“Tourists. All you see are beaches and criminals. We live in between,” the driver said.
“What do you think?” A short woman, five feet four tops, with recently dyed reddish-brown hair, swept her arms out as if she were responsible for the view. Straight-backed, she carried herself with authority. “Senior Justice of the Peace Carmen Hicks.”
“It’s so good to meet you.” I hunched over awkwardly to give her a hug. A lot stronger than she appeared, she hugged me tight and kissed me on the cheek.
“I’ve been telling all of my people that we have important family coming from the States to stay with us. And who is this beautiful gal?”
“This is Holly. My…wife.” I laced my fingers into hers. She squeezed my fingers as if locking them in a steel trap so they wouldn’t wander.
“Come here, let me take a look at you.” Brushing my hand aside like she swatted at a fly, Carmen took each of Holly’s hands and held them out to better inspect her. “I have such a beautiful niece.”
“Thank you,” Holly said through clenched teeth, half glaring at me.
“And this is my friend, Owen.” I stepped aside.
Letting go of Holly’s hands, Carmen scarcely spared a glance in Owen’s direction. “Yes. He can stay round back with Lord Evader. Come, let me show you around.”
Entering through a mosquito-screened door, a blast from an air curtain hit them. A wide-screened HDTV filled the back wall and sat next to the array of boxes of her wifi and satellite connections. Doilies and knickknacks covered each end table and shelf surface with an elderly British mum’s fussy sense of décor. Sheets of plastic covered the furniture and similar strips ran along the main walkways. Owen sat down, his chair sounding like it passed gas. He squeaked against the plastic, attempting to settle in. Carmen insisted that Holly and I take the loveseat while she stood. She barked at a maid to fetch a tray of a drink called sorrel. The maid disappeared through a door leading to the kitchen. A group of women sat around huge metal pots filled with bubbling rice. A series of pots held what smelled to be curried goat simmering on the stove. Trays and trays full of jerk chicken lined the counters. The driver leaned a stack of crates along a dolly, wheeling bottles of rum through to another room. Eyeing them, the man closed the door behind him.
“Quite the party you’re preparing for,” Owen said.
“Death is a chore which needed attending to,” Carmen said. “The Nine Nights are a celebration of a life well lived. Our loved one no longer suffers with this life.”
“But one so young,” Holly said.
“You’re never too young to know the sting of life. Friends soon come, not with their condolences and sad faces, but with food and drink and music. Life.”
“It goes on all week?” I asked.
“On the ninth night, the family prepares the food for all who come. Some say that’s the night the spirit of our loved one passes through to say goodbye.”
“Spirits?” Owen perked up.
“Look how the duppy kissed me last night.” Carmen turned her arm over to reveal a bruise. Then she grinned as if letting us in on some joke. “Did you have any problems with your arrival?”
“There was a police roadblock, like they were searching for something,” Owen said.
“Police? Big-talk buffoons, the lot of them. If one stop you, he’s just trying to get a let off. All them wanting money in return for doing their job? No, sir.”
“I thought they might be looking for our guns,” Holly said.
“American guns drop into Kingston like mangoes from a tree,” Carmen said.
“Then what about the deaths?” I asked.
“The ‘police’ just collect the bodies and file a report. Natural causes.” Carmen sucked her teeth.
“But our reports said the bodies had been drained?”
“No one cares about a poor, dead child.” Carmen took a glass of sorrel when her maid passed her the tray.
I took a glass of sorrel. “Do you have any idea what’s behind the killings? My mother used to tell stories that her mother told her…I only vaguely remember duppies and the spinning cow.”
“Oh, that takes me back. I haven’t heard or told a Br’er Nansi story in forever. Nor a…spinning cow.” Carmen rocked back with laughter. She repeated the spinning cow reference to her maid so quickly in thick patois that I barely recognized the words as English. “I think you meant ‘rollin’ calf.’”
