The Gris-gris man bellowed a wild laugh that bordered on hysteria at the sight of the police captain and his captive. He knew the blank one was somehow the key.
Jimmy stood barely balancing on the tall cemetery wall. Henri had climbed him up on top of his car, parked outside the wall, and hoisted him up the rest of the way to have an advantaged view. He was a cold and miserable sight. His pajamas were nearly one color of dirt brown, and he shivered with a deep, bone-shaking cold. One house shoe was missing and the other—a badly stained Bugs Bunny—looked like it had been dragged out of the swamp. Tears of pain and confusion streamed down his face as he looked upon the chaos. His first sight was of Del lying on the cold ground.
“You found him… …found him… …you found… …the blank one… …blank one…”
“Dat sumbitch!” Frank yelled, seeing Henri standing upon the wall. “I knew it!”
“Bring him to me… …to me… …bring him…”
The weasels grew bold at the distraction and ran, snapping at the circle. In some places the dust had almost blown away completely and they tested its fading power.
Frank swung his pistol around and centered it on Henri. The tearing winds blew dust at his eyes. He couldn’t get a clear bead.
“No,” Del’s voice rocked in his head. “Wait.”
Del? Del, is dat you?
Suddenly Frank felt himself walking when he’d never planned to. Like synchronized dancers, he and Armand exchanged places without a word. Mama Dedé grabbed a torch, and with Armand began swinging at the weasels.
Armand raised his pistol just off his hip and put his finger to the trigger. His mind was occupied by swinging the torch with his left hand, so he never noticed his right arm moving. Suddenly a shot rang out as he pulled the trigger involuntarily. The head of a weasel exploded as it jumped into the shot path just as Armand squeezed the trigger.
The Gris-gris man, the beast and the two dead dolls all screamed when the weasel exploded. Each one of them felt the pain differently, but they were all grievously wounded.
A second weasel went mad and spun in a circle just long enough for Mama Dedé to smash it over the head with a heavy torch. Its neck snapped, but the unholy beak continued to open and close, searching for prey. She pressed down hard with the flaming torch. A thick scent of burning flesh rose in the air as she seared its head from its body. The Gris-gris man shuddered again and trembled.
“READ!” he screamed at Henri. With a silent command, he called his hellish family to retreat to his side. The beast howled its anger, but retreated into the shadows and ran around the outside of the circle. The weasels skittered back as well; tica-tica-tica-tica floating on the wind.
“Sing!” Del said inside Jimmy’s head.
Jimmy looked around stunned, hearing Del’s voice but not knowing where it came from. He began to cry harder. He thought Del was dead.
Henri oddly held the grimoire, not tight against the blasting wind, but lightly like a waiter carrying a delicate soufflé. Strangely, the book did not tip from his outstretched hand, nor did the pages flutter wildly. He didn’t know how the book worked, but knew he had to be patient. It was as if an unseen presence was turning the pages and reading the book to him. He felt the final words of the spell would soon be exposed; the voice on the wind had been reliable to this point.
Del cast a vision into Jimmy’s mind: bees; Jimmy hated bees. He swung his arms wildly, trying to make them fly away. He had no idea why bees would be out on a night like this. He didn’t like them because he was afraid of being stung, but then he heard Del tell him to be brave.
“Bwave da ‘ion?”
“Yes, brave like a lion,” Del said.
Without thinking, Jimmy swatted at the imaginary bees that had just flown in front of Henry and smacked him hard in the groin. Henri let out a groan and doubled over. Grabbing at Jimmy for balance, the large man toppled forward as Jimmy fell backwards.
“Jimmy!” Del yelled, as the sound of banging metal echoed over the wall.
Henri fell and rolled, jamming his shoulder into the hard cemetery floor, but kept hold of the grimoire. He stood up and walked out of the crypt shadows, looking for enough light to see the spell once it was exposed to him.
“Jimmy,” Del said, more quietly this time. From her trance, she had watched him hit the top of Henri’s car and roll to the ground. She knew he was badly bruised, but this was the last chance they had. She had seen every option possible, she had tranced on every scenario, and this was it. She had to get Jimmy to sing.
