by Ocean
“But we’d heard from the tour guide and some locals in Key West, that originally, Ria and Naomi had been cursed by a Shaman. That their souls had been trapped into the bodies of dolls and then they were banished to remain on the island for eternity.”
The Mambo nodded.
“Was that you? Were you the Shaman that cursed them?” Devin asked.
Again, the Mambo nodded.
She lifted her head and peered, first into Devin’s eyes then Rosie’s. Rosie had never experienced what she did in that moment that the Mambo gazed at her. It was an odd sensation. The Mambo’s eyes were dark, black actually. And they were deep. Rosie couldn’t quite figure out what she meant by feeling the sensation that they were ‘deep’ but that’s what she felt. She’d never stared into the eyes of a cobra before, but at that moment, that’s what she experienced. As if she were being hypnotized. She couldn’t look away. Her pulse quickened.
The Mambo broke the fixation when she spoke.
“They lied to you, did they?”
“Yes,” Devin said. “They lied.
Rosie simply nodded.
“I’m not surprised.” The Mambo’s lips curled slightly as if she enjoyed a private joke.
“Would you like to hear my side of the story?”
19
There’s always a story
“Yes, of course,” Devin said. “We’d love to hear your side of the story. Tell us what happened?”
The Mambo made a kissing sound.
“Zeolie!” she commanded.
A rat darted from underneath the bookshelf and sat submissively at her feet. She picked the animal up, held it to her face and cooed at it.
“How’s my little girl?” She rubbed the rat’s nose against her own.
The rat wiggled and squeaked.
The Mambo held the animal to her chest with one hand and stroked it with the other. Zeolie closed her eyes and was soon asleep.
“When you become a Mambo.” The Mambo directed her speech toward the fireplace and did not look at Devin and Rosie. As if responding, the flames erupted. “You are chosen, selected by the previous Mambo. And you swear an oath. You swear it on the grave of your mother, that you will only use your powers for good. If you break that oath, everyone you have ever cared for will be damned to spend eternity in the underworld. I took that oath with my mother, and until Naomi, I kept my promise. So, you can imagine, the decision to perform the curse was not taken lightly.”
“What happened that made you break your oath?” Rosie asked.
“I had selected Naomi to be my successor. I was grooming her, training her. I trusted her.”
“And she cheated on you with Ria?” Devin asked.
“Yes, she cheated on me with Ria.”
“Isn’t that a little harsh?” Devin asked. “Banishing someone into a doll’s body for eternity just because they have an affair? I mean, people’s hearts get broken all the time, and they get over it. They don’t go casting curses to get revenge. You did that, just because you could?”
Rosie glared at Devin and nudged her with an elbow, but she was ignored. Devin’s attention was focused on the Mambo.
“I didn’t care that she cheated on me as a lover…I did love her, of course. But what I did care about was that she cheated on the oath she took to remain faithful to the honor of being a Shaman. Being a Mambo. She did have an affair with Ria, yes, but that’s not what disturbed me. Once I began teaching her the ways of being a Mambo, it went to her head. She used the potions for pleasure. The spells were mere playthings to her. She’d ingest concoctions of herbs, potions, enter another level of consciousness and do crazy things. Tell our secrets. Secrets she’d taken a sworn oath to take with her to the grave. It was only a matter of time that she would’ve started to play with curses. I couldn’t allow that.” The Mambo lowered her head. “I’d made a poor choice, a bad decision in choosing her. It was my responsibility to rectify it. There was only one way.”
“Oh…So, it was because she didn’t keep the sacred oath that you banished her?” Rosie asked.
“Yes. That’s partly why. But, I also did it to save her. Both her and Ria.”
“Save them?”
“Yes, because of what they did, well, mostly what Naomi did although Ria played a role as well. Because of what they did, Guede Nimbo wanted their souls.”
“What does that mean exactly, ‘wanted their souls’?”
