The Clearing

by Dan Newman

  Nate held his gaze for a moment, and then shook his head dismissively. “Darkness…? What the fuck, Smiley.” Nate knew about Obeah. As a kid, he remembered people talking about it—the Caribbean version of African black magic. Island voodoo. Nate’s parents had seen its power firsthand, when the gardener they employed got sick, lost forty pounds and died in a matter of two weeks—all because he believed in the power of Obeah, and in the power of the Obeah man who had put the curse, the spell—whatever it was—upon him. The incredible power of suggestion, his father had called it. “Come on, I don’t believe in that shit,” said Nate.

  “No matter. You don’t have to believe.”

  Nate took another tentative sip of water and felt a curdling in his stomach. “I don’t think the antibiotics are kicking in yet,” he said, partly to himself and partly to Smiley. “I think I’m running a bit of a fever, too.”

  “Nate, it inside you, man. Dis sickness you feel, it—”

  Nate cut him off in a burst of agitation. “Give it a rest, Smiley! This nice cut I got from the Thompson Twins is a little infected—that’s all. Enough with the hocus-pocus.”

  Smiley understood people. He understood when to push someone who was about to tell him what he wanted to know, and he knew when to leave it well enough alone. The large black man sat back in his seat and folded his arms. “All right, all right, Nate,” he said, and blew out a stream of air to punctuate the subject change. “So, what are you doing out here in Dennery?”

  Nate was about to answer when his mind began reshuffling his thoughts. He furrowed his brow deeply. “What am I doing here? What are you doing here, Smiley? You told me to get lost for twenty-four hours, and that’s what I’ve been doing. So how is it that you’re here, on the other side of the island? How did you know I was here?”

  Smiley laughed glibly. “Nate, you forget I am a reporter. Nothing happens that I—”

  “Oh cut the bullshit, Smiley. Don’t give me that nothing happens on my island without me knowing crap.” Nate’s head was throbbing with a new ferocity now; it made him nauseous and supremely agitated. “How did you know where to find me? And why the fuck are you here pounding on my door wondering if I’m okay? You know, Smiley, it occurs to me that all this black magic shit started right after meeting you. Some asshole waves a bloody cow foot in my face, some other asshole throws a dead chicken into my room and, lo and behold, you’re there. Do you see the connection I’m making here? Do you? Explain that to me, Smiley. I’d really like to hear your thoughts.”

  The round man with the kind face just sat and absorbed the ire like an understanding parent waiting out a tantrum. Nate finished his tirade and dropped his head back into waiting hands.

  “You dun now? You finish?” asked Smiley patiently.

  Nate answered with his head still in his hands. “Yeah, I’m finished.”

  “Aright, then. For now, don’t worry ’bout how I know what I know. Jus’ believe me when I say I be your friend, and as your friend you must listen to me. Fair?”

  “How’d you find me?” It was a demand, not a question.

  “De car. Someone called the paper to report it.”

  “What the fu—?”

  Smiley lifted his hand as if to silence a child. “Let me finish. The car I loaned you—dats a company car. It belong to the paper and it have a sticker on the bumper with the phone number and it says The Word: Call us when news happens. The people see it outside here and they call de paper. De paper call me.”

  Nate was still bristling. “Why would they call? It’s a car…”

  “De car has been vandalized. Considerably. You’ll see when we leave, all right?”

  Nate took a deep breath and clenched his jaw. His head was pounding and his gut was churning an evil brew. He tried to trim himself, get back to an even keel. Finally, he nodded once. “Okay.”

  “Good, fine,” he said. “Now it be my turn. Firs’ off: Why you here, man?”

  “You know why.”

  “I know what you tell me, but I don’t think dat’s de truth, at least not de whole truth.”

  “Like I said before, because you wanted me to come back.”

  “Dat’s partly true, for sure. But not de whole ’ting. Right?”

  “Smiley, my head is about to split in two. What are you getting at?”

  “You here on de island, and here in Dennery because you on your way to Ti Fenwe.”

