by B. L. Morgan
Cyphre looked down at me. He had a large black bag hanging from his left hand by a rope. He reached into the bag and withdrew a knife with a long black blade.
"This is the soul taker," he said to me and held the blade up over his head. Lightning flashed in the sky directly over Cyphre and the sound of thunder roared from the heavens. It seemed almost like the sky was acknowledging Cyphre's powers.
No, things were not looking good for us at all.
Cyphre laid the bag on the ground and reached into it. He came out with a handful of white powder and threw it into my face.
"These are the ground up bones of warriors," he yelled up at the sky. "I give to you Abbadon the soul of another warrior tonight. This one can guard the gates of your kingdom in hell."
The crackle of lightning answered Cyphre.
He walked to Julia and flung some of the dust in her face.
"I give to you the soul of the mother. The symbol of what is good in this world. Take her to your bedchamber in hell."
Again the lightning answered him from the skies overhead.
"But first," he said and grabbed a handful of the white powder and poured it onto Felicia's face. "I give you the untouched soul of the innocent. The rarest of souls that glows golden, I give to you."
He raised the blade up with the point aimed downward and stood over Felicia.
I jerked at my ropes and nothing was coming loose.
Julia screamed and I yelled, "Stop you fucking bastard!"
Cyphre tenses to slam the blade straight down into Felicia's chest. From behind him I hear, "That's about enough, motherfucker."
It's Johnny and he has his shotgun pressed to the back of Cyphre's head.
Cyphre freezes, then slowly turns his head and looks past the two barrels of the shotgun and into Johnny's eyes. Over his shoulder he asks, "Would you throw away the chance to rule the earth with me? You would show loyalty to these two and a white man when you could stand with the most powerful Bokor on this world."
"All I see is a fuckhead who's gonna hurt a little girl," Johnny answered him. "I was never with you. I played you, Cyphre, and you were too stupid to know it. Answer me a question you stupid fuck," Johnny said. "What does a smart man do when he's held down with a knife to his throat and he is told, join us or die? I'll answer for you. He fucking lies."
Johnny laughed and winked at me. "Now I got the gun to your head," Johnny said to Cyphre. "You gonna be our buddy now?"
"You are making a mistake," Cyphre told Johnny.
"Yeah, right," Johnny said. "Now, you make your boys cut my friends loose or I'll blow your head off your shoulders."
I said to Johnny then, "Hey, Bro, sorry I called you a sack of shit."
"No problem," he answered. "I've called you worse and meant it."
Johnny poked Cyphre with the shotgun in the side of the head. "I told you to have them cut loose. Do it now!" He shouted at Cyphre.
Cyphre laughed and told Johnny, "You do not know what kind of power you are challenging today."
Johnny poked him with the barrel of the shotgun again and in a harsh tense voice he said, "Do it now or I pull this trigger."
Cyphre tensed and sang out, "Seera, Seera, come to my aid. Come to me."
The snow blew into my eyes stinging them. Lightning flashed through the skies overhead.
Cyphre continued singing, "Seera, Seera, I call you to my bidding, Seera, Seera."
The wind quit blowing into my face.
The snow stopped falling. The snowflakes literally stopped in midair. They are frozen where they are. Stopped, suspended in their downward flight.
"What the fuck is this?" I asked.
I looked at Julia and saw that her face was a mask of near insane fear. I looked at Felicia and saw that she had passed out. I was really grateful for that.
Cyphre laughed. "Seera controls time," he said to me. "He is a demon who does my bidding." He stepped to the side of Johnny, who was now frozen like the snowflakes in the air. He took Johnny's shotgun out of his hands and threw it to the ground. Johnny was unmoving like a statue.
Cyphre's men were looking at each other and murmuring in hushed tones. They all looked frightened. These weren't the most intellectual guys that I'd ever seen and their superstitious fears seemed to be running wild.
"Do not be alarmed," Cyphre shouted to them and raised his hands into the air to calm them. "I will protect you in this place. So long as you follow me, no harm will come to you."
The air tasted strangely metallic. It left a copper taste in my mouth. My breath did not steam up in front of my face as I breathed out. The cold wind that had been blowing in my face was gone. As a matter of fact, the cold that was stinging my face felt like it was gone now too. It isn't that it was warm. It just didn't feel cold anymore. It was like we were disconnected from the world around us.
I focused my eyes on a single snowflake and realized that it was moving. It was just moving downward extremely slow. So what was happening I realized, was that time hadn't stopped. Time had been slowed down to a huge degree, so that everything had appeared to have stopped.
Cyphre grinned at me. "This is a very small demonstration of the power that I have at my beck and call. You never stood a chance against me. You are only an ant compared to me. Not even an ant, you are a gnat buzzing around a bull's head, annoying but impotent."
"Fuck you," I told Cyphre. "You'll never know what it's like to be a real man. You have to have a chance of losing before you know what it's like to win. Guys like you never take any chances at all."
