by David Wood
“As for why he was down here, you think there’s a chance he might have been some kind of inquisitor?” Bones was looking in the other direction. They turned to see two sets of shackles set in the wall. Lying nearby were iron clamps and knives. Implements of torture.
“Sure looks like it to me,” Willis said.
“And that explains the bodies down there,” Maddock said, pointing to the pool.
“Well now I’m not at all sorry that you lost your treasure,” Bones said to the skeleton. “And I hope you really did get trapped down here and starve to death.”
“We shouldn’t stay down here too long,” Maddock said. “Everybody give this place the once over and make sure you’re not leaving anything valuable behind.”
They found little more of value. There was no more treasure, and aside from the crucifix, there appeared to be no artifacts of interest here. And then Maddock saw a glint of silver. On the third finger of his left hand, the dead man wore a ring—the strangest ring Maddock had ever seen.
The band was a twisting mass of tentacles. Where the signet should be was a shark’s head with a tiny blue gem where its eye should be.
“Oh my God,” Rae said. “Is that...?
Maddock nodded. “It’s a Lusca.” He reached down and slipped the ring off of the bony finger. He held it up for the others to see. It appeared to be made of the same metal as the amulet.
“This can’t be a coincidence,” Willis said. “That ring and that thing,” he pointed to the amulet, “have got something to do with each other.”
“I agree,” Maddock said. “But what?” He let his eyes drift, go out of focus. It was a trick he’d learned from his father. When you think you’ve seen everything, try to look at it through different eyes. Sometimes, simply altering your eyesight did the trick.
Sure enough, he spotted something. Lying only inches away from the skeletal hand, half buried in bits of a rotted blanket, lay an old journal. Carefully, he picked it up and opened the first page.
“It’s in Spanish,” he said. “No time to read it right now. We’ve really got to be getting back.” As he tucked the ring and the journal into a waterproof container and secured it to his body, he couldn’t help but wonder. What was the man up to? Why had he apparently tortured and killed all of those people? And what did the Lusca have to do with it?
28
Mermaid Hole did not live up to Bones’ expectations. The small lake of dull green water out in the middle of nowhere did not conjure up images of mysterious aquatic beauties. He wondered if Maddock and Rae were having better luck. They’d decided to split up, with Bones and Willis investigating Mermaid Hole while Maddock and Rae paid a visit to the Hermitage.
Things here weren’t all bad. Apparently at least a few tourists thought the Mermaid Hole worth a closer look. Right now, three attractive young women splashed around in the water. One of them, a deeply tanned brunette in a bright orange bikini, turned, saw him and Willis standing there, and waved.
“Hey guys! Why don’t you two come in for a swim?” she called. Her friends repeated the invitation.
“You know what?” Bones said to Willis. “Maddock isn’t here to tell us how to go about our business, so I don’t see any reason we can’t spend a little time investigating the Mermaid Hole up close while we wait for the voodoo woman to arrive.”
Upon arriving, they’d spoken with a few locals, none of whom wanted to talk about Mermaid Hole. Finally, one man had told them that the only storyteller at Mermaid Hole was a woman, a practitioner of obeah.
“You can’t find her. She will either come to you or she will not,” the man had whispered before hurrying away. The words had unnerved them at the time, but somehow Bones could no longer remember why.
“You know what? You’re not as dumb as people say you are,” Willis said.
“Who says I’m dumb?” Bones asked.
“Not everybody. Just the people who know you, or have met you, or have heard mention of you...”
“That’s enough. We’re keeping the ladies waiting.”
The two men began stripping off their shirts when a voice from behind froze them in their tracks.
“You are looking for the witch woman, perhaps?” The voice was deep and carried with it the gravitas of age. But when the two men turned around they were surprised to see that speaker was a small woman. No, small did not begin to describe it. She was tiny, well under five feet tall and probably didn’t weight more than eighty pounds. Her russet skin was heavily lined. A red scarf covered her hair, but a few shockingly white strands showed at the temples. She stared up at them through rheumy eyes and somehow managed to make Bones feel very small.
“We’re looking for a storyteller,” Bones said, embarrassed. He quickly pulled his shirt back on. “Someone who knows the mermaid legends.”
“That’s right, ma’am,” Willis added with the air of a young man who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
“There are no mermaids here, young man, despite what the name might suggest,” she said. “But if you want to know about Mama Wata, her I will tell you about.”
“What is a Mama Wata?” Willis asked.
The woman sucked her teeth and made a clucking sound. “Silly boy. Mama Wata is the spirit who protects this place.”
“Protects it from what?” Bones asked.
The woman quirked an eyebrow. “You sure you want to talk to a little old woman? You don’t want to go swimming?”
Bones smiled and shook his head. She gave a single nod, turned and walked away. They assumed they were expected to follow and did so.
The old woman seemed to melt into the tree line. Bones could move quietly in the woods. In fact, he’d only met a few people who could match his skill, but this woman seemed to drift through the jungle as if she were made of vapor. She made no sound, left no track, and never seemed to change her course, no matter what obstacle stood in her path.
