A Haunting in the SWATS (The Savannah Swan Files Book 1)

by Balogun Ojetade

  “Ain’ gotta go much further now, old man,” he whispered to himself as he limped up a steep hill. He leaned against the spindly pine trees as he passed them, pulling himself up the hill with his arms and pushing with his wobbly legs. The sun had not yet made it over the horizon, but Papa Marcel did not need sight to find his way through the woods. They were as much a part of him as his bad knee or his clouded eyes. He had lived in these hills for over two decades after he first moved to Georgia from Haiti. The forest held no secrets for him.

  But it did have some surprises.

  The ground shuddered beneath Papa Marcel’s boots – a rippling that flowed down from the top of the hill and jarred his cane out of his hand. He groped at a nearby tree for balance, but the wave of earth rolled back up the hill before the bokor could steady himself. His bad knee buckled, then Papa Marcel crashed to the ground.

  Gnarled roots and moss-covered stones bit into his legs. Papa Marcel toppled onto his side, groaning. He struggled to get up; to crawl to safety. His knee hurt so badly it made his whole leg useless; it trailed behind him as he crawled toward a bent pine tree.

  The wind exploded over the top of the hill, driving a billowing carpet of ground fog ahead of it. The cloud flowed over Papa Marcel, blinding and chilling him to the bone. He kept crawling, dragging his bad leg, trusting his instincts to guide him to safety. He could smell the springs; he was close. There was something else out there, close, too. He could feel it coming for him, stirring in the earth.

  His hand brushed against a fine layer of pine needles. “Gotcha,” Papa Marcel whispered.

  He shuffled forward a bit and got his hands on the tree’s trunk. He hauled himself up, raising one hand. He grabbed a limb, then another, and another. The tree was not big, but it was sturdy enough for Papa Marcel’s needs.

  His knee felt like someone had lit it on fire. The pain set his teeth to chattering whenever he tried to put any weight on his leg.

  Papa Marcel started a slow, rhythmic chant as he rubbed the knuckles of his fist into his knee. He could feel the Loa answer his plea – a slow infusion of strength and comfort soothed him and got his old bones moving again. Papa Marcel knew he would pay later for what he had taken from the earth, but he was not even sure there was going to be a later to worry about.

  He limped along, slower than if he had his cane, but he figured he would still get where he needed to be on time. The sun was a hint of pale pink on the horizon, little more than a suggestion of the day to come. “I’m gonna make it.”

  “Nope.” The voice rattled from within the rippling fog, “You end here, shawty.”

  Papa Marcel turned toward the threat and almost lost his footing again. The ground rumbled and the fog roiled, churning as something rushed through it.

  The bokor did not wait to see what burst up out of the ground. He lurched from tree to tree, making his way up the hill on his one good leg. His breath came in ragged gasps. He knew he was close to the top of the hill, but he could sense the monster behind him was even closer. He needed to give himself time.

  Papa Marcel leaned against a gnarled pine then pressed his lips to its scaly bark. He whispered to it, asking one last favor for an ancient man who had spent his life trying to make things better for the people of the SWATS. The pressure of Gran Bwa, the Loa of the forest, pressed hard against the bokor’s chest, exacting His price for Papa Marcel convincing the trees and earth to do their part. Papa Marcel grunted against the pain, trading months of his life for a chance to avoid death in the next few minutes. Petwo Vodou was dangerous stuff at his age; reach too far, pull too deep, and the cost would kill him on the spot.

  The ground erupted behind him. Papa Marcel hugged the tree for support.

  “Old man,” the conjured girl snarled. “That’s far enough!”

  Papa Marcel put his back to the tree then tried to stand tall. The conjured girl was a few yards away – a broken, distorted mess rising from the earth on a stalk of bloody flesh and exposed bone. She looked like walking road-kill; more exposed flesh and fractured skeleton than girl.

  “Come and get me, den!” Papa Marcel prayed the earth would answer his plea. “Let’s wè what you got.”

