Acolytes of Cthulhu

FROM THE PITS OF ELDER BLASPHEMY

BY HUGH B. CAVE & ROBERT M. PRICE

THERE WERE DRUMS TONIGHT—OR WAS IT THUNDER, SO FAR off he couldn’t yet tell the difference? But then he could hardly hear them. Not only too far off, but suddenly drowned by something closer at hand, something admittedly less ominous, but with more raw irritation—the barking of dogs. It started, his bedside clock documented, at precisely 3:15 in the morning, putting an end to any hope of slumber. One dog would bark somewhere in that part of Port-au-Prince in which he had rented a room at the Pension Etoile. Half a dozen others would follow, scattered throughout the city, at first with an almost tentative note, as if a great canine orchestra were tuning up for a concert. But when they started in earnest, it was more like a shouting match, each bark answered by challenging rejoinders until the whole city was set ahowl. Dismissing the momentary urge to add his own barked “Quiet!” to the melee, a weary Peter Macklin gave up in disgust and got out of bed. Shrugging himself into his clothes, he opened the verandah door to let in any breeze that might be passing by. It was July, and Haiti—this Caribbean land of vodun and poverty—was as savagely hot as its people were gentle in their unspoken surrender.

He had expected the city to be hot in July, of course. As a graduate student of anthropology, that fascinating study of man’s veiled origins, struggling development, and kaleidoscopic cultures, he had twice before visited Haiti to write about vodun and its believers. By now he could speak enough French to carry on conversations with the country’s elite, as well as sufficient Creole to communicate with the masses. And he had had ample occasion in his work to do both. His studies had evidenced enough early promise to merit a modest travel stipend included as part of his scholarship, but it was close to exhausted, and he had comparatively little to show for it. After all, vodun, “voodoo,” had long attracted researchers, both serious and sensationalist, because of its inherent exoticism, and his academic advisors warned him of delving into a dried-up well. He was beginning to fear they had been right. What else was there to say about it?

This time he was here on little more than a hunch, based on a rumor he had heard in Miami’s Little Haiti while visiting his parents in Florida. He had once heard of something similar in hushed whispers among the Rasta communities of Jamaica, too. The rumor involved certain of the magicians, or shamans, as anthropologists were careful to call them nowadays, bocors and houngans, belonging to a secret cult whose members were in touch with unknown deities, terrible gods from the sound of it, who might be called upon to do terrible things. The infamous zombie legends went back to such people. They existed as religious outlaws on the margins of vodun society and theology, operating much as contract killers who claimed magical means to do dirty jobs. But until now no one had ever heard of them banding together in a religious society of their own. Was it something new? Or perhaps something very, very old, only now becoming known for the first time? In either case, here was a new wrinkle, a new aspect of the matter. And his research took on a whole new relevance. Here was his chance not only to avoid reploughing a depleted field, but even to gain a precocious reputation among his peers by a major discovery. If, that is, he could make it more than a rumor. There would have to be interviews, participant observation, and before that, some actual, personal contact.

And here he was in luck, for it turned out that the brother of a young Haitian in Florida, who did odd jobs for Peter’s family, claimed association with this mysterious cult, and Peter was awaiting the arrival of this man, one Metellus Dalby, who would bring him news of the group’s latest meeting. He did not have long to wait. It almost seemed as though the barking of the sleepless dogs had been prophetic, an oracle wrung from them by some supernatural influence on their keen other-than-human senses. Within fifteen minutes there came a knock on the rickety door of his room.

Leaving the little verandah where he had gone for a breath of air, only to find more of the crowded city’s suffocating heat, Peter advanced the short distance to the door and opened it. The man confronting him was a Haitian, tall, slender, and very black.

“You’re back already?” asked Peter, startled, in Creole. It came out almost like a rebuke.

“With good news, m’sieu.” Nodding briskly, Metellus Dalby stepped past him into the room, then spun about to face him. “There is to be a big meeting of the cult this very night. You must accompany me to it!”

The bright gibbous moon illuminated the scene of two men, one white, one black, staring at each other. Then the Haitian spoke again, more slowly. “But there is something we must do first, mon ami.” From a pocket of his baggy trousers he withdrew a pint bottle of some dark liquid.

Peter nodded. “How long will it take?”

“I will apply the first coat now, another about noon, and a third before we begin the journey.” His smile broadened into a shining crescent moon. “You will look like one of my people when I finish, I promise you that. And while it will itch, a little, it will not inconvenience you.”

“What about my sharp nose, my thin lips?” For the first time, Peter saw them as he feared a non-Caucasian might see them, not handsome, but marks of alien origin.

“Haitians come in all shapes, my friend. Some of our ladies on the Mardi Gras floats could win prizes anywhere in the world. You’ve seen them.”

The Pension Etoile was on the Champ de Mars, and, that being part of the Mardi Gras route, Peter involuntarily glanced out the window, as if half-expecting to see the marching bands and gaudy floats in full force. His companion smiled again, showing those whiter than white teeth.

“It may burn a little, this vegetable dye,” Metellus warned. “But not for long. You’ll be comfortable again soon, I promise.” Peter wondered what sort of errands had made Metellus so familiar with the stuff and its use. Whatever they might have been, they only made Metellus exactly the sort of person who would know how to help him on a gambit such as he contemplated. Like the CIA, anthropologists sometimes had to deal with people who could get things done when there were only dubious ways to get them done.

Peter took the two or three steps to the bed, removed the top part of his pajamas, and lay down on his back. Pulling the cork from the bottle and leaning like a masseuse over his client, this man he looked on more and more as a friend, Metellus began the process of darkening those parts of the white man’s body that would be revealed by short-sleeved attire. As he did so, he talked.

