Shades of Evil

by Cave, Hugh

  The stream seemed higher and swifter than it had been in the upper part of the cave. Was that normal, or had the rains of the past couple of days increased its speed and volume? At times it filled the tunnel and made wading necessary; then the cold climbed Will's legs and seemed to reach the pit of his stomach.

  Adding to the chill was the thought that Sam Norman could have stumbled through here before him, en route to an execution.

  He trudged on behind McKoy, who now was a silent, plodding shape silhouetted against the wavering glow of his light. The walls and roof of the cavern seemed spotted with fungus—which turned out to be bats. Those awakened by the lights released their hold and went whirring and squeaking past in search of new darkness.

  Why, he wondered, was there no guano underfoot? Did the stream rise often enough to keep it from accumulating?

  The stream now had become a series of deep-looking pools connected by noisy cascades, getting around which involved clinging to any handy outcrop of rock. Clawing his way along just above the rush of water, peering down into it when his light happened to touch its swift, swirling motion, Will felt trapped and frightened.

  When he'd explored this kind of underworld in Haiti with Sam, he had felt no fear, he recalled, only an intense exhilaration which made any ordeal a grand adventure. This was different. This cavern was a haunted place in which every forward step seemed more perilous than the last.

  Ahead, McKoy had stopped and was shining his light back to help Will cross a shelf of rock covered with a skin of swift water. Both their lights aided Ken Daniels over the danger. The darkness ahead was filled with a thunder of sound.

  To be heard above the roar, McKoy said in a loud voice, "We will need the ladder now if you think we ought to go on. Look." Turning, he aimed his light ahead.

  Its glow, far less brilliant than the carbide glare such dungeon darkness called for, revealed the lip of a cascade noisier than any of those behind them. "It falls about thirty feet straight down, but we can belay to that outcrop there," he yelled, pointing to a ledge on their left at the brink of the drop. "What do you say?"

  They went forward to the edge, where Ken Daniels peered into the noisy depths and shuddered. Will, too, leaned forward to look down.

  Far below, the stream crashed into a boulder-strewn pool and then sped out of sight into darkness.

  Will had a mental picture of Sam Norman sliding down a rope here, and of those above snatching the rope from his grasp after he reached the bottom. As the picture developed more sharply, he saw, Sam standing abandoned at the foot of the fall, helplessly gazing up, knowing he was doomed to wander alone in darkness until he died.

  "Well, Mr. Platt?" McKoy said.

  "He may be down there. Let's go."

  "Even if he is there, can he possibly be still alive?"

  Five days, Will thought. Or was it six? But—and he said it aloud—"Sam may not have been brought here the day he disappeared. We don't know. And even if he had no food, he'd have had water. Let me go down there alone and see what I find. You two wait here."

  "What can you find?" McKoy protested. "Mr. Platt, that passage leads down to a deep, muddy pool, very nasty, very dangerous. To go beyond it you will have to crawl under a low ceiling with your head under water. After that—"

  "If they brought him here to kill him, it isn't likely they went beyond this drop. There'd be no need."

  "Then what—"

  "I know Sam. If they tricked him into going down a rope here, or forced him to and abandoned him, you can be sure he left a message of some sort, even if they stripped him naked and he had to scratch it on the wall with a stone." Will reached for the rope ladder hanging from the guide's shoulder. "Come on, let's get this into place."

  It seemed safe enough when McKoy finished rigging it.It was long enough, too. Will winced a little when first trusting it with his weight, but the thin yellow nylon rope was strong.

  Slowly he descended, with his feet feeling for the rungs and his flashlight jammed into his pocket. Over his head Daniels and McKoy lay on the lip of the drop, aiming the beams of their lights into the depths.

  The sound of the waterfall became a deafening thunder. The mist rising to engulf him sparkled in the light-beams. The ladder became wet and slippery, spoiling his rhythm; then it began to sway from side to side over the rock face until, at the end of each swing toward the cascade, he felt the torrent trying to tear his left hand loose.

