by Layton Green
Viktor’s tone eased. “The only thing you need remember is what I’ve told you from the beginning. The mind is a powerful weapon, and you must be the master of yours. Don’t listen to him, don’t think about him—let your mind be a clean slate.”
Grey was looking out the window, but all he could see was the look on the man’s face at the ceremony, trapped inside the circle. Grey thought he had known evil, had known depravity, but Doctor Fangwa and the N’anga were something else entirely. These men didn’t just take human suffering to another level, they did it because they believed in its power.
Grey told himself that none of it was real, but his mind kept returning to the impossibilities he had witnessed. The mental path of least resistance. The same thing that happened when every single passenger on a plane, regardless of religious belief or lack thereof, shut their eyes and prayed during heavy turbulence.
He remembered watching his mother die, when he’d both cursed and pleaded with God. It was human nature. Show me the atheist who doesn’t want to believe, Grey thought grimly, and I’ll show you a liar. Deep down, everyone possesses the same desire.
“Don’t worry about me,” Grey said. “There’s only one thing on my mind.”
Grey willed himself to believe in his own words, but he knew they weren’t entirely true.
There were other things on his mind. Darker things. A dead monkey, glassy-eyed servants and villagers, lines of blood, men trapped by air.
“Viktor,” Grey said.
“Yes?”
“Do you believe in God?”
“That,” Viktor said, “is a question for another day.”
56
They escaped the brewing storm. The last of the daylight gleamed with golden-tinged hues as the sun submerged into the horizon, feathering the boulders and msasa trees with evanescent brushstrokes.
Grey noticed the changes in landscape with a dull interest. He only cared about the appearance of lowland forests and then drier, boulder-and-mopani stippled bushveld because the changes signaled that they were drawing nearer to Nya.
Viktor had estimated a dusk arrival, and Grey knew their destination approached. A mix of emotions surged through him, but one emotion trumped them all, an anger which clawed upwards out of his depths and threatened to overwhelm him.
He could hardly allow himself to think about Nya without risking losing his reason entirely, and becoming an ineffective weapon blinded by rage and revenge. Anger was the worst possible emotion to be enslaved to during a fight, followed by love. These emotions strip a fighter of his ability to coldly calculate and react to a situation. When Grey allowed his mind to slip into the precarious realm of contemplation of Nya’s suffering, a world where love and anger became as one, he felt the fabric of his reason breaking apart.
So he roamed elsewhere. He tried to focus on William Addison and the other victims, past and future, of the N’anga. He tried to focus on his enemy, on what he needed to do to prepare. But that, too, proved precarious: if he dwelled too long on the N’anga, on what he’d seen with his own two eyes, he risked traveling to the one place Viktor said he must not go.
He opened the window to Nya just a little bit, let the anger slip back in. A delicate balance, he knew. A dangerous one. He had to keep his focus tonight. If he failed, Nya would die, and probably himself and others.
A sign gave him escape from his thoughts: the entrance to Great Zimbabwe.
• • •
Viktor slowed and turned onto the narrow road that wound deeper into the bush, and then pulled into the visitors parking area.
“Too many cars,” Grey said. “Last time we were the only visitors, and that was daytime.”
“He’s here,” Viktor said.
Please God, let this be the place. Grey hadn’t asked anything of God since his mother had died. But he was asking for this.
Not asking. Begging.
“Which way?” Viktor said.
“You think the ceremony will be in the ruins?”
“Yes.”
“Park and follow me. The road to the village is on the other side. We can’t risk the car.”
They stepped out of the car as the sun disappeared, and moments later a loud boom sounded. A throbbing reverberation that lingered on the night air, followed seconds later, just before fading, by another boom, and then another. The powerful cadence caused the hairs on the back of Grey’s neck to writhe in an unholy rhythm. After a grim smile at hearing the drums, he quickened his pace. They still didn’t know where Nya was.
