SADDLEBAGS, Trunks, and Tombs

Chapter 12: The Hidden

     The aged hand reached for the deep brown mahogany statuette.  He, who picked up the statuette, gripped it in both of his hands, firmly, held it up to the morning sun and snapped it into two equally sized pieces.  Into his hand fell the ancient black talisman that had been hidden in the center of the statuette for centuries.  The mahogany immediately turned to dust, that blew off of his hands, as he placed the smooth, black stone into the ancient saddlebags.

     The fertility statue had traveled far from its original land.  It was carved by the hand of a dying tribal chief hundreds of years ago, deep in the most hidden parts of the Congo.  A spirit was said to torture the land and it was time to save themselves from this demon of destruction and decay, both of their lands and their women.  The statue was carved of the most beautiful piece of deep, reddish-brown mahogany and was just shy of thirteen inches in height.  In the very center was a small hollowed out cavern.  This is where the talisman would be placed.  In the very heart of the statue is where he was to be bound. 

     The elders had begun to chant.  The sun had been down for hours and the only light was from the fire in the center of the village that caused the tall cast shadows of the elders, which seemed to dance against the backdrop of a dark and unforgiving forest.  There would be no sounds in the jungle tonight.  Tonight the jungle would be still.  All that lived was silenced by his very presence, as if silence could save them from him.  

     He made his way through the forest towards the light of the fire.  There was life, abundant life there, but it would be lost tonight.  He had been a murderer of the seed since the moment he had been thrown to the earth after the battle had been waged and lost.  He would seek out the living and work his part, in the plans of his king, until the last living thing gasped its last breath.  They would lose in the end, this he knew, but the casualties to the children would be great.

     Unbeknownst to him, his lust for the kill would be his downfall.  His vengeance for being one of the Creators condemned was of a magnitude that was unmatched in the world.  The blue light enticed him, intrigued him.  New life, waiting... 

     The dance had begun, the chants rising higher.  The earth seemed to move under their feet, they felt his steps roll towards them, the very life force within each of them shuddering.  The fire blazed from red to blue.  He was here at the edge of the circle, they could all feel him.  As the spirit moved towards the blue flames, the tribal chief pulled the statue and the smooth black stone from his headdress.  

    The spirit began to bathe in the blue flame and the statue and the stone were cast in with him.  He never saw it coming, he had been too focused on the blue flame.  As the blueness of the flames dissipated into the heart of the stone that had made its way into the statue, a centuries old roar came forth.  The fire went out, the tribal chief lay dead and he was trapped. 

     The hole they had dug to hold him, until the final battle was to be waged, would not hold him. His pull was too strong.  The very presence of his essence, lying deep in the ground, caused the roots of the jungle to expel him from its bowels.  There would be one, the Maker liked the game of it all, who would be able to free him.  He would find the one and would kill again.  It would not be the slave girl who would eventually find herself a captive to be loaded onto a large water vessel, like cattle.  It was amazing to him how the human heart found ways to hold on.  Somehow, in her nakedness, she was able to hold on to the one thing that gave her hope of rescue, of home.  If only she had known.  She had been overjoyed to find the statue.  She thought it would bring the fullness of life into her belly when she was finally joined in marriage.  She would grip it until her last breath as she was thrown, alive, into the raging sea along with the other women.  Only death, which came soon, could release it from her grip. 

     Years would pass as the currents of the ocean would carry him.  He had nothing but time.  The statue, his prison, would come to wash up on the beaches of what would one day be known as Haiti.  He would be found by a young boy, a direct descendant of a slave, born into s*****y.  The boy had run, excitingly, to his grandmother.  The spirit had tasted her power, but as she looked upon the statue, she remembered the stories.  The white men, those that had lived, were retreating in their boats.  She would send this death with them.  The slaves of Haiti had fought and won one battle, her people did not so soon need another battle, especially against one who they were not strong enough to subdue. 

     The statue would next find its way to the shores of the colonies.  Years would pass by.  He would feel the power from time to time, but never the one.  There had been stories of the statue and of its movement throughout the land.  Stories that the old slaves passed to any who would listen.  One day the stories would stop.  One day there would be no one left who would remember what had been captured, hidden.  Centuries would pass before the hunt would began again.  He would only have one chance.  He would only need one. 

     Somehow he could see her.  A young woman, late thirties, but young to him, was walking towards him.  She stopped for a moment as she noticed the statue lying unceremoniously on the ground.  “Beautiful piece”, she said out loud to no one.  It was as if it strained a melody to her.  For some reason she caught a chill, though not completely unpleasant.  “Someone must have dropped this when they were moving in.”  She continued to walk down the road, never having laid hands on the statue, but he had touched her, had felt her power.  It was a power she would not have knowledge of and it was strong, so strong that his desire caused the statue to shudder.  He had been with her people.  The resilient African and the powerful Native American.  The downfall of both, those who she descended from, had been that they loved too much and trusted more.  If he was to return to his former glory, this is where he would need to attack.  This was the seed that needed to be destroyed.  This is how they would overthrow the heavens.

