Forever Odd

me to accept her touch. She did not seize my hand boldly, but took it hesitantly, almost shyly, and then held it firmly as a child might in anticipation of a spooky adventure.
        I would not have bet on the proposition that this demented and corrupted woman harbored within her any wisp of the innocent child that she once must have been. Yet the quality of submissive trust with which she inserted her hand in mine and the shiver that passed through her at the prospect of what lay ahead suggested childlike vulnerability.
        In the eldritch light, which cast about her an aura that seemed almost supernatural, she looked at me, her eyes adance with wonder. This was not the usual Medusa stare; it lacked her characteristic cold hunger and calculation.
        Likewise, her grin was without mockery or menace, but expressed a natural and wholesome delight in conspiratorial feats of daring.
        I warned myself against the danger of compassion in this case. How easy it would be to imagine the traumas of childhood that might have deformed her into the moral monster she had become, and then to convince myself that those traumas could be balanced-and their effects reversed-by sufficient acts of kindness.
        She might not have been formed by trauma. She might have been born this way, without an empathy gene and other essentials. In that case, she would interpret any kindness as weakness. Among predatory beasts, any display of weakness is an invitation to attack.
        Besides, even if trauma shaped her, that didn’t excuse what had been done to Dr. Jessup.
        I remembered a naturalist who, having come to despise humanity and to despair of it, set out to make a documentary about the moral superiority of animals, particularly of bears. He saw in them not only a harmonious relationship with nature that humankind could not achieve, but also a playfulness beyond human capacity, a dignity, a compassion for other animals, and even a mystical quality that he found moving, humbling. A bear ate him.
        Long before I could precipitate a fog of self-delusion equal to that of the devoured naturalist, in fact by the time we had descended only three flights of stairs, Datura herself brought me sharply to my senses by launching into another of her charming anecdotes. She liked the sound of her own voice so much that she could not allow the good impression, made by her smile and silence, to stand for long.
        “In Port-au-Prince, if you are invited under the protection of a respected juju adept, it’s possible to attend a ceremony of one of the forbidden secret societies shunned by most voodooists. In my case, it was the Couchon Gris, the ”Gray Pigs.“ Everyone on the island lives in terror of them, and in the more rural areas, they rule the night.”
        I suspected that the Gray Pigs would prove to have little in common with, say, the Salvation Army.
        “From time to time, the Couchon Gris perform a human sacrifice-and sample the flesh. Visitors may only observe. The sacrifice is made on a massive black stone hanging on two thick chains suspended from a great iron bar embedded in the walls near the ceiling.”
        Her hand tightened in mine as she recalled this horror.
        “The person being sacrificed is killed with a knife through the heart, and in that instant, the chains begin to sing. The gros bon ange flies at once from this world, but the ti bon ange , restrained by the ceremony, can only travel up and down the chains.”
        My hand grew damp and chill.
        I knew she must feel the change.
        The faint, disturbing scent that I had smelled earlier, when I’d considered climbing these stairs, arose again. Musky, mushroomy, and strangely suggestive of raw meat.
        As before, I flashed back to the dead face of the man whom I had hauled out of the water in the storm drain.
        “When you listen closely to the singing chains,” Datura continued, “you realize it isn’t just the sound of twisting links grinding against one another. There’s a voice expressing in the chains, a wail of fear and despair, a wordless urgent pleading.”
        Wordlessly, urgently, I pleaded with her to shut up.
        “This anguished voice continues as long as the Couchon Gris continue to sample the flesh on the altar, usually half an hour. When they’re done, the chains immediately stop singing because the ti bon ange dissipates, to be absorbed in equal measure by all