But for only a hundred dollars, it would give me what I needed—except for one tiny problem I kept forgetting about. I still didn’t have any money.
The expletive that shot from my mouth made my new friend jump, but he recovered quickly, as I sat down and decided to give the guitar—and John’s fingers—a try.
A chill ran up my spine as I plugged the pseudo-Tele into an amp and tuned the strings. What if I couldn’t play? My mind knew what to do, but that wouldn’t matter if my fingers wouldn’t do their part.
The next thing I knew, my new fingers were dancing across the fretboard like they’d been playing for years.
I sighed, closed my eyes, and lost myself in the notes and chords I was coaxing from the instrument. I didn’t even pay attention to the G string as it started to slip out of tune. It was enough that I was making music again—my first song since the start of my new life.
While I was playing, the store owner didn’t utter a sound. Instead, he gave me one of the greatest gifts a man could give—complete silence. When I finally took a break and looked up, he hadn’t moved at all. He was just staring at me as he wrung his sweaty little hands together.
That’s when I remembered what Ahriman had said about the supernatural residents of Ashburn being afraid of John. Given the look on the store owner’s face, I began to suspect he was one of us.
Regardless of who or what he was, I still didn’t have any money to pay for the guitar, so I handed it back to him with a nod.
“Not bad for the price,” I said. “I’ll be back for it later, if you can set it aside for me.”
I turned to leave, but the owner held up his hand.
“Your playing was masterful,” he said. “I did not know you were a musician. I keep instruments of higher quality in the back, you know—my personal collection—if you would like to see them.”
“That would be great—” I said before snapping my fingers like I was trying to remember his name.
“It is all right,” he said. “I thought that because of last week, perhaps you might remember my name, but I understand. You are a very busy and important individual. I am Enkimdu, but you may call me Chaz.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am very sure of my name.”
“Not what I meant,” I said, pursing my lips. “I was talking about your guitars. I wouldn’t mind seeing them if you have a minute.”
He smiled and led me to the back of his store, chatting with me as we walked.
“You will love my axes,” he said. “They are works of art.”
I stopped my eyes in mid-roll and forced myself not to laugh at the fact that he’d just referred to his guitars as axes.
Much like the bookstore, the back of the music shop consisted of a small office with a cluttered desk, a computer, and two filing cases. The only things missing were the guitars he’d promised to show me. Before I could say anything, he produced a rusted key and touched it to the wall. From nowhere, a door appeared.
Chaz unlocked the door, and we stepped into a hidden room of enormous size. I raised my eyebrows and stared at the stunning collection of guitars. Some of them were top-of-the-line models from the major brands while others were clearly handmade by master craftsmen who made custom instruments for either very special or very rich players. I gave a low whistle and looked at Chaz with increased respect. At the same time, I wondered how he could afford all his beautiful guitars. It certainly wasn’t from the profits he made selling sheet music and renting tubas to kids.
I reached over with care and picked up a tiger-stripe green PRS with the brand’s standard mother-of-pearl inlaid birds running up and down its neck.
“Let me hear what you got,” I said, handing it to him. He grinned and plugged the guitar into an old Marshal amp, like he was handling a religious artifact. Once the amp started to hum, his fingers began moving across the fretboard.
He started slowly and simply with a series of perfectly formed chords and followed them up with arpeggios, plucking each note in one chord before moving on to the next. He gradually increased his speed and added complex riffs, bending strings and holding notes and playing with all his heart.
I’d seen plenty of better guitarists in my life. I used to be one of them. But Chaz was good. Really good, especially for a guy in the suburbs running a store called Music.
“Where do you play?” I asked. “You must be in a band.”
His hand stopped moving, and his cheeks turned pink.
“I practice here when I have time and sometimes at home.”
“You’ve got real talent,” I said. “You could find a band if you wanted to. Maybe even start one up yourself.”
He shook his head and averted his eyes.
“Perhaps I would, if things were different. But not many bands perform only in Ashburn.”
