Paradise Cursed, Chapter 24

They were cute, Dayna had to admit, their shells painted in bright primary colors and trimmed with flowers and squiggles. The dozen hermit crabs scrabbled around the bottom of a bucket much too small for their comfort, in her estimation.

“What do I do with them?” she asked Graham.

“You mean you’ve never managed a crab race?”

“Never even seen a crab race.”

After giving her one of his I-can’t-believe-I’m-stuck-with-this-dumbell look, the acting first mate, as she preferred to think of him, never mind that the real first mate was fighting the throes of some voodoo-hoodoo-wackadoo curse, pulled big poster-board signs from a supply closet.

“One poster for each crab,” he said. “Passengers team up by choosing their favorite to win and put their sticker on that poster.”

“Okay.” She could see where previous stickers had been pulled away leaving scuffed places.

He handed her a thick piece of white chalk. “Draw a circle in that big open area in front of the bar, about the size of the bucket. The crabs go in the circle, bucket over them so they can’t get away. That’s the starting position.”

“Okay, but why me? Isn’t there anyone here who’s done this before?” You, for instance? She had sense enough not to say it.

“You’re it, kid. Blame it on your good looks.”

“What?”

“You’ll look good in the photos and videos, which everyone will be taking to post to their friends back home.”

“No freakin way. I didn’t sign on for the nerdery or to be humiliated on YouTube.”

“You signed on to serve at the captain’s pleasure, didn’t you?”

She hated it when he smiled like that. The guy she’d thought was hot the first time they met now grinned like a smarmy know-it-all. “Yes, I did.”

“You may recall the captain saying that our first responsibility is to keep the passengers happy?”

Oh, yeah. That. “Okay, okay. Just tell me.”

“Draw another circle outside the smaller, this time make it more than six feet across.”

“How do I measure six feet? Is there a ruler in that closet?”

“Just do it. Collect shoes to outline the edge of the outer circle. The passengers feel they’re participating, and the crabs have to crawl over the barrier to get away—don’t let them get away.”

“Posters, stickers, circles, then…?”

“Once everyone has a favorite, start the race. Count down to ten—encourage the passengers to join—and lift the bucket. The first crab to reach the outer ring wins, and that team gets a special treat from the kitchen.”

“That’s it? All that buildup for a two-minute race?”

“The bar will be serving drinks. You do three to five races, whatever keeps everybody happy.” He looked over his shoulder at thunderclouds turning darker by the minute. “In case you hadn’t noticed, we’ve got weather coming.”

The captain’s Story Time awning would stave off a mild shower, but not a blowing rain. “They’ll be cooped up indoors if it rains hard,” Dayna said, softening to the crab-race idea. “Most people will scramble to the dining room and play cards or board games. After dinner, Cookie will think up some kind of indoor entertainment.”

“Okay.” Dayna could see the crew milling around the deck, ready to luff the sails if the wind continued piping up.

The clouds did look pretty ominous. She guessed the wind at about twenty-two knots, a strong breeze, nothing to worry about yet. But she recalled from her studies that wind force increases exponentially in comparison to its speed, so if it got up to forty knots, the force would be eight times what it was now. A chance to learn how to sail in heavy-weather survival conditions, and she’d miss it all.

She knelt beside the colorful little crabs trying to scramble up the side of the bucket.

“A suck-all situation, guys, but not your fault.” Picking up a particularly feisty one, Number 10, according to his blue-green shell, she placed her other hand just beneath his legs. She’d gotten a hermit for her tenth birthday, so she knew they didn’t like to dangle in mid air.

“Since you and your buddies are doing all the work in this race, I’ll make sure you get a kitchen treat, too.” When she returned Number 10 to the bucket and set off to round up passengers, Dayna saw Jase Graham standing in the shadows taking her picture.

What’s the deal with that guy?

*

The wind nipping up around the Sarah Jane didn’t worry me nearly as much as those thunderclouds on the northeastern front. They lay thick along the horizon like piles of moldy sour cream.

Late sunlight slanting low ignited the western side of a cloud column that reached high into a second cloud layer above, leaving the sky between deceptively clear—a beautiful photo op for my passengers on the party deck. By the time those clouds rolled over the ship and the rain started, everyone would be moderately soused and laughing as they dashed for cover.

