THE DARK ARTS

By Thomas Vohasek

The soldiers stood immobile surveying the miniature battlefield and saw nothing. The boy lay on

his stomach, his elbows resting in the dust. The floorboards creaked as Simon Lane moved to

position one of his toy soldiers.

The sound of cicadas wafted in from outside and the heat of the midmorning crept up,

leaving them sweating in the sweltering heat. Far away, Simon heard the ticking of the

grandfather clock.

His father, Douglas Lane, worked on the clock for months. But only on the days when he

wasn’t in the fields with the slaves. Simon liked the slaves. Especially Selene. Selene was the

main slave who took care of him, a kindly woman reaching an age when work in the fields was

out of the question. Simon had taught her to read a year ago when he was seven. Now he was

eight. Douglas Lane did not appear to love Selene the way Simon did, in fact Douglas did not

appear to even like the slaves.

Aside from Selene, no one paid attention to him. His mother, Sarah, hated Douglas. He

had always abused the slaves. But now his rages had turned to her. She rode in the fields most of

the day, not returning until supper. She stopped sleeping in the same room as Douglas. Simon

was afraid of his father. They shared as few words as possible, for they were strangers living in

the same house.

Simon positioned another solider. He heard the ticking of the clock louder this time. He

stood and went to the foyer and peered up the stairs of the Plantation House. Two slaves,

Matthew and Luke, appeared on the stairs each holding an end of the clock and bringing it

steadily downstairs. Simon turned to go but heard a cry. He turned clutching the doorframe.

Matthew dropped the clock’s edge and the front struck the stairs. The clock face and the

pendulum compartment glass shattered. Luke put his end down and they flipped the clock over to

inspect the damage. The glass was indeed shattered, but the wood was intact, the clock face was

undamaged, the tiny hands which spelled the hour and minute continued to turn unimpeded. It

would be the work of an hour perhaps to replace the glass. Finding the glass would be harder

than sliding it in place. And the stairs would need to be swept of the broken shards. All together

to clean up the accident it would take no more than two hours.

And then Simon heard the footsteps. Douglas’ boots sounded like thunder on the stairs

down to the landing. His father appeared rounding the corner. He looked at Matthew and Luke

and then down at the shattered glass. Douglas Lane, a man of forty-five, hulking in his frame

with long, brown hair, turning gray, his eyes hard and black, continually gave off a smell of

whiskey. His clothes appeared ruffled, except when he was out in company.

“Which one of you did it?”

Matthew raised a quivering hand.

“Come here.”

Matthew stepped forward. Douglas punched him hard across the face. Matthew dropped

to one knee, a livid bruise already starting to form on his left cheek. Lane grasped him by the

shoulders and threw him backwards down the stairs. Matthew screamed as his head banged off

the railing and the banisters. His face took a blow from the opposite wall leaving a dent and

causing a sickening snap.

Matthew reached the ground and lay still, unmoving, lying in that unnatural position, his

head off center. Simon crept back toward the living room to his toys. He peered up at his father

contemplating the body with loathing. A scream. One of the serving slaves, Martha, rushed into

the room. She fell to the ground screaming. “NO!” she yelled. “You no be dead! You no dead!

Ged up! Pease, ged up!” Douglas Lane turned to his son, their eyes met, and he turned from the

landing and strode slowly upstairs.

***

Sarah Lane rode across the grassy landscape. The horse bouncing as she rode, speeding across

open acres, her eyes closed, and taking a deep breath of the hot, fresh air. She neared the pond

the birds drank from. A swan skimmed along the surface. She dismounted and crept to the trees

surrounding the pond. Peering between the branches she saw the beautiful black and white

creature bathe itself in the clear sparkling waters. Mrs. Lane, thirty-four, German by descent, had

long golden locks, she brushed a hundred times a day.

This time to ride alone was the only peace she ever got. Her husband took to drink since

his mother died. He used to be sweet and loving. But he had never liked their son. She theorized

the reason was Simon resembled Nelson. Nelson was Douglas’ younger brother, who met with

an accident at the age of five while the two played in the woods.

