by Dale Lucas
"What's all this about?" the fat man boomed.
"None of your goddamned business!" Brown Tom snapped. "Push on, all of ya!"
More guns rose, muzzles trained on the tight little band of erstwhile poker buddies. They were packing serious hardware: shotguns, Tommies, a bunch of shiny blue six shooters that looked brand new.
"Explain yourselves or face the consequences!" the fat man demanded.
"Fine," Fitzy said, lowering his knife and stepping toward the vigilantes. Ace couldn't believe his eyes. He'd never seen so many armed jigs in one place before. This was a nightmare! He was never coming up to Harlem again! Never!
"This sumbitch cleaned us out!" Fitzy said, pointing at Ace. "Sneaky fuckin' Heeb thinks he can slink uptown and roll hard cash off a coupla hard-workin' niggers, he's in for a nasty lesson."
Ace still couldn't countenance being called a cheat when he hadn't actually cheated. Hell, he could barely tolerate it when he did cheat. "I didn't cheat!" he cried. "Honest to God, these guys let me into their game and I beat 'em, fair and square! Is this justice? Buncha sore losers rolling me in an alley cause they didn't like losing to a Lower East Side Jew?"
The fat man and his posse stared for a long time, studying the four of them. The rain beat down. Ace wondered what might have happened to the money he dropped. For all he knew, it could've been washed into the gutter by now.
"Hand him over," the fat man said. He meant Ace.
"The hell," Blue Lou growled.
Bolts were drawn and shells pumped into chambers.
The fat man drew a deep breath. "Hand. Him. Over."
Ace was thrown to the pavement. He landed facedown in a stream of water gurgling toward a storm drain. When he looked up again, the posse was right on top of him. They'd marched into the alley and closed their circle. Every one of them stared down at him like he was the lowest piece of garbage on the planet. The muzzles of their shotguns and Thompsons yawned, deep and black.
The fat man leveled a finger at him. Ace thought it might be the finger of God, pointing down from on high.
"Teach this Son of Abraham that if he wants to play games of chance for money, he can do it downtown, among his own kind."
"Goddamn right," Fitzy said.
Then the fat man raised his finger and pointed at Fitzy, Blue Lou and Brown Tom. "And teach these degenerate field niggers what hard-working, law-abiding Harlem citizens think of gamblers and thieves."
Brown Tom raised his pistol. It was a ridiculous moment of bravado, staring down all the firepower that the vigilantes carried.
Somebody's shotgun roared.
Hell broke loose.
In the confusion, Ace tried to crawl away.
He didn't make it.
XX
Doc Voodoo never pulled the trigger on Willie Bunyon. He just wanted to scare the bejeezus out of the kid, and yanking him out of the ice truck then putting a gun to his head seemed to do the trick. Erzulie had given him this tip, based on prayers from a Creole widow worrying herself sick over her daughter's escapades with Willie the Iceman. Willie's intent was probably more youthful exuberance than deep-seated viciousness or criminality, but once he had a taste for forced couplings in the back of his ice truck, there was no telling where his appetites would go.
So Doc intervened—none too soon, by the look of things.
The rain fell all night. Apart from keeping Willie out of Miss Esther, the Dread Baron had already foiled two armed robberies, scared a would-be arsonist straight, and beaten a dirty cop to a bloody pulp after the cop had forced a hard-working mother of three to give him a blowjob. He hadn't fired his guns all night, and no blood had been spilt—at least, not fatally. It was just a riot of rottenness, vice and predation, seemingly stirred up by the rain like a colony of roaches scurrying out of a leaking wall.
The vibes on the web drew him further uptown, toward the Harlem river and the Bronx bridges. All the while, he found his mind and heart wandering back to Harlem center; back to the Mother Zion African Methodist Church; back to the Reverend Barnabus Farnes.
Maybe the reverend had his own divine protection—but that still didn't quiet Dub's heart. He wanted to keep the man safe. If anything happened to him…
Stop it, Ogou said.
"Stop what?" Doc asked. He stood at the intersection of three dark alleys, in the shadows of a troupe of brick walk-ups.