  The girl’s jaw gaped wide. A scream poured out of her mouth that Papa Marcel could feel, like a dagger of ice stabbing his bowels.

  The girl’s body coiled, screwing itself downward, compressing as her scream went on and on.

  Then she unwound, roaring as she shot through the air, her mangled arms reaching for Papa Marcel.

  Thick roots tore up from the soil, their glistening white tips punching through her body. They looped around her broken bones, hooking into the pink slits of her torn flesh, then wrapped around her throat like living nooses.

  The girl’s scream was strangled to silence. She hit the ground hard, digging a furrow in the rich, black soil from the impact.

  “Far enough,” Papa Marcel said, spitting on the ground near the snarling conjured girl. He turned then limped away, dragging his bum leg up the hill. He was out of trees to cling to, so he lowered himself onto his one good knee and his scarred hands, then crawled. It was not far now, maybe thirty feet. The ground felt good under his hands, and there were no more rocks to dig at his knees. He prayed for the strength to continue.

  Whatever Mayor Green and the Root Woman might think, Papa Marcel believed there was a God up there. Not a kindly old man with a swaying beard and a warm hug, but a demanding, vengeful spirit that wanted the best from its followers. The kind of God that farmers and miners could believe in; the sort of parent that pushes their children to get shit done. Heaven was not for chumps; you had to earn heaven. Papa Marcel had worked hard all his life to earn his spot in syèl la; he was not about to give up now.

  The revenant trapped beneath the trees shrieked in desperation – a hellish cry that filled Papa Marcel with dread. He pushed the fear away and kept crawling, dragging himself up the hill one handful of damp earth at a time.

  The top of the hill was a bare hump of glossy black marble pushed up through the deep emerald grass. Papa Marcel’s breath gushed out in a relieved sigh when he saw that ancient rock. He crawled the last few yards in a rush. He dragged himself up onto the marble slab then lay on his belly, head dangling over the edge. A hundred feet below was Cascade Springs Nature Preserve spread out before him. Its waters were black in the darkness, shot through with tinges of red from the rising sun.

  Papa Marcel maneuvered around until he was sitting on the ledge above the springs. A cool wind dried the sweat on his brow. He sighed then pulled his short-bladed knife from the scabbard on his belt. He had carved countless Vévé with that knife; he had even cut switches from an old palm tree when his parents decided he needed a spanking for being devègonde. Holding it was a reminder of the chores and duties and jobs and pain that had rested on his shoulders for his whole adult life.

  “Met Kalfu,” Papa Marcel began the invocation that would cleanse the springs of their foul taint. “Take this sacrifice and bless it with ya grace. Senyen pou mwen, mwen pral senyen pou ou – bleed for me, I’ll bleed for thee. I ask for ya presence; not for myself, but for those I protect. Master Crossroads, in this time of need, drink of the blood of ya servant and shield ya timoun from the darkness.”

  Papa Marcel slashed the knife across his palm then held his hand aloft, cupped so the blood collected within it. The pain in his hand was intense, far out of proportion to his actual injury. The pain of sacrifice. It was almost over.

  Thunder roared behind him. The stone under him cracked and bounced, nearly shaking Papa Marcel off. “No,” he whispered. He needed more time; just a little more time.

  She blasted free from the face of the bluff below Papa Marcel’s feet – a bloody, earth-crusted horror that wormed through the air like a broken kite. Torn roots dangled from where they had impaled her. Rivulets of dirt and gravel spilled from her raised arms. She spiraled up before Papa Marcel, a black aurora of tangled hair flaring out around her head. Her body ri
ppled in the wind, loose and boneless in places, awkward and stiff in others. She reached for Papa Marcel with arms that seemed far too long. He could see new wounds on her, places where the trees had bitten into her skin and rubbed her down to naked muscle. Her strength was still awesome to behold, as if the pain filled her with unwholesome energy.

  “So close,” she growled, “but still so far away.”

