All Heads Turn When the Hunt Goes By (45 page)

"Oh, around and about."

"And what's the gun for?"

Early Boy glanced at his revolver, smiled his deformed smile and put the revolver in his belt beneath the poncho.

"Just a chance you might be somebody else." He walked toward Jackson and handed him the papers.

"Maybe you better sit down," he said kindly. "Before you read that."

The four-page typewritten report was headed with the name of a laboratory in Memphis and dated the 24th of. March, 1944. Liver biopsy, seroanalysis, urinalysis, the spectrochemical data, it all read like an autopsy report. Extremely high concentrations of an unknown toxic substance had been found in the hair and nail samples, in the liver, in the sputum, sufficient to cause the death of the victim. Of twenty victims.

"This is a lie! It's nonsense, someone's idea of a cod! Or, or—there had to be a mixup—"

Early Boy shook his head. "No mixup. Talmadge must have checked it out. He wouldn't have believed it himself. When they told him there wasn't no mistake, that's when he hanged himself. He couldn't face what he had to."

"Don't you realize what you're saying? No human being could survive this level of toxicity!"

"That's exactly the point, doc. Nhora Bradwin ain't human."

"But I—she—"

"No wonder the bugs don't bite her," Early Boy said, scratching his bristly chin, staring implacably at Jackson.

Jackson began to laugh, as if he found Early Boy's attempt at humor irresistible. Then the laughter came in great snorting sobs and he fell out of the chair. Early Boy seized him and hauled him to his feet.

"Don't go off the deep end, doc, I need you!"

Jackson screamed with laughter, his eyes rolling in his head.

Early Boy began slapping him, short, jarring blows. "Jesus, you're cold. Like a corpse. Snap out of it, you dumb—
cluck
!"

Jackson suddenly stopped in mid-seizure, his eyes wide open, mouth agape. He seemed to be listening. Early Boy hesitated, right hand back for another blow. Jackson's chin was bleeding again. His face was flushed and striped with the marks of Early Boy's hand, the fingers hard and stinging like hickory withes. Jackson's mouth worked, and he spit up a thin, bitter liquid.

"Nhora," he gasped. His head jerked up, face animated by joy.

"What?"

"Nhora's upstairs! She called me!" He tried to fight free of Early Boy, who pulled him back by the collar of his jacket.

"You ain't goin' anywhere."

"Nhora needs me. I tell you she's right upstairs!"

Early Boy looked around in dismay, retaining his tight grip on Jackson, who was fighting like an animal in a trap. He sniffed; a broad stench of perfume was drifting over them.

"No, she ain't. What's up there is something called the Ai-da Wédo. Maybe she's just a little like Nhora; I only had one quick look and that'll do me the rest of my life. You ain't goin' anywhere near—"

Jackson went slack and Early Boy lost his concentration for a second, seeking to get a better purchase with his right hand. Jackson ducked his head and bent his knees, then came up full force, the top of his head colliding with Early Boy's chin. Early Boy flew backward and rebounded from a wall, staggered forward with glazed eyes and a tooth protruding through a bloody lower lip, and sprawled across the desk.

Jackson ran to the stairs.

Early Boy clawed at the desk blotter to keep from falling but fell anyway, taking nearly everything on the desk with him. His cheek lay against the hot light bulb of the shadeless lamp. His eyes opened and closed spasmodically.

On the stairs Jackson heard laughter; delicious, buoyant, familiar laughter. Dormant in the mind for nearly twenty-five years, but never quite forgotten.

"Nhora!"

The light flickered along the wall as he reached the top of the stairs; he turned and paused, gripping the railing, enthralled. There was a room at the front end of the hail, the door half closed. In the dark beyond the door she laughed again, pleased by his promptness.

"Jackson! Come in." Her accent distinctively French, where there had just been a lisping suggestion before.

"I—I can't see you."

"Yes, you can. Come closer."

He was momentarily dazzled by a streak of greenish light that played at the level of his eyes, teasing him, leading him closer to the dark doorway, vanishing then, reappearing like a charge of protoplasm. This light form was limpid, luminous, suspended without definition in front of him but wisping at the edges, curling attractively around and around, forming iridescent coils.