They headed down a path marked as leading to the Great Enclosure, the drums a constant presence. They walked a brief distance along the darkened trail, under the shadowy outlines of the ruins looming in the distance. The din of nocturnal insects rushed forth in the brief lulls between drumbeats, as if freed from a century-long imprisonment.
They topped a small hill halfway to the ruins, close enough to get a good look at the Great Enclosure. Inside the remarkably intact remains of the gargantuan circular wall, under a brazen moon, the Great Enclosure swarmed with worshippers. There had to be thousands. As the drums picked up speed, the crowd came to life, heaving and swaying with a sinister rhythm. Heads reared to quaff palm wine, bodies arched in abandonment to the drums.
Grey pulled Viktor around to face him. “If it’s the wrong cave, I’ll rejoin you here.”
“Wait until you see the N’anga,” Viktor said, his voice low and even. “If the igbo-awo is nearby, the N’anga will remain there until he surfaces for the ceremony, with his bodyguards close by. When he leaves the igbo-awo—this is when you go to Nya.”
“And you?”
“I’ll see to him.”
Grey scanned the worshippers. He forced himself to think about something besides Nya. He wrung his hands and tried to pick out individual faces in the crowd.
The throbbing of the drums increased, the intensity of the worshippers with it. They began to chant for the N’anga, and Grey tensed. A giant hand squeezed his shoulder. “Almost.”
Grey could sense her nearness, and the waiting tested every ounce of self-control he possessed.
The drums and chanting hammered the night sky. Finally the massive crowd shifted, opening a path into the Great Enclosure through an archway on the far side. Grey saw the horned tip of the N’anga’s mask rise above the crowd, and he strode into the Great Enclosure like a king returning to his ancient homeland.
Viktor held Grey’s gaze for a brief moment, long enough to express all that needed to be said.
“Go.”
57
Grey ran.
He skirted the edge of the ruins, propelled by adrenaline and the pounding of the drums. He slipped to the side of the labyrinthine Valley Complex and then circled behind the Hill Complex. The fortress ruins towered over him as he picked his way among the boulders and thorny brush surrounding the bottom of the hill.
He found the dirt road he and Nya had followed before. He hunched over the flashlight and raced down the road to the village. He reached it within minutes, and when he did, he sucked in air.
The village was deserted.
It took him precious minutes to find the faint trail they’d followed the last time, and then he stepped into the bush. The dry terrain, which from a distance looked easily traversed, swallowed him.
The low density of the bushveld toyed with his nerves; denser landscapes provided more cover, a false sense of security from predators. The soft moonlight allowed Grey to see between the trees and scrub, leaving him with a constant feeling of vulnerability.
The sound of the drums faded, and he stepped now to the cadence of the insects. Although Nya had said this wasn’t lion territory, the threat of lesser predators was very real, and Grey tried not to think about it. The bush was threatening enough during daylight. Walking alone at night, without proper protection, was a fools’ errand.
Grey stiffened and switched the flashlight off. He’d seen a light down the trail. After a few moments he saw it again:
a powerful golden beam flicked on, swept the bush, and then flicked off.
Grey’s emotions soared. Someone had bothered to put a guard up in the middle of the bush, which meant there was something here. Something worth hiding.
He left the path and stole ahead and to his left, approaching the light from a side angle. He soon made out a shadowy human shape in front of the same rocky outcropping he’d seen with Nya, the one next to where they’d found the string. A man-sized opening yawned behind the figure.
The cave.
Grey dropped to his knees and crawled closer, using the shrub as cover, until he could get a clearer view. The person in front of the entrance came into focus, and every muscle in Grey’s body tightened. Adrenaline coursed through him like a live wire.
The guard was Lucky.
• • •
As soon as Grey left, Viktor bent and opened his bag. It was time, as they say, to enter the fray.
