There was a tap on his shoulder. It was Shani, and she held out his backpack for him. “You can go up now,” she said.
“Thanks,” Tyrone said as he slung the pack over his shoulder and clambered up onto the pier. He could see Moesha was tying the boat near the side of the dock. Shani had a little trouble climbing up the ladder so he helped the younger girl up. The two men who were watching them stayed at the other end of the wooden platform.
When Moesha finally climbed up on the dock, she pointed over to a wooden cabin on top of a rusted metal building. “You can head over there, my momma will wanna talk to you.”
Tyrone thanked the two girls and started walking towards the shack. He noticed that Shani started running towards a group of children in an adjacent platform, while Moesha walked over to the two sentries and started talking to them. He could hear the beating of drums coming from the other houses as well as some chanting. The smell of roasting fish, along with the pungent muck of the water, was in the air.
When he got to the front of the cabin, he knocked on the rickety wooden door. The shack was a hodgepodge of different sizes of wooden panels and corrugated rusting sheet metal that were haphazardly nailed together. A dozen wind chimes were hung on top of the roof overhang, their tinkling melodies reverberating through the soft night wind blowing across the black waters.
“Come in,” a voice said from the inside of the cabin.
Tyrone opened the door and then nearly tore it off since its hinges were loose. As he carefully used his free hand to push a rusted nail back into place to help support the door, Tyrone stepped inside and closed it behind him. The interior walls of the place were filled with shelves. The dividers had everything from glass jars to wooden boxes that were full of stuff. A number of charms and small, fist-sized dolls were hanging from the ceiling. There was a solid glass counter near the entrance that had assorted necklaces and beads on top of it. Along the wooden walls of the shack were masks in all sorts of grotesque styles, from red devils to grinning black and blue skulls. There were dozens of lighted candles in strategic areas all around the interior, their illumination giving off a constant yellow flickering over the entire scene. Standing at the center of the room was a thin black woman he estimated to be over six feet tall.
“Welcome, Tyrone Gatlin,” she said. The woman wore an all-white duster dress and was barefoot. A solid black head cloth was wrapped around her scalp.
Tyrone nearly stumbled backwards but he was able to control his composure. “How d-did you know my name?”
She gave him a big toothy grin. “The loa tells me. They told me you would arrive at the end of the highway this day. That’s why I had my two daughters pick you up and bring you to me. My name is Monique, by the way.”
“Loa? What’s that?”
Monique gestured towards an old wooden chair by the side of the door. “Have a seat. The loa are the invisibles, they are the spirits that serve as the agents of the supreme creator, Bondye. I spoke to them the night before and they said that you would come.”
Tyrone frowned as he sat on the chair. Where they trying to swindle him? “Come on, lady. This must be some sort of trick. Did your daughter have a hidden cellphone on her or something? She told you my name using her cell, right?”
“Cellphones don’t work in this part of the country. You know that.”
He was still somewhat skeptical about trusting them. “Then is must be a walkie-talkie then, right?”
Monique sat down on the wooden floor facing him and crossed her legs. “No walkie-talkies here, Ty. We in this city drained almost every battery we had months ago. The only news we get are from traveler’s tales and those windup radios, you know the kind that they used to distribute to the poor in Africa. Those things are highly sought after now.”
“Assuming what you say is true, this loa you’re talking about, what kind of religion is it?”
Monique laughed. “Boy, you must be dumb! Don’t you know we here in Louisiana practice voodoo?”
Tyrone figured as much. Now it all made sense. “So y’all into these voodoo dolls and devil worship then?”
Monique kept giggling as she shook her head. “You have been so brainwashed by TV and such, you need a reeducation when it comes to our beliefs down here. We worship spirits and our ancestors. Our supreme god, Bondye, is distant and unknowable. He doesn’t take part in human affairs and so we worship the loa, the spirits who serve him. We maintain a relationship with the loa through our offerings, our charms, and our ceremonies.”
Tyrone was intrigued. He got off the chair and sat down, cross-legged on the floor, so he could see into her eyes directly. “What about these stories I heard? About devil worship and black magic and all that.”
“Nonsense and misunderstandings. The European Christians always attribute what they don’t understand to their concept of the devil. If it wasn’t about Jesus then it was bad. As our voodoo evolved, we incorporated many Christian beliefs into our faith. Then again, I feel that we will devolve back into the olden ways again since the time of the Glooming.”
Tyrone looked around. He wasn’t too familiar with voodoo. “I dunno, those skulls and crossbones you have hanging around this place seems scary to me.”
“The skulls are a symbol of our ancestors, they are not symbols of death in our religion. The crosses of bones represent the crossroads. It is the spiritual symbol of Papa Legba, the loa of the spirit world. He is the life bringer, he channels the power of Bondye to humanity, he serves as the bridge between the realms of spirits and men.”
“What about possessions by spirits? And those voodoo dolls you people make to torture your victims with?”