Del watched the unfolding scene, manipulated the group and spoke to Jimmy simultaneously. She directed Frank and Armand to fan out slightly, instead of standing directly between her prone body and the Gris-gris man. She knew where the beast would run next, but too many variations were nearly the same shade of blue in her mind, so she couldn’t see exactly which would happen next, thereby negating a scene just a second behind it.
“Sing, Jimmy,” Del coaxed. “I know you know it. Sing the secret song. But you have to be really quiet.”
Jimmy leaned against the back of the car, listening to Del. He didn’t know any secret songs, unless the song kept itself a secret from him, but he was pretty sure that was a different thing. “I doan know a—”
“Shhh…” she whispered to him. “Just speak to me in your head, Jimmy. Just think the words to me.”
Jimmy thought of the made-up song he had been singing ever since he’d left the orphanage. Like a lot of songs, this one had popped into his head and never left, but he didn’t understand the words.
Da ph’gn mglwa song?
“Yes! That’s—” she almost shouted. Yes, that’s the one. Hurry!
The Gris-gris man heard Del speak to Jimmy, and with a silent command sent the last two weasels up over the wall.
Armand, not knowing why he did it, picked up a handful of rocks and threw them over the crypt, away from Jimmy, sending the raven squawking into the wind. Little echoes of sound reverberated down the alleyway on the other side of the wall. The weasels, just topping the wall, skittered down the other side and blindly followed the false sounds, looking for running prey.
OK, Jimmy, now quiet as a mouse. Sing the secret song for me, Del spoke in his head.
Quiet da’ mouse, Jimmy thought, and began to sing.
The words of the song were ancient words. To human ears they sounded glottal and phlegmy.
Ph’ng bwahla gwyhb’ll uhl, Pk’yn vhmoha dwb’ll duhl…
But to the creatures of the night, it was the sound of their undoing, for this was the Unbinding Spell, spoken in its most ancient form.
“Alas, what is that?” the old man screamed. “What is that sound?!”
No one in the cemetery heard the ancient song except Del and the Gris-gris man. Everyone else was focused on their mortal enemy, and who would make the next move.
Henri emerged from the dark shadows, waiting for the last verse of the hidden spell to be exposed. This was the Binding Spell, which was never meant to be found again, and had been kept secret until the unfortunate day when someone read from a book they didn’t understand.
As the first syllable of the first word of the last part of the spell was uttered upon the wind, the dark void within the crypt began to turn. No one noticed.
Jimmy, quietly singing his song, had a sudden vision of the dream where he saw Del’s reflection in the pond. He saw the small water bug create the whirlpool that grew larger and larger until it threatened to swallow her up. He didn’t know why, but he felt the whirlpool had just come back.
Chapter 60
Just one night not surely just, for break and maim and kill I must;
With this new power all will see, that hell hath come upon their door.
* * *
Henri heard the first two lines of the last verse spoken into his head as the words appeared to him in the book. The voices in his head were many. The voices that had exposed the spell to him, who had driven his actions the entire time, w
ho hated him now but couldn’t look away, those voices were many, and they were upon the wind. Those voices would finish the spell, he knew. If they could only do it in time.
The Gris-gris man, hearing both spells being spoken, panicked at the slightest hint of the Unbinding Spell being cast, and tore at his overcoat to get to his gris bags.
“Don’t read that book!” Mama Dedé yelled, and ran at Henri. As he walked into the dim light of the torches, she saw that he was a man, not only possessed, but cursed at the same time. The same rash that affected Eddie and Sharon had started on Henri as a small fever blister. Forming near the point of sin-origin, the rash had spread out like a plague—a scarlet signal drawing attention to the source—and infected his mouth, throat and tongue. It had eaten through his right cheek and spread up to his eye, which hung nearly out of its socket. His tongue—working desperately to form the words he had killed to find, words that would bind him permanently to unnatural power—fought to stay inside his mouth, and in his frenzy, slipped out of the hole in his cheek, lolling crazily down the side of his face like a carnival mask.
