by Parry, Owen
I did as he suggested, stepping back along the trail and out of their ritual ground. I did not take the lantern, but left it in Mr. Barnaby’s hand. For although I have been a soldier, with all the raw experience that implies, in general I remain a friend to modesty.
As I paused at my baseness, limbs shifted in the shrubs.
Still, no one appeared to greet us. Emptied for the ordeal ahead, I followed Mr. Barnaby to the spot where their devilish pattern glittered.
It was a circle of about five feet from its empty center to its outer rim. Made of broken oyster shells it was, speckled here and there with colored glass. It put me in mind of the symbols Hindoo holy men draw in the sand, their markings so ancient that the fakirs themselves do not know their origin. Or even their proper meaning.
“Step in there, Major Jones,” Mr. Barnaby instructed. “Right to the middle, where they ’as left you a proper space. No, no! Don’t step across the lines like that, sir, that won’t do at all. Slip in right ’ere, where the spirits ’as left you an opening, like.”
“Mr. Barnaby …”
“Please, sir. This ain’t no time for arguing. It’s too late now. Just do as I says, I begs you. Or they might not look with favor on either one of us.”
I did not restrain the impulse to feel the outline of my Colt beneath my cape. Tracing its solid outline with my hand, I stepped into the circle.
“Now stay there, sir,” my companion told me, his tone half a plea, half an order. “And don’t say a word to whoever comes out of the bushes to close up the circle. Don’t say a word to nobody, no matter what you sees. Just stay mum. Pray, if you likes. But don’t make a fuss of it, neither. Stand up as long as you can. But whatever happens, whatever you sees, don’t lay so much as a fingernail outside the circle. Don’t even touch the shells, if you can ’elp it.”
I had to wonder, as you yourself would have done, how on earth I had allowed myself to enter into so unsound a situation.
“Please, sir,” Mr. Barnaby said again. “Whatever you do, and whatever you does … whatever you sees or you don’t … don’t even hint that you’re like to break the circle. It’s for your own good, sir. Bless me and you both, it’s for your own good. Even if they seems to be speaking to you directly, don’t answer. For it ain’t them speaking at all, and it ain’t your mouth that the spirits expects to reply. Don’t make a move you doesn’t ’ave to, and don’t say a word, I begs you.”
I began to ask a question, but found my mouth peculiarly dry. “You really intend to go? You won’t be watching?”
He shook his head decisively. “They’d kill me dead if I so much as tried, sir. For though they doesn’t dislike me the way they generally does a white man, my credit ain’t good out ’ere and they’d treat me unpleasant. Before they got around to killing me proper.”
“And … and how will I know … that is, when will I be able to leave this ridiculous circle?”
“When it’s all over, sir, when it’s all over. One of ’em will come back and open the path again. But don’t speak to ’im, neither. And step careful, sir, step careful even then.”
“But … if I am not to speak … how will I ask questions … or come by answers?”
“She’ll take care of that, sir. In ’er good time. We can’t be too demanding, under the circumstances.”
“But will this … this woman actually—”
“I ’as to leave you now, sir. I can sense ’em and they’re growing most impatient. They wants to start their business, sir, and it won’t do to delay ’em.”
With that, he turned abruptly and strode off, lantern bobbing. He did pause for one last moment, turning just enough of his formidable person to whisper, “For God’s sake, Major Jones, stay in the circle!”
His bulk obscured the lantern and, for a little time, his silhouette glowed orange. Then he reached a bend in the trail and disappeared entirely.
The night did not feel welcoming. Under the draping moss, the torches crackled, their noise akin to mockery. Again, I laid my hand upon my Colt, clutching my sword-cane tightly with the other. Queer it was. My left hand had taken a wound from a blade the past autumn. Although it had healed nicely, I had not yet been able to make a solid fist. That night, my paw relented, gripping my cane so tightly that you might have mistaken my fist for an old Seekh cannonball. Yet the wound itself, which I had received from a madwoman, ached peculiarly, with a cold, sharp pain that seemed a thing alive.
