The Dark Rites of Cthulhu Read online

  One time Beaugard’s men had beat him so badly he nearly died. Even now he couldn’t remember why they stopped.

  He had a flash of Carly coming into the barn, the six overseers turned to look at her and Jefferson had blacked out cold. When he woke he’d found Carly pressing water to his lips, and felt the sting of salt on his back.

  “You is such a fool sometimes,” she had said. “Always comin’ to defen’ my honour. You gon’ git yourself kil’.”

  But it wasn’t cold, or distant. All her words were spoken with pride and love.

  Carly was smart. She could read and write but she kept this mostly to herself, even though Jefferson knew about it.

  “My daddy was a white man,” she had told him. “He let me learn with his other chil’ren sometimes.”

  “What happen to him?” Jefferson said.

  “Uprisin’. He had a taste for black flesh. Some of the men on the farm didn’t like him messin’ with their wives. The overseers beat the rebels down but by then they’d slit his throat. His widow sent me to the auction the very next day.”

  “She wanted you gone…” Jefferson said. He had taken her hand and kissed it to show how bad he felt for her.

  “Yessir. She always hate how he paraded me around the house. How he bought me nice things, just like his other chil’ren, even though my skin was still too dark for him to ever admit I was his. She took all those fine presents back, too. Sent me out in rags.”

  Jefferson had always felt Carly was a lady but Beaugard’s men had treated her like fresh meat from the start. It didn’t matter how you were brought up. All that mattered was the colour of your skin.

  “Jefferson …”

  Jefferson jumped awake to find Isaac standing by his bedside. The Pollitts’ manservant was a large man, and his dark silhouette was an unnerving sight.

  “You want to help your woman still?” asked Isaac.

  “Yes.”

  “You knows the sacrifice you has to pay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come with me. The congregation is waitin’.”

  Jefferson pulled himself from his sweat-soaked bed as he heard the drums pick up in the distance. He didn’t ask what it meant. Even though he had been born on American soil, he knew something of the old ways by instinct. They all did.

  He followed Isaac from his small shack and out towards the edge of the land. It was still night, but the dawn was tinting the sky and Jefferson could see the big old white house that belonged to the Pollitts up on the horizon. Nothing stirred over there. If the white family heard the drums they showed no sign of it.

  “Isaac, how come the Pollitts free you all?” Jefferson asked as they plunged into the dense forest that formed a part of the plantation.

  “That is ’tween me an’ Massa Pollitt,” Isaac said.

  Jefferson swallowed any further questions and quelled his curiosity as Isaac led him into a wide clearing just as the Sun began to chase the night away.

  They began a ritual, a dance of sorts, while Isaac, clad in a long white robe, shook a tall staff, covered in bone shards tied on with cord. The bones rattled together in rhythm with the drums. Jefferson saw no one playing them though, and even here the sound seemed distant, but part of the ceremony.

  Bare-chested, Jefferson kneeled by a blood-soaked altar while a young woman danced forward holding a live chicken. Within moments Isaac had taken the bird, cut its throat and splashed the still-warm blood all over Jefferson’s face and chest. The rest of the blood was drained off into a round bowl.

  As the last twitches of the bird ceased, Isaac stared down into the bowl and began to talk in the old tongue.

  Jefferson listened to the lilting language, unable to recognise a word because his parents had never been allowed to speak it on Beaugard’s land.

  “I sees somethin’ here …” Isaac said.

  “What you see?” asked Jefferson.

  “I sees Carly. She… No!”

  Isaac’s sudden gasp brought Jefferson to his feet. He looked into the bowl that Isaac held and for a moment he thought he saw Carly’s face in the blood, only it didn’t seem like her at all. She held the same, cruel, sneering expression she had worn when she sent him away the last time. There was a darkness crowded around her. Carly’s lips moved, even though Jefferson heard no sound. A huge monstrous bulk appeared to be gathering momentum from the words she spoke.

