Latest update October 1st, 2024 12:59 AM
Jun 08, 2014 News
By Dennis A. Nichols
It was late Friday afternoon as the sun was setting behind a coconut grove, that Mrs. Farrier blanket-wrapped her baby
and, with her husband, started off for Cousin Jane’s house just over a mile away, a short distance past the Mahaicony River Bridge. She held the infant tight, close to her breast in a clumsy, over-protective manner. Her eyes flickered suspiciously from one side of the dusty, red road to the other as they approached the bridge.
The sun, no longer visible, cast an unnatural orange-purplish glow high above, and across toward the eastern sky so that a careless observer might for a moment marvel at the incongruous notion of sunset and sunrise occurring simultaneously. Then suddenly the tints of twilight deepened and darkened, and night was upon them even as they crossed the bridge. Five minutes later they were at Cousin Jane’s house.
Cousin Jane, an elderly woman of indeterminable age, was no cousin to anyone in the village as far as they knew. But she looked respectable, and dressed respectably, so that with deference to her age and appearance, she was ‘Cousin’ to all, including folks that may have been older than her. No one seemed to be able to recall when she had come to the village, or from where, and no one cared to ask.
She didn’t talk much but when she did it was always with a taken-for-granted authority, and always in what the headmaster termed ‘good’ English. She was short, thin and wiry, with sparse, greying hair, but she walked, and spoke rather briskly.
The Farriers entered the lantern-lit wooden house, and sat down.
“Good evening Cousin Jane. How you doing, and how’s the family?” Mrs. Farrier asked distractedly, then becoming aware that the old lady had no family, added awkwardly, “You know my husband … the headmaster… and this is my baby, the first child, Daniel; he’s not too well.”
“Good evening dear, and you too, Mr. Farrier.” She got straight to the point.
“Of what service can I be to you? I guess it has something to do with your child, or you wouldn’t be out this time in the evening.”
Mr. Farrier spoke, “Well, you’re right. This is our first child, Daniel – well not exactly. You see we had a child before, a boy, who died shortly after birth, and it was hard on Mrs. Farrier. She was very worried while she was pregnant with this child and when he was born, well he looked so much like the first one, and she just hoped and prayed that this one would be okay. But…ah – you see…” he began to falter. His wife took up the narrative and explained what had happened over the past two days. As she spoke she noticed that Cousin Jane was looking keenly at the baby. When she had finished speaking, the older woman addressed them.
“Your child has the horror on him,” she began bluntly. Mrs. Farrier fidgeted with the baby’s blanket. “Now I know it sounds bad, and it is, but there are some things you can do; you must do, and you have to act quickly. Old Higue has been around for a long time, before the history of the world, and there are many different kinds. I think you know about the ones that you can catch through counting rice grains, and those you can keep away with garlic and chalk and such things. Those are the easy ones.” She chuckled softly.
“But others, aaahh, I tell you, others need the avenging power of The Spirit. The word! You know what I mean? Yes, the word; that is all that can save your child, and save you, and…” she paused then added almost in a whisper, “and save all of us. Wait, let me get it for you.”
The old lady got up and went into another room, and something was different about the way she walked, slowly and with a slight stoop of the shoulders that spoke of world-weariness. The headmaster and his wife noticed. Maybe, Mr. Farrier pondered, she is older than she appears. Cousin Jane was in the room for almost five minutes, then returned, walking even more slowly, with a large, old bible in her hands that she seemed scarcely able to lift. She looked very tired.
“The word,” she repeated, and she chuckled again, but there was no mirth in it. No one knew how tired she was. So much she had done over the years; so many children and babies, and the misery and iniquity of sinfulness everywhere. It was as if this little family, the sober headmaster, the distraught wife, and the distressed infant, right there in her house, perplexed and impotent, was breaking her heart and her spirit, was somehow releasing her from the toil, the commitment, and burden of the years, the endless years…
The headmaster and his wife looked at her, and at each other. She opened the book and turned the pages slowly until she came to a certain passage. Quoting book, chapter and verse, she urged the Farriers to write them down. (the headmaster always had writing material on his person) She added two other scriptures and closed the bible abruptly.
“Hurry,” she admonished them. “Tonight, read, believe, confess, and claim your eminence.” Strange words, and a strange tone. The couple thanked her and left.
After they left, Cousin Jane stood at her door, gazing for a long time into the darkness. Then she closed it and sat down at a table in the centre of the room. After a while, she heard the wind outside gusting, and cold draughts of air swept in under the door and through two half-opened windows. She lived a hundred yards from her nearest neighbour, but had anyone ventured within earshot five minutes later, they would have heard the now-shrieking wind mingling in hideous harmony with another sound – a rising, whimpering wail ending in a sob that had in it all ghastly resonance of long-endured pain.
There was a catharsis that night. At the Farriers, bible verses were read in repeated and fervent supplication, with tears and entreaties, as little Daniel moaned and coughed and several times vomited small amounts of a gritty, dark substance. This went on intermittently for about an hour. Then he slept, in peaceful oblivion, as his exhausted parents kept watch through the rest of the night.
Cousin Jane had lived a long life and had travelled much. The night was her element, and she had been born under the curse of fire and blood. She’d known for a long time that there was one way only to escape the bondage of an ancestral pact with the devil, and when she had placed her hand on the Holy Book that night, it had seared her very soul. The demons of the night had shrieked insanely at this betrayal, but they were overwhelmed by the power of the scriptures she had given to the headmaster and his wife, which had a fire and blood of their own.
For the Farriers, the words had been received by the One Who Sees and Knows All, as an entreaty. But for Cousin Jane, they were configured by the ‘Spirit’ and presented to that same One in the only form that could have guaranteed her release – a confession!
October 1st turn off your lights to bring about a change!
Oct 01, 2024
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