Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural)

by Henry S. Whitehead

  There, at the sideboard, I did the honors for my friend Sergeant Kraft of the Christiansted Police.

  ‘The woman’s screaming awakened me, half an hour early,’ I began, invitingly, as soon as the sergeant had been duly refreshed and had said his final ‘skoal’, his eyes on mine in the Danish manner.

  ‘Yah, yah,’ returned Kraft, nodding a wise old head. ‘She tell me de Obiman fix her right, dis time!’

  This sounded promising. I waited for more.

  ‘But joost what it iss, I can not tell at all,’ continued Kraft, disappointingly, as though aware of the secretiveness which should animate a police sergeant.

  ‘Will you have – another, Herr Kraft?’ I suggested.

  The sergeant obliged, ending the ceremony with another ‘skoal’. This libation, as I had hoped, had the desired effect. I will spare Kraft’s accent, which could be cut with a knife. What he told me was that this woman, Elizabeth Aagaard, living in a village estate-cabin near the Central Factory, a few miles outside of Christiansted, had a son, one Cornelis McBean. The young fellow was what is locally known as a ‘gallows-bird,’ in short a gambler, thief, and general bad-egg. He had been in the police court several times for petty offenses, and in jail in the Christiansfort more than once.

  But, as Kraft expressed it, ‘it ain’ de thievin’ dat make de present difficoolty.’ No! it was that young Cornelis McBean had presumed beyond his station, and had committed the crime of falling in love with Estrella Collins, the daughter of a prosperous Black storekeeper in one of Christiansted’s side streets. Old Collins, utterly disapproving, and his words to McBean having had no effect whatever upon that stubborn lover, had, in short, employed the services of a papaloi to get rid of McBean.

  ‘But,’ I protested, ‘I know Old Collins. I understand, of course, how he might object to the attentions of such a young ne’er-do-well, but – a storekeeper like him, a comparatively rich man, to call in a papaloi – it seems – ’

  ‘Him Black!’ replied Sergeant Kraft with a little, significant gesture which made everything plain.

  ‘What,’ said I, after thinking a little, ‘what particular kind of ouanga has Collins had “put on” him?’

  The old sergeant gave me a quick glance at that word. It is a meaningful word. In Haiti it is very common. It means both talisman and amulet; something, that is, to attract, or something to repel, to defend the wearer. But here in Santa Cruz the magic of our Blacks is neither so clear-cut nor (as some imagine) quite so deadly as the magickings of the papalois and the hougans in Haiti’s infested hills with their thousands of vodu altars to Ougoun Badagaris, to Damballa, to the Snake of far, dreadful Guinea. Over even so much as the manufacture of ouangas I may not linger. One can not. The details –

  ‘It is, I think, a “sweat-ouanga”, ’ whispered Old Kraft, and went a shade lighter than his accustomed sunburned ivory. ‘De wooman allege,’ he continued, ‘that the boy sicken an’ die at noon – today. For that reason she is walk into de town early, because there is no help. She desire to bewail-like, dis trouble restin’ ’pon her head.’

  Kraft had given me all the information he possessed. He rated a reward. I approached the sideboard a third time.

  ‘You will excuse me again, Sergeant. It is a little early in the day for me. Still, “a man can’t walk on one leg!” ’

  The sergeant grinned at this Santa Crucian proverb which means that a final stirrup-cup is always justified, and remarked: ‘He should walk goot – on three!’ After this reference to the number of his early-morning refreshments, he accepted the last of these, boomed his ‘skoal’, and became a police sergeant once more.

  ‘Shall I take de wooman along, sir?’ he inquired as we reached the gallery where Elizabeth Aagaard still rocked and moaned and whispered to herself in her trouble.

  ‘Leave her here, please,’ I replied, ‘and I will see that Esmerelda finds her something to eat.’ The sergeant saluted and departed.

  ‘Gahd bless yo’, sar,’ murmured the poor soul. I left her there and went to the kitchen to drop a word in the sympathetic ear of my old cook. Then I started toward my belated shower-bath. It was nearly seven by now.

