‘Edman,’ he said.
The word was phrased as an epithet, containing such a wealth of viciousness I almost did not recognize it as my name.
His movements revealing no sign of debility, he picked up a straight-backed chair, carried it to the bed and sat next to me. How can I tell you my feelings at that moment, the effect he had upon me? I have stated that the patients were charismatic in the extreme, but Harrison’s personal force was beyond anything of my experience. To put it simply, I was terrified. His anima wrapped around me like an electrified fist, immobilizing and vibrant, and I stared helplessly at my agog reflection in his mirrored lenses. The wind rattled the window, branches ticked the glass, as if heralding his presence. I wondered how Verret and the old man could be so at ease with him. Did they not notice, or had they become acclimatized to his aura of power? And what of his patients? Were all faith healers equally potent beings? Could it be that the power to heal was in part conferred by the faithful upon the healer, and this exchange of energies immunized the patients against awe? It is, I believe, a testament to the rigorous discipline of my education that, despite my fear, I was able to make a mental note to investigate the subject.
‘Any successes lately with the new strain?’ he asked.
I am not sure what I expected him to say, a threat perhaps, an insult, but certainly not this. ‘Two,’ I managed to gasp.
Expressionless, he absorbed the information. ‘Edman,’ he said, ‘I need money, a place to work unimpeded, and a guaranteed freedom of movement. Can you supply it?’
I wish I had said that I could offer no guarantees, that the CIA was involved and I no longer had substantive control of the project; then he might have accorded me a measure of confidence. But as it was, I obeyed the reflexes of my office and said, ‘Come back to the project, Donnell. We’ll take care of you.’
‘I bet,’ he said, and here his voice became resonant for the space of a few syllables, the voice of a ghost rather than a man. ‘I should be taking care of you. You’re quite ill, you know.’ He turned to the old man and gestured toward the door. ‘See if there’s anything around we can use, okay?’ And then to Verret: ‘He’s totally untrustworthy. One second frightened, the next scheming. Do you have any money?’ he asked, turning back to me.
I pointed to my trousers hanging on the clothes rack. Verret went over and emptied my wallet of bills. I felt sudden hostility toward her, seeing her as the betrayer of our mutual cause, and I commented on her thievery.
‘Thief?’ She lashed out at me. ‘You ghoul! Don’t call me names!’
‘Don’t waste your breath on him.’ Harrison regarded me with displeasure. ‘He’s just random molecules bound together by the stickum of his education.’
Normally I would have been infuriated by such a description, but he said it with kindness, with pity, and for the moment I accepted it as accurate, a sad but true diagnosis. This, and the fact that during our encounter I was prone to fits of depression, a characteristic I had associated with Harrison, led me to wonder whether or not his energies were materially affecting my thought processes.
Verret left to join the old man in his search, and Harrison gazed at me thoughtfully. ‘Get up,’ he said. He pushed back his chair and stood.
I was afraid he was about to harm me. My fear may seem to you irrational; I was, after all, a much larger man, and I might well have been able to overpower both him and Verret, though the old man had a wiry, dangerous look. Yet I was very afraid.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said, thoroughly disgusted. He removed his sunglasses. ‘I’m going to try to cure you.’
As he moved his hands above my head, concentrating his efforts at the base of my skull, I lost track of the storm, the others in the house, and was caught up in the manner of my healing. Mild electric shocks tingled me from head to foot, my ears were filled with oscillating hums. Once in a while violent shocks caused my muscles to spasm, and after each of these I experienced a feeling of - I am hesitant to use the term, but can think of no other - spirituality. Not the warm bona fides of Jesus as advertised by the Council of Churches. Hardly. It was a cold immateriality that embraced me, that elevated my thoughts, sent them questing after a higher plane; it was less a palpable cold than a mental rigor, one implying an icy sensibility in whose clutch I foundered. I had an image of myself lying in a gold-green scaly palm, tiny as a charm. Was this the biochemistry of salvation in action, an instance of Harrison’s effect releasing spiritual endorphins? Or was it the overlapping of his sensibility with my own? I only know that each sight I had of the flashes within his eyes gave credence to my newfound apprehension of the supernatural.
‘Sorry,’ he said at last. ‘It’s going to take too long. A day or more, I’d guess.’ He smiled. ‘Maybe you should have one of the new patients check you over.’ (And I would have, had not the project been taken from me.) He must have forgotten that Verret had left the room, for he half-turned and spoke over his shoulder, assuming her presence, saying, ‘If this works out, we should think about setting the others loose. There’s no…’ Then, realizing she was elsewhere, a puzzled expression crossed his face.
‘What is the gros bon ange?’ I blurted. ‘What are you intending to do?’ I was still frightened, but the character of my fear had changed. It was the unknown quantity he represented that assailed me, and I was desperate to understand.
‘The gros bon ange?’ His voice became resonant and hollow again, gusting at me like a wind from a cave, merging with the howling wind outside. ‘A dream, a vision, or maybe it’s the shadow a dog sees slipping out of an open coffin.’ Then his voice reverted to normal, and he described what he had seen.
I am not sure why he humored my question. Boredom, perhaps, or it may have been simply that he had no reason to hide anything from me. There were, he said, three types, the most commonplace a black figure in which prisms of light whirled chaotically. The second most common type seemed to exert a measure of control over its inner fires (his term), able to form of them faces, simple patterns; and the rarest, a type of whom he had seen only three, were capable of wielding extensive control, even to the point of sending bursts of light shooting from their fingers.
‘As to what I intend,’ he said, ‘I intend to live, Edman.
I’m going to build the veve of a voodoo god out of copper. Three tons of copper.’ He laughed. ‘I don’t suppose you know about veves, though.’
Indeed, I assured him, I did know, having done quite a bit of reading on the subject of vaudou, this at the urging of Ms Verret.
‘Oh?’ He scratched the back of his neck. ‘Tell me about Ogoun Badagris.’
‘One of the aspects of Ogoun,’ I said, ‘who is essentially the warrior hero of the pantheon. I believe that Ogoun Badagris is associated with wizardry. A rada aspect.’
‘Rada?’
‘Yes. Rada and petro are more or less equivalent to white and black magic. Good and evil.’
‘And which is rada?’
‘Good,’ I said.
‘Well,’ he said softly, more to himself than to me, ‘I guess I should be thankful for that.’
He went on to tell me of a plan he had, hardly a plan, more a vague compulsion to act in some direction, and though the action was as yet unclear, as the days passed the parameters of the deed were defining themselves. Something decisive, he said, something dangerous. It was evident to me that he was evolving past the human, and I was in mortal terror of the vibrant devil he was coming to be. I lay half hypnotized, helpless before him, the tongues of his words tasting me, licking me prior to taking a bite. Finally Verret and the old man returned; he was carrying a brandy bottle and she a coil of rope. Without further ado they gagged me and lashed me to the bed, and afterwards Harrison asked me to break free if I could. Ordinarily I would have pretended to struggle, but at his behest I shook the bed in earnest.