Armand screamed somewhere to Frank’s left.
The more he screamed, the more Toth came to life. The more Toth came to life, the more it fought to claw its way inside. Its mother was here finally. Its mother with the beautiful, handsome mustache. It would love its mother forever, if it could just get inside.
Frank rolled to his side and saw the mutant Toth chewing at Armand’s ear. The needle had sunk deep in Armand’s shoulder, preventing him from raising his right arm. His left hand fought to pull the thing out, but each slight movement of the needle sent bolts of pain shooting into his body, rendering the attempt useless.
Frank grabbed the unholy thing and thought he heard a mad gibberish word of “nooo…” eek out of it just as he yanked it from Armand’s shoulder. He threw the thing into the night and thought of it no more.
He turned back and looked at the Gris-gris man, who was rapidly changing. The strange man appeared to have a faint aura of blue surrounding him. It was if part of his essence was being blown away. He spun in a slow circle, both laughing and screaming at the words on the wind. Two spells had been unleashed onto the night. The Binding Spell and the ancient words of the Unbinding Song swirled simultaneously on the wind. They were never meant to be spoken at the same time.
Del watched from her trance and saw the horror of Henri’s undoing before he realized he was doomed. The blue-shift scene in her mind showed the terrible events set into motion. Henri, thinking he had bound his essence to the spirit that controlled the gates of hell, was now loose upon the wind, as his host began to come undone as well.
Her body suddenly moved, pulling her mind away from the trancing scene. She saw her arms lift slowly, pulled by the violent winds being sucked into oblivion, and now saw her own demise. She had lingered too long to save herself. The last trancing scene to cross her mind was her body lifting off the ground and disappearing into the black void with a spectacular explosion. Her mind went blank as she tried to regain control over her own body.
Jimmy crept forward. He was almost to the crazy, spinning man. “Bwave da ‘ion,” he kept repeating, although he now wondered if this wasn’t just a dream. He had been lost from the orphanage for so long, and had had so many things pop into his head that it must be a crazy dream. Del had told him that there were no such things as wizards that eat your head, so he decided he must still be dreaming. And in his dream with the blue frog, the void went away after it hopped in, and that’s when Jimmy woke up. He decided he would just hop into the void like the frog had done and end this crazy dream.
He broke his quiet cover and ran with a clumsy gait toward the void.
The Gris-gris man, disoriented and failing, heard the words of the Unbinding Spell come close to him, then pass him by. He spun in the direction of the words and reached into the shadows, grabbing at the wind. When he did, the blue mirrored glasses were thrown from his face and his true nature was exposed for all to see. The rash had not only eaten away the skin of his head and part of his skull, it had eaten his eyes first, for the Gris-gris man always looked upon the great sin of his own making and could see nothing else. He was blind without the beast, raven, or the other abominations he had created, and could not even look upon Jimmy with his mind. Jimmy was beyond his ability to see, for he had lived up to every bit of his potential.
Frank and Armand pulled Mama Dedé to her feet as Henri unraveled. He was still on his hands and knees when they had kicked the book away from him, hoping to stop the spell. They pulled her away as his skin flaked off in long, papery strips. He shuddered violently in his crawling pose; a strange mannequin searching for a lost item—a recently departed soul.
Frank saw the boy far too late to save him. He was running towards the void as Del’s body began to lift off the ground. It was a slight motion, be he could see first her legs, then arms, float free trying to escape gravity.
Chapter 62
“Jimmy, no!” Frank heard from overhead. He looked up to see a girl running along the top of the cemetery wall. She was agile and quick and seemed to anticipate the odd motion of the boy, as if she had run after him before.
The girl hurdled the gap between the wall and the nearest crypt and launched herself in the air from its roof. She overtook Jimmy with her fall and knocked him flat.
“Ow, I feh down!” he yelled as he rolled to a stop.
Jo fell and rolled as she saw Del’s body lifting from the ground. The beast, only a few feet away from Del, had just been sucked into the void, sending brilliant blue tendrils of essence flashing into the night. Somewhere behind her she heard the strange man scream as it snapped out of existence. Rocks and debris blew past her and into the void, each producing its own un-existing snap.
Del’s body was pulled from the ground again, balancing on the tipping point of gravity, just as she fully came out of her trance and opened her eyes. The mouth of a cosmic void stared her in the face, and she saw into the other side. Her mind was overwhelmed, and went blank. The time and space of the void beyond expanded her mind; strange visions burned ancient knowledge into her mind, altering it forever; unimaginable monstrosities looked across the void and saw her existence—and they would never forget her.
As Del’s body tipped forward, Jo hit her with a hard tackle, which flung the two girls back to the ground. They landed lightly as the void pulled at their bodies. Jo didn’t notice the angry vortex pull at her frame. She only saw Del.
Del, knocked back into reality by the hard blow, saw the horrors of the universe slip away and become the glistening eyes of someone who had once trusted her, and now smiled at her again.
Jo hugged Del and pawed at her leather jacket, smoothing it as her feet floated off the ground, dangerously close to the event horizon of the void.
“Del, Del, are you hurt? Tell me you’re OK.”
