by Dan Newman
Calm the fuck down, he said aloud to himself. And for a moment he did, but the doubts crept back in. Soon thoughts of the dead chicken entered the fray: What was in that vial? Did anything come out? Did it get on him? And from there it was a short leap to Smiley and Ma Joop, the hocus-pocus behind her hysterical reaction, the banishment to Smiley’s car, all of it, and soon he was speaking to himself again: Stop it!
He was sweating now, too, even though the windows were down and a steady breeze whipped through the car. And that ache behind his eyes was back. Was he getting sick? Did he feel okay? Was this all just psychosomatic? Of course it was. Probably. Most likely. There was only the slimmest of chances that there was anything sinister going on. He thought on that for a moment. Only the slimmest of chances. And soon, that was enough. He needed to get to the hospital, and he knew just where it was.
Victoria Hospital wasn’t far, just on the other side of Castries near the mouth of the harbor on the south side, and he was pretty sure he could still find it even thirty years later. He would go into the emergency room and have it looked at. They would know if there was something wrong. A doctor—one in a white smock with a stethoscope draped neatly around his neck—would take one look at it and declare it nothing, and then Nate would move on. He just needed that reassurance. That’s all. After that it would all be fine.
But as he drove, the questions kept creeping in. What was it about this that had him so jumpy? Was it the heat? The tropics? No, it was none of them. He knew exactly what it was but didn’t want to admit it—to do so meant it was a possibility, preposterous as it was. But his mind, full of its own sense of will, wandered over and landed squarely on what he was trying so hard to ignore. Hocus-pocus. Magic potions. Dark figures, cow’s feet, and sacrificed chickens. Local lore that works because people believe in it. They’ve grown up with it. They’ve been told stories by their mothers and their grandmothers. And they’ve been told it’s real, and so for them it is.
Nate thrust it aside as best he could, pushed his head out of the window and took the full force of the wind in his face and hair. He breathed deeply and looked at the modern buildings around him, the construction equipment, the cranes, the trucks, the cargo ships looming over the rooftops as they sat at the quay waiting to be loaded. This was not a backwater part of the world anymore. This was no remote, forgotten island run by tribesmen with feathers and boned noses—no, this was a vibrant and modern commercial center and hocus-pocus had no place here—or in his head.
He would drop these thoughts here and now, but just before he could, his mind played one last highlight reel, one last soundtrack: the sound of dried nutmegs in their thousands rolling, rolling, rolling over wooden floorboards, rattling away as those heavy, short footfalls pounded across the ceiling in the loft above. Even in the heat and brightness of a full blown tropical day, the thought made a cold shudder run through him.
He moved cautiously through Castries, not for fear of being seen by one of the phantoms he had conjured up in his head or from thoughts of Smiley’s warning (stay out of town), but more to make sure he didn’t smash up the car through some North American expectation that the lines in the road—where there were some—were supposed to divide the oncoming traffic. He wound his way through the streets, past landmarks that he recognised from his youth—M&Cs where his father had bought him his first cricket bat, and past the building that had housed Geity Cinema, now a warehouse, where he’d karate-chopped and kicked his way through a hundred Saturday morning kung fu matinees.
He stuck to the water’s edge, along the harbor, and only went wrong once before making it onto a stretch of road now called the Millennium Highway. It wrapped around the last section of the harbor and brought him up to the front gates of Victoria Hospital. He paused as he reached it, looking at the buildings, at the parking lot and the trees, and the clusters of structures that made up the hospital compound. He took it all in, waiting for the thunderclap, bracing for the jolt of memories that would wash over him and swamp his every sense.
But there was nothing. The place had changed almost entirely. He drove the car in, parked it, wiped the sweat from his forehead with a sleeve and went through the double doors marked “Emergency.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he was: like every hospital, medical clinic or infirmary in every part of the world, there was a lineup. Nate took a deep breath and went to the back of what looked like a two-hour queue, crossed his arms and settled in for the wait.
