Whiteout: 9 (The Black Market)

9. The Black Market

     “This place is very dangerous.”

     “I know, you’ve already told me a thousand times.”

     “No, James, these people will kidnap you and sell you as a sex slave to camel dealer without even batting an eye.”

     “You said that.”

     “They will take you to a back alley for a game of dice, steal your liver, and then let the cannibal orphans eat you alive!”

     “Are there really cannibal orphans?”

     “No, that part was hyperbole, but they will steal your liver during a dice game. Point is they don’t really like outsiders that much. You need to watch yourself.”

     “Jesus man, can we just go in?”

     “Not without Lopsang. We need him to give the code. If we don’t then idols with laser beams will cut off our genitalia and sell us as jugglers in a traveling caravan. I am not going back to the circus life James! Never again!”

     “More hyperbole.”

     “No, that part was real.” The look of horror on James’s face made it all worth it. Just in time to interrupt any further lines of questioning, Lopsang arrived with two black hoods and a bamboo scroll.

     “Put these on.” It is customary for all members of the black market to cover their faces. In this way all of the deals are truly anonymous, and no one can carry out hits in the market. If people showed their faces it would be a bloodbath. Most of the refuse that go there barely pass for human beings (some of them aren’t), and those who do are exceptionally dangerous.

     “God, this smells like an old foot.”

     “The man that wore it before you was decapitated for not giving a fair price.” Said Lopsang, deadpan. I couldn’t see his face, but I’m sure that underneath James was terrified once more. The gagging noises he made were enough to put my spirits at ease and lighten the mood. “Follow me, and do exactly as I say. This is not a place I like to go often.”

     “But you have been here. Tell me Lopsang, just what kind of mountaineering guide are you?”

     “Shh, be quiet! Only I speak until we are in the market.” The gates to the market were inconspicuous. Two simple, black doors to what looked like an apartment building. If we hadn’t had a guide we could have passed them ten times over. It was early morning and the streets were fairly empty. We went up to the doors and Lopsang exposed a small deposit box in the wall next to the doors. He lowered the bamboo scroll in and the box snapped shut.

     I guess now we can see whether or not that code is worth the price we paid… The moment of silence was unbearable. The doors just stared straight back at us, and any moment I felt that the idol would emerge to laser us. There was a loud grinding noise and I jumped a little. I covered it with a cough, but the Sherpa had seen. He laughed underneath his hood as the doors swung open.

     Inside was a hallway that was equally black as the doors. We stepped in and the doors shut behind bathing us in darkness. For a brief moment there was only silence, and then the floor dropped from beneath us. The room shook as we descended deep underground. It continued for a few minutes and then abruptly stopped. Before us a thin white line spread until there was dim light pouring into the room.

     The din that erupted from outside took a moment to get used to. In front of us was an entire street, filled with stands and shops. The ceiling was painted and moved just like the night sky, giving the impression that we were outdoors. It bustled like any street would have, but everyone wore the same black masks. There was a sea of them, trading and carrying various goods throughout the streets.

     A group bustled past us as we stepped out and made their way into the elevator. “Lopsang this is incredible.” It was the biggest black market I had ever seen. Most consisted of a twisting network of back alleys filled with vagrants and smelly merchants, but that place was exquisite. Even more impressive, it was clean. There was no refuse in the streets, no people begging for change. It was a fully functional black market, unlike anything I had ever seen. Certainly the last thing I would have expected to see hiding beneath the farming villages of the mountains.

     “Alright, I got you here now where do you want to go?” Truth be told I hadn’t really thought that far ahead.

     “You’re the one who came here for information. So, who gave it to you?”

     “You don’t want to go to him. Most people say he’s crazy.”

     “Well obviously a little less than everyone thought if this yeti tale is to be believed. He knows something and that’s better than what we have now. We need to know how to kill it. We’re also going to need some mountaineering supplies. James, you go find us all we need to climb a mountain, Lopsang, show me to this ‘crazy’ man.” Black markets didn’t have much in the range of climbing gear, but it was fun to send James out on impossible tasks. In the end we would just pick it up on our way back through the villages.

