by J M Bannon
17
Friday the 16th of April 1858
8 PM, Moya Plantation, Haiti
Rose was no longer in London. She was channeled to a time in the past, in a place she had never been. She felt the immense power of Angelica coursing through her. Rose was the Voodoo priestess. She was Angelica, yet not in control, a passenger to see the scene play out yet feeling what Angelica felt and remembered. This wasn’t the first time Rose had this type of out-of-body experience. Her life had been plagued by visions and dreams. The difference this time was it wasn’t while she slept.
She was sitting at the Moya plantation in the office of Don Hernando. It was hot and humid with the frogs croaking and cicada droning in the trees outside. The windows were open but no breeze provided relief from the humidity. Above her head, a belt drive ceiling fan churned the air with no affect.
Hernando Moya finished signing the papers, and he handed them back to the solicitor.
The solicitor notarized the papers. “Don Hernando, that is the last of the documents you wanted drawn up,” said the lawyer. He kept looking at Angelica, coveting her beauty. He likely assumed she was the house help for Don Hernando. Angelica met his gaze then looked back to her needlepoint.
“Please keep a copy and send the original notarized and witnessed last will and testament to the London and New York office of Chilton, Chilton, Owens and Strathmore,” said Don Hernando without emotion.
“Very well,” said the solicitor, collecting the documents, putting them in a folio then into his briefcase.
“Watson will show you out.” Don Hernando rang a bell, and the house man came into the office.
“Yes, Don Hernando,” said the butler.
“Show Mr. Foubert out, Watson.”
“Yes, Don Hernando.” Watson looked in Angelica’s direction and gave a slight bow, not too much to be noticed by Moya or Foubert, but he wanted to be certain Angelica knew the respect he had for her. Watson had been with the house since it was under Don Ernesto and Angelica used to play here as a little girl. Watson was now a free man, liberated by the French government’s decree, and Angelica had returned to her home as the witch queen of Haiti.
The two men left. Only Angelica and Don Hernando were in the room. She dropped her needlepoint to the floor, and underneath the fabric was the Voodoo fetish of Don Hernando she was using to control him. She walked over to him, pricked his index finger with a pin and used the blood to draw a mouth on the doll. He had control of his mouth again. “You won’t get away with this. The trustee will see through those forgeries.”
“Hernando, those documents are originals with your signature. They are now your last will and testament and precede these,” she gloated while taking the old will off his desk. At that moment, she took a match from his cigar box, struck it and lit the papers on fire, throwing them at the foot of the curtains.
“The die is cast, my brother. You chose to go against our father’s wishes. You chose to treat me and my mother as slaves. I am resetting the scales.”
“You don’t understand, you savage witch. There is a legal system to be contended with. The institutions handling these affairs will see right through this farce.”
“Hernando, it is that very legal system that I plan to wield against you far more easily than the magic I just used to draft up those papers.” It felt to Rose as if it was her saying the words, but it was indeed Angelica. This had already happened.
“Come, brother. Come out from behind your big desk and kneel before me.” The curtains began to smolder at the flames from the burning documents.
Hernando gave every effort to resist. He was sweating and physically struggling against himself. His feet moved as if he wore shoes of lead. Hernando whelped in pain, but slowly moved closer to Angelica as she re-arranged pins in the cloth doll.
Rose felt the satisfaction of wielding power over this man who had started a string of horrors. First, when her brother showed up for the funeral, she and her mother were locked away in their rooms. She never was given the chance for a proper goodbye. When the doors opened days later, slavers came and took her and her mother away as slaves. Rose was plunged into the fear and pain of Angelica’s two years as a slave, cutting sugar cane in the mosquito-infested fields, living in endless fear and abuse. The mix of her memories, Angelica’s memories, and the experience of the events she was witnessing gave Rose a sick feeling of uncertainty and anxiety, unsure what was her, what was Angelica what was now and what was then. She wondered if this was how Preston felt during his possessions.
“Unbutton your shirt. Take it off,” ordered Angelica.
Don Hernando unbuttoned his vest, shirt cuffs and shirt as commanded. He threw the clothing to the side, his eyes filled with fear and shock as he watched his body do unthinkable things no matter how hard he resisted.
“You know, Hernando, this is all your doing. If you hadn’t disowned me as your sister and sold me off to that plantation, I would have grown up here as a privileged Catholic girl, with the guilt of being half-black and profiting from the work of slaves. Instead, my fate was to live as a slave and a savage in the jungle, and yours will be worse than damnation.”
She walked over to her needlepoint bag and pulled out a spirit siphon, like those Rose had found in Moya and Chilton and a clear glass ball. “Do you have any idea what I am about to do, Hernando?” she asked as she held up the perfect glass orb and the primitive spirit siphon.
At that moment, Rose realized she could tap into Angelica’s feelings and memories as well as her senses.
“No, please don’t hurt me. You just said that it was your fate to go to the jungle … to become so powerful. I beg your forgiveness and pity,” whimpered Hernando.
