Strange Conflict

by Dennis Wheatley

  The Doctor shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘You must not think too badly of us. Admittedly the poorer Negroes, who make up the bulk of our population, are still in a very low state, but they are very far from being savages. In Haiti there are, too, quite a number of educated men who are striving to enlighten the ignorant masses and during the last twenty years have greatly improved conditions here. Their first chance came when they had the backing of the United States Government, which took over the country for a period of nineteen years and has only recently given us back our independence. Having once got a start, these good men have been able to carry on their work, and although cannibalism was rife here in the old days such practices are now much frowned on.’

  ‘How about the Cochon Gris?’ Simon asked.

  Doctor Saturday shot him a swift look from beneath his beetling white brows and replied with another question. ‘How did you come to hear of that?’

  ‘Priest who put us up in Anse à Galets mentioned it to me last night.’

  The Doctor lowered his eyes as he said slowly: ‘The Cochon Gris is a thing that we do not talk of here; it is dangerous to do so—except, of course, at a time like this, among a group of friends, when none of the servants are about. It is, as you are evidently aware, a secret society, and I do not seek to conceal from you that its members practise cannibalism. But you must understand that it is not just a matter of eating human flesh for its own sake; the practice is an ancient ritual connected with the worship of the Mondongo gods which was brought over from the Congo. All decent people—Voodoo worshippers as well as Christians—hold the society in horror, and some years ago the most enlightened men in Haiti formed a league for its suppression.’

  ‘They haven’t had much luck so far, from what the Catholic priest told me.’

  ‘There are great difficulties,’ the Doctor spread out his hands. ‘During the period of the French occupation all the Negroes were enslaved, so they were able to carry on these horrible rites only with great difficulty, but after the slaves gained their freedom—which occurred in Napoleonic times—it became much easier for them to travel from place to place and so attend such ceremonies. Consequently the cult spread, and in the 1860’s it had gained an alarming hold over the whole population. During the Revolution the Roman Catholic priests had been killed or driven out with the other Whites, and for many years no Europeans were allowed even to land in the island; but the Catholic Church is very clever and in the ‘80’s they recruited a number of Fathers from the French possessions in Africa, and sent them here. These—and later the white Fathers, when they were allowed to settle in Haiti again—fought the Cochon Gris—or the Secte Rouge, as many people call it— with the utmost determination; so that by the opening of the present century its power had waned and it was driven underground. Nevertheless it is generally admitted that it still exists, and it is even whispered that some of the wealthiest people in Haiti are members.’

  ‘Can’t the police do anything about it?’ Simon suggested. ‘Surely cannibalism implies murder?’

  ‘The trouble is that no one knows who belongs to this dreaded society, and it is certain death for any member who recants or is even suspected of lukewarmness once he has been initiated into the mystery. An indiscreet word is enough for the Sect to decide on the execution of anyone who might become an informer. That is why everyone here is so frightened of even speaking of the Cochon Gris in public. These people are absolutely unscrupulous and most averse to any mention at all being made of their activities or even existence; so you will see the wisdom of any ordinary person denying all knowledge of the society, when the penalty of careless talk may be to be dragged out of one’s house one night and murdered in a peculiarly horrible manner.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Backsliders or suspects are taken out to sea in a boat. One of the adepts smashes their right ear with a blow from a large stone. Poison is then rubbed into the bleeding flesh and the victims are thrown overboard, so even if they were sufficiently strong swimmers to reach the shore they’d die an hour or so later from the effects of the poison. Why this particular method of ensuring their captives’ death should be used, when they could quite well knife or strangle them, I do not know; but that, according to report, is the inevitable practice followed from long custom.’

  ‘Have you—er—ever attended one of their meetings—as a scientist, I mean?’ Simon inquired with considerable boldness.

  ‘Unless I myself were a member of the Secte Rouge, had I done so I should certainly not have lived to tell the tale,’ the Doctor replied. And Simon noted that although from the Doctor’s tone and smile, the implication was that he obviously was not a member, he had in fact hedged rather cleverly, and the probability was that it amused him to turn his phrases thus skilfully instead of telling a direct lie.

