The following is a short douen story about a young Trini boy who responds to a call better left unanswered, written by Rajiv Ramkhalawan​. Rajiv is an Attorney-at-Law and Writer from Trinidad and Tobago.

Sweet, sweet calypso music clouts the Caribbean air.

Lah-da-dee-dai-la-la-lai-lai. 

Simon’s eyes bat open like Monarch butterflies warming up to fly. Delicate yet frenzied. He remains flat on bed. The music has summoned him into existence. From the deep recesses of nothingness into the reassuring sentience of being awake. Someone must have left the stereo on, he thinks. But how? The power has gone out again. Flickering candlelight in his bedroom is proof of this. Smoky jumbies revel and swoon against ivory-coloured walls. 

Ma must have come in. 

She is known for her catlike stealth as most mothers are, he supposes. Indoctrinated by rote shortly after giving birth—shushing away noises and gliding silently over floorboards to let sleeping babies lie. And later, mastering illustrious skills like festooning missing buttons onto aging shirts for her school-age children and dicing firm potatoes in preparation for dinner, all while time stretches and spools, as her baby remains nestled in between her tepid breasts and pillowy arms. Asleep.

This talent naturally dovetails into ruby lip imprints on Simon’s cheeks, despite their obvious absence the night before. And warm polyester blankets plastered neatly on top of him, only to reveal themselves to Simon on mornings, usually when the temperature outside dips and the skies around El Cerro del Aripo darkens and become pregnant with engorged clouds. On days like these, Pa wants limey fish broth for lunch, with a nice hand of green fig. A whole hand.

Simon rises, swoops up the rusting candleholder and disappears from the room. Aged cedar planks and corroded hinges groan and squeak, as he hurries across the dark hallway into the refuge of Ma and Pa’s room. But, there is no one there. The sheets have not crinkled and furrowed under the weight of bodies. They never went to bed.

“Ma! Pa!”

No answer.

“Ma! Pa!” 

His breath becomes raspy in the humid room. He gets the uncanny feeling that he may be alone in the house. It’s one of dread. Like how he feels whenever he watches that black and white show Pa loves—The Twilight Zone. The one where people find themselves dealing with disturbing and strangeevents, and which almost always has a depressing ending. 

Finally, in the corner of his eyes—on the other side of the room—Simon spots what appears to be an arm on the floor, wrapped disjointedly around a bedpost pillar. He reluctantly draws the candleholder closer to the bed. It is his father. The bulky, gold beera on his wrist is irrefutable evidence of this alarming fact.

Simon’s breathing escalates into a series of claustrophobic heaves for air.

“Pa! Pa!”

Simon runs to Pa. An inky mask of purple and black blood covers Pa’s face. The cavity of his chest is open but empty. The area smells of pig shit and Pa’s Old Spice aftershave. 

“Paaa!”

The music continues to intensify. 

Lah-da-dee-dai-la-la-lai-lai. 

“Simon! Come fast, Simon!”

​“Ma! Where yuh? Maaa!” 

He is disoriented. The music swells even louder. Ping-pong-ping-pong-ping. Simon covers his ears and stares at the obsidian blood which has consumed his father’s countenance. He vomits a slurry of clumped white rice, dhal and curried chicken he had for supper. Simon pokes his father with his big toe, but he does not come alive. He is in concert with the nothingness now. He pokes him again and again. The situation remains unchanged, hopeless.

“Simon! Come fast!”

It is Ma’s voice.

In the kitchen? In the living room? No. 

Simon makes up his mind that Ma’s voice is coming from…outside. Without thinking, he races out of the house and into the reposeful night. The light from his candle quivers violently and dies. A crescent moon is the only illumination now. 

The music suddenly stops. 

His pupils dilate in the darkness. This doesn’t help for the darkness is the same. Black. Unnerving. Towering bushes conceal the identities of the dragonflies, crapauds and rat snakes producing unsettling flapping, rustling and croaking noises. Wails of wind lash against blades of tall grass and forgotten clothes on metallic hanging lines. In the distance, the sudden clink of a water pump sends a group of sleeping stray dogs darting. 

“Simon!”

“Maaa!”

“Come! Hurry!”