* * *
I freely spill this blood of mine, and with a drop, do fully bind,
My tattered soul, black heart and mind, to abgeL’s beyond the door.
* * *
As the words appeared, he pulled a small knife from his belt. This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He repeated the words as they came into his head while running a knife down the left side of his face, slicing a large cut on his cheek bone. His blood had been spilt.
Mama Dedé was upon him, and swung the heavy torch at him as he pulled his head back, causing her to catch the right side of his face instead of his head. The flaming torch easily broke through the remaining shreds of cheek skin connecting his upper and lower lips and opened a wide mouth-hole in the side of his face. His tongue flew back into place, then lolled around like a flopping fish tail. He screamed in agony and swung a wild knife hand at her.
The void in the crypt spun faster. Small flecks of dust and debris began to shimmy on the three steps that led up to the unholy resting place. One by one, the flecks hovered at the balancing point of gravity, then like a magic trick, were sucked into the void and blinked out of existence with a tiny snap.
Jimmy silently sang his song from his hiding spot. He knew the void was getting bigger and he knew that it was coming after Del, but she had told him to sing, so sing he did.
Frank and Armand stared in disbelief as the Gris-gris man dropped his long overcoat and searched his gris bags. Having thought the man clothed with an old brown shirt, the men were shocked to see that he was clothed with nothing more than old leather gris bags that hung over bumpy brown skin—infected and leaking. The same brown skin covered the mutant, but seemed to be in a constant state of sloughing off the old man. It was as if he was regenerating and melting at the same time.
“Oh hell,” Frank muttered as he raised his gun and fired. Several shots hit the man, but seemed to have no real affect. Pieces of flesh were blown into the wind and carried away, but they melted back together just as quickly.
With a flinch of his hand, the beast leapt to the man’s side just as he yanked a gris bag from around his neck. He grabbed the mutant Toth on its long needle and tossed the gris bag into the air. As the men watched the gris bag defy gravity in the neutral balance between the void and ground, the man yanked the needle from the spine of the beast and hurled it—with an inanimate Toth—toward the men. They didn’t see it until it was too late.
Del’s body lay helpless in the cemetery as her mind saw the ploy a second too late. She sent the warning to the men just as the gris bag was sucked into the void and exploded out of existence with an ear-popping sound.
Free of the mutant, the beast leapt a crazy leap and covered ten feet in the space of a second, just as Del’s warning hit Frank’s mind. He looked up in time to push Armand to the side as he thrust his pistol in the air and fired.
The airborne Toth—like a well-placed missile—sailed through the air and stuck inches deep into Armand’s shoulder as he fell away from Frank and the beast. Armand screamed in pain and horror, sending a new jolt of life-energy into the mutant thing. Toth sprang to life and screamed in unison. With this new source of energy, a new magic happened. The face of Toth changed; the sewn red-bead eyes came to life and stared into Armand’s face; like a newborn seeing the face of its mother for the first time, Armand’s face was burned upon the mind of Toth, and the mutant would never forget it. The mouth came to life and tried to suckle more life, but only knew how to gnash and bite. Armand felt the hot sting of its bite as Toth bit off the outer part of his right ear with the frantic sound of “Ngyihng! Ngyihng! Ngyihng!” The arms and legs came to life, moving where there had never been joints before. They flailed at him, groping, kicking, trying to cling to this new precious source of life; to crawl inside and live forever. The makeshift right foot, a rotting big toe having been pinned on by a rusty needle, flailed and kicked on mutant legs, catching Armand in the mouth. The big-toe foot tried a feeble grasp at his mustache and lip, but only managed to lose small bits of skin in the process.
Mama Dedé staggered back from the knife blow as they both fell to the ground. The book fell from Henri’s hand with a heavy thud, but never lost its place, hellishly intent on being finished.
As the two foes crawled toward each other, Mama Dedé intent on burning the book with her torch, Henri resolved to see the final words appear and repeat them, they watched in awe and terror as the book moved.
