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

by Henry S. Whitehead

Knudsen and his prisoner – handcuffed fast between two gendarmes who sat with him in the lower gallery on three adjacent chairs from eight forty-five until the punctual arrival of Macartney and Hansen on the stroke of nine – were the first to arrive. Knudsen and I sat together in my office waiting for the other two men in the interim. Knudsen had a glass or two of rum, but I excused myself from joining him in this refreshment.

  Upon the arrival of Macartney and his son-in-law Cornelis Hansen, we dismissed the gendarmes, Knudsen instructing them to wait at the farther end of the inner gallery, and took the prisoner into the office where he was provided with a chair. We sat around and looked at him.

  This man, rather small and very black, was decently clothed and, except for an extremely villainous expression about the eyes, looked commonplace enough. Yet a mere word of direction from him into the ear of my butler had caused that faithful old servitor of our family for more than thirty years utterly to refuse to obey my orders and dispose of the filthy beast stabled in my hall!

  I had sent all the servants home, not even retaining Herman. We had thus the entire house to ourselves. Knudsen nodded to me as soon as we had bestowed ourselves, and I addressed the witch-doctor.

  ‘Joseph,’ said I, ‘we know that you were here in this house with Mr Otto Andreas, and that you used my hall for some of your incantations. This, of course, places you outside the law on several counts. The code forbids the practice of obeah in the Danish West Indies, and you were, plainly, breaking that law. Also, since you have been doing so here in my house, I am concerned in the matter. I have talked the affair over with these gentlemen and, I will be frank with you, there is some of it which we fail to understand; in particular why I discovered a beast stabled in my residence which, as I understand it, is some of your doings. We have brought you here, therefore, to hear your story. If you will reply clearly and fully to what we desire to ask you, Herr Knudsen assures me that you will not be thrown into gaol in the fort, nor prosecuted. If you refuse, then the law shall take its course in this case.

  ‘I ask you, therefore, to explain to us, fully, what this animal was doing in my hall; also what part Mr Otto Andreas had in the affair. Those are the two matters on which we desire to have the fullest information.’

  Malling, this black fellow simply refused to speak. Nothing, not a word, not a syllable, could we get out of him. Macartney tried him, Mr Hansen spoke to him; finally Knudsen, who had waited without saying anything, put in his word.

  ‘If you refuse to reply to the two questions,’ said he, ‘I shall take steps to make you speak.’

  That was all. It occupied, in all, more than half an hour. At any rate, my watch showed it nearly a quarter before ten when we paused, and Macartney and Hansen and I looked at each other, baffled; apparently we could get no satisfaction out of this wretch. Then, in the pause which had ensued, Knudsen, the policemaster, addressed me.

  ‘Have I your permission to send my men into your kitchen?’ he asked in his curt manner. I bowed. ‘Anything you desire, Herr Knudsen,’ I replied, and Knudsen rose and walked out into the inner gallery, and through the half open door of the office we could hear him saying something to his gendarmes. Then he returned and sat, silently, looking at the black fellow who now, for the first time, appeared somewhat moved. He showed this only by a slight and characteristic rolling of his eyeballs. Otherwise he gave no more sign of communicativeness than he had vouchsafed previously.

  We sat thus, waiting, until a few minutes after ten o’clock, Knudsen and the black fellow quite silent, the others of us conversing slightly among ourselves. Then, at eight minutes past ten, one of the gendarmes knocked at the door and handed in to Knudsen, who had arisen to open to this summons, a burning charcoal pot and the bayonets from the two men’s rifles which had been detached, doubtless by their officer’s command. I sensed, at this, something extremely unpleasant. I knew Knudsen’s well earned reputation for downrightness. He is, as you are aware, one of those ex-non-commissioned officers of the Danish army who, as a professional handler of men, takes no stupidness from criminals or others with whom his profession causes him to deal.

  He set the charcoal pot on the middle of the floor of my office, thrust the two bayonets, points inward, directly within the bed of glowing coals and, turning to the man who had waited at the door, commanded: ‘Bring Larsen here, Krafft, and bind this fellow with his hands behind him and his feet trussed together.’

