Andersonville (28 page)

The rain beat down hard on Barclay and Quit as they stood over the wreckage of Major Bruegel's tent.

“Well, now what?” Day groaned.

He had thought to hide out here in his tent, which he had warded against spiritual intrusion and sight. He hadn't considered that Wirz would have been there already. He was amazed the canvas and poles were still there.

Lightning lit the stockade briefly with a colorless daylight flash, and Barclay saw more evidence of Mastemah's rampage through the camp as a torn tent canvas soared through the sky and the broken body of its occupant turned end over end before the rainy darkness renewed.

The resultant crash of thunder covered up the sound of the impact.

When it subsided, Barclay became aware of a voice calling to him from a neighboring shelter—Callixtus's tent.

It was Doctor John, waving at him, with Callixtus peering over his shoulder.

“Barclay! Barclay!”

Barclay pulled the moaning Day along to the mouth of the tent.

“Barclay, what's goin' on out there?”

“Just stay out of sight, Doc,” Barclay said. “If you hear a ruckus coming your way, you and Callixtus light out for the walls. Never mind the rain.”

“They busted up your tent lookin' for you. I thought you made it out. What the hell are you doin'
back
here?”

“Just remember what I told you,” Barclay said, turning away.

“Where to now, brother?” Day whispered weakly in his ear.

“I know another place.”

They started off, but Doctor John came out of the tent with a bundle in his hands.

“Barclay!” he called. “I saved some of the stuff you left behind.”

“Thanks, Doc,” Barclay said, taking it. “Now get low, goddammit, and out of sight!”

As Doctor John ducked back into Callixtus's tent, Barclay and Day cut south. Another lightning flash showed Wirz's colossal tentacular arm whipping up against the sky, a man caught up in it, shrieking as he was flung away. They kept that horror on their left and returned to the creek bank.

Wirz had destroyed a good number of the shelters here and the smashed bodies of the ejected occupants lay strewn around the marsh, but there were still a few shebangs standing, and Barclay and Day made for one of them.

Barclay barged into the Hatter's cross-laden shebang unannounced, and the filthy, scrawny occupant leaped back from where he'd been stooped over the reposing body of young Cora Wirz in surprise. He knew the lunatic had no ungentlemanly urges as a result of his self-mutilation, but the posture of the Hatter in regard to the girl unsettled him nonetheless.

Corbett rummaged quickly through a pile of garbage in the corner of the tent and came back with a sharp pointed stone, which he brandished at the intruders before Barclay deposited Day on the ground and held up his hands.

“It's me, Corbett!”

“Brother Barclay!” the Hatter exclaimed with a broad, rotten smile, lowering the makeshift knife.

Barclay went to Cora's side and held one of her eyelids open with his thumb. The iris rolled senselessly beneath.

“I didn't touch her,” Corbett assured him.

“I know you didn't, Corbett. You saved her. I know. Now I have to ask you another favor.”

“All I have is yours, brother.”

“We need your Bible and your hospitality, just for a little while,” he said.

Corbett nodded and returned to his junk pile.

Day sat up slowly, painfully.

“What's the plan?”

“Wirz is like a suit of armor for Mastemah. We have to get him out of Wirz if we're going to stop him. I've already warded this tent. You can exorcise him. It's tricky, but you have everything you need right here,” he said, tossing the bindle Doctor John had given him, which contained all his ritual candles and scrounged implements.

“No good,” Day said, shaking his head. “I told you, God and the angels are sitting this one out. I haven't been able to command any power in months.”

“Begging your pardon, but He most certainly is not sitting this out, sir,” Corbett said, handing his ratty, dog-eared Bible to Barclay. “He watches. He always watches, but He is not idle. We should not have found each other otherwise. Perhaps the problem lies with you.”

Day glanced sideways at Barclay, who shrugged and tossed him the Bible.

“He's right, Quit. Believe me, I understand. But there's more important things at stake than your anger. You asked me if I could put my feelings aside and do what needed doing. You've got to be willing to do the same.”

“Even if I can perform a proper exorcism from here,” Day said, “this isn't some minor kastiri. This is a goddamned Grigori. A full-blown angel inside a willing host, no less. I can't keep Mastemah out of Wirz for more than a minute unless his body's sealed against him.”

