Title: Horse
Author: sangga
Rating: R
Disclaimer: Not mine, don't own etc.
Email: sangga55@hotmail.com
Archive: Call me, we'll do lunch. No, I'm joking – sure, archive away, although an email would be nice.
Summary: Any excuse to rub Paul's body up against Evelyn's. Pity he wasn't there for it.
Spoilers: Eps 1&2. What, I've watched like two episodes… yeah, I know, I can't help it, it's a disease
Feedback: Lie to me.
Note: Ouch - stop hitting me, okay? I was just foolin' around…. I hate it when the local commercial TV stations air two eps of a show and then send us all on extended hiatus when the rugby season starts. And this is the result.
I am not living vouduisant, and therefore for all the details in this fic I am indebted to a number of excellent websites and Barb C for her suggestions. Apologies in advance for any incorrect use of Creole and langaj, and any inappropriate use of ritual prayers and language, or misrepresentation of voudoun herein. Please don't bad vibe the ignorant.
Horse
Evelyn, still sitting next to Paul on the worn office couch, has her hands wrapped around her middle. Hugging herself. Thinking about Sarah lying in a hospital bed, dying of internal injuries. Tubes and wires.
Matty is two years off Sarah's age. And it's so mundane, it's something she herself thinks about often – losing your child to a hit and run. Mentally the faces interchange, run together – Matty, Sarah; Sarah, Matty. Paul watches her eyes focus on the floor, and touches her shoulder gently, mind-reading again.
"It's a terrible thing to happen," he says, soft and calming.
Evelyn blinks and pulls herself out of it.
"It is," she agrees, unfolds herself with an effort. Gives him a sad but appreciative smile, then looks at Alva, who's still fixated on his notebook. He's frowning at the scribbles in the margins. Their collective attention finally pinches his awareness and he looks up, fumbles for the conversational thread.
"Yes – yes, you're right, it is. Nonetheless…" and paper crackles as he leans forward, "…it still doesn't detract from the fact that Sarah seemed to have some sort of unique insight –"
"Do we call prophecy 'insight', now?"
Paul, being unusually acerbic. The hospital has affected him. Evelyn's eyes go between the two men like she's watching the tennis. Alva parries the backhand smoothly.
"Prophecy or insight, it's left a few threads dangling, wouldn't you say?"
Paul sighs and concedes.
"We don't know what Sarah meant – her terms, like 'the blackness', and the stuff about blackness coming…"
"Well, enough of her 'insights' seemed to have been sufficiently well-proved that it would suggest we need to do more digging, or at least ask more questions."
Which is the point where Evelyn's eyebrows lift.
"But we can't ask Sarah any more questions, Alva. She's dead."
Like she's explaining to a three-year old, but her boss seems to have missed it entirely – now he's already sitting back in his chair, chewing his lip, concentrating on the floorboards.
"Asking questions of the dead…"
His muttering sounds loud in the office dusk. Evelyn and Paul trade glances.
"Alva, you can't –"
Paul's words snipped off neatly as Alva suddenly stands up and heads for the desk. His palm is up, requesting grace.
"Excuse me. There's…someone I need to call…"
His two employees are left sitting on the couch, blinking at each other, and at the depression in the seat where he's just been.
oOo
You ever been rid?
Half-turned around on the front passenger seat so she can watch him in the back. He's lying prone, face turned to one side, mouth a little open, eyes closed. Eyelashes fray the dark circles, make his face look untidy.
Too long to fit in comfortably, his legs bend at the knees, one leaning on the door, one off the seat. His right hand flops off the edge too, and his left hand lies on his chest, in repose. Long fingers.
Night scenery flashes by.
She blinks, remembering her fingers fixing his shirt – buttoning where possible, otherwise tugging the fabric together. She did this when he was still passed out, before they put him in the car. Her fingers were still shaking then.
It feels weird. It feels like an out-of-body experience.
"Is he okay?"
Alva, from very far away. She blinks again, looking at him. He keeps his eyes on the road. Evelyn wonders if he thinks she still feels embarrassed, if this is Alva being sensitive.
"He seems fine. No more nosebleeds." She shrugs – not enough information to go on. "Hard to tell. I guess we'll know more when he wakes up."
Which is all perfectly true.
oOo
You ever been rid, chile?
"Pardon?"
The woman looks at her with one eyebrow raised.
"Ti-fi, believe me when I tell you, if Ghede done ride you, you ain't never gonna forget." She gives Alva an offhand glance. "Not wid dis one den, non? How's about boy, dere?"
Paul's eyes go wide as saucers as her gaze turns his way, his perpetual expression of mild concern levitating into the stratosphere.
"Me? Ah, no – no ma'am."
