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Blue on Black- Kenny Wayne Shepard Band |
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I've looked at it in the mirror probably a hundred times since the other day - well, what I can see of it. Dead center on the back of my neck, there's a barely perceptible round ridge under my skin. There's no entry point you can see, nothin'. It hurt like fucking hell for the first two or three days, but now it's just there, makin' me a danger to everyone around me.
When I woke up in that cave with a dead demon, I felt hot all over and weak in my joints, and I was confused 'til I remembered what happened. When I checked my watch, I saw I'd been layin' there for nearly three hours. It was almost dawn. Lucky for me I had enough presence of mind to grab my knife, 'cause on my long walk back to my car, I ended up fighting three Ga'hars. Badly. I still can't believe they didn't kill me. I didn't kill them either, and if I'd been at the top of my game, I would've.
When I told my daddy and grandpere what happened, they gave each other that look. You know, the one that makes you say, "Oh, fuck. What?" They wouldn't say nothin' until they took me to the voodooienne. She's called Madame Ysebeau - no last name that anyone knows, anyway - and she lives in a fallin' down little house at the edge of the swamp. Nobody knows her age, but grandpere says she was livin' there when he was a boy. I can't see how that's possible, myself.
I'd never been to see her before, and I thought maybe she was gonna start handlin' snakes or conjurin' spirits. But when I told her what happened, she simply put her hand on the back of my neck and stood there like she was in a trance for five minutes. It was eerie; dusk was near and only a little light came through the smudged windows. Candles burned on a table in the front room where she receives visitors, and shadows flickered across her face. Her eyes were half-closed, and her expression was intent on... something. "Dark," she said finally, in her Cajun patois. "Darkest magic. There will be no refuge. No rock will hide you on that day."
My lips struggled to find words. "But what is it?"
"You already know, ma cher," she replied.
She sent us away with the name of a powerful bokor in the Lake Mojave, Nevada area, about twenty miles outside of a town called Searchlight, which none of us had ever heard of before. When we got outside on her porch, we saw five demons waiting for us in the shadows beyond the gravel driveway. They were too frightened of the voodooienne to come any closer.
She was right. I suppose I already knew what the device in my neck was before I even asked her. A curse. Judgement, perhaps?
I'm leavin' tonight, going West, taking every weapon I can get my hands on. Got a feelin' I'll need 'em.
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awake
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