By Jasmaine Payne
Twenty minutes.
That was how much time I had before the clouds would dissipate, unveiling the main attraction of this evening’s performance.
I wished Allison would walk faster. I wished she hadn’t insisted on going out tonight. I try to be alone at this time. But, this month, the blasted date fell on our anniversary.
My Granny Thelma, God rest her soul, had always called me “gangly”- a reference to my disproportionately long arms and legs. That night, I tried to put them to use in lengthy strides- almost dragging Allison along- but she was bent on taking a romantic stroll after our dinner.
“Like you in a hurry? Is only seven o’clock,” she said, noticing that I was several steps ahead of her.
Her house was ten minutes away. Behind it was a wide stretch of unoccupied land, covered by a thick mix of monstrous fruit trees and wild plants- we called it ‘The Bush’. If I could just get there, I would be hidden in time to perform my fated task.
I shrugged in response to Allison, preoccupied with the passing time and her trailing footsteps. Tomorrow I would make it up to her.
Thirteen minutes.
As we banked the corner of Pilgrim Street, Allison let out a groan. The street and houses were shrouded in black night. Patches of dim yellow light were all that could be seen. Misty shadows moved behind the curtains of each house. The people they belonged to functioned in the semi-darkness like this was the norm, after all, blackouts were a staple of Guyana’s countryside.
“Stwww. I fed up of this blackout!” Allison protested, frowning at the darkness that greeted us. “Every minute the lights cut off. Like they working fairy lights in this place!” Her voice bounced off the front of the houses as the silence of no electricity took centre stage. There was no means of entertainment except the company of those around you. In this modern world, company no longer sufficed. As we passed each house, we could hear scattered conversations from Allison’s neighbours- some of them sitting on the front steps passing the time, some looking out the window. She waved and answered “Goodnight” as they called out to us. In ten minutes, the street would be aided by the light of the moon coming up from behind the clouds – a welcome appearance for all but me.
“Why you so quiet tonight, man? Is what happen to you?” My silence, and now the unwanted blackout had soured her mood. She stopped walking. Her house was just feet away. No lamps were lit.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. She would want me to come inside, but not tonight. Not tonight. “Sorry, man.”
Eight minutes.
I looked up. A silver line carved the edge of the clouds. The trees behind her house looked black and menacing.
“Come inside. Daddy them gone to church meeting,” she said, taking my hand as we approached her front door. She was a simple girl, too caught up in her own presence to care for anything beyond a one-word explanation for my strange behaviour. She was over it and ready for the second part of the night. She looked up at me, her eyes pleading.
“I got to go,” I said. I squeezed her hand in earnest, hoping that this, too, would be enough for now. But as I tried to pull away, she would not loosen her grasp.
“What happen? What happen to you, Paul?“
She was angry and hurt. I had never rejected her invitation and we both knew moments, where her house was vacant, were few and far apart. The whole of Pilgrim Street knew the iron grip Allison’s parents had on her, so even the neighbours turned a blind eye, rooting for us young lovers to get some alone time when the adults were away.
Five minutes.
But not tonight. I grabbed her roughly, kissed her sloppily then yanked my hand away from hers.
“I got to go!” I began backing away, hoping she would go inside. But she did not. And everyone else on their front steps seemed to be looking on at our display- their eyes having adjusted to the gloom of the night. I looked around frantically. I could run to the end of the street, then duck behind the trees of another house, but I risked being seen. It had to be here. Now. Allison stood bewildered, staring in confusion as I hesitated. Frantic and desperate, I made the final decision. I ran past Allison – knocking her out of the way- down the side of her house, into her back yard, scaled her fence and threw myself into the thicket of the trees, just as the moon emerged in all her majesty.
—-
“When you don’t hear, you does feel” were the words Granny Thelma would chant like a mantra when I was a boy. That statement was the only thing that ran through my head one Saturday evening as she sat bandaging a nasty cut I had received from a broken bottle while playing in The Bush behind our house. All the boys did it; it was a countryside pastime to get away to The Bush and play our boyhood games. The village folk said it was haunted by a Dutch plantation owner and the slaves he slaughtered. That only made our playtime more thrilling.
That afternoon, Granny Thelma had banned me from leaving the house because I forgot to scrub the front steps while she was on her weekly market run. Upon her return, I was sitting on those unscrubbed steps waiting on Tommy and Nando to arrive so our games could begin. Chore undone and anticipation high, Granny Thelma snagged any hopes of seeing my friends as she raced me into the house with hot lashes from a stick she picked up in the yard.
I was confined to my room and was taunted by the calls of my two friends moments later. Eventually, I decided that the old woman was not the boss of me. She would be too caught up watching soap opera reruns when I snuck out the house. I told Tommy and Nando from my bedroom window that I would meet them later.
“Yuh too hard ears!” Granny Thelma scolded. The bandage was already soaked through with my blood. She hustled to undo it and dress it with another layer of ointment and clean bandages. “You mother really do a job when she mek you boy. Ah say don’t leave this house. Yuh gone gallivanting like you ain’t got owner. Now look where it carry yuh!”
My face was soiled with tears and the nipping pain of my wound was the only thing that distracted me by what I had really encountered. That night, in bed and sore from more lashes, I tried to forget what had happened while I was making my way home, but their voices were like a horror song in my head. I had been told before to leave Dutch bottles alone, and in my ignorance, I did not think that kicking one into a tree would cause me any harm. I didn’t pick it up; I didn’t open it. But the vessel shattered as it collided with the trunk and the shards catapulted in my direction. I crouched and screamed, feeling my arm stinging as I held it up to shield my face. For a moment, I couldn’t breathe, and a blackness that did not belong to the coming night swelled up around me. Loud, angry voices filled my ears, screaming a malevolent curse on to my life. It was quick, but it was horrific; proof that the stories of the hauntings in “The Bush” were real.
