Paradise Cursed – Snippet 14
“Duppy,” Ola was saying over dinner, “is Jamaican for ‘spook.’ You hear duppy tales all over these parts.”
“Like ghost stories when we were kids?” Dayna said. “Dead guy coming up the stairs, dragging his wooden leg. I’m coming to getcha…thump…I’m on the first step…thump…” She thumped the table top. “I’m on the second step…”
“You got it, girl!” Ola laughed. “That’s what I’m talkin about, only a duppy, see, it might be a ghost or a gremlin or even a crocodile man. An them that practices Obeah—”
“Obeah?” Erin frowned.
Uh-oh. Dayna had asked Ola along to bring some cheer to their shore leave, hoping Erin would snap out of her gloom. Their restaurant had an ocean-front view on two sides and a sunken schooner right below where they were sitting. Tomorrow Dayna hoped to come back and, like the waiter suggested, climb down with breathing gear to look at the wreckage.
But Erin was taking Ola’s duppy talk way too seriously.
“Obeah is like magic, right?” Erin said.
“That’s it, child. Obeah folks can turn a duppy into a snake or a lizard. Make it spit on you. And you ain’t never been sick till you been spit on by a duppy lizard. Or a frog, they do frogs, too. Bring on fevers, belly tumors, you name it. Bad stuff.”
“How do you know when a person’s Obeah?” Erin set her fork down with a bite of fish still on it and pushed the plate aside.
Dayna reached over with her own fork and snatched a French Fry, which they referred to here as chips. At home, she’d had fast-food fish and chips, not nearly as good as these.
“Same way you know when a Texan’s got the sixth sense,” Ola said. “They have to tell you, and sometimes they lie. Show me a rich psychic and I’ll show you a liar. The real ones, they consider it a gift from God, and maybe they charge a little, we all have to make ends meet, but they don’t set hooks and keep reeling a person back time after time.”
She looked down at her empty plate for a moment, and Dayna was about to ask more about duppies, when Ola looked at Erin straight on and her expression turned sober.
“That’s why I know you’re the genuine article, Erin. Because you see things in the cards that scare you.”
Dayna held her breath. Erin going weirdo was becoming a habit. She hoped Ola hadn’t just dead-ended their great evening.
*
Hands flying, eyes gleaming, hair still gooey with chicken blood, Ayanna kept smiling and thanking me in her thick Jamaican patois, as if it were I who had lifted her curse.
“Coodeh! Tank you, don dada. We arrive dere I’m tink we got big choble us, all dees wimmin, is jus pure almshouse ah gwaan. Tank you, tank you, don dada.”
How could I not laugh? Then she started laughing, slapped a hand over her mouth, and after the laughter stopped, resumed her appreciation in perfect lilting English.
“Captain, when we arrived and I saw the setup with all those women in white, I just knew it was pure trickery. Not only had I fallen for Demarae’s smooth talk like a fool, I had brought you into it. The sacrifice I expected, but I did not expect such a spectacle.”
“Yet you believe it worked?”
“I do! I cannot explain, but when the blood came down on my head, my face, I felt the cleansing. My stomach does not hurt. My feet—it is all good. I am so thankful, Captain. I am your sailor-slave for life.”
“Well, now, that’s a deal I can’t pass up. Who’s life, yours or mine?”
She laughed again, and it was as musical as her patois. “Let’s say, as long as you need me—at full wage, of course.”
Considering how often my crew deserted me, that was still quite a deal. The change in my first mate as we motored back to the ship could only be described as phenomenal.
Perhaps it was the absolute beauty of the moon on the quiet sea and the excitement of having witnessed a true healing, but my mind kept picking at an absurd idea. I had not sailed among these islands for so long without consulting more practitioners of shamanism, mysticism and all other forms of mumbo jumbo than most people meet in a lifetime. None of it had worked against my own curse. But suppose I brought a powerful shaman such as Demarae aboard the Sarah Jane. Would whatever power permeated my ship reinforce the shaman’s curative spell with enough oomph to undo a curse rendered by a bolt from heaven?
Ayanna fingered a bobble on a neck chain, which usually nestled inside her shirt. I’d noticed it before without paying much attention. As she held the object now and gazed at it in a gleam of moonlight, I recognized it as a protection amulet.
“The Toucan and the Dove ladies, Captain, you have seen them, yeah?”
