“You talking about this supermodel nigga your daughter with on the gram?” Fel asked Wesley as she scrolled through her phone.
“We should talk later,” Wesley said to Zacchaeus. “I know it’s fucked up and I don’t want them clowning me.”
“I ain’t gay or nothing,” Tyrone said, “but that’s a good looking man. You must think he ugly cause you racist. It’s like how white people don’t see how fine Serena is.”
“It’s a racial optical illusion,” Otis said, nodding his head. “Like, how is Madonna attractive? I ain’t never saw that. But white people like her. I don’t know if it’s racist though.”
“It ain’t racist!” Zacchaeus said between laughter. “I mean, in any other circumstance, I’d probably agree with y’all, but this sound more serious than Wesley not thinking the guy is attractive.”
“To be fair,” Wesley added, “I don’t generally find any men attractive, but it’s worse than that. Even if I thought he was just ugly, it wouldn’t fuck me up like this. When I see that man with Daisy, I see her with a demon or something.”
Fel shook her head and pursed her lips. “Saying shit like that about a dude look like this next to your mulatto daughter sound pretty racist. Z, look at this nigga.”
Fel walked her phone over to Zacchaeus and the man he saw at first was handsome and dark-skinned like Tyson Beckford or Tyrese, smiling with an arm around Daisy’s shoulder. But after a moment, his vision switched, and the Needy said, This is the true appearance of the thing that pilots that body, and Zacchaeus almost swatted Fel’s phone to the ground.
What he saw was a skeleton with chunks of flesh clinging to the bones, like the body had been partially eaten but was still animated. Somehow, the fleshless mouth seemed to smirk and the bony brow was furrowed and sinister.
“You saw it didn’t you?” Wesley said. “The fuck is up with that?”
“What is y’all seeing?” Fel said, glaring at Zacchaeus as she sat back down in her chair.
“Let’s go somewhere and talk,” Zacchaeus said to Wesley.
“Wes, you better cut that man hair before y’all go outta here,” Otis insisted. “I don’t care what y’all seeing, Zacchaeus head is the real emergency.”
As Wesley cut Zacchaeus’s hair, they all talked about the strange stuff they had experienced in their past and even though it was difficult to truly convince the barbers of what they were seeing, Zacchaeus thought they were at least more accepting of the reality that something strange was happening with Daisy.
“If it’s really like you say,” Otis said, “then Zacchaeus, you should go get Wesley’s daughter away from that thing. You got that dark hoodoo from Mavis Turner, didn’t you? Before you try to deny it, I heard what you did with them big spiders came out of the Canned Heat a few years back. Earl and them said they saw you and the hoodoo killing ‘em with the Magician man from that Black Museum in Louisiana. What they call him, Fel?”
“Up From Slavery,” Fel said seriously and looked around curiously when everyone stared at her skeptically. “What? I’m serious. That’s what I heard from my girl in New Orleans. He got this magical museum and he saved a bunch of people when all that red pollen was spreading. He use the knowledge of black history to power his magic.”
“That don’t sound right,” Tyrone said, “but I know who you talking about. You know this Magician, Zacchaeus?”
“I do,” Zacchaeus said, “and I’m worried about Daisy.”
Wesley was brushing hair off of Zacchaeus as he spoke and the haircut was done. Zacchaeus looked sharp with the neat waves in his hair that was neatly cropped and faded. His face was clean shaven and he had a concerned look on his face.
“I need to smoke a blunt,” he said, “or six. Is Daisy with him now?”
“She at some festival in North Carolina with her cousins for the next few weeks,” Wesley said.
“And dude is there too,” Fel said, scrolling through her phone. “They must have paid them to go to this festival I ain’t ever heard of. Damn, Wes, your daughter must be a real influencer hanging out with this dude.
“I’ll go check it out,” Zacchaeus said. “See what my hoodoo tell me about him up close.”
“Bring her home if you think it’s dangerous,” Wesley said. “I’d go with you, but these two going on a cruise.”
“It’s FreakNik on a boat!” Fel said excitedly and clapped hands enthusiastically with Tyrone.
