by Dan Alatorre
I turned around to see the mambo. The voodoo priestess.
She was tall and thin, with long black hair and dozens of bracelets adorning her wrists. Her colorful dress hung on her slender figure like a sack. She wore too much makeup, a reflection of a woman who is either trying too hard or didn’t have makeup skills.
But from looking at her, she seemed legit. Something about the way she carried herself around all these guys who were there to protect her. She was cool. Like she didn’t really need their protection, she just liked how it looked.
“Come.” Her voice was laced with an accent from the islands. Somewhere in the Caribbean, maybe Jamaica. She walked on ahead.
I entered a small room with a tiny round table in the middle, like what you’d see in those old séance movies with a medium and a crystal ball. Candles lit this room, housed on the shelves and tables that cluttered the walls. Dark glass jars and bottles filled every available space. A tray of incense embers glowed in the corner.
But the room itself was plain and brown and well-worn. Everything here was well-worn.
In that room, it was just us. Me and the priestess. She sat down and gestured at the other chair. “Sit.”
The big guy stood outside near the room’s entrance. I sat.
“I am Dahlia. My friends tell me you are looking for something.” She spoke slowly and deliberately, each word filling the entire room. “What . . . are you looking for?”
I drew slow, even breaths to mask my nerves. “I’m looking for help.” Trying to answer as slowly as she did, my words came out sounding quiet instead.
She smoothed the table cloth. It was colorful, like a silk scarf. “Why . . . do you need help?”
“Because things are happening that I can’t explain.”
“What sort of things?”
I cut to the chase. “Tragedies.”
That didn’t faze her. She nodded, staring at the table. “Did you bring money?”
It didn’t seem like a good idea to lie. Most seers are pretty good at reading people. I figured she would know if I lied. “I did.”
“Who do you need to protect? Not yourself. You came here in the middle of the night.” She lifted her gaze to me. “That is not the act of a person who is afraid for themselves. A person like that would stay home.”
“I want to protect my family,” I said. “My wife and daughter.”
“But you did not bring them.”
“That’s right.”
Her voice fell to a whisper, a low hiss audible only to me. The wind grew outside, masking our conversation from anyone else. “Why . . . do you think I can help you?”
Again, I thought honesty was the best approach. “I’m not sure you can. I told your friends I needed help. They brought me to you.”
“What kind of help do you think you need?”
“Any kind I can get.” I spoke softly, the uneasiness in my gut settling. “Magic. Voodoo. Religious help of some sort.” I offered these words with quiet reverence. Not everyone believes, and not everyone who believes cares to have it known. But those who practice in such trades have their reasons for body guards.
Dahlia stroked the colorful table cloth, as though reading its patterns for her next question.
“Magic . . . Voodoo . . . Religious help.” She said my words back to me like they were part of a mantra. “Do you have the gift?” She lifted her eyes and peered into me, a piercing gaze that made my stomach tighten. “Do you see?”
I hesitated, uncertain of how to answer.
“Your wife? Your child? Do they see?”
I looked down. “I don’t think so. No.”
The wind picked up, tapping tree branches against a window somewhere.
“But you believe that I see, yes?” She drew my gaze off the table and back to her eyes.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “Maybe. I respect the talents and gifts that any descendant of Marie Laveau might have.”
She smiled, accepting my words as a compliment.
“I do see.” She nodded. “Auras. Colors, around an animal’s eyes, or a person’s face.” Dahlia’s eyes flashed wide at that. “What do you know of this?”
I took a slow breath. “I’ve heard of it.”
She wagged a finger at me. “No, no, no. If I am going to help you, then you must tell me the truth.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “I know a little. About auras.”
“Do you see them?”
“I, um—not like . . .” I shifted on my chair. “Like you suggested.”
She stood up and slowly walked around the room, circling me. “A voodoo priestess, a mambo, sees the aura. In people, in animals. It is always there if they have the gift.”
Dahlia struck a match, and held it to a candle. “If others have the gift, the mambo can see it in them, too. If she can hold items of theirs, she would see it as well.” She blew out the match. “Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“The gift is inherited. But there are those who refuse to understand that they have a gift. They deny it, and push it down. Then, it can die in them.”
She continued around the room with the candle. Its flickering light threw dancing shadows on the walls. “But just as a child has to learn to speak, even though there is speaking all around them their whole lives, they still must learn to build the muscles for themselves. It is the same thing with the gift. Some can be learned, but you must be born with the ability.”
Sitting down, the mambo placed the candle in the center of the table. The orange glow illuminated her face, seeming to darken everything else in the room.
She gazed at the flame. “And then you must be taught. And then you must do for yourself. A coach cannot make an athlete run, the athlete must do the running. But still the athlete needs a coach to show her what she cannot see for herself. How to improve, where her faults are.”
Lifting her eyes to mine, she smiled. “And there are many things we cannot see for ourselves.”
I sat, unmoving, taking it in.