You're mind ain't in the moment. You keep drifting.
"Well, I'm just a horse. What else should I do when you're riding me?"
Ogou seemed to growl—a low, throaty sound in the center of Dub's consciousness, like the low and hungry snarl of a lion contemplating a meal.
You've got a whole territory to protect here, Ogou said. You can't go putting the needs of one old man or one woman—however fine she might be—above the work we've got for you.
"You've got to admit," Doc answered. "It's been small time, all the way."
Maybe, Ogou said. But that's what you're here for.
Somewhere off to the east, Doc caught a signal: the frightened screams of a child as a shadowy beast lumbered out of the dark toward her, snarling and shouting, battering anything in its path with its fists. She prayed for rescue without knowing who or what she was praying to.
That'll be her father, Ogou said. She can't see his face when he gets like this. She just sees a monster.
"So do I," Doc said, and checked his pockets for govi grenades.
Some perditious flames would cut the kiddie-beater down to size.
XX
Fralene took an awful risk, leaving Beau alone with their uncle locked in the basement. Generally, that lock was sturdy, and she'd removed the key, but he seemed different in his present state: stronger, more agile. Just to be safe, she and Beau had shoved an old sideboard in front of the basement door. If the lock didn't hold him, the sideboard probably would.
Probably.
She'd heard of lunatics being granted greater-than-normal strength like that. She prayed to God he wasn't going crazy. She couldn't handle that. Illness or a brain fever or some such—that was fine, that could be treated. But the idea of watching the kind and gentle man who'd raised her and Beau slowly go murderously bonkers filled her with a terrible dread.
Her umbrella did her little good. The rain slashed down on an oblique, soaking everything below her shoulders. She had tried calling Dr. Corveaux, but he didn't answer his phone. Either he was out for the evening, or he was so soundly asleep that he couldn't hear it ringing. It didn't matter. She needed him. All personal entanglements and stresses aside, she needed a man—a strong man who wouldn't be afraid to face her uncle in his present state—and she needed someone who could diagnose him, possibly even sedate him. There were other doctors in Harlem, but Dub was the closest. And she knew he could keep a secret.
Her shoes were soaked through and her feet and stockings squelching when she reached Dub's brownstone. She let herself in on the first floor, where the offices were, then took the stairs as quickly as she could up to the second. At Dub's door, she pounded hard with her fist.
There was no answer. No sound of footsteps. Nothing.
Fralene rapped again. "Dub!" she shouted, knowing that he was the only person living in the brownstone, thus, the only person who she could disturb. "Dub, wake up, I need you!"
Again, she waited. No answer.
She pounded again. Tears stung her eyes. She was losing her grip. She didn't like to lose her grip. If he answered this door and saw her crying like this, disheveled like this, frightened like this—what would he think? He'd think she was a weak, hysterical woman, just like so many others she knew. She hated that thought; loathed it, in fact. A part of her felt that if he saw her in this state—he might never want to see her again.
He couldn't ever know how frightened she was capable of being; how helpless she often seemed. He'd lord that over her, she knew it. They all did. Men. Goddamn all their composure and cheap machismo and condescension.
She pounded agai
n. "Dub, please!" she screamed, but she knew he would not answer. He wasn't home.
And where could he be at such an hour? Out carousing in some gin joint? Charming some prettier, livelier, more promiscuous woman? Smiling the way he smiled? Laughing and joshing the way he so often did, his masculine seriousness disguising a rakish—sometimes even childish—sense of humor?
Fralene's knees failed her. She didn't fall, precisely. She simply slid down the immovable barrier of Dub's door and folded herself into the doorway. The only sound in the second floor hall was the rain beating the street-front window, and her desperate sobbing.
XX
Doc Voodoo was passing by when he felt it: a terrible malignancy; a rotten soul infecting a human host, laughing inwardly at the opportunities that lay ahead for mischief and destruction. He slid to a halt, mid-way across a rain-battered rooftop, and waited, trying to locate the source of the signal—the other end of the web-strand now vibrating.