They passed into deep shadow among the swaying palms and thick Palmetto until they lost sight of her for a moment.
“Where did she go?” Willis asked.
“I am behind you.”
The words nearly made Bones jump out of his skin. How in the hell had she done that?
He turned to see her seated on a low-hanging limb of a Caribbean Pine. She fitted the curved branch so perfectly it seemed as if it had been grown solely for the purpose of providing her with a chair. He and Willis sat down on a low flat boulder, which meant they were now slightly below the little woman’s eye level. She seemed to think this was a great joke.
“Now you boys know how I feel, don’t you?” she cackled.
“I suppose so,” Bones said.
“You may ask me your questions.”
Bones was finding it difficult to formulate questions. There was something unsettling about this woman’s presence.
“What is your name?”
“You did not come here to ask my name.
“All right, then. Tell us about this Mama Wata chick.”
“She is not a chicken. Mama Wata is a water spirit. She can charm men and serpents. Of course, most of the time those are the same thing, no?”
Bones and Willis chuckled.
“I like you,” Willis said.
“Not as much as you would like Mama Wata. All the stories agree she is a seductress. Beautiful beyond what the human mind can conceive. Many of the stories associate her with fertility and sex.”
“I like her so far,” Bones said. “Does she live in this lake?”
The old woman shook her head. “She lives somewhere down below, deep in the passages that connect all the islands together.”
“What does she look like?” Bones asked.
“Part human, part creature of the sea. She can take a woman’s form for a short while, but she is never fully human.”
“So she is sort of like a mermaid,” Bones said. “I don’t suppose she has red hair and green eyes?”
The woman laughed. “Mama Wata came
here from Africa. Her skin and hair are as dark as the night. Her eyes are golden like the sun. And she sings a song older than language. No man can resist its call.”
“You said she is a protector of this place. What is she protecting, exactly? No offense, but it seems like an ordinary lake.”
“Not only this place. She protects all the deep places, all the Blue Holes, all the caverns. The waters that provide life.”
“Are those girls going to be in trouble for swimming in Mama Wata’s lake?” Willis inclined his head in the direction of the Mermaid Hole.
It was only a joke but the old woman took the question seriously. “Not if they do no harm.”
“Where does the snake charming fit in?” Willis said.
“Not snakes, serpents.”
“What’s the difference?” Willis asked.
Bones thought he knew the answer. “Serpents could include sea serpents, couldn’t it?” He looked to the old woman for confirmation.
She nodded her head. “Mama Wata can charm the great serpents of the sea.”
“She’s that good-looking or is it her singing?” Bones asked.
“Only men are foolish enough to be mesmerized by her beauty and her song speaks only to humans.” She looked down, her expression dark. “In ancient times, with her ring and her amulet, it is said Mama Wata could control the great Leviathan itself.”
“You mean like the creature from the Bible?” Willis asked
“Leviathan, Kraken, call it what you will. The ancients wanted her power. Mama Wata fled the Old World, but they sent men to find her and steal her treasures. They got her amulet but not her ring.”
“How did they manage to steal it?” Bones asked.
The woman’s dark expression brightened and her eyes twinkled. “One of them was very handsome. Mama Wata is a charmer, but she can also be charmed by the right man. That is her great weakness.”
Bones could have sworn he saw her wink at him when she said the last. He shifted uncomfortably.
“What happened to the amulet?” A strange feeling was beginning to rise up inside of him. A ring and an amulet. A charmer of serpents. Things had gone from weird to creepy.
“No one knows what happened to it,” she said bitterly.
“Did it look anything like this?” Bones reached inside his shirt and took out the cheap Lusca amulet they had bought from Cyrus. When they’d left Boiling Hole, Maddock had insisted that Bones wear one and Rae the other.
The old woman hissed and bared her teeth. Despite her obvious age, they were straight and white. Probably dentures.
“Where did you get that?”
“Boiling Hole. A man named Cyrus sold it to us. He’s the one who sent us here.”
The woman cackled. “Cyrus. He came around once, a long time ago, asking about things he did not need to know. He did not come back again.” Her expression turned grave. “He should not have made that. It is wrong to profit off of the memory of what was lost.”
Bones determinedly kept his eyes on the old woman. Somehow, he was convinced that if he and Willis so much as exchanged a glance, the woman would read his thoughts, and he didn’t want her to know about the real amulet. Every instinct told him he should keep that a secret.
“Mama Wata didn’t have any way of finding the amulet again after it was stolen?”
“How could she? The link is between the ring, the amulet, and the creature, not between her and the amulet.”
“And what happened to the ring?”
The woman hung her head. “Without the amulet it was useless. Eventually she lost it, too. Taken by one of the Christians. Another handsome man with evil intentions.”
Bones’ heart lurched. Obviously, they were talking about a legend here. Just an old story. But clearly in the amulet and ring, he and Maddock had found something of great value.
“This ring and amulet, where did they originally come from?”
