Black Panther

by Ronald L. Smith

  “Skulls,” T’Challa whispered.

  Gemini lifted his chin, and one of the other boys in black—he thought it was Bicep—picked up a bag from the ground. He brought it to Gemini, who pulled a drawstring to open it. He reached inside—

  —and took out out a gleaming human skull.

  “Gross,” Zeke whispered.

  Sheila nudged Zeke in the ribs.

  Gemini held up the skull with one hand and turned in a circle, as if addressing the whole world—the whole universe, even. “This is the skull of my great-grandfather, Thaddeus Jones,” he announced, “the first Grand Mage of the Ancient Order of the Skulls.”

  T’Challa couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “He was powerful,” Gemini continued. “He knew that to rise up in this world, you had to be feared. That is true power.” He paused. “Now kiss the skull, and be one with our order.”

  T’Challa’s stomach turned. The blindfolded kids murmured and shifted where they stood.

  “The longer you wait,” Gemini warned them, “the less power you will receive.”

  One by one, the blindfolded were pushed forward, while Gemini lowered the skull to be kissed.

  T’Challa swallowed hard.

  “Now you must swear,” Gemini said. “Raise your left hands.”

  Hands went up in the air.

  “Repeat after me,” Gemini said. “‘I swear my life to the Skulls…in this life and the next.’”

  T’Challa shuddered as a chorus repeated the words back.

  “‘I swear to this oath, and may I be turned to ash if I do not abide.’”

  “Jeez,” Sheila whispered, hovering behind Zeke.

  There was a moment of silence after the last words were repeated.

  “Now,” Gemini finally said, once more taking a walk around the group. “You may think that you have now passed into our order. But you are mistaken.”

  T’Challa saw one of the candidates turn left, then right, as if afraid, and wanting to run. One of the leaders grasped him by the arms.

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Gemini commanded. “You still have to swear on the Book.”

  Gemini placed the skull on the tree stump, and then reached back into the bag. T’Challa closed one eye to focus. Gemini drew out a large book with a tattered cover.

  He opened it.

  And then he began to chant.

  As the words left his lips, T’Challa felt a sense of unease. It was a language that was unfamiliar, yet he felt as if he had heard it somewhere before. Gemini paused in front of each candidate as he spoke, and they repeated the words back, while laying their hands upon the book. Sometimes Gemini had to correct them as they stumbled.

  Finally it was over. Moonlight shone down into the room from a hole in the ceiling, as if it had been timed that way.

  “Now,” Gemini Jones said, and he held his head high, “rise…rise as a member of the Ancient Order of the Skulls!”

  Deshawn removed the blindfolds. Several girls were among the newly initiated.

  “Equal-opportunity creep,” Sheila quipped.

  But T’Challa had gone still.

  The last one to have their blindfold removed was a face he knew well.

  M’Baku’s.

  The return bus trip home was quiet. The three of them barely spoke. T’Challa’s thoughts were scattered: blindfolded kids, Gemini and his skull, M’Baku.…

  “Well,” Sheila said. “At least we know why they’re called the Skulls.”

  “Why?” T’Challa asked.

  “Because they’re all a bunch of boneheads,” Sheila snapped.

  “There’s a secret society right in our school,” Zeke said in amazement. “It’s like something from one of my books.”

  “But it’s real,” Sheila said.

  “They had a skull,” Zeke said. “A human skull!”

  T’Challa didn’t need to be reminded.

  “This is us,” Zeke said, as he and Sheila rose from their seats. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Right,” T’Challa said absently. “Tomorrow.”

  “Hey,” Zeke called before he got off. “You never said where you live.”

  T’Challa swallowed. “I’m a bit farther up.”

  Zeke nodded. “Oh, well, if you take the—”

  Sheila closed her eyes and opened them again slowly. “You’re worried about bus routes? After what we just saw?”

  Zeke shrugged.

  T’Challa was glad Sheila interrupted him, because he didn’t have a quick answer ready.

