Unsympathetic Magic

by Laura Resnick

  Shondolyn blinked and jerked herself awake as the other kids laughed. But, to my surprise, instead of laughing with them, or even looking sheepish, she got tearyeyed.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Diamond,” she said in a shaky voice.

  “Call me Esther.” I hadn’t meant to embarrass her into tears. “Don’t worry about it, Shondolyn. Friday afternoon, hot day, substitute teacher droning on and on . . .” The kids laughed again, but awkwardly this time. “Bound to happen.”

  She cleared her throat. “I need to be excused for a minute.”

  “Sure,” I said in bewilderment as she fled the room.

  I noticed that the boy named Jamal, once again dressed in baggy hip- hop clothing, involuntarily rose from his seat, his expression serious and concerned as he watched her leave. He moved uncertainly, as if wanting to go after her, then stopped himself and sat back down, but his gaze remained fixed on the door through which Shondolyn had departed. I wondered if he was the cause of her tears. A young lovers’ quarrel, perhaps?

  “Okay, everyone,” I said to the students, who were restive in response to Shondolyn’s distress. “I want you to think about what I’ve just said as you run through your scenes with each other again. I’ll be back in a few minutes, and we’ll see if what I’ve talked about is helping you.”

  I left the room and went directly to the place I thought I was most likely to find Shondolyn. Sure enough, she was in the ladies’ restroom. But she wasn’t crying, as I expected. She was cursing and punching the wall.

  Tough girl.

  She looked embarrassed when she saw me. “Sorry.” She went to the sink, turned on the tap, and started splashing cold water on her face.

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I just came to see how you are.”

  “I’ll be okay in a minute.” She sounded tired.

  I hadn’t worked with kids before, so I hoped I wasn’t taking the wrong approach. Starting with what seemed to be the most likely cause for her distress, I asked, “Is there someone in the class that you’re uncomfortable with, Shondolyn?”

  “What?” She ripped off a paper towel from the dispenser and started patting her face dry. “No.”

  She was a very attractive girl, with a lot of poise and style for a teenager. But I noticed now that she looked exhausted and there were dark circles under her eyes.

  I said, “You haven’t, uh, quarreled with anyone in the group?”

  “No, Miss Dia—Esther. No, it’s nothing like that. It’s just . . .” Tears welled up in her eyes again. She brushed them away angrily. “I just feel like I can’t take it anymore.”

  I put a hand on her shoulder. “Take what, Shondolyn?”

  “I’m so tired,” she said, still sounding angry. “I can’t sleep. It’s been bad for weeks, and lately it’s getting worse. So now I’ve got a headache almost all the time. I think it’s just because I’m so tired.” She added apologetically, “It makes me pretty bad-tempered, too.”

  The headaches must be why she had been carrying that bottle of painkillers yesterday. I hadn’t thought about it at the time, but I realized now that not that many teenage girls went around with a jumbo-size bottle of ibuprofen in their purses. “Has your mom taken you to a doctor?”

  She nodded. “He gave me some sleeping pills.”

  “Did they help?”

  She said irritably, “I don’t take them. My mom thinks I do, but I don’t.” She added, “Don’t tell her, okay?”

  Worried that I was out of my depth, I nonetheless said, “Okay. But, Shondolyn, why don’t you take the pills?”

  “I’m scared I won’t be able to wake up if I do.”

  I frowned. “You mean . . . you’re afraid of dying in your sleep?”

  She looked at me like I was an idiot. “No. Why would I die in my sleep?”

  Then what are you afraid of?”

  She took a breath. “The nightmares.”

  “Nightmares?” I repeated.

  Considering the hormonal roller coaster that teens experience, the conflicting pressures they feel from their peers and their families, and the way they’re so often forced to straddle the fence between childhood restrictions and adult problems, I thought that nightmares might easily just be a side effect of adolescence.