  The policemaster spoke in Danish which, I suppose, the black fellow did not understand. Yet I could perceive him wince at the words, which plainly had to do with his subsequent treatment, and his dark face took on that grayish shade which is a Negro’s paling.

  Almost at once the two gendarmes were at the door again. The fellow addressed as Krafft saluted and said – ‘We have no rope, Herr Commandant.’

  I remembered at that the bull handler’s rope which Macartney’s man, when carried out for his trip to the hospital, had left behind him. I recalled it as it lay on the floor near that horried platform, as I had myself left the room after the destruction of the animal. No one had been in the hall since that time, some seven hours ago.

  ‘Pardon, Herr Knudsen,’ said I, rising. ‘If you will send one of these men with me, I will provide him with a rope.’

  Knudsen spoke to Krafft, who saluted once more and, stepping aside for me to pass out into the inner gallery, followed me a pace behind while I walked along it toward the doorway leading into the hall.

  Malling, my friend, I hesitate to go on; yet, go on I must if I am to make it clear to you, after this long rigmarole which I have already, by nearly a whole day’s steady composition, succeeded in setting out for your perusal and understanding. I will try to set it down, the dreadful thing, the incredible horror which blasted my sight and will invade my suffering mind until death closes my eyes for the last time on this earth; my real and sufficient reason for leaving this island where I have lived all my life, which I love as my native land, where all my friends live.

  Attend, then, friend Malling, to what I must, perforce, set out on this paper, if you are to understand.

  I reached the door, throwing it open, which let out upon us more of that wretched odor which was, of course, all through the house despite opened windows. Lighting a match, I set alight the nearest lamp, a standing, brass mounted affair, which stands quite near the doorway beside my mother’s Broadwood pianoforte.

  By this light we proceeded, the gendarme Krafft and I, along the room toward the other end where the platform still stood, where the carcass of the animal hung, its head over the edge, awaiting the very early morning when old Herman, according to my orders, was, with the assistance of two laborers he was to secure, to remove it and set about the cleaning of the room immediately afterward.

  Two-thirds of the way along the room I paused and, pointing in the general direction to where it lay, on the mahogany floor, told Krafft that he would find the rope somewhere near the place I indicated. I caught his silent salute with the corner of my eye as I paused to light another standing lamp, since the light from the first, dimmed by its large ornamental shade, left us, at this point, in semi-darkness and the mantelpiece and platform above it in thick darkness. I had just turned down the circular wick of this second lamp when I heard Krafft’s scream and, dropping the box of matches I held upon the floor, wheeled just in time to see him, his hands above his head in a gesture of abandoned horror, sink limply to the floor not five paces from the front of that platform.

  I peered toward him, my eyes for the instant slightly dazzled from having been close to the flame of the newly lighted lamp, and then, Malling – then, my friend, I saw what he had seen; what had set this tough-grained manhandler of a policeman to screaming like a frightened woman, and himself hurtling to the floor in an uncontrollable spasm of stark, unmitigated terror. And as I saw, and felt the room go around, and envisaged the conviction that this was the end of life – as I myself sank, helpless with the fearsome horror of that eldritch unca
nniness, toward the floor, the light fading from my consciousness in the onset of a merciful oblivion, I heard behind me, the agitated voices of Knudsen and Macartney and young Mr Hansen as they, summoned by Krafft’s scream, crowded into the hall through the doorway. I had seen, dimly in that not too good illumination from the two standing oil lamps, not the head of the bullock I had destroyed, but – the head and shoulders of my half-brother Otto Andreas: a great blackened hole in his forehead; and the blood dried on his inverted face; as he hung, stark now, and ghastly lifeless from over the edge of the voodoo platform . . .

  I awakened in my office surrounded by my acquaintances, a drizzle of cold water upon my face and neck, and the taste of brandy in my mouth puckering my lips. I was on my back on the floor and, looking up, I perceived that the gendarme, Larsen, stood over the still seated black fellow, his pistol held near the back of the man’s head. As I sat up, assisted by young Mr Hansen, Knudsen turned away from the group and, taking a now glowing bayonet out of the charcoal pot with his gloved hand, curtly ordered Larsen to turn the Negro out of his chair and stretch him, bound as I perceived, according to orders, upon the floor.

