Voodoo Tales: The Ghost Stories of Henry S Whitehead (Tales of Mystery & The Supernatural) (69 page)

Old Morris, as I knew, had not always lived on St Croix. His youth had been spent in Martinique, in the then smaller and less important town of Fort-de-France. That, of course, was many years before the terrific calamity of the destruction of St Pierre had taken place, by the eruption of Mt Pelée. Old Morris, coming to St Croix in young middle age – forty-five or thereabouts – had already been accounted a rich man. He had been engaged in no business. He was not a planter, not a storekeeper, had no profession. Where he produced his affluence was one of the local mysteries. His age, it seemed, was the other.

‘I suppose,’ Mr Bonesteel had said, ‘that Morris was nearer a hundred than ninety, when he – ah – died. I was a child of about eight at that time. I shall be seventy next August-month. That, you see, would be about sixty-two years ago, about 1861, or about the time your Civil War was beginning. Now my father has told me – he died when I was nineteen – that Old Morris looked exactly the same when he was a boy! Extraordinary. The Black People used to say – ’ Mr Bonesteel fell silent, and his eyes had an old man’s dim, far-away look.

‘The Black People have some very strange beliefs, Mr Bonesteel,’ said I, attempting to prompt him. ‘A good many of them I have heard about myself, and they interest me very much. What particular – ’

Mr Bonesteel turned his mild, blue eyes upon me, reflectively.

‘You must drop in at my house one of these days, Mr Stewart,’ said he, mildly. ‘I have some rare old rum that I’d be glad to have you sample, sir! There’s not much of it on the island these days, since Uncle Sam turned his prohibition laws loose on us in 1922.’

‘Thank you very much indeed, Mr Bonesteel,’ I replied. ‘I shall take the first occasion to do so, sir; not that I care especially for “old rum” except a spoonful in a cup of tea, or in pudding sauce, perhaps; but the pleasure of your company, sir, is always an inducement.’

Mr Bonesteel bowed to me gravely, and I returned his bow from where I sat in his airy office in Government House.

‘Would you object to mentioning what that “belief” was, sir?’

A slightly pained expression replaced my old friend’s look of hospitality.

‘All that is a lot of foolishness!’ said he, with something like asperity. He looked at me, contemplatively.

‘Not that I believe in such things, you must understand. Still, a man sees a good many things in these islands, in a lifetime, you know! Well, the Black People – ’ Mr Bonesteel looked apprehensively about him, as though reluctant to have one of his clerks overhear what he was about to say, and leaned toward me from his chair, lowering his voice to a whisper.

‘They said – it was a remark here and a kind of hint there, you must understand; nothing definite – that Morris had interfered, down there in Martinique, with some of their queer doings – offended the Zombi – something of the kind; that Morris had made some kind of conditions – oh, it was very vague, and probably all mixed up! – you know, whereby he was to have a long life and all the money he wanted – something like that – and afterward . . .

‘Well,
Mr Stewart,
you just ask somebody,
sometime,
about Morris’s death.’

Not another word about Old Morris could I extract out of Mr Bonesteel.

But of course he had me aroused. I tried Despard, who lives on the other end of the island, a man educated at the Sorbonne, and who knows, it is said, everything there is to know about the island and its affairs.

It was much the same with Mr Despard, who is an entirely different kind of person; younger, for one thing, than my old friend the government surveyor.

Mr Despard smiled, a kind of wry smile. ‘Old Morris!’ said he, reflectively, and paused.

‘Might I venture to ask – no offense, my dear sir! – why you wish to rake up such an old matter as Old Morris’s death?’

I was a bit nonplussed, I confess. Mr Despard had been perfectly courteous, as he always is, but, somehow, I had not expected such an intervention on his part.

‘Why,’ said I, ‘I should find it hard to tell you, precisely, Mr Despard. It is not that I am averse to being frank in the face of such an inquiry as yours, sir. I was not aware that there was anything important – serious, as your tone implies – about that matter. Put it down to mere curiosity if you will, and answer or not, as you wish, sir.’

