Naked in School
The Vodou Physicist
Chapter 2 - Rejecting Black Magic
Aubry, Arcahaie Arrondissement, Haiti, two years later
“Fabienne, I got a call from the Universite this afternoon asking if I want to continue to allow you to work in the electrical engineering lab there. Can you tell me what you’re doing?” Cassandra asked.
“Sure, I was in the library and heard a guy talking about a circuit he was building and it wasn’t working. So I went over and asked if he could show me the diagram. The kids there are funny; they call me their ‘mascot’ ‘cause they say I bring them good luck. That’s ‘cause when they show me their work, and I look at it, suddenly they realize they have to make changes and take it away to fix. When they show me again, I see there’s nothing wrong. They know if I look at their science work, they get good marks.”
“Do you tell them what’s wrong?”
“No, Manman. I see the wrong things and think that they need fixing. When I do, maybe the kid sees what I saw and goes to fix it.”
Cassandra shook her head. Her daughter’s increasing abilities never ceased to astound her.
“So what about that lab?” Cassandra asked.
“Oh yeah. He showed me his diagram and it had some parts in the wrong places. You mustn’t put a resistor and capacitor in circuit like that when you’re using a transistor as a driver...”
Cassandra thought, She might as well be speaking Russian—or Chinese, for all that means.
Fabienne was still explaining, “...so he asked me to go to the lab and show him. He had breadboarded the circuit so it was easy to switch things around and then it all worked. Then the professor came in and asked what we were doing. The guy told him how I had fixed the project and the teacher didn’t believe it. So he showed me another circuit breadboard and asked me if I knew what it was and if it looked okay. It was a basic superheterodyne receiver with a radio detector IC input and a low-power speaker output. I told him that, and showed him that the transistors in the amp section were the wrong ones to use in that circuit ‘cause they were overloaded. When he looked, he saw that I was right. That must be when he called you. He wants to work with me in the lab.”
Later, Cassandra called the professor. After they introduced themselves, she told him that Fabienne could work there if she wasn’t being a distraction.
“Oh, goodness, no,” the man replied. “She’s somewhat of a prodigy, actually, and seems to understand electronics intuitively. She told me some of the books she’s used to learn what she demonstrated to me and many of them are texts our university seniors use. I want to show her some more complex things, the kinds of integrated circuits that are used in computers and other electronic gadgets.”
“All right,” Cassandra told him. “If she becomes a bother, just send her back to the library. I doubt she’d complain about being exiled there,” she chuckled.
He laughed and they disconnected.
~~~~
Several days later, when Jonas arrived home from work, Cassandra had some distressing news. She had had an unwelcome visitor that afternoon.
“Vanessa was here.”
Jonas tensed. “What happened? What did she want?”
“Me. She wants me to join her group of chochés. I told her no.”
“Anybody see her come here?” Jonas asked.
“No, I was alone. She must have been watching the ounfò, since there’s almost always someone visiting; you know how they come to get my herbal medicines or get counseling. At first I didn’t know who she was, actually.”
“You never met her?”
“Never even seen her before, actually,” Cassandra told him. “She has an enormously powerful presence and when she spoke to me, it appeared that she was trying to use her voice in a deliberately hypnotic manner. I realized that an unsuspecting person would come under her influence quite quickly.”
“Did she have any effect on you?”
“Actually I found it abrasive and annoying; first it seemed like she was addressing me like a child; then I saw that she was trying to do a kind of verbal hypnosis. That angered me, so rude. Then I realized that this must be Vanessa.”
“What did she talk about first?” Jonas asked.
“It was mostly trivial questions. How many people were in this congregation, what services I provided, did I also do faith healing and sell amulets. Some questions about the area too. I answered those questions; they’re mostly normal when one manbo speaks to another. But I got alarmed when she began asking about my family. At that point, I told her that those questions were inappropriate.”
Jonas scowled. “How did she react when you shut her down?”