“The gift is stronger in women anyway. That is how it has always been. A woman listens to her body more, and will allow it to grow. A man does not do this. The gift is stronger with women because they want to believe it more. A man may give it to his daughter without ever knowing that he did so.”
She eyed the candle, focusing on it like the answers lay within the flame. “That is where I got my powers. But it was nurtured in me.” She looked me up and down. “You are a writer?”
I nodded.
“Did you be born with a pen and start writing? Of course not. You were taught. And for many years, you were taught just the plain, the basics. Then one day you took it upon yourself—to make it more.” She leaned forward. “Do you remember when you did that?”
I cleared my throat, confused at how this related to why I was here, but following where the priestess lead. “Probably high school.”
“That was the start?”
“Well, the grade school paper, I guess. I was the editor. I pestered my teacher to make it happen, to have a school newspaper.”
Her eyes watched mine.
I thought deeper, going back, like drifting downward into a well. “It was earlier, though. I always wrote comics and funny stories.”
“Who were they for?”
“I made them for anybody, everybody. Probably I made them for myself.”
“Who enjoyed them the most?”
“My brother,” I said. “He loved them.”
“Always?”
I rubbed my chin. “No, that was later when he was in high school. So I was in about eighth grade.”
“Think,” she commanded softly, her voice nearing a trance. “Who was your audience?”
“Well.” I thought for a moment. “My mom, early on. She made sure I had pens and paper—that stuff was hard to come by for a kid, and I went through tons of it. Colored pencils, art class. She even sent me to typing lessons.” I laughed. “That was a bust. Typing. Boy, I hated it.”
“It was not organic,” the mambo said. “The natural part, you supplied yourself—and your mother fostered it.”
“I guess.” I shrugged. “Maybe.”
“She did!” Dahlia slammed her hand down on the table. “She saw the aura!”
The mambo glared at me, her chest heaving.
“Come on.” I looked away. “That’s a bit much to—”
“Because you refuse to believe!” She jumped up, gripping the table and sending her chair over backwards. “When the aura is there, a man tends to deny it, even to his closest friends. A woman embraces it and her friends may not understand, but there are always signs if you know what you are looking at!” She pointed at me. “You may not be the caretaker of this garden, but the garden exists!”
“This is crazy.” I stood up and reached for my wallet. “I have to go. I’ll pay you.”
“Pay! There is no paying with money! What do you possess that I would want?” Her eyes bore into me, her breath coming in gasps.
Putting her hand to her forehead, Dahlia turned away. Lowering her head, she sighed. “When the time comes, you will offer your gift to me. You will know what you need to do. Do not disappoint or your mojo will be cursed.”
I stood there, uncertain what to do. “You will want a favor?”
She nodded, her back to me.
“How will I get your gift to you?”
The big man walked in, as if on cue. He handed me a card. Scrawled on it was a name and a phone number.
I looked at the mambo. “The tipster?”
She nodded again.
It was over. I’d blown it. Whatever she was going to tell me, if anything, I missed my chance.
But I couldn’t go back to my family with nothing.
“No.” I elbowed my way past the big man and approached the mambo. “I want answers first.”
Big Man didn’t move.
I pursed my lip. “Let’s stop playing games.” I moved back to the table, pulling out my chair. “Come on. If you can help me, help me. What do you see? Look here. At me. What do you see when—”
She looked back with a stern face. “Sit.”
The gusting wind rattled the glass again.
I lowered myself into the chair. If she was going to be of any help to me, now was the time. She had proven to be insightful, but she was being evasive. But if she knew something that would help us, I needed to hear her out.
She took her seat and closed her eyes, slowly lifting her hands to rest on the table top. She drew several deep breaths and turned her palms up.
I didn’t know if I was supposed to put my hands on the table, or on hers, or what. I wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.
“Ask me.” She whispered. “What you want to know?”
The wind picked up again, rustling through the trees. Light gusts of rain batted along the roof.
I swallowed, trying to relax. “Do . . . you see an aura in me?’
She nodded.
“Do you believe I have the gift?”
Another nod.
“Can it also be something else?” I clutched the table. “Something other than a gift?”
She nodded again. “A gift is a tool. You can use it for good or for evil.”
I hesitated, not sure how to ask the trickier questions. For the first time, I wasn’t sure I really wanted the answers.
“Ask,” she said. “Ask what you want to know.” She opened her eyes and looked softly at me. “You have come all this way. Do not be afraid to find the truth.”
I took a slow, deep breath, held it a moment, and let it out in a huff. It was time. “Is—is my daughter . . . cursed?”
The candle flame flickered once, then remained still.
A thin smile crept over the mambo’s face, her eyes aglow in the warm orange light of the flame. “No, not yet.”
My heart caught in my throat. I leaned forward. “Does she have an angel on her shoulder?”
“What happened, to bring you here?” Dahlia asked.
“I told you.”
“You tell the wrong things. Tell me what happened . . .” She closed her eyes. “At the winery.”
A wave of shock shot through me.
She kept her eyes on mine. “Do you now believe me?”
I swallowed, my heart pounding. “Yes.”
