“I don’t know what that means,” Ben said, but he thought he partly understood.
“You will learn more from your own Mami Wata soon. The rest maybe you don’t need to know – only the Great Vodu can decide.”
The old man went back to poking at the dirt with his stick. Ben thought the symbols he made should hold some meaning for him, but they didn’t. The Elder continued.
“The Ashe that grows now inside you has been yours always and is focused by the ring, but not from it. You will learn on your own how to use it, and I cannot help you with this, nor can Mami Wata.”
Ben felt the world around him shimmer and bow and the sane part of his brain he still clung to reminded him that anything is possible in dreams. The woods around him reshaped – that seemed the only real word for the change – and he recognized the forest it became. Without looking back, he knew he leaned now against a ramble shack house in the bayou that could not possibly still exist. But he believed now it probably did. A new part of his memory clicked into place, and he saw a brilliant fire from the past – a blocked memory that explained why he knew with such certainty that their shack, his home with his Gammy, couldn’t be here anymore. Other things from his troubled history tumbled back into place, as well, but he had no time to think about them now. He had to take his very familiar, sometimes nightly over the years, stroll through the Cajun forest of home.
Ben walked along the path in the moonlight as he had done thousands of times. He felt the same anxiety that traveled with him each passing moment and again reminded himself of the dicked-up nature of dreams. Why be scared of a dream that ended the same way night after night after night?
Because you don’t choose what you fear in dreams.
Ben came to the clearing and stopped. His Gammy stood naked and pale in the moonlight, head back and arms outstretched. Her quiet voice mumbled words that meant something to him but he didn’t know what.
And, then it came.
Not a doe this time, and Ben felt his already pounding pulse quicken more.
The man was thin and pale, his face covered in dirt and stubble, his hair long and unkempt. What looked most familiar were the eyes – the blue, impossibly small eyes from the doe of so many dreams, looked wide eyed on the thin man that walked towards his Gammy as if called. The blue seemed surrounded by yellow, and Ben remembered the man had been sick when he came to Gammy the first time. He remembered, from his bed in the loft of their shack, the shouts exchanged in a foreign tongue, and the fear he had heard for the first time in the voice that belonged to Gammy. He remembered those blue eyes tinged with yellow and how they flashed reddish orange when the man held a long bony finger at his Gammy, the words meaningless to him but the threat clear.
He watched the man with the blue and yellow eyes approach his Gammy, his back arched as if his mind fought against his body as he glided slowly toward her. The face looked expressionless, but the eyes showed the fear trapped inside.
Gammy kept her head back and her mouth barely moved as she chanted, her arms outstretched and hands upwards. The right hand remained balled up tightly, white knuckled, around the handle of the knife.
The man stopped beside her and leaned forward. For a moment Ben thought the man would nuzzle her as the doe had in the dream so many times before. Instead he stopped and then his own head tilted back and upward, his thin neck pale and stretched before the old woman and his red lids closed over the familiar, jaundiced eyes.
Ben knew what would be next and tried to tear his eyes away, but couldn’t. He wanted to shout out to his Gammy, to tell her to stop, but his voice stuck in his throat. He didn’t want it to happen, didn’t want to lose his innocent childhood love for his gentle grandmother.
The flash of moonlight on the steel blade looked the same as it always did, but a scream stuck in his throat because everything else was different. Gammy mumbled loudly as the long, curved blade opened the man’s neck easily, the cut in his throat so deep that Ben thought the head would tumble off into the dirt. An explosion of crimson spray soaked his grandmother followed by two pulsing geysers that looked grayish black in the moonlight, but Ben knew would be bright red in daytime. The head fell backwards, nearly striking the man between the shoulder blades, and the now lifeless face stared upside down at him. The tongue flicked in and out of the mouth as if trying to expel some foul tasting shit, and the grey geysers of blood painted obscene patterns across his Gammy’s face and sagging breasts as she again raised her hands up at the moon and let her own head fall backwards as she shouted more meaningless words up into the night.
