Marie Lou stood there, rooted to the spot. Temporarily all memory of her tiredness had left her. She was held fixed by sheer terror. There was a prickling at the back of her scalp and the palms of her hands were wet.
The Doctor must have heard her pass the living-room after all, and since she had not re-passed it he had come out to see where she had got to. Now that he had found her there he would realise at once that she had learnt his secret. The cards would be on the table. From the beginning he had been fully aware of the reason for their visit to Haiti so it would be utterly useless for her to pretend that she did not appreciate the significance of the big map at which he had caught her staring. Facing it still, she wondered frantically what he would do. Dreading that he might strike her down from behind, she wanted to swing round; but she dared not, for fear that immediately she did so he would be able to hypnotise her.
She wanted to cry out, but her tongue clove to the roof of her mouth for what seemed an interminable interlude. Then, like a douche of cold water down her spine, Simon’s voice came: natural, good-humoured, cheerful.
‘Marie Lou! Thank goodness we’ve found you.’
The reaction was so great that she almost fainted with relief. A strange little noise came from her throat. She staggered, then turned right round. He was standing there in the doorway, with Philippa just behind him.
He suddenly spoke again, this time with quick anxiety. ‘Good God! What’s happened to you? You’re looking simply ghastly.’
She swayed for a moment then ran towards him and grasped the lapels of his coat. ‘Simon,’ she whispered hoarsely, ‘Simon! Oh God! You don’t know. But we must get away from here—quick!—don’t make a sound! I’ll take you to Greyeyes. We must get away—we must get away!’
Simon put an arm round her shoulders and led her out on to the verandah. Seizing his hand, she pulled him down the nearest steps into the garden, and with Philippa following they made a long circuit through the shadowy patches until they came round to the house again and reached the Duke’s room.
He was sitting just as Marie Lou had left him, hunched up and staring with dead eyes at the opposite wall. At the sound of their footsteps he roused himself and looked round.
‘Simon!’ he exclaimed, rising to his feet. ‘My call for help is answered.’
A smile twitched Simon’s wide mouth but his eyes were anxious. ‘What on earth have you been up to? You look like a death’s-head. And where are the others?’
De Richleau sighed. ‘All my protective materials went down in the plane, and we dare not sleep until we can make ourselves a proper pentacle. Richard and Rex left for Jamaica yesterday evening to get new things, but they won’t be back until morning. Marie Lou and I haven’t slept since we left Miami—which is getting on for forty hours.’
Marie Lou broke in abruptly. ‘Never mind that now. Greyeyes, I’ve made an awful discovery. Doctor Saturday is our enemy.’
‘What! Are you certain?’ De Richleau stared at her.
‘Yes; absolutely.’ In a spate of words Marie Lou told them about the map in the Doctor’s room and recalled the way in which, although he had been on the spot, he had refrained from coming to their assistance until the fishermen had made their rescue certain.
‘You’re right,’ the Duke said gravely. ‘It’s just possible that people fishing might have been so occupied with a bite on their line that they wouldn’t have noticed the plane crash, because it was all over so quickly; but the chart of the North Atlantic proves that the Doctor is the Adversary. Any Haitian occultist working for the Nazis would have to have such a chart to register the results of his astral journeys, if he was to convey exact practical information to another occultist in Germany, and it’s impossible to believe that there are two such maps in a place like Haiti. Anyone might have a war map of Europe or Africa pinned up on his wall, but not a great chart of the Western Approaches with flags stuck in it.’
‘We must leave—at once—this minute!’ urged Marie Lou. ‘We should be mad to stay here a moment longer.’
De Richleau shook his head. ‘No, Princess. You’re wrong there. In the first place, until we can make a proper pentacle, wherever we went we should be just as much at his mercy if we fell asleep. In the second, your discovery gives us an advantage. He’s still under the impression that we believe him to be a cultured man who is not mixed up in any way with Voodoo. If we play our cards properly we ought to be able to use the fact that we’ve discovered his secret while he still believes us to be in ignorance of it. If we were to run away he’d immediately guess that somehow we’d found him out; whereas by staying on we may be able to trap him before he makes up his mind to strike at us.’
