“Why?”
Vimbai shrugged. “No idea. You know how ghosts are always restricted to one room. Or a hallway or whatever.”
Maya nodded. “I guess. But you did drive her here.”
Vimbai stopped, awkward. It was time for them to part ways—Maya seemed intent to continue down the path covered in yellow leaves, to the bluish grove of firs on top of a hill they named after Oprah. And Vimbai had to head back, past the rich deposits of old mattresses and into the desert, the yellow sand with two chairs on the shore of a silent, smooth lake, where the unspeakable cannibalistic horror of a catfish lurked beneath.
It was silly, Vimbai told herself. Perhaps it was just a fish with no intelligence and no accompanying malice; perhaps she just imagined its words. Perhaps the house was just a canvas onto which she projected her silly fears and believed them to come to life in the shifting, uneven light—much like her own carelessly tossed shirt transformed a peaceful chair in her childhood bedroom into a monster. Perhaps all she needed was a closer look, a light switch, that would let her see her own foolishness.
“I’ll see you later,” Maya said. “Just be careful.”
Vimbai headed for the lake. At first she thought of stopping by the kitchen and talking Peb into coming with her, but it was a bit of a detour. Besides, Peb being the creature of mostly spirit (and soap skin) could be vulnerable to the man-fish—provided the latter was real. It was better to go alone, she decided.
Vimbai waited on the lakeshore, looking for telltale circles in the water. She waited for the flip of a tail, the silvering of a side and the splash of a large slithering fish. She stood among the green cattails and succulent patches of sedges, their green inflorescences tilted like bayonets.
There was no sign of the catfish, and she considered retreating back to the lawn chairs, perhaps sitting down, kicking up her legs and enjoying a nap—for all the weird absence of smell here, inside the house it was much warmer than outside, subtropical even. Vimbai decided not to contemplate the heating bill—and after all, who said anything about a bill? For all she knew, they would never have to encounter anyone from the gas or electric company again. She finally understood what Maya was so jubilant about, imagining a life with no bills and no responsibilities, free to roam the endless plains of this dream Africa, with its forever flowering Harare and plush lions who cuddled and never bit, its mountains and ridges named and explored by them, by Maya and Vimbai, and not some dead unknown people. Their own world, their endless circus that had the good sense to run away with them.
Her feet sank into the soft soil of the bank, and she wiggled her toes, enjoying the sensation of thick ribbons of warm mud squeezing between them. She longed for the rich smell of river, of the green and decay and silt warmed by the sun, and she sighed. Their dream refuge had a serious flaw, no doubt about that.
She lifted one foot, and the mud made a sucking noise, an obscene slow kiss, as it released her. She turned around and froze at the sight of Balshazaar hopping along on his phantom leg, away from the lake. She was not sure if he had seen her, but crouched low just in case he turned around. There was no particular reason for her to hide, it just seemed like a good idea. Balshazaar roamed freely now, and Vimbai saw no harm in keeping a secretive eye on him, even if it meant crouching on the bank and getting mud on the knees of her relatively clean jean overalls.
Balshazaar never turned, and Vimbai watched the back of his shriveled head, parchment skin with a few long wisps of gray hair, disappear behind the straight line of the horizon—she knew that a grove of palms and couches waited just behind it, embraced by a clear gurgling brook with a pebbled bottom, where mayfly larvae built their strange delicate houses from straw and tiny shells cemented with silt.
“What do you want?” a voice came from behind. An unpleasant voice, with a strange suffocated quality to it—it sounded like a person talking without breath, a mouthed voice with no lungs behind it to give it strength.
The man-fish peeked out of water, his fins propping him up not far where Vimbai had previously stood. He was a large fish, beautiful in his way—brown and green patterns covered its wetly glistening sides, like a snakeskin boot. His eyes, small and golden, bulged a little out of his flat head, staring at Vimbai with an empty feline expression.
Vimbai studied him a while. There was no hurry for her to speak, and she hoped that her silence came across as unnerving rather than timid.
