Cursed

Prologue

Marie Toussaint moved as fast as her plump body would go down the street running between the Iberville Projects and an expansive cemetery located just outside the French Quarter of New Orleans. The early autumn night was chilly enough to make her shiver despite the gown she wore. Street lamps rendered the sidewalk well-lit while the graveyard and side streets were shrouded in darkness.

As a member of a culture that revered death and celebrated the transition of a person from flesh into a spirit, Marie normally felt comfortable – honored even – to be anywhere near the tombs of the deceased.

Except when she came to the city.

Evil lurked somewhere in the cemeteries of New Orleans, and it scared her more than the Projects at night. She dug through her pocket to grab a good luck gris-gris she created for herself, a chicken claw and cat foot bound with the hair of a loved one and blessed by no less than two magic spells. Comforted by the charm, she focused on the rhythmic clicking of her bone and wooden bracelets instead of the unwelcoming city around her.

By the time she reached the end of the cemetery, she was panting and ready for a tumbler of her favorite Sazerac. She licked her lips and slowed without stopping. She was already half an hour late for the secret meeting in the city with the heads of the other two Houses – families of ancient voodoo magic bloodlines.

She stopped to catch her breath.

Someone had begun following her at the bus stop and was closing in. Pretending not to notice, she silently asked the spirits to warn her of any danger, the same way they told her someone trailed.

She began walking again.

Rene. The spirits whispered the name of the gang member in a voice only she could hear.

“Ah. The warrior,” she said loudly, pleased. “He watches over me.”

She listened intently for a moment, wondering if he’d respond. Her pace was quick for her, but slow for a young man accustomed to prowling the wards and graveyards of New Orleans. He could’ve robbed her or attacked her or worse. But he wouldn’t. Not this member of the Loa Ogoun gang. Named after the warrior god, Ogoun, the LO gang was small and dedicated to voodoo. They were created in the wake of Hurricane Katrina to protect the core voodoo religion and its adherents when the city was thrown into total chaos after the storm wiped away most of the city – and all forms of law and order.

“I ain’t no warrior,” Rene grumbled at last. “How you know I’m following, Madame Marie?”

“The spirits protect them who serve well,” she said with a grateful look towards the cloudy sky.

The rugged gang member materialized out of the shadows lining the storefronts and apartment buildings. Tall and lean, Rene wore baggy jeans and a t-shirt with cap sleeves that left the tattoos on his roped forearms visible.

“You got almost all the Loas on your arms,” she said in approval. “Ogoun twice.”

“He’s my family’s god,” he said, pointing to the warrior god’s symbol. It was in the center of both forearms.

Any other day, she might try to convince him that the spirits really did want him to take his place as a warrior. Today, however, she was already late. She walked faster instead and saved her breath for the journey.

She spotted the Coffee Loa – Coffee God – a hole-in-the-wall café that specialized in voodoo memorabilia and African imports located at the edge of the trendy, touristy French Quarter. The door of the all night meeting spot was propped open, and the rich scents of incense and coffee rolled out onto the street. They reached her half a block away, along with the sounds of a jazz band playing in the club across the street.

“I could eat a horse,” Rene said, eyes on their destination.

Accustomed to feeding eight children and their two dozen grandchildren whenever they dropped by her house north of New Orleans, Marie kept a ready supply of treats in her pockets. She automatically reached for one and pulled out a small baggy, handing it to him.

He took it and held it up, peering at it cautiously with blue-green eyes the color of the shallow Caribbean water of her native Haiti. It was another reason she felt at peace with the reluctant warrior. He reminded her of a much simpler time from her youth.

“Mini-po-boys,” she told him. “Homemade.”

He lifted his eyebrows. “I never eat homemade no more. My mama’s too sick to cook.” He opened the baggy and pulled out the messy sandwich. Two bites later, he was done and sucking the spices from his fingers.

Marie smiled then turned her attention to the café. Instead of going in the front door, they went around the side, to the secondary entrance.

Rene opened the metal door for her. It scraped the cement below. Two doors were on the other side, though only one was visible to the naked eye. The second was protected by magic.

She went to the hidden door and pressed her palms to the cool cement. The spell that hid the door sizzled around her hands in warm, yellow flames. Recognizing her, the protective ward retreated, and the sound of a bolt being retracted filled the quiet space where she and Rene stood.

The door opened. The narrow stairwell beyond was lit by buzzing fluorescent lights. The walls and ceiling were made out of slate gray cement.