The mambo chuckles throatily, flaps a hand near his chest.
"He call me 'ma'am' – ain't dat de sweetest?"
Alva's frowning.
"I didn't think you were in the market for a new horse, Brigitte."
She gives him a look – then her eyes go lazy, and the hand-flap turns into a gesture that calls them forward as she swivels towards the back rooms. "Y'all gonna come, you come on now. Ghede-business bes' done by minuit –" She casts a quick cool glance back at Alva, "- 'les you want speak to Baron."
Her voice echoes as she shambles through the hallway in the dark. Candles in wall alcoves make the shadows hiss and leap as the three of them trail in the woman's wake.
Brigitte looks back sharply before they reach the rear kitchen door.
"You bring dose tings I ask for, non?"
Alva nods curtly, lifts the hessian bag he's been dragging. Something squawks inside, and Evelyn winces.
"Bon, bon." The mambo rubs her hands together and smiles at them, showing teeth. "No presents - you gonna have hard time with Papa. He like dem fresh tings. Like you, boy, eh?"
She winks at Paul before pulling on the door handle. Paul grins, wan, the look on his face peaking as Evelyn catches his eye – a what-the-hell-have-we-got-ourselves-into look. Alva ignores them both, leading down the outside stairs behind the mambo.
Their passage down the rickety fire-escape steps is muted by the sight of the preparations outside at ground level. Fires, small fires, and candles stuck all around the back lot. Flowers, loose and in garlands, and fruit, and bones, and other offerings that Evelyn doesn't want to name or think too hard about. No tenement backyard this – more like ritual space. A crowd of devotees, maybe forty or so, black folk dressed in white, mill and scuttle and smoke and tend the fires and otherwise make ready. Long grass here and there, and the air is chill – Evelyn pulls her wrap closer around herself.
And it's not until she's walking towards the biggest bonfire, the fulcrum of it all, that she kicks a stone marker and realizes that she's in a graveyard.
oOo
"Tell me again why we're going to see this?"
Paul, in the back seat. He sounds tired, and Evelyn reasons that it has, after all, been a long day. Alva watches the road as he talks, measured and imbued with his typical gravity.
"We're not just seeing – we have to participate. Rituals in voudoun are actually very specific. If we want to ask questions we have to do it in person."
Evelyn folds her hands in her lap.
"But she won't be answering questions herself, will she? She's just the magician –"
"The mambo. The priestess. She'll call the spirit, who enters the body of the devotee, and provided you present the appropriate gifts, the spirit – the loa – will answer."
"So you're talking about possession," Paul says. His tone speaks a world of disapproval.
"Yes. But of a very particular type," Alva counters.
Paul isn't swayed.
"So how do you know that this loa is going to give you the right answers? Or that it's not just some guy falling around, frothing at the mouth and spouting whatever you want to hear?"
Alva glances into the rearview.
"When you see it, you'll understand a little better."
For some reason, Evelyn doesn't find this at all reassuring.
oOo
"Ose, ose! Eh, we got beaucoup folk to see Papa ride tonight!"
There's a strong smell of rum and flowers. The mambo is cackling, her hands flying up as the crowd circles around her. Paul, Alva and Evelyn keep a discrete but inclusive distance.
Brigitte lifts her hands high, one of them heavy with a cork-stoppered bottle.
"We got all the accoutrements, non?"
"Oui, oui!" "You say it!" "We got it all!"
The chorus of cries and whispers gathers momentum around her.
"Gifts for Papa Ghede! Oui la, oh yes, we got it all. And we got horses too, non?"
"Oui, cher!" "Let Ghede ride!"
People clap and sway to a drumbeat. A dull humming starts, and Evelyn thinks it begins at the base of her brain. The mambo whirls, darts forward and back to meet eyes, clasp hands. She pulls out the bottle stopper with her teeth and spits it away, gulps down a draught of the liquid innards. Rum shines on her chin, drips onto her mauve and white flowered dress. Petals unfolding.
oOo
Streetlights make patterns on the road. Evelyn looks out the car window and thinks about Sarah Fuller.
"They say that when it comes, you just close your eyes and go to sleep. But I'm afraid of the dark. When it's dark, the Blackness… It eats you up, you know. When it comes. That's why I leave the lamp on, at night. Because I'm afraid of the dark."
A hissing gurgle in her throat and her face contorts for a moment. Evelyn feels her eyes burning bright.
"Would you hold my hand?"
But Evelyn was already doing that.
oOo
There's singing in the hounfor, singing and dancing and drumming and smoking, and the mambo sways in the middle of it, the ululations keeping time with her hips, or she keeping time with the pandemonium, Evelyn can't tell which.
