Tempter (5 page)

Je-Rouge

There is a panther caged within my breast,

But what his name there is no breast shall know

Save mine, nor what it is that drives him so,

Backward and forward, in relentless quest.

—John Hall Wheelock,
The Black Panther

Chapter Seven

Tee had been unsure, at first, about Rossiter photocopying the book, but she finally relented after he fucked her three times in a row.

It had taken some doing, but he had succeeded in enlarging the mandala from the book into a poster-sized duplicate. Rossiter spread it across his hide-a-bed, careful not to crinkle it. He then dragged a stepladder from the closet and carefully tacked the poster onto the ceiling over his bed. Now he was free to lie back and study the elaborate arabesques at the pattern’s heart whenever he felt like it.

During his previous delving into enlightenment, Rossiter had never once experienced anything remotely mystical. Instead, he had attained chronic light-headedness following the Hare Krishna regimen of macrobiotic food and mantras, but that was hardly the same as what he had seen the other night.

Rossiter kicked off his shoes and collapsed across his bed, frowning up at the ceiling. He wondered if he needed to observe some kind of ritual before attempting to go inside the mandala? Tee was always talking about the importance of rituals and their attendant symbolism. His eyes traced the twists and turns inside the design...

Something was attempting to enter the place between places. Tempter could feel it pushing against the membrane that separated the planes, stretching it like a toy balloon. He tensed, trying to keep his agitation veiled from his warders. If the
vévés
sensed activity on his part, they would awaken, and all his planning would be for naught. Still, it required tremendous effort on his part to keep from hurrying things along.

Rossiter felt himself sliding into the not-place. It was a pleasant sensation, not unlike falling asleep in a tub of warm water. He felt something inside himself slip free, and he suddenly found himself hovering above the fold-out couch, looking down at his own body. He stared in dismay at the lines and creases etched into face. He looked way too old for a business that routinely ate teenagers for breakfast.

There was a sound of wind rushing down a tunnel, and his uninhabited shell began to dwindle, like the picture used to fade on the tube of his family’s old television, until it collapsed into a point of pulsating blue light.

He was back in the place between places,
vévés
stretching across the expanse where the sky should have been. He moved towards them, trying to discern where one began and the other left off, but it was impossible to separate one from the other. He somehow had the impression that the
vévés
were alive, but not the same way humans or animals are. He was reminded of sea anemones waving in the ocean current. He reached out to touch one of them, but the
vévé
was suddenly somewhere else, just beyond his reach.

“Of course I can’t touch them,” he gently chided himself. “I don’t have any hands! I’m just a bundle of thought.”

“You’re much more than that, my friend.”

It took Rossiter a moment to realize that the voice inside his head wasn’t his own. With a start, he saw the shadowy figure of a man standing on the other side of the pulsing
vévés
. As he focused his attention, the other man’s features suddenly leapt into sharp detail, and Rossiter was surprised to discover he was looking at his own face. Except the duplicate that stood before him was not the embittered thirty-something whose body he had left sprawled across a foldout sofa like an empty suit.

The Rossiter who confronted him was considerably younger, with spiky hair and the barest hint of whiskers on his jaw. He was the very image of The Artist As Boy Genius, youthful and unbowed, captured at his professional and physical peak.

“You read my mind,” he said.

His younger self shrugged.
“There is no difference between thought and word on this plane. The thought and the deed are one and the same: both irrevocable and inconsequential.”

“What are you? Are you really me? Or are you a spirit?”

“Call me Alex, if you wish.”
His younger self smiled, and for the first time Rossiter noticed the doppelganger’s eyes shone like of polished carnelian.
“There is much you must learn. More than you can possibly imagine.”
The doppelganger beckoned Rossiter to step forward.
“Come closer, so I might show you.”

Although the
vévés
seemed as delicate as hothouse orchids, moving forward was like trying to push his way through a privet hedge. They did not so much stop him as slow his progress.

The doppelganger scowled, his eyes shining like twin cups of fresh blood.
“Try harder! You’ve got to want to enter.”

Rossiter tried to do as his younger self instructed, but the more he pushed, the harder it was to move forward. It was as if he was trapped in sucking mud. He tried to extricate himself from the
vévés
by backing up, but that only made things worse. A tiny flicker of panic sparked inside his mind, and suddenly the
vévés
surged into life, crackling like an electric fence.

The last thing he saw was his younger self, wrapped in multicolored lightning, shouting furiously at the patterns towering overhead.

So close! He’d come so close to ensnaring a horse, only to have the damned
vévés
get in the way! Tempter’s frustration created tornadoes that danced across the emptiness, raining bloated, worm-eaten corpses in their wake.