     “But…”

     “Listen James, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it my way. To get up the mountain we’re going to need gear. We are also running short on time. It’s going to go faster if we split up. Now quit your whining and go get me some crampons and more rope than you can carry.” It was hard to tell his emotions through the hood, but I bet they were sullen. Slowly he walked away into the throngs in search of items that wouldn’t be there.

     “Shall we?” I said to Lopsang. He shook his head and led me the opposite direction into the crowd. The stalls and shops we passed were selling items that even baffled me. I had seen a lot in my time, but none of what they had hung in the windows. Strange creatures hung out to dry, foods that resembled poison, and weapons with so many pointy ends that it was unclear exactly how they could be used for combat.

     The shop we ended at was crooked. The rest were fairly square and decent-looking, but this one looked like it had been made by a blind man. The door was nearly diagonal and the shades on the front of the windows hung at odd angles, making the store look like it was questioning outsiders. All in all it resembled a shack more than a store, but we went in anyway. As we entered I brushed against a wind chime made of jars filled with various creatures floating in formaldehyde.

     The shop itself was filled so densely with smoke that it was difficult to see the sides of the room. It felt much larger than it was. The shelves were lined with oddities. In one corner sat a mummy in a glass case, sacrificial dagger still clutched in its brittle hands. A man stood behind the counter reading a newspaper and smoking from a long-stemmed pipe. The smoke that came out the end was acrid and a dull red color.

     Lopsang motioned for me to go forward. “You kill that yourself?” I asked, attempting to make pleasant conversation and motioning to the mummy in the corner. The man straightened his newspaper and continued to smoke, ignoring my comments. I pretended that I hadn’t said anything and continued to look around the shop. The ceiling was lined with skulls and pelts of more animals that I could not recognize.

     Some of them looked perfectly normal. There was a goat, a cougar and a bear, but that was the extent of the mundane. Creatures with three sets of horns stared down at me, menacing, aggravated in their final glare of death. “So I take it you’re a hunter then?” Trying again to get the shopkeepers attention. He cleared his throat and continued to read. I looked to Lopsang for guidance, but he just held up his hands in a gesture of ‘I told you so.’

     Boring conversation anyway. “We’re here about the yeti.” In one swift motion the man put down the newspaper, picked up a menacing sword from behind the counter, extinguished his pipe, and leapt over to hold it to my throat. He was much older than I had expected. His beard was long and white, but didn’t seem to get in the way. His face was a canvas of scars and wrinkles, with no clear delineations of where one ended and the other began. Mean eyes looked out from beneath bushy eyebrows and studied me.

     “Look, I didn’t mean any offense.” He pressed the blade closer to my throat until a tiny bead of blood dribbled down my neck. Should have sent James to do this job. He sniffed at me as if assessing my threat and then pulled the sword away. Just as I was about to relax he swung it in a wide arc towards my face. Luckily Lopsang jumped in front of it at the last second and began babbling quickly in another language. The man’s blade stopped mid-air, and slowly lowered the longer Lopsang spoke.

     They continued to speak back and forth to each other, taking occasional glances at me. At one point they both started laughing and pointing at me in areas I wish they hadn’t. “What’s he saying.”

     “That you talk too much and lack respect.”

     “Great. He’d get along great with my ex-wife.”

     “Don’t worry, I’m working on him.” They went to the backroom, leaving me in the empty shop alone. I waited for what felt like hours, until they finally emerged in a haze of the dull red smoke, laughing like a couple of teenagers. I was lucky that they couldn’t see my face, as I’m sure it would have earned me another swing from the old man’s sword.

     “Well, is he going to help us?”

     “Yes, I will, but know that what you seek is a fool’s errand. You will die upon that mountain and no one will hear your legend but the cold stone. If you climb to that sacred valley you and your friends will find nothing but suffering and death.” The old man’s voice was like gravel, slow, methodical, and rough.

     I almost reconsidered it. I knew there was danger, but the rewards far outweighed the risks to my foolish mind. “Can you help us kill it?”

     “That is no easy task.”

     “I didn’t say it was going to be easy.” Like lightning the man’s hand shot out and slapped my mouth shut.

