'Same reason you have. For my health.'
Fruit Juice laughed, partly surprised that the Englishman had noticed the gun he was carrying. Then he held out his hand to Adam. 'Lemme hold it for you.'
'No.'
'Come on.'
'Why?'
'Just in case. Some people get carried away, don't always know how to handle it. Don't like seeing inside themselves.'
'No. I never let it go.'
'And if you…'
'I never lose control.'
'kay. But if things go wrong…' Fruit Juice looked round at the others. '…we're all carrying.'
'Good. Then we’ll all be safe.'
Fruit Juice stepped away and signalled the Creole girl to do the same. Then he looked up to the moon, bright and high over the city. In the distance you could hear the occasional police siren of a marked car that raced through the streets, but little more.
'Let it begin!' he cried, his arms held out to the moon. 'Let the man meet his spirit. Oh Vadun, let thy summon the loa. Let thy blood of the past mingle with what is yet to come and what is as it is.'
As he chanted upwards to the spirit of the Vadun, the Voodoo God to summon the loa that is the spirit of life, the Creole girl danced in front of Adam, a sensual slow dance. She sprinkled the white gris-gris spell-casting dust over Adam as a symbol of protection.
The woman in the monkey mask joined the Creole girl, but she danced and slid along the ground as a monkey would, kicking her heels upwards, moving her posterior towards the four drummers. As she moved, trying to excite the drummers, pulling her satin hooped skirt up so that she bared her behind and they could see her nakedness, the monkey faced drummer started to moan, moved his body as though possessed.
'Vadun, bring down thy godliness to us here on earth. Vadun. Vadun. Let us hear your word. Let us see your juice. See how we prepare ourselves for your coming. Vadun. Deliver to us thy loa. Give us the juice.'
The others joined the chant. 'The Juice. The Juice. Vadun, Oh great Lord, release thy juice.'
The monkey man, now wildly gyrating his body moved away from the other drummers and approached the girl with the bared behind. He knelt down behind her and unzipped his trousers. Then he lifted her upwards, from the rear and stroked his manhood against her. It grew, long and hard, bigger than anything Adam had ever imagined. Then he pushed it into her and the monkey woman screamed.
'God,' Adam heard Billie gasp, but he ignored her, could not bring himself to believe what he saw in front of him.
The monkey woman had stopped screaming, had her knees braced in the ground to take her assailant, but didn't move. The monkey man had also stopped moving, knelt there, his pelvis nearly twelve inches away from the woman's rear. They were joined by his black penis, rock hard and gross in its texture. Whereas they were now still, the penis moved of its own accord, backward and forward in its own frenzied sex act, driving into her softness in its animal fierceness.
That's when Billie clutched at Adam.
He later swore he saw the penis turn into a snake, twist and bend, and disappear into the monkey woman.
Her partner, with nothing left to protrude from his unzipped trouser opening, groaned and fell to the ground, unconscious.
Vadun had released his juices. The chanting stopped.
He knew it was a trick. Damn it, how the hell had they pulled that off. But there was nothing to see, only the kneeling girl, her naked behind still held high and open, and her now unconscious mating partner.
The drums started again, louder this time.
The Creole girl moved closer to Adam and started to chant, indecipherable to him, but African in its rhythm.
Fruit Juice opened one of the three boxes and took out a large machete, its sharpness highlighted by the way it glinted in the moonlight. He held it up to the night and chanted 'Vadun. Vadun.’ The goat faced drummer left his instrument and opened the second box and dragged out a white chicken by its feet. He held it up high, the bird frantically clucking and flapping its wings, and came towards the Creole girl who had swung round to face him.
The goat man held the bird high over the girl, directly over her face and breasts. Then Fruit Juice slashed at the chicken, the sharp machete slicing its neck off and severing it from its head. The headless bird, now in its death dance, gushed blood over the girl, over her face and over her breasts. Adam saw the blood stain into the satin dress, saw the girl's eyes roll upwards in an emotional trance. She continued to chant, her body moving with the lilting music of her own words as the drums beat behind her.
Then she reached up with both hands and took the chicken and buried her face in its bleeding throat.
Adam saw her gorge herself on the still thrashing bird. Billie had her head bowed still clutching him. The whole thing had become too unbearable. As he comforted her, the fat boy stepped out from behind the tomb.
There was no guitar this time, no cardboard box. The fat boy, in his obesity and rolls of hanging flesh, was disgustingly naked.
He moved past where Billie sat and came to the kneeling monkey girl. He put his arm round her and swung her up, right there in front of Adam, and then, with his two arms round her as he gripped her naked buttock, forced his mouth on to hers through the monkey mask and kissed her long and deep.
'Vadun. Let us see thy juice,' screamed Fruit Juice. 'Vadun, Show us they spirit. Be thee the Lord that we might see ourselves as thee see us.'
As he chanted, and as the couple kissed in their obscene manner, the Creole girl threw away the chicken and came close to Adam, grabbed a handful of gris-gris from her pouch and rubbed it over his cheeks and nose, rubbed it deep into him.
She stepped back and Fruit Juice turned to him.
'See thyself as the Lord Vadun would see you,' he cried.
The fat boy pulled away from the monkey girl and turned to Adam as Fruit Juice stepped back.
The fat boy opened his mouth and put his hand into it.
Adam watched in fascination as the fat boy pulled the head of a snake out of his mouth, then the rest of it, dragging it out from inside him.
Fruit Juice moved alongside Adam and grabbed his arms, held them tightly.
Adam never flinched, never tried to pull away.
The drumming stopped. Billie started to sob quietly but he never turned towards her.
'See thyself as the Lord Vadun would see you,' Fruit Juice repeated as the fat boy held the snake's head up towards Adam's face, held it tight so it wouldn't strike. The snake was nearly four feet long and at least six inches diameter round its body.
'The water moccasin,' Fruit Juice went on. 'Vadun visits us in the form of the deadliest of the spirits.'
The snake's head, now no more than three inches from Adam's face, flicked its forked tongue at the Englishman.
'Very good. What's it do next?' Adam asked calmly. He hated snakes, but there was no way he would show them his feelings.
The fat boy moved his own face menacingly beside that of the snake and stared closely at Adam.
'There are two,' the fat boy said, his voice now deeper and threatening.
'Two?' asked Fruit Juice from behind.
'Two souls in one pair of eyes. Two spirits. One body.'
'Piss off,' said Adam, suddenly visibly upset.
'Two souls. Of what is and what was. Of what can never be. Two troubled souls. Two. Two. Two faces making one. Two of you.'
Adam tried to turn away, the memory of Marcus and his lonely grave burning through his emotions, bringing tears to his eyes. But Fruit Juice's grip was vice like.
'Two. I see two. Good and bad. Bad and good. Which is which? Is good bad and bad…'
The snake flicked its tongue again as Adam shouted back. 'Fucking tricksters. Go on you bastard, let's see how real that thing is. Go on you bastard. Bite. Bite me.'