Weather on a tall ship is a thing to talk about when the vacation ends, an experience unlike any other to be had. While the heavens pound you with rain, and wind blasts you fron side to side, your foundation gives way, becomes as unsteady as a rodeo ride, and you have nowhere safe to stand. As storms go, this one promised to be mild enough, however, and my men knew their assignments. While it’s a hassle to hire new seamen for every cruise, I hadn’t slighted us on skills.

I’d put a dinghy sailor on wheel duty, knowing he was likely to have more experience than most big-boat sailors. A wind of only fifteen knots can get the best of a dinghy, so keeping one upright was excellent training for handling a four-master at thirty knots.

Every man aboard knew how to work the sheets, depower the sails as needed, and if the sea became so rough that simple measures failed, they knew to cover the hatches and companionways. Having a hard wave or torrential rain fill the bilge was not only dangerous but demoralizing. All my men needed was a firm hand in command of when to do what, and if Jase Graham was half the sailor I thought him to be, this was his chance to prove it. He might be a sly bastard with something wily up his sleeve, but he knew his stuff, all right.

No, it wasn’t the ship’s or my passengers’ safety that put me on edge. At the moment, it was only fresh wind and distant clouds, and my vessel had weathered worse storms. We were making good time toward Roatan. I could put my mind to more pressing problems, the first being our patient.

Marisha was at her bedside while I met with Erin Kohl and Shaman Demarae.

“Our plan tomorrow,” I said, addressing Demarae, “is to meet with this master shaman you have such faith in. But what can we do to stall any furtherance of Ayanna’s symptoms until we arrive?”

He took a moment answering, staring down at the water as I often do when gathering my thoughts.

Finally, he said, “My hope is that we might speak with Shaman Shawnte by satellite phone to explain the problem, our need for an immediate audience with him, and to ask his advice on any preparations we could tend to in advance. In light of the recent changes in her condition, I believe the sooner we can open a communication with Shawnte, the better.”

“What can another shaman do that you can’t?” Erin asked.

Demarae smiled gently at her, then at me, his eyes glowing with a hint of reverence. “I only know that he is considered by many to be the most powerful and successful shaman in all of the Caribbean.”

“And you are measuring success by… what… exactly?” If it was the size of his bank account, my worry for Ayanna would jump a notch.

“By his ability to cure what others could not. I am not the only doctor who has sent incurables to him with happy outcomes.”

Demarae spoke with conviction, yet from his grave demeanor, I was convinced he had reservations.

“Let’s call him,” Erin said. “We have hours ahead of us. Maybe he can explain what to do differently. After the other passengers are asleep, we do another healing based on his advice.”

Demarae shook his head. “We certainly can make that request, but I do not believe a simple change in procedure will have the effect we need.”

Erin looked from Demarae to me. I could feel the frustration etched around her sharply focused eyes, but I had no idea how to ease that frustration. Having seen dramatic changes in Ayanna after only a few hours, I also felt an anxious need for an immediate remedy, if only for the short term.

“Captain, we almost had him this morning,” Erin said. “You made the Bokor vanish when you cut him. Afterward, Ayanna improved.”

“For a short time,” Demarae agreed. “It’s true, Erin, that with your help and the captain’s quick reflexes, we banished the Bokor. Briefly. He will be ready for our next attempt, however, and I fear not so easily dismissed.”

“Erin has a point, though,” I said. “Considering how much Ayanna’s condition has worsened since this morning, the hours ahead may aid the Bokor to continue gaining control. If another healing would again send him licking his wounds, she might recover strength, which could give Shawnte’s work a better chance to succeed in banishing the Bokor entirely.”

“This would be a good thing to ask when we communicate with him,” Demarae said.

Yes. Though we were no closer to a cure, merely having laid out a course of action felt like progress. The communications room was right behind the wheel house, so I might need to relieve the helmsman to avoid having Demarae’s conversation overheard.

Before I could relay this thought, I spied Marisha running toward us. The desperation I saw in her face told me she was not bringing good news.

 

*

Ayanna floated in yellow-green slime. Da slime slide down her troat, yeah, fill her insides with pain. Pushing, stretching her bones like a bitty girl stretching her chewing gum. Pain screaked in her head, screaking-screaking from inside where her brain is gone mush-cake and her thoughts dribble into da Bokor’s fire.

Ayanna fought da stretch, fought da screak, fought da dribble of her brains. Then evilous thoughts sizzle up from fire, from da cold fire. How can fire be so cold? Evilous thoughts open her mouth, open wide her mouth, stretch da bones to swallow dove-girl.