From the frantic light of her torch, as if driven by unseen hands, they watched as the book turned its own page.
Chapter 61
My chanting, spirit, hear it right. Bind us now on equal shore.
This I pray, forever more.
* * *
The Binding Spell had been cast.
Henri had read the words.
The Gris-gris man laughed in ecstasy as a toothy, distorted grin stretched his face. He waited for the newly bound soul to join with him, making him whole again.
The words were now upon the wind, and would forever haunt those who uttered them. This thing could not be undone.
The black void in the crypt, spinning madly as the magic words fueled its existence, suddenly sparked to life with a violent flash of lightning. A great heat burst forth from the void and momentarily lit the hellish scene in the cemetery with a bright, hot light. Smoke and debris spun around the opening of the void, hanging in suspension, before being sucked out of existence. The violent winds of doom sucked at the air, pulling everything to it.
Del, watching the mad scene from her trance, became suddenly aware of a strange sensation. Her floating gimbal-mind was free, but was still aware of her physical body lying on the ground. Her body felt lighter as the void-winds sucked at her, threatening to pull her straight off the ground and into the black void of nothing. She was almost out of time.
“Sing, Jimmy!” she screamed into the air. “Sing loud!”
Jimmy had been faithfully singing in his head as he tried to block out the scary sounds of the cemetery. He had sung the song so many times, it was now on autopilot, and he couldn’t stop it if he wanted to.
In his mind he saw the void open wider. To him it looked like the giant mouth of a monster, and it was trying to eat Del. It was trying to eat everything in the cemetery. The image of the monster mouth and the image of the whirlpool from his dream melted together into one scene. Suddenly, Jimmy saw the blue frog floating on the lily pad. He remembered watching the frog cling to the pad in his dream as the deep whirlpool inched closer and closer to the image of Del. Just as he had thought it would suck Del’s image down, the frog jumped into the whirlpool and scared it away. Jimmy also remembered Del telling him that he needed to be brave like a lion. He knew what he needed to do.
Very carefully, Jimmy climbed onto the car and pulled himself to the top of the wall. Looking onto the chaotic scene, he saw Del lying on the ground and the whir
lpool-void getting larger. It was about to suck her down.
As no one noticed, he slipped over the wall and landed hard on the ground, inside the cemetery. As the strange song ran through his head on autopilot, he coaxed himself along with Del’s simple instructions.
“Bwave da ‘ion, bwave da ‘ion,” he said as he crept forward.
Frank felt his left foot slide backward just as he pulled the trigger. The unexpected movement caused him to fall back slightly, altering his aim. Del had seen the arc the beast was yet to leap and knew that Frank’s aim would be slightly off. She didn’t know how much she could correct it, though.
It was an overcorrection.
The giant mouth of the beast closed over Frank’s hand as the bullet exited the gun. The range was too close. A wide hole blew out the side of the beast’s mouth and separated the left side of its jaw from the skull, but did not kill it. The powerful jaw hung loosely to its head by the remaining skin and tendons. The beast somersaulted over Frank’s falling body, flipped in the air and landed unconscious on the ground.
The beast did not move.
The Gris-gris man froze in disbelief. One moment wild with elation, the next, paralyzed by fear and confusion. His family was slipping away from him.
Blinking his eyes clear, Frank looked up as the Gris-gris man convulsed violently, tossing the old hat from his head; blue mirrored glasses reflecting a chaotic scene.
Standing before them, shirtless and bald, a hunched figure stood on the precipice of non-existence. The old man’s skin, brown and putrid, fought to regenerate itself. His head, now exposed to the feeble light of the night, was forever rotting away by a violent red rash. The rash had eaten away most of the skin and some of the skull, exposing a fetid blob of gray material that was itself an abomination; part man, part animal. Being fed by the completed binding spell, parts of him were regenerating from Henri’s own essence, but Frank had the sense that he was one body occupied by competing forces. A thing in a constant state of change.
A Grimoire Dark Page 28