Simon nodded vigorously. ‘Um. After all, we’ve come thousands of miles to find him, so now that he’s taken you into his house it would be silly to clear out.’
Marie Lou passed a hand over her eyes. ‘Perhaps you’re right. I don’t know. I’m so tired I can hardly think any longer, but you and Philippa look quite fresh apart from your sun-burns. You must have slept last night.’
‘Um,’ Simon nodded again. ‘Can’t say I had a good night; I was too worried about all of you. ’Fraid I’d never see any of you any more. But after it got too dark for us to look for you any longer out there in the bay, we found beds all right, in the house of a Roman Catholic missionary.’
De Richleau’s face suddenly lit up and his grey eyes flashed with something of their old brilliance. ‘I’ve got it!’ he cried. ‘You can give us details as to how you found us here, later. The fact that you slept last night is the one thing that matters at the moment. I’m now more certain than ever that you were sent to us in our extremity as the result of my call. Marie Lou and I are dead-beat. I doubt if we could have hung out till morning, but we’ll be able to pull through if we can get even a short spell. This is what you’re to do;
‘You’ll go out of the house again and enter it by the doors of the big living-room. If Doctor Saturday is still there— well and good; if not, you’ll call out until one of the house-boys comes on the scene and gets him for you. You’ll present yourselves to the Doctor as two people who were travelling with us in the wrecked plane but not actually in our party, and describe how you got ashore in the rubber-boat. You’ll then say that having arrived in Port-au-Prince you heard that we were here and so came straight up to congratulate us on our escape. The Doctor will naturally send for us and we’ll have a nice little formal reunion. You will intimate that you haven’t arranged for any accommodation in the town and he’ll offer you beds. Soon afterwards, Marie Lou and I will again excuse ourselves on account of the long day we’ve had, then it will be your job to keep the Doctor up for as long as you possibly can while we get a few hours’ sleep.’
‘Splendid,’ sighed Marie Lou, ‘oh, splendid!’
‘Talk to the Doctor about Haiti and its customs,’ the Duke went on. ‘Get him on to Voodoo. Ask him about the Cochon Gris, cannibalism and Zombies. He enjoys talking about his pet subject so you ought to be able to keep him up until two or three o’clock in the morning, while we get a respite. You’ll probably have to pull us out of bed to wake us when you do come to bed yourselves; but that doesn’t matter. We’ll have gained new vitality in the interval and be able to carry on until Richard and Rex turn up. By the by, I’m supposed to be a scientist who is interested in native customs, and Marie Lou is my niece who helps me with my notes. Rex and Richard are two British agents who, although they arrived here with us, had to leave almost at once because they had urgent business with the British Consul. The Doctor believes that they’re staying with him. Is that all clear?’
‘Um,’ said Simon. ‘I’ll keep the swine up till three o’clock anyhow.’
Philippa had made no contribution to the swift discussion but she meekly followed Simon as he left the room by the window.
Marie Lou returned to her own bedroom, while de Richleau waited in his, until some seven minutes later Doctor Saturday came down the passage and called out to them that two friends of theirs, who had been wrecked with them in the plane, had just arrived.
In the interval the Duke had partially undressed, as though he was just about to go to bed. Opening his door he put out his head and showed himself as he expressed delight and said that he would be along in a minute. As soon as he had got his clothes on again, Marie Lou joined him and they hurried to the big living-room, where the sinisterly hospitable Doctor had already installed Simon and Philippa in comfortable chairs and was just mixing drinks for them.
Each party congratulated the other on its escape, and after saying how pleased they were at meeting again they began to tell each other what had happened to them since they had been separated.
It transpired that the coast of Gonave had not been as distant as Rex had imagined and that Philippa and Simon had reached it in less than two hours, but only to find themselves on a desolate shore along which they had had to plod under a blazing sun for an hour and a half until at last they had come to a fishing-village. There, with Philippa’s help, Simon had raised among the natives a number of willing volunteers who had put out to hunt for the wreck in three fishing-boats, but although they had searched the channel until darkness had put an end to their anxious scanning of the waters they had been unable to find any trace of the wrecked plane.
