She looked sideways at Conquer, bit her lip, and shook her head.
“What do you mean?” He lowered his voice. He felt like he was getting into familiar territory at last.
“I would not speak ill of your blood.”
“It’s OK.”
She plopped her sponge down in the sudsy water, grateful for his permission.
“Better that his heart gave out than he should have broken Mama’s.”
“Uncle Silas had a thing with China on the side?”
“Mama asked him. He denied. He said only that he felt sorry for China. Prissy little yellow bouzin. Always speaking so proper so you would not hear the Geechee bitch with the bare feet. Pal franse pa di lespri pou sa!”
Conquer frowned. No wonder China had locked herself in her room. No wonder Verbena had said she was taking Silas’ death so hard. This was feeling more and more like one of his regular jobs. Always somebody running around.
Maybe somebody had laid a trick on old Uncle Silas’ ticker, but he didn’t think it was some rabbi. Verbena had a reason for doing him in, but then why would she call him? What if one of the other queens had done it for her sake? Jasmine was mad as hell over it, but said she didn’t believe Silas had been killed. Maybe she was trying to misdirect him though. And what about the three she’d mentioned that would do anything for Verbena? For that matter, what about Amaretta, the one that had died the same way last week?
“How about Amaretta?”
“She was our big sister. She was konfyans kay.”
“What?”
“Keyholder. In our société. An assistant to Mama and Papa as houngan and mambo in the temple,” Jasmine smiled slightly then. “She was champion Twister two years running at the Harlem Ball.”
“Twister?”
“She could blend in with the straights, then turn around and bring it like a femme queen. Realness with a twist. Bondye, sister was so fierce! We always told her she could win Femme Queen, and she did, first and only time! But, santi bon koute che. She didn’t like all the effort it took to dress up.”
There was a creak in the doorway, and they turned to see China leaning there, in a black and purple hounsi’s dress, head wrapped in a trailing purple scarf.
Conquer wondered how long she’d been listening.
“We’re ready,” she said, and went away.
The honfour had been dressed for the Ghede Nation, in drapes of purple.
Conquer took his place at the Boula, alongside Lobelia on the Segon and Calendula on the Manman. Ginger settled in on his other side and took up an ogan bell.
Verbena swept out in her full, white priestess’ regalia, bearing clochette and asson rattle. She led them in the long Priye Ginen, the call and response that began with the Roman Catholic prayers and turned into the listings of the saints, and finally the lwa themselves, nation by nation. As Jasmine led the responses, Lobelia and Calendula brought in the drums, and Conquer kept time.
In the middle of the space, Damiana, Rosemary, and China danced around Verbena and the center pole.
Conquer’s earlier notion that the hide of the drum was like an old book had been mistaken, for books and the words within, though powerful, were dead things, imprinted upon still more dead things. The drums lived. They thundered and pounded like the storming heart of the universe. They carried him back further and bore more history than any book could hope to contain; past his uncle’s apartment, to his earliest memories of his grandmothers and the white dresses and shining black limbs of his boyhood, the hard smell of clairin and cigar smoke and blood, the revolutions around a knotted tree that occupied his earliest memory, bouncing beneath the hot Louisiana sun in his mother’s arms.
But no mere recollection of a single man could hold all the drums spoke of either; he flew back across the Gulf to lands he’d ever known in life, but whose places lived in the unwritten histories of his very blood. They spoke of those heroes lovingly remembered and rightfully revered, as well as those whose names were forever forgotten, all the who had taken up the torch and the machete to burn and cut the pale hands that had put fetters to their necks and stroked their backs with the lash, all who had won not only freedom but deity in the hearts of the grateful generations that succeeded them.
And the drums hinted at still further lands; Africa, yes, sun-blessed with the green and golden bounties of Bondye, but just as books could not contain these stories, so too the earth itself could not hope to house the glory of fabled Ginea, in whose capitol city Lavilokan dwelt the blazing nations of the lwa.
Now they called to these in the Pale Ginea tongue; the sacred words spoken in that unknown country, and after Papa Legba and all the nations had been saluted, something answered.
