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

The woman walked the irregular trail at an unvarying pace, with her golden hair hanging limp on her shoulders and the white fabric of her gown dragging along the ground behind her.

She heeds the call of the sabreur, but how will his needle take her?

As if in answer, a second figure appeared on the trail, moving at an awkward pace but clearly driven by an intense passion. It was the planter’s brother.

The rum-soaked man.

He blundered along the sand much faster than the woman, quickly overtaking her.

Carrefour noticed that there was something in the man’s hand, a long and slender cylindrical object which resembled a wand or a small whip. It was only as the two white figures connected at the crest of the trail, in the brief moment before they vanished behind a shield of jagged black rocks, that Carrefour recognised the instrument which the man clutched so purposefully.

An arrow from Sebastian’s chest. .

So this was the dark magic the sabreur had wrought. His holy ouanga needle, when pressed into the doll’s chest, would bring about an event that ended the dead woman’s empty, ceaseless walking. Carrefour had hoped for a bolt of lightning or a column of fire, even one which would set alight the dry, rain-starved cane fields and bring ruin to the region, but not an arrow pulled from the wooden figurehead over Fort Holland’s fountain.

Saint Sebastian survived his martyrdom. So too will the planter’s wife rise again .

Unless.

He shuffled as quickly as he could toward those jagged black rocks, his immense brown feet scraping the sand like shovels. As the salty air stung his nostrils, he realised at last why he had always felt at peace near the shore, why he had always been able to hear the echoes of his ancestors who had perished in the ocean.

The salt.

He understood now, at last making sense of those words he had overheard the Great White Mother say to her servant, wise counsel about using a brick of salt as voodoo magic, to subdue a zombie.

The salt will end the suffering.

He was too late.

As he reached the crest of the trail, he looked down on a chamber of rock and saw the rum-soaked man standing over the woman, who lay motionless in a soft bed of sand. Saint Sebastian’s arrow protruded from her heart.

Weeping softly, the man withdrew the arrow and cast it aside.

Does he truly think she is finished? Can the man believe that this is truly her end?

Carrefour descended the trail and advanced toward them.

Even above the pounding of the surf, the white man somehow heard his approach and turned to face him. Seized by panic, the man began shouting and gesturing for Carrefour to get away, but Carrefour reached out with both of his hands, extending them toward him.

The man turned back and gathered up the woman in his arms. She hung limply in his grasp, but Carrefour could already see her leg beginning to kick as her inevitable re-animation began. It would not be long.

Unless.

“Get away from us!” the man shouted. “Away, I say!” With the woman sprawled across his arms, he began to back up into the surf. The waves broke around his ankles, then around his knees, and then around his waist. The woman’s head, dangling into the seawater, was soon submerged.

Carrefour continued his advance. It was this event for which he hoped.

The salt. she will taste the salt.

It was the village fisherman who found them.

Long before dawn, when the tide was at its highest, the dark-skinned men walked barefoot in the warm coastal waters, guided in their quest by the fluttering flames of small torches. They carried spears and tridents, quickly thrusting these sharp-edged tools at the darting fins of their elusive aquatic quarry. Less than an hour had passed and already their catch had exceeded that of the past three days, until one of the younger men spied something floundering in the water, something which was not a fish.

As the sombre column moved up the trail from the beach, two fishermen bore torches in advance of the others. A group of four of the men carried the lifeless body of the planter’s rum-soaked brother. Carrefour alone transported the corpse of the planter’s wife, draped over his extended arms, for none of the villagers had dared to touch her.

She no longer moved.

At last , thought Carrefour, she has found peace .

The sky was still dark when the grim procession reached Fort Holland. The great iron gate opened for them at the hands of servants whose heads hung in woe, though Carrefour sensed their relief in the hushed whispers they exchanged as he passed. The planter stood sadly on the porch above them, with his arms around the healer-woman. Though the healer’s wrenching sobs were genuine, he sensed that the planter’s grief was as false as that of his servants.

The healer then wiped away her own tears with a small chequered handkerchief and began to watch the fishermen closely, with fascination, almost as if she intended later to paint a portrait of the scene. Her stare faltered only from time to time when she daubed the corners of her eyes with the moist cloth.

The healer , he thought, she is strong. She will go North and tell this story, so that others will come to believe.

The group of fishermen laid the planter’s brother gently onto the cool flat stones of the courtyard. Carrefour did the same with the limp form of the planter’s wife, her robes spilling out beside her. The villagers then turned and, after respectfully placing one of their torches upright near the two limp bodies, they made their way back out through the gate.

Carrefour shuffled slowly over to the courtyard’s fountain, whose water trickled like bitter tears. From the waist of his rough sackcloth trousers, he drew the single arrow which the rum-soaked man had taken from here. Carrefour placed its tip back into the small hole in the centre of the big wooden saint’s chest. He pushed forcefully. The arrow sank deeply into the aperture, protruding upright.

It would stay.

As Carrefour passed through the gate, lightning flickered in the distance. It was followed by a low, faraway roll of thunder.

The rain comes , he thought.

The loa are pleased.

The cane crop will be saved .

From the distance he heard the call of the ocean, the foamy waves breaking rhythmically on the shore.

I shall join them now.

The beach glistened like fine jewels as moonlight reflected off the wave-washed sand. Salty spray burst from the rocky outcroppings, lingering ghost-like in the air after each mighty crash of the surf against the beach.

Carrefour shuffled purposefully into the wet sand. His huge brown feet sank down into the soft smooth grains, each step leaving massive divots in the beach which filled up quickly with warm saltwater and were erased by the next pass of the waves. The ocean crashed around his knees and then, as it drew itself back from the shore, began to pull him along with it, beckoning him toward its depths.

He continued to walk.

The water wrapped itself around his waist like the arms of his long-ago lover, tugging him forward, deeper. Ocean salt teased his nostrils, re-awakening long dormant memories of his life before, returning him to the long-ago time when he was alive, when he was human, when he had foolishly believed that his own death, however it might come, would be final and would bring an end to his time on Earth.

And now , he thought, at last it shall be.

Men in far lands will hear of what happened here, of this island and its mysteries. They will speak of the white healer from the North, of how she travelled to join us and learn of our ways .