“What is to happen tonight, m’sieu, will interest you, I am certain. These people plan a special meeting in which they will call upon the Old Ones to present themselves. There is a line you will hear, and you must be ready to join in the first time you hear it. That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange eons, even death may die. I heard it from Tiburon, on the Southern Peninsula, who told me it was not for the ears of just anyone. You do not want to sound like it is new to you. That is not dead,” he repeated, coachingly, “which can eternal lie, and with strange eons, even death may die.”

“Meaning?” Peter asked with a frown.

The Haitian shrugged. “Who knows, exactly? But they know its meaning, never fear. And perhaps after tonight we, too, shall know.” He fell silent, giving the white man the chance to repeat the formula to himself silently till he knew it.

When the bottle was empty, Metellus stepped back from the bed to look Peter over, then nodded. “We should plan on being there before dark, so we can show my work off to best advantage, eh? We can use my Jeep to take us as far as Furcy, then we’ll have to walk a few miles. Those mountain trails are not easy, as I believe you know.”

Paying as little mind as he could to his tingling skin, Peter looked at the mirror while speaking to his partner. “What time did you leave there tonight?”

“Just after midnight.”

Peter glanced at an alarm clock on his chest of drawers, subtracting the minutes it was off by. Its lazy hands now stood at five minutes to five, and Metellus had been here how long? Forty-five minutes? A little more? “So we want to be there when?”

“I should plan on picking you up about three o’clock this afternoon, I think.”

Nodding matter-of-factly, Peter opened the top of the chest of drawers, a storage place with absolutely no security, to take out his billfold. From it he handed the Haitian some gourd notes. “Fill up the gas tank, Metellus. Better put some food in the Jeep as well. There’s no telling what we may be getting into, eh?”

“Thanks, boss,” he answered with a note of irony, noticing that there was more there than needed for the tasks Peter had stipulated. He left, and Peter’s sole companion was once again the humidity, which by now seemed to have gotten the better of the dogs, who had fallen silent. Maybe he’d be able to get some sleep now. When the dye on his skin seemed to be dry enough, Peter returned to his bed and dozed till mid-morning, knowing he would probably not sleep at all in the night ahead of him. Who or what, he wondered, were the “Old Ones” his Haitian friend had talked about? Old gods, older than the conventional Obeah pantheon, to be sure. But which gods? What kind? It later seemed vaguely to him that his dreams that morning tried to give him some hint, but he could not remember.

Come five minutes to three that afternoon, Metellus turned his Jeep into the Pension driveway, and Peter, standing ready, stepped right into it. Several of the little hotel’s other guests had stared unabashedly at Peter as he had descended the staircase from his second-floor room and walked through the downstairs hall to the door. No doubt they were startled at a white man having becoming a black one, but none questioned him, perhaps feeling it safer not to. As he slid onto the seat beside the driver’s, his Haitian friend nodded approval and said, “The dye worked well, I see. If I were you, I might be wondering how long it will take to wear off.”

“I have thought about it, now that you mention it.” Peter smiled as he made himself as comfortable as possible. The Jeep was an old one, open, with a fabric top to shield its two occupants from rain or sun.

“You may continue a Haitian for three or four days,” said Metellus, with the air of a doctor, showing his white teeth again in a grin.

“I can think of things I’d less rather be.”

“Eh?”

Peter realized he probably hadn’t phrased the remark properly in Creole. “Just so long as it works tonight,” he amended.

“Yes,” replied Metellus with surprising and sudden gravity, as he backed out of the Pension’s drive. “Just so long as the Old Ones don’t know who and what you really are.” Peter thought about that remark from time to time as the two of them traveled up the winding road to Petionville, where so many of the country’s wealthier citizens lived to escape the heat and squalor of Haiti’s capital. It lingered in his mind on the even longer climb over a narrow blacktop road to the mountain village of Kenscoff. And it jabbed at his mind now and then as Metellus, a skilled and careful driver, took the little vehicle up the final twisting climb to the end of the driving road at Furcy. At various times during the journey Peter had turned in his seat to peer down through the heat-haze hanging over the roofs of the capital, as if trying to penetrate the opaque mists of antiquity. He wondered why he was doing what he was doing. Did all anthropologists live dangerously? It was only missionaries who wound up in cooking pots, wasn’t it?

His companion brought the vehicle to a stop in front of a peasant cottage, and Peter snapped out of his reverie. “We leave the Jeep here,” Metellus announced. “These people know me.” He glanced at the watch on his wrist. Peter had earlier observed that he wore a Rolex or some such, which one would think out of the range of any legitimate income. But he had wisely traded it for a more modest Timex for the occasion. “Are you hungry, my friend?”

His eyes concluding a sweep of the cottage and what lay beyond it, Peter barely caught the words but replied, “I hadn’t given it a thought. The heat takes away my appetite. But perhaps we ought to eat something, eh?”

Metellus slid from his seat and leaned into the back of the Jeep to lift out a bag of food. It turned out to be a strange mixture of fruit, vegetables, and the worst sort of greasy junk food. More of all of it than they could expect to eat. And there was alcohol. Metellus opened the bag and gave him his choice. Peter grabbed a couple of apples and a roll. Metellus took even less. Just then the cottage door opened, and it was an attractive, middle-aged black woman who greeted them both with a smile and a happy “Bon jour!” Metellus handed her the rest of the provisions. Trust him to think of everything, Peter thought.

From there they walked. And Peter soon discovered and appreciated why Metellus had judged it wise to arrive at their destination before dark. The trail was a footpath. It was a snake twisting through the forest. At times it would be blocked by fallen tree-limbs, mostly pine, and by boulders that must have come crashing down the mountain. Peter hoped there were no more like them at home. It seemed endless.

