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And to sleep wearing the talisman was to invite the spirits of his dead enemies into his dreams. And now it was missing. |
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After tearing his hut apart looking for the necklace, the Dark Man had gone looking for his son, Tomas, to ask the boy about the talisman, and had found him sprawled on the dirt floor in his huthis handsome young face half submerged in a pool of blood. When the Dark Man turned the boy over, he had seen it all: the chalky-gray skin, the wide blood-engorged eyes, the puckered hole, like a third eye, in the middle of his son's forehead. |
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And the talisman was gone. |
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It was clear that Tomas had taken the Butcher's Broom and that someone had killed him for it. |
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The Dark Man was oldolder than he looked, and he looked like he could have held the rudder for Noah. Tomas had been his only childa late gift from the Loa. His fifth wife, an eighteen-year-old woman from the nearby island of Guanaja, had been the vessel, but the child had been his. And as often happens in these cases, the Dark Man had fallen under the boy's spell and had been too soft. He had tried to get across the idea that human beings are fleshy sacks of conflicting wants and needs, emotions and impulses. And that this dichotomy of purpose makes them weak, vulnerable to every petty dictator or religious fad. True strength, the Dark Man had preached, came from purity, and the one true icon of purity in an otherwise diluted universe was evil. |
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As much as the Dark Man had tried to explain, Tomas had never understood this. His instruction in the arts of Shango and Obeah had barely begun when the boy had started running off to town. |
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"Ha! Town," the Dark Man muttered under his breath. |
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Coxen Hole, the capital of the island of Roatan, was a dirt street full of wooden shacks built by the descendants of pirates and disease-ridden whores. |
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Staring at his son's ashen face, the Dark Man had reached down and stuck his finger into the hole in the boy's skull, |
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