They encountered a mother wolf protecting its babes and Douglas prodded Nelson into

the cave to see what the wolf would do. Nelson was dead before he even saw the wolf’s paws

lift from the ground. It tore him to shreds. Douglas fled home and begrudgingly told his father

what happened. They got a pair of riffles from the barn and went out to the cave. Douglas

described in detail the bloody mess of the wolf mother’s head as they shot it from a distance

behind a boulder. What became of the babies they didn’t know. Most likely they died very

young, picked off by some other predator before they reached adulthood.

The swan neared the closer bank and Sarah peered between the reeds to watch it. And for

several minutes she forgot about everything. She forgot about home, about her husband she’d

been sent off to, she forgot her son and the slaves, and the harvest, and the drink, and the damned

grandfaterh clock, and she thought only of the swan. The swan turned and glided back across the

pond. Sarah faced her reflection. It was not her face, surely. This face was old beyond her years

with gray beginning to sneak into her gold locks.

This woman had lines on her face and crow’s feet. Sarah had none of these imperfections.

She was a beautiful girl of nineteen. No, that was fifteen years ago. Fifteen years with Douglas.

Four had been mostly happy. Fifteen? That was impossible. Where did life go? Could it be

swallowed whole and only after it is gone does the person who has lived this time cannot

remember it? Where did time go? Where did the best years of her life escape to? She wanted

them back. She was still young, she could have a happy life. A life without Douglas. But what

would she do without Douglas. She had no money without Douglas. She had nowhere to go. And

there was Simon to think of. Simon who looked like Nelson and so earned his father’s hatred.

Douglas had told her the story of Nelson and the wolf as it really happened. He was

drunk, close to passing out, and he had explained that he had lied to his father. He had confided

to no one but her that he had prodded Nelson toward the cave. He had made it sound as though

Nelson had stumbled upon the wolf without looking. “But,” Douglas told her that night of

reveltation, “I think even then I knew what would happen. I think I told Nelson to walk to the

cave because I wanted him gone. And now I want him back more than anything and I can’t take

it back.” He had wept on her shoulder, clutching her tight.

But the day was passing. Night was approaching. Sarah looked up at the sky and saw the

sun beginning to set and reluctantly climbed atop her steed and rode off back to the Plantation

and her husband.

***

The Lane family named her Martha from birth. She wasn’t sure where exactly she came from or

much about her family. She was told early on she wouldn’t be working in the fields but in the

kitchen and serving the family at night. But tonight she knew were she to try and serve them she

would stab Douglas Lane at the dinner table until she was pulled from his corpse with a knife

stuck in his face.

She left the Plantation grounds. Punishment for not arriving to serve their meals was

whipping; she knew that. But she needed to see the Voodoo woman, a witch who knew the dark

arts and would sell those secrets. She’d stolen money from the Lanes to give the Voodoo woman.

That was a more severe whipping, if not death, a man like Douglas Lane was never predictible in

his rages.

The ancient door of rotting wood loomed up before her. She knocked. The door opened

and the ancient black woman smiled, exposing blackened teeth. “’Ello, child. Come in. Come in,

please. What is it you want?”

“I ‘eard about you, Aunt Agnes,” said Martha. “You have the powder, the dark powder.”

“Child, what you be wanting dat fo? You no want it. It won be no good. It ain’t the dead

one you lost when dey come back.”

“I know,” said Martha.

Aunt Agnes hesitated a moment, but she was a buisness woman after all. She turned into

the dark of the shack and allowed Martha to enter. Aunt Agnes rushed behind a curtain into

another room in the shack. The main room lay in ruins. The wood was beginning to rot. A few

moth-ridden armchairs, discarded from the manor house, adorned the room. A rotted table sat in

the center of the room, encrusted with the remains of some dead animal, the wood scratched,

stabbed, and stained with a thick, dark substance. Rats scratched and bit at each other in the

corner. The place smelled of rotting wood and animal feces. Martha shivered to behold it and

turned to the curtain Aunt Agnes vanished through.

Aunt Agnes reappeared. In her arms she held a massive jar filled with a black powder,

darker than dirt. She placed the jar on the table and whispered, “It takes no more dan a handful.

How much do you wan?”

