Jerry Ahern - Takers 03 - Summon the Demon.pdf - Jerry Ahern - allforjesus2001

The Takers

Summon the Demon

Jerry Ahern

Sharon Ahern

The Takers

Summon the Demon

A Peanut Press Book

Published by

peanutpress.com, Inc.

www.peanutpress.com

ISBN: 0-7408-0918-0

First Peanut Press Edition

To all those who feel as we do— that there are still mysteries unsolved in the world and there remains

high adventure for those who dare to seek it.

Any resemblance, etc…

BOOK ONE

RITUALS OF DEATH

Chapter One

JeAnn Bonaparte could feel the wind, cool against her legs, flirting with the hem of her dress. Like the

fingers of a lover, it caught her hair at the nape of the neck, moving it to its will. The Battery was a

marvelous place. With a toss of the head, she could gaze east or west, into the purpling darkness of the

open sea or the orange wash of the lowering sun.

Whit Candler's hand touched at hers and she held it with the tips of her fingers. "Let me take you home, "

Whit told her, his voice barely audible, but almost to the level of a shout. The wind drumming against her

ears made speech of any kind nearly impossible to hear. The concrete walkway on which they stood

looped outward and then, at what seemed a right angle, thrust back toward the city of Charleston. The

lapping sounds of the waves beneath and the screeching of the seabirds overhead only exacerbated the

wind's cacophonous effect.

JeAnn looked up into Whit Candler's eyes. "I love you, I think," she said, not saying it loudly, not

knowing if he heard her. He was too old for her; her friends had told her that. She had never asked Whit

how old, but she guessed middle forties, perhaps late forties, his hair all but steel grey.

JeAnn supposed Whit had heard her, because he folded her against him, his arms enclosing her at

shoulders and waist. "I think I love you, too," he told her, the little lines at the corners of his eyes

deepening as he smiled.

Whit Candler always told her things, never suggesting, asking, or otherwise stating anything. Perhaps she

liked that about him, too. Her university days psychology professor would have counseled her that

Whitlock J. Candler's age, his prepossessing manner, his affluence, the way his grey eyes seemed always

to bore into her soul, that all of this fascinated her simply because she had never known her father. But

her psychology professor was someone she hadn't seen for a long time and hadn't liked that very much

anyway.

Whit Candler kissed her, and JeAnn didn't kiss him back at first, just letting him do it all. But then her

hands touched at his face and his throat. She held his face tightly as he squeezed her against him; and, she

kissed him back at last.

"Now you've gotta go home with me," he smiled. He had a broad smile, instantly ingratiating, animating

every plane and angle of his face, leaving only his eyes unchanged.

"Why do you want to take me home?"

"To ravish your body, of course," she heard him tell her, his lips touching at her hair, her forehead. She

turned around, hugging his arms to her waist as she looked south. And she felt it, almost heard it on the

wind. "What's the matter— cold? You're shivering."

"No— it's not that," she told him. She knew what it was. But she could never tell him that…

* * *

Where the land was higher, it would not yet be night. But already here, Momma Cinda could see the

moon, low. It was, of course, only its reflection, because the moon could not have risen yet. But, unlike

the reflection of a person's face in a mirror, showing what is, the reflection of the moon in the clouds was

a reflection of what would be. In that way, tonight's moon was like a deck of cards or the fragmented

leaves in the bottom of a Blue Willow china cup; it revealed the future.

She had considered the moon for a very long time, ever since her mother had begun to teach her the

mysteries.

Momma Cinda walked, deliberately not hurrying herself because for them to see that she was afraid

would have invited their attack only sooner. And she was not yet near enough to the house.

Her thoughts had scanned the faces of many, but there was only one who could aid her, who could try.

Child bearing and a passion for pecan pie had destroyed the lithe figure of her girlhood; and, it was only

at times like these when she had to move in haste that she at all experienced regret. Childbearing and

pecan pie— one a good taste for the soul, another a good taste for the mouth. She smiled to herself, still

walking, purposefully, but not quickly. Passion, after all, was still passion.