“He was coming for them, to bring them to the underworld. The only way I could save them was to banish their souls for eternity on that island. That way, he could not have access to them. Otherwise, they’d ended up in the underworld with Satan.”
“Whoa,” Devin said. “So, you were trying to save them. In an odd sort of way.”
“Yes. And even though Naomi had disappointed me, I did love her. Which is why I had selected her in the first place. I thought we’d spend the rest of our days together. I didn’t want to see her soul tormented for eternity.”
“But now, they’re off the island and out of the dolls bodies–” Rosie started.
“And they have our bodies,” Devin finished her sentence.
The rat rolled over, exposing its throat and stomach. The Mambo rubbed its belly.
“And you want your bodies back.”
“Right. We want our bodies back,” Rosie said.
The Mambo stood and strode across the room. She cradled the rat to her chest and continued stroking its head as she paced from one side of the room to the other. When she stopped pacing, she turned toward Devin and Rosie.
“I’m afraid you may be too late.”
“Too late? What do you mean, ‘too late’?” Devin stood on the bench.
A nauseous sensation stirred in Rosie’s stomach. A stomach she knew she didn’t have, but the nervous sensation was as real as if she had one. She flashbacked to when Mambo Cielo had spoken the same words to the woman who’d brought them there. That she was ‘too late.’ Guede Nimbo had already collected her husband’s soul.
The Mambo explained.
“Someone has been waiting centuries for Ria and Naomi’s souls. As long as they remained on that island and in the embodiment of a doll, they couldn’t be harmed…but now. I’m afraid….” She paused. “Once this entity realizes that Ria and Naomi are back in human bodies and off the island, it’s only a matter of time. And after the souls have been gathered, the bodies will be discarded. Destroyed.”
“What? What do you mean, ‘destroyed’? And who is this person? We have to get to Ria and Naomi before they do.”
“It’s not a person,” the woman said.
“Not a person? Then who, what is it?” Devin asked.
“It must be Guede Nimbo,” Rosie was thinking the words, but they quietly escaped her mouth.
“No. Not Guede Nimbo. He’s just doing his job,” the Mambo said. “He is directed which souls to collect. If he didn’t collect them, they’d languish in a sort of a middle state for eternity since they aren’t pure enough to qualify to go to what you know as heaven. It’s Guede Nimbo’s job to retrieve them and bring them where they belong.”
She paused before saying the words.
“To the underworld.”
Waves of hot and cold vibrations washed over Rosie. Her body trembled. It was as if her muscles and nerves were injected with a dose of adrenaline, and she didn’t even have muscles and nerves. Somehow, the feelings of fear were so intense, they flooded her as if she were still in a human body. The terror was immediate, deep, and complete when the realization of what the Mambo had just said became clear to her.
“You mean…” She couldn’t bring herself to speak the word.
The Mambo nodded and the word she muttered next elevated the all-consuming sense of fear and terror in Rosie to a level that she never imagined was possible.
The word slithered from the Mambo’s mouth.
“Satan.”
20
The day I met Satan
“Satan?” Rosie knew the word
had come from her own mouth, but it sounded muted, as if it’d been spoken by someone far away. A shiver crawled through her body as if an ice cube had been rubbed along her spine.
“As in the Devil…Satan?” she said.
“The very one.” The Mambo had continued pacing.
“Impossible,” Devin said. “This can’t be.”
“That’s why I placed their souls into the body of dolls and put them on that island. That’s the only place they would be safe from the Lord of Darkness. If they were ever to leave the island and returned to a human form, he’s free to take their souls.”
“Did they know that?” Devin asked.
The Mambo shook her head. “When I placed the curse on them, I was angry. I never expected they’d figure out how to get out of the doll bodies and back into a human form.”
“Well, they figured it out all right,” Rosie said. “And there’s lots more souls trapped in lots more doll bodies on that island. Or, there was until Devin blew it up.”
“Something went wrong.” The Mambo shook her head. “Someone or something has intervened. I was the only one that knew that curse.”
