Paradise Cursed – Snippet 23

A melon in the sun, lonely and dry, Ayanna waited to split open. She saw wavery people. Eyes not clear, captain and shaman shimmery in candlelight. Da heat of the Bokor’s fury burn inside her, like fire sizzle across electric wire. Yet she could not move.

Her belly sour-up, her feet useless melting ice, she try to open mouth, scream at captain, scream warning. Da Bokor clamp down, make big hurt in belly, in brain. She cannot move, cannot speak, cannot see in the shimmery yellow light. Cannot warn da dove. Eat da dove, swallow da dove, put dove in Bokor belly to make magic.

Ayanna push at the heat inside, push with her brain, shove da Bokor out, yeah.

One bitty moment to see clear, think good clean thoughts, then he push back. Too strong, Bokor like pushing wall. Like pushing mountain.

Ayanna cry inside. Useless. Tears melt in da yellow fire.

*

Erin, Demarae and I stood shoulder to shoulder confronting the yellow-eyed thing from Hell. In quick, darting motions, its gaze moved to each of us in turn. Staring at it and listening to Erin’s persistent reciting of the incantation, I tried to form logical thoughts. But how does one plot a course of action against a vision?

“Do not trust it,” Demarae was mumbling. His face had drained of color. “Do not trust your senses.”

Even as he spoke, the snake opened its mouth wide, as if to snap off Erin’s head in one gulp, its evil teeth wet and gleaming. Its tongue flicked outward and touched her cheek.

After one tiny flinch and a backward step, Erin remained steady, staring back and thrusting her amulet toward the reptile while continuing her chant. For a moment, she and the snake appeared locked in mental combat, tongue darting in mesmerizing rhythm with the spoken words.

Incredibly, the snake appeared to lose color. From yellow, scaly green and slimy pink, it faded to pale gray, almost transparent. Its mouth opened wide… wider… until the jaws unhinged, the way a python swallows a fully grown doe. Again I tried to yank Erin away from it, but I might as well have been tugging on a chunk of granite.

One of the women shrieked—then another—then a chorus of horrified cries as their music gave up its rhythm in a clangor of unrelated sounds. Could they see the thing now that it was fading? A quick glance told me they were staring not at the snake or at us but at something behind us. Ayanna. Was the ghastly vision merely a distraction? I turned to look.

No longer sitting, Ayanna lay crumpled in a heap inside the plastic tub, her skin the color it should be but her eyes like huge burnt coals. She was dead?

Erin’s relentless chant skipped a beat—she sucked in an audible breath.

“Dear God,” Demarae said again.

Erin resumed her incantation, now louder and fraught with fear. Demarae added his own terror-struck voice.

But I could not tear my sickened gaze from Ayanna. We had not helped this woman, we had killed her, but how?

Frantic shrieks filled with panic snapped me out of my trance. I whipped around to find the snake shedding its skin. With a ripping, sucking sound and a stench like swamp sludge, its face peeled back in ragged chunks, revealing a transformation.

This new nightmare came with substance.

Chairs and tables flew across the room as the writhing reptilian horror knocked aside everything in its path, including three women. The others screamed and ran to the door.

The thing taking form in front of us was incredibly tangible and growing larger with each crashing step forward. Not a slithering snake, but a scuttling crocodile, it’s gaze locked on Erin.

Its face faded…shifted.

One instant crocodile, the next man, then woman…not just any woman: Ayanna. Her jaws opened wide, wider, coming unhinged like the snake’s, with a hissing sound like steam but also thick and growling, shifting from one to the other as the face transformed once more into a reptilian monstrosity.

This time I succeeded in pulling Erin away, shoving her behind me. Her magic amulet had failed. Backing away from the vision that had become all too real, I realized Demarae was no longer at my side.

The smell of smoke snatched my attention. Even in the presence of monsters, fire on a ship means urgent danger. Instinctively, I looked for the flames and found them in the path of toppled dining tables and candles… then I kenned to the fact that we were in port, where fire was important but not deadly. Not like the thing scrambling toward me.

For an instant, I wondered if I could finally shake off my own curse by landing in the digestive tract of a giant crocodile. But only for an instant. The creature didn’t want me, it wanted through me to get Erin. Why, I could only guess. The Bokor had boarded the Sarah Jane as Ayanna to tap the ship’s rumored magic, only to find another source of spiritual energy aboard, and the Bokor wanted it all.

Besides, it wasn’t really a crocodile, I reminded myself, it was a vision. Solid enough to knock things about, but how real could it be?

