Blackfly Season

by Giles Blunt

  “Great. So now their spirits have power over me? I’m gonna be haunted?”

  “Not at all. You didn’t sacrifice them. You didn’t invoke the spirits. And you did what you did with my blessing. My protection. And now I’m going to increase that protection one-hundredfold. Take your shirt off.”

  Leon sat up and pulled his shirt off over his head. Red Bear went to the dresser and came back to the bed with an intricately carved wooden box. He opened it and pulled out a chain with a gold amulet hanging from it.

  “Classy,” Leon said. “What do the symbols mean?”

  “I have blessed this with the power of Oggun.”

  Red Bear hung the chain around Leon’s neck. The amulet was cold against his chest.

  “Oggun’s the one in charge of iron, right?”

  Red Bear smiled. “Not just iron. All metals. Lead, for example. From this you will gain the powers of gold: its purity, its strength, its flexibility. Wear this, and bullets cannot harm you. They will pass right through your body without leaving a mark.”

  “Wow. That’s amazing.” Leon could feel the gold warming against his skin. He took a deep breath and concentrated, trying to absorb the purity, the strength, the flexibility.

  “Now you are bulletproof,” Red Bear said. “You have nothing to fear, my friend.”

  They lay silent for a while. The music had changed to some woman crooning about finding peace. The song set up a sharp ache in Leon’s heart. Red Bear was saying something to him.

  “What? What did you say?”

  “I asked you if it bothered you. Killing a woman.”

  Leon thought a moment. Something about Red Bear made you want to tell him the truth. Those strange eyes of his made you feel he already knew the truth.

  “Yes. I was shaking after. And scared. Maybe because she was a woman, I don’t know. That’s why I done her the same place you done Wombat. Woman. Man. Don’t see why it should make no difference. There’s nothing special about women. They’ve never done anything for me except make me feel like a loser, give me a lot of grief. Kinda feel bad for Kevin, though. He’s an okay guy. I don’t want him to know about it.”

  Red Bear tapped Leon’s chest, gently. It felt like someone banging on a castle door, loud and echoey, fate come calling.

  “There’s your loyalty again,” Red Bear said. “I admire that so much.”

  “Kevin better not find out. Him and his sister were close.”

  “He’ll get over it. How was he about Toof?”

  “Scared. Same as I was first time.”

  “I’ll calm him down. But now I want you to just lie still. I’m going to give you another little reward.”

  Red Bear got up and pulled off his sweater. He was well muscled but not much bigger than Leon. Down his back, two long scars formed a V from his shoulders to his tail-bone.

  “How’d you get those scars?” Leon said. “They don’t look accidental.”

  “Never mind about that now.”

  “I told you about mine.”

  Red Bear smiled and stepped out of his drawstring pants. “Maybe I’ll tell you about them sometime. But for now, we have other things to do.”

  Red Bear went to the door and called out to the other room. A moment later, a small blond woman stepped into the bedroom, naked. She had small breasts, a wonderful smile. She looked Russian, with deep-set eyes, wide cheekbones.

  “This is Mira,” Red Bear said.

  Mira sat on the bed. She took hold of Leon’s belt and undid the buckle.

  “And this is Katya.”

  A second woman came in, this one darker, bigger in the chest and, like her colleague, naked.

  “Somehow,” Red Bear said, “I don’t think these ladies are going to make you feel like a loser.”

  24

  RED BEAR REMEMBERED RECEIVING those scars to the day, hour and minute. It had been his twenty-first birthday. Uncle Victor had taken him to the tool shed. To this day, no one but the two of them knew the goings-on in that little concrete shed, a miniature outbuilding surrounded by brute high-rises. Who could have suspected the magical power emanating from the backyard of a housing project in Toronto, that least magical of cities?

  Victor led him to the tool shed, blindfolded him and steered him in darkness beyond the back wall and into his temple. The stench no longer bothered Red Bear—or Raymond, as he was then known. Far from nauseating him, the stench set his pulses pounding. Uncle Victor had been preparing him for this day; through years of training, had brought him ever closer to the black beating heart of Palo Mayombe. Raymond could feel it pulsing around him, the heart of magic.

