Conquer (The John Conquer Series Book 1)

by Edward M. Erdelac

  Popobawa, it called itself. Bat-Wing.

  It set upon the white man first. His screams, intermingling with its strange howls of lust, something like an animal and the guttural revving of a great diesel engine, brought the others. They shrieked in terror at the sight of the Popobawa killing their employer so heinously, nearly splitting him up the back, and fled.

  When it had finished, the Popobawa had burst out into the night, the wash of its chopping wings scattering anything not nailed down in the room. For a long time Hawla lay in the blood-splashed wreckage and listened to her own breathing, waiting for the cries of the pursued Shirazi, clutching the scrap of the Koran with which she commanded her revenge. She took money from the dead man’s suitcase, and stumbled out into the dark street.

  Hawla could not hope to return to Pujini. Home was like a thing she had once dreamed of, the memory a drop of dew drying up fast in the dawn light. She wandered Pemba for a time, the Popobawa her only traveling companion, a dark thing that crouched and leered, watched her hungrily and whispered promises and threats in her ears until she couldn’t tell one from the other. It ran rampant across the island, attacking men and women wherever she roamed.

  The villages she passed spread word of it, and people began to sleep outside in groups for fear of it. She staunched her own outrage in its capers, taking a perverse kind of satisfaction in its depredations, until the day she found it attacking a girl, loudly demanding to be spoken of. Why had it chased notoriety? No, not notoriety, not infamy, or even fear. Faith. It had been spreading belief, for if enough people believed in the Popobawa, feared it, worshipped it, it could become powerful enough to break her magic shackles.

  She banished it immediately, to the dark burrow in the universe it had crawled from.

  She envied its departure, for she had no home. She thought to go to the mainland and find her mother, but she knew in her heart her mother was dead, or else better off. She lived off the dead white man’s money. When that ran out, she tried to work as a mganga, but she had only bits of stolen knowledge, and soon found herself spending the only currency she had left, her own body. When she had saved enough, she resolved at last to leave Pemba for the States, the furthest place she could think of, to start again.

  She had thought to live in California, the place where movies came from, but had gotten lost in the swirl of strangers and color at Grand Central Station. Pope had coalesced from that mélange of sensation, a handsome man, regal even, dressed in purple and a stylized priest’s collar, kind-eyed, sympathetic, smooth-talking, with promises of shelter, protection, and love.

  Pope had delivered none of those things. He had taken her shopping, dressed her in too-tight clothes, then driven her to The Vatican. He had introduced her to other women (as Sister Mary Holla), to Sister Mary Sugarfoot, who explained to her that she must earn her keep like all the rest without explaining what she must do. She was not inclined to take charity, but the work; she had thought she had left that sort of work behind on Pemba Island. Pope was nothing but a procurer, a destroyer of women and young girls.

  When she had refused, Pope’s velveteen mask had dropped. She had seen the Popobawa’s face in his, the face of the white man and the Shirazi who had raped her. When he had tried to beat her she had fought back, and he had set upon her with a terrible fury she had never known. It was as though her defiance had personally insulted him. He had beaten her senseless and thrown her through a dressing mirror, then stormed out of the apartment, yelling for Mary Sugarfoot and Mary Cincinnati to get dressed and bring her down to the car.

  In her own blood and broken glass she lay once more. She picked her Koran from her pocketbook. The last thing she had seen with her own eyes in this world was a thing coming from another, the Popobawa, grinning as it spread its wings and slipped from the dark, glad to be back, eager to please. She had laughed through her broken teeth to see it come.

  She was laughing.

  Conquer was laughing.

  She was Conquer….

  Conquer’s fingers burned in the candlelight, and the pain brought him out of it. He nearly flung himself from the chair to the white tile floor.

  Hawla had become rage, nearly indistinguishable from the shetani. She had sought to draw him into that deathless place in which she spun like a roaring cyclone. The entire time, while her consciousness had driven his own deeper down, he had forced the animal part of his brain to slowly inch his hand closer to the tapering white candle.

