Red Rain: A Novel (2 page)

When French traders arrived and heard the stories, they gave the island its unlucky name. I haven’t been able to find out what they were trading. Most likely rum or some concoction like it. The islanders I’ve met seem to drink from morning till night. And if that’s your idea of travel adventure, go ahead—pack your bags.

I’ve saved the best (or worst) for last. Here’s the most interesting historical detail—and it’s definitely creepy. Especially with frightening forecasts of a big hurricane heading this way.

I don’t want to talk about the hurricane now. I’m pretending it’s not going to happen.

You see, Le Chat Noir was devastated by one of the most powerful storms in hurricane history. It was the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935. And I have every finger crossed that history is not going to repeat itself now.

I heard the story of that dreadful hurricane shortly after arriving at Cape Le Chat Noir and stepping off the bouncing, wooden dock. Believe me, folks—it did not exactly make me feel as if a welcome mat had been put out for me.

The jeep-taxi to take me to my hotel was late. Squinting in the bright sunshine, I glanced around. The dock area seemed to be deserted, except for two ragged-looking fishermen setting off in a tiny flat-bottomed skiff. Definitely no official tourist greeter waiting with a rum punch or even a friendly smile.

I spotted a tiny brown shack across the dirt road with the sign
Tea Shop
. So, with suitcase, laptop case, and camera in hand, I made my way there to wait for my ride.

Inside, the room was dimly lit, with red neon lights over the mirror at a bar and small gas lamps on each table. The tables were round cylinders, like conga drums. Wall posters from tea companies provided the only cheeriness. I liked a poster that showed a grinning Chinese child holding a big steaming cup, and the words
How Long Since You OOLONG?

The place was totally empty. I took a seat at a table near the bar. I coughed, hoping it might summon someone from in back. A wooden overhead fan squeaked as it slowly made its rounds.

An old woman emerged—white bristly hair under a black bandanna, pale skin tight over her cheekbones, silvery gray eyes, a little hunched over. She wore a long black dress, not exactly island wear. Without asking, she set a cup of dark tea down on my table with quavering hands.

“Thank you.” My voice sounded muffled in the heavy air of the tiny room. The squeaking fan seemed to grow louder.

“Why have you come?” Her voice was velvety smooth, much younger than her looks. Not exactly a friendly hello, huh, folks?

I stammered an answer about writing a travel story about Le Chat Noir.

“There’s a big storm on the way,” she said. “Hurricane Ernesto. Didn’t you hear about it?” She had no accent at all. Her eyes were so glassy, I thought she might be blind. But then I remembered she had set the teacup down on the little table with ease.

“Yes. My husband warned me not to come here in hurricane season,” I said, inhaling the bitter steam from the cup.

Mark is so sweet. He always wants me to stay home. But exploring my backyard would make for a dull travel blog, don’t you agree?

Well, to cut to the chase, the woman told me her name was Marguerite. She procured her own cup of tea, sat down across from me, stared unblinkingly into my eyes, and began to talk in her smooth whisper of a voice.

“The hurricane of 1935 didn’t have a name. They didn’t name them then. But it didn’t need a name to be remembered.”

I blew on the cup, then sipped the tea. “You mean it was a bad one?”

She nodded. Her throat made a rattling sound. I pretended not to notice.

“The storm showed no mercy. It swept over the Outer Banks, up to Chincoteague Island and the Virginia coast, flattening everything in its path. Nothing was left standing on this island. Not a house, not a shack, not a bait shop, not a teahouse. All shattered. All ruined. Even the lighthouse on the south shore was toppled over, into the ocean.”

I tsk-tsked. “That’s horrible.”

“My friends . . . people I knew, members of my family . . . Many were crushed, buried, drowned. I was a child. I saw the corpses. They were floating in lakes and rivulets caused by the storm. Even at my age, I knew the horror. I knew the pain, the suffering. No one could decide where to pile the bodies. They lay sprawled in the sand and sea grass and on piles of wreckage. The corpses . . . They were feasted on for days by seagulls and starving dogs.”

She took a long sip of tea. Her throat rattled as she swallowed. She gripped the cup with both hands, I guess, because her hands were so shaky.