My instinct was to tell him he could be anything he wanted—that he should never limit his dreams. But he’d just confirmed my suspicion—that he was one of the supernatural beings trapped here, just like me. And like me, there would be no world tours for him any time soon.
Still, he was being a damn good sport about showing me his collection, and I could have spent the rest of the day talking music with him. But the compulsion to check out the Voodoo priestess was real, and I couldn’t ignore the twitch in my stomach much longer.
“These are making my mouth water,” I said as I stood to leave. “But I have some business I have to take care of. Maybe I could come back and we could jam sometime.”
Chaz nodded as he placed the PRS back in its stand and opened an ancient, dusty hard-shell case. He pulled out an acoustic guitar that was as beautiful as it was unique. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen, made of unstained walnut with archaic letters and symbols inlaid in gold up and down the neck.
He looked at it lovingly, then held it out to me.
Touching another man’s favorite guitar was almost the same as feeling up his wife, so I shook my head and kept my hands by my side. But he nodded at me in reassurance and inched it closer, tempting me.
When I wrapped my hand around the wooden neck, Chaz smiled.
“I forged it myself,” he said with pride.
Even though I’d never heard anyone talk about making a guitar and forging a weapon in the same breath, my impression of Chaz increased again. I held the instrument in my hands, feeling the cool dampness of its wood. He’d taken good care of it and had stored it in the proper humidity. Its balance was sublime, and the frets were of the highest craftsmanship. Maybe Chaz rented and sold cheap stuff to the public, but he had a future in making custom instruments if he ever wanted one.
He nodded again, encouraging me to try out his creation, so I did. I’d spent a lot of my younger years playing electric guitars, but later in life I’d fallen back in love with the simplicity of an acoustic. As my hand glided across the strings of Chaz’s baby, I realized I’d never played anything like it before.
Its tone was bright and perfect as my right hand strummed a few chords before I went into a few riffs from some of my own songs. Faster and faster, the fingers of my right hand plucked the strings without effort, while my left hand landed without flaw every time, nailing each chord precisely. It was so effortless, it was as if the guitar knew what I wanted to play before I did.
“This is amazing,” I said, taking a break, and catching my breath. “I don’t think I’ve ever played its equal.”
A mini-spasm rolled across Chaz’s forehead and his left eye twitched involuntarily as his mind calculated his next move. After a lengthy pause, he spoke.
“The instrument is yours now. A gift from me.”
“No one gives something like this away for free,” I said, shaking my head.
Chaz took a deep breath.
“It is yours now. I only ask that you would be kind enough to provide me with a favor in the future if I am ever in need, and if you feel the value of the gift warrants it.”
And there it was.
First Oizys and
now Chaz. Both placed a lot of value in John’s favors. The idea of being in debt to another supernatural being didn’t excite me, but my hand refused to loosen its grip on the guitar. So I gave up.
“I give you my demon bond that I am in your debt,” I said as I again pretended to know what I was doing.
I placed the guitar back in its case and looked at Chaz. I didn’t want to push my luck, but since he was being so generous, I decided to ask.
“Any chance I can score some light gauge strings, a couple pads of blank sheet music—and some picks?”
Chaz smiled and led me from his secret room, back to the main store.
Within a few minutes, I had a fresh ream of sheet music and a bag of picks in hand, but no strings.
“You will not need new strings,” he said. “Ever.”
That was an outrageous claim to make, but something about the way Chaz looked at me made me think he knew something I didn’t, so I didn’t argue.
“Is there anything else you require?” he asked with a smile.
Behind him on the counter, I saw a stack of dark blue tee-shirts sporting the phrase, I Love Rock and Roll in white letters, but with a red heart icon where the word Love should have been.
“I’ll take one of those in a Large.”
Soon, I was out the door, stowing my new gear and my sweet tee-shirt in the trunk.
I looked back, and saw Chaz standing outside his store, waving at me like a father watching his kid get on the school bus for the first time.