“I tried to blow it up,” Devin said. “The last we saw of it, most of the island was on fire. I can’t imagine too many of the dolls survived.”
“This is terrible. Devin, what are we going to do?” Tears welled in Rosie’s eyes. She was surprised that she was actually able to cry real tears. “I want my body back. It wasn’t the best body, but it was my body and I liked it. I want it back.”
Devin sat back down beside Rosie and hugged her. She wiped a tear from a corner of Rosie’s eye.
“Don’t cry, Rosie. We’ll get our bodies back. Devil or no Devil.” She turned and faced the Mambo.
“Will we have time?”
“You might. It’ll take Guede Nimbo awhile to find them. They’re in your bodies so that’ll make it challenging for him. It complicates things a bit. Right now, they’re like valuable inventory that’s been misplaced. But he’ll figure out soon enough where they are. I wouldn’t waste any time.”
“What do we need to do to make sure we get to them before Satan does?” Devin asked.
The Mambo didn’t answer.
A tsunami of panic crashed over and flooded Rosie.
“What do we need to do? Please help us,” she begged.
The Mambo stood and gently placed Zeolie onto the floor. The rat curled in front of the fire and continued napping. The Mambo loomed over Devin and Rosie, gazing down at them as if she were reading their very souls before turning and strutting across the room toward a bookshelf. She paused in front of rows of books, all neatly lined with their worn vertical, leather bindings exposed. A solitary fingertip ran across each book, until pausing at one that was smaller than the others. She stood for a few moments with her finger resting on the book before reaching and pulling it from its spot on the shelf. The other books had brown leather covers, this one, however, was black. Gold gilded lettering decorated the spine though Rosie couldn’t make out what the words said. The corners of the book were decorated with an ornamental silver metal plate and something, a design, was embossed on the front cover.
The Mambo held the book for a few moments, stroking its cover the same way she’d comforted the rat. She released a long, slow exhale, then pushed it back into its spot on the shelf. Her hand lingered on it before lowering to her side. She turned and faced Devin and Rosie.
“I can’t help you.”
Devin stood. Her tiny doll fists were clenched.
“Can’t or won’t?”
“You must go back,” the Mambo said. “I can’t risk it.”
“No. We won’t leave until–”
“You dare defy me?” The words blasted from the Mambo’s mouth and with them, a discharge of foul-smelling air that crossed the room. The wave of wind blew Devin backward. She slammed against the side rail of the bench and grabbed onto it, preventing herself from being blown down.
The Mambo’s face contorted as her lips curled back, exposing a mouthful of plentiful teeth, most noticeably four oversized canines. Rosie expected her to begin hissing.
Rosie reached for Devin.
“Dev–”
The Mambo closed her eyes, threw her head back, raised her arms and chanted.
“Ah degroda. Ah domango–”
She was interrupted by a rumbling that shook the ground. Devin tumbled on top of Rosie, and Rosie tightly clung to her. The Mambo stopped chanting and grabbed onto the bookshelf for support. Her face held the same look of confusion as Devin’s. Items on the shelves rattled and tumbled down. The flames of the candles blew out. They were instantly immersed in a dimmed gray gloom with the only light coming from the raging flames that blazed in the fireplace.
In the far corner of the room, a dark shadow appeared. Slowly, the shaded silhouette filled with what looked to Rosie like sparkling molecular granules. They were a combination of bright reds and dazzling blacks. The flashes of light swirled, counterclockwise, faster and faster and as they did, the wind inside the hut picked up speed.
“Guede Nimbo,” Rosie muttered.
“Oh shit, not again,” Devin said.
The whirling particles took shape but the shape of what, Rosie couldn’t tell.
Devin and Rosie lay on the bench. The earthquake-like vibration in the room made it impossible to stand. They were both mesmerized by what was happening.