Hoping Holly and Owen didn’t notice, I flushed with mild embarrassment. I took a deep sip of sorrel. It tasted like bitter fruit with a dash of ginger. Not used to it, I wanted to spit it right back into my glass. What Holly said was true: I was little more than a tourist here now.
“Did your mother ever tell you about Old Higue?”
I shook my head.
“All these gals keep going on and on about it around here when they should be working. I normally don’t have time for such foo-foo nonsense.”
“But you suspect something,” I said.
“I’ve seen a lot of things. I was the first call my people made. Not the police. Not the hospital. Not their family. Me. Because my people, them know I will do whatever it takes to look out for them. I saw the body myself. Poor little child, little more than a week old, the life drained from it. Sometimes even the best people turn wrong.” Her voice took on a mournful quality. “If people swear that an Old Higue stalks these parts, I’m not quick to dismiss it. Whatever it takes, me say. Whatever. Whatever. Whatever. But sometimes it’s best to keep things in the family…so to speak.”
Owen leaned forward. “I just need to know one thing: bullets, fire, or ax? If we’re going to go hunting, I need to know what to pack with me.”
“Je-sus.” Carmen said with such emphasis, the word almost had an extra syllable. “Do you know I came home one day to find rice scattered all over the house? Them gals”—she cocked her head toward her maids—“said the community set a trap for the Old Higue. She flew about in the night looking for her next victim, drawn by the smell of asafoetida. So them pile up rice, nuh. Say that the Old Higue has to count the grains and if she loses track, she has to start over.”
“Did it work?” I asked.
“You know a monster who stops its rampage to count rice grains? I told them to sweep it up and quit wasting my rice. We have a whole community to feed. Go talk to Lord Evader. He loves to chat.”
“The taxi driver?”
“Driver. Handyman. Gravedigger. Used to be a reggae singer a lifetime or two ago.”
“Like Bob Marley?” Owen asked.
“That’s reggae for people who don’t know reggae. Overproduced for easy consumption,” Carmen said.
“I like Bob Marley,” Owen whispered.
“You might as well order ‘Rasta Pasta’ back at that hotel resort.” With a self-satisfied grin, Carmen waved us on our way. “It’s the last night of the Nine Nights and we begin about seven. See you in the morning. If life spare.”
* * *
The sky threatened to rain, the heavy air smelled of salt and damp sand. The trees crowded in, assuming thick huddles, but soon opened up. Two guard dogs barked in the distance. At the center of the clearing, a man dug a small hole. A machete poked from the earth like a marker. A tiny cardboard box filled with four bottles of Jamaican rum sat next to it. Lord Evader had changed into a denim shirt and threadbare dungarees. Hopping out of the small grave, he straightened his bowler hat, then swiped up his machete, carrying it on his shoulder like it was a backpack and he was on his way to school.
“Catch you at a bad time?” Owen crept his hand to his Jericho.
Lord Evader swaggered past the box of rum and stabbed the dirt with his machete before plopping down. He laid out an array of marijuana and papers with the sacrosanct air of preparing for communion. After rolling his spliff, he offered it up. “Do you like to blow bush tea?”
“I’m good.” I held my hands up.
Lord Evader leaned his head back and let a thick plume of smoke issue fro
m his mouth. “Me, too. Fulla vibes.”
“I bet you are.” Owen moved his hand away from his Jericho.
I elbowed him gently. “We hear you’re the go-to guy for ghost stories. Sorry, duppy stories.”
“Puppy?” Holly whispered to Owen.
“Shh,” Owen said.
“Them say that duppy dead out,” Lord Evader said. “The Maroons considered the cotton trees sacred. They believe duppies often danced among the branches of those rooted in graveyards.”
“Carmen said you could tell us more about the…Old Higue?” Holly raised her voice with uncertainty.