The thumb of her left hand was hooked on the frayed strap of her woven bag, the one in which she

carried the instruments of her profession, everything from band-aids and antiseptics to her charms. The

people would call the Momba and she would come. Frequently, the need was only for the cleansing of a

minor wound and its protection. Other times, the reason was something else again. Infertility. Possession.

Nervous energy. A lump on the body. The combatting of an evil eye. All these ordinary things, and the

charms and mixtures of her trade— for all but the more bizarre ailments which required special remedies

of a more exotic nature— were in the hand woven bag of bleached, once tan cloth.

Momma Cinda hugged the bag closer to her. If, somehow, the ones who followed her in the twilight

stopped her before she reached her house, what the bag held would be her only defense, that and her

ruby talisman engraved with the symbol of the loa Ibo who helps the wearer fulfill all her responsibilities

and solve all her problems.

She had walked paralleling the blacktop since crossing the bridge over the intercoastal waterway. And, it

was once she had crossed the bridge that the noises began. Thrashing sounds, like blind animals in the

brush. But they were not animals and they were not blind. They were once human and they could see

because their master wished them to see.

The thrashing sounds were on both sides of the road now, near her and distant and both ahead of and

behind "Velasquez," she whispered, sucking air through her teeth, making a faint whistling sound. She had

made the doll Velasquez out of a perceived requirement for self-defense. But the doll was safe at the

house and the doll would not work for her without the bit of fingernail secure in a compartment in the

lining of her bag. When, in his rage, Velasquez had come at her with his hands, going for her throat, it had

been young Willie Boyle who had taken out his knife and slashed at Velasquez's left hand. She had

picked up the bit of flesh and fingernail when no one saw and hidden it in her handkerchief.

Velasquez then did the unspeakable. His left index finger was heavily bandaged, as one of them who had

been too frightened not to tell her had recounted. And he swore revenge against Willie Boyle. He sent the

ones who almost constantly attended him, sent them for Willie Boyle. And now, Willie Boyle was one of

those who pursued her, one of Velasquez's soulless ones.

She walked a little more quickly at the thought, cooing the name, "Willie. Go away and do not harm me,

or come to me to end your pain, Willie." But Momma Cinda knew he would do neither, because Willie's

will was not his own.

The Catholic Church of St. Peter was coming up on her left. Had it been a normal evening and were she

just returning from visiting a patient, she would have stopped at the rectory beyond the graveyard, shared

a glass of wine with Father Whitehead or talked off a wart for Father housekeeper, Luella. The old

woman was always plagued the things and had been ever since discovering a vaginal wart on her

wedding night and thinking it was some sort of curse from the grave of her new husband's dead first wife.

Momma Cinda had tried to explain it was only a wart and what caused warts and that it was not a curse.

But tonight, she would not stop, because it was not a normal evening.

Momma Cinda passed the church, making the Sign of The Cross. She did this not because she was

Catholic— she wasn't really anything— but because she believed in the fine young man Jesus quite a lot

and always had. And, the Sign of The Cross was a symbol of good against evil. So many of her people

practised both religions, Voodoo and Catholicism. Momma Cinda, like Father Whitehead, practised only

one. Father Whitehead had invited her to his church in the building beside the graveyard a hundred yards

set back from the road. She had invited him to her church, her Oumphor, in the clearing at the end of the

narrow path across Gunwater Swamp.

She had declined. He had declined.

Occasionally, over the years since he had replaced Father Hambrick, Father Whitehead had encouraged

his congregation to leave her church; she had never encouraged her congregation to renounce Father

Whitehead's church. And, after a time, she and Father Whitehead had begun to talk, to discuss the

concerns of their common flock.

She stared at the graveyard. Mists rolled in early tonight from the swampy land beyond. It was said by

some that when the next hurricane came, it might be enough to make the graveyard wash into the swamp.

That the rotted corpses and the nearly as rotted boxes which contained them would float to the surface.