The boat with Simon and Philippa had put back into a small port further along the coast, called Anse à Galets, which proved to be the principal town of the island, and the natives had taken them to the house of the Catholic Priest, who was the only white man resident there.
The Priest had done his best to console them for the tragic loss of their friends, as by that time they were quite convinced that the others had been drowned. All the same, Simon had insisted on conducting another search of the channel on the following morning and had not given up until late that afternoon, when another boat had landed them in Port-au-Prince. Feeling that there was still an outside chance that his friends had beeen picked up and taken there, he had made inquiries at some of the little cafés along the harbour front. At the third he had learnt, to his great joy, that all four of his fellow-passengers had come ashore with Doctor Saturday on the previous afternoon and had gone up to his house with him; so, having obtained directions, he and Philippa had set off up the hill to join them.
‘You have not arranged for any accommodation in the town, then?’ said the Doctor.
‘Ner,’ Simon shook his head. ‘We only landed an hour ago and came straight here from the harbour. I do hope you don’t mind our butting in on you like this?’
‘Not in the least,’ replied the Doctor suavely. ‘It is a pleassure to receive you here, and I hope that you will not think of going down to the town again tonight. There are the two guest-rooms which your other friends were to have occupied, so you must please make use of them and stay as long as you like.’
‘Thanks most awfully. That’s terribly good of you.’ Simon’s geniality almost outmatched the Doctor’s.
It then occurred to the Doctor that his two new guests might not yet have eaten, and upon inquiry that proved to be the case; so in spite of their protests he insisted on going off to get his house-boys out of bed to serve some cold food.
While the Doctor was absent, de Richleau whispered his congratulations on the way in which Simon had handled the situation and told him that he and Marie Lou would slip away as soon as they could, so as to get as long a sleep as possible.
When the Doctor returned the Duke stood up at once, and as he and Marie Lou had already pleaded fatigue, nearly an hour before, their host did not seek to detain them. Having said how much they would look forward to seeing the others again in the morning, the two of them went to their rooms. No sooner were they in them than with a sigh of thankfulness they dropped, clothed as they were, upon their beds and fell into the deep sleep of exhaustion.
When the cold meats, flanked by dishes of mangoes, custard-apples, grape-fruit, sliced pineapple, papaws, bananas and avocado pears, were served, Simon noted with satisfaction that Philippa’s healthy appetite had not been impaired by finding herself in such sinister company but he could spare her no special attention at the moment as his fertile brain was already working overtime.
While he ate he made polite conversation with the Doctor, but secretly he was also busy assessing in his mind what the Doctor’s reactions would be to this new set-up. If he suspected the trick that was being played upon him he certainly showed no indication of it, as he had not betrayed the slightest sign of annoyance when the Duke and Marie Lou had said that they were going to bed. Yet if Marie Lou was right, and Doctor Saturday was indeed the enemy, he must know much of their hopes and fears.
He would certainly not have swallowed the tale that the Duke was Marie Lou’s uncle and that Rex and Richard were two British agents who had come to Haiti on urgent business with the British Consul; or that the three couples were separate parties who had only joined up to make the trip in the plane from Miami to Port-au-Prince. He must be perfectly well aware that all six of them had set out from England together and that with the exception of Philippa they were the group who had already begun operations against him from Cardinals Folly.
In that case he would certainly have guessed that Richard and Rex were not staying with the British Consul but had been sent off by the Duke for some special purpose. There had then to be faced the grim possibility that the Satanist knew where they had gone and why, and would strive to bring about their death by another attack before they could get back to the island. If that occurred the remainder of the party would be permanently stranded in Haiti with no hope of receiving new supplies of the things that would give them proper astral protection.
