Voodoo Express by Theodore Roscoe

Book Details

Voodoo Express by Theodore Roscoe is a pair of novelettes about Haiti, voodoo, zombies, shrunken heads and drums – the incessant drumming from the hills that drives men mad.

The Little Doll Died (1940) – Haiti is a dark place where you may live for years and know less about it than when you came; where human relationships clash discordantly in the sinister tropic air; where people speak only in whispers of the zombies—those soulless creatures, the un-dead dead. And there a Leatherneck once saw a dead man rise
Prolog
Chapter I – Mummies And Marines
Chapter II – Loaded For Trouble
Chapter III – Danger— With Tears
Chapter IV – Memento Mori
Chapter V – The Corpse Doesn’t Bite
Part Two
Chapter VI – Zombies! Zombies!
Chapter VII – Blood Ran Fast
Chapter VIII – Christian Burial
Chapter IX – Last Baptism
Epilogue

The Voodoo Express (1931) – The boom and echo of Haiti’s mountain drums worked in the blood of Conrad Yole, and made the legend of a ghost railroad come alive
Prologue
Chapter I. – Black Man’s Magic.
Chapter II. – Bleached Bones.
Chapter III. – Master Of Voodoo.
Chapter IV. – The Black Express.
Chapter V. – Mad Rites.
Epilogue.

Theodore Roscoe (1906–1992) was a prolific writer of adventure and fantasy stories as well as an historian of the United States Navy. He was a world traveler and his stories were based in the locales he visited and on the people he met. Roscoe is most remembered for his French Foreign Legion stories.

Voodoo Express contains 4 illustrations.

Editor’s Note: Some of the racial attitudes expressed by some of the characters in this book may be objectionable to some people.

Files:

1. Roscoe-VoodooExpress.epub

Excerpt: The Little Doll Died

Prolog

HE  AND  I were the only passengers on that little Dutch steamer which tramps around the coast of Haiti. I noticed him when he came aboard at Jacmel. His name was Glennon. His shoulders were rugged, he had the complexion of a cavalry saddle and the look of a man who traveled far and light.

But he had this shoe box with him, the sort of cardboard box excursionists pack lunches in. He wouldn’t let the steward touch it, and he carried it about with him and kept it at his elbow in the smoke room. People usually expand in the intimacy of a ship’s bar; but when we reached Gonaives and my good-evenings drew only nods I began to think him saturnine. Then off St. Maro he unexpectedly opened up.

“Down here in bananas?”

“Newspaper man,” I said. “You’re a planter?”

“Me?” His eyes were faintly rueful. “Insurance is my business, brother. Life insurance.” Then his eye brightened. “But I was down here in the old days with the Marines. Fought against Charlemagne in the Caco War and helped set up the Garde d’Haiti. Know the island, do you?”

“First visit,” I admitted. “You must know it like a book.”

He nodded. “I’ve covered about every kilometer, yes. But I doubt if any white man gets to know Haiti very well. When I pulled out after the Marine occupation—we left in ’34—I reckoned I didn’t know it as well as I thought I did after my first year there in ’19.” His eyes mused out of the port hole at the mountain-jungle coastline. “I’ve an idea you never get to know Haiti as well as Haiti gets to know you.”

I asked, “When you were stationed here with the Leathernecks did you hear much about voodoo?”

Something in his face stiffened. “What?”

“Well, you know,” I explained. “Most Americans are curious about Haitian voodoo. Black magic. The Death Cult. Zombies and all that.”

He said slowly, “I suppose it has had a lot of publicity. Movie trash. And of course there is a lot of voodoo down here. But don’t mix it up with black magic. Voodoo is an African religion with priests, shrines and a mythology—much like our white man’s religion. Black magic, sorcery, that’s something else again.”

His gaze fixed on the lingering, shadowy coast.

“About black magic: the Negroes aren’t the only people who believe in charms. They wear this gadget called an ouanga. Put the curse on somebody and have faith enough in your ouanga and the curse come’s true. Lots of white men believe in faith healing; the Haitians merely put it in reverse, what you might call ‘faith killing.’ Well, I don’t know. Maybe if you have faith enough you can make anything come true.”

“That sounds plausible,” I agreed conversationally, “but how about these zombies—these dead brought back to life?”

“Old African folklore. Hocus-pocus practiced by Negro medicine doctors in the so-called Society of the Dead. Outlawed by the Haitian government and scorned by the true voodoo priests. But I did see one dead man brought back to life, at that.”

He gave a queerish look around as if scouting eavesdroppers, then placed his curious shoe box directly in front of him on the table and leaned across it toward me. “By the way, are you interested in taxidermy?”

The abrupt change of subject took me back a little. I wondered whether the man was a bit corked. The smoke room was deserted except for us, and he’d peered around with a caution that seemed exaggerated for a dusty subject such as taxidermy.

Then I noticed a bead of perspiration starting down his temple; his fingers on the box-string were quivering. I rather expected something to hop out as he lifted the lid and drew back.

Glennon gripped my arm while I peered down.

“Ever see anything like that before, mister?”

I was surprised. I had seen something like it before— in toy departments and nurseries. Only this looked like a home-made specimen, a crude, hand-sewn article: the hair obviously horsehair; lumpy, blob-shaped arms and legs; the leather worn and weather-stained and scrubbed from hard usage—a cherished relic that might have been rescued from an ash can. Stitches were open in the stomach, disgorging a spill of sawdust. The face resembled an old tobacco-juice-stained baseball.

“Why,” I had to say, “it’s only a doll!”

Its owner, aware of the steward’s step behind us, closed the box hastily. “Only a doll.” He gave me a level stare, requesting discretion as the steward brought us drinks. He said in a low tone after the Dutchman had gone, “Perhaps it looks like one, my friend; but take my word, it’s not the kind you’d have old Santa bring your kiddies for Christmas.”

Excerpt From: Theodore Roscoe. “Voodoo Express.”