  After breakfast I inquired for Elizabeth Aagaard. She had had food and had delivered herself at length upon her sorrows to Esmerelda and the other house-servants. Esmerelda’s account established the belief that young McBean had been marked for death by one of the oldest and deadliest devices known to primitive barbarism; one which, as all Caucasians who know of it will assure you, derives its sole efficacy from the psychology of fear, that fear of the occult which has stultified the African’s mind through countless generations of warfare against the jungle and the dominance of his fetish-men and vodu priests.

  As is well known to all students of African ‘magic’, portions of the human body, such as hair, the clippings of nails, or even some garment long worn in contact with the body, is regarded as having a magical connection with the body itself and a corresponding influence upon it. A portion of the shirt which has been worn next the body and which has absorbed perspiration is especially highly regarded as material for the making of a protective charm or amulet, as well as for its opposite, planted against a person for the purpose of doing him harm. Blood, etc., could be included in this weird category.

  In the case of young Cornelis McBean, this is what had been done. The papaloi had managed to get hold of one of Cornelis’ shirts. In this he had dressed the recently buried body of an aged negro who had died a few days before, of senility. This shirt, after it had been in the coffin for three days and nights, had been cunningly put back for Cornelis to find and wear again. It had been, supposedly, mislaid. Young McBean, finding it in his mother’s cabin, had worn it again.

  And, as if this, in itself enough to cause his death from sheer terror as soon as he knew of it, was not sufficient, it had just come to the knowledge of the mother and son by the curious African method known as the Grapevine Route, that a small ouanga, made up of some of Cornelis’ nail-parings, stubble of a week’s beard collected from discarded lather after shaving, various other portions of his exterior personality, had been ‘fixed’ by the Christiansted papaloi, and ‘buried against him’.

  This meant that unless the ouanga could be discovered and dug up and burned, he would die at noon. As he had learned of the ‘burying’ of the ouanga only the evening before, and as the Island of Santa Cruz has an area of more than eighty square miles, there was, perhaps, one chance in some hundred trillion that he could find the ouanga, disinter it, and render it harmless by burning. Taking into consideration that his ancestors for countless eons had given their full and firm belief to this method of murder by mental process, it looked as though young Cornelis McBean, ne’er-do-well, Black island gallow’s-bird, aspiring admirer of a young negress somewhat beyond his station in life according to African West Indian caste systems, was doomed to pass out on the stroke of twelve that day.

  That, with an infinitude of detail, was the substance of the story of Elizabeth Aagaard.

  I sat and looked at her, quiet and humble now, no longer the screaming fury she had appeared to be at that morning’s crack of dawn. And as I looked at the poor soul, with the dumb, distressed motherhood in her dim eyes from which the unchecked tears ran down her coal-black face, it came to me that I wanted to help; that this thing was outrageous; wicked with a wickedness far surpassing the ordinary sinfulness of ordinary people. I did not want to sit by, as it were, and allow the unknown McBean to pass out at the behest of a paid rascal of a papaloi merely because unctuous Old Collins had decided on that method for his exit from this life – a matter involving, perhaps fifteen dollars’ fee to the witch-doctor; the collection and burial of some bits of offal somewhere on Santa Cruz.

  I could imagine the young Black fellow, livid with a nameless fear, a complex of ancient, inherited, unreasonable dreads, shivering, cowering, sickened to his dim soul by what lay ahead of him, three hours away when twelve should strike from the Christia
nsfort clock in the old tower by the harbor; writhing helplessly in his mind before the approach of the ghastly doom which he had brought upon himself because he had happened to fall in love with brown Estrella Collins, whose sleek brown father carried a collection-plate every Sunday up and down the aisle of his place of worship!

  There was an element of absurdity in it all, now that I was actually sitting here looking at McBean’s mother. She had given up now, it appeared, was resigned to the fate of her only son. ‘Him Black!’ Old Kraft had remarked.

  That thought of the collection-plate in Old Collins’ pudgy, storekeeper’s hands, reminded me of something.

  ‘What is your church, Elizabeth?’ I inquired suddenly.

  ‘Me English Choorch, sar – de boy also. Him make great shandramadan, sar, him gamble an’ perhaps a tief, but him one-time communicant, sar.’

