Love and Glory: The Coltrane Saga, Book 3 (14 page)

Eldon sank down into a rickety chair, the only piece of furniture in the room other than the bed and the table beside it. His face was the color of snow, and he was shaking so hard Travis could hear his teeth clicking.

“Let me get you a drink. You’re going to pass out on me, man,” Travis murmured in disgust, going to the table where he had left the bottle of rum. Reaching for it, he thought that he must not have consumed as much as he remembered. The bottle was almost three-quarters full. Good. That meant he could indulge in one more drink, and Lord knew, after listening to this loony, he deserved another drink.

There were no cups or glasses, so he tilted the bottle, took a long gulp, then handed it to Eldon, who did likewise. “Now will you go to your room and get some sleep?” Travis asked gently.

Reluctantly, the man nodded but took one more drink before returning the bottle to Travis. “I tried, but you won’t listen. I’m just going to have to save you from yourself.”

Travis raised an eyebrow. “Now, what does
that
mean?”

“I’m going to my room and get my gun and sit outside your door until morning,” he replied simply. “I know what is going on out there, what they have planned for you, and since you won’t listen to reason, then I have to protect you.”

Travis laughed, then instantly hated himself for it. The man was sincere, after all. “Why do you feel responsible for me?” he asked curiously.

“You’re a fellow human being. You don’t understand that you are in grave danger. I know voodoo. I believe in it. I would never forgive myself if I just walked away and left you to suffer the consequences of being so blasted stubborn. It could mean your
life.”

Eldon had stopped trembling and was speaking calmly. The rum was doing its job, Travis thought. “Why don’t you just go to the local police if you feel so strongly about this?” he asked suddenly. “I mean, if these natives really mean to do me harm, why not go to the marshal or whatever they call it around here?”

Eldon threw back his head and laughed sharply. “You’re a fool, Coltrane. You think the law would interfere? They have already heard the drums. They hear them every time. Some of the authorities might even know who is marked, but they would never interfere. To do so would mean retribution from the
loas,
and you can be sure they do not want that. Why, the law would not even interfere to save one of their own family. When the
loas
wish to punish, when the souls of the dead are angry and demand to be appeased, no one gets in the way, Coltrane.
No one.”

Travis had had it. The rum was suddenly making him very sleepy, as though he had never been to bed, and there was no point in listening to a drunk rattle on either. Harcourt was even more obnoxious when he
wasn’t
hysterical. Travis went to the door, opened it, and made a waving gesture. “Out, Harcourt. Enough is enough. Go to bed or sit outside my door all night long if that is what you want to do. I don’t care. The only thing I
do
care about is getting some sleep. I’ve heard enough of your nonsense for one night.”

Eldon nodded. His eyes looked a little glassy. He must not be used to drinking, Travis reasoned. “I’ll look out for you,” Eldon mumbled as he passed. “Don’t worry. I’d never forgive myself if I let anything happen to you.”

Travis slammed the door. His head had suddenly begun to pound, and he was so damn sleepy he found himself weaving as he moved back to the bed. That devil, rum. That fool, Harcourt. The two had combined to make his evening miserable, and he would probably awaken in the morning feeling as though he had never even slept. Damn!

The wind was howling, screaming, causing the windows to rattle in protest. And those drums, those goddamn drums were getting louder and louder, as though floating right inside his head to beat there. His brain began to spin, and there was a strange tightening in his throat. He tried to take a deep breath and couldn’t. Alarmed, he tried to bring himself out of the stupor engulfing him. The lantern beside the bed still burned, but he could not see the flame through the grayish fog that had descended on him.

Something had to be done about those infernal drums. They
were
inside his head. His eyeballs were contracting, squeezing with each thud. It was becoming harder and harder to breathe. His hand went to his throat but he could not find it. Where was his throat? His hands flailed the air. Where was his body? Where was his head? His eyes were gone…gone with the drumbeat. He had no body. The fog had taken it away. All that remained was his soul, but the soul had nowhere to go and hung suspended in midair, seeking a home but finding none.

Movements. There was someone there with him. But who? Eldon? Eldon had come back. He tried to think, tried to make the words come to tell Eldon to get a doctor. He was sick. God, but he was sick. Too much rum. Never again. Whiskey had never done this, not that he could remember. It came to him then with frightening clarity that he could not remember anything anymore. What was his name? Why was he here? Those drums…inside him. He gasped, but how did he gasp? He had no mouth, no throat. No body at all. Only a soul, and then he felt that, too, slipping away.

Faces in the fog. Some were black. Some were brown. There were white stripes painted across noses, red circles around bulging eyes. Bones. Why were there stark, white bones rattling together? Blood. Where was the blood coming from? It trickled down on him, warm, thick, sticky. He wanted to wipe it away but had no hand.

A voice from out of the mist spoke angrily, accusingly, “This is the one?”

Travis felt nauseous at the sound, so cold and dreadful. But how could he feel anything? He had no body, only this soul that was not visible, lost, somewhere in the gray fog. Yet, he could smell. Even without a body, there was a horrible odor of something rotten…something decaying.

“Yes, oh,
houngan,
he is the one.”

Molina.
Yes it was Molina speaking, and she spoke with a venom strong enough to kill.

The man spoke again, loudly, nearly screaming above the thunderous drums which had begun to beat wildly. “The
loas
Ogoun and Erzulie will come this night to bring you peace.”

Shouts of approval rang through the mist. From somewhere, chanting began, and hands clapped together. There was movement, and Travis’ soul allowed him to see bodies dancing around and around in a frenzy, aims waving, bones rattling, and those infernal drums that never stopped.

“He will die,” the
houngan
shouted. “The evil spirit will die. The soul of your long-dead grandfather will be appeased. Bring the sacrifice.”