Verbena stooped and, with a fistful of gunpowder, traced the delicate, intricate veve cosmogram of Ghede Nibo, a headstone cross pierced with swords, in the dirt. As she completed it, China suddenly collapsed and began to convulse, her eyes rolling up.
Damiana and Rosemary dutifully drew out a white sheet and wrapped her as if in a shroud, until her eyes fluttered and closed. Then Verbena dusted her face with talcum powder.
Lobelia beat a banda rhythm, forcing Calendula to shift her own drumming. Conquer’s arms already ached from keeping up his own steady pace. Now, his muscles sang as he beat the drumhead rapidly to keep up.
On the floor, China’s eyes snapped open, wholly white, and a strange expression, simpering and gleeful, spread across her face.
She sat up, and the hounsis drew away the shroud. Verbena brought the possessed woman Ghede Nibo’s regalia; a pair of dark sunglasses, one lens missing, which China seized and put upside down across her eyes. She stuffed a handful of proffered pistachios into her mouth, and slugged a bottle of clairin packed with African bird peppers.
When she shouldered into the black and purple frock coat and the tall silk hat with the purple ribbon, she was no longer China, but Ghede Nibo. Verbena lit a cigar and put it to her smiling lips, and she began to cavort and hike up her skirt suggestively, slicking her limbs with the rum and grinding in sultry motions against Damiana and astride the black goat when it was led in.
Verbena slid a pan beneath the goat and Rosemary seized it by its horns. Verbena passed a knife under its throat and blood jetted into the pan like fresh milk. As the screaming animal died, the god Nibo rode its convulsions out, until it sagged at last beneath his knees and collapsed kicking.
Nibo dipped his hand into the pan of blood and spread it across his pouting lips. He strutted about, wiping it in the faces of the other dancers, and up and down China’s body.
Then suddenly he wheeled on the drummers and sashayed to each of them in turn, grasping their hands, stopping the playing, coming at last to Conquer. Conquer looked into the white eyes of the leering god, who showed him bloody teeth, winked flirtatiously, and stroked the side of his face, leaving a red smear before wheeling to address Verbena.
The god continued to dance, as though the drummers had not stopped. The only sound was the shuffling of her dress, the slosh of the half empty clairin bottle, and the scrape of her bare feet on the dirt floor.
Verbena approached in a posture of obeisance.
“Brave Ghede Nibo, who speaks for those taken before their time, for those without graves. Speak to me now. Where is my husband? Where is Silas Conquer?”
Nibo danced closer, his limber movements hypnotic, every contraction of his shining, sinuous limbs drawing out the breath of the gathered onlookers.
“What you seek is not under the waters,” Nibo croaked, in a ragged voice. “It is there!”
And one finger pointed to the basement stair, where the door suddenly flew open so violently it slammed against the wall.
Everyone jumped up. Verbena slowly turned to follow the lwa’s gesture.
A shadowy figure stood in the light of the doorway. As they all watched, it began a slow, deliberate descent, until the lights of the hounfor shined across the slack, drawn face of Silas Conquer himself.
The dancers shrieked and retreated, putting the center pole between themselves and the newcomer. On either side of him, Ginger and Lobelia clung to Conquer, terrified.
Conquer’s own heart hammered. What was going on here?
Only Verbena hadn’t moved. She stood, arms hanging dead at her sides. The calabash and the clochette clattered loudly to the floor.
“Papa?” she whispered hopefully.
Silas Conquer nodded, his mask-like face drawing up into a strange, tight smile. He laboriously raised one arm, held out his hand to her.
And then the lwa descended upon Conquer.
He felt it settle first on the top of his head, then down around his shoulders, like a rambunctious, piggybacking child. And, then with a jolt like an electric shock through his entire body, it slid into him, pushing aside his consciousness like a cop commandeering a car in a movie.
At a touch from Ghede Nibo, the true Ghede Nibo, Conquer knew everything. He was not told, he was not shown, he simply knew, as though he had already lived all that the god imparted to him in that instant.
