by Toby Tate
He wiggled his toes and fingers, then each leg and arm in turn, checking for sprains or broken bones. Amazingly, there were none. He didn’t seem to have any bruised ribs, though his butt was sore from the hard landing on the stone floor.
He tried to stand. His legs wobbled slightly and he felt some dizziness, but other than some minor scrapes, he was fine.
“Guess Jason won‘t laugh at my tai chi any-more,” he mumbled, then turned to try and locate the movement he had seen while hanging precariously from the old ladder. Looking in every direction in the darkness, he noticed some lights in the distance about a hundred yards from where he stood. Hunter thought about calling out, but decided against it. It would be best to maintain anonymity. If they had seen him fall, they probably thought he was injured or dead.
Using what little light filtered in from the opening above, he began to move slowly, feeling his way around the stalagmites, stepping cautiously. From research he had done for vacations that he and Lisa had never taken, Hunter knew that many of the primeval forest caves in the Bahamas had pits in them, much like the one he had come down to reach this cave. Those pits might lead to other caves, or could possibly be booby trapped. He knew the only snakes on the islands were small, non-poisonous boas and racers, but he didn’t want to step on one nonetheless, or fall into a pit full of them.
Hunter continued to move inexorably forward, knowing that Lisa’s very life may depend on his timeliness. If only he had taken one of Jason’s guns. He had never particularly liked guns, had seen too many people killed back home on the reservation. But he also believed in the right of self-defense, and right now some blue steel would be quite comforting.
He could hear voices, one female and many male, but couldn’t quite make out the words.
* * *
“I have to see if he’s all right.” Lisa fought against Jonathan’s iron grip, trying to get back to where she had seen the body fall from the ladder.
Jonathan tried talking some sense into her. “Listen, Lisa, you can’t go to him. If he’s hurt, then that other guy, Justin…”
“Jason.”
“Whatever...his friend will take care of him. But if we’re going to help, we need to maintain some element of surprise. Understand?”
Jonathan could feel Lisa’s arms relax in his grip. He could also hear her quietly sobbing, trying unsuccessfully to gain control of her emotions. He turned her slowly around to face him.
“Look, I know how you feel. But do you think Blackbeard is just going to let you go? He would follow you and then likely kill Hunter and his friend, too.”
Lisa slowly nodded her head, wiping her face with the back of her sleeve. Jonathan released his grip.
“Besides, that guy is one tough bastard. I doubt the fall even hurt him.”
Lisa sniffled, a smile creeping up on her face. “You’re probably right.”
A commotion at the gravesite caused Caesar and Aiden to cry out in surprise.
Jonathan and Lisa moved closer to the grave.
Lisa shone her flashlight on Teach, who held an object in his hand as he rose to stand. She cast her light to the ground, and saw that inside the shallow hole lay the skeletal remains of Israel Hands. What remained of the corpse’s dusty, brittle clothes covered the dry bones. And in the weak light, Lisa spied black eye sockets and grinning, yellow teeth.
Looking back at Teach, she saw his eyes light up as if he had just discovered the Holy Grail. He held a book in his huge hands. She knew by looking at it that it was the book they had been seeking.
One thing that disturbed Lisa was the physical appearance of the book’s cover. Like the fictional Necronomicon, or Book of the Dead, the cover looked as if it was made of human skin. In fact, it was a face, stretched hideously out of proportion to cover the book. The skin had obviously been treated somehow, like tanning leather, to keep it from rotting over the centuries and to protect what was inside from the elements. The eyes were closed and the mouth was contorted in agony, as if its owner had protested, but to no avail.
Lisa felt herself beginning to gag, and closed her eyes against the horrific sight.
Teach turned back toward the far side of the cave and continued on, leaving the grave open. Lisa felt almost as if it were sacrilegious to leave the grave defiled, with Israel Hands lying there open to the elements and to the eyes of the living. But she held her tongue. The group reluctantly followed Teach, and after a few dozen yards, Jonathan could see they had come to a dead end. They stopped, shining their lights on the wall, searching for an opening. There was none.