Ayanna not want dove-girl in her belly. Not want da girl more pain.

Ayanna floated, floated. Da slime, da dribble, da bones breaking, screaking.

Ayanna screamed.

 

*

I’d scarcely pushed the door open when the rank, swampy odor assailed us. Erin and Demarae crowded behind me as I gaped, stunned by what lay in Ayanna’s bed.

If I had not known Ayanna, had not experienced the apparitions of our earlier “healing” ceremony, no one could have convinced me that what lay in Ayanna’s bunk was in any way human. Her torso was longer, thicker, her head enlarged but also flattened. Nose and mouth protruded into a muzzle, and her eyes had slid toward the sides of her skull. Feet, wide like her hands and with long curved claws, had burst through her deck shoes.

My stomach heaved at the sight.

The twitching had worsened into spasms that jerked her entire body off the bed in an upward arch. Muffled grunts and squeals issued from her mouth.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered. “She is in agony.” Pure understatement on my part. She looked like an Inquisition victim being tortured and torn on the rack.

Erin knelt beside the bed and tried to take one of Ayanna’s horny hands, but the spasms were too strong. Demarae murmured words that sounded like a prayer.

“We can’t let this continue,” I said to Marisha. “Give her something for the pain!”

“Dilaudid will lessen her misery,” she said. “Knowing no health history, it is dangerous, perhaps making the seizures worse.”

“Will it ease her pain?” I demanded.

She hesitated. “Yes.”

“Then do it.”

“Yes, do it, if you dare,” Erin said, but the voice was not Erin’s.

She had succeeded in capturing one of the claw-like hands in both of her own, and Ayanna’s spasms had calmed. But Erin’s face was animated as no human face should be.

“Coo deh! Whaa gwaan yaah mi breddah?”

The gravelly voice coming from Erin’s twisted, snarling mouth was difficult to wrap my mind around, but roughly translated, she had said Look at that! What’s going on, my brother? in Jamaican patois.

“Let go of her hand!” I reached to pull Erin away.

A claw-filled deck shoe slammed into my chest, knocking me back with such force I fell against Demarae and would have fallen to the floor if not for his support.

“Cha! Ah weh eem tink eem ah guh duh?”

Darn! What’s does he think he going to do?

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“My good captain,” the voice said in ordinary English, “I am the one you seek to banish from your ship.”

I felt a strange relief. Confronting an enemy that exists only as a phantom, a vision, is frustration at its worst. “Slaying” the crocodile had brought satisfaction only briefly, because it was so ephemeral. It might merely have been a shared hallucination. This voice, coupled with the tangible changes in Ayanna, was solid confirmation that our enemy was human and therefore possessed human foibles.

“What do you want?” I said.

Erin’s mouth stretched into a hideously wide grin. Her eyes bulged hungrily.

“Everything, my fine captain. I want it all.” The eyes shifted to Demarae. “Hello, Doctor. Or do you prefer the lesser designation of Shaman? Do your friends know you hold doctorates in both theology and psychology? I think you are too modest, but then those academic credits have no power in our craft, do they? No more power than your medical doctor’s tonics and potions. The lovely Ayanna is mine.”

“Let her go.” A lame retort, but my thoughts were hammering at those three words: tonics and potions. The Bokor had chosen to speak to us just as Marisha was about to administer Dilaudid, a painkiller.

“Do it, Marisha,” I said. “Give her the injection.” I prayed it was the right decision, that it wouldn’t dull her ability to fight off the Bokor and allow him to take her completely.

“Are you certain?” Demarae said. “Perhaps we can learn something helpful—”

“Not from him. His lies will tell us nothing.”

“Oh Captain, my captain, you are an idiot.” The claw-hand Erin was holding suddenly jerked upward and grabbed her throat.

As I sprang forward to pull it loose, Ayanna’s body began to arch and buck as it had before.

“Hold her down,” I told Demarae. Using both hands, I managed to release Erin.

She gulped air and her face relaxed into its normal appearance. Jumping from the chair, she backed away, pushing past all three of us to get away.

Ayanna sat up and struck Demarae, who was holding her feet down. I grabbed the offending claw-hand, captured the other one as it came at me, then climbed on Ayanna’s chest.

“Do it!” I shouted to Marisha, hoping the painkiller would also have a sedative effect.

Join me here next week for another chapter of Paradise Cursed, or BUY THE BOOK now.

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save

Save