After an impossibly long time the body collapsed at his Gammy’s feet, and with incredible speed a huge lake of blood formed as the near headless body drained itself in the clearing. Within moments the blood lapped up over his Gammy’s feet. The body gave its last flick of uncontrolled spasm, and the left foot splashed in the lake of death and then lay still, the last nerve now dead. Gammy stood motionless, arms out and up, head back. Red trails ran down her arms and dripped from her elbows and thin streams trickled down her flabby sides and legs.
Ben tore his eyes away at last as tears coursed down his cheeks. He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, tried with everything to force away the terrible image burned into his mind. When he opened them again, the clearing and the horror show it held were gone, replaced by a hammock. The old Cajun sat precariously on the edge of it, scattered teeth gleaming under the ball cap and feet swinging above the moss-covered ground.
“Don’ be yo Gammy judge makin’ yet now, boy,” the old man cautioned. “She be savin’ all us kin dat night. She don’ chase back dem demons den an like to save allin’ us, special mos’ like yo’, Bennie boy.”
The cane flashed out and struck him sharply on the thigh, but Ben didn’t flinch. His mind could register nothing except the horror he had just witnessed.
“She sayin’ all her on’ sef, sho’ ‘neff true dat. Tellin’ yo down ere soon dat.”
The old man gestured and Ben looked behind him. The tunnel-like hole in the woods gaped open behind him. It seemed to swell wider, as if reaching out to swallow him, and Ben stumbled backwards away from it, arms up. A foul steam seeped out from the entrance as if it belched the humid smell of rotting death and shit, and Ben felt his stomach heave.
Then, he sensed movement behind him and felt the old man’s cane smack onto his ass, and he fell headlong towards the hole.
“In nah, boy!”
The wet heat from the hole engulfed him as he tumbled forward.
* * *
Ben did his best four-count tactical breathing and tried to slow the pounding in his chest and temples. He raised shaking hands to his face and wiped sweat from his eyes as he kicked the Duvet cover and sheet off of his legs. The horrible death-smell from the rabbit hole lingered a moment in his mouth and nose and then disappeared. As his breathing slowed Ben turned his head and looked at Christy, certain he had wakened her and that she would be watching him, forehead furrowed in concern and brown eyes soft with worry.
Christy lay peacefully undisturbed, her face beautiful in the blue light that streamed in from the partially pulled drapes. Her face read nothing but happiness and safety, and he noted her hands still lay across her belly. Ben leaned over and kissed her cheek gently. He watched a moment to see if she would stir, and when she didn’t he slipped out of bed and headed to the bathroom.
The heat had dissipated both from the dank, dark ass hole in the bayou and from the lit charcoal briquette he had married. As he splashed cool water on his face, he felt goose-bumps pop up on his naked body and shivered. Ben looked at himself a moment in the mirror, but found he could not hold the stare from the cloudy-eyed, haunted face that glared at him from the mirror.
He grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his shivering body. He decided a hot shower would both warm him and wash the sweat from his body before he crawled back in with his wife.
Ben stood under the hot water and let it melt away his chill as he mulled o
ver the dreams that clung to the back part of his mind. The dream of the Cajun meant very little to him – he knew he would go home and that he would keep Christy safe and no longer needed the old man’s encouragement or advice. It was the Village Elder that consumed his thoughts. He contemplated the words, so many of them familiar, the old man had used and rolled his head around under the steaming hot spray to unclench the muscles in his shoulders and neck.
Well, of course, they’re familiar, dumb ass. Your mind created the damn dream and found some frightening words from your fucked up childhood at the bottom of your memory barrel. Stop making them more than they are.
Ben knew in his heart he no longer believed that. He knew also his upbringing in the backwoods, the child of a Traiteur, made him prone to accept the supernatural when things didn’t seem to make sense. He had tried to work on that his whole adult life, but this went beyond that. Could his mind, no matter how unbalanced from the hauntings of his youth and the trauma of his failures in Africa, really create such vivid and disturbing fantasies? He wanted to believe it could (for the first time the idea of being nuts might be better than the alternative), but he honestly didn’t think himself creative enough to pull all of this together.
