Green Eyes Page 0,77

face.

'What is the gros bon ange?' I blurted. 'What are you intending to do?' I was still frightened, but the character of my fear had changed. It was the unknown quantity he represented that assailed me, and I was desperate to understand.

'The gros bon ange?' His voice became resonant and hollow again, gusting at me like a wind from a cave, merging with the howling wind outside. 'A dream, a vision, or maybe it's the shadow a dog sees slipping out of an open coffin.' Then his voice reverted to normal, and he described what he had seen.

I am not sure why he humored my question. Boredom, perhaps, or it may have been simply that he had no reason to hide anything from me. There were, he said, three types, the most commonplace a black figure in which prisms of light whirled chaotically. The second most common type seemed to exert a measure of control over its inner fires (his term), able to form of them faces, simple patterns; and the rarest, a type of whom he had seen only three, were capable of wielding extensive control, even to the point of sending bursts of light shooting from their fingers.

'As to what I intend,' he said, 'I intend to live, Edman.

I'm going to build the veve of a voodoo god out of copper. Three tons of copper.' He laughed. 'I don't suppose you know about veves, though.'

Indeed, I assured him, I did know, having done quite a bit of reading on the subject of vaudou, this at the urging of Ms Verret.

'Oh?' He scratched the back of his neck. 'Tell me about Ogoun Badagris.'

'One of the aspects of Ogoun,' I said, 'who is essentially the warrior hero of the pantheon. I believe that Ogoun Badagris is associated with wizardry. A rada aspect.'

'Rada?'

'Yes. Rada and petro are more or less equivalent to white and black magic. Good and evil.'

'And which is rada?'

'Good,' I said.

'Well,' he said softly, more to himself than to me, 'I guess I should be thankful for that.'

He went on to tell me of a plan he had, hardly a plan, more a vague compulsion to act in some direction, and though the action was as yet unclear, as the days passed the parameters of the deed were defining themselves. Something decisive, he said, something dangerous. It was evident to me that he was evolving past the human, and I was in mortal terror of the vibrant devil he was coming to be. I lay half hypnotized, helpless before him, the tongues of his words tasting me, licking me prior to taking a bite. Finally Verret and the old man returned; he was carrying a brandy bottle and she a coil of rope. Without further ado they gagged me and lashed me to the bed, and afterwards Harrison asked me to break free if I could. Ordinarily I would have pretended to struggle, but at his behest I shook the bed in earnest.

And then they were gone, gone to Maravillosa, swallowed up and gone beyond the reach of the CIA, the project, and for all I know beyond the hand of God Himself. We had no word of them until news came of Harrison's actions on Bayou Rigaud.

I may well have met Otille Rigaud; however, from all reports, it is unlikely I would have forgotten the occasion. She was a woman who traveled freely through the various strata of society, and the mention of her name was sufficient to cause highly respected citizens to cough, make their excuses, and leave the room. I wish that I had met her. Though many have tried to explain the events which occurred upon Bayou Rigaud, she alone might have illuminated them. Stacked on my writing table at this moment is page after page of dubious yet accurate explanation. Data sheets, medical records, government documents. For example, here we have the results of an autopsy performed on an unidentified body, citing one hundred and seventy separate fractures caused by the instantaneous degeneration of bone tissue, blood clots, cell damage, crushed spinal ganglia, and so forth. Appended is a telephone-book-sized study exploring the victim's agony, which must have been substantial, and speculating on the nature of the forces that came into play. I will quote from the summary section.

...Movements of the Ezawa bacteria within the brains of Subjects One and Two created electrical currents which interacted with the electrical functions of the neurons, thereby enabling them to intuit the direction of the geomagnetic