  Isaac abruptly tipped the blood out of the bowl and the vision was lost.

  “What was it?” Jefferson said.

  “You don’t wan’ to know what I seen. She ain’t no good Jefferson. She into some bad voodoo. Somethin’ like I never seen ’fore.”

  “You said you’d help me,” Jefferson said.

  “I can’t. I never would have said so if I knowed what was goin’ on …”

  “Tell me what to do,” Jefferson said.

  “She gone to you,” Isaac said. “You best for’git her.”

  No matter how much Jefferson pleaded, Isaac wouldn’t change his mind. He sent the gathered congregation of semi-naked men and women away. And all evidence of their ceremony was removed, including the remains of the dead bird.

  A few hours later the same people stood side by side with him in the cotton field, but no one spoke of the ritual.

  The failed ceremony made Jefferson even more determined to save Carly. If something bad, some form of black magic, was responsible for the change in her, then maybe he could help. Maybe he should just steal her away, out of the city, as he had planned to do the night before.

  When the work day ended, Jefferson gathered his possessions, his freedom papers and the small amount of money he had managed to save and set off from the plantation for the last time.

  New Orleans town was in chaos.

  “What’s happenin’?” Jefferson asked as he saw a group of slaves running from the dock.

  “The Union Navy done broke through the boom,” one of them said. “They is firing at anythin’ that move. Git outta here fella or you is gon’ git kill’.”

  Jefferson hurried away, but not in the direction that the slaves went. He carried on his journey to the French Quarter. Tonight, no matter what she said, Carly was going to listen to him. And, if he could, he would persuade her to leave with him.

  As he did the previous night, Jefferson looked up at Carly’s window. This time the balcony doors were closed, the room was in darkness. Jefferson felt a pang of anxiety as he hurried towards the building.

  The building had once been a fine and expensive house, owned by a wealthy Creole family. Now this former regal home had been turned into a brothel. This dwelling housed girls and women on all levels of the spectrum and fees. Some catered to aristocracy, others – the basement whores – lay in cots underground and serviced the white-trash. White men, no matter how rich or poor, always seemed to need whores. Even so, girls like Carly were in the minority. She was favoured by the wealthy, and had entertained a fair amount of Confederate senior officers, too.

  Jefferson pushed the thought of all those wealthy white men away. Her words still stung him but he couldn’t give up on her. Not yet. Not until he was certain she was really where she wanted to be.

  Heading around the back of the building Jefferson found the entrance to the basement rooms unlocked. Carly had told him about this entrance on one of the few occasions she managed to slip out to meet him. That was before the brothel changed her, but even then she had difficulty in being around him.

  “Bein’ with you makes me feel bad,” she had said once. “You is everythin’ I thought I wanted.”

  “I love you, Carly. I’m gon’ git you outta here,” Jefferson had promised.

  “That’s a nice dream, Brent. I’d like to believe it could happen. But you try takin’ me from this place you is gon’ git yourself strung up. I’m white man’s property. You knows that would be stealin’.”

  Her words were intelligent like always, but Jefferson didn’t want to hear them. It was on their second to last meeting
when he had been the most insistent. Begging her to come with him then.

  “You don’t wan’ somethin’ that’s been all used up,” Carly said. “You deserve better’n me. Don’t come back here. Forget about me. This just ain’t gon’ work out how it was s’posed to.”

  Jefferson couldn’t forget, though, and all the times she’d been kind, juxtaposed with the one time she had rejected him, made it harder for him to let her go.

  Now, he paused at the back door wondering what had gotten Isaac so spooked. What was it he had seen in the chicken’s blood? Jefferson pushed away the weird and blurred image, convinced it was all his imagination, brought on by his desire to find the help he wanted. The thing was, Jefferson was a practical man. He didn’t believe in heaven, hell or voodoo, he had just been so desperate he had hoped for a miracle.

  A creeping doubt entered his mind when he recalled Isaac’s reaction during the ritual. The houngan had been truly afraid of something.

