Tropic of Darkness

by Tony Richards

  Luis was getting on his cell phone again, not for the first time this afternoon.

  * * *

  They were still waiting around the Dodge when Torres finally put in an appearance. He was driving a Toyota SUV, large enough to take them all.

  “I’ve been similarly hampered,” he said. “Suffered mishaps the entire way. Still a coincidence, Doctor?”

  Hague could only shrug, uncertain what to think of this. It wasn’t exactly proof positive that there was anything supernatural going on.

  “Damn,” Torres muttered as the rest climbed in. He was checking the position of the sun. “I was hoping to begin this much further from nightfall.”

  But they drove on without any further incident, and finally wound up outside the house.

  Everything around them shimmered. The bay off to their left looked more like quicksilver than water. Boats were reduced to phantoms, and the far shore was a dimly colored blur. It would have been gorgeous to look at, Hague was thinking, if it hadn’t been for the damned mansion. This was the first time he’d seen it. In spite of which, it was familiar somehow.

  It seemed to be partly immune to the hot Caribbean sunshine. Partly trapped in shadow in the full brightness of day. The weirdness of it drew him inward, holding his attention.

  The others in the group seemed equally affected. They’d gone very quiet, their movements hesitant. All except for Torres, who had sensed the strangeness too, but was reacting to it in a different way. There was a hurried stiffness to his actions as he began unloading his gear.

  There was an old-fashioned black leather medical bag, which rattled as he set it down. A coarse hemp sack did the same. And a large basket with a wire mesh door, the kind that was used for transporting pets. Jack could make out huddled gray shapes in its depths.

  “Dear God,” Hague muttered. “Are those what I think they are?”

  “It’s time to get going,” Torres answered briskly. “There’s a great deal to get ready.”

  He went marching off, leaving the others to follow. Luis stayed with Jack. Manuel helped Hague. They made a strange procession as they approached the front gate.

  They were already on the path, and rounding the corner of the house, when Manuel spotted something off in the direction of the water. He hurried over to the rocks, and returned a minute later looking very grim indeed.

  Something wet and multihued was flapping from his grasp. A necktie.

  “Your brother-in-law’s?” Hague asked.

  So Carlos’s death was somehow connected with this place. It wasn’t too much longer until they found the hole that had been kicked through the boarded-up window.

  “Him, too?” Luis wondered.

  “I’d imagine so.”

  Torres produced four flashlights from his bag, sharing them around. Jack played a beam in through the gap, letting out a whistle when the furniture and paintings were revealed.

  “This place is still inhabited.”

  Every eye went to Torres, who could only shake his head. There was no point in even trying to guess the explanation.

  They climbed inside as quietly as they could. Hague had to be lifted. Luis, very jumpily, brought up the rear. The five men stood close together, listening for the slightest sound. The only noises they could hear were the occasional creak from the house’s timbers and the rushing of the waves outside.

  Torres approached a door, paused again with his fingers on the handle, and then opened it. A cavernous hallway was revealed. A huge iron chandelier suspended on a massive chain could be made out halfway along it.

  He shone his flashlight up a tall, curved flight of stairs.

  “We have to find the very heart of this place,” he announced. “It will probably be somewhere up there.”

  * * *

  They’d opened the door to a room lined heavily with shelves, before much longer. Jack stared in, his puzzled gaze running along the ranks of jars.

  “What are they?”

  “Part of the twins’ magic, perhaps?” the high priest answered briskly.

  He would not meet any of their eyes, so maybe it was a part that he didn’t want to talk about.

  “We need more light in here. But no one use those black candles between the jars.” He indicated. “Do not even touch them.”

  Hague went trundling closer to them, nonetheless. Tipped his head, and then looked startled.

  “I can hear noises coming from them. What’s that about?”

  Jack stepped up, and could make out the same thing. Not voices, exactly. More like very faint insectile sounds. He stared across at the high priest—who seemed to understand that he’d get no more help without a proper explanation. Torres cleared his throat, his face stiff.

  “This is mentioned in the book. I always prayed it was not real. They . . . contain the souls of all the sisters’ previous victims.”

  No one was so much as blinking. Even Hague had gone quite still.

  “The twins keep them here?” Jack asked.

  The high priest nodded.

  “Pierre’s trapped here?”

  All the Babaaláwo could do was stare back at him. Over by the shelving, Leland Hague absorbed every word that the man had said, then snorted loudly. Frank Jackson was in one of these? He raised the end of one of his crutches to the nearest pot. And jabbed it, so it rattled. But nothing else happened. What a load!

  * * *

  Hague watched Torres as he set to work. The man had brought large candles of his own, and the room was soon filled with their ochre glow.

  Torres put on a big necklace of green and brown beads, then tied a smaller string of them around his temples. He drew a cross below it with some coarse white powder. And then, with colored dyes, he marked crude symbols on his cheeks. He produced a curious-looking staff—weird carved faces staring from it—and a length of chalk, and moved about the floor, drawing more symbols with the latter.