Simon wondered if that was the Doctor’s game—to let them hope on for the help that would never come, until they all dropped asleep from utter exhaustion. He wondered, too, why it was that having had the Duke and Marie Lou, all unsuspecting, in his house for over twenty-four hours he had not taken the opportunity to poison them by inserting something in their food, but he thought that he knew the answer to that question.
Doctor Saturday would kill his antagonists only as a last extremity, because by poisoning them he could only cut short their present incarnation; whereas if he waited until he could get the better of them on the astral he might be able to capture their spirits and force them to work on his behalf.
Pondering such possibilities between swift, amiable snatches of conversation in which he gave a vague fake account of Philippa and himself, solely because he knew that he would be expected to do so, Simon could at first see no reason why the Doctor should not have drugged his guests in order swiftly and efficiently to overcome their resistance, but after a moment he thought that he knew the answer to that one too.
Nearly all Satanists are sadists who derive great enjoyment from inflicting both physical and mental torture. It was highly probable that the Doctor considered that he had the situation completely in hand. If so, he was doubtless deriving a devilish pleasure from the knowledge that Marie Lou and the Duke had been compelled to suffer such torments to keep awake so long, and during the day he had probably been thoroughly enjoying the spectacle of their becoming more and more exhausted.
But if that was the case would the present trick defeat him? It would certainly not do so if Rex and Richard failed to arrive within the next twenty-four hours, as four hours’ sleep out of sixty-four would be totally inadequate to sustain de Richleau and Marie Lou, and by then Philippa and Simon himself would also be at the end of their tether.
That, Simon decided grimly, was the game. The Doctor meant to prevent the reappearance of Rex and Richard then quietly enjoy the agony endured by the rest of them as they tried to keep awake all through the next day. If he was right—and Simon now felt convinced that he was—they were in a more desperate situation than any that they had ever encountered; but he had a stout heart in his frail body and the common-sense belief in tackling each situation as it arose.
His job now was to keep the Doctor awake for as long as possible, and if the Satanist was aware of what was going on it might prove even easier to keep him talking till two or three, for he would know quite well that an hour or two’s sleep for de Richleau and Marie Lou could not possibly prevent the total collapse of all four of his victims by the following evening.
When the supper things had been cleared away they settled down in comfortable chairs and Simon, to test out the ground, said: ‘D’you know, it’s an extraordinary thing but I don’t feel the least bit sleepy although I was up soon after dawn. As a matter of fact, I rarely go to bed before one or two in the morning, so, if you’re not too tired, Doctor, I’d be awfully interested to hear something of this strange island.’
Doctor Saturday gave his courteous little bow. ‘I should be delighted to talk for an hour or two. I myself require very little sleep, and when I’m alone I often work in my study until the small hours of the morning. Please don’t dream of hurrying to bed before you wish to go, on my account.’
As the two of them smiled at each other Simon felt certain that he saw in the Mulatto’s eyes a glint of cruel humour, which made him more convinced than ever that he was right. The Doctor was so confident of his victory that he was perfectly happy to let them think that they were fooling him, while mentally preening himself upon being the big cat who was playing a game with four wretched little mice which he could gobble up whenever he had a mind to do so.
For quite a time they talked of a number of things— Haiti’s abundant fertility, its hidden wealth, crops, climate, history, present form of government, leading men—and it was already past one in the morning when Simon asked:
‘Is it true that there’s still cannibalism in Haiti and that some of the natives eat human flesh just as their ancestors did before they were brought over from Africa as slaves?’
The Doctor shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘You must not think too badly of us. Admittedly the poorer Negroes, who make up the bulk of our population, are still in a very low state, but they are very far from being savages. In Haiti there are, too, quite a number of educated men who are striving to enlighten the ignorant masses and during the last twenty years have greatly improved conditions here. Their first chance came when they had the backing of the United States Government, which took over the country for a period of nineteen years and has only recently given us back our independence. Having once got a start, these good men have been able to carry on their work, and although cannibalism was rife here in the old days such practices are now much frowned on.’
‘How about the Cochon Gris?’ Simon asked.
Doctor Saturday shot him a swift look from beneath his beetling white brows and replied with another question. ‘How did you come to hear of that?’