He gazed around the waiting room and saw her almost immediately. She didn’t fit in. The room was full of people from almost every walk of St. Lucian life—young kids coughing into their mothers’ laps, old-timers staring blankly ahead, construction workers with bloodied hands. There were school kids, pregnant women, and a few business types sitting with heads in hands or closed eyes awaiting their turn. All colors and types were represented, and Nate didn’t stand out in his dishevelled shirt and creased pants, or even with his tan-less white skin. Everyone in the waiting room was bonded by the one common element of poor health, and each of them wore a largely similar expression on their face that was a mix of discomfort, boredom and angst.
Everyone except her.
She was dressed casually enough, in jeans and a simple white blouse, but it seemed she worked hard at looking casual. She was a striking woman, probably in her forties, with sun-kissed sandy blonde hair that fell in a graceful arc across her left eye.
She looked up at almost the same instant that Nate saw her, and for a moment, their eyes locked. There was something immediately familiar about her—the soft pout of her lips, the dark, almost Egyptian eyes. As Nate looked at her, she rose to her feet and walked directly toward him. She stopped a foot in front of him. “Hello, Nate.”
• • •
“What is that?” asked Pip in a quivering voice. The howl from deep in the forest was nearly more than he could bear. “I wanna go home!” To his right, one of the big women wrapped her ample arm around him. The small boy sank immediately into her embrace, and shuffled quickly and unabashedly along the bench and into her protective girth.
Nate was scared, too, but his reaction was all about flight. He stood from the table, his eyes riveted on the doorway. Everything in his being was on red alert; he was as tense as a drawn bow, ready to tear off in whatever direction the moment might call for. “Richard, was that a person?” Nate tore his eyes away from the doorway just long enough to glance at Richard, and immediately wished he hadn’t.
This was Richard’s world. Richard knew everything about it, he’d been here dozens of times before, hell it was part of his family’s heritage, and he was the one who was supposed to tell them it was nothing, just the wind, just some drunk playing a prank—anything to diffuse the terror that gripped them all. But as Nate glanced over he saw that Richard’s eyes were pinned open, his mouth formed a tight ‘O’ and he watched the doorway intently.
The woman with Pip tucked under her arm finally spoke. “De Bolom. He runnin’ ’bout tonight. You all mus’ stay here, yes? You stay here ’til de sun dun rise.”
“But what was that?” asked Nate again insistently. “And what’s a Bolom?”
Richard regained some of his composure and prodded at the piece of bread before him on the table. He looked at Nate but didn’t answer.
“Seriously, Rich.” His throat was dry and he swallowed hard. “What’s out there?”
The young blonde boy looked back at his bread. “Bolom,” he said in a whisper, and the darkness outside seemed to plumb a new depth of black.
“What’s a Bolom?” Pip erupted, and everyone at the table flinched. They watched as one of the women stood from the table and retrieved another candle and a worn rosary. She settled back into her spot, lit the candle from another burning on the table, and began running the beads through her fingers while her lips moved silently.
“The Bolom is something very old,” began Richard. “It’s something that lives here, always has—and not just her
e, but at all the great plantations on the island.” He stopped for a moment and rubbed at his eye. “The Bolom is a kind of protector, a guardian of the estate that keeps watch over the land. It’s connected to the master of the estate.”
“The master?” asked Nate.
“The person who owns the plantation. At the moment that’s Uncle Vince. And one day it’ll probably be Tristan. But for now it’s Uncle Vince’s.”
“But what is it?” said Pip, still lingering under the safety of the old woman’s arm.
“I’m trying to tell you…”
“Sorry.”
Richard tossed the lump of bread aside and leaned deeper into the table. “The Bolom is kind of like a little man. It’s about this high,” he said, holding his hand about three feet off the floor, “and it’s supposed to look like a baby and an old man all at the same time.”
“You haven’t seen one then?” asked Nate.
“No, only the owner of the estate can see him.”
“So just your Uncle Vince?”
“Yeah.”
Pip piped up again. “What about Tristan?”