  ‘However,’ the Doctor went on, with an unexpected honesty, ‘I have means of screwing information out of the natives, which the police do not possess, and as a man of science I am interested in all their customs, so I can describe for you what takes place at one of these meetings.’

  The night outside was very still. Even the cicadas had ceased their chirping and a brooding silence hung over the mysterious land. In it the Doctor’s every word was clear as he began to describe these barbarous ancient rites which might even at that moment be reaching their revolting culmination, at a place no more than a few miles distant, out there in the darkness.

  The members have facilities, which few people understand, for travelling very swiftly and they come from all parts of the island. Each one carries with him a sac paille containing ceremonial raiment. They meet at the Hounfort of a Bocor—that is, a priest who specialises in devil-worship. Actually, as far as the ordinary people are concerned, there is no way in which they can tell if their local Houngan is also a Bocor or not, and a Houngan may practise the usual Voodoo rites for many years without any of his congregation suspecting that he is a Bocor. On the other hand, certain of them have definitely acquired that reputation though there is never any means of proving it.

  ‘A little before midnight the members assemble in the Hounfort, which is a compound surrounded by a number of small thatched houses. To see them then one might imagine that they were just ordinary people getting ready for a Voodoo service, but at a given signal they all begin to robe themselves. The Bocor plays the part of the Emperor and his Mambo that of the Queen. Others of the principal adepts fill the roles of the President, the Minister, the Cuisiniers, the Officers and the Bourresouse, which is a special guard composed of men picked for their speed and strength. The ceremonial vestments are very rich and strange and they have the effect of giving the whole assembly the appearance of demons with tails and horns. Some of them appear as dogs, goats and cocks, but most of them as grey pigs— hence the name of the society.’

  ‘Sounds like a Witches’ Sabbath in Europe,’ Simon commented, recalling, with a shudder that he strove to suppress, a Walpurgis Eve ceremony in which he had once participated on Salisbury Plain.

  The Doctor nodded. ‘From such books as I have read on Witchcraft, you are right. When everyone is robed the drums begin to beat, but they have not the deep singing quality of the Rada drums; it is a keen, high-pitched note. To the rhythm of the drums they begin to dance, working themselves up into a frenzy, then each lights a candle and chanting a liturgy of Hell they depart for the nearest crossroad, bearing a small coffin which has scores of candles on it and is the symbol of their Order.

  ‘At the crossroads they set down the coffin and perform a ceremony to the Petro god, Baron Carrefour, asking him, as Lord of the Roads and Travel, to favour them by sending them many victims. Soon one of the adepts becomes possessed, which is a sign that Baron Carrefour is willing to grant their request.

  ‘Then they dance and prance down the highway to the cemetery, where they call upon Baron Cimeterre to give them success in their undertakings. Each person with his or her hand on the hip of the person in front and with a lighted candle in the othe
r they advance through the gates. The youngest adept is stretched upon a tomb and all the lighted candles are placed round him. A bowl made from half a calabash is set upon his navel, and, placing the palms of their hands together, they all dance and sing as they move round the tomb until each person has returned to the place in which he has set up his own candle.

  ‘The congregation cover their eyes while the Queen leaves the cemetery. The youngest adept rises and follows her, after which the others come streaming out. They then take up their positions on some lonely stretch of highway between two towns, from one to another of which it is certain that travellers will be passing. The Bourresouse, or hunters, are sent out in different directions and each group often covers many miles, while the Bocor and his assistants wait on the highway to waylay anyone who may come along it. The hunters carry with them cords, which are made from the dried intestines of human beings. These pieces of gut are very strong, and with them they bind and finally strangle the unfortunate wretches whom they succeed in catching. In the early hours of the morning the hunters return with two, three or perhaps half a dozen victims. These are then taken to the Hounfort, where the Bocor performs the ceremony of changing them into cows, pigs, goats, etc., after which they are killed and their flesh is divided among the congregation.’

