Hell Rig (26 page)

“It’s all beyond me, dear sweet Lisa. I just waded in the shallow waters of voodoo. Dabbled at doing good for folks. I wasn’t a full-fledged
mambo
. You need someone who done went in all the way.”

“Who?”

Granny Iris held out her hand. “Wait. I’ll fetch her.”

Granny Iris retreated into the shadows. Lisa stood, shoulders slumped and chin pressing against her chest in defeat. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jeff move toward her as if he wanted to hold her in his arms but stopped short, perhaps sensing that she preferred to be alone in her sorrow.

A few minutes later, a second woman, black, tall and willowy, stepped into the light.

“I am Mama Cariou,” she announced. “I think I can help.”

Lisa stared at her. “I’ve heard of you. You just died, during Hurricane Katrina.”

Mama Cariou opened her mouth and wailed. A cold wind whistled around them. The flames flickered. The stones seemed to shudder beneath her feet. Mama Cariou lowered her head. When she raised it, her emotions were under control. A brief smile flickered across her lips. She nodded. “It is so. I have not yet become used to death.”

Lisa’s heart almost broke under the great weight of sorrow in Mama Cariou’s words.

“Can you help us?” she asked.

“I’ll do what I can. I started this.”

“You? How?”

“Digger Man came to me in my little shop afraid of what he saw coming. I gave him power for his
gris-gris
. It was too much power for him to control, I guess. Something in the storm, some Loa in Katrina, took him over, used him to murder all those people. Each evil death weakened the doorway between life and death just a mite. That Loa wants to escape its ageless death, become human or maybe more than human. Part of it lives on that oil rig. The rest of it is coming for you.”

“The rest of it?” Lisa asked.

“Hurricane Rita,” Jeff said from behind her.

Mama Cariou smiled and nodded. “That’s right, son. Hurricanes contain much power, the power of wind and wave and lightning. A Loa can harness this power and compel it for its own purposes. This Loa wants more death, more bloodshed, so it can break the barrier between life and death for all time, live among us as a god.”

Lisa’s face had turned pale. “Which Loa?”

“Damballah Wedo,” Mama Cariou whispered.

The name reverberated from the stone walls, shaking the entire room. The fire in the brazier flared and shot to the ceiling, flooding the room with a blood red light. Mama Cariou fell to her knees and cried out. A vague, human-shaped shadow stood in the red flames. Scanning the chamber with coal black eyes, it focused on Lisa and began to laugh. The room quaked. Damp moss, lichen and crawling things fell from the ceiling like rain. Lisa quickly brushed them from her hair in disgust. Slowly, the flames subsided, became yellow once again as the figure vanished with the laughter.

“Was that Damballah Wedo?” Jeff asked.

Lisa turned to him and nodded. “He is the creator, the father of all Loas.”

“I thought the creator was a good Loa.”

“So did I,” she answered. “Something must have happened.” She began to look around the room for Mama Cariou. The old woman was gone. “Granny Iris.”

The shadows began to close in. Dancing fireflies surrounded them. “Go back, child,” her grandmother called from the darkness. “You mustn’t linger near death too long, remember. Beware of the eagle.”

Lisa felt the room spin. The fireflies made a band of light around them, spinning. She grabbed Jeff’s hand and held it tightly. She closed her eyes against the vertigo that threatened to overwhelm her. When she opened them, they were in the front office on the rig. The candles spluttered, as if in a sudden gust of wind. No wax had run down their sides.

“We’re back,” Lisa said.

“Did we even go anywhere,” Jeff said. He looked at his watch. “No time has passed.”

“I feel fine,” she said. “The alcohol is gone from my system.” She found a chair and sat down. Her legs felt rubbery. The floor felt unsubstantial beneath her.

“Oh, granny. Was it a dream?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeff answered.

“You remember?” she asked.

He nodded. “Granny Iris said, ‘Beware of the eagle.’ What does that mean?” He tried to remember what Doug Peters, the young boy on the supply ship had said about an eagle.