“All of it,” said Marth, putting her money down on the table. Aunt Agnes took it, stuffed

it into a pocket and Martha grasped the jar and left the shack. Aunt Agnes closed the door and

locked it with a dead bolt. She closed her eyes and did the Sign of the Cross. It was to be a night

for unholy deeds.

***

“Where were you at dinner?”

“I could not serve Mr. Lane, ma’am. Not after what he did to Matthew only a few hours

ago.”

“What?” asked Mrs. Lane in shock. Her voice enchoed through the empty dinning room.

Martha made a visit to her husband before returning to the house. Mrs. Lane found her first,

which was good. Perhaps she might not be whipped. “What happened, Martha? Tell me

everything.”

***

Sarah Lane entered the room. She pushed the door open and started to shout. “Douglas

Lane! You bastard! You lied to me and you killed that man, just because he dropped a clock! I

cannot believe…”

She stopped dead. A man sat before her husband’s vanity. But it was not her husband. It

was a black man. He turned toward her, his movements very stiff and rigid. His face was hidden,

but then he turned. The eyes! The eyes were still glassy and dead, without lights, without any

sign of life. Dead, and yet the body moved, staring at her, as though it could see without the dead

eyes that filled those sockets.

***

Mr. Lane was going to be punished? No, that wasn’t what she expected. Martha had

already gavin her husband’s remains the black powder and preformed the ritual. Martha ran.

Maybe she did something wrong. Please say she did something wrong. She saw Selene walking

back to the house and Selene stopped her. “What’s going on?” asked Selene.

“I wen’ to Aunt Agnes,” whispered Martha. “I got the black powder. But Mrs. Lane,

she’s gonna make sure he is punished fo what he’s done. I have to stop Matthew.”

Selene’s eyes widened and a hand flew to cover her mouth. She took off for the house.

Martha sprinted for the hut where she and her husband slept. She pushed aside the cloth door and

looked down on his cot. Empty. The body was gone…

***

The zombie rose and crossed the room, slow at first. Sarah turned and threw the door

open trying to escape. The zombie was faster than she could have imagined. It slammed the door

shut and pushed her back. Sarah stumbled backwards away from the creature and slipped over

her husband’s ottoman. She fell to the floor staring up at the face.

She screamed. The zombie bent and grasped her throat and squeezed. She tried to scream

but his fist cut off her air. Clawing at the hands tearing at her throat, she tried to scream for help.

The zombie snarled viciously. Sarah grabbed the ottoman and smashed it across the zombie’s

head. The zombie grasped it and threw it away smashing into the mirror in the vanity. It

shattered. Matthew stared into Sarah Lane’s eyes as its fingers tightened and her neck snapped

with a sickening snap.

The door burst open. One of the kitchen slaves ran in, saw the zombie, turned, screamed

and ran from the room. The zombie followed. It pushed him and he pitched head first over the

railing and down three stories to the ground floor. He smashed into another slave walking by

with a lantern to light the fires. The lantern fell smashing along the wall, starting the curtains

beside the window aflame. Douglas Lane appeared in the foyer. He took in the scene; the dead

man, and another trying desperately to put out the fire, and then his gaze flew upstairs to the

zombie retreating into his room.

He ran, taking the stairs two at a time until he burst into his bedroom. The zombie stood

on the other side next to the open window. It held Mrs. Lane in its arms. Bruises coated her neck

and her head fell back at an awkward angle. Her eyes hung open and glazed over. He saw the

same look of death etched into its eyes. The zombie turned and jumped, smashing the window. It

dove from the third floor to the ground outside. Lane rushed to the window. The zombie hit the

ground landing on its feet and running off toward the hut with the zombie powder.

Mr. Lane couldn’t believe his eyes. He rushed to the vanity and brushed away the shards

of shattered mirror, opened the center drawer. He drew out his six round revolver and ran from

the bedroom. The foyer was drapped in flames. Whatever it was, it had once been Matthew.

Martha, the bastard’s husband. She was responsible for this. A wife for a husband. Douglas was

angry and somewhat drunk and so perhaps did not think about the strange, otherworldliness of

the situation. He thought only of killing the thing which had taken his wife. He threw the front

screen door open in a haze and rushed out onto the lawn. He held the gun and ran to the side of

the house where the zombie jumped.