“Old Higue. Yes, man. That what we call any old witch. I grew up around here, not two miles from this very spot. I remember when I was a boy having to walk past the house of an Old Higue. The chill that crawled up and down my back like stepping in front of Death. This haggish-looking woman. Ageless, years upon years upon years. My grandmother told me she used to provide the witch with food. Since we barely had food for our pot, it wasn’t fair, I said. But my grandmother warned me that taking care of her was for our own protection. But then children started to die mysteriously. That was when we all knew what we was dealing with was a true Old Higue, but we were too scared to confront her. We just make cross marks by their house and hung a blue cross over the cradle of any new baby. But soon she disappear. One night, a fireball left her house and she was never seen again.”
“A fireball?”
“Yes, man. The Old Higue waits until early morning when everyone is asleep, she sheds her skin like a snake, and then transforms into a ball of fire. Flies from her house and lands on the roof of another. If there is a baby in a cradle, she will suck it dry, dry, dry. Only then does she go home.”
“So…vampire.” Owen turned to me. “Why didn’t your aunt just say ‘skin-shedding vampire’?”
“This just gets better and better,” Holly said.
“Old Higue would hang her skin on branches as a warning. If her skin is found before it is put back on, salt and pepper or vinegar thrown on it, that ends her.”
“Rice. Salt and pepper. Vinegar. At this rate I don’t know whether to cut its head off or toss a salad,” Owen said.
Lord Evader continued, his yellow eyes focused on me. “She may have a raw body, skinny fingers, and red eyes, but in the end, she just an old witch. Miss Carmen knows. She thinks she hide it, but I know her mother was a powerful obeah ma. She worked the old ways, set duppies on people. People they come trouble her, all vex up about them neighbor or something. She’d work obeah on them and seldom asked for anything.”
“Her mother?” I feared where this might be heading. “Her mother lives here, too?”
“When life hard, you try anything.” Lord Evader stared long and hard at me. He held the burning spliff between his fingers and gestured at me. “You an obeah man, too.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You have faith. So if an obeah man or an obeah ma try to work obeah on you, it wouldn’t work. Your faith…it has been bruised. You’ve seen things and have your doubts. Like passing clouds over the sun, but the light is still there waiting to burst through.”
I stood there, suddenly self-conscious of all eyes trained on me.
“Where’s the guest house?” Owen chimed in, sparing me any more discomfort.
“You’re there.” Lord Evader cast his arms about, waving him toward the small shed. “We’re back where Miss Carmen buries the things she doesn’t like to think about.”
“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me. I might as well sleep in a tree. Look, I’m securing the perimeter, you two get yourselves pretty. If this thing likes to come out before daybreak, we’ll just have to hunt it down tonight before it can hit its snooze button.”
I prepared to leave, but Lord Evader took me by the arm. “No one appreciates the stories like they used to. The Old Higue may be the last of her kind. After this, she may only live on in stories, but there are fewer and fewer storytellers. Like I told you, you hunting your heritage.”
* * *
Aunt Carmen had small bottles of Jamaican Rum Cream set out on the dresser, which tasted like a vanilla milk shake spiked with rum. A mosquito net over the bed fluttered in the breeze. A lizard skittered across the wall, stopped, and stared at me as if I were the one intruding. Staring through the curtainless window, I rested on top of the made bed in my full body armor. Body armor was not designed for tropical climes. My fellow Monster Hunters always liked to say that I’d get used to the heat. They lied, but I did get used to the protection it offered. Despite being suited up, I felt the pressure of an incoming storm closing in. Wind swept through the leaves of the breadfruit trees which sounded like rainfall. A chirping chorus of cicadas filled the night.
“You all right?” Holly fastened the last part of her body armor as she came out of the bathroom.
“I don’t know how to explain it. For a long time, I’ve just felt so disconnected from everything. Like I have no roots to ground me. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just the idea of being able to help out family.”
“Even family so distant you couldn’t pick them out of a lineup?” Holly asked.