I considered abandoning all the nonsense before me and taking myself along behind Mr. Barnaby. As quickly as I might go.
A form materialized at the edge of my vision. It was not Mr. Barnaby returned.
A black fellow, big and fierce as a heathen idol, come strolling straight toward me. He did not look affable. Despite the chill of the winter night, his attire consisted of only a colored handkerchief draped to conceal his embarrassment. For a worrisome instant, I thought it might be that great colored fellow with the scars upon his face, the one who had chased me from the rooftop down through the fancy house. But the approaching negro soon looked a less kindly sort.
He engaged my eyes for an instant’s disapproval, then dropped to his knees at the outer edge of the circle. Deft as a veteran seamstress at her stitching, he rearranged shells and sparkles of glass to complete the inward pattern of the design. Then he closed the circle and pushed back to his feet with an angry grunt.
Towering above me, his person was of such developed musculature that you might have judged him impervious to bullets.
Then I heard them. The way you hear Afghanees creeping toward your camp in the heathen dark.
The drumming commenced, meant to entice, not terrify. Instead of booming through the night, it slapped and tapped and teased in rhythms that had no civilized origin. From out of the maze of crippled trees, the musicians themselves appeared, to the number of three, approaching the flank of the altar. One of the drummers affected the same state of undress as the negro who closed the circle, but the others wore long white shirts over bare, black legs.
None was shod.
Twas not a setting for the weak of heart. In ones and twos, then in silent packs, the celebrants entered the clearing, phantoms out of the wintering swamps, their eyes thirsting for the torchlight. You might have thought them risen from their graves on the Day of Judgement.
Motley and immodest, the women appeared as shameless as the men. Some wore loose frocks of white or butter-muslin, while others wore only skirts and, forgive me, nothing above but blue cords round their waists. A minority of the negresses had chosen raiment identical to that of the nearly naked men.
Twas winter, mind.
First one man, then a second, seized the torches from their sconces on the tree trunks and began to prance about, playfully thrusting the flames toward their companions, who made a game of leaping from their paths. As they jollied about the clearing, the torchbearers lit the bonfires, which must have been prepared with pitch or the like. The pyres blazed so readily that waves of unleashed warmth swept over the clearing.
The lot of them began to chant to the tapping of their drums. It was no outcry, but a mighty whisper, all the more unnerving for its restraint.
Gourds passed from mouth to mouth. Some drank from bottles.
They began to form themselves into unkempt patterns, dancing in and out of the star of bonfires, flexing their limbs and paying each other not the least untoward attention. Despite the alarming nakedness of full-grown women and girls coming into their figures, the men pressed no indignities upon them. In return, the females ignored the males, but brought increasing vigor to the dance.
Even as the fires blazed, turning brown flesh bronze and scorching the air, the volume of the drumming remained subdued. The fire-glow must have been visible from afar, above the wild trees of bayou and swamp, but the worshippers did not wish to be heard.
At least not yet.
I believe they were in number almost a hundred, perhaps more, with the females in the advantage by two
to one.
I remembered, of course, that I had been singled out to become a “goat without horns” by some of their fellow pagans. But for the moment I might have been invisible for all the interest the celebrants took in me.
They chanted and danced, and drank without breaking stride.
As the fires blazed, I got a better look at the altar’s clutter. A great wooden bowl took pride of place in the center. To the right stood a Catholic statue. I believe it represented the Mother of Christ. Beads and baubles adorned it and I thought it seemed familiar. On the other side of the bowl, a creature carved of wood depicted Nightmare.
The pattern of the drumming changed, taking speed as the cavalry shifts from a trot into a canter. The dancers compacted themselves into the yard between the bonfires. I noted that not one approached the altar.
I felt a nasty chill, almost a panic, but fought it down by reciting my favorite Psalms under my breath.
The congregants took as much care to avoid my circle as they did to shy from the altar.