At least it wasn’t a total loss. The bait had produced the desired response in his prey. The horse would return, of that he was certain. But he would have to be careful. Luring his prey into reach would take more manipulation than he’d originally thought. But he could wait. After all, what choice did he have?

The tornadoes spun down, wavered, and grew still, fading into nothing. Tempter molded the emptiness into the form of a woman, the face smooth and mouthless. The figure was dressed in a white muslin dress, her hair bound in a red kerchief. The face of the imago shimmered as its features emerged: the nose long and straight; the eyes large and dark; the cheekbones high; the mouth wide and expressive. It was the face of an African princess.

“Dance,” whispered Tempter, and it obeyed, moving supple arms and legs in imitation of the woman he hated more than death itself.

“Burn,” he commanded, and his creation obeyed. Flames burst from its kerchiefed head, like an infernal halo. The effigy began to scream, flailing its arms as it melted like a wax doll.

Tempter’s revenge would not be as simple, but it would be far more satisfying. The black bitch and her progeny would pay for locking him way. He would see to that personally.

Chapter Eight

Tee leaned over Rossiter and stared down into his face. “Do yourself a favor, baby, and get rid of that shit. Forget that you ever saw it.”

“You’re not serious, are you?”

“Serious as cancer, lover.
Voudou
ain’t all wringin’ chicken necks and burnin’ Fast Money candles. What you’re describing ain’t fit for beginners. Shit, it probably ain’t fit for anyone.”

“I thought you’d be happy, seein’ how I’m plugged into the Loa.”

Tee shook her head like a schoolteacher aggravated by a dense student. “How many times have I got to tell you, man? It
ain’t
a Loa! I can’t be sure, but from what you told me, this thing sounds like some kind of
Guede
…a spirit of the dead. And those suckers can be
really
bad news. Mostly they’re content possessin’ folks at rituals and makin’ them do silly shit, like tryin’ to drink rum by pourin’ it in their ears, walkin’ backward, talkin’ in funny voices....that kinda thing.

“But then there’s the ones that make their horses have fits or attack people. I saw this one old woman, she had to be in her nineties, get possessed by Marienette of the Dry Arms, one of the cannibal
Guede.
She started dancin’ round, wavin’ her arms and screechin’ like she was an owl. Then she started laughin’ and braggin’ bout all the babies she ate. Then she screamed and jumped right in the middle of the ritual fire and started flailin’ round like she was drownin’! She was screamin’ for someone to help her, so one of the others tried to pull her out of the fire. But instead of lettin’ him help, she bit off one of his fingers and swallowed it! I know it sounds kinda funny talkin’ about it now, but it was scary as shit while it was happenin’! When she came out of the trance, she couldn’t remember a single thing. When she was told what she did, she had a heart attack right there on the spot and died a week later in Charity Hospital.”

“What makes you think this thing I saw might be dangerous?”

“Didn’t you say it had red eyes? That’s the sign of the
Je-Rouge.”
She tapped her bottom eyelid with an index finger. “The Red Eyes. They’re evil cannibal spirits that mean harm to humans. If I was you, I’d have Papa Beloved work a cleansin’ spell and burn that damn poster you made.”

Rossiter shrugged and tried not to look her in the eyes. “I’ll think about it.”

“I’d do
more
than think about it--”

“I know! I know! ‘If you was me’. But you’re
not
, got that?” Rossiter said as he got out of bed, turning his back to her.

“Fine! Fuckin’
be
that way, for all I care!” she snapped. “If you’re going to be a damn fool and start jackin’ with shit you don’t know nothin’ about, don’t come runnin’ to me when it goes bad on you!”

“You don’t understand, do you?” Rossiter replied. “You don’t understand at
all
. The first time in my while life I make
real
contact with the supernatural, and you tell me it’s some kind of evil spirit. And now you’re saying I better leave it alone because I don’t know what I’m doing. Why? Because I’m white? Because I’m a man? Is that it, Tee? Are you jealous because it picked
me
to talk to, not
you
?”

“Jesus, Alex!” she said, rolling her eyes. “Get real!”

“I
am
getting real, bitch! Realer than I’ve ever been. I’m also getting the hell outta here!”

“That suits me just fine!” she spat, hurling his jeans across the room at him. “I don’t need no fools in my house, anyway!”

Rossiter managed to stay righteously indignant until the door slammed shut behind him. As he started his long walk home in the early morning gloom, his anger quickly dissipated, leaving him feeling cold and hollow inside. He might not know a
Guede
from a Loa, but one thing was for sure: he really knew how to screw up a good thing.

