by Day Taylor
Lucifer had come.
Chapter Two
The sun beat down mercilessly, a ball of fire in a shimmering sky. The air hummed, a low, soft buzzing burr that made Adam's head pound. Around him everything undulated, shimmering, unstable.
The ball of fiery sun seemed to be both inside and outside him. Burning with a cold fury from within, scorching
him from without. His leg, swollen from the knee to his toes, shot pain all through him. He shivered, in spite of the hot sand burning his flesh. He moved, and fell back groaning. His stomach heaved with waves of nausea. The sea water burbled up into his throat. He rolled over, pressing his swollen leg, cut by the coral, into the gritty hot sand. He vomited until his body curled, clutching with the effort. Slowly the compulsive spasms subsided. He fell back exhausted, moaning with pain. Against his closed eyelids everything was flaming red, red and pulsing, red and hot, red and deathly cold.
He stirred restlessly in semiconsciousness, his hands weakly searching the sand for water. He drifted into and out of sleep. Nightmare followed nightmare. Dulcie tossed on a green sea. Himself dashed beneath the surface to be dragged along the dark, sharp coral. Shapes dancing and glittering in the eerie light of a ring of fire. Himself left there thirsty to bum from its heat. The blazing sun, burning and peeling Dulcie's flesh. His own skin burning. Hellish faces gyrating, leering, putting hands all over him, lifting him. Itching. Cold. Sun fire. Ring of fire. Blackness. Redness.
Days later he awakened to a gentle rocking and thought he was in a bayou. He lay still, confused, searching the sky for the cool green protection of overhanging trees. Above him was an endless sheet of blue broken only by wisps of shredded cloud. Hunger gnawed at him. The thirst was unbearable.
He drew his breath in sharply as he scraped his injured leg. He reached down to protect it, then he sat up examining himself carefully. The blue duck trousers were tattered, the right trouser leg in ribbons. A long ugly gash ran from his right knee to his ankle. The remains of a poultice clung to the wound. He touched it gingerly. It was not a new wound.
Adam hardly breathed. He felt as though a thousand pairs of eyes watched him, though he could see no one. Shaking himself free of superstitions and fear, he touched his face, his fingers working back and forth over his heavy beard. Five days' growth, perhaps more. Again he felt chilled. Where had he been? Where was he now?
His attention shattered as he saw fruits and nuts, food in clay pots, coconuts and roasted meat in the bow of the craft. Greedily he wolfed down chunks of bread, wetting
it with coconut milk. Glancing about, he craftily shoved the remaining food back into the protection of the bow.
He felt clear-headed and unfevered; still, he didn't trust himself or what he saw. It might be yet another of the hellish nightmares. The ring of fire seemed more real than the food or the gently swelling blue sea. He looked around quickly and fearfully to see if the fire ring were anywhere near him.
Behind him was the ocean. In front of him was the ocean. To his left was the endless ocean. To his right lay a long shoreline. For nearly an hour he let the boat bob along, staring apprehensively at the low, desolate shore. There were no signs of habitation or human activity. Behind sand beach lay a dense wall of deep forest as forbidding and black as the shore was forbidding and bright.
It was as if he had been plucked from some past time and placed here, ignorant and alone in an unpeopled world. The sun was riding low, the sky turning a dusky blue-violet overhead, scarlet and gold nearer the horizon. He lay back tired and fevered again. Without knowing to what he was resigning himself, he shut his eyes, knowing it was easier to let gods or demons control him than it was to try to reach that desolate, unfamiliar shore.
Adam fell into a restless sleep. With darkness came the nightmares. Sound pounding, pressuring, crushing, drumming against his body. He was slammed against the curling wall of green water. The Independence came apart, great pieces of her planking thrown into the ocean. He was thrust down, pinioned and torn on the coral reef so close beneath the raging surface. His oilskins swirled around him, trapping his arms. Screaming in soundless, water-stifled screams, he fought to the surface. His chest burned with liquid fire as the water closed. Again he was thrust onto the lashing coral, the moving water sawing him across the sharp points.