"The time for talking is done," Cyphre said with a dismissive hand gesture. "Your words mean nothing."
"You ain't shit," I said to him. "You depend on all these tricks. Without all these helpers you call on you're nothing. You can't play on an equal playing field. You're nothing. Nothing but a little boy playing a game."
Cyphre had been looking down at Felicia getting ready to shove his knife into her heart. He now turned his eyes to me and looked in my face. "Shut up," he shouted with wildness in his voice sounding like the child I had called him.
I must have hit a nerve somewhere, although I had no idea how I'd done it.
"Hey little boy, go home and suck on your momma's titty," I told him. "You ain't ready for any power at all. You wouldn't know what to do with it. Go home and play with your toys, little boy. You're in the company of grownups now."
"Silence," Cyphre screamed at me. "I will take your soul first," he yelled at me. "No one talks to me like that. No one."
"It's a long time overdue," I told him. "Your daddy should’ve spanked you more. Then you wouldn't be such a spoiled brat."
Cyphre jumped to me and slashed at my chest with the black obsidian knife. He ripped my shirt and gashed open my chest.
Cyphre stood over me with the knife poised to be slammed down into my chest. I actually saw tears in his eyes. So, this was the voodoo superman that everyone was afraid of. Whatever magic skills and psychic powers Cyphre had, he was really just a small boy crying for the love and acceptance of dear old mom and pop.
CHAPTER 55
THE RESTLESS DEAD
Cyphre dropped to his knees beside me. "I can control the wind and the weather," he cried at me. "I can control the Earth and the Heavens." Tears ran down his face. "You will respect me!" He shouted.
"You need to grow up," I calmly told Cyphre my mind working furiously as to how I could use his own loss of control against him. "That shit don't impress me. You're just another kid with some magician’s tricks you got out of your Captain Crunch box."
He screamed then and I figured my little game was over. He raised the obsidian black bladed knife over his head with both hands and yelled, "I'll kill you!"
Cyphre's expression changed from one of childish rage to one of bulging eyed surprise. He looked down at his thighs.
Skeleton arms had shot out of ground through the snow. The skeleton hands were gripping him by the thighs and the ground that he was on appeared so
ft and mushy. He looked like he was being drawn down into the Earth. Cyphre sank down to his ankles as the Earth beneath him turned to oozing mud. He was being pulled down.
Cyphre screamed, "No!" He dropped the knife.
I heard screams coming from Cyphre's men and saw that the same thing was happening to them. Bare boned arms were coming out of the ground and bare boned hands were grasping the ankles and legs and feet of Cyphre's men. The ground beneath them was churning and changing to a thick brown slime that was sucking them down. They were being dragged downward through the snow and sludge into the waiting dirt beneath.
The screams from Cyphre's men were blood curdling. They cried out and screamed and begged for mercy from Jesus and a dozen other gods. But no gods were going to come to their aid on this night.
I saw them being pulled underground. First they were dragged down kicking and screaming to their thighs. They struggled and beat at the skeleton hands that grabbed them, but only more arms came out of the sludge to help. The claw-like skeleton fingers ripped and clawed at Cyphre's men tearing their skin open in hundreds of places.
They screamed and they fought but they were dragged down beneath the Earth.
Cyphre was the last one to go. His face was a mask of unholy hellish fear. He reached his hand out toward me.
"Help me!" He screamed, his eyes bulging and blood running from his nose. He looked at me like a lost child begging to be taken home.
Well, I was tied to the stakes. I couldn't have helped him if I would have wanted to. The bottom line was that I wouldn't have helped him if I could have. Cyphre was trying to get power by calling up the spirits. I guess the spirits didn't want him to have power. They just wanted him.
Cyphre gave one last choking cry, then his mouth was filled with the thick sludge of the land of dead Indian warriors and he was pulled beneath the Earth.
When Cyphre was gone, all was silent for one long moment.
Julia looked at me and I looked at her. The pure fear was gone from her face, but she didn't look overly happy either. Her voice was shaky when she spoke. She asked, "What comes next?"
The snowflakes were still immobile in the sky and I saw that even the flames from the torches were unmoving. The flames were giving off the same glow but they were as stationary as light bulbs. The flames did not dance.
So we were still in this strange half world that Cyphre had put us in.
As an answer to Julia I jerked on the ropes that bound my arms. "I think I can work my way loose," I told Julia. "It might take a little while, but it don't appear to be that cold out here anymore."
Felicia appeared to be coming around and as I worked on pulling the rope on my right wrist back and forth to loosen the stake in the ground, Julia spoke to her. "The bad man's gone," Julia shouted to Felicia. "He won't be coming back."
I was working the rope back and forth and the stake was beginning to come loose when I saw a figure come up over the edge of the hill we were laying on.
The figure was robed completely in black and had a black hood pulled over its head. It was moving slowly toward us.