  The hot touch of the burning wick was all that had saved him from a catatonic purgatory.

  He hated that sensation, that pitiful ghostly helplessness to affect anything. Jesus, don’t let him linger like that. When the time came, let some mugger blow his soul out his body in an alley. Anything was better than hanging out in the space in-between, like a rotting bag left on a curb during a garbage strike.

  He sat a while, brushing Hawla’s angry tears from his eyes, sorting her own thoughts from his and filing away what he had learned.

  He was stiff and sore. How long had he sat in the chair? A lifetime. Hawla’s lifetime. The dark in the room was real now, and the door rattled against the chair. Someone pounding with the flat of their hand.

  A lady’s voice.

  “Who’s in there? Who’s in there?”

  A nurse making her regular rounds, or had he been laughing aloud?

  He got to his wobbly feet, put on his coat, grabbed Hawla’s Koran and the little leather bag on a string, which contained the scrap of paper she had used to bring the Popobawa into being.

  He yanked the chair aside so the nurse in the hallway, a squat little Latin woman, fell into his arms and yelped in surprise.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Just leaving.”

  He sat her swiftly in the chair and slipped out as she called after him.

  At least she didn’t think to call for security until he was at the elevator, but then the life support alarm sounded in Hawla’s room and she rushed back in, in a panic. She was calling for the crash cart when the elevator doors closed behind him again.

  Rest, Hawla, thought Conquer.

  He couldn’t completely blame her for what she’d done. Now he had to clean up the mess that filthy fucking ofay in Zanzibar had created years ago.

  He had a block and a half to mull over what he had seen, and when he got back in the car, he wanted to drive it off a pier himself. Maybe Pope hadn’t died so hard at all. Maybe he hadn’t gotten half of what he deserved.

  He would’ve driven all the way back to the Vatican without saying a word if Pope hadn’t crackled from the radio;

  “How is she?”

  “Dead,” Conquer said flatly.

  “Damn....”

  “You need to tell me what apartment she had at the Vatican,” Conquer said.

  “49,” said Pope. “All my bitches was on the fourth floor.”

  It was getting to be night. Where did the Popobawa go when it wasn’t out catting and its mistress wasn’t around to keep it on a leash?

  He had an idea.

  “Yo, Conquer…,” said Pope.

  “Save it,” Conquer said, getting out of the car.

  Standing in front of the Vatican was the same Muslim in the suit and bow tie Conquer had met earlier, calling out with the same enthusiasm to a group of barely dressed prostitutes and their clownish pimp in gold lamé;

  “Indeed if a believer sins, a black spot covers his heart. If he repents, stops the sin, and seeks forgiveness for it, his heart becomes clean again. If he persists…”

  Conquer had no command of Arabic, and the knowledge he had gotten from Hawla was fading quickly, like a dream in the morning. But here was the perfect assistant. What had Hawla’s grandfather called it? Shauri ya Mungu. The plan of God.

  “Hey, man!” Conquer called, jogging up to him.

  The Muslim looked at him warily, falling immediately into a defensive posture, one hand forward, the other back, something the FOI had taught him down at Mosque No. 7, maybe.

&nb
sp; Conquer flipped open Hawla’s Koran to a dog-eared page he remembered from his vision. He held it open and out to the man.

  “Can you read this?”

  The Muslim relaxed slightly and took the book.

  “This is the Ayat-al Kursi,” he said, and then proceeded to read rapidly. “In the name of Allah, the Beneficient, the Merciful. Allah, there is....”

  “Alright,” Conquer said. “But how’s your Arabic?”

  The Muslim shifted his swift recitation seamlessly, into a song out of a National Geographic TV special.

  “Al-Haiyul-Qayim. La ta’khudhuhu sinatun…”

  “What about writing?” Conquer asked.

  “In Arabic? I’m fair,” the Muslim said.

  Conquer slipped the necklace with the pouch quickly over the man’s neck.

  “You’re elected. I’m John Conquer. What’s your name?”

