Times were changing, and would change more still; Silas could see the inevitable depletion of good native stock, combined with the simple ability to breed more at home, would lead to an inevitable and irrevocable erosion of business. He heard increasing rumors of rumblings from the northern ports such as Boston and Manhattan about the moral and ethical dilemmas posed to good Christian folk by their trade; indeed, as far inland as Philadelphia, with its damnable concentrations of Quaker and Huguenot blood, the bleatings were reaching a fevered pitch, with cries to unduly levy or even ban the trade altogether.
But these circumstances also offered unprecedented opportunity for any man with the courage, the vision, and the conviction to exploit it. What was needed, Silas came to realize, was a way station between Middle Passage and market, and even within the market itself, where unruly cargo could be taken and broken.
And Silas Custis was just the man to do it.
He had learned and climbed, and, above all, he had lasted. The average life span of a white man on the Gold Coast was a little over two years. Silas had lasted ten. By the age of twenty-nine, Silas Custis was well-connected, well-known if not well-liked, and more than a little bit feared. It was time for him to make his move.
In 1768, Silas acquired a charter of three hundred and forty acres in the colony of Virginia, at the edge of the great swamp, where Lake Drummond met the inland waterway. It was here his dream became a reality etched in nightmare.
He had taken much from his years of service in the Gold Coast and knew well the infinite utility of lash and brand, of chain and barracoon in the hand of one who knew how to wield them with cold and calculating deliberation.
And thus was born Custis Manor: the house of horrors, on the plantation of pain, where those already stripped of their freedom could be more purposefully raped of their will. Where torture was a given and ghastly death the ever-present wages of resistance. His overseers were men of low and ruthless repute, chosen for their capacity for unflinching brutality and unwavering loyalty.
Silas, being thorough, had heard the many foreboding legends surrounding his new domain, but they only seemed to bolster his design: the already inhospitable land came cheaply, and its remote and forbidding quality both terrified and dissuaded prying eyes.
Not that anyone was really looking: the general ignorance of the conditions of the trade, combined with the unshakable conviction that hot lands could not be properly cultivated without Negroes, and the convenient belief that slaves were but simple creatures of burden, altogether happier and healthier on the veritable paradise of the plantations as compared to their heathen African wilds.
Silas Custis became a well-connected shadow figure to the Founding Fathers. Though his reputation was unsavory, his stock was prized; even if they never invited him to the parties at Mt. Vernon and Monticello, his was the iron hand that broke their servants. The struggling new land turned a conveniently blind eye to the remote reaches of Custis Manor. Indeed, landholders throughout Virginia and the Carolinas would pay Custis for the privilege of sending their more impudent property to him to work for a time, savoring the grateful and obedient — albeit heavily-scarred — chattel who would ultimately return.
Silas was wealthy, powerful, and arrogant. And the manor he built testified to that success, growing more and more self-contained and self-sufficient, virtually a kingdom unto itself. No authorities came to question or challenge his decisions. He answered to no one. There was no discipline so heinous, no cruelty so barbaric, that he couldn't practice it openly and with impunity at Custis Manor.
Of course, the more broken souls he fed to the place, the more terrible became the seething, concentrated darkness that dwelled there. And the more powerful it grew, the more successful and prosperous he became.
It was, literally and figuratively, a kingdom of the damned. And Silas Custis would be its sovereign lord.
17
By 1789, the wisdom of Silas Custis’s plan had been borne out. The revolution had thrown off the shackles of English domination, and the violent birth of the American nation had left his services ever more in demand. Custis Manor burgeoned, maintaining a façade of gentility while incorporating the most efficient aspects of the factory systems from which his inspiration drew, and making even the most brutal statutes of the French West Indie’s Côde Noir or the even more brutish Colonial slave codes, which descended from English law, seem positively quaint.