Peter was tired, his companion scarcely less so, when the pair finally arrived at a cluster of huts in a clearing that, mercifully, turned out to be their destination. But there was to be no rest for them. People came striding from the huts—men, mostly—and Peter had to be introduced to them by Metellus. Had to smile and remain standing while his companion explained that Peter was a Floridian, a friend of Metellus’s brother, and that he was deeply interested in the Old Ones. Also that he was eager to participate in the night’s proceedings, at least as an observer. Peter momentarily started at hearing the exact truth from the other’s lips. He had expected more pretense than this, though he could think of no real reason it should be necessary.

By the time the newcomer had been introduced all around, it had grown dark enough for lanterns to be lit and hung in the surrounding trees, and vodun drums began to throb. No one seemed suspicious of him, and the only looks in his direction that he noticed appeared to be polite and friendly. He returned the smiles he saw and hoped for the best. He asked if he might do anything to help prepare, was told that he was a guest and should not busy himself with such tasks. This he took for permission to nod off for a brief nap.

Once he felt Metellus nudging him awake, he realized he had slept for at least three hours. The moon was high, and the clearing was now crowded with eager figures darting to and fro, creating almost a strobe effect as they passed rapidly before the blazing lamps and lanterns. He got rapidly to his aching feet and looked nervously to make sure his sleeping posture had not revealed any pink flesh. Metellus’s grin anticipated him and let him know all was well. The two of them hurried into the circle and looked for good seats, close to the action, whatever action there should be, yet not too obtrusive, lest any surprise or reluctance on their part be noticed. Here at the scene itself, Peter wondered for the first time how much of the celebrations of this sect Metellus had actually seen? He spoke enigmatically about it, as if he knew little, and yet he appeared to be well enough known to those gathered. Perhaps he had received only a preliminary degree of initiation and could only guess, as Peter had heard him do, at the real secrets of the cult. But didn’t that imply he himself, an outsider, could not hope to see anything much out of the ordinary? Well, there was nothing to do but wait now.

He scanned the close-packed crowd. The scene was familiar, as were the expressions of adventurous expectancy on the black faces gleaming with sweat and firelight. Then with a start he hoped no one noticed, he saw faces of a more ominous cast, weathered and haughty visages whose peculiar lines betrayed habitual emotions and exaltations of a kind he could not guess. Some bore ritual scars, others faded tattoos and paint. There were ear-hoops of strange workmanship, too, some suggesting the forms of strange sea creatures. Here was something new. Might he perhaps interview these old men, who were certainly those curiously allied bocors and houngans rumor had described as improbably coming together for some frightful purpose? He sensed somehow his chances of that were slim.

His eagerness dulled to disappointment once the congregation hushed as if by some tacit signal and the service began. The celebrant, an aged fellow with a wrinkled face and a voice little more than a fatigued whisper, droned out the singsong of the usual introductory prayers. He drew the usual veves around the base of the central pole or poteau mitan. Still droning, as if wearily reciting a child’s nursery rhyme, he called upon the usual string of vodun deities: Legba, Ogoun, Erzulie, Damballah, and the rest. Peter had seen and heard all this too many times before. And yet the gathered cultists appeared to be all the more eager, as if their favorite part were on its way.

At once the rote character of the display vanished. The preliminaries, perfunctory, were over. Gestures in the crowd became rapid, even violent, aimless jabs, striking heads and torsos oblivious of the impact. Eyes rolled up, people blindly rising, shrilly chanting, joining a frenzied follow-the-leader snake-dance. At Metellus’s urgent signal, Peter joined in as best he could. He strained to make out the words being sung, and because of the number of voices, twenty-five or so, it was difficult. Especially difficult for one to whom Creole was not a primary language. Yet he understood some of it. And to his surprise, these black bacchantes were calling not on the traditional gods of vodun, whose names he had heard mere moments before, but on someone, something, far more ancient. The names were altogether new to him, and he realized this was why it was so difficult to understand. Some of the… names? were so bizarre, and were barked and screamed past comprehension. Tulu… Nigguratl-Yig… Nug and Yeb… And the cacophony was rapidly giving way to some alien language, perhaps speaking in tongues. Less and less Creole.

An intuitive flash told him what must be going on here. Old Ones. He knew, anyone knew, that the nominal Christianity of Haitians and other Caribbean peoples thinly masked the African religions of their pre-slavery ancestors. They might call the object of their ecstatic devotion Saint This or That, but they were really invoking Damballah, Baron Samedhi and the others, gods of ancient Africa. But what he was beholding here was something else—these Old Ones had to be the unthinkably archaic gods and devils to whom screaming sacrifices had been offered in the dawn ages before Zimbabwe and Benin and Opar, deities whose worship had at length been banned and driven underground to take refuge under the names of the more wholesome gods of Zulu, Ashanti, Shona, and other tribes. Behind their myths the Things of Elder Blasphemy still lurked and ravened, as the benign spirits of African faiths would later hide behind the haloes of Catholic saints. In a moment he knew.

The chanting and the drumming continued. So did the dancing, as the cultists formed a rough circle and continued to move their feet—some in flat-soled sandals, others quite bare—in a shuffling processional. The celebrant, whose torpor had long since vanished, hopped into the center of the circle and began to rotate, his glazed eyes following the crowd as it spun round him. He shouted something once, twice, stabbing a finger in the direction of two of the entranced mob. One of these, who could hardly have even been aware of the summons, a teenaged girl, broke from the group and fell to the ground. She was instantly followed by a second, this one an old hag. Further uncouth vocables erupted from the voodoo priest’s raw throat, and the two females obediently threw off all restraint, their faces still strangely vacant, and began a savage death-struggle. Gouts of blood and torn-off flesh flew everywhere, and Peter’s stomach roiled. Fistfuls of human meat, an eye, another, scattered into the air. Blood somehow splashed over him from the direction of the two women as if thrown from a paint can. The young anthropologist found his consciousness tottering. Rousing a moment later, he realized he had fallen into the arms of Metellus. He prayed no one else had noticed this failure of nerve, but a quick glance told him no one was paying any attention to him, nor would they.