Jonathan sighed. “Great. Now what do we do?”
Teach reached out to the wall and touched a single stone that seemed to be embedded there. To everyone’s surprise, the stone sank into a hole and the wall began to move.
Jonathan flinched and took a step back. “Holy shit! What happened?”
Caesar’s eyes were wide with astonishment. “I don’t remember this place.” .
The wall, which had looked to be solid, was actually a large stone wheel, and the group could see it as they shone their flashlights around its outer edges. It slowly rolled sideways on the other side of the wall, revealing a dark passage.
Jonathan squinted, trying to make out whether the faint glow he saw coming from within was actually there, or only his imagination.
“You know, I could be wrong, but I think I see light coming from inside.”
Blackbeard held up his lantern and stepped through the opening.
“You’re not wrong,” he said.
Sixty-six
“To tell you the truth, I don‘t really want to go in there,” Lisa said to no one in particular, eyeing the passage through which Teach had just disappeared.
Jonathan held up his lantern and peered inside. “I’d have to agree with you on that one. This place is already creepy enough without secret passageways.”
As they stood deciding what to do next, Aiden made up their minds for them. “Go on and step through. Blackbeard is waiting for us.”
Jonathan, Caesar, and Lisa whirled around and saw Aiden aiming his nine-millimeter Glock in their direction, his wild eyes gleaming in the lantern light.
Caesar glanced at his companions. “Well, I guess he means business. Let’s go.”
The echo of their footsteps on the cavern floor sounded hollow and much too loud as they made their way down the passage. Jonathan, who had spent many years in caves both underwater and underground, held his light close to the walls, inspecting its surface. “It looks as if these walls are man-made,” he mused. “It doesn’t have the rough, uneven texture of the walls in most primeval forest caves. Somebody dug this passage by hand.”
Just as Jonathan had finished speaking, the group came upon another smaller chamber, adjacent to the one they had just left. It was a room about the size of a large house, nearly rectangular in shape and devoid of cracks, crevices, stalagmites, or stalactites. There were no vines or tree roots growing from the ceiling or the walls, which were polished stone.
In the center of the room was a primitive altar that seemed to grow out of the cave floor. The altar was covered with small, wax candles, and beside it stood two shadowy figures. One of them was Blackbeard; the other was someone none of them had seen before. The group turned and looked at one another, then back at the dark pair.
Lisa was the first to speak to their new guest. “Who are you?”
The man was dark-skinned, likely a native of the island, and wore only a simple robe. His hair hung in long dreadlocks, and when he grinned, Lisa saw that his teeth were all capped in gold crowns. He was an older man, maybe mid-sixties, and he looked frail. He stood with his fingers interlocked, as if he were a professor about to give a lecture to a class of undergraduates. The grin he wore was decidedly malevolent.
The man gave Jonathan the creeps.
“I can see why Captain Blackbeard has chosen you,” the man said to Lisa. “You have a lot of spirit.”
Lisa’s eyes filled with fire and her chee
ks became flushed. “Nobody has chosen me, you old—”
Before she could finish her sentence, Jonathan grabbed her arm and whispered harshly into her ear. “Not now. This isn’t the time.”
Lisa glanced at Jonathan, and he could see the rage burning in her eyes. At the moment, there was nothing he, or any of them, could do about their situation.
“We have waited a very long time for this day, have we not, my friend?” the old man said to Blackbeard.
Jonathan, who had been to the Bahamas many times, thought it strange that the man spoke with a slight English accent. The old priest, or whatever he was, did not speak with inflections common to the small chain of islands—a mix of Shakespearian English, African, and local island dialect.
As they watched the old man, his eyes seemed to momentarily roll back in his head, and then quickly return to normal. “It also seems we have another visitor. Mr. Aiden, please help our friend find his way.”