To my relief, there were no white women present. Of that, I can assure you. Rumors of such racial mixing had troubled me, as they would any Christian man.
Yet, not all those assembled were the cinder-black of Africans in picture-books. Some of the women, especially, were light as caramel or even as pale as milk coffee. The men tended to a darker hue, but not a few of them might have passed for Rajputs, had their features been less broad and their manners more decorous. I wondered what pursuits they followed by day.
One of the men erupted in a fit, demanding the attention of all present. He was a queer fellow, muscled like a half-starved stevedore, ropey, strong and hungry-looking as Cassius. At first, I thought him a victim of Caesar’s affliction. He stomped madly, arching his back until it must break, then flopping forward to curl over his belly. Next, he flung wide his arms, eyes rolling madly, then closed himself into a fist.
Sleek as a dolphin spotted off the Cape, he leapt high in the air, twisting about between myself and the altar. He dropped from his heaven-ward flight straight to his knees, striking the earth so heavily the pain echoed in my limbs.
He did not rise, but dropped his forehead to the earth like a Musselman.
All of the others followed his example. Hastily. Groveling on the soil. With no regard for white skirts or snowy blouses.
They barely paused to plug up their gourds or stuff corks into bottles. As they bent and writhed about, a fellow saw much that was not meant to be seen.
Even the drummers fell to their knees, although they did not press their faces in the dirt. They bowed to the altar in rhythmic waves, slapping away at their instruments all the while.
Twas then I saw her. Emerging from some morbid bower or grotto. I felt the sort of surprise that transfixes a man, that makes no rational sense. Twas a shock far greater than it should have been, of the sort that none of our doctors can explain.
Madame La Blanch it was who appeared from the shadows. She no longer wore her dress of tattered frills. Instead she wore a gown of purple satin that made her face look regal, hard and deathly. The palest of them all she was, but revealed now unmistakably as a negress. Perhaps it was the turban she wore, tied up like the rags of a Peshawar mullah who has done his Haj and wears his badge of honor. The cloth of her headdress was parti-colored, so rich and tumultuous in pattern that I only saw the snake when it thrust its snout some inches beyond the fabric.
She carried a snake in her turban, and not a small one. Curled about her head like a fancy bonnet, making of the woman a willing Medusa. I had never seen the like even in India.
But that was not the queerest of the business. She led a fellow on a golden chain, a towering negro whose skin gleamed as maroon as Spanish leather.
He looked like a walking corpse, dead to the world but still maintained in motion.
Twas not that his physique was foul or withered. His flesh looked plump and strong. But there was nothing in his eyes, no spark, no soul. His movements were stiff, as if he were a machine in need of oiling.
Except for the chain about his waist, by which he was led as a prisoner, the fellow wore the innocence of Adam.
As Madame La Blanch approached, her congregation began to moan and plead. I could not understand a word they uttered. Their language was as foreign as the shores of Death. Perhaps it was a ruined child of French.
Madame La Blanch was the first of the lot to look me over properly. Vivid with firelight, her eyes burned the air between us.
Hereafter, I shall call her Queen Manuela.
Behind the empty-faced fellow she led along, a single fully-dressed male appeared, got up like a king in an amateur theatrical. He carried a drowsing lamb in his arms and rocked his head from side to side as if to a strain of music none other could hear. The “king” wore a goat’s beard on his chin, but no moustache or whiskers. His eyes would have frightened a cobra.
Of a sudden, Queen Manuela cried out. The sound reminded me of the calls of tribal women perched above the Khyber. At once, her followers hushed and cowered as if they wished to hide themselves in the earth.
She did not secure the leash by which she led her naked slave, but merely left him standing by the altar, dead-eyed and grim. Plunging into the midst of her flock with exaggerated strides, she took no care of where she placed her feet, but let the worshippers squirm out of her way. Producing a pouch from the folds of her gown, she tossed a handful of dust in the nearest bonfire.
Her offering flared green, sparking and sizzling. I caught a scent that might have put me in mind of India’s incense, had it not conjured up a matching odor of death.