He pulled out a surgical mask and affixed it tightly to his head. The mask would provide a second layer of defense against the palm wine that flowed freely at the ceremonies, and which no doubt contained a powerful hallucinogen. The revelers had sprayed it on Grey and Nya, and he feared the same would be attempted on him. He guessed it was one of the N’anga’s defenses against outside intrusion: his followers made sure anyone that looked new or suspicious received a healthy dose of altered reality.
Viktor then took two small pills. The key ingredient in the pills was physostigmine, administered as an inhibitor to certain psychotropic drugs, as well as a treating agent for cases of datura and atropine poisoning—two drugs known to be used by Vodou and Candomble priests.
He was unsure what pharmacology an experienced Yoruba babalawo might employ, but the pills couldn’t hurt. In addition, physostigmine is derived from the Calabar bean, a tropical plant native to Nigeria. The pharmacologist had speculated that the Calabar bean might possess an innate resistance to Yoruba psychotropics.
He trembled at the task that lay before him. What would he see? Would the N’anga be a charlatan, a wizard, a devil?
He had to know.
He emptied the bag and reached for the next two items. The first was a sophisticated pair of goggles; he strapped them on and scanned the crowd below. Fantastic colors filled his vision, impossibly vivid fluorescent hues from the infrared spectrum.
Thermography glasses, capable of thermal imaging in the infrared spectrum. Typically used by the military, but also by firefighters, since the glasses are capable of seeing through smoke.
Capable of seeing through fog.
He slid them on his forehead, and then donned the final piece of equipment for the night: the bestial mask he’d saved from the first investigation. It was similar to that of some of the worshippers, but still modest compared to the N’anga’s. He slipped it over his head; it was loose enough so he could wear the glasses, but voluminous enough to be an extra layer of protection against hallucinogens.
He took off his coat, revealing torn and ragged trousers, an equally worn shirt, and bare skin of which every inch had been dyed mahogany. He slipped on a pair of black gloves, completing the disguise.
His exposed skin was a light black, splotchy if viewed from up close, but it wouldn’t matter. Everyone would be too busy with the ceremony to notice. By the time they led the captive out everyone would be too intoxicated and focused on the N’anga to bother with him.
Or so he hoped.
The N’anga’s procession had reached halfway to the circle, and he wanted to glimpse the captive. He threw the empty bag behind a large stone, and headed into the ruins.
He entered amidst the corridors, hut mounds, and small conical towers of the Valley Complex. Some of the walls along the corridors of the Valley Complex, which had seemed smallish from afar and had paled in comparison to the walls of the Great Enclosure, rose far above his head.
He stepped over a crumbling section of wall at the base of the Great Enclosure, at the perimeter of the worshippers. The wall was gigantic. He pushed his way through the crowd as fast as he could without looking suspicious. No one paid him any attention; everyone was too far gone. He felt a rush from the intoxicating surge of drums and chanting, and inhaled the smell of sweat mingled with perverse excitement.
He reached the front line of worshippers just before the captive entered the circle. This time it was a young village girl. Bastard.
She carried herself in the same manner as the other captive he’d seen: glossy eyes, wooden steps, hands at her sides. She looked, for all intents and purposes, like a zombie. But if things went as they had before, she was about to wake up. And the Haitian zombies, the Vodou zombies, never woke up. Haitians, he knew, were not afraid of zombies; they were afraid of being turned into zombies.
The girl entered the circle. The N’anga performed his sacrifice, poured the circle of blood, made the clapping motion—and she came alive. She gawked at the crowd for a few shocked moments, and then opened her mouth to scream. It couldn’t be drugs alone, Viktor thought—he knew of no drug whose effect ended that instantaneously.
He watched her. She tried to flee as the others had, and bounced off the invisible wall. She moved her hands up and down the empty space in front of her, crying out the entire time. Finally she bowed her head, shoulders heaving.
