The White Darkness

Richard Stanley's Voodoo Diary

(Originally appeared in Fortean Times #140, 2000.)

July 23rd - The citaedel

My horse snorts, starting in a panicky gallop as the first peal of thunder comes rippling across the treetops. The storm is closing in fast now, dark clouds rippling around the forested flanks of the magic mountain.

Warm sticky rain gusts against my face as we bolt up the narrow, precipitous track, leaving the rest of the company far behind us. Having no choice but to go with the flow I try to make the best of the situation, crouching low in my saddle and holding on for dear life, taking the last stretch of the ride at full tilt, overhanging branches whipping past my face and tearing at my clothes, terrified farm animals and jibing children scattering before my mount's madly racing hooves.

The track is rapidly becoming a torrent, jagged bursts of lightning flickering about our heads as we round the last corner, catching up with Altes, the sorcerer, who has somehow been keeping ahead of us all day, seated astride a foaming black stallion that's even bonier than he is. Despite the inclement conditions he seems as composed and immaculate as ever in his rakish black hat and mirror shades.

He cracks one of his patent creepy smiles as I catch up to him and we ride side by side through the storm, racing each other as far as the rainswept courtyard of the mad emperor's castle, a monstrous dry stone construction that straddles the summit of the holy mountain, a Gormenghastian hybrid of medieval French chateau and Mayan ruin.

The emperor Henri Christophe who ruled the northern half of Haiti after it was divided in the aftermath of its struggle for independence built this fortification as his last redoubt. Twenty thousand people died in the construction of his folly, fully three thousand metres above the canopy of the rainforest and too far from the sea to be of any real strategic value in defending his crumbling kingdom.

Christophe ruled as an African king, choosing this site not for any imagined military advantage but because he knew it was the home of Ogoun Fera, the warrior god of iron and the lover of Ezili, associated with the colour red and the Christian image of St Jacques. Like Ogoun, Christophe hoped to become both immortal and indestructible, a strong man of Voudou. In the end he proved to be neither, taking his own life with a pistol still on display in the museum back in Port au Prince.

The rain eases off, a watery beam of sunlight breaking through the mist as I tie up my horse in Christophe's courtyard and glancing back find the rest of the posse are only just emerging from the treeline. In their bedraggled red scarves they look like a wayward band of overgrown boyscouts.

I join Altes atop a cyclopean stone battlement and what looks like all of Haiti unfurls itself before my feet, crumpled patchwork of sun and shadow. Looking down I can see the backs of eagles turning in the valley far below and the pulse of drums quickens in my blood their insistent rhythms rising from the base of the sheer white cliffs beneath us where hundreds of pilgrims in identical headscarves are climbing through the mists and gathering beneath a scarlet banner to touch the rocks, light candles and make obeisance to Ogoun.

"The world we live in," breathes the sorcerer, looking out over creation and taking in all of it as if for the first time.

July 24th - Bassin Saint Jacques

For hundreds of years the pilgrims have wended their way from the white cliffs of Ogoun to the luck baths, the Bassin Saint Jacques at Plain du Nord.

Until recently the stagnant pool stood in the midst of a wide open space but walls have sprung up since then in a futile attempt by a corrupt local administration to limit access. No force on earth though could control the phantasmagoria.

A naked man rises slowly from the ooze before me. He might as well be the first man emerging from the primordial pool of protein soup itself, clay grown animate, his shrieking, distorted features sculpted from the same grey brown stuff as the earth, his clenched fists raised towards the heavens, the very image of Ogoun.

All around him his fellow pilgrims are swimming and sliding through the sludge now, old men and children, pregnant women proud as paleolithic fertility goddesses, their bellies heavy with new life, their faces touched by ecstasy, some of them screaming too, some of them chanting, all of them possessed.

To bathe here is to take on spiritual powers that can backfire with great force unless they are properly controlled. I've heard that having too much luck can turn a person into a werewolf and although Edelle assures me that I'm already a werewolf, I still make my prayers before entering the enclosure as I hate to imagine what this sediment is really made of.