I felt a shiver go down my back. The story was terrifying and sad, but her whispered voice made it even more frightening. I had to remind myself that this took place in 1935.

“I was a child but the pictures never faded from my eyes. The island was devastated. Turned to rubble. But it took only
weeks
to rebuild Le Chat Noir. Why? Because of a miracle. You might not call it a miracle, dear. You might call it a
nightmare
.”

She waited for me to react. Her silvery eyes still hadn’t blinked.

I set down the cup. “What do you mean? What kind of nightmare?”

She swallowed. She leaned closer, close enough for me to see the thick layer of powder on her tight cheeks. “Le Chat Noir returned to normal in weeks. Because the
old
dead—the dead from centuries past—came back to life. All the dead of the island returned to help rebuild it. No eyes, flesh rotting, bones yellowed and broken, they floated up from their flooded graves and went to work. They joined the survivors to bury the recent dead and restore and rebuild Le Chat Noir.

“When the job was done, did they return to their graves? No. The dead were proud of their handiwork. And they enjoyed the sunlight. It healed them and made them look almost normal, so normal most of them could blend in with the living. They decided to stay.”

I squinted at her. “The dead? The dead people stayed?”

She nodded, her expression solemn. She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. Her hand was dry and hard, like solid bone. “That’s what makes Le Chat Noir special, dear. It’s the only place on earth where the living share their space with the living dead.”

I glanced down at my empty teacup. The tea leaves on the bottom appeared to form an X. Of course I didn’t believe Marguerite’s story. But it left me feeling strange, kind of cold and tingly.

She smiled for the first time. Her smile cracked the powder on her cheeks. Placing both hands on the table, she pushed herself to her feet. “I see you are thinking about my story.”

I nodded. “Yes. It’s . . . frightening.”

Her smile faded. “Not that frightening, dear. I died ten years ago, but I’m doing pretty well. Can I bring you another cup of tea?”

My mouth dropped open.

A dry laugh, more like a cough, escaped her throat. “I’m only teasing you. I see your ride is outside. Enjoy your stay on our beautiful island.”

L
ea sat on the edge of the bed, smoothing her hands over the tropical-colored, flowery quilt, letting the warm sea breezes tickle her face. The lace curtains fluttered at the open window of the rooming house. White and yellow daisies floated in a glass bowl of water on the bed table beside her.

The small, second-floor room was bright with afternoon sunlight spreading across the blond-wood floor, and spotlessly crisp and clean with a vague aroma of coconut in the air. Red and blue starfish dotted the wallpapered walls, appropriate since the place was called Starfish House.

The two-story, shingled house with a sloping red-tile roof stood on a low, grassy dune overlooking the Eastern shore beach and a row of white fishing huts along the water.

Is this the calm before the storm?
Lea wondered.
Or has Hurricane Ernesto changed its course?

She didn’t want to check. She didn’t want to spoil her first day.

She could hear the hushed voices of her hosts drift upstairs from the front desk. An hour before, when the jeep-taxi dropped her off at the front door, they had both come bursting out, clapping their hands and speaking rapidly and excitedly in French, almost dancing around Lea and her two bags.

Maybe they are just warm, excitable people,
she thought.
But they’re really acting as if I’m their first guest.

Macaw Henders and her husband, Pierre. They owned the six-room inn. She was a big woman, Spanish-looking, with cocoa skin, round, black eyes and straight black bangs across a broad forehead.

She wore an expansive red-and-fuchsia housedress with feathery sleeves and collar and a red bandanna over her hair. Lea had to suppress a laugh since it really did look like bird plumage.

In contrast, Pierre was as thin as a pencil, balding, with brown eyes deep-set in a serious face. One of those people who always looks worried, Lea figured. No way to determine how old he was. He could be thirty or fifty.

A soft knock at the doorway startled Lea from her thoughts. She stood up as Macaw appeared, holding a tray with a white china cup. She handed the cup to Lea. Lea gazed down at a foamy, dark brown drink. She expected the cup to be hot, but it was cold.

Macaw smiled, revealing a gold cap on one front tooth. “Go ahead, Madame Sutter. A welcome drink. Take a small sip to start.” She spoke in a lilting singsong.

