Picking Up the Ghost, page 17
“You are E Rú, right?”
“As you have named me, master,” answered the lion.
“And you must obey my commands?”
“As I have been constructed, master.”
Already the Fool was thinking beyond the Hyenas, thinking of ways that E Rú could make his life easier, so much easier.
“E Rú, for your first order, my village is overrun with Hyenas. I want you to chase them away.”
The spirit bowed again. “Gladly, master,” and bounded through the wall of the building without touching it.
Before the Fool could rush outside he heard the cries of the Hyenas, “A lion! A lion is among is!” as E Rú ran them down. Within seconds the Hyenas scattered and fled from the village.
His task done, E Rú returned to his master’s side and followed the Fool to the cattle pen to gloat. But the villagers were as afraid of E Rú and the Fool as they were of the Hyenas.
“We are not coming out with that lion here!” they cried, “We are no safer than we were with the Hyenas!”
The Fool turned to E Rú and said, “E Rú, see these villagers?”
“Yes, master.”
“I order you. Do not eat any of them.”
“As is your command, master”
But the villagers were not convinced. “If you are this monster’s master you can change your order. We cannot trust it because we cannot trust you. We are afraid of your power.”
“All right,” the Fool was getting frustrated. Again he turned to E Rú.
“E Rú! Do something to make these cowards fear me no longer!”
The lion asked, “How should I do that, master?”
The Fool rolled his eyes and said, “I don’t care how. Do it your way.”
So the lion knocked the man down, pinning him to the ground with a massive paw against his chest and bit the Fool’s head off at his shoulders.
The story ended and Pastor Akotun put his drum aside. Cinque leaned back on his hands and kicked at the dirt. His anger had faded but he still resented the African for not taking his problem seriously. “E Rú was a lousy slave,” he muttered.
“Why do you say that?”
Cinque leaned forward, trying to imitate The African’s authoritative manner. “’Cause he killed his master.”
“What is the nature of a slave?”
“To do as it’s told.”
“Is that all? Do not some slaves live to be free? Why am I telling you about slavery?”
Cinque dismissed the question with a shake of his hand. “That’s all long in the past. I ain’t ever been a slave.”
“You have missed the point, but found your own.”
“Can you do that? Make a lion out of thin air?”
“The Fool didn’t make the lion. He made a grou-grou, a spirit bound to a physical object.” The African stroked the drumhead. Cinque guessed that the drum was an example. “A grou-grou can be made from thin air but they are stronger if you use a spirit. Spirits can be asked into a grou-grou or forced. Which is better? That depends on the spirit.”
“Can you make a grou-grou then?”
“Of course, any fool can do it.”
Cinque woke up saying, “How was that supposed to help?”
Before tonight, he used to wonder how it felt to be homeless, curled up in a doorway or sheltered in an alley. He’d thought about spending the night in the driveway, just to try it. When a wet gust of air blew across his face and that’s where he thought he was: the driveway at home. He pushed the hood back and didn’t see stars, moon or a cloudy sky lit from the city lights below as he remembered. When he tried to sit up, his face bumped into something cold and wet. He stopped, listened and heard something breathing. Close, right next to him. His hands shot out in the dark towards the sound of the breath. He got two handfuls of muscle and fur. He said, “What—?” before it bit his arm.
He let go and there was a scurrying sound of nails on floor. Cinque grabbed the arm where he’d been bitten, but the teeth hadn’t penetrated the sleeve of his hoodie. That thing was somewhere out there. Maybe the fox-faced Fib came back, he thought. Then he smelled his hand. It smelled of dog—the Dog who chased him from the meatworks. “Whatcha doing in here?” he asked into the darkness.
“Grouph,” the dog replied, whatever that meant. It must have followed him here looking for more steak. If the Fibs caught the dog . . . Cinque assumed the worst. The dog might have been mean to him, but he didn’t want it getting it hurt.
“It’s okay, I’ll figure out how to get you out of here.”
