Merrick (20 page)

She said nothing. Then:

“We have a problem, David,” she said, her eyes fixed on the altar, perhaps deliberately avoiding me.

“And what is that, darling?” I asked.

“We don’t know exactly where to go.”

“I’m hardly surprised,” I responded, trying to remember what I could of Matthew’s vague letters. I tried not to sound cross or pompous. “All Matthew’s letters were mailed from Mexico City in a batch as I understand it, when you were making your way home.”

She nodded.

“But what of the map that Oncle Vervain gave you? I know it has no names, but when you touched it, what happened?”

“Nothing happened when I touched it,” she said. She smiled bitterly. She was silent for a long time. Then she gestured to the altar.

It was then that I saw the small rolled parchment, tied in black ribbon, sitting beside the small picture of Oncle Vervain.

“Matthew had help getting there,” she said in a strange, almost hollow voice. “He didn’t figure it out from that map, or on his own in any fashion.”

“You’re referring to sorcery,” I said.

“You sound like a Grand Inquisitor,” she replied, her eyes still very distant from me, her face devoid of feeling, her tone flat. “He had Cold Sandra to help him. Cold Sandra knew things from Oncle Vervain that I don’t know. Cold Sandra knew the whole lay of the land. So did Honey in the Sunshine. She was six years older than me.”

She paused. She was obviously deeply troubled. I don’t think I had ever seen her so troubled in all her adult years.

“Oncle Vervain’s mother’s people had the secrets,” she said. “I see so many faces in my dreams.” She shook her head as if trying to clear her mind. On her voice went in a near whisper. “Oncle Vervain used to talk to Cold Sandra all the time. If he hadn’t died when he did, maybe Cold Sandra would have been better, but then he was so old, it was his time.”

“And in the dreams, Oncle Vervain doesn’t tell you where the cave is located?”

“He tries,” she answered sadly. “I see images, fragments. I see the Maya
brujo,
the priest, going up to a rock by the waterfall. I see a big stone carved with facial features. I see incense and candles, feathers from the wild birds, beautifully colored feathers and offerings of food.”

“I understand,” I responded.

She rocked a little in the chair, her eyes moving slowly from side to side. Then she took another drink of the rum in her glass. “Of course I remember things from the journey,” she said in a slow voice.

“You were only ten years old,” I said sympathetically. “And you mustn’t think that because of these dreams you should go back now.”

She ignored me. She drank her rum and she stared at the altar.

“There are so many ruins, so many highland basins,” she said. “So many waterfalls, so many cloud forests. I need one more piece of information. Two pieces, really. The city to which we flew from Mexico City, and the name of the village where we camped. We took two planes to reach that city. I can’t remember those names, if I ever knew them. I don’t think I was paying attention. I was playing in the jungles. I was off by myself. I scarcely knew why we were there.”

“Darling, listen to me—,” I started.

“Don’t. Forget it. I have to go back,” she said sharply.

“Well, I assume you’ve combed all your books on the jungle terrain. You’ve made lists of towns and villages?” I broke off. I had to remember I didn’t want this dangerous trip to take place.

She didn’t immediately respond to me, and then she stared at me very deliberately and her eyes appeared uncommonly hard and cold. The candlelight and the light of the lamps made them gorgeously green. I noticed that her fingernails were painted the same shade of shiny violet as her toes. Once again she seemed the incarnation of all I’d ever desired.

“Of course I’ve done that,” she said to me gently. “But now I have to find the name of that village, the last real outpost, and the name of the city to which we flew on the plane. If I had that, I could go.” She sighed. “Especially that village with the
brujo,
that’s been there for centuries, inaccessible and waiting for us—if I had that, I’d know the way.”

“How, precisely?” I asked her.

“Honey knows it,” she answered. “Honey in the Sunshine was sixteen when we made that journey. Honey will remember. Honey will tell it to me.”

“Merrick, you can’t try to call up Honey!” I said. “You know that’s far too dangerous, that’s utterly reckless, you can’t . . .”

“David,
you’re
here.”

“I can’t protect you if you call up this spirit, good God.”

“But you must protect me. You must protect me because Honey will be as dreadful as she ever was. She’ll try to destroy me when she comes through.”

“Then don’t do it.”

