The Lower Deep

by Hugh B. Cave

  He would probably not see anything very out of the ordinary in the short time he was to be here, Steve reluctantly had to admit when he walked about the compound later. True, there were more than a hundred persons present, including perhaps thirty women, but the ceremonies being held throughout the compound at present were apparently only preliminaries.

  The later ones would be something else, without a doubt. Among the animals tethered for sacrifice were a huge black bull and the largest white ram he had ever laid eyes on.

  At one of the night's events, however, he did see for the first time one of the fabled assotor drums about which he had heard so much. Nearly seven feet tall and played by a man on a platform, this was the largest, tallest, and deepest-voiced of all the voodoo drums. For more than an hour, entranced, he stood in the doorway of that particular peristyle and watched while the drummer filled the night with a rhythmic thunder.

  Out of the dark came his houngan friend from the hospital—obviously a man of high standing, for at his appearance the thunder ceased for a moment while the player saluted him. That particular thunder, the houngan explained to Steve, was meant to awaken the gods or loa from their slumber, wherever they might be, and summon them to La Souvenance. And they would come.

  The faithful awaiting their coming were from all parts of St. Joseph, it seemed. In a country where travel was such a hardship, that seemed to say a lot for the power of faith. The houngan from the hospital, strolling about the compound with him now, introduced him to some of them. All responded politely to his greetings, though some were obviously startled to find themselves gazing at a white face.

  From time to time during that eventful night Steve did return to his hut for a few minutes of rest and refreshment, though he had no intention of retiring while anything of interest was taking place. One look at the drinking water provided for him dissuaded him from tasting any. Green and slimy, it came from an ancient village well and probably would be fatal to anyone who had not built up an immunity to typhoid over the years. Instead, he sipped from a bottle of St. Joseph rum he had brought along, and sucked hard candy he had dropped into his pocket before leaving the hospital.

  Then at daybreak, during a lull in the activities, he went to his hut and stretched out for a while on a sleeping mat there. And was to regret that later—at least, was to regret having taken off his shoes—because in addition to all the other horrors brought on by his attendance at La Souvenance, he had to remove chigres from under four of his toenails. Those nasty little beasties dwelt in the soil of such places, it seemed, and invariably felt an urge to burrow under one's toenails to lay their eggs. And the victim had damned well better get them out in a hurry or he could lose a toe or two to infection.

  That day, in response to the throbbing of the assotor, many of the summoned loa arrived and possessed the minds of chosen celebrants—or so it seemed. At least, the chosen ones underwent striking alterations in personality and appearance, speaking and behaving as the loa were known to. Services were held in their honor in the peristyles scattered throughout the village. Steve went from one to another, sweltering under roofs of banana thatch to watch the proceedings.

  There was chanting. There was more drumming. There was dancing of the incredibly skilled kind that, years ago, had led the famed Katherine Dunham to recruit dancers of that other voodoo country, Haiti, for her international troupe.

  Not once did he meet with anything but politeness. Never an ugly word or an ugly question concerning the reason for his presence. The old houngan who had invited him had prepared them, it seemed. Almost everyone knew he was a doctor from that hospital in Fond des Pintards that did so much for the barefoot ones of this poor country. As for the old houngan himself, he became possessed at a service early in the day and thereafter wandered about the compound talking to people in a strange tongue that no one understood. By way of explanation he would add in Creole, "Mwen Moise! (I am Moses!) I bring you greetings from the old days."

  Could the foreign tongue be Hebrew? Steve knew no words in that language with which to test the man.

  When the time drew near for Nadine Palmer to return for him, Steve would have said good-bye to many of those he had met, but it was out of the question. The evening ceremonies had begun. With regret that he would not be able to see more of the rituals, he placed his still nearly full bottle of rum where someone in need would be sure to find it, and reluctantly made his way across the compound to the gate.

  The same gatekeeper who had let him in stepped forward with a scowl to confront him.

  "Yes, m'sié?"

  "I have to leave now, compère."