Just then, the door latch opened with a determined jerk. The tall, lanky outline of the Sin Catcher stood framed in light. The dog woofed a warning.
“What—” The Sin Catcher pointed into the room, “—is that doing in here?”
A goat-like Fib in a trucker’s cap peaked around from behind Kelly’s legs. “Wha—? Aw, damn! How the hell did that get in here?”
Kelly knocked the Fib to the ground. “That’s what I just asked you!” He punctuated this with a hard kick into the fallen Fib’s side. It screamed like a beaten child.
“Quit your crying!” Kelly kicked him again. “You’re making us look bad.” Sin Catcher picked up a ball-peen hammer from somewhere behind the door.
The dog growled. As Kelly Lee stepped up to the edge of the pit, it barked, glanced sideways at Cinque quickly, and backed away.
Kelly swaggered slowly towards the dog, swinging the hammer so that boy and dog could see it. The dog jumped forward, let out three of its loudest barks, and just when Cinque thought it was going to attack, Kelly feinted forward. The dog turned. Kelly threw the hammer and Cinque dove as far as the chain would allow, grunting as he blocked the hammer with his chest. Pain spread across the web of bruises Kelly’s creatures had beat into his body when the hammer hit the boy. The dog jumped up out of the pit and escaped out through the same unseen passageway it had taken in.
“Damn pest,” Kelly muttered past the boy before looking down at Cinque. “Son, you got your own problems and a dog is just a dog.” It stepped forward and retrieved the hammer. “I’ll get it next time.” Its picture-face smiled confidently. It cocked its head and considered Cinque. “How ya doin’?”
“What do you care? Why you even askin’? Just use my frozen heart and make me do what you need to. If you can.”
“Ah, come on now . . . don’t be like that.” Kelly took a seat on the edge of the hole, legs dangling over the edge and completely at ease. “Just because we found ourselves in these unfortunate circumstances don’t mean we can’t be civil. Remember, I ain’t the reason you’re here and you ain’t the reason I’m here. Your Pa is the reason we’re both here. That’s the fact of it.”
That wasn’t the fact, as Cinque saw it. But he didn’t see the point of splitting hairs right now, so he let it slide. Not without giving the spirit a glare that said I’m hearing you, but I ain’t listening.
“Well,” Kelly looked away. “I can see you haven’t come around to my way of thinking yet, but you will. And not just ’cause I’m strong-arming you into it with all this.” He pointed up and down the length of the chain.
“It’s ’cause I’m right and he’s wrong. Your Pa was wrong to make me like this. He was wrong to make you and leave you behind. As long as I’m still his sin catcher, then he can go on being wrong. He’ll get away with it too. Now I ask you, where is the justice in that?”
While Kelly talked, Cinque took a seat, folding his legs under him and picked at the ground. He was missing a piece of himself and far away from home, desperate, like the Soldier from the African’s story. “Whose justice?”
Kelly cocked his head, the smile losing some of its certainty. “What do you mean?”
“It ain’t my justice. You ain’t called the cops or nothing like that. So is it your justice? If it is, then doesn’t that make this revenge, not justice?”
Kelly nodded, understanding. “Ah. I see what you’re getting at.” He crossed his legs and leaned back on his hands. “You caught me. I don’t believe in justice. I was just using that, invoking the cosmic balance, because I thought you might. The only justice you’ll get in this world is the justice you make. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a sucker or looking to screw you over. So what do you say you let me go make some justice, go get some revenge, for the both of us?”
Cinque turned away.
“Think about it. You’ll come around.”
With that, Kelly left the room, but just before he closed the door he said, “I almost forgot, seen a friend of yours heading this way. You remember it—lots of arms, lots of mouths, talks too much. . . . It’s pretty determined to get back in touch with you, if you know what I mean, and you’re just sittin’ here. Waitin’. Think on that.”
The handle turned shut with a clang.