“Then tell me. Tell me what you saw.”
I forced myself to continue, barely able to speak. “There was a wreck . . .”
“No,” she shook her head. “Open your eyes to not look outside, but inside. You understand this. You saw a blue color flash across the face of a man at the park, as a child. Use that sight.”
My mouth fell open, my mind reeling. How could she know that? Jimmy, the smash car, the crazy man. Her eyes seemed to peer right into me, into the things I’d hidden, like it was all there and only she could read it. My thoughts were a blur. I was falling down the well.
Her eyes flared. “And you have seen others.”
The storm gathered life outside. Distant thunder rumbled and rolled.
Dahlia’s voice was a whisper. “Tell me what you saw in the winery.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, gasping. “I don’t know. Nothing.”
“Think,” she gently commanded. “Remember.”
“My daughter. She wanted to look at t-shirts.”
“Go on. What else?”
“She—she was fussy.”
“Why?”
“She was hungry.”
“Was she?” Dahlia coaxed me, pulling the words out of me. “Think. Remember . . .”
“She . . .”
“Yes?”
I gasped, squeezing my eyes shut. “She saw the truck driver. He almost ran us over with his cart in the lobby. He wasn’t paying attention.”
“And?”
“And she had a fit. She started yelling about eating.”
“Eating?” Dahlia’s voice rose. “You must look. You must see.”
Sweat broke out on my forehead. My shaking hands grabbing the table, I lowered my head. The words were coming now, whether I wanted them to or not, struggling to free themselves from me. “Um, Sophie, my daughter, she . . .”
“Go on. It is there.”
“She wanted to have a picnic in the parking lot. But she didn’t want to have Jello. But we didn’t have Jello with us anyway. It was a crazy thing to say.”
“What exactly did she say?” Dahlia’s voice grew firm.
“She said, ‘No blue Jello!’ She freaked out.”
“When?”
“Right after we almost got hit by the old guy wheeling the cases of wine through the tasting room.” I said. “The truck driver.”
“She saw him?”
“Yes.”
“And then she said . . .”
I was gasping, rushing, the words spilling from me. “She saw him and then she said she didn’t want to go outside, that the man had blue Jello on his face, in his eyes. She was ranting. She was crazy. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“And then?”
“And then I distracted her. I showed her the t-shirts. The funny ones. I read them to her until she calmed down.”
Lightning cracked outside. The booming roar of thunder cascaded through the room.
Dahlia urged me on. “How long did that take?”
“A minute or two . . .”
“A minute or two,” she echoed. “And then?”
“And then we headed out to the parking lot.” I said. “That’s when the wreck happened.”
“Your daughter delayed you long enough for you both to be safe.”
“Yes.” I nodded, gasping, my insides turning over and over. I was lost, reeling. I laid my head on the table and opened my eyes to the priestess.
Her face was red in the light of the candle. The room around us had faded to black.
“That happened by chance, you think, but you are wrong.” Dahlia’s eyes went wide. “She sees! She saw him, like you saw, but she saw it first, and she made y
ou stop!”
The priestess stood up, the force of her revelation lifting her. “That is why the dark angels want her! Because she sees them.”
I cowered against the blinding white light of the revelation. I wanted it to not be true.
I wanted my daughter to be safe.
And she was not.
The priestess pointed a long finger at me. “She has not yet learned from you how to ignore these things, and push them down, and pretend they do not happen, until the gift is finally lost.”
Lightning cracked outside, lighting up the room and splashing Dahlia’s face white with light. “She can see them.”
It was all coming at me too fast. I was lost. Powerless.
But I knew. Inside, I knew Dahlia was right.
She narrowed her eyes. “You asked if your daughter has an angel on her shoulder.”
I wiped my eyes and looked up at her. It was all I could do. The priestess wasn’t really asking questions anymore.
“Everyone has angels on their shoulder.” She towered over me. “Angel of light, angel of darkness. Good and bad. You choose to let them guide you or choose to push it down and ignore what you should know. Your family, your upbringing, that tells you what you believe. To some, there are many angels with us all the time. This is how I believe. To others, there is one that maybe watches over a child, or helps the sick.”
Her voice grew quieter, almost inaudible. “But in the end, every time a choice comes, you make the decision, the good angel or the bad angel. In the end, if you make enough bad choices, the bad angel is all that is left.”
I stared at the woman, my mind unable to fathom it all. Thunder rumbled as the rain streamed down the windows.
Dahlia took a deep breath. “Have you ever met someone where that happened?”
I forced myself up, propping my elbows on the table and rubbing my brow. “I think maybe I have.”
“Then you know,” she said. “That's when the dark angels have been playing with them—but dark angels don't play. When you meet that person down the road of life, they are not who they were at the beginning of the road. Young in life, they had not yet allowed the dark angels to win. Then, later on, they are not the same.”
She stepped to a shelf of bottles and dried plants, leaning on it like she would fall down if it weren’t there. “You don't have to go too far down the wrong path before it becomes impossible to get back to the right path.”