‘Priest who put us up in Anse à Galets mentioned it to me last night.’
The Doctor lowered his eyes as he said slowly: ‘The Cochon Gris is a thing that we do not talk of here; it is dangerous to do so—except, of course, at a time like this, among a group of friends, when none of the servants are about. It is, as you are evidently aware, a secret society, and I do not seek to conceal from you that its members practise cannibalism. But you must understand that it is not just a matter of eating human flesh for its own sake; the practice is an ancient ritual connected with the worship of the Mondongo gods which was brought over from the Congo. All decent people—Voodoo worshippers as well as Christians—hold the society in horror, and some years ago the most enlightened men in Haiti formed a league for its suppression.’
‘They haven’t had much luck so far, from what the Catholic priest told me.’
‘There are great difficulties,’ the Doctor spread out his hands. ‘During the period of the French occupation all the Negroes were enslaved, so they were able to carry on these horrible rites only with great difficulty, but after the slaves gained their freedom—which occurred in Napoleonic times—it became much easier for them to travel from place to place and so attend such ceremonies. Consequently the cult spread, and in the 1860’s it had gained an alarming hold over the whole population. During the Revolution the Roman Catholic priests had been killed or driven out with the other Whites, and for many years no Europeans were allowed even to land in the island; but the Catholic Church is very clever and in the ‘80’s they recruited a number of Fathers from the French possessions in Africa, and sent them here. These—and later the white Fathers, when they were allowed to settle in Haiti again—fought the Cochon Gris—or the Secte Rouge, as many people call it— with the utmost determination; so that by the opening of the present century its power had waned and it was driven underground. Nevertheless it is generally admitted that it still exists, and it is even whispered that some of the wealthiest people in Haiti are members.’
‘Can’t the police do anything about it?’ Simon suggested. ‘Surely cannibalism implies murder?’
‘The trouble is that no one knows who belongs to this dreaded society, and it is certain death for any member who recants or is even suspected of lukewarmness once he has been initiated into the mystery. An indiscreet word is enough for the Sect to decide on the execution of anyone who might become an informer. That is why everyone here is so frightened of even speaking of the Cochon Gris in public. These people are absolutely unscrupulous and most averse to any mention at all being made of their activities or even existence; so you will see the wisdom of any ordinary person denying all knowledge of the society, when the penalty of careless talk may be to be dragged out of one’s house one night and murdered in a peculiarly horrible manner.’
‘How?’
‘Backsliders or suspects are taken out to sea in a boat. One of the adepts smashes their right ear with a blow from a large stone. Poison is then rubbed into the bleeding flesh and the victims are thrown overboard, so even if they were sufficiently strong swimmers to reach the shore they’d die an hour or so later from the effects of the poison. Why this particular method of ensuring their captives’ death should be used, when they could quite well knife or strangle them, I do not know; but that, according to report, is the inevitable practice followed from long custom.’
‘Have you—er—ever attended one of their meetings—as a scientist, I mean?’ Simon inquired with considerable boldness.
‘Unless I myself were a member of the Secte Rouge, had I done so I should certainly not have lived to tell the tale,’ the Doctor replied. And Simon noted that although from the Doctor’s tone and smile, the implication was that he obviously was not a member, he had in fact hedged rather cleverly, and the probability was that it amused him to turn his phrases thus skilfully instead of telling a direct lie.
‘However,’ the Doctor went on, with an unexpected honesty, ‘I have means of screwing information out of the natives, which the police do not possess, and as a man of science I am interested in all their customs, so I can describe for you what takes place at one of these meetings.’
The night outside was very still. Even the cicadas had ceased their chirping and a brooding silence hung over the mysterious land. In it the Doctor’s every word was clear as he began to describe these barbarous ancient rites which might even at that moment be reaching their revolting culmination, at a place no more than a few miles distant, out there in the darkness.
