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“Leave dat creacha’ out dere!”
My new cellmate crouched high on the top bunk and huddled into a ball. He stabbed his finger toward me, hand shaking, brow twisted somewhere between fear and revulsion. His wispy mustache and goatee told me he was young, but the shrewd glint in his eyes said he might’ve seen a lot in those years. Could be he knew of This World and the ones beyond.
Practitioner? A shaman like me? It was rare enough to stumble across magic along lost country roads or even crowded city streets. Getting locked up in the Charleston County Detention Center with one? Pure coincidence.
But I don’t believe in coincidence.
I glanced at my escort. Special Operations Guard Wallace was built like somebody had shrinky-dinked the Rock. An inch shorter than me, height was all I had on him. His hairless arms had veins that lifted more iron than I could.
“What’s he geekin’ for?” I asked.
Wallace shifted uneasily in a desert camo tactical vest too small to protect all that mass. He’d been the one to oversee my extradition from Saint Augustine all the way to Charleston. I gave him respect, and he offered the same. Couldn’t say we were friends, but we’d bonded a little over his FN P90, a damn spiffy means for sending lead downrange. Looked like something out of Star Trek.
“Damn Haitians,” he muttered, shifting the strap of his P90. “They all crazy.”
I’d earned an escort by the lockup’s special operation squad on account of the brutality of the murder. I’d been framed. Innocent. Everybody else here would say the same about their crimes.
But I don’t eat people.
“I have de rights! Dual citizenship, ya? Freedom of releejon!” My cellie mouthed the last phrase punctuating each syllable which only deepened his Haitian creole accent.
“You got what ICE says you got,” Wallace barked. “And now you got what I tell you. Company.”
I started to step inside the cell.
“Turn around, zombie! Don’t you be turning de spirits against me!”
I hesitated.
For real, my track record with spirits wasn’t good. My relationship with my mentor from beyond the grave had taken a darker turn. I’d gotten mixed up with two different gangs in the Above and Below, and I’d been framed by a pack of Demons led by a preacher who made Hannibal Lecter look like a punk.
That last clown, Mordecai Sunday, he’d never stop coming. He’d made that clear. So until I saw that beast again, everything had to go smooth.
After a week spent in the Saint Augustine city jail waiting on a transfer, I’d recovered from most of the previous injuries. Shit — this almost felt like a vacation. I had no need to start a beef with this prisoner, fellow shaman or not.
So I did what he asked and turned around.
Wallace dropped his chin and glared. I shrugged. Head wagging, he patiently stiff-armed me backward into the cage and slid the door closed.
“You start doing what he says, you going to go just as crazy,” Wallace said as I stuck my hands through the slot in the bars to let him remove my cuffs.
“He ain’t seen me crazy yet.” I rubbed my wrists. “Wouldn’t want to.”
“Well go easy on him,” Wallace said, already strutting away. “He dies, the County loses fifty-five dollars a day. Not sure they think he’s worth that, but let’s not find out.”
I watched Wallace leave, ignoring shouts from inmates asking for favors, demanding privileges, beefing; he let it all wash over him like background noise. Professional, self-assured, we could’ve started a patrol shift over corner store coffee in a different life. That was a guy I’d trust to watch my back.
Right now, all I had behind me was a crazy Haitian burning a hole between my shoulder blades with his glare.
“You mind if I turn around? Because that bunk has my name on it and getting there walking backwards isn’t happening.”
“You turn when I tell you!”
I turned. “As you command.”
He stared from his perch, his face close to the fluorescent lights. What I’d first thought to be a harsh reflection on his forehead became clearer. Raw, pink patches surrounded his right eye and dotted his forehead. Scars from a burn — either a recent injury or the kind which couldn’t heal naturally.
He curled his lip. “Sit down over dere, zombie! Keep ya stink away from me!”
I shook my head and wandered toward the lower bunk. The Haitian recoiled, nose wrinkling and mouth curling into a deep frown. Whatever his story, I wasn’t in the mood. Wallace had made the transport tolerable. But the waiting, the standing around in the Saint Augustine jail, and the shackled ride all the way from Florida had left me ready for a lie down.
Above, the Haitian whispered in his mixed-up language. Curse words, maybe straight up curses. I just hoped they weren’t real.
If they were, I couldn’t use any magic in defense. Atofo, my mentor, hadn’t been able to cure my terminal illness just delay it. The more I weakened the boundary between worlds by casting, the closer Death got.
Ignoring the steady chanting coming from the top bunk, I closed my eyes. A smile crept across my face. What the Haitian said wasn’t wrong. For years I’d been a dead man walking.
During my search for a cure, I’d looked into voodoo. Every case of their brand of immortality had been so-called witch doctors poisoning people with tree sap and pufferfish. If the victims were lucky, they’d slip into a coma and end up dead. Unlucky — a state of being I knew plenty about — and they’d recover with brain damage. Shambling and grunting. Exactly like a zombie.
But just because I hadn’t found the real voodoo practitioners didn’t mean this guy wasn’t one.
“Hey,” I said, leaning out from the bunk to stare upward. “What makes you say I’m a zombie?”
His chanting stopped. I watched the mattress shift and he peered from above, crazy flop of dreads crawling first over the edge like a tarantula.