  “Adham Muhammad,” the man answered, fingering Hawla’s talisman skeptically. “What is this?”

  “A hirizi,” Conquer said quickly. “Don’t worry, it’s for protection, and don’t worry about no heathen bullshit. There’s a piece of the Koran inside. Look, Adham, I don’t know your book, but somebody told me once the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life and he that winneth souls is wise.”

  “I know yours,” said Adham tersely. “That’s Proverbs.”

  “God or Allah put you and me together tonight. You stand out here every day tryin’ to help the brothers and sisters,” Conquer said. “You wanna help ‘em right now, I mean protect their actual tangible asses, right here and now, you come with me.”

  He said no more, trusting to the man’s curiosity. He opened the door to the apartment building and climbed to the fourth floor.

  When he reached the landing and saw the familiar hallway, the police tape across the door of Cincinnati’s apartment, Adham Muhammad was coming slowly up the steps behind him.

  “Brother, if you are runnin’ some scam…,” Adham muttered.

  “No scam,” Conquer said. He went over to Cincinnati’s door and kicked it so hard it splintered. He set to work ripping a broad piece of the wood free.

  One of the doors opened at the sound and an old woman’s face peered out, disapproving, before the door closed and he heard locks and chains sliding into place. If she had paid her phone bill, the cops would be here. He checked his watch. Nearly three in the morning. They’d be in no hurry if they weren’t in the vicinity already.

  He thrust the piece of the door at Adham, and rummaging in his pockets, brought out a faintly red jar of ink and the nub pen and handed them over.

  “Dragon’s blood ink?” Adham said skeptically, reading the label on the bottle.

  “Dragon Palm resin and red ink,” said Conquer. Good for writing protective magic. His father had worked as a salesman for one of those mail order outfits selling mishmash Kabbalah, Hoodoo, and western magic to housewives and gamblers. His father’s boss had taught him the recipe. “Write out that verse on the wood. In Arabic. Quick as you can.”

  Adham set the board down and knelt on the floor, twisting the cap on the little bottle and dipping the pen.

  Conquer loosed his Colt Python in his shoulder holster and watched Adham work for a bit.

  “You know, I thought you’d take more convincing,” Conquer said. “Thought I’d, I don’t know, have to buy a mess of your bean pies or swear off pork and white women or something.”

  “It couldn’t hurt, brother. But I know you by reputation,” said Adham, glancing up from his work. “My mama told me about John Conquer.”

  “Good things?”

  “She said you did the Devil’s work. But Mama has her white god, and our notions of the Devil differ. Besides, Alagba Mustafa vouches for you. That’s good enough for me.”

  Alagba Mustafa, the funky old owner of Hekima Books, the biggest afrocentric bookstore on 125th since Michaux’s shuttered. Shauri ya Mungu again?

  “I’m finished,” said Adham, putting the cap back on the inkwell. “Now what?”

  Conquer stooped and picked up the board, looking over the squiggly Arabic letters. Looked good to him, but he didn’t know the Koran from….well, Adam. Maybe something to remedy. He didn’t like having blind spots.

  He broke the police tape and stepped over the ruin of Cincinnati’s door, carrying the inscribed wood to the bathroom.

  “Get me a pot or something out of the cabinet.”

  When Adham rejoined him, Conquer had plugged up the tub, and was washing off the handsome script into a red pool.

  Adham gasped at the destruction of his toils.

  “Sorry,” Conquer said. “It’s the water we need, not the wood. Here, scoop it up.”

  As Adham filled the pot with red water, there came a sudden cacophonous sound, like a gang of Harley Davidsons revving in the hallway….or a Bell helicopter firing up indoors.

  Three A.M. on the nose.

  “What….?” Adham began, covering his ears.

  There was a high pitched scream, barely discernible from the strange noise.

  “Come on!” Conquer said, drawing his pistol.

  Back in the hall, they found the prostitute, Sugarfoot. She was dressed for work, probably coming home from a long night. She crouched on the floor, pressed against the wall, her face twisted in fright, hands over her ears.