Cinque lay down again, this time he couldn’t sleep.
19 Friend of Yours
Alone, Cinque lay in the dark pit for minutes or hours, time blurred without context, until he felt something else in the cell, something huge. He jumped up and listened hard, heard nothing but his own breath but the sense of looming remained. He looked around three times before noticing that one side of the room, everything to the left of the door, floor, walls, every surface was a deep red colour, while to the right everything was pitch black. He realized that the surfaces glittered, sparkled not with light, but with a personal deepness, so real they didn’t need light to be seen. The room rippled with movement, covered in ants, red ants on the left and black ants on the right, swarming the room, ceiling, walls and floor, up to a rough circle around his feet.
The ants spoke, a million little voices in chorus: “Again, I find you on the edge. Will you always keep me so busy, Cinque Williams? This is good, the further you explore, the more you experiment, the faster you will learn.”
The sound was strange but he recognized the unique diction of the pimp in the red and black suit.
“Eshu Waru? How . . . how’d you find me here?”
A wave of motion rippled across the line of ants as if they were whispering to each other. “I can always find my followers, no matter how far they wander.”
“But the Sin Catcher—it look like the meatworks is his, like he a god in this place.”
The chorus of ants filled the room with laughter. The voice came from every direction at once, disorienting. “That little construct? A god? Oh my boy, he is nothing compared to me. With the flick of an eyelash, I could pop him like a soap bubble.”
Cinque found himself turning in slow circles. He pointed to where the chain was bolted to the floor, the only surface free of ants.
“You’re steering clear of his chain.”
“Please, boy, it’s not because the white man’s magic can threaten me.”
Cinque thought of something, maybe he could be slick like Darren would. “Then why don’t—”
“—I prove it? You cannot trick a trickster. Or at least, you cannot trick the Trickster. I once fooled an entire village into tearing each other apart just by walking down the middle of it. Any angle you can think of was old to me millennia ago.”
So much for being sneaky, Cinque thought. He would play it straight from now on. He was glad he hadn’t angered the god.
“Remember what I said the first time we met? I will help you help yourself, but only when it makes you a stronger servant. I won’t break this chain for you, but I might show you how to break it yourself.”
“That all I get? Unhooked? How about this? How about you get rid of that scarecrow, the Sin Catcher?”
“No. There will be no easy escapes for you. The Sin Catcher is an enemy, and enemies are to be destroyed. I will not help you become a coward and a weakling, dependent on my help at every turn. I will make you strong and you will use that strength for me someday. You will see. I will show you how to walk free of this leash. From there you only have your wits to escape the rest.”
Cinque said nothing. Eshu Wara’s tone was clear: they both knew he would accept whatever help the god offered.
“In exchange, I will require another sacrifice from you, just as we sealed the deal for my services as mediator with the lapsed wizard.”
“Um,” Cinque looked down at his palm. “How are we going to shake on it if you don’t have any hands?”
“I’ve had your sacrifice of spit, this time I want more. This time I want blood.”
He balked, but he wasn’t in any position to deal. Getting further in debt to the god felt like a walk down a dark road, but it was better than sitting in this cell. “How much?”
“Five drops. Leave them on the floor. I’ll take them after you’ve gone.”
“How?”
“You have teeth, don’t you? Don’t forget your animal capacity just because you call yourself civilized.”
Cinque looked at his hands. They seemed the most likely place to draw blood from, the easiest part to bring up to his mouth.
He used his upper incisors to saw at the thin skin at the base of his thumb and away from his palm, tracing jagged scratches across the back of his hand. After the third attempt a drop of red finally blossomed where the three lines of ruined skin intersected. He squeezed out a drop with his other hand. As it hit the ground there was a wave of motion and a sound among the ants radiating out from where he stood, like the ripples in a pool or the excitement of a crowd. The god’s exuberance over the sacrifice worried Cinque. He didn’t like being the subject of such gluttonous desire.
