The First Soucouyant

Reckoning

Jean De Verteuil buried his head in his hands, attempting in vain to stop the chattering of his teeth. They rattled rhythmically, like macabre castanets, keeping time with the low chanting of the old black man in the other corner of the hut.

He looked around at it. In all his years as Master of his plantation he had never been inside a slave's hut. It was small but clean. He found himself wondering how many slaves had lived here before Old Joseph.

Vain thoughts, empty thoughts, anything to distract himself from the dread creeping into his soul, freshly sprung from the horror of what he had witnessed. Old Joseph paused his chanting.

"What you say it look like again?"
De Verteuil spoke, his voice tense and sharp with fear.
"I told you already, it was.."
He stopped suddenly.
"It was what?"
"Hush!" He exclaimed. "Listen man, listen!"

There was complete silence, which would have been unremarkable, were it not for the fact that the frogs and cicadas had been making quite the racket only a moment before. He could feel this silence, feel it coming closer. He drew his chair nearer to Old Joseph's.

"You have to protect me."
Old Joseph chuckled silently.
"Now you know that? All this time you harassing me for practicing Obeah.  Now something kill your family and burn down your house and look where you end up."
"You impudent nig..."

He stopped again, listening. There was no mistaking it this time.
Old Joseph rose from his chair and prepared  to  leave the hut. The white man looked at his bent frame in despair. Frail and aged as he was, Old Joseph had given him a last source of comfort. Of hope. Now that too was slipping away.

"Where are you going?" he heard his breaking voice murmur.

"Me?" The old slave asked, as though surprised by the question.

"I going and use what lil obeah I know to get the hell outta here."

He turned and looked at his master, his expression almost pitiful.
"God be with you Massa."
A gust of wind and he was gone.
As the deafening silence fell, De Verteuil buried his head in his hands, quaking with fear.
Outside the hut, somewhere in the darkness, came the sound of crackling flames and a sick orange glow....

.