In near-perfect diametric opposition, however, was the growing and troublesome awareness of the innate discrepancy between his hellish practices and the stated ideals of the new land of liberty. Indeed, within scant years of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, most of the newly christened states had officially prohibited importation of fresh slaves or had imposed punishing and exorbitant taxes on those who did; by 1788, New York had abolished import and export altogether, with penalties of up to one hundred pounds per offense. But still the need was there, to work sugar in Louisiana, tobacco in Virginia and Kentucky, or rice in the Carolinas. So, enterprising, erstwhile Colonials, unbound by ethics or scruples, simply smuggled them in. And again, Silas was there. His land made an excellent port for those wishing to escape detection, his coffers filled to overflowing, and at the age of forty he was flush with accomplishment.
It is said that when matters of survival are no longer paramount, one’s attention turns to matters of legacy. As such, Silas reasoned it was time for him to produce an heir.
The woman he chose was one Priscilla Pierce, the handsome yet peculiar only daughter of a fine Richmond family. The marriage was more commercial contract than loving union, her father having depleted his fortune on bad speculations. Silas paid well for her hand and took her as his wife.
Priscilla promptly bore him six children in rapid succession. But the following years, though prosperous, were not without tragedy. Two of his children died mysteriously before the end of their second year. The cause of the first death of his second child, James, was traced to a cook from Jamaica, who it was discovered was proficient in vegetable poisons and Obeah, or murder by fetish; the second death, of his son Matthew, came at the hands of a wet nurse from Trinidad, who stabbed the babe through the base of the skull with a slim scarfpin. Silas, outraged at the betrayal and fearful of their audacity, had them both flayed alive and rolled in salt, their still-gasping carcasses hung in iron gibbets and left to rot before the assembled ranks of the other slaves.
Another son, Thomas — his favorite — was struck down by typhus in the winter of his fifth year. On top of all that, Silas came to despise Priscilla, whose frail temperament was ill-suited to the harshness of manor life. The cries of the slaves echoing through the night disturbed her, and as her own powerlessness became manifest she lashed out at the very suffering that so aroused her, eventually beating to death a hapless house servant who spilled her afternoon tea. Her eccentricities tipped over into full-blown madness as the years progressed. Silas locked her away in the attic, ostensibly for her own protection, and there she languished.
This left him with two daughters, Anne and Isabel — whom he promptly married off like cattle — and one bumbling son, Isaac. Poor Isaac was a tender man, taking as he did after his mother, and showed no aptitude whatsoever for the savagery inherent in the family business. His gentleness of spirit was further aggravated by a headstrong resistance to paternal authority. He ultimately fled the familial estate altogether and, against the violent objections of his father married Angelica Stroudt, only daughter of Wilhelm Stroudt, a Philadelphia abolitionist.
At the age of fifty-six, Silas found his health deteriorating, his dynasty stalled, and his superstitious paranoia profound. And though his appetite for cruelty had not diminished, he was enjoying it less; it took more and more to arouse, much less satisfy, him. It was, as they say, the winter of his discontent.
Then two things happened to change all that. In 1820, there came word of the birth of his first grandson.
And the coming of
the slave named Papa Josephus.
18
From the moment he arrived, the word spread quickly: a slave had come who filled the others with a terror even greater than that reserved for Silas. At first, Silas was perplexed: the old slave was nothing more than a shriveled raisin of a man, blind and ancient, thrown in almost as an afterthought with the last shipment from the West Indies. But very quickly he came to understand: this wizened old husk was no ordinary chattel.
Papa Josephus was Tata Nkisi, the Great Night, practitioner of a particularly vile and mysterious amalgam of African and Caribbean witchcraft. Silas was no stranger to the myth and folk magick of his property; it was impossible to spend decades in the trade without hearing the songs sung at night or the names of their gods uttered under the lash, or seeing the remains of makeshift altars furtively erected. Indeed, it was advantageous to understand what idols they were praying to, the better to more thoroughly topple them.