I was, perhaps, a little nettled at this unexpected, and, as it then seemed to me, finicky obstruction being placed in my way. What could there be in such a case for this formal reticence – these verbal safeguards? If it were a ‘jumbee’ story, there was no importance to it. If otherwise, well, I might be regarded by Despard as a person of reasonable discretion. Perhaps Despard was some relative of Old Morris, and there was something a bit off-color about his death. That, too, might account for Mr Bonesteel’s reticence.

‘By the way,’ I inquired, noting Despard’s reticence, ‘might I ask another question, Mr Despard?’

‘Certainly, Mr Stewart.’

‘I do not wish to impress you as idly or unduly curious, but – are you and Mr Bonesteel related in any way?’

‘No, sir. We are not related in any way at all, sir.’

‘Thank you, Mr Despard,’ said I, and, bowing to each other after the fashion set here by the Danes, we parted.

I had not learned a thing about Old Morris’s death.

I went in to see Mrs Heidenklang. Here, if anywhere, I should find out what was intriguing me.

Mrs Heidenklang is an ancient Creole lady, relict of a prosperous storekeeper, who lives, surrounded by a certain state of her own, propped up in bed in an environment of a stupendous quantity of lacy things and gauzy ruffles. I did not intend to mention Old Morris to her, but only to get some information about the Zombi, if that should be possible.

I found the old lady, surrounded by her ruffles and lace things, in one of her good days. Her health has been precarious for twenty years!

It was not difficult to get her talking about the Zombi.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Heidenklang, ‘it is extraordinary how the old beliefs and the old words cling in their minds! Why, Mr Stewart, I was hearing about a trial in the police court a few days ago. One old Black woman had summoned another for abusive language. On the witness stand the complaining old woman said: “She cahl me a wuthless ole Cartagene, sir!” Now, think of that! Carthage was destroyed ’way back in the days of Cato the Elder, you know, Mr Stewart! The greatest town of all Africa. To be a Carthaginian meant to be a sea-robber – a pirate; that is, a thief. One old woman on this island, more than two thousand years afterward, wishes to call another a thief, and the word “Cartagene” is the word she naturally uses! I suppose that has persisted on the West Coast and throughout all those village dialects in Africa without a break, all these centuries! The Zombi of the French islands? Yes, Mr Stewart. There are some extraordinary beliefs. Why, perhaps you’ve heard mention made of Old Morris, Mr Stewart. He used to live in your house, you know?’

I held my breath. Here was a possible trove. I nodded my head. I did not dare to speak!

‘Well, Old Morris, you see, lived most of his earlier days in Martinique, and, it is said, he had a somewhat adventurous life there, Mr Stewart. Just what he did or how he got himself involved, seems never to have been made clear, but – in some way, Mr Stewart, the Black People believe, Morris got himself involved with a very powerful “Jumbee”, and that is where what I said about the persistence of ancient beliefs comes in. Look on that table there, among those photographs, Mr Stewart. There! that’s the place. I wish I were able to get up and assist you. These maids! Everything askew, I have no doubt! Do you observe a kind of fish-headed thing, about as big as the palm of your hand? Yes! That is it!’

I found the ‘fish-headed thing’ and carried it over to Mrs Heidenklang. She took it in her hand and looked at it. It lacked a nose, but otherwise it was intact, a strange, uncouth-looking little godling, made of anciently-polished volcanic stone, with huge, protruding eyes, small, human-like ears, and what must have been a nose like a Tortola jackfish, or a black witch-bird, with its parrot beak.

‘Now that,’ continued Mrs Heidenklang, ‘is one of the very ancient household gods of the aborigines of Martinique and you will observe the likeness in the idea to the
Lares
and
Penates
of your school-Latin days. Whether this is a
lar
or a
penate
, I can not tell,’ and the old lady paused to smile at her little joke, ‘but at any rate he is a representation of something very powerful – a fish-god of the Caribs. There’s something Egyptian about the idea, too, I’ve always suspected; and, Mr Stewart, a Carib or an Arawak Indian – there were both in these islands, you know – looked much like an ancient Egyptian; perhaps half like your Zuñi or Aztec Indians, and half Egyptian, would be a fair statement of his appearance. These fish-gods had men’s bodies, you see, precisely like the hawk-headed and jackal-headed deities of ancient Egypt.