Then again, if it was real, it could die.

I sprang for the machete, snatched it up, and whirled to face the beast again. It was closer, lumbering toward Erin, and I let it pass. Facing an alligator head-on is risky, I’d learned that after allowing a group of Florida fishermen to plot our course, and crocodiles were at least as dangerous. A beast this impossibly big would have a brain the size of a golf ball but jaws that could crush bone as easy as pudding.

Crouching low, I aimed upward for the soft part of its neck. Using both hands, I struck with all the force my legs and arms could throw into it and thrust the machete deep into its throat, aiming toward its tiny brain.

The croc screamed, a human scream.

Then it vanished.

Gone!? For a full five seconds I stood riveted, scanning the space before me.

The thing was gone.

But not dead. It—the Bokor/reptile—might be licking his wounds but also would be scheming for the next assault.

Of more immediate concern, the small fires—Marisha and Demarae seemed to have them under control. And Erin? She appeared stunned but otherwise all right, perhaps in need of a comfortable chair and a stout drink.

Ayanna’s need was more urgent. Cross-legged in the shallow water, she’d folded face-forward. I rushed to pull her out. Erin came to help, and together we laid her on the floor.

She wasn’t breathing. How long had she been out? The entire business with the reptile had taken no more than ten minutes, ten terrifying, nerve-shattering minutes.

We worked water from Ayanna’s lungs until she coughed and moaned, but the strange trance, which had overtaken her when the snake vision first appeared, persisted. She was alive, breathing but not recovered.

From the ship’s sick room, little more than a closet filled with emergency supplies, I retrieved smelling salts and a litter. With luck, Ayanna’s continued affliction was merely a faint. She responded to a whiff of the ammonia yet failed to come around completely.

I asked Demarae to help me carry her to her cabin. Marisha and Erin insisted on coming, too. Inside the tight quarters, we tucked her into her bunk.

“What is wrong with her?” I asked the shaman. “Should I get a doctor? I mean… a medical doctor?” Knowing that a shaman’s practice usually involves the healing of physical problems, I didn’t want to insult the man.

“We are fortunate in that respect, Captain. Marisha is a physician qualified to practice anywhere in the Islands. We met, in fact, when I hired her to sit in on my healing rituals merely as a precaution.” To Marisha, he said, “Do you have your bag?”

“Always.”

She did appear quite capable as she checked Ayanna’s vital signs. As certain as I could be that my first mate was in good hands, I gave Demarae a nod, and we left the women to take over. I was sorely in need of a pipe. Lighting it as we proceeded to the main deck, I remembered my manners.

“Do you smoke? We have cigars and cigarettes at the bar. I could use a strong drink. Would you care for something?”

“Though it’s barely lunch time, I would be grateful for a spot of whiskey,” he said. “This has been a morning like no other.”

Ascending to the upper deck, I considered what he’d said. Somehow, I’d been of the impression that dangerous visions were at least an occasional occurrence for a man in his profession.

“How could you not prepare us for this?” I said, unable to suppress my mounting fury.

“Do you believe I expected to be attacked by your girl’s hallucinations? Do you believe I would have subjected Marisha or my flock or any of us to that confrontation of horrors in your ship’s dining room?”

“You’re saying my ship is at fault!” Even while shouting it, I knew my anger was aimed at the wrong person. The dark arts attract the most sinister, fiendish, black-hearted practitioners imaginable, and I had not allowed my imagination full rein when considering Ayanna’s Bokor.

“I only suggest that your ship is an amplifier. It enlarges and intensifies. In this case, the Bokor exploited your ship’s energy much as we were attempting to do.”

“And did it better. We were outmaneuvered.” I banged bottles around and slammed cabinet doors venting the remainder of my annoyance. Once we were settled at the bar with a bottle of the good stuff and two glasses, I asked, “What do we do now?”

“We?” He gave one of his morose sighs. “My dear Captain, we are treading bitter waters, and I am sorely afraid my strengths have been exhausted in this circumstance. If you recall, we discussed the possibility that a second healing would fair no better than the first.”

“You can’t leave Ayanna this way! This thing that’s got hold of her is—”

“Is beyond my abilities. I warned you as such.”

“You scheming dog. You simply wanted to test the rumors about my ship, is that it?”

He gave a half nod and stopped. “Captain, we both know they are not rumors. In your time aboard the Sarah Jane… what would that be? Eight years? Ten?”

“Close enough.”