I knew exactly who she meant. An apt description of Dayna Kohl, with her flaming hair and “kiss me” t-shirt, and her sister, Erin, with her dark hair framing a solemn face and ivory skin.
“We’ve met briefly,” I said.
“The Dove, she got choble—is troubled—a magic kind of trouble, I think.”
“How do you know that?” Yet hadn’t I made the same assumption?
Ayanna waggled her hand, meaning “this-and-that.” Being free of her curse had definitely brought an animated happiness to this woman.
“I think I will pass some of my defense magic to the dove.”
“You believe she’s in danger?”
My first mate’s eyes caught mine in the moonlight, and I saw a grave concern that tweaked the short hairs on my arms and neck.
“I believe Jase Graham is not in danger,” she said. “And with the dove, my protection charm will have a worthy home.”
*
“Tell us a duppy story,” Dayna begged Ola as they waited for the launch. “The Crocodile Man or The Duppies of Rose Hill.”
“Rose Hall, chile. It’s a stone house on Little River in Montego Bay. You can read about it anywhere, visit there when we return, if you want. And Crocodile Man? Lawd, that story is too spooky for this time of night.”
“I like spooky.” Dayna glanced at Erin, obviously less enthusiastic about the idea, and relented. “Okay, then, tomorrow. Promise!”
Ola raised a finger and winked at Dayna. “There’s one story, though, about a man ridin his horse near the cemetery. It’s short, and I’d allow it’s not too spooky.”
Dayna nodded eagerly.
“So this man sees a puppy sittin there beside the road, an that puppy peers up at him with these big brown eyes, lookin all lost, an he can’t jus leave it there. So he climbs down off his horse and puts the puppy inside his coat.
“Now, his horse gets kinda jittery like, actin up all the way home. When they get to the man’s yard, he climbs down, tethers his horse and puts the puppy on the ground. It sits quiet like, lookin up at him with those big brown eyes, you know how they do. Puppies, lawd, they are natural beggars.
“But the man turns his back, not lettin those big eyes get the best of ’im, an he walks on up to his porch. And lo and behold, that puppy’s right back inside his coat!”
Dayna laughed and looked at her sister, who was smiling—not a big smile but better than the usual gloomy-face she wore most days since the aborted wedding.
“The man, he’s no fool, an he’s havin none of that.” Ola swiped her hands in the air as if to erase any thought of a foolish man. “He puts that puppy down again, gives it a good stare, then starts to move away—and there it is, back up again. He opens his door, turns and sets it down outside and closes the door, real quick like. But there it is, right back in his arms. Puppy put down, puppy back up, down, up. No way he can put that puppy away from him, and it goes on and on like that.”
When Ola stopped talking and looked at them expectantly, Dayna waited, urging her on with wide eyes until she couldn’t bear it any longer. “Well? So what happened? Tell us!”
Ola hunched her meaty shoulders and let them fall in a big Southern shrug. “Three weeks later, the man is dead.”
“Oh.” Dayna hadn’t expected such a weird and sudden twist. She glanced again at Erin, whose smile had turned slightly sour.
“Some weeks later,” Ola continued, “a man is riding a horse near the cemetery, and he sees a puppy….”
This time they all laughed. Dayna stole another glance at her sister, happy to see her having a good time, at last, and relieved that their evening was ending on a high note. Hearing the noisy launch headed their way, Dayna was about to move toward it when Ola took Erin’s hand.
“Now, tit for tat, chile. You promised me a reading. I did hear you promise, this morning. When the captain was telling us all about Grand Cayman?”
Dayna had overheard part of that conversation, but not Erin’s answer. Surprisingly, her sister nodded.
“Yes, I did, Ola. We can do it tomorrow, right after breakfast,” she said.
Ola patted her hand. “That would be good. But I’m willing to bet our Cookie has a pan of warm cinnamon buns waitin for us when we get back to the ship. How’s about we jus go on an get it done?”
Yes, Dayna mentally urged, do it. Erin’s interest in tarot and astrology had been a part of her life since they were kids, Erin and her friends playing with a Ouija board. It was only after she shoved that interest out of her life, fearing it, that she’d become so morose.
“All right,” she said, her smile not as bright as it might be. At least she was nodding. “We can do it tonight. But only if Cookie has cinnamon rolls.”
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