  Nate lifted his head and looked at Smiley. “Yes. That’s right. But it’s just—”

  Now it was Smiley’s time to get angry. “Bloodclat man!” he cursed. “You don’t have time for dis kind of childishness! You headed to de damn grave, man!”

  “Smiley, the Obeah stuff doesn’t…”

  “Dat only part of you problem!” Smiley took a breath and regained his calm. “We need to get you back to Castries, back to Ma Joop, and then back to your worl’. Off de island. You hear me? You need to go home.”

  Nate tried to resist. “It’s just some assholes trying to scare me,” he said, but it didn’t sound convincing—even to himself. In his gut, a warm stew brewed and his head felt stuffed with feathers.

  Smiley leaned in and put his face mere inches from Nate’s. “There is more I need to tell you, man. Le’ we get in de car and go—I will tell you on de way and you can decide what you want do. Please, Nate. Trust me on dis…”

  In the short time Nate had known Smiley, he’d never seen him so compelling. “Okay,” he said meekly, and the resignation seemed to steal away any last trace of strength that he had. Nate slumped in his chair, and would have slid under the table had Smiley not reached out and seized him.

  Working his way around to the other side of the table without letting go of his grip, Smiley easily hoisted the man and walked him out to the blue Sigma.

  Nate roused himself as they crossed the courtyard. “What about your car?” he asked weakly. “It’s out front.”

  “Don’t worry ’bout de car—I’ll fetch it another time.”

  Smiley helped Nate into the back seat. He immediately laid back and closed his eyes. Smiley quickly collected Nate’s things from the room and tossed them into the trunk of the Sigma. He started the car and rounded the restaurant, stopping briefly, just long enough to see the group of people that had gathered around the white Honda Nate had been driving. They were careful not to get too close, but it was clear they were drawn inescapably to the scene. Smiley turned the blue Sigma onto the main road, moving slowly to navigate the impressive collection of potholes, and passed directly alongside the white Honda.

  The car’s windshield had been drenched with a red paste. It wasn’t blood, but something thicker, something that allowed words to be scrawled in it. On the roof was a pair of dead birds, much like the one Nate had found in his room, and more of the red paste had been sloshed liberally around the bodywork. The net effect was that the car looked like it was bleeding, and where the paste had run thinner it had streaked down the sides and pooled on the ground.

  “What does it mean,” Nate asked quietly from the back seat. “What does it mean, those words on the windshield?” His voice was hollow, far off.

  “It says, Fè défini. It means to put to death.”

  23

  It ran through the blackness with the gait of a very short and stocky man, thump, thump, thumping over the hardwood planking of the main hall at Ti Fenwe. In Nate’s mind he could see the dark shape: unshod, menacing, and hunched over. The bedroom itself was dark and silent, broken only by the sound of Vincent snoring lightly across the room and the other boys’ heavy breaths of sleep. Nate’s ears were so focused on listening for the footsteps they hurt, and if it weren’t for the terror that seized him like a gnarled old claw about his throat, he would have screamed out to the others.

  Instead he stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, and listened as the short staccato of footfalls pounded their way up the stairs to the landing, paused, then climbed the next set to the attic. Nate remembered the inky, lightless staircase,
and his having been there only hours before made the horror that much more intense. The thing that wandered through the dark passages of Ti Fenwe stopped for a moment, and Nate’s ears strained harder still to hear it. Then it stepped into the attic and Nate heard just two footfalls on the hardwood. It paused again, presumably looking around, weighing its options, perhaps smelling the stale air around it. Nate was sick with fear, and looked around again to see if anyone else had woken.

  To his left, he could see Pip. He was awake, Nate was sure of it, but the young Dutch boy had not stirred. He lay stiffly in his bed staring wildly at the ceiling above. Seeing Pip’s eyes open was enough to give him the courage to speak. “Pip,” he whispered frantically. “Pip! Did you hear that?”

  Pip, however, was in a state of near shock and unable to answer. All he could do was move his eyes. He flicked them at Nate and then back at the ceiling, knowing that the inch of wood in the ceiling was all that separated them from the beast roaming in the attic above.

