Academic Evenings

🌿The Lady in White - A Terrifying Encounter in Siparia. (1973)🌿...............................................
Edwin George looked like a man who had already outlived himself. The years had hollowed his eyes, bent his frame, yet his words came out sharp, cutting against the silence.

When he finally began, it was to draw me into a memory from the early seventies. One of an encounter that had shaken him deeply, and left his life forever changed................................................
It had been a lazy Sunday morning when Edwin set out from Couva, driving south to Siparia where Jacob’s brother was to be wed. Jacob, his best friend, had urged him not to miss it.

The wedding itself was brief, a delicate ceremony of vows and smiles, but soon the streets filled with the sound of drums, the clinking of glasses, and the laughter of neighbours sharing food. The celebration carried on long into night. Edwin stayed late, and so did Jacob, who, by the time the moon was high, swayed drunkenly against him, insisting on a lift home.

"He had a caramel-coloured girl with him," Edwin noted, "In a white dress and white hat, but at that point I didn't really see her face de way she turned her head. So I say no worries I'll carry them and leave one time."

Jacob stumbled out of the front passenger seat when they arrived at his house, disappearing into the bush at the side of the yard without a backward glance.

The woman who had accompanied him though, didn’t move.

For a moment Edwin thought maybe she was intoxicated as well, but when he asked softly if she was staying with Jacob there, her lips parted just enough for a single word to escape... "No."

"As any gentleman would do," he continued, "Since Jacob was soo drunk, I say I'll drop her home. Told her to ride in de front, and we was on our way."

Edwin drove on, following her directions from the small, precise movements of her hand. Right, then left, then into a narrow gravel road that crunched beneath his tires.

The deeper he went, the heavier the air became. Branches reached overhead, grazing the vehicle's roof. The headlights caught only the narrowing track, hemmed in by the press of forest. Edwin frowned, unease gnawing at him. The girl remained perfectly still beside him.

"Then I realised it had no more road to drive," He recalled, "I felt dotish, really dotish for takin' directions from her, blind leadin' de blind I thought. So then now I say I'll drop her back to de weddin' reception because she probably too drunk to know where she goin'."

Edwin cursed under his breath and shifted into reverse. The gear clicked into place, but the tires only spun, grinding against gravel. Sweat broke along his brow. It was then he turned to the woman. Really turned.

She was smiling.

Her lips stretched too wide, and her eyes... her eyes were nothing but black, endless pools that swallowed any light.

Edwin's chest tightened. His hands locked around the wheel. Terror held him so completely that he couldn’t even scream. He folded forward, hands gripping the wheel and closed his eyes. Instinct dragged the familiar words of Psalm twenty-three out of his throat.

“I started to say it loud,” He said, now looking straight at me, "But when I reach 'For thou art with me' somethin' slap me!”

A hard, solid blow to the crown of his head, sharp enough to daze him. For an instant his world blurred.

"When I catch myself an' spin around, de girl not in de car... p**f, just like that... gone. I remember feelin' sick, wanted to vomit, I couldn't understand what de ass was happenin', but I needed to get out of there fast."

The car, unsuprisingly, moved freely again, as though whatever gripped it had let go. Edwin drove hurriedly, back toward the reception. His hands shook on the wheel. His body felt weak.

"When I reach there now, I almost drop-down dead!" Edwin claimed, as he leaned forward on his chair, "Jacob... Jacob sit down playin' cards!"

Edwin had stammered in tears about the woman, and Jacob only blinked.

"You know Jacob never leave de reception, and nobody did know what girl I was talkin' about."

He did not sleep that night. He could not. For years afterward, the memory clung to him. That smile, those black eyes, the utter confusion in his head that followed.

He would come to believe it was no woman at all, but some devil that had tried to claim him. What saved him, he swore, was not his own strength, but by the hand of God. That slap to his head, he believed, was no malice... but mercy, shaking him awake, breaking the spell.

From then on, he surrendered himself wholly to God, leaving behind parties, drink, and the pursuit of women. Yet even as he told me this, with a voice fierce and unwavering, his hand drifted unconsciously to the crown of his head, rubbing the very spot where that unseen blow had landed.