The catfish smirked a little, his whiskers hitching up to expose a wide lipless mouth. “What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”
She spoke only when she felt certain that her voice would come out without trembling. “Who are you?” she said. “What are you doing here?”
“I live here,” the fish replied in the same breathless voice. “As to who I am?” He paused, swallowing air in large gulps, his gill covers falling and rising like bellows. “I think you know that. Or have you lost touch with the stories you learned like you lost touch with your past?”
Vimbai smiled. A few months back these words would’ve stung. Today, she knew well enough that they were not the truth—at least, not the real truth. Sure, her Shona was lacking and her knowledge of her parents’ culture was patchy, to say the least. Yet, Vimbai refused to feel guilty for being the way she was. “I remember,” she said. “You’re the man-fish.”
“That’s right,” the catfish answered. “And what are you doing in my dream?”
It had not occurred to Vimbai that the house might not be their creation entirely; yet, she dismissed the thought that the catfish was the architect of this place. It seemed too influenced by human things—furniture everywhere, and very little water. Besides, dreams of dreams sounded awfully recursive to her. “It’s not your dream,” she said. “You’re lying.”
“Maybe not yet,” the man-fish answered. With a single beat of a strong blunt tail, he sent a spray of murky water splashing into Vimbai’s face. When she rubbed her eyes dry, he was gone—not even a trace on the surface of the lake, not even a tattoo of concentric circles as if after a fallen stone.
Back in the kitchen, Vimbai’s pensive mood was dispelled by Peb’s frantic cries. He hovered over the stove and wailed and whimpered, inconsolable, despite the vadzimu’s and Felix’s efforts. Peb cried and cried and fluttered frantically about, like a moth trapped under a lampshade.
“What’s the matter with him?” Vimbai asked. She had to raise her voice to be heard over the racket.
“Aaaaaaa!” Peb wailed in response, opening his mouth wide. Only then did Vimbai notice that his tongue was missing—his mouth was an empty cave bordered by two rows of transparent teeth, smooth and devoid of any features, like the inside of a teacup.
Vimbai turned to Felix, who was following Peb around the kitchen, his hands flapping helplessly. “Who did that to him?”
“No idea,” Felix said. “He just showed up like this.”
“Can you help him?”
Felix shook his head and stopped pacing. “No, of course not. How can I? There are forces, and I don’t understand them, and no one ever had a phantom tongue—at least the one I know of.”
Cat got your tongue? Vimbai remembered the hissing voice of the man-fish. More like catfish got your tongue, she thought. Perhaps that was the original expression—cat getting someone’s tongue just didn’t make sense; then again, neither did catfish.
Vimbai’s throat constricted, and when a sob squeezed out of it, it startled her, as if it came from an extraneous source. She had surprised herself; she did not expect to feel such acute grief for the poor Peb and his stolen tongue. The Psychic Energy Baby, birthed in some ethereal realm, had grown to be a part of Vimbai with his festoons of feet and hands, with his relentless desire to absorb colors and parts of people. He became a part of the household, and without Vimbai’s ever noticing, they all had learned to love him—even Felix, as unhinged and disconnected as he was most of the time.
Vimbai could think of nothing better to do than to pick Peb up—he struggled in her arms at first and then quieted and felt silent save for an occasional sob. She held him awkwardly, having little experience with babies, psychic or otherwise. As Peb relaxed in her arms, Vimbai thought about what it would be like, to have a baby sibling.
The vadzimu touched her elbow, startling Vimbai from her thoughts. “Don’t cry, granddaughter.”
“But . . . but they took his tongue,” Vimbai said, and swiped her open palm over her watering eyes. “What will he do now?”
“You can always find what has been misplaced,” the ghost said. “You just need to know where to look. Now, who could’ve taken it?”
“The catfish,” Vimbai said. “The man-fish, I mean. Only I don’t know how—he was in his lake and I spoke to him.”
The vadzimu gasped. “Why would you do such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” Vimbai said. “I wanted to see what he was up to, I guess. And just to make sure he wasn’t planning anything . . . I was worried about the crabs because of the dream I had.”