  And then the footfalls began again, this time shuffling more, sliding across the wooden floorboards and displacing the nutmegs that had been laid there to dry. They let out a rattle by their thousands, a hollow forlorn sound that ebbed and flowed as the mace-wrapped orbs turned over and over again, slowly rolling to a stop. The sound came in waves with each footfall, and the two boys moved their eyes along the ceiling, tracking the sound, convinced that they could see the woodwork bowing downward slightly with every step. It began to move with more purpose, as if it had decided where it was going, and it broke out into something close to a run, sending the nutmegs into a rattling, cackling chorus. It passed directly over the boys, and they instinctively pressed themselves deeper into their mattresses, putting as much distance between themselves and the thing above them as they could. Pip could contain himself no more, and let out a short, high pitched squeak: the thing above them abruptly stopped.

  The nutmegs rolled and rolled, jockeying for position in the wake of the footfalls, slowly subsiding to a chatter, then trailing off to nothing like a fall into a dark well. Above him, Nate could practically see the thing looking down, edging toward a crack in the woodwork, kneeling awkwardly and placing one filthy, yellowing eye against the boards and peering gleefully down at the boys so terrified in the room below.

  Both Nate and Pip held their breath, and eventually the footfalls began again, hesitantly at first, and then picking up speed as it crossed the room toward the gabled window. “What do we do?” Pip whispered through vocal chords tight as piano wire.

  “Tristan!” Nate called out lightly, and was about to call again when a clatter arose above them. It sounded like a baking tray tossed violently down a bowling alley, and was attended by a light clicking and clattering of nutmegs disturbed along the way. Pip squeaked again, but this time it was muffled by the blanket he had drawn tightly about his face.

  Nate looked over and could make out the form of Tristan sitting up, his face also tilted toward the ceiling. “Tristan! Is that the…?” He couldn’t bring himself to say it.

  “Shh,” said Tristan, a rigid finger across his lips. And as Nate peered through the darkness he could see that the boy was smiling. Nate watched as Tristan pushed the covers back, rolled onto his knees and reached down beside him; it was enough to give Nate the courage to move as well, and he suddenly realized that since the sound had started he had moved no part of himself except to swivel his head. He sat up and narrowed his eyes as Tristan flicked on the beam of a small flashlight.

  “Watch this,” whispered Tristan. He raised the beam to the ceiling, and to the spot where the boys all knew the thing was standing in that attic above. Then Tristan moved the beam slowly away, and the footfalls began again, seeming to cautiously follow the path of the beam.

  “What are you doing?” whispered Nate in a tone that was more accusation than question, a warning for Tristan not to screw around.

  “It follows the light, see?” And as he swung the beam back across the ceiling the footfalls followed, raising a protest once again from the drying nutmegs.

  To Tristan’s left Richard was now awake, too, and he reached out a hand to Tristan’s wrist and gently pushed the flashlight beam downward. “Tristan, you’re scaring them.”

  But Tristan would have none of it. He pulled the flashlight away and swatted at Richard with his other hand, catching the youngster on his shoulder with a loud smack. “Bay wipo!” he hissed. Leave me alone!

  Richard simply moved back onto his own mattress and away from Tristan, who was again flashing the light at the ceiling. Nate watched as Richard unfolded himself from the blankets, and moved silently over to Pip’s bed and sat beside him. He could see Richard whispering something to Pip, but could not hear the words. Soon Pip moved for the first time since the sounds had begun, and he wiped at his eyes with the stretched out body of his T-shirt.

  The room suddenly plunged back into complete darkness as Tristan flicked the flashlight off. A moment later he turned it back on, but this time it was pointed at a different part of the ceiling some five feet away from the last spot he had lit. Above them the creature dashed forward to the new source of light, and then Tristan promptly turned it off again. The footfalls stopped cold. A second later Tristan flicked it on again, again at a new spot, and once more the thing in the attic dashed forward, only to stop once more when Tristan extinguished the light. He did it twice more before Pip spoke up half in anger, half in fear. “Stop it!” he shouted. “You’ll make it angry!”