Angelica moved in front of the overweight hairy man, soaked in the sweat of fear and no longer the picture of a haughty Portuguese sugar magnate. “Hernando, do you know where you went wrong?
“I did not honor our father’s wishes… I did not honor our family… You were family” said the Don.
“You’re still begging, even in your answer,” Rose heard Angelica speak to him. “No, your mistake was that you only saw my mother in me, never our father. You were blind to the half of me that is Moya and more than name. I have the Moya patience, intellect and determination, maybe more than you, and that is why father wanted me to have my birthright. I imagine it took you some time to plan. How long did it take you?
Hernando just looked up at her, gulping short breaths.
“How long? I asked,” she repeated.
“The decision to send you away was a rash one. I did it and consulted with no one. Later, when Chilton asked about you, it was a few months to cover up the evidence of my transgression,” answered Hernando.
“And your brother’s part?” asked Angelica.
The situation was surreal for Rose. Her point of view was that of Angelica’s, and she could feel her feeling sense what she sensed, but at the same time, experienced her own feelings as an observer, and she felt terrified for Hernando.
“It—it was easy to convince Emilio. He’s so lazy and greedy. He was all for me doing what I could to grow and protect his inheritance,” shared Hernando.
“Your selfish choice took two years of my life as a slave, then a month of running through the jungle to find the Village of the Falls. I did not know if the village was real or just a slave myth, but I decided I would rather die in the jungle looking for it then spend one more day cutting sugar cane,” replied the queen.
“I’m so sorry. I see you are a Moya. You have our father’s determination.”
“Never mind your simpering. How did you convince the English bankers?” asked Angelica.
That was Emilio, really. I had sent you and your mother away. Chilton contacted him as executor and trustee of my—our father’s estate. Sir Lester had a copy of my father’s intentions and asked Emilio about you. He got him to agree to honor the preceding will and trust, or he and I would contest the will in court and our first order of busin
ess would be an injunction to move the trusts to the Rothschilds. He would lose the fees from the trust and our commercial relationships and the respect of his financiers for losing us to another banking house.”
“Well, brother, we both have bankers that are prepared to bend the rules for their clients. Those papers you just signed will assure that all the Moya fortune flows to my birthright and that is your punishment for how you treated me. For you not honoring my mother, the punishment will be far worse. For subjecting her to the cane fields and whip, your soul will be ripped from your flesh and housed in this perfect glass orb, crafted by the Beaumont Glassworks in Shreveport, Louisiana,”
“Oh, God help me,” he begged.
“Too late for that. What I can guarantee you is your immortal soul will not be punished in hell. It will stay right here on earth, in my purse. You will have the existence of a fish in a bowl.” chided Angelica cruelly.
And then the incantation began. Rose was there as Angelica pressed the siphon against Hernando’s chest and channeled his soul directly into the glass ball. Rose felt the anger, the sadness, the exaltation of the pure power and most importantly for her, the knowledge of the incantation.
18
Saturday, the 26th of June, what remains
10:25 PM, Pilton Road
When Rose returned to the room, she had the presence to discover the glass orb on top of the mantel, perched on a wooden pedestal. Inside the ball, ochre fumes swirled about. Emilio, Hernando and Sir Francis in spiritual limbo, she surmised. The spirit siphon was also on display above the hearth.
Rose got up from the chair, walked over to the hearth to examine the fetish wand and peered into the glass orb. “Do they have any sense of their fate?”
“The Pwen Hanaan. It’s not meant to be pleasant, the ritual or the condition after,” shared the Voodoo queen.
“I felt sadness but not remorse,” said Rose looking at the fetish. “I mean, you didn’t feel remorse. It was calculated.” Rose could see a faint reflection of herself on the surface of the orb. She looked at and could see the tears running down her face.
“I have none. My upbringing was unusual. I was born on the Moya plantation; my mother was a house slave, but my father was the plantation owner. He loved my mother very much, and we grew up as his family, not as slaves. When Hernando completed university, he joined us in Haiti and learned he had a little black sister and was utterly disgusted with his father, my mother and me.
“He told my Papi that he was old and going senile to take up with my mother. He yelled about how the investors would lose confidence in their enterprises if they knew the life he was leading. Papi told him he was happy, and if Hernando did not approve, to leave. Don Ernesto was much older than my mother, and when he became sick, he signed papers that freed my mother and acknowledged me as a Moya and one-third heir. I was thirteen. I did not understand the significance of those papers or the fortune that one-third of his estate was worth, but my father knew his son’s contempt. Should I care more that I killed my own blood? It was my brothers and Chilton that went to the extent they did to take my birthright and erase my existence.”
“Thank you for sharing the experience,” acknowledged Rose.
"Sister Rose, I see that you have summoned beings from the highest choir of Angels. You are steeped in the arcana of light. If you choose to apply what you have learned here today, you will break your covenant," Angelica explained.
“I don’t take that decision lightly,” said Rose as she contemplated the orb and its contents. Rose caught the reflection of a man standing in the archway behind her. She spun around to see a tall gentleman in necronist garb. Judging by his adornment, he was a Guild Master.