What are you doing? Ogou asked.
"Listening," Doc said. "Do you mind?"
Move it, Ogou insisted. There's more work to be done.
Doc had it now: the evil entity was just a block or two northwest… a creature not of this plane, locked inside a physical form… and locked somewhere else, as well.
An attic?
No. A basement.
When that little bitch gets home, it kept thinking. Oh, when that little bitch comes home, she's gonna have a big surprise coming to her…
Doc moved toward the thought-signal, drawn like a lodestone to an iron bar. There was another signal coming through—interference, behind that primary voice. Someone in need. Someone calling for help. But though he knew that both phantom transmissions came from the same source—the same body—the one in need sounded weaker and farther away than its more obnoxious, ill-intentioned companion voice.
That's not a human spirit, Ogou said, sounding more than a little worried.
Where am I? the needy one cried, again and again. What's become of me? Is this the other side? Is this death? Where's my Lord to greet me? Where's the golden light of my salvation?
Locked down here, the other growled inwardly. Sneaky, tricky, scheming little slut. Just you wait, sis. Just you wait til you come home. You'll find me right where you left me, playin' possum, and oh, what a surprise I'll have in store for you!
You best move on, horse, Ogou snarled.
"That ain't natural and you know it, Papa Ogou," Doc answered. "That's something from the other side… something that's crossed over and taken up residence."
Like I've crossed over and taken up residence in you, Ogou snarled. Now, let's move!
"You're in me by invitation," Doc said in answer. "You know that what we're hearing isn't a spirit anybody invited in… it's something that forced its way in and took over! You can hear the host, like two radio stations fighting over the same frequency."
Your night's done.
"Pardon me if I say the hell with that," Doc said, and backed himself up to get a running start.
You want me to dismount, boy? Ogou said. You want to see how this leap goes without me on your back?
Truth be told, Doc didn't know if Ogou would or could do such a thing. He'd acted of his own accord the other night, hadn't he? When he'd come to the reverend's aid at the church? Ogou blustered and roared then, too—but he didn't stop him.
Maybe he couldn't stop him.
"Back me up or stand aside," Doc said, then broke into a run and launched himself from the rooftop. He sprang skyward, travelling in a long, shallow arc before landing at last on a rooftop across the broad, deep span of the street that he'd traversed. When he hit the tarpaper, he broke into a run again, making straight for the source of the diabolical signal.
As he neared his next launching point, he tried to orient himself… and suddenly realized where he was headed.
"No," he said, feet pounding away as he neared another ledge, another long drop. "No way this is gonna be—"
Maybe you don't want to get involved in this one, boy, Ogou said.
Too late. Doc leapt off the rooftop, this time not aiming for an adjacent roof, but for the street below.
He dropped five stories from the top of the brick walk-up he'd just jumped from and splashed down in the center of the street, knees bending to absorb the magically-blunted force of the landing. When he straightened up, he realized he was right where he feared he'd be.
The home of the Reverend Barnabus Farnes.
Fralene's home.
12
The house didn't carry the same charge as the church, even being the home of a holy man. Doc Voodoo felt a reticence in the walls and foundations to accept him—a weak but insistent force, like a strong wind blowing in his face as he marched into it—but it didn't stop him from opening the door and stepping inside. He was still safe. Still horsed. Still Doc Voodoo.
Then he felt the full force of that malignancy emanating from the basement: a soul full of poison and rot, rife with nightmare impulses. He closed the door behind him and moved through the foyer toward the hastily-barricaded door to the basement, beneath the main staircase. The evil that he sensed down there—waiting in the dark, delighting in its own twisted fantasies of terror and fear—put him on guard. He wanted to draw his guns, but knew he could not; would have felt safer if he loosed the Machette d'Ogou, but dared not.
He couldn't spill the host's blood, after all. It was the Reverend Barnabus Farnes—Fralene's own upright and kindly uncle—possessed by something terrible and unknown.
How was that even possible?
Who is that? the thing in the basement asked itself. It sensed him now. Who is that tromping through my front door?