“I know that,” Barclay said. “I can do that.”

“Bullshit. This isn't hoodoo or vodoun. You have to know the right Solomonic ward.”

Barclay reached forward and pulled Day's tunic open. He rifled through the string of amulets, found one, and pulled it from his neck.

“I know which one to use,” he said, holding up the talisman. “I watched your daddy put it on you when we were eleven.”

“Fair enough,” said Day. “But you won't be able to see Mastemah leave Wirz's body. You won't know when to slap it on him.”

“Yes, I will,” said Barclay.

Then, without preamble, he poked Corbett's left eye with his pinkie finger.

“Son of a whore!” the Hatter cursed, clapping his hand to his face.

Barclay then poked himself in the left eye with the same offending finger.

Squeezing the watering eye shut, he turned once more to Day.

“Just don't leave my ass hanging out in the wind, Quit.”

“Good luck,” said Day.

Barclay rushed back out into the storm.

It wasn't just a rainstorm he ran through now. It was a storm of demons. The disembodied kastirin and a host of lesser fiends swarmed around him like bees, twisted creatures of every horrendous, blasphemous shape imaginable, shrieking incessantly and seeking to harry him at every turn.

They were a distraction to him, but more, he knew Mastemah could see them, too, and they were sounding a shrill alarm, pointing him out. They had been doing that ever since he and Day had begun running.

But they couldn't see inside the Hatter's tent.

Now he was the distraction. He had to keep Wirz from Day and from Cora, had to just run him around the stockade until the rite was completed.

He streaked down the creek to the west, and glancing once over his shoulder, he saw Wirz come running after him, that snaking arm decimating every shelter it came in contact with out of sheer wrathful destructiveness.

But like the ha-Mashchit itself, it passed over Corbett's tent. Whether by chance or by some subliminal power of the seal he'd put on it, Barclay didn't know, but he gave thanks under his breath and cut north, trying to keep Wirz from the most populous area of the camp.

The mud was slick, but he was still barefoot, and that was serving him surprisingly well. His father had taught him to run through the bayou shoeless as a boy. Side by side they had skipped quickly over stones and propelled themselves through the marshes, using every bit of undergrowth and low-hanging limb to keep in forward motion. It was a skill his father had learned from his own father, one he himself had enjoyed learning but had never thought would be put to practical use until now.

Behind him, Wirz slid in his boots. The arm righted him whenever he toppled, and soon it began to vault him along, gaining a lot of distance.

Lightning whipped like a luminous flail across the dark sky.

He ran until he was breathless, and the cannon burst of thunder and the pounding of his heart overpowered the cries of the men Wirz smashed with his arm in his wake. Barclay wept for those men as he ran, the rain washing away the tears. He clutched the talisman tightly in his fist and came at last to the north wall of the stockade.

Wirz stepped from the tangle of broken shelters, the violence of the storm washing the thin bodies and the blood of the dead south to the creek.

He said nothing as he advanced. He could say nothing. The hex still held him.

Barclay crossed the deadline.

A youthful sentry in a rain poncho called down for him to halt and aimed his useless musket. He kept hollering when he realized the weapon wasn't loaded.

Wirz came to the edge of the deadline, dragging his arm behind.

It snaked up then and struck at Barclay, a blur of hideous flesh and sharp bone.

He narrowly dodged it.

The boulder hand struck the stockade wall, and the young sentry pitched over the lip of his pigeon roost with a scream that ended when he landed on his head inside the stockade, his neck broken.

Wirz jerked his shoulder back, and the arm recoiled and swept.

Barclay jumped over it.

It came back down, and he rolled to the side again, feeling the ground shake as it struck and spattered him with mud.

Lightning. Thunder.

Wirz's wide eyes shone with Mastemah's madness. His lips moved in quiet curses, his face a grimace of rage.

The huge arm undulated and rose. It gripped the wall itself by the pickets and pried a fistful of logs, three in all, free.

Barclay avoided the tumbling pine logs.

Wirz wielded one point down like a knife now and thrust at Barclay as the harried farmer's wife stabbed at the blind mice in the old round. Again and again it plunged point downward into the muddy earth, and Barclay danced an exhausted dance to keep out from under it.

Then the great clawed fingers suddenly released the log and darted at Barclay.

