"And you wish to leave when?"
"At daybreak."
"Very well. I will see about mules tonight."
"They are already arranged for with Alcibiade," the shopkeeper told him. "We attended to that while you were checking on the faithlessness of your woman. Just bring them to my house in the morning." He stepped behind the counter. "Now then, M'sieu Norman, tell me what you need from my poor shop and we can complete the preparations for your journey."
11
As the gray mule climbed doggedly through an eerily quiet mountain wilderness, Kay Gilbert found herself thinking of Sam Norman again.
"You must have one hell of an effect on me, Kay. So help me, I have never in my life done anything like that before."
Those were the words he had spoken that night in Jacmel after walking naked into her room.
Naked and intoxicated? She would never know. He had drunk a lot at Leon's bar before they climbed the stairs to their rooms, but she hadn't been dating him long enough then to know his capacity.
You still don't know his capacity, Gilbert. Face it, there are lots of things you don't know about Sam Norman.
She had not panicked when her door opened that night and the light from the street lamp revealed him standing there. Sliding out of bed on the side away from the door, putting the bed between him and her, she had grabbed a heavy glass ashtray from the night table and taken aim with it as he came stumbling over the threshold.
"Hold it right there, Mister. Don't come one step closer!"
He had stopped then. Whether the threat or the mere sound of her voice had stopped him, she couldn't know. Like an aroused sleep-walker struggling to orient himself, he stared at her, first vacantly and then with growing comprehension. Then he looked down at himself—right down at the parts of him that emphasized his nakedness—and said in a hoarse whisper, "Oh, my God!"
Lurching about, he fled from the room, reaching out to slam the door behind him as he went.
Badly shaken, she had switched on the light and got dressed, then sat on the bed and tried to think. Were there things about Sam Norman she had never suspected? Mental things? Character flaws? Did he need help?
How would she get back to the capital in the morning? By camion?
For ten minutes she had sat there with her thoughts, first angry, and then full of compassion, certain one minute he had been drunk, then just as certain he had not been. Hearing footsteps outside her door, she took in a quick breath and reached again for the ashtray.
The footsteps ceased and hesitant knuckles rapped on the door. A voice full of contrition said, "Kay? May I come in?"
She did not know how to answer.
"Kay? I'm all right now. Can I talk to you?"
"Well… I suppose so."
The door opened and he came slowly into the room, leaving it open behind him. That was to reassure her, of course, because he knew he had frightened her. He was dressed now. Not just in pajamas, but dressed. Halting at the foot of the bed, he looked at her with misery in his eyes and seemed to have trouble finding his voice.
"Kay … I must have been walking in my sleep. I swear to God, I don't remember leaving my room. I wasn't aware of a thing until you spoke to me and snapped me out of it."
It was the truth, she decided. Not just an alibi. He hadn't looked right when he was standing there naked in the doorway. "Sam," she said, "sit down." She had risen but now sat on the bed again.
He went to a chair and sank onto it, staring at her and slowly shaking his head. He looked tired, she thought. He looked old. He looked ill.
Above all, he looked scared.
"Sam, has anything like this ever happened to you before?" It was Nurse Gilbert speaking now, as coolly detached as she could be with her emotions so rampant.
He shook his head.
"Was it the rum?"
"I didn't drink that much rum."
"None in your room after we came upstairs?"
Again, his head moved from side to side. "Not a drop."
"Sam, does it have anything to do with that man—what's his name?—at the bamboche?"
"Fenelon? How could he be responsible?"
"Well, you said he's big in voodoo. We've had patients at the hospital who claimed—" She let it drop; she could see no point in going that route. After all, who could prove anything where voodoo was concerned? Rising, she went to him and put her hands on his shoulders and bent to peer into his face. "Are you all right now, Sam?"
"I feel like hell. As though I've been drugged."
"That's how you look, too. Why don't you lie down?"
"Here?"
"Yes. I don't think you ought to be alone right now." She took his hands and helped him to his feet, then put an arm around him and led him to the bed, knelt and took off his shoes while he sat there. Helped him off with his pants and shirt, leaving him in shorts. Then swung his legs up and drew the sheet over him.
When she walked around the bed and lay down on its other side—still fully dressed and on top of the sheet, not under it as he was—he turned to face her.
"Kay …"
"Yes?"
That was when he said, "You must have one hell of an effect on me, Kay. So help me, I have never in my life done anything like that before."
"Well, if you ever get a notion to do it again," she said, trying to help by keeping it light, "just give me a little advance notice, will you? I mean I mightn't object to it if I'm not scared half to death. The truth is, Sam Norman—"
The sound of swiftly moving water interrupted her recollection of that Jacmel night and brought her back to the Massif du Sud, where she now gave her full attention to the trail. If they were coming to a stream, maybe their guide, Joseph, would stop to let the mules drink. She hoped so. They must be thirsty after so many miles of hard climbing. She knew she was. She was tired and sore, too.
The saddle on this big gray animal had never been designed for a person with a bottom and thighs shaped like hers. The insides of her thighs felt as though they had been massaged with coarse sandpaper. Tina must need a break, too, although the child was so excited about going home, so happy to be riding with Joseph on his mule, that she had not once complained.
