by Sam Stone
‘I wasn’t up and about the night that Callon arrived. I was lying in bed, feeling terribly sorry for myself and cursing the idea that I would have to suffer like this for many months to come, but Alice liked the man immediately and she came into my room to thank me for getting such efficient help. She felt sure that Callon would see away any of the spirits that might be lurking.
‘The next day I was feeling better and so I went down to have a late breakfast and met the man for the first time.’
‘He had yellow eyes,’ Maggie said.
Big Momma nodded. ‘He was a peculiar sort. Charming and charismatic. He reminded me more of a conjuror than a preacher. He wore expensive clothing, acted like a gentleman. Alice was quite taken with him. “With your permission,” Callon said, “I would like to move into the house for a time. This way I can properly assess what is wrong here. It may take a few months. But I am certain you will see improvement all round.”
‘He said he “sensed” something. He made references and comments that fed Alice’s phobias. But privately, when she wasn’t around, he explained that this was all a ruse. He had to make her believe that she could trust him. That he wasn’t there to disprove anything, but to find out the truth. Then he planned to show her that there were no ghosts and spirits. All of which he said he didn’t really believe in. He said that Alice was suffering a malady of the mind. That sometimes white folks went like that when they were suddenly around the superstitions of the blacks. He said that Alice had probably heard some of the slaves talking their nonsense and it had somehow disturbed her peace of mind. In fact he told us exactly what we wanted to hear. What we ourselves thought was going on.
‘We gave him a room that was situated at the end of the right wing, and Callon soon became part of our lives. He knew all about voodoo. Said he’d studied the slaves’ religion and so knew how to deal with it all.
‘A few weeks passed. Alice grew calm when Callon was in the house, but strange and confused whenever he left to go and take care of some business elsewhere. Sometimes he would be gone for a few days. And we noticed the difference in her at those times. It was always a relief when he returned. Alice became instantly calm. He was no trouble to have around either and made a charming addition to the household. All of the family and overseers liked and trusted him. He had that way with people. He could just put you right at ease.
‘And Big Daddy was real happy too. He didn’t want unsettled slaves. He didn’t want to start having to beat sense into them. He’s always been a gentle soul and never liked that kind of thing, saying that “kindness” was a better way to keep them in check. Callon’s presence seemed to settle them down also and so his presence in our home became something we started to accept and take for granted.
‘After a while things returned to normal. Alice was happy again. Sometimes she would get real shy around Callon and we began to think that she and him would probably marry at some point. We didn’t know his origins and it never occurred to us to ask who his people were. He was certainly attentive and kind to Alice, and we didn’t mind the idea of her marrying a preacher. There seemed nothing bad in the situation at all.
‘Then Isaac approached Big Daddy out of the blue and asked him, “When is that … thing gonna leave here?” Big Daddy was taken aback by his head house slave talking to him so forward like that. He had always liked Isaac though. The slave worked hard and had never given him one jot of trouble. So he looked at him surprised and said, “Who are you talking about?”
‘We were in the orangery and Isaac nodded out towards the doors. We looked out and saw Callon standing outside, looking in at us like he didn’t even know who we were. “What’s gotten into you Isaac?” Big Daddy said. You see by that time, Callon had pretty much become part of the family. We were completely comfortable with his presence and it never occurred to us to wonder how he had so easily become part of our lives like that. Or why.
‘Isaac just shook his head. “You can’t see it,” he said. “But that thing ain’t human.” Well of course Big Daddy questioned him. But Isaac didn’t make any more sense no matter what we asked. He just kept insisting that Callon was some kind of … devil. He called him a kishi. But when Big Daddy asked him to describe what that was, Isaac wouldn’t.
‘That night we heard the drums on the plantation for the first time but when the overseers searched the land they never found the instrument, nor the player. Every night, for a few hours, the drums beat. It became a source of frustration to the overseers that they couldn’t find the culprit. They saw it as some kind of protest that the slaves were making and were suspicious of its meaning.