“Jo, how… where did you come from?”
Jo unconsciously squirmed up Del’s body as her legs kept floating off the ground.
“I came back. I came back to you, Del, and you were gone. You were all gone,” she said breathlessly. She felt as if she were on a high mountain with very little oxygen.
The gris bags had already been pulled loose of the old man as he stumbled against the force of the cosmic wind. With Henri’s essence spent, he was unbinding rapidly.
“Jo, I was looking for you, but we had to leave, we had to—”
“No, no, don’t explain. I understand. I was looking for you, too.” Jo clawed at the ground without realizing why. “At first, I didn’t know where to go, but then I knew. I knew where to go, somehow. It was if—”
“Jo, what’s wrong?” Del said.
Jo grabbed at Del’s jacket.
“Del, I wanted to tell you—” She felt her legs lift completely off the ground, and realization crossed her face.
She clung to Del, but saw that she was pulling her off the ground as well. She didn’t want to lose her again, and clung tightly.
With all the strength she had left, Jo pulled herself forward and clutched at Del’s jacket. She pulled her face close, and while looking into the wild powerful eyes of the girl who had pushed her down once to protect a little boy, she kissed her, with open eyes. She wanted Del to be the last thing she saw.
Del reached out to Jo’s face just as the deflating body of the Gris-gris man lost its balance and went skidding toward the void. The cosmic wind pulled him into the same path as the girls, and a flailing arm caught hold of Jo’s ankle. The strange man had almost completely unraveled, but the sudden jolt was enough to break Jo’s tenuous hold. Her hands released, breaking the kiss, just as Del reached for her face. The cosmic wind sucked her back and Del was left with a strand of hair fluttering between her fingers where Jo’s face had just been.
The Gris-gris man and Jo fell into the void at the same time and snapped out of existence with a blinding flash of light. As the void snapped shut, blue tendrils of essence sparked off a dying existence and flew away into the night.
The cemetery fell silent as the
dead things slunk away.
Thrown back to the ground as the void snapped shut, Del’s mind closed around the last images she had seen: the cosmic horrors of the universe, and the eyes of her friend slipping into them. Those images splintered deep into her mind, and the shards would be left to fester forever.
Frank and Armand scanned the cemetery, then ran to Del and lifted her motionless body from the ground. The only sign of life they saw was a small trickle of blood from her nose.
Mama Dedé inspected Del and cast a quick healing spell over her. She didn’t know what injuries Del had, but hoped the spell would hold until they got her home.
The group looked around the cemetery in disbelief. Was the Gris-gris man really gone? Were all the weasels dead? What about–
“Jimmy!” Mama Dedé said. “Where’s da boy?”
“Here!” Armand yelled. “I have him.”
Armand pulled Jimmy from the ground, still dazed from his hard tackle.
“Let’s go!” Frank yelled as the group hobbled together.
“Are we forgetting any—“
“Let’s go, now!” Frank yelled again.
Eddied vibrated with shock and anger at the betrayal of his master. These vile people sent away one of the few things he loved, and the only thing he felt ever loved him back. He would remember the names of these people, for they all had a sin-song, and his God-given talent was to hear the music.
He sent silent messages into the night, searching for a receiver, pleading for a sign, but couldn’t tell if his signal was being heard. He imagined that he felt the faintest pull on his sin-transmission, but was quickly fading without the unholy power of the Gris-gris man. He felt the undead life leak from his body like the fleeting warmth of an ember in the rain. The last thing to cross his dying mind was the name of the blank one. It came to him in a whisper as one of the fleeing cowards placed it on the wind.
Jimmy!
Then he faded to stone.
The battered group carried Del and Jimmy through the creaking gate and crammed into Frank’s car. Without a look behind them, they left the hellish cemetery to the dead and drove off into the night.
Chapter 63
April 1963
A month later, on a warm Saturday morning, Del woke to the smell of bacon and coffee and heard the warm banter between Frank and Armand coming from downstairs.
The unholy storm that had plagued them for weeks during that cold March had stopped almost immediately after that night, as she had come to think of it. The clouds persisted for a few more weeks, as if desperate to cling to an old memory, before they finally faded away. They had all been clinging to old memories the last few weeks and would continue do so for the rest of their lives.
The high waters had finally subsided and, she was sad to learn, had left many dead. It seemed that during the hellish weeks leading up to that night, many other people, crazed either from the extended, dark isolation of the flood, or suffering from the fear of an uncontrollable rash—or both—had committed some of the most heinous acts in recent memory.
The police stations had been overwhelmed with the calls for help, and hampered by the intermittent electricity. Because of this, people were left to their own means. And some of those means were beyond explanation for a civilized society.
The people committing the heinous acts—and who were later apprehended—all had the same story: They thought the end was near, and were trying to atone for their sins, or trade them away by whatever means possible.
After that night, Del had spent a week straight in bed recovering from the mental and physical exhaustion of the ordeal. The thought of Jo and all she had seen haunted her relentlessly the first several weeks. Her dreams were tormented visions—like a trance state turned inside out—that sent her thrashing wildly in the dark. Sometimes she would wake, sometimes not, but in the morning, there was always a sign that Mama Dedé had been at her side the night before: a warm glass of milk; a cold pot of tea; the lingering smell of burned incense; always a gris bag; and several dangling mirrors hanging outside her windows.