“It’s cool. I’ll come here when I get back.”
Zacchaeus smoked a blunt as he walked casually back to Mavis Turner’s house, and when he was home, he packed a bag then drove to the festival in Asheville from Mississippi.
He’d never spent considerable time in Asheville, but he liked the size of the city and got a hotel room downtown. He arrived late and woke the next morning, following the directions of the Needy.
“So we’re looking for a ghost?” Zacchaeus mumbled to himself.
It’s a spirit, something that died horribly and now serves a darkness foreign to me. We should find Daisy, and see if she can lead us to it.
“I’m surprised you helping like this, it ain’t like you to care.”
Zacchaeus, if you concentrate, you will feel what I am curious about. It is faint, but it is not altogether unfamiliar. Is it possible that a being from the Fonlands could be here in our universe?
“You think? I ain’t never seen nothing like the Fonlands here before. How would they get here? They got tech like me?”
Magic beyond anything even I can comprehend? Maybe I am wrong and just too eager to be there again. But I want to see where this takes us. Isn’t that Daisy driving away from the festival that is taking place a few more blocks that way?
Zacchaeus saw her as the light changed. She was driving a very old model car that looked out of place and Zacchaeus turned to follow it as traffic moved slowly out of downtown. There was someone in the passenger’s seat that he couldn’t see, but the Needy was sure it was the thing in the body of the handsome man.
You’ll have to fly to keep up for much longer. Aren’t you afraid of being seen?
“Not really, no” Zacchaeus said as a black cloak materialized at his back in a puff of smoke that made a few pedestrians near him gasp with shock. Zacchaeus flew up, using the power of the Needy that manipulated heat to glide on wind currents, keeping the car in sight as some people noticed him from the ground.
She’s a good driver to be so young. It seems she’s driven in these mountains before.
“I wonder where they’re going. And why is she driving?”
The further we travel, the more I am sure that we will encounter something from the Fonlands. And I must know how it came to be here.
Zacchaeus flew high above the car for a long time before it came to a stop at a cabin deep in the woods. He landed next to the cabin after struggling through the canopy of trees with all of the limbs and leaves. He crept up to the window, and though there was a curtain covering most of it, there was a section of the window along the bottom that allowed for a clear view of the living room where Daisy stood in front of the man from the pictures on Fel’s phone as he removed chunks of his body to reveal the form of himself that had haunted Wesley. The man was a grisly sight as chunks of himself piled up. His skeletal form was horrible with bits of bloody patches of his body still clinging to the bones. Daisy seemed to be stunned and she was frozen in front of the skeleton though her body trembled with fear.
We should go in and restrain that skeleton, then you get Daisy out and take her back to her father.
As the Needy said this, Zacchaeus saw the skeleton put a string necklace around Daisy’s neck with a single cowrie hanging down at her chest. Then the skeleton walked away from the window, towards the back of the cabin, and Daisy followed him.
Zacchaeus eyed the window and noticed the single latch that locked it. He focused on the pane of glass and after a moment, he collected the black, oily being of the Needy into a point on his fingertip and jabbed at the glass just hard enough to break it in a jagged shape without shattering the entire window. The jagged hole in the glass was enough for Zacchaeus to manipulate the Needy to unlock the window, and then he slid it up silently and climbed inside. From inside the living room, Zacchaeus could see the back door of the cabin open and he laughed at himself for trying so hard to sneak into an empty house.
He crossed the living room and spotted Daisy and the skeleton in the backyard. The skeleton seemed to pound his fist on the ground four times and then he stepped back as a large door swung up. Zacchaeus hid next to the back doorway to avoid being seen and from that vantage he saw a black rectangle in the ground where the door had swung up. Five other skeletons emerged from the black rectangle, and they were as gruesome as the one with Daisy, a couple were worse.
“Is she ready to descend?” One of the skeletons asked Daisy’s skeleton.
“She is,” he replied. “She is mine and I give her to Sasabo. I deserve my flesh back permanently like he promised.”
“Ohh,” one of the skeletons said, “this one is a bride offering? I assumed she was treat.”
“She is young and will make a good wife. Now, let’s go. Sasabo should not be made to wait.”