Things touched him in the watery darkness. Then in the clarity of a blazing sunlit day he saw Dulcie swept away from him, her red hair wet and darkened like aged rust, fanned out on the green water. He reached for her, pushing with all his strength for the surface and Dulcie. He was spun head over heels until one darkness became all darkness. He no longer cared if he breathed in the rain-pelted air or the salt-laden sea.
He awakened, his stomach heaving. He leaned over the side of the boat and vomited up all he had eaten from
his cache. Shaken, he lay back, trying to separate reality from nightmare. Then with a shrieking moan that stabbed the night air, he remembered clearly everything that had happened. All that was missing were the fevered days of the fire ring in the night and blazing sky fire in the day. He must find Dulcie.
He ran the boat up on the shore. It was a native longboat a crude, primitive craft designed to skim the shoals and coral-strewn shallows. He took his cache of food and hobbled up the sandy beach, stopping to rest every hundred feet or so. His still-swoUen leg began to ache, blood oozing through the poultice. He began to gether driftwood but gave up, falling down exhausted to sleep in the damp sand.
During the days that followed, Adam grew stronger. He wandered the beach, searching for wreckage of the Independence. He found flotsam, but nothing bearing the name of the ship, no sign that anyone had survived and passed this way, no old campfire or refuse. Nothing.
By the third day his apprehension for Dulcie's survival grew stronger. She would not know how to find food or fend for herself. Every moment he spent tramping the miles of beach he counted as one less moment she had to live. Finally, he realized that while he had lain unconscious and fevered in the longboat, he had probably been traveling northward, with the current of the Tongue of the Ocean. Likely he had been wrecked somewhere south of the area he now searched.
He went to what he supposed to be Andros's North Bight and speared several bonefish, then smoked them, stowing them in the bow of the native longboat. Then he set out south, staying close to the shore, beaching the boat often to walk the shoreline, hunting for signs of life or evidence that he had finally found the spot where the Independence had gone down.
He came to Middle Bight and knew then that he had indeed been on the northern section of the island. Andros was a collection of islands, an archipelago within an archipelago. Stopping just long enough to fish again, he crossed the bight to the largest of the many small islands that made up this section of Andros. Some of the tiny cays were only three to five acres, just small protruberances sticking up above the level of sea and reef.
A stop at the native settlement at Mangrove Cay lent
no encouragement. The natives had not heard of a shipwreck. Adam again headed south, searching the beaches on the north tip of the southernmost island of Andros. At last he found the grim evidence: the remains of a jolly boat, skeletal and partially sand covered. Independence was clearly marked on its good side. The other side and the bottom were stove in. Tucked under the prow was an oilskin.
He picked it up, his hands trembling with the impact of this first sign that someone besides himself might have survived the wreck. He laughed aloud, then he broke into a run, heading for the dense forest that crowded in against the salt grass, certain he would find Dulcie or a crewman from his ship.
Adam tore through the rich growth, ignoring wild briars that ripped at him. Colonies of flamingoes scattered. Pelicans, ducks, black parrots raised an alarm. Screaming "Dulcie," he slashed through the mangroves, sisal, and pawpaw, and trampled over wild cotton, bay lavender, and poppy.
From the dense foliage iguanas scurried to safer domains, and frightened eyes in brown faces
watched him. He was the Guede I'Orage—the evil spirit who had appeared in the storm. Thin and haggard, his black curling hair matted and encrusted with dried sand, he looked imploringly at the trees, raising his hands in supplication. Mam'bo Luz had underestimated the powers of this spirit when she set him adrift in the longboat. Mam'bo Luz said she had the power to keep him from giving to Lucifer the body he needed to make him the earth-bound servant to Legba, the voodoo god. But she had been wrong. He had returned.
Adam slumped to the ground, lying back against the trunk of a cabbage paJm. He buried his face in his hands, desolate and half-crazed. He no longer knew what he was doing. His mind would take him no further than two simple thoughts—keeping alive and finding Dulcie.
Wanting to appease the tormented guide, an elderly native crept silently and fearfully from the heavy underbrush. He placed coconuts and grapefruit about ten feet from where Adam lay and vanished back into the wilderness.
