by Eden Royce
Silans, she soothed.I fix for you.
“But how?”
Set koud kouto, set koud pwenyad. Even with his limited knowledge of the language, her words and intent were clear.
Seven stabs of the knife, seven stabs of the sword.
***
Two days later, David sauntered into the tiny shop and browsed the plentiful knick-knacks and wooden carvings while the owner sold bottles of mango soda to a group of sweating relief workers. He picked up a wide-eyed doll, its face round and shiny black, and ran his fingers over the rough cotton dress and headscarf. He snorted as he read the tag attached to it.
“Ah, you have returned, drummer.”
“I wanted to say good-bye. I leave today.”
“Your problem is no more?”
“I’ll take care of it as soon as I get back. Thank you for your help.”
“It is nothing.”
David’s pupil and iris swirled together with the white of his eye. He turned the doll over, his calloused fingers snagging the cloth as he switched to fluid Haitian. “Jean-Pierre. Is this what my people think I look like?”
“Those that have not seen you as you truly are.” The old man shrugged his narrow shoulders. “It is what they are comfortable with because it makes them feel less afraid.”
“Even so, it is good to be without this for a while.” David stroked his right cheek, unmarked under a light growth of stubble.
“You are always beautiful to me,” Jean-Pierre said.
“Thank you for this one. Much time has passed since a blan has come to me.” David loosened the rope around the tanbou and unwound bands of blue and yellow cloth. “He says he does not wish her death, but in time, he will see my way.” A wedge of wood from the drum’s side had been removed and whittled sharp, its point already dark with blood. It fit flush into the shallow cavity, undetectable when he re-wrapped the drum.
“Forever, I am your servant, Danto.”
“This will be such a joy.” David smiled. “I will return soon, you know I cannot stay away for long.”
He left the old Haitian standing in the doorway, staring after him as he walked the dusty path to the airport, drum slung over his shoulder, his fingers tapping a divine rhythm.
The Choking Kind
An old man sat behind the dilapidated counter of the country store humming Negro spirituals as Grace walked in, sweaty from standing in the Charleston sun. Her new black dress clung to her like a frightened child and she plucked at its neckline with irritation.
“Sun hot for all that there,enny?” He put down his newspaper, folded to the obituary pageand nodded at her ensemble. She smiled at his words, the singsong of her native Gullah reaching her ears for the first time in almost a decade. English peppered with African dialects made a steamy fusion of language rich with chewy rhythms.
“Too hot to be wearing black, that’s for sure.” Funny how her drawl had returned, each vowel emerging pregnant, full and round. “But I just came from a funeral,” Grace said. She shook her head, surprised at her revelation. Half a day here and she was already over sharing with strangers.
She wove her way through the tight aisles of the old store. Dusty tin cans lined the shelves, some bearing labels promoting brand names long out of production.
Grace pulled her braids away from where they lay heavy against her damp neck. In the few hours she’d been at the cemetery, the sun had turned her skin the color of burnished teak. Sticky heat formed a staunch wall around the island, blocking all but the most steadfast of breezes. What wind managed to penetrate was off the salt marsh and dank with sulfur, smelling like a match just blown out. Afternoon slipped toward dusk and the island’s night creatures would soon come alive.
But her father wouldn’t. No amount of prayer or hoodoo could do that. She wiped perspiration from her face.
The storeowner took in her designer handbag and shades. Then his gaze traveled to the window, smoky with age and inattention, where her car waited outside in the dried grass. He asked with a healthy serving of doubt, “You abinyuh?”
“Yessir. Grew up in the last house on Marsh Road.” She looked at the date on the bottom of a can and put it back on the shelf. “Though the last time I was here, that road didn’t even have a name.”
A smile warmed the old man’s face, softening the deep ebony lines. “Then you been gone a long time.”
Wadmalaw Island had escaped time’s notice; its residents caught fish and shrimp exactly as they had when they’d been brought to this land as slaves. Shopping consisted of makeshift roadside stands manned by heat-softened proprietors of intricate sweetgrass baskets and hand-harvested produce.