  Hang on, Platt. You can do this.

  It seemed to take forever but his feet at last touched solid rock and the pendulum stopped swinging. With a grunt of relief he released the ladder and stepped away from it—onto a smooth, spray-slick slope that whipped his right foot from under him and sent him plunging into the stream.

  Above, either Ken or the guide yelled at him to be careful, and he was a little surprised that he could even hear the yell above the fall's thunder. Struggling to his feet after the swift current had swept him downstream a few yards, he regained the bank and frantically tried his flashlight.

  It still functioned, thank God.

  He made his way back along the stream's edge to the foot of the cascade and looked up. The men above called to him—this time he could not make out the words—and he waved to tell them he was all right. As he began his search for a message, their lights played around him, seeking to aid him.

  There was no scrap of paper with words on it. Nothing scratched on the cavern wall. And it had to be on this side if it existed at all; a man marooned here would never have tried wading through the torrent to reach the wall on the other side, where he would have had to stand in water, in any case, to scratch a message.

  Nothing. He repeated the search, going as far as fifty feet downstream from the cascade. Nothing at all. Of course, Sam might have tried to find a way out. Might have gone on downstream in search of another entrance, not knowing there were no others.

  Will returned to the cascade and signaled the men above with his light. "I'm going downstream!" The yell seemed loud enough to him despite the water's roar, but Ken Daniels shouted back, "What?"

  "I am going downstream to look for him!"

  "Be very careful!" McKoy warned. "Watch the sump!"

  It was different, plunging into that unknown darkness alone. He hadn't realized how much the company of Ken and McKoy had meant to him before. The thunder of the waterfall became fainter and fainter behind him as he picked his way through descending twists and turns of tunnel with the stream gurgling along beside him.

  His light, of course, kept sweeping the cavern floor for the message he sought but hoped not to find. Or—worse —for the body of a trapped man who in the end might simply have collapsed from exhaustion and died here.

  A sharply descending section of roof caused him to stop and kneel; he played his light ahead through an opening barely four feet high to see what he might be getting into. The tube was only a few yards long; then the roof sloped up again. But the probing light did something to a vast black stain on the walls beyond.

  The stain suddenly detached itself and hurtled down to pour through the tunnel, a hurricane flutter of wings and a mad symphony of squeakings accompanying it. As it reached him, he hit the cave floor and covered his face with his hands, gasping for breath in momentary panic.

  Then it was past him and he rose again, trembling from head to foot, and watched the bats until they vanished beyond the reach of his light. Shaking his head, he went on.

  And came to the barrier McKoy had warned about.

  A sump, he had called it. A deep, muddy pool which in this case filled the passage from wall to wall. No way around it; you had to go through. He shone his light ahead and could not see the end of the dark water, though the light was an excellent instrument with a long beam. Well, if he had to wade . . .

  But it was not simply wading. It was trying to keep himself erect on an invisible carpet of mud that would not stay still. For the first few yards the water deepened as he expected, rising slowly to his waist.
No problem unless it rose too high. Then the floor played tricks.

  His feet, moving ever so slowly because he sensed the risk, encountered hidden holes that sent him lurching off balance, ledges that turned an ankle when a foot came down on the edge of them. And still the sump continued.

  Then, ahead, the roof of the passage sloped down into the water and he recalled McKoy's warning that he would have to crawl through a low spot with his head submerged.

  Would Sam Norman have tried to do such a thing, not even knowing it could be done? No. Never. Any man who had not been told otherwise would have to believe the cave ended here. Those who had continued past this point had been dedicated spelunkers with special equipment.

  There was no point in trying to go farther. Sam was not here. Had probably never been here.

  He turned and started the slow, dangerous return journey through the sump, wishing he had eyes on his feet to detect the booby traps in the mud. Then he heard something he had not heard before in this eerie place—a snarl of swift water in the near distance.