Birds screamed overhead, small animals slithered through the ground cover, as Adam remained hour after hour, his head tucked protectively in the shelter of his arms. He was tired, filled with the despondency that offers no hope but
refuses to allow a man to stop trying. It was dusk before he had the courage to come out of his refuge.
He nearly stumbled over the coconuts and grapefruit He stared, puzzled at the smaU pile of bounty; then hunger overcame thought. He ripped open the grapefruit. He took the three coconuts to the ruined jolly boat. He wrapped them in the oilskin, using it as a knapsack.
He continued his search for Dulcie. He rowed south about two miles before he realized that someone had had to bring the food. Just as night fell, he beached the craft and ran back across the open expanse to the woods. Before he had gone a hundred yards, he was hopelessly lost and confused.
His nerves drawn beyond endurance, Adam stood in the dark virgin forest and screamed his frustration. There was nothing. No sound. No human. No hope. No peace. He pounded the trunk of a papaw until he brought down the fruit and bruised and bloodied his hands. For the rest of the night he wandered, trying to make his way back to the beach.
The watching eyes were fearful. The small offering had not been enough to drive the spirit back to the sea. The offerings must be greater. The ceremonies seeking the aid of the moon goddess, Erzulie, though her handmaiden, Mam'bo Luz, must be more holy, or the Guede I'Orage would offer his powers to Lucifer. Mam'bo Luz would make them pay dearly if that happened.
As Adam slept, a small band of them crept, laying out in ritual fashion the foods most likely to please this spirit from the sea. Just before dawn, they placed dried twigs around the Guede I'Orage, a protective circle to keep his powers inside and away from themselves. Then they set fire to the twigs. Immediately there blazed around Adam a ring of fire that brought him screaming from sleep.
Wild with memories of the nightmares, he thrashed through the blazing circle before the natives could gather their wits to run. One by one they eluded him, vanishing into the dark foliage, leaving no sound nor track to follow. Adam ran after one, then another. He managed to collar one small, wiry boy. The youth's eyes rolled deep up into his head, showing only the whites as he sank to the ground, muttering and praying in a strange tongue.
Adam shook the boy. "Did you take me from the sea?"
The boy muttered uncomprehendingly.
"Was there a woman?!'*
Trembling, nearly senseless, the boy bobbed his head indicating first yes then no.
Adam shook him until the boy cried out, gasping for breath. "Answer me! Answer me! The woman! Did you see her? Did you send her out to sea too? Oh, God! What did you do with her? Answer me!"
The boy began to jabber and gesture, pointing west
"She's farther in the woods? You lead me to her." He held onto the boy as he pulled at some vine to tie the youth.
Securely bound to Adam's waist, the boy sat meekly down. Adam pointed to the sky. "At first light you take me to her."
The boy smiled slightly, then curled up to sleep. Adam sat next to him, his back rigid against a tree, trying to remain alert.
At full dawn Adam awakened, the vine still around his waist. The other loop lay empty beside him. The boy was gone. As before, in a ceremonial configuration lay a supply of fruits, prepared meats, and vegetables. Adam ate slowly, scanning the brush. There was no sign that anyone was there.
Perhaps it was the forest that gave him the feelmg of being followed and observed, and the legendary chick-charnies who left food for him. Perhaps it was a nightmare, and he was not really on this primitive, largely unexplored island at all. Perhaps the Independence had never gone down in a storm off the Andros coast. Perhaps he was completely mad. But perhaps the boy had seen Dulcie.
He tossed the remainder of the chicken away and walked deeper into the woods, heading westerly. Before long, he found distinct paths, and the going became easier. He walked for hours, wishing that the little Androsian chick-chamies would feed him again. Hopefully, he lay down and feigned sleep. After an uneventful hour he searched for food on his own. Each sloping, twisting trail took him deeper into the heart of Andros.
He went on, determined not to give up until he had found Dulcie. He continued through the woods, going down one path to its end, retracing his steps until he dropped to the ground exhausted. In the morning food lay beside him. Drawn in the earth was a picture legend
that he read with ease. He was to return to the sea. The figure of a man lay on the beach. Himself. In front of the man's outstretched hands was a native boat. Behind the figure of the man, representing the past, was the stick figure of a woman with flowing hair. Dulcie. The head of the woman was a skull. Angrily he swiped at the drawing, obliterating it with his hands. Then he stood and stamped the earth imtil no sign remained.