Are you going to let him take her inside? They are talking skeletons, what if there is magic inside that makes them stronger.
“Wait!” Zacchaeus yelled and stepped into the doorway. “Y’all can go on down in that hole, but Daisy stays with me.”
“What is this?” one of the skeletons asked Daisy’s skeleton. “Are you plotting against Sasabo? You have made a dumb mistake.”
“No, I would never…” Daisy’s skeleton started, but before he could finish, a vicious growl issued from the hole and Zacchaeus felt bursts of wind rush out in steady pulses. Then Sasabo, who looked like a large black man with the features of a bat and wings so large that he had to hold them close to his body to emerge through the black rectangle, hovered over the black hole in the ground showing the sharp claws at his hands and feet. He was shirtless but he wore tattered pants and no shoes.
Zacchaeus watched as Sasabo grabbed Daisy’s skeleton with the claws at its feet and ripped it apart until it was nothing but scattered bones. Daisy was facing away from Zacchaeus, so he could not see the expression on her face, but he was surprised that she didn’t move or try to run from the large bat, even though it didn’t seem interested in her at all. When it was done with the skeleton, it turned its sights on Zacchaeus.
“You,” Sasabo said and pointed a clawed hand at Zacchaeus. “Attack dog of Xêvioso.”
“Do I know you?” Zacchaeus asked, trying to be casual, but he was worried about Daisy because she was well in the range of Sasabo’s claws and she wasn’t moving. The skeletons stood well behind Sasabo, seemingly afraid to move.
“I know you,” Sasabo said. “Indombe sends her regards. She told me how to find you, but imagine my surprise to learn that you are not from the Earth of the other realm, Prime 5, but of this Earth that no Fonlander has encountered before.”
“How did you find this place, then?” Zacchaeus asked with real curiosity.
“Do you remember the gem that Indombe took from Xêvioso with your help?”
Both Zacchaeus and the Needy remembered the giant snake Indome who had helped them find Xêvioso the last time he was in the Fonlands, but had only done so in order to steal one of the powerful gems of Grootslang that was in Xêvioso’s possession.
“She used parts of its magic to find you,” Sasabo continued. “She is a stubborn one, it took a lot of blood to convince her, but here I am. Now, let’s see if you are as strong as the meta seems to think you are.”
This is it Zacchaeus! The Fonlander behind all of this!
“Why is Daisy involved in all this?” Zacchaeus asked Sasabo.
“I’ve been watching you, or I should say listening for you. I know everyone who knows you, Zacchaeus Turner, and I drew you out. My condolences about your grandmother.”
“If you had anything to do with that,” Zacchaeus growled, “I will rip you apart like you did that skeleton.”
“I would never kill such a fine black woman! I am not a monster. I am here to regain my standing, Zacchaeus, and that is between you, the Needy, and me.”
“Then let Daisy go,” Zacchaeus said.
Sasabo’s silver teeth gleamed in the sunlight as he spoke. “She’s wearing the cowrie. She won’t speak until it’s removed, and she won’t move unless I tell her to. And you won’t get what you’re asking for until I get what I want. Face me, Zacchaeus and the Needy!”
I’ll go after him, the Needy said, you grab Daisy and fly her back to Mississippi.
Before he could protest, a black form of the Needy separated from Zacchaeus’s body and attacked Sasabo. Zacchaeus retained enough of the Needy to grab Daisy and he flew like a flash back to Mississippi, to the barbershop, with Daisy fighting and resisting him the entire way. Wesley was relieved to see his daughter, but he was confused at her silent anger to be with Zacchaeus.
“This might sound messed up,” Zacchaeus said to Wesley, “but I think she need to hit this.” Zacchaeus lit up a blunt and took deep puffs from it. “My friend, the Needy, said it should help break the skeleton curse.”
Wesley was speechless, but nodded with a shrug of his shoulders. Zacchaeus tried to give the girl the blunt, but she refused and fought him until he blew a cloud of it in her face. The necklace disintegrated and the single cowrie hit the ground and smashed into pieces. Daisy ran to her father and hugged him.
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