But exactly what kind of attack? And why had he been stricken by it? What had brought it on? He wasn't an epileptic. He didn't have low blood pressure. No other physical maladies, as far as he was aware. He had never experienced a fainting spell in his life; nothing remotely like that. He was in perfect health. So why?
And how had he known the phone call was for him?
He stood there for a while, thinking about it, as thousands of snowflakes fluttered like moths around him.
Eventually he realized he ought to call Faye and explain the situation to her, warn her to be certain that she wasn't followed when she picked up the kids at Wellton School. He turned to the pay phone, paused. No. He wouldn't make the call here. Not on the very phone Lavelle had used. It seemed ridiculous to suppose that the man could have a tap on a public phone — but it also seemed foolish to test the possibility.
Calmer — still furious but less frightened than he had been — he headed back toward the patrol car that was waiting for him.
Three-quarters of an inch of snow lay on the ground. The storm was turning into a full-fledged blizzard.
The wind had icy teeth. It bit.
VI
Lavelle returned to the corrugated metal shed at the rear of his property. Outside, winter raged; inside, fierce dry heat made sweat pop out of Lavelle's ebony skin and stream down his face, and shimmering orange light cast odd leaping shadows on the ribbed walls. From the pit in the center of the floor, a sound arose, a chilling susurration, as of thousands of distant voices, angry whisperings.
He had brought two photographs with him: one of Davey Dawson, the other of Penny Dawson. He had taken both photographs himself, yesterday afternoon, on the street in front of Wellton School. He had been in his van, parked almost a block away, and he had used a 35-mm Pentax with a telephoto lens. He had processed the film in his own closet-size darkroom.
In order to put a curse on someone and be absolutely certain that it would bring about the desired calamity, a Bocor required an icon of the intended victim. Traditionally, the priest prepared a doll, sewed it together from scraps of cotton cloth and filled it with sawdust or sand, then did the best he could to make the doll's face resemble the face of the victim; that done, the ritual was performed with the doll as a surrogate for the real person.
But that was a tedious chore made even more difficult by the fact that the average Bocor—lacking the talent and skills of an artist — found it virtually impossible to make a cotton face look sufficiently like anyone's real countenance. Therefore, the need always arose to embellish the doll with a lock of hair or a nail clipping or a drop of blood from the victim. Obtaining any one of those items wasn't easy. You couldn't just hang around the victim's barbershop or beauty salon, week after week, waiting for him or her to come in and get a hair cut. You couldn't very well ask him to save a few nail clippings for you the next time he gave himself a manicure. And about the only way to obtain a sample of the would-be victim's blood was to assault him and risk apprehension by the police, which was the very thing you were trying to avoid by striking at him with magic rather than with fists or a knife or a gun.
All of those difficulties could be circumvented by the use of a good photograph instead of a doll. As far as Lavelle knew, he was the only Bocor who had ever applied this bit of modern technology to the practice of voodoo. The first time he'd tried it, he hadn't expected it to work; however, six hours after the ritual was completed, the intended victim was dead, crushed under the wheels of a runaway truck. Since then, Lavelle had employed photographs in every ceremony that ordinarily would have called for a doll. Evidently, he possessed some of his brother Gregory's machine-age sensibility and faith in progress.
Now, kneeling on the earthen floor of the shed, beside the pit, he used a ballpoint pen to punch a hole in the top of each of the eight-by-ten glossiest Then he strung both photographs on a length of slender cord. Two wooden stakes had been driven into the dirt floor, near the brink of the pit, directly opposite each other, with the void between them. Lavelle tied one end of the cord to one of the wooden stakes, stretched it across the pit, and fastened the other end to the second stake. The pictures of the Dawson children dangled over the center of the hole, bathed in the unearthly orange glow that shone up from the mysterious, shifting bottom of it.
Soon, he would have to kill the children. He was giving lack Dawson a few hours yet, one last opportunity to back down, but he was fairly sure that Dawson would not relent.
He didn't mind killing children. He looked forward to it. There was a special exhilaration in the murder of the very young.
He licked his lips.
The sound issuing from the pit — the distant susurration that seemed to be composed of tens of thousands of hissing, whispering voices — grew slightly louder when the photographs were suspended where Lavelle wanted them. And there was a new, disquieting tone to the whispers, as well: not merely anger; not just a note of menace; it was an elusive quality that, somehow, spoke of monstrous needs, of a hideous voracity, of blood and perversion, the sound of a dark and insatiable hunger.
Lavelle stripped out of his clothes.
Fondling his genitals, he recited a short prayer.
He was ready to begin.
To the left of the shed door stood five large copper bowls. Each contained a different substance: white flour, corn meal, red brick powder, powdered charcoal, and powdered tennis root. Scooping up a handful of the red brick powder, allowing it to dribble in a measured flow from one end of his cupped hand, Lavelle began to draw an intricate design on the floor along the northern flank of the pit.
