Red Rain: A Novel (3 page)

He gazed at them, blinking a few times. He didn’t answer.

What a great guide. I don’t think he speaks English.

A well-dressed, middle-aged woman with pink cheeks, short blond hair, and pale blue eyes turned to Lea. “They are called jelly palms, dear.”

Lea studied the very fat trunks topped by long, delicate leaves that looked like feathers. “Y’all can make jelly from the dates,” the woman said. She had a definite Southern accent. “The dates are big and juicy and very sweet.” Then her eyes went wide. “Are you Lea? From Long Island? I’m Martha Swann.”

Lea gasped. “Martha? Really? Hi. How did you recognize me?”

“From your Facebook photo. I feel like we’re old friends.”

“Wow! I mean, wow. How nice to meet you. See? I took your advice. I’m here. I always think these rituals are a hoot, don’t you? They’re almost always like from a bad horror movie. Hope I don’t burst out laughing.”

Martha pursed her lips. “I don’t think y’all will laugh at this
one.” She glanced around. “My husband, James, and I come often. It’s . . . really miraculous. We’ve even gotten to know the priest.” She raised a finger to her lips. “Look. I think it’s starting.”

Lea turned and stepped forward, into the circle of people. They had gathered around a fallen log, smooth-barked, about ten feet long. A sun-bleached skull was placed in the center.
A human skull. No. It’s an animal head. A goat, maybe.

She turned to Jean-Carl to ask, but he had moved away to the other end of the log. She mopped her forehead with the back of one hand. The center of the island felt much steamier than the outer beach areas. She suddenly found it hard to breathe.

These weird ceremonies make me giddy.

She listened to the buzz of quiet conversations. Two older men in white robes and sandals appeared to be having an argument. A woman in a blue chiffon caftan stepped between them.

The crowd grew larger. Now there were maybe forty people standing in the circle around the log. Lea hadn’t seen them approaching. They seemed to have emerged from the trees.

She turned and saw five people striding quickly on the path. Four of them were obviously American tourists. The two men were paunchy and pale and wore blue-and-red Chicago Cubs baseball caps. One wore a Budweiser T-shirt with a beer can emblazoned across the front.

The two women with them were slender and dressed in shorts and flowery tank tops. They had cameras hanging around their necks and were being led by a tall, serious-looking guide, dressed in khaki cargo shorts and safari jacket, like Jean-Carl.

Lea was startled. Actual tourists on Cape Le Chat Noir! She had the urge to say hello. To interview them and ask how they came to be on the island and if they knew what this ritual was about. But their guide led them to the other side of the circle.

People talked quietly, but the conversations ended when the priest—a tall, bald man wearing a long red robe tied with a yellow sash—stepped out from behind a fat-trunked jelly palm. He had a red face and shocking white-blond eyebrows that moved up and down on his broad forehead like furry caterpillars. His eyes
were silvery gray, metallic. He had a tattoo of a blue five-cornered star on the crown of his bald head, almost big enough to be a skullcap.

Weird-looking dude.

He stepped into the circle, carrying a long wooden tray. On the tray were coconut halves, flat side up. Without uttering a word, he stepped up to people and raised the tray to them, offering a coconut half. Lea quickly realized that he was approaching only the men in the circle.

He handed coconut halves to six men. She could see that the insides had been carved to form a cup, and each cup contained a dark liquid. It looked a lot like the Kill-Devil drink Macaw had given her when she arrived the day before.

Lea felt a chill as the priest eyed her for a long moment. She couldn’t read his expression. He flashed her an almost imperceptible smile. Then he moved to the center of the circle and gazed at the men holding the coconut cups.

“It’s the Black Drink,” Martha murmured in her ear. She leaned close and whispered surreptitiously, as if she was breaking a rule. “The Black Drink. Be grateful, dear. In the ceremony, the priest gives it only to the men.”

“Why?” Lea whispered back.

Again, Martha raised a finger to her lips. Her eyes flashed in the gray afternoon light. She returned her gaze to the priest.

Lea glanced down the line to the tourists. All four of them were busily snapping photos with their cameras and phones.