They've been ushered forward; now they have front row seats. It's a euphemism – she and Alva and Paul are still standing. But they have a great view of the mambo, with her skirts hiked up to her thighs as she stands spread-legged near the bonfire, beside a tall painted pillar, making patterns on the ground with some sort of chalk sprinkling out of her pinched fingers. Occasionally she crouches over to bridge a line, correct an image – Evelyn thinks that for a woman her age, Brigitte has the smooth legs of a teenager.
While the mambo is occupied drawing and muttering, a devotee in white shirt and pants races around the circle, stoking up the singing, shaking some kind of weird caraca. The look of fever on his face, and the cold night air, is almost enough to make Evelyn wish she had her own bottle of rum to slug back.
Paul and Alva whisper to her left. She's been picking up the odd piece of information from their huddle – they talk like a pair of conspiring anthropologists, and she feels like a detached witness, disembodied.
"It's a vever," Alva says in a knowledgeable murmur. "A ritual symbol the mambo will use to 'open the gates' in the ceremony. Each vever is specific to a certain loa, and no two practitioners seem to draw the same image."
"So who's this one specific to?"
Paul's hushed tones. Alva's equally quiet reply.
"She draws this one beside the pteau-mitan – it's for Legba, the Guardian of the Crossroads."
And Evelyn can hear the mambo's mutterings, so she knows it's true. The woman works with her eyes half-closed, a steady stream of Creole thickening the air around her, the image before her.
"Alegba Itoto Ewa, Goubasa…Houn Basa! Na mashe, Oulada…"
Evelyn shivers. The whirl of bodies and trance-drums around her is becoming a dizzying mess. Brigitte claps her hands together over the finished vever and her master of ceremonies returns her rattle. The mambo is fully in the moment now, gesticulations and movements meshing together in a hoarse throaty chant, a mix of Creole and English and French that Evelyn has no hope of understanding. Feeling too close to the action, she takes a small step backwards, bumps into Paul's arm, the sensation of warmth and realness so reassuring that she doesn't apologize. Now she's party to Alva's continuing explanations.
"There's a certain order – first address Legba Atibon…then Les Marases, the twins…"
An old woman pushes past them towards the pteau-mitan; she's dragging something in the dirt behind her, and Paul recognizes it before Evelyn herself.
"Alva, that's your –"
He cuts himself off when the woman unties the hessian bag and pulls out a white rooster by the feet. Flapping wings, and the smell of chickenshit. A feather flies in their direction. And in an economical series of motions, casual and domestic, the woman holds up the chicken to the mambo's rattle, waves it over the vever - then takes a knife out of her belt and slits the bird's throat.
Blood sprays. Cheers erupt.
Half-expecting it, Evelyn still can't help herself – she claps a hand to her mouth and turns left, eyes reflecting her shock. Alva looks interested but unphased. Paul has tiny spots of bloodspatter on his cheek, on his collar – the bright scarlet drops are already spreading and melding with the dark brown material.
oOo
You like to fuck, cher?
"What?"
Alva gives her a strange look and repeats himself, more slowly.
"I said, we're almost there."
"Good." Evelyn nods her head, pulls the rest back inside. Stops staring at Paul in the rear seat. "Good."
"You must be tired."
He seems concerned, so she makes a polite smile and gives ground.
"A little, yeah. I'm glad I told my sitter to stay the night."
Alva checks his watch, fingers of one hand lifting slightly off the steering wheel.
"It's nearly three am. I think Paul might be sleeping this one off on the office couch." He sighs, weary. "At least none of us have to be up early for work in the morning."
Evelyn thinks about making scrambled eggs for her son at seven am, and gives Alva a heavy dose of eyebrow.
"Speak for yourself."
oOo
"…Azonblo Gidi-Gidi Welo Neg Taya Wangan, Kowa myaze yevo…"
People move around them, jostling for position. Evelyn lets them push past, happy to be relinquishing the foreground to the lead players. From Alva's monologue she knows that the other hounsi are all candidates for possession; the collective drumming of heels is a supplication. People beside her throw back their heads, open their arms, relax their faces – a release, an invitation. Brigitte, in a sheen of sweat, dances a storm, a maelstrom, a call to the centre.
Alva's voice sounds quietly and Evelyn jumps. She didn't realize he was standing so close.
"She's calling Ghede. Protector of children, god of cemeteries…"
Evelyn looks into his face. Alva is staring at the mambo, fascinated and intent. He could be speaking to himself.
"Ghede speaks of death, and sex..."
Alva meets her eyes, and Evelyn suddenly understands why they're here, when he intones quietly:
"Ghede knows all the dead know."
oOo
It starts as a constriction in the chest – like your gorge is rising. Tightening. Hard to breathe. Asthmatics feel like this: the lungs try to expand, can't, the body feels the deprivation, the mind springs alert.