“Please continue, ladies,” said the guild master.
"Gerard, have you met Sister Rose Caldwell?" asked Angelica.
Gerard held the stoic stance of a necronist, with both hands tucked into the opposite arms sleeves and his feet placed more than shoulder width apart to set a base of power to conjure from. "We have not met. A pleasure to meet you."
Rose looked him up and down. She had never met a necronist, let alone one of the six guild masters. "What's your business here?" she demanded.
"I could ask the same of you, but I’m sure that you, like me, were asked by Detective Williamson to act as a spiritual scent hound to find the murderer of Chilton and the Moyas, am I correct? One of us is the back-up plan.”
Angelica flipped a new Tarot. "The Hermit, the law-bringer, is here.”
“I don’t need the power of premonition to tell you that the English detective is coming. She would have given him your location. We need to leave now and return to Paris, where we will have the protection of the Emperor,” retorted Gerard.
“I have no intention of going to Paris,” said Angelica.
“I am your way out of this mess you started. They will kill you.”
“Gerard, that’s the difference between you and I. You’re so restrained and scientific, the son of the age of enlightenment, and I embrace the chaos and natural flow of the aether. How long did it take your city of Paris and solemn brothers to sap you of the primal power you discovered when we were together?”
His stoic stance melted. “Less than a year, but it wasn’t the city that diluted it. It was no longer being with you. If you came to Paris, we could continue not where we left off. I know that would be too much to ask with what has passed, but we could start anew,” replied Gerard.
“Gerard, it is your turn to pick a card,” implored Angelica.
Gerard walked into the parlor and stood before her tarot table. “Angelica, I am not here to play games.” Looking up to meet Angelica's gaze, something caught the seer’s eye. It was the Voodoo King’s staff and it had changed from the last time he saw it. “Is that a fifth skull on the staff? Is that Papa Lafayette?"
“He passed when France sent the Foreign Legion into the village. We had kept our side of the grand bargain, Gerard. We never left the Village of the Falls.” Angelica touched his hand.
Rose assumed that Gerard was getting a vignette of the carnage in the village, just as she had experienced Hernando’s death.
Without sitting down, he touched a card on the table with the hand that held his necronist beads.
Angelica put her finger on the card. "You broke the bargain."
Gerard lifted his finger "I had no part in that. I never knew until now.”
Rose observed loss and sadness in the guild master as he spoke. “I left my heart there. it was our sacred place.” He pulled his hand away. "I had no idea, Angelica."
Angelica flipped the card. "Death, the pale rider, the end of a phase of life that has served its purpose. How do you read the cards, Seer?"
The Voodoo queen stood up, grasped the Ju-Ju staff and made her way towards Rose, passing Gerard as if he did not exist.
Angelica stepped up to the hearth and looked at the orb, then at the spot where Rose had taken the siphon from. "Rose, you have played your part, and now you must go. The crossroads you face are of no consequence to what happens here. Please take your leave."
Rose advanced towards the parlor exit. She had what she needed and had to decide if she was prepared to take the consequences for using the ritual to free Preston. Rose looked back at Angelica and Gerard then turned to exit, only to be startled by the presence of another necronist standing at the front door.
Rose withdrew a reliquary from her belt sheath and incanted the invitation to Raziel, a guardian angel, protector of Adam and chief of Erilhiem. As the Enochian call rolled off her tongue, she felt in her bones that Angelica’s wards dampened and hindered her summoning call. No supernatural power would intervene to help. She would be on her own.
"White witch, spare me your summoning,” said Seer Thomas as he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the parlor. “Witness those that truly practice the craft.”
Angelica turned to Gerard. "How did you see the conclusion, Master Seer?"
“Angelica, our offer s
till stands. Come with me to Paris, and we can continue our studies again.”
“Our offer?” she questioned.
“My offer. My plead,” Gerard begged, clasping his hands together.
“There is no going back to those young lovers in the jungle, and you can offer nothing I wish to learn. The best option for you, Master Seer, is to leave with your minions before there is more death by my hand.” Angelica’s tone invoked efficacy and resonated beyond the sound of her voice and into the aether as she began to glow with eldritch energy.
Rose watched in amazement as Angelica drew deeper upon her power. At the same moment, Lord Oswald phase-shifted through the parlor wall from outside of the house in hopes of surprising and surrounding the Voodoo queen. However, her defensive wards alerted her and slowed his ability to pass into the room. Still, it was a fantastic feat to phase-shift into the room, a sure sign of power and control of the arcane.
Angelica spun around to face the Lodge occultist, one arm outstretched with a subtle twist of her wrist. Her extended index and middle finger threw a hex that spewed an inky, smoky mass coating the wall with what initially looked like tar but transmuted into multitudes of spiders. Every type and size crawled all over Oswald and the wall he was passing through. It was enough for him to lose concentration and begin to rematerialized amid the cracked wall plaster. Blood splattered, as Oswald’s internal organs were pulverized and intermixed within the parlor wall. Angelica's spider illusion disappeared, leaving a more horrifying vision of the dead Lord trapped in the wall.