Nasir leaned back on the railing and watched the buses go past on lethargic wheels, slowing to a crawl as what was left of the day sunk low behind the squat tenement blocks of the Mong Kok district. His long nose and deep sunken eye sockets gave him the appearance of a predatory bird, and as he peered around him, people passing on the sidewalk gave him a wide berth.

He was a tall, gangly young man of nineteen, dressed in an ill-fitting shirt and a loose pair of jeans, lean face pockmarked with acne and fingers yellowed from the twelve packs of Marlboros he smoked every week. In short, he had a look about him that suggested he was up to no good.

And tonight, that certainly was the case. He took out his carton of smokes and cast a furtive glance around him before shaking one out.

“Hey there handsome,” croaked a voice in Cantonese, “How about one for the lady, lah?”

It was the little old woman again, on her way back from a day spent rustling through the garbage bins. Her back was hunched from a lifetime of work, spine crumpled into a painful, stooped arch, her sun browned skin flaking from hours working in the summer heat.

Her trade was in old cardboard sheets and bottles of soda, which she would sell to recycling centres to be paid for by the kilo. She always came this way at this hour, and he replied as he always had for the past five years:

“Sure, grandma.”

He shook out another cancer stick. She took it eagerly and plunged the end of it into her dry, wrinkled mouth. He lit hers first, and then his own. Her scrawny old shoulders heaved as she inhaled, and her wrinkled old face took on a look of contentment.

“You know that stuff’s not good for you, right?”

“You’re one to talk,” she shrugged, “Besides, we all have to die of something.”

Nasir looked down at her shabby figure and exclaimed:

“And what are those?”

“Oh, yes!” She smiled wide and looked at her new loafers. They were the colour of pink carnations, and had white laces. “Aren’t they nice? Found them at the Salvation Army store. Sixty dollars. Fit me just right.”

“Looking good, ah suk.” He whistled and gave her a thumbs up.

“Ah, screw you,” she replied in a genial tone, blowing out tendrils of smoke from both nostrils. “Thanks again, Singh.”

“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not Indian, lady.”

“What’s that?” She frowned and leaned closer to hear him.

“I was born in Karachi, not New Delhi. I’m Pakistani. Pa-kei-si-tan-yahn, yeah?”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“No,” he chuckled, “It really isn’t.”

“Hmph. You all look the same anyway. See you tomorrow, Singh.”

“Yeah.”

She trundled off, the cigarette trailing from the side of her mouth. As she walked, she scanned the ground in front of her. No doubt looking for more cardboard to fill her cart. He watched her disappear around the corner, and then turned away.

And that was when he noticed him.

Across the street, a man stood behind a large black van. There was nothing so remarkable about his appearance: he was much older than Nasir, short and slightly bow-legged, a Chinese fellow with indeterminate facial features.

No, what stood out about him was his stance. Had his knees been bent but a little further, Nasir would have described him as crouching. In his small hands he clutched a thick, bulky yellow umbrella. He wasn’t sure why, but somehow he knew that the man was watching something very intently.

The man noticed Nasir observing him and abruptly straightened. For a long moment, they stared at one another. Then without a word the man did an abrupt three sixty turn and darted off.

Nasir raised an eyebrow. Weird. The guy had a strange shuffling gait too, like a crab that had learned to walk forwards instead of sideways. He probably had a few screws loose in his head, but then again, many people were that way around here, especially the old and the senile. It was the loneliness that did it, that and the lifetimes spent in cramped, suffocating shoebox apartments.

He forgot all about it when his phone chimed. Arnav had replied; they were to meet in fifteen minutes at the usual place. He grinned and started walking.

The night market was at its most hectic, thronged with tourists and middle-aged wives buying their vegetables. He passed under the great red archway and the lanterns strung out on lines, walked down the bustling rows of shops with their low canvas roofs, past the watch salesmen with their knock-off Rolexes, the tables of electronic toys, the miniature drones that spun and flashed in time with chimes of glitzy music. Nasir turned left at the intersection where the broad round tables were set out for the open-air restaurants, gagging at the smell of beer and lobster. He was wandering among the fruit stalls, where they sold everything from lychees to jackfruit, when Arnav called to him.