“The place where they were forged is long gone. Sunk beneath the waves. The crystals came from farther away.” Her eyes flitted skyward.
Bones frowned. Could she mean that they came from space?
“What happened to Mama Wata?” Willis asked. “Is she still around somewhere?”
“She still lives. Most have forgotten about her, but here on Cat Island, she is remembered. And here, she has power, if only a shadow of what she once was.”
“What about the power of the ring and amulet?” Bones asked. “Could someone use them to control the Lusca?”
“In the water, yes. On the land, they are no more than jewelry.”
Bones wasn’t sure what to make of the story. It was all too bizarre.
“Did you ever tell this story to a man named Echard? A white guy, always looks and smells like he needs a shower.”
“That is not the question you want to ask me.”
That was true. It didn’t matter if he’d heard the tale from this woman or uncovered it elsewhere. Obviously, Echard had heard the story of Mama Wata, and he was willing to kill for what was apparently an incredibly old and legendary artifact. Something else was now on his mind.
“This might be a strange question, but have you heard stories of a girl who disappears and then appears again years later, still looking the same?”
The woman turned her head slightly and stared at him out of the corner of one eye. “What do you mean?” she said slowly.
At the mere thought of Thel, Bones felt a sudden, desperate urge to tell unburden himself to this woman. As Willis looked on in bemusement, he quickly recounted the story of his initial meeting with the strange and beautiful women, and the ensuing events that had brought them to this place.
“And she looked exactly like the girl in the newspaper photo. And Maddock said the girl in the newspaper looked like the woman he saw underwater. And I just thought maybe there’s a connection.” When he finished, he realized he was surprised that he had been talking for so long. Mildly embarrassed, he folded his hands and waited.
“You actually met one of them?” the woman whispered.
“One of what?”
“The Finfolk. You must stay far from them. They are more dangerous than you know.”
“Dangerous in what way?”
“They are predators. They abduct humans. I will say no more about it.”
But Bones had to know more, much more. He remembered his time with Thel. The sadness in her eyes. How conflicted she had seemed. How the water she had given him had been better than any drug, yet had muddled his thoughts.
She really did roofie me, he thought. She planned to abduct me but changed her mind.
“So the Finfolk... They’re like a cult or something? They kidnap people and force them to join their religion?”
“No,” the woman said flatly. “I will say no more about them. To name a thing draws its attention and can give it power.”
Determined to keep the woman talking and hopefully circle his way back around to the Finfolk, he searched for another question to ask. He thought about her comment that the amulet and ring only had power in the water.
“The amulet and ring, what would happen if one of them touched water?” Bones said, remembering a discussion from earlier in the day.
The old woman frowned and then her expression brightened. “Was that what I felt? Has one of them been found?”
“What? No, I just wondered.”
“If you are going to lie to me, our conversation is at an end.”
“No! Please! We found the amulet in a shipwreck. We didn’t know what we had. And ever since then, people have been trying to kill us. One of our friends was murdered.”
“Meanwhile,” Willis chimed in, “our boat got chased by a giant creature, we don’t know what, and people are disappearing out in the water.”
“Do you have any idea what’s going on?” Bones asked. He didn’t know why he craved this woman’s opinion. Doubtless she would reply with some hokey legend. But for whatever reason, he was prepared to believe her.
&nbs
p; She looked him hard in the eye. For a moment, he worried that she was going to ask him about the ring, too. He knew he would not be able to lie to her. But instead, she closed her eyes and let out a deep, tired sigh. She somehow seemed to diminish.
“The amulet had not touched water in centuries. When it finally did, it called out to the Lusca with tremendous force. So powerful that it caused tremors deep beneath the earth. Three times, to be exact.” She held up three fingers.
“That’s right,” Bones said.
“I believe one of these tremors has released the Lusca from the caverns beneath Andros, where it has been trapped.”
“You realize this is hard to believe,” Willis said.
She inclined her head. “Is that so? Says the man who came to a witch woman for answers.”
“Fair point.”
“Suppose, for argument’s sake,” Bones began, “we believe the Lusca is real and that we accidentally set it loose on the world. Where will it go? What will it do?”
“It will answer the call of the amulet whenever it touches water. It cannot resist it.”
Bones frowned. If that were true, then the creature was on its way here right now.
“What about when the amulet is on land?”
“Then it cannot hear the call. It will do what any apex predator does. It will go where it wants, do what it wants, and eat whatever it likes.”
Bones took a reckless gamble. “Any chance it will go to the Fountain of Youth?”
“Not the Fountain of Youth, boy. The Waters of Life.”
Bones sat up straighter. But before he could ask another question, the old woman held a finger up to her lips.
“People are coming.”
The average person would have stood and looked around, but Bones and Willis read her tone of voice and instinctively went to the ground. They listened intently. Bones immediately realized what was missing. He no longer heard the sounds of the women splashing around in the lake. Had they left, or did these new arrivals have something to do with their sudden silence?
He caught a glimpse of someone moving off to the left. Before he could react, a voice behind him spoke in a loud, cold voice.