“He’s not the master,” replied Richard, slightly annoyed at having to explain it again, “so he can’t see the Bolom—until he’s the master.”
Pip pressed on. “You mean can’t see him as in he shouldn’t, or can’t see him as in he can’t because the Bolom’s invisible?”
“Invisible.”
Nate’s face twisted in question. “Come on, Richard. What are you talking about? That’s a load of crap.”
“No it isn’t. It’s real. Ask Augustine,” he said, gesturing to the woman running the rosary through her hands.
Augustine nodded slowly and began to speak. Her accent was thick with an island melody, and her voice crackled and rasped as she told her tale. “Richard nah tell no lie,” she began. “De Bolom, he a little fellow dat was once a chyle, but never had de chance to grow. But he been Bolom so very long, he now old, old. And dis little fellow, he very bored. Very mischievous. Run ’round all de time making trouble. Causing ’ardship everywhere.”
Augustine paused, and looked at the doorway. She seemed far away to the boys, as if reliving some time long passed. “Dat sound way out dere in de bush—dat was de Bolom up to no good. He take some poor beast. He kill ’im. Eat ’im. Him behave like a troublesome, ill-tempered dog. Dat Bolom run round dis place, watching the estate, but hating him lot in life. Him forced to protect the land, for sure, but him have no love for de landowners. He must obey the landowner, and he hate dat, for sure. Him spend eternity hating one master after the other, forced to serve, but waiting de whole time for this one to die and the next one to come along—hoping de next one will treat him well, maybe even set him free. But it never happen. It a thorny dance between Bolom and master, for sure, with plenty trouble as a result.”
Nate was now more worried than ever. “You mean the Bolom’s not a real person? Not, like, you know, a human?”
“No, no, my sweet chyle. Dis creature want so badly to be a human. But him can’t. Him made by a dark Obeah man, and de Bolom bound into service for de plantation for all eternity.”
“Made him?”
“For true. De Obeah man take a chicken egg, him put it under de arm of a woman who push out a dead chyle first time.”
“I don’t understand…”
Richard cut in. “He takes the egg and puts it in the armpit of a woman who had a baby that was born dead. Her first baby. It has to stay there for a week or something, and then he buries it with the baby. I don’t know what else they do, but that’s basically what makes the Bolom.”
Nate was frightened and repulsed. “The Bolom’s a dead baby?”
“No. De baby is just de way into dis worl’,” said Augustine. “De Bolom is a Devil ting for sure. A Devil ting trapped ’ere by some powerful Obeah.”
Pip leaned into the table with the others. “But why would any woman let that happen to her dead baby? Why would she let some guy do the egg thing and have it do that…that…stuff—to her baby?”
“Some people terrible poor, chyle. Terrible poor. Not everyone live like a queen de way we do here!” she said, raising her hands palms up to the bare walls around her. The other two women chuckled lightly. “And besides,” she continued, “if de Obeah man tell you he want make Bolom, den you let him make Bolom—otherwise he gone curse you.” The other women became serious again and nodded their heads in agreement.
Pip looked at each of the women and realized they were deadly serious. It unnerved him even more. “Curse you? What is this Obeah man thing? What is he?”
The woman with the rosary and the sandpaper voice drew a breath in reflection. “Obeah man? Well, him—and his like—dey are a most powerful force on dis island. Dey keep de rhythm, keep de balance in place ’tween good and evil. Dem can capture love for you, or cause you neck to break—jus’ like that,” she said, and punctuated it with a crisp snap of her fingers. “Him wield terrible, terrible powers.”
Nate was spellbound by what the woman was saying. Could this all be true? He had to know more, had to ask more. “This Bolom, is it around all the time? I mean, how do you know where it is if you can’t see it?”
Pip eyed the room nervously.
“My dad told me that once when he was a boy,” said Richard, “he took a banana from the cart the laborers use to load them up, and something slapped him really hard on his butt when he peeled it—but there was nothing around. He said you could see a welt on his butt in the shape of a small hand when he pulled his pants down.”