There are people crowded everywhere around the verges of the pool, getting down on their hands and knees to drink the mud or scoop up bucketfuls to take home to their friends and families. Before leaving every one of them says a prayer, lights a candle and hurls it into the ooze along with generous libations of rum, Florida water and often the soft parts of animals, the hearts, lungs and lights. Despite the drifting incense the smell of putrefying flesh is thick enough to be almost tangible.

Specialised beggars work this muck, true denizens of the pit their thrashing bodies churning in the viscous grey fluid as they grapple for the choicest offerings, hands clasping desperately for half empty bottles and fistfuls of entrails. A vision out of Dante and enough to warm even Altes' dark heart.

Afterwards the smell stays with me as we make our way to the coast with the other pilgrims to bathe in the cool, blue waters and scrub ourselves with mombin leaves. Swathed in white now, Edelle stands waist deep in the ocean, her arms outstretched towards the far horizon where sea meets sky, chanting a husky hymn to Agwe, the lord of the deep, her voice rising clear and clean to the cloudless heavens while Altes watches from the shade of a palm tree, Jackson, the sorcerer's apprentice hovering just behind him like a shadow, a bucket in one hand and a glinting carving knife in the other.

July 25th - Chalbert

"The Americans herded them into barracks that were hooked up to the exhaust pipes of big trucks that kept running all night. That way the monoxide would take care of them all, hundreds at a time. Afterwards their bodies were carried down a track to the sea where they were fed to the crabs..."

All that remains of the camp at Chalbert are the occasional stubs of walls, vague traces of concrete foundations still showing through the weeds in a fallow field just outside Cap Haitian, a relic of the first military occupation, a period of unprecedented brutality that claimed the lives of many thousands of Haitians. When the marines finally caught up with the leader of the resistance they literally crucified him, nailing his body upright, spread-eagled against a wooden doorframe.

In the face of such monstrous tyranny it's no wonder the Haitians turned to the powers of Voudou for help, unleashing a genie that could never really be put back into the bottle. People like Altes would once have been heroes of the struggle but now, devoid of a common purpose, their powers have been placed at the service of questionable causes, supporting military dictatorships and crime families alike, silencing rivals and shielding smuggler's vessels from the searchlights of the American coast guard.

"Those were the good times," says the old man who has been acting as our guide, his eyes brimming with misplaced nostalgia and a typically Haitian desire for strong leadership. "Now things are worse. Much, much worse..."

August 9th - Carrefour redux

This morning we purchased a black goat from the rambling waterfront market in downtown Port au Prince and delivered it to Altes, making good on our part of the bargain.

When we first arrive at the compound Altes is out back, feeding his birds from a sackful of grain. All around him I cannot help noticing are row upon row of pigeon coops. The sorcerer welcomes us, shaking my hand in the manner of a worshipful brother before slipping away to don an embroidered crimson robe and summon his cohorts. After that the ceremonies in the kongo temple begin in earnest, one drummer after another joining in until the air vibrates with tones too subtle for the mind to follow, a cresting tidal wave of sound that builds and builds as the shadows lengthen, Altes' voice guiding them in the old songs sung in the secret tongue of his ancestors, an African dialect incomprehensible to all save the initiated.

Just after sundown, Jackson leads in the goat, holding it over one of the coffins while his father reaches for a carving knife and a bottle of rum. Two of their colleagues produce a white sheet, spreading it over the wretched animal so that what happens next can be hidden from the eyes of the onlookers. The shadow of the sorcerer flickers eerily across the billowing cloth as the ageing bou'ko crouches beside the goat, gently pressing his blade to its quivering throat, whispering softly in its ear and comforting it all the while as he draws its blood, catching the thick, cascading droplets in a metal dish and mixing them with the rum. The goat makes barely a sound, so unperturbed by this ordeal that at one point it begins to lap contentedly at its own blood as if it has been rewarded with a special treat for it's patience, achieving a kind of awful, stasis, refilling the dish from the gash in its throat just as fast as it drinks. Then reaching the end of one phrase in the music Altes presses his bony fingers to the wound, stemming the arterial flow so that when the sheet is refolded and the goat led away the beast seems completely unscathed, mercifully unaware of what it has just been through. The goat will be turned loose, Altes tells us, to wander the night and find its own destiny.