  Pip’s objection was delivered forcefully enough to make Tristan stop and turn, this time with the light off. And as their eyes adapted to the dark room Nate could see that Pip and Tristan were locked in a staring war. It didn’t last long before Pip looked down, but it was a glimmer of resolve Nate had never seen before in Pip.

  “What the hell are you boys playing at?” came a gruff, sleep-sandy voice from the other side of the room. But before Vincent could give the boys the bellowing they all knew was coming, the attic erupted in a storm of clattering and crashing as the tin bowl left by the boys was seized by rough, leathery hands and beaten into scrap on the wooden floor, blow after furious blow. Then there was a pause, just for a second, as the metal form apparently flew through the dark attic air, then clanged against the rafters. The boys collectively cringed at the sound, and every eye—Vincent’s included—watched the space above them with lids peeled back well past their limits.

  And then, silence.

  All five in the room sat motionless, watching the ceiling, waiting for something to happen. It stretched for almost a full minute, a minute cloaked in shadow and a stillness so complete it seemed the whole forest had stopped to witness the outcome.

  The sound, when it came, was something Nate and Pip would never forget. It started in a tone close to hopelessness, and aww, like a child lamenting the loss of a favorite toy. Then, in the same note, it changed. It transitioned to frustration and then to outright rage, and ended as more a growl than anything else. It stopped abruptly, and was replaced by an equally ferocious burst of footfalls: heavy, anger-laden stomps that were running hard for the attic door. And with every landing of a foot, the nutmegs rolled. They rattled away in clear disapproval, sending up a hollow drone that was full of dread and warning.

  Nate instinctively looked over to Tristan, and to Vincent, looking for the comfort of a smile or a knowing wink—anything that would reassure them this was just part of the scene, part of the program up here at Ti Fenwe. Instead he saw fear on Tristan’s face for the first time, and a glance over to Vincent showed a grown-up momentarily caught without all the answers.

  “Papa!” shouted Tristan in a tone so packed with panic that it popped Nate to his feet without thinking. “It’s coming!”

  Vincent lunged from the bed in a swirl of sheets and legs, and stumbled to catch his balance. “Quickly, check the door!”

  24

  Nate woke coughing and spitting, and the knitted white blanket that covered him was spattered wit
h yellow fluid. He tried to push the sheets aside but couldn’t, and another wave of nausea coursed through him and made him retch again. Behind him, his pillow and sheets were damp and cold, and he felt rivulets of sweat trickling through his temples and down toward the back of his skull. He wanted to cry out for help but it was already there. An unseen hand whipped the sheets away and a clean-smelling towel firmly wiped the vile spittle from his face.

  A moment later he saw her—a slender black woman in a white dress with a silver watch hanging from her lapel. She dabbed at his face again and spoke in soothing tones, but Nate could not make out the words. He looked around frantically, confused by a sudden awareness that he recognized nothing at all. Who was this woman? What was this place? And why was he in this bed? The questions were about to tumble from his lips when the woman in the white dress cupped his face in both hands and calmed him.

  “Come now. It’s all right. Calm yourself,” she said with a comforting smile. “Dat quite some way to wake up.”

  Nate’s eyes said everything and the woman spoke again. “You be here at Dennery hospital. I’m guessing you no remember ’riving las’ night?” she asked, and her voice was as melodic as a softly played steel pan drum.

  It was calming Nate quickly. “Um, no…” He scouted around in his mind for memories but came up with nothing.

  “You have a good friend d’ere in Terrance,” she continued. “Him bring you in las’ night, full of fever and mumbling away somethin’ fearful.”

  “Terrance?”

  “Terrance Edwin,” she said plainly, “Him go by Smiley,” she said.

  “Oh, right. Smiley.” Nate’s mind managed to reach out and snag a lightly floating recollection, and then pull it in tight. The evening came back to him—to a point. He remembered the room in Dennery, the conversation with Smiley, the incredible thirst. And he remembered the car, the old Sigma, and seeing the Honda bleeding among a group of onlookers. What was it Smiley had said about death? He mumbled the word as the thought lingered. Death, he said in a dreamy, far away manner.