “You wanted it to be me. You wanted this to happen, and for me to be here now, didn’t you?”

He was pushing too hard probably, and he felt Hapi’s cheek twitch under his palm.

Hapi reached up, curled his fingers around Jayden’s wrist, and forced his hand away.

“You are….” Hapi paused, and then his expression, which for a moment had almost softened into something Jayden thought was an actual emotional response, shuttered. “You are here to be judged.”

“Hapi, wait—”

But Hapi pushed him into the shed and slammed the door behind him.

Jayden stood there in the darkness, breathing heavily, and listened to Hapi chain the door behind him.