by Layton Green
Ten minutes down the tunnel leading back to Great Zimbabwe, they found a short side tunnel that opened onto an antechamber. A skinny pallet lay in the corner of the room. On the pallet were a few personal items, the sort of mundane things one doesn’t expect someone such as the N’anga to own: a passport, a small pouch stuffed with American dollars, a South African driver’s license.
Next to the pallet was a table surrounded by a small army of candles. In the middle of the table lay the Awon Iwe. Viktor knew them instantly by the markings and their position as the centerpiece of the shrine.
The Awon Iwe: the lost books of the babalawo, containing the true names of the babalawo’s flock, including, remarkably, the current prime minister of Nigeria. The reason the N’anga had come to Zimbabwe, the reason William Addison and Nya’s father and many others had died. Viktor had picked them up reverently. He would of course return them, he’d said, to the Nigerian government.
Grey chuckled. After Viktor knew what was inside.
Grey returned to the present, and asked Viktor a question he’d been too overcome by emotion to ask that night. “What happened at the end? The N’anga didn’t seem the type to make a mistake like that.”
“I don’t believe he expected me to wake up for quite some time.”
“Then how did you?”
“Earlier in the evening I took a counteragent that stimulates certain receptors within the body. I’m uncertain what he used to drug me, but I have to believe it was mitigated by the counteragent. I was still rendered unconscious, but I woke up not long before you arrived. Of course I pretended otherwise.”
“So you didn’t know for sure it would work?”
“No.”
They simmered in an uncomfortable silence until Nya set her tea down, put a hand to her side and leaned towards Viktor, her face taut from the strain of the movement. “Do you know? Do you know how he took me? If you do, I want to know. I need to know.”
Viktor hesitated before answering, and when he spoke, his voice was careful. “When I attended the ceremony, I brought a pair of thermo-imagery goggles with me.”
“Smart,” Grey said. “To see through the fog.”
“Everything happened as before. But this time, when the fog concealed the captive, I saw what occurred within the circle.”
“And?” Grey asked, his mouth set. Nya’s head was cocked to the side, and she was looking away from Viktor.
“The girl backed around the circle as if frightened. Just after the N’anga shouted Esu’s name—he only did it once, and only after he’d quieted the crowd—she calmed and walked to the altar. She opened it and crawled inside. And then she shut it behind her.”
“She did what?”
“She didn’t wake until the crowd had died down and the N’anga clapped. Then she came to life, and was trapped inside the circle. There wasn’t another change until the N’anga roared Esu’s name, and then she crawled into the box.”
“I don’t understand.”
Viktor turned to Nya. “Grey mentioned that you saw him during confession. Is this true?”
“I thought he knew my father. I needed someone to…” She trailed off.
“Did you receive any substances from him, any food or drink?”
“I took communion,” she said, her eyes widening. “Numerous times.”
“I’m quite sure the N’anga used a combination of drugs and mental enthrallment to seduce and control his victims. He must have used mind-weakening narcotics—I suspect something akin to datura weed, perhaps a Yoruba variant—to get you through the ceremony and into his igbo-awo. He introduced the drugs into your system gradually, through communion. In the last session, he likely increased the dosage and kept you under until you entered the circle. Just enough to bend you to his will. His other victims were probably easier to enthrall, more susceptible to his power.”
“But I… I never felt like I was being drugged, or controlled. I just woke up at the ceremony.”
“He was very skilled.”
Grey gestured towards the Awon Iwe. “Was there anything helpful in there?”
“It’s mostly incomprehensible dialect and native pharmacology. I did see a ritual related to enthrallment. What I understood of it wasn’t helpful. It spoke of channeling the Orisas, ritualistic phrases and movements, sometimes combined with creating effigies of the victim.”
“You mean spells,” Grey said.
“I prefer to think of them as unnecessary cultural affectations. I believe the babalawos are, in effect, practicing an advanced form of mind control, aided by narcotics, the belief of the victims, and strong-willed priests skilled in mental manipulation.”
Nya wrapped herself in her arms. “So you think in confession he somehow… his voice, it was so calming, and that grandfather clock… Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”
“As I once said, Juju is a much older, much more effective version of its New World offshoots. I believe some of the enthrallment, the mind control, was lost in the transition to the Americas. It was replaced by an over-reliance on narcotics, creating the mindless zombies of Vodou. What he did to you, and the other victims, was much more subtle—and much more effective in the eyes of his worshippers. It’s more disturbing to see someone like his ceremonial victims, someone like Doctor Fangwa’s servant boy, alive yet not alive, bound by fear to the will of the babalawo.”
