by Derry Sandy
There were so many of them around him that he could not see the ceiling beyond the crowd of bodies. The maboya were not only fighting him but were fighting amongst themselves to determine who would get the first substantial bite. A clawed hand scooped a handful of flesh off his chest. An alien mouth tried to bite his foot through the sole of his boot. Rohan fought violently but the situation was impossible, for the umpteenth time this week he was going to die.
Smoke. The air was suddenly filled with smoke. Screams. The air was filled with screams and shrieks. The sounds were coming from the hallway. Then the maboya immediately atop him began to sweat drops of liquid blue flame, like rubbing alcohol set alight.
Liquid fire trickled like tears from its eyes-space, burning a thin trail down its face. It opened its mouth to scream and blue fire belched out engulfing its body rapidly. Soucouyant fire Rohan knew it well. When old Stone had burned, the fire had been blue too. Some of the fire dripped onto him but it did not burn. All the maboya were now burning. They wailed and writhed and screamed but the fire was relentless and the room grew lethally hot.
The air filled with the acrid smoke of their torment. Rohan crawled towards the door, looking for Cassan, and avoiding the shrieking flailing demons. He found the man, unconscious. His arm had been mauled badly and was putrefying. Even as Rohan watched a blackish mossy-green cast spread out from the site of the bite and leached up his forearm.
The wound stank like snail meat gone rancid. There was no occasion for second thoughts, the bite would spread sepsis throughout Cassan’s entire body in minutes. Rohan swiftly tied his belt around Cassan’s bicep and tightened it. Then he held the knife over the flames of the small wooden table which had caught on fire. He stretched the man’s arm out and amputated it with the glowing blade, using the floor as a chopping block. He cut at the elbow, just above the advancing putrefaction. The wound barely bled.
Rohan then hauled Cassan into the hallway where burning corpses were strewn everywhere giving off a nasty black smoke that smelled of rot. The stone walls had caught fire in places. Rohan was choking and growing light-headed. His eyes burned and he fell to his knees. Even though he was unconscious, the jarring fall caused Cassan to groan. The black poisonous smoke of the dead maboya filled his lungs. Rohan could not tell up from down, right from left. He had survived the beastly horde only to suffocate on the vile smoke from their corpses
A dog. A dog was barking. Something was tugging at his sleeve, licking his face. He opened his eyes and Agrippa’s snout was inches away from his nose. Rohan shook his head and the cobwebs cleared somewhat, and while the dog swam in his vision, it did not vanish.
“Are you really there?” Rohan rasped. In response the dog tugged at his sleeve then ran a little way to the left and came back. Revived by hope, Rohan struggled to his knees, grabbed Cassan by the collar of his shirt, and began to drag him in the direction the dog had gone. Agrippa also gripped Cassan’s shirt between his teeth and helped Rohan.
Smart puppy.
The hall seemed to go on forever, but then Rohan felt a draft of clean air. He saw a doorway at the end of the hall, and beyond the doorway, rolling hills covered in waist-high bull grass.
Rohan imagined that the view beyond the door must be what the first views of Valhalla looked like to a deceased heroic Viking. With every agonizing step towards the door he felt stronger. When he got to the portal he did not hesitate but walked right through and out into the light, hauling Cassan behind him and sucking down lung-fulls of Trinidad’s best air.
He vomited ash, he coughed up soot, he cried charcoal stained tears then he turned around and knelt to check on Cassan. Agrippa was licking the man’s face. Then Tarik appeared, walking towards them through the tall grass. He was barefoot, grinning, and carrying some of Kat’s ointments and cures. A more welcome sight Rohan had never seen. Rohan asked no questions as the boy poured a heavy grey paste down Cassan’s throat. The man coughed and sputtered awake then spent the next ten minutes vomiting an oily green amalgam that stank like a sack of dead toads as the medicines drew out the infection.