  The anticipation sickened me slightly, and I closed my eyes; but I had determined not to interfere with Knudsen, who knew his own methods and was, after all, here upon my own request to force from this villain the confession which should clear up the mysteries we had vainly propounded to him.

  I was soon in my chair, pretty well restored by the vigorous measures which had been taken with me, and able to hear what Knudsen was saying to the supine prisoner. I saw, too, the pale and stricken face of Krafft, just outside the doorway. He too, it appeared, had recovered.

  I will abbreviate a very ugly matter, an affair which sickened me to the heart; which was, nevertheless, necessary as procedure if we were to secure the information we desired.

  In short, the black fellow, even in his present distressful condition, refused, point blank, to reveal what we had inquired of him, and Knudsen, with his own hand, tore open his shirt and applied the cherry-red bayonet to his skin. A horrid smell of scorched flesh made itself apparent at once, and I closed my eyes, sick at the dreadful sight. The Negro screamed with the unbearable pain, but thereafter clamped his thick lips and shook his head against Knudsen’s repeated orders to answer the questions.

  Then Knudsen put the bayonet back, thrusting it well into the glowing charcoal, and took out the other one. He stood with it in his hand above the Negro. He addressed him, in his usual curt, cold and hard tones.

  ‘My man, I warn you seriously. I make you sensible that you will not leave this house alive. I shall go over your entire body, with these, unless you reply to the questions you have been asked.’

  With the conclusion of this warning speech, he abruptly pressed the flat of the bayonet across the Negro’s abdomen, and after an anguished howl of pain, Pap’ Joseph capitulated. He nodded his head and writhed out of twisted lips his consent.

  He was at once lifted back into the chair by the two gendarmes, and then, gasping, his eyes rolling in a mental anguish plainly greater than that of his grievous bodily hurts, he told us . . .

  It appears that there are two ‘supreme offerings’ in the dreadful worship of these voodooists; one the affair of a human sacrifice which they name ‘the goat without horns’, and which, according to our informant, was never put into practice in these islands; and the second, their ceremony which they call the ‘baptism’. This last, it was, which had been perpetrated in my house! And – one could hardly guess it, even at this stage of this narrative of mine for your private eye, friend Malling – it was Otto Andreas who was the candidate!

  I should, perhaps, have mentioned that his body, supposedly buried a day and a half before, and which had, to my distraction and that of the man Krafft, been seen hanging over the edge of the sacrificial platform, had been taken down and now lay, decently disposed by Knudsen and Larsen along four chairs in the hall during the short period when Macartney and Hansen had been engaged in reviving me and bringing me back to my office. Earth and splinters of pitch pine were upon the body.

  The culmination of that foul rite which they impiously call the baptism is the sacrifice of an animal; sometimes a goat, sometimes a young bull. In this case the bull had been selected.

  Before the knife is drawn across the throat of the animal, however, the candidate for the baptism, on hands and knees, and stripped naked as the hour he was born, must ‘confront’ the goat or the bull. Yes, Malling, as I gathered it from those twisted, pain-galled lips of that black fiend, the two, the candidate and the sacrificial animal, gaze for a long period into each other’s eyes; the belief being that in this way the two, for the time being, exchange, as it were, their personalities! It seems incredible that it should be believed, yet such is what he assured us of.

  In the ordinary course, the officiating priest having determined that this alleged exchange of personalities had indeed taken place, the animal is abruptly killed, its throat being cut across with a sharpened machete or canebill. At this, the personality of the human being retransfers itself to its proper abode; yet some modicum of it is supposed to remain in the animal, and this on the animal’s death, passes out of it and into the custody of the thing they name the Guinea Snake, which is the ultimate object of their nefarious devotions, as a sacrifice, given up by the candidate thereto.

  Such, as it was explained to us, is the underlying principle of a voodooist’s baptism.