“You stink. You reek of death. Baron Samedi rides your back like a mule.”
Of all the creatures I’d met in the Below and the Above, Baron Samedi wasn’t on the list. But Death and his Gallu recruitment squad? We were tight. Easing back, I laced my fingers behind my head and tried to get comfortable. No dice.
“What cures you got for zombies or whatever?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
The bunk shifted and my cellmate hung his head into my space, covering his nose and mouth. “We take your head,” he said and chopped viciously at the air with his free hand. “Den your feet.” He repeated the same motion. “And we swish dem ‘round. No more zombie.”
Blood rushing to his face ruined his attempt at a threat. His eyes bulged comically. I could see the burns better now. Facial scars weren’t uncommon as souvenirs from encounters with Otherworldly beings. I resisted the urge to peer beyond the veil and closed my eyes.
“How about a cure where I don’t end up dead.”
“You already dead. You jist don’t know it.”
“Comforting.” I heard the mattress flop as he settled back. “My name’s Ace. You can stop calling me zombie.”
“Evens my name, zombie. Dat’s all you need to know.”
“That and how to smack down Death,” I mumbled.
Tired enough, my thoughts began to drift. The thinly-padded metal frame and a pillow seemingly stuffed with newspaper weren’t going to stop me from getting some rest.
A click sounded in the room. The hum of the bulbs gave way to an eerie silence and the light bleeding through my half-closed lids disappeared. Lights out already?
“You got to find your soul,” Evens whispered, sincerity creeping into his voice. “It’ll be trapped in a jar. Set it free, set dem all free. Dat’s the only way.”
“Jars, huh? Well, my soul is already spoken for,” I muttered, my thoughts drifting, convinced what he called magic would be of little use.
“Oh yes, by quite a few.” His words invaded my personal space again.
I opened an eye. Evens hung impossibly low off the top bunk. His face had gone as pale as the bleached sheets which were now tied around his neck like a scarf, the extra length running in a taut line to the floor. White makeup caked his face in the guise of a skull. A ratty top hat ringed with skulls and a wispy plumage clung to his head, defying gravity. Grave dust splotched the black suit he wore, his prison orange gone.
“You ‘aven’t truly lived until you’ve died.” He flourished his hands and I realized he wasn’t hanging over the edge of the bunk. No, he was too far away, too close to the center of the room.
I slid down my mattress to create some distance before stepping onto the cell floor. Evens swung to face me. Feet pointed to the ceiling, they didn’t touch. The sheet around his neck had anchored itself to the floor and he hung there, twirling slowly, his mouth parted in a smile. The teeth painted over his lips spread to reveal yellowed, cracked enamel. Outside, in the darkened tier, I heard the sound of oars parting water.
Gallu. Death’s minotaur entourage come to collect.
“Best you wake up, shaman,” Evens said. He checked a grimy watch on his wrist, the face shattered, the gold housing dented. “Not time for your soul to be free. Not yet.”
My eyes popped open. The fluorescent bulbs flickered. The faint taste of blood hung in the back of my throat. I’d drifted off into real sleep, not the meditation which kept a shaman grounded in This World — a mistake I couldn’t afford.
Staying focused, controlling the impulse had been hard. Worries I’d completely lost touch with the spirit world nagged at the back of my mind. Just take a little taste, they said, a little swig.
For this plan to work, I had to resist the temptation. Not even a tiny bit of otherworldly power could be tapped. If so, lung cancer might finish me off long before I got close to Mordecai. Without casting spells, I had a month, tops, before I’d need a re-up from Atofo.
But resisting had left me less and less connected. Even the meditations to avoid true sleep, a dream realm where a shaman often attracted otherworldly beings, had just failed. One day, I might close my eyes and be pulled into an eternal nightmare.
No. That couldn’t happen. I had a demon to hunt. I had a cure to find. And I had a son, waiting to see his father.
Izaak. I hadn’t tried to write him since being transferred from Saint Augustine. Writing letters in lock up made me feel like a stereotype. Like the failure my father was certain I’d become. But I couldn’t fail now. The stakes were too damn high.
“Grant.” I heard Wallace call my name. He stepped up to the cell door and took hold. “Lawyer’s here to see you.”
I got to my feet, dazed, while he readied the cuffs. A glance over my shoulder showed the top bunk was empty.
“Evens,” I said, unsure if I wanted to know. “What happened to him?”
Wallace tapped the cuffs against the bars. I shambled forward, stuck my wrists through the slot. He laughed as he snapped the bracelets on.
“You a combat vet or something? Been deployed to a war zone?”
I shook my head.
“Only people I know who sleep that deep are either doped as a motherfucker or used to getting an artillery lullaby.” He nodded toward the corner. “Evens had a fit right over there last night. Damn near caused a riot. Kept screaming about his zombie voodoo bullshit. Got sent to seg. And you? You slept through it all like a baby.”
The cell door clicked, and Wallace slid it open, metal grinding. I cautiously looked up and down the tier. Pure, early morning sunlight burned through the narrow windows of the cells. I listened for the sounds of water. The relentless oars of the Gallu boatman. Hearing only the mutterings of prisoners broken by an occasional shout, I nodded.
“You okay?” Wallace asked.
“Far from it, brother. Far from it.”
***