“Their bites and scratches are poisonous. Your marks saved you from the worst of it, Rohan, but drink this anyway.” Tarik handed Rohan a calabash of the same mixture he had given to Cassan. Rohan drank it without protest. It was bitter and he felt queasy but there was none of the projectile vomiting that Cassan had exhibited. When Cassan had finished vomiting and cursing, Tarik bound what was left of his arm in a cloth soaked with the same ointments Kat had used to heal Kamara’s jumbie bites.
“Where are the others?” Rohan asked. “Who set the maboya ablaze?”
“Voss is safe, Wrise is not. Richard is waiting at the bottom of the hill with a van to take us home. I could not enter the house, but I did what I could from out here. Pyromancy is one of my specialties.”
Given the animosity between the two men, Rohan suspected that either Wrise or Voss would not exit the house alive. He was glad that it was Voss who had survived and he wondered if it was really the maboya who had gotten Wrise in the end. The real surprise was that Tarik and not Kat had burned the maboya.
Rohan was regaining his strength, and Cassan, though he smelled like the La Basse and was missing an arm was also doing better. He was taking the amputation like a stalwart. He leaned on Rohan heavily as they made their way down the hill. Rohan spared a glance at the doorway and was not surprised to see that it was no longer there. There were only grassy hills behind them. No hint of the subterranean hell that they had just exited.
“How far are we from the house?”
“About three miles give or take. The tunnels extend for miles in all directions around the house. We are in the hills of Morvant.”
“Did Kat send you?”
“No, I followed you here, but the house kept me out, Richard has been unable to reach anyone at Stone. We assume they are asleep.”
Did you cut my arm off with a red-hot knife or did I dream that?” Cassan asked drowsily.
“It’s good that he cut off the arm. Once the rot spreads to your torso you are done for,” Tarik said.
They made their way down the grassy hillside. Rohan relished the sun on his face and he even enjoyed the feeling of dew soaking his pant legs and the invisible spider silk breaking across his forehead. At the bottom of the hill Voss sat with his back against the wheels of one of the large vans in which the guards had arrived. As soon as Richard spied them he ran over and embraced Rohan in a rough brotherly hug.
“It’s good to see you, boss,” he said. “We were concerned for a while.”
“What took you so long, Rohan? You getting soft?” Voss’ greeting was sarcastic but Rohan thought he saw genuine relief in the softening of the lines at the corners of his eyes.
“I was just cleaning up all the freaks you failed to put down.” Three huge dogs leapt out of the back of the truck and ran up to Cassan, wagging their tails and whining. They had returned to their original size, but Rohan recognized them as the goliath hounds from the kennels. Cassan did his best to greet them in his weakened state and with one hand. “My girls,” he said weakly. Agrippa stood apart. He neither rushed to join the new dogs nor did he show any aggression toward them.
“The house changed around and somehow the dogs found me,” Voss recapped. They were still oversized then. With their help we tore through the maboya and escaped out of some door. When the sun came up they returned to their normal size, which is still overgrown.” He gestured to a sickly looking Cassan. “Does he need to go to a hospital?”
“No,” Tarik replied. “The wound will soon heal and the venom has been countered. He will recover.”
“But his clothes will not,” Rohan said pinching his nose in mock disgust.
The men prepared to leave. When Rohan saw the chance he pulled Voss aside, “What happened to Wrise?”
“He didn’t make it.”
“It’s pretty obvious he didn’t make it, but what exactly happened to him? Did you kill him.”
Voss was silent for a while. “No, I didn’t kill him, but it may have been better for him if I had.”
Rohan pressed no further on the matter. He hauled himself into the canvas-roofed tray of the military-style truck. There were wooden benches on either side of the truck’s bed but Rohan lay flat on the floor next to Cassan with his head pillowed on Agrippa’s body. The truck roared to a start and lurched forward in a diesel rumble. As he lay, tossed around as Richard navigated the pothole-ridden roads, Rohan remembered the message from Ghita and the murdered jamette.
The dead want to talk with you, Kat. That was his last thought before he drifted into a black sleep.