  T’Challa slipped back into the embassy unnoticed, and opened the door to his room. He tapped a communication bead on his Kiyomo Bracelet immediately. “Ancient Order of the Skulls,” he said. A screen rose up around him. After a moment, there was a beep and small lines of text appeared.

  Skulls, rumored to be an American secret society. Founded 1930s. No known facts or information. Said to be founded by Thaddeus Jones (deceased), once described as an African American mystic and occultist.

  Gemini’s words came back to him.

  This is the skull of my great-grandfather, Thaddeus Jones. The first Grand Mage of the Ancient Order of the Skulls.

  He knew a little about secret societies. In Wakanda, there were several, and they were always jockeying for power. His father called them usurpers, people who wanted to take his throne and sell vast amounts of Vibranium for their own personal reward.

  T’Challa slipped out of his coat and sat down in a chair. What was his friend doing in that crazy ritual? M’Baku’s father had taught him better than that. He just didn’t understand.

  T’Challa slept fitfully and awoke several times during the night. He kept seeing Gemini Jones in that dark room, slowly turning in a circle, the ghastly skull held up to the moonlight coming through the roof.

  This is the skull of my great-grandfather, Thaddeus Jones.

  And what about the words he spoke? What did they mean? And the book the kids swore upon?

  At some point, he must have fallen asleep, because the next thing he knew…

  BEEP…BEEP…BEEP…

  T’Challa reached out from under the covers and shut off the alarm. He looked across the room and thought he might see M’Baku, but no such luck. He was gone. And then it all came rushing back.…

  The Ancient Order of the Skulls

  Candles on a tree stump

  A gleaming human skull

  M’Baku

  He pushed the weird thoughts to the back of his mind and got ready for school.

  Sheila found him at lunchtime and cornered him, her eyes wide. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said breathlessly.

  Five minutes later, T’Challa, Sheila, and Zeke were in the cafeteria. The noise and clatter of activity set T’Challa’s nerves on edge.

  “What is it?” T’Challa asked.

  Sheila flipped open her tablet. “Remember the words Gemini was speaking last night? The ones we didn’t understand?”

  “Yes,” T’Challa and Zeke said at the same time.

  “It was Old Nubian,” Sheila said proudly.

  “Old what?” Zeke asked.

  And that’s when T’Challa remembered.

  “What?” Sheila asked. “What is it?”

  T’Challa paused. “Some of the words. They seemed familiar. Like I’ve heard them back home.”

  “Maybe it’s from the same family of languages,” Sheila suggested. “Old Nubian is ancient. It’s one of the oldest African languages, going all the way back to the fourth century.”

  T’Challa felt a twinge of envy. He should have been the one to recognize the language first. “Wait,” he started. “How did you—?”

  Sheila waggled her cell phone in front of him. “I had it on audio record.”

  “Excellent move,” said Zeke.

  “All I had to do was transcribe it,” she said “Look.” She flipped the tablet around so T’Challa and Zeke could see the screen. T’Challa mouthed the words in front of him:
<
br />   Darkness falls,

  And He shall awaken.

  Swear to Him,

  And ye shall be rewarded.

  A cold chill crept up T’Challa’s neck. He swallowed. “What in the world is this?”

  “Some kind of spell,” Zeke said, a tremor in his voice.

  “Spell?” Sheila shot back. “There’s no such thing as spells. This isn’t the Dark Ages.”

  T’Challa leaned back from the table. He knew this wasn’t true. In Africa and Wakanda the old magic was still practiced, and there were many people who fell victim to curses and dark spells. Or, at least, they claimed they had.

  “Who is ‘He’?” Zeke asked. “Swear to who?”

  “‘Whom,’” Sheila corrected him.

  “Whatever,” Zeke said.

  The sunlight in the cafeteria disappeared, blotted out by dark clouds. The three students sat very still for what seemed like minutes. The noise around them slowly morphed into one constant hum, one that seemed to pierce T’Challa’s ears.