  The fellow did not step aside. Did not, in fact, even budge, except to take in a whistling breath and place his big, long-fingered hands on his hips.

  "You cannot leave, m'sié. It is forbidden."

  Though tired from the long ordeal, Steve felt his pulse race. What was this? To be sure, the old houngan had made some remark about there being rules that must be obeyed, and the fellow with the unfamiliar Creole might have mentioned something similar, but for this to be happening now . . .

  "What are you talking about, friend? I have to get back to the hospital. I'm a doctor there."

  The guard, sentry, whatever he was, only shook his head more vehemently. "It is not permitted to depart before the week of La Souvenance is over, m'sié. Everyone knows that!"

  "What? You expect me to stay here the whole week?"

  "You must."

  It was no joke, Steve suddenly realized. In fact, it could be a very big problem. "Let me talk to someone in authority, please." He kept his voice level because it would be a shame to make anyone angry now, when surely a few words to someone higher up would bring about a relaxing of the rules. "Who is in charge of the comings and goings? Get him, will you? Or no—just take me to him."

  "M'sié—" A note of sadness had crept into the fellow's voice, as though ignorance in a learned man caused him great unhappiness. "M'sié, it is not we who make the rules here. It is the loa."

  "The loa. I see."

  "For you to leave would offend them."

  It had gone on too long, Steve decided. Nadine would be arriving any minute now and he had to be outside in the road, not here in the compound behind a closed gate. "Compère, tell me. Are you saying you mean to stop me from opening that gate and walking out of here?"

  "It will not be I, m'sié. It will be the loa."

  "They will stop me?"

  "Yes, m'sié. Or punish you."

  "Well"—Steve exhaled an elaborate sigh—"it's a chance I'll have to take, then. Because I'm expected back at the Brightman, and that's where I'm going."

  He stepped forward.

  Though scarcely seeming to move, the gatekeeper was suddenly in front of him on widespread legs, blocking his way. Those big, long-fingered hands left the man's hips and reached forward to grasp Steve's shoulders.

  No man did that to Steve Spence, at a voodoo ceremony or anywhere else. Especially after Steve had patiently made every effort to explain matters. Freeing himself with a twist of his hips, he made a fist of his right hand and drove it home just under the keeper's rib cage. Then as the fellow doubled over, the heel of Steve's left hand cracked down on the back of his neck and sent him sprawling. He was unconscious before he hit the ground.

  There was no lock on the gate. It swung open when Steve pushed it. With a "Sorry, compère, but I had to do that," he walked out of the compound.

  Almost.

  Actually, he was through the gate but still in the strip of scrub growth between the gate and the road when the pain took him. The sentry could not have caused it, even if he had been conscious; Steve was well beyond his reach. What happened was like a lightning strike, or being belted under the heart with a sledgehammer.

  The explosion of agony caused him to stumble and stagger while he grabbed at his groin with both hands in a struggle to keep going. He could not keep going, though—at least not on his feet. His knees buckled and he fell f
lat, facedown, and lay there hearing himself moan in torment as the pain coursed through him like a flame in his bloodstream. Then his mind screamed at him to get away from the fence, the compound behind it, the gate, and the man who had been guarding it, because all of them together must somehow be responsible for what was happening to him.

  Willing himself forward again, he began to crawl. He crawled through the last of the scrub and reached the road and collapsed again. There, hearing the sound of a car engine, he feebly raised his head.

  Down the road a pair of headlights approached through the deepening dusk. Was it Nadine? Just in time to help him? Dreading what he might see, he willed himself to look back at the gate. Its keeper still lay there on the ground, unmoving. No one else was there.

  The headlights stopped, and he saw Nadine running toward him. It was the last thing he remembered until he came out of a coma five days later at the hospital.

  After dragging him to the Jeep and getting him away from La Souvenance, Nadine had stopped a little distance down the road and given him some kind of first aid, he heard later. Then she had completed the return trip to the Brightman at a speed that should have caused the death of them both. There Tom Driscoll had taken over.