  But as Shondolyn spoke about her dreams in recent weeks, I realized she was experiencing something strange in her sleep. The girl relieved her anxieties in a rush of uninhibited honesty, the words tumbling over each other to get out of her mouth. Maybe it was because I was a stranger who listened without interrupting or judging her, or maybe it was just because she had reached a breaking point. In any case, she told me about her nightmares in vivid detail.

  And in her dreams, I discovered, this girl had seen the baka.

  Having seen them myself, I recognized them quite clearly from her description—which included their dirty claws and their stinking breath.

  She had also seen the walking dead in her dreams: glassy-eyed men with dull, sunken skin who didn’t breathe or talk, and who moved in response to commands from an unseen master.

  “It’s freaking me out!” She scowled and kicked the nearby garbage can. “I can’t stand it anymore!”

  I could understand why she feared sleep—and why she was forcing herself to stay awake at night, to the point of hurting her health and her temperament. I could also understand why her mother thought that sleeping pills and time were probably the answer to her problem. The images haunting Shondolyn probably convinced her mom that she was a sensitive and impressionable youngster going through a troubled phase, and if her family was supportive and patient, it would pass.

  Whereas I feared she was being menaced by the mysterious bokor who was summoning dark forces. And the next thing she said convinced me of it.

  “I also hear names in my sleep. I can’t remember most of them, but there’s one that sticks in my head: Mama Brigitte.” Shondolyn looked at me. “I’ve never met anyone with a name like that. Why is it in my dreams?”

  Thanks to the reading I had done on my way here, I recognized the name. And because of that, I suddenly felt so cold, I almost wished that Puma hadn’t given me those books.

  “I want you to go see a friend of mine. Right now,” I told Shondolyn. “Her name is Puma, and she runs a voodoo shop that’s only a few blocks from here.” I wasn’t sure where Max was, and I thought this girl needed immediate help.

  “Whoa!” Shondolyn resisted as I tugged on her arm, trying to drag her out of the bathroom. “No way am I going to some voodoo shop! I’m a good Christian!”

  “So is Puma,” I said. “In a sense. She’ll explain.” I hoped the Catholic paraphernalia in the shop would reassure Shondolyn. “Puma studied with a respected, uh, priest and teacher. I want you to tell her what you’ve just told me—”

  “You’re not coming with me?”

  I was leading her down the hall toward our classroom now. “I have to finish teaching this class. But I don’t want you to go anywhere alone. I’m going to ask Jamal to escort you to Puma’s shop.”

  Shondolyn curled her lip. “That boy with the baggy pants and sloppy shirts?”

  Apparently Jamal’s interest was not reciprocated. Well, this was his chance to prove to her that he had strength of character, even if he lacked fashion sense.

  I said, “He’ll be glad to be asked. I think he likes you.”

  “He can dream on.”

  At the door to our class, I summoned Jamal, advising him to bring his daypack with him. Then I said quietly to Shondolyn, “Puma can probably explain some of the images in your dreams, and she’ll give you something to protect you.” No doubt the houngan had taught Puma how to use some of those amulets and herbs in the shop. And we’d need to locate Max, in whose powers I placed the most faith.

  Jamal’s shoulders straightened and his eyes lit up when I explained that I wanted him to escort Shondolyn to Puma’s shop and to protect her—this, in particular, seemed to appeal to him. Shondolyn looked as if only her fatig
ue kept her from rolling her eyes. I gave them my cell phone number and told them to call me as soon as they reached the shop. Then I sent them on their way.

  Only after they were gone did I realize that I still didn’t have my cell phone. “Damn!”

  Some of the kids paused in their rehearsals and looked at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “Uh, let’s get back to work.”

  While teaching the rest of the class, I tried not to speculate frantically on why Shondolyn was dreaming of Mama Brigitte, a dark and dangerous loa who was the wife of Baron Samedi, the Lord of Death.

  14

  “Apparently there was some commotion after you left my office yesterday?” Catherine said to me.

