by Slay (epub)
But amongst the pale eyed, animalistic mobs, she saw white hooded sheets, some adorned with the crest of blue flowers on their lapels: The Order of the Maison de bleu fleur-de-lis. Entitlement made them believe that the chants of useless prayers and manufactured scriptures that they had tortured out of her people could harm her. But what they failed to realize was, that their words were tainted and corrupted by the evils of what they had done to her people to bring them to and keep them in this stolen land.
The jarring sounds of their words, hymns, and prayers were like lemon juice in a wound. They stung, but she would still kill them. Horses rushed by her, some pulling bodies, others with carts. Comfort looked on in horror. Her community was being erased and torn asunder.
She shrieked for it all to end when she saw a little girl, crying and holding a boy’s hand. Now, instinct took over. With a feral hiss, she fought her body from shifting. It was a weakness for her, and one only used as a last resort. Otherwise, she’d be vulnerable for the taking.
Clergy fought with several of Easy’s military comrades, men, and women who were shop owners in the town. Shots rang. Comfort ran, pivoting away from hands that tried to snatch at her. They grabbed terrified children. Generations of warrior training allowed for her to swing the butt of her Winchester in a swooping curve to slam it against the enemy’s face. Pleased, she licked the red liquid from her clenched knuckle in swift brashness.
To her right she heard a hunter yell. “Sweet blood of darkness! That which you are is our leaders sovereign right, false sanguine breed! We have the right to the sun. You are the darkness! Return our birthright.”
His hate filled slurs laced in stolen and bastardized enchantments by her people and mangled Latin of their religion was used against her. Her eyes weep blood and she recoiled in pain. Rage filled her heart.
In the tongue of her mother, she spat out, “Yuh not worthy of di curse! Mi people were di sanguine root of time! I be anointed, not you!”
She shifted the pistol in her grasp to snap his neck back and expose his blushed flesh. This was her nature. Her fangs sank into the enemy like a viper, tearing open his windpipe. She baptized the land with him. Everything was sprayed in blood.
Comfort’s body warmed from the sucrose taste of him. He reminded her of candy rum. She licked her lips in bliss at the spiciness then muttered her thanks in the language his blood spoke, Catalonian. In the dark fire of the night, she saw threatening fangs of her enemy as they snapped at her, attempting to tear at her flesh.
In the lieu of the rabid yells of bestial rage pointed at those with her skin tone, she heard a child scream, “Miss Comfort!”
A raging maniac threw a lit bottle of oil where she ran. The sensation of flames against her flesh made her panic but it put purpose in her movement. Her speed kept the flames from damaging her life. She saw people motioning for her to come towards them and she did. They chanted in the old tongue of her Motherland while they ran. Each enchantment gave her strength to absorb the fire into her lantern power.
More hunters appeared out of smoke and the child kept screaming her name. “Miss Comfort, help!”
The wire she held onto, swung in the air. It sliced in an arch at her stalkers causing them to burn then flame into ash. Conjure chants came from her lips. The land rippled with her will, pushing mobs into the sides of box trains near the town’s tracks.
As she rushed towards the child, a fist landed against her head. World spinning, she dropped to the ground, water spilled from her eyes. The angry face of a man, a regular townie, stared down at her. His face was contorted in primal rage. His spittle rained all over her as he called her various hateful words.
When he grabbed her ankle pulling at her skirts, she screamed and released her supernatural strength. One boot into his chest sent him flying. A silver wolf appeared from the smoke. It flew in the air, taking the man down by his throat tearing into flesh.
Comfort was grateful. The saving grace allowed her to get up and retrieve the crying child. As she settled the little one on her hip, she saw the wolf nod at her, then shadow them. His scent hit her, and she knew that was Mr. Coleman.
“Miss Comfort…my mama!” interrupted her thoughts.
“We’ll find her baby girl. We will, and we’ll get to safety.”
In her arms, she held the young child on her hip with her gun in her free hand. Comfort ran with the will of survival. Her shotgun rung in the air. She prayed for the future of her people and her baby within. As the Mississippi River edge greeted her, she stumbled then fell.
