by Derry Sandy
Voss brought the vehicle to a stop announcing that they had arrived. They got out and stood on the sidewalk in front of a large house. The house was built in the turn of the century Victorian architectural style that was unique to Trinidad. Though very old, it had been meticulously preserved. Its steep sided roof of green corrugated sheet metal contrasted with the wooden lace-like lattice work of the gable trim.
The wide wooden windows had hand carved frames and displayed a patina which reflected countless years of being varnished and revarnished. The porch tiles were a deep ocean green that matched the roofing. The house itself was painted peach with white accents. A thick bougainvillea hedge encircled the grounds, its blooms a riot of peach, violet, and white. Mature palm and fruit trees dotted the lush, manicured lawn.
Voss pressed the doorbell button that was recessed in the short square concrete gatepost. Above the bell button was a marble inlay with golden lettering advertising that the location housed the office of Dr. Premkumar Luchman, as well as the law offices of Glazer, Williamson, and Stewart.
A female voice answered the intercom. Voss identified himself and the gate swung open. The trio followed a winding white gravel path that was bordered by an Ixora hedge in full bloom. The mahogany double doors were open and they stepped into the clean, cool air of a large and well-appointed waiting room. The off-white walls were covered with paintings by Caribbean artists. Waterfalls, forests, and birds were the primary inspirations.
Behind a heavy wooden desk, a petite, pretty, dark-skinned woman in a well-tailored skirt-suit, stood, extended a manicured hand, and smiled in greeting, shaking each hand in turn. The brass nameplate on the desk introduced her as Lisa Cyrus and she directed them to take a seat, assuring them that they would be called upon shortly.
Rohan sat and allowed himself to be mesmerized by the lazy spinning of a ceiling fan with blades that mimicked banana fronds. There was a time when the Order’s three houses; Stone, River, and Wood had been filled with initiates but as the numbers of greyborn dwindled so had the membership of the houses. Fewer children were born who could survive the rituals that conferred the powers Rohan used to track, fight, and kill.
Attempting to tattoo an unproven child could result in infection or worse, death. Potentials therefore had to be tested. There was a time maybe a century ago when more children passed the test that there was room to accept. Now, finding a suitable recruit was rare.
The scarcity of new initiates had not worried the men of the Order because those who bore the tattoos lived a very long time. Additionally, since the diminishing numbers of recruits seemed to dovetail with the diminishing number of greyborn, some members of The Order felt this reduction of recruits was the Absolute’s way of setting the balance. But the three deaths at Stone underscored how easy it was for an entire house to be wiped out.
Lisa Cyrus rose and asked Rohan to accompany her. Voss and Kamara stood to follow.
“They only need Rohan for now,” Lisa said, motioning that Voss and Kamara should retake their seats.
The small woman walked ahead of him, her back straight. Her tall red heels clicked rhythmically on the hardwood flooring. The two ascended a spiral staircase, went down a wide hall, and stopped in front of a tall black door covered with carvings, the most prominent of which was a wrinkled old man sitting below a silk cotton tree, the Watchers’ seal.
Lisa knocked once and entered without waiting for a response. Inside, the room was bathed in warm sunlight entering from its picture windows. Three men and two women sat around a large table the surface of which was polished to a mirror finish. Rohan knew most of the faces but only some of the names of the people seated around the table.“Please sit, Le Clerc.” The man who spoke sat at the head of the table. Rohan noticed with interest that although he was the blackest man he had ever seen, his eyes were bluer than a clear sky. His voice was deep and gravelly as if he did not use it often.
Rohan did as he was asked. Lisa turned to leave. “Lisa, stay, you may have a seat as well.”
Rohan objected, “The receptionist stays while Kamara is left downstairs like a stranger?”
“Rohan, we understand that this is an awful time for you. You have lost friends and family. Christopher and I also mourn.” These words were spoken by the elder of the two women. Her straight steel gray hair was pulled back revealing a face that was more handsome than pretty. Rohan thought he remembered her name to be Miriam or was it Martha or something else pious and mundane. She motioned towards the dark-skinned man who nodded in solemn agreement as the woman continued. “Isa was a good friend and a great man. But we ask you to be patient and listen. There is a lot you do not know.”
“The Order depends on you lot for psychic intelligence gathering,” Rohan responded. “You are also supposed to find potential recruits. A potential has not been tested in twenty years, not since I was raised. You were also the ones who informed us that there was a single rogue lagahoo in Stone House’s jurisdiction. You left us to blunder into a massive ambush led by a master. How did you fail to see the psychic ripple always created by anything moving between the Grey and the Absolute? If you had seen it, done your job, my chaptermen would be alive.”
There was a momentary silence before Christopher spoke again.
“Rohan, we will address your concerns, but first a matter of equal importance. The life candles of Isa and Dorian have been extinguished. Their bodies are dead, their essence has moved on, and we mourn their loss. The candle for Kimani Le Clerc, went out on the night of the battle but burns again. A life candle that has gone cold, has never in our history come back to flame. We do not know what to make of this.”
“That is not possible.” Rohan exclaimed. “If Kimani was alive he would have returned to Stone.”
