The bayou is alive, Ivory whispered inside Jude’s mind. It may just be curious about you.
And then it happened all at once – a sudden, unnatural cessation of sound. Gone were the tree frogs, the nightmare humming, the slithering of the vines, the clicking of the skeleton doll bones and the churning of the water. It was as if someone had flipped a switch.
“There’s one right there!” Sharkey pointed.
A gruesome thing was perched in one of the lifeboats. Part bird and part reptile, it had a scaly, bony body, with black-feathered wings ending in sharp claws, and a cruel, twisted beak on both of its jackal heads. Jude thought of the jackal on Baron Lukah’s cane and shuddered. But worst of all each head must have had a dozen eyes – each one of them as milky and blind as an ancient spider’s.
As if sensing their gaze, both its beaks opened at once, like it was about to hiss at them, but instead that weird humming noise started up again. Jude felt a strange pressure on the back of her eyeballs and her head ached worse than ever.
The next moment the nightmare had raised one of its claws and one by one began to dig out its blind eyes. They popped out with a horrible wet sucking sound, falling down to roll around in the bottom of the lifeboat.
“Why … why is it doing that?” Sharkey asked, transfixed.
Before anyone could reply, another nightmare flapped overhead, landing with a thud on the deck, followed by two more that tentacled their way up the side of the boat, sprawling with wet slaps on the boards. The nightmares were a sickening mix of teeth and suckers and jaws, humming their weird discordant song louder and louder.
Jude glanced at the wheelhouse, thinking they could shelter in there, but the cajou ivy was tangled in the doorway, holding it open.
“We’re trapped,” the Phantom said. “We should—”
But he was interrupted by one of the nightmares suddenly whipping a tentacle at Sharkey, wrapping it round his ankle and jerking his feet out from under him before dragging him, yelling, halfway across the deck.
Jude made to follow but the Phantom’s hand clamped down on her shoulder.
“Wait,” he said. “It’s not—”
Jude threw him off and ran across the deck. The creature had slithered up to the side of Sharkey’s face and suddenly wrapped its tentacles round his throat. There was a wet sound as its suckers fastened on. Sharkey gave a yell and then the thing started slobbering and sucking at his ear. The next moment, it had coaxed out a long string of what looked like saliva but as it left the ear it turned into a large greasy bubble with images moving around inside it.
Jude could see an image of Sharkey inside the bubble, trying to play his saxophone. There was no sound coming from it but every time he tried to play, he couldn’t remember how. Sharkey had told her about it before, it was one of his most common nightmares.
Jude reached down, dragged the creature off and threw it over the side of the boat. Another nightmare came slithering over and she aimed a kick at it with her swamp boot. It landed right in the soft, fleshy part of the creature with a horrible squelching sound but instead of falling to the deck, the nightmare burst apart into more than twenty versions of itself.
“What the—?”
“If you strike them, they multiply,” the Phantom said, appearing at her side.
The next moment, one of the nightmares clamped its teeth round Sharkey’s leg and ripped out a chunk of flesh. Her friend’s scream of pain went through Jude like a blade. She grabbed the nightmare and threw it off but the damage was already done. And there were more of the things slithering across the deck towards them. They were trapped.
“How are we supposed to fight them off?” Jude asked.
“You can’t,” a female voice said.
Jude looked up and saw a woman in a dark blue evening gown sitting on the railings, lazily swinging her feet back and forth. She was beautiful but she was also depraved and insane. Jude could see it in the depths of her eyes, the twist of her mouth and the strange sing-song lilt to her voice.
“Who are you?” Jude asked.
“Who are you talking to?” the Phantom said beside her.
“That woman on the rails.”
“There’s no one there,” the Phantom replied.
Jude realized she was looking at a legba.
“You’re Sheba,” she said. “Aren’t you?”
“That’s right,” the legba of nightmares replied.
And then Beau appeared on her shoulders and an image immediately filled Jude’s mind – a vision of the snake unhinging his jaws to swallow a nightmare down whole.
Just at that exact moment, one of the awful creatures took a flying leap, heading straight for the Phantom’s chest. Jude’s hand flashed out and she grabbed it by the tentacle in mid-air. “Stop!” she cried, her voice ringing across the bayou.
The nightmare had been leaping so fast, how the heck had she managed to catch it? Perhaps she was tapping into some of Beau’s snake prowess somehow? She could certainly feel the snake’s excitement through the pounding of her own fear as she stared at the devilish thing dangling from her grip, its tentacle slick and slimy beneath her fingers. She knew what Beau wanted her to do, so she tossed the nightmare up to him in one fluid motion.
There was a distinct crack as Beau unhinged his jaw, opening it astonishingly wide, and allowed the entire creature to land in his mouth. It thrashed, tentacles wriggling everywhere, but Beau swallowed it down greedily. Jude could feel the lump of it on her shoulders, still struggling from within the snake’s bulging belly.
Sheba clicked her fingers and the nightmares that had been crawling towards them suddenly stopped in their tracks, tentacles twitching. Slowly the legba got down from the railings, her bare feet landing on the deck, her dress stirring round her ankles.
“A cajou queen!” she exclaimed. “Here in our humble bayou. I dare say we should be honoured, my children.” One of the nightmares slithered up her leg to her arms. She cradled it, crooning over it like a small child. “Your snake is large and powerful,” the legba said. “But he can’t eat all of my nightmares. Not in their hundreds.”
Jude became aware that even more of them had appeared. The flying ones rustled feathers and leathery wings from the railings and the branches of the trees overhead.
“We don’t mean any harm,” she said, walking closer to the legba, her hands spread in what she hoped was a non-threatening gesture. “We’re just looking for the devil’s wishing well.”
“Ah, the devil,” Sheba replied. Her eyes glittered violet in the strange half-light of the swamp. “The swamp devil lights the way for those who wish to make a bargain with him or return one of his coins. But since none of you want to make a bargain yourselves and you do not have a coin, you won’t find the wishing well.”
“What makes you think none of us want to make a bargain?” Jude asked, walking closer to the legba. “Or that we don’t have a coin?”
“Because if you did then you wouldn’t have found your way to me,” Sheba said. “The truly desperate ones go to him. Everyone else is mine. That’s our agreement.”
“In that case, you’d better let us go,” Jude said. She was right at the railings with the legba now, close enough that she could see the flecks of black in her purple eyes. “We’re not here for you. And I don’t think you want to break the terms of your bargain?”
“I do not,” Sheba replied. She fixed her strange violet gaze on Jude and stepped right up to her. “But your snake ate one of my children, so you owe me something first, girl.”
Jude was immediately wary. “What can I give you?” she asked.
“It isn’t what you can give me,” the legba replied, her voice as smooth as a length of cool silk. “It’s what you can take with you.”
Jude frowned. “But—”
And that was as far as she got before Sheba gripped her arms and with an inhuman strength lifted her over the railings and threw her down into the murky water below.