The scent of burned flesh made her howl in rage, “Oh, Kitty!”
A boy child lay at her feet in a ball clutching a woman. Both were lifeless, murdered by the crazed mob of ruddy pale face goons. Charred flesh of her mother’s once beautiful brown skinned body lay at her feet. Her mother walked in restrained ire into the stillness of the dark reflective Mississippi River toward a waiting riverboat with a group of shaken people behind her. She and a few others with mouths wide wailed to the ancestors, bared deathly jagged fangs dripping in blood.
Those who stood in anger like her mother with their flesh gone, changed into various animals: wolves, birds that glowed, and more. Others reached the boat to travel up the river towards Alton, Illinois. As they drifted away with the grief of their loss, Comfort howled in her wolf form staring at the burning city. Easy, a continent away at war in France, felt it bond with his rage. The loss of his brothers and sisters in combat, triggered his protective defenses to go into hibernation and hiding. He promised to protect the future from their enemy, including Comfort and their child.
The pain was real. The trauma was debilitating and through it all, a voice cut through the blood memory with a message: a child was missing.
“Crimson?”
Lost in her mother’s blood story of the past, twenty-three-year-old Crimson Noble snapped out of her haze at the muffled sound of her name. It was the 21st century and not the ‘Red Summer’ of 1917. She was at the City Museum on a field trip with her cousin’s supernatural kindergarten class. She blinked then glanced at her worried cousin whose long two-twist braids fell over her shoulder. The tips of her fingernails briefly glowed with teal energy while she rapidly waved her hands in front of Crimson’s face and snapped her fingers.
“Oseye!” Justice used Crimson’s birth name instead of her nickname.
Her cousin was partially deaf and relied on reading lips, hearing aids, and American Sign Language to communicate, even though she could also speak.
“I’m sorry,” Crimson signed and spoke simultaneously.
“What did you see? Are we okay? Your eyes went dark with the sight cousin,” Justice rapidly signed then laid a hand against the back of Crimson’s neck. A light brush of power calmed her and flowed over her scalp. It felt like gentle waves.
She settled in the healing, then looked around at the kids. “Count your class, cousin.”
“Count my wha—?” Justice glanced at her in worry then gave a quick nod.
Her cousin snapped her fingers then clapped her hands, signally for her students to come together. “Time for the count up song, ready?”
All the children clamored together in excitement saying, “Yay!”
While Justice handled her students, Crimson backed away then waited a bit. When cleared, she turned to scan the crowded atrium of the museum.
“Tell me who’s missing,” Crimson asked within her cousin’s mind.
“Kamil Davis.”
At the same time, Crimson stopped at the customer service desk to ask for help.
“How old? Type of supe and attributes, please.”
“My kiddos say he had to go to the bathroom. Check the bathrooms…” Justice’s muted voice paused then continued. “He’s six with light brown skin, and eyes like yours. Wavy fade, and dimples. He’s in a Black Panther shirt with custom Black Panther Nikes. He’s a conjure descendent. He’s six, and he can transport objects to him.”
Crimson was on it. Her anxiety made her ha
nds shake in fear. The blood legacy in her was strong and she was afraid of it, afraid to embrace the curse and turn. Two hundred and sixty-one years ago, her parents were trafficked here. Her parents were forced to tend to a people who stole them from their birthland of Dahomey, Benin. A violation that resulted in the loss of their culture, village, each other, and an event that would change them both into something indescribable during that time.
From that, a pact to protect those made like her parents were developed as a means of survival. It wasn’t perfect, Black folk were still dying in the streets of St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois. But now the unfinished business of the past was being revived for power. There was no way she could allow this. Crimson stopped her frantic search and stared in horror.
In the middle of the museum atrium floor in a bundle was Kamil’s jacket and a blue flower, the insignia of The Order of the Maison de bleu fleur-de-lis. Zoning out, her hand mirrored the same actions her mother took generations ago. Crimson unclasped the gris-gris on her wrist and felt a tenderness for the first time in her gums. The Order of the Maison had returned, and her people were never going to be safe.
