by Anton Marks
“Oh, shit!” He said.
Y landed hard on her feet the pain pierced her like jagged spikes of electricity from her toes to the crown of her head. She didn’t look back there was no need to.
Dark pickney swarmed him like a wave of black piranhas his body erupting into a cloud of red mist and what was left of his corpse shuddered with the ferocity of it being torn apart. Changing direction slightly, Y headed for the other guy, dashing through the shadows at speed, enduring the vicious snapping of the creatures at her heels. Going with the flow but ending up where she wanted to be. Y estimated being five strides away from where Suzy had fallen and where the second gun-man had taken aim.
I’m coming baby.
Y mounted a stone hewn plinth at full tilt and hurled herself from it.
A gun went off, then another.
Too late?
Gravity held her descent or so it felt and when it resumed its effect she smashed into the back of the gunman, only a split second choice saving him from a severed head. He stumbled forward trying to keep himself upright but failing. Y skidded to a stop, steeling herself for what she would discover.
Suzy was not there.
What remained was a blood trail that meandered to another area of light which was obstructed with another rock.
A wave of relief washed over her.
Y turned away from the blood trail just in time to see the gun man regaining his footing, standing just on the edge of shadow and light. His relief was palpable. Even if he had lost his weapon in the shadows he knew he could take this bitch.
Y watched him keenly.
He revolved his neck like a bare knuckle fighter and bunched up his shoulders. He started bouncing on the spot, using the fingers of his right hand to call her into conflict.
“Lose the sword, bitch. Let’s party.”
Okay, Y thought. let’s, play.
Y sheathed the katana and drew a stance, checking the demarcation of the light and the shadow around her floor area. This was to be her arena and she was bound to its dimensions. The goon grinned and began to weave his way towards her like the bell had rung and he was leaving his corner.
Deacon and Remy stood back to back in an oasis of light that they both knew would not last forever. Boss man Deacon looked forlornly at what could have been. The altar was hewn from a boulder and covered with boxes, crates, old scrolls, trinkets, oddities and bejeweled treasures, not to mention many bundles and stacks of fifty pound notes unable to fit into the cases already bursting at the seams with money. It might as well be a million miles away. Everywhere that shunned the light was filled with the tiny burning red eyes of the creatures that unnaturally blended with the darkness that bore them.
On the side where the treasure lay were Spokes and Patra in what seemed like a similar predicament. Sardonic laughter echoed in their minds like a psychic call waiting you had no choice but to accept and that left you feeling unclean and soiled afterwards.
The voice’s amusement continued for a while longer and slowly a modicum of recognition slivered out of the hatched eggs of confusion like lizard spawn.
“Who feh kill first, eh?” it said, words dripping with menace.
“Eeny, meeny, miney, moh, catch a begga by deh toe, if him bawl, den yuh know, eeny meeny, miney, MOH!”
The final word boomed in the heads of everyone present, making the receivers grit their teeth, hold their heads or massaging their temples from the effect of the force.
A wave of darkness erupted from the scattered pockets of shadows like a tsunami. Dark matter coalesced into a force that was much more than the sum of its parts. The anguished screech it made was ear splitting, like a painful birth that was forced upon it by its new master. Everyone shrank back from its suddenness. The wave of hell stuff rolled over itself, ignoring the searing lances of light, its bulk compensating for the damage as it flowed like a wall of oil, excrement and debris all rolled into one. It reared up as soon as Deacon and Remy were in its sight, a roaring mew from something that should not have lungs but the horrific insanity did. It had many gaping mouths too, many staring red eyes that bore into you, all burning slits, dripping saliva and chomping teeth like guillotines.
Remy’s eyes bugged but he was in survival mode, his mouth working away in concentration like he was chewing his cud. He let the spell fly, like a baseball pitcher, the incantation made physical as a fire ball streaked towards the creatures. But impact was as anticlimactic as a cigarette being doused in a mud bath. His hex of fire lacked purity, fuelling the hell spawn instead. Remy flinched as the darkness morphed into something resembling a giant cloven hoof and slammed down onto him with a sickening crunch. His screams made Deacon try to back up but his left leg was pinned under Remy’s broken body. The gangster tried to keep panic at bay but his wild struggling to free himself spoke volumes of his fear. Remy tried to lift himself up on his hands and knees, bones broken, muscles crushed, tendrils of congealed blood hanging from his lips.
“Yuh bring a ratchet to a gunfight, bwoy?” Darkman cackled in everyone’s head just as the creature slammed down on the Haitian again, transforming into something else the human mind could not completely comprehend and devouring the body in a frenzy of teeth and claw.
A squeak of despondency escaped from Deacon’s chapped lips. He was paralyzed with terror, his mind grinding to a stop as he helplessly watched the writhing flesh devour his last best hope.
Darkman seemed to consider the pathetic figure of Deacon stripped and powerless.
“You didn’t tink I would forget yuh. No, no, no. Because of you I spent four years in lockdown. Because of you I’m still recovering what is mine. Yuh tink your organization was a match feh me? I don’t need an army to vanquish you, I have deh hosts of Hell at my disposal. But don’t fret Deacon, I’ve been promised a special place in deh pit for a bad man like you. So hush, you will have to wait while I speak to my breddrin’ Spokes.”