“Most men, coming upon what you faced tonight, would stand shivering in their shoes. Perhaps you didn’t expect to conjure a monstrous crocodile, but you were quick to respond, much too quick to never have been in a similar situation. So don’t be shaking your finger at me, young man.” He sipped his whiskey.

I swiveled my barstool to stare at out the sea. My pipe was slow at having its usual soothing effect, and for several minutes, neither of us spoke.

When Demarae cleared his throat, I did not immediately turn to look at him.

“You own this ship, true?” he said.

“Every plank and canvas. It’s been handed down, you might say. What makes you ask?”

“I am curious about its heritage. How could I not be? That girl you have aboard, the one glued to your hands earlier, she does have a touch of the psychic, soothsayer or evocator, perhaps, but nothing like I feel embedded in the soul of this ship. If I were a younger man, my friend, I would book passage with you in hope of soaking up all her secrets.”

Hmmmm. Now I turned, wanting to see his eyes as I asked the next question.

“What would you hope to do with those secrets?”

“Precisely what I do now, only more so and with greater success.”

“Pave your road to wealth?” I could not stifle the sarcasm.

He smiled, poured himself another finger of spirits. “Every man must earn his bread. I am no different in that respect, but great success is not measured by how many trips one makes to the bank.”

“Well said,” I conceded. My brain pushed at the nub of an idea. “You’re right when you say the Sarah Jane is rife with spiritual, if not supernatural, energy. And yes, while I’ve never before endured an attack by a huge raging reptile, I’ve seen nightmares manifest aboard my ship. By your own words, you’re a curious man, so I ask, can you walk away from what went down today without it nagging you?”

I could sense the gears whirring like mad behind the soulful brown eyes he leveled at me.

Footsteps sounded on the deck behind us, and I looked to find Marisha wearily lugging her medical bag our way. It didn’t appear to be heavy, so she must be weakened by the same sadness of spirit Demarae and I shared.

I swung around off the barstool and rescued the bag. “What might I get you from the bar, dear lady?”

“Coffee,” she said. “And a nip of whatever you’re having.”

“Coming right up.” I was not practiced at using our expensive new coffee machine, but I could serve up a decent mug of ordinary Jamaican joe. While it brewed, I set a whiskey glass on the bar for her.

“How is our patient?” Demarae asked.

“Resting as comfortably as I could manage. Her skin remains clear. Her mind? Who can say?” She poured an ounce or so of whiskey into the glass and sipped it. “As a physician, I would tell you she’s in a light coma. As your assistant, I’d swear she’s in a trance.”

“A trance?” I said.

“I don’t pretend to explain it.”

“As though she’s been hypnotized?” I set a steaming coffee in front of Marisha then made one for myself.

She nodded vaguely. “The mind has its way of escaping what it cannot bear to endure.”

“Learning that someone hates you enough pay a Bokor to curse you would be hurtful to anyone’s spirit,” Demarae said. A thoughtful frown drew his bushy gray eyebrows together.

“Discovering that the curse is turning you bit by bit into a reptile would drive many people over the edge of sanity. I cannot imagine the effect of knowing the Bokor’s loathsome presence is riding within you.”

I stared at the shaman for a moment then walked away from both my guests, ostensibly to relight my pipe. True, I did continue to crave the comfort of good tobacco, but his words had set off an alarm in my head. Laying it out like that, he’d made me wonder if bringing Ayanna’s cleansing ritual aboard had put my other passengers at risk.

Had our attempts to rid Ayanna of her curse summoned the Bokor’s wrath? Or would he have appeared at some point, regardless? Recalling the way I’d found the Kohl sisters last night, staring at a space amidships, clearly frightened but unwilling to own up to anyone hassling them, I wondered if they had encountered the Bokor in some form.

In any case, it made sense that an evil practitioner would not go to such lengths to hitch a ride on the Sarah Jane without first devising an offensive scheme of some sort. Might that scheme endanger my unsuspecting passengers? The ship didn’t have a brig, where I could stow our patient under guard until we returned to Jamaica. Nor, considering her condition, could I put her off at another stop. As captain, I was the law on my ship, so I’d be within my rights to confine her to quarters, restrained to her bed, if necessary.

Only, how would that prevent the Bokor’s spirit from moving about the ship and implementing whatever devious strategy he’d planned? Erin was the only person aboard who could see him—or rather, his apparitions— if he didn’t want to be seen. Perhaps I should wait and talk with Erin before making any decision about my first mate— other than passing her post to Jase Graham on a more permanent basis.

Buy the book now, because you’ll want to know what happens next…

 

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