"Ogou?" Doc asked.
I told you not to come here, Ogou said.
Doc heard quick, heavy footsteps thumping up the basement stairs, then the basement door buckled in its frame.
"I know you're out there!" the thing in the basement croaked, still throwing all its weight on the door, again and again. The door buckled. The sideboard scooted, forced away from the buckling door just an inch. "I know you're out there and I know you ain't like the rest! I can smell that red-iron sumbitch ridin' you, friend! I can tell you ain't yourself, same as this here holy man!"
Then, Doc heard a sudden, in-drawn breath off to his left. He spun, hands falling toward his holsters and the pistols they held. He stopped short of drawing them when he saw who had made that tiny sound.
It was Beau Farnes, Fralene's younger brother. He stood in the doorway that led from the front hall to the kitchen—seventeen years old but looking like a wide-eyed, scared kid.
And why shouldn't he be scared? He had his possessed uncle locked in the basement, and here stood the Cemetery Man, in his very own front hall.
Doc slowly removed his hands from his coat. He showed his empty hands to the frightened boy. "Stay calm," Doc said, his voice still sounding like iron scraped ominously along iron. "I'm not gonna hurt you."
Beau stared. Swallowed. "Jesus," he breathed.
"Who's out there?" the thing in the basement growled. "Who you talkin' to?"
Doc pointed to the basement door. "That's your uncle down there, isn't it?"
Beau, dumbfounded, just nodded his head. His eyes looked like they were ready to pop right out of his head and he couldn't seem to close his mouth.
"Calm down," Doc said.
Beau nodded again. Swallowed again. He didn't look any calmer.
Doc decided to get back to business. He turned back to the basement door and studied it. He whispered to himself, a question just for the spirit that currently rode him. "Who is he, Ogou?"
Ogou was silent for a time, studying the etheric signature of the spirit on the other side of the door. He ain't one of mine, he said. I got no jurisdiction on this one.
"Legba? Erzulie?"
Them neither, Ogou answered. Somebody else is runnin' this one, and it ain't anybody we hold favor with.
"Lemme out!" the basement
thing shouted, its body still hammering against the locked and barricaded door. "It's been a coon's age since I been loose! Time's a wastin', friend, and I ain't aimin' to waste it!"
Doc marched forward, planted one boot on the sideboard, and shoved it back against the buckling door again. "Not on my watch, you son of a bitch!"
He threw a glance back at Beau. The boy stood against the door frame, clutching it fearfully.
There was a pause. The thing stood just on the other side of that locked door, and Doc almost fancied he could hear its infernal mental wheels turning—smell the smoke rising from the stripped and rusted clockwork of its diseased mind.
"Who are you?" the thing asked. "What do you care what mess I make of these mundanes?"
"Forget who I am," Doc said. "Who are you?"
"You don't know, I ain't tellin' you," it said.
"Who sent you?"
"Go spit," it said.
Doc huffed. He spoke to himself again. "Ogou, tell me something—"
Nothin' I can tell you, Ogou answered. It ain't Rada, and it ain't Petro. Maybe Ghede, but that's just a guess.
Ghede. The dead, the ancestors… and the infernals. If that was the way of things, Ogou was right: neither he, nor Legba, nor Erzulie could help Doc with a Ghede run amok. He'd have to figure out which Ghede Baron held sway over this punk, then try to get it recalled.
And getting a Ghede Baron to call back a spirit already loosed—probably by someone's command—meant he'd have to do that Baron some favor as well, or give him something in return.
This was getting worse all the time.
The door shuddered on its hinges as the thing in the basement threw its frail old host body against it. "Awfully quiet out there, buck! What you thinkin' about got you so quiet all of a sudden?"
Doc had a new idea. He turned to Beau and motioned for him to stay back. The boy nodded and cowered against the door frame. Then, Doc grasped one end of the blood red scarf that hung round his throat—the Serpent d'Ogou—and yanked it loose. The scarf coiled and undulated in his hands like a silk snake, restless and alive. He heard Beau gasp at the sight.