Y grunted from the fist to her ribs, her body buckling in with the force but just managing to twist her torso minimizing the impact.
He was strong.
And strength for strength, she didn’t stand a chance against him but conflict was more than raw strength. Y braced herself. His upper cuts came thick and fast and Y kept deflecting his energy with her sore arms. He roared his frustration aggravated; he wasn’t inflicting the kind of damage he was expecting. He leapt up, hurtling towards her with his knee extended like a seasoned Thai boxer.
Y read him too late.
His knee smashed into her chest, lifting Y off her feet with the force and depositing her some feet away. She skidded to a stop at the edge of shadow and light, glaring at him, from her knees, a sharp pain stabbing into her chest, stars popping before her eyes.
Unsteadily she stood up.
His grimaces seemed to say, why won’t dis gal go down?
Y flexed her chest and flashed her arms, a routine that was meant to erase the pain of their last tangle.
This time she came at him.
His reach was long so he swung at her from a distance and followed up with a straight thrust kick that she side stepped and parried with her forearm. Close quarter combat favored small narrow frames and Y fitted the bill. She got in close and personal ramming her elbow and the heel of her hand into his pressure points. His body language switched from confidence to uncertainty. He tried to counteract the flurry of blows but Y just kept blocking his awkward attempts and hurt him, her anger rising a notch. He was gritting his teeth as the pain started to eclipse him. He was unable to move backwards as the shadows were nipping at his heels and unable to move forward as the bitch was on him like a itchy sweater.
He was losing energy, stability and his self control dwindling.
He roared again, kicked out with a last ditch attempt to take back some advantage but Y caught his leg, pivoted it upwards and toppled him on his back. He was up on his knees quickly but Y had already sprung up on his torso, both feet smashing into his chest and using it like a springbo
ard catapulting herself away from him. Y landed clumsily from tiredness but she didn’t care. The force sent him tumbling away from her like a disjointed hay bale and that’s where he came to rest.
The sigh of relief whistled through his teeth, when he realised he was in the safe zone. He relaxed and his arm flopped in the shadows and that’s all it took. The darkness snarled to life like a shapeless velociraptor, dragging him into its embrace. He thrashed violently. A mist of crimson like an aerosol spray tinted the air and screams like his body and soul were being ripped apart rose up into the vault above. The chorus of his agony was celebrated by the caverns acoustics.
Then there was silence.
The grotesquery that stood in the shadows was doing its best at being a corrupted facsimile of Darkman but even in the gloom it was struggling to keep the form together, swaying slightly, its balance wavering from time to time. Spokes watched it with the intensity of a man whose life depended on reading its body language, watching as the creatures struggled to maintain the illusion of the Obeah man. An arm would fall off, quickly replaced with more minions molding themselves to replicate the limb but lacking the same coherence every time they had to reconstitute themselves. The telepathic connection Enoch had established between everyone in the cavern was waning too because his words of anger had become a whisper until they ceased to be sensed altogether.
Spokes knew without the guard ring he would be dead and even the awesome powers Darkman wielded, his vows to the evil Gods, could extend so far. He was flesh and blood after all. But the promoter did not for a second take him for granted. Their lives were a precarious balancing act right now that still favored Darkman’s decision to slaughter them or offer them a reprieve. Spokes had a feeling this would be his most important negotiation to date.
Life and death.
Acidic bile rose up in his throat, a nervous tick tugged on the corner of his mouth and clammy sweat drenched him. He swallowed erratically, trying to keep the contents of his stomach down but he had to focus elsewhere, he had to build a most convincing case in this pressure cooker moment. Spokes let the facts and figures, pros and cons, indications and contraindications of everything that had happened and everything he had observed soak into him. They started making connections and links in his mind. He thought of Jimmy and how he would handle this and tried to channel his friend’s gift for negotiation into the present situation.
Tentatively Spokes and Patra stepped away from the cover of the boulder, hand in hand like nervous children and made their way the short distance to what was left of the circle and the box that sat in the middle.
It had to be now.
Spokes could feel it.
He forced authority into his voice.
“So we at a Tivoli Garden standoff den?” Spokes boomed.
“Well I think it best we don’t waste each other’s time, pardy.
This is what you want, don‘t it?” Spokes bent and flipped the latch on the old wooden box that had been at his feet all this time and reached into it. He hesitated.
The thought crossed his mind that he had never actually handled the totem inside. With care borne of fear and inquisitiveness, he scooped his fingers under the rock and lifted it up. It never dawned on him to examine it closely. He just knew the effect it had but gazing at it now, it was a beautiful thing to behold and it was heavy too. His fingers tingled pleasantly as he became comfortable with it in his hands. The geode looked like an ugly sandstone colored rock from the outside but a portion of the exterior shell was split open to reveal the crystals inside. The crystalline structure was layered with deep purples, blues, clarets and whites each segmented area twinkled seductively like natures attempt at a Faberge egg. The interior was riddled with twinkling miniature stalagmites and stalactites erupting from the crystal bed, that bent and refracted light in the most exquisite of ways.