  “Today is the most important day of your life, Raymond.” Uncle Victor’s wheezy, disembodied voice was like a speaking kazoo. “Today you will become a full priest of Palo Mayombe. You do not have to take this step, remember. There is still time to change your mind.”

  “I know. I want it, Uncle.”

  “You are sure?”

  “I am sure. There is nothing I want more.” Red Bear/Raymond inhaled deeply the smells of candle wax, cinquefoil and wormwood, and, above all, rotting meat.

  “Very well. Two things will happen today. First, you will give up your soul. And second, you will be rayed out. You know what these things mean?”

  “Yes, Uncle. My soul will die. And so for me there will be no chance of eternal happiness and no chance of eternal damnation. But I will be freer than any other man alive: free to take other souls.”

  “And to be rayed out?”

  “To be rayed out means that I will accept the pain of the scars in return for the light and the power of Palo Mayombe.”

  “And you choose to do these things of your own free will?”

  “I do.”

  “Has anyone forced you in any way to do these things?”

  “No.”

  “And you recognize that once done they cannot be undone?”

  “I do.”

  “Very well then, we will proceed.”

  Raymond heard his uncle draw the ceremonial knife from its sheath. This was followed by the sound of steel against whetstone. Then his uncle secured Raymond’s wrists in the leather cuffs hanging from the ceiling. His mouth dried. Tremors shook his body.

  That wheezy voice, dry as paper, chanting now in the language of his chosen religion, Palo Mayombe. Then the first searing touch of the blade.

  Who can number all the ingredients that go into the creation of a monster? A dead body, the brain of a murderer, a bolt of lightning—the mad scientist throws a switch, life courses through dead veins and evil walks the earth. The case of Red Bear is more prosaic.

  Long before Red Bear was Red Bear, he was Raymond Beltran, son of a teenaged prostitute named Gloria Beltran, who was shipped out of Cuba in the Mariel boat lift of 1980. Little Raymond had been eight years old then, and if his life in Havana had been unstable, it was nothing compared to the journey he was about to undergo.

  Gloria’s first stop was Miami, along with the other hundred thousand-plus Cubans of that exodus. She moved in with a cousin who threw her out when she came home to find Gloria plying her trade on the living-room couch, young Raymond not more than ten feet away in the next room. Her next stop was with an uncle, a much older and apparently more tolerant man. Unfortunately, Gloria had to quit that place on a matter of principle when the uncle insisted that she pay her rent in kind. The list of addresses that followed was long: two weeks here, three months there, each basement apartment more unpleasant than the last.

  Then Gloria and Raymond caught what seemed like a break when they took up with Inigo Martinez, a drug dealer who had tired of the murderous competition in Miami and set his sights on the wide open market of Canada. Which was how Raymond Beltran came to grow up in a housing project called Regent Park on the east side of downtown Toronto.

  Whenever the government does a census, Regent Park comes out as the poorest neighbourhood in Toronto. Most of its inhabitants are recent immigrants trying to realize some tiny ap
proximation of their dreams. Many are single parents living on welfare; almost all are law-abiding. Inigo Martinez was not. Nor was he a successful businessman. His vision of Canada as a vast, undersup-plied market for his product turned out to be incorrect. So incorrect that a disgruntled competitor had him thrown from the top of a high-rise.

  Gloria managed to evade deportation by persuading a Canadian of Cuban heritage to marry her. For a small financial consideration, he agreed to appear at several immigration interviews, have photographs taken of their “honeymoon” and so on. After her status was legalized, Gloria tried to coerce him into providing “child-support” payments, but he disappeared from her life as people with any sense were wont to do.

  That left Gloria to raise Raymond on the income she received from Social Services and the proceeds from selling her body. Neighbours complained, of course, and the police were frequent visitors. The Catholic Children’s Aid Society repeatedly hauled her before the provincial court at 311 Jarvis Street on charges of child neglect. Having left school forever at the age of fourteen, Gloria saw no reason why her son should attend; she liked having him around the apartment.