“Always feels like a tomb,” she complained and gripped the wooden railing. She stepped down, letting her good leg go first.

She heard the voices before she reached the secret vault under the coffee shop. The others were already present.

Marie descended the last step with a heavy sigh and reached into the knit purse hanging over one shoulder. It held more snacks for the grandkids and a collection of vials with ritual powders and herbs, small boxes containing mummified animal parts and other essential items to perform magic on the go.

The two voodoo leaders sat at a small table in the center of the room whose corners pointed in the cardinal directions. An altar to each House’s respective god was in three of the four corners of the room, and someone had recently drawn a protective veve under each chair. Homemade purification sachets in lovingly created silk pouches of bright purple and gold lined the room with one tossed under the center of the table.

She admired the sachets for a moment. They were the work of one of the voodoo leaders. Marie’s tools of the trade, plastic baggies and beat up boxes, were functional and far less pretty, much like her cooking.

Marie went to the corner dedicated to Papa Legba, the benevolent, powerful chief of the gods who was also her family’s personal protector. She pulled a squeeze bottle of cascarilla – crushed eggshells – from her bag and used it to deftly draw the veve of Papa Legba on the cement in front of the altar.

Kneeling in the purified spot, she closed her eyes and prayed to her deceased husband, her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

“Please grant me protection and forgive any offenses I made,” she murmured. Uncomfortable in the city at night with the people behind her, she called upon the spirits of the long dead, just in case she needed the added protection.

When she rose, she went to each corner, deposited puffs of eggshell powder into each then drew the family god’s veve under her chair.

The others waited in respectful silence for her to finish a routine similar to those the House leaders no doubt went through before she arrived. Only when she was ready did she look up at who awaited her.

“Madame Toussaint,” Rene’s uncle, Olivier DuBois, greeted her. He was tall with the polished, educated air befitting the man who bore the title of Assistant Police Commissioner. Well-dressed and middle-aged, he had the family’s blue-green eyes. “Welcome.”

“Welcome,” added Candace Igbo, a woman in an African head wrap and robe with a warm smile. She smelled of the café above, a sign she had been working in her shop before coming down.

“I apologize for the emergency phone calls,” Olivier started. “We’ve had an incident. The … menace we thought was gone has returned.”

“I sense the evil all around,” Marie said. “It followed me from the bus stop here.”

“I ain’t evil,” Rene objected.

“Not you, my warrior.”

Frowning, he crossed his arms and leaned back against the wall.

“Rene, give us a minute,” Olivier ordered. “We need to talk about official matters. Go upstairs and wait for me.”

“A’ight. Candace, I’m grabbing some beignets or something,” Rene said.

“You’re welcome to any of our snacks, as usual,” Candace replied.

The gang member left.

“He is a good boy,” Marie said.

“He, his brother and their street thugs serve a purpose,” Olivier replied. “They keep our culture safe and secrets hidden. There are still parts of the city where police won’t go. If we can’t protect our own, how can our religion withstand another Hurricane Katrina, let alone other threats?”

“The religion is not as vulnerable as you believe,” Candace chided, her accent giving her words a pleasant rhythm. “People may die, but our religion will remain.”

“You and I will never agree,” Olivier said with a smile. “My family has been protecting the Original Three Houses of New Orleans for a few hundred years. We are the -”

“- First Families of voodoo,” Candace finished. “I’ve heard it enough times.”

“It’s a source of pride and responsibility. We are charged with covering up issues like those we need to discuss tonight and ensuring the continuation of our way of life.”

Marie watched them talk. Candace glowed with goodness. She was a mambos, a voodoo priestess who was gentle, wise and focused solely on healing magic. Olivier’s background was more like Marie’s: mixed. Having dabbled in black magic as well as healing, Marie found her place, but only after making a few mistakes she was still trying to right.

C’est la vie, she told herself.

It didn’t take long for her to tune out Olivier. Once he got on his soapbox, she lost all interest. She wasn’t there to be reminded how voodoo in New Orleans had withstood great challenges, from hurricanes to witch hunts to being condemned as a satanic religion, until the Original Three Houses went underground in the 1700s, long before Madame Leveau helped take the legitimate religion out of the mainstream circus it had become in the late 1800s.

No, Marie wasn’t in the mood. She pulled a small wooden box and her cascarilla out of her bag and returned to a spell she’d been working on for a week now. It had to be done by tomorrow, when her beloved grandson, Jayden, visited.