“Pretty gal like you aine wed?”
She smiled, lips tight. “Nope.” There’d been enough discussion of marriage lately and she needed a break from her latest beau’s persistence. Grace placed her items on the counter for purchase: quarter bushel of peaches, Mason jar of clear moonshine, spearmint gum.
“You said you was here for services. Who you lost?”
“My Pop. Joseph Moultrie. Did you know him?”
He gathered her purchases in a line before he meticulously pressed buttons on an ancient wooden cash register. “Once, way back. Kept to hisself the last few years, though.”
Grace pursed her lips. “I’m not surprised. We had a bit of a falling out over a… family issue. I left but he was happy staying right in that little house at the top of the road.”
The man nodded in understanding, of which part of her comment she didn’t know. “Never guessed you was his. Rugged old so-and-so.” He lifted his arm, palm toward the ceiling. “Bless the dead.”
“Yeah, he was. Guess I must look like my Ma, then. But I don’t remember her.”
“Neither me,” he said. The man’s lip trembled as he focused his attention on packing her purchases.
“You knew my father that long ago, but not my mother? See, that’s why I left this place.” She twisted a cowrie shell fastened to the end of a plait. “Nobody wants to talk about her. I can almost understand Pop not wanting to talk about her, but I can’t get a word out of anyone. They’re both dead now. Who cares?”
“Joe never crack teeth ’bout your Ma and I won’t neither.”
“Thought you said you didn’t know her.”
“Don’t.”
“Would you help me with something?”
He quoted her a price, but kept his eyes on the buttons of the register as he grunted in inquiry. “Hmm?”
“Directions. To Ma’s grave.”
When he didn’t respond, she realized he was waiting for her payment. “Oh, sorry.” Grace placed cash in his cupped palm and dropped the coins he gave her as change into a cracked ashtray on the counter. He busied himself with finding the right sized bag for her purchases.
Grace raised her voice, thinking the man hadn’t heard her earlier question. “I’ve been to Pop’s grave. Now I need to visit my Ma’s.”
His fingers shook, either with nerves or age. After several tries, he was able to separate one brown paper bag from the stack.
Grace plucked the Mason jar of moonshine from the bag and put it in her purse. Its weight, along with that of a worn Bible she’d found hidden in a beat-up hatbox in Pop’s closet, made her purse strap bite into her shoulder. “Do you know where she’s buried? Pop never told me anything.”
He seemed to deflate, becoming smaller, flatter. “She aine…” He ran a crumpled handkerchief over his damp forehead. “I don’t believe she dead.”
Grace stared at him, speechless until he patted the worn metal stool next to the counter and she perched on it. The old man found two dented tin cups under the counter and he pointed at her purse where she’d put the bottle of shine. She relinquished the jar to him and he poured a generous amount for each of them.
“He told me that she died.” But Pop had never allowed trips to the cemetery or even conversation about her mother. At first, he distracted her with toys or candies. As she got older, he simpl
y ignored her pleas for information, telling her to do her schoolwork. “For years he told me that.”
He drained his cup and filled another before he spoke. “She somewhere deep in that marsh. But dead? I aine sure.”
Despite the struggles of the window unit air conditioner, it was stifling in the store. Grace waved a cardboard fan she’d gotten at her father’s services in front of her face. “I’ve got to get in that grave,” she said. “I have to know if she’s dead.”
He avoided her intense gaze as he sliced up a ripe peach from her bag and mashed its pulpy sweet flesh into the next cup of moonshine. “No way you getting in that place unless you a witch. And you don’t look no where close to being no boo-hag.” He took another long swig, draining the cup. A moment later, he pulled the gnawed peach skin out of his mouth and placed it delicately in the graying handkerchief.