“Like I said, I don’t know how to explain it. I just have a hole gnawing at me, something missing. I just need to see this through.” I closed my eyes. “I still have the nightmares, you know.”
“About the zombies?” Holly stared at me with those blue eyes of hers that never missed anything.
It seemed like my life kept coming back to voodoo of some sort. It was a voodoo priestess who terrorized my home in Florida, stirring up zombies which I had to put down with a pickaxe. All the talk about obeah and the undead left me more on edge than I was ready to admit. “Yeah. This mission, it’s just got me all turned around. Like there’s a debt that I owe.”
“You don’t owe anyone anything, Trip.” Holly sat on the edge of the bed. She put her hand on my arm. “I’m only going to say this once and if you ask me about it later, I’ll deny it, but you’re a good man, John Jermain Jones.”
“Thank you…Mrs. John Jermain Jones.”
Holly punched me in the leg.
* * *
We slipped out the back entrance of Carmen’s house. A DJ had begun to spin a few dancehall tracks while people milled about in line for food. We couldn’t escape all of the curious stares. Two Americans in paramilitary gear would certainly stir the rumor mill. Carmen nodded her approval. When we turned the corner, Owen was slipping a tank onto his back.
“What is that?” I asked.
“The XM42 flamethrower. These are perfectly legal to use to clear weeds. Or snow.”
“Though clearing the undead is probably an off-brand use.”
“Never fight high-level undead without one,” Owen said.
A few scattered houses hid behind Carmen’s property. Dilapidated shacks I thought abandoned, save for the furtive movement of extinguishing a gas lamp at our approach. The sounds of the Nine Nights retreated to the main house. The hillside took on a foreboding aspect at night. Its crests and tree line a series of shadows against an indigo sky full of more stars than I could ever remember seeing. We formed a skirmish line with Holly on point. She hefted the Negev machine gun like it was an extension of her arm.
“Do you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what?” Owen said.
“Exactly. It all stopped. No birds. No cicadas. Everything’s quiet.”
A small path cut through the overgrown trees. Owen tromped through the woods. I used to play football in college and it would be easy to confuse Owen with a simple bruiser, but he knew how to use his bulk when he moved. His bulky frame pushed through like he dared nature to get in his way.
“Anything?” I asked into the comm link.
“Nothing yet.” Holly moved further ahead of us. “Wait, I may have a trail. Leads back past the property line. Got some houses back there.”
I had the undefinable feeling that we were being watched. Something stalked the woods alo
ngside us, waiting for its time to strike. Tree branches crunched loudly underfoot, each twig snapping and echoing across the hills. I’d grabbed the Beretta 1301 Tactical shotgun and carried it at the low ready. I switched to my helmet-mounted night vision monocular. Though I had a 1,000 lumen Nitecore MH12 LED flashlight affixed to my shotgun, a second light casting the world in green was picked up by the monocular. The trees loomed tall overhead, now so thick they blocked the night sky. Anything could hide among their high limbs. Owen had the same idea, spending as much time scanning the branches above as the path in front of us.
Holly pointed to the nearest house and signaled that she was going around back. I stepped to the front door. It didn’t quite fit in the frame as if the house had been assembled from spare materials.
“Let’s see if anyone’s home,” Owen said.
The house was a small open room with two tiny windows. Broken bottles lined the shelves. In the center of the floor was a brass bowl with dried blood on it. All manner of teeth lay scattered around it. Other bowls sat on a makeshift bench, half filled with grave dirt.
“What do you think?” Owen sifted through a pile of dirt.
“Witch.” Holly stood by the rear door.
“Definitely a witch,” I said. I paused at a framed photo on a shelf—a picture of an older woman next to a young Carmen who could be her twin in another ten years. The air temperature dropped several degrees. I set the photograph back on the shelf with calculated care, not wanting to make any sudden movements.
“We’ve got company,” I whispered.
A woman stood in the corner, hunched over, like a grandmother whose arthritic bones barely allowed her to stand.
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