It has taken a bit to collect myself and write about our evening adventure...Bear with me.
Aisai returned that evening to let me know no one would be willing to drive me to The Duppy Church at night.
"Mi ask everone mi kno...not a gud plac wid duppy dem."
I'll just rent a car and do it myself...I exclaimed.
He looked at me as though I had just lost my mind...or claimed I would sail in a rowboat to America.
Horrified.
After much protest on his part and many rules...he agreed to drive me.
The stipulations included
No camera.
We would not park in the churchyard, but on the side of the road.
We would not be leaving the car.
...his concession was to open the windows, which he loudly protested, but I won...
We would not attempt to interact with The Duppy.
We would not stay long...and if he decided it was time to go...it was time to go.
I am pretty sure he heard me mutter superstitious fool under my breath.
I am sure I heard him shake his head and say "Crazee whi' woman".
The sun was beginning to set...and we were fortunate to have a large full moon to see by.
...or so I thought at the time...
I have had hours, now, to process what we saw...heard...and felt. It is still unsettling and my mind tries to come up with clever ways to dismiss all of it...and comes up empty.
I have no rational explanation.
It happened.
We arrived a little past midnight.
If the place looked uninviting in the daylight...it was completely formidable at night.
Deathly still.
Long shadows cast from the full moon.
...later I would try to explain away some of the things I saw as these shadows...
They were not.
Aisai did not have to tell me not to leave the car.
It was unthinkable.
He heard the music first.
I was focused on the chattering voices like a congregation talking amongst themselves.
Then I saw him.
The pastor.
In tattered clothing...a white shirt...brown pants...and above the shoulders...nothing.
...a trick of the shadows and light I rationalized...squeezing my eyes tightly shut....
But when I opened them...he still stood there, in the doorway, with arms raised.
Then he returned to his duppy congregation.
Eyes adjusting to the light...looking around the graveyard I saw them.
Black shadow-like forms.
Some big as adults, some small like children...and the feeling of a hundred eyes on me.
...you know the feeling when someone is standing just behind you...but you haven't seen them...yet you know they are there...
Thousand yard stare.
Reproachful.
We weren't suppose to be here.
Intruders.
I looked at Aisai, and he was crossing himself.
Maybe it is time to leave...I whispered.
...the relief I felt when the engine roared to life was a moment I'll never forget...I half expected it not to start...
We were silent on the way back to the guesthouse.
There wasn't anything to say.
And I'm through with Duppy for the rest of my Jamaican trip.
Friday Morning:
When I opened the guesthouse door this morning I saw the article (left presumably by Aisia).
It was a clipping from a month back...a story of four twenty-somethings who did not believe in duppy and were camping at The Duppy Church overnight.
Like many young men, they had brought beer, arrogance, mocking, disrespect, and exaggerated confidence.
The article said that in the morning three were gone...although their tents and possessions remained untouched. Their whereabouts unknown.
Like they had vanished.
The fourth was found in his car.
Doors locked.
Windows tightly shut.
The autopsy report would call his death was a cardiac event...but the chilling detail noted by the medical examiner read as follows:
...swelling of the vocal chords and the larynx consistent with prolonged screaming...
He had screamed, it seems, until his heart had given out.
Of fright.