     Rick was coming out to do his bi-annual inspection of his properties.  To him, this city was a horrid place to live, but people were living here and they needed homes.  He would make his money one way or the other.  Danielle was one of his newer tenants and he was looking forward to meeting her.  His apartment manager had said how she had come to get the application on foot, and even though she was a nurse and seemed like she should have more, she still walked, him not knowing from where she came or where she walked back to carrying the rental application in hand.  Normally Rick would have found this very odd.  There were numerous casinos in town and a lot of people had fallen to gambling.  Something about Danielle said otherwise and he would rent to her without ever having looked into her credit history or background. 

     As much as he wanted to meet her, Rick knew the chance was slim to none.  The story she told was that she needed a place to shower and lie her head, that she had a home in Vegas.  She worked two jobs and normally there wasn’t an hour between one to the next.  As he hopped out of his truck to knock on her door, he stumbled over the ancient statue.  It looked like a piece of African inspired art, but was probably a cheap imitation.  He bent over to pick it up and noted the weight of it, the solidness.  Maybe it was real.  

    The apartment manager had told him that Danielle was a woman “of color”.  Maybe it was hers.  He knocked on her door, statue in hand, knowing there would be no answer.  Opening the door with his key, he walked in and began his inspection.  Danielle had been made aware that he would, yet Rick still felt as if he were intruding.  After he was finished, he walked out the door and locked it.  He opened the garage door to check if it was functioning properly and felt the weight of the statue in his hand.  He looked at it one more time and placed it on top of the water heater, in the garage, walked out and closed the garage.  The piece seemed like it should belong to her.  “Well, if it isn’t hers, I hope she enjoys it.”  With that final thought, he headed towards the next apartment. 

     “What a ride!” Danielle thought out loud as she walked the bike up to her garage.  As she opened the garage door and moved inside with the bike, she felt something.  Something felt different.  She was just about to turn around and walk out when she noticed something sitting on top of the water heater.  Even from a distance, she swore it was the same statue she had seen on the ground a few weeks ago when she had come to get and application.  

     “What’s that doing here?  Rick must have found it and thought it was mine.”  Danielle had always been very aware of her surroundings.  Not as aware as she could have been, though she didn’t know that, but aware enough to feel when things were different.  She hated when people made her surroundings different, in any way.  “Oh great, I’m turning into my mother.”  

     She remembered, with a small chuckle, the last time she had went to visit her mother and her daughter in California.  She had winked at her daughter and quietly knocked he mothers peacock statue over onto its side, knowing good and well it would trip her mother out as soon as she noticed it, it did.  She wouldn’t be doing things like that to anyone else anymore.                                                                   

     The house didn’t have much furniture in it and no decorations.  She carried the statue into the house, cleaned the dust off of it and decided to put it in the guest bathroom for the time being.  There wasn’t really anywhere else to put it for the moment.

     The pulse he felt when she touched the statue nearly nauseated him.  When her hand had closed over the heart of the statue, his prison, he knew it would only be a moment, in his perspective, before he would be free.  He wasn’t sorry to have to close her womb, bad enough it had already been opened once, but it was vital.  Strength like this would be vital to the opposition.  Maybe he could turn her.  There would be no victory for him, but he would take his solace in her demise.  He would take her, have her and destroy her.

     Danielle had known, since she was a child, that there was a “knowing” in her.  It was weak, and would remain so as she had no desire to even think about it, but it was there.  It had taken her thirty five years to even truly acknowledge it and at that point she had had to, to save the lives of herself and her child.  The “knowing” had been what kept her moving when she realized their lives were in danger.  The “knowing” had been the force that helped her put her only child on a plane, without her, and send her to safety.  It was the “knowing” that helped her make her escape a month later.

     As she sat on her couch, taking her sneakers off, she heard a whisper in her mind, “Be careful what you bring in your house.  You don’t know where it has been or whose it has been.”  This she had heard screamed at her numerous times from the man who she had allowed to torment her, for love.  The man she had run from.  

     Something was out of place.  Something was wrong, she could feel it in the air.  She began to walk down the hall toward the bathroom, the closer she got, the thicker the air.  She picked up the statue, now barely touching it and almost fell trying to run down the hall and out of the front door.  She made it to the dumpster, lifted the lid and threw the statue in.  That statue had no place in her home.  It had no place anywhere lest Hell itself took it in.

     The trash truck came the next morning.  As it lifted the dumpster and turned it upside down to collect the garbage, the statue bounced off the side of the truck and fell to the ground.  The game was not over, not by a long shot.  He would get his chance at freedom, sure that the Maker was the reason he lay here on the ground now.  Even if he had to call to her very soul, HE WOULD BE FREE!!

     He felt someone coming towards him.  Someone was moving very near and he knew whoever it was, they were coming purposefully towards the statue.  He felt power, but it was not the girl.  The power was different.  When the statue was snapped in two and the talisman freed, he felt as if he would suffocate.  Before he could get his wits about him to detach from the stone, it was dropped into darkness, as darkness that even he could not escape from.