Heartman: A Missing Girl, A Broken Man, A Race Against Time by M.P. Wright

hand she held a small cloth toy rabbit while the other clasped his palm. He was in his early forties and well built, with strong features. He had a real presence to him, something I couldn’t put my finger on at first. Perhaps it was the dark, hard eyes that unsettled me, or the awkwardness in his unsmiling face. He was a man who looked uncomfortable having his photograph taken. He was a man who looked a lot like a young Earl Linney.
     
    *
     
    It was just after one thirty on Monday afternoon and I was sitting in the Star and Garter in a booth at the furthest end of the pub. My pint of Dragon Stout was already half drunk. Lunchtime drinkers stood at the bar laughing and chatting while The Kinks’ ‘Tired of Waiting for You’ played on the jukebox. The events of the previous night while checking out Stella’s home had dragged up more questions than answers for me. If the police had searched the house, they hadn’t gone over the place very thoroughly. There were things that didn’t sit right in there. Surely alarm bells were gonna ring when the whole place stank like a washed-down morgue.
    But I had found something other than the photograph and empty scrapbook. Something I hadn’t seen in a long time. It was the one thing the law would not have picked up on, even in the most disciplined and determined of searches. Not unless, like me, you knew what a duppy was and its connection to an open Bible by a bed.
    My mama had been a dignified and proud woman with strong religious beliefs and a determination to teach her son about the customs and traditions of our people. Juju stories were part of that tradition, as was the legacy of our servitude and bondage. The slave routes from West Africa brought my ancestors to the island of Barbados in the mid 1600s. They brought with them a vast cultural history, and their strength and skills put to use in the hard labour that the rich Dutch settlers demanded of them on the sugar plantations on the island.
    Through locust plague and hurricanes, famine and bloodshed, my forefathers, many of whom died before reaching their destination, continued to suffer the deprivations of cruel slavery until its abolishment in 1834. Those who survived and found freedom continued to work and live hard, oppressive lives. The struggles faced in their pasts long ago had created the resilient Bajans who now populate the island today. But my people also brought something to those islands unheard of before.
    Travelling with them was our folklore, and with it an altogether darker side to our lineage. They brought with them the duppy.
    A duppy is the manifestation of the soul of a dead person. It is a malevolent spirit that can appear in either human or animal form. It is said that a duppy can be heard in the dog howling in the night or be found in the buttress roots of silk cotton trees, patiently waiting for the moment that its evil intent can be released upon the innocent. It is believed that babies and children are susceptible to these ghouls. An open Bible is often placed in a newborn’s crib or bed to protect it and ward off evil. The Bible is usually left open at a Psalm. Just like the one I’d found next to Stella Hopkins’ bed.
    My cousin Vic, even as a child, had referred to the supernatural superstitions of our descendants and elders as a “pile of mule shit”.
    “Why you worryin’ ’bout some claptrap? It means nuttin’ except to some stupid old fool who tellin’ you tales at the foot o’ your bed at night,” he would say to me.
    As kids, Vic and I would sit and talk at night in the ruins of the old sugar mill close to our homes. Our conversations were often dictated by my fascination for the stories that would be told to me by my grandmother.
    Her yarns of ghosts, or duppies, as she called them, would frighten my sister and me before going to bed, keeping us awake long into the night. My need to recite those old wives’ tales to my cousin would always fall on deaf ears.
    Then, as now,