Part of what was being said was in the French creole dialect that Travis had learned in the Louisiana bayou. The fog was starting to lift, and he realized that it was from sheer willpower alone that he was bringing himself out of the drug-induced stupor. Slowly it was coming back to him. The rum. The goddamn rum bottle that he had thought half empty and surprisingly found almost full. Someone had slipped into his room and poured something into the bottle that had drugged him. He had taken only one swallow, but Eldon had taken two. That explained Eldon’s change in behavior.

He dared not open his eyes all the way. Let them think he was still drugged, which was not altogether untrue, for there was still great difficulty in coordinating his thoughts. His thoughts were coming in slow motion, thickly, hard to grasp.

Through partially closed lids he could see the flames of many torches and weirdly dressed natives dancing. They were dressed in black and purple robes, but most of the women were covered only below the waist, their bare breasts bouncing in the glow of the fires.

“Guédé will come this night. Baron Samedi will demand it.
Jeunesse,
you will have your honor.”

He could see that the one called
houngan
was a tall, skinny black man covered in feathers with white and yellow stripes painted on his face. He was shaking something over his head as he stood before Molina, who was kneeling, head bowed.

“You will have your honor to appease your grandfather,” he cried, “and then Baron Samedi will decree that he shall be sacrificed.” He ran toward Travis, who quickly closed his eyes. He lay still, listening to the frenzied rattling of that gourdlike thing over his face.

“No. No kill.”

Travis could hear Molina crying out to the
houngan,
but Travis was having difficulty staying awake. The drug was trying to take him away again. That damn rattling above his head. Slowly it came back to him. The boy he had known down in the bayou had told him about the
asson,
a gourd filled with pebbles, snake bones, dirt from a graveyard. There would be the bony vertebrae of a snake around it. And it was this that a voodoo priest used to command the dead and master the living. Even now the drums were following the rhythm of the rattling gourd. The boy had wanted to show an
asson
to him…had said his father had one and he would sneak it out to show it off. Travis had not wanted to see it then, and he did not want to see it now. He only wished he had the strength to pull himself up and give these dancing idiots something to remember him by. He was heavily outnumbered, but by God, he would go down fighting.

Instinctively, he clenched his fists, then realized his wrists were bound. The
houngan
saw the movement and shrieked, “He awakens. We must sacrifice. We must call up Baron Samedi and let him be appeased.”

“No, no! I want him only punished. I want him only to be mine, to do my bidding and remain by my side forever and never leave me. You cannot sacrifice him, O
houngan.
I never asked that he be sacrificed.”

“Then we must have a sacrifice.”

Travis felt the warm blood splashing on his face and his eyes flashed open to see the chicken being swung above him in front of a leering black face. The chicken’s throat had been cut, and its life blood was pouring down on him.

“Dance the
banda,”
Molina was sobbing. “That will appease Baron Samedi. Please!”

Banda.
Travis did not know what that meant. But here, tied down on some kind of flat stone, stripped naked, nothing was going to save him from whatever these lunatics had in mind.

“You will dance the
banda,”
the
houngan
cried triumphantly, and Travis saw the tall, skinny man reach out and jerk away the black and purple cloth that covered Molina’s lower body. Picking her up, he swung her about to the pleased cheers of the crowd. As she cried out in pain, he brought her down.

Travis strained at the ropes that bound him, watching as women were grabbed and thrown to the ground. Everyone began to copulate. Only the drummers did not stop. They kept up their crazed beating, and men assaulted women to the rhythm of the drums.

Where is everybody else? he thought wildly, while this insane orgy was going on amid bloody chicken feathers, and—good Lord—they were in the middle of a graveyard. Did nobody in Haiti care about anything except this insane party?

He stiffened as he felt a movement to his right, on the side away from the others. “Don’t move. I’m going to get you out of here,” a trembling whisper penetrated his whirling brain.

It was Eldon, crouched on his knees. Travis could see the glint of a knife. “How’d you find me?” he whispered back gratefully. “Hell, it doesn’t matter. Just get me out of this place, fast, before they finish their party.”

The rope holding down his right wrist was severed, but he did not move. Eldon’s arm reached over his bare stomach to saw at the binding on his left wrist.

“Evidently the
houngan
did not have the power this night to call up Baron Samedi,” Eldon said nervously as he moved to Travis’ ankles. “That’s why he went along with the
banda.
I’ve been hiding and watching. Believe me, you’re lucky. If he had called him up, you’d be dead by now.”

Travis felt his ankles freed. “What do we do now?”

“We run,” Eldon sounded as though he were about to burst into team. “We run as damn hard and as fast as we can. You follow me. I know the way out of here to a place where we can hide till morning. Just roll off the altar and crawl until I give a signal, and unless the drummers see us, we can get a good piece from here before we are spotted. They may not even miss us, from the looks of this rite.”

Rite, Travis mused in amusement, was a strange name for mass intercourse, but it was not the time for musing. He rolled over to his right, fell from the stone slab, then began to crawl behind Eldon, who was moving faster on his hands and knees than Travis had ever seen him move on his feet.

When they were out of the graveyard, Eldon stood and gave the signal to run. There was no moonlight, but Travis could make out his figure and managed to keep up
.
Behind, there were still the sounds of ecstasy and screaming and the ever beating drums.

They ran hard and fast through brambles and brush for a half hour or more before Eldon halted. “A cave. My grandfather told me about it being near the graveyard here. When I first got here, I went for a walk one day just to see if I could find it. I had to look a long time, because it was hidden by so much growth, but we can get inside, and they will never find us here. I could tell it hadn’t been used in a long, long time.”

Travis was beyond caring that the brambles were tearing his flesh. He was already bleeding from the run through the thickets and weeds. He was only too glad to follow Eldon inside the cave.