“Good morning, my dear,” Armand said, looking up. “Are you… better?”
Del nodded. “Yes, thank you. I…”
Armand watched her search for words.
“Thank you for helping me last night. You know, when you offered the tea. I wasn’t quite sure if I was still trancing or not, or if I was… out yet. I had seen so many visions, I wasn’t sure what was real.”
“Yes, I understand. Well… sort of. To be honest, we weren’t sure…”
“If I was real?”
Armand chuckled. “Yes, exactly. How did you know?”
Del looked at the large bookshelf and wondered if there was anything in Armand’s books that could explain what she had experienced. She doubted there was.
“It’s hard to describe. I was lost for so long—actually, I don’t know if lost is even the right word. I was not here for so long, I wasn’t sure what was real. Eventually, I saw a scene form—you all talking in front of the fireplace—and I was drawn to it. I watched it for a while, but was… well, I was afraid that I was dead and that I was watching it as a ghost. Crazy, huh? Anyway, I tried to reach out. I tried to get your attention, but it was like no one could hear me. I wasn’t even sure if I was speaking. I tried to project an image out and get someone’s attention, then I saw a door open and—”
“Excuse me for interrupting, but what type of… door?”
Del watched as Armand tweaked his mustache.
“Not like a normal door, but somehow I saw a way… through. It was a new path I could take, and I suddenly wanted to move from where I was, out, to the scene I was watching. I’ve never felt that before, but I’ll have to ask Mama D about it. Then, I was walking down the hall and could see you all sitting, but it was very far away. The hall was stretched somehow, and you all looked very hazy, like I was seeing you through a cloud. Someone was speaking to me, I think. Did I say anything?”
Armand thought back to the strange conversation Mama Dedé had had with the apparition. “No, not that I recall.”
“Hmm, strange,” Del said. “That part must have been a dream. But suddenly I got to the end of the hall and you all were sitting there. I don’t remember going to bed, however.”
Feeling that they had already ventured too far into dangerous territory, Armand shifted the conversation. “I must say, you look quite lovely in the kanga. It’s much better than the old blue jeans and sneakers.” He gave her a quick wink.
“Is that what you call this?” Del said. “I just thought it was an African dress, and it fit. But, why do you even have something like this in your house?”
“Oh, it’s quite fascinating, really. It appears that the former owner of this establishment was very eccentric, and amassed quite the collection. She collected themes of items and stuffed them into every conceivable corner of the house. When she passed, I purchased the home as you see it. Alas, you ended up in the African room last night. How did you sleep after…? Well, are you recovered?”
“What do you know of my… trancing issue? At the house, before last night. Did she say anything?”
“Mama Dedé? Oh no, ever the discrete one. She just said that you… got tripped up.”
Del looked at the sleeping Frank and smiled slightly. She thought back to the time when she was trapped and everything she saw. She didn’t understand most of it, but thought that Armand might.
“When I was… trapped, and spinning, I saw a lot of strange things. I remember Mama D describing how scenes move toward or away from a person, and it wasn’t that. It was like… I was seeing things that I only imagined, or… that don’t exist, somehow. Does that make any sense?”
Armand twisted his mustache to a different calibration and studied her closely. “Give me an example.”
“Well, for instance, I saw a man floating in space with glass eyes.”
“Fascinating,” Armand said quietly. “What did he look like?”
“I’m not sure. I didn’t even see his face, but somehow I knew it was a man. At first, I was scared of him, then I was scared for him. I don’t know, it may have just been a hallucination.”
“And his eyes where glass, you say?”
“Yes, well… maybe not glass, but they sparkled, like the stars.”
“Really? What else?”
“I don’t know, just a bunch of weird images. What do you think they were?”
Armand puffed at his pipe thoughtfully and considered Del carefully again.
“She’s got da sight,” Frank said from his sleeping-chair. “Simple as dat.”
Armand thought he was correct, and nodded his agreement.
Del accepted this conclusion as fact. She now knew that it was true, although she didn’t know how to interpret most of what she’d seen.
“Can I speak with you both downstairs?” she asked.
The two men followed her without question, which was soon to become the norm.
The small group sat around the kitchen table and waited for Del to start. The two men had cooked up a late brunch while Mama Dedé and Jo had rummaged through the upstairs closets, forming interim wardrobes for themselves.
Finally, Del spoke.
“I need to say something, then I need to ask for something.”
The group waited in reverence.
“I have to apologize to each of you, but for different reasons.”
She looked at Frank first. “I’m sorry for all the times I dismissed your concerns, when I didn’t believe you. I do now.”
She turned and looked at Mama Dedé. “I’m sorry for not listening to your instructions earlier. I… I thought I would just play along with this Voodoo stuff and get past this and go on with my life. I know now that this is my life.”
She looked at Armand. “I’m sorry for dismissing you in the beginning, as well. I thought your stories were crazier than Frank’s.” Armand nodded some agreement to this.
“And for you,” she said, turning to Jo, “I want to apologize for taking something without asking.” Jo wrinkled her face in question. “The last day I saw you… at the orphanage,” Jo’s face lit up with the warm thought of Del’s touch, “I took a strand of hair without you knowing it.” Del watched the wheels turn on Jo’s face until realization dawned across it in painful waves.