  Her fingers closed around Papa Marcel’s injured hand. She wrenched his arm around then yanked him away from the top of the hill. His blood burned in his hand as the prayer of sacrifice took root and began working its magic. He had to get away from her, get his blood into the water.

  But she was having none of it. Her mangled body swirled around Papa Marcel, and her free hand raked at him with ragged fingernails. Papa Marcel groaned as she shredded the parchment-thin skin over his ribs with one vicious swipe after another.

  “Your time is over,” she whispered into his ear, her lips brushing against his skin. “All those people you thought you saved; all the fools who came crawling to you for help? They’re ours now. We give them what they really want.”

  Papa Marcel struggled in her grip, but she was so strong it was like being wrapped in chains.

  She turned him until their eyes were inches apart. She stank of rotten earth and old blood, and her eyes burned with the fires of madness. Her arm turned, and Papa Marcel’s wrist splintered. Her thin arm rotated as if it had no bones in it at all, while Papa Marcel’s skeleton popped and cracked and came apart inside his forearm.

  “Met Kalfu,” he gasped as the sacrificial blood spilled out of his mangled hand. “All I have, I give to you!”

  The conjured girl spun, turning her whole body around the axis of Papa Marcel’s shattered arm. “He can’t hear you.”

  Papa Marcel’s elbow separated with a sickening pop. His shoulder followed a second later. The ball and socket went their separate ways, and his old, stiff ligaments shredded with muffled cracks.

  The girl laughed and revolved again, again, again.

  Papa Marcel screamed as he fell face downward, the empty socket where his arm had once been engulfed in a roaring ball of fiery pain. He felt his life spew out of the gaping hole, spraying onto the earth.

  Something wet and hot slammed into his ribs, cracking half of them and knocking him a yard up the hill. Papa Marcel lay on his back, watching the conjured girl wind her way toward him. She slithered toward him, a sinuous cord of hate and evil wriggling and coiling over the ground.

  He shoved with his good leg, driving himself up the hill as best he could. His remaining hand dug into the earth, dragging him backward in an awkward crab crawl.

  “Nowhere to go, old man.” The girl laughed then reared up above Papa Marcel, his severed arm raised above her head. She swung it down and around in a brutal swipe that smashed into Papa Marcel’s bad knee and drove her farther up the hill. She hit him again, slamming the fleshy club into his ribs.

  She bit a mouthful from the ragged stump of his arm, gnawing on it like a toddler with a French fry. “How many demons you think you’ve chased out of this shithole piece of Atlanta?”

  Papa Marcel gagged on the pain. “One too few, looks like.”

  “One hundred and seventeen.” She took another bite of his arm. “They want you to know something…”

  The girl exploded toward him, blood spewing from her broken body. Her hand locked around Papa Marcel’s throat. She rose into the air with the old bokor, spitting words into his face.

  “They’re all waiting for you.” She kissed Papa Marcel gently on the lips and breathed the taste of his own flesh and blood into his mouth. “They’ve been waiting for the day you fell. Today’s the day.”

  Papa Marcel forced words past the grip on his throat. “There ain’ no demons where I’m headed.”

  Despite the pain; despite the suffering, Papa Marcel could still feel the touch of Met Kalfu, scalding hot in his blood, proof that his blessing was still there. His blood was holy, cleansing. He was going home.

  “We’ll see,” she whispered, flicking her tongue across the tip of his nose. “Tell my sisters things are going well.”

  Papa Marcel smiled and spat in the girl’s face.

  She screeched and spun, whipping Papa Marcel around in a tight circle.

  The conjured girl released her grip on Papa Marcel’s throat, and he flew, sailing out past the edge of the hill, arcing over the waters of Cascade Springs.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Savannah’s eye felt like someone had scooped it out of her skull, rolled it in jagged bits of glass, then stuffed it back into her head. She opened her eyes then stared up at the stalactites clinging from the ceiling. Savannah knew there was no light here, but she could still see, though everything was cast in shades of black and gray. She heard something shuffle in the darkness. She lifted her head a bit to look around.