Opening the box, she withdrew the old, round dog tags that belonged to her grandfather and set them on a cloud of eggshells to work on.

“… because we are the original three Houses in New Orleans, each one representing a sect of our religion. African, Haitian, American, we are …”

He will talk forever, if we let him.

Tomorrow morning, she’d prepare the altar in the shed where she practiced her voodoo for the final ritual meant to give the dog tags her most powerful protection spell yet. Her collection of oils, powders and special prayers had grown over the years to the point where she doubted anyone outside of the high priests and priestess in Africa knew more.

If what the spirits told her was accurate, then her grandson was going to need every ounce of knowledge and powder she had.

“Am I boring you, Marie?” Olivier asked, tapping the table to draw her attention.

“Chatte brile pair di feu,” she replied in Creole. A burnt cat dreads the fire. Is creole french different than regular? Chat is cat in French. “I don’t never vote and I know you too well. You ain’t ever gonna impress me.”

Candace laughed. Olivier gave a slow smile.

“Okay. Onto business,” he said.

Marie put her project away.

“The LO gang is reporting two more murders like those that used to be frequent a few years ago,” he started. “Black magic deaths. The voodoo serial killer is becoming more active again.”

“The Red Man returns as well,” Marie said. “The spirits have warned me.”

Olivier shifted in his seat. “Last time, the Red Man came and left and then the ritual murders started. Both are connected to the curse, but the LO never found out why.”

“It is the foulest curse I have ever seen,” Candace murmured. “What kind of curse is beyond my skill to heal?”

They both looked at Marie.

Marie touched the mole between her eyes the way she did whenever she was troubled. Every woman born in her family the past four hundred years bore the birthmark; it made her feel closer to those who came before her. She worked on recalling what she’d been told by the spirits.

“It’s the return of the Fourth House, that which used to be one of the original families of New Orleans,” she said. “The spirits told me another member of the Fourth House has come. The Red Man follows.”

The other two exchanged alarmed looks.

“Your ancestors warned us about him last time. I don’t understand how the spirits of your family know so much about this Red Man curse,” Olivier said.

I won’t never tell you, neither, she said to herself.

“The tale of the Red Man comes from Africa, Olivier. He is known to be hungry, to eat his own, body and spirit and must claim who he comes for, or he will never leave. He pulls others into his curse, anyone in his way, even the innocent,” Candace said. “Whatever he was sent to do last time, he did not finish it, if he is returning. He was supposed to be a legend, a myth only.”

“He came when the Fourth House resurfaced in New Orleans last time and left when the serial killer claimed her life. The Fourth House is here again. We should just send its member away,” Olivier reasoned.

“No,” Marie said quietly. “It is too late. This time, the Red Man will not be satisfied with the girl. He brings great evil.” The images the spirits had shown her flooded her mind: those of a gorgeous young woman with the touch of death. Marie pushed the vision back. “Evil that will not stop.”

“Your ancestors told you this?” Olivier’s tone was hushed.

“Yes.”

“Marie, can we speak to them? Please?” Candace asked. She leaned forward, her brown eyes concerned, and took Marie’s hand. “Maybe there are things they told you that you don’t recall. Maybe we can ask them for guidance.”

Marie hesitated and looked around the dreary room. “The spirits … there are always some near,” she said. “But we should be outside, where more will hear us and speak through me.”

“This is too important to wait. Even if they only tell us a little bit more, we must know,” Olivier said. He stood and removed his jacket, draping it over his chair. “I’ll prepare the area.”

Marie frowned, torn about letting them talk to her ancestors. She feared revealing her family’s secret and exposing her beloved grandson, Jayden, to harm. The spirits had told her recently that his fate lay in a direction filled with black magic. The most she could do: try to protect him while he traveled his path and guide him to using healing magic rather than blood magic. It would not be long before he learned of his role in what was to come.

Soon, he’d meet her, the white zombie that plagued Marie’s dreams. A beautiful girl in her early twenties with blonde hair and light eyes. An un-dead girl whose spirit was returned to her even after her body was gone. Her siren song would draw the Red Man and doom everyone around her.

“Marie, we’re ready for you.”

Marie blinked herself out of her troubled thoughts and stood. Olivier had drawn a large circle with ritual powders that smelled of licorice and vanilla, along with other earthy herbs. In the center was a candle dressed with cascarilla. He stood on one side of the circle, opposite Candace. Both were barefooted.