  His father had told him tales of monsters, demons, and spirits when he was a child, but those were just fireside tales, weren’t they? Did those things really exist in the modern world?

  Darkness falls,

  And He shall awaken.

  What did it mean?

  He didn’t have an answer, but he knew he had to find out.

  The school day was done, and T’Challa and Zeke were just finishing up a chess match. Truth be told, T’Challa hadn’t been able to concentrate at all. He’d made his moves without careful thinking, something Zeke had caught on to and taken advantage of.

  There was something he had to do. There was no way around it.

  T’Challa drummed his fingers on the table and let out a sigh. “Zeke?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you know where Gemini Jones lives?”

  Zeke tilted his head. “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Marcus said he was staying with him. Remember?”

  Zeke paused a moment before speaking. “So, let me get this straight. Marcus not only joined the Skulls, now he’s living with their leader? Why would he—”

  “I don’t know,” T’Challa interrupted. “Like I said before, he’s had problems with his host family. You know. Since we’ve been here.”

  Zeke nodded slowly, like he wasn’t sure he should believe T’Challa’s explanation. “Hey,” he said, fiddling with a pawn on the board and not meeting T’Challa’s gaze. “You never said where you live. When I asked you last night. Where do you stay, anyway?”

  T’Challa stiffened. His brain ran in circles. Think. “One of my uncles has a place on Michigan Avenue,” he blurted out. Another lie, he thought with regret. He was amazed at how quickly he could deceive people.

  “Ah,” Zeke said, and then, after a brief pause: “Wait a minute. The other day you said ‘the host family we’ve been staying with.’ You and Marcus. So which is it? Are you staying with your uncle or a host—?”

  “Zeke!” T’Challa bristled. “Where does Gemini Jones live?”

  Zeke shrank in his seat.

  T’Challa immediately regretted his outburst. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m just worried about my friend.”

  Zeke let out a breath. “I know,” he said contritely, pushing up his glasses. “I would be too, if my friend went around kissing a dead man’s skull.”

  T’Challa swallowed.

  “He lives over by the big Greek church on Wentworth and Twenty-Ninth Street. You can’t miss it. It’s got a sculpture in the front yard. Kind of like a big animal thing.”

  T’Challa nodded and made a mental note. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks. I’ll see you soon, Zeke. And sorry.”

  “No problem,” Zeke answered.

  T’Challa turned to leave.

  “Hey, T.,” Zeke called.

  T’Challa turned around.

  “Be careful.”

  T’Challa smiled. “I will,” he said. “I know how to take care of myself.”

  Zeke nodded, but the half smile he returned was a troubled one.

  T’Challa walked with his hands stuffed in his pockets and braced himself against the wind that came swirling off the lakefront. He really shouldn’t have blown up at Zeke, he realized. He was just asking questions, something any friend would have done. I have to start being more careful. Patient. That’s what Father would say. Nothing was ever accomplished through anger. T’Challa promised himself he would take his father’s wise advice.

  He had to try talking to M’Baku once more—make him come to his senses. They’d been friends since childhood, and T’Challa wasn’t going to give up on him that easily.

  He thought of taking a bus, but wasn’t sure how often they ran. He passed basketball courts and check-cashing shops, liquor stores, and churches. As he turned onto Wentworth, a group of boys in big coats came sauntering in his direction. Zeke had told him to be careful, but T’Challa wasn’t afraid. He was a prince, after all, and could certainly handle himself.

  The sidewalk was only so big, and the boys didn’t look like they were going to move, so T’Challa stepped aside, but not before one of them bumped into his shoulder.

  “Watch where you’re going, man,” one of them said.

  T’Challa paused but did not speak. The boy drew a little closer. He had at least three inches’ height on T’Challa.

  “You owe me an apology,” the boy said. The other boys grouped in a circle around T’Challa, as if he were an antelope being sized up by lions, something he had seen more than once.

  “You heard the man,” one of them said. “Apologize, son.”