  There was nothing anyone else could do, right at the moment. The fellow looked utterly absorbed.

  How very serious he was about all this. Hague took it in with amazement. The man was entirely bound up in this curious activity. Taking it as seriously as a chess player might take his next series of moves. It was as if he actually believed reality was like some kind of patterned fabric, and if you had the right knowledge you could unpick it, reweave it to a new design.

  Torres produced a bowl, into which he started pouring liquids. He added the same powder he had used to mark his face, then began crushing herbs and ferns in.

  “It is called omiero,” Manuel was explaining to Jack. “A ritual fluid, used for purification.”

  Torres was muttering under his breath, his tone rising slightly every time he put in something new. He drew a large chalk circle on the floor and sprinkled some of the white powder around its circumference. The man held his palms out flat, and began tracing its outline through the air.

  “What’s he doing now?”

  “Building an invisible barrier,” Manuel answered. “Making it as strong as he is able. It is very hard for him.”

  Torres’s lips stopped moving. His eyes came open, and his exhausted gaze refocused on the rest.

  “It’s nearly time.”

  From the leather bag, he produced a dagger. He pulled a large black rooster from the wire-front basket.

  “Oh my God,” Hague protested, seeing what was about to happen.

  And he started moving forward, except Luis and Manuel stopped him, with their hands against his chest.

  “This is hideous!” Hague was barking.

  “This is entirely necessary, Señor,” Torres responded calmly.

  And he slit the bird’s throat with one swift, practiced motion, letting some of its blood drain into the bowl.

  Two white doves came next, to more protests from Hague. More blood went into the
omiero.

  Torres picked the bowl up, summoning the others to him.

  “You must drink a little—it will give you strength. One sip is enough.”

  Manuel and Luis complied immediately. And even Jack took a little. But Hague stiffened, drawing himself up as best he could manage, thrusting out his chin defiantly.

  “Whatever else disgusting might be going on here, sir, I will not drink blood.”

  Torres seemed to have been expecting that and nodded.

  “Very well. But you must carry the mark of the cross, at least.” He’d produced the powder again. “See, it’s only crushed eggshell.”

  And he was reaching for Hague with it, when they heard a sound outside.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  It was only the faintest creak of a floorboard, but it couldn’t have happened by itself. Somebody had stepped on it, which ruled out any phantom. Had anyone followed them inside?

  Torres raised a finger to his lips, then tilted his flashlight beam away from the door, so as not to warn whoever was out there that he was coming. He stepped cautiously over, making very little sound. Jack and Luis followed suit. Manuel seemed uncertain about moving. And Hague was better left behind.

  Torres and the others paused. The priest appeared to be holding his breath—perhaps they all were. Then they stepped out, swinging their flashlights around sharply.

  A woman’s face was revealed in the darkness.

  Surprisingly, she stayed completely motionless, her dark eyes squinting in her withered face. She was shabbily dressed, her frame hunched over. Certainly not one of the twins, Jack registered after the initial shock

  Torres raised a hand again, this time for calm.

  “It’s okay,” he told them softly. “I think I know who this is.”

  He went forward a pace, addressing the woman.

  “You would be another descendant of Camille, is that not so? But from a different line.”

  It looked like the light was hurting her eyes. Her heavily veined hands kept coming partway up. Torres angled it away. But the woman still said nothing in response.

  “A book that I own tells of a third—a later—daughter,” he continued. “If memory serves me, Esme. You’re descended from her, yes?”

  He got a nod that was almost imperceptible.

  “You’re the caretaker of this place?” Torres pressed on.

  She lived here? Jack was aghast. He’d seen people inhabiting some pretty awful dumps since he’d come below the border. But nothing like this.

  Manuel emerged from the room next moment, and was pushing his way fiercely at her before anyone could stop him.

  “Was my brother-in-law here? A policeman?”

  It seemed to goad the woman into action slightly. She stepped away, still facing them, and her eyes widened.

  “A man with a gun? Yes,” she whispered. “The night before last.”

  “And what happened to him?”

  “They killed him, the sisters. Just as they’ll kill you, if you don’t go away. Right now.”

  Her gaze swept across them and became imploring.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you need to save yourselves, gentlemen. Get out of this place.”

  “No, Señora,” Torres answered gravely. “Leaving is the one thing that we simply cannot do.”

  * * *

  He even got her to tell the main part of her story. And Jack listened to it with a deepening sense that he was going mad. She’d been born in this place, spent her entire life here? How could you even imagine anything like that?

  The woman was clutching at her belly by the time she’d finished. Just thirty years old, Jack thought, staring at her dried-out face. What the hell must she have been through in that time?

  Only Torres seemed to be able to cope. He had the same air he’d displayed when he had first met Jack.

  “There is a way to finish this,” he was explaining to her. “Join with us. With your help, we will be twice as strong. We’re offering your unborn child a chance.”