“I have to do it. I have to do it and I have to go back to that cave. I promised Matthew Kemp when he was dying I’d report those discoveries. He didn’t know he was talking to me. He thought he was talking to Cold Sandra, or maybe even Honey, or maybe his mother, I couldn’t tell. But I promised. I promised I would tell the world about that cave.”

“The world does not care about one more Olmec ruin!” I said. “There are universities aplenty working all through the rain forests and jungles. There’re ancient cities all over Central America! What does it matter now?”

“I promised Oncle Vervain,” she said earnestly. “I promised him I’d get all the treasure. I promised I’d bring it back. ‘When you grow up,’ he said to me, and I promised.”

“Sounds to me as if Cold Sandra promised,” I said sharply. “And perhaps Honey in the Sunshine promised. You were what, seven years old when the old man died?”

“I have to do it,” she said solemnly.

“Listen,” I insisted, “we’re going to stop this entire plan. It’s too dangerous politically to go to those Central American jungles anyway,” I declared. “I won’t approve the trip. I’m the Superior General. You can’t go over my head.”

“I don’t intend to,” she said, her tone softening. “I need you with me. I need you now.”

She stopped, and, leaning to one side, crushed out her cigarette, and refilled her glass from the bottle. She took a deep drink and settled back again in the chair.

“I have to call Honey,” she whispered.

“Why not call Cold Sandra!” I demanded desperately.

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I’ve kept it locked in my soul all these years, but I have to call Honey. And Honey’s near me. Honey’s always near me! I’ve felt her near me. I’ve fended her off with my power. I’ve used my charms and my strength to protect myself. But she never really goes away.” She took a deep drink of the rum. “David,” she said, “Oncle Vervain loved Honey in the Sunshine. Honey’s in these dreams too.”

“I think it’s your gruesome imagination!” I declared.

She gave a high sparkling laugh at this, full of true amusement. It startled me. “Listen to you, David, next you’ll tell me there are no ghosts or vampires. And that the Talamasca is just a legend, such an Order doesn’t exist.”

“Why do you have to call Honey?”

She shook her head. She rested back in the chair, and her eyes filled with visible tears. I could see them in the flicker of the candles. I was becoming genuinely frantic.

I stood up, marched into the dining room, found the bottle of twenty-five-year-old Macallan Scotch and the lead crystal glasses on the sideboard, and poured myself a good drink. I returned to her. Then I went back and got the bottle. I brought it with me, settled in the chair, and put it on the nightstand to my left.

The Scotch tasted wonderful. I didn’t drink on the plane at all, wanting to be alert for my reunion, and it took the edge off my nerves beautifully.

She was still crying.

“All right, you’re going to call up Honey, and you think for some reason Honey knows the name of the town or the village.”

“Honey liked those places,” she said, unperturbed by my urgent voice. “Honey liked the name of the village from which we hiked to the cave.” She turned to me. “Don’t you see, these names are like jewels embedded in her conscious; she’s there with all she ever knew! She doesn’t have to remember like a living being. The knowledge is in her and I have to make her give it to me.”

“All right, I see, I understand everything. I maintain that it’s too dangerous, and besides, why hasn’t the spirit of Honey gone on?”

“She can’t until I tell her what she wants to know.”

This baffled me completely. What could Honey want to know?

Suddenly Merrick rose from the chair, rather like a slumbering cat instantly propelled into predatory action, and she closed the door to the hall. I heard her turn the key.

I was on my feet. But I stood back, uncertain of what she meant to do. Certainly she wasn’t drunk enough to be interfered with in any dramatic authoritarian fashion, and I wasn’t surprised when she abandoned her glass for the bottle of rum and took it with her into the center of the room.

Only then did I realize there was no carpet. Her naked feet were soundless on the polished floor, and, with the bottle clutched in her right hand to her breast, she began to turn in a circle, humming and throwing back her head.

I pressed myself against the wall.

Round and round she spun, the violet cotton skirt flaring and the bottle sloshing rum into the air. She paid no attention to the spilt liquor, and, slowing her turns only for a moment, she took another deep drink and then turned so fast that her garments slapped against her legs.

Stopping dead as she faced the altar, she spit the rum between her teeth into a fine spray at the waiting saints.

