by Ken Douglas
“ Go on,” she finally said.
“ You sure you want me to?”
“ I’m sure.”
“ Okay.” Then he continued. “After the soucouyant finds a victim, usually a young woman, it flames down to earth, arriving as a carnivorous animal, where it hunts the girl until she’s crazy with terror, because the soucouyant needs the terror as much as the young blood.”
“ It sucks out the blood?” Sarah interrupted.
“ Yes.”
“ Like a vampire?”
“ Yes.”
“ And you want me to believe this?”
“ Yes.”
“ Because that’s what the wolf and the bear were, your soucouyant?”
“ Yes.”
“ Why couldn’t they be just what they appeared to be?”
“ You saw the ball of fire?”
“ I saw something. We were going so fast. I closed my eyes.”
“ Do you want me to finish?” he asked.
His smile was forced and Sarah thought he was treating her like a kid with a simple math problem. The answer appears obvious, but the kid can’t seem to grasp it, so you keep explaining away, attacking the problem from different angles, until you see the light in the child’s eyes. Well, if John Coffee wanted to see that light in her eyes, he was going to have to do a heck of a lot of explaining.
“ After the soucouyant has fed, it returns to the ball of fire, seeks out its skin and becomes a simple old woman again.”
“ There are no males?” Sarah asked.
“ I don’t know, maybe, but this one’s definitely female. And she’s one tough old bird. My personal theory is that soucouyants have been around for a very long time, coexisting with man. I think they could be the source of all of the shape changing legends. Vampires. Werewolves. They’ve always been with us, we’ve just never understood them.”
“ So how do you kill them? Silver bullets?”
“ You know, I could slap myself, that one seems so obvious. I’ve got a silver bladed knife that sent it flaming away the other day, but I’ve never considered silver bullets.”
“ I was kidding,” Sarah said.
“ I know you were, but silver does weaken it. The old folks in Trinidad use a silver cross to protect themselves against it. But if you want to kill a soucouyant, you have to find the skin.”
“ Then what do you do?” Sarah found herself getting interested, despite herself. He was a powerful storyteller and she was hanging on his words.
“ You fill the skin with rock salt and hot pepper.”
“ And?”
“ When she returns to her house and slips into the skin, she starts to itch and burn and she literally scratches herself to death.
“ And of course there’s the locket and the necklace. The Soucouyant wears an old locket dangling from an old necklace that’s been dipped in a magic potion. When she’s wearing it, she can’t age. Take it away and they grow old, like us. They grow old and they can die.”
“ Why don’t you carry around a jar of salt water and just throw it on the animal when it comes?”
“ We’re talking a lot of salt water. She’d have to be immersed. However I do carry a jar of cayenne pepper and it saved me the other day. A good slap in the face with that stuff will cause the old woman to start scratching and flame away.”
“ How did you get involved with this thing?” she asked, still playing along, because now she was sure he was suffering from some kind of paranoia.
“ Remember the movie, To Have and Have Not, staring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacal?”
“ Vaguely.”
“ There’s a part in it where the Lauren character tells the Vichy police that she just arrived from Port of Spain, Trinidad. Just the way she said it made me want to go there.”
“ So you did?”
“ So I did,” he said, then he continued. “I stayed in a guesthouse overlooking Port of Spain on the left and the ocean on the right. It had no pool, no cooking facilities, a television that got only one channel and a part time air conditioner. It was summer and it was hot.
“ I was bored and casting around for something to do. I could read when the air conditioner was working, but I had to get out of that house when it wasn’t. And since there was nothing to do in Trinidad, I decided I might as well work.
“ And I’m a thief.”
“ You went to a foreign country to steal? I don’t believe it. What if you would have been caught? Do you have any idea what jail is like in a third world country?” Sarah said.
“ I didn’t go to steal, I went for a vacation. Things just didn’t work out the way I’d planned.”
“ So you stole that thing you told me about the other night?” she said.
“ The necklace.”
“ And you gave it to Carolina?”
“ You’re getting ahead of the story.”
“ Sorry.”
“ So one night when the air conditioning wasn’t working and it was about ninety degrees at ten o’clock at night, I decided to go for a walk. There was this house at the end of the block. Sitting off by itself. Fenced in. Two stories. Very upscale for the neighborhood. I wondered what was behind that tall fence.
“ Breaking into a house is the easiest thing in the world to do. The fence was about six feet high with pieces of broken bottles cemented to the top of it to discourage anyone from climbing over. I picked the lock on the gate, then picked the lock on the back door.
“ Once inside, I found a veritable burglar’s feast. The house was furnished with expensive antiques, and the hardwood floor had the kind of finish you’d expect to find on an expensive yacht. The walls were covered with paintings and you didn’t have to be an art expert to know their value. I didn’t have to look very far to know that I’d hit the mother lode.
“ Inside the bureau drawers in the dining room, I found stacks of bills, dollars, pounds, Swiss francs. Bundles of hundred dollar bills, a hundred to a packet. Other drawers had gold coins, Double Eagles, Canadian, and here’s the kicker, Doubloons, Spanish Doubloons.
