Корнелл Вулрич - A Treasury of Stories (Collection of novelettes and short stories)

“Why, I’m in the very heart of New Orleans! They wouldn’t dare!” But sweat oozes out on Eddie’s face just the same. He’s no fool. Sure the police will come and sure they’ll mop this place up. But what will they find? His own remains along with that of the fowls, the pig and the dog.

“You’d better hurry up, Eddie. I can’t hold them back much longer. Unless you do, you’ll never get out of this place alive and you may as well know it! If I tried to stop them, I’d go too. You know what this is, don’t you? This is voodoo!”

“I knew that five minutes after I was in the room.” And Eddie thinks to himself, “You son-of-a-so-and-so! You better ask Mombo-jombo to get you a new job starting in tomorrow night!” Then he grins internally and, clown to the very end, says with a straight face: “Sure I’ll join. What d’ye suppose I came here for anyway?”

Knowing what he knows now, Staats is the last one he’d tell about the glorious new number he’s going to get out of this, the notes for which are nestled in his inside pocket right now. And he might even get more dope out of the initiation ceremonies if he pretends to go through with them. A song or dance for Judy to do with maybe a green spot focussed on her. Lastly, there’s no use denying there are too many razors, knives, and the like, in the room to hope to get out and all the way back where he started from without a scratch.

Staats’ face is grave though. “Now don’t kid about this thing. If you knew what I know about it, there’s a lot more to it than there seems to be. If you’re sincere, honest about it, all right. If not, it might be better to get cut to pieces right now than to tamper with it.”

“Never more serious in my life,” says Eddie. And deep down inside he’s braying like a jackass.

Staats turns to the old man. “His spirit wishes to join our spirits.” The papaloi bums some feathers and entrails at one of the candle-flames. Not a sound in the room. The majority of them squat down all at once. “It came out all right,” Staats breathes. “He reads them. The spirits are willing.”

“So far so good,” Eddie thinks. “I’ve fooled the guts and feathers.” The papaloi is pointing at him now. “Let him go now and be silent,” the voice behind the mask cackles. Then a second time he says it, and a third, with a long pause between.

Eddie looks hopefully at Staats. “Then I can go after all, as long as I don’t tell anyone what I’ve seen?”

Staats shakes his head grimly. “Just part of the ritual. If you went now, you’d eat something that disagreed with you tomorrow and be dead before the day was over.”

More sacrificial slaughtering, and the drum and gourds and wailing start over again, but very low and subdued now as at the beginning. A bowl of blood is prepared and Eddie is raised to his feet and led forward, Staats on one side of him, an anonymous colored man on the other. The papaloi dips his already caked hand into the bowl and traces a mark on Eddie’s forehead. The chanting and wailing grow louder behind him. The dancing begins again. He’s in the middle of all of them. He’s an island of sanity in a sea of jungle frenzy. The bowl is being held up before his face. He tries to draw back, his sponsors grip him firmly by the arms. “Drink!” whispers Staats. “Drink — or they’ll kill you where you stand!”

Even at this stage of the game, there’s still a wisecrack left in Eddie, though he keeps it to himself. He takes a deep breath. “Here’s where I get my vitamin A for today!”

Staats shows up at orchestra rehearsal next A.M. to find somebody else at drums and percussion. He doesn’t say much when Eddie shoves a two-week check at him. Spits on the floor at his feet and growls: “Beat it, you filthy—”

Staats only murmurs: “So you’re crossing them? I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes for all the fame and money in this world, guy!”

“If you mean that bad dream the other night,” says Eddie, “I haven’t told anybody and I don’t intend to. Why, I’d be laughed at. I’m only remembering what I can use of it. I’m a white man, see? The jungle is just trees to me; the Congo, just a river; the night-time, just a time for ’lectric-lights.” He whips out a couple of C’s. “Hand ’em these for me, will ya, and tell ’em I’ve paid up my dues from now until doomsday and I don’t want any receipt. And if they try putting rough-on-rats in my orange juice, they’ll find themselves stomping in a chain gang!”

The C’s fall where Eddie spat. “You’re one of us. You think you’re pink? Blood tells. You wouldn’t have gone there — you couldn’t have stood that induction — if you were. Look at your fingernails sometime, look in a mirror at the whites of your eyes. Goodbye, dead man.” Eddie says goodbye to him, too. He knocks out three of his teeth, breaks the bridge of his nose, and rolls all over the floor on top of him. But he can’t wipe out that wise, knowing smile that shows even through the gush of blood.

They pull Eddie off, pull him up, pull him together. Staats staggers away, smiling at what he knows. Eddie, heaving like a bellows, turns to his crew. “All right, boys. Altogether now!” Boom-putta-putta-boom-putta-putta-boom!

Graham shoots five C’s on promotion and all New Orleans jams its way into the Bataclan that Saturday night. They’re standing on each other’s shoulders and hanging from the chandeliers to get a look. “First time in America, the original VOODOO CHANT,” yowl the three-sheets on every billboard in town. And when Eddie taps his baton, the lights go down and a nasty green flood lights the platform from below and you can hear a pin drop. “Good evening, folks. This is Eddie Bloch and his Five Chips, playing to you from the Bataclan. You’re about to hear for the first time on the air the Voodoo Chant, the age-old ceremonial rhythm no white man has ever been permitted to listen to before. I can assure you this is an accurate transcription, not a note has been changed.” Then very soft and faraway it begins: Boom-putta-putta-boom!

Judy’s going to dance and wail to it, she’s standing there on the steps leading up to the platform, waiting to go on. She’s powdered orange, dressed in feathers, and has a small artificial bird fastened to one wrist and a thin knife in her other hand. She catches his eye, he looks over at her, and he sees she wants to tell him something. Still waving his baton he edges sideways until he’s within earshot. “Eddie, don’t! Stop them! Call it off, will you? I’m worried about you!”

“Too late now,” he answers under cover of the music. “We’ve started already. What’re you scared of?”

She passes him a crumpled piece of paper. “I found this under your dressing room door when I came out just now. It sounds like a warning. There’s somebody doesn’t want you to play that number!” Still swinging with his right hand, Eddie unrolls the thing under his left thumb and reads it:

You can summon the spirits but can you dismiss them again? Think well.

He crumples it up again and tosses it away. “Staats trying to scare me because I canned him.”

“It was tied to a little bunch of black feathers,” she tries to tell him. “I wouldn’t have paid any attention, but my maid pleaded with me not to dance this when she saw it. Then she ran out on me—”

“We’re on the air,” he reminds her between his teeth. “Are you with me or aren’t you?” And he eases back center again. Louder and louder the beat grows, just like it did two nights ago. Judy swirls on in a green spot and begins the unearthly wail Eddie’s coached her to do.

A waiter drops a tray of drinks in the silence of the room out there, and when the headwaiter goes to bawl him out he’s nowhere to be found. He has quit cold and a whole row of tables has been left without their orders. “Well, I’ll be—” says the captain, and scratches his head.