  ‘Phew!’ Simon whistled. ‘What a party! I certainly shan’t go walking about the roads alone at night while I’m in Haiti. But surely, with all this light and noise, it would be easy enough for the police to locate and break up the meetings if they really had a mind to it?’

  The Doctor shook his head. ‘One would think that it would be easy for the police to put down the racketeers in the United States, which is a highly civilised country, but even there the G-men have found great difficulty in stamping out the well-organised and powerful gangs. From that you may judge how infinitely more difficult it is for law-abiding people to do so in Haiti. Each man fears that he may call down upon himself the most unwelcome attention of the Secte Rouge—the Negro police themselves not less than others. So all but a very few brave ones fight shy of having anything to do with this horrible business.’

  For over an hour the talk turned on racketeers and secret societies not only in the United States but all over the world. With considerable satisfaction Simon noted that it was close on three o’clock and the Doctor still showed no signs of weariness. Turning a little, he glanced at Philippa.

  He was by now used to the perpetual silence which she was forced to observe, but she had had her handbag with her when she had scrambled out of the wrecked plane so she was still in possession of her tablet, and it occurred to him that she had not written anything upon it the whole evening, confining herself to nods whenever she had been addressed. She had been sitting there impassively for over four hours, her round eyes fixed on their sinister host. He wondered if she was very tired, but did not like to ask her in front of the Doctor so he laid his hand gently on her arm and said:

  ‘You feeling all right?’

  Her large eyes seemed quite blank as she turned towards him, but she nodded twice and, looking away, lit a cigarette. It was his job to keep Doctor Saturday up as long as possible, so he swiftly put Philippa out of his mind and brought the conversation back to Haiti.

  ‘Pretty awful fate to be caught by those Grey Pig people but even worse to be turned into a Zombie.’

  ‘So you know about Zombies also?’ said the Doctor with a slightly amused glance.

  ‘Um,’ Simon nodded. ‘Not much, but the Priest told me something about them. They’re bodies without souls—sort of Vampires, aren’t they?’

  ‘Hardly that. But it is another subject that is normally taboo in Haiti, as we are ashamed to let the outer world know that such awful things still go on here.’

  ‘What is the difference?’ Simon’s eyes flickered quickly over the Doctor’s face. ‘That is, if you don’t mind talking about it in private?’

  ‘The only resemblance between a Vampire and a Zombie is that both are dead and have been buried yet have left their graves after their mourning families have departed. A Vampire is said to live in its grave but leave it each night in search of human victims, and it keeps life in its body by sucking the blood from living people—like a human bat.

  ‘A Zombie, on the other hand, is one who is called back from the dead, and once it has left its grave it never returns to it but continues as the bond slave of the sorcerer who holds its soul captive. A Zombie possesses the same physical strength as it had before it sickened and died, and it sustains its vitality with ordinary human food which it is given in the hovel in which it lies imprisoned during the daytime. I say “prison”, but that is not really the right word, because no bolts and bars are needed to keep a Zombie captive. They cannot speak, they have no reasoning powers, and they cannot recognise even the people who were dearest to them when they were alive. For them there is no escape; and they do not seek it; they labour night after night, year in year out, in the banana plantations, or at any other task which is set them, like poor blind beasts.’

  ‘How—how frightful!’ muttered Simon.

  The Doctor nodded his white head. ‘And it is even more frightful for a family which respects that one of its members has been turned into a Zombie. Think of it. Someone you love very dearly—your wife or your sister, perhaps—and whom you have always cherished and surrounded with every comfort, suddenly, to your great sorrows, falls ill and dies. Even if you are poor you stint yourself to make the best funeral arrangements you can afford, and afterwards you try to assuage your sorrow by thinking of that person sleeping peacefully in the grave, relieved of all earthly cares and worries. Then, a year or perhaps two years later, you hear a whisper that your loved one has been seen and recognised, covered with lice and dressed in filthy rags, bowed down with weariness, stumbling away from some plantation in a distant part of the island one morning in the grey light of dawn.

