“The fellow made extra money poaching orchids near the monastery, but stayed too late one night. Dogs caught him. Of course, he claimed that obeah devils attacked him-there’s cachet in that. But we’re having none of that nonsense. It’s all about timing, you see?”
I asked, “Did the man hunt orchids on weekends?” Today was Monday, four days until Shay’s deadline.
“What in blazes does it matter?”
“Weekend schedules and weekday schedules vary. Maybe they let the dogs out earlier on weekdays.”
“Didn’t think to ask-and it’s too late now. I heard the poor sot was taken off to the hospital. But we can’t expect to have every t crossed and every i dotted in our trade, now can we?” Montbard shouldered his backpack, then retrieved his walking stick. “Right. Over you go, Ford. You’re the new La’Ja’bless, according to Lucien. The hounds won’t bother a fellow demon.”
Lah-zjay-blass, the old man had pronounced it. He’d said the word with a reverence that was becoming familiar, and softly as if he were afraid the trees would overhear.
"The creature, he attack three mens jes last night over to Saint Arc,” Lucien had told us, delighted to have news to share with visitors. “The creature, he hurt one fella purty bad. It because that fella were disrespectful, and speak a profanity regarding the spirits. But all them men’s lucky, in my opinion, ’cause the La’Ja’bless got the power to do much worse than break a fella’s ribs.”
I didn’t make the connection until I noticed Sir James looking at me, waiting to confirm the significance with a slight smile.
“Three local men, Lucien?”
“That right. Boy who bring me my coffee, he tol’ me this mornin’. He down to the wharf and hear the fishermens talkin’. The La’Ja’bless, he quick to punish. But that fella very fortunate he only in hospital, not the grave.”
The La’Ja’bless was a night creature that could assume different forms. Sometimes he was a wolf or a cat-“If those things cross the road in front of you at night, it the creature, an’ you smart to run, man!”
More often, though, the La’Ja’bless was half man, half horse… or a faceless man dressed in black.
“Las’ night, the creature be a man-all black but for the eye in the center part his head. It a green eye that burn like fire, the fishermens sayin’. That fella in hospital? He never be disrespectful again, that much I know!”
We had stood in the shade of a tamarind tree, listening to Lucien tell his stories while chickens scratched in a neighbor’s garden. There was a scarecrow made of sticks and a calabash gourd, a faded red scarf over its face, like a bandit.
Lucien, I discovered, was father of the subdued man who’d served our breakfast, Rafick. It was Rafick who drove us to the old man’s cottage on the outskirts of Soufrier and encouraged him to talk freely in front of Senegal, a woman, and me, a stranger.
Before Sir James asked the first question, though, Rafick was gone- a true believer who’d done his duty, but who wanted no part in discussing obeah.
Senegal appeared surprised that I jotted key words in my notebook as the old man talked.
Gaje: Practitioner of witchcraft
Zanbi (Zombie?): Creature who rises from grave to do evil
Dragon Tooth: Volcano
Anansi Noir: Black spider whose supernatural power is equal to a snake’s
Bolonm: Tiny person, born from a chicken’s egg, who eats flesh
Maji Noir: Male spirit who roams the night, preying on women walking alone
Maji Blanc: Female spirit who appears as a beautiful woman dressed in white and has sex with men who are asleep or drunk. Uses her fingernails on their backs and genitals as her calling card
Flirting, Lucien had said to Senegal, “You would make a mos’ lovely Maji Blanc. Not a evil spirit, a’course, but the pleasuring type. Why you not allow this gen’lman buy you a pretty white dress, ’stead of wearin’ them pants?”
Senegal let him see she was flattered, even though the subject made her uncomfortable. “I’d rather have a white dress from you, Lucien. I’ll come back and model it.”
“Oh my, I like that! The Maji Blanc visit me several times when I were a young man. What you think my wife do when she see them scratches? She take garlic and rub it. Garlic burn when you been scratched by the Maji Blanc, tha’s how you know it was a spirit woman.”
The old man tilted his head skyward and laughed, showing freckles on his cinnamon skin, and eyes that were milky blue. “I tell you true now-sometimes the garlic don’t burn so bad, but I yell like fire, anyway!”
He stopped laughing when Montbard asked about the monastery on Piton Lolo.
“That a dragon tooth long ’go. It stick out the ocean so high it snag clouds. That why it a dark place where the wind got a chill, and it have washerwoman rain all the time. It a fine spot for orchids, but it bad for peoples.
“In back times, it were a godly place for monks. But them monks all die sudden of fever. By the time they found, the birds been feedin’ and carried they spirits away. Left nothing but they robes.
“The robes still up there to this day! I tell you ’cause I know it true. One night, I seen it with me own eyes, them empty robes comin’ down the mountain, candles for faces. Trottin’ alongside was a wild pack of mal vu chien. Them animals glowed, so I knew they was demons. .. on fire with bawe yo.”
I wrote in my notebook:
Mal vu chien: Demon dogs; hounds from hell
“Any wonder the islanders stay away from the monastery?” Sir James had said as we drove away. “Madame Toussaint takes pains to ensure her privacy.”
He wasn’t talking only about the mythical dogs. According to Lucien, worse things awaited people who ventured onto the mountain at night.
“Some say the real Maji Blanc live up there now,” Lucien had told us, “but I seen that Madame Toussaint. She were wearin’ black, not white. I think she invented that tale, make peoples think she become beautiful at midnight. But I feel she a vitch, you ask my opinion. Obayifo, or a sukkoy-uan, that what we old people calls her.”
A vitch, the old man explained, had the power to quit their bodies and travel great distances in the night, and could be identified by a foul odor and a phosphorescent light visible in the hair, armpits, and anus. A thirsty vitch sucked the sap and juices from crops, but their real power came from human victims.
My notebook:
Sukkoy-uan or obayifo: Vampire witch who drinks blood to stay young
22
Sir James WHISPERED, “Males on one side, females on the other. Senegal will be very pleased by that. I think you make her nervous, Ford.”
I said, “She doesn’t strike me as the nervous type.”
“Not just you, old boy, don’t take it personally. It applies to most men, which is why I’m surprised she was lured into this fix. Interesting, your theory about victims being drugged. Do those people look as if they’ve been drugged to you?”
We were positioned in a clearing looking down on the monastery, where there was a quadrangle with miniature spires at the four corners, tile-roofed buildings within, and a cemetery on the seaward side. Torches added medieval light.
Within the walls, eleven people sat on mats, facing a fire, meditating or doing yoga, men on one side, women on the other. A few wore monks’ robes with hoods and rope belts. Others wore jogging suits or leotards, or white surgical scrubs as baggy as robes. Japanese flute and the sound of chanting drifted upward on incense.
I whispered, “You mean drugged with MDA?”
“The love potion you mentioned. Whatever it was they slipped Senny.”
I said, “No. I think they’d have the robes off by now, hugging, talking loud, laughing-something.”
Sir James said, “Quite,” and pressed binoculars to his eyes again. After several seconds, he said, “Why eleven? Five men, six women. If they accept only couples, shouldn’t it be an even number?”
I had called the Hooded Orchid earlier and confirmed that Marion W. North and friend did have reservations starting tomorrow. In Montbard’s mind, for some reason, that made me an expert.