Marie reached into her pocket to grip her chicken claw gris-gris for a moment then took a deep breath. She nodded and walked to her place near the candle. Bowing her head, she said a prayer to her family’s god, her ancestors and to the Christian god, whose teachings she still heard every Sunday morning.

When she was finished, she started to shuffle around the candle in a simple dance.

The two other House leaders began to sing quietly, Candace in her native Swahili and Olivier in French. Marie listened to their voices as they called to her ancestors to help them. They danced around her, near the inside edge of the protective circle. Their discordant melodies synced, and energy surged through her, a sign the spirits had agreed to help.

Marie flung her head back and readied herself for the blackness that always came when the spirits possessed her. The scent of the candle and potions filled her senses while the singing warbled as if traveling through water to reach her. She was fading, being replaced by a spirit.

The darkness came. It was like sleeping, except that her body was awake while her mind stepped away to allow the spirits to communicate in a language others could understand.

After a moment of pitch black, a vision formed. She saw the white zombie walking the dark streets of New Orleans with the grace of a ghost, dressed in a glowing white dress. She appeared to be following the Red Man, a mysterious figure in a maroon robe whose quick step soon outpaced the girl and Marie. With a flare of red, he disappeared from Marie’s dream, slipping easily out of her mind while the white zombie stayed.

The beautiful girl from the Fourth House stopped and bent over to touch the booted foot of a bum passed out against a building.

The man’s foot began to rot then fall a part. The deterioration crawled quickly up his body, consuming all of him, before he crumbled to a powder right before Marie’s eyes.

She stepped back, repulsed by the touch. She was able to use power channeled by spirits to kill small animals for sacrifice, just by looking at them.

But the magic she’d just seen was different.

The building the bum leaned against began to rot next, then crumble.

Everything the white zombie touched rotted and died: people, buildings.

Jayden. He was across the street, frozen mid-step.

As if she just noticed him, the white zombie started to cross the two lanes separating her from Marie’s grandson.

“Stop!” Marie shouted, chasing the vision in her dream. “You cannot have him!”

The zombie turned.

Marie stopped suddenly, afraid the girl meant to hurt her.

“Please! He is free of the curse. Leave him be!” Marie pleaded.

“He is both curse and prophecy,” the girl replied. “Just like you. Our families are linked and will remain so. There’s nothing you can do to stop me. Only the Chosen, Warriors and Devil can.”

For a moment, Marie was too stunned to talk. The white zombie had never done more than threaten her before.

The girl turned towards Jayden once more.

“Wait!” Marie said quickly. “Tell me – who is the Chosen? The Devil?”

“Good luck finding them.” The girl began walking. “Before I do,” she said over her shoulder.

Marie opened her mouth to speak or scream and warn her grandson.

She was wrenched awake. The external world was too real, too fast, and she crashed to the ground.

“Marie!” This voice wasn’t the white zombie but Candace’s.

Marie felt hands rolling her over, fingers digging into her thick neck to check her pulse. She was sweating profusely and exhausted.

A fuzzy face appeared above her. Her eyes focused once more.

“Oh, Marie!” Candace exclaimed. “How are you? Are you well?”

“Y…yes,” Marie managed. “Takes much … energy for the ritual.”

Olivier brought her water, and Candace helped her sit. Marie sipped the water, wishing again it was her Sezarec. She needed a stiff drink after the exchange with the zombie.

The two were quiet. They were gazing at one another, not at her.

“What is it?” she asked. “What did they say?”

“The Red Man isn’t the only danger. A curse and a prophecy,” Candace answered. “We can’t stop what comes. Only they can.”

“The Chosen, the Devil, the Warriors,” Marie said. What was the connection between the Red Man and white zombie? Why had she been after Jayden?

“Yes,” Olivier said. “Our salvation rests in the Fourth House that bears the curse and the prophecy.”

“What else?” Marie asked anxiously.

Candace’s eyes were filled with tears. “They said many will die. People we love. The three Houses of New Orleans will fall before the prophecy is fulfilled.”

“Unless we find those who can stop it,” Marie whispered.

Olivier nodded.

Her heart racing with fear, Marie could think of nothing except Jayden. The spirits guided her to protect him at all costs even while warning her that many would die.

Jayden was special. She didn’t fully understand why, but she had to make sure he survived whatever evil was coming. If it took her all night, she had to finish the ritual to bind the protective spells to the dog tags before he came to visit the next morning.