Randy White - Black Widow

I pulled the door closed, eager to be inside, then waited while the woman’s shape acquired definition as my eyes adjusted. She was in bed, under the covers. The sound of ocean waves still rumbled from the speakers, but not as loud now. I emptied my pockets on the table, then felt around until I found a towel. Used it to wipe my hands, my face, but what I needed was a shower. I stood at the foot of the bed, and my hand found her ankle.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, just tired,” I heard her sniff. “Were you outside smoking a cigar? I can smell it.”

I said, “No. I was… out wrestling with some old demons. Couldn’t sleep.”

“You shouldn’t be outside. They say it’s safe inside the fence, but you didn’t hear those dogs? Ten minutes ago, I never heard anything like it. Like the whole pack was fighting over a bone. I was worried that you-”

“It wasn’t me.” I saw her hand reaching for the reading lamp on the nightstand. “No, leave the light off. I can see fine now.”

“Light’s okay if the door’s closed-I already used the shower. I’m thirsty. I’ve been thirsty all night.”

“Give me a couple of minutes.” I didn’t need a mirror to know I was a mess. I wanted to stuff my clothes into a bag and throw them in the garbage.

There was a carafe of iced tea on the nightstand. I filled two glasses, but she said she didn’t want the herbal stuff, it would make her sleepier.

“That’s exactly what I need.” I took a sip. It tasted of mint, anise, and sandalwood. I emptied the glass on my way to the bathroom. I exchanged the glass for a bottle of water, then hit the bathroom light. Took one look at myself, and turned the light off fast.

As I returned to the room, the woman said, “You found another bottle of water? Thanks.”

I’d gotten it for myself, but handed her the bottle, asking, “The French guy, how bad did he hurt you?”

“How do you know about that?”

“Fabron and I got better acquainted today.”

“Fabron, he’s a pig. Worse than a pig.”

Returning to the bathroom, I was thinking, If pigs had wings… but didn’t say it because I’d have to explain. Later, though, maybe I would. It might put a smile on Norma’s pretty face.

When I’d finished showering, I left the bathroom light on. It added pale angles and shadows to the room. I came out drying myself, a towel around my waist.

“What happened? Do you mind talking about it?”

Norma said, “It wasn’t Fabron so much. It was that witch, the White Lady. She’s a hundred times worse than the others.”

She blinked when I switched on the reading lamp. She was sitting up, bottle of water in hand, the bedsheet tucked primly around her neck. In the afternoon, she’d looked like a thirty-year-old in training for the Olympics. Now, though, she was gaunt. Her eyes were dark, oversized, like kids in Ethiopia.

I sat on the bed, and took the glass of tea I’d poured for her. “You’re not all right. You need a doctor.”

“No, really, I’m better. Mostly, I feel lucky to be alive. She had them tie me to a post. You believe someone would do something so crazy? No… first she made me strip, then they tied me to a post. Only it wasn’t just a post, it was a cross. That’s how I lost my clothes. I’ll need to borrow some of yours because I have to leave soon.”

I leaned to look in her eyes. She didn’t appear to be in shock. I said, “You’re not going anywhere. But if you don’t want to talk about it-”

“I don’t mind. I can see you’re tired, though.”

“Don’t worry about me.”

Polite houseguests are deferential. This was a polite woman. I had to reassure her again before she settled back and began to tell me what happened. It took her awhile because she was processing it all for the first time.

“I heard rumors of her putting demons in people, doing her magic. Some things even worse. But my God almighty, I never imagined how crazy she really is. She made them tape my hands and my mouth. I felt like I was going to suffocate. You think something like that, having tape over your mouth, is no big deal, but man. Things go through your head. They could drown me, throw me off the cliff… bury me alive. That feeling of not being able to breathe…”

I put my hand on her leg, noting the line of tape stickum on her neck. Hysteria wouldn’t have surprised me. Her composure did.

“There was a fire. They built it so close to the cross, I thought she was going to burn me, the way Catholics burned people in old times. The White Lady was speaking Latin, all dressed in her robes, carrying a crucifix she said would purify my evil. Talking like I was the evil one, not her.”

“You really do believe she’s the Maji Blanc,” I said.

“Yes.”

“But you won’t say the name.”

It was more like a nervous reflex, the way Norma shook her head. “No. The Widow is what I call her. In my own mind.”

“You’re still a believer. After what she did?”

“How can you not believe something you know is true? When the sun’s up, she’s just a mean rich woman. After dark, though, things change. You don’t live on this island, but I know. The Widow, she has power. Six people watched me roast by that damn fire. Stood around me in a circle, because that’s what they were told to do, and didn’t lift a finger. That’s how bad she scares folks-and I’d given some of them men massages.”

I said, “Guests?”

“Two of them, yeah. She has some strange ones that come here four, five times a year. Crazy, sick people-but rich. The kind who’d pay anything to watch what she did to me tonight. Like I told you, I’ve heard the rumors. But my God!”

Always men guests, Norma told me. Toussaint tolerated women, but she liked men.

“That’s why there’re cameras in all the rooms. The Widow picks her favorites, watching on a monitor, and they don’t even know they’re being watched. She gets sort of bouncy and excited when a new man gets off the helicopter. I’d bet she’s seen all of you there is to see. There’s a camera over there in that clock radio. There was a towel or something over it, but I unplugged it, anyway.”

I felt a creeping uneasiness, imagining Toussaint in her nun’s hood, smoking a cheroot, paintings of orchids everywhere, studying me as I stripped to take a shower.

I said, “Fabron and Wolfie were there?”

She nodded.

“What about a couple of guys name Ritchie or Clovis?”

“How do you know those two? They’re the ones tied me up.”

"They hang out at a bar called the Green Turtle,” I said, as if that’s where I’d met them.

“Um-huh, the Turtle Bar, along with all the other no-goods on this island. Those two, they’re gangsters. Only come up here when she needs something bad done. Fabron and Wolfie, they showed up late. That made the Widow mad because she’d already stuck the needle in my arm, and it caused her to drop the tube when she looked to see who was coming.”

I said, “Tube?”

“Same as the plastic IV tubes they use in hospitals. The Widow picked it up, me with that needle in my arm-didn’t even wipe the dirt off. Then the bitch drank my blood, like sucking it through a straw. The whole time, her eyes were watching me, wanting me to be afraid, like that was something she could feed on, too.”

Norma gulped the last of her water, already looking around the room for a fresh bottle.

I checked Norma’s eyes, tested the elasticity of her skin, scrubbed her arm, then coated the needle mark with disinfectant from my shaving kit.

Norma appeared all right physically except for bruises on her wrists and a tape burn on her face. There were no symptoms of debilitating blood loss. But the psychological trauma had to be significant-she’d come this close to going over the cliff.