Acolytes of Cthulhu

by Robert M. Price

  He had expected the city to be hot in July, of course. As a graduate student of anthropology, that fascinating study of man’s veiled origins, struggling development, and kaleidoscopic cultures, he had twice before visited Haiti to write about vodun and its believers. By now he could speak enough French to carry on conversations with the country’s elite, as well as sufficient Creole to communicate with the masses. And he had had ample occasion in his work to do both. His studies had evidenced enough early promise to merit a modest travel stipend included as part of his scholarship, but it was close to exhausted, and he had comparatively little to show for it. After all, vodun, “voodoo,” had long attracted researchers, both serious and sensationalist, because of its inherent exoticism, and his academic advisors warned him of delving into a dried-up well. He was beginning to fear they had been right. What else was there to say about it?

  This time he was here on little more than a hunch, based on a rumor he had heard in Miami’s Little Haiti while visiting his parents in Florida. He had once heard of something similar in hushed whispers among the Rasta communities of Jamaica, too. The rumor involved certain of the magicians, or shamans, as anthropologists were careful to call them nowadays, bocors and houngans, belonging to a secret cult whose members were in touch with unknown deities, terrible gods from the sound of it, who might be called upon to do terrible things. The infamous zombie legends went back to such people. They existed as religious outlaws on the margins of vodun society and theology, operating much as contract killers who claimed magical means to do dirty jobs. But until now no one had ever heard of them banding together in a religious society of their own. Was it something new? Or perhaps something very, very old, only now becoming known for the first time? In either case, here was a new wrinkle, a new aspect of the matter. And his research took on a whole new relevance. Here was his chance not only to avoid reploughing a depleted field, but even to gain a precocious reputation among his peers by a major discovery. If, that is, he could make it more than a rumor. There would have to be interviews, participant observation, and before that, some actual, personal contact.

  And here he was in luck, for it turned out that the brother of a young Haitian in Florida, who did odd jobs for Peter’s family, claimed association with this mysterious cult, and Peter was awaiting the arrival of this man, one Metellus Dalby, who would bring him news of the group’s latest meeting. He did not have long to wait. It almost seemed as though the barking of the sleepless dogs had been prophetic, an oracle wrung from them by some supernatural influence on their keen other-than-human senses. Within fifteen minutes there came a knock on the rickety door of his room.

  Leaving the little verandah where he had gone for a breath of air, only to find more of the crowded city’s suffocating heat, Peter advanced the short distance to the door and opened it. The man confronting him was a Haitian, tall, slender, and very black.

  “You’re back already?” asked Peter, startled, in Creole. It came out almost like a rebuke.

  “With good news, m’sieu.” Nodding briskly, Metellus Dalby stepped past him into the room, then spun about to face him. “There is to be a big meeting of the cult this very night. You must accompany me to it!”

  The bright gibbous moon illuminated the scene of two men, one white, one black, staring at each other. Then the Haitian spoke again, more slowly. “But there is something we must do first, mon ami.” From a pocket of his baggy trousers he withdrew a pint bottle of some dark liquid.

  Peter nodded. “How long will it take?”

  “I will apply the first coat now, another about noon, and a third before we begin the journey.” His smile broadened into a shining crescent moon. “You will look like one of my people when I finish, I promise you that. And while it will itch, a little, it will not inconvenience you.”

  “What about my sharp nose, my thin lips?” For the first time, Peter saw them as he feared a non-Caucasian might see them, not handsome, but marks of alien origin.

  “Haitians come in all shapes, my friend. Some of our ladies on the Mardi Gras floats could win prizes anywhere in the world. You’ve seen them.”

  The Pension Etoile was on the Champ de Mars, and, that being part of the Mardi Gras route, Peter involuntarily glanced out the window, as if half-expecting to see the marching bands and gaudy floats in full force. His companion smiled again, showing those whiter than white teeth.

  “It may burn a little, this vegetable dye,” Metellus warned. “But not for long. You’ll be comfortable again soon, I promise.” Peter wondered what sort of errands had made Metellus so familiar with the stuff and its use. Whatever they might have been, they only made Metellus exactly the sort of person who would know how to help him on a gambit such as he contemplated. Like the CIA, anthropologists sometimes had to deal with people who could get things done when there were only dubious ways to get them done.

  Peter took the two or three steps to the bed, removed the top part of his pajamas, and lay down on his back. Pulling the cork from the bottle and leaning like a masseuse over his client, this man he looked on more and more as a friend, Metellus began the process of darkening those parts of the white man’s body that would be revealed by short-sleeved attire. As he did so, he talked.

  “What is to happen tonight, m’sieu, will interest you, I am certain. These people plan a special meeting in which they will call upon the Old Ones to present themselves. There is a line you will hear, and you must be ready to join in the first time you hear it. That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons, even death may die. I heard it from Tiburon, on the Southern Peninsula, who told me it was not for the ears of just anyone. You do not want to sound like it is new to you. That is not dead,” he repeated, coachingly, “which can eternal lie, and with strange eons, even death may die.”

  “Meaning?” Peter asked with a frown.