  A teenage girl was crouched a few feet away, watching Savannah with wide eyes as she chewed on her fingertips. Savannah could smell the cat-piss perfume of the longtime molly-head and wondered how long she had been working on turning her brains into pudding.

  Remembering the abuse she had endured, Savannah did not get up right away. She lay on the floor, taking stock of her body. She wiggled her toes, then clenched her teeth and flexed her legs.

  The blast of pain she expected from broken bones grinding against one another never came. She bent at the knees, lifted her feet off the floor, then clicked the heels of her boots together. She seemed to be in working order below the waist.

  Savannah remembered the exquisite torture of her hands and arm. She touched her fingertips to her palms, one at a time. All seemed accounted for. She raised her hands, bringing them up where she could see them. There were thick hash marks of scar tissue on her arm, and she seemed to have a couple of extra knuckles on one of her index fingers, but other than that, they were her hands and they worked.

  Savannah closed her right eye. She could still see out of the itchy left one, despite distinctly remembering she lost it. “I guess the new head honcho really did fix everything.”

  “Guh-good-ood,” the girl said. She stood, stiff and awkward, as if she was not quite sure how her arms and legs worked. “Come.”

  The girl padded out of the pit on bare, scabbed feet. Savannah struggled up to follow her. She looked up as she left the room and could see how far she had fallen. Maybe twenty feet. She almost wished the fall had killed her.

  She could feel the new head honcho in her head – a throbbing presence, like a tooth threatening to go bad. That presence filled Savannah with a deep sense of disgust; a constant reminder of her fear and weakness. She shoved her self-loathing down, concentrating on the new strength flowing through her. She was revolted by the choice she had made, but she was still alive. That was a start.

  “Where are we going?”

  The girl stopped, then tilted her head off to one side, like a dog trying to identify a noise only it could hear. “The tuh-time-ime is almost at hand. We must retrieve your guh-girl-irl.”

  Savannah kept walking after the girl, despite the uneasiness she felt at her words. But, even at the thought of Lashey, Savannah’s emotions were blunted by the new power in her head. She could feel the panic, but it was distant; an idea rather than an emotion itself. She was different. So were her priorities.

  Somewhere way down deep, the old Savannah ground her teeth in frustration.

  Even further down from there, the mayor gnashed his teeth in torment.

  The girl dug in the pockets of her grimy jeans. She came out with a yellow pill. She tossed the pill into her mouth, then swallowed.

  The girl turned sly eyes toward Savannah, smirking. She led the former Root Woman deeper into the cavernous maze, navigating a handful of intersections and switchbacks. Savannah found herself having to stick close to the girl’s back to avoid being left behind. When the girl stopped, Savannah bumped into her. The girl giggled as the two of them struggled to keep from falling. “W
atch ee-your-or step.”

  “Ee-you-oo must go alone from here. Follow the path; bring the girl to the cathedral.”

  The girl smiled at Savannah, then she turned and padded away on legs that seemed to bend in too many directions, disappearing into the blackness.

  The tunnel bored deeper into the earth, a long descent that tested even Savannah’s new strength. By the time it leveled off, her thighs were burning, and her calves felt stretched thin. She paused, kneeling to rub some of the aches away. Savannah knew she had been made for this kind of service and found it did not matter that much whom she served.

  “Back it up,” she heard a familiar voice call from up ahead. “I don’t want any trouble, Savannah.”

  Savannah stood. Her hands drifted to her holsters. Someone had slipped the guns back into their homes while she lay on the floor of the pit.

  “I got you covered.” Phil stood fifteen feet away, holding Lashey in one hand and a pistol in the other. The weapon’s barrel was aimed at Savannah’s gut, ready to breathe fire and lead.

  Savannah lifted her hands high. “All right, Phil. I see you got the drop on me. Why don’t you let Lashey down, and you can go on past.”

  “I’m taking her outta here. She’s coming with me.” The Chief Detective took a halting step forward – one foot, then the other. “It’s the way it has to be.”