CHAPTER 7 - THE INHERITANCE
Her brother, Ramon, had been waiting, too, and he was delighted to hear of her decision. As a Santero, he'd always craved more power and he was next in line. He quickly dug up the book, brushed the dirt from its covering, then bore it home with great reverence. Ramon had always been secretive and, with the book, he became even more so. He spent long hours alone with his prize, reading it, memorizing bits and pieces, gathering materials needed to work its magic, experimenting.
The more Ramon learned, the more he wanted to know. The more power he gained from the book, the more power he wanted, the more power he needed. As his power grew, he began to spend more time alone with his magic, and his family and friends began to fear him.
Little by little, Ramon and those who thought they knew him grew apart. Ramon barely noticed this loss. He was too busy setting up a special hut far away from the village. This was to be his secret place, where he would do secret things, and it had to be located where the uninitiated would not accidentally stumble upon it.
It wasn’t long before the book and its power were the first thing Ramon thought of as he opened his eyes in the morning and the last thing he thought of as he closed his eyes at night. In time, little by little, the book became Ramon’s whole reason for being.
At first, Ramon had been hard pressed to master the book’s simpler mysteries, but he studied diligently and soon became adept at his chosen craft. Each success led him ever deeper, step by step, into a colorful, mysterious world of invisible forces. He was true to the book. More faithful than any man had ever been to any woman. And then, one day, the book returned Ramon’s devotion.
It gave him a token of its affection. A truly wondrous and magical reward.
His precious book, which he pored over at every opportunity, contained his mother’s secrets painstakingly recorded in her own hand. At first he had difficulty deciphering the scrawling script. After all, his mother, a woman from a rural area even more remote than this little village of Cristo, had been barely literate. He snorted with scorn. Fortunately, she had been able, with great effort, to commit her extensive magical knowledge to paper and so, the power had not been lost with her passing.
The first few nights he spent with the book told him the one who mastered the book’s secrets would possess power beyond belief. He shivered with fear as he realized any mishandling of that power could kill him. He concentrated his efforts on the portions he could more easily decipher and master. Thus time passed before he became aware of a section in the back of the book which had been written in another tongue.
Ramon mused at length as to why his mother might have recorded one magical chapter in a French dialect. Then he remembered, many years ago, his mother had told him of how she'd been born in Liberte, a Dominican village so small that it was not named on any map of the area. It had been located somewhere northwest of Cristo, their present village near Santiago, Cristo also being too small to appear on a map but, at least, was more easily identified as being "near Santiago."
Perhaps, being so near to Haiti, she had managed to pick up some very special power and then set this magical instruction down in Haitian patois, just as she'd learned it. To his frustration, he was unable to decipher this last part of the book and, of course, he couldn't simply trot down the road in search of a translator. So he continued to pore over the timeworn pages until, finally, he was able to understand the somewhat illegible handwriting and the foreign words.
One fateful night, he was engaged in his favorite and solitary occupation of studying the book when a phrase jumped out at him. He caught his breath and carefully reread the paragraph.
Yes! It was true! He wasn’t mistaken! Here, in the back of the book, in his mother’s own hand, in bastard French, were the secrets for conjuring a most powerful demon. The Baka! If properly summoned, the Baka would grant Ramon anything he could ever hope to ask. Ramon could scarcely breathe. His whole being was riveted on the book. His fingers clutched the pages tightly as he forced himself to read further.
Yes! There it was! The summoning spell! But there was just one little catch. And that was, in addition to the initial sacrifice, the demon demanded an annual fee in return. The anniversary offering was to be the sacrifice of a blood relative. Once the bargain was struck, failure to meet this demand meant the conjurer’s life was forfeit.
No problem, Ramon thought, smiling. He had such a large family.
But just to be sure he hadn’t been mistaken, Ramon reread the passage. Yes! The magic was all there in the book, just waiting for someone to release it. Ramon sighed and closed the cover. In order to invoke the demon, he needed certain herbs and stones, all of which could be found in abundance in the village of Liberte, near the Haitian border.
Ramon twitched with excitement and frustration, but there was nothing to be done about it. The spell couldn’t be cast until the necessary items were acquired and that was that. Taking the first step, he prepared a special metal powder by following the instructions in the book, and then he packed a small knapsack. At first light he would jump into the old Chevy and head for the Haitian border. "By this time next week," he whispered.
Ramon had no way of knowing when he set out on that fateful journey that it was to be the first of many.