‘It was one of those, the Black People say, with which Mr Morris got himself mixed up – “Gahd knows” as they say – how! And, Mr Stewart, they say, his death was terrible! The particulars I’ve never heard, but my father knew, and he was sick for several days, after seeing Mr Morris’s body. Extraordinary, isn’t it? And when are you coming this way again, Mr Stewart? Do drop in and call on an old lady.’

I felt that I was progressing.

The next time I saw Mr Bonesteel, which was that very evening, I stopped him on the street and asked for a word with him.

‘What was the date, or the approximate date, Mr Bonesteel, of Mr Morris’s death? Could you recall that, sir?’

Mr Bonesteel paused and considered.

‘It was just before Christmas,’ said he. ‘I remember it not so much by Christmas as by the races, which always take place the day after Christmas. Morris had entered his sorrel mare Santurce, and, as he left no heirs, there was no one who “owned” Santurce, and she had to be withdrawn from the races. It affected the betting very materially and a good many persons were annoyed about it, but there wasn’t anything that could be done.’

I thanked Mr Bonesteel, and not without reason, for his answer had fitted into something that had been growing in my mind. Christmas was only eight days off. This drama of the furniture and Old Morris getting into bed, I had thought (and not unnaturally, it seems to me), might be a kind of reenactment of the tragedy of his death. If I had the courage to watch, night after night, I might be relieved of the necessity of asking any questions. I might witness whatever had occurred, in some weird reproduction, engineered God knows how!

For three nights now, I had seen the phenomenon of Old Morris getting into bed repeated, and each time it was clearer. I had sketched him into my drawing, a short, squat figure, rather stooped and fat, but possessed of a strange, gorillalike energy. His movements, as he walked toward the bed, seized the edge of the mosquito-netting and climbed in, were, somehow, full of
power
, which was the more apparent since these were ordinary motions. One could not help imagining that Old Morris would have been a tough customer to tackle, for all his alleged age!

This evening, at the hour when this phenomenon was accustomed to enact itself, that is, about eleven o’clock, I watched again. The scene was very much clearer, and I observed something I had not noticed before. Old Morris’s
simulacrum
paused just before seizing the edge of the netting, raised its eyes, and began, with its right hand, a motion precisely like one who is about to sign himself with the cross. The motion was abruptly arrested, however, only the first of the four touches on the body being made.

I saw, too, something of the expression of the face that night, for the first time. At the moment of making the arrested sign, it was one of despairing horror. Immediately afterward, as this motion appeared to be abandoned for the abrupt clutching of the lower edge of the mosquito-net, it changed into a look of ferocious stubbornness, of almost savage self-confidence. I lost the facial expression as the appearance sank down upon the bed and pulled the ghostly bedclothes over itself.

Three nights later, when all this had become as greatly intensified as had the clearing-up process that had affected the furniture, I observed another motion, or what might be taken for the faint foreshadowing of another motion. This was not on the part of Old Morris. It made itself apparent as lightly and elusively as the swift flight of a moth across the reflection of a lamp, over near the bedroom door (the doors in my house are more than ten feet high, in fourteen-foot-high walls), a mere flicker of something – something entering the room. I looked, and peered at that corner, straining my eyes, but nothing could I see save what I might describe as an intensification of the black shadow in that corner near the door, vaguely formed like a slim human figure, though grossly out of all human proportion. The vague shadow looked purple against the black. It was about ten feet high, and otherwise as though cast by an incredibly tall, thin human being.

I made nothing of it then; and again, despite all this cumulative experience with the strange shadows of my bedroom, attributed this last phenomenon to my eyes. It was too vague to be at that time accounted otherwise than as a mere subjective effect.