  Halting, he played the flashlight's beam along the gliding surface of the pool. Nothing. The water scarcely moved. But the sound was there beyond reach of the beam. Louder now.

  Frightened, he pushed on again, this time too fast. The booby traps were waiting. A turned ankle brought a gasp of pain from his lips as he staggered off balance and barely caught himself.

  Platt, for God's sake take it easy! This is a long pool. You have to wade it, not run it. And that sound could be something that was there before. You just didn't hear it.

  But the sound was louder. Water growling, snarling, hissing like snakes in a pit.

  He stumbled on, holding his flashlight at arm's length to gain the last few inches of its range: Ten steps, twenty, thirty, his feet feeling their way through the pool-bottom carpet of thick mud. Then his light reached the end of the sump and he saw what was happening.

  Waldon McKoy's words exploded like thunder in his head. "If it rains hard outside while you're in here, this stream can rise without warning and trap you."

  Caution be damned now! Sucking in a breath, Will threw himself forward. His legs worked like pistons, arms flailing the air to help him maintain balance. Long before reaching the place where he could pull himself from the pool onto the open floor, he felt the rush of water against him, as if alive, trying to force him back. It caused him to stumble the last few steps with his arms out-flung and body pitched forward. When he emerged from the sump he was all but horizontal, crawling up the stone slope to a place where the stream could not reach him.

  But the stream was rising. He could see it creeping up the sloping floor, boiling over small boulders and climbing the sides of big ones. He could not stay here!

  The sound of racing water filled the passage now. He pushed on through it, afraid to run, but moving as fast as he dared. How high the water would rise would depend on the varying width of the passage. But this was a river cave. The passage was nowhere wide enough to spread a swollen stream out and pull its fangs.

  And he had seen Jamaican rains. He had seen five, six inches of rain fall in an hour to wash out substantial bridges and bring the island's earth slithering down mountainsides to bury country roads under tons of mud. At the thought of what a daylong rain might do to the stream now threatening him, he felt ice in his blood.

  But he was making progress. Despite the danger underfoot, he had reached the place where the roof dipped low and his light had dislodged the barrage of bats. If he could just get past the dip to the stretch of wider passage beyond . . .

  He could not.

  Swift, thundering water filled the entire opening now, boiling out at him as though the tube was an overfilled storm sewer. He knew it was only a few yards in length, but to crawl into it would be suicidal. He would not be able to travel a yard before being battered senseless and hurled back again to drown.

  Approaching to within ten feet of the tube, he stared at it with a feeling first of shock, then of helplessness. And then of terror, for the water hurtling toward him increased in strength and volume even as he watched it.

  He had stopped on a ledge wet only by spray. Now before he could step to a higher perch, the water leaped at him like a living thing and swirled about his shoes.

  How high would it climb? To the ceiling?

  He looked about him in near panic. The river filled half the passage here, leaving only four yards or so of sloping floor not yet inundated. The roof was a thing of dips and domes, in some places no more than eight feet above his head.

  Wading through white water at the edge of the rioting stream, he battled toward a part of the floor that rose steeply through a nightmare of boulders to the highest section of ceiling. Doggedly he climbed until exhaustion stopped him.

  Still only half way to the top he reached a formation that could have passed for a saddle on a stone horse, and sank onto it. Sore, winded, numb with terror, he knew he would have to rest before continuing the struggle.

  Relentlessly the water pursued him.

  20

  The Gèdés

  For the third time since learning her beloved Juan Cerrado was dead, Ima Williams stood in her nightgown, beside her bed, determined to avenge him. The hour was eleven P.M. and the door of her room was closed. Though Mr. Will's wife was in the house, she anticipated no intrusion.

  On the dresser to her right were an aluminum pie plate filled with flour, a box of white candles, and a crudely made earthenware jar.

  The jar was a govi from the altar of a voodoo hounfor in which she had served in Haiti, and had been a parting gift from her people when she left twelve years before. About ten inches high, it had an earthenware lid with a small knob in its center for a handle.