Chapter 20
Jonah was already awake when the alarm went off. He had been preparing a simple breakfast for himself and his wife. While chopping the onions he whistled his favorite calypso; Obeah Wedding by Sparrow. It was a running joke between him and his wife that she had trapped him with an obeah spell like the ‘Melda in the song had failed to do with Sparrow.
Jonah and Imelda lived in a small wooden cottage on the grounds of Stone that had been converted from an over-sized equipment shed. Over the years they had declined countless invitations to move into the main house, which, even before it had been burnt and rebuilt, was too fancy for their tastes. While the men of the Order said that Stone was as much theirs as it was the Order’s, the small wooden cottage sitting in seclusion amongst a grove of teak trees on Stone’s grounds was truly his and Imelda’s sanctuary.
Secluded as it was the small house was however connected to the main house’s security systems and the single light bulb illuminating the small kitchen blinked on and off when the infrared beam was tripped. There was also a desktop monitor from which he could confirm whether another wild parrot had landed on the wall and tripped the motion sensors.
A look at the monitor revealed that the offender was not a wild parrot. Jonah watched as two people came over the back wall and one brazen bloke clambered right over the front gate. They moved like fer-de-lance in high grass. He and Imelda knew what their employers did for a living. Even though they preferred not to think about it too much, they acknowledged the potential dangers commensurate with their job.
The monitor registered that someone had locked the house down. Good job, Kamara, he thought. Now he had two choices. These people could simply be vandals or trespassers in which case he could call the police. It was more likely however, that they were something far more dangerous. Fer-de-lance in the high grass. Jonah reasoned that he and the women could arm themselves and hold off the intruders until Rohan and Voss returned, but when the woman began to squeeze under the door, he knew there could be no waiting. He picked up the receiver of the rotary phone in the kitchen and dialed Rohan’s cell number from memory. The phone rang once and a groggy voice answered.
“Jonah, what’s cooking?”
“Eggs actually. Rohan, Three people came over the wall. One is squeezing herself under the door and will be inside Stone in a minute.”
“Did she melt into a puddle of white liquid like milk?” Rohan’s voice sounded as if he was now fully alert.
“More like a rubber chicken. It’s a tight squeeze but she’ll make it eventually.”
“Where’s Kat?”
“She left a little after you guys did, early this morning.”
“Get Kamara and Lisa and get out of the house. We’ll be there in about ten minutes. Do not allow the intruders to bite or scratch you.”
“Sounds like a plan. See you soon, sir.”
In the background Jonah heard Rohan shout something followed by the sound of a large diesel engine revving up. Jonah was confident that Rohan and his new friend Voss could deal with whatever had come over the wall, but until they arrived he was the point man.
“Imelda lover, we have ah problem.”
He turned around and was not surprised to see that Imelda was already wearing a bullet-proof vest over her nightgown and a tactical helmet over the rollers in her hair. She also wore boots, gloves, and kneepads. An Ak-47 with a fat drum magazine was slung across her broad shoulders.
“I’m old not deaf honey. Suit up. We’ll go through the tunnel and get the girls.”
Jonah was ready in about forty-five seconds and the couple entered the underground walkway that connected Stone to their house. They normally used the passage to get to work when the weather was inclement, but it doubled as an escape-way when rubberized people came over the wall.
***
Clarence’s crew believed they were blocking him out of their thoughts and he was, for the moment, satisfied with allowing them to believe that. Clarence, however, knew exactly what they were about to do. Damian and Rebecca had already lost sight of the objective. They were rabid and hungry and intended to kill and eat all the people in the house. Nathan intended to force himself on Lisa before bringing her back to the car, if there was anything left of her to bring back.
All three of them planned to kill him when their power waxed stronger on the next full moon. Their thought-shielding process was immature, and they could certainly learn a thing or two from Fifty-seven. The little girl’s mind was as impenetrable as a solid steel sphere. There was not even a corner he could use to pry it open. Now that she was out of his sight he could not find her. As far as he knew for sure she could be escaping or off massacring a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but his instinct told him she was near.