A sheet of blue flame ripples across the coffin lid as one of the candles kindles the rum, sending shadows flicking out across the faces of the leering idols, briefly investing them with the semblance of life. A tongue of fire climbs the blade of Altes' carving knife as he stirs the blazing bowl of blood, the dark fluid slowly boiling away as he sends the offering over to the spirit world where I imagine his masters must be well pleased by it.

Finally the moment has come for the sorcerer's party trick, the thing that has made his name a legend on this island. Asking me to take a sheet of paper he tells to write down the name of whoever it is that I want him to kill, reassuring me that the workings of this curse will be swift and sure. No one can escape the hand of the death magic once it has been unleashed. And for a moment I think it over, composing myself as I meet the sorcerer's gaze, his eyes glowing in the half-light like splinters of antimatter. And I think of my father and all the people who lied to me and betrayed me, and all the names of a great many film industry movers and shakers. It would be a perfect crime, a perfect revenge, clean, sure and undetectable. The faces of various politicians and famous mass murderers swim through my consciousness. I even toy with the thought of nominating Colonel Walker who told us so eloquently about his mission here but in the end I have to bow to the sorcerer's powers and admit that although I don't really believe in his death magic, I still can't think of anyone I hate badly enough to want to put in its way.

This amuses the old man greatly and taking his leave of us he retires to his secret chamber, limping slowly down the long flight of steps into his private underworld content in the knowledge that with all our learning and western logic we are still irrationally afraid of him.

In our heart of hearts we have not come so far from our paleolithic ancestors. So long as we still live in fear so people like Altes will exist to feed off it and find it sweet. He and his kin have always prospered in those shadows just as they will continue to prosper, down through the ages, leeches growing fat on the world's pain. I feel the first flush of the fever taking hold of me once more but I manage to keep it together until the ceremony is over before staggering out into the night and falling to my knees, voiding the contents of my stomach into the humid, Caribbean darkness.

August 17th - Port au Prince

"Don't @#%$ move! Don't even think about it!" Just outside the airport a phalanx of American military policemen close in on our jeep, levelling their automatic firearms at our faces. It's a moment that seems to have been a long time coming and now that it's finally here. Mr Horn, hardened by too many years of trying to deal with the American film industry, simply refuses to put down his camera and stop rolling.

"I said put the camera down and get out of the car! You're under arrest!" "By what law?" hisses Mr Horn, zooming in on the marine for a close up. "This isn't the states this is Haiti!" "@#%$ you! You're not Haitian!" "You think your pretty @#%$ slick, huh?" The bullet headed stormtrooper cocks his rifle, bracing himself as if about to open fire. Danielle, the driver, ducks, trying to take cover beneath the dashboard.

"That man's dangerous! He's assaulting an officer!" "I did not assault you, sir," sighs Mr Horn, realising slowly that they are about to kill him. "Put the camera down, man. It'll be alright," I tell him. And he does, resignedly handing it over to the armed posse who proceed to escort us back to their base. "Where's Colonel Walker?"

The newcomer wears a colonel's stripes and is evidently in charge yet his face is unfamiliar to me. He does not give his name. "The Colonel was sent back to the states two weeks ago. I heard about that interview he gave you. Seems he shot his mouth off one time too many." He pauses, giving us a long hard look before issuing what must be the marine Corp's official disclaimer. "In America, see, we have a separation between church and state. The colonel's views were intended personally. They do not reflect the policies of the U.S Government or the aims of the Haitian American support group as a whole. We'd appreciate it if you didn't use any of the material you shot concerning our presence here but of course under international law I can't stop you. I'm just asking you nicely. As a favour to us."

Which was how we came to learn that we had inadvertently toppled the leader of the armed forces on the Island. It was a small blow, barely a glitch in the scheme of things, but afterwards I found I slept better at night knowing we had made some incremental difference, no matter how slight, reassured that somehow, despite everything, the camera lens is still mightier than the gun and possibly more effective than Altes' death magic.

"You boys have caused quite a bit of trouble here. If I was you I'd be on my way back to London." "I'll take it on advice, sir. Speaking personally I think we've all seen quite enough." And none of the posse sees fit to disagree.