He stopped again, arrested by nausea, by a corresponding spasm of sexual excitement that rolled deep and heavy in his loins. His skin had begun to prickle, and to burn, which only increased the sick, sexual rapture he was experiencing.

"Nhora?" For now it had eyes: wise, charming, beastly, grave-sent eyes. He was looked down upon. A final judgment he yearned to embrace.

"Gen. Gen-loa. You remember me, don't you?" The perfume disguised the rot of the indistinct, flitting hag; but her eyes were magnificent, her body alluring as it undulated in rhythm with his pulse. She pretended to pout. "I don't want to believe you could forget me, after Tuleborné."

"It's my—father you want," Jackson said, gulping, feeling shy and ashamed of his boy's body, his lack of experience. "Not me."

"I caught up to your father," she said indifferently. "And he fulfilled his obligation to me. Jackson—"

He blinked. It was almost Nhora, the voice different, the eyes more compassionate. Her body, her love for him. "Remember how it was for us this afternoon? It can be so much better now. I can't describe to you how pleasurable, how ecstatic you'll feel. Love me, Jackson. I need you, I've always needed you. I was reborn for you. I can't live without you."

He pushed the door open wide. He entered the bedroom.

She was reclining naked on the bare mattress of the bed, but naked in a way he'd never seen before. Her gorgeous scales shimmering, cascading with desire. Tongue flickering in and out of her mouth. His erection was unbearable, ejaculation near.

He heard nothing, except for a slight grunt of effort, as Early Boy came charging through the doorway, head lowered, arms reaching out to seize him. The impact of the football tackle lifted Jackson off his feet and in the next instant they smashed through shade and window and went tumbling down the slant roof of the porch to the overflowing gutter, fell without slowing and crashed down hard into drenched shrubbery, the muddy soft turf of the yard.

Jackson got up first, but sagged immediately. Early Boy, the wind knocked out of him, was scrabbling in mud. Jackson turned toward the house.

"Nhora!" he shouted.

Early Boy caught him from behind and yanked him toward the street. Above them, behind the torn, dangling shade of the window, there was a pulsating, greenish glow.

"You dumb son of a bitch, don't you know how close you came to looking like Old Lamb? All you had to do was get your dick out of your pants and she would've blown you sky high. Get in the car!" He slapped Jackson hard. "I'm tellin' you, she ain't through yet with you; rain's the only thing keepin' her away. We got to get a move on."

"My medical bag," Jackson said. "Need my bag."

Early Boy groaned, gave him another push in the direction of the car and ran into the house. He was out again in a few seconds, the bag in one hand. He grabbed Jackson on the fly and pulled him to the cm.

He opened the car door and shoved Jackson in, ran around the driver's side. Rain pounded the roof of the coupé.

"Give me the key."

Jackson, shuddering, fumbled in his jacket pocket, unable to take his eyes off the house. Through the heavy rain it looked dark now, and deserted. He came up with the key and Early Boy snatched it, started the car. They lurched down the street, then picked up speed. Jackson turned his head to stare at Early Boy.

"Your face is bleeding."

"Hell, yes, we're both cut. What do you think this is, a cowboy movie? Lucky we didn't cut our throats. But I couldn't think of any other way."

"I don't know—what happened. It was like being in a trance."

"Yeah. That's the Ai-da Wédo; she's Nhora, or part of Nhora—I don't know how that works. Tyrone got to messin' with voodoo a couple years ago, and called her out. Now look."

"Nhora—doesn't know."

"Maybe she doesn't. Maybe she can't help what's happening to her. But she's got to be killed all the same. Both of 'em."

"Killed!" Jackson grabbed Early Boy just as he was making a turn onto a deserted stretch of highway. The car, slithered on the wet road, spun around twice before he had it under control.

"Chrissake, I just about cracked up this heap! Get your hands off me, doc."