For all his knowledge of their murderous purpose Clarence would not intervene yet. He did not really care if Rebecca and Damian killed anyone else in the mansion. The house reminded him of the clients from his newly old life, beautiful and rich on the outside but inside was surely filled with secrets and skeletons. As for Nathan’s designs on Lisa, he would not allow the man to have his way with her. For one, he did not trust the man not to kill her if she resisted, which she would. Secondly, he despised rapists with a fervor. But for now she was safe. Nathan was still outside trying to pinpoint her location by scent.
Clarence watched to see how this volatile situation would unfold. This was the lair of the men from the car they had crashed into. The men’s predatory musk lingered in the air with the promise of bloodshed. That was the main reason he had not entered the house himself. The men were not here now and he suspected that if they were, his boarding party would already be suffering for their intrusion. But even though they were not here, entering that house was like trying to steal eggs from a giant eagle’s nest. The risk of the raptor returning to roost while his hand was clasped around an egg was too great. Was he afraid of them? Hell, yes, he most certainly was. Fear was the appropriate response to the prospect of a confrontation with these men. So he sat in the car, monitored the behavior of his team and waited for something to go wrong.
***
Until the moment she decided to slip beneath the door Rebecca had no idea that she possessed that ability. It was just like scaling the wall, her body simply told her that she could do it. The sensation of squeezing beneath the door was a strange one. It did not really hurt but it was uncomfortable and disorienting. It felt as if her bones and organs had liquefied with her skin being the only thing separating her from becoming a puddle entirely.
The space under the door was so narrow that she had to become as thin as a sheet of paper. The parts of her body not under the door maintained their solidity. Her entire torso was now through and so she clawed forward with her hands while pushing with her feet and knees. Eventually she was inside the foyer.
“Can you open the door?” Damian whined from the other side.
“So you can come through the easy way? Not a chance?. I’m going to find breakfast. You better hurry.”
She strode into the house.
“Is anyone here? Hello, hello, hellooo.” Rebecca was in no mood for hunting. The sooner someone came out to investigate the intrusion the sooner the festivities could begin. “Come out. I can hear you breathing. I can smell you too.”
In response to her taunting, a young woman
stepped around a corner. She was taller than average without being too tall and very lovely. Her lean healthy body was easy to appreciate through her sleepwear. Rebecca dismissed the naked sword she held in her right hand and the blood red scabbard she held in her left. A sword, ha!
“I must say you look really scrumptious,” Rebecca said coyly.
“And you look like you’ll be dead soon,” the young woman replied, making no move to retreat. Rebecca could hear the woman’s heartbeat. The sound was a steady thump from within her chest. The sound of her breathing was similarly unhurried. The pretty bitch has cajones, she thought. The woman had to know she did not face an ordinary intruder. Rebecca was almost sorry she would have to kill her, but she was hungry. She sprang forward, her hands clawed and her teeth bared. The saliva of her anticipation dampened her chin.
Rebecca knew she was fast. She was supremely confident in her ability to dispatch the other woman quickly so she was shocked when her clawed hands slashed through the empty air where the woman had been standing. Her surprise only increased when the scabbard in the woman’s left hand slammed into her jaw knocking several teeth out and smashing her lips.
The clubbing blow of the scabbard was followed by a sharp, burning sensation across her chest. She took a moment to realize the woman had slashed her with the sword. The flashing blade left a deep horizontal cut across both of her breasts. She was bleeding, bleeding as if she was still human. She felt her ruined mouth begin to knit itself, but where the sword had cut was not healing at all. Out of her peripheral vision she saw the woman move.
Rebecca punched, her fist traveling towards the woman’s chest with enough force to shatter her sternum and stop her heart. But the young woman was ready. She caught Rebecca’s punch by presenting the blade with the tip pointing downward to the floor. Rebecca could not react fast enough to pull the punch back and her fist ran right into the razor edge, cleaving her hand between the middle knuckles almost to the wrist.