‘About a week later, Alice came to me and said she was afraid for her life. I thought this was just because of the drums. They seemed to upset everyone but me. I liked them. They lulled me to sleep at night and strangely they made me feel safe.
‘But Alice told me she had seen that dark spirit again. We had thought that all of this nonsense was now behind us. “I almost dropped my hand mirror,” she said. When I asked her to describe what she saw, she said “Mister Callon … He was in my room. When I looked at him in the silver mirror he was the ghost I’d seen. When I looked at him directly he was Callon.”
‘Alice had tried to hide what she had seen from him though. She asked him what he was doing in her room, he merely stared at her. Alice told me that she then began to feel drowsy. She likened the sensation to the excesses of wine on the occasions when she had been allowed to drink it with the family. She didn’t feel in total control of herself, and she began to sway. At that moment, one of the servants knocked on the door to bring her some fresh linen.
‘Alice says she jumped awake, and found herself lying back on the bed. Her skirt was raised up to her thighs and she thought she saw this black shadow disappear out through the open balcony door. She quickly straightened her dress and called in the girl. But she was shaken and afraid.
‘Obviously I told Big Daddy immediately about the incident. He called Callon in and spoke to him, but of course he denied everything. He said he had been out riding at the time and the grooms confirmed his story. Big Daddy had no reason to disbelieve him. He said that Alice was probably dreaming the whole thing. She was, he thought, quite infatuated with Callon. Even so Big Daddy was concerned and a creeping suspicion was nagging at the back of his mind the whole time. He was worried about the slaves’ dislike of Callon, and so he discussed the possibility of him leaving the plantation for a little while to see if Alice was better now.
‘Of course Callon, being his usual amicable self, agreed and he packed his things and left the very next day.
‘Isaac and the slaves seemed happier after that. I had seen a growing unrest among them, a kind of quiet disapproval that made me feel nervous and confused. We dropped back into the life we’d had before. Quiet, happy and, what’s more the drums stopped at night which made me think that perhaps Callon had been the cause of them after all.
‘Even so, Alice refused to sleep alone. She kept one of the slave girls in there with her at all times. She was acting oddly again but she didn’t start on about seeing the ghost. Despite what we had thought she felt for Callon she seemed relieved he was out of the house. I began to think that she was going to get better after all. It would just take time. I listed out in my mind all that she had been through since our parents died, particularly the insecurity of our financial circumstances. All of this must have had some bearing on her state of mind. Especially when we were suddenly in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by slaves.
‘A few weeks later Big Daddy told me he had to go away for a few days to take care of business in the port of New Orleans. Although the port and centre are in travelling distance of the Plantation, it was sometimes more convenient for him to stay there a night or two, rather than have a long ride in and out for the duration. Before my pregnancy I would go with him and we would eat at some of the cosmopolitan restaurants around the docks in the evening and while he worked in the day I would have fun shop
ping in the markets, with a team of slaves in tow to take home all of the lovely things I found. Of course this time, the doctor had told me I wasn’t to travel. The heat had been getting to me a lot, and I’d only just started to feel less sick in the mornings. Besides, I didn’t want to leave Alice alone. I was worried for her.
‘The first night Big Daddy was away I heard the drums again, but they were faint, as though they were some distance away from the Plantation and especially the house. It was strange but I found them reassuring. Like they were playing to ward off evil. And as I drifted to sleep I felt safe and happy, like something good was trying to watch over me.
‘In the middle of the night I woke up. I felt this strange pressure on my chest. Like something was on top of me, crushing me down into the bed. I cried out. The pressure lifted, and a blast of air whooshed out through the open balcony doors. It was hot, but I had thought I had closed the doors that night to keep out the mosquitoes. I got up and closed the doors thinking that I must have been mistaken.
‘I vaguely remembered the sound of the drums as I had fallen asleep, but I even thought I had imagined that too.