“No way,” said Pip wide-eyed and anxious.
Augustine tut-tutted. “Das true, you know. De Bolom watch over every-ting. He catch you tiefing, he gone pay you some attention. Your Papa lucky him jus’ get a slap. Many fare worse, you know. Much worse.”
“Tiefing?” asked Nate.
“Stealing,” said Richard, swinging his gaze suddenly back to the doorway.
Everyone followed Richard’s lead and turned their heads to the black opening. “Quiet,” he said in a voice that was eerily calm. “There’s something out there.”
18
“You don’t remember me, do you?” she said, filling in the uncomfortable silence that had gathered between them the very instant she had said hello.
Nate’s brain was in full stall. He blinked, then blinked some more, and finally managed to speak. “Hello,” was all he could come up with, and then immediately realized he was one response behind in the conversation. He quickly blurted out a catch-up. “I mean…I don’t. Do I know you?” His mind raced as he tried to find her in his memory, but despite something vaguely familiar about her—perhaps a hazy similarity to someone he had once seen but couldn’t bring to mind—there was nothing.
“Well, you did know me,” she said, smiling a guarded smile. “Back when we were kids.”
Nate’s mind took a hard left for a blistering ride down memory lane. It took a few heartbeats, a wrinkled face and a bitten lower lip, but then he found her. She was standing on the beach at the foot of the abandoned airstrip by the Yacht Club, feet planted in white sand, a pink T-shirt flapping in the wind, lips pursed and eyes closed in that visceral moment right before the kiss. It was Rachael Stanton.
Nate smiled his first real smile in what felt like years. “Rachael?”
“So you do remember!”
“Oh my God,” he said. “Rachael Stanton!” He wasn’t sure if hugging someone you hadn’t seen in more than thirty years was socially appropriate, but it was too late. He was already committed and had his arms around her before the thought finished. Thankfully Rachael hugged him back warmly. He pushed her gently away so that he could look at her again. “You look absolutely fabulous, only bigger.”
Rachael patted her hips and smiled awkwardly. “Well, that’s age for you.”
“No! No…that’s not what I mean!—You’re not the kid I have in my memory. And take it from me—you’ve got nothing to worry about in the age departme
nt. I’m not kidding, Rachael, you look great. Really great.”
Rachael smiled modestly and waved her hand. “You’re going to make a girl blush.” Her accent was a unique island blend—not hard-core local, but definitely island—and liberally mixed with British stylings.
Nate’s mind was still spinning. “What are you doing here? Well, I mean, you live here—you still live here, on the island, right?”
“Yes, up in Cap.” For a brief second a shadow seemed to skate across her face, as if the answer had cost her something. But she shook it quickly. “I should be asking you what you’re doing here, but by the look of your eye, I’m guessing you’re here to get it looked at.”
Nate involuntarily lifted his hand to his eye. “Yeah, this.” he said, scrambling for an explanation and finding none. “I hit it.”
“And stitched it up yourself?” Rachael smiled disarmingly. “Let’s get that looked at. Come with me,” she said, taking him by the arm and leading him through a set of doors at one end of the waiting room. As they walked she asked a million questions—where had he been? What did he do now? What was his life all about? And by the time they reached the nurse’s station Nate had not been given the chance to answer even one.
Rachael spoke politely but firmly to one of the nurses in white. “Sister, can you clear a curtain for this gentleman, please.”
The nurse quickly complied, and Nate was ushered into a small curtained-off bed where Rachael sat him down. “So, you’re a doctor?” asked Nate.
“Not really,” she said, smiling. The shadow was there again—as fleeting as a blink. Again she brushed it aside. “Let’s have a look at this.” She probed the wound and Nate winced, and then she dabbed it with a cotton swab soaked in something that smelled like rubbing alcohol. “Looks a bit angry, but nothing to worry about. We’ll start you on a course of antibiotics just in case.” She dabbed at the cut again and dried it with gauze. “So who stitched you up? They did a decent job.”