Wolf Mountain, page 17
He stood completely naked in front of the fire. Even in his human form, Henri Christophe’s body was terrifying. It was thickly muscled and capable of inflicting great damage. But he had two gaping wounds where the silver blade had pierced him. He was not all-powerful.
Henri Christophe began chanting in Creole to the rhythm of the drums. He knelt before the bowl and the pyre, chanting all the while. Cupping his hands, he reached into the bowl. It appeared to be filled with oil. He took the oil and began to spread it over his entire body.
When at last he was finished, he got back to his feet. He spread his arms wide, closed his eyes, raised his head, and chanted stronger than before. The sight was awesome to behold. He looked like an oiled bodybuilder. The fire illuminated every muscle, every tendon.
Henri le Diable stopped chanting. He lowered his head and—eyes still closed—turned toward Asher.
He opened his eyes.
The eyes didn’t just glow red—theyshone. They were like two red lasers boring into Asher. Henri Christophe’s lips parted into an obscene smile, revealing a mouth full of growing fangs. He looked like a demon.
This is death, Asher thought. Just accept it. It will make it easier.
And then Asher asked himself:Isn’t this what I came here for, really? Why had he been so desperate to pursue a story in a dangerous country? Why had he gone toward the danger at every step of the way? To be helpful? But hadn’t all his efforts done more damage than good? Wasn’t he a complete failure as a hero? Wasn’t he a complete failure as a man? Had he not failed at both his marriage and his career? Wasn’t the ultimate goal of this enterprise to seek death?
Yes,Asher thought,and no. He had sought death—but just to confront it. To look into its face and not be afraid. Now, he was facing death. He wasn’t afraid. He did not want to die.
Henri le Diable got down on all fours and the change happened. It seemed to take forever. The thing groaned as muscle and bone stretched and grew. A thick layer of fur developed over the entire body. The mouth cried out as it elongated into the muzzle of a wolf.
Then the transformation was complete. The drummers kept drumming. Before the pyre now stood a fully-formedjé-rouge—wolf and hyena and man all at once.
The thing gazed at Asher and seemed to smile. Then it drew back on its hind legs, raised its head to the sky, and let out a long, terrifying, triumphant howl.
The howl was answered by a cacophony of others.
This was obviously unexpected. Thejé-rouge lookedaround wildly. The howls seemed to come from all around them.
Suddenly, the parapet was alive with blazing red eyes. The drummers stopped, frightened. The Henri Christophe-thing growled.
At once, a pack of loups-garous descended on the drummers and ripped them apart. The Henri Christophe loup-garou raised its hackles and barked. It was now confronted by four other loups-garous.
The Henri Christophe-thing seemed cowed now. It back-stepped and accidentally burned itself on the fire. Looking around, seeing nowhere else to go, it stood its ground and growled.
As if on cue, the other werewolves leapt on him. Asher saw that Coco had her eyes firmly shut but he could not look away as—in a scene out of Bosch—the pack tore the Henri Christophe-thing apart and ate his body.
When they were done and nothing was left but a skeleton, the loups-garous turned their attention to Asher and Coco.
“Oh shit,” Asher said.
But the werewolves did not attack. They put down their heads and calmly left them there.
Chapter 16
Les Loups Sans Cheveux
Sometime later, Asher woke. His neck throbbed from the awkward position in which his head had rested. The pyre still smoldered. In the distance, light streaked the horizon. Dawn approached.
He looked over at Coco. Her head lay on the back of the chair and he couldn’t tell if she was awake. “Coco?”
She opened her eyes. With great effort, she turned to him. “I’m okay.” She didn’t seem okay. Her voice was scratchy and her face was drawn and listless.
“I want you to know I’m very sorry,” he said.
“For what?”
Asher looked around. “For everything. For getting you into this mess. For Saint-Fort. For not having a better rescue.”
“We’re still alive.”
“No thanks to me. Every step along the way, I’ve screwed up.”
“Don’t sell yourself short. Henri Christophe is dead.”
“But how? What...who were those things?”
They had another hour to wait before they found out. By then the sun had risen over the mountain. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Asher and Coco kept trying to work their bonds and break free. Asher knew that his exposed skin would get burned to a crisp if he had to spend all day tied in the hot sunlight.
But then they heard movement. A group of four Haitian men—three middle-aged and one a bit elderly—emerged up the staircase and onto the parapet. They had the look of the moderately-wealthy of Haiti—they appeared in good health, with all their teeth, and they wore clean clothes that were not yet threadbare.
“Bonjour,” the elder one said.
Asher raised an eyebrow. “Hello.”
The Haitians set about untying them. Asher massaged at his aching wrists as soon as they were free. He was handed a bottle of water, which he drained in several gulps.
“So let me guess,” Asher said, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. “You guys are The Hairless Wolves. The secret society of loups-garous.”
The three other Haitians looked to the oldest one. He smiled at Asher. “We areLes Loups Sans Cheveux.”
“And it was you who destroyedHenri le Diable last night?”