“Oy, gaandu! You here to buy mangoes all night or what?”

“Peace, brother.” He raised a hand in greeting.

“Yeah, yeah. Come over here, I’ve been waiting for you.”

He took Nasir aside to a nearby alleyway, where the pipes gushed and pools of iridescent murk gleamed with what little light could find its way through the twisting paths, between the tall, brooding tenement blocks whose vacant windows were like so blank faces, hearing and seeing nothing. He bought a gram of orange kush, which Arnav fished out of the lining of his Adidas jacket. Before parting ways, they jawed for a while, talking of cousins and mutual relations in juvenile or jail, and of what the tai lou’s were hustling these days out of the shady backside of Hong Kong’s dockyards.

Nasir went cheerfully down the path, dodging the trash heaps and the occasional puddles of sick. A lifetime on these streets had made him quite at home in this crooked maze, and he knew quite a few shortcuts. In a while, he would be home, and then he would take the lift up to rooftop on the 30th floor, where he would roll one out and enjoy it in peace.

He stumbled just then on something soft. A solitary shoe, lying forlorn upon its side. He paused to examine it, and as he did so, he heard behind him soft footfalls.

He glanced back and saw a shape dart quickly out of sight. There were dozens of doors along the walls, the back entrances to restaurants, auto repair shops and parlours where one could receive a “foot massage”, but all of these were bolted shut. He had never before noticed how deep the shadows grew in these quiet places. A step or two to the side and one could vanish completely from view. He had heard stories from up the grapevine, of people going missing like that, disappearing into the very cracks of the pavement.

Nasir had no desire to be among them, and practically sprinted toward the nearest intersection, heart hammering against his chest. He swerved right on the first turning, then right again when he passed a barrel of corrugated scrap. Above him a cat’s eyes gleamed amber in dark. At the far end, he saw figures loom against the neon glare of the night market. Immense relief flooded over him as he strode towards it. Halfway there, however, he found her.

Her cart was overturned, sheets of cardboard spilling all over, empty bottles of Coke and 7-up rolling in the gutters. A trail of crimson ran on the damp ground and dragged along the wall, ending in the mouth of an open manhole. Her legs were sticking out of it. One of her feet was bare, and the other wore the remaining shoe. Pink, with white laces.

Behind him, someone kicked aside a soda can. Nasir spun around and beheld the man creeping forward silently on his toes, holding his umbrella before him like a lance.

“She…she’s-” Nasir gestured, unable to express his mounting horror.

“Dead, yes.” The man brushed past him and knelt down, surveying the grim scene.

“Looks like they miscalculated the service pipe’s diameter.”

“What?”

“Not wide enough. But they’ll be back for her soon, I’m sure.”

“Who’ll be back?”

“You sure ask a lot of questions.”

The man turned and looked Nasir straight in the face.

“Oh, but I forgot. This isn’t your first language is it? There, is that better?”

Alim blinked. The man had just transitioned from Cantonese to Urdu, his native tongue.

“Now then. While it is regrettable that you had to witness this, while you’re here you might as well be of use. So hold this.”

He took a torch from his pocket and handed it to Alim.

“Keep it steady.”

Alim complied, barely thinking. He thumbed it on and pointed the beam at the corpse, and stood awkwardly to one side.

“Um. Shouldn’t we call the police, sir?” He said tremulously.

“Shush.” The man crouched low and tensed. He held his ear close to the tangled mass of piping next to him, and listened intently. “Here we go!” he whispered. He brought up his bulky umbrella. It was wrapped in a thick sleeve of synthetic cotton, which he now removed, to reveal a twisted mass of circuitry and metal beneath.

Secured to the handle and frame with a wad of duct tape were six heavy duty triple-A Duracell batteries, the terminals of which were connected to a compact circuit board, festooned with a complicated array of capacitors and resistors. This arrangement ended with several thick spools of thin wiring, threaded into what looked like barbed fishing hooks, all sharpened and hammered straight.