Del hated the dangling mirrors because they reminded her of Loo’siana Slim—the first person she had met when this whole thing started—but she had also learned that there was a lot about the world she didn’t know, so she pushed the bad memories of Slim and Jo to the back of her mind and tried to get out of bed each day.
It was just in the last few days that she’d taken to venturing out of her room to roam Armand’s interesting old house—her house now, apparently—but she still tiptoed through it like a ghost that didn’t quite belong. Mama Dedé had told her that it would take some time. Yes, Del thought, it will take quite a lot of time.
As she stretched out of bed, her eyes glanced over her nightstand and fell upon a small crystal jar that sparkled with early morning light. It was appropriate that the light shining through the window should hit the crystal just so, she thought. That jar held something very special.
She shimmied to the edge of the bed and carefully lifted the lid. A long strand of hair was neatly wound around a small thimble and rested inside. Mama Dedé said it was the strand of Jo’s hair that Del had clung to after they’d brought her home that night.
In her mind, she ventured to recall a little about that night, but mentally kept her distance. The horrible memories were too quick to come screaming back.
She remembered coming out of her trance to the feeling of being thrown to the ground. She had almost been stuck again, she thought. Somehow, from the time she exited her trance to the time she saw Jo fall into the void, something had happened. Something, or someone, had looked into her mind. It was different than when the Gris-gris man had done it during her first solo trance. It felt more like great and terrible things had been imprinted on her mind.
Thinking back to the strand of hair, she also struggled with a vague memory of a scene that kept floating to the top of her mind. Did Jo kiss me? Maybe she was thinking of that day at the orphanage. Or maybe she had just dreamt it. But why? Had she kissed her back? She couldn’t be sure but would—
“…of course! Have you ever heard the strange story of…” floated up the stairs and broke her chain of thought.
She giggled at the image of Armand twisting his mustache in preparation for a great debate, and Frank knocking ashes onto his big belly. Plus, her appetite was coming back, and between Frank and Armand, they made pretty good short-order cooks. She hopped out of bed, threw on her robe and went downstairs.
Frank and Armand were busy with breakfast when Del walked into the kitchen.
“Well, if it ain’t Sleepin’ Beauty!” Frank said, looking up from his large skillet of sausage gravy. “Come to grace us dis mornin’ for breakfast.”
“Good morning, Frank,” Del said, pouring her coffee. “Mornin’ Mama D. Thanks for the tea last night. Sorry I didn’t drink any—”
“What? Nothing for me?” Armand asked, feigning insult.
“Good morning Armand. Your mustache looks very handsome this morning.”
Armand’s eyes brightened. “Why thank you!”
“Hhmmpff,” Frank mumbled under his breath, “always da mustache…”
Ignoring Frank, Mama Dedé said, “Oh, honey, don’t worry ‘bout that. I was just up a-wandering around this big ol’ house last night and needed to sit down and drink me a little cup.”
“In my room?” Del asked with a twist of her mouth.
“Well, this house is so damn big I got to carry my drinks with me for when I need to sit a spell!” She waved her hand around the kitchen. “Armand, why you need such a big house anyway?”
Brightly he said, “Well actually, it’s quite a fascinating story. You see—”
“Save it, Frenchy.” She dismissed him with her hand. “After breakfast.”
“Oh, OK, I—”
“So Frank, are you living here now, too?” Del asked as she dipped a spoon in his gravy.
“Del-bell?”
She saved a special hug for Fra
nk. “Just kidding.”
“Well, you know, I got to make sure Armand is takin’ care of my two favorite gals.”
“Mon ami?” Armand shrugged. “I haven’t burned the roux once, not like—”
“Da damn roux wasn’t burnt! It was supposed to be dat color.”
The two women exchanged a knowing glance and let the morning banter fade into the background of homey noises that were quickly becoming familiar.
Del hadn’t remembered the first several nights at Armand’s, but as she lay in bed day after day, the creaks and groans of the house became familiar, then soothed her like the sound of an old rocking chair. It was as if the old comfortable house was inviting her to stay.
Her fitful dreams didn’t allow her to think too long on the subject, until the night Mama Dedé came to her and said that Armand had asked them both to stay. It was a big lonely house, he had said, and seemed much brighter with them in it. She wanted to know if Del was OK with the arrangement.
The few other girls from the halfway house had already been assigned to new homes, and now it was just Del and Mama D. Del remembered that being the first time she had smiled, albeit weakly, in a long time, and slept deeper that very night.
She turned and looked out the back window of the kitchen onto the sunny, brick garden. It needed serious tending, but appeared to be great for attracting butterflies. Jimmy would love it here, even though his stay was temporary for now—due to the strange events at the orphanage.
Mama Dedé knew the foster system well and assured her that his paperwork was nearly complete. Mama Dedé would officially have custody of Jimmy until he and Del were older. They would decide what to do when the day came, but Armand had assured them that this was their home for as long as they wanted.
A Grimoire Dark Page 29