The old man nodded. Now freed, Asher got to his feet and went to help Coco stand. “Now here’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: Did youmake him a loup-garou in the first place?”
The old man sighed and looked at his feet. “Yes.”
“Then everything that has happened has been your fault.”
The old man shrugged. “Things are not as simple as they seem.”
“It seems rather simple to me. You took a murderer and turned him into a monster.”
Coco grabbed Asher’s arm. “Don’t.”
“It’s alright,cherie,” the old man said. “There are rules. Henri Christophe was a member of our society. He was betrayed by his own people. When he was free, he asked us to becomejé-rouge to have his revenge. That was a fair request. Disloyalty must be punished.”
“Oh,” Asher said. “When you put it like that, of course you are completely blameless.”
The old man got angry for the first time. “This is Haiti,blanc! You think you know what life is here? How long have you been here—a couple of weeks? There has never been a stable government. There has never been a rule of law. Here,we are the law. We set our own rules. Us and all societies like us. We are the real governments of Haiti.”
“So you create werewolves to punish the wicked? What about those children in the tent cities? Were they wicked?”
The old man shook his head. “We made him one of us. Our society has rules that must be obeyed. Christophe swore to uphold those rules.”
“Let me guess,” Asher said. “As soon as you turned him, he went off and did exactly as he wanted?”
The old man sighed. “Yes.”
“You took your sweet time in stopping him, didn’t you?”
“No. We tried before. One of our brothers went after him but Christophe killed him. I knew it would take all of us to bring him down. We needed him exposed and vulnerable. We knew he would come here. So we waited.”
“And used us as bait?”
The old man shrugged.
“And what happens now? Are you going to kill us? We know your secrets.”
“No, of course not. If you want to go back to America and report on the—what do you call us? — werewolves you’ve seen, go right ahead. Who will believe you?”
“Haitians may believe me.”
The old man smiled. “They already believe. There have always been loups-garous in Haiti. And there always will be.”
“I want you to know that what you did caused a lot of harm,” Asher said. “Innocent people died. Three of them were my friends.”
“We know. We have restored justice.”
“That’s not going to bring my friends back.” He put his arm around Coco. “This woman lost her cousin and she went through hell.”
The younger Haitians looked indignant. They did not seem accustomed to being rebuked or having their authority challenged. The oldbocor simply lowered his head.
“Come on,” Asher said to Coco, “let’s go.”
Just before they were out of sight, thebocor called out. “Monsieur Greene, do not think that by returning to America you will be free of loups-garous.”
Halfway down the stairs, Asher looked at him over his shoulder. “I’ve never run into one in New Jersey.”
“Not there,” thebocor said. “Up north. In the wolves’ natural habitat. Where it will have plenty of room to roam free. Look to Canada. Wherever the French have been, you will find loups-garous.”
Asher contemplated this for a moment. Then he turned and led Coco out of the Citadelle.
Chapter 17
The Arcadian Coast
Asher left Coco asleep in bed. He quietly slipped on his bathing suit and exited the bungalow. He wore a pair of crocs to protect his feet from the pebble beach at their resort.
It was another lovely Haitian morning outside. The night had been filled with thunderstorms, of course but now there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was too early to be truly hot yet.
Birdsong filled the air as Asher walked toward the shore. He passed one bungalow in disuse. The door appeared ripped from its hinges. I wonder what happened there, Asher thought, in passing.
They were at a resort hotel on the Arcadian Coast—one of the vacation areas of Haiti. After he and Coco had made their way back to Port-au-Prince, they had stayed for a couple of nights at the Hotel Olaffson. Coco had to tell her family that Saint-Fort was dead; that there was no body to be found. In Voodoo, this is unfortunate as the relativesmust know where a family member’s physical remains are in order to commune with them.
Asher had his own matters that needed attending. First there came a long phone call in which he repeatedly and emphatically told his two confused children how much he loved them. Next, he called Gary Simmons to tell him that: (A) he was alive; (B) he’d been through hell; (C) no, he couldn’t tell him exactly what—beyond the mere fact that he’d been kidnapped; (D) he would file a story very soon; and (E) that yes, Gary wasn’t completely wrong in warning him not to go to Haiti.
But after Saint-Fort’s funeral, he and Coco had been devastated. The urban blight and congestion of Port-au-Prince had been stifling. So Asher checked out of the beautiful Hotel Olaffson and climbed into Coco’s truck so that she could take them away from it all.
Gentle waves lapped the pebble shore as Asher reached the beach. The view here was magnificent. To his left, Asher could see the entire city of Port-au-Prince. It lay at the bottom of a bowl formed by the immense mountains that cut a jagged line against the horizon. He was surroundedby mountains on both sides, as well as directly in front of him asIle de la Gonave rose out of the Caribbean. He waved to a passing fisherman as the man rowed past him.
Asher kept a pair of swimmer’s goggles in his bathing suit pocket. He put them on and dove in. He kept his shoes on; standing on the hard rocks in bare feet was virtually impossible.