Grey thought of the girl he’d found lying on that slab of stone, eyes open, nothing stopping her from walking out of that cave. Grey found himself gripping his chair. The man was dead, he reminded himself. Dead and rotting.
Nya rubbed herself as if there were a chill. “But how did he get us to wake up when he wanted?”
“I believe he instilled pre-conditioned signals in his victims, similar to what’s used in hypnosis. Militaries have experimented with this, and found significant success. Remember—the West has been studying the power of the mind for a few hundred years, on an amateur level. Certain cultures, in this case the Yoruba babalawos, have been studying, practicing and perfecting the powers of the mind for thousands of years. I’m afraid some of what they’re able to do, we cannot yet understand.”
“It’s amazing,” Grey said, “that it works on such a grand scale. A whole culture that…” he broke off and stared at his hands.
“It’s difficult to say where the cycle of belief starts. Once boils spontaneously appear on a victim, do you think anyone that’s seen that will ever doubt that it’s real? The babalawo will never have a shortage of victims.”
Nya stood, her face unreadable. She put a hand on the couch to steady herself. Grey rose to help her. “I must beg off,” she said. “I know I’ve said it before, but thank you both again. For my life. And Professor, thank you for your explanation.” Her mouth drew tighter. “I apologize. My weakness endangered everyone’s life.”
“Don’t, Nya,” Grey said. “He was your priest, for God’s sake. He drugged you. I fell under his spell in the caves also.”
“This man was extraordinary,” Viktor said. “What he did to you could have happened to anyone.”
Nya pushed away from the couch.
Grey took her arm. “I’ll walk you out.”
“Grey,” Viktor said. “A word before you leave?”
“Sure,” he said, and helped Nya to the lobby.
He embraced her before she left the hotel. She let him hold her for a long time, but when he moved to kiss her, she turned her head.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and took his hand. “I can’t yet.”
“I understand.”
“What will you do?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Will you stay in Harare for a while?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like that.”
They fell into each other’s silence, until her tear interrupted them. Grey ran a gentle finger across her cheek. She cringed but let him. He said, “Are you going back to work?”
“Not yet.”
“Then I guess we b
oth have some time on our hands.”
She smiled, wanly. “Would you care to have tea tomorrow?”
“I’d love to.”
Grey walked her to the taxi. He’d wanted to drive her, but she wouldn’t let him, and her pride and courage broke his heart. He watched as the traffic swallowed her. In spite of her distance, she still felt closer than anyone ever had.
• • •
Viktor clasped his hands in front of him. “You’ll remember I told you Interpol and other law-enforcement organizations occasionally solicit my assistance? Over the last few years the requests have increased in frequency. In fact I’ve had to turn down quite a number.”
Grey had been thinking of Nya, but Viktor’s insinuating tone returned his attention to the conversation.
Viktor’s eyes crinkled. “I’d like to refuse fewer requests. For that to happen I’d need assistance.”
“Are you offering me a job?”
“I’ve seen your capabilities first-hand. Your skill-set and international background will be extremely useful. And,” he said, quieter, “your courage is without question.”
“Are we talking full-time?”
“Certainly.”
“And you can afford to pay me?”
“I’ll double your government salary.”
Grey could only gape.
Viktor spread his hands. “Take as long as you need to think about it.”
“I accept.”
Viktor smiled.
“I don’t know what to say, except thank you. I don’t think the government will be asking me back.”
“The assignments will be in various locations around the world. I trust that, given your past employment, travel won’t be an issue?”
Grey looked out the window, in the direction from which he’d just left Nya. “Will I be able to be based here?”
“Of course. The job requires travel, not nomadism.” Viktor offered his hand, and Grey took it. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve a bit of sleep to catch up on.”
Grey opened the door, but paused in the doorway. “Professor, there’s something I need to get off my chest.”
“Of course.”
“What about my experience with the N’anga?”
“I don’t understand.”
“I heard your explanation. But I,” he looked away, and then back. “I couldn’t cross that line. And I wasn’t drugged.”