He ran down the path, desperate to reach its end. Perhaps it was only madness, but every instinct told him Dulcie was near. He tore down the long twisting, tangled path, his mind wildly racing with hope enlivened by the natives' efforts to discourage him.
The sun was almost directly overhead when he burst out of the woods. Before him lay a wide expanse cleared of forest growth, a large emerald island surrounded by a sea of dark pine and mahogany trees. In its midst blazed a pinking white mansion, unreal and dazzling in the bright light. Intimidated by the sight of a house such as this in an unexplored wilderness, Adam retreated to the forest, peeking out from the broad sisal leaves. Twice he ventured out, determined to go boldly to the house. Twice he retreated. He was no better than the natives, as apprehensive of the unfamiliar as they.
He tugged at his beard. His clothing, what there was of it, was torn and stained from the nights spent in the forest and the water. It was no wonder the natives were afraid of him—but how was he to regain his veneer of civilization and approach this house? It was amazing how quickly he had become a wary, stealthy animal.
Yet Dulcie might be inside that house. He started across the great lawn. Without the cover of the trees he felt exposed, watched at every step. Furtive and wary, he kept looking over his shoulder as he approached.
A slender, plainly dressed Indian woman answered his knock, her dark eyes widening for a moment before her face became a mask again. Her hair was black and straight, knotted at the back of her head. "You come ter see Mistah Gilmartin?"
Adam didn't know whom he had come to see. Tiredly he rubbed his forehead. "I was in a shipwreck. My wife ... my wife went down with it. I've been told ... a native indicated this house—"
"We find no woman. No woman here."
"Have you heard anything? Has anyone seen—**
"Maybe she be buried. Always give the dead to the Lord of the Cemetery, Baron Samedi."
"Amparol Who's that?" a strangely resonant tenor called.
Amparo looked at Adam, her dark eyes filled with warning. "You go now. You go back ter sea. You go."
Adam's hand shot out, holding the door. "No, wait, please. Help me. I must find my wife. Please. You know something. T
ell me—tell mel"
A dog nosed past Amparo's legs. The petulant tenor voice demanded, "Move aside! I can't see! Who is it?"
Her eyes scolding Adam for not having left, Amparo stepped aside.
Staring up at Adam from his seat on a dogcart sat a malformed youth. His black beadlike eyes were moist and staring. On his head bristling black hair sprouted. The boy's ears stood out, small winglike protuberances. His mouth was a gaping slit. His torso was large. He had no arms or legs. From his shoulders grew finlike hands, flapping gleefully as he laughed his odd, mirthless cackling. At his groin were two other growths, feet, useless, fleshy.
Amparo said, "This be Lucifer Gilmartin."
Adam mouthed the boy's first name.
Lucifer smacked the hps of his gaping mouth twice. "Didn't you know you've come to Satan's Keep? The home of the damned? I am lord of Satan's Keep. Lucifer. Do you know Lucifer?"
"Yes, I know of Lucifer," Adam said quietly.
The boy cackled. "You may think you know, but you don't. Lucifer outsmarted God. How, then, could you, a mere man, know anj^hing? Or are you smarter than God too?"
"No, I'm not." Adam turned to Amparo. "Could I see Mr. Gilmartm?"
"Nol" Lucifer cried. "No! Talk to me! Talk to me!'*
"I need help. Your father can help me."
"My father can do nothing! I have the power, not he!"
*'Lucho!" Amparo said chidingly. "We'll take 'im ter your father an' let 'im see for himself."
Lucifer commanded his dog to back the cart up. His eyes never left Adam's. An expression of venomous hatred
was on his face. "He's like all the others," he said to Am-paro. Then he spoke to Adam. "What you want to know, I know. I could have been your friend.*'
"What could you have told me?"
"That you were in a shipwreck."
"You heard me say that to Amparo."
"You're looking for a woman," Lucifer said.
"My wife."
Ludfer laughed. "She's not your wife now. She's with the spuits."