“What is that?”

“Get ready! There’s a whole lot of them down there!”

Alim now heard a faint pattering from within the sewers, of many tiny forms scampering in the dampness beneath the earth. The woman’s legs began to twitch, as an unseen force began pulling her body further inside. Whatever it was, it was strong. Her body began to compress, like a cork forced down the neck of a champagne bottle, ribs snapping like toothpicks. Bile rose out of his stomach at the sight of this, and he retched.

“I said hold it steady!” The man yelled.

He pressed the umbrella’s button. The spring, lengthened and strengthened by some process of heat treatment, shot forward with vicious speed. A cluster of sharp barbs flew into the sewer mouth. There was a flash of white, and a screech of agony. There was the smell of cooked flesh. The man racked back the spring and put another spool of wire in place, but before he could discharge again he leapt back with a curse.

A rat had scuttled out from hole in the ground, spitting with hatred. Only, it wasn’t a rat. It couldn’t be, because no rat Alim had ever seen had such sharp spines or jointed, bony things like fingers sprouting out of its singed grey fur.

There was a wet squelch as the man stomped on it with his boot. The thing shuddered and lay still. The man stomped on it until it was a red paste. The scuttling had reached a crescendo. Pieces of her began to fall off around the edges, tearing away from the friction like the peel of an orange. With an obscene plop, she was pulled completely inside. Just how many of them there were was uncertain, but now the sound of their tiny feet sounded like rainwater gushing down a mountainside.

“Kid! You still with me?” He said over his shoulder. “I have to keep my eyes on this. Reach into my backpack. There’s a bottle in there, a big one. Take it out.”

Alim heard the desperate urgency in his voice, fumbled at the zippers and lifted it out. It was a large gallon jug, filled with a mud-grey solution.

“Now pour it in. All of it. And if you want to keep your skin, don’t let it drip on you.”

In moments it became apparent why he said this. As Alim poured the contents of the bottle, a thick, choking cloud arose. They backed away, covering their noses as the very iron hissed and began to melt away. The scampering subsided.

When the acrid gases dissipated and they could approach again, she was gone. The man followed the sound of her scraping the sides of the pipe until she passed under a building. When they shone the torch inside the hole, they found the burnt and slightly runny remains of a dozen of the rat-things.

“Was that acid?”

“Drainage cleaner. Concentrated it myself. Nasty, but it hurts them all the same. Woah! Steady on there, friend!”

Alim’s legs had wobbled out from beneath him. His head felt light and dizzy.

“You alright?”

“She bought them today. Real cheap, and they were just her size.”

He could recognize the hysteria in his voice, but couldn’t help himself.

“Did you know her?”

“She liked Camels best. But I always had Marlboros.”

He fell to his knees, wheezing and weeping. The man stood and regarded him for a moment, before putting a gentle arm around his shoulders, saying:

“Alright, that’s enough. Get up, kid.” He hoisted him to his feet and dusted him off. “Come on. Let’s find you somewhere to sit down, yeah?”

#

He took him to the nearest noodle place, a grimy little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Steam rose from the vats of broiling beef broth, and behind the glass counter, a cook carved pork belly on a wide wooden slab.

The man’s name was Lam. That was all he would say as they waited for their order, and when their bowls came he did not speak at all, but concentrated solely on noisily slurping down every morsel. Alim on the other hand peered into the depths of his soup and fought down the urge to vomit uncontrollably.

“Ahhh,” Lam set down his chopsticks with a sigh, “Shrimp wontons. They’re one of the things I love most about this city, this whole place even. Hey,” he frowned at Alim, who hadn’t touched his own food, “what’s the matter with you?”

Alim quietly pushed it back, and asked:

“How is it that you can speak my language?”

“So what if I can?”

“But you’re Chinese.”

“Let’s just say I’ve been around,” the man’s eyes tightened into slits, “Besides, what we’re discussing would probably upset some people if they heard it,” he gestured at the handful of patrons around them, eating their dinners, “So let’s stick to it, yes?”