  In addition to his mother, the other major influence on Raymond Beltran’s character—the bolt of lightning that zapped the latent murderer’s brain to life—was witchcraft.

  Witchcraft, or more properly brujeria, came to Raymond in the person of Victor Vega, a fellow Cuban who looked to young Raymond to be about a hundred years old. Vega was bony, twisted and stooped. One leg dragged behind the other, the legacy of a long-ago car accident. His brown face was a cartoon exaggeration of brows and cheeks. All in all, an unprepossessing exterior for a man who commanded the respect—even fear—of those who knew what he was.

  Vega was a witch, a padrone in the religion of Palo Mayombe. Palo Mayombe, like the better-known Voodoo and Santeria, is an African belief system whose gods wear the guise of Christian saints. Like its two sister religions, it concerns itself with magic, but in Victor Vega’s hands it was magic of the blackest kind.

  He lived down the hall from Gloria and Raymond; they saw each other often in the elevators. They greeted each other in Spanish, exchanged comments about the weather, but not much more than that. But the old man always looked at them with curiosity, as if he recognized them from somewhere. One day, when they were waiting for the elevator to arrive, Victor said, “I see you are a follower of Santeria.” He was pointing with a sinewy finger at a huge carved bracelet on Gloria’s wrist.

  “I light my candles,” Gloria said. “I ask now and again for guidance.”

  “Do you know about Mayombe?”

  “Yes. I have a cousin who is a padrone. My father and mother did not believe, however, so I did not learn much about it.”

  “Still, I could see it is in your family.”

  “Oh, yes?”

  “Your son’s eyes. He has the kind of eyes that can see the future.”

  “Well, it’s true he sometimes knows things he should not know.” She turned to Raymond. “Even as a little boy, Raymond. Even as a child, many of the things you said had a habit of coming true. There was the time—long ago, this was back in Havana—you pointed to the mulata Lena Lindo and said, ‘But she is dead, that woman.’ And the next day she was indeed dead.”

  “I saw it in a dream,” Raymond said. “I thought it was real.”

  “Yes, of course,” the old man said. “Of course you did. But I will tell you something right now, something that is true: One day you are going to be a padrone.”

  “I don’t think so,” Gloria said. “Raymond is not a religious person.”

  “Oh, yes he is. He may not know it yet, but it is obvious from those eyes. One day he is going to be the most powerful padrone we have ever seen.”

  After that day, the three of them became more friendly. Vega took a kindly interest in the boy, taking him to Blue Jays games and teaching him how to fix cars and all kinds of motors. It was the most sustained attention Raymond had ever had from an adult, and he thrived under it. He got along better with the old man than he did with boys his own age, and Gloria was happy to see him spend time with someone from the old country. The three of them became very close.

  Victor often paid Raymond to help him with his work. For, in addition to being a witch, the old man was in charge of grounds maintenance at the housing project. From the outside, his tool shed seemed nothing more than a cramped, concrete structure with a metal door and a roof of corrugated tin. It was heavily padlocked at all times unless Victor was inside; no one else had a key. If any of the local teenagers had decided to break in, they would have found the usual assortment of clippers, lawn mowers, weed whackers, shears, gloves and hoses.

  But no one ever did break in, and it is unlikely that anyone would ever attempt it, because the place smelled so bad. Bags of sheep and cow manure were stacked against the entire back wall of the shed, and in summer it stank to high heaven.

  That was Raymond’s first sense of the place, how the smell hit you in the face like a wall of cement. The lungs closed off in self-defence and the gorge rose in the throat. The first few times he stepped inside, he was consumed with fear, fear strong enough to set his stomach tumbling even before Victor opened up the back room, the secret room, the place he referred to as his “temple.”

