A Vision of Fire

Caitlin wasn’t sure whether the woman meant she was healthy or acceptable. Either way, she thanked her. Then she looked her in the eye and said, “I feel bad for the snake.”

Madame Langlois nodded. “Me too. There are alternatives.”

“Are they dangerous? To either Gaelle or the snake?”

“No. I will make a wanga, what you call a fetish. It will do the job of the snake. I will do that today.”

Caitlin slowly nodded. Whether it was household gods in ancient Egypt, totems in Native American lore, or Catholic icons, she had always understood that people thought inanimate objects had great power. Like the placebo effect, their beliefs could change their minds and actions, thus changing their situations. But maybe there was more to it. She had felt the power through the snake, and she had seen the madame wrestle with that power and manage it. If the madame also wrestled power into an object…

But you don’t believe any of this, her rational side was telling her. Snakes don’t intercept energy any more than frogs cause warts or pulverized eye of newt can make someone fall in love. That woman was squeezing the poor creature, choking it, putting on a show that caused Gaelle to react. And that caused you to react. The power of suggestion, that’s all this was. You brought back your nightmare because you were in a receptive, weakened state.

Maybe so, Caitlin told her brain. But maybe not.

Tentatively she asked, “Can an inanimate object handle that much… whatever it was? Energy? Pain?”

“It will take some doing,” the madame admitted, then unexpectedly smiled in a very tired way. “I will stay here with her. And if it must be, I will take some.” She shrugged. “That is the responsibility. That is the job.”

Caitlin smiled, closed her eyes, and rested the back of her head on the wall. From outside she heard people, tourists most likely, asking questions in a hodgepodge of languages. They reflected the confusion she felt. There was only one thing she knew for certain: like the universe itself, the scope of this mystery continued to confound, deepen, and expand.

“Doctor,” Madame Langlois said.

Caitlin opened her eyes to see the madame tearing a sheet of paper from a small notepad. She held out the page—it was Gaelle’s drawing of crescent triangles. “Take it,” the madame ordered. “This is not of Vodou.”

CHAPTER 16

Caitlin gasped herself awake on the plane.

The hum of the engines just outside the window had a soothing effect as she eased herself back…

From what?

The nightmare face from her vision in Haiti had violated her mind with startling ferocity… and contempt. She’d been dreaming of domestic familiarity: feeding Jacob’s fish while he was away on a sleepover. Then the awful thing appeared, leering with its hideous grin and lifeless gaze, burning like a brand into her brain.

The late evening flight from Haiti to New York was nearly empty and she had full privacy in the dark. As much as she flew, Caitlin didn’t really like it; she wished there were some way to ride outside the plane, with real air instead of this canned stuff, and a big, unobscured view. She turned to the side and brought her feet up on the seat next to her, curling into herself as Gaelle had curled against the wall.

Caitlin’s breathing was shallow and quick, panicked, and she was shaking; she felt as though she were wearing a heavy winter coat zipped tight to the throat. She tried tapping the sides of her eye sockets with her fingertips and running a slightly cupped hand down her breastbone, slowly, to focus on clearing her airway. Neither worked and she felt like she might start to cry. Caitlin had participated in too many street-corner arguments with dates, colleagues, a stalker, and decades of cab drivers; and Jacob, when he was little, had not been shy about calling attention to himself in restaurants when he felt frustrated. Over the last ten years Caitlin had become much more self-conscious about public displays.

Still shaking, she gently rested her head in her palms. No tears came. The magnitude of what she had experienced overcame her: How do I help these girls? Are their experiences related—and if so, by what conceivable mechanism? What am I missing?

And then there was Vodou.