Boo-hag. She’d been no more than seven or eight when Pop’s mama had come to visit and told her stories of the swamp witches. They existed on male lust, sucking it in like air, leaving their willing hosts drained and temporarily paralyzed. Unwilling ones were left dead. Pop had come in during the middle of the tale and forbidden any more nonsense talk.
“I remember those stories.”
“Just stories, huh?”
“I don’t know,” Grace shifted her purse higher on her arm. “Pop used to throw salt over his shoulder when he spilled it. A couple of people at the funeral told me they’d already seen his spirit walking on the roadside.” She frowned. “I don’t feel… alone sometimes. So I stopped saying things don’t exist a long time ago.”
The old man nodded.
“I need to get into that grave, though,” she said.
“No way you can pass through clean ’cept...” He stopped, cursed his loose tongue. “Damn backyard shine. Gets to me quick.”
Grace sat up, rocking the stool forward. “Except what?”
He lifted the cup to his lips, then changed his mind and sat it down again. “The one way I know aine worth it.”
“Please tell me.”
“What you know ’bout hags?”
“Not much. They steal a man’s…” She groped for a word. “Desire and make him weak.”
“More than that sometime, but that’s what the old people say,” he said, seemingly oblivious to his own age. “But how?”
Grace stuck a piece of gum into her mouth and shrugged. “Magic, I guess. I don’t know.”
“Without they skin, that’s how.” He leaned back in the ancient chair. “Don’t screw up your face like that. You asked for the tale, now you aine ready for it?”
“Okay, sorry. Tell me.”
“Get one of them hags to help you. They all over them woods after midnight.” He poured the rest of the shine into his cup. “You can’t get in that graveyard smelling like you fresh out the womb. They say that thing old Joe got guarding the place’ll rip you apart.”
***
Grace crouched behind a thick-rooted oak tree in the densest part of the woods. Spanish moss hung from the trees filtering the moonlight like lace curtains as she watched the group of witches congregate around small piles of what looked to be heaps of discarded laundry. She moved closer inches at a time, praying that her progress through the forest sounded like an animal skittering for safety.
Even though the old man had said to steal one, Grace couldn’t bring herself to do it. So she’d waited in moonlit darkness for hours, going through flashlight batteries and sticks of gum, until the hags returned from their carousing. Her only hope was that they would appreciate her manners for asking politely.
As she got nearer, Grace could see that the heaps of laundry were actually piles of luminous sky blue flesh lying in puddles on the ground. The creatures standing above them were grotesque, wet and blood red, as they stood in line to run their fingers over each pile, stage whispering. Grace strained to hear the grainy, singsong words of the figure in front as they floated toward her on puffs of dogwood-scented wind.
Skin, skin, skinny… Do you know me?
Skin, skin, skinny… Is you mine?
The first pile didn’t move, so the stooped creature repeated itself to the second. No response. But the words made the third heap quiver and spring from the damp ground and dangle suspended in air as if on a hanger. Grace stared openmouthed as the witch donned the grisly garment and flew off, out of the woods. Other hags followed a similar ritual as the piles of flesh dwindled. Soon only one hag remained.
“I know you are there, child. Come to me.” The boo-hag didn’t turn to face her, but Grace heard its voice, soft and persuasive, clearly over the pounding of her own heart.
Grace swallowed, throat dry as her hands clutched the rough bark of the ancient tree. The witch didn’t give any other indication that she’d spoken as she stepped into her suit of flesh. It covered her slimy-looking frame without leaving any indication of an opening.
“I know you’ve been watching me with those marble eyes of yours. Curiosity shines in the dark.” She stood with her back to Grace, as she basked naked in the rays of moonlight. “Are you embarrassed?”
The hag slipped on a faded cotton dress from the forest floor. It was difficult to tell the color—it may have been green or brown or black—as it melded with the night so well. She made no attempt to tame her rioting hair. “There now. Come see what you wish to see.”
Grace’s tongue loosened. “I don’t want…” Her whisper trailed off as she realized lying to a witch woman was not a good idea.