The fog arrived. He thought he knew how the N’anga accomplished this—in spite of the teeming chaos, the ceremonies all lasted the same amount of time, with each segment carefully orchestrated by the N’anga. Viktor guessed he scattered tiny time-release pebbles into the area of the circle beforehand. The pebbles would dissolve after releasing the “fog,” leaving no trace. He’d seen this used before, by an illusionist in Krakow, for the same purpose—to screen the audience from what was happening inside the fog.
The N’anga even had a valid religious reason, in the eyes of his worshippers, for the fog: to shield them from the face of Esu. Viktor also knew that with a hallucinogen, fog was particularly conducive to apparitions and fanciful imagination.
The fog rose to its full height, concealing everything inside the circle. Viktor reached up and moved the thermography glasses into position.
A barrage of strange colors assaulted him, and he squinted. He swiveled until he found an empty circle of space—empty except for the oblong, dull grey shape of the altar. Beside the altar he saw the surreal green and hot pink outline of the girl.
The chanting for Esu ceased, and the girl ran along the edge of the circle, testing her invisible barrier. She gave up trying to escape, and began to scream. Her anguish pierced the air like a spiritual knife.
The girl stopped screaming and then moved in wary circles, as if avoiding someone or something. It must be the drugs, Viktor thought, because nothing else showed up on the thermal imaging.
The crowd died down, and then the N’anga gave his customary shout to Esu over the low throb of the drums. Viktor leaned forward. This was it. This was when it happened.
What he saw next caused his throat to constrict and his skin to prickle and curl as if the legs of a thousand centipedes had brushed him.
The girl stopped screaming and walked, calm as fallen snow, to the center of the circle. She was in the trance state again.
She stopped beside the stone altar, then dropped to her knees and pushed on the top. It hinged open. She crawled inside, reached up and replaced the lid, securing herself within.
My God, Viktor thought—she is completely and utterly under his thrall.
58
Grey crawled as close as he could. The events of the past few weeks ran through his mind—the adolescent girls at Club Lucky, the desecration of his home, the disappearance of William Addison and the boy’s sister and who knew how many others, the grotesque trade with Dr. Fangwa, Nya’s capture and torture, his own torture—all of this attributable in large part to the man in front of him. He trafficked in death and prostitution, in corruption and human misery.
If the situation was different, Grey might hav
e taken other measures, might have just arrested him. Might have. He wasn’t even sure, and the point was moot. Right now, Lucky was guarding the cave so that the N’anga could continue to torture Nya.
He exaggerated his breathing, channeling his rage until it became a single, white-hot ember of rational purpose, rather than an all-consuming force. His eyes narrowed, he inhaled one last time, and he was ready.
He sprang out of the bush and rushed straight at Lucky. Lucky was sitting on a block of wood. He caught Grey at the edge of his vision, cursed and scrambled for his gun.
The rule for law enforcement is that if the officer’s hand is on his weapon and it’s unlatched, then the officer has time to unholster, de-safety, raise and aim at center mass if the target is at least twenty-five feet away. Grey knew this intimately, and Lucky had barely taken the gun out of its holster before Grey was on him. Just before they collided, Grey dropped his level and threw his weight into a vicious snap kick straight on top of Lucky’s front knee, driving downward.
Lucky screamed and collapsed like a stepped-on sand castle. At that angle, and with that force on the planted knee, Grey knew he’d disintegrated Lucky’s patella.
The gun was on the ground in front of Lucky. Grey kicked it away as Lucky reached for it. Grey dropped his body weight again, this time smashing his knee into Lucky’s face.
Grey was surprised; that blow would have knocked out most men. Blood flew from Lucky’s nose and across his face, but he kept moving. Rage-fueled adrenaline must have overcome the pain, because Lucky reached up and grabbed Grey, pulling Grey on top of himself as he went down. Grey again got a first-hand account of how strong the man was. He felt as if a python had grabbed him.
But this was Grey’s domain. He hooked his ankles under Lucky’s hips, kept his body weight centered on top of Lucky’s chest, and dug an elbow into what was left of Lucky’s right knee. Lucky bucked and screamed, but couldn’t escape.
