“Lots of luck with that, man,” Jeff said.
“Possessing living beings is also dangerous for the bokor,” said Max. “Having raised zombies, created baka, and tormented young Shondolyn, the bokor is expending still more power by controlling Biko—of whom control was perhaps gained by possessing Puma first.”
Jeff frowned with concern. “I don’t really buy this ‘white darkness’ thing, Max, but I do agree that Biko would be easy to manipulate by threatening Puma.”
“This expenditure of power is costly. It must surely require additional obeisance and offerings to the dark loa whose favor the bokor courts.” Max added, “And since Biko and Puma are living beings, with friends and responsibilities, their absence has already been noticed.”
“Compared to the corpses, who were probably missing for weeks before anyone noticed,” I said, nodding. “So the bokor must be getting desperate! Possessing people who’ll be missed almost immediately and whose behavior will have complicated consequences.”
“The additional danger,” Max said, “is that the bokor will consider Biko and Puma expendable once they have served their purpose, and command them to perform a fatal act.”
“Kill themselves?” Jeff said, appalled.
Max nodded. “However, clearly one of the tasks the bokor has assigned to Biko is the murder of Frank.”
“Tasks?” Frank repeated. “You’re calling my murder a
task
now?”
“With that, er, feat still unaccomplished,” Max said, “Biko is presumably not yet expendable. So I believe we have time to rescue him.”
“What about Puma?” Jeff demanded.
“Without knowing the purpose for which she was possessed, we cannot be sure,” Max said. “But I strongly recommend optimism.”
Looking at Jeff’s worried expression, I decided not to mention the obvious reason Puma might have been possessed: to make Biko vulnerable. Now that he was under the bokor’s command, his sister might indeed be expendable.
“Well, I can at least tell you where to start looking for them,” Frank said. “In the basement of that building. That’s where I saw the zombies.”
“Oh, that’s so creepy!” I said. “They’ve been down there all this time?”
Frank said, “I don’t know about ‘all this time.’ I only know what I saw Monday night.”
“What exactly happened that night?” I asked.
Frank began by explaining to us that, in contrast to the negative reaction that most people had to Napoleon, he enjoyed herpetology and was interested in the snake.
“You enjoy
what?
” I asked.
“The study of reptiles and amphibians.” He added, “I’m a huge Animal Planet fan.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But Napoleon’s owner is a crazy old bitch on wheels,” he said. “You know what I mean?”
“I do,” I said.
Mambo Celeste had rebuffed Frank’s interest in the snake during the couple of weeks he’d been filling in for Jeff at the foundation. Then on Monday, Frank had stayed late after class, using the classroom as rehearsal space for a new audition monologue he was working on. By the time he was ready to leave, early in the evening, the building was quiet and seemed empty. So he gave in to the temptation to go into the basement and observe the snake in its cage.
“Yuck,” I said.
“Snakes are beautiful, Esther,” he said earnestly. “You just have to learn how to appreciate them.”
“Whatever.”
Having learned, during his short time at the foundation, that snakes were revered in Vodou, he also felt some interest in learning more about the faith.
“Mambo Celeste cold-shouldered me about that, too,” he said. “But at least Dr. Livingston was happy to talk to me about it.”
“You mean, talk
at
you?” I said.
“Well, yeah,” he admitted. “She doesn’t have a sparkling personality, but she’s very knowledgeable. A person who’s willing to listen could learn a lot from her.”
While observing the sleeping snake in its glass cage downstairs, Frank had heard voices chanting in Creole. Giving in to his fledgling interest in Vodou, despite knowing the mambo would react badly if he intruded on her, he had followed the sound by walking out of the hounfour, down a narrow hallway, and toward a room at the end of the corridor.
Curious enough to risk a tongue-lashing from the mambo, he had opened the door a crack and peered inside the room.
“And the first person I saw was one of my students,” he said. “A girl named Shondolyn.”
“Shondolyn!” I cried at the same time that Max leaped from his chair.
Frank fell back a step, startled by our reaction.
“Go on!” I said.
“Go on!” said Max.
“Uh . . .” Frank looked at us a moment longer, wondering at our excitement, then continued, “I waved to her, thinking that if she was there, maybe I’d be welcome and could sit in on the service.”
Though looking directly at him, Shondolyn had not acknowledged him or waved back. That surprised him. Although prone to drowsiness and bad temper, Shondolyn was a pretty good student, and Frank felt he had developed a rapport with her. So he was puzzled that she didn’t respond to his silent greeting. As his hand motions grew bigger, it occurred to him that she wasn’t ignoring him; she didn’t
see
him. Her face was blank and passive as she chanted in Creole—a language, he suddenly realized, she had mentioned in class that she couldn’t understand. He also recalled that Shondolyn described herself as a good Christian.
Wondering what the hell this Christian girl was doing standing blank- faced in a Vodou ritual, chanting in a language she didn’t know, Frank said her name loudly.
“And that was when all hell broke loose.” He shuddered briefly before continuing his story.
Frank heard a woman shriek inarticulately on the other side of the door he was pushing open. Then the door slammed into him, hitting his head and knocking him backward into the hallway. He tripped and fell. He heard a voice inside the room, issuing orders. As he was rising to his feet, four . . .
“I guess they really
were
zombies?” Frank said dispiritedly.
“Yes,” said Max.
Four zombies came out of the room. They had cold, sunken skin. Their eyes were dull and unblinking. They didn’t speak, though they made some grunting noises.
“And they smelled weird,” he said.
I looked at Jeff. “I told you so.”
“Ah, how I’ve missed hearing you say those words,” said Jeff.