Joseph. Thank God for Joseph. She saw him looking back to check on her now, and she waved to let him know she was okay. He returned the wave, and while she was not close enough to see his good-looking young face, she was sure he was smiling. He was about nineteen, a good boy. She had encountered enough Haitian young men at the hospital to know the good ones. Clean, intelligent, mild of speech and manner, he was exactly the sort of guide she had hoped for. The corporal at the police post in Trou had produced him.
They had left Trou about one o'clock and it was now after five by her watch. When planning this trip, she had counted on reaching Vallière the first night. It was only a village, but there was a church, and the priest would put them up, she was sure. But the various delays—getting away from the hospital yesterday hours later than her schedule called for, the late start from Cap Haitien this morning—had put Vallière out of reach, she knew now. Perhaps the hard rains of the past few days would have thwarted them, anyway, for time and again they had had to walk the mules over portions of the trails which, Joseph said, would normally have presented no great problem.
And since they couldn't reach Vallière, where would they sleep tonight, the three of them? On the early part of the journey they had passed a few peasant huts, some in clusters, some standing alone in remote forest clearings, and Joseph had spoken to some of those people. Whether he actually knew them or not, she had no idea. But in the past hour or so they had seen no houses anyway. So would they spend the night out in the open, beside the trail? But what if Joseph, like most country people, young or old, feared the loup-garou and evil spirits?
The sound of running water was louder and, ahead, Joseph's mule had disappeared around a bend of the trail. It was dark here, she noticed. A spooky kind of place, unlike anything they had encountered b
efore. The trail had entered a steep-sided ravine and the small amount of late-afternoon light from above was filtered through great feathery tree-ferns growing high up on both walls. Riding into it was like venturing into a lush, tropical greenhouse, with the stream saturating the warm air with moisture. Such an unusual place … at another time she might have been really interested, wanting to stop and explore it. But now she was tired and saddle-sore and hungry and anxious about Tina.
Swollen by the rains, the stream raced through the gorge in a torrent, a good thirty feet wide and full of boulders. The trail wound along beside it, so wet that it seemed to disappear in places. The noise was deafening and disconcerting. With the other mule ahead and out of sight now, her feeling of apprehension deepened. I don't like this place! I don't like it at all! Then, rounding a sharp bend, she saw that Joseph had stopped where the trail seemed to run straight into the stream. Having dismounted, he was lifting little Tina from the saddle.
Kay dismounted too, and looked with consternation at the rushing water, which was swift enough to be white but appeared dark green in the strangely filtered light here. "My God, Joseph, do we have to ford this?"
"It won't be so bad, M'selle. People do it all the time."
"With the river this high?"
He shrugged. "In these mountains if one waited for low water all the time, one wouldn't do much traveling." He gave her his outrageously handsome smile. "Look, I'll show you while the animals rest a little."
At the stream's edge he studied the flow for a minute or two, and then knelt to take off his shoes and roll his pants up over his knees. Rising, he entered the swift water and slowly, calmly felt his way through it to the opposite bank, then turned and retraced his steps. It really wasn't all that deep, she realized, noting that his pants were not wet.
"You see, M'selle?"
"Well … all right, after we've rested." She hunkered down before Tina Sam—Ah, Sam Norman, I wish you were here now in spite of everything!—and took hold of the youngster's arms. "How are you feeling, baby?"
"Fine."
"Your legs sore?"
"A little. Not so much."
It was different, no doubt, being perched up there on Joseph's mule and knowing Joseph would not let her fall. Quite a bit different from having to grip the saddle hour after hour with both legs to be sure of staying on board. Giving the child a pat on the bottom, Kay rose and faced their guide. "Have you any idea where we can sleep tonight, Joseph?"
"I know a place, M'selle."
"Where? It will be dark soon, won't it?"
"We will be there in time. Don't worry."
She worried anyway, not for herself but for the child. After all, this little girl had only just recovered—if indeed she had recovered—from some mysterious malady that for months had deprived her of her memory. Even with all the care she had been given by a concerned staff at the hospital, and by the doting Cap Haitien nuns before that, she was still not physically what a nine-year-old ought to be.
I wonder if we should be letting her go home this early, especially to such a remote village. Should we have made her wait a while longer?
Joseph had watered the animals. Now he said, "When you are ready, M'selle, we can continue."
She looked at the racing green water. Ready? Even if she were not, what could she do about it? Gilbert, you get yourself into the damnedest situations sometimes.
"All right, Joseph. Let's go."
He watched her mount the big gray, then swung himself onto his own mule and reached down for Tina. He was careful to seat the child securely in front of him. Would Tina be scared? He had walked across there and back, but it was still fast water foaming among huge boulders. There could be deep holes.
Beckoning her to follow, Joseph coaxed his animal into the river. "Don't try to guide your mule, M'selle!" he yelled back above the river-roar. "Just let him follow mine!"