I pulled with all my strength on the rope on my right wrist trying to free my arm. I jerked furiously at the rope but the stake wouldn't let go.
The figure pulled a long gleaming silvery knife from beneath the robe. It walked to where Felicia was still tied. It stood over Felicia as she pulled at her own ropes and whimpered like a scared puppy.
It kneeled down beside Felicia.
"Leave her the fuck alone," I yelled at the hooded figure.
The figure turned to me. It reached up and pulled the hood back. It was Jeanette. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
"If you ever curse at me again," Jeanette told me. "I will slap you so hard your grandchildren will cry."
"Thank God it's you," I told her as she cut Felicia loose.
Jeanette cut us all loose. It felt good to be standing again. Then she went and looked at the still frozen Johnny.
"I think I like him better this way," she told us. "Sometimes my grandson talks too much and he gets on my nerves."
Julia asked Jeanette what happened that made the dead take vengeance upon Cyphre and his men.
"Spells of power have to be done perfectly, or the result can be the opposite of what you wish to happen," Jeanette explained. "Cyphre made some mistakes. This place is a holy place where noble warriors are buried. That was Cyphre's first mistake. You cannot force the good spirits to do evil. He woke them up, but I directed them to attack him and his people. Cyphre did not know I was involved so he took no precautions against me taking control of his conjuring. He was a natural Bokor. One who was born with the powers to control the forces and call up the dead. The rest of us have to learn how to do what he did from birth. He was very dangerous and had to be stopped."
CHAPTER 56
FALLING SNOW
Without a word Jeanette stepped away from us to the center of the hilltop and raised her arms to the sky. She chanted out some words that I did not understand. I had the feeling that the words were from some ancient language that was old when western civilization was young.
She stood there frozen like a statue, then we heard a clash of thunder and the tree to the side of the mound was struck by lightning and turned to splinters.
The ground rumbled like an earthquake was taking place. Then it stopped and all was silence except for the wind. The snow began falling again and I heard Johnny say, "Hey, what the fuck is going on here?"
He couldn't remember anything after he put the shotgun to Cyphre's head.
We walked and slid down the side of the mound to where Jeanette had parked Johnny's car. The cold actually felt good on my face. It was good to be back in the normal world where snow didn't just hang in the air in front of you.
Johnny drove us back to his place. On the way he told Jeanette that he didn't know that she had a license to drive.
"I don't," she answered him. "But that does not stop me from doing what I must do."
At Johnny's, Julia telephoned a friend to ask if she and Felicia could stay with them for a while until her house was fixed up. The friend told her to come on over.
Sushi was at Johnny's bar when we arrived and wanted an explanation as to what we were doing wandering around in the snowstorm. When Johnny told her an abbreviated version of what took place she said to him, "You must be fucking crazy if you think I'll believe that story."
Jeanette laughed at that and told her, "Do not worry yourself child, you are too stupid to be crazy."
AFTERWORD
I drove Julia and Felicia to their friend's house. I gave Felicia a hug and she went in. I stood on the porch with Julia.
I looked in Julia's eyes and suddenly I knew I didn't want to say good-bye without saying a lot more, but the words were sticking in my throat.
After I stood looking at her in silence like an idiot for what seemed like forever, I finally blurted out, "I don't want to lose you. When I thought something had happened to you and Felicia, I think I went a little bit insane. I want us to be together and I don't know if I can live any other way now."
She came into my arms then and I held her and kissed her and tears ran down my face.
"We'll give it a try," she whispered in my ear.
Then she pulled away from me and said, "I do need you to quit drinking though. If we can make this work."
"No problem," I told her.
* * *
The next day the snow plows had been out and I got up about two in the afternoon. The sun was shining through the window and it felt good on my face when I looked out.
A lot of the businesses around town were closed because the streets were still hard to get around on. After I drove around for a while, I found an open grocery store that sold roses.
I bought two bunches of roses and headed to the graveyard.
I went through the rusted gate and tramped through the snow to the graves of the people who I know. First I went to Lisa Rio's grave and I cleaned the
snow off the headstone as good as I could.
Then I placed her bunch of roses on the snow over where Lisa is buried.
"Little girl," I told her. "These are for you. I hope you've found more peace in the next world than you did in this one. I know you deserved better than what you got."
I then turned to Kira's grave. I brushed off her headstone and placed her roses on the snow over where she lay. The roses looked like blood tears on clean white linen.
"Hello, Babe," I told her. "After what's happened the last couple days, I know you can hear me now. So if you're in the neighborhood, I just want to tell you how sorry I am. I should have been a better man for you. I can't change what's happened.
"I am going to let you know that I met someone and I'm going to try to be good for her. I hope you understand. I guess I wasn't very good at trying to kill myself. So I really do believe I should try to start living again."
As I was leaving I saw that someone was standing at the gate. As I got closer I realized it was Jeanette.
When I stood in front of her, she hugged me and whispered in my ear, "She heard you."