Aiden turned and disappeared through the passageway. Moments later, a figure came into view, followed by Aiden and his ever-present Glock.
Lisa sucked in a breath as Hunter was led into the cave.
Sixty-seven
Nearly as soon as Hunter had walked into the chamber, Lisa threw herself into his arms, kissing him with all the passion she could muster under the circumstances.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the silver cross necklace, then gently placed it around her neck. “You dropped this,” he said.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered breathlessly.
Hunter held Lisa at arm’s length, looking intently into her eyes. “So did I. We heard you scream. Are you okay?”
“Scream? Oh, yeah. The bats.”
Hunter pulled Lisa toward him and looked around the room, nodding in turn at Jonathan and Caesar.
“Well, I see the gang’s all here. So, what happens now?”
The perpetually-grinning old man held out his arms, like a preacher about to deliver a sermon. “Now, we begin the ceremony.”
Hunter let go of Lisa, and took a step toward the altar. “Wait, before we start, do you mind if I ask a few questions?”
Aiden started to make a move with his Glock, but the old man held up his hand. “No, let him speak. There is no hurry and there is nothing he can do to stop the inevitable. Why should we not answer his questions? After all, he is a reporter, is he not? He can take the story to the world when we are finished. That is, if he is still alive.”
Hunter stared at the old man, momentarily stunned that his delay tactics had actually worked, and a little uneasy about the answer itself. But his mind was full of questions. “Exactly who are you?”
The man furrowed his brow. “It makes no difference who I am. Those whom I serve are all that matters. But you may call me Oya. I am a bokor, a priest of the Vodun house who serves the Loa with both hands. I have studied in your American universities, as well as in London. Once, I was even a professor of theology. But that was long ago.”
“Those whom you serve?”
“The Great Old Ones. Some call them demons, cast down from heaven long ago. They once ruled the earth, even the universe, but they did blasphemous things, rebelling against the elder gods, and were cast down to the earth and sea. Some were banished to distant planets, along with their master, Cthuhlu.”
Hunter shook his head in disbelief. “Listen, old man, I think you’ve been reading a little too much H. P. Lovecraft. Besides, you said you were a Voodoo priest.”
Oya laughed. “It is true. But I have studied many religions, and virtually all contain one central theme—the struggle between good and evil, between the soul and the mind, the spirit and the flesh. And who is to say which shall win and which shall lose? Perhaps neither, or perhaps both.”
Hunter thought Oya actually believed his own double-talk, as crazy as it sounded. He was more than happy to let the old man continue, which gave Hunter more time to think of a plan.
The priest gestured around the chamber. “In this very room, I have seen terrifying and amazing things that would make your heart stop beating. Yet, that is nothing compared to the things we shall witness on this day. We shall bring forth powers that will shake the very foundations of the world.”
Hunter found the old man’s proclamations a bit disturbing, so he decided to bring the subject down to a more mundane level. “I’ve seen the power that exists. The mere fact that a man who was once nothing more than a barnacle-encrusted bag of bones is now alive is enough to convince me that it’s real. But I don’t think you worked alone. I believe you had a little help in raising Blackbeard from the dead.”
The old man nodded his head, his black dreads swaying with the movement. “You’re quite right, my young friend. I enlisted the help of Mr. Aiden here, possessor of the skull of Blackbeard, as well as another person of your acquaintance.”
Hunter turned and glared at Jonathan. “I knew it. You sleazy bastard. It was you all along, wasn’t it?”
Jonathan stared back at Hunter in wide-eyed dismay. “Me? You think I had something to do with this?”
Caesar shook his head, putting a hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “I assure you, Mr. Singleton, my grandson had no part in raising Blackbeard from the dead. He does not possess enough knowledge of the black arts to do such a thing.”
Hunter narrowed his eyes at Caesar.
Caesar slowly shook his head. “I know you think I may have had a hand in this, but believe me when I say I want no part. I only wish to stop it. I converted to Christianity long ago, and as you can see,” Caesar swept a hand from chest to thigh, indicating his aging body, “the spell of eternal youth was broken.”