The older woman responded. “This is unbroken ground for all of us. We simply have no idea how this should be interpreted. All the other candles burn with a yellow light but since Kimani’s candle reignited it has burned blue. We have tried to find him; our eyes have been extended throughout the Absolute and into the Grey but we are blind to his presence. As you know we cannot see into the Ether. Those of the Absolute who go there neither return nor have candles that burn.”
Rohan stared at the mirrored table top, trying to make sense of what he had heard. Life candles were the Order and the Guild’s method of determining whether an Orderman was still alive and thus worth searching for or if he was dead. A candle was lit for each Orderman on the day he was raised, and it burned until the day he died. Anger filled him as he thought of Isa and Dorian’s extinguished candles.
“If he is alive then use your talents and find him. Isn’t that your job? Based on what I have seen we need every seasoned man.” He knew he was being unreasonable, but their calm inaction was infuriating. He paused again to consider his other unanswered questions. “How were the bodies of Isa and Dorian returned? How was I found?”
Christopher responded. “We found their bodies washed and wrapped in shrouds. One of the seers had a dream that led us to their location. We found you nearby. You were unconscious, but your wounds were cleaned and dressed. We believe the forest people, either the Duens or Papa Bois, are responsible for your return.
The younger woman spoke for the first time. She wore a navy business suit as if she had come to this meeting after working at a regular job. “In the dream, the seer was led by the hand by a forest child to the exact spot where you were found. The Duen have mild psychic abilities, a group of them working together could muster the power needed to plant a dream.”
Rohan shook his head. He could not believe that the faceless forest children known for their mischievous ways would have been this helpful. “Duen do not behave in the manner you have described. What makes you think they retrieved the bodies? Why do you think they wanted me found? They are usually aligned more with the creatures of the Grey than with the men of the Order,” he responded.
The table was silent until Christopher spoke. “I think they know that there is
a greater danger.” He paused for a meaningful breath. “The reason most of us did not see the master enter the Absolute is because someone very powerful opened the gate and hid the master’s presence until it was too late. When it finally leapt from the Grey, the suddenness and violence of its psychic signature blinded the third eye of two seers and gave another some sort of metaphysical stroke. Since the Guild was established nothing has ever been able to cross into the Absolute from one of the other realities unseen.”
“You said most of you were blind to it? Did someone actually see it enter?”
“Yes. Lisa saw it.” Christopher gestured to the receptionist.
Rohan spun. “She’s not a receptionist?” he stammered. Lisa grinned at him, with a wide but lovely smile.
“Well, of late I’m an apprentice seer, but I’m also an impoverished university student and I need to pay tuition somehow, so receptionist it is,” she responded continuing to grin.
Rohan’s anger returned. “And I am supposed to be happy that the only person from the entire House of Three that saw the lagahoo master come into the Absolute, was an apprentice, part-time receptionist, university undergrad? And why was an alarm not raised. We should have been warned.”
Lisa’s smile faded and her eyes narrowed with what Rohan thought was annoyance.
“Well to clarify, I’m a full-time receptionist who does evening classes. Secondly, I didn’t ask to be included in this occult nonsense. Two weeks ago I was just a regular person and an actual receptionist for Dr. Luchman, who I now know is also a witch doctor. By the way, I feel like you people need to put those facts in the job ads, but I digress. Just after I began working here, I started having these dreams, dreams like I never have had before, vividly real, dark dreams, and I started being able to guess the winning numbers of Play Whe with frightening accuracy. Then I started having the dreams even while I was wide awake. An entire hour could go by and I would not remember what happened except for the visions. I was zoning out during classes, parties, my favorite sitcoms, it was annoying. I spoke to Dr. Luchman. He called in Christopher and Miriam,” she gestured to the dark-skinned man and the gray-haired woman. “They made me drink some bitter dishwater tasting swill then they poked at me and told me I was Seeing.”
Miriam spoke, “At twenty-seven she is a bit old to be coming into her power. We think the fact that she is such a powerful clairvoyant coupled with the fact that she was unwittingly surrounded by sorcerers and seers opened her third eye. She is a late bloomer, but so far very impressive.”
“What did you see on the night of the attack?” Rohan asked.
“At first not much, initially the vision was…slippery. I was sitting at my desk when it came to me. I reached out with my third eye and it was like trying to grab an eel while wearing silk gloves. It came in flashes. I saw the four of you fighting and running. I saw your chaptermen dying. But the more I focused on it the harder it was to see. So, I stopped trying to reach for the vision and allowed it to come to me.” Lisa swallowed visibly and fussed with one of her freshwater pearl earrings. “Then I saw glimpses of the man who was holding open the gate to let the master into the Absolute.”
Christopher interjected, “The man she saw was shrouding the magic needed to open a gate to the Grey. All of us were blind to it. We believe that it was this person’s intention to open the portal longer allowing more masters into the Absolute.”
“So why didn’t he do it then and there. It seems to me that someone powerful enough to blind the entire Guild, save the receptionist, would be powerful enough to open the gate for as long as they wanted.”