“An eagle doesn’t mean anything to me,” she answered.

Jeff rubbed his forehead. It felt tight from lack of sleep. “Maybe I imagined it all.”

“We both couldn’t have the same hallucination. It was real.”

“But…” he began. He raised his hands and dropped his protest before voicing it.

“At least we know what is happening,” she said.

“But not how to stop it,” he reminded her.

She sat down heavily beside him. Her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Jeff, my Granny,” she sobbed.

He leaned her head against his shoulder. “I know, Lisa, I know,” he repeated as he stroked her hair gently.

“You guys have got to see this,” Ed said excitedly as he burst into the room. With a quick glance, he took in the pentagram and candles, then looked back at them. “What?”

“Never mind,” Jeff said. “What’s happened?”

Chapter Twenty Two

Tolson sat up in bed. His skin was pale except for two dark circles surrounding his eyes, but he was smiling.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Lisa asked. She stared at the thermometer she held in her hand in disbelief.

“Well, my shoulder hurts likes hell and I can barely move my arm, but I feel fine.”

“I don’t understand it,” Jeff said, scratching his head. “You were at death’s door.” He looked at Lisa, his eyes posing a question.

“Maybe it was the antibiotics,” Ed suggested.

“They shouldn’t work this fast,” Jeff replied.

“It was Baron Samedi,” Lisa said. “He’s trying to help.”

Sims snorted.

Lisa replaced the thermometer in its case. “His temperature is down to 99. That’s almost normal.”

“Come on, guys,” Tolson said. “Don’t stare a gift horse in the mouth. Let’s get the hell out of here. Where’s the supply ship?”

Jeff looked at Tolson. “Sunk. The crew’s dead.”

Tolson’s face clouded with rage as he clenched his fist. “Waters?”

“It looks like it,” Jeff answered.

The look of rage passed as a new thought came to him. “What about the emergency craft?” he asked.

Jeff shook his head. “Hurricane Rita will be here in less than twenty four hours. We wouldn’t stand a chance in it.”

“Hurricane Rita? I’ll risk it,” Tolson said. “I don’t want to spend one more minute on this damn thing.”

“Ed thinks we can ride this one out,” Lisa told him.

Tolson shot a baffled look at Ed. “Have you forgotten about Waters? The son of a bitch is crazy.” He looked around the room. “Where’s Mac?”

It was Ed’s turn to convey bad news. “Dead. Waters killed him.”

Tolson fell back and held his arm over his face. “Too bad. I liked Mac. He…”

He sat up again suddenly, wincing in pain as he did so. “What about Big Clyde? It seems I saw him…in a dream.” Tolson rubbed his temple as if coaxing a memory.

The three looked at each other, uncertain. Jeff took the lead. “He’s dead, too.” He didn’t have the heart to tell Tolson the whole truth. Tolson didn’t need the guilt of killing Gleason on top of everything else.

Tolson stared at him a minute before replying. “Yeah, I knew that, somehow.” His brow furrowed in thought as he lay back down. “Poor Clyde,” he whispered. “Poor Clyde.”

By his regular breathing, Jeff knew Tolson had fallen asleep.

“Let him rest. The antibiotics seem to be working but they need more time.”

“We don’t have time,” Ed retorted. “The storm will be on us before you know it. We need to reinforce the back door and secure the kitchen area.”

“Why there?” Lisa asked.

“It’s the strongest part of the building, lots of steel and concrete. We can secure the cooler door and…”

“The cooler,” Lisa cried out. “You want us to ride out a hurricane in the cooler with all those dead bodies? What if the power goes out?” Her hand went to her mouth as her face paled. “Oh, my God!” She looked at Jeff. “I won’t do it.”

Jeff tired to calm her. “We must, Lisa. It is the safest place. The cooler is solid steel.”

She shook her head defiantly. “Not with all those bodies.”

Jeff looked at Ed and shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe we can put the bodies somewhere else. If the power goes, it won’t matter if they’re in the cooler or not.”