Jackson slumped back in the other seat, once again finding it hard to breathe. He resorted to the amyl nitrite again. Early Boy caught a whiff of it.

"That's powerful stuff; what else you got in that bag?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"She's chock full of poison. Just one scratch from the lady and you're a goner. So my question is, how do you kill somebody that should be dead already?"

The car was fishtailing again, and Jackson panicked. "You're driving like a maniac!"

Early Boy grinned sardonically. "You're on borrowed time anyway. And if we don't get to Tyrone before he closes up shop for the night, maybe we don't get him at all."

"Do you know—where he is?"

"At his alternate house of worship, down by the river." Jackson nodded. "I know the place. The
Stephen Mulrooney
. Nhora and I found it by accident early this morning." He sat shuddering in the wet, filthy suit. They passed a single streetlight in a Negro settlement, the thin vein of a neon beer sign in a lonesome window. Then blackness again, rain flooding the unsteady headlights. He had seen blood on Early Boy's tense knuckles as he drove. He heard Early Boy's rasping, painful breath. "How bad are you hurt?"

"I'll find out later. Maybe a busted rib."

"I can drive."

"Just sit back and enjoy the ride."

"Do you still have your revolver?"

"We don't have to—kill Nhora."

"It ain't just your funeral, it's Champ's too."

"I think I know—what this is about."

"I got a little free time right now, doc. Why don't you fill me in?"

Jackson talked considerably longer, drawing the threads of the past together in a comprehensible pattern, for himself as well as Early Boy. It had begun with his father's encounter with the inhuman Gen Loussaint a quarter of a century ago, and ultimately involved the fortunes of two families. He explained what little he knew about Nhora's sojourn among the Ajimba, and tried to deduce the rest.

"I never really believed she existed, till now. Gen Loussaint must have lived for a year or two after my father treated her. She was a—a goddess in a decrepit body, badly in need of a successor. I didn't know why a child was chosen. Perhaps she was the image of Gen herself as a child. At any rate they must have planned to raise her as a superbeing, capable of living 150, 200 years, a new leader for a once-great tribe. But by then the Ajimba had been decimated, their tribal identity destroyed. They were wanderers, occasional raiders, confused and desultory in their religion. Whatever plans the aging, reptilian old monster may have had for Nhora, they were forgotten when ultimately the body died. The goddess herself—Gen-loa—didn't die of course, her spirit persevered within Nhora, but dormantly. Gen-loa was helpless to exert her power without the tradition, the force of belief the pathetic tribe no longer had.

"So Nhora was returned to civilization, still a child, but deadly beyond her knowledge. I think they must have fed her on the poison which they fed their hunting dogs, little by little saturating her body so that as she matured she retained the poison. It may even have become more concentrated, with the passage of time."

"What about this fetish thing your daddy made out of your skull bones? Old Lamb talked about that too—he called it
'baka
.' Said while you had it, the Ai-da Wédo couldn't touch you."

"That's right. My father died a different sort of violent death, in the war, but he was safe from her, as long as he kept his fetish near to hand. So Ai-da Wédo bided her time, as Nhora grew older. Waited for the voodoo adept, the believer who would come along and set her free of the innocent one. Nhora is innocent, I swear! And totally helpless."

"Not as long as she's got that poison in her system. If one of those damn killer dogs was runnin' around loose, you'd shoot it, wouldn't you? Use your head, doc!"

They had reached the levee; Early Boy turned off the car's lights.

"No sense givin' him time to scram if he's down there makin' his mumbo-jumbo. See if there's a flashlight aboard, doc."

Jackson found one in the glove compartment.

"Some dinky light," Early Boy complained. "It'll have to do. Come on."

Jackson got out of the car clutching his medical bag. If Nhora was down there with Tyrone then there were drugs he would need immediately. He was afraid again, mortally afraid after his encounter with the seductive serpent-goddess, to descend into the thicket. But it might be true that the power of Ai-da Wédo was diminished by rain, or water of any kind. And his concern for Nhora's safety was stronger than his conviction that it was a fatal mistake to tempt Ai-da Wédo again.