Ben dropped his chin to his chest and let the hot water wash away the last bit of tightness in his back. Then, he spun the shower off and grabbed a towel. He realized he now felt too hot again, his body replacing the toweled-off water with a new, thin layer of sweat. He looked at his watch on the bathroom sink. He had been lingering in the hot spray for much longer than it seemed.
He stood for a moment in the doorway, his naked body slowly adjusting to the temperature, and tried to figure out what to do next. There was no chance he would fall back asleep anytime soon, and he wasn’t really sure he wanted to, since his two old friends seemed to lie-in-wait just on the other side. Of course, the old Cajun had chased him around the Quarter half the night, and he had been awake for all of that, hadn’t he? Then, he had a sudden inspiration.
Under the glow of his watch, so as not to wake his peacefully sleeping wife, Ben flipped through one of several guides to New Orleans his wife brought along on their honeymoon trip. He found what he wanted in Frommer’s under the “Sights to See and Places to Be” chapter. He skimmed the section of interest and found there was a Voodoo spiritual temple only a few blocks away on Rampart Street. The guide claimed the temple was the real deal and tourists were welcome only if they were interested in learning more about the occult religion and could be respectful of the practitioners there. Ben had no idea whether they would be open at – he looked at his watch – two-thirty in the morning, but everything in his childhood suggested the late hour seemed to be when most of the “occult religion” was actually practiced.
Ben bit his lip and thought for a moment. What the hell would he even be looking for at such a place? Maybe just being there would shake loose something in his head that could answer some of his questions? Maybe someone would know how the Voodoo practiced by some in New Orleans might relate to a primitive people in the middle of nowhere on the dark continent of Africa? He had no idea, but he felt he needed to do something.
Ben looked at his beautiful wife, still deeply asleep and peaceful in their wedding bed. Should he leave her a note? What the hell wound he say?
Had to run over to the Voodoo temple to check on a few things. Back soon – yeah, right. That would work.
He settled on Be right back with a big heart underneath it and the letter “B.” He just hoped he would be back before she had a chance to read it, forcing him to somehow explain where he had gone. He left the note on the vanity, stuffed the credit card-like room key into the back pocket of his jeans, and quietly slipped out of the room.
The bellman tugged on the bill of his 1920’s style hat as Ben left the hotel, and he thought immediately of the old Cajun pulling on the brim of his dirty “Purple Haze” baseball cap. He gave a nod and headed north on Court Street the two blocks to Rampart and turned right. He held his head down, and his brain alternated between scolding him for this foolish outing and searching for some sense he could make from what the Elder had told him. He didn’t see the two drunk men weaving towards him on the dark sidewalk until it was too late. He jumped a little, startled from his own thoughts, when the taller guy’s shoulder struck him in the chest.
“Hey, watch out, dickhead,” the man slurred at him and then stumbled a step backwards.
“Yeah, asshole,” the other man said, clearly clueless as to what they were upset about but backing his friend’s play. “Yeah, dude, what’s your fuckin’ problem?”
“Yeah, what’s your fuckin’ problem, man?” the first one parroted.
“No problem, guys,” Ben said. “Excuse me.” He went to maneuver around the men, but the bigger one, clad in baggy jeans and a black, sleeveless “Daytona Bike Week” T-shirt, stepped in front of him.
“Is, too, a problem,” he said and blinked the impossibly long blink of the shit-faced drunk. He looked at Ben through red eyes. “Is, too, problem,” he said again.
“Yeah, asshole,” his friend agreed. “You got a problem now.” He crossed his arms defiantly across his chest and stepped beside his pal to further block Ben’s way.
Ben sighed.
I don’t have time for this shit.
Christy waited for him asleep in their room, and he realized all he really wanted was to hurry back to her. He decided his trip was more than unnecessary – it bordered on nuts. He needed to get away from these drunks, clearly upset they had come all the way to New Orleans just to get rejected by a different class of women, and get back to his hotel. He could visit the temple in the morning, if at all. It probably wasn’t even open this late.