It's uncomfortable – you think it's the heightened atmosphere, the smoke from the bonfires, you try to step back and find your legs too wobbly to move. Hand to your chest, you rub to ease the discomfort near the ribs. It doesn't help.
Shiver then – feel the tremble in the shoulders.
Red bloom of panic
oOo
They've been here for a long while now, and she can see that it's not working.
One devotee comes forward, then another, to receive the splash of the asson, the touch of the mambo's hands, but for all the chicken-blood smears no one has been blessed as yet. Brigitte's casting round, calling out for someone true, someone to pique the loa's interest. But Evelyn can see that through the blush of frenzy, the hunger on each devotee's countenance, there's no eminence. The shouting and moaning and crying will plateau soon if the loa doesn't make an appearance.
She's confused enough to look over at Alva.
"What's going on?"
"I don't know." His tone and face suggest preparedness forestalled. "There's not usually such a lag…"
Evelyn frowns and looks behind for Paul's thoughts.
"Paul, do you –"
He's got his head down, clutching at his chest. Something wrong. Can't reply. Evelyn's memory of her late father's stroke grabs at her from out of nowhere. She reaches towards him.
"Paul –"
Alva's gasping cry shocks her into freezing.
"Don't touch him."
oOo
This is an invasion. The body is in revolt.
Try to talk, open your mouth, gasp for air. See and hear shouting, through a smoke-tinged haze, and if you could yell for help you would, but the larynx is filled with some thick gooey stuff, it's cold, cold, everything…
Your knees kick out from under you, pummel you to the ground, one hand at your chest and one in the dirt, stiff trembling arm your only support until other hands pluck and knead and pull you back…
oOo
Alva's grabbed her arm in the act of reaching for Paul – Evelyn's pulling back hard, but he's got a grip like iron and ice, and his face has come alive in some light, the sparks from the bonfire throwing shadows into the corners of his eyes.
"Goddammit what's wrong with you! He's –"
Alva's hold tightens.
"Just stand clear and watch. Please."
What's more disconcerting is the cheer that's gone up, and the flood of grinning faces that have immediately crowded around as Paul's collapse becomes the focus of Brigitte's snagged attention. She's thrown her head back, smiling and laughing broadly, and the flood of langaj becomes a prayer of thanks, the drums and the singing picking up the thread, the sound of adoration all around.
Adoration, as Paul gags and convulses in the dirt, his face gasping in obvious pain, people swarming to make him the locus of an expanded circle. He's on his knees, and in a sudden writhe his torso kicks back, shoulders sliding onto the arm of an elderly black man who's muttering hard, eyes glassy, midwife attendant.
Evelyn watches, appalled, as the rum bottle is pushed to Paul's lips and a generous libation washed down his throat. She can see the crushed-up chillies swirling in the liquid now, and she swallows hard to stop herself from crying out. Catch a glimpse of his eyes between the press of bodies – fluttering wide, hot and terrified.
Then his eyes dip closed as the rum sluices down.
Evelyn feels Alva's fingers making bruises near her elbow, and thinks she's going to be sick.
oOo
"And what if this loa doesn't come to the party?"
Alva glances behind to the backseat, a quick grin playing his features.
"Ghede is a show-off. He can't help himself. If white people attend the ceremony he's bound to make an appearance."
oOo
Something's happening. She can see it – no, she can feel it. Static electricity. The short hairs on her nape and arms stand up with a shiver.
He's stretched back fully, haunches forward, in apparent collapse. Someone has wrenched open the front of his shirt and daubed an offering, a bloody flower on his chest. Stray runnels of red course down, mix with the shine of sweat, outline the muscle.
Evelyn tastes her breath, metallic in her throat. She tugs hard away from Alva's grip, steadies herself by glaring at him. Alva's acknowledgement is cursory – his attention is fixed by the sight of Paul on the ground, surrounded by chorusing devotees. Brigitte stands close, swaying and cooing at the chosen one, calling out refrains for the singing and throwing herbs into the nearest fire. Somebody passes her a small basin of water and she sprinkles it at Paul's head - it's too late for lave tet now, but this might be some appeasement.
Evelyn feels ruffled. She takes a hesitant step closer to Paul on the ground, watching his hair falling over his closed eyes. Her hand lifts automatically in his direction –
Movement.
Shocking and sudden, his body lifts, like Frankenstein's monster at the reanimation. Paul's on his knees, dark shirt-ends and bloody decorations, and his mouth is a small silent 'oh', closed eyes feathering open now, clam shells underwater, and he blinks lazily and turns his head, gazing around, expressionless…
And it isn't him.