“What the fuck you mean I look like Hell?”

“Chill, man. Just chill, okay?” Arsine smiled at his friend. “I didn’t mean anything by it, dawg. Sorry if I struck a nerve.”

Rossiter sighed and dropped his shoulders. “I’m sorry too, man. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that. The strain’s getting to me, what with rehearsals and everything! I haven’t had time to take a decent shit, much less wind my watch. God, it’s been so long since I played in front of a live audience!”

“Don’t worry, man. You’ll do just fine. The band sounds tight. You’d think we’ve been playing together for years.”

Rossiter nodded. Opening-night jitters was only half the reason for his irritability, but he wasn’t about to tell Arsine about Tee kicking him out of bed or describe his mystic forays into the not-place. But Arsine was right: they
did
sound good. Then again, it wasn’t hard to cobble together a righteous band in a city where every other housepainter was a seasoned R&B guitarist.

They had been rehearsing in a studio loft in the warehouse district for the last six weeks. This was fine while the air-conditioning functioned. However, the ancient Polar King window unit had picked this particular day—the hottest so far—to crap out. Arsine and Rossiter had abandoned the rehearsal space for the cool comfort of the bar down the street, while their bassist, Paulie, tried to get his handyman cousin on the phone. That was six beers ago.

Rossiter snuck a glance at Arsine out of the corner of his eye; the lanky drummer was going through his pocket change, looking for quarters to feed the jukebox. Was Arsine in cahoots with Tee? Was he reporting back to her? Rossiter decided to keep any further developments concerning the
Je-Rouge
or whatever the hell it was to himself. He liked Arsine, but he didn’t particularly trust him when it came to his personal life.

“There y’all are! Me, I been lookin’ all over for y’all! Shoulda knowed y’all be in a bar. Hoo-Yah! Talk about hot!”

Rossiter swiveled on the barstool to see the band’s keyboardist framed in the doorway, mopping his forehead with a bandanna.

“Hey, Hoo-Yah,” Arsine said without glancing up from the jukebox. “Whatcha know good?” He punched some numbers and Professor Longhair’s “
Bald-Head”
issued from the machine’s much-abused speakers.

Rossiter smiled and motioned for the young Cajun to take the bar stool next to him. The bartender automatically placed a longneck in front of him. The musician’s real name was Raphael Boudreaux, but everyone called him “Hoo-Yah”. When he wasn’t behind an electronic keyboard he played zydeco in his cousin’s chank-a-chank band in Plaquemines Parish. He was tall, with shoulder-length red hair and a light dusting of freckles. He wore overalls and a green nylon baseball cap proclaiming “I (Heart Symbol) Copenhagen” everywhere he went, and was a graduate of Julliard.

“Paulie sent me to find y’all,” Hoo-Yah said after taking a pull on his beer. “Told me to tell y’all he done got the AC fixed.”

“About fuckin’ time,” Rossiter grunted.

“So what y’all been talkin’ about?”

“Rossiter here’s been sayin’ how he’s worried we ain’t logged enough rehearsal time before the gig. I keep tellin’ him there’s nothin’ to worry about: we’s cookin’.”

Hoo-Yah clapped Rossiter’s shoulder. “That’s God’s honest truth! Me, I’ve played with some of the best this city got to offer, but you sure as hot damn put them to shame,
mon frère
!

Rossiter lowered his eyes in acknowledgement of the compliment. But as much as he enjoyed the company of these men, he couldn’t wait to get home and slip back into his own private world again.

His younger self was waiting for him.

The doppelganger stood just beyond the
vévés
, watching him with crimson eyes. He was dressed in a torn leopard-print T-shirt and a pair of stovepipe black jeans held together with safety pins. There was no seductive beckoning this time. The younger Alex simply turned and walked away, leaving his older self to follow. Still, fear of the
vévés
caused Rossiter to hesitate.

“
You still think in terms of up and down, solid or liquid; those terms are meaningless here.”
The doppelganger’s voice was comfortable in his head, as if it belonged there. “
To follow me all you need to do is
want
to follow. Certainty clears the way. Doubt hampers. Do not doubt. Do not think. Simply
follow
.”

Rossiter moved forward, expecting the
vévés
to block his path as they had before, but this time all he experienced was a slight shock, as if he’d rubbed the coat of a Persian cat the wrong way. The pain was negligible as he pushed his way through, ignoring the tingling sensation that ran through him.

“I knew you would not fail me.”
His younger self said as he turned back around, extending a hand to Rossiter in welcome. “Come. It’s time to see the show.”