  With Tom's skill and Nadine's round-the-clock nursing, they had pulled him through.

  No one, then or since, had ever explained what happened to him when he defied the rules and walked out of that voodoo gate. Nor had anyone ever explained why a voodoo houngan, so grateful for having his life saved that he would invite an outsider to attend such a service, had allowed such a thing to happen. Perhaps, as the gatekeeper had suggested, the loa themselves had been offended, in which case maybe even a powerful houngan could not have intervened.

  At least, he had learned one thing. Voodoo was not what the stick-a-pin-in-a-doll writers said it was. It was real and powerful and frightening.

  You played games with it at your peril.

  7

  With the memory of his nightmare experience at La Souvenance still vivid in his mind, Steve looked at his watch. Half an hour had passed since Tom Driscoll's departure from his room. It was now 3:30 A.M.

  Troubled by the older doctor's visit, he went to a window and stood there frowning out at the night.

  Could there be some connection between La Souvenance and what was happening here at the Azagon? It seemed unlikely, yet this was the first time he and Tom Driscoll and Nadine Palmer had been together since then. And the village of Dame Marie was said to be a hotbed of voodoo, wasn't it?

  In St. Joe, the impossible was merely improbable. And the improbable happened all the time.

  Be careful, Spence. You still don't know what the hell happened while you were out of it back there at the Brightman. Be very, very careful here.

  The night was dark, as his caller had mentioned. It was not altogether lightless, however. There seemed to be rather more stars in evidence than usual. He could still make out the sloping front lawn, the road, and the hotel beach beyond.

  What the devil was Paul Henninger doing on his mysterious nighttime excursions? Was he up to something a bit shady, as Driscoll obviously suspected and perhaps young Mendoza did, too?

  Was there maybe a house in town to which such a man might be drawn for the usual reason?

  I'll have a talk with him tomorrow, Steve promised himself, then turned from his contemplation of the night sky to go to bed. But in mid-turn he stopped and swung back to the window, aware that he had seen something remarkable at the foot of the hotel driveway.

  Paul Henninger had come back, stark naked and apparently ill.

  Steve strode from the room with his dressing gown flapping behind him and his moccasins barely touching the floor. With one hand on the banister he descended the stairs like swift water flowing, then sped along the lower hall at the same no-nonsense gait. He was out the front door and striding briskly down the driveway before Henninger had managed to travel a third of the drive's length.

  "All right, Paul. All right. Just hang on to me now, and we'll get you to your room."

  The manager's only response was a shuddering moan as Steve got an arm around him. Though the night was warm, his naked body was cold and clammy despite its layers of fat, and he seemed unable to stop his violent shivering.

  With Steve's help he did stop stumbling, however, and together they made it up the driveway, up the steps, and along the downstairs hall to Henninger's untidy room. There Steve eased him onto a chair, covered him with a sheet from the unmade bed, and stepped back to look at him.

  "Do you want to tell me where you've been?" Steve had no trouble keeping his voice gentle.

  "Oh, my God," Henninger moaned.

  "Try to get hold of yourself, Paul. You haven't been drinking, have you?" The question was pointless. No one at the Azagon used alcohol. Some on the staff were rehabilitated alcoholics themselves.

  "No, no, Doctor... I don't drink."

  "Then let's try again, shall we?" Steve said. "When you left here about midnight, where were you going?"

  "I don't know. I don't remember leaving."

  "You were walking in your sleep, you mean?" Henninger lifted his head long enough to look at his questioner for a few seconds, then let it fall.

  "I don't—I don't remember going out, Doctor."

  "You were sleepwalking, then?"

  "I just don't know. All I know is that I ended up swimming naked in the sea, and everything around me was dark. I couldn't see the shore, any lights on shore. I was all alone in the sea, naked and terrified."

