Tempter, page 5
Interested by what he’s read so far, Rossiter sat down on the sofa and began thumbing through the rest of the book. The actual text seemed to be in Latin, but what caught his attention were the numerous engravings of elaborate mandalas, some of which seemed to change their pattern every time he looked at them.
He used to have a poet-friend named Jim who loved dropping acid while looking at weird shit like that. Rossiter couldn’t resist smiling as he remembered how enthusiastically his friend had been about the mind-expanding power of psychedelics. Back in 1996 Jim had taken a sabbatical in Paris. He sent Rossiter a letter, describing the treasures of the Louvre and the macabre wonders of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery as seen through his ‘third eye’, as he called it. Jim made Paris sound so wild and fantastic, Rossiter decided to join him and see for himself. Hell, he deserved it; his new album was almost finished, after two years of being hassled by his label.
Rossiter wired Jim that he was on his way and jumped the next jet to Paris, hoping the telegram would get there before he did. At first he was relieved to see Jim waiting for him at Orly. Then he got a good look at him. He had not seen his friend for nearly two months, and he was shocked by the changes the drummer had undergone. Where once Jim appeared boyish and energetic, now he was wasted and bloated. It was clear that Jim had given up psychedelics in favor of harder drugs.
The reunion turned uneasy within a day. Rossiter was eager to see the sights the fabled City of Lights had to offer, but the only thing Jim was interested in was shooting up in his rented pension. Rossiter returned home after a couple of days, disgusted and depressed by his friend’s dissolution. Jim sent a few more letters after that, but he did not read them; instead, he stuffed them in his desk drawer unopened. When the news came of the inevitable overdose, Rossiter found himself consumed by grief and guilt. He took out the unopened letters and read them. Most were stoned rambles about the duplicity of women, with the occasional stanza of bad poetry thrown in for good measure. One letter was actually a grocery list stuffed inside the envelope by mistake.
Strange he should think about the dead poet at that moment. It had been years since he had last thought about him. Rossiter shook his head, dispelling the vivid memories the weird designs had triggered in his mind. He was reminded of the visual puzzles in the back of the old Children’s Hi-Light magazines. Maybe if he sat there long enough, staring at the lines and squiggles that comprised the design, he would finally see the monkeys hiding in the trees and the Indians crouching in the bushes. But, instead, the longer he looked at the designs, the heavier his eyelids became...
He was somewhere that wasn’t anywhere; he could feel himself hovering just beyond his physical body. It was disconcerting but not unpleasant, kind of like the effect he got from huffing nitrous gas. He didn’t feel warm and he didn’t feel cold. He didn’t feel anything. He was in a place that was neither dark nor light.
While there was no time in this place between places, there was certainly space. As his vision adjusted, he glimpsed traceries of light and movement all around him, like tiny, fluorescent tropical fish darting about a vast aquarium. As he focused his attention on the flickering lights, they began to take on form and substance, and he recognized them as the elaborate vévés that decorated the interior of Papa Beloved’s temple. He recalled a photograph he’d seen of Picasso drawing he outline of a minotaur with a penlight and empty air. The sudden realization that something might be creating the vévés unnerved him. He wondered if he was visible to whatever it was that drew the vévés, and if it might resent his intrusion.
There was a ripple in the nothing. Then another. Although he could not see or hear anything, he knew something was approaching. The vévés suddenly burned as bright as suns, their outlines suffused with color, like the throat sacs of lizards challenging a newcomer.
His soul froze as if pinned to the spot, like a rabbit facing an oncoming automobile. He wanted to scream, but he did not have lungs. As the vévés burned like neon snakes, he turned inward, not wanting to see whatever it that was coming for him. Then--just as suddenly as it had arrived--the thing gone. Although he had not seen whatever it was the vévés scared away, he had the distinct impression that it had smiled at him.
“That was sure one wild-ass dream,” Tee said when he related his experience to her.
“You think that’s all it was? A dream?”
“The Loa communicate through dreams all the time. Maybe you just happened to get a closer look than most folks.”
“But I didn’t see anything.”
Tee sighed and rolled onto her side, propping herself up on one elbow. “I swear, folks expect the spirit world to be like those damn movies they rent on Netflix! Of course you didn’t see nothin’! Why do you think they call them Les Invisibles? Besides, you don’t need to see ‘em to know they’re there. The Loa live through you, whether you like it or not. You’re their conduit to the material world: they are the Divine Horsemen, and you are the horse.”
“You’re saying that I was possessed while I was asleep?”
“Maybe. Or maybe it was a Guede, instead of a Loa. Or maybe it was just something you ate.” Tee snuggled closer, grinding her hips against him. Rossiter felt himself grow hard and all thoughts of vévés and the spirit world abruptly vanished from his mind.
At least for the next twenty minutes.
Tempter was excited.
His agitation could not be divined by any physical means, for such things do not exist in the place between places. Although he possessed a corporeal body, it had been years—perhaps decades—since he last inhabited it. It was not that he disliked the physical realm: far from it. He had been forced into limbo as a means to preserve his energies. Still, even here he was a prisoner, as the cursed vévé were quick to remind him.
His warders were deceptively quiet right now, their configuration almost transparent. But Tempter knew better than to think they were gone. The moment he should try to leave, they would flare to life once more, burning him with their heatless light. He had allowed his eagerness to overwhelm his caution earlier and had paid the price.
Still, he could be excused his enthusiasm. He had been waiting for someone to find the book. He hoped he had not frightened away his prey. It was very important that it come back. Tempter was uncertain as to whether his prey was male or female, but its hunger was all too visible. And that was all he needed to know, really.
He had been waiting a long time. There was no hurry. He could afford to be patient. Once his prey returned, he would shape his bait to mirror its need. And then he would reel the prey in close enough to grab it.
The vévé made excellent guards. His nemesis had been correct about that. They were good at keeping him inside. But when it came to keeping others out, that was another story…
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.”