     “You are very disrespectful. Do you know that?”

     “I’ve been told.” There was more yelling in a foreign language that sounded an awful lot like a lecture, followed by what sounded like an apology from Lopsang. I’ve been ignorant in enough languages to recognize when people are embarrassed about me. I’d feel badly about it, but I’ve come to recognize that it’s just a part of life.

     “Look Nick, if you want his help, you have to be respectful.”

     All that gibbering just for that? I could have figured that out. “Fine.” We were going to need the old man’s help one way or the other. I wasn’t going to go up the mountain half-cocked, and surprisingly my knowledge of the creature that I had been so vehemently convinced was nonexistent was fairly limited. “I apologize for my rudeness. It’s just, the hour is late and we need help very quickly.” When in doubt, go middle ages, it can work out occasionally.

     “If your heart is set on this, I will help you, but know that I do not encourage it. You will die on that mountain. If I help you, maybe you can last a few hours longer, but there are reasons why no one has ever come back from that journey. If it was possible I would have hung it in my shop a long time ago.” The man was mystified by his own dreams, drifting off at the end of every sentence. Either he had something pretty powerful in that pipe of his, or he was just aging. I couldn’t be sure which it was, but it made for a painfully slow conversation.

     “We just need to know how to kill it.”

     “Oh, of course. The simple question no?” He pasued for a long while. I was beginning to think that we would never leave the shop when he returned from his mind and graced use with more words of ‘wisdom’. “There is only one way to kill a yeti.”

     Course there is. It seems like mythical creatures are fond of having only one weakness. It’s like they all sat around after the battle of troy and thought: ‘You know that Achilles fellow? I think he’s got it right.’ I’ve never met a monster that I could just shoot, and when I’ve tried, it usually just ends up worse than the start.

     For example, shoot the hound of resurrection, two take its place. Blow apart a mummy into bits of sand and they come back more powerful than one could have possibly imagined. Really it’s best to do some research before running into the field. Unfortunately in the big book the page about yetis is mostly filled with grim obituaries of those who have chased after them. What I would have given for an abominable allergic reaction to peanuts, or garlic, any of the usual fair.

     “The yeti is a solitary creature. The apex predator of these mountains. It hunts everything and is hunted by nothing. As such it is not cautious. It will stalk you, but it will never perceive you as a threat. You can use this to your advantage. Their hides are very thick and you’ll have to get close to break through it.”

     Get to the point old man. I could have figured out all of these things from sheer guessing. Living in the mountains tends to create hearty creatures that are very difficult to kill. Even the yaks can be a formidable opponent if they want to be. I wouldn’t tangle with a yak unless I had to. I mean really, yaks are pretty damned beastly.

     “You will need a blade dipped in Shangri La lilies. The yeti heals faster than most mammals and the poison from the flower will slow the coagulation. Once slowed you will have to cut its major arteries.  3 cuts in total: One in the neck, and one at the joint in each leg.”

     “Will the lily slow the creature at all?”

     “No, but it will aggravate it. So I would be quick.”

     “Do you have any lilies on hand?” The man left for his mind again and stared off into space for a few minutes. It was as if he was searching the shelves in his mind for where he kept the poisonous Himalayan flowers.

     “Yes…” Quickly he hopped off of his stool and into the piles that lined his shop. Bottles and jars went flying. One shattered sending a foul smelling liquid all over the floor. The man paid it no heed and continued to work his way through the shop.

     “Why doesn’t he wear a mask?” I quietly asked Lopsang.

     “Because no one is stupid enough to try and come after me!” He said, laughing maniacally from beneath a pile of old books. The shop was chaos, and he seemed to thrive on it. “One man tried! You’ll see his hand pickled and filled with candle wax lighting my counter!” I looked to my left and saw a black hand adorning the counter. It had shrunk quite a bit, unless the man was overly tiny, but it certainly got the point across.

     We should get out of this shop as soon as possible.

     “Got it!” The old man wobbled back up to the counter and placed three vials of bright purple liquid on it. “These should be enough to bleed the creature, if you can manage to get them in its bloodstream!” He was laughing again.

     “How much?”

     “How much you got?”