  Looking terrified even now, Henninger began to tremble violently but recovered and went on in a voice slightly more under control. "Oh, my God, Doctor, you can't know the feeling! I had been here in my room, safe in bed, reading. I almost always read at night. I don't remember putting the light out. Then all at once I found myself there in that dark sea with no shore, no lights, swimming as if I had to swim. Something was forcing me. And somehow I knew I was swimming out, away from land, to keep some kind of—of appointment."

  "How did you get ashore?"

  "Something—some fish, I suppose—struck at me. That broke the spell or whatever it was, and I stopped swimming. Then while I was treading water, confused, not knowing what to do, I heard drumming. You know—voodoo drums. That told me where land was, and I swam toward it like a madman."

  "Were you far out? I mean, did it take you long to reach shore?"

  "Oh, my God," Henninger moaned again. "I was so far out, I thought I would never get back. When I stumbled up onto the beach at Anse Douce, I was absolutely exhausted and had to lie there until I recovered. Then I walked up and down searching for my pajamas. I must have been wearing them when I left this room, don't you see? But I couldn't find them. Evidently I took them off somewhere else. So I had to walk home naked."

  "Where did this fish, or whatever it was, bite you?" Steve wondered if his frown betrayed his suspicions. "What part of your body?"

  Henninger stood up and put his left foot on the chair, brushing the sheet aside to bare his leg to the knee. "See for yourself, Doctor."

  Something with teeth had certainly attacked the man, Steve had to admit as he examined the patch of lacerations, four or five inches in diameter, on Henninger's calf. It was nothing to be alarmed about now—simple first aid would take care of it—but to be swimming in deep water at night, far from land, and suddenly feel that sort of tearing at one's leg must have been truly frightening. "Let me bandage this for you, Paul."

  "It's not bleeding now, is it, Doctor? But if you . . . there's a first-aid kit in the bathroom cabinet."

  Steve went for the kit and put on a bandage. "I'll run along," he said then. "After what you've been through, you need to sleep awhile, Paul."

  "If I dare go to sleep," Henninger sighed while hobbling to the bed.

  "Do you have anything to help you?"

  "Pills, you mean? I'd be afraid to use them!"

  "I see what you mean. Anyway, you'll hardly need any for the r
est of tonight. You're exhausted. I'll look in on you first thing in the morning."

  "Thank you." The fat man worked himself into a fetal position on the bed and pulled the sheet over him. "Thank you for helping me, Doctor. Believe me, I'm grateful."

  On his way out of the room Steve again felt the rustling of the spilled salt, if it was salt, under the soft soles of his moccasins, and again found himself frowning down at the floor. But Paul Henninger's untidiness had nothing to do with tonight's wild adventure, he was sure. There had to be, as Tom Driscoll kept insisting, something very sinister going on here at the Azagon.

  What the hell was it? And who was behind it?

  Deep in thought, he climbed the stairs to his room. Five minutes to four, his watch said now. He hung up his dressing gown and pajamas—somehow it seemed important to do that after the clutter of Henninger's quarters—and got dressed. Flashlight in hand, he departed.

  His destination being the hotel beach, which seemed the likeliest place for the manager to have begun that weird nocturnal swim, he went out the front door and down the driveway.

  The beach was deserted, of course. During the day you might find some of the patients here, now and then even an off-duty member of the staff, but at this hour the crabs owned the place. The beam from his flashlight picked them out—slow-moving, otherworld weirdies that fled like phantoms when the light touched them. The smell of the sea was cleaner and sharper at night, too. I should do this for the fun of it now and then, Steve thought. Not just when I have to.

  He walked along only a few feet from the water's edge, sweeping a broad section of the sand with his light. The beam picked out lumps of coral of assorted shapes and sizes, creating a fantasy world of shadows as it struck them. It hovered briefly over clumps of seaweed that just might hide the pajamas he was looking for. Once it touched a small-bodied, long-legged bird, seemingly asleep on its feet, that sprang to life and went racing down the shore ahead of him with its wings outspread but rigid. Not a pelican. Much smaller than that. But for some reason it caused him to think of pelicans.