“With a very ill-concealed anger. She said that manbos needed to be open and communicative with each other. Then she began talking about the ‘old days,’ and that turned into a tirade. Apparently the ‘old days’ were during François Duvalier’s regime, his rule, really, and she wants Haiti to return to a government with a king who holds power by divine right. She told me that Duvalier was a person of ‘real power’ and she can help bring back a strong political figure to rule; then, she said, the oungans and manbos will have real political power because everyone will worship them like they do the ancestor spirits and the lwa.
“Jonas, you know that if there’s anything in my religion that approaches being sacrilegious, it’s that idea. The very thought that the oungan and the manbo should be worshiped is simply preposterous.
“Then she went on to tell me that I had real power; she could tell that I had great strength and would be a natural choché. She said that she would teach me and she would rule as the manbo queen with me at her side. I insisted that I could never sert des deux mains; that my patron. Papa Legba, would not allow it either.
“She scoffed at that and said she could fix that. Dealing with my patron lwa wouldn’t be any difficulty for her and that she could exorcize any lwa easily. I was trying not to show my anger, so I told her that I’d never consider going against my beliefs. That’s when she said that she’d give me three weeks to decide and that if I didn’t join her, she would make me wish I hadn’t rejected her offer. She told me that she knew where you worked and where Fabienne went to school and that she would be sorry if she heard that something had happened to someone in my family.”
“Damn!” Jonas exclaimed. “Maybe I need to visit Vanessa myself.”
“No, Jonas, don’t face her directly. When she left, I watched her get into a car and she had two evil-looking men with her. I’ve heard that her compound in Carrefour is heavily guarded.”
“Okay; I’ll just check her out. I promise I won’t confront her.”
~~~~
The following day, Jonas drove to Carrefour and located Vanessa’s compound. Cassandra was correct, it was heavily guarded, and whenever Vanessa left the grounds, she always had two men with her. With a Marine’s eye, he watched to see if she could be shot from a distance; Jonas had some sniper training, but the house wasn’t very visible from outside the compound walls. But Jonas quickly dismissed the sniper idea; he realized that such cold-blooded killing felt repugnant to him now. This was not combat; neither was he an assassin.
Jonas wondered what he could do to protect his family. With no evidence, going to the authorities wasn’t even worth a thought, not to mention that the authorities were unreliable, corrupt, or in league with Vanessa. Or probably all of the above.
During the following week, Jonas was still pondering what to do about the Vanessa situation, when he got an excited call from Henri, his boss, soon after he had left the shop for the day.
“Jonas, you gotta come over now. Rafael was doing a job in Carrefour and he got a recording of Vanessa talking about Cassandra.”
Jonas quickly drove back to the shop. Henri was there with his younger son Rafael.
The three men went into the shop and Rafael pulled out his phone.
“I was working at this estate in Carrefour. They had a van that had an electrical problem. You know the place, off RN-2; we’ve done work for the owner a lot, so they like to use us. They let me come in to do repairs without watching me, like many of the other rich people do. When I got there, someone pointed to a big garage where it was sitting.
“I pulled my truck into the bay next to the van; there was lots of room there. I got out my tools and began to look for the problem. I was lying on my back, working under the van’s dash, and using the light from my phone to see, when I heard someone pull into the other bay, right next to the van. There was talking; I could hear it through the open window. Then a woman’s voice mentioned Cassandra. That’s when I turned the phone recorder on.”
He played the recording.
Man: “...know where she lives. Raymond was your driver when you went there that day, right?”
Woman: “Yes. I want you and Ricardo to start staking out the girl’s school. She goes to Institution Saint Dominique, but several times a week she walks over to the Universite GOC. Watch for the next week to see any change in patterns. Also, keep tabs on Cassandra. If I feel like it would be to my advantage, maybe I’ll have you grab her too. We’ll aim for the second week from now, a week from next Tuesday for the snatch date, and if there’s no one around to see, do it. The fallback days will be Wednesday and Thursday. I’ll make up my mind by next week about taking the woman.