It was 2002 and Rossiter was wearing grimy jeans, a battered leather jacket, mirrored aviator glasses, and spiky hair. He stumbled across the stage as he forgot the words to songs he had performed a hundred times before. It took him a second to realize that he wasn’t experiencing a memory, but was actually part of the audience, watching himself fuck up his life. It was bad enough living through it the first time; but seeing it from the outside in such unflinching detail made it even worse.

“Is this real?” he asked, turning to his younger self, who was seated at the bar next to him. “Have we traveled back in time? Can we alter the past?” He hoped against hope that the Rossiter on stage might be able to see or hear them, so he could tell him what a huge mistake he was about to make.

The doppelganger shook his head.
“No. What’s done is done.”

Rossiter looked away from his former self on the stage and saw the heckler at the bar. The guy looked like he was from Jersey. Funny, Rossiter had never noticed that before. In the past, whenever he tried to recall what the heckler looked like, all he could remember was a bloody oval perched atop a Duckhead shirt.

The heckler was drunk and yelling insults at the stage. Rossiter cringed as he threw aside his electric guitar and literally dove into the crowd. The people closest to the stage screamed and tried to get out of the way. One of the members of the band tried to pull him back onstage, but ended up sprawled atop the drum kit instead.

The heckler was either too shocked or too stupid to make a run for it. The first blow shut the heckler up. The second one sent his teeth flying. The third one broke his nose. Rossiter’s hands were closing about the heckler’s throat when the bouncer came up from behind and put him in a hammerlock.

Rossiter watched his 2002 self, red-faced and wild-eyed, shriek obscenities as the battered heckler was loaded into an ambulance. There was foam flecking the corners of his mouth.

“Had enough?”
the doppelganger asked. With a wave of a hand the scene disappeared.
“Quite an impressive display. The fool ended up with fifty stitches and unconscious for three days. You, on the other hand, spent three months in Bellevue. You also lost your house in Beverly Hills and the Mercedes. Not to mention your agent, your manager, and all your bookings for the rest of that year. Too bad, considering you were so close signing that contract with Matador Records. You stood a good chance of making a real comeback. But you blew it, didn’t you?

“Why did you show me that?” Rossiter asked. “I
know
I fucked up. I couldn’t have killed my career any deader than if I’d put a pistol to its head.”

“I have my reasons,”
the doppelganger replied with a smile.
“What if I told you it is within my power to return to you everything you have lost? That I can return you to the spotlight? That is what you really miss the most, isn’t it? Not the money, or the prestige, but the thrill of standing before thousands of screaming, swooning girls, worshipped as a god made flesh; to be adored for no other reason than that you exist.”

“Yes. I miss it.” Rossiter knew he should feel shame for confessing to such adolescent urges, but there was no point in lying to himself. He’d come of age in the brilliant, searing glare of the public’s gaze, and the thought of spending the rest of his life outside its magic circle was too horrible to bear.

“I can give it back to you. But you must want it. I cannot force a gift on you. You must take it of your own free will.”

“But...what do you want from me in return?”

The doppelganger shrugged.
“A trifle, nothing more. I need to utilize you for one or two minor activities. Then you will be free to do as you like.”

“That’s it? That’s
all
you want from me?”

“Yes. That is all.”

“Then it’s a deal.”

“Excellent. Now that you have agreed, we must seal our bargain.”

“How?”

The doppelganger’s features suddenly began to blur, the mouth widening as the nose flattened and his hair changed color and grew longer and softer. “With a kiss,” Pearl smiled, her eyes glowing like live coals.

Rossiter came out of the trance choking on phlegm. He was flat on his back, wrapped in dingy, sour-smelling sheets, his skin exuding a chill layer of sweat. His touched his naked thighs and his fingers came away sticky. He groaned in disgust and wiped his hand on the mattress.

Had he dreamed it? Or had he really been in a land beyond time and space, bargaining with a nameless, faceless entity? He shivered as he recalled Pearl’s hot red eyes staring up at him, the ectoplasmic equivalent of jism dribbling down her chin.

He got out of bed and retrieved the bottle of Stoli from the freezer. He told himself that at worst he’d had a sick wet dream; at best he had some heavy-duty mojo working in his favor.

That sounded good. And it sounded even better with every shot of vodka.

Tempter’s delight was beyond definition. At last he had succeeded! He had shown his prey the bait and the poor, deluded fool had taken it without hesitation. Now he had a foot in the material world. Granted, his hold was tenuous, but it was there. The horse had unwittingly given him access to his body and, soon, his soul. For in the place between places, there is no such thing as a symbolic act. He would have to work quickly, before the
vévés
became aware of the rupture. Still, he had enough time to gloat over his conquest.