Simon goes into a skinny, meandering track.  The smell of father’s citrus crops and the earthy odour of manure pervades Simon’s nostrils. He passes rows and rows of lemon, orange, and lime trees before finally coming to a clearing. 

There, a figure—no more than three feet tall—stands like a miniature sentinel at the edge of Pa’s fishing pond. A gargantuan, floppy straw hat sits on the figure’s head, adding, perhaps, another two feet to its diminutive stature. Its face is hazy, nothing more than ashy smog. 

Ma has spoken about a creature like this before on ventures from Arima to Port of Spain in cramped red band maxis. They would look to board an empty maxi and seat themselves at the very back to enjoy being lightly thrown into the air whenever the maxi charged over a speedbump or fell into a pothole.  

To pass the time, Ma would tell Simon the same stories about growing up in Barrackpore and how she milked cows after school and helped her mother leepay the ground in the living room on weekends. When Simon lost interest in the topic (which was almost sooner rather than later), Ma would pull out a pack of corn curls and a bottle of homemade peanut punch from her oversized market bag.

“Now Simon, you muss ent go straying anywhere by yuhself, chile,” she had said, while handing over the goodies to Simon. “It does have things call douen that always looking to raft little boys and girls.”

“Douen,” he repeated, crunching into a fluffy curl, and liking the sound of the word.

“Yes, douen. Dey is unbaptised little devils with no face, cept for a small mouth to speak with. Douen does come for yuh when yuh by yuhself. So doh wander anywhere by yuhself, chile.”

“Mom, iz seven,” Simon had said. “Iz a big man. Dem make believe ting doh scare meh.”

Simon turns away from the figure, but before he can run, tree roots shoot up and tentacle around his legs and waist, chaining him to his position. In a deafening crack, the girthy roots spin Simon’s body around to face the figure again. His feet and ankles are left facing the other direction. 

Simon is not in any pain.

This is the Twilight Zone, he tells himself!

Giggles permeate the air. But it is not coming from the figure. The echoes channel and reverberate throughout the plantation of teak trees in the distance.

“Doh be fraid,” the figure says, taking a step closer.

Its voice is oddly childlike.  Angelic, even. 

“Maaa!” 

“Doh shout. Doh shout.”

“Wh-where Ma?” 

Silence.

“…with Pa.”

Simon pisses himself as the figure comes even closer. 

Three feet. 

Two. 

One.

“We watchin yuh, long time. All of a sudden, we start hearin baptism talk. We cah wait forever for you to come here, alone. We hadda take matters into we own hands, yuh undastan?”

Simon shudders as he notices Ma’s stereo sitting adjacent to the creature. A black and grey Sony Boombox. Remnants of Ma’s red nail polish are still on its worn handle. The box comes to life. Ping-pong-ping-pong-ping.

“Lewwe go, Simon. We have music to prance to on we way.”

The roots around Simon’s body begin to recede like a mapepire uncoiling itself from a tree branch. The figure picks up the stereo and walks straight into a thicket of murky bush, clearing the view of Ma’s lifeless body floating in the back of the pond, bobbing up and down. 

Simon falls to the ground. The severing of the maternal bond causes him to cock back his head like a lone wolf and let out a frantic shriek. 

“Ma! Ma! Yuh was right! Yuh was right! It have douen.”

“I told you don’t shout!”

The creature’s voice shifts from childish to hellish.

Ma must be wearing her Church dress, Simon thinks. Ma always says silly things like she would die in this dress, whenever Pa would kiss her and tell her that she looked pretty-pretty on a Sunday.

The figure pokes its head out of the bush, but only the top of its pendulous thatched hat is visible. 

“Come on, Simon. Lewwe go. Dis stereo heavy, yuhknow!”

Submissively, he begins his walk into the nothingness.

—

Rajiv Ramkhalawan is an Attorney-at-Law and writer from Trinidad and Tobago. Rajiv is the winner of The Caribbean Writer’s 2020 Cecile de Jongh Literary Prize. He is a past recipient of a regional award from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. His short fiction has been longlisted for the 2021 Fish Short Story Prize and shortlisted for the 2020 Perito Prize. His most recent works of short fiction is forthcoming or has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Litro Magazine, The Sunlight Press and STORGY Magazine. Rajiv is also on IG at rajiv_ramkhalawan.

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