  Pushing down the nervous adrenaline that flooded his body, Jefferson tugged on the door, and as he expected, it opened effortlessly.

  Once these downstairs quarters would have belonged to privileged serving slaves of the Creole household. Now, the interior of the basement smelt like hot sex and perspiration. All the time he was certain someone would see him there. One of the white pimps, or maybe one of the whores would raise the alarm. But no one came out of the rooms, and though Jefferson listened outside one of the doors, he heard no sounds from within.

  There was litter and spillages of unknown origin underfoot. His shoes felt tacky as he traipsed quietly through the narrow corridor, past the whore’s dormitory and up the staircase that led, he hoped, to the inside of the house. At the top of the staircase, Jefferson opened another door. He found himself in the main lobby.

  Light poured in through a tall feature window illuminating a large circular hallway with an ornate marble floor and a grand staircase in the centre. Jefferson looked around at the many doors that came off from the hallway and up to the staircase and balcony that spread around the top. He could see several rooms in the gloom above and it didn’t take him long to work out what direction Carly’s room would be in.

  The house was quiet though. Too quiet. Though he had timed his visit to coincide with the end of business, he had expected some customers, servants and whores to still be around. He went to the front door, found it locked up tight as though they expected the siege outside to surge inside. Maybe there had been no trade that evening. Maybe the whore house had remained closed while outside the world went to hell.

  A surge of panic consumed him. What if the white man had taken all the best girls and fled? Forgetting caution now, Jefferson took the stairs two at a time. At the top he turned right and followed the doors around to the one he thought was Carly’s. Then he paused. What if she was in there now with a customer? Could he bear to see it?

  Jefferson floundered for a moment then he grabbed and turned the handle.

  The door was locked.

  Of course. It would be. They wouldn’t let their best girl roam free would they? But then… how did she manage to meet with him in the past?

  Jefferson pressed his ear against the door then tapped lightly. No sound came from inside at all. Then he heard a strange chanting coming from the floor below. He turned and walked back to the balcony, looking down the hallway. The sound was coming from one of the doors to the left. Though he had no idea what he was going to do, Jefferson hurried back down.

  He could hear music now. This must be a ballroom. Perhaps some kind of debauched party was just beginning. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t just walk inside and take Carly. He wouldn’t get within ten feet of her before some white man would shoot him down.

  Jefferson heard a door creak somewhere behind him. He sank back into the shadows beside the staircase just before a group of people emerged from the room opposite. Three men wearing robes approached the door and Jefferson pressed himself deeper into the gloom for fear of being seen.

  The doors to the ballroom opened releasing a flood of light into the stairway. Jefferson looked in, his eyes adjusting, and then opening wide. There in the centre of the room was Carly.

  She was surrounded by several people all kneeling in a circle on the mosaic ballroom floor. She was wearing a long black dress and she stood before a tall table on which was opened a thick leather bound book. Her hands were raised, palms upwards as though in supplication, but her eyes remained fixed on the pages of the book.

  As the other men joined her, two standing on either side, one joining the kneeling congregation, Jefferson was reminded of the ceremony that Isaac had performed. Only, Isaac had said something about daylight and dawn being crucial to keeping evil out of their magic. Carly was clearly involved in something more here than mere prostitution.

  Jefferson realised he was trapped now in his hiding place unless someone closed the doors to the ballroom. But the open doors didn’t seem to worry these people. Jefferson wondered if everyone in the main house was now gathered in this room and this was why there was no need to keep their activity secret. He cast his mind back to the whore den below. He hadn’t seen anyone down there, his entry had been easy. Too easy.

  “On dis night…” said Carly, “when the enemy is near, we call upon the Old Ones to help protec’ dis house. Hide us, your servants, oh Great One.”

  Carly began to read directly from the book. It was like no language Jefferson had ever heard. The robed congregation shivered in unison as the idiom seemed to vibrate in the air. There was a substantial echo after each word, far more than the space should have created, mixed with the low timbre of Carly’s voice.