The two drunks watched him expectantly, foolish smirks on their faces.
“Look, guys,” Ben said. “I’m sorry I ran into you. I don’t know what else you want me to say. How about I get on my way, and you go crash in your hotel? I don’t want no trouble.”
“Well, you got trouble, mother fucker,” the bigger guy hollered way louder than he probably meant to. “You got a pecker full of trouble, you faggot.”
Ben shook his head. He really, really didn’t want this. He could feel a heat rise in his chest and creep up his neck. He also in no way needed to get to some tourist trap Voodoo fucking temple. He felt the anger grow larger – as much at himself as these two asshole drunks – and took a couple of four-count tactical breaths. Then, he turned on his heel to head the other way and back to his wife.
“Don’t you turn you back on me, faggot,” the bigger man screamed. Then he made a giant mistake – he grabbed a U.S. Navy SEAL by his arm and pulled.
Ben didn’t expect the hot rage that exploded suddenly inside him. He spun around, using the momentum of man’s pull on his forearm, and spun his wrist in a tight arc which forced the man’s grip under his own. In a fluid motion, he jerked downward and leaned in toward the drunk to use his weight in the hold. He felt a satisfying crunch of bone as the man’s wrist shattered and heard a girlish scream as the pain cleared the man’s alcohol-soaked brain. Ben’s free hand grasped the man’s throat, and he pressed him backwards against the brick wall beside them.
Ben became aware of a tingling in his right hand which spread up his arm as he squeezed tighter and crimped off the whimper in the man’s throat.
“Don’t ever fucking touch me,” he said. “You understand?”
The man tried to nod but couldn’t move. His free hand held on tightly to Ben’s powerful forearm.
“Leave him alone, dude,” the other drunk said and slapped painlessly at Ben’s back with an open hand. Ben felt his anger rise more, and the tingling spread farther up his arm. He felt a similar vibration in his chest and behind his eyes. Some part of him watched the ring on his right hand, the one that pinned the drunk to the wall by his throat, turn from pulsating orange to fiery bluish purple and fireflies began to dance around.
The man screamed again – this time in
both terror and agony.
“Oh, shit, my head! My eyes – my fuckin’ eyes!”
The scream alerted some less primitive part of Ben, which somehow reigned in the homicidal animal intent on crushing the man’s windpipe as he boiled his brain and eyes. He immediately opened his hand, and the man crumpled to the sidewalk, clawing at his head. His friend took off at full sprint down the sidewalk away from them screaming “Help! Help!” in a frenzied sob.
Ben looked at the man at his feet and noted the fiery blood red welt marks on his neck which had already begun to raise into blisters. The pain in his neck must have paled beside whatever imploded in his head, because he curled up in a ball on the sidewalk, moaning and pawing at his face and eyes. Ben felt something slip from his right hand and looked down to see a thin sheet of skin hanging from his palm, partially stuck to his thumb by a piece that looked charred. The skin resembled that from a piece of chicken when you flipped it on a grill that had gotten too hot. He flicked at it in disgust, and the long piece of skin tore free and flew slow motion through the air, landing on the back of the man’s head and sticking in his long hair.
“My fuckin’ eyes,” the man moaned. “My eyes are on fire.”
Ben opened his mouth to say something at the writhing figure at his feet, but he had no idea what. He snapped his mouth shut.
What the fuck did I just do – and how the hell did I do it?
Ben looked at the ring on his hand as the angry purple faded slowly to a pulsating orange.
Images of the terrorist in the interrogation room in Africa suddenly crashed down on him. How in the shit had he blocked that memory from his mind? He saw him now as clearly as he had that day. The bubbles boiling behind his eyes as his fucking brain turned to liquid. The horrible smell of flesh, shit, blood, and the seizure as the scum died. The eyeball that had popped in its socket and dripped grey liquid down the mottled cheek. He had nearly done the same thing to the drunk at his feet, whose cries had faded to a whimper.
The Traiteur's Ring Page 21