Parts of the two ragged forms surrounded the old priest, who now sank to his bony knees and began to scoop up the blood and apply it to himself, a gory baptism, finally falling down and rolling in the crimson pool. The others grew silent, watching intently, Metellus and Peter no less than the rest. The old man regained his knees and remained in a posture of supplication, his blank eyes showing only their whites, intoning some throat-kinking chant.

Peter knew that in an ordinary vodun ritual, one would next expect the ecstatic possession trances to begin, nothing very sinister, not far removed from the goings-on in any Appalachian Pentecostal ceremony. But he was in for a surprise. From one of the nearby huts a strange figure appeared. The crowd wheeled as one to face it. The drummers poised motionless with hands upraised over their drumheads. Into the clearing there slowly advanced, on clawlike feet each some fifteen inches long, a body like that of a chicken but as big as a barrel, with the head of a human male. And it did not seem to be a costume. Behind it in single file came half a dozen other monstrosities. In absolute silence (Peter absently noted the distant cacchinations of forest insects) the cultists widened their circle to give the summoned newcomers enough room.

Then came another, all by itself. A creature anthropologist Peter Macklin recognized from his reading, or thought he did. What was its name? He could not remember. His mind was in too much of a turmoil to function properly. But the thing was like an octopus. A huge one. You couldn’t see all of it because it seemed to sprout a number of weaving, waving tentacles. They moved with supreme ease despite the lack of any fluid medium. Everything about it seemed to be in motion, hypnotic motion. Some of the tentacles moved it forward; others writhed and trembled above its bulbous body, glistening greasily in the lantern light that illumined the whole clearing. Then as it came closer Peter saw that he had been wrong; in truth it was more like a huge sea-serpent, with ugly-looking big claws on some of its arms—or were the arms really feet? All he knew for sure was that a name for it came into his mind.

The monstrous Thing joined those that had preceded it. Peter was no longer certain what was or was not hallucination. It somehow appeared that he was looking at a line of gigantic creatures seen from a great distance. But then they seemed to be standing here, with their human worshippers, in this Haitian hilltop clearing. Metellus, beside Peter, now on his left, leaned toward his companion, who was plainly paling beneath the dye. He said in a low voice, “That last one is the dreaded Tulu, my friend.”

The name which had come into Peter’s mind was different. It was Cthulhu. But he only nodded. And then he felt two pairs of strong hands take his elbows and guide him quickly out of the circle and into one of the huts, not that from which the entities had emerged. Momentarily, amid his sudden panic, it occurred to Peter to wonder how any of the tiny huts could have contained the great creatures he saw. A familiar voice spoke in the intelligible accents of Creole. It was Metellus.

“Do not worry. The ceremony has reached a point which we may not see. Here, take your rest.” Metellus indicated a soft straw mat on the ground. Peter felt himself sinking fast into sleep. Perhaps he had in truth been hypnotized, or perhaps the emotional shocks he had experienced were proving too much for him. He put up no resistance. He did not notice whether Metellus lay down beside him or returned to the festivities.

Peter slept dreamlessly, or at least he remembered no dreams, and this with a strange sense of relief. He was awakened by the hand shaking his shoulder. He was led wordlessly by a couple of big Haitians into another of the huts. There, cross-legged and completely cleansed of the previous night’s defilements, sat the wizened priest, who silently motioned him to sit on the ground opposite him. His two retainers assumed waiting positions on either side of the structure, seeming to blend in with the barbaric figures depicted on hangings that draped the circular walls. Peter felt no fear, only a sense of nervous anticipation, much as he had felt defending his Master’s thesis before his committee.

The old man’s Creole was clear, his voice steady. “Young sir, I think you would like to join us. Have you not come among us for that purpose? A simple initiation will be required. Don’t worry. No harm will come to you, despite what you perhaps think that you witnessed last night. Then, and only then, can our true secrets be revealed to you.”

Peter did not hesitate. Indeed, this was more than he could have hoped for! He had seen something disturbing the previous night, at least he thought he had. But he could not remember what. Maybe he had dreamed after all. At any rate, this would be an unparalleled opportunity for participant observation. This was his chance to do original research into a virtually unknown Afro-Caribbean religion! His academic career would be off to a flying start!

“It would be an honor, Grandfather. I must tell you, though, I must eventually return to the States where I have obligations. I would not be able to be present as regularly as I would desire. May I still join you?”

“Your friend Metellus has told us you would divide your time between here and the United States. That poses no difficulty. You bring to us new blood. I believe your coming to be a boon both to yourself and to our divine lords. Indeed, I have no doubt but that it is they who guided your path to us.”

Peter smiled and answered, “I’m sure you are right, Grandfather.” He secretly wondered how delighted the old man or any of the others would be when he published his research on their cult. He hated to betray a confidence in that way, but it was sometimes necessary if knowledge were to be shared with one’s colleagues, and with the world.

“Go and rest now, young Peter, till tonight, when you shall swear the First Oath of Damballah. Remain in your hut until the sun sets. Then these brethren,” (indicating the two giants who still stood silently like sculptures) “will pick you up for the ceremony, when you will become one with us.” He smiled. Both men rose. Which man was concealing more from the other?

When he returned, Peter was glad to see Metellus waiting for him.

“Tonight I’m to be initiated, Met!”

“Me too,” the Haitian replied, making his friend’s eyes widen.