Ed looked doubtful but seeing Lisa’s reaction to his suggestion softened his reply. “They may be lost. They’re your friends, too, but if you want to take the chance…”

Jeff nodded and smiled at Lisa. “I think they would understand.”

“They’re dead,” Sims said. “Cold meat. They’re past caring and understanding.”

Ed wiped his hands on his pants leg, like Pontius Pilate washing his hands of Jesus’ execution. “We secure the cooler for ourselves. We’ll need food and water, all the flashlights we can find, oh, and we’ll need to clear the exhaust vent for air.”

Lisa tried to hide a yawn.

“Let’s get some sleep first,” Jeff suggested seeing Lisa’s gesture. “I’m exhausted,” he lied.

Ed nodded. “I’ll take the first watch.”

Sims, ever the loner, stalked off to his room.

* * * *

Despondent at the part he played in the deaths of his men, Ed Burns sat wearily in a chair in the front office smoking his last cigarette. The five-pointed star from Lisa’s voodoo ritual still marred the floor. Neither she nor Jeff had told him all that transpired during that time, but from their grave expressions and muted conversations, he had guessed it did not bode well for them. All their talk of Papa Legbe, Damballah Wedo and an open doorway meant nothing to him. All he knew was that he was no longer in control and that scared him.

“Why should that be any different?” he mumbled to himself.

Bad investments, medical bills—all had conspired to eat into his savings. The Global job was to be a lifesaver. Global’s promises of easy money with more jobs to follow had awed him too much to question their motives or the job. He had dismissed the rumors as drunken sailor talk. He wished to God he had listened to the inner voice which guided him for so many years, the one that whispered ‘Walk away’.

Bale, Easton, Gleason and McAndrews—all dead or dying because of him. Easton was a nephew. How could he look his sister in the face and tell her how her son had died sliced open and flopping on the deck like a gutted fish? Ed finished his cigarette, slowly exhaling a cloud of smoke, enjoying the taste of it as it moved over his tongue, and stubbing the butt out on the chair arm. The cigarette had relaxed him, allowed him time to collect his thoughts. It was his fault they were here. He would have to be the one to see them home.

In spite of his assurances to the others, he harbored doubts about the rig surviving another hit by a hurricane. The fire had weakened some structural supporting beams on the cellar deck. If the rig took a heavy pounding, the deck could collapse and slide off the legs into the sea, leaving only four steel tombstones marking their watery grave.

The TEMPSC was not the answer either. He knew he was right about that. Ten to fifteen-foot waves would rip the emergency rescue craft’s polycarbonate shell to shreds, dumping them into the heart of the storm.

The lights began to flicker. Moments later they went out entirely. Ed sighed. The last of the fuel for the generator was gone, leaving them without power. He picked up a candle and lit it. As he sat staring at the feeble glow it produced, he came to a decision.

He checked on the others, found them all fast asleep except Sims. Sims just looked up at him and nodded. He picked up a flashlight and laid the Glock on the table in the coffee room for the others to find and headed to the back door. He found Sims barring his way.

“If you go out there, you’ll die,” Sims said with a slight grin on his face.

“Get out of my damn way, Sims,” Ed replied.

Sims shrugged and stepped aside. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Ed stormed out the door. He told himself it was only for luck that he briefly touched the amulet hanging from the doorknob. Sims scared him and he didn’t know why. Sims seemed to enjoy irritating people, rubbing them the wrong way, but there was something more sinister about him Ed couldn’t quite put his finger on. The man had cold hard eyes, cold enough to freeze water and hard enough to break stone. How could a man who had been a shrimper all his life, suddenly give it up? It wasn’t fear of water or he wouldn’t be here on the platform. He would have to have a long talk with Sims. Later.

There was no moon and the fog had disappeared but the platform glowed slightly with an ethereal light. Shadows within shadows coiled and writhed in his peripheral vision. Ed ignored them. The platform was strangely silent in spite of the hurricane bearing down on them. He stalked the platform like a hunter, probing the dark recesses with the flashlight.