Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

The drummers quickened the pace of their rhythm yet again, excited to have such a prominent loa here in their midst, even if the human body he had chosen to inhabit was hardly much larger than a monkey. The worshippers applauded and swayed eagerly with the music, confident that if Papa Ghede had joined their ceremony, the spirits of Zaka and Dumballah must be nearby as well. This would bode well for their harvest.

Hopping about and then undulating as if engaged in intense copulation, the small boy passed down along the row of dancers. He briskly pinched each one on her buttocks as her skirt rose with the beat. After leaving his mark in this manner upon the whole company, he stopped at the far end of the circle and, taking the cigarettes from his mouth, threw his head back and opened his jaw wide.

How the oversized top hat remained atop his head through this was impossible to determine, but even more astonishing was what followed. The possessed child tilted the bottle of fiery pepper-infused rum and poured nearly a quarter of it straight into his mouth, gulping it down eagerly and without pause. Even from the far side of the circle, the stinging aroma of that fiery spiced rum burned at Carrefour’s nostrils.

Carrefour noticed the healer-woman react to this event, reflexively turning to the planter’s wife in alarm. Seeing that her silent companion was still unmoved, the healer moved forward as if to intercede between the boy and the bottle. Carrefour extended one arm and held her back, restraining her from entering the circle.

Her shawl was soft under the coarse husk of his hand, her body warm and yielding beneath it. Briefly, a dim vision of his own long-ago woman flickered somewhere in the fading grey pools of memory inside Carrefour’s mind.

He released the healer. She turned and looked up at him with an expression he was unable to interpret as either terror or relief.

The drums continued their relentless pounding. At the edge of the circle, the possessed boy laughed shrilly and began to dance in place, again joyfully following the beat. His high-kicking steps never faltered as he alternated each long drag on his smouldering cigarettes with a deep gulp from his incendiary bottle. When all the rum was drained from it, he cast it aside and jumped to the centre of the circle, throwing his arms upward with a swift, violent move which brought the entire dance to halt.

After one final savage flourish, the drums fell silent.

The sabreur stepped forward, raising his sword. He then lowered it slowly, extending its hilt to the child. The boy seized the huge blade, its edge nearly as long as his own entire body, and turned toward the two white visitors. He pointed the tip of the sword at the planter’s wife.

The circle was completely silent. The only sound was the howl of the wind through the cane and dangling whistles.

Back behind the sabreur , on the wicker and cane-husk wall of the hounfour , a small door swung inward, its crude wooden frame creaking weakly. The possessed boy passed the sword back to its bearer, marched forward, and stepped through this portal. The door creaked shut behind him.

Silently, a small procession of the faithful advanced and began forming a line outside the door, awaiting their own opportunities to speak with the wise houngan within, to ask him to interpret the ways of the spirits for them and to advise them on their prayers. The healer-woman stepped forward to join them, glancing back briefly at Carrefour as if to ask his permission.

He made no move to stop her.

The healer stepped aside briefly to pick up the discarded rum bottle. She raised it toward her nostrils as if to sample its scent, but dropped it before it reached her face. Her lips curled and she grimaced in open disgust at the potent smell wafting from its uncorked end.

In a moment, the door of the hounfour swung open again and the boy emerged. He no longer wore the black hat of Papa Ghede. He walked normally, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. When the faithful reached down to rub his shoulders or to pat him on the head as he passed down the waiting queue, he looked up with genuine surprise, baffled by their excessive attentions.

The healer woman knelt before him and, in a soft voice which Carrefour could not clearly hear, asked him some questions. The child shook his head and smiled. She leaned forward more closely and whiffed the boy’s breath. Her forehead creased with confusion. Clearly she was puzzled, for the boy did not reek in even the slightest way of the cigarettes or of the fiery rum which the whole circle had watched him consume.

A native woman now stepped to the door of the hounfour and whispered a question for the priest inside it. He answered her in a deep voice which reached Carrefour’s ears as a low rumble, like great wooden wheels rolling over cobblestones. The woman nodded, accepting the holy man’s answer, and stepped away. Another worshipper, who had waited in the queue behind her, beckoned for the healer to take her place. The white visitor accepted gratefully, but when the healer reached the door, it opened. She was ushered briskly inside and the door creaked shut behind her.

A low murmur grew steadily among the faithful waiting for the houngan . They gestured at where Carrefour stood. For a moment he imagined that they were staring and pointing at him, but he soon realised that their attentions were focused on the planter’s wife. She remained near the edge of the circle, unmoving and unmoved, where she had stood throughout the entire ceremony. The sabreur walked slowly up to her, extending the tip of his sword. He pressed it against the bare flesh of her left arm and drew its edge down purposefully, finishing the stroke with a quick and forceful turn which spun her slightly on her heels, so that Carrefour could now see her face. A longitudinal wound, nearly four inches across, opened in the white woman’s arm. The skin on either side parted like a pair of thin, pale lips opening to speak.

But no blood flowed forth.

The murmuring of the crowd rose to a tumult.

“Ghost,” one voice hoarsely whispered.

“Living dead,” another gasped.

“Zombie!” someone shouted.

The door of the hounfour creaked open again and the healer-woman dashed out. Close behind her followed the island’s Great White Mother, and then the houngan himself. The healer looked in horror at the bloodless wound and, grasping the planter’s wife by the arm, led her quickly from the circle. The houngan and the Great White Mother spoke to the worshippers, calming them and asking that they resume the service.

Carrefour watched the scene carefully through his dull, milky eyes. He saw the Great White Mother turn and steal a curious, lingering glance after the two departing women. Her face seemed to reflect more than mere interest. She seemed to smile with pride. Even through the blur of his dead eyes, there was no mistaking it.

It was then that he knew.

He recalled the strange song of the village troubadour, who had sung of sorrow and shame descending on the planter’s family.

The words of that song are true , thought Carrefour, but the blame for those two brothers’ pain lies with the woman who bore them. It was she.

He sensed strongly that the fault for their sorrow lay only partly with the planter’s rum-soaked brother, whose misplaced passions had threatened to shatter their familial bonds. The greater blame belonged to their own mother, a white woman well-schooled in Northern medicine, but who also dabbled adroitly in island voodoo .

The planter’s wife who walks as a ghost. walks because of her.

Ceremonial drums pounded vibrantly as Carrefour held the planter’s wife in his hand, closing his dry brown fingers around the soft, cool smooth silk of her gown. She was so small that only the tips of her feet and the top of her head protruded from the grasp of his surrounding fingers.