Nor was Silas a stranger to the larger threat implicit in the slave’s presence: in a word, revolution. Slave uprisings and murderous insurrections were always an inherent risk, particularly from those who came from the estates of the British and French West Indies, as was readily attested to by the bloody coups of Barbados, Guadeloupe, Martinique, and virtually every other island; in San Domingo in 1793, the damnable Toussaint L’Ouverture had led his runaway Maroons so successfully against the French that they had ultimately decreed them a free nation, much to Bonaparte’s dismay. No less a personage than the Governor of Martinique had proclaimed that the safety of the whites demanded that they keep the Negroes in the most profound and destitute ignorance, believing firmly that they should be treated as one would treat beasts.
But Silas knew all too well that beasts could not reason, or scheme, or dream. He could not allow such thoughts to take root and spread.
Silas resolved to break the old man.
But Papa Josephus would not flinch under the lash, no matter how often or how vigorously applied. And the slaves' fear of him grew all the greater as they witnessed both the old man's resistance and Silas’s desperation. It was an intolerable imbalance of power. After a while, even killing the old man was out of the question; it would only make him invincible in their eyes, and Silas might lose his grip on them altogether.
There was but one thing left to do.
One night Silas came to the old slave’s shack, escorted by his chief overseer, Luther, a pig-faced and powerful man of low bearing. The other slaves murmured fearfully as Luther took position outside the door and Silas went in.
Inside, Papa Josephus sat tending a small fire. He was shackled with a heavy iron collar, long spikes protruding outward; his back was covered with thick keloid scars, layer upon layer like fat tallow drippings, the latest still gleaming angry red. He looked up, blind eyes staring, as Silas entered. The old man did not flinch or grovel but simply regarded him with flat and unnerving detachment.
There was a small wooden table with rough-hewn stools; Silas bade him to sit. The old man rose on creaking limbs and obeyed, his unseeing gaze never leaving Silas’s face. Silas reached into his coat, producing a pistol and a set of keys. As he laid them upon the table, the old man’s head titled, hearing the sound.
I should have you killed, Silas told him. As one would kill an infected animal to protect the herd.
Silas waited for a reaction; Papa Josephus continued to stare, not so much at as seemingly through him.
Why do you not? the old man replied. His accent bore no trace of the pidgin English the other slaves spoke but was cultivated, tinted with a hint of French. It is your right, n’est pas?
Because I think you are more burden to me dead… Silas said, then looked at him, puzzling. Who educated you?
Papa Josephus shrugged withered shoulders. My father was an African chieftain, he explained. He was educated by missionaries. In turn they taught me to read and write, anglais and français. He paused. My father taught me other things as well…
Silas leaned forward. What other things? he asked.
Papa Josephus said nothing. Silas looked at the gun and the keys.
Teach me the secrets of your power, he told him, and I will use mine to release you.
Papa Josephus regarded the offer carefully. The old white man was crazy, of this there was no doubt. But Papa had lived in bondage his entire life, and he understood the difference between black and white man's magick. The black man's magick was powerful, true. But the white man's power was measured in gold and guns across thousands of hostile miles, and Silas held the proverbial keys to freedom.
I can teach you, the slave said. But why should I trust you?
Silas smiled. What choice do you have?
There was a moment of silence as Papa Josephus shrugged again. Luther peered inside, watching the impertinence, his right hand moving instinctively toward the whip at his belt. But Silas waved him off. No words were spoken, but the old man’s blind eyes seemed to track the motion, as if he could sense the movement in the very air. Silas watched intently, trying to plumb each crag and fissure of the slave’s face for some hint of exploitable emotion. But Papa Josephus merely fixed him with his flat, milky gaze.
You must know, he said, there are things which once seen cannot be unseen. And there is no turning back.
Silas smiled and extended his pale hand; Papa Josephus returned the gesture, thick manacles clanking.
The bargain was struck.
And slave and master became teacher and pupil.
