Previously: Aleigha prepares to hunt Dareion Bass. He fixes his hair, buys a gun, and continues.
"New York?" I came from Maine. In the underground I have no idea what could happen, I could just steal a charm from Yahoska. And steal a gun.
Yahoska wants me to take down a vampire. I'm Drunk, he's Drunk that's dangerous. I also wanna see what kind of charm she has. "Tell me where Dareion is again."
"Outside the Ghytto, out the realm. Try New York, you in the Vybe, so you go up North." This nigga is giving me directions again. "This is the Alabama area, so you go back through the tunnel but this time, you don't go up the elbow. You'll make a left at the curve, that's the shoulder. Up in that region is New York. Talk to a nigga named Rashed Terry, call em' Lil' Roulette."
I got a bad feeling about this. "If I have any trouble. I'm coming back to kick your ass."
"and I'll have a silver bullet."
Nigga, that's a werewolf.
Going back the way I came but making a left at the curve. It's different this way. A row of homes and dead earth beneath. Ghytto means an ever-lasting struggle and shows in the world. Some parts are decrypted. They don't provide anything but depression and hard times. The Vybe is the richest part. It's crowded down there from the migration. Something about one of the Gods destroying a part of the Ghytto. Too much sin said the Lord.
"A man named Rashard Terry, call him Lil' Roulette." I better not struggle today. The town is ghosted, I can't stop thinking about how Shackhs lead me astray before and now I'm suspicious again.
The town is so desolate, I want to cry. I take a step forward and look at the bottom of my feet to see a bent metal sign. Welcome to Hittahem.
I shout into the loneliness, "Anyone know Rashard Terry!"
I feel stupid. Why am I going through all this? For mom, that's right. In the culdesac, eyes shimmer through the windows. A harsh bellow echoes through the dusty air. "NO!"
Well damn, "What about Dareion Bass?"
That sound makes the air shake. "Who dat?"
"Oh, he means Dareion's brother."
Fuck, here we go. In the closest house in culdesac, a little girl in a white floral dress, her face burnt on one side and half of the right side missing in hair. "Who are you?" she asks, running up to me. "Dyshelle!" calls out a female voice. "Get back here!"
"I'm Aleigha," I tell her. "Do you know someone named Dareion Bass?"
She nods her head, "Yep. I know everybody in town!"
Her mother comes grabbing her shoulder. "I told you to mind yo' business!" She jerks her away from me and tans her hide. "Go back in the house."
The little girl rubs her bottom and jogs home. "I can't stand her..." She turns to me, examining me up and down. "A sexy nigga, that's bad luck."
Damn, mama always said I was so beautiful I was ugly. "Listen, I didn't come here to start foolishness. I just to find someone for a woman named Yahoska."
She scratches her neck, "Yahoska? The hairdresser in the Vybe?"
"That's her." I keep running my black ass into bullshit. Give me my time back. My sanity. "She's not looking for Dareion Bass." Then who?
"You ever play the Cookie Game?" she asks. "Old hood shit."
"The Cookie Game?"
"You know, Diamond stole cookies from the cookie jar, who me? Couldn't be." She claps. "You new to Ghytto?"
"Mother is Childhood."
She arches a brow. "Follow me. Dis wey."
"This is Hittahem. Sister City to Brooklyn. I'm Nila Payne." She takes a seat near a kitchen table. The home is sectioned off with the kitchen open and connected to the living room. "You Childhood's son? I heard she had many."
"about thirty-eight plus," I sit across from her. She starts rolling a joint and offers me a smoke. I take the joint out of her fingers, she lights me up. "The Cookie Game is what it sounds like. You tryin' find who stole the cookies."
"That's a metaphor." I take a drag and knock off the dust in an ashtray. "What's the cookie?"
"Depends on who you askin'. Dareion Bass is dead. The nigga doesn't have a name." Nila rolls herself a joint, "He got shot, in the Vybe but you know niggas believe in ghost. They think the spirit is coming back and front. It's somebody else."
Sounds oddly familiar, my hand starts to twitch. Damn that memory. "Do you also... now about Linus Growden?"
"The Lynchman? An old slave could tell you that." The Ghytto is hard to reach unless you got magic. Using the roots in our blood, a path was made for us to have our own space. If I'm thinking of what I'm thinking, Linus isn't doing this alone. A white man like that isn't working with magic unless someone gave it to him. "Like I said, don't nobody know his name for real. That's what makes it so hard. He's got my little girl believing that paint is wine and glass is just a mirror." She smokes her weed and dumps the ashes, "I said the Lynchman. I have heard of Linus. You can find that nigga's grave near a plantation. He loved slaves"
"Nigga fucka?"
"Exactly." She smirks. "Maried several African women but made the men work. One was a vampire, kept Childhood on lock a lot."
"My mama?"
"That's why she's famous and infamous." Nila bites her lip. "How a woman can kill herself and wake up again is..." she shakes her head. "Your mama isn't dead, she just resting. She always said she was exhausted."
"As for the Linus story?"
"He liked fucking black women. Called them Dolls, had a whole thing of black barbies made. Named them. A fucked slavery mindset, I won't beat you, instead I will honor you. Nigga loved niggas so much, he worshipped the fuck out of black women. Sometimes he cut off the feet of the one's that died. Some Cinderella bullshit."
That's a fucking first. I expected a slave story of bitches getting beaten, not raped and God knows what. "Linus Growden was a worshipper of black people?"
"Yeah..." says Nila. "Linus had 77 kids and 108 slaves or should I say. He had totems; he didn't lynch them. He put them on poles after they died and prayed under the feet. You know about obayifo? West Africa."
"Vampires. We go way back," This is disgusting. I've heard of worshippers. Some of them drink vampire blood thinking it will make them immortal. That's halfway true. It's a membrane around the blood cell.
The Immortale Dyaman has a membrane around it that keeps a blood cell healthy. Or at least not die as quickly. Gives a whole meaning to Black don't crack.
Compared to a Drunken Vampire that is a cannibal, it doesn't have the membrane so it eats others thinking it will get healthy again.
Where the shit comes from isn't clear. Egyptians had it, so some believe that it started there. However, Changany or by his birthname Camaṛī Pairāṁ. Was an Indian and met an African woman. The African was an obayifo that grew to love him so much she said she would share his life with him. According to family history, Gezi She drained her blood and allowed Camari to drink it. Camari was a dying man and body gnarled. She gave him bones and her own blood.
To a certain degree, Changany was a slur, 'He who is twisted.' He's one of the first Indian vampires and fathered multiples from Gezi. Then he cheated on her and became drunk with power, he killed the mistress and his lover who saved him.
Boy, I sure love being black...