I nodded back, hopped in the car, re-engaged the GPS, and continued on my way to find Marie. It turned out she lived close by, and in less than five minutes I pulled up in front of her house.
As Oizys had promised, the trees in the front yard were filled with prayer flags and offerings to the loa spirits—bits of hair, pieces of candy, wooden masks, and a feather from a black bird hanging from a tree branch.
Also as Oizys had claimed, six gardeners—in straw hats and baseball caps—worked slowly but steadily at pruning bushes that were already well-shaped, pulling weeds that weren’t there, and rearranging chips of mulch in the garden.
When I got out of my car and set foot on the driveway, one of the workers, a man with dark ebony skin, turned and glared at me. As the sun broke through the clouds, the light hit his face and reflected off his milky white, lifeless eyes.
I tensed, ready for him and his crew to come after my brains in true zombie fashion. Instead, the gardener ignored me and turned back to his imaginary weeds. With his head down, no one could tell the difference between him and one of the living, but now that I knew what he and his crew were, a song started to form in my head about a dead guy who tended a garden where the crop was human souls. Each time he harvested a spirit, he’d send it on to the land of the living, then return to his never-ending task. The imagined chords and drums to my new song started to kick in just as I knocked on Marie’s front door, ready to meet my very first Voodoo priestess.
Chapter 10
AN EXOTIC WOMAN with latte brown skin and curly black hair opened the door. She was barefoot and wore a simple but form fitting cotton dress covered in a faded flower pattern. Her wild hair spilled over and covered one eye, and the smell of rum followed her.
“May I help you?” she said in a light Cajun accent. She hesitated for a second as she glanced past me to the lead zombie in her gardening crew.
“I’d like to talk for a minute or two if you have…a minute or two,” I said.
It wasn’t my most brilliant opening line, but sadly, it wasn’t my worst either.
She flashed me a coy grin before turning away and leaving the front door open behind her.
It was no surprise that the layout of her house was almost identical to John’s. The main difference was that her place was decorated. Her living room was furnished with a black leather couch and a matching love seat. And the kitchen was functional and well-used, overflowing with cooking tools, utensils, dried herbs, hanging pots and pans, and a large wooden cutting board.
She crossed her arms, waiting for me to explain why I was there.
“Hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” I said, clearing my throat.
“Like sacrificing a chicken?” she said.
“Or a goat,” I said with a shrug, my voice trailing off. “I don’t discriminate...”
“Goats are offered only at Easter,” she said in a tone that was suddenly serious. She shook her head, like I should have already known that somehow.
“I’d ask you to join me for lunch, but there’s only enough meat for one. What did you want to talk about, John?”
“Have we met?” I asked, surprised she knew my name.
“Not in person, but everyone knows who you are.”
She stepped closer and, yes—just like everyone else in Ashburn—she sniffed me. She exhaled like she was cleansing her palette and cocked her head to one side.
“I assumed you wouldn’t look like a demon. None of you do. But you don’t smell quite like one either. You’re part demon for sure, but something else too. Something that dominates your ti bon ange enough for my gardeners to let you pass—and for my charms and wards to not stop you dead in your tracks.”
I felt my shoulders relax even though I hadn’t realized they’d been tensed. If she was right, maybe I was only a demon on the outside but still a human where it counted.
“You don’t have to explain what you are to me,” she said. “We all have our secrets, and since you made it into my home safely, I can only assume you don’t mean me any harm.”
She stepped closer, and I tensed up, excited but wary.
“If you’re not here to hurt me, then why are you here?” she whispered, like she didn’t want someone else to hear her question.
Maybe it was her magic or maybe I was just a sucker for a beautiful woman, but even if I’d wanted to lie to her, I don’t think I could have at that moment, as the truth came rolling out of my mouth.
“Someone told me you’re going to try to leave Ashburn, and I’m here to see if that’s true and to stop you if it is.”
She paused, then laughed so hard her shoulders shook.
