Voodoo Queens of New Orleans - Vol. II | In Progress

Chapter Seventeen: Baron Samedi

Baron Samedi - the loa of the dead. The ruling spirit of cemeteries and the decider of souls' fates. Me, Alize and Sajida owed a particular debt to Baron Samedi, but we swore on our souls to never talk about it. It's been over 25 years since, and it seem like this debt had finally caught up to us.

It was Alize's mama's fault - the first Madam Dumont. When she was the High Priestess of The Coterie, she became obsessed with those prophetic papers that were kept in the study, locked in a chest. They were the papers that Lisa allegedly wrote herself, but of course, none of us knew that then, not even Madam Dumont; Lisa wasn't even a thought yet. But Madam Dumont was close to uncovering the truth - close until another priestess in The Coterie, Mama Edna, tried to stop her in her tracks. Now, Mama Edna was a very powerful, old school mambo who spent many years communing in Haiti. She saw voodoo as a source of good intention, and if there was one thing Mama Edna did not tolerate, it was Madam Dumont's willingness to abuse her power to decode those papers. But Madam Dumont, eclipsed by her obsession with this prophecy that she barely understood, saw Mama Edna as an obstacle that needed to be moved.

I didn't know what we was doing when Madam Dumont invited me, Alize and Sajida to some lonely shore off Lake Ponchartrain. It was late at night, and the only way we could see anything was by the small fire that Madam Dumont had made for us in the middle of the ceremonial circle. I had just recently joined The Coterie as a hounsi a few years prior, so anything I could do to make Madam Dumont satisfied, I would do it. She knew this; she knew I'd keep my mouth shut, too.

I didn't know the Dumont sisters very well yet. This was before Madam Dumont gave up Alize's innocence to Abraham, and before Madam Dumont sold Sajida to the Bayou of the Shunned for deep secrets and power. To me then, they were just the Dumont sisters - Alize a soft-spoken, devout young woman of her faith, and Sajida, the outspoken, intelligent renegade who often practiced witchcraft behind The Coterie's back.

Madam Dumont was honest when she told me we was invoking Samedi. But what she wasn't honest about was the reason why. And as hounsis, the three of us ain't ask no questions. Not until we saw Mama Edna a few weeks later, standing atop her house in the dead of night, wailing about demons in her head 'fore she jumped off the roof and ended her life. I will never forget the screams that came from her children, seeing they mama fall and hit the ground, splattered about the asphalt like roadkill.

A few weeks after that, Mama Edna was replaced by the now late Ophelia Lowry, who supported Madam Dumont and all of her endeavors, whatever they were.

We put the pieces together then - Madam Dumont hexed Mama Edna, and we helped her do it. And now Samedi, promised compensation for His efforts, was waiting for the return on his profit. We were young. So young. And scared. We thought if we didn't speak about it, it would just magically go away; that Samedi would realize that this was Madam Dumont's doing, and she needed to fulfill her end of the bargain on her own. But Samedi didn't see it that way. We were involved, so, therefore, this hung over our heads just as much as it hung over Madam Dumont's. And when we found out what Madam Dumont promised Samedi in return, we knew we were in deep shit:

Madam Dumont promised Baron Samedi a vampire sacrifice as payment. She died 'fore she could fulfill her end of the bargain, and we swore with blood to never speak of Samedi again.

"You voodoo witches and your goddamn curses!" Abraham yelled at me before forcing me to get into the SUV that Mr. Boone pulled up in (of course Boone with his bougie-ass would be too good to walk here like the rest of his well-abled brothers and sisters). Hezekiah was told to leave to the city while I was forced to go with Abraham to stop Alize from doing any more damage; he made some vampire woman give me her boots to wear.