  ‘Your whole being cries out to go there, to rescue them, even though you know that if you could find them they would stare at you without a trace of recognition in their blank eyes. But you dare not do so. You know that if you attempted to seek them out the Witch Doctor who has enslaved them would learn of it and that before long you, too, would sicken and die and he would make a Zombie out of you.’

  Fascinated against his will by this macabre subject, Simon inquired: ‘How are the victims selected? I mean, are there any special qualifications which the Witch Doctor seeks in a person whom he decides to turn into a Zombie?’

  ‘None; except that the man or woman concerned should not be too old for the labour required of them—usually work in the fields. And there are a number of reasons for making Zombies. For an unscrupulous man it is a good way of acquiring labour, since Zombies do not have to be paid; they have only to be fed, and any sort of garbage will do, providing it contains enough goodness to support their strength. Again, if one hates a person sufficiently, what could be a more subtle and satisfactory form of revenge than to go to a Bocor and have one’s enemy turned into a Zombie? Quite frequently, too, people are made Zombies as a result of a ba Moun ceremony.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Ba Moun means “Give man”, and there is a definite similarity in it to the medieval European practice of selling oneself to the Devil. A poor man who is very ambitious, but sees no hope whatever of improving his status by normal means, may decide to go to a Bocor and ask for the help of the evil gods. Under the altar in every Hounfort there are jars containing the spirits of one or more long-dead Houngans and the more powerful Bocors possess many such jars. These spirits are invoked, and when the right offerings have been made to them they begin to groan; then the inquirer knows that the evil gods are prepared to listen to his supplication. He signs a deed in his own blood and puts it with money into one of the jars. He is then given a little box. The priest tells him that this contains some small animals and that he must look after them and tend them each night as though they were a portion of himself.’

/>   ‘There’s a similarity between that part of the affair and the toads and lizards and cats and owls which Witches in Europe used to keep as their familiars,’ Simon cut in, and with a nod of agreement the Doctor proceeded.

  ‘A bargain is struck by which the evil gods will prosper the man’s affairs for a certain time but he agrees to surrender himself to them at the end of that period, and he is warned that, if he fails to do so, upon the third night after the expiration of the pact the little animals will become huge, malignant beasts which will devour him. There is, however, one way in which he can escape payment, at least for a time, and this is by giving some other member of his family to become a Zombie instead of himself. The pact is then automatically renewed for a further period, but the person given must be someone whom he holds dear and thus a definite sacrifice made by him. People have been known to give their whole families in this way—sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, parents, until they have no one left—hoping each time that they will die a natural death before the next payment is due; and often they commit suicide rather than face payment of the debt themselves.’

  That’s a pretty grim picture,’ Simon commented, ‘but I suppose it applies only to the most ignorant and superstitious of the Negroes?’

  ‘Not at all.’ Doctor Saturday’s white teeth flashed in a grim smile. ‘That they may one day be turned into a Zombie is the dread of every man and woman in Haiti, from the blackest Negro to the lightest-skinned Mulatto. It is a fear that is ever present in the minds of even the richest, because there are other uses to which Zombies can be put beside working in the fields. Not long ago one of the loveliest young Mulatto girls in Haiti died with mysterious suddenness, and eighteen months later she was found one night wandering in the streets of Port-au-Prince. Her mind was blank, and she was dumb, so she could not tell her story, but it was a curious coincidence that a very rich Negro, who had wished to marry her when she was alive, but whom her parents had rejected for her with scorn, had died only the day before she was found. I have good reason to believe that as he could not get her by marriage he paid a powerful Bocor to turn her into a Zombie, received her back from the grave after her resurrection and took his pleasure with her whenever he wished, keeping her hidden in his house. Then, when he died, his wife, wanting to be rid of the girl, turned her adrift.’