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might expect to find in a spider or some deadly cold-blooded reptile that slithered through the world on its bellyrefocused on the house's low rambling silhouette. Each time the lightning flashed, the house momentarily blinked into view, blatantly pink against the background of greenish palm trees. The lights inside had gone out more than an hour ago, but the Dark Man was nothing if not patient. The men with him were cold and wet, but they were also intelligent enough not to grumble. In hopes of keeping dry, they had retreated into the sea grape trees that fringed the beach but the water ran right off the large saucer-shaped leaves and only added to their misery. |
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At long last the Dark Man snapped his fingers once and the men hurried to his side. |
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As soon as his aides had unfurled a blanket over the sand, the Dark Man knelt and spread the tools of his trade around him: a black three-legged bowl made of fire-hardened clay, leather and human skin pouches, two horsehide rattles and a small obsidian statue of Legbain voodoo lore, the youngest son of the creator. From the leather pouch he poured a black-and-green granular substance into the bowl, then quickly fired a match and tossed it in. The powder ignited with a muted pop that sent a foul-smelling ball of smoke rolling up into the storm. As he shook the rattles, the Dark Man hummed a melody that had originated in the Olduvai Gorge region of Tanzania back when Mount Kilimanjaro was a small bump on the horizon and men were still dragging their knuckles in the parched, red dirt as they walked. |
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The storm responded to this chilling refrain with wind that lashed the trees and lightning that came so fast and furiously that it changed the night into day. As the howl of the wind increased in pitch, the Dark Man began to chant, spitting out strings of incomprehensible incantations like phlegm. Behind him, the men covered their ears and bent over to take the brunt of the storm on their backs. Just when it seemed that the earth must surely implode under the weight of the storm's fury, a massive bolt of lightning struck the power pole at the end of |
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