I didn’t dare tell Granny Thelma, for fear of being beaten some more. So I endured my bad dreams, then tucked the memories far, far away. Within a few days, I was convinced that the trauma of my cut had made me hallucinate. I was no slave to the moon like the voices warned. In fact, there were no voices. There was no curse. I was a twelve-year-old boy in the country, who fell victim to a tale of the old wives. At least, that was what I told myself- that is until I was called by the next full moon.
—-
Allison’s voice had long gone as I ran deeper into the trees. She wouldn’t follow me here. I would have a hard time explaining my behaviour, but it was the least of my worries now. I could see Her light tearing through the trees. My blood turned hot, my vision red and my body grew rigid in excitement as I scrambled toward the light. With a sudden rush of adrenaline, I could feel my body stretching; my legs covering the length of ten tree trunks; my arms parting the massive branches like grass, pulling me forward at tremendous speed. The public road was now within my reach as I moved clumsily through the darkness of the leaves, drooling, grunting and hungry for Her light.
As I emerged from The Bush, the beams hit me like fresh air; I fell to the floor, gasping for breath- overwhelmed by the feeling. Above Shell Village, no- soaring magnificently above this world, was the most beautiful creature ever imagined. The lunar goddess, the Mother Moon, staring down at the earth. And I, her servant, chosen through a clumsy encounter, now knelt before her, transfixed.
It is a love that you cannot define; wonderment that renews itself upon every encounter; and a lingering dread that, should I not obey her, the world would drown in water and destruction.
Versed in this monthly ritual, I rose to my feet, my eyes pierced in her direction. My head ascended above the trees, the houses and the electricity poles over the village. It was a dance between us two. Legs stretched on each side of the Public Road, arms dragging limply beside me, neck craned in her direction; I remained spellbound. It was a standoff of silent mind readings; of worship and pleas for her patience and mercy.
But this ceremony could go only way. And within the cloud of my mind, I heard the solution in the distance. I was disappointed and relieved.
They are never quiet. Usually drunk. Always oblivious to the haunting mass stretched across the street. Though I stand towering above the village, perhaps I am easy to miss as my skin becomes translucent in her glare and all that is left is my shadow, thrown across the landscape.
His thoughts were amiss with idle things- where the next party was – which girl he would carry home. He walked along the side of the road, now deserted as the countrypeople retreated to their beds.
I could feel his footsteps drawing ever nearer. His breathing and the swish-swish of his slippers were the only sounds of the night.
I inhaled, shut my eyes, breaking the trance between myself and the moon. He was right beneath me and in a moment, he was dead.
Shrunken, I wrapped my arms around his body and dragged him into The Bush before we were seen.
The silver moon shone brighter than ever.
He was a young boy – no more than 20. His neck hung flaccidly over my arm. His eyes and mouth were stretched in horror at the last thing he ever saw before his death.
A snap of the neck with the weight of my foot.
Out of sight, I lay him on the warm soil and surveyed his body. It must be perfect for Her to approve. Just as I decided that he would do, a rustle of the leaves and slow movement in the dark aroused me.
“Paul?”
Allison emerged from behind one of the trees, muddy and petrified. She looked at me, returned to human form, but kneeling beside the dead man.
“Paul…oh gosh… Paul wuh you DO?!”
“Allison,” I said, raising my hands in surrender, signalling I meant no harm. She began to back away. How much did she see? How could I explain? “I find he so-“
“You-you LIE! Is wuh jumbie thing you mix up with?! Oh God!”
“Allison please-” I got up to approach her, but she screamed and ran.
How did she follow me through all that mud and slush? Now she had seen what I really was. I did not pursue her right away. I waited, hoping that I would not have to do what I knew was inevitable. I waited for an answer. I waited for an alternative that would allow her to go; that could make her forget so that I would not have to take her.
But the song that haunted me since I was twelve years old began to play. It was all around me. It screamed that I must do her bidding, reminded me that it was my burden alone to bear and possessed me to pursue Allison.
I could see her clearly in the night, pelting helter skelter, trying to remember the path back to her house. She screamed for help, but we couldn’t be heard here. They made sure of that. Halfheartedly I ran behind her, feeling my body stretch again as I grew closer. I could smell her sweat and her perfume mixed in with the dread that she would not make it.
As she scrambled over a broken tree-trunk, I stretched and grabbed her tiny frame, dragging her into me.
Her face was muddy. Her arms flailing. She kicked and shrieked for me to let her go.
I had no words. I only had a mission. In my mind, I knew I loved her and I said goodbye.
Then in one sweeping motion I broke her neck.
And I too was broken.
—-
And my heart lay dead on the ground beside a nameless man.
Their bodies were more perfect than any others I had taken before.
Beyond the trees, I could see Her light, effervescent. Satiated.
I despised Her now.
Drained, I lay next to Allison and fell into a dreamless sleep.
In the morning, the bodies were gone. Taken by that silver devil.
The trees in The Bush seemed harmless, spacious- welcoming even. I rose and began to make my way home.
Above me, the sun shone brighter than it did yesterday. The world had begun its first day, until She called my name again.