  But the woman wasn’t in the least convinced. She simply shook her head again, then turned and moved away from the group of intruders, melting off into the shadows.

  Manuel tried to go after her, but Torres stopped him.

  “Let her go. She’s no use to us in that frame of mind. And it’s already later than I’d hoped.”

  When he glanced back at the stairwell, the others could see what he meant. There was a large hole in the plaster at the top, the underbelly of the roof revealed. Many of the tiles were crooked, thin slivers of sunlight shining through.

  And by the way that they were slanted and the faintly reddish tinge to them, evening was approaching.

  * * *

  Torres could feel the darkness coming, moving to the walls of the big house like some incoming tide. He had stayed reasonably calm up to this point, despite the exertions of the magic he’d been weaving. But fear—at last—began its poisonous trickle through his veins. He kept feeling the strange urge to abandon the others to their fate. And that was not a typical emotion.

  Not too late, a voice seemed to whisper, directly behind his ear. Not too late to save yourself.

  Were those his own thoughts, or were the twins already getting to him? The man clenched his fists. There was no choice but to stay here, and he knew that. He had to keep a grip on both himself and his surroundings. Was there anything that he had missed?

  He went back into the room, gazing at the symbols that he’d chalked, satisfied that he had done everything right.

  So he gestured to the others. “Step inside the circle. It’s our best defense.”

  He began to bring the candles out, and Luis helped.

  The rest did as he asked, the elderly Canadian rather grudgingly. It was large enough to hold them all, but little more than that. Spread a ring like this too wide, and its power to protect them would be heavily diminished.

  All that they could do was stand there. Torres craned his head around, and saw that they were not in the correct position.

  “Stand around Jack,” he told the others. “Between him and the edges of the circle. He’s the one they’re going to try and get at, after all.”

  He was asking them to use their own bodies as shields, and that provoked some hesitation. He did as he’d said immediately. Luis did the same. But Hague and Manuel were a little slower to follow.

  Jack was looking awkward, and the high priest understood exactly why. This was a self-sufficient man, someone used to fighting his own battles. But there was no way that he could help himself in circumstances such as these. He had to accept that this was necessary.

  Minutes passed. Torres felt his limbs start aching from the sheer tension of waiting. How much longer would they have to stay like this?

  The corridor beyond the door looked darker than ever, its shadows opaque. And the light around them had grown a little dimmer too, in spite of the fact that the candles were nowhere near to burning down.

  Someone behind him stiffened, jerked; had obviously noticed something. He heard one of the other men suck in breath, and realized what was making him do that.

  The flames on the candles were flickering wildly.

  Only . . . he couldn’t feel any kind of breeze.

  They continued to dance as he watched, casting silhouettes throughout the room with every twist and flutter. Shadow images of his companions lurched across the walls and floorboards, shifting constantly.

  That gentle, faintly mocking voice returned behind his ear.

  Too late, it told him. Yes, too late to run away, good priest. You really should have listened.

  The flame of the nearest candle suddenly leapt up, stretching a hand’s breadth in the air. Everyone in the circle went rigid.

  Torres watched it carefully as it se
ttled down again.

  But when it jumped a second time, the flame extended a full meter. Every eye was glued to it.

  It receded to its normal length, as if nothing untoward had happened.

  But the third time, it actually broke free of its wick. Hurtled though the air, leaving a searing afterglow on the dimness.

  It flew toward the nearest of the shelves. Touched the wick of one of the black candles, pausing very briefly before darting to the next.

  Brand-new flames began to grow. In a few more seconds, every single one was lit.

  The men were frozen, watching intently. Even Hague had let go of his supercilious expression, and his mouth was gaping.

  Oily smoke had begun drifting from the hot black tallow, floating through the room and slowing down again in front of them.

  It gathered there, writhing languidly.

  And then, it began to coalesce.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY-ONE

  Dolores had moved off from the room, but not that far. Heading down the corridor, she’d reached another, narrower staircase, the kind that had once been used by servants. And had gone halfway down the first flight before stopping and turning round. She stood there, hunched over a little. Listening intently.

  Her hearing was extraordinary inside this place. She could pick out every slightest sound, in its minutest detail. The men were talking amongst themselves. She found herself wondering which they were more of, brave or plain deluded. What did they imagine that they could achieve? But she remained there, motionless, until she started to feel the presence of the twins above her.

  That finally made her move, turning to descend the flight again. There was no point in staying here, since there was absolutely nothing she could do.

  Her pace kept getting faster. And she knew she ought not panic, but she couldn’t seem to help herself.

  They’ll punish me. The thought kept pounding at her as she scrambled downward. When this is over, when the sisters have prevailed, they’ll punish me for letting this intrusion happen in the first place.

  There was nothing that she could have possibly done to stop it. But Lucia, in particular, would be in no mood for those kind of excuses, and would vent her rage to its inhuman fullest—she was pretty sure of that.