Chapter 2: Rejecting Black Magic

Aubry, Arcahaie Arrondissement, Haiti, two years later

“Fabienne, I got a call from the Universite this afternoon asking if I want to continue to allow you to work in the electrical engineering lab there. Can you tell me what you’re doing?” Cassandra asked.

“Sure, I was in the library and heard a guy talking about a circuit he was building and it wasn’t working. So I went over and asked if he could show me the diagram. The kids there are funny; they call me their ‘mascot’ ‘cause they say I bring them good luck. That’s ‘cause when they show me their work, and I look at it, suddenly they realize they have to make changes and take it away to fix. When they show me again, I see there’s nothing wrong. They know if I look at their science work, they get good marks.”

“Do you tell them what’s wrong?”

“No, Manman. I see the wrong things and think that they need fixing. When I do, maybe the kid sees what I saw and goes to fix it.”

Cassandra shook her head. Her daughter’s increasing abilities never ceased to astound her.

“So what about that lab?” Cassandra asked.

“Oh yeah. He showed me his diagram and it had some parts in the wrong places. You mustn’t put a resistor and capacitor in circuit like that when you’re using a transistor as a driver...”

Cassandra thought, She might as well be speaking Russian—or Chinese, for all that means.

Fabienne was still explaining, “ ... so he asked me to go to the lab and show him. He had breadboarded the circuit so it was easy to switch things around and then it all worked. Then the professor came in and asked what we were doing. The guy told him how I had fixed the project and the teacher didn’t believe it. So he showed me another circuit breadboard and asked me if I knew what it was and if it looked okay. It was a basic superheterodyne receiver with a radio detector IC input and a low-power speaker output. I told him that, and showed him that the transistors in the amp section were the wrong ones to use in that circuit ‘cause they were overloaded. When he looked, he saw that I was right. That must be when he called you. He wants to work with me in the lab.”

Later, Cassandra called the professor. After they introduced themselves, she told him that Fabienne could work there if she wasn’t being a distraction.

“Oh, goodness, no,” the man replied. “She’s somewhat of a prodigy, actually, and seems to understand electronics intuitively. She told me some of the books she’s used to learn what she demonstrated to me and many of them are texts our university seniors use. I want to show her some more complex things, the kinds of integrated circuits that are used in computers and other electronic gadgets.”

“All right,” Cassandra told him. “If she becomes a bother, just send her back to the library. I doubt she’d complain about being exiled there,” she chuckled.

He laughed and they disconnected.

Several days later, when Jonas arrived home from work, Cassandra had some distressing news. She had had an unwelcome visitor that afternoon.

“Vanessa was here.”

Jonas tensed. “What happened? What did she want?”

“Me. She wants me to join her group of chochés. I told her no.”

“Anybody see her come here?” Jonas asked.

“No, I was alone. She must have been watching the ounfò, since there’s almost always someone visiting; you know how they come to get my herbal medicines or get counseling. At first I didn’t know who she was, actually.”

“You never met her?”

“Never even seen her before, actually,” Cassandra told him. “She has an enormously powerful presence and when she spoke to me, it appeared that she was trying to use her voice in a deliberately hypnotic manner. I realized that an unsuspecting person would come under her influence quite quickly.”

“Did she have any effect on you?”

“Actually I found it abrasive and annoying; first it seemed like she was addressing me like a child; then I saw that she was trying to do a kind of verbal hypnosis. That angered me, so rude. Then I realized that this must be Vanessa.”

“What did she talk about first?” Jonas asked.

“It was mostly trivial questions. How many people were in this congregation, what services I provided, did I also do faith healing and sell amulets. Some questions about the area too. I answered those questions; they’re mostly normal when one manbo speaks to another. But I got alarmed when she began asking about my family. At that point, I told her that those questions were inappropriate.”

Jonas scowled. “How did she react when you shut her down?”

“With a very ill-concealed anger. She said that manbos needed to be open and communicative with each other. Then she began talking about the ‘old days,’ and that turned into a tirade. Apparently the ‘old days’ were during François Duvalier’s regime, his rule, really, and she wants Haiti to return to a government with a king who holds power by divine right. She told me that Duvalier was a person of ‘real power’ and she can help bring back a strong political figure to rule; then, she said, the oungans and manbos will have real political power because everyone will worship them like they do the ancestor spirits and the lwa.

“Jonas, you know that if there’s anything in my religion that approaches being sacrilegious, it’s that idea. The very thought that the oungan and the manbo should be worshiped is simply preposterous.

“Then she went on to tell me that I had real power; she could tell that I had great strength and would be a natural choché. She said that she would teach me and she would rule as the manbo queen with me at her side. I insisted that I could never sert des deux mains; that my patron. Papa Legba, would not allow it either.

“She scoffed at that and said she could fix that. Dealing with my patron lwa wouldn’t be any difficulty for her and that she could exorcize any lwa easily. I was trying not to show my anger, so I told her that I’d never consider going against my beliefs. That’s when she said that she’d give me three weeks to decide and that if I didn’t join her, she would make me wish I hadn’t rejected her offer. She told me that she knew where you worked and where Fabienne went to school and that she would be sorry if she heard that something had happened to someone in my family.”

“Damn!” Jonas exclaimed. “Maybe I need to visit Vanessa myself.”

“No, Jonas, don’t face her directly. When she left, I watched her get into a car and she had two evil-looking men with her. I’ve heard that her compound in Carrefour is heavily guarded.”

“Okay; I’ll just check her out. I promise I won’t confront her.”

The following day, Jonas drove to Carrefour and located Vanessa’s compound. Cassandra was correct, it was heavily guarded, and whenever Vanessa left the grounds, she always had two men with her. With a Marine’s eye, he watched to see if she could be shot from a distance; Jonas had some sniper training, but the house wasn’t very visible from outside the compound walls. But Jonas quickly dismissed the sniper idea; he realized that such cold-blooded killing felt repugnant to him now. This was not combat; neither was he an assassin.