  I was in her office again today. I looked up from the employee paperwork I was filling out so that I could get paid and also so that I could work with the kids. There were various forms I had to sign guaranteeing that I didn’t have a criminal past and that I wouldn’t lead my students astray. I felt very glad that no record existed of my recent arrest.

  “Commotion? Oh!” I recalled Max’s mad dash through the building in pursuit of the boy with the sword as Jeff and I ran after him. It seemed like a long time ago. I supposed that the worried receptionist had told Catherine about it. “Max and I thought we saw someone we knew. We were wrong.”

  “My, you do keep things lively, er . . . Esther.” She’d had to glance quickly at one of my employment forms to recall my name.

  I decided not to tell her that I had sent a student to a voodoo shop today. Despite her enthusiasm for the syncretic faiths of the New World, Catherine would no doubt realize that the girl’s family might not approve, and she might feel obliged to reprimand me. So, in the spirit of not looking for trouble unless it came looking for me, I said nothing.

  After I had finished teaching the class today, I’d checked at the reception desk. Lopez hadn’t dropped off my purse yet. The receptionist—whose name was Henry—had let me use the foundation’s phone to call the shop. Puma assured me that Shondolyn had arrived safely and that I had done the right thing by sending her there. Max and Biko were also there, and between Puma and Max, they were figuring out what ailed the girl and finding a solution. Shondolyn had dismissed Jamal, who had seemed worried about her and disappointed about being sent away; but he had left after the girl made it clear that she didn’t want him there.

  Ah, rejection. I knew the feeling.

  Which reminded me of something. “I understand that a police detective came here yesterday to see you?” I said to Catherine.

  “Goodness, word travels fast,” she responded with a cool look. “Yes. Like you, the police officer had questions about Darius Phelps’ death. And I gather that . . .” She paused for a moment, evidently wrestling with distaste. “That is, the detective informed me that Darius’ grave has been robbed and the body taken.”

  I feigned shock. “Do you have any idea who would have done such a thing?”

  “As I told the detective, no.”

  I met her eyes. “Do you have any idea why someone would take his body?”

  She looked surprised by the question. “Perhaps it was stolen by someone who provides cadavers to medical schools. Or by a necrophiliac. Or by a gruesome prankster.”

  I was a little sorry I had asked.

  Catherine added, “Or perhaps someone is trying to raise a zombie.”

  I blinked. “Pardon?”

  “When I mentioned this yesterday, the detective looked almost as surprised as you do right now. But given my field of study, it’s natural that this would occur to me. And, I confess, I am rather curious to learn whether that was the intention.”

  I glanced involuntarily at the nearby couch and decided that what Biko had witnessed there was probably just a one-time incident. Or perhaps an episode in a very short-lived fling. Even for a woman who was prone to concealing emotion, Catherine seemed so detached when talking about Darius’ missing body that I found it hard to believe they’d recently been lovers, or that there’d been something serious between them in the past.

  She concluded, “But I suspect we will never know the intention of the thief or the fate of the corpse. Surely a missing body cannot long claim the attention of the police at this time of year, given the increased violence that typically accompanies a summer heat wave.”

  I thought it likely that Lopez was pursuing this case on his own time, but I left that subject alone.

  I asked her, “Are you familiar with any actual instances of, er, zombiism?”

  “Of course,” she said. “There are well-documented examples in Haiti.”

  “Really?” That wasn’t what I had expected an academic to say.

  “Certainly. The cases are controversial—”

  “No kidding.”

  “—but widely discussed. The most famous case is that of Clairvius Narcisse, a Haitian man who died in the 1960s, was buried, and then returned to his village in the 1980s. Shortly after burial, he had been exhumed from his grave by a bokor—a dark sorcerer—who then forced him to work as a slave on a sugar plantation, alongside many other zombies.”

  “There were other zombies there?” I asked.

  “According to Clairvius Narcisse, yes. However, Narcisse escaped after the mysterious bokor died, and neither that man nor the plantation were ever identified.” Catherine shrugged. “Such stories are typically impossible to verify in all their particulars.”