The red-robed priest gave a signal, and the six men raised their coconut cups high above their heads, as if offering them to the sun. They all chanted something . . . in French?

Lea struggled to understand. She had studied French for two years at Northwestern. But this didn’t sound like any French she’d ever heard.

When the six men finished, the priest chanted for a long time, mumbling to himself and moving his hands slowly in a strange sign language. The sleeves of his robe swayed beneath his bone-slender arms.

Lea kept her eyes on his hands. They appeared to take on a life of their own, like small, pale animals floating in the air.

Birds uttered harsh cries in the rainforest behind them. A gust of hot wind made the feathery palm leaves slap and scrape.

We need pounding drums here. Ominous background music.

She scolded herself for being so cynical.

The skin on her arms tingled. She wiped sweat off the back of her neck.

The air is so heavy and wet. Perhaps we are feeling the first winds of the hurricane.

She crossed her arms tightly on her chest to steady her heartbeat.
I certainly don’t want to be out here in the middle of the island if the damned hurricane hits.

The priest finally finished his low chant. He nodded. The six men lowered the cups to their mouths and drank the dark liquid down.

Lea heard soft cries in the crowd. Muttered words.

The men stood silently, swallowing even after lowering the cups to their sides. Palm leaves slapped loudly above their heads, as if clapping.

The sky darkened from pale gray to charcoal. The wind picked up, fluttering robes and skirts, lifting Lea’s hair behind her head, making a howling moan as it swirled through the shivering trees.

Special effects,
Lea thought.
The priest chants and the wind starts to howl. Very dramatic.

But she wasn’t prepared for what happened next.

As she squinted into the fading light, the six men all began to groan. They coughed and rolled their eyes. Their faces reddened. They bent their knees and knelt.

Bending low, faces purple, they uttered hideous choking sounds. Then rasping moans from deep in their throats. Their stomachs bubbled and heaved.

And they all began to vomit at once.

G
roaning, moaning, bleating like sick sheep, all six men heaved together. At first they spewed a dark liquid and then the chunky orange and yellow of their undigested lunches.

Hands on their knees, heads bowed as if praying, they puked their guts out in a chorus of animal groans and splashing liquid.

Lea grabbed her throat. She felt her breakfast rise. Her stomach churned. She held her breath, swallowing hard, swallowing, struggling not to heave along with them.

This was no act. They weren’t faking it. No one could fake those ugly sounds, those horrified expressions. She covered her ears from their choked gasps and bleats and retching moans.

The sour smell rose into the humid air and swept over her. She stared at the thick piles of yellow-green vomit, spreading puddles on the sand. Still holding her breath, Lea started to turn away.

But Martha held her by the shoulders. “It isn’t over. It just started.”

Just started?

A shudder ran down Lea’s body. Her legs suddenly felt rubbery, weak. She forced herself to watch. The six men bleated and choked. They grabbed their throats. Their eyes bulged in panic. Their faces darkened from red to purple to a sick blue.

She cried out as the men collapsed to the ground. One by one, they folded up, coiling into themselves. Uttering strangled sighs, they dropped facedown into their own vomit. They sprawled awkwardly on the ground, eyes bulging, gazing blankly. Their arms and legs twitched, as if they were getting electrical shocks; twitched like grotesque puppets that had lost their strings. Then stopped.

No one moved.

Swaying in the gusting wind, the feathery palm trees slapped and applauded. The birds had stopped their shrill symphony.

The red-robed priest knelt beside one of the fallen men. The star tattoo on his scalp appeared to wriggle, alive, like a blue octopus. He placed two fingers on the man’s throat. Minutes went by.

“Il est mort.”
Announced in a whisper.

“Oh my God,” Lea murmured. She suddenly realized she had been hugging herself tightly for some time. Down by the tight circle of onlookers, she heard the startled cries of the four tourists. No one else made a sound.

The priest moved to the next victim sprawled facedown on the sand, a young man with short red hair and a boyish, freckled face. He rolled the man onto his back. After a brief examination, the priest repeated the words.
“Il est mort.”
Flat. No emotion at all.

Lea turned and saw the two men tourists snapping photos with their phones. The women had their hands over their faces, blocking out the death scene.