Spokes stared into its shimmering depths, transported into another dimension of stars, galaxies and universes and he was suddenly imbued with a sense that anything was possible.
He held the John Crow stone high over his head.
The weight was uncomfortable; its surface rough and pitted. A steady pulse of incandescence radiated from its interior and you knew this was power of a kind modern man rarely came across. The powerful African totem that had kept the club successful had also kept lands perpetually fertile and bountiful for centuries. Darkman had taken it from his home in St Thomas to replenish it in Ghana where legend says it was forged. For five years it remained here, providing the club with a glittering reputation but dooming his lands back home for lack of it. Spokes knew all this and felt a pang of regret and sorrow.
“Jimmy died protecting your secrets.” Spokes said, his voice hollow. “Up to his last breath, he wanted these treasures to be safe an’ dats what I did. Me nevah involve in yuh downfall. You did that yuself. You an’ dat pussyclaat bwoy Deacon.”
Deacon flinched as eyes fell on him.
Enoch Lacombe’s dark copy cocked its head. It was either losing coordination or reacting to his words, Spokes didn’t know which.
“Try to kill wi and I drop it and you have nothing. All gone,” Spokes boomed.
Enoch was motionless, his dark skin formed from the hell creatures blending more and more into its habitat of shadow around him like rain clouds. And around that was the host of unblinking red luminescent eyes, waiting for the command to overcome them.
“If we hafe dead, so be it. But you go home with nothing. Without this, what do you have?”
Dark Pickney completely surrounded them and every slither of darkness was bristling over with them. Patra moved closer to Spokes, feeling the confinement and the smell of sulphur and excrement.
“Rass!” Spokes swore, feeling something scurry over his foot and explode passing through the charmed ring. Patra kicked out at something that skittered past her feet and it too exploded into dust.
Spokes looked down and realised what they were doing in amazement and horror.
“Goddammit.”
They were sacrificing themselves and for every dead demon a gash was left open in the circle of protection, a way in.
“Damn it!” Spokes shouted. “Do yuh think I won’t smash this rass to pieces? Test mi again,” as he backed up raising the stone even higher over his head, the creatures kept a respectable distance. One of them screeched its impatience and then the others joined, in a strangely grating but rhythmic chorus that echoed off the high ceiling and into the tunnels.
“We not dying without a fight, you know that right?” The voice rose sweet and confident into the confines of the cave. Spokes shivered at the sheer optimism of Y’s projected voice and was looking around to see where it was coming from. It was Patra who directed his gaze to the right place with a point of her finger. Then he saw the light coming towards them like a beacon and the scurrying, almost panicked retreat of the hell creatures. The blue tinged light became brighter and a path was being made for the wielder of the light as they came forward. In moments he saw them more clearly. Suzy had her arm around Y’s neck for support. She hopped on her good leg and crooked her injured thigh, high enough from the ground to facilitate easy transport. Y’s left hand held Ms Wong’s waist tightly and her right hand held the katana straight ahead, glowing brightly like it had been pulled from a blacksmith’s hearth.
Dark pickney scuttled away from it in waves and Y and Suzy hobbled towards the refuge of the circle with faltering steps. Half way to them and once a path had been cleared Patra came running. Taking up Suzie’s unsupported shoulder, they moved as one to where Spokes stood. The katana grew more intense as Patra joined them and the power of three was almost blinding. With Spokes in the middle, they huddled together and the glow cocooned them all. Their audience, although cautious, crowded in on them, keeping a safe distance from the light but even with this unexpected mystical advantage, the sheer numbers of the monsters would easily overcome them.
“Jesas Christ man, I have a way we can all leave here satisfi
ed. You get what you need and I get what I need.” his voice was filled with tremors as the night creatures flowed forward from the surrounding darkness. Thousands of eyes ringed them with thousands of voracious appetites.
“How we doing?” Y rasped.
“Mi have dis.” Spokes cleared his throat dramatically. “Let us go man, you take your treasures including the John Crow stone, the trinkets and I keep some of the money for Jimmy’s family.”
Darkman turned away and started to head back into the catacombs. Spokes was feeling the weight of the stone over his head but he kept it ready to be destroyed before they overwhelmed them.
The facsimile of Darkman was turning away from them.
“Face me when I’m fucking talking to yuh, obeah bwoy!” Spokes screamed at Darkman’s departing back. “Jimmy left two boys fatherless because of you.”
“They are going to grow up without the man who loved them the most in this world. How dat make you feel?” A bone shuddering chill racked Spokes as the hell things, mimicking muscle fiber, nervous system and circulation in the pseudo Darkman, pulled the body to a stop in response to Spokes angry outburst.
Darkman drooped his shoulders despondently and turned to face him. But there was something different about him, his demeanor skewered. The familiar Frankenstein image of him composed of these hell creatures disappeared for a moment and he seemed to be sheathed in a phantom image of his real self, his human self. It looked like he was cradling something in his arms. Spokes focused and was taken back as his eyes discerned the figure of a phantom infant snuggled protectively to his chest and him with a repetitious hushing movement that was reminiscent of any loving father and their child.