In my opinion, the evidence was telling. It seemed clear, that while devils may be driven out in a day, uprooting a memory is a struggle that endures a lifetime...............................................
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🌿 My Uncle Was A Lagahoo: The Shape-Shifter's Secrets (Gasparillo, Trinidad - 1960s) 🌿......................................................
Every Trini has an uncle who drinks too much, gambles too much, or disappears on moonlit nights. His did all three... and then some.

Mr. Ezekiel Barry’s story unfolded like a Jerry Springer episode written by Stephen King. There was a fever in his voice, a kind of trembling delight that bordered on hysteria.......................................................
"As a youth growin' up in Gasparillo," Ezekiel began, "You would hear countless story 'bout jumbie, soucouyant an' douen. An' well of course, de lagahoo, my uncle Paul."

Ezekiel said it without a blink. Then he smiled, that strange little smile people have when they’ve made peace with madness.

Tall, broad, and dark as molasses, Paul was the kind of man who made men move out his way and women look twice. His bald head caught the sun, his beard thick and disciplined. Neat shirts, polished shoes, pressed trousers, he looked like a man who understood appearances... at least, during the daytime.

"Many ah night," Ezekiel confessed, "We would hear de chains draggin' up an' down dat steep Caratal road. Dem dog would be barkin' deh life out an' we had to stay inside an' say we prayers... he was wukkin', an' we know not tuh go outside when he wukkin'."

Uncle Paul, he claimed, had learned his trade from his grandfather, who’d passed on his "bad books" before dying. That grandfather, Ezekiel's great grandfather, had survived the Plein Palais Riots in Pointe-à-Pierre back in 1832. It was rumoured that he had known the old ways, the ways from Africa, when his bloodline could shift effortlessly into hyenas using magic.

In this country though, that magic seemed to have lost some of its elegance. Paul could never muster much of a change... turning half man, half jackass. A proper Trinidadian compromise.

"Long time," Ezekiel said leaning back with a wry smile, "Changin' form was a way to hunt, an' tuh escape, an' ah defense. But Paul was all about de money!"

Apparently, Uncle Paul would read three chapters from the 'bad book' and sit still. He’d wait for the itch under his skin to start. Then came the cracking bones, thickening hair, and stench of burnt oil. For seven hours, he was beast and business.

"Dat fool would drag he chain from Caratal to Lightbourne Junction," Ezekiel remembered, "Every Monday an' Thursday night. Some would pay him to frighten people out of deh house, to clear de way for thief. Pay him to destroy people garden crop, an' thief deh cattle. He used to even get pay to tickle people wife wen night come."

At that juncture, curiosity got the better of me, the same way it’s probably now gnawing at you, I bet.

Ezekiel smiled again, "You never hear bout lagahoo troublin' people in de night?'

Taken aback, I then asked a question I figured I already knew the answer to.

"Why would people pay someone to destroy crops and to do those other horrible things?"

Ezekiel looked me dead in the eye and replied with that age-old truth.

"Trinidad is small... but envy is big!"
.. and Paul had more clients than conscience.

Nobody confronted him. He had money, a certain charm, and enough children scattered around the country to populate a small village.

"Thirty-eight!" Ezekiel claimed. “And dat is de ones we could count.”

Then, as these stories go, things grew quiet. He moved to Parforce, and was not heard from in months. One morning afterwards, word came that he was found beaten to death all the way in Edward Trace, Moruga. No one claimed the body. Maybe they were afraid he’d get back up.

Ezekiel shrugged. “Not everybody will believe me,” he concluded, “But I know wat I hear dem nights, an' wat people say deh see, and all my family tell me de same ting, is no fairy tale.”

And now I'm left to wrestle with it all. Could his uncle really have conjured a force to transform his very DNA, to become the beast he already resembled inside?

It would appear, from the many testimonies I’ve heard, that the creatures walking among us might well outnumber doubles vendors. At this rate, the supernatural does not seem quite that super after all.

Furthermore, if such beings could revel in plain sight as neighbours and family, perhaps countless other deceptions go unnoticed all around us.

In light of this, I now have this growing suspicion that my last girlfriend is, in fact, a soucouyant.................................................
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