She had seen the dead many times in many ways in many forms, and she laughed as she thought of the

way the white women spoke of the impending disaster for the cemetery in such a hushed and frightened

way.

As if the dead could harm someone. Only the living could do that, and those trapped between life and

death who served the living.

Momma Cinda addressed a particular grave. It was her custom, had been since the grave was first

occupied. "Good evening, Mr. Hutchins." And she added something she had never said, but felt deeply

tonight, because it was still a long walk and although she could no longer hear their thrashing about in the

underbrush, she knew Velasquez's Zombies still followed her. "I might be in your arms again real soon—

real soon." And for the first time since Mr. Hutchins' death twenty-eight years ago, she felt tears come to

her eyes for him.

Momma Cinda brushed her tears back and sniffed. Mr. Hutchins was the best looking white boy she had

ever seen. She let him get into her and when she had realized he loved her she was very afraid. His father

murdered him, then killed himself. And his mother refused to let her son be buried in the family cemetery

on the other side of the s island. Mr. Hutchins had not been Catholic, but Father Hambrick had taken him

in.

Momma Cinda had not cried when she was told her white lover had been killed. She had not cried when

she learned by her own art that she carried his child in her womb. She had cried only the one time until

now, the one time late at night, when the fog was so thick no one would see, and she had taken her baby

in her arms and undressed the pretty little girl child over the grave so Mr. Hutchins would know. For a

moment again, she was a young girl, body aching for the touch of her lost lover.

From the graveyard, she heard moans. Not the dead, but the undead, calling for her. Momma Cinda,

fatter, older, kept walking.

Past the rectory. No light glowed from Father Whitehead's study window. His yellow light was a beacon

she could sometimes see from her own house on the opposite side of the road and beyond the ten feet or

so of bridge spanning what the white folks called Gunwater Creek. Gunwater Creek was not usually a

real creek, but merely a free flowing trickle of water, draining from one side of Gunwater Swamp in to

the other.

The undead would be moving behind the rectory. Momma Cinda smiled. There were lights on in other

rooms. If Luella were there alone, Luella would be making the Sign of The Cross, and rubbing the charm

Luella had insisted on having as proof against the powers of Arturo Velasquez's Zombies.

Momma Cinda reached the bridge spanning Gunwater Creek. What she heard frightened her deeplv and

she looked down into the shadow. Arms, brown and muscled, glistening in the water, reached up toward

her over the sides of the bridge. She moved more quickly now, into the center of the bridge at an angle.

Her track shoes slipped once and she fell. She picked herself up, gathering her ankle length print skirt in

her right hand and hitching it to her knees. She started to run.

"Momma… Momma… Momma…"

She looked back. Six of them. They were coming. Her house was small but nicely kept, with freshly

painted blue lintels and a small porch with a well-used rocking chair. Her house was less than five

hundred yards further ahead as she reached the center of the two lane blacktop.

She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, her tongue dry against the roof of her mouth, its tip darting

back and forth into the gaps where she had no teeth left. The moaning, the chanting of her name. They

were using her own beliefs against her. Velasquez was. It was not that she was afraid of the physical

harm the Zombies of Arturo Velasquez would do to her. But if they killed her. Velasquez would control

the Voodoo on the island and control her people. Her people would be damned. Momma Cinda forced

herself to keep running.

A different sound. A rising wail. Brightly glowing lights. A horn. Headlights. She looked behind her and

dodged to the side of the road, a pickup truck loaded with teenage white boys, laughing loudly, beer

cans in their hands. The wind of the truck's slipstream sucked at her skirt at the loose hairs which had

worked free of her single braid. From the right side of the road, strong brown arms reached for her. She

shouted. "Be gone!" And she ran again.

"Momma… Momma… Momma…"

She could not run anymore.

She stopped, she turned, faced the Zombies as they climbed from the brush. one of them was Willie

Boyle. Or had been.

"I am the Momba. I order you to be gone!"

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