“Oh, but you do.” The boo-hag turned to Grace with the speed of a striking snake.
The young woman shrieked and shuffled backward, landing on her bottom in a scattering of decaying leaves. Backlit by the gibbous moon, the hag peeled herself away from her surroundings. Her eyes looked empty at first, but as she came closer, Grace saw they were solid and shiny black, like patent leather.
To Grace’s surprise, the crone laughed. “Which is it? Frightening? Disgusting? Better with the skin?”
Gone was the gory, dripping muscle-over-bone. Over it lay a washing powder blue husk that hung loose on the hag’s slight physique. The witch’s voice belied her look, because the demand came out silky and lulling. “Speak your mind.”
There was no need to be coy. Any person of sound mind would be home in bed, not stalking boo-hags for favors in the middle of the night. She scrambled to her feet. “I need to get into my Ma’s grave.”
“LuAnn Moultrie’s grave? What for?”
“How do you know my mother?”
“I’ve been roaming these woods since before you were thought of. I see a lot and hear a lot more.” Frowning made the witch look as though her face were going to separate down the middle. “Doesn’t matter though. You can’t get out there because your Pa set a spell on that land.”
“I know. But someone told me I might be able to get by the guard dog if you…” She trailed off, the right words eluding her.
“If you were to look and smell like a hag? That why you’re so taken with my skin?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
The hag laughed, a controlled shriek. “Been a long time since anyone called me that. You might be able to do it if you could fool that plat-eye.” She turned serious again. “A plat-eye is no a dog. Ever seen one?”
Grace shook her head.
“He’ll get close to smell you, check you out. Don’t run and you’ll be fine. Run and it’s the end of you, skin or no.”
“I understand.”
“Um hm.” Heat rushed into Grace’s face as the witch’s gaze journeyed over her. “What do you have to offer?”
“Offer?” Grace’s jaw went slack. “I don’t have anything. I thought—”
“You thought me that generous?” The creature extended a hand ending in gnarled, overgrown claws. “Or were you proposing an exchange?”
This time Grace held her ground. “No!”
“Good girl,” the hag said, approval evident in her tone. “Now what do you have that I migh
t want?”
“Money?”
Another shriek. “Try again.”
“My car?”
“We fly, girl. On the wind or without it.” Her smile returned. “You could owe me.”
Grace rubbed her arms for warmth even in the balmy night air. Part of her wanted to run away and check into a hotel. To leave at first light and forget that she ever lived on this island. Reinvent herself again. “Okay,” she whispered. “But what is a plat-eye?”
“Pieces of dead animals put together and brought back to life.” The hag reached up to her mane of coarse graying hair. As Grace watched, it appeared she was going to smooth it with her palms. Instead, she parted the mass of steel wool hair and pulled. With a sucking pop, the hide separated and the hag shrugged it off like a winter coat. The skin swung in the air like a hanged man. “You don’t know nothing about what you getting mixed up in and well, I’m sorry for you.”
Rogue thoughts dashed through her mind, chased by the thought of Pop’s scrawled words in the old Bible she found tucked in an old shoebox.
I was a good man before you.
Grace reached for the skin and it came toward her, lowering itself several inches to her height. Even with the eye sockets empty, the hide seemed to be looking at her, assessing her worthiness to wear it. Where she touched it, the skin felt cool like crisp bed linen. Her stomach roiled and she suppressed a shudder before she stepped into the opening down the back, clothes and all.
Inside the skin was hot, sticky with blood and ripe with the scent of bowel. Grace gagged at the moist, dank stench. “You can do this, Grace,” she muttered. She held her breath as she pulled it over her face and it sealed itself closed. With a bit of adjusting she was able to breathe from the mouth and nose and see out of the eyeholes, but the world had a strange look, as though it were covered in plastic wrap. For a moment, the skin hung loose as it had on the witch, then it fused itself to her body with a rubbery snap. “Oh God,” she gasped, the shells on her braids pressing into the tender skin of her neck.
