“There are other shops like yours?”
“One shop somewhat like this, although not as large.
And then there are two practicing Houngons-not strong magicians, these
two, little more than amateurs, neither of them powerful enough or
knowledgeable enough to do well for themselves-who sell the stuff of
magic out of their apartments. They have considerable lines of
merchandise to offer to other practitioners. But none of those three
have scruples. They will sell to either the Bocor or the Houngon. They
even sell the instruments required for a blood sacrifice, the ceremonial
hatchets, the razor-edged spoons used to scoop the living eye from the
skull. Terrible people, peddling their wares to anyone, anyone at all,
even to the most wicked and debased.”
“So Lavelle came here when he couldn’t get everything he wanted from
them.”
“Yes. He told me that he’d found most of what he needed, but he said my
shop was the only one with a complete selection of even the most
seldom-used ingredients for spells and incantations. Which is, of
course true. I pride myself on my selection and on the purity of my
goods. But unlike the others, I won’t sell to a Bocor-if I know what he
is. Usually I can spot them. I also won’t sell to those amateurs with
bad intentions, the ones who want to put a curse of death on a
motherin-law or cause sickness in some man who’s a rival for a girl or a
job. I’ll have none of that. Anyway, this man, this one in the
photograph-”
“Lavelle,” Jack said.
“But I didn’t know his name then. As I was packaging the few things
he’d selected, I discovered he was a Bocor, and I refused to conclude
the sale. He thought I was like all the other merchants, that I’d sell
to just anyone, and he was furious when I wouldn’t let him have what he
wanted. I made him leave the shop, and I thought that was the end of
it.”
“But it wasn’t?” Jack asked.
“No.”
“He came back?”
“No.”
“Then what happened?”
Hampton came out from behind the sales counter. He went to the shelves
where the hundreds upon hundreds of bottles were stored, and Jack
followed him.
Hampton’s voice was hushed, a note of fear in it: “Two days after
Lavelle was here, while I was alone in the shop, sitting at the counter
back there, just reading-suddenly, every bottle on those shelves was
flung off, to the floor. All in an instant. Such a crash! Half of
them broke, and the contents mingled together, all ruined. I rushed
over to see what had happened, what had caused it, and as I approached,
some of the spilled herbs and powders and ground roots began to . . .
well, to move . . . to form together . . . and take on life. Out
of the debris, composed of several substances, there arose . . . a
black serpent, about eighteen inches in length. Yellow eyes. Fangs. A
flickering tongue. As real as any serpent hatched from its mother’s
egg.”
Jack stared at the big man, not sure what to think of him or his story.
Until this moment, he had thought that Carver Hampton was sincere in his
religious beliefs and a perfectly level-headed man, no less rational
because his religion was voodoo rather than Catholicism or Judaism.
However, it was one thing to believe in a religious doctrine and in the
possibility of magic and miracles -and quite another thing altogether to
claim to have seen a miracle. Those who swore they had seen miracles
were hysterics, fanatics, or liars. Weren’t they? On the other hand,
if you were at all religious-and Jack was not a man without faith-then
how could you believe in the possibility of miracles and the existence
of the occult without also embracing the claims of at least some of
those who said they had been witness to manifestations of the
supernatural? Your faith could have no substance if you did not also
accept the reality of its effects in this world. It was a thought that
hadn’t occurred to him before, and now he stared at Carver Hampton with