Impossible to say how Evelyn knows this. Scores of facial muscles, working in odd unfamiliar patterns. The same face worn a different way. A certain look in the eyes.
Evelyn stares.
He looks around at the crowd, then down at himself, takes in the clothes, the body, looks at his wrists, hands…then begins a slow rumbling laugh that starts in the midsection and spreads upwards, crinkling his eyes, gurgling out his mouth. Others seem to get the joke, and the giggling runs carefree among the devotees.
It's so weird to see Paul – Paul, serious, Paul, concerned, pensive – laughing this broadly that Evelyn takes a step back.
His next movement startles her further. A quick athletic up-jump from the knees, and he's standing, listing a little drunkenly, the laughter trailing off. The devotees fall quiet.
He opens his mouth and the voice is a rusty disused mutter:
"Anmouwa…"
The words seem to have an effect on the crowd, there's an excited whisper – until Paul, this strange new version of Paul, dips his head then rears up suddenly with a guttural roar:
"And where the fuck my hat is, eh?"
Evelyn blinks and stumbles back, collides with Alva. His presence is the only other sane one now.
oOo
It feels weird. It feels like an out-of-body experience.
It's not him,
she keeps reminding herself. This is not Paul Callan. Paul Callan doesn't wear a battered top-hat at a rakish angle, or leer and glug down bottles of spirits with wild abandon, or smear roast chicken into his mouth, or dance with his arms thrown out, or laugh gleefully when a rooster is slaughtered for his benefit, or speak in husky Creole, or cavort shamelessly with a voodoo priestess in lurid fuck-pantomimes, or hunger for candy, or –- or look at her that way.
Paul Callan doesn't do that.
Evelyn has been trying to keep herself out of sight, lose herself in the crowd's skirts, but it hasn't worked. Ghede spots her from a mile away. He's sniffed her out. And now Paul-Ghede is worming his way towards her, despite her best attempts to shield herself with others, and the crowd parts like the Red Sea as he slides up closer…
Not Paul. Not Paul. Not Paul.
She reaches inside for something to bolster her nerve but finds only sticky fear, so she pulls her wrap around her shoulders – poor armor – and stands very still as Paul-Ghede laps around her barefoot. Although his intentions are plain, he circles without making eye-contact, speaking to the others milling close.
"Now I do believe I see some bel fle here when I come awake… Then I look over dis arm and pht! – she all gone!"
"Yes, indeed." "Mm-mm." "Where dat flower go?"
She can hear the muttering and knows when she's being teased. Paul is the sole focus of attention, and now Evelyn is the new unwilling hub. Men nearby grin and nudge each other; women give her sly encouraging glances. She sees Brigitte, in the background, clap hands and urge her on…then Paul's whisper, behind her ear:
"She disparet – jus' like that." A fingersnap. "Mebbe she invisible one, eh?"
Evelyn can hear giggles and muted guffaws as Paul glides to her left, then around to face her. She opens her mouth, but no sound emerges. It doesn't matter. His voice is wooing soft:
"You been hide over here, ti?"
Dark brown eyes, in a fever-dark face, and that hat, crooked over one eyebrow.
Not Paul. But god, it sure looks like him…
Evelyn blinks silent. His body is so close she can feel heat and presence rising off him like steam.
"Now dat be some shame. Never met no pretty girl born shy…"
She's watching him. When he traces one finger down the back of the hand clutching her wrap, she tries not to twitch away.
Where the hell is Alva? Her eyes flick around. There. But his look is one of encouragement. He wants his answers.
Play it out. Keep him talking. Don't scare him off.
Evelyn frowns, and Paul notices the distraction. Goosebumps, as he lilts nearer and makes a tripping turn around her again. She feels for all the world like the trembling lamb encircled by the wolf.
"You shy, bel fanm?"
He's slid his fingers under her wrap to touch her waist delicately, and she doesn't want to make any sudden movements. She swallows, so her voice doesn't sound croaky.
"Sometimes."
"Sometime, eh?"
Hear his smile before seeing it – he's pleased at the response. She's almost congratulating herself for standing up to him when he whips in front to face her.
"You like to fuck, cher?"
She startles then, the jerk of her body playing into the hand Paul's slipped around her. His face is butted up close and confronting, and she can see the sweat in his hairline, the rum on his cheek.
"Mebbe you like to fuck 'sometime', eh?" He grins. "No shame dat, cher. All earth creature like to fuck. You like tout-de-suite or slow dance? Mm, you smell good…"
Pushing in suddenly, burying his face in her hair, in her neck, and the heat rises there, everywhere, despite her attempts to repress it. She can see the smooth tan skin of his neck and shoulder where his open shirt has ridden up. Underneath the cigar smoke and the alcohol she can smell the soap Paul uses to wash. Sharp tang of citrus.