“But don’t you see—he enthralled you as well. You believed. As you saw more and more apparent impossibilities, you convinced yourself of their reality. At the end, your own mind refused to let you cross that line of blood. “A man thinketh, and therefore he is.””
“But when I was in that pit,” Grey said, his voice husky, “I felt something in there with me. I understand what we just discussed, but it was more than that. I felt it weighing down on me, clutching at my chest—I think if that boy hadn’t intervened when he did… I think I was going to die.”
“Fear can incapacitate, Grey. It can even kill. You believed in the N’anga’s power so strongly that your fear overcame you. You fell from the plane, but someone opened your parachute before you succumbed.”
The N’anga was dead, but Grey still felt exposed, as if a hole had been opened in his defenses which none of his training could help combat. “Still, when he drew the first line in blood, back in the passageway—how did he know I wouldn’t be able to cross it?”
“That was the source of his power. The possibility you might not succumb to his Juju never crossed his mind. His belief becomes his victims’ self-doubt and, consequently, their belief. Your reality becomes what you believe it to be. Children believe there are monsters in closets; to them, there are. When adults are presented with convincing evidence, we are as children. Humankind has merely probed the surface of the mind’s capabilities. Some have dug deeper than others.”
Grey moved to the window. “You said something else once, when we were just starting this investigation. You said there’s another explanation for Juju, for the babalawos. You said maybe it’s real.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Grey saw Viktor take a long drink from his glass, and a strange expression, a roiling cloud of darkness and mystery, overtook his face. Grey wasn’t sure what the expression signified, or if Viktor’s mind hadn’t perhaps wandered elsewhere. Whatever it was, it passed as quickly as it came.
“Does the discovery of the quantum particle signify the death of God?” Viktor said. “Absolutely not. Is it possible that babalawos can work unexplainable deeds apart from their ability to mentally coerce? That their hand waving and secret ingredients and prayers to Orisas have real power? Anything is possible. But I presented to you what I believe happened. We know he used artifice on some level, with the altar. He just needed you to believe.”
“Or maybe something did happen in that pit,” Grey said. “Maybe he summoned Esu, and he came.”
“Do you believe that?”
“I don’t think so. But even after your explanation… it’s hard to think I could’ve been taken like that.”
“Then he still has power over you.”
Grey pushed away from the window. “I suppose we’ll be having more of these conversations.”
“I suppose we will indeed.”
THE END
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The house at which I stayed in Harare during the writing of parts of this novel was originally purchased in 1980 for 35,000 Zim dollars. The house was in the beautiful northern suburbs, and in 1980 the Zim dollar was roughly equivalent to the British pound. By the time of the first draft of this novel (December 2005), a pint of milk cost 50,000 Zim dollars. When I returned to Harare in December 2008, a pint of milk cost 3 billion Zim dollars. Today, the Zim dollar is no longer in existence, and without access to foreign currency, a pint of milk is unattainable in Zimbabwe. Moreover, please remember that the genesis of the troubles in Zimbabwe is a very complex matter. This novel is a fictional snapshot of present day Zimbabwe, and does not seek to address the region’s troubled history or the myriad other components that have led to the unfortunate state in which the country is in today.
Finally, this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, is entirely coincidental. Please remember that the Yoruba religion, in its various names and incarnations, is an ancient religion, and should be given the same respect and weight (whatever those may be for each reader) as would any other religion. I met many wonderful practitioners of Yoruba religion during the writing of this novel, and there was no disrespect intended to Yoruba religion or any of its practitioners.
Acknowledgments
Endless thanks to my esteemed editor, Richard Marek, for his wise counsel and mad skills; to my brilliant fact-checker and grammarian, Rusty Dalferes; to James Luis of Pura Vida Entertainment, story teller extraordinaire, for his incisive comments; to my invaluable first readers, JWall, LB, Julie A., Deborah J., Matt& Mel, and McLemore; to mom and dad and grandma and the brothers for unconditional love and support; to my gracious hosts in Harare and to everyone else in Zimbabwe who provided support and research for this novel; and finally, to Shihan, a great man and teacher, and the person people are really talking about when they say I wouldn’t want to meet him in a dark alley.
About the Author
Layton Green divides his times between Miami, Atlanta and New Orleans, and might also be spotted in the corner of a dark and smoky café in Prague, researching the next Dominic Grey novel. You can also find him at www.laytongreen.com.
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