  She saw Conquer the same time he saw her.

  “It’s back!” she wailed.

  He ran past her, Adham on his heels, counting the apartment numbers till they got to 49.

  He kicked the door in. The noise was louder here, deafening.

  Conquer was back behind Hawla’s eyes. There was the broken glass of the mirror through which Pope had thrown her. And there was the Popobawa, rising in the center of the room, drawing all the shadows of the corners to coalesce its own oily body. The great wings spread wide and chopped at the air, kicking up a terrific wind.

  Conquer snatched the pot of red ink water from the stupefied Adham’s grasp and flung it like hot coffee. It had much the same effect. The shetani threw up its thick arms across its smoking, hissing face and screamed, staggering on its reversed hind limbs, the water eating away at its body like peroxide.

  “Read!” he yelled over his shoulder

  But Adham didn’t read. The Koran hung limply from his hand and he recited the Ayat-al Kursi in Arabic from memory, his voice growing in pitch and intensity as he progressed.

  Conquer advanced on the thing, unsure if his gun would do anything to it. Adham came right alongside, roaring like William Marshall in Abby, arms spread, sure of purpose.

  The Popobawa dipped down, folding its wings, and seemed to stagger. It scooped up a handful of the broken mirror glass.

  “Watch it!” Conquer gasped, as the shetani flung the glass at them.

  He felt a sharp pain across the back of his hand and dropped his gun as he dodged aside.

  Adham’s prayer was cut short.

  The man fell on his back, scrambling and gasping, clutching at his throat, where a sliver of bright mercury protruded. He pulled it free before Conquer could get to him, and blood jetted high in the air, splashing Conquer’s cheek, painting the ceiling. He clamped his hands over the wound as Adham’s eyes bugged, but he had seen hits like this in ‘Nam and knew it was too late.

  The Popobawa shrieked in a kind of triumph, those shark teeth and distended black gums arrayed in a horrific grin. It turned and staggered toward the window.

  Conquer grasped the hirizi talisman and snapped it from Adham’s neck as he gurgled his last.

  With a yell he charged after the thing.

  It smashed through the window, making its escape, wings unfurling once more to carry it away. Conquer landed full on its back, forcing it into a nose dive.

  It banked and buzzed and clawed at him, managing to slow their descent enough not to kill Conquer when they hit the middle of the street below, but all the wind went out of him and something cracked in his side.

  He lay on his back, the
ugly thing full upon him, shrieking in his face, flecking him with a foul, black saliva that stank of sewage.

  Then it flipped him on his belly, and he felt, rather than heard, a warning; that he must tell someone about the Popobawa, or it would return, and do this to him again.

  Then they were both bathed in light, bright as the sun. There was an engine roar, different from the weird noise of the Popobawa. Familiar. Like the gunning of a 318 V-8.

  The Cordoba hit the thing full on and sent it tumbling, the chrome bumper and the tires screeched to a stop inches from running Conquer completely over.

  He rolled to his feet and clambered atop the shetani, gripped its head, and stuffed the hirizi talisman into its mouth.

  Its huge black eyes bulged and it trembled, shaking its head, like a kid that didn’t want to take its medicine.

  The words came to him from somewhere. He didn’t know where. Maybe from his communing with Hawla, or maybe Adham Muhammad slipped in before he caught the train to Jannah.

  “Qulna la takhaf in naka antal a'la Wa alqi ma fi yaminika talqaf ma shana'u in nama shana'u kaidu sa hir wa la yuflihus sa hiru haitsu ata!”

  By the time Conquer had finished singing, the Popobawa was just a puddle of feebly bubbling black sludge that had ruined a perfectly good pair of Gabardine slacks.

  Conquer picked himself out of the slimy muck and went to the car. The engine was running, but nobody was behind the wheel.

  Across the street, a petrified, slightly familiar looking junkie with a broken nose tipped over a garbage can in his hurry to vacate the madness of the scene.