  One side of the jar bore blotches of white paint on a field of black. The other bore similar daubs of black on white. In an inch-wide band around the middle were assorted voodoo symbols: X's, a cross, horizontal bars with a vertical stripe through them.

  This particular govi held the spirit of Gèdé Nimbo, the god of death and a son of Manman Brigitte, to whom Ima now addressed herself.

  A certain ritual had to be followed. First she crossed herself by touching her right hand to her forehead, then to her breast, then to her shoulders. Next, taking the plate from the dresser, she proceeded to dribble the flour through her fingers onto the polished mahogany floor drawing a design similar to the one on the jar: a vèvè of the god of death, a magic symbol that would insure his presence and his attention.

  When the design was finished, she gently blew some of the flour from her fingertips to the four points of the compass before returning the plate to the dresser.

  Now from the dresser she took the govi and placed it on the floor in the center of the vêvè, where she ringed it with lighted candles set upright in small puddles of their own soft wax. Falling to her knees, she pressed her lips to the decorated floor as a gesture of respect. Then, rising, she turned to the bed.

  On the bed was a bowl-shaped iron cook pot of the kind used by most peasant families. Its contents had taken her most of her spare time that day to collect. It held lime juice and oil pressed from castor beans, and scrapings of soot from a kerosene lamp, and—the really difficult ingredient—parts of the gall bladder of a bull, for which she had had, to take a taxi to the village of Mollison to visit a butcher she knew.

  Now she lifted the iron pot from the bed and placed it on the flour drawing, next to the painted jar.

  Only one family of loa would be interested in such an offering. It was for the Gèdés. Not just for Gèdé Nimbo this time, but for all of them: L'Oraille of the thunder, Zeklai of the lightning, and the more than thirty others in the family of death.

  At last, with the ritual completed and everything in place, Ima reached to the bed for her cocomacaque stick and, facing the design on the floor, held the stick out in front of her at arm's length.

  "Manman Grande Brigitte, come and help me!" she cried out in a voice that filled the
room. "I have made a vèvè for your son Papa Gèdé and would make one for you too if I knew how. But I am only a simple hounsi, ignorant in some things, and you must not expect too much of me. Manman, listen to me, I beg you. The man I love is dead, murdered by that evil witch, Sister Merle. He must be avenged!"

  She paused, and the room filled with stillness except for the sputtering of one of the white candles. Fixing her gaze on the govi, she waited for it to move. And it did, though perhaps only because in leaning forward she shifted her weight on the floor and caused a loose board to quiver.

  "Take this, Manman!" she cried then, kneeling suddenly to slap the cocomacaque down in front of the jar. "Maitress Erzulie herself has blessed it for me! Take it and destroy that horrible woman, I beg you!"

  She rose. The candles flickered and the room was alive with their soft, shifting glow. The govi had stopped moving. With her hands at her sides, Ima awaited a reply.

  Suddenly her hands clenched and an expression of agony changed the shape of her face. She cried out in a strangled voice for help. With the heels of her hands pressed fiercely against her eyes and her fingers gouging her forehead, she staggered back against the bed.

  She began to tremble. Then to writhe. Then to moan. And her bare feet beat a tattoo against the mahogany footboard of the bed in a way that must have filled them with pain.

  For two or three minutes she struggled bravely to fight off the force that assailed her, but it would not be denied. Gradually her resistance weakened until her struggles ceased.

  The door opened then. Into the room came Will Platt's wife, in her nightgown. Skirting the vèvè and voodoo paraphernalia on the floor, she silently approached the bed and looked down at the unconscious woman lying there.

  For a long time she merely gazed at Ima in silence. Then with just the ghost of a sneer she said quietly, "Now you know which of you is more powerful, don't you? Foolish little creature, didn't you know I would warn Sister Merle that something like this would happen? And that the two of us, working together, would be able to stop you?"