  T’Challa looked from left to right, keeping an eye on their movements. “I’m not your son,” he said. I am the son of T’Chaka, he wanted to say. The Black Panther and King of Wakanda.

  The boy cocked his head. “What’s wrong, dude? You can’t hear?” He brushed imaginary debris from his shoulder. “You bumped into me. Got dirt on my coat. Apologize.”

  Someone grabbed T’Challa’s throat from behind.

  T’Challa drove his right elbow back into his attacker’s stomach, then spun around quickly and struck the boy in the chest with the heel of his left palm. The boy doubled over and flew back.

  Another kid lunged.

  T’Challa caught his arm and struck down hard at his elbow.

  Snap.

  The remaining boy bounced on his toes and held up both fists, but dropped them after a fiery glare from T’Challa.

  “It’s cool, man,” the boy said, raising his hands in defeat and slowly stepping back. “No worries, bro.”

  And then he took off running, leaving both of his friends on the ground, rolling around in pain.

  T’Challa looked at his attackers for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he finally said. “But I’m really not your son.” He shook his head and turned, then quickly made his way down the street.

  T’Challa looked back and saw the two boys pick themselves up from the ground. They seemed to be arguing with each other, raising their arms and shouting. He squared his shoulders and continued on, glancing behind him every now and then, just to make sure they weren’t regrouping for another attack.

  I didn’t want to hurt them, he thought, his heart still racing. But I have to protect myself. That’s what Father’s always said.

  After another minute or two, T’Challa passed a massive church with stained-glass windows and onion-shaped domes on the very top. Rows of houses were on the opposite side of the street. One was set apart from the others, on its own lot. There was no mistaking it. The whole house was surrounded by a high fence, except for a gate at the entrance, set far from the walkway. A metal sculpture that seemed to be made from rusted car parts sat in the front yard. It reminded T’Challa of a griffin—a mythological creature with the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle. Sharp metallic talons gripped the block of wood it perched upon.

  Strange, he thought.

  He unlatched the gate and walked down a flag
stone path, which led to a row of little white steps. He rang the buzzer. He heard footsteps and the door opened with a creak. The man who stood behind it was taller than Gemini, but just as intimidating. He wore a black suit and white shirt, with a red tie knotted at his throat. Piercing dark eyes looked out from a thin face with a prominent sharp nose leading to a finely trimmed beard. He smelled of clove, a scent T’Challa recognized from some of the healers in Wakanda.

  “You are here for Marcus,” the man said.

  His voice was slow and deep. It wasn’t a question.

  “I am,” he said.

  The man breathed in and seemed to grow even taller. “I am Gemini’s father, and you are…T.” He said this with curiosity, like T’Challa was some kind of strange bird or animal, a specimen for this man’s collection. How does he know who I am?

  “Yes,” T’Challa said. “I am.”

  “Do come in, then,” Mr. Jones said.

  T’Challa followed Mr. Jones inside, and watched him slowly walk to the foot of the stairs. “Marcus,” he called.

  T’Challa took in the room around him, trying his best not to be obvious. It was like he had just stepped into a museum, but one from a place he didn’t know. There were skulls of several animals that he did not recognize, African sculptures carved from wood and ivory, some with elongated necks and exaggerated features. Several clay bowls filled with flowers and red and blue powders rested on end tables. But what really took his breath away were the masks. They were everywhere—on the walls, set upon pedestals and columns, hanging from the ceiling on wires. All of them were quite strange, with leering grins and broken teeth. A standing candelabrum displayed three red candles, flickering with flame in the dim room. It smelled of dust and old books. Even though he had never been in an American home before, he knew that most probably didn’t look like this.

  Heavy footsteps brought him back to attention. M’Baku bounded down the stairs. Gemini wasn’t with him. Mr. Jones stepped away from the stairway. M’Baku froze on the bottom step. “T.,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to talk to you,” T’Challa replied. “About…a class assignment.”

  Mr. Jones eyed them both curiously.