He's entwined the fingers of one warm hand with her own – his other hand has strayed down carelessly to make lazy circles on her ass. She shivers, but he's doing all the talking now. Husky whispers...
"Mebbe I take you behind dis fire, we make slow dance, eh? Make dem rooster crow all night…"
His lips brush her earlobe and when he grins she can feel it. Can feel it too when he nibbles on her collarbone, and she makes a quiet stricken sound, because with the nearness of him in the half-light she's having a hard time distinguishing horse from rider…
Alva's sudden voice from over Paul's shoulder is like a wash of ice water.
"Ghede, I was hoping we might talk business…"
Evelyn closes her eyes as Paul spins around with a roar.
"I makin' business here, damn fool! What you bother me for now?"
But it's enough – in the cool space that's opened up Evelyn can catch her breath and step away. Wobbly legs. And hot wetness in her body, mulled wine in her veins, but she can't think about that too much right now…
Alva's hands are open.
"I was told that you play hard but fair, m'sieur. You know what I'm talking about, I think."
Paul-Ghede rolls his eyes and grabs a bottle from a nearby hounsi, taking a long pull before replying.
"I think you talk same bullshit mos' folk talk. I sick of look at you already…"
He grins and flops to the ground, crossing his legs, loose-hipped. Another suck on the rum bottle, then he crooks a thumb over his shoulder.
"You want play question-game, say ti-bon ask. Mebbe you get you answer, eh?"
Alva looks up, dismayed. Evelyn's mouth drops. Then she's fumbling mentally, trying to remember what's relevant and what's not, recalling Alva's preparatory insistence on fielding the right questions.
Think carefully. Ghede is a trickster – that's his nature. We need specifics, not a whirl of metaphor.
She steadies on a breath and steps toward Paul. It's hard to feel composed when her blood is still pounding – she's overly aware that his licks are drying on the skin of her neck.
"Ghede –"
He lolls back on one elbow and looks up at her, teasing adoration.
"Oui, cher? Regardez moi, do good yanvalon dos bas for you, eh?"
Evelyn swallows and plunges in.
"What did Sarah Fuller mean by 'the blackness'?"
He shrugs, nonchalant.
"Shit, chile – you never been six? What you think it mean?" He lifts an eyebrow at her confused look, then elaborates. "Big furry spider in you hair, momma done left you behind at de store, boogey-man under you bed… At six, it all be black. You close you eyes one time - you see. All black, non?"
Evelyn frowns, glances at Alva. He's looking equally frustrated. This isn't quite the answer they're after. She wets her lips and tries again.
"So, what was Sarah referring to when she said the blackness was coming?"
Paul-Ghede makes a face like he's considering, then narrows his eyes at Alva.
"Hey, bullshit-man – I got no cigar. Smoke an' talk is nice, you know what I mean?"
Alva produces an impatient frown and a Romeo Y Julietta from his coat pocket. Paul snatches the proffered cigar with a sly grin.
"Mm-m, I like dat. Shit – now I got no fire…" He chews on the cigar and pats himself down before looking up at Evelyn with a clownish leer. "You want blow on it for me, cher?"
The leer provides the encouragement his nearness had diminished. Evelyn gives him the look she reserves for overly fresh men in bars, then walks over and pulls a glowing stick from the edge of the fire.
"Here. It's all yours. We were talking about Sarah Fuller -"
"Mm." Paul puffs with relish and his eyes glint at her. "As' me you kesyon over. I forget."
Something in his manner alerts her – she thinks hard for a second, reluctant to cede an opportunity for clarity in the rephrasing.
"Sarah…spoke about the blackness 'eating you up'. She said that it was 'coming' – but she didn't say when or how or where it was all going to happen…"
"Uh-huh," Paul says as he nods and watches, still but for the clouds of smoke.
"Ghede, please tell me what you know."
It didn't come out quite right – it came out a little imploring, which wasn't her intention. But the question doesn't meet with disfavour; Paul doesn't grin or joke around like before. In fact, his face assumes a sombre deadly expression as he takes the cigar out of his mouth. His quick twist up to standing, like a snake unravelling, still makes her jump though.
"She no idyo, dis one, eh?"
He gives Alva a glance before returning his calculating gaze to Evelyn.
"I like you kesyon – here, I tell you…"
He stalks a little closer and Evelyn forces herself not to give ground. When he is two hands-breadths away, looking into her eyes, she can feel the air shake with his answer.
"You ask 'when' – I tell you right now is when. Black don't come sur le livre – it come like tide coming in. You see one wave, two wave, three wave next. Look you down…"
He trails his eyes to the dirt; Evelyn feels her own gaze follow compulsively.