“Is this for real?” the man in the Budweiser shirt boomed. “Hey—are they really dead?”

No one replied. All eyes were on the tall, bald priest until he knelt over the last of the six victims.

“Tous sont morts.”

Lea forced herself to breathe. She suddenly felt dizzy, the blood pulsing at her temples. She had hoped to write about travel adventures people would find exciting. But
no way
she wanted to watch six men drink poison and vomit themselves to death.

Squinting into the graying light, she could see clearly that the six men weren’t breathing. Their chests showed no movement. No rise and fall. No movement at all. Their eyes bulged, gazing blankly like
glass doll eyes. Their mouths hung open, frozen in their final gasps for breath.

Still, no one on the island moved or made a sound. She glimpsed Jean-Carl across from her in the circle. He had his head down, hands jammed into the pockets of his cargo shorts.

The tourists had stopped their picture-taking. One of the women was crying. Budweiser Man wrapped her in an awkward hug.

The priest, still expressionless, turned to face the crowd. His blond caterpillar eyebrows had gone stiff and still.

He clasped both hands in front of him. Lea noticed for the first time that his fingernails were painted black. He began to chant:
“Revenir . . . Revenir . . . Revenir . . .”
Softly at first, then louder, urging the audience to join in.

“Revenir . . . Revenir . . . Revenir . . .”

The chanting voices echoed off the trees of the rain forest. The chant continued for two minutes . . . three . . .

Lea screamed when she saw a hand move. On the ground. Fingers twitched.

“Revenir . . . Revenir . . . Revenir . . .”

The chant continued, no longer a word, just a low, breathy sound.

Another dead man blinked his eyes. Another raised his head an inch off the ground. A short groan escaped his throat. More hands twitched. Like crabs testing the sand.

“Revenir . . . Revenir . . . Revenir . . .”

As Lea stared in disbelief, the six dead men sat up. They blinked rapidly and shook their heads, tested their jaws, squinted at the chanting crowd.

The chant ended suddenly. People rushed forward to help the men to their feet. In seconds, they were all standing, taking small steps, still looking dazed, wiping chunks of vomit off their shirts and shorts and robes.

The priest raised his hands high above his tattooed head.
“Les hommes sont revenus,”
he announced. “The men have returned.”

The six men were walking steadily now, making their way to the path. The circle of onlookers broke up, people heading in all directions.
Lea listened to the excited conversations. Some people were laughing. The ceremony was over.

Lea shut her eyes. Again she pictured those men bent over, their streams of vomit splashing onto the grass. Their gasping, terrified faces. Their bodies coiled lifelessly on the ground in front of her.

And as rain began to patter down, she thought of the 1935 hurricane and the story of the dead returning to life to repair the devastating damage. The living sharing their space with the unliving.

Huge raindrops rattled on the palm leaves, like assault rifles. Loud as thunder. The wind swirled around Lea, pushed her right, then left. She planted her feet, determined not to be blown over. A suffocating wind rushed over her face, made her gasp for breath.

It came on so suddenly. I thought we had time.

Hugging herself again, she ducked her head and searched for Jean-Carl. Nowhere in sight. Perhaps he had run to the jeep.

A strong blast of wind bent the palm trees till they were nearly horizontal. Lea’s shoes sank into the mud as she stepped onto the path.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. Gasping in surprise, she spun around. “Martha?”

Martha had a canvas tennis hat pulled down tight over her hair. Her sweater was already soaked through, matted to her body. “Better come home with me.” She had to scream over the roar of the wind.

Lea blinked through the sheets of rain that swept over her. “No. My stuff—”

“Better come with me, Lea. This is going to be bad. It’s going to be real bad.”

A
s Hurricane Ernesto slowly made its way north, Mark Sutter was ending his book tour close to home at HamptonBooks in Easthampton, Long Island.

The store occupied a gray shingle building near one end of the long row of shops on Main Street, a few doors down from the Ralph Lauren store, a country antiques store, an old-fashioned toy store, and the Hamptons’ branch of Tiffany’s, all closed and deserted on this rain-tossed April night, before the summer people had arrived.