Tropic of Darkness (17 page)

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

They carried Jack inside between them, put him in a chair. He looked like he'd gotten in a fight with a machine, his whole face puffed up. And from the way the man was holding himself, Hague reckoned a couple of his ribs were fractured for good measure.

But he had to content himself with a spectator's role while Torres took over.

Oddly, the Cuban's main interest didn't seem to be in Gilliard's injuries. He took a flashlight from his pocket, and shone it into the musician's pupils. Gilliard kept muttering something, talking low and breathlessly. Hague could barely catch any of it. Only something about being chased. And daylight.

“The pills I gave you?” Torres was asking.

“Gone. I lost them.”

“When you took this beating, yes? Bad fortune has clung to you ever since we met, is that not so?”

And when Jack confirmed it, the doctor nodded. He went over to a cabinet, produced a vial of fluid and a vacuum-wrapped syringe.

“Painkiller?” Hague inquired.

“No, anything but,” came the reply. “Caffeine.”

The older doctor jerked with shock. “What are you trying to do, finish him off altogether?”

“The sisters will, if they get half the chance. We must do everything in our power to keep Jack awake.”

A feeling of sheer helplessness descended over Hague as he watched the man swab Gilliard's arm. Nothing here was as it should be. No one acted as they ought. He felt like he was lost in fog, nothing familiar to guide him by.

Gilliard's hands began to tremble as the drug hit his system.

“Luis, get over here,” Torres snapped. “Keep him walking around. I'll get some cold compresses and then take a look at those ribs.”

He glanced back at the cornet player.

“They have come to you in daylight, you say? This is serious, then . . . I've never heard of such a thing before, and there is not a single mention of it in the book.”

“What do you think it means?”

“We're running out of time, perhaps. They're getting stronger.”

*   *   *

They'd all grown silent when Jack finished telling them his story, everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours. Even Doctor Hague felt uneasy. The surgery seemed to echo, and he could hear the smallest murmur from the street outside.

“It is exactly as I feared,” Torres was muttering. “The sisters are preventing you getting off this island any way they can. Maybe they sense victory. The promise of it draws them closer. They are taking their first tentative steps out, and ought to fear the sunlight less and less with every new excursion.”

“And we stop this how?”

“Take the fight to them,
Señor
. Push back, and hopefully destroy them. They are out in the open now, so it is possible.”

“But it's my fight,” Jack protested. “I don't want anyone else putting their safety on the line for me.”

The high priest looked down for a short while at those words. And there was a peculiar cold light in his pupils when his gaze returned.

“You remember what I told you when we first met, Jack? That if the sisters manage to return, a doorway might be opened between our world and the supernatural one? Who knows what disasters may occur if that thing happens? It is not just you. No, it is all of us.”

“That's just speculation.”

“No it's not. The dream world and the real world
must
not be combined.”

At which point, the
Babaaláwo
turned his stark attention to the others.

“It is wholly your decision. None of you should feel obliged, and no worse will be thought of you if you back out.”

Luis looked a little scared, but tightened his grip around Jack's shoulders.

“I've come this far, so I guess that I'm still in.”

Torres stared round at the others. Manuel drew back slightly, then gave a tense nod. “
Para mi familia,
” he muttered. “And for Carlos.”

“And you, sir?” Torres asked of Hague, who pursed his lips.

“I still don't believe a word of this. But I didn't come the whole way out here just for a vacation. I could use a laugh.”

“Five of us, then. That is good.” Torres rubbed his palms together, gathering his thoughts. “There are things I need to pick up from my house. It's best that you go on ahead, and we meet up again in a few hours' time.”

“Where?” Hague asked.

“At the DeFlores mansion, of course.”

*   *   *

Except it turned out that the tunnel underneath the bay was closed. There'd been an accident inside, police vehicles and ambulances everywhere. Barriers were being set up, uniformed men waving at approaching cars and shouting orders. The traffic around them was completely stalled.

Manuel couldn't afford to waste this much fuel, and so he had to switch his engine off. Which meant they had no ventilation save the windows. They sat in the hot sunlight for over an hour. The barriers ahead showed not the slightest sign of being lifted.

Finally, the short man cursed, turned his ignition, and then edged the Dodge back and forth until he could swing it round the way he'd come.

“We'll have to take the other route.”

The bay sprawled in every which direction, and there was no single road around it, which meant a long journey.

Luis produced a cell phone and called Torres's house, informed him what was going on.

“He thinks it's no accident,” he told the rest when he hung up. “Too much of a coincidence. It is the sisters, trying to slow us down.”

A point that was emphasized heading up along the Via Blanca. They were part of a line of smoothly flowing traffic, and there seemed to be no obstacles in the least . . . when a truck up ahead of them, piled high with building material, abruptly swerved and shed its load. Dozens of breezeblocks and great swaths of lumber hit the asphalt. The cars in front of them slewed sideways as they braked, and several collided.

It was more than two hours before they were on the move again.

And heading up the north side of the bay, the steering wheel went spongy under Manuel's grasp. He swore again, pulled over to the roadside. And when he got out, the rear offside tire was flat.

The spare had no air in it either.

Hague eased himself out, shielding his eyes against the glare.

“You guys go on,” he told the others. “I'll be okay.”

Was he genuine, or was he getting nervous, trying to back out?

“In this heat?” Manuel shook his head angrily. “And besides, I don't think Jack can even make it the rest of the way on foot.”

Luis was getting on his cell phone again, not for the first time this afternoon.

*   *   *

They were still waiting around the Dodge when Torres finally put in an appearance. He was driving a Toyota SUV, large enough to take them all.

“I've been similarly hampered,” he said. “Suffered mishaps the entire way. Still a coincidence, Doctor?”