"…you already up to you ankle…"
If she blinks hard enough Evelyn can almost see the inky swell covering her feet. She feels a finger raising her chin; she's looking into his eyes again.
"You ask me 'when' – I say, don' check you calendar. You already in it, cher. You feel it, non?"
She nods numbly. Paul continues.
"You ask 'where' – same, is all. No where. Every where…"
Evelyn feels herself start, and she glances over Paul's shoulder at Alva. He's taking notes furiously. By the time she looks back, Paul has blown a smoke ring above her head. He drops the cigar into the dust and grinds it out with one bare toe.
"And you want know 'how' it come?"
Another nod.
"It come in tru' you own door, cher. Here."
Before she can move, Paul's taken another step and pressed one hand to her chest, above the collar of her v-neck. She's totally unprepared for the rush of heat where his palm meets her skin, but he's got his other hand in the small of her back, fixing her in place. Fixing her with his eyes too, as she makes a gasp, almost missing his next words:
"Here – you feel it now, eh? Door to you soul always open – chasin' dat blood tru' you vein. You tink hard – real hard – about all dose tings you heart cling to…"
His eyes change in the firelight, a glow of recognition and awareness.
"Mebbe I feel one dose tings right now –"
And he leans in close to mutter in her ear, using another voice, from another time.
"It's a terrible thing to happen…"
Evelyn pulls back sharply and her teeth nearly click together on the tip of her tongue. She's trembling now. Paul swings away from her, his expression both a warning and an apology.
"You tink hard now, cher."
He's about to walk to the fire when her brain wins out over her instinct. She finds her feet and calls out.
"What about my third question?"
Paul turns, nonchalant.
"You got no more, bel fanm – but I give you boss-man him answer alright…"
Alva is already meeting Paul's grin.
"I didn't ask you –"
Paul waves a hand.
"Non, but I tell you anyways." His expression empties. "You be try stop tide, you get drown for sure. But you make a fire on de cliff, mebbe you have some luck."
Alva looks aghast. Paul speaks as he turns away.
"You remember – watch out for dat tide now, eh?"
He shambles back to Evelyn as if drawn to a flame. She thinks his face seems a little dulled as his hand drags through his hair, knocking the top hat to the ground. His next words are slurred, quiet.
"You like dis horse, cher?"
Too thinned out now to feel anything, she just nods at him. It doesn't feel like a revelation. Paul returns the nod.
"Bon."
And when his lips dip down to meet hers, the overwhelming impression is…softness. Tenderness. Succulence. Malleable and sweet and warm around the edges. She can taste the inside of his mouth. It's just as she imagined it would be. Time stops long enough for her to glue the memory in…then he steps away.
"Bon. You have him back now."
She barely has a chance to register that Ghede was kissing her goodbye when the light shifts, and suddenly it's Paul looking at her – just him, nothing more.
And the instant of recognition is all they have time for as his eyes roll back to the whites, and he keels suddenly sideways like a falling tree, to hit the dirt with a flopping painful sound, and Evelyn drops to her knees and lifts his head, very gently, into her lap.
oOo
It takes three men to carry him into the peristyle, and Alva is one of them. Brigitte is responsible for drawing Evelyn away, smoothing her hair, providing warmth and reality with a brusque embrace, before clapping her hands and directing the flow of group movement once again.
The movement of people – Evelyn finds it a jarring return to the world, the spin of bodies, the congratulatory touches and grins, the resurfacing babble of sounds and voices. A woman comes and puts a finger on her neck, in the place that Paul kissed, and Evelyn starts and blinks at the woman's flurry of Creole, the look of coy reverence on her face. Evelyn smiles politely and slides away. There's the sense of being disembodied once again, like her own spirit has departed and been replaced by a loa of exhaustion and hollow numbness.
She heads for the peristyle.
A ramshackle three-sided shed, garlanded and sanctified with candles in bottles, animal skulls and hubcaps, small pictures of saints and offertory fruit and booze and empathy. Evelyn pokes her head around the corner in time to see Paul being covered with a blanket of thick white flannel. He's lying on an old sheet, and his shoes have been retrieved and placed beside him. Alva is folding a white towel to serve as a pillow, conferring with the other men.
Evelyn feels like an intruder, and backs out into the night air, looking for a place to sit, a quiet place – she finds a thick tree stump near the peristyle and lowers her shaky legs down. Watches the continuum of the celebrations – more singing, feasting, with Brigitte telling stories and squirting shots of alcohol into the fire. Raucous laughter. Evelyn sits and watches the fire flare up, cinders sparkling into the night sky. She pushes back her hair, smoothes her face with her hands, fingers rubbing her eyes – things she's felt, things she's seen…
Alva's voice nearby makes her look up.