“ I won’t even go in to the jewelry, except to say there were more diamonds there than any jewelry store in Manhattan ever dreamed of having at any one time.
“ All that cash and treasure and no alarm. Why? My first impulse was to load up as much as I could carry and get on out of there, but then I thought about it. I was in way over my head. I’d never been anything but small time. I would have been crazy to take that stuff, at least anything that would be missed. Whoever lived in that house had to be one powerful individual to amass that kind of wealth and just leave it lying around unprotected like that.”
“ So what did you do?” Sarah asked, finding herself being drawn into his story, despite her doubts about his sanity.
“ I took one of the Doubloons, just to have one, and one of those bundles of hundreds. Ten thousand dollars. I figured they would never be missed. Then I committed the worst mistake of my life.
“ I opened the back door to leave, and as I turned to close it, the moonlight reflected off an object in a trash basket, by the washing machine. Curious, I went back in. It was a child’s locket on an old gold linked chain. So old that it was frozen shut. I supposed that’s why it had been tossed in the trash. I thought it would make a great gift for Carolina, so I took it.”
“ Let me guess,” Sarah said. “It was the magic locket.”
“ And she wants it back,” John Coffee said.
Sarah thought about what he’d said and decided that when he got back with the clothes, she was going to get them on and get out of Dodge. He was a nice enough man, and a wonderful lover.
He made her wonder what she had ever seen in Miles. True, Miles was successful. He was well read in a day when most men were stuck in front of the television. He dressed well, talked well, lived well. He cooked her gourmet meals, took her out on weekends, showered her with presents, and he wrote poetry to her. On the surface he was every woman’s dream.
But he was stick-in-the-mud boring when it came to talking about anything he wasn’t interested in, and he was a coward.
John Coffee on the other hand was a man of few words, with powerfully attracting eyes. He wouldn’t write you a poem, or send you flowers, or spend all day in front of a stove for you.
But he would die for you. And that had to count for something.
Still, he belonged in an institution somewhere. He needed help and she didn’t have it in her. The last few days had used her up. All she wanted was some clothes, so she could go to the bank and get enough money to travel to Europe or South America. Someplace where she could sleep till noon and eat all the junk food she wanted. It was what she needed. A vacation from life.
She slid out of the sleeping bag and peeked out of the tent. She looked at the sky and wondered what time it was. She should have asked John before he went into town. She knew it must be late, because the sun was hanging low in the sky. Probably around four or five. Still a couple of hours of daylight left.
She pulled her head back in the tent and put on her socks and hiking shoes. She had a hard night, followed by pleasant sex, and she wanted a bath, needed a bath. She stuck her head out of the tent again and roamed her eyes around the clearing.
Deserted.
Should she, she asked herself? She had always been a shy person, and until now, had never even slept without a nightgown. She had always disliked being naked outside of her bedroom or bathroom, but last night she’d been all over northern California without a stitch on, and now she was thinking about going to the river and splashing some of the cool water on her bare, naked skin.
She climbed out of the tent, and stood in front of it, feeling deliciously wicked and giddy. She was exploring uncharted regions of herself and finding that she liked what she found. The slight breeze, whipping around parts of her body that had never seen the sun, sent a pleasing chill through her. Maybe she was a closet nudist, she thought.
She laughed as she walked through the clearing. Every nerve was alive. She felt like the forest had a thousand eyes, each one on her. Every tree an admirer, every branch waving homage, every leaf and pine needle rustling in the breeze, making sweet forest music for her. She had never felt so free. She wrapped her arms around her breasts, grabbing her shoulders with her hands and hugged herself. Then she did a full spin and laughed again. She was having fun.
But she was cold, too, so she hustled back to the tent and started rummaging through his duffel bag. She found a tee shirt, way too big for her, but scads better than nothing at all. She pulled it over her head, then pulled off the shoes and wiggled into a pair of his well worn Levi’s, surprised to find that they fit round her waist pretty well. John Coffee had broad shoulders, but a thin waist. She remembered last night and she remembered that she liked that.
She would splash that cool water on her bare, naked skin another day, when it wasn’t so cold, she thought, as she cuffed the Levi’s. She was lacing up her shoes when she heard the laughter.
She recognized it immediately, Brad Peters, her perennial problem child. She tucked the shirt in, ran her hands through her hair. Counted to ten, and stepped out of the tent.
“ Over here,” Brad said, to Ray Harpine, then he turned and saw Sarah standing in front of the tent.
“ Brad Peters,” she said in her best school teacher voice.
“ Miss Sadler, what are you doing here?”
“ No, Brad, I’m the one that asks the questions. Remember?”
“ Yeah, sorry,” the boy said.
“ I’d really hate to think you two boys were coming up here to get into some kind of mischief.”
“ Not us,” Brad said.
“ Over where, Brad?” Sarah said.
“ What do you mean?” Brad said.
“ You said, ‘Over here,’ what did you mean?”
“ Nothing,” Brad said.
“ You didn’t mean that there was a tent over here, did you?”
“ No.” Brad said.
“ Did he, Ray?”
“ Yes, ma’am,” Ray Harpine said, without thinking.