“But it’s really essential that no one sees you.”
Inaudible: “Mumble mumble.”
Woman: “Right, she walks across a farm field there, then crosses Route 1. It’s only about a kilometer and a half walk for her. After Route 1, she’s on a road where some sections are overgrown and you’d be hidden from view there.”
Man: “Do we need to knock her out?”
Inaudible: “Mumble mumble.”
Woman: “Ricardo’s right. Use the heavy van, the gray one. The walls are insulated, keep sounds in. Don’t hurt her.”
Then there was the sound of the door opening and closing.
Second man: “Greetings, Vanessa. Sorry to delay you. Some business came up...” A phone buzzed. “Just a second, a text... says to wait, some papers are being faxed. Vanessa, we can do what you want. We can fix up a secure place for you on your compound to assemble your chochés and train them in your magic.”
Vanessa: “I need rooms that can be locked or cages to secure those who are reluctant until they are convinced to participate. We might have several of those people.”
Second man: “How many people are we talking about?”
Vanessa: “I have eleven loyal followers right now; eight being recruited, and so far, two extremely strong manbos who’ve refused so far, but I will make sure that they will be changing their minds very soon now.”
Second man: “So you really want to become queen of the manbos?”
Vanessa: “I actually already am. No one is more powerful than me, and I have the backing of ... you know the person who we picked to lead the new regime. The Duvalier family will take its rightful place again, and with my powers and those of my trainees, we can assure you that Haiti will soon be a kingdom. Also...”
There was a knocking noise.
Second man: “A moment. Here are the papers.” The noise of a car door opening and closing sounded. “A whole satchel? Oh, the guns you wanted are in here too.”
Vanessa: “Can we go? Good. David, let’s go.”
There was the sound of an engine starting and the vehicle moving away; then the recording stopped.
Rafael continued his narrative. “I was scared as shit. I closed up as fast as I could, just throwing my tools into the truck, and hauled my ass outta there.”
“Who do you figure was in the car besides Vanessa?” Jonas asked.
“Yeah, that was the estate owner who got in; it sounded like his voice. He’s a government minister. The other two must be Vanessa’s muscle.”
With the information from the recording, Jonas was able to make some plans. First, they made sure that Fabienne was never alone. Next, on the first date that had been scheduled for the kidnapping, Jonas, Henri, and his sons kept watching for a gray van, and sure enough, they saw that it was parked at an isolated corner where Fabienne would pass. The van was parked there the two following days as well. The same gray van was also seen driving slowly around the area of Jonas’ home.
On Saturday, the compound was busy and Cassandra had many people who wanted to talk to her or to buy herbs. During a lull in the activity, two women went into the ounfò. One stood at the door and the other went to Cassandra, who was putting some bottles away.
“Oh, I didn’t see you,” Cassandra said. “May I help you?”
“This is a message from your visitor of two weeks ago. She wants you to know that she’s been watching you and next Wednesday, you will be contacted, and you will follow the instructions.”
With that, both women hurried out, met two men at a car in the driveway, which then drove away.
Cassandra phoned Jonas, who was working at the shop, to tell him what happened.
“I’ll be right there, I need to get Fabienne, she’s in Emanuel’s house with his kids,” he replied.
When he got home, Cassandra told him of the women’s visit.
“So we need to something drastic before Wednesday. Let me see about driving to the D.R. on Monday afternoon or Tuesday to buy us more time. I need to go with Henri to Port-au-Prince first thing Monday to get some parts. I’ll pick up a Dominican Republic eTicket then,” Jonas told her. “... so we can enter the country. Do you have anyone watching you and Fabienne on Monday?”
“Yes, it’s Robert. He can handle any problems if they happen.”
“All right. I certainly hope that we don’t have any more problems next week.”
They had no idea about what kind of problems that the following week would bring.
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