The members have facilities, which few people understand, for travelling very swiftly and they come from all parts of the island. Each one carries with him a sac paille containing ceremonial raiment. They meet at the Hounfort of a Bocor—that is, a priest who specialises in devil-worship. Actually, as far as the ordinary people are concerned, there is no way in which they can tell if their local Houngan is also a Bocor or not, and a Houngan may practise the usual Voodoo rites for many years without any of his congregation suspecting that he is a Bocor. On the other hand, certain of them have definitely acquired that reputation though there is never any means of proving it.
‘A little before midnight the members assemble in the Hounfort, which is a compound surrounded by a number of small thatched houses. To see them then one might imagine that they were just ordinary people getting ready for a Voodoo service, but at a given signal they all begin to robe themselves. The Bocor plays the part of the Emperor and his Mambo that of the Queen. Others of the principal adepts fill the roles of the President, the Minister, the Cuisiniers, the Officers and the Bourresouse, which is a special guard composed of men picked for their speed and strength. The ceremonial vestments are very rich and strange and they have the effect of giving the whole assembly the appearance of demons with tails and horns. Some of them appear as dogs, goats and cocks, but most of them as grey pigs— hence the name of the society.’
‘Sounds like a Witches’ Sabbath in Europe,’ Simon commented, recalling, with a shudder that he strove to suppress, a Walpurgis Eve ceremony in which he had once participated on Salisbury Plain.
The Doctor nodded. ‘From such books as I have read on Witchcraft, you are right. When everyone is robed the drums begin to beat, but they have not the deep singing quality of the Rada drums; it is a keen, high-pitched note. To the rhythm of the drums they begin to dance, working themselves up into a frenzy, then each lights a candle and chanting a liturgy of Hell they depart for the nearest crossroad, bearing a small coffin which has scores of candles on it and is the symbol of their Order.
‘At the crossroads they set down the coffin and perform a ceremony to the Petro god, Baron Carrefour, asking him, as Lord of the Roads and Travel, to favour them by sending them many victims. Soon one of the adepts becomes possessed, which is a sign that Baron Carrefour is willing to grant their request.
‘Then they dance and prance down the highway to the cemetery, where they call upon Baron Cimeterre to give them success in their undertakings. Each person with his or her hand on the hip of the person in front and with a lighted candle in the other they advance through the gates. The youngest adept is stretched upon a tomb and all the lighted candles are placed round him. A bowl made from half a calabash is set upon his navel, and, placing the palms of their hands together, they all dance and sing as they move round the tomb until each person has returned to the place in which he has set up his own candle.
‘The congregation cover their eyes while the Queen leaves the cemetery. The youngest adept rises and follows her, after which the others come streaming out. They then take up their positions on some lonely stretch of highway between two towns, from one to another of which it is certain that travellers will be passing. The Bourresouse, or hunters, are sent out in different directions and each group often covers many miles, while the Bocor and his assistants wait on the highway to waylay anyone who may come along it. The hunters carry with them cords, which are made from the dried intestines of human beings. These pieces of gut are very strong, and with them they bind and finally strangle the unfortunate wretches whom they succeed in catching. In the early hours of the morning the hunters return with two, three or perhaps half a dozen victims. These are then taken to the Hounfort, where the Bocor performs the ceremony of changing them into cows, pigs, goats, etc., after which they are killed and their flesh is divided among the congregation.’
‘Phew!’ Simon whistled. ‘What a party! I certainly shan’t go walking about the roads alone at night while I’m in Haiti. But surely, with all this light and noise, it would be easy enough for the police to locate and break up the meetings if they really had a mind to it?’
The Doctor shook his head. ‘One would think that it would be easy for the police to put down the racketeers in the United States, which is a highly civilised country, but even there the G-men have found great difficulty in stamping out the well-organised and powerful gangs. From that you may judge how infinitely more difficult it is for law-abiding people to do so in Haiti. Each man fears that he may call down upon himself the most unwelcome attention of the Secte Rouge—the Negro police themselves not less than others. So all but a very few brave ones fight shy of having anything to do with this horrible business.’