The Mambo, however, had no trouble moving and breezed past them. She grabbed her staff. It was the same staff they’d seen Mambo Cielo use. She strode to the side of the room where the apparition had by now almost fully appeared and waited with Zeolie perched by her side as dutifully as a guard dog.
When the swirling stopped and the wind died down, before them stood a creature of sorts, the likes of which Rosie had never seen or imagined. It was a combination man, animal and monster.
Whatever it was, it was taller and larger in stature than the Mambo, with wide shoulders and covered in scales. The scales were shiny and reddish black, the color of burnt meat. It had the face of a raven, iridescent blue and black. The eyes were blood red. In the center of the eyes, instead of black pupils, orange yellow flames flickered.
The most noticeable feature on the beast, however, was its mouth. A pair of wide, beak-like lips protruded over multiple rows of sharp pointy teeth. The mouth widened and a long, thin, red, forked tongue, like that of a snake, flickered out several times, as if by doing so, it tested the air.
Two thick black horns rose from the top of its skull and curled downward like those of a ram.
Its chest was wide and expanded greatly with each inhale. Massive dark hands with long, black fingernails that looked more like claws, hung at the end of burly arms. Its thighs bulged with muscle and were slightly bent, like those of a cougar, ready to pounce. Heels lifted high off the ground, like ankles of a horse, and instead of feet, it towered over a large pair of hooves that reminded Rosie of those of a camel that she’d seen in a zoo once. A thick, long tail, similar to that of a lion’s tail, attached to the end of its spine. The tail glowed red and gave off sparks. The very tip of it formed the shape of a pyramid.
The beast spun around, and when it did, the end of its tail landed against the cottage door, scorching a triangular shape into the wood. Rosie immediately recognized the burn mark as the same one she’d noticed when they’d entered Mambo Cielo’s hut. It was the same door, same burn mark, and right now, a thin stream of smoke rose from it.
Whatever it was that stood before them was massive, dark, and filled the air with an electric energy that was almost tangible. And it wasn’t a good energy.
Rosie tried but couldn’t control her body from trembling.
Devin stood and stepped in front of Rosie.
Rosie remained seated and peered out from behind Devin’s gown.
“The Devil,” she whispered.
“What do you want?” the Mambo’s voice flaunted defiance.
“You know what I wan
t,” the creature hissed and as the words were spoken, the air vibrated which caused an unrelenting pressure in Rosie’s ears. Both she and Devin clasped their palms to the sides of their heads at the same time.
It pointed a bony finger at Rosie and Devin.
“You can’t have them,” the Mambo said. “They’re not yours. You’ve made a mistake. They’re not who you think they are. Ria and Naomi switched souls with these two and are now in their bodies. You’ll never find them.”
Rosie watched in horror as the creature’s lips curled back. If a vulture could smile, that’s what this beast looked like at that moment. Its fiery red gaze laser-beam stared at Rosie with such intensity she quickly looked away for fear it would burn her eyes.
It spoke again and Rosie and Devin crumbled from the pain the words caused in their ears.
“So. That’s what happened? I’d lost track of them. Now that I know where they are, I’ll send Guede Nimbo to collect what’s rightfully mine.”
“You’ll never find them.” The Mambo raised her staff and began to chant. “Ah degroda. Ah domango–”
Rosie stared in disbelief at the drama that unfolded. Her brain was busy trying to figure out what was happening and what she should do when Devin yelled, “Rosie! Get the book!”
Rosie didn’t have time to think. She scooted down the bench and bolted toward the bookshelf. She’d only made it a few feet when a movement caught her eye. It was Zeolie. The rat had jumped into action and scampered in her direction. Devin, however, moved with equal speed and as the rat passed before her, leapt onto the mass of moving fur. Her body splayed on top of it. The rat’s squeals pierced the air as it fought viciously to get away. Devin pressed her weight onto the head, holding it against the floor to keep the rodent from biting her.
Rosie scrambled from one shelf up to the next as quickly as she could.