“I half-suspected you were already a member, the way everybody knows you here.”

“The truth is that I took the First Oath when a young boy. I took the Second when I reached manhood, at age thirteen. I learned more then than you know now. But the Deep Things, as they call them, are revealed only to those who take the Third Oath of Damballah. That is what I’m to take tonight. I hoped I would. But now I’m beginning to wonder, to worry. I think maybe I’ve already seen too much.”

“You mean, last night?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Except that I don’t know what I mean. I can’t remember much, except for some nightmares afterwards. I don’t know what was dream and what wasn’t. Do you?” Peter shook his head, a frown settling across his stained face.

“I’m not sure I want to go through with it, Peter. And I’m even less sure you ought to go through with it.”

“But why not, Met? It seems like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!”

“Oh, it is—for them!”

“I don’t follow you.”

“About the only thing they don’t know about you, mon ami, is that you are white. I doubt they would care about that any more. You see, I think they want to use you, your position in society back in the States. They know that you will have connections they could never get, influence they wish they had.”

“For what?”

“Oh, the cult is very old. They once had power and influence on a scale you can’t imagine. They would love to get it back. At least that’s what the Old Ones are telling them in dreams. I know, because since the Second Oath, I share in some of those dreams. And they think you can help them get their old power back again. And I’ll tell you something else—I’m quite sure they’ll never let you publish the facts of what’s really going on here. Only a kind of toned-down version. I’m sorry to upset you, Peter. I’ll leave now. I want to scout about the camp a bit. I’ll see you tonight before the ceremony. Till then, you think about what I’ve said, okay?” Metellus left without giving Peter a chance to respond.

Peter did give the matter some thought, though nothing he could think of persuaded him to change his mind. He had too much invested in the thing now. And what harm could come of it? Metellus seemed to have survived it with no difficulty. And what was he worried about all of a sudden? It was dark in the hut, and, while not quite as hot as in the countryside below, the place was still pretty sweltering. So Peter did what he often did on such days. Without actually deciding to, he slept.

He dreamed. In his dream, Metellus returned earlier than he had said he would. He had a sense of great urgency about him, said he had managed to remember something. But the more he pleaded with Peter to get up and leave the compound with him, the deeper Peter seemed to sink into slumber. It was a strange dream, and Peter began to forget it as soon as he felt hands shake him awake. They were black hands, Metellus’s he thought at first, but no. The priest had sent him the two unspeaking escorts as he had promised. Peter was happy to join them and surprised, once the door opened, to see that it was already dusk. And no sign of Metellus. Well, probably he was on his way to the ritual area where the crowd was beginning to reassemble. Metellus, too, he remembered, was due to undergo an initiation this night.

Smiling faces greeted the outsider, about to become an insider. The throng parted like a curtain to let him penetrate to the center, where the old priest, in ceremonial finery, stood holding a ceramic cup. He was already chanting. It did not sound like Creole. The postulant met the old man’s glance, smiling and, he hoped, reverent. But he could not help stealing a glance here and there to check on Metellus’s presence. Still he did not appear.

Peter was made uneasy by the strange language, filled with gutturals and grunts, yet also with tongue-twisting, liquid-sounding accents, almost melodious, and yet somehow bestial. It became clear, as the priest neared a crescendo, that he was reciting the conditions of an oath, the Oath to Damballah. Peter knew he should shortly have to assent to whatever it was they were requiring of him. If only Metellus were here to help him make some sense of it all. But then, he thought ruefully, he was the anthropologist! He should be able to figure it out. Well, there was nothing for it now but to go on with the drama. When the priest stopped, looking expectantly at Peter, the latter nodded and bowed, hoping that would suffice. It must have, for the old man said something else unintelligible to his congregation, and they broke into wild applause and joyful shouting. Women and children came forth to place flower wreathes around his neck, a laurel wreath upon his sweating brow. Several dipped their fingers in the cup the old priest held, then made crosses on Peter’s face and forehead with the red substance contained in the cup. After all had their chance, the old man offered the cup to Peter and bade him, this time in clear Creole, to take a drink. Peter knew by now that it must be sacrificial blood. But he was not one to be shocked or disgusted at alien mores, much less alien diet. As a field anthropologist, he could never afford such scruples. So he took the cup and drank of the salty beverage. More cheering followed. He guessed he had successfully taken the First Oath of Damballah. Now he need only wait to discover what secrets the initiation entitled him to. It was a cross-cultural constant: initiates into any cult received catechism about the inner truths, though still deeper secrets might well remain pending further degrees of initiation, degrees he dearly hoped might not take him too long to attain. It was all a matter of research, and of making friends with these people. And that shouldn’t be too hard. Like all Haitians he had met, they were plainly good-natured and friendly.

The drums began to throb, and his pulses involuntarily picked up the pace. The priest gestured toward one of the huts, and Peter realized the ritual was not over after all. He looked at his initiator, then in the direction he had pointed. Shrugging, he decided he was game, and started for the hut. Now he noticed the drummers were moving into a circle around the small structure. As the shaman walked beside him, Peter ventured to whisper to him, “Grandfather, you do me great honor. But where is my friend? Was not, he, too, to receive initiation tonight?”

