Paradise Cursed – Snippet 18
After the rain stopped, I saw Erin to her quarters and decided to look in on Ayanna. She had disappeared from the dining room as soon as dessert was served. Granted, the lady deserved some time alone for coming to grips with Shaman Demarae’s reversal of her curse, but tomorrow was another day. If she drank herself silly tonight, she’d get no mercy from me.
A knock at her door brought no response. Yet, I hadn’t seen her elsewhere on the ship.
I knocked louder.
“Ayanna?” When still no response came, I raised my voice. “Look sharp, mate. This is a twenty-four-hour job you’ve signed on for.”
I needed to know she would belly up to the task now that she’d achieved her purpose for sailing with us. Another knuckle rap.
“I’m coming in, mate.” I waited another three seconds before applying my passkey to the lock, my displeasure with the woman rising hotly up my neck. The door pushed easily inward, and the thick scent of recently burned candles rushed to greet me, along with a darkness deeper than in the sparsely lighted passageway.
I fumbled for my pipe lighter and spurred a flame.
“Ayanna?”
She lay on the floor at the foot of her bed. When I placed a hand on her shoulder, she moaned. I smelled no hint of alcohol, which surprised me. Why else would she have passed out on the floor?
Feeling the lighter begin to overheat, I snapped it off and clicked on the overhead light. The candles were part of an altar of sorts. Something odd about Ayanna’s arm drew me to lean down again and examine it. From elbow to shirtsleeve, her skin was greenish in color. Touching it gave me the sort of chill I recalled from a long-ago night…
A band of lowlifes raided our camp. Outnumbered, logy with food and drink, we were fair game. When the hilt of a sword bashed my temple, I fell, lay unconscious for a bit, and was slowly regaining my wits when a snake crawled beneath my shirt, onto my naked chest, taking its bloody time about it. The fight was still going on around me, and a single move would likely get me the sharp side of a sword, so I stayed put, and by the time the snake moved on, so had the raiders.
Our party eventually caught up with the buggers and reclaimed what they’d pillaged, but lying skin to skin with a snake was a feeling I’d never forget. That precisely was the feeling
I got when I touched Ayanna’s skin.
She moaned again and tried to sit up.
“Take it easy.” I gripped her shoulders to help her sit.
The bottom of one pant leg rose to reveal her ankle, colored that same greenish tint. What the bloody hell was going on with her?
“If I go with you, Shaman Demarae can complete the healing,” Ayanna argued.
“Did he tell you the process would take more than one ceremony?” Learning that the scaly green skin was part of the curse Demarae supposedly had cured made me want to wring the charlatan’s neck.
Ayanna was too sick to put up much resistance. After I’d helped her to stand, she clung to her bureau for support. Still, she wanted to argue.
“He say one time, but—”
“Earlier tonight, why did you think the healing had worked?”
“The sickness was gone. My skin was all smooth and brown. I felt wonderful.”
“I saw nothing wrong with your skin when you came aboard yesterday.” She’d been wearing a sleeveless dress, with no hint of snaky green scales showing.
“That part started later.” She nodded, and the motion must have churned her nausea. Lurching from one handhold to the next, she made it to the head before emptying her stomach.
“Rest,” I said. “I’ll deal with Demarae then summon Burke to bring you ashore once the shaman has arranged another healing party.”
A quick stop at my quarters was enough to prepare me for whatever arm-twisting I might need to do. Leaving Jase Graham in charge, I took the dory ashore, alighting at the pier where taxi drivers sat smoking in their vehicles in hopes of a late night fare. Approaching the nearest, a small silver van, I leaned in the driver’s window with a wad of cash in my hand.
“I need your car for several hours,” I said. “But I don’t need you to drive it. Understand?”
He grinned with a brilliant flash of white teeth. Cayman Islanders are a friendly lot and eager to please, a fact I was counting on.
“Mon, da car rental place—”
“—is not what I want. I’m in a hurry. You can fill your pockets right now with more dollars than you would earn all week.”
He hesitated, looking at the Cayman banknotes, probably wondering if they were real. “Sorry, mon, I cannot give you my taxi.”
“Tomorrow, you can pick up your taxi right here. Let’s keep this a pleasant deal between the two of us.” While speaking, I gave the man a hint of my backup plan. The prick of a blade near the jugular can be quite persuasive. “Now, step out and take the money. Stay quiet, and I promise your car will be returned without a scratch.”
Opening the door slowly, I removed the small knife from his neck but held it close enough to remain a threat. He eased out, the whites of his eyes as bright in the dock lights as his teeth had been a moment ago.
“Thank you,” I said, pressing the money into his hand. “You will find your keys on top of the right front wheel.”
He began backing away, and I swung into the seat. A minute later, I was on Harbor Drive and could see him standing there counting his sudden wealth. One of the curiosities of my predicament is that, regardless of the business I and the Sarah Jane engage in, money is rarely in short supply.
*
Shaman Demarae’s home was dark except for two rear windows where lights shone and cast their glow over nearby shrubbery. I parked the taxi two doors down. Taking care not to make noise, I walked back.
Skills I mastered as a pirate have served me often through the centuries. Thus, silent reconnaissance of a house, compared with a ship at sea, is child’s play. Three minutes after arriving, I knew that Demarae and Marisha, the tall, thin woman who greeted us the night before, were alone in the main house. The building in back with no windows held no guests.
Having gotten the lay of it, I approached the door and knuckled a loud, officious knock. Without waiting long enough for anyone to walk from the rear of the house to the front, I knocked again, even louder. Seconds later, the porch light winked on. The door opened a crack.
Life on a barefoot cruise ship is quite casual. Shorts, baggy shirts and swimwear are accepted for all occasions, thus my dress whites remain in their plastic casing from the dry-cleaner for months on end. But there is nothing quite as authoritative as a full dress uniform.