Hunter was exasperated. He thought he had this thing all figured out. “Well, if not you, then who?”
As if on cue, someone hiding in the shadows of the passageway cleared his throat, and into the light of the chamber, flashlight in one hand and pistol in the other, stepped Jason Summerfield.
Sixty-eight
Jonathan, Lisa, and Hunter stared in shock at Jason. Even Caesar seemed astonished by this latest turn of events. Aiden simply kept his Glock trained on the group.
Blackbeard and Oya watched the proceedings with mild amusement, entertained by the drama unfolding before them.
Hunter found it difficult to speak. His face flushed with the anger of betrayal, but finally he managed to move his lips. “Tell me you just arrived in the nick of time to save us all, and that what I’m thinking is totally wrong.”
Jason chuckled and shook his head. “You know, you steal my girl away from me, the only one I ever really loved, and you expect me to just forget it?” he said, his voice tinged with venom.
“You mean this whole thing is about a woman?” Hunter glanced at Lisa. “No offense.”
“None taken,” she said, keeping her eyes on Jason.
“Besides,” Hunter said to his former friend, “you gave her up when you went your separate ways after school.”
“I intended on getting her back, but that never happened, thanks to you.” Jason shook his head, a sneer of contempt on his lips. “You don’t really know as much about me as you think, Hunter, nor do you, Lisa. I spent many years here in the Caribbean, studying their culture, their language and their religion. I traveled the world and dabbled in other religions, discovering the darkest, most profound secrets of each, taking notes on them and eventually applying them in the real world. The things I accomplished were amazing. I created my own hybrid religion, combining the most powerful aspects of each to do what most would consider unthinkable.”
Hunter’s eyes bored into Jason. “Like raising the dead?”
“Of course. Thanks to Jonathan, I received an e-mail from a colleague in Raleigh who knew that I might be able to decipher the writing on a certain animal skin that was found on Blackbeard’s old ship, the Adventure. It was written in an ancient code, a mixture of Latin and other languages used by old shamans to fool the authorities, and it just so happens I could read it.”<
br />
Caesar looked at Jonathan, surprised by the revelation.
Jonathan’s eyes flashed with rage. He moved towards Jason, but eyed the pistol and stopped short. “You sorry fuck, you killed my best friend. And for that, I’m going to kill you.”
Jason ignored the remark and continued his exposition, enjoying his moment in the spotlight. “I knew when I saw that animal skin scroll that it was the break I had been waiting for. Teach had planted that scroll on the ship knowing that if anything ever happened to him, he would eventually be able to lure someone to the ship and they would find the bottle. Someone did. I have been studying with Oya for some time, and when we discussed our knowledge of Blackbeard’s occult dealings, we realized that we could raise the demon and control it, at least temporarily.
“I went to Ocracoke Island and cast the spell from a deserted beach. I knew Teach would go after the skull first chance he got. Then it was just a matter of following him. Only the Death Defier knew where the secret book of spells was hidden. But even raising the dead is child’s play compared to the things I have uncovered. There are beings that wait on the other side of the membrane, a wall which separates our universes, ready to reclaim their rightful place as the rulers of this world. And you,” he gestured at Caesar, “are going to help us with your knowledge of the book.”
“So where do Lisa and I fit into all this?” Hunter asked.
“I knew that if I brought you along on this quest, Lisa would follow, and Jonathan was my insurance that it would happen.”
Jonathan shot Jason the finger.
Jason ignored the gesture and continued eyeing Hunter. “I knew that if I told you the story of the Diablero, your curiosity would be aroused. And I wanted you here to witness the resurrection of the Old Ones, and to have someone you love taken from you, as she was taken from me. Of course, I realize that Lisa will belong to Blackbeard, or whichever of the gods ends up with her. But at least I will have the satisfaction of knowing you won’t have her.”