The oldster smiled and bobbed his head enthusiastically. “So he was. And so he did, less than an hour ago. You will see him soon enough. And now, my son, you will learn the secrets of life and death. First life. The Second Oath of Damballah.” So saying, he pushed open the flimsy door. Peter went through it and gazed around the close quarters. There was room for a pad on the ground, and it was not unoccupied. Her black flesh gleaming in the light of banks of candles, the very incarnation of Haitian female vitality stretched out invitingly. His pulses hammered, his hormones surging. The drums outside did his thinking for him, though thinking had little to do with a situation like this! She was naked, and in a moment, he was, too. As he mounted her, as impatient as she of preliminaries, he got a good look at her face and saw two things with a gasp. He recognized her as the woman at whose cottage they had left Metellus’s car. And her eyes were completely vacant, whites showing, lost in a rapture that was at least as spiritual as sexual, probably more. Peter understood that she was in the midst of a possession trance, no doubt believing herself to be indwelt by the spirit of the love-loa Erzulie. He had never imagined making love to a woman in such a state. As he entered her, pumping madly, he found she was like a volcano, a bucking mustang. It was all he could do to hold on, to gain purchase and drive himself home again and again till explosive release came. It was glorious!

He was winded, rolled over, felt her lithe limbs shuddering, shivering, coming to a gradual relaxation. Still she said nothing. And in the post-coital silence Peter could detect the low tones of an antiphonal chant. On one side of the hut, he could make out male voices. They repeated an invocation, Nigguratl! Then the female voices responded, Yig! He wondered what it meant specifically. He knew what it meant generally: he had just participated in a holy rite older than Baal and Asherah, the Hieros Gamos, or sacred marriage between god and goddess, between heaven and earth. It was supposed to be a magical guarantee of fertility for the fields. As this went through his mind, he realized for the first time he had exposed his piebald, half-dyed flesh! But the woman had been past noticing.

He had barely managed to wipe himself down and replace his clothes when the old priest swept the door open, exposing him to the laughing, eager faces of as many of the cultists as could get a view inside. The old man beckoned him to come out, while a couple of older women rushed past him to see to the woman, who was beginning to rouse from her trance. He was still reeling with ecstasy and exhaustion, but there was evidently to be no break. Eager hands ushered him into a smaller hut, this one with smoke ebbing from the door corners. He dimly observed that it was no doubt a sweat lodge, part of the universal pattern of the rites of passage. You could find them in preliterate cultures the world over: Amerindians, Siberians, Melanesians, Amazonian rain forest dwellers. All of them did it. In Peter’s preconscious mind rested the knowledge that the smoke hut symbolized the womb of the second birth, birth unto a higher plane. It would be an ordeal, designed, through oxygen starvation and sensory deprivation, to produce visions, usually visions mirroring the traditional totem-masks of the tribe. What would he see, if anything?

Half-stumbling, partly due to the shoving of his escort, partly to his residual light-headedness, Peter fell to the ground inside the fire-lit hut. The ground was plain but not hard. The light flickered with its source. He felt a great urge to surrender to sleep. When had he slept so much? He could not remember. He drifted, drifted. He supposed he was asleep again, because now there appeared to be a row of figures stooping and sitting before him, too long a line for the small space to accommodate. He thought that he ought to know them. There was surely something familiar about them. And then he remembered he had marked their faces the previous night, at that ceremony he had largely forgotten. Maybe he would remember more of it now that they were here again, the bocors, the houngans, the tattooed and branded sorcerers of the cult. The firelight did strange things to their outlines, that was for sure, but it seemed to Peter that it was their shadows that were strangest of all. They did not seem remotely to correspond with the bodies casting them. The man in the middle, with the hoop ear rings and the worst scars along his neck: the shadow that loomed above him reminded Peter vaguely of the outlines of Great Tulu, the pincers attached to rolling necks and appendages. The others were all different but equally ill-fitting. Yes, the Old Ones… He was beginning to remember…

The spokesman for the group opened his eyes, and Peter saw no iris or pupil, only an empty expanse of glowing green, as when a ray of sunlight penetrates the sea water above a diver. The figure started to speak. It seemed as if he had been speaking for some time, as if someone had turned on a radio in the middle of a speech. But the content was definitely directed to him. “We know it is knowledge that you seek. The true seekers come to us sooner or later, as you have come. Here they learn the higher path, the path to the past. Which can come again. But you are special, Young Sir. The Old Ones have sent you to us for a purpose. You can help us to bring back the past of the Old Ones.”

Peter felt he should be sitting in a posture of respect or veneration to these old saints, these elders of the community. But he was utterly empty, barely able to grasp what was being said. He lay there like a limp doll, hoping they would take no offense.

“We know you want to learn our secrets so you may gain fame by betraying them to the outside world. That you cannot do. But you will gain your fame. You will write your book. We will tell you what you may say. Others will even be able to verify what you say. And when you have your fame, we will have it. And then we will send one to you with something else you may tell your world. It is a world that loves the drugs. Substances.” A ripple of laughter followed this.

“In that day, maybe two, three years down the road, when you are the so-famous professor, you will tell them you have discovered something great among us. You will tell them the old island witch doctors are not so stupid. That they have chemical secrets from the rain forests. Powders that can lift the spirit, than can extend the manhood, that will shrink the fat from the white man’s ass. And it will. And it will do other things their tests will not show. And in this way, you, my son, will open their hearts to love the past of the Old Ones. And in that day you white men will sing as we sing: That is not dead which can eternal lie. And with strange eons, even death may die!”

He didn’t see them leave. Maybe he had blacked out, lost consciousness even within the dream. But at length he roused again, sure by this time that he had been secretly drugged, even before being brought here to the sweat lodge. Now the fumes were making him cough. That’s it—he had coughed himself awake. There was something in the smoke that was playing hell with his sinuses, that kept him confused, too. But that, of course, was part of the regimen. It didn’t worry him unduly. But it entered his head to wonder about Metellus. Was he elsewhere in the camp, undergoing something similar?

And then: there he was! Peter flinched with shock, as welcome as the sight of him was.

“Peter! I made a big mistake bringing you here!” The image of his friend hovered nearby. The man must be kneeling to look into Peter’s sodden face. Peter smiled and reached out to touch the other’s shoulder in reassurance, but he could not reach him somehow.