He swam for about fifteen minutes. No matter how far out he went, he could see to the rocky bottom of the clear water. A multitude of multi-colored fish kept him company.
When he arrived back at the bungalow, he found Coco awake and already dressed. She sat in front of the mirror looking lovely in a bathing suit and sarong. The television was set to the New York news in the background. “Good morning, sunshine,” she said.
“Good morning, gorgeous. What shall we do today?”
“Go for breakfast, and then spend the day at the pool.”
He went over to her and kissed the back of her neck. “Sounds like a plan.”
“After that,” she said, “book a flight to Florida.”
He rested his hands on her shoulder and looked at her in the mirror. “You sure you can leave your parents here?”
She looked down. “I’ve been here long enough. I’ll be back but I just can’t stay here right now. I have to get on with my life.” She turned in her seat and looked up at him. “Come with me.”
Asher looked at her a moment. “All right.”
Coco was taken aback. “Seriously?”
Asher laughed. “What? Didn’t you mean it?”
“No,” she added hastily, “I meant it but I know you have your life back in Jersey. I was prepared for more of an argument.”
“A beautiful woman asks me to come to Florida with her and you think I’m going to say no? I think you overestimate my journalism career. Besides, I have a book to write now.”
As the words were leaving his mouth, Asher wondered if they were true. He did have a life in New Jersey—albeit, not much of one. Most importantly, he had to see his kids again as soon as possible. But why not fly them down to Florida?
And then there was his relationship with Coco. Could there really be a future in it, despite the differences in their backgrounds? They clung to each other to survive through a life-and-death situation but what would happen when the mundanities of everyday life set in?
I’d be a fool not to try, Asher thought.
At that moment, their attention was directed at the television when the anchorman said: “…and in Haiti today, Jean-Claude—or ‘Baby Doc’—Duvalier is being charged with theft, corruption, and misappropriation of funds. Duvalier claims that he has returned to Haiti to help the country recover from the earthquake while critics charge he is trying to free approximately four million dollars from a frozen Swiss bank account. He is under house arrest—or ‘mansion arrest’—in a wealthy suburb of Port-au-Prince.”
Asher shook his head. “There have always been werewolves in Haiti,” he said, “and there always will be.”
January 2011 - September 2014
Acknowledgements
This book was born out of a (seemingly) unrelated interest in two topics: Haiti and werewolves. Somewhere in my reading, I discovered that Haiti had its own tradition of werewolves—or loups-garous—orjé-rouge(a term I didn’t even discover until the second draft). Once I found this out, I did an internet search and—much like Asher Greene—discovered a small news item about a man being lynched as a werewolf in the tent cities of post-earthquake Haiti.
Many sources were invaluable to me during the writing of this book. The great horror writer, Hugh B. Cave, used to live in Haiti and wrote a wonderful memoir of his life there, entitled: Haiti: The High Road to Adventure. It is currently out of print but, if you can get your hands on a used copy, I highly recommend it. Hugh has written his own story of Haitian werewolves but I haven’t yet been able to procure a copy. Also invaluable were Zora Neale Hurston’s Tell My Horse: Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica, Laurent Dubois’s Haiti: Aftershocks of History, Wade Davis’s The Serpent and the Rainbow, Jan Rogonzinski’s A Brief History of the Caribbean, Graham Greene’s The Comedians, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Werewolves by Nathan Robert Brown, The Book of Werewolves by Sabine Baring-Gould, “Venance Lafrance Is Not Dead” by Mischa Berlinski, and Haiti Noir edited by Edwidge Danticat. YouTube, Google Images, and Google Earth were also invaluable tools—as were countless television news programs. My grateful appreciation to the Haitians I have met, both in Haiti and America. A sincere thank you goes to the Food For The Poor organization who allowed me to accompany them on one of their missionary trips to Port-au-Prince—you are literally doing God’s work.
I would like to thank my editor, the novelist, Robert S. Wilson, whose website is http://www.shiningincrimson.com/ . Please check out his works.
For the website, I would like to thank my publicist, Joseph Giovannoli, and David May.
For his wonderful cover art, I would like to thank Devin Robinson.
Filmmaker Josh Rubenstein created the wonderful trailer. Check out his other works at http://www.joshrube.com/ .
As always, I would like to thank my brothers in Alpha Kappa Lambda for their love, support, and helping me to achieve a wholeness of manhood.
And finally, once again, for being kind enough to read my novel and write a lovely blurb, the late Dominic Di-Natale.
About The Author
JR Pinto began his career as a filmmaker. After receiving a degree in Philosophy and Creative Writing from George Washington University, he wrote and directed the feature film, When I’m Thirty-Five, which was screened at the Director’s Guild of America as part of the OUTFEST series. He then spent several unremarkable years in Los Angeles working in the television industry before returning east to get his MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. An inveterate traveler, he now teaches Travel Writing at FDU, which also colors his fiction. Wolf Mountain is his first published novel.
J R Pinto, Wolf Mountain