“Do you feel like you are on the menu?” the ants laughed. “Do not fear for the blood in your veins, at least not from me. Lesser spirits take what they can get, but my tastes are far more refined. It’s the act of sacrifice that I find sweet.”
Cinque wasn’t convinced, but continued to make his offerings. With each drop he turned a little to the right, careful to keep them from falling on each other. When he was done he realized he had inadvertently placed the drops at even intervals in a circle with him in the center. He licked the wound and applied pressure to it with his thumb to stop the bleeding.
“Your sacrifice is accepted,” the ants said in chorus.
“So how do I get off this hook?”
“You think yourself off of it. What is the hook for?”
“To keep me from escaping.”
“Be more specific.” The ants stirred in a clockwise motion.
“To keep me attached to the chain and to the floor.”
“Anything else?”
Cinque couldn’t think of anything else.
“What did he say?”
“He said my name. My full name. Which is weird, ’cause I didn’t think he knew my middle name.”
“What does that imply?”
“That this chain isn’t meant to keep down anything but me—just me.”
The ants shuffled clockwise again. “And if this leash is designed to imprison you, to restrain you and no other, then how should you escape it?”
“Do I change the hook?” Cinque asked. “Change it so it’ll trap someone else?”
“Not while it’s inside your skull you won’t. Imbedded, its strongest connection is to you.”
Cinque tried to picture the scene from above, outside of his body. Looking down there were three elements: the chain, the concrete floor and himself. Eshu Wara had already ruled out affecting the chain, at least from the inside. There wasn’t much he could do about the concrete floor. He made a list of what he had to work with: the meatworks, the cell, the floor, the chain, the hook. . . .
“The only thing I can change is . . . me?”
“And what about yourself are you going to change?”
Cinque fingered the chain dangling from his scalp. “What’s the hook using to hold me in?”
“You tell me.”
“I can’t change into someone else. Can I?”
Could he? He’d seen it happen on the way to Chicago, hadn’t he?
Cinque looked into the black substance of the chain, its darkness deeper than its thickness. “How does the hook know who I am?”
He paused but there was only a grim rustling from the ants.
“Does it see me? Does it taste me? Does it know me? I don’t know much about Juju, but everything seems to want my spit or some other part of me.”
Eshu Wara spoke: “This isn’t Juju, but the principles are similar.”
“So if it’s not holding on to my body, is it holding on to my mind?” Cinque tugged at the chain. The hook in his head hurt less than it should have.
“Why your mind? Why isn’t it holding on to your soul or desire? Or your dignity? Who forged the hook and chain? And how well did he know your mind?”
“I guess he couldn’t know me very well. We never met but all he knew was my name. Is that it? My name?” Cinque remembered reading in The Black Arts that spirits could be controlled by knowing their true name. This time, he was the spirit.
“Names are powerful things.”
“How do I change my name?”
“Are you prepared to reinvent yourself?”
“If it’ll get me out of here I am.”
When the ants laughed they flowed like ripples in the water. “Oh I wasn’t asking if you are willing to try. I was asking if you were capable. Can you take yourself apart, removing a piece of yourself and leave it behind?”
“I’m already in pieces, aren’t I? I get the feeling that I’m halfway there.”
“So you are . . . but you’ll still have to peel off your identity and leave it on the hook.”
“What if the hook was made out of my spit or blood?”
The ants rippled outward. “Then you would be in some real trouble.”
“At least there’s that then. So how do I do this?”
“Disassociate yourself with your name. Make it a strange thing. Let the sound of it lose its familiarity until it is gone.”
He’d seen a man named Robbie turn into the man named Ted, exchanging identities with a pack of cards but Cinque didn’t have a pack of cards so he did what he did best. He thought about it. He sat, cross-legged with his face in his hands until he felt his pulse in his cheeks and jaw. He followed this sensation, keeping the warmth and the movement for himself and distancing himself from the surface he touched. He made the act from himself.