  That is how it would have occurred in the case of Otto Andreas, if there had not been a kind of unexpected hitch. Naturally, one would gather, the nervous and mental strain upon such a candidate would be an extremely severe one. In the case of my half-brother it proved too severe.

  Otto Andreas had dropped dead, doubtless from heart failure induced by the strain of it all, there on the platform, just at the very moment before Pap’ Joseph himself, as he assured us, who was officiating at the baptism, was to slaughter the bull.

  The personalities, as the voodooists believed, were at that moment entirely interchanged. In other words, lacking the release and relocation of these, which would have come at the knife stroke across the bullock’s throat, the ‘soul’ of the sacrificial animal died at the moment of Otto Andreas’ unexpected death, and – the soul of Otto Andreas remained in the bullock.

  ‘An’ so, sar,’ finished Pap’ Joseph, with a devilish leer in his eyes, and addressing me, ‘yo’ is destroy the life of yo’ bruddah, sar, when yo’ is so hasty as to shoot de bull!’

  The witch-doctor, it transpired from a portion of this account, had given old Herman the orders – not knowing of my imminent return home – to keep the bullock in the hall, because he was ‘making magic’ to get the ‘souls’ exchanged back again! It had, of course, been necessary to bury Otto Andreas’ body. But we were assured, if the bullock had been left alone, it would, by now, have been changed back into Otto Andreas, a process which, the witch-doctor gravely assured us, required not only a great skill in magicking like his own, but considerable time!

  There was only one thing to be done that night. Pap’ Joseph was sent back to the Christiansfort, with instructions that he was to be liberated the following morning at six o’clock. Then the four of us, having placed a blanket about the body of Otto Andreas, carried it among us to the cemetery. Arrived there, with the two spades we had fetched along, Hansen and Knudsen set to work to dig up the coffin. It was moonlight and, of course, at that hour of the night no one was in or even near the cemetery.

  The earth, even for a newly made grave, was unusually loose, it seemed to all of us. A spade struck wood, about four feet down. Macartney spelled his son-in-law. I offered to do the same for Knudsen, but he refused. Within a minute he said in a puzzled tone – ‘What is this!’

  He squatted down in the grave and with his gloved hands threw up a mass of soft earth about something he had discovered.

  Malling, they had disinterred a smashed coffin, a coffin burst out of semblance to
the narrow box which is designed to be the last housing place of a human form. And no wonder it had been burst asunder, from the monstrous thing which came partially to light. We did not wholly uncover what he had discovered down there under the surface of the holy ground. There was no need, Malling.

  It had been the stiff, unyielding, bony limb of a four-legged horned animal, from which Knudsen had thrown up the loose earth. A bullock was buried there, where some thirty-six hours previously men had interred the body of my late half-brother Otto Andreas Gannett. Pap’ Joseph, it appeared, under that direful compulsion to which he had so reluctantly yielded, had told us the truth.

  We hastily enlarged the grave sufficiently to receive the body we had brought with us and, leaving a higher mound than had met us on our arrival, though beaten down with the flats of the spades, we came back swiftly and in silence to my house and there, as brother Freemasons, swore that, save for this information to you, our fellow brother Freemason, which I specified as an exception, we would none of us – and the others during the term of my life – reveal anything of what we had heard to any man. Knudsen answered for his gendarmes and from the reputation he bears as a disciplinarian, I have little fear that either of them will ever mention what part of it all they were privileged to witness.

  This will serve, then, my friend, to account to you for why I am leaving Santa Cruz and going to Scotland whence our family came here four generations ago, when these islands were for the first time opened to the settlement of planters other than natives of Denmark through the generosity of the Danish government. I can not stay in this cursed house where such things as confound man’s understanding have taken place; and so I place my property in your kind and efficient hands, my friend Malling, in the belief that I have made my reasons for such a decision clear.

  I am taking with me to Scotland my faithful old servant Herman. I would not leave him here to endure the tender mercies of that pestiferous scoundrel Pap’ Joseph, whose orders, out of faithfulness to me, he broke. One cannot tell what would happen to the poor old fellow if I were so inconsiderate.