“No, no, Met. It’s all going well! Better than I could have… Say, that’s quite a scar you’ve got there… How’d you…?”

The black visage, curiously dim and gray in the smoky interior of the hut, waited for Peter to compose himself, to get his thoughts straight.

“Hear you passed your initiation rite, or test, or.. Give me a minute…”

“Yes, mon ami, I took the Third Oath of Damballah, all right. With the Third Oath one renders oneself entirely to the Old Ones.”

“Well, I can tell you, buddy, the Second Oath’s not s’bad! I never had such a…”

“What about the First Oath, my friend? Did you taste the drink? The salty cup?”

“Yes, it was blood, I know. I knew it would be. Very common in these things. Probably one of their goats.”

“I think it was a goat named Metellus,” the black man said, closing the mouth in this face and opening the new lips of his throat into a horrible grin. “It is no mere scar. You now have my blood in you. That is why I may come to you in this manner, while your mind has been opened to the influences. I have little time left. You have little time left.”

Peter was shaking himself awake, shruggingly gathering himself into a sitting position. His wide eyes looked on the face of his dead friend, and the greater his sobered clarity became, the dimmer the features of Metellus became. “No, Metellus, I…”

The words came as a sourceless whisper: “You dare not leave and disobey the Old Ones now. They will not permit it. Do not openly defy them. But do not serve them. I will…” And there was no more. But Peter was now very definitely awake. His head pounded without benefit of drums. The smoke was about dispersed, which, he figured, was probably what allowed his head to clear. He lay down for a second, found that this only made his head hurt worse. So he rolled over to kneel and stand, but as he rolled, he encountered a supine form and recoiled. At first, his memories mixed up, he imagined it was the woman from a few hours before. But it wasn’t.

He sprang backwards away from the machete-butchered carcass of Metellus. It hadn’t been just his throat. That must have been only the beginning. He hadn’t looked like this in the dream Peter had just awakened from. But he could no longer begin to guess, in this place, what was a dream and what was waking reality, or even what the difference was supposed to be. Anything was equally real, it seemed.

He flung open the fragile door and staggered out. A semicircle of the cult elders, a couple of their musclemen, and a few little boys awaited him. His dramatic appearance caught some by surprise, awakened others. The little fellows scattered, their interest in the stranger at an end for the time being. The others, rising to meet him, seemed subtly to come too close, their chests hoisted as if to signal threat, forming a cordon around him. A strange way to treat a guest and a new brother in the faith! But they must have a pretty good idea what was going through his mind. Mustn’t he be weighing his old loyalties against his new ones? He would in a short time seal off the past and identify fully with the cult. That would be easier, of course, the longer they could keep him here among themselves, isolated from his professional colleagues and family members back home.

He met their polite questions as to his welfare with equally empty answers. He knew he was meant to see the corpse of Metellus. It must somehow be part of the ritual experience, “the secrets of life and death.” It also no doubt stood for a warning that the same thing could happen to him should he have second thoughts. Peter thought better of expressing his sorrow and rage at the ritual murder of his friend. It could only increase their suspicion. Better for the moment to let them think, as they no doubt did, that as a white man (oh yes, they knew all right: “you white men”), he regarded Metellus merely as an expendable hireling.

“I… saw great things. Heard great words. Words of destiny…” The older men smiled and looked at one another. He knew they had been waiting to hear something like this.

During the long afternoon, Peter listened and took extensive shorthand notes as the oldest of the cult elders fulfilled the promise made to him, that initiation should carry the privilege of disclosure. He got an earful of the lore of the cult. There was very little about the history of the group. Life changed very little in their tiny world from year to year, even from century to century, with the exception of the disruption of slavery. But the faith could go on and did go on, with only the temporary lack of sacrifices, in the slave quarters. And occasionally they had been able to get to the swamps on certain nights. By far most of their lore concerned the Old Ones, old gods, as he already knew, but now he sat entranced with morbid fascination at tall tales and weird theogonies unlike any he had encountered in his wide study of folklore and mythology. It was a treasure trove, and a genuine ancient tradition. There was far more here than he had dreamed of when he first dared hope there might exist in remote Haiti an untapped trove.

Most of what they told him, he was made to understand, he would be permitted to communicate to the outside world in the form of scholarly monographs. It was a sacrifice of traditional secrecy, to be sure, but even that was necessary to pave the way for the past of the Old Ones to come again. All men must know their Masters so that they might render them a fitting welcome when the great day came. Peter understood that there were yet greater arcana to which his two degrees of initiation did not yet entitle him, and of these he dared not ask, nor were the elders likely to permit them to be spread abroad.

Nor was Peter especially eager to advance farther along on the cult’s path of discipleship, given what he knew had happened to poor Metellus at the climax of his initiation. He kept thinking of those last words his friend’s shade had uttered in the dream vision. He had left him a dilemma, a riddle. He dared not give any sign of resisting or renouncing his role in their insane conspiracy, yet neither could he afford to become their accomplice, really their puppet, in it. He waited, as if for a signal he knew could never come: a signal from a dead man.

The catechism went on for days and then weeks. He could hardly imagine there was so much to the religion! It must be ancient indeed for the legendry to have become so complex, so fulsome, so baroque! There was no way of knowing how old the belief was. Their own lore said that it went back, of course, to the Old Ones themselves, and that they had come to this planet from somewhere else entirely. But here history had shaded off into mythology. The true story would never be known. Peter found he was beginning to think like an anthropologist again. He found himself, as he looked over his notes by firelight each evening, musing over possible methodologies to make sense of the seemingly confused symbols and myths. He felt even Levi-Strauss would find himself outwitted by these old myth-mongers! Well, one thing anyway: if he managed to get out of here alive and unharmed, he had more than enough for a monograph, no, a series of them that would make Victor Turner’s famous studies of the Ndembu look like a kid’s description of a birthday party!