  The Haitian shrugged. “Who knows, exactly? But they know its meaning, never fear. And perhaps after tonight we, too, shall know.” He fell silent, giving the white man the chance to repeat the formula to himself silently till he knew it.

  When the bottle was empty, Metellus stepped back from the bed to look Peter over, then nodded. “We should plan on being there before dark, so we can show my work off to best advantage, eh? We can use my Jeep to take us as far as Furcy, then we’ll have to walk a few miles. Those mountain trails are not easy, as I believe you know.”

  Paying as little mind as he could to his tingling skin, Peter looked at the mirror while speaking to his partner. “What time did you leave there tonight?”

  “Just after midnight.”

  Peter glanced at an alarm clock on his chest of drawers, subtracting the minutes it was off by. Its lazy hands now stood at five minutes to five, and Metellus had been here how long? Forty-five minutes? A little more? “So we want to be there when?”

  “I should plan on picking you up about three o’clock this afternoon, I think.”

  Nodding matter-of-factly, Peter opened the top of the chest of drawers, a storage place with absolutely no security, to take out his billfold. From it he handed the Haitian some gourd notes. “Fill up the gas tank, Metellus. Better put some food in the Jeep as well. There’s no telling what we may be getting into, eh?”

  “Thanks, boss,” he answered with a note of irony, noticing that there was more there than needed for the tasks Peter had stipulated. He left, and Peter’s sole companion was once again the humidity, which by now seemed to have gotten the better of the dogs, who had fallen silent. Maybe he’d be able to get some sleep now. When the dye on his skin seemed to be dry enough, Peter returned to his bed and dozed till mid-morning, knowing he would probably not sleep at all in the night ahead of him. Who or what, he wondered, were the “Old Ones” his Haitian friend had talked about? Old gods, older than the conventional Obeah pantheon, to be sure. But which gods? What kind? It later seemed vaguely to him that his dreams that morning tried to give him some hint, but he could not remember.

  Come five minutes
to three that afternoon, Metellus turned his Jeep into the Pension driveway, and Peter, standing ready, stepped right into it. Several of the little hotel’s other guests had stared unabashedly at Peter as he had descended the staircase from his second-floor room and walked through the downstairs hall to the door. No doubt they were startled at a white man having becoming a black one, but none questioned him, perhaps feeling it safer not to. As he slid onto the seat beside the driver’s, his Haitian friend nodded approval and said, “The dye worked well, I see. If I were you, I might be wondering how long it will take to wear off.”

  “I have thought about it, now that you mention it.” Peter smiled as he made himself as comfortable as possible. The Jeep was an old one, open, with a fabric top to shield its two occupants from rain or sun.

  “You may continue a Haitian for three or four days,” said Metellus, with the air of a doctor, showing his white teeth again in a grin.

  “I can think of things I’d less rather be.”

  “Eh?”

  Peter realized he probably hadn’t phrased the remark properly in Creole. “Just so long as it works tonight,” he amended.

  “Yes,” replied Metellus with surprising and sudden gravity, as he backed out of the Pension’s drive. “Just so long as the Old Ones don’t know who and what you really are.” Peter thought about that remark from time to time as the two of them traveled up the winding road to Petionville, where so many of the country’s wealthier citizens lived to escape the heat and squalor of Haiti’s capital. It lingered in his mind on the even longer climb over a narrow blacktop road to the mountain village of Kenscoff. And it jabbed at his mind now and then as Metellus, a skilled and careful driver, took the little vehicle up the final twisting climb to the end of the driving road at Furcy. At various times during the journey Peter had turned in his seat to peer down through the heat-haze hanging over the roofs of the capital, as if trying to penetrate the opaque mists of antiquity. He wondered why he was doing what he was doing. Did all anthropologists live dangerously? It was only missionaries who wound up in cooking pots, wasn’t it?

  His companion brought the vehicle to a stop in front of a peasant cottage, and Peter snapped out of his reverie. “We leave the Jeep here,” Metellus announced. “These people know me.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist. Peter had earlier observed that he wore a Rolex or some such, which one would think out of the range of any legitimate income. But he had wisely traded it for a more modest Timex for the occasion. “Are you hungry, my friend?”

  His eyes concluding a sweep of the cottage and what lay beyond it, Peter barely caught the words but replied, “I hadn’t given it a thought. The heat takes away my appetite. But perhaps we ought to eat something, eh?”

  Metellus slid from his seat and leaned into the back of the Jeep to lift out a bag of food. It turned out to be a strange mixture of fruit, vegetables, and the worst sort of greasy junk food. More of all of it than they could expect to eat. And there was alcohol. Metellus opened the bag and gave him his choice. Peter grabbed a couple of apples and a roll. Metellus took even less. Just then the cottage door opened, and it was an attractive, middle-aged black woman who greeted them both with a smile and a happy “Bon jour!” Metellus handed her the rest of the provisions. Trust him to think of everything, Peter thought.

  From there they walked. And Peter soon discovered and appreciated why Metellus had judged it wise to arrive at their destination before dark. The trail was a footpath. It was a snake twisting through the forest. At times it would be blocked by fallen tree-limbs, mostly pine, and by boulders that must have come crashing down the mountain. Peter hoped there were no more like them at home. It seemed endless.