‘The next day I woke feeling tired and drained as if I hadn’t slept at all, and yet even though I had awakened in the night to the strange dream, and the feeling that someone was in the room with me, I had rapidly fallen back into a drug-like sleep.
‘At breakfast Isaac served me as usual, but I found him looking at me intently on more than one occasion. Eventually I sent him away. His scrutiny was making me feel uncomfortable and I was determined to tell Big Daddy about his odd behaviour when he returned home.
‘That night I was tortured with strange dreams once more. There was that pressure feeling again. I struggled to wake, but I couldn’t open my eyes. The weight made me feel sick again and the next day, when my servant came in to help me dress she found me lying across the bed in a dead faint.
‘Isaac sent for the doctor immediately, and when Big Daddy returned the doctor told him I was suffering from some malady induced by the pregnancy and heat. There were even fears that I had contracted some sort of swamp fever, that might have been passed to me from the incessant assault of mosquitoes that plagued us so much at that time of year.
‘But with Big Daddy back, I began to sleep better again and I soon recovered from whatever had been ailing me.
‘Of course the same couldn’t be said for Alice. She got sick. So much so that the doctor recommended we send her away for her own health’s sake. Whatever illness had touched me, began to eat away at her and she suffered more and more with her delusions.
‘When we found out that she was carrying a child, Big Daddy and I made the decision to send her away immediately before the scandal brought shame on the Plantation. She couldn’t tell us who the father was, denying that it was even possible. Her lying angered Big Daddy and it made him more determined not to have her around anymore. We suspected that the father was Callon, but part of me didn’t want to believe that a preacher could take advantage of a young innocent girl like that. But he was the only man that had been given freedom in our home.
‘The day we sent her away Alice seemed relieved to go. She let the servants pack her things with barely a murmur and she left with a small chaperone of slaves and men to take her all the way to the hospital in Mississippi.
‘A few weeks later we received word that Alice had lost the baby. The journey had been too arduous for her weakened state. I felt just awful about it, especially in my condition. It had to be for the best though: she would have been ruined. When we learnt that the experience had completely driven the last bit of sanity from her mind I felt terrible guilt. As though I had failed to protect her.
‘Obviously Big Daddy sent money to secure the best care for her, and we received six-monthly reports, but Alice never recovered from her experience and isn’t likely too either.
‘I had Big Daddy question all of the white men on the plantation again. We knew that one of them had to have been responsible for Alice’s condition. Maybe he had even disguised himself as some spirit. And I reminded Big Daddy about the story she had told, of being drowsy, of Callon and of waking up with her clothing pulled up. Callon had been gone a while before the pregnancy became known though, and we hadn’t heard from him since.’
Big Momma paused in her story and she looked from Maggie, to Henry and then to me.
‘I’ll get to the point,’ she said quietly. ‘Some months later I gave birth to my babies. When Orlando came out, Big Daddy came rushing in to hold his son. Nanny Simone held out the baby to him and at that point he opened his eyes and yelled with lungs that a wolf would have been proud of. Big Daddy smiled down at the baby and then he froze. I’ve never seen a man of ruddy complexion go so instantly white. “He’s not mine …” he declared and he refused to take him. Then he stormed from the room.
‘I began to cry. All the pain I’d gone through, and now my husband, to whom I’d been completely faithful, was denying his own child. I couldn’t believe it. Well with every tear the pains began again, and soon Nanny Simone realised what was happening. “Why you is having another one, Miss Cherie,” she said. And indeed I was. A few moments later Maggie was born, and Nanny Simone rushed out to show her to Big Daddy.
‘Soon after that he came back in. He refused to look at Orlando, and when Nanny Simone passed him to me to press to my breast, I suddenly learnt why. Orlando’s eyes were yellow and I had only ever seen one person with such a strange feature. Callon. I gasped and cried, pushing him away as I begged to see my baby girl. Nanny Simone took the baby back. “Don’t worry none,” she said. “We will make sure he gets milk from one of the other suckling mothers on the plantation.” I knew she meant one of the slave girls but I didn’t care. To me Orlando looked like something spawned of the devil.