Lea took a small sip, then another. Coffee with vodka? No. But definitely potent and sour. She could feel the warmth slide down her throat, into her chest.

“Macaw, what is this drink called?”

The woman hesitated. She ruffled her feathery housedress, much like a preening macaw. “Kill-Devil,” she said finally, lowering her eyes.

Lea laughed and gazed into the cup. “Kill-Devil? Do you know why?”

“Because it’s powerful enough to kill the Devil?”

Lea took another sip. She was starting to like the bitter taste. “This is a lovely room,” she said, gesturing with her free hand. And then blurted out without really thinking about it, “Am I the only one staying here?”

The woman nodded.

“But, why?”

Macaw’s smile faded. She pretended to be interested in something on the tray. “I guess they have their reasons, Madame Sutter.”

BLOG POST

BY LEA HARMON SUTTER

Travel_Adventures.com

(April 11)
The bad news is that Ernesto still has its sights on Le Chat Noir. The hurricane is slow-moving, about fourteen miles per hour, which is even more bad news, because the longer it stays in one place, the more damage it does.

The only good news is that it gives me a little time to find some kind of adventure to write about before I have to duck and hide.

I’m writing this post on my iPad. I can feel the emergency vibes. People are boarding up their windows and pulling their boats onshore. The sky has turned an ugly lead color, and the wind feels heavy and damp.

My hosts, Macaw and Pierre, were reluctant to let me leave the house. I’m not sure they understood that my job is to go out and do risky things so I can write about them.

I’d been in touch (by email) with a woman who lives on Le Chat Noir, named Martha Swann. Martha told me about an island ceremony called
Revenir,
which is French for “to come back.” She explained that the
Revenir
ritual is part of a practice called
Mains
Magiques
—Magic Hands. She believed the French traders picked it up somewhere and brought it here with them. Martha wrote that it is a must-see.

I told my hosts I wanted to attend a
Revenir
ceremony, and they reacted not with horror but with definite disapproval. They both started shaking their heads, as if it would persuade me to drop the idea.

“It’s all a fake,” Macaw insisted. “They put on a show. The priest—he performs it every week.”

“It’s bad for the island,” Pierre agreed. His eyes took on a sadness. “These magic rituals, they make us look foolish. Primitive.”

“Why scare the people away?” Macaw said. “Why not talk about the beauty here? The natural beauty. Not the
unnatural
.”

“I know it isn’t real,” I said. “I’m not going to write that it’s real. But I think my readers will find it interesting. You know. It’s all about life and death, right? It’s been practiced for hundreds of years. It’s so . . . colorful.”

“We don’t want to be colorful,” Macaw said in her red-and-fuchsia dress.

After a lot of begging and pleading and explaining, they finally agreed to find a guide to take me to the ceremony.

He turned out to be a sandy-haired, boyish, tanned young man in khaki cargo shorts and safari jacket, who seemed so shy and spoke so softly I never did figure out what language he was using. I believe his name was Jean-Carl. He always looked away when he spoke to me, as if he was ashamed of his job or where he was taking me.

He drove me in an open jeep over the one single-lane paved road that leads to the center of the island. The road was lined on both sides by amazing cabbage palmettos. Their clusters of long leaves gleamed, even in the darkening light of the sky. Talk about magic! The trees were flowering, the yellow-white blossoms flashing by like tiny lights.

I didn’t see any other car traffic. Jean-Carl parked the jeep in the shade of a clump of palms at the edge of a sandy path, and we
began to walk, the soft sand tickling my feet as it flowed over my open sandals.

I tried to ask Jean-Carl questions about what I could expect to see. But again, he seemed embarrassed or else just painfully unsuited to his job. He kept repeating the word
scary
and shaking his head.

Of course, that only heightened my anticipation. And when we reached a small crowd of people—men and women of indeterminate age in colorful beach caftans and robes—I was ready for my
Mains Magiques
adventure.

L
ea estimated twenty people in the crowd, mostly men. They stood at the edge of the thick rain forest, inside a circle of the strangest palm trees she’d ever seen. “What are those trees called?” she asked Jean-Carl.