  An inspiration came to me then. Perhaps I could prevail upon one of the English Church clergy to help. It was, when one came down to the brass tacks of the situation, a question of belief. A similar ouanga, ‘buried against’ me, would have no effect whatever, because to me, such a means of getting rid of a person was merely the height of absurdity, like the charm-killing of the Polynesians by making them look at their reflection in a gourd of water and then shaking the gourd and so destroying the image! Perhaps, if Elizabeth and her son could be persuaded to do their parts . . . I spoke long and earnestly to Elizabeth.

  At the end of my speech, which had emphasized the superior power of Divinity when compared to even the most powerful of the African fetishes, even the dreaded snake himself, Elizabeth, her hopes somewhat aroused, I imagined, took her departure, and I jumped into my car and ran up the hill toward the English Church rectory.

  Father Richardson, the pastor, himself a West Indian born, was at home. To him I explained the case. When I had ended –

  ‘I am obliged to you, Mr Canevin,’ said the clergyman. ‘If only they would realize – er – precisely what you told the woman; that Divinity is infinitely more powerful than their beliefs! I will accompany you, at once. It is, really, the release, perhaps, of a human soul. And they come to us clergy over such things as the theft of a couple of coconuts!’

  Father Richardson left me, came back in two minutes with a black bag, and we started for Elizabeth Aagaard’s village along a lovely shore road by the gleaming, placid, blue Caribbean.

  The negro estate-village was surprisingly quiet when we arrived. The clergyman got out at Elizabeth’s cabin, and I drove the car out of the way, off the road into rank guinea-grass. I saw Father Richardson, a commanding, tall figure, austere in his long, black cassock, striding in at the cabin door. I followed, and got inside just in time to witness a strange performance.

  The Black boy, livid and seeming shrunken with terror, cowered under a thin blanket on a small iron bedstead. Over him towered the clergyman, and just as I came in, he stooped and with a small, sharp pocket-knife cut something loose from the boy’s neck and flung it contemptuously on the hard-earth floor of the cabin. It landed just at my feet and I looked at it curiously. It was a small black bag, of some kind of cotton material, with a tuft of black cock’s feathers at its top which was bound around with many windings of bright red thread. The whole thing was about the size of an egg. I recognized it as a protective amulet.

  His teeth chattering, the cold fear of death upon him, the Black boy protested in the guttural Creole. The clergyman answered him gravely.

  ‘There can be no half-way measures, Cornelis. When a person asks God for His help, he must put away everything else.’ A mutter of assent came from the woman, who was arranging a small table with a candle in the corner of the cabin.

  From his black bag Father Richardson now took a small bottle with a sprinkler arrangement at its top, and from this he cast a shower of drops upon the ouanga charm lying on the floor. Then he proceeded to sprinkle the whole cabin with this holy water, ending with Elizabeth, myself, and finally, the boy on the bed. As the water touched his face the boy winced visibly and shuddered; and suddenly it came over me that here was a strange matter; again, I dare say, a matter of belief. The change from the supposed protection of the charm which the priest had cut away from his neck and contemptuously tossed away, to the prescribed method of the Church must have been, somehow, and in some obscure mental fashion, a very striking one to the young fellow.

  The bottle went back into the bag and now Father Richardson was speaking to the boy on the bed.

  ‘God is intervening for you, my child, and – God’s power is supreme over all things, visible and invisible. He holds all in the hollow of His hand. He will now put away your fear, and take this weight from your soul, and you shall live. You must now do your part, if you would be fortified by the Sacrament. You just purify your soul. Penance first. Then – ’

  The boy, now appreciably calmer, nodded his head, and the priest motioned me out, including the woman in his gesture. I opened the cabin door and stepped out, closely followed by Elizabeth Aagaard. I left her, twenty paces from her cabin, wringing her hands, her lips murmuring in prayer, while I went and sat in my car.

  Ten minutes later the cabin door opened and the priest beckoned us within. The boy lay quiet now, and Father Richardson was engaged in repacking his black bag. He turned to me: ‘Good-bye, and – thank you. It was very good of you to bring me.’

  ‘But – aren’t you coming?’

  ‘No’ – this reflectively. ‘No – I must see him through.’ He glanced at his wrist-watch. ‘It is eleven-fifteen now. It was at noon you said – ’

  ‘I’m staying with you, then,’ said I, and sat down on a chair in the far corner of the little cabin room.