That night Papa Josephus was taken from the slaves’ quarters to the manor house. He was fed and bathed, his wounds tended. Clothing was procured of an altogether finer fit. And as he healed, Papa Josephus began to instruct Silas Custis in the ways of the Great Night.
Papa's way taught that human beings were made of two halves. One half was the external, the physical, "real" self. The other half dwelt in the spirit dimension. Papa Josephus taught Silas that magick was the both the force that holds the parts together and that which wants to tear them apart, to hurl the bloody chunks into the stinking eternal abyss. Magick could heal, and magick could kill. But in the end, magick was but a tool to bend reality, shaping it to the will of the magician.
The soul was what the Great Night sought to possess, the prize in the eternal war between darkness and light. Those who became the Great Night had no soul, it having been systematically and ritually slaughtered, until all that was left was pure unchecked will. The sorcerer had no conscience. What he saw, what he wanted, he took. Without compunction, without guilt, without an ounce of hesitation or remorse. That was the heart of his power, and what made him so compelling: he was lust and greed and hunger, all rolled into one. There was nothing to hold him back.
Silas proved an apt pupil. He mastered the herbs and rituals of Papa's strange knowledge with a voracious lust that both frightened and fascinated the ancient brujo. And he always wanted more.
Power had its price, Papa warned. The conjurer of evil was always hungry for souls, always on the prowl. He must constantly feed on others to maintain his strength. That was why, once the brujo got inside a family, he would gnaw at the bloodline until no one was safe. At any sufficiently weak or vulnerable moment, the soul could be invaded and seized by the evil. Once possessed, it worked like an infection. One member of the tribe was possessed: from there the dark force could branch out, looking for other members to occupy, other souls to devour.
The ordinary human heart revolved around family, around home and tribe. It held dear the measured rhythms of life, the safe circle of the campfire that held back the night. Mortal man stayed happily within the fortress of ritual — doing things the right way, the good way, the way that kept the hunting bountiful and made the crops grow green.
The sorcerer was the enemy of all that. He was the bringer of darkness and death and despair, and he was most likely to prey on his own kin: because he was the absolute antithesis of family, and because they were most vulnerable to him. The Great Night was darknes
s incarnate, master of death and decay and madness, and his kingdom was made of rot and blood, unspeakable brutality and horror. The magick was rooted at the vital juncture of flesh and spirit. The body was both the battleground and the tool. Blood and meat, brains and body parts all played their roles; indeed, they comprised the supreme test, by deliberately and ritualistically propelling oneself into the most repellent experiences imaginable. By plunging into such horrors and mastering them, one achieved power.
There was nothing unreal or imaginary about such power. It was literally the ability to do anything. It was fearlessness and absolute single-mindedness, unfettered by guilt or doubt or shame. It was a power achieved by willingly becoming a monster.
And at its center was the nganga.
The nganga was the cauldron of souls, the heart of the Great Night's power. In the nganga, so terrible a vessel was created — filled with such ghastliness — that it was capable of capturing an entire universe of dead souls, all of whom became the slaves and agents of the sorcerer. When the nganga was properly prepared and taken to the proper place, it acted as a powerful magnet, sucking into itself the souls of the dead.
It was Papa Josephus who located the swamp's dark heart, the center for its terrible power. It was there — on a small and godforsaken island, approachable only by rowboat — that Papa ordered Silas to erect the shack where the nganga was to be kept.
And his darkest rituals would be conducted.
Papa Josephus had Silas take him to the slaves' graveyard on the far edge of the plantation. To build a proper nganga, the apprentice went with his mentor to a graveyard at night, under the waning moon. There they would seek out a kiyumba, a spirit of the dead.
The grave was selected. It was recent, a defiant young slave named Thomas who had been whipped to death a fortnight past. Sweating, heart thudding in anticipation, Silas did as he was told: soaking the ground of the chosen grave with rum, making the sign of the cross. Papa Josephus lit a cigar, puffing grandly, and ordered Silas to open the grave.
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