He knew first that China was playacting. She was not being ridden by Ghede Nibo or any other lwa, no more than the thing that stood at the bottom of the basement stair was his Uncle Silas.
Uncle Silas was dead.
Conquer knew in that instant the confusion in which he had died. Amaretta had come to him in the night, sliding into his bed, over him, covering his mouth with her hungry lips.
But Amaretta had already, by then, been dead three days.
He had wakened in fright, tried to pry her off of him. He had felt the irresistible strength of the thing that held him, felt its pincer-like fingers clench about his arms as he threw up a desperate hand to Amaretta’s face and tore the cheek away from the sinewy red face beneath. He had felt its lips seal air-tight to his own, felt his breath, no, not his breath, his very soul, drawn out, until his body, having no further purpose, simply fell away.
Its stolen flesh ruined, this thing that had sucked the life from Uncle Silas had gone to the Greenwood Cemetery after the funeral, trespassing against the Ghede, gone and fetched a replacement for its ruined Amaretta suit; a replacement which it now wore.
This wild island djab washed up on the Carolina shore. This haint. This Slip-Skin Hag, called to work by an over-ambitious, jealous, profaning Geechee, not content to be anything less than the head of the House of Méchant.
Se rat kay k ap manje kay, Jasmine had said. Only now Conquer understood it. It’s the house’s rat that eats the house.
When Ghede Nibo released him, he knew all he needed to, but was disconcerted to find himself standing now in the middle of the honfour, back to the peristyle, with no memory of having left the Boula behind. The queens had pressed themselves against the walls, staring at him in fright, all but China.
“Boy, will you get off of me?”
Verbena, in his ear. She was pressed between the center pole and himself.
Conquer eased up and she slid out from behind him.
“Where’s China? Where’s that thing?” Conquer demanded.
“What are you talking about? You jumped up from the drums screaming your head off. You grabbed hold of China and took something from her. Then she started screaming. She pushed past your uncle and ran up the stairs.”
“That wasn’t Uncle Silas,” Conquer said. He felt that he had something clenched in his hand, and he opened it. There was an oyster, tied shut and pierced to hang from a broken chain that drooped between his fingers.
“I know that!” Verbena gasped. “But what was it? A zombi?” She looked at the charm in his hand. “What is that?”
“Boo Daddy,” he said. It was what China used to control the Slip-Skin Hag. But don’t ask him how, or how he knew that. “What was I saying?”
“You were shouting in the Pale Ginea! Don’t you remember?”
“What’d I say?”
“Devil’s Shit.”
“Merde du Diable?” Calendula asked tentatively.
“You mean Asafoetida?” Ginger asked.
Conquer snapped his fingers and pointed at Ginger. Ghede Nibo had provided the means to stop the thing wearing Uncle Silas’ skin.
“Right, baby. Asa-motherfucking-foetida. We got any?”
“In the spice rack,” said Jasmine. “Up in the kitchen.”
Then they heard a long, drawn out shriek from somewhere upstairs. China, hollering her lungs out.
“Bondye bon,” said Jasmine, crossing herself.
Conquer jumped to the basement stair. He turned and tossed the Boo Daddy charm to Verbena.
“Better hang onto this, Auntie.”
“What about you?” Verbena wailed, catching it, real fear for him in her eyes.
“Don’t worry about me, just stay down here in the temple till I say it’s OK.”
He crept up the stairs. He thought he’d be alright. His pockets were full of salt, Psalms, and mojo hands, pretty much every damn thing he needed except asafoetida, and that was in the spice rack. Just a couple of feet off the foyer. No problem.
When he slipped through the basement doorway and into the foyer, something heavy and wet plopped into the entryway from the second floor.
He grimaced. It was Uncle Silas’ skin. And up above, he could hear a wet tearing sound.
He edged along the wall, wishing he’d decided to take his Colt out of the office today. He slid along until he caught a hint of motion through the railings, a dark, wet red figure with black eyes, just for an instant. It pulled China’s hide down over itself like a sweater, and now it was China crouched up there on the landing, naked, glaring down at him.