For over an hour the talk turned on racketeers and secret societies not only in the United States but all over the world. With considerable satisfaction Simon noted that it was close on three o’clock and the Doctor still showed no signs of weariness. Turning a little, he glanced at Philippa.
He was by now used to the perpetual silence which she was forced to observe, but she had had her handbag with her when she had scrambled out of the wrecked plane so she was still in possession of her tablet, and it occurred to him that she had not written anything upon it the whole evening, confining herself to nods whenever she had been addressed. She had been sitting there impassively for over four hours, her round eyes fixed on their sinister host. He wondered if she was very tired, but did not like to ask her in front of the Doctor so he laid his hand gently on her arm and said:
‘You feeling all right?’
Her large eyes seemed quite blank as she turned towards him, but she nodded twice and, looking away, lit a cigarette. It was his job to keep Doctor Saturday up as long as possible, so he swiftly put Philippa out of his mind and brought the conversation back to Haiti.
‘Pretty awful fate to be caught by those Grey Pig people but even worse to be turned into a Zombie.’
‘So you know about Zombies also?’ said the Doctor with a slightly amused glance.
‘Um,’ Simon nodded. ‘Not much, but the Priest told me something about them. They’re bodies without souls—sort of Vampires, aren’t they?’
‘Hardly that. But it is another subject that is normally taboo in Haiti, as we are ashamed to let the outer world know that such awful things still go on here.’
‘What is the difference?’ Simon’s eyes flickered quickly over the Doctor’s face. ‘That is, if you don’t mind talking about it in private?’
‘The only resemblance between a Vampire and a Zombie is that both are dead and have been buried yet have left their graves after their mourning families have departed. A Vampire is said to live in its grave but leave it each night in search of human victims, and it keeps life in its body by sucking the blood from living people—like a human bat.
‘A Zombie, on the other hand, is one who is called back from the dead, and once it has left its grave it never returns to it but continues as the bond slave of the sorcerer who holds its soul captive. A Zombie possesses the same physical strength as it had before it sickened and died, and it sustains its vitality with ordinary human food which it is given in the hovel in which it lies imprisoned during the daytime. I say “prison”, but that is not really the right word, because no bolts and bars are needed to keep a Zombie captive. They cannot speak, they have no reasoning powers, and they cannot recognise even the people who were dearest to them when they were alive. For them there is no escape; and they do not seek it; they labour night after night, year in year out, in the banana plantations, or at any other task which is set them, like poor blind beasts.’
‘How—how frightful!’ muttered Simon.
The Doctor nodded his white head. ‘And it is even more frightful for a family which respects that one of its members has been turned into a Zombie. Think of it. Someone you love very dearly—your wife or your sister, perhaps—and whom you have always cherished and surrounded with every comfort, suddenly, to your great sorrows, falls ill and dies. Even if you are poor you stint yourself to make the best funeral arrangements you can afford, and afterwards you try to assuage your sorrow by thinking of that person sleeping peacefully in the grave, relieved of all earthly cares and worries. Then, a year or perhaps two years later, you hear a whisper that your loved one has been seen and recognised, covered with lice and dressed in filthy rags, bowed down with weariness, stumbling away from some plantation in a distant part of the island one morning in the grey light of dawn.
‘Your whole being cries out to go there, to rescue them, even though you know that if you could find them they would stare at you without a trace of recognition in their blank eyes. But you dare not do so. You know that if you attempted to seek them out the Witch Doctor who has enslaved them would learn of it and that before long you, too, would sicken and die and he would make a Zombie out of you.’
Fascinated against his will by this macabre subject, Simon inquired: ‘How are the victims selected? I mean, are there any special qualifications which the Witch Doctor seeks in a person whom he decides to turn into a Zombie?’