“Captain McKinsey to see Shaman Demarae,” I said, “on urgent business.”
The door opened wider. “McKinsey, the fellow from last night?”
Without his feathered costume and headpiece, the shaman looked rather ordinary: close-cut gray hair, heavy-lidded eyes, a round belly.
“I need a word.” Taking advantage of his surprised confusion, I gently bullied my way in. “The service you promised and were paid generously to provide did not have the agreed-upon result. In fact, the woman’s suffering has worsened since your treatment.”
While delivering that little speech, I watched Demarae’s expression intently. His raised eyebrows fell and with them every muscle in his face drooped. Emotions can be faked, but I believed the man was genuinely sad to hear that he had failed.
Marisha came in from another room, wearing a light robe and slippers.
“Sit, please,” the shaman said, “and tell me.”
“I can do better than tell you.” Using my cell phone, I’d taken a short video showing the nubby green patches on Ayanna’s arm and feet. Her weakness from the nausea was also apparent.
“This is not good,” he said, taking the phone from me and dropping into a chair. “But our prayers were strong. The orichas were there, Babalu Aye and Oya Mimo, I felt them among us.”
He stared at the video, features screwed into a frown. Light from the screen reflected in spots of dampness in his eyes. The video dimmed and he stared past it, unfocused, as if looking into the past.
“I felt another presence among us last night, a dark spirit, very dark, and I hoped I was wrong. Seeing this, I know I was not wrong.”
He handed the phone back to me, and I sat down. “A dark spirit?”
Demarae’s grave nod was slow and thoughtful. Finally, he said, “Ayanna believes she was cursed by a Bokor, a curse broker, if you will, someone who misuses the orichas for their own gain. Perhaps this is true, but I believe now that this Bokor may have dealt Ayanna a greater misfortune than she knows.”
I wasn’t surprised. The Sarah Jane never seemed to attract people with easy problems.
“Did Ayanna tell you the lore about my ship?” I asked.
He smiled, but not with humor.
“I have heard the tales, long before Ayanna called me from Jamaica. At that time, we were merely exploring her situation, the dreams, the illness that attacks her stomach without warning and for no apparent reason. Only yesterday, when she called to arrange the ceremony, did I learn she was on the ship that spawns so many strange stories.” Demarae captured my gaze for a long moment with his sad brown eyes. “It is your ship, I believe, that the Bokor covets. Somehow, he, or it could be a she, you understand, orchestrated Ayanna’s plan to sign on with your crew. At that moment, he, or she, cast a binding ceremony and took possession of Ayanna.”
While we talked, Marisha must have gone and returned. She set a steaming cup of tea on the table beside my chair.
“Thank you,” I said. Then to the shaman, “What does that mean, exactly? That he took possession?”
“The Bokor, I believe, is riding within your first mate…with intention of capturing the Sarah Jane‘s magic for himself and using Ayanna’s natural beauty and charm to wield it.”
“And you knew this last night?” I demanded.
“It was only a… a notion… a hunch.”
“Ayanna paid for your experienced hunches, so why the bloody hell didn’t you deliver on your promise?” Without waiting for his answer, “Trust me, Shaman, you will cure Ayanna’s curse and stop this Bokor from invading my ship.”
*
The shaman’s words took me back to the night I awakened after being struck by whatever force had cursed me to ride these seas for eternity. One would consider a lightning bolt to come from Heaven, and by association from God, or at the least from one of God’s angels.
But had it? Or had the ship itself wielded a latent wizardry? Had the Sarah Jane snatched me from Death’s hands?
The first sensation I recalled from that awakening was the acrid odor of smoke from the burnt-out brigantine nearby. Then the silence of a calm sea and the eerie sense of isolation.
Private moments in a pirate’s life were rare, almost nonexistent. Hammocks below decks strung side by side for sleeping, crowded benches at the dinner table. The remoteness of a small ship on a vast sea with not another soul around was alien enough to spark thoughts of Limbo, that wasteland of lost souls.
Only after exploring every crevice of the Sarah Jane, as well as the Spanish ship, had I realized how truly alone I was. Lying supine on the ship’s main deck, I gazed upward, past the furled sails and into a blackness broken by a glitter of stars. Where had everyone gone? If they died, one would expect to find the deck stained with blood and littered with corpses. That was not the case.
Had they jumped or been tossed overboard? If so, why?
And even more troubling, why not I?
Suddenly I became so convinced that I was not flesh and blood but a spirit that even a thorough examination of my arms, hands and legs, then in a shaving glass, my face failed to persuade me otherwise. I unsheathed my knife and drew the blade across my arm. Though I winced at the pain, I felt also gladdened. I marveled at the blood that flowed freely.
Surely spirits did not feel. Did not bleed.
Hunger and thirst drove me to the galley, where I had seen a full stock of supplies during my search for fellow sailors. Everything tasted wonderful, as if near death had sharpened my senses. I gorged myself. Strong drink seemed inadvisable, so I made do with tea.
Then I wandered to the gunnels and looked out across a four-pounder cannon at the brigantine, trying to recall any hint of what had happened after the ball of fluorescent light had engulfed me. I sat pondering until daybreak. During that time, a notion came over me that I was not truly alone. I may be the only flesh-and-blood aboard, but there was another presence.
By whatever magic I had come to be alive, I knew instinctively that the Sarah Jane and I were bound together. As decades passed, that notion solidified. My ship and I were one.
Now Shaman Demarae had suggested a conniving conjurer was bent on exploiting the Sarah Jane‘s magic. Recalling that long-ago experience, I shuddered at what horrors such power might loose upon the world if wielded by a depraved mind.
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