Jo swallowed hard at the feeling of being pulled toward Del that day, but now felt an equally strong revulsion.
Quietly Jo said, “You… you needed it to control me, didn’t you?”
Del nodded.
“And… when the house burned…”
Del nodded again.
“You lost it in the fire.”
“Yes.”
Waves of confusion crashed over Jo as she suddenly realized the smell of the sausage grease and cigar smoke was turning her stomach sour. It surely wasn’t what Del had just said to her, because she didn’t care what Del said. It had been a stupid schoolyard crush in a terrible place, where no one cared about anyone anyway, so nothing about Del mattered. It never did. Her breakfast started to come up, but she held it back.
“Jo, please, I want you to understand—”
Jo waved her off and stood up. Her legs almost betrayed her, but if she could survive the Crow, she could survive Del. She willed steel to flow into her veins, which hardened her against the betrayal. She squeezed the muscles in her legs as tightly as possible to steady herself against the hurricane force of Del’s words. “Excuse me,” she said, nodding to an impossible understanding, and smiled weakly at the dishes on the table. She left the kitchen and went upstairs to her temporary room. She had to leave this place as soon as possible.
After a long uncomfortable pause, Del looked up from the table and let each person inspect the shame in her eyes. She exposed it for all to see and did not hide it. She cleared her throat and said, “Now I need to ask something of each of you.”
The group looked from one to the other and waited for the request. “What would dat be, Del-bell?” Frank said.
“I need a hair from each on
e of you.”
The room fell silent.
“You do?” Frank mumbled past his cigar, with wide eyes.
“Yes. The Gris-gris man is coming for me and Jimmy; for all of us actually. I need to meet him before he is at full strength. And I’ll need you all to come with me. I think you each have a part to play.”
“We do?” Frank said.
“Yes. Marie showed me each of your faces this morning.”
“You heard from Marie?” It was Mama Dedé’s turn to be surprised. “Thank da Lord! Did she give you da unbinding spell?”
Del shook her head slowly.
“No? Then how we suppo—”
“She won’t give it,” Del said.
Mama Dedé tried to shake the confusion from her head. “What do you mean ‘she won’t give it’? She unbound him once before. It’s da only thing we have to—”
“She says the words are too dangerous to be upon the wind. We are to go and meet the Gris-gris man and she’ll deliver the—”
“More dangerous than da binding spell?” Mama Dedé stood up and stalked the kitchen. “We got half da damn binding spell suddenly been found. Who knows where da last part is, what can be worse than that?”
Del twisted in her chair, then finally said, “I don’t think she’ll give it to me for some reason.”
Mama Dedé looked at her from across the room. “Why you think that? You a Laveau honey, you—”
“I don’t think she trusts me with it,” Del said quietly.
“What? Why, that’s a bunch of nonsense. You kin and—”
“I don’t think she trusts me with it because there’s something wrong with me. There’s something else that I don’t know about myself.”
“Well… now I just… I just don’t know why that would be.” The woman sank back down in her chair.
“I think I’ll find out tonight,” Del said.
“Tonight?” Frank said. “Why to—”
“We have to call the Gris-gris man tonight. We can’t wait any longer, which brings me back to my request. I need a hair from each of you.”
“And why is dat again?”
“So I can control you when the Gris-gris man comes.”
Chapter 56
Later that day, Frank and Armand sat in the second-floor library quietly smoking. Earlier in the day, Frank had driven home and grabbed his second pistol. He cleaned each one thoroughly as he sat next to the roaring fire.
Despite the afternoon hour, the house was dark from the oppressive clouds. The rain was threatening another downpour. The Number One power station had flooded the night before and plunged a large section of the city into darkness, sending a feeling of complete isolation over the drowning city.
Armand settled his mind by rummaging through old manuscripts. He had resigned himself to the fact that a magic bullet was not in his pile of worn and smelly books. He looked at the mountainous shelves and suddenly felt silly and small. How could he imagine fighting an ancient spirit with these books? He shook his head and joined Frank by the fire.
Frank puffed a large cloud of smoke into a perfect ring and sent it Armand’s way. When Armand looked up, Frank quietly pushed the second revolver to him.
“Der’s da safety,” he said. “Keep it in your pocket just in case. I doan know what we’re fixin’ to see out der tonight.”
“Thank you, mon ami. I wish I had something to give you. A good luck charm or… something. Alas, all these things,” he pointed around the room, “and not an amulet in sight.”
Mama Dedé puffed to the top of the stairs. “Ooo, wee! Frenchy… we gonna… have to put my… room on da bottom! These stairs… like to kill me!”
She sat down heavily in front of the fire.
“What were you sayin’ about an amulet?” she said.
“Well, I was just thinking—”
But then a small cloth bag landed on his lap. “Here’s your good luck charm, Frenchy. Put it around your neck.”
Armand’s eyes sparkled at the gift as he gently inspected the bag.
“I’d hate for somethin’ to happen to that handsome mustache tonight.”