"Are you okay?"
"Fine." She sighs and nods. "What about Paul?"
Alva breathes out tiredly and crouches beside her, glancing at the celebrations.
"He had a nosebleed. Nothing serious. But I've been told that he has to be left to rest for a while. Covering him with white is traditional. And there's someone watching over him for now."
"Right."
Evelyn is staring into space, which Alva finds disconcerting.
"Are you sure you're alright? I know Paul's behaviour was unsettling, and I'm sorry if you felt unprotected. I would never have allowed him to –"
"Alva, I'm fine," Evelyn says firmly. She looks away to the fire. "I just…"
Alva is blank-faced, waiting for the words. When nothing emerges, he's forced to prompt.
"What is it?"
Evelyn swallows, then meets his eyes squarely.
"Just tell me that you didn't know this would happen."
oOo
Cool night air.
It's late. Evelyn buttoned his shirt; they put him in the car. Alva has said his goodbyes, and is already waiting in the driver's seat.
Evelyn turns to meet Brigitte's watchful gaze.
"Thank you."
"Pas probleme. You take care dat boy now, oui?"
Evelyn smiles.
"I take care of them both." She thinks of something else. "Will he remember…any of this?"
Brigitte shrugs.
"Mebbe he remember. Mebbe he remember some strange dream he have, you understand?"
Evelyn nods. Good. She gives Brigitte a final smile.
"Bye, now."
Brigitte winks at her.
"Until next time, eh?"
oOo
He opens his eyes about a block from the office – groggy, disoriented. Takes a moment to figure out where the hell he is. Evelyn notices, sits up straighter.
"Paul –"
"Pull over."
Alva's trying to navigate the corner and talk over his shoulder at the same time.
"Paul, you're in the car –"
"Pull over."
Glassy eyes. Alva pulls to the kerb sharply and Paul scrambles his head out the back door and throws up into the gutter.
They make it to the office in time for him to throw up once more in a trash can, and then manage to get him upstairs, staggering uncomfortably on the turns.
Alva helps him to the bathroom, then leaves judiciously to let him puke in dignity. There's a killer stench of rum, and Evelyn offers him a washcloth from the door, in the absence of anything better to do.
"Go. Away."
This raises her eyebrows, but she figures it's a good sign.
He emerges a few minutes later, face damp, fringe bedraggled. Alva puts on the kettle and gives him a once over.
"Feeling better?"
Paul glares at him.
"I'll, uh, just go and collect my notes from the car."
Alva's discrete exit. The atmosphere leavens with his absence. The nearest seat is an old sofa chair – Paul steadies at table, wall and armrest before sinking into the cushions with a look of extraordinary gratitude. Evelyn watches, and waits for the water to boil.
"Sorry. I snapped at you."
His voice is a little muffled. He has one hand up, blearily rubbing his face. There's a bad bruise developing on his upper left cheekbone, blooming almost the way to his temple.
"That's okay." Evelyn uncrosses her arms, turns over a clean mug. "How are you feeling?"
He massages his eyeballs behind the lids and talks slowly.
"Like a really big truck ran me over, then backed up, and ran me over again." He looks down at himself, suddenly realizing. "What the…what happened to my shirt?"
Evelyn walks over and delivers a steaming mug into his hands.
"Here. Black tea. It'll help with the nausea."
"Thank you."
But he still wants his questions answered. She steps back onto a stool to explain, very matter-of-fact. She sounds like she's ordering takeout.
"You were possessed by the loa. Brigitte said that because you were uninitiated you probably had a rough ride."
It takes a second to sink in. He blinks at the floor and snorts weakly.
"Possessed. Great. That's great." His eyes narrow and he looks up. "Did I froth at the mouth?"
Evelyn shakes her head, mouth turning up at the corners despite herself.
"No."
A pause. He thinks again.
"I didn't do anything stupid, did I?"
She looks at his face for a full two seconds.
"No."
"Okay." His relief produces a soft wilting, and he has to use both hands to bring the mug to his lips. "Thank god for that."
Sipping his tea, he completely misses her expression.
"Can I get you anything else?"
He slowly lowers the cup to his belt and lays his head back for a wincing while.
"Tylenol?"
"My pleasure."
"Thank you." Soft-voiced.
Evelyn rummages through the first aid kit while Paul finds the strength to bring his head forward and gaze at his shoe. There's gravedirt encrusted on the toe. He stares at it.
"So, I got possessed. And presumably Alva got his answers."
"Yes, he did."
Evelyn walks forward, hand out with the tablets. Paul nods wearily at the floor.
"Bon."
And…freeze.
Finis