“How long did you two date?” asked Frank.
Jeff blinked. “Is it that obvious?”
“Oh, please,” said Frank, rolling his eyes.
“What happened next?” I asked him.
One of the zombies knocked him unconscious. When he awoke, he was outside and it was nighttime. His mouth was gagged and his hands were bound. Initially disoriented, he realized after a few minutes that he was being carried through Mount Morris Park.
“I had no idea what was going on, but I felt pretty sure they hadn’t brought me to the park after dark for a picnic,” he said. “And fear lends amazing strength to a man.”
Perhaps they hadn’t tied his feet because he was unconscious. Or maybe it was because he wasn’t a big or athletic man. In any case, he used his free legs to kick and lash out at his stiff-limbed, smelly captors. Although there were four of them, they were surprisingly slow to respond and inept at regaining control of him.
“Zombies do not respond well to the unexpected,” Max said. “They’re not equipped to solve problems or react to new circumstances. They’re created only to obey commands.”
“Once I got away from them, I took off running,” Frank said. “But these . . . these
things
came out of nowhere and made a beeline for me. These two vicious, growling, stinking little monsters.”
The baka had torn at his clothing, chased him around the park, drooled on him, and terrified him out of his mind. They had finally caught him and were, he felt sure, on the verge of killing him when Biko came along and rescued him.
After Biko left him alone to go in pursuit of the baka, Frank had been overcome by terror. He was afraid the zombies would find him, or that the baka would return for him while Biko was hunting them elsewhere. So he had fled.
“Since then,” Frank said, “I’ve been barricaded inside my apartment. Too scared to come out, talk to anyone, answer calls . . . Half the time, I thought I was completely crazy and had imagined the whole thing. The other half of the time . . . I
prayed
I was crazy and had imagined it.”
“It didn’t occur to you to warn others about this?” I said critically.
“As if anyone would listen,” he said. “Come on. You know how crazy it sounds.”
Recalling Lopez’s reaction tonight, as well as the merriment of the cops on the night I had been arrested, I found it hard to disagree with that. “Even so,” I said. “The foundation is full of kids. Shondolyn was in danger. You had a responsibility to—”
“Esther,” Max said gently. “Recriminations will not help us decide what to do next.”
I made a grumpy noise and folded my arms.
Max said to Frank, “You did not see who led the dark ritual or commanded the zombies?” When Frank shook his head, Max persisted, “But you heard a voice?”
“A woman’s voice.”
“Did you recognize it?” Max asked.
Frank shook his head. “I was scared and dazed. There was a door between us. A lot was happening. But I’m pretty sure she was speaking in Creole the whole time.”
“The mambo,” I said with cold certainty.
“She knows I didn’t see her,” Frank said. “I mean . . . I
think
she knows. So why send the kid to kill me? And if she had doubts, then why wait until tonight to do it?”
“Maybe the cop is the reason,” Jeff said suddenly.
“What?” I snapped.
“He goes looking for Frank. So someone
else
goes looking for Frank,” Jeff said. “Lopez was poking around the foundation and asking questions, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “He was.” And on Friday, when I left to go work at the restaurant, he said he was returning to the foundation to ask more questions—after I had told him about a missing teacher named Frank Johnson. I nodded. “I think he started asking about Frank a couple of days ago.”
“So maybe Celeste started getting worried about what Frank would say when Lopez got to him,” said Jeff.
“And crossing town to find and kill Frank without being noticed, stopped, and exposed would probably be a tall order for a zombie,” I said. “So she had to find another way.”
Max nodded. “Hence the possession of Biko.”
“But how did she know
where
to send Biko?” Frank said, “I don’t picture a chubby Haitian mambo or a kid with a sword following that police detective to my place without him noticing.”
“You filled out the same kind of paperwork I did at the foundation,” I said. “Both of our addresses are on file there now.”
As I realized this, I decided maybe I wouldn’t go home again until we solved this mess.
“That information is kept in Darius’ office,” Jeff said. “Since he died, people are in and out of that room all the time, looking for files, getting paperwork, and picking up the slack until his replacement is hired. It’s not exactly Fort Knox.”
“So the mambo just walked in and looked up my address?” Frank said.
“Shit.”
“The room where you saw Shondolyn is obviously a space used for dark worship,” Max mused. “A place to honor the most dangerous of the Petro loa. Traditionally, it could not be done in the hounfour where the Rada are worshipped. That would be a form of sacrilege.”
“It would also be kind of stupid,” Jeff pointed out. “Whatever Celeste is up to, secrecy is obviously a big part of the plan. Why else try to kill Frank just for seeing that service? And what the hell was Shondolyn doing there, anyhow?”
“White darkness,” Max said. “I’ve questioned, examined, and hypnotized Shondolyn—”
“You’ve done
what?
” Jeff blurted.
“You missed a lot,” I said. “I’ll explain later. For now, suffice it to say that we got Shondolyn out of town and away from all this.”
“But—but—”
Max continued, “I am certain Shondolyn has no conscious knowledge of attending that service, or of any other involvement in Vodou, dark magic, or Petro worship. But what Frank saw does explain the poor girl’s nightmares.” He nodded slowly as he met my eyes. “Her subconscious mind has been trying to process the terrifying things she has seen and experienced while in a possession trance. And it appears to have been going on for some weeks now.”
“Was the bokor trying to convert her?” I wondered.
“I think it far more likely that the bokor intended to use her for some evil purpose and was preparing her for it,” Max said. “Attempting to ensure her cooperation by conditioning her to obedience when in the thrall of possession.”