“That is not necessarily the case. It takes a lot of power and very specific knowledge to open a large hole. We think he is not completely ready and this was a test to see if he could even achieve an opening. Maybe he does not have all the elements in place yet. But there is more, let Lisa finish her story,” Christopher said.
Lisa took a breath, “When I stopped actively trying to see the vision, it all came to me; I knew what the person was attempting. I saw more monsters waiting to squeeze through the small gate he had opened. So, I hit him. He must have lost concentration. His obeah dissolved, and he vanished.”
Rohan was confused. “You hit him? How? I always thought the visions were like images on a video feed.”
Miriam spoke before Lisa could respond. “The only explanation we can make is that Lisa traveled in the astral plane between the realms to the place where the obeah man was casting his spells and she hit him as if she was physically there, but it was her essence. What she did was extremely dangerous” Miriam glanced at Lisa. “A thousand times more so because she did it inadvertently. Death in the astral plane means death to both the physical and spiritual self, it means nothingness, no reincarnation, no heaven not even hell.” Miriam paused then continued, “The skill required to simultaneously hold open a portal to the Grey while working another spell to blind every psychic to what you are doing is considerable.”
“How do we know he doesn’t have all the elements for a bigger hole?” Rohan asked.
“Because he was trying different things over and over, arranging the spells differently, like he was experimenting,” Lisa said.
Christopher continued, “Since that night nothing further has happened, and we fear we will be unable to locate him until he again draws on as much power as he did on the night of the attacks. He was interrupted the last time, but we know he will try again. He must be found and killed before then.”
Rohan scoffed, “Found and killed?” he said, mimicking Christopher’s gravelly tone. “How and by whom? I’m the only one left at Stone and I survived by some magical fluke. River house has five men and Wood has seven. This obeah man could not have chosen a better time to try his hand.”
“Your survival was not a fluke. It was Lisa who saved you,” Miriam said. “Tell him Lisa.”
“After I struck him he dropped something, a thing of magic that is invisible in the physical world. I knew instinctively it was the key he was using to channel power to open the gate. I picked it up. By that time the master had already crossed into the Absolute and called the lesser lagahoo to harry you. Dorian and Isa were dead, and you lay there with a broken back. I tried to strike the master with power drawn through the key but I couldn’t do that from where I was, so I brought your essence to the plane and used some of the power to help you.”
“Help me? Wait, what?! That was you? You pulled my soul into the astral plane, pumped me full of some mysterious power that you stole from an obeah man then returned me to my body?”
“That’s a pretty good way of putting it. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was doing. It was all very intuitive,” Lisa said as she fussed with her necklace.
Rohan stammered in shock, but finally managed to get control of his tongue. “You seem to know a lot about obeah for someone who was ‘normal’ two short weeks ago.”
“She has an amazing intuition for the craft.” Miriam chimed in.
“And the key, do you still have it? Seems like something he would want back?”
“No, I didn’t know how to keep ahold of it when I returned to my body.”
Rohan sighed. “Did you see Kimani in one of your dreams do you have any idea where he could be?” Rohan asked.
“I have not seen him since after he fell off the cliff…” Suddenly Lisa paused. “Did anyone else see that?” She stared intently at the smooth mirror-like finish of the wooden table top.
“See what?” Christopher asked.
“I thought I saw something move in the table?”
“You mean on the table?” This came from another of the three men, a balding bespectacled gentleman; Leon? Lennox? Rohan felt like he really should make it a point to learn the names of the members of the Watcher’s Guild.
“No, I mean in…there it is, over there.” She pointed to the area of the table under Miriam’s elbows.
Rohan squinted and was about to dismiss Lisa’s suspicions as the result of an over acti
ve imagination, but then he saw it too. A small shadow moving sinuously like a snake in water. Miriam stood so suddenly she knocked over her chair.
“What is that?” she cried, backing away.
The shadow began growing like the silhouette of an aquatic creature rising from a murky pool. Everyone around the table was standing, making sure that no part of their person touched the table. The shadow continued to rise within the table, as if the surface of the table was the surface of a slimy lagoon. The air became thick and humid, like the air of a primeval swamp. The room reeked with the organic stink of mildew, decay, and rot. The shadow had taken on a shape however, the silhouetted creature was so massive that only parts of it could be viewed in the table at a time. Rohan thought it looked vaguely crocodilian with a long snout and a ridged tail, but with longer arms. The creature would swim out of sight beyond the borders of the table’s edge and swim back into view, as if the table was the window of an aquarium. Everyone was staring spellbound when, without warning, the shadowy creature thrashed its massive tail from within the surface of the table, like an alligator would from beneath the surface of the water. The table top buckled upward, splintering and sending chips of wood everywhere, and with that the phenomenon ended, leaving a shattered table and a shaken group of people.
Rohan was the first to break the silence. “What just happened.”
“I think we just had a glimpse into the Grey, which suggests that the barriers between the realities are thinning.” Christopher sounded a lot less confident than he had before, but Rohan surmised that an otherworldly crocodile swimming in your office furniture would shake anyone’s confidence.
“That thing is called a Leviathan. It patrols the swamps of the Grey. I don’t know how I know, but I know.” Lisa stood as far away from the table as she could without leaving the room. Rohan gave her credit for staying.