Snake Hill Blues
John Linwood Grant
New York City, 1927
No one recognized the dead woman, though her face was turned up to the sky, nothing between her blank eyes and a threat of March rain. She was dressed fancy here, cheap there, like a dancing girl who’d been given a present or two. Late twenties by her full cheeks; slightly older by the lines on her neck.
One of the row’s residents, out on the sidewalk for an early morning smoke, thought that she must have tumbled down the basement steps, maybe hit her head.
The traffic cop they dragged over from 123rd and Lenox wasn’t so sure.
“Looks set there,” he said, rubbing one dark cheek with a gloved hand. “Yessuh, looks like she was set there, out o’ the way and tidy.”
This observation spread talk fast as oil on a griddle. People came down from their flats, remarking on her leaden color, on the cuts across her bare arms, and soon there was more gossip than sense.
The officer, better used to halting Studebakers at the lights, sent a boot-black to fetch a beat cop; the boot-black shared the news with anyone else he fancied.
The morgue wagon took the body away at 8.15 am, less than an hour later. The man who had found her watched it drive away, no expression on his face. He was Italian, with a job to go to.
Wondering about dead colored girls didn’t pay the rent.
Mamma Lucy sat in her room at the Ivory Club, hands in her lap, her mojo bag clutched tight, and a half-quart of whiskey on a shelf by the window, inviting her over. For once she thanked it kindly, but let it be. She would have to fess up to her host – it was time to leave the city.
Brick, concrete and glass; too much steel and too many people, all cramped up close. Every mirror and every window showed her someone who needed to be back walking the long roads with dirt under her feet. Back to the crop-shares, to the mean shacks where there was a welcome they couldn’t afford, and the small towns with small troubles...
She’d tried. Borrowed an abandoned pair of boots from by the Harlem River, and crammed her big feet into them; it was worse than scraping horny soles against the sidewalk. She’d been invited to fish fries and funerals, to stylish jazz clubs and to cramped house parties where no one asked what was in the jugs, but even so… it was too fast here.
If they wanted root-work, they wanted it yesterday, and their idea of conjure was gaudy shopfronts; incense by the pound and fancy vinegars by the gallon. Everyone – almost everyone – wanted fame and fortune now, no time to wait for a candle to burn.
So she’d sold the boots for twenty cents, and bought eggs for a journey. There was a slow train heading down Richmond way in two days; she could catch her breath on that and get the city out of her lungs.
Florence Garvey, owner of the Ivory, would be disappointed. Florence was a good soul, but wasn’t immune to Mamma Lucy’s value. The speakeasy had a gen-u-ine conjure-woman staying, and that brought in rubberneckers, blustering skeptics, and a handful of true petitioners besides. They all bought drinks and told their friends about the Ivory.
You heard? Miss Garvey, she done got a conjure-woman. Heared it was the one as saved Moses Clayton’s girl, when she got sick to dyin’.
And much more like that, rumors up from the South. That Aunt Caroline Dye had taught Mamma Lucy – or that, Lord save us, Mamma was Aunt Caroline, back for her people. They wanted to set her on their every problem, like a possum hound with too many masters.
An awkward knock on the door, and Florence put her head into the room. A face with strength, and looks to catch many an eye, but sorrowful this evening.
“They found Ruby,” said the younger woman, hesitant on the threshold.
Ruby Jones, one of the Ivory dancers, pretty and prone to seeing too many men. The girl had been missing two days, her room empty, and Florence had been on edge about it.
Mamma Lucy beckoned her in, bade her sit on the bed next to her.
“Ain’t no good news on them lips, girl.”
“No.” Florence wiped at her eyes with a square of linen. “Pat Corrigan, from the Precinct – he came in just now, said there was a body in the police morgue. He’d seen Ruby dance here a few times; he was… was certain.”
The conjure-woman placed one large hand on the young woman’s knee.
“Better world ahead o’ her.” But she felt it then, the heat between her shoulder blades that always changed her plans. “This Officer Corrigan, he know how she passed?”