  “Was the man who returned to the village really the same one who had died years earlier?” I tried not to think about what the zombie must have smelled like after all that time.

  “According to various witnesses, he was the same man who had been buried,” she said. “But one obvious reason that folklore all over the world is full of stories of the living dead, the undead, and restless spirits is that a percentage of people over the millennia have been buried alive.”

  “Buried alive?” I repeated in horror.

  “Oh, yes,” she said casually. “Without modern medical equipment or trained personnel present, someone in a state of coma, hypotension, or deep narcosis may well be considered dead and in need of burial.”

  I asked in confusion, “So was Narcisse alive or dead?”

  “Alive, obviously,” she said. “Only people mistakenly presumed dead get out of their coffins and walk away, Esther. The actual dead stay put.”

  Not quite. Darius Phelps had been pronounced medically dead in New York City in the twenty- first century, and he was still walking around. But I thought my telling that to Dr. Livingston might be sharing a little too much. Especially if I wanted to keep my new job here.

  “If Narcisse was alive all that time, why didn’t he go home sooner?” I asked. “How did he wind up enslaved as a zombie for years?”

  “He was presumably subjected to powerful hallucinogenic drugs that affected his memory as well as his ability to exercise his own will. Only after the bokor who had enslaved him died, and thereby stopped dosing him with drugs, did Narcisse start recovering his wits and eventually make his way home.”

  “What about the other zombies that he mentioned?” I asked. “Did they escape, too, after the bokor died?”

  “No one knows.” She spread her hands. “As I said, such cases often remain shrouded in mystery and doubt.”

  “What sort of drugs would have such an effect on Narcisse?” I wondered.

  “Oh, folk medicine and various ritual practices are full of interesting pharmacology,” she said with enthusiasm. “In addition to nerve toxins derived from animals, there is a rich variety of botanical poisons and hallucinogens. An ethnobotanist could tell you much more about this than I can, of course.”

  However, her limitations apparently weren’t going to prevent her from indulging in another monologue. “Calabar beans, which are used in some forms of African witchcraft, cause paralysis while keeping the victim conscious. Without an antidote, a dosage can easily be fatal.” Barely pausing for breath, she continued, “A plant known as datura, which grow
s in Haiti, can cause hallucinations, delusions, and amnesia. That is probably what was given to Clairvius Narcisse. In Candomblé, which is an Afro-Brazilian syncretic religion—”

  “What do you think happened to Darius Phelps?” I asked, hoping to avoid a recitation of the whole canon.

  “Pardon?” She looked puzzled.

  “Well, his grave is empty now,” I said. “And you mentioned zombiism.”

  “I mentioned it as a matter of intellectual curiosity. Realistically, Darius’ body was probably taken by someone whose motives are crass and perverse,” she said coolly. “But if the body snatcher is motivated by the dark side of traditional Vodou beliefs and is intent on raising a true zombie from the dead through magical invocations and rituals . . .”

  “Yes?” I prodded.

  “Then the thief is a disturbed and deluded individual who needs help more than he needs punishment. And I hope the police will realize that, if they catch him.”

  “Or her.” I took the plunge. “Do you think Mambo Celeste could conceivably be invol—”

  “What? No. Absolutely not,” Catherine said firmly. “A mambo is a guide, a healer, and a teacher.”

  “Anyone who reads the daily news knows that religious leaders in other faiths go astray and do bad things,” I pointed out. “So why couldn’t a mambo?”

  “Obviously, a mambo could, just as anyone could. But is it feasible? No—at least, not in this case. I know Mambo Celeste well, and although she is a . . . an unusual personality, shall we say, she is dedicated to her faith and conventional in her practices.” As if thinking of Napoleon, Catherine amended, “Er, most of her practices.”

  “But—“

  “If you’re imagining Mambo Celeste prowling a cemetery by night to dig up Darius Phelps’ body, well . . .” She shook her head. “No, it really is too ridiculous for words.”