  Jefferson felt the hairs stand up on the back of his neck. He sensed power. Real magic which was nothing like the feeling he had experienced that morning in the clearing with Isaac. This voodoo was different. It was black magic, just as Isaac had said. It terrified him.

  Jefferson felt an urge to run. An unnameable fear sent blood pounding through his veins. He felt like a buffalo cornered by hunters. It was a moment of clarity that made him realise he needed to get out of there before…

  Jefferson swallowed. He forced his panic down and away. Before what? This was all just strange to him. What could the magic do to him or anyone else?

  “On dis night … when men die for their belief… we ask the Old Ones to protect’ this house…” Carly repeated. “Destroy all those who enter dat do not belong here.”

  Carly slipped back into the strange tongue once more and the gathering raised their voices in a rehearsed response, not unlike the Christian chants that Jefferson had endured when he was a slave on the Beaugard Plantation.

  Jefferson felt as though the words had pierced him. Whatever magic Carly was summoning – and he couldn’t help but wonder how it was even possible after years of deliberate atheism – was presumably dangerous to any and all intruders, himself included.

  Once more he began to wonder if he should leave before things went too far. He felt a real and genuine terror, though, that froze him in his hiding place while he watched the woman he loved.

  The chanting suddenly stopped. A sense of anticipation rippled through the room. Jefferson could smell it, taste it, almost like the sexual energy he could sense in the basement.

  “Bring in the sacrifice,” Carly said.

  A young white girl, face heavily painted, was brought in from a side room that led off from the ballroom. She was subdued, but afraid. Her thin arms trembled as she was brought before Carly.

  Jefferson knew about forfeits from Isaac. Other than the death of a chicken – which Isaac had explained fulfilled the magic’s need for life energy – the voodoo priest did not condone the taking of human life. This, he had said, was black magic and it had no place in the rituals of good men. Jefferson realised that this girl was, in fact, the equivalent of Isaac’s chicken. Jefferson didn’t know what to do. He had no responsibility to anyone but Carly. He couldn’t risk being discovered for some
white whore who meant nothing to him.

  The girl was forced to lie down on the floor. The robe she was wearing was pulled open, and Jefferson could see that she was completely naked underneath. He wondered how she had come to be in the hands of these people. She seemed so young and he suddenly he wasn’t convinced that she was the whore she was made-up to be, either. What if she were just some poor innocent who had been taken by these mad men? And how could Carly be involved with this?

  Carly walked towards the girl. Now she was holding a dagger which glinted in the light from the chandeliers.

  “You know what you have to do?” said Carly looking down at the girl.

  Four men held her spread-eagled on the floor, each holding a wrist or an ankle.

  The girl didn’t struggle, but from his vantage point Jefferson could see tears roll down the sides of her face into her blonde hair.

  “Dis is my sacrifice to you, oh Great One!” Carly announced. “My own blood sister, given in tribute. Give me the power to free dis city. Give me the power to seek revenge on those that have used me.”

  The girl squealed as Carly ran the sharp blade over her wrists, cutting viciously into the arteries.

  Two more whores appeared with bowls. They placed them under the wrists of the girl and her captors twisted her arms viciously to ensure the blood seeped into the containers. Jefferson knew it wouldn’t take long before the girl bled out. He had been shocked to see Carly inflicting the wounds but had forced himself to remain still and unobserved. Jefferson had heard of Carly’s white sister. She had been close to her. Jefferson had even believed that Carly loved her. He couldn’t believe that she had now, effectively murdered her for some obscure power.

  The men and women were disrobing and all stood before Carly in their naked glory. As the bowls filled, the girl’s captors let go of her arms and ankles and left her to bleed on the mosaic floor. Two of them brought the bowls over to the table and placed them before Carly. The knife was now lying beside the book, and Carly turned the page with a blood-stained hand. The blood stains disappeared as though the book was made of blotting paper and it had sucked in the blood.