W\\CKED

Monster in the Dark

[Sanny]

Abadai lived on the second floor of the Bohique, a building her family owned for generations, going right back to when the town of Old Green was founded in the seventeenth century. We parked in back so I could use the private entrance on the second floor. The only way to reach it was a wooden stairway that wobbled if you walked too quickly. The screen door was unlatched and the interior door unlocked, indicating that Abadai was at home.

We entered the dim hallway. I used the switch by the door, but nothing changed. She still hadn't gotten around to fixing the wiring that caused the hall lights to fail occasionally. Light filtered through curtains in the tiny kitchen to the left, which served as an artistic workplace. It was a cluttered mess, the sink filled with blue dye; a damp tunic, deep as twilight, hung on a clothesline above it. Sitting on the counter were open boxes of the chalk Abadai used when she drew temporary vévés to summon loa. The fact that they were out meant she was in the peristyle—the temple used to perform the rituals of Op'a Vodou.

Nameless opened the fridge. Studying the unmarked bottles inside, he finally picked up an uncapped beer bottle. He turned it sideways, watching the thick sludge inside crawl slowly along the glass surface.

"I wouldn't drink that if I were you," I advised him.

"Just seeing how long it takes to reach the tip."

"Wait here. I'll be back in a couple minutes." I left him to his strange new hobby and headed for the peristyle, which was in the room at the end of the hall. The door was ajar; the room was dark as pitch. I could only just make out the table set against the nearby wall where Abadai kept gifts known to be favored by the loa she summoned the most—everything from high-end perfume to cheap bourbon to a pile of colorful feather boas.

As my eyes adjusted, I recognized the trunk of the black gum that rose out of the floor from the shop below and continued through the ceiling to the attic above. A large circle had been drawn in florescent chalk on the floor around the tree. Placed along the outside of the circle were small, unadorned candles, the only source of light in the room. Their flames spread a milky glow across the floor, which lapped at Abadai's bare feet as they rose and fell lightly against the floorboards.

She was dancing to silence.

There were Vodou rituals for which dancing to drums was a natural part, and there were loa who would dance when they temporarily possessed the body of a human being—a practice known as "riding the horse." But as Abadai's body curved and twisted around the black gum tree, I knew instinctively that she was dancing unpossessed. Her motions were sensual and free-spirited, her body unhindered by clothing, her smooth-skinned elegance revealed in teasing glimpses as wavering light flickered against her form.

I should have turned away, but my mind was undone by the poetry of her flesh, which drew me into its undulating verses until she swirled to a stop, her arms reaching out to the shadows. A figure stepped up to the edge of the candlelight, a familiar red jacket hanging limp in his grasp. Tall and formidable, his body was wrapped in a black cloak that billowed down to the floorboards. Thick, white hair tumbled down past his shoulders. It had an unnatural glow, brighter than the candles trembling at his feet.

White hair, glowing against a starless night as a voice whispered, "You are what I want..."
Abadai's eyes greeted him with familiar intimacy. She stepped over the circle's rim. His cloak shrouded her body as he wrapped an arm around her. She tilted her head back, the candle light giving her long neck a burnished glow as he bent forward—

A scream exploded from my mouth.

The monster's gaze turned in my direction.

I saw nothing but his eyes, writhing black nightmares that caught me, held me, wrapped me in their reckless abandon, so that I could feel nothing but their searing presence as they searched my mind for the thing they desired, coiled black smoked around it, and shrouded it from my sight.

"Queza, Amon! Cease!" a voice cried.

There was a loud, sharp snap, as if something was breaking between my ears, and I was abruptly released from the stranger's gaze. I slammed my shoulder against the door as I backed away. I ran to the kitchen, where Nameless was leaning against the counter, green bottle still tilted sideways.

"We're leaving!" As I yanked him into motion, the bottle slipped from his fingers, smashing against the tiled floor.

Nameless followed me to the car. "That was quick."

"She's not alone."

"Which means?"

"I don't want to interrupt her."

As we drove away, I could still taste those words on my tongue. She's not alone. Abadai didn't have close friends, and she definitely didn't have a boyfriend who she would go flashing her private assets to so casually. Who was this stranger, who dared to stare at my mentor with a passion that bordered on possessiveness?

There was something wrong with him—wrong, in fact, with everything I'd seen.

I could feel the wrongness burning in my veins, but as I searched for it in the memory of Abadai spinning inside the chalk circle, an unfamiliar stranger staring at her, all I knew was that he held in his hand the answer to some question I could no longer remember asking.