  The priest stood by the bedside, looking down at the Black boy, his back to me. The woman was, apparently, praying earnestly to herself in another corner, out of the way. The priest stooped and took the limp hand and wrist in his large, firm white hands, and counted the pulse, glancing at his watch. Then he came and sat beside me.

  ‘Half an hour!’ he murmured.

  The Black woman, Elizabeth, prayed without a sound in her corner on the hard, earth floor, where she knelt, rigidly. We sat, without conversation, for a long twenty minutes during which the sense of strain in the cabin became more and more apparent to me.

  Abruptly the boy’s mouth fell open. The priest sprang toward him, seized and chafed the dull-black hands. The boy’s head turned on the pillow and his jaws came together again, his eyelids fluttering. Then a slight spasm, perceptible through the light covering, ran through him, and, breathing a few times deeply, he resumed his coma-like sleep. The priest now remained beside him. I counted off the minutes to noon. Nine – eight – seven – at least, three minutes before noon. When I had got that far I heard the priest’s deep, monotonous voice reciting in a low tone. Listening, I caught his words here and there. He held the boy’s hand while the words rolled out low and impressively.

  ‘ . . . to withstand and overcome all assaults of thine adversary . . . unto thee ghostly strength . . . and that he nowise prevail against thee.’ Then, dropping a note, to my surprise, the clerical voice of this most Anglican of clergymen began to declaim the words of an older liturgical language: ‘ . . . et effugiat atque discedat omnis phantasia et nequitia . . . vel versutia diabolicae fraudis omnisque spiritus immundis adjuratis . . . ’

  The words, gaining in volume with the priest’s earnestness, rolled out now. I saw that we were on the very verge of noon, and, looking back to the bed from my glance at my watch, I saw convulsion after convulsion shake the thin body on the bed. Then the cabin itself began to tremble in a sudden wind that had sprung up from nowhere. The dry palm fronds lashed back and forth outside and the whistle of the wind blew under the crazily hung door. The muslin curtain of the small window suddenly billowed like a sail. Then, suddenly, the harsh voice of the Black boy.

  ‘Damballa!’ it said, clearly, and moaned.

  Damballa is one of the Greater Mysteries of the vodu worship. I
shuddered in spite of myself.

  But now higher, more commanding, came the voice of Father Richardson, positively intoning now – great sentences of Power, formulas interposed, as he himself stood, interposed, between the feeble Black boy and the Powers of Evil which seemed to seek him out for their own fell ends. The priest seemed to stretch a mantle of mystic protection over the grovelling, writhing body.

  The mother lay prone on the dirt floor, now, her arms stretched out crosslike – the last, most abject gesture of supplication of which humanity is physically capable. As I glanced down at her I saw, in the extreme corner of the little room, something oddly shaped projecting from a pile of discarded garments.

  It was now exactly noon. As I looked carefully at my watch, the distant stroke of the Angelus came resoundingly from the heavy bell of St John’s Church. Father Richardson ceased his recitation, laid back the boys hand on the coverlid, and began the Angelus. I stood up at this, and, as he finished, I plucked his sleeve. The wind, curiously enough, was gone, utterly. Only the noon sun beat down suffocatingly on the iron roof of the frail cabin. Father Richardson looked at me inquiringly. I pointed to that corner, under the pile of clothes. He walked to the corner, stooped, and drew out a crude wooden image of a snake. He glanced accusingly at Elizabeth, who grovelled afresh.

  ‘Take it up, Elizabeth,’ commanded Father Richardson, ‘break it in two, and throw it out of the doorway.’

  The woman crawled to the corner, lifted the thing, snapped it in two, and then, rising, her face gray with fear, opened the cabin door and threw out the pieces. We went back to the bedside, where the boy breathed quietly now. The priest shook him. He opened swimming eyes, eyes like a drunken man’s. He goggled stupidly at us.

  ‘You are alive – by the mercy of God,’ said the priest, severely. ‘Come now, get up! It is well past noon. Here! Mr Canevin will show you his watch. You are not dead. Let this be a lesson to you to leave alone what God has put outside your knowledge.’