Conquer ran for the living room.
The Slip-Skin Hag leapt over the railing and landed nimbly behind him.
He tore through the dining room, knocking down chairs behind him to slow it down. He reached the kitchen and glanced back to see it jump up onto the dining room table and come running on all fours, grinning crazily.
It leapt at him like a cougar. He flung open the freezer door and smacked it dead in the face. Its legs went out from under it and it fell on its back on the linoleum.
Conquer wheeled toward the spice rack and ran his fingers quickly over the labels. Bless Jasmine. They were in alphabetical order.
He pulled the asafoetida off the rack and unscrewed the top as the Slip-Skin clambered to its feet, China’s face slightly dislodged across its skull, like an upset ski-mask, the blood red muscle underneath showing through one cockeyed eyehole as it came at him.
He dumped the spice bottle in its face. It walked into a cloud of yellow powder, sneezed, and screamed, backing away, clutching its face. Conquer reached behind him for the knife block and swept out a steak knife, not knowing if it was any use or not.
Then it went running for the picture window.
“Oh hell no,” said Conquer, and ran after it, because if it got to some place nice and dark, who the hell knew what it would do and how he’d ever find it again.
He ran for all he was worth. As the thing smashed through the front room windowpane, he dove after it, clutching its ankles.
Then he was in the air, soaring over the dark Brooklyn rooftops, hugging its spindly legs.
Hot socks!
The Slip-Skin Hag took him higher, shook him. Conquer clenched his eyes tight, the wind in his ears. It hissed and screeched down at him, slapped at his face, his head.
He hazarded a look, saw the sun breaking over the buildings to the west, a fiery orange ribbon.
He had the steak knife. Looking down between his size twelves, he saw they had left the neighborhood behind and were passing over Prospect Park; over the lake.
He lunged up and jammed the knife in the small of its back. It hissed, but didn’t fall, or seem overly perturbed.
At least, not until he dragged the blade down its flank, peeling its stolen skin like a prize buck’s.
It didn’t bleed, but its blood red, muscled body, like one of those plastic vis
ible man models, began to smoke wherever the dawn light touched it.
The flesh suit was a loose fit. Nothing really keeping it there. Conquer felt it sloughing off. He let go of the knife, gripped the edges of China’s hide like a pair of loose pants, and let gravity do the rest.
As he fell, the weird skin ‘trousers’ flapping about him like a grotesque parachute, he saw the bright red baboon ass and legs of the hovering thing for a minute in the air. It turned toward the rising sun, and threw up its arms, shrieking, the exposed tissue catching fire now.
He prayed he hit the water.
Bondye bon, he did.
His head broke the surface, and he gasped. The water was goddamned frigid.
A moment later something hit the water to his right. He turned, treading, gasping, feeling like the skinny dipper in that shark movie.
The lake was still.
He turned toward the shore, and that was when it burst from the water, clutching at him, a fleshless thing, teeth clacking, struggling to draw him close.
He drove his knuckles hard into the gushy face and kicked out. It went flailing back, and then the sunlight finished it in an impressive burst of fire the flared and was quickly quenched, leaving nothing but an oily muck that floated momentarily on the surface of the water before breaking up.
Conquer was sopping wet and shivering, making his way out of the park at the corner of Parkside and Ocean in the early morning chill, when Uncle Silas’ shiny black Mercury Montclair rolled up to the curb like something out of a dream and honked, disgorging the entire House of Méchant. Squealing and making enough of a fuss to get the Lubavitchers clamping their ears, they surrounded him with a variety of sweet-scented towels.
Conquer pushed his way through them to the car, where Verbena leaned out of the passenger window.
“You still got the car,” Conquer said, leaning on the passenger door. “Why didn’t you just come to my office?”
“Oh honey, I don’t drive,” said Verbena, putting her hand over his.
This time, he didn’t flinch away.
Jasmine, squeezed behind the wheel, leaned over and attested;
Conquer (The John Conquer Series Book 1) Page 6