She did, and it seemed to be sound advice. She respected this big gray animal; he had already earned her trust time and again. Slowly, with no sign of nervousness, he splashed toward midstream, his hoofs turning up some of the smaller stones with a hollow cloppy sound that echoed through the gorge.
But what was happening to the light?
Kay rubbed her eyes, and turned her head right and left. The gorge had been dim from the beginning, of course. With these high walls and so little room at the top for light to seep down, it was almost like a cave. But there had been light, even though it was subdued and spooky green. Now, for no apparent reason, the light was fading.
In a moment, the gorge was almost night-dark and the sound of the river had become an earsplitting roar, deep and menacing.
She felt the gray mule stumble, then hesitate, then come to a halt and begin to tremble. It scared her that this powerful animal trembled just as she did. The flow of water against his quivering legs was now furious. It was a Niagara rapids kind of thing. As it crashed against the bigger boulders and exploded, she felt the spray sting her face and arms and hands, inflicting real pain. The whole gorge was sound and fury.
Why? Had there been a flash flood higher up in the mountains? She had heard of such things. One of the hospital doctors had lost a car once when it stalled at a supposedly safe fording and was caught in such a rush of water. But if this was only a swiftly rising river, why the darkness? Had something happened to her eyes?
She leaned over the mule's neck, straining to see what Joseph was doing. It was no use. Even that eerie green light was gone now, swallowed up by the swooping gloom. On the verge of panic, she drove her sneakered feet into the gray mule's flanks and slapped his neck to urge him forward. Whatever was happening, she could not just sit here in midstream waiting for it to engulf her.
Unused to such treatment from her, the mule voiced a snort she could hear even above the river's roar and lurched to one side. She had braced herself for a forward motion and was taken by surprise. She tumbled sideways from the saddle. The river boiled over her as she screamed. Then the current sucked her under and her mouth filled with water.
She struggled. A stream that Joseph had walked through only a few minutes ago should not have the strength to make her struggle so desperately, but it did. She felt herself slammed against boulders, scrubbed along the bottom, ripped against submerged tree branches. Felt herself flung back up to fresh air from time to time, and had sense enough left, no matter how mad the nightmare, to fill her lungs. Some relenting current swept her into a quiet eddy and she staggered to her feet, grabbing at an overhanging branch to steady herself. "Joseph… Joseph… where are you?"
It was a feeble cry. She hadn't enough strength left for an honest yell. On the other hand, the roar of the river was subsiding. The canyon walls no longer hurled thunder at each other. It was as though someone who had been amplifying all the normal sound effects was at last turning the volume back down.
Hauling on the branch, she pulled herself up out of the stream and called again, this time with more strength. "Joseph!"
"M'selle, where are you?"
"Here!" Where was here? Downstream from the fording, of course, but how far down? And what had happened to Joseph and Tina? And to her mule?
Strange. As the din diminished, the darkness began to subside, as though a thick sheet of dark glass in front of her eyes were dissolving. She could see the stream again, the cliffs, even the strip of sky above.
"M'selle, please! Where are you?"
"Here, Joseph." It was going to be all right. If Joseph had come through it, Tina must have, too. But come through what? Something real or just imagined? Was there such a thing as unreal reality?
Never underestimate this country, one of the hospital doctors had warned her once. Listen carefully to everything a patient tells you, and don't weigh it on the scales of your own experience. Things happen here that don't lend themselves to rational analysis.
She heard someone crashing through the streamside jungle nearby and called out again. "Joseph! Over here!" Suddenly, he burst through a
tangle of hanging vines not six feet away, and stopped. With obvious relief, he stood there looking at her while getting his breath back. Then, quietly: "M'selle, are you all right?"
She nodded, realizing for the first time that she must appear to be half drowned. "Tina?" she whispered.
"She is only frightened. I told her to wait with the mules while I found you."
"Mules? Both of them?"
"When it happened, I was almost through the river. Your animal followed without you. M'selle"—as he came toward her, his bulging eyes were something to behold in the restored green light of the gorge—"what in God's name did happen? The darkness, the river going mad that way …"
Feeling she was strong enough to walk now, she let go the tree limb to which she had clung since her crawl from the river. "Joseph, I don't know," she said. "But I think we ought to get away from here. Fast."
12
The outskirts of Port-au-Prince.
Ti Pierre Bastien
faces the weary white man
he has led across half of Haiti.
"This is where we part company, Dr. Bell.
You have your street map of the city?"
"I have it."
"To reach Turgeau from here, you—"
"I cannot go directly to Turgeau.
I must go to the Pension Calman first."
"No, Dr. Bell. Margal said—"
"Don't be foolish!
Can I call on a university professor
looking like this?
I must have a bath
and a change of clothes.
Also l need a rest."
"Margal is not a patient man, Dr. Bell."
"Nor am I indefatigable. Good-bye."
Dr. Bell trudges away
from the man
who for many days
and many weary miles
has been his constant companion.
An hour later
he arrives at the Pension Calman.
Finding no one about,
slowly climbs the stairs to his room.
A Haunting of Horrors: A Twenty-Novel eBook Bundle of Horror and the Occult Page 193