If only he could leave it at that. But a dark pall hung over him. There was little chance, he now realized, that they would hinder his return to the outer world (he once would have called it “the real world,” but who knew what that was anymore?). Indeed, his role in their plan depended on that. But how many more atrocities must he be implicated in before he left? Back home, he could put that part of it out of his mind. Cultural relativism and all: who was he, a Westerner, to judge their ancient customs? And so on. But there was a ritual tonight in which the Old Ones would be invoked, and believers would receive their expected foretaste of the ecstasy of the past of the Old Ones, a past which now looked closer than ever to returning, thanks to their new brother. He knew he could not stand seeing any more of the poor wretches picked out of the crowd to die in a bloody holocaust as part of the ritual. Yes, he now remembered all too well what had transpired on that first night.

He had a seat of honor alongside the ranks of shamans and bocors inside the circle. Behind him gathered a number of children, whom he hated to contemplate seeing what he feared they would see, though he knew they must be hardened to it by now. Peter was a favorite of the children, especially as his skin, free of the dye, had begun to lighten and lighten, until it approached very nearly its original hue. This fascinated the children, who followed him around like baby ducks.

The time came, and soon, as he feared, one of the priests began to intone the familiar invocations. He was interested to note that, even though they no longer had to be judicious in the presence of outsiders, the crowed persisted in the ancient formula, calling on the names of the vodun deities that masked the terrible entities they actually served. He knew that traditions endure even absent their original rationale. So here came the names: Legba, Ogoun, Erzulie, Damballah, Samedhi…

As before, the crowd’s enthusiasm was pent and building. But suddenly something surprised them. Something was going on at the rear of the circle. Peter craned his neck, trying to see over the shoulders of the old men. In a moment he could tell that the same thing, whatever it was, was going on all around the outer perimeter. Instinctively, he turned to his young entourage, gathered behind him, and sternly told them in his clearest Creole to get out, go to their homes, even out of the village, now.

The commotion was building. He could hear numerous physical impacts—bodies falling? Crowds clashing in battle? Was a riot beginning? Were some already intoxicated? Screaming began, and not just screams of alarm or of pain. There were shrieks of holy terror that ripped through the cotton humidity of the jungle night. Peter was on his feet, moving around aimlessly, uncertain what to do. If it was a fight, what side should he be on? How could a company of men approach the compound undetected? He began to slip on skids of blood on the packed ground, then to trip over bodies. A bloody harvest was progressing with amazing speed. He guessed that he, too, would momentarily fall under the scythe. Lanterns swung wildly and were extinguished. Torches bobbed and some went out. Some were swung as weapons, but ineffectively.

Suddenly, in the midst of the melee, Peter was sure that his sweat-stinging eyes glimpsed the impossible visage of Metellus, his livid gash gaping. But the gross wound did nothing to impede his prowess with the machete. He hacked and hacked without the fatigue of the living. Dead, he had himself become the Grim Reaper. But he did not fight alone. Like a gang of laborers chopping down jungle growth to clear a field or the path for a road, there was a whole crew of forms wielding knives, clubs, machetes. All silent. None of their faces was visible given the bad lighting. But the nearest one seemed incongruously to be sporting a top hat and sunglasses over a gaunt form one would not have thought sturdy enough to inflict the blows he was dealing.

The bocors and cult priests, taken by surprise, began to rally. They had no earthly weapons, but Peter could see their hands and arms flailing as if they bore deadly cudgel and sword. He knew they must be conjuring. It looked like superstitious pantomime, but Peter could tell something was happening because of what he heard, or thought he heard. He seemed to catch the echoes of explosions without the explosions themselves. Aftershocks of invisible eruptions. Something was occurring on a plane he could not see. But whatever it was, it had little effect on the invaders. One or two seemed to vanish, not to fall smitten, but just to disappear. But then perhaps they were leaving of their own accord now that the massacre was near its end. In the hacking fury of Metellus’s vengeance, with the aid of his mysterious hosts, tattooed heads flew like coconuts in a windstorm. Blood rained down, and Peter found himself spitting it out as he could not prevent a good deal of it entering his nose and mouth. Indeed, there seemed a red fog which made him gag and cough till he thought his lungs would burst.

He made for the edge of the clearing, where he could see the terrified yet curious young faces following the whole ghastly business. Their eyes grew even wider, if possible, as he approached, a wild and terrifying sight, he knew. But once he was upon them, and they kept looking past him, he knew another was the object of their gaze, and he turned to face it. It was Metellus. He gave a look to his dripping machete and cast it away, into the trees. He extended an arm toward Peter, but when the latter made a move to join him, Metellus waved him off. He tried to say something, but there was no sound, and Peter could not read his lips. He knew it was a final parting gesture, though. And then there was no one.

Peter’s ears felt the pressure of sudden and total silence. None of the adults could have survived. But neither were their conquerors anywhere to be seen. Yet he knew where they were: wherever Metellus was. The true loa had taken their revenge, and Metellus had shared in it. As for him, Peter knew what he must do next. He would round up the newly orphaned children of the village and, with them in tow, begin the long journey back down the mountainside to the cottage. A few could return with him to town in the Jeep; the rest could be picked up by the authorities. He hoped they could all find homes, and anything would have to be an improvement.

He paused for a moment, looking in the direction of his hut. His papers and notes were there, even a tape recording or two. His book, yet unwritten, was there. His career was there. But now who would believe any of it? The myths and rituals of a small community—now all dead in a massacre? A massacre he alone had survived? How would any of that look? He turned his back on the village, counted the children, and started for the foot path.