Another bag landed on Frank’s stomach, causing him to ash cigar sparks in all directions.
“Now Frank, don’t go and burn up all da good luck I just made for ya.”
“No, no, not at all,” he said, smiling. “Much appreciated.”
“Well, these will help, but they ain’t magic bullets,” she said. “I don’t know what we’re fixin’ to see tonight, but you two managed to not get your brains et out da other night, so there’s still some hope for you.”
“Indeed,” Armand said proudly as he inspected himself in the mirror over the mantle. The gris bag hung prominently around his neck.
“Jo’s gone,” Del said suddenly from the hall.
Frank looked up in awe as he watched yet another version of Del emerge from the dark. The orphan girl with the tattered jean jacket and sneakers was gone, she was transforming. She now stood before them nearly complete. Del the Spirit Hunter, Frank thought.
Having rummaged through the closets, Del had replaced her worn sneakers and tee-shirt with used but sturdy knee-high brown leather boots; jeans and white shirt; a well-used leather motorcycle jacket and a loose tignon to tie her hair back. Several protective amulets and a small silver cross hung around her neck. Mama Dedé had already drawn a protective symbol—a veve, the woman had called it—onto the back of the jacket with a pen knife and bleach so it would never come off.
Frank whistled his awe. He thought the young girl had become a beautiful young woman overnight.
Mama Dedé looked upon a woman who had been cast into hardness by an unnatural process. An unraveling that most could not survive; tempered by unnatural forces. The problem with tempering, she thought, was if it was done too quickly or at too high a temperature, it made the item dangerously unstable; the slightest imperfection would eventually cause a fatal break. She thought briefly of the black essence that had once swirled around the Del-orb, and wondered where those imperfections had settled.
Del looked over the group, then opened her jacket and took a gris bag from around her neck. She walked to Mama Dedé first, who—without asking—pulled an old gray hair from her head and said, “I freely give this.” She then turned to Armand who did the same and said, “I freely give this. Use it wisely.”
Del then turned to Frank, who had watched the others with surprise. So willingly they gave themselves over to Del. Why was that, he wondered?
Frank stammered a weak question: “So… what you gonna… why you need dis again?”
“When we see him tonight,” Del began, “and we will see him. He won’t be alone. I can sense others that surround him. And you’ve already seen a few of his creations. I’ll be trancing, and while I am, with these hairs, I can best protect you all if I can control you to some degree. However, it will be difficult to protect myself, which is why I need you all there.”
Frank ignored the questioning glance that Armand sent his way. From time to time, throughout their long friendship, Armand had done that, Frank remembered. He turned his attention back to Del.
“Do you know da spell yet?”
Del shook her head no.
“Mon ami?” Armand prompted.
Frank ignored him.
“Please, Frank,” Del said. “It’s important that you trust me.”
After an uncomfortably long pause, Frank plucked a gray and black hair and muttered, “I give it,” then placed it in the bag.
“Thank you,” Del said.
“What about Jo?” Frank asked.
“She left sometime after breakfast,” Del said quietly. “I went up to her room to apologize again, but she was gone. I was hoping to… well, it doesn’t matter now.”
“She didn’t leave a note?” Mama Dedé asked.
“No, just this.” Del held up a hairbrush.
The same question passed between the group in an instant, but remained unspoken, for speaki
ng of such a delicate thing could change its very nature.
As the silence settled and the flames waited in anticipation, Del finally spoke.
“It’s time to find the Gris-gris man.”
Chapter 57
The group arrived at the St. Louis Cemetery #1 shortly after 7:00 pm. With them they carried the few items they thought would be of use: pistols, gris bags, torches, and a life-altering belief in Del.
They stood at the main gate and quickly reviewed the plan again; Del would trance and communicate with Marie. The unbinding spell would be delivered, at least they were all trusting that it would be; Mama Dedé would trance and watch over Del; Frank and Armand would watch over them.
The cemetery had been pitch-black for days due to the loss of the Number One power station. The men set up the torches and lit them as the two women drank the bitter tea from a thermos and prepared. As the torches shone against the sharp stone corners of the dead, Del nodded to each person, then walked to the large double crypt at the rear of the cemetery. Marie had given her a picture of it in her last trance. It was the crypt of Jean Montanee, aka Dr. John, and now served the Gris-gris man. An unholy creation looked down from the top of the crypt, watching her with stone eyes.
Mama Dedé quickly laid down a large circle of brick dust around the group using the torch circumference as a rough outline. She didn’t have much, and cursed herself for not thinking to bring more.
Silent against the dreadnight, Eddie vibrated in anticipation.
Del knocked three times on the chamber door—per Marie’s ghostly instructions—and stepped back inside the dust circle in the center of the cemetery. There she waited.
The fat black clouds were the first to respond. With a purpose that could only be described as unnatural, they sank close to the cemetery walls and formed a soft but ominous ceiling just over their heads. They rolled in agitation; a stomach lining black with cancer turned inside out. They dripped heavy raindrops that sizzled just outside the circle of torchlight like acid drops.
A Grimoire Dark Page 26