A high-pitched wail came out of her clenched teeth as she continued to issue the rum from her mouth.

Once again she began to dance, almost deliberately slapping her feet and murmuring. I couldn’t catch the language or the words. Her hair was tangled over her face. Again a swallow, again the rum flying, the candles sputtering and dancing as they caught the tiny droplets and ignited them.

Suddenly she hurled a stream of rum from the bottle all over the candles, and the flames went up before the saints in a dangerous flare. Mercifully the fire went out.

Head back, she screamed between her teeth in French:

“Honey, I did it! Honey, I did it. Honey, I did it!”

The room seemed to shake as she bent her knees and circled, pounding her feet in a loud dance.

“Honey, I put the curse on you and Cold Sandra!” she screamed. “Honey, I did it.”

Suddenly she lunged at the altar, never letting go of her bottle, and, grabbing the green jade perforator in her left hand, she slashed a long cut into her right arm.

I gasped. What could I do to stop her, I thought, what could I do that wouldn’t enrage her?

The blood streamed down her arm and she bowed her head, licked at it, drank the rum, and sprayed the offering on the patient saints once again.

I could see the blood flowing down her hand, over her knuckles. Her wound was superficial but the amount of blood was awful.

Again she lifted the knife.

“Honey, I did it to you and Cold Sandra. I killed you, I put the curse on you!” she screamed.

I resolved to grab hold of her as she went to cut herself again. But I couldn’t move.

As God is my witness, I couldn’t move. I was rooted to the spot. I tried with all my resources to overcome the paralysis, but it was useless. All I could do was cry to her,

“Stop it, Merrick!”

She slashed at her arm across the first cut, and again the blood flowed.

“Honey, come to me, Honey, give me your rage, give me your hatred, Honey, I killed you, Honey, I made the dolls of you and Cold Sandra, Honey, I drowned them in the ditch the night you left. Honey, I killed you. Honey, I sent you to the swamp water, Honey, I did it,” she was screaming.

“For the love of Heaven, Merrick, let go!” I cried. Then suddenly, unable to watch her slash her arm again, I began to pray frantically to Oxalá:

“Give me the power to stop her, give me the power to divert her before she harms herself, give me the power, I beg you, Oxalá, I’m your loyal David, give me the power.” I shut my eyes. The floor was trembling beneath me.

Suddenly the noise of her screams and her bare feet stopped.

I felt her against me. I opened my eyes. She stood in my embrace, both of us facing the doorway, which was indisputably open, and the shadowy figure who stood with her back to the light of the hall.

It was a graceful young girl with long tightly curling blond hair lathered all over her shoulders, her face veiled in shadow, her yellow eyes piercing in the candle glow.

“I did it!” Merrick whispered. “I killed you.”

I felt Merrick’s whole pliant body against me. I wrapped my arms tightly around her. Again, but silently, I prayed to Oxalá.

Protect us from this spirit if evil is the intent of this Spirit. Oxalá, you who made the world, you who rule in high places, you who are among the clouds, protect us, do not look at my faults as I call on you, but give me your mercy, protect us if this spirit would do us harm.

Merrick wasn’t trembling, she was quaking, her body covered in sweat, as it had been during the possession so many years before.

“I put the dolls in the ditch, I drowned them in the ditch, I did it. I drowned them. I did it. I prayed, ‘Let them die!’ I knew from Cold Sandra that she was going to buy that car, I said, ‘Let it go off a bridge, let them drown.’ I said, ‘When they drive across the lake, let them die.’ Cold Sandra was so afraid of that lake, I said, ‘Let them die.’ ”

The figure in the doorway appeared as solid as anything I’d ever beheld. The shadowy face showed no expression, but the yellow eyes remained fixed.

Then a voice issued from it, low, and full of hatred.

“Fool, you never caused it!” said the voice. “Fool, you think you caused that to happen to us? You never caused anything. Fool, you couldn’t make a curse to save your soul!”

I thought Merrick would lose consciousness, but somehow she remained standing, though my arms were ready to hold her should she fail.

She nodded. “Forgive me that I wanted it,” she said in a hoarse whisper that seemed entirely her own. “Forgive me, Honey, that I wanted it. I wanted to go with you, forgive me.”