  Whenever Raymond and Victor were together, the old man talked to him about magic. He taught him that you could affect the events of this world with help from the creatures of the next. All that was required was a knowledge of how to control them. This knowledge, Victor hinted strongly, was something that was his to convey. Raymond began pestering Victor to teach him. Eventually, Victor agreed to show him his temple.

  That first day—Raymond was not yet twelve—Victor squatted beside him and gripped his shoulder hard. His breath smelled of onions, but it was nothing compared to the stench in that shed.

  “Little Raymond,” he said. “What I am about to show you is a great secret. You have told me you wish to learn about magic. To learn how to command the spirits. To employ them in bringing good things to the people you love, to your mama and to me. To learn how to protect yourself from enemies. To see the future. Are you still interested in these things?”

  “Yes, Uncle.” Victor had told him to call him uncle and, by now, it came naturally. “Uncle, why does it smell so bad?”

  “When you understand magic, you will know that that is a good smell, not bad at all. But now will you listen to what I am telling you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Because it is the most important thing you will ever hear me say. I repeat: What I am about to show you is a great secret. So secret that if you ever tell anyone what you see in here, or what I do in here, or what you do in here, I will kill you. Do you understand me? I will kill you, Raymond.”

  Uncle Victor’s face, seamed and brown as a walnut, drew closer. His black eyes looked into Raymond’s, and Raymond knew he could see his fear.

  “I won’t tell, Uncle.”

  “I love you, my child, but if you tell, I will kill you with no more hesitation than a butcher kills a pig. You will die, you will be buried, and your mother will weep endless tears for you and she will never be happy again in her life. You don’t want that, do you?”

  “No, Uncle.”

  “So, if someone says to you, ‘Hey, that Victor is a strange old bird. What does he get up to in that shed of his?’ what do you say to this person?”

  “I don’t say anything.”

  “They may force you to say something. What will you tell them if they twist your arm and hurt you to make you talk?”

  “I will tell them I don’t know what you do in here?”

  “No, you will tell them this: ‘Uncle Victor keeps his gardening tools in there.’ That’s all. Not a word more. It is the truth, after all. No one can call you a liar. So what do you say?”

  “‘Uncle Victor keeps his gardening tools in there.’”

  The bony fingers gripped his shoulder; it was like bein
g squeezed by a hawk. “Good, Raymond. You are a good boy. You are worthy to learn about magic. Now I will show you my temple.”

  Victor slipped a foot under a rack of manure bags and pressed on a pedal. Something clicked, and the back wall shifted on a pivot. The smell became ten times worse, and Raymond gagged.

  “It’s all right,” Victor said. “You will get used to the smell. In time, you will come to love the smell. It is the smell of power.”

  The room was tiny, and pitch dark except for the single red bulb that glowed overhead. As Raymond’s eyes adjusted, he saw there was very little in the room: one large table, a hatchet and an array of knives fixed to the wall. The wall itself was painted with symbols he didn’t understand. In the middle of the table was a large iron pot. From this, a quiver of long sticks protruded, so straight they might have been arrows.

  There was a chicken tied to a bolt in the table, black eyes glistening with fear.

  Victor gestured toward the iron pot. “The source of my power. It doesn’t look like much, does it?”

  Raymond sensed that no answer was required. Victor reached for him to lift him up, and Raymond shrank back.

  Victor leaned down and spoke gently.

  “You have nothing to fear, my child. Nothing. I am in control here. You will learn to ignore these feelings of fear. Eventually you will feel nothing and, believe me, to feel nothing is a great advantage in this world. For now, know that I will protect you. I will let nothing harm you. Nothing.”

  “I want to go home, Uncle.”

  “It is too late, Raymond. Stay by my side and nothing bad will happen to you.”

  He hoisted Raymond up and stood him on an apple crate so the boy could see into the pot. There was a foul, congealed liquid with solids of indistinct shape adrift in it.

  “Nganga,” Victor said. “This is called the nganga. In here we place the things we give to the gods. If we want a favour from Oggun, the god of iron, for example, we might put in a railway spike, or some large nails. If we want a favour from Ochosi, god of hunters, we might put in an arrowhead.”