“ I’d hate to think you boys were going to be sticking your noses into tents that don’t belong to you,” she said.
“ No, ma’am,” Brad said.
“ And I’d hate to have to call your parents and tell them I thought that. You wouldn’t want me to have to do that, would you, Brad?”
“ No, ma’am.”
“ Then go home. It’s getting late and this is no place for boys to be playing after dark.”
“ We play in the woods all the time at night,” Brad said.
“ Not tonight you don’t. Tonight you go straight home. Unless of course you want me calling your parents.”
“ No, ma’am. We got studying to do, so we’ll go to my house,” Ray said.
“ When?” Sarah asked.
“ Right now,” Ray said.
“ Then get going,” she said. She watched as they turned and crossed the clearing, heading for the path.
“ Stupid,” she heard Brad say to Ray, just before they reached the path and left her sight.
She laughed to herself. Then she heard laughter of a different kind, a primitive, high pitched, staccato laughter that froze her to the bone. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. Then she thought of the boys, so soon out of her sight, and she shivered again, because she knew they were in great danger.
John Coffee had been telling the truth after all. She had been so blind, not wanting to accept what she couldn’t understand. She had seen his eyes, and they radiated truth, yet still she refused to believe. The wolf, the bear, the old woman, and still she refused to believe. But this, this could not be explained away. She had spent too much time in Africa.
She dropped to her knees and dove into the tent, shooting her hands under the duffel back and coming out with the forty-five. She ejected the magazine and started pulling clothes out of his duffel, until she got to the two boxes of shells at the bottom, and with frantic, fumbling fingers she started popping shells into the magazine, ramming them home with her thumb.
Once full, she slammed it into the weapon and jammed a full box of shells into her hip pocket. Then she saw the spare magazine at the bottom of the duffel. She checked it, found it full, and shoved it in her pocket along with the shells. She didn’t know if a normal, lead forty-five slug could stop a soucouyant, but it damn sure could stop a hyena.
Again the hyena’s laughter ripped through the night, reminding her of the Kenyan bush. Normally the hyena preferred to feed off another’s kill, scavenging what the lion or cheetah was willing to leave, but they were not above killing themselves, and their specialty was the very young among the East African plain. Zebra colts, gnu calves, lion cubs and children. The hyena played no favorites. It was an equal opportunity baby killer.
She had to get to those two boys.
She ran across the clearing with the forty-five clutched in her hand, charging toward the path like a mother racing to save her young. And in a way they were hers. All those kids were hers, and no old woman, wolf, bear, witch or hyena was going to harm them as long as she was alive and able to raise a hand against it.
She fled out of the clearing, onto the path, without slowing her stride, her hiking boots scrunching leaves, pine needles and twigs, waking up the forest to the fact that a desperate human was charging through.
The overhead branches killed most of the remaining daylight, but there was enough for her to see and dodge the rocks and the low branches. She leapt over a fallen log, and in mid air she saw it, a black charging object. She skidded to a stop and dropped to her knees, raising the gun to fire.
She had her finger on the trigger.
The animal was bounding up the path the children had just gone down.
That meant they were dead.
She started to squeeze the trigger. Slow and easy. She didn’t want to miss.
The animal barked.
She relaxed her finger
, and sighed, as Condor plowed into her side, covering her face with his wet, slurpy tongue.
“ Get up you silly dog,” she said. Every animal lover in town willing to get down and play had to deal with Condor’s slippery kisses. The big dog had been her friend ever since she’d moved to Palma. Binky Bingham had bought him as a watch dog for his pharmacy, and at that he had been an abysmal failure, but he was a huge success as Palma’s ambassador of good will. Sarah never would have been able to forgive herself if she would have hurt him.
Again the laughter swarmed through the night, seeming to come from everywhere. The dog stopped his playful tongue lashing and moved off Sarah, allowing her to get up. He growled low and pointed with his eyes to a place behind her. She scrambled back up to her knees, following the dog’s eyes with her own, and she saw it, standing less then twenty feet away, eyes blazing red, lips curled, fangs bared, snarling.
She wrapped her left hand around the dog’s neck and could feel the heat of him as he growled low, baring his own fangs and snarling back, something Sarah didn’t think the gentle animal was capable of. She raised her right hand to fire, as Condor broke free and charged the hyena with a roar that rumbled like a jet on take off, but the dog’s snarling fangs met only the trail of hot fire, because the hyena turned into a mass of flame, shooting skyward as a flash of lightning bolted across the sky, followed by the barrel boom of thunder and a slight drizzling rain.
Then the fog started to move in. Slow, steady, creepy.
“ Condor,” she called. The dog barked and came back to her.
“ Stay with me,” she said, not sure if she should go back to the tent or continue down the path. She opted for getting out of the woods as quickly as possible. She started to stand, when she heard something coming.
“ Stay,” she whispered to the dog. She was still on her knees. She raised the pistol.
Whatever it was stopped. Then she knew what it was, and it was down there on the edge of the fog, waiting for her. Not eager to pounce, happy to wait. Then Sarah remembered what John had said, about how the soucouyant would hunt a young woman, until she was crazy with terror before it attacked. It needed the fear as much as it needed the blood.