“I don’t have any plans to go out today,” she said. “But I was thinking about visiting the mall tomorrow, if that’s all right with you.”
“You can do that?”
“Of course,” she said as she plopped down on her couch. “I love shopping.”
She motioned for me to sit next to her, but I wanted to keep my focus, so I sat in the love seat across from her.
“I meant the leaving Ashburn part. How do you plan on accomplishing that?”
“I’ll probably drive. I go whenever and wherever I please because I’m not like you. I’m a human. I stay in Ashburn because I have roots here, not because someone is forcing me to.”
“If you’re a human, who told you—”
“No one told me anything,” she said, cutting me off. “Most locals don’t suspect anything about who and what their neighbors really are, but not all of us are blind to supernatural activity. To me, this town reeks of demons and gods and angels and other things—like a supernatural barn yard.”
“Oizys says you have power and that you’re in the same situation as the rest of us.”
Marie rolled her eyes when I mentioned Oizys.
“Things are starting to make sense now,” she said. “I know who Oizys really is—a mid-level demon who lives off of human suffering, especially from the residents in her community. Perfect choice for someone to lead the Homeowners Association if you ask me.”
“I’ll give you that, but you need to convince me you’re not working with the loa to help you escape. Then I’ll leave you alone.”
“Do you even know what a loa is?” she said, her face devoid of humor.
“I know they’re the spirits of your ancestors,” I said, leaning forward in my seat. “And that you’ve been killing a bunch of innocent chickens with no intention of eating them. I’m sure your loa appreciate it,
but it won’t put you in very good standing with the local vegan Meetup group.”
“In Voodoo,” she said, “we believe in the one god, Bondye. But unlike the Christian deity, our god does not interfere in human affairs. He leaves us alone, and we leave him alone. To feel close to Bondye, we worship the spirits who serve him—the spirits of our ancestors—the loa. They watch after us and guide us. Offering them the lives of the animals is an essential part of my religion, especially as Saint John’s Eve approaches to mark the beginning of summer.”
“How does killing a bird bring you closer to your dead relatives?”
She hesitated before answering, but the tremble in her hand told me I was getting under her skin.
“Before I kill an animal, I pray and I ask the loa to come to me. When I make the sacrifice, I offer myself to them, and if I am fortunate, one of them accepts my invitation and possesses me. While the loa is inside me, I gain its strength, and it is able to do things it can only do while in a mortal body. The spirit eats the offering—the animal’s body and its soul. The loa uses my mouth and my teeth, but it gains the nourishment and strength from the life energy of the animal—not me.”
“One of the loa possesses you?” I said. “Like a demon?”
Finally, we were talking about something I had experience with.
“It is a very different thing,” she said. “The loa are strong, but they are not demonic beings. And unlike your victims, I am their willing host. I welcome their spirits into my body.”
She went on for fifteen minutes about the details of the ceremony she’d performed the week before. At one point, she compared being possessed to a sexual experience, which got my attention, but otherwise, I spent the time scanning the living room as she talked. There was one wooden drum in the corner, three bags of cornmeal on the floor, and faint remains of at least a dozen red splatter marks on one of the walls. I took a gentle sniff of the air with my new nose and was certain the marks were made from blood.
On the mantel above the gas-powered fireplace, six glass jars were lined up on a shelf, filled with various items such as strips of clothing, strands of hair, and an occasional tooth. Everything in the jars was covered in a fine yellow-orange powder, and each jar contained a small wax carving of a person. Those were strange enough, but what stood out the most in the living room was a framed ink drawing hanging on the wall above the mantel—an illustration of a man wearing a black top hat and a tuxedo jacket with his face painted white to resemble a skull. He wore mirrored sunglasses with one lens missing, and his one exposed eye seemed to peer into my soul. In his left hand, he held a glass of booze while his right hand clutched a staff with a skull mounted on top of it. It was the first thing I’d seen in Marie’s house that fit my preconceived notions about Voodoo and dark magic.
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