Surprised and too tired to get clear, he found himself caught up by them. They snaked around and around his body, coiling, squeezing the air from him.

His arms were pinned to his chest, and though he fought, he couldn't budge the thick grip of flesh. Once more he felt the fragile little bottle beneath his arms and prayed it wouldn't break. Now was not the time.

Then he saw the bony spines along the arm. They began to travel down the length, toward the hand, like the dorsal fins of hunting sharks.

Mastemah was not content to crush him. He would drive Wirz's bones into him. Bleed him out.

The constrictions came in predictable waves now. He was allowed to draw just enough breath to have it forced out of him once more. The bottle pressed hard against his chest. All around him, the kastirin and their unholy brethren cavorted and prodded at him in his agony.

Summoning all his will as the blood flooded his brain and drowned his thoughts, he latched on to a wordless prayer, a gibbering invocation that had no translatable meaning but in which he gave himself at last to God and to the
lwa
. He forgave and asked forgiveness of Erzulie, and his father, and his queenly mother, and his dear Euchariste, and his unborn nephew, and he asked Damballah Wedo to accept Joseph Danger once more and take him to the place beyond. He was the prodigal drummer, his waning heart beating his way home to Dahomey at last.

Then the sky erupted bright as day. It was as if the night had split wide open like a torn sack and the sun within had tumbled out.

The light was all-encompassing and caused his bones to shake and shiver within his body. It made the monstrous hand of Wirz jump open; it made the bodiless demons gathered around him like flies go spiraling away in every direction like vermin fleeing a light.

Barclay tumbled to the ground, and in the instant it had taken him to fall, the light was gone.

There was an odor of seared flesh, some his own. Smoke rose from his clothes and from the long arm of Wirz, who had been knocked flat by the bolt of lightning. He looked at his hands. They were pink and raw, his skin burned away.

Ears ringing, teeth vibrating in his mouth, Barclay got painfully to his hands and knees and crawled toward Wirz.

His whole body felt on fire, every nerve humming.

But there in the air over Wirz's body he saw a brilliant, shimmering form that burned his eyes. It was like looking at the sun.

It was Mastemah.

Mastemah, expelled from Wirz. Day had completed the rite, and it had manifested in the form of lightning, sundering man from angel.

All three of them in close proximity, all the spirits that had been clustering, all had been stunned by the divine intercession Day had invoked.

But the shining spirit was stirring. Wirz's eyes were fluttering. They would rejoin in moments.

Yet Barclay was the only one moving.

He reached Wirz's side and slapped the talisman on his forehead.

He remembered the old invocation Dr. Day had recited that long-ago day in his oratory, and though his mouth was numb, the words tumbled out:

“Jannes and Jambres practiced the magical arts, but they were unable to stand against Moses the prophet. So may there be annulled divination and the bonds of magic from off Heinrich Hartmann Wirz. So be it. Amen! Amen!”

The blazing form plunged toward Wirz's form like a diving phoenix but rebounded. It tried again and failed once more.

Then it flared brighter than before, so bright that Barclay had to put his face to Wirz's chest and cover his head to shut out the terrible light.

It dived at him now, enveloping him in a flare of brightness equal to the lightning and nearly as painful. It was a desperate gamble even for an entity as powerful as Mastemah. A soul did not make way in its body for another readily. The best most bodiless presences could hope for in forced possession was a fleeting taste of the physical as a dying soul left its body before it expired and the spirit was evicted. Seeing his ravaged physical state, Mastemah was attempting to invade him now like a flailing man caught in a rushing river grasping at a branch. Barclay could feel the Grigori's spirit grab hold of his own, trying to force its way inside. The angel's touch imparted much. He had impressions of lust and envy, guilt, rage and loneliness, and he perceived in nightmare flashes tremendous sights no mortal eye was designed to behold. With these impressions he was confronted with the failings of his own life, the myriads of minor betrayals and the monumental bloodshed of the war, the thousands of little evils he had perceived in those around him. Was this what Wirz had been subjected to? Mastemah was a whispered promise to right all these wrongs. He could well understand the allure. But shattered as his body was, he was an old
cheval
, trained from an early age to be a horse for spirits. Possession in vodoun was a mutual enterprise, and just as he had bucked Kalfou, he coalesced his will and flung Mastemah from him like an unwanted rider.