“Voodoo dolls are not used for pain. Only evil practitioners would want to do that. The main purpose of the dolls is for healing. We don’t really have much use for them. As far as spirits goes, we do not believe that spirits are evil, there are many good loa and these spirits can help the sick and the weak. It’s a voluntary ritual and the practitioner must be willing to do it. Once the loa possesses a person, they can gain the power of prophecy or be healed through the channeling of energies from the loa to the body.”
Tyrone nodded. “Okay, it’s starting to make sense to me now, but you do admit that there are evil people who could use voodoo to do bad things, right?”
Monique sighed. “A year ago, when the Glooming started and the floods killed a lot of folks, there was a faction within the voodoo community that wanted to have power for its own sake. They called themselves the bokors. The rest of us didn’t approve of what they wanted so we helped to drive them outta here. It was a tense moment but we prevailed.”
“Where are they now?”
“I heard that they found a ship that would take them to Haiti,” she said. “You wouldn’t wanna go there.”
“What’s in Haiti?”
“It is said that over there they found something that made them even more powerful than ever before. They made the dead walk the earth again. A few of us wanted to go over there and right their wrongs, but we decided it’s better to stay here and defend what little we got. Then I started to get dreams.”
“So you mean there are zombies in Haiti now? They be like, eating people and all that?”
Monique shook her head slightly. “Lemme tell you something about zombies. They aren’t like the ones you see in the movies, the ones where they eat the living and all that. Those kinds of monsters are just a creation of the entertainment industry. When someone dies, their body has two spirits in them, not one. When your body dies, the first spirit, called the grand angel, flies up to the afterlife. The second spirit is called the petit angel, it stays in your body for three days while it rots. If anything happens to the petit angel before it flies away, you might turn into a zombie. That’s why many people in Haiti guard their dead for three days.”
“So anyone whose body is disturbed before the three days are up just turns into a zombie, just like that?”
“No. That’s where the dark vood
oo comes into play. The bokors are the sorcerers, they can practice evil things and they can create zombies. They can trap souls in jars and they can steal spirits from people too. Once a dead person becomes a zombie they are like slaves, the bokor can order them to do tasks for him. The zombie will serve until their body rots away to nothing, then the bokor can keep the soul.”
“So you can’t kill a zombie by shooting it in the head then?”
Monique laughed a little. “Only on TV. The way to defeat a real zombie is to feed it salt. Because a zombie doesn’t know he be dead, so giving them salt will make them aware of it. Once they realize they suppose to be dead, they will bury themselves in the earth and their petit soul escapes into the afterlife.”
“Are there any zombies around here?”
“As of right now, I don’t know of any. We practitioners here try our best to protect the land using our rituals to help the loa that protect us. Though our power is limited, as long as we are alive, we will protect the country from the evil ones. All this time we have been searching for someone who will give us the sign. Then, I started seeing you in my dreams.”
Tyrone was surprised. “Me? But I’m not of the voodoo religion. I worship Esaugetuh Emissee, a Muscogee god.”
“When I was possessed by a loa last week, it told me that the one I was seeking would be an outsider. He would be coming up from the borderlands and that I must help him on his quest for knowledge. That was when I saw your likeness in my dreams. The loa also told me of your name, Tyrone Gatlin.”
Tyrone’s whole body trembled. “There’s n-no way you c-could have known my last name. I didn’t even tell your daughters that!”
Monique winked at him. “Now do you believe?”
“I-I dunno what to believe. I only became a follower of the Master of Breath a few months ago. Surely there must be someone who knows more about him than I do. So why would I be chosen for anything?”
“You are a soldier. You fought the Aztecs and you survived. Very few people could say the same thing.”
Tyrone looked down at the wooden floorboards. “I deserted. I ran away. I’m nothing but a coward.”
“My loa Papa Legba told me you did fight them. Your side lost the battle and you left. There’s nothing dishonorable about that.”
“I’m still technically a deserter. I didn’t report back to HQ. I’ll be facing a court martial if they catch me.”
“The Army has more things to worry about than you,” she said softly. “The Aztecs have advanced across the southwestern states. They have swallowed up almost all of Texas now and are bringing their booty back to their great pyramid cities.”
“Booty? What kind of booty?”
“Prisoners. So that they can make sacrifices to their gods.”
Tyrone looked away. “I was that close to getting taken by ‘em, but they seemed to ignore me. There were many times I was thinking I was a dead man, but they seemed to go right past me. I was in Dallas when they attacked it and they were either killing or takin’ everybody prisoner. I still dunno how I got outta there.”
Monique pointed at him. “That is because you are blessed by your god. He protects you. Papa Legba says the gods defend their own.”
“How you know that?”
“I can sense an aura on you,” she said. “I first noticed it on the docks. I figured one of the gods must be watching over you.”
Tyrone sighed. “Why me though? What’s so special about me?”
“Only the gods can tell you that. Did you not say that you were being led here?”
Tyrone closed his eyes so he could remember. “In my dreams. I didn’t get much sleep in the past few days but when I would doze off, I would dream about this spirit. I couldn’t really see what he looked like because he was all in shadow, but there was a bit of an outline like seeing that he had a head, two arms and legs. He would sort of point the way ahead to me. When I woke up it was like I knew which way to go, which roads to take. And it led me here.”