‘Nanny Simone passed you to me, Maggie, reassuring me like she did Big Daddy. Then she took Big Daddy aside and said he needed to go and see Isaac. That he could explain what had happened right enough. You see, they had seen this sort of thing before and Nanny Simone remembered the tales her parents told of the kishi. Who, she explained, was a demon that impersonated a human.
‘Big Daddy went away just like she said. Then he came back to me. He held me and told me how he knew this wasn’t my fault. Isaac had told him who the demon was, and how he had managed to do this.’
‘Callon had been the spirit that you felt crushing you,’ I said.
‘Yes Miss Kat. And the whole thing wasn’t over yet.’
Maggie hugged her mother. ‘This must have been so awful for you. And I remember, Orlando wasn’t kept in the nursery with Amelia and I. But doesn’t this mean … that Callon was my father too?’
‘Oh no, Miss Maggie,’ said a deep voice from behind us. ‘Orlando was the only brood of that demon.’
We all looked around to see Isaac standing by the door into the house. His face was serious as he walked over and joined us at the table. He sat down with us just like he was a member of the family and I knew that another important story was about to be told.
17
‘Orlando was the only brood of that demon,’ repeated Isaac, looking into each of our eyes in turn. ‘He used Big Momma’s already working womb to create another life is all. He failed with Miss Alice you see. The human body wasn’t made to work with a demon that way. Demons can only birth dead babies. But the kishi, he had realised a way around it. He gave Big Momma another baby. This baby gained life because of you, Miss Maggie, because you were in there keeping his coldness warm.’
‘This is all so awful,’ Maggie said. ‘I love my brother. He hasn’t got an evil bone in his body. None of this can be his fault.’
‘That’s true,’ said Isaac. ‘He is half-human after all and …’
‘And what?’ I asked, but Isaac let the sentence hang there.
‘Orlando is a sweet innocent,’ Big Momma said again. ‘But he wasn’t always that way. He …’
Big Momma glanced at Maggie and tears spra
ng into her eyes. ‘He tried to drown his sister. We had to do something after that.’
‘Momma, what do you mean? Orlando never hurt me.’
‘It was Miss Amelia he tried to drown,’ said Isaac quietly. ‘Out there in that lake.’
‘We found her body floating out there,’ Big Momma continued. ‘She was all but dead. If it hadn’t been for Isaac’s quick thinking. He threw himself into the water, dragged her out and somehow managed to shake the water from her lungs. She woke up, coughing and spluttering, and she told us who’d done it. “It was Dando, Momma,” she told me.’
‘Dando?’ I said. ‘Oh my goodness.’ Suddenly I knew who the child was that I had been seeing. It was Orlando of course. It all made sense. Why hadn’t I realised it sooner?
‘Yes, that was the name I had for him because I couldn’t pronounce Orlando properly. It sort of stuck after that. Though we never call him by that name anymore,’ said Maggie. ‘But I don’t believe Orlando hurt Amelia. You need to understand something, Momma. Although you all tried to keep us apart, Orlando and I shared the same womb. We also shared feelings. He never did this Momma, I’m sure of it.’
‘Maggie is right,’ I said. ‘I don’t think Orlando hurt anyone.’
‘If it wasn’t him,’ asked Henry. ‘Then who did?’
What Big Momma didn’t know was that Isaac and Big Daddy had come to an agreement the night that Orlando was born.
‘You wasn’t to know,’ Isaac had said to Big Daddy all those years ago, ‘but those things are tricksy. They hide in plain sight. Why that creature was trying to get access to Miss Alice all along. Once you let him in he had the right to come and go as he pleased.’
‘But what can we do?’ asked Big Daddy. ‘There has to be somethin’. Maybe we need to send for a real priest, get this place exorcised.’