The zombie was rushing into the forest with his wife’s body, headed down the old trail to

the city graveyard. Lane made to run after him and there was Martha. He stopped dead and

turned toward her. Martha met his gaze. They stood for a second, surveying each other, and each

knew the other for what they were, and then she took off into the woods.

Lane cocked the gun and rushed after her. The crickets and the cicadas droned on around

them. He could see the house going up like a torch to his right, and he could feel the breath of the

flames on his flesh, adding heat to the already sweltering night. Martha reached the edge of the

trees and entered the woods. Lane aimed his gun and fired. The bullet missed, sticking in a tree

trunk. Lane entered the woods pulling the hammer back again. Leaves crunched beneath their

feet and the smell of burning wood faded from their nostrils, overtaken by the trees and the

decaying leaves.

An owl hooted somewhere in the darkness. Martha tripped over a root and nearly fell.

She regained her balance and took off again. Lane aimed the gun and fired. Martha screamed, the

bullet struck her in the lower back. She collapsed to her knees, her hand flew forward to steady

herself. The ground before her was quick sand. She could feel the slippery mud like substance

between her fingers.

Perhaps it was better she was shot and not drowned in quick sand. Martha skated around

the roots and struggled to run with the pain. She crawled, skirting the edge of the quick sand

pool. Lane saw her. He fired and the shot missed, skating into the leaves beside her.

Martha jumped backwards to get away instinctively as she felt the bullet pass by her. Her

foot caught in the quick sand. She struggled to remove it. Lane aimed the gun again. Martha

turned away, closed her eyes, and screamed. The gun went off. The back of Martha’s head

exploded like a watermelon spurting blood across the leaves.

Her head fell forward and hit the quick sand, her face plowing into it. Lane stepped

forward and grinned down at Martha’s body. The moon peaked between the trees and Lane blew

the smoke still seeping from the barrel of the gun away into the sultry night. It was quiet. Lane

could hear the slaves trying to put out the Plantation house but to no avail. She was dead, and so

too the zombie must be dead.

Lane turned, about to head back to the house, when he saw several figures in the dark.

The nearest shuffled forward into a break in the leaves. Moonlight illuminated the face of Sarah

Lane. Her dead and glazed over eyes stared straight at Lane. Matthew shuffled forward. And still

more from the graveyard appeared. These had begun to decay or were little more than skin

stretched and broken over bones.

The zombies moved in, moving slowly, but Lane knew it was no good trying to run. They

were fast. Lane aimed the gun at Matthew and fired. The face vanished and the zombie continued

forward missing his nose and half his mouth.

Lane aimed the gun again. He fired at Matthew and his chest exploded where his heart

should have been. Lane screamed and all the zombies surged forward. Three of them tackled him

grasping him about the waist, one about the neck and the other grabbing at his chest as it tried to

bite off his cheek. The four of them toppled backwards, slamming into the quick sand with a

resounding splash. Lane screamed. The gun left his hand. The three zombies dragged him down.

He screamed into his wife’s dead face as they clawed at him and bit him and tore pieces of his

flesh. And swiftly they vanished beneath the surface…

***

Simonhan Lane slept, curled up on a mat in the corner of the shack. Selene sat, ensconsed amidst

one of the massive moth ridden armchairs watching him.

“Drink dis,” said Aunt Agnes handing her a cup. Selene looked at the contents and then

up at Aunt Agnes with a bit of trepidation.

“What’s in it?”

“Trust me. You no wan to know.” Selene took a sip and it warmed her.

“I had to get him out.”

“I know, child.”

“Why?” asked Selene. “Why did you give her the powder?”

Aunt Agnes sat down in the rotting armchair across from her and said, “Revenge is what

brings most to me door. Curses are half me busi-nuss.”

***

Matthew bent over the remains of his wife and breathed the powder into her face. He

took a step back. She lay across the undergrowth, away from the quick sand pool. Two minutes

passed. The zombie returned and bent over his wife again. Martha’s only remaining eye opened

and her body moved, her back arching into the air, as if straining to take in breath, and then she

lay back and placed her hands on the forest floor, and began to rise.

Somewhere far away the grandfather clock that started it all began to toll midnight.

Strange considering the fact that it had been incinerated in the Plantation house, along with

everything else the Lane family owned…