  Peter was tired, his companion scarcely less so, when the pair finally arrived at a cluster of huts in a clearing that, mercifully, turned out to be their destination. But there was to be no rest for them. People came striding from the huts—men, mostly—and Peter had to be introduced to them by Metellus. Had to smile and remain standing while his companion explained that Peter was a Floridian, a friend of Metellus’s brother, and that he was deeply interested in the Old Ones. Also that he was eager to participate in the night’s proceedings, at least as an observer. Peter momentarily started at hearing the exact truth from the other’s lips. He had expected more pretense than this, though he could think of no real reason it should be necessary.

  By the time the newcomer had been introduced all around, it had grown dark enough for lanterns to be lit and hung in the surrounding trees, and vodun drums began to throb. No one seemed suspicious of him, and the only looks in his direction that he noticed appeared to be polite and friendly. He returned the smiles he saw and hoped for the best. He asked if he might do anything to help prepare, was told that he was a guest and should not busy himself with such tasks. This he took for permission to nod off for a brief nap.

  Once he felt Metellus nudging him awake, he realized he had slept for at least three hours. The moon was high, and the clearing was now crowded with eager figures darting to and fro, creating almost a strobe effect as they passed rapidly before the blazing lamps and lanterns. He got rapidly to his aching feet and looked nervously to make sure his sleeping posture had not revealed any pink flesh. Metellus’s grin anticipated him and let him know all was well. The two of them hurried into the circle and looked for good seats, close to the action, whatever action there should be, yet not too obtrusive, lest any surprise or reluctance on their part be noticed. Here at the scene itself, Peter wondered for the first time how much of the celebrations of this sect Metellus had actually seen? He spoke enigmatically about it, as if he knew little, and yet he appeared to be well enough known to those gathered. Perhaps he had received only a preliminary degree of initiation and could only guess, as Peter had heard him do, at the real secrets of the cult. But didn’t that imply he himself, an outsider, could not hope to see anything much out of the ordinary? Well, there was nothing to do but wait now.

  He scanned the close-packed crowd. The scene was familiar, as were the expressions of adventurous expectancy on the black faces gleaming with sweat and firelight. Then with a start he hoped no one noticed, he saw faces of a more ominous cast, weathered and haughty visages whose peculiar lines betrayed habitual emotions and exaltations of a kind he could not guess. Some bore ritual scars, others faded tattoos and paint. There were ear-hoops of strange workmanship, too, some suggesting the forms of strange sea creatures. Here was something new. Might he perhaps interview these old men, who were certainly those curiously allied bocors and houngans rumor had described as improbably coming together for some frightful purpose? He sensed somehow his chances of that were slim.

  His eagerness dulled to disappointment once the congregation hushed as if by some tacit signal and the service began. The celebrant, an aged fellow with a wrinkled face and a voice little more than a fatigued whisper, droned out the singsong of the usual introductory prayers. He drew the usual veves around the base of the central pole or poteau mitan. Still droning, as if wearily reciting a child’s nursery rhyme, he called upon the usual string of vodun deities: Legba, Ogoun, Erzulie, Damballah, and the rest. Peter had seen and heard all this too many times before. And yet the gathered cultists appeared to be all the more eager, as if their favorite part were on its way.

  At once the rote character of the display vanished. The preliminaries, perfunctory, were over. Gestures in the crowd became rapid, even violent, aimless jabs, striking heads and torsos oblivious of the impact. Eyes rolled up, people blindly rising, shrilly chanting, joining a frenzied follow-the-leader snake-dance. At Metellus’s urgent signal, Peter joined in as best he could. He strained to make out the words being sung, and because of the number of voices, twenty-five or so, it was difficult. Especially difficult for one to whom Creole was not a primary language. Yet he understood some of it. And to his surprise, these black bacchantes were calling not on the traditional gods of vodun, whose names he had heard mere moments before, but on someone, something, far more a
ncient. The names were altogether new to him, and he realized this was why it was so difficult to understand. Some of the… names? were so bizarre, and were barked and screamed past comprehension. Tulu… Nigguratl-Yig… Nug and Yeb… And the cacophony was rapidly giving way to some alien language, perhaps speaking in tongues. Less and less Creole.

  An intuitive flash told him what must be going on here. Old Ones. He knew, anyone knew, that the nominal Christianity of Haitians and other Caribbean peoples thinly masked the African religions of their pre-slavery ancestors. They might call the object of their ecstatic devotion Saint This or That, but they were really invoking Damballah, Baron Samedhi and the others, gods of ancient Africa. But what he was beholding here was something else—these Old Ones had to be the unthinkably archaic gods and devils to whom screaming sacrifices had been offered in the dawn ages before Zimbabwe and Benin and Opar, deities whose worship had at length been banned and driven underground to take refuge under the names of the more wholesome gods of Zulu, Ashanti, Shona, and other tribes. Behind their myths the Things of Elder Blasphemy still lurked and ravened, as the benign spirits of African faiths would later hide behind the haloes of Catholic saints. In a moment he knew.