They continued their conversation in Urdu, with a smattering of English thrown in for the more technical terms.

“Alright. How long have you been hunting those things in the sewers?”

“For a while now. And they don’t live in the sewers. That’s just one of the ways they can acquire people. It gives them access to the blind spots, the nooks and crannies of the city, if you will.”

“Were they…eating her?” He stared into the depths of his soup and fought back the urge to vomit again.

“In a sense, yes. Not for nourishment, you understand. You noticed I’m sure, that the ones we saw tonight inhabited the bodies of black rats?”

Alim nodded, shuddering at the remembrance of the little skull that had been caved in, and the masses of ridged orange polyps sprouting from the brain, swelling with vile stinking pus. Black veins, laced like spider webs, had coated its entrails and the surface of every bloody organ. And it had still been alive. Amid the darkness and the murk, the jagged length of claws and mandibles that had been the creature’s tail had begun to detach. Lam had poured the remaining sulphuric acid onto it, dissolving it into rancid goop.

“You see, they have this disturbing habit of repurposing the tissue of their vessels. Improving them as they see fit. And for that, they require biomass.”

He paused to sip at his milk tea and then continued.

“Usually they synthesize the proteins on their own, in a vat, but that’s too slow. Or they go fishing for stray dogs or cats (that’s why you don’t see those around very often). But human tissue has such an excellent in-built nervous system that sometimes, they take the risk of abducting one. When they do decide to take one, they research on their target. Methodically. In this city, they go for the older demographic. The ones with no family to ask after them when they disappear. The unemployed, the homeless who sleep in the subways and the public parks or under bridges. When they disappear, all that happens is the city cleaning crews come the next day and sweep out their belongings, maybe spray the place with hoses and call it good riddance.

“Why haven’t you told anybody this? The police, the authorities? For God’s sake, I just saw someone get dragged into a hole in the ground until her bones popped! That kinda shit is not from this world!”

The man chuckled grimly.

“Oh, you have no idea how right you are.”

“You mean to say, that they’re…” Alim swallowed hard.

“Yes.” The man said simply, and drained the last of his cup. He stood to leave, his bulky umbrella up on one shoulder.

“I’m sorry you had to see all that. You were simply at the wrong place at the wrong time, kid. In fact, I’m sorely puzzled as to why you were even there in the first place.”

Alim felt at the gram of ganja in his pocket, and declined to answer that question. Instead, he asked one of his own:

“That weapon you have. What is it?”

“It’s basically a modified taser. I cobbled it together from some old power tools and the coils of an electric fan. See, they don’t care about physical trauma like we do, because they can block off any signals from the meat’s pain receptors. But they do use the motor cortex to control their vessels. Pre-synaptic neurons sparking and triggering action potentials, which travel to muscle fibers and glands and so forth. Useful system for them. However, when you shoot sufficient amperage into that, just like with us, it paralyzes them. Renders the vessel momentarily useless, so they come crawling out. It’s a self-defense mechanism of theirs, and it makes killing them that much easier.”

“Think you could make another one?”

The man sat back down, eyeing Alim in disbelief.

“I don’t think so. Do you really want to do all that again?” He jerked his head in the direction of the alley.

Alim took a deep breath and said:

“Listen. That woman passed by my street every day for fifteen years. Rain or shine, pushing her little cart, asking no favors from anybody. I never once saw her go begging. Until one day, she asked me for a smoke. I gave it to her because I figured if anyone deserved one, she did.”

Alim shut his eyes and ground his teeth together.

“It turns out, in all the time I knew her, I never bothered to ask her name. Now she’s been erased, and nobody will remember her. Except for me.”

He looked Lam straight in the eye.

“So no, I wouldn’t mind doing all that again.”

Lam shook his head.

“Are you sure? Because let me tell you; you have no idea what you’re getting into.”

“Then why don’t you tell me?”

“Well, in that case,” Lam ordered another tea-and-coffee. “We’re gonna be here a while.”

And as he sipped it, he told him.

End of Chapter 1

link to Chapter 2: https://mhloja.substack.com/p/the-umbrella-men-part-2

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