With the mass of worshippers teeming against one another, careless of indecency, Queen Manuela proceeded from blaze to blaze, offering a tribute of dust at each. I saw bright clouds of purple, rose and blue, then green again.
The aromas grew confusing and complex. First, they bid you breathe deeply and take your pleasure. Then they gagged you like a pit of corpses.
Queen Manuela paid me no further attention, but paced thrice round her star of roaring fires. With the snake rising up from her turban, as if on watch for dangers to her rear.
Returning to the altar, she began to chant in a voice as strong as a man’s, leading her flock through a queer, corrupted liturgy. Spreading her arms in mockery of a priest, she let her purple vestments trail like wings. Eyes closed, she raised her face to greet the darkness. The way an honest Christian greets the light.
Beside her, the tethered negro stood inhumanly still, while the tatterdemalion king stroked his lamb and smiled.
The queen raised the empty bowl to the sky and shrieked.
Her adherents roared out a sudden response so mighty it made me recoil. I had to remind myself of Mr. Barnaby’s warnings to keep myself upright and within the circle.
The incense changed aromas as it burned, beginning to smell of nameless fruits gone off. The fragrance hinted of lures, of intoxication.
A prayer broke on my lips. I retreated to the greater strength of the Gospels.
Back and forth they went, the queen and her congregants, in call and response that might have suited the noisier sort of Baptists. The sound was disconcerting. It carried a sort of undertow, like the tides of the Bristol Channel. I laid my hand over my breast pocket. Where my Testament resided. As if I feared to end a drowning man.
She must have called to the mock-king with the lamb. He bowed his head and, bending low, meekly approached the altar.
I expected a blood sacrifice, for that is the general practice of primitives everywhere. But the meanness of their actions soon astonished me.
Queen Manuela stepped toward the king, who seemed to shrink and cower. Slipping to his knees, he offered the lamb. Standing before the trembling fellow, the voodoo priestess raised the skirts of her gown, allowing him to slip the animal underneath the folds.
Queen Manuela screamed, as if in agony. Gingerly, the king withdrew the lamb.
Twas a pantomime of birth.
Then he placed the beast upon the altar.
Animals have more sense of things than we credit. The little creature trembled so hard that I could see it quivering from my circle. All beings want to live.
I thought that one of them would cut its throat. Instead, the priestess took the great, insensate fellow by the leash and drew him behind the altar, until his massive torso framed the lamb.
The queen had lowered her voice, whispering secrets to her soulless slave. I never saw him blink. Stiffly, like a great mechanical doll, he extended his arms and took up the lamb, lifting it to his mouth.
I will spare you excessive description. Suffice to say he skinned the beast alive. With his teeth. Over the altar bowl.
The poor thing bleated longer than I thought possible.
The snake in Queen Manuela’s turban rose to watch the world beyond the sacrifice, as if it were a sentinel in a tower.
The meat and bones and pelt of the lamb were discarded. Twas only the blood that mattered. The priestess thrust her slave back into the shadows, rudely and confidently. Gore trailed down his jaw and over his chest.
The king turned from the altar, scurrying off like a child who fears a beating. The worshippers had grown ever more restive, some of them trembling like the lamb, others writhing in torment and demanding some vague blessing of the darkness. Choosing the most demented among them, the king tapped one head then another.
The fortunate crabbed their way toward the altar.
Queen Manuela lifted the bowl of blood and filled her mouth, then set the vessel down reverently. Lunging forward, she spit quick streams of blood onto her disciples, staining their faces and frocks, their heady nakedness. Each took the unholy baptism as license to a frenzy.
The maddest rose and danced. Others chanted, raggedly but fiercely. The drums surged. There was no fear of intruders now. Their spirits had come among them.
The priestess drank again. And then again. Treading among bodies as tormented and bloodied as soldiers in a field hospital. Yet, for all the intoxication, I noted that a few of the men remembered to add more wood to the bonfires.