Florence shook her head. “Just that she’s dead. I… I dont...”
Mamma Lucy waited, and when she saw that no more was coming, she stood up.
She had liked Ruby well enough, even seen a bit of herself in the girl – outspoken, even forward, just as the conjure-woman had been at that age. And although she’d clucked a time or two at Ruby’s tales, Lucy had once been no stranger to menfolk...
“You settle here a while. Mamma’ll go see.” She grabbed her carpet bag and headed for the street.
A cab and a couple of questions took her where she needed to be. It was only a holding room beneath the Precinct House, really, where the dead lay until they could be assigned to one or another final destination. No one stopped the gangling old Black woman in the faded print dress or asked her where she thought she was going. They chewed on that afterwards, wondering why they’d let her by, but found no answer.
The morgue attendant was a pale stick of a boy, barely able to speak to his visitor; when Mamma Lucy asked for Ruby Jones, he stuttered an objection but pointed to the far slab, where a sheeted body lay.
They’d undressed the girl, but nothing more. Knife and bone-saw were yet to come, if they bothered at all. It was unlikely.
The conjure-woman murmured a psalm as she stroked the cold flesh.
“Ain’t nothin’ here but the clay, Ruby darlin’, so don’t you fret.” She lifted one of the girl’s arms, peering at the bloody marks on the smooth skin. “You been missin’ since Tuesday, so where’s you been?”
The wounds weren’t right.
“What made these, boy?”
The attendant shuffled over, keeping his distance.
“Looks like a blade, ma’am.” He leaned forward. “But... wouldn’t say that was all.”
She warmed to him as he took a damp cloth and wiped Ruby Jones’s forearm clean with a certain respect. There were cuts, livid cuts, but underneath.
“Sort of queer.” He wiped harder, removing crusted blood. “Like she was bit first, maybe by some dog, then a feller tried to –”
“Hide them marks by cutting her. And this feller in a hurry, not doing so fine a job.”
Her roving, milk-and-honey eye fixed on him, and he swallowed.
“Yes, ma’am.” He glanced at the body. “No offense, ma’am, but for a colored girl, she looks kinda… pale. Bloodless.”
&nb
sp; He wasn’t wrong. The exposed skin had a gray tinge to it, more lifeless than even the dead should be.
“How d’they call you, son?”
“Alan. Alan Zwieski.”
She showed him big horse teeth. “Well, Alan Zwieski, why don’t you wait by that there door, jess outside, and if a soul should come, tell them that Mamma Lucy is grievin’ a while. Reckon you can do that?”
A nod.
When the boy had left, the conjure-woman took out her mojo bag and watered it with a little whiskey. Placing it between her feet, she found a blue candle from her carpet bag, dressed it with sweet vinegar, and lit the wick. She set the candle on the edge of the slab.
“They done you wrong, Ruby Jones, and that ain’t no hound bite neither.”
The candle flame flickered; the silver dime at Mamma Lucy’s ankle went dark, then cleared again. No haint in the girl, but plain wickedness had been there sure enough. Been and gone, taking life with it.
She wrote Ruby’s name nine times on a slip of paper, and placed that back into her carpet bag, wrapped in red flannel and soaked in blessing oil.
“Rest now, girl. You done with this world, and amen to that.”
Mamma Lucy pulled a sour face as she snuffed out the candle. The Richmond train might have to wait.
She had herself a blood-walker, somewhere nearby in Harlem.
Jazz blared, then whispered, as Johnny Pane and the Harlem Boys practiced on the Ivory’s main stage; a dancer tapped her way across the polished floor. Roadhouses were more Mamma Lucy’s style. Roadhouses on dirt roads, with many miles between them and earth between her toes. But the Ivory Club speakeasy was fair-square.
Sitting between Harlem proper and the tenements to the south and east, it was a calm oasis, a known black and tan which offered a moment of escape for anyone, of any color, as long as they minded their manners. Most trouble came from outsiders seeking the Harlem ‘experience’, gawking at the locals and drawing attention to themselves by getting drunk, or being stung over a reefer deal.