‘None; except that the man or woman concerned should not be too old for the labour required of them—usually work in the fields. And there are a number of reasons for making Zombies. For an unscrupulous man it is a good way of acquiring labour, since Zombies do not have to be paid; they have only to be fed, and any sort of garbage will do, providing it contains enough goodness to support their strength. Again, if one hates a person sufficiently, what could be a more subtle and satisfactory form of revenge than to go to a Bocor and have one’s enemy turned into a Zombie? Quite frequently, too, people are made Zombies as a result of a ba Moun ceremony.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Ba Moun means “Give man”, and there is a definite similarity in it to the medieval European practice of selling oneself to the Devil. A poor man who is very ambitious, but sees no hope whatever of improving his status by normal means, may decide to go to a Bocor and ask for the help of the evil gods. Under the altar in every Hounfort there are jars containing the spirits of one or more long-dead Houngans and the more powerful Bocors possess many such jars. These spirits are invoked, and when the right offerings have been made to them they begin to groan; then the inquirer knows that the evil gods are prepared to listen to his supplication. He signs a deed in his own blood and puts it with money into one of the jars. He is then given a little box. The priest tells him that this contains some small animals and that he must look after them and tend them each night as though they were a portion of himself.’
‘There’s a similarity between that part of the affair and the toads and lizards and cats and owls which Witches in Europe used to keep as their familiars,’ Simon cut in, and with a nod of agreement the Doctor proceeded.
‘A bargain is struck by which the evil gods will prosper the man’s affairs for a certain time but he agrees to surrender himself to them at the end of that period, and he is warned that, if he fails to do so, upon the third night after the expiration of the pact the little animals will become huge, malignant beasts which will devour him. There is, however, one way in which he can escape payment, at least for a time, and this is by giving some other member of his family to become a Zombie instead of himself. The pact is then automatically renewed for a further period, but the person given must be someone whom he holds dear and thus a definite sacrifice made by him. People have been known to give their whole families in this way—sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, parents, until they have no one left—hoping each time that they will die a natural death before the next payment is due; and often they commit suicide rather than face payment of the debt themselves.’
That’s a pretty grim picture,’ Simon commented, ‘but I suppose it applies only to the most ignorant and superstitious of the Negroes?’
‘Not at all.’ Doctor Saturday’s white teeth flashed in a grim smile. ‘That they may one day be turned into a Zombie is the dread of every man and woman in Haiti, from the blackest Negro to the lightest-skinned Mulatto. It is a fear that is ever present in the minds of even the richest, because there are other uses to which Zombies can be put beside working in the fields. Not long ago one of the loveliest young Mulatto girls in Haiti died with mysterious suddenness, and eighteen months later she was found one night wandering in the streets of Port-au-Prince. Her mind was blank, and she was dumb, so she could not tell her story, but it was a curious coincidence that a very rich Negro, who had wished to marry her when she was alive, but whom her parents had rejected for her with scorn, had died only the day before she was found. I have good reason to believe that as he could not get her by marriage he paid a powerful Bocor to turn her into a Zombie, received her back from the grave after her resurrection and took his pleasure with her whenever he wished, keeping her hidden in his house. Then, when he died, his wife, wanting to be rid of the girl, turned her adrift.’
‘What happened to her?’ asked Simon.
‘Naturally her family was most anxious to hush the matter up, so the nuns took charge of her and she was smuggled away by night, in a ship that was leaving for France, to enter a convent. But the Bocor who made her a Zombie would still have the power to bring her back to Haiti if he wished, and if he were a very powerful occultist he would also have the power to animate her brain and put into it such thoughts as he wished to express, even at a very great distance; though it would not be possible for him to enable her to speak.’
Suddenly the Doctor’s manner changed. He stood up abruptly. From veiled mockery his tone hardened to one of open enmity and contempt, as he said:
‘I have amused myself by talking to you for long enough, Mr. Aron. I am now going to bed and to sleep. When you wake your friends and they renew their struggle to escape meeting me upon the astral they may gain a short respite from the interest which I’m sure they will feel if you repeat to them what I have told you about Zombies— particularly the story of the beautiful Haitian girl who was sent to France. I was the Bocor in that instance, and in order to keep a watch upon you all, through her, during your journey it suited me very well to bring her back to Haiti.’
For a moment Simon did not catch the full implication of what Doctor Saturday had said, then his heart stood still. He slowly turned his head and stared at Philippa.