Tonton (A Hunter Kincaid Novel)

Malice paced the floor, saying, “I’m not sure I can bring him back. I don’t know what Hercule Ismera used, what incantations he uttered. He was a powerful witch, Marc, and that power makes his spells vigorous and hard to counter. I might do more harm than good.” She looked at him, “I still don’t understand how you bested him. He kept protection spells around him all the time. He was famous for that.”

Marc indicated Ringo, standing still and silent against the wall, and said, “How can you do more harm to him than what has already been done?” He placed the gunnysack on the table, “These are what Hercule had with him. The incantation I do not know, but what I do know is that you, Malice, my amazing mother, are greater than any of them. You can do this.” He walked to her and hugged her. With his height, Malice’s head rested on the fourteen year-old boy’s chest. He said, “No one is your equal. No one. Please, do this for me.”

Malice released from the hug and looked up at the tall boy, “I will, on one condition.”

“Yes, whatever it is.”

“You will begin training to become a bokor.”

Marc smiled, “I am ready.”

Malice sensed that he meant it, was eager for it. She said, “Bring Ringo and we will begin.”

The initial treatment took a week to begin as Malice mixed and prepared the materials. She took Marc deep into the southern mountain range, into what was left of the forests. She harvested plants, and as she did so, told him about each one, and their properties, and how those properties differed between the rainy and dry season.

The next day she took him on a different path into the mountains nearer Port Au Prince. As they exited the jeep beside an abandoned hut in a field of bare earth, Malice gestured at the mountain peaks and valleys with a wave of her arm.

She said, “The people do not understand what they are destroying. Everyone makes charcoal from trees they cut in these mountains, and each year, there are fewer trees and more people making charcoal. By the time you are a grown man, there will be nothing but bare land, mudslides, and hunger in this country. There will not be a tree in sight, unless planted by men.”

Marc didn’t reply, but even at his young age, he saw the results of it all around him. Thousands of chunks of white limestone, from an inch to a foot high, jutted out of the bare earth where rains washed away the topsoil down to bare rock. They are exposing the bones of the earth, he thought. White limestone dotted the mountains as far as he could see.

Malice said, “When I was a little girl, this was a great forest with huge trees. Look at it now, and remember my words.”

Malice made several calls the next day, then took Marc to an isolated house near an abandoned cemetery outside Pètionville. The house was low roofed, windowless, and the wooden plank walls were painted red. A large, smoking fire was centered in a ring of river stones in the front unfenced yard, and several chickens pecked and scratched in a small nearby millet field. Beyond the field, in the brush line, goats raised up on their rear legs to eat the new leaves.

The man, bald and very old, tottered out of the house’s dark interior when he heard the jeep pulling in to stop. He wore a threadbare white shirt, filthy khaki pants held up with a piece of rope, and no shoes.

The old man bowed when Malice stepped from the vehicle. She said, “I need two.” She used her hands to show two sizes: one a soccer ball, the other a large orange.

Marc watched from the passenger side of the jeep as the old man shuffled to the fire and used two sticks to push through the loose ash. The stirring released more gray and white smoke, and the stench was terrible. The old man found what he needed in the fire and used the sticks to roll it to the side until it rested against the stones.

It was a human skull.

The skull was black, with wisps of white smoke issuing from the eye sockets and nose cavity in thin, curling strings. The old man said, “This is one. The other is inside.”

“Get it.” Malice said. The old man went in the house and returned seconds later carrying the small white skull of a young child.

Marc went to him and took the small skull as the old man picked up a plastic bucket by the door and carried it to the fire, where he poured it on the skull. Steam and ash whooshed up in a rolling cloud. The old man turned the skull with a stick and put the remaining water on it, with lesser results. Putting the bucket down, the old man rolled the skull outside the ring, handled it to make sure it wasn’t still hot, and carried it to Marc.

He took it, feeling the fire’s remaining heat in the bones warm his hands. Marc placed it beside the little skull. Malice paid the old man and returned to the jeep. They put the skulls in a sack, and Malice drove toward home. She said, “To reverse the magic, I need to bring Ringo from old to young. It is how I was taught. You will help me. It’s easier to learn that way.”

At home, Ringo still stood in the same place they left him, immobile, staring at nothing. Marc thought it was like leaving a statue. They carried the skulls into the workroom and placed them on the long bench attached to the wall, beside all the other items and plants they gathered in the previous days.

Malice said, “Come with me.” She led the tall boy down the hall and stopped in front of the forbidden room, and opened the door with her key. “It’s time you see.”

The room was larger than Marc had imagined. Long and rectangular, with tables along the walls and cabinets filled with jars and vases filled with what Marc could only guess were for vodou. Photos and paintings were placed haphazardly around the room.

A large painting of Papa Doc was centered on the back wall. Photos of Malice were few, and were always with her in the blue denim uniform, straw hat and sunglasses of the Tonton Macoute.

Two large glass aquariums on the floor had snakes in them. Marc checked to make sure the glass lids were secure on both before he ventured closer. He’d read books on snakes, Malice had several, so identifying them was easy. The long, slender cobras were easiest because they flared their hoods when Marc approached. In the second aquarium was a long gray snake, maybe twelve feet long, Marc thought. It aggressively raised its head off the floor and opened its mouth. The inside was black.

Malice said, “Careful with that one.”

“Black mamba?” Marc asked.

“Yes.”

“And these live snakes have uses?”