Monique nodded. “Then that is your god speaking to you. Did he say anything about what you would do when you get here?”
“He really doesn’t say anything, it’s more like, he lets my feelings guide me. When I’m going in the right direction he lets me know it by making me feel that I’m headin’ there. When I saw that riverboat docked by the building, I got that feelin’ again.”
Monique glanced up and took a deep breath. “The riverboat? You wanna join up with that crew?”
He knew he would have to join the crew. His dreams told him so. “I don’t know. It was just a feelin’ like I said. Why? Is something the matter with that boat? Who runs it?”
Monique’s attitude had changed. She seemed testier now. “Papa Legba told me that crew up to no good and I warned the people here in this village. The captain of that boat is a man named Pillinger. I do not like him. He’s a mercenary and his crew is just like their captain. They docked here a few days ago to stock up on supplies. They looking to hunt the beasts in the bayous and take them as trophies so they can sell them for money. They are bad men. I warn the others in the village not to join them, but a couple of the people here joined up with them anyway.”
“Is hunting animals really bad? I mean, don’t y’all need to hunt for food nowadays?”
“The gods allow us to hunt, but only for food, not for money or for sport. When you hunt like that, it disrespects the animal spirits. When you disrespect the spirits, you disrespect the gods.”
“I guess you got a point there,” Tyrone said. “Though I still gotta join ‘em. My god is telling me to do so.”
Monique frowned. “Then go ahead and join them, but you must not hunt the beasts of the forest or of the water. You must respect the spirits that dwell there, or you will be cursed and your god will abandon you. Papa Legba told me this.”
“Then how can I join up with them if I ain’t no hunter then? I don’t think they accept passengers for this trip, do they? I don’t have any money anyway so I can’t buy my way into that boat.”
“Find a way. I’m sure they could use some more deckhands.”
“Okay, I’ll try talking to them.” Tyrone said. “What about you people? Are you just gonna stay here until the Aztecs come and take y’all?”
Monique seemed back in her usual calm self again. “Papa Legba told me that the Aztecs will not renew their push upwards to the north for at least a month in order to celebrate their latest victory and appease their gods. Our spirits have told us that the gods of this place will not allow the Aztecs to progress any further.”
“Oh? So how will they stop ‘em then?”
“The loa told me that the gods in this region will protect us. The first step is that a man will come from the south, they said. This man will be the key to protecting all the lands in the north, they say.”
“And who would this man be?”
Monique smiled. “I’m looking at him.”
Tyrone’s was surprised. “Me? Like I told you, I’m nothing special. I got no idea what my god wants me to do for him.”
“You will know when the time comes,” Monique said. “The gods work in mysterious ways.”
He just didn’t understand it all. They were all telling him the same thing. Tyrone felt used, but whatever was going on was beyond his understanding. Maybe if he let it play out the meaning would become clear. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.
There was a knock on the door and then it opened. Standing outside were Shani and her older sister, who was carrying a metal cooking pot.
“Food’s ready, momma,” Moesha said.
Monique glanced at Tyrone as she stood up. “Remember what I told you. Now go help us set the table.”
Dinner was Creole fish stew and cornbread. It was the first time in days that Tyrone had a hot meal and he ate heartily. They all sat alongside a folding table laid out at in front of the cabin. The only thing Tyrone didn’t like was the foul tasting water that served as his beverage, so he took only a few sips at
a time.
Shani giggled. “Doesn’t seem you like our water, Mr. Tyrone.”
“Hush now,” Monique said to her youngest daughter before glancing back at him. “We have to use boiled river water nowadays, but I’m sure you know that.”
“I’m not complaining, ma’am,” Tyrone said. “This is the first decent meal I’ve had in weeks.”
Moesha put a spoon down on her empty bowl. “You stayin’ with us, Tyrone?”
“Nope,” Monique said. “He will be joining the riverboat crew in the morning.”
Shani’s mouth was open. Bits of fish and soup dribbled down her mouth. “That boat? But momma, you said that ship is cursed!”
“I told you no shouting at the dinner table, Shani,” Monique said. “Mr. Gatlin has to do something for the gods, and they will protect him while he is on that ship.”
“I sure hope so,” Tyrone said, muttering under his breath.
“No more talk of curses and such at the dinner table,” Monique said as she stood up and started walking towards the open door of the shack. “I’ll be right back.”
Shani leaned over to Tyrone and started whispering. “I wouldn’t go on that ship if I were you, Mr. Gatlin.”
Moesha grabbed her younger sister’s elbow and yanked it slightly. “Shani, stop scaring him like that.”
“I was just telling him about momma’s warnings,” Shani said as she straightened up her body and resumed eating.
Tyrone smiled. “It’s okay, your momma did tell me about it.”
“Maybe she didn’t tell you everything,” Moesha said softly. “That Captain Pillinger is a scary man. And I don’t mean scary just because he got a scar on his face either. The other people on the ship told me he has some sort of special prisoner in his cabin. He be trying to recruit all the greedy men who want to make a lot of money by hunting all the magical animals in the bayou.”
A World Darkly (Wrath of the Old Gods Book 3) Page 6