Hague could only shrug, uncertain what to think of this. It wasn't exactly proof positive that there was anything supernatural going on.

“Damn,” Torres muttered as the rest climbed in. He was checking the position of the sun. “I was hoping to begin this much further from nightfall.”

But they drove on without any further incident, and finally wound up outside the house.

Everything around them shimmered. The bay off to their left looked more like quicksilver than water. Boats were reduced to phantoms, and the far shore was a dimly colored blur. It would have been gorgeous to look at, Hague was thinking, if it hadn't been for the damned mansion. This was the first time he'd seen it. In spite of which, it was familiar somehow.

It seemed to be partly immune to the hot Caribbean sunshine. Partly trapped in shadow in the full brightness of day. The weirdness of it drew him inward, holding his attention.

The others in the group seemed equally affected. They'd gone very quiet, their movements hesitant. All except for Torres, who had sensed the strangeness too, but was reacting to it in a different way. There was a hurried stiffness to his actions as he began unloading his gear.

There was an old-fashioned black leather medical bag, which rattled as he set it down. A coarse hemp sack did the same. And a large basket with a wire mesh door, the kind that was used for transporting pets. Jack could make out huddled gray shapes in its depths.

“Dear God,” Hague muttered. “Are those what I think they are?”

“It's time to get going,” Torres answered briskly. “There's a great deal to get ready.”

He went marching off, leaving the others to follow. Luis stayed with Jack. Manuel helped Hague. They made a strange procession as they approached the front gate.

They were already on the path, and rounding the corner of the house, when Manuel spotted something off in the direction of the water. He hurried over to the rocks, and returned a minute later looking very grim indeed.

Something wet and multihued was flapping from his grasp. A necktie.

“Your brother-in-law's?” Hague asked.

So Carlos's death
was
somehow connected with this place. It wasn't too much longer until they found the hole that had been kicked through the boarded-up window.

“Him, too?” Luis wondered.

“I'd imagine so.”

Torres produced four flashlights from his bag, sharing them around. Jack played a beam in through the gap, letting out a whistle when the furniture and paintings were revealed.

“This place is still inhabited.”

Every eye went to Torres, who could only shake his head. There was no point in even trying to guess the explanation.

They climbed inside as quietly as they could. Hague had to be lifted. Luis, very jumpily, brought up the rear. The five men stood close together, listening for the slightest sound. The only noises they could hear were the occasional creak from the house's timbers and the rushing of the waves outside.

Torres approached a door, paused again with his fingers on the handle, and then opened it. A cavernous hallway was revealed. A huge iron chandelier suspended on a massive chain could be made out halfway along it.

He shone his flashlight up a tall, curved flight of stairs.

“We have to find the very heart of this place,” he announced. “It will probably be somewhere up there.”

*   *   *

They'd opened the door to a room lined heavily with shelves, before much longer. Jack stared in, his puzzled gaze running along the ranks of jars.

“What are they?”

“Part of the twins' magic, perhaps?” the high priest answered briskly.

He would not meet any of their eyes, so maybe it was a part that he didn't want to talk about.

“We need more light in here. But no one use those black candles between the jars.” He indicated. “Do not even touch them.”

Hague went trundling closer to them, nonetheless. Tipped his head, and then looked startled.

“I can hear noises coming from them. What's that about?”

Jack stepped up, and could make out the same thing. Not voices, exactly. More like very faint insectile sounds. He stared across at the high priest—who seemed to understand that he'd get no more help without a proper explanation. Torres cleared his throat, his face stiff.

“This is mentioned in the book. I always prayed it was not real. They . . . contain the souls of all the sisters' previous victims.”

No one was so much as blinking. Even Hague had gone quite still.

“The twins keep them here?” Jack asked.

The high priest nodded.

“Pierre's trapped here?”

All the
Babaaláwo
could do was stare back at him. Over by the shelving, Leland Hague absorbed every word that the man had said, then snorted loudly. Frank Jackson was in one of these? He raised the end of one of his crutches to the nearest pot. And jabbed it, so it rattled. But nothing else happened. What a load!

*   *   *

Hague watched Torres as he set to work. The man had brought large candles of his own, and the room was soon filled with their ochre glow.

Torres put on a big necklace of green and brown beads, then tied a smaller string of them around his temples. He drew a cross below it with some coarse white powder. And then, with colored dyes, he marked crude symbols on his cheeks. He produced a curious-looking staff—weird carved faces staring from it—and a length of chalk, and moved about the floor, drawing more symbols with the latter.

There was nothing anyone else could do, right at the moment. The fellow looked utterly absorbed.

How very serious he was about all this. Hague took it in with amazement. The man was entirely bound up in this curious activity. Taking it as seriously as a chess player might take his next series of moves. It was as if he actually believed reality was like some kind of patterned fabric, and if you had the right knowledge you could unpick it, reweave it to a new design.

Torres produced a bowl, into which he started pouring liquids. He added the same powder he had used to mark his face, then began crushing herbs and ferns in.

“It is called
omiero
,” Manuel was explaining to Jack. “A ritual fluid, used for purification.”

Torres was muttering under his breath, his tone rising slightly every time he put in something new. He drew a large chalk circle on the floor and sprinkled some of the white powder around its circumference. The man held his palms out flat, and began tracing its outline through the air.

“What's he doing now?”

“Building an invisible barrier,” Manuel answered. “Making it as strong as he is able. It is very hard for him.”

Torres's lips stopped moving. His eyes came open, and his exhausted gaze refocused on the rest.

“It's nearly time.”

From the leather bag, he produced a dagger. He pulled a large black rooster from the wire-front basket.