This design was called a veve, and it represented the figure and power of an astral force. There were hundreds of veves that a Houngon or a Bocor must know. Through the drawing of several appropriate veves prior to the start of a ritual, the priest was forcing the attention of the gods to the Oumphor, the temple, where the rites were to be conducted. The veve had to be drawn freehand, without the assistance of a stencil and most certainly without the guidance of a preliminary sketch scratched in the earth; nevertheless, though done freehand, the veve had to be symmetrical and properly proportioned if it were to have any effect. The creation of the veves required much practice, a sensitive and agile hand, and a keen eye.
Lavelle scooped up a second handful of red brick powder and continued his work. In a few minutes he had drawn the veve that represented Simbi Y-An-Kitha, one of the dark gods of Petro:
He scrubbed his hand on a clean dry towel, ridding himself of most of the brick dust. He scooped up a handful of flour and began to draw another veve along the southern flank of the pit. This pattern was much different from the first.
In all, he drew four intricate designs, one on each side of the pit. The third was rendered in charcoal powder. The fourth was done with powdered tennis root.
Then, careful not to disturb the veves, he crouched, naked, at the edge of the pit.
He stared down.
Down…
The floor of the pit shifted, boiled, changed, swirled, oozed, drew close, pulsed, receded. Lavelle had placed no fire or light of any kind inside the hole, yet it glowed and flickered. At first the floor of the pit was only three feet away, just as he had made it. But the longer he stared, the deeper it seemed to become. Now thirty feet instead of three. Now three hundred. Now three miles deep. Now as deep as the center of the earth itself. And deeper, still deeper, deeper than the distance to the moon, the stars, deeper than the distance to the edge of the universe.
When the bottom of the pit had receded to infinity, Lavelle stood up. He broke into a five-note song, a repetitive chant of destruction and death, and he began the ritual by urinating on the photographs that he had strung on the cord.
VII
In the squad car.
The hiss and crackle of the police-band radio.
Headed downtown. Toward the office.
Chain-rigged tires singing on the pavement.
Snowflakes colliding soun
dlessly with the windshield. The wipers thumping with metronomic monotony.
Nick Iervolino, the uniformed officer behind the wheel, startled Jack out of a near-trance: “You don't have to worry about my driving, Lieutenant.”
“I'm sure I don't,” Jack said.
“Been driving a patrol car for twelve years and never had an accident.”
“Is that right?”
“Never even put a scratch on one of my cars.”
“Congratulations.”
“Snow, rain, sleet — nothing bothers me. Never have the least little trouble handling a car. It's a sort of talent. Don't know where I get it from. My mother doesn't drive. My old man does, but he's one of the worst you've ever seen. Scares hell out of me to ride with him. But me — I have a knack for handling a car. So don't worry.”
“I'm not worried,” Jack assured him.
“You sure seemed worried.”
“How's that?”
“You were grinding the hell out of your teeth.”
“Was I?”
“I expected to hear your molars start cracking apart any second.
“I wasn't aware of it. But believe me, I'm not worried about your driving.”
They were approaching an intersection where half a dozen cars were angled everywhichway, spinning their tires in the snow, trying to get reoriented or at least out of the way. Nick lervolino braked slowly, cautiously, until they were traveling at a crawl, then found a snaky route through the stranded cars.
On the other side of the intersection, he said, “So if you aren't worried about my driving, what is eating at you?”
Jack hesitated, then told him about the call from Lavelle.
Nick listened, but without diverting his attention from the treacherous streets. When Jack finished, Nick said, “Jesus Christ Almighty!”
“My sentiments exactly,” Jack said.
“You think he can do it? Put a curse on your kids? One that'll actually work?”
Jack turned the question back on him. “What do you think?”
Nick pondered for a moment. Then: “I don't know. It's a strange world we live in, you know. Flying saucers, Big Foot, the Bermuda Triangle, the Abominable Snowman, all sorts of weird things out there. I like to read about stuff like that. Fascinates me. There're millions of people out there who claim to've seen a lot of truly strange things. Not all of it can be bunk — can it? Maybe some of it. Maybe most of it. But not all of it. Right?”
“Probably not all of it,” Jack agreed.
“So maybe voodoo works.”
Jack nodded.
“Of course, for your sake, and for the kids, I hope to God it doesn't work,” Nick said.
They traveled half a block in silence.
Then Nick said, “One thing bothers me about this Lavelle, about what he told you.”
“What's that?”
“Well, let's just say voodoo does work.”
“Okay.”
“I mean, let's just pretend.”
“I understand.”
“Well, if voodoo works, and if he wants you off the case, why would he use this magic power of his to kill your kids? Why wouldn't he just use it to kill you? That'd be a lot more direct.”
Jack frowned. “You're right.”
“If he killed you, they'd assign another detective to the case, and it isn't too likely the new man would be as open-minded as you are about this voodoo angle. So the easiest way for Lavelle to get what he wants is to eliminate you with one of his curses. Now why doesn't he do that — supposing the magic works, I mean?”
“I don't know why.”
“Neither do I,” Nick said. “Can't figure it. But I think maybe this is important, Lieutenant. Don't you?”
“How?”
“See, even if the guy's a lunatic, even if voodoo doesn't work and you're just dealing with a maniac, at least the rest of his story — all the weird stuff he told you — has its own kind of crazy logic. It's not filled with contradictions. Know what I mean?”
“Yes.”
“It hangs together, even if it is bullshit. It's strangely logical. Except for the threat against your kids. That doesn't fit. Illogical. It's too much trouble when he could just put a curse on you. So if he has the power, why doesn't he aim it at you if he's going to aim it at anyone?”
“Maybe it's just that he realizes he can't intimidate me by threatening my own life. Maybe he realizes the only way to intimidate me is through my kids.”
“But if he just destroyed you, had you chewed to pieces like all these others, then he wouldn't have to intimidate you. Intimidation is clumsy. Murder is cleaner. See what I mean? “
Jack watched the snow hitting the windshield, and he thought about what Nick had said. He had a hunch that it was important.
VIII
In the storage shed, Lavelle completed the ritual. He stood in orange light, breathing hard, dripping sweat. The beads of perspiration reflected the light and looked like droplets of orange paint. The whites of his eyes were stained by the same preternatural glow, and his well-buffed fingernails also gleamed orange.
Only one thing remained to be done in order to assure the deaths of the Dawson children. When the time came, when the deadline arrived for Jack Dawson and he didn't back off as Lavelle wanted, then Lavelle would only have to pick up two pair of ceremonial scissors and cut both ends of the slender cord from which the photographs hung. The pictures would fall into the pit and vanish in the furnacelike glow, and then the demonic powers would be set loose; the curse would be fulfilled. Penny and Davey Dawson wouldn't have a chance.
Lavelle closed his eyes and imagined he was standing over their bloody, lifeless bodies. That prospect thrilled him.
The murder of children was a dangerous undertaking, one which a Bocor did not contemplate unless he had no other choice. Before he placed a curse of death upon a child, he had better know how to shield himself from the wrath of the Rada gods, the gods of white magic, for they were infuriated by the victimization of children. If a Bocor killed an innocent child without knowing the charms and spells that would, subsequently, protect him from the power of the Rada, then he would suffer excruciating pain for many days and nights. And when the Rada finally snuffed him out, he wouldn't mind dying; indeed, he would be grateful for an end to his suffering.
Lavelle knew how to armor himself against the Rada. He had killed other children, before this, and had gotten away with it every time, utterly unscathed. Nevertheless, he was tense and uneasy. There was always the possibility of a mistake. In spite of his knowledge and power, this was a dangerous scheme.
On the other hand, if a Bocor used his command of supernatural machinery to kill a child, and if he got away with it, then the gods of Petro and Congo were so pleased with him that they bestowed even greater power upon him. If Lavelle could destroy Penny and Davey Dawson and deflect the wrath of Rada, his mastery of dark magic would be more awesome than ever before.
Behind his closed eyelids, he saw images of the dead, torn, mutilated bodies of the Dawson children.
He laughed softly.
In the Dawson apartment, far across town from the shed where Baba Lavelle was performing the ritual, two dozen silver-eyed creatures swayed in the shadows, in sympathy with the rhythm of the Bocor's chanting and singing. His voice could not be heard in the apartment, of course. Yet these things with demented eyes were somehow aware of it. Swaying, they stood in the kitchen, the living room — and in the dark hallway, where they watched the door with panting anticipation. When Lavelle reached the end of the ritual, all of the small beasts stopped swaying at exactly the same time, at the very instant Lavelle fell silent. They were rigid now. Watchful. Alert. Ready.
In a storm drain beneath Wellton School, other creatures rocked back and forth in the darkness, eyes gleaming, keeping time with Lavelle's chants, though he was much too far away to be heard. When he ceased chanting they stopped swaying and were as still, as alert, as ready to attack as were the uninvited guests in the Da
wson apartment.
IX
The traffic light turned red, and the crosswalk filled with a river of heavily bundled pedestrians, their faces hidden by scarves and coat collars. They shuffled and slipped and slid past the front of the patrol car.
Nick Iervolino said, “I wonder…”
Jack said, “What?”
“Well, just suppose voodoo does work.”
“We've already been supposing it.”
“Just for the sake of argument.”
“Yeah, yeah. We've been through this already. Go on.”
“Okay. So why does Lavelle threaten your kids? Why doesn't he just put a curse on you, bump you off, forget about them? That's the question.”
“That's the question,” Jack agreed.
“Well, maybe, for some reason, his magic won't work on you.”
“What reason?”
“I don't know.”
“If it works on other people — which is what we're supposing — then why wouldn't it work on me?”
“I don't know.”
“If it'll work on my kids, why wouldn't it work on me?”
“I don't know. Unless… well, maybe there's something different about you.”
“Different? Like what?”
“I don't know.”
“You sound like a broken record.”
“I know.”
Jack sighed. “This isn't much of an explanation you've come up with.”
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