When duppy does come, who are you? by Clarissa Angus

Read by Sophie Cartman (final story in podcast, here - find it at 1:30:10)

Under an obsidian sky with no stars, Kiyane crouches by the chicken coop in the yard behind mistress house. She doesn’t know what to do. Going back inside might mean she would dead. Hiding in the yard might see her get catch and could dead, too. She covers her ears, but that does no good. She can still hear every dying scream of her kin, the other folks trapped inside the house, before they fall away, leaving only the creeping silence of their killer.

When duppy come, you should run ‘way
When duppy come, them nah speak but them stay
Duppy is mean, but duppy is few
When duppy does come, who are you?

Her whole life, she’d never thought on the song any more than a thing to tell pickney to make them behave. She behaves. All her life, she’s behaved just like Hattie, who’s been her mama since mama die, says she should. She doesn’t know nothing else, other than working for her mistress in she great house. She scrub, she cook, she pull weeds until her hands get sore. At sundown, exhausted, she returns to the village and devours her daily rations which never seem to satisfy her hunger, before stumbling to her hut and falling onto her bed of itchy hay. She rarely sleeps, yet somehow, she dreams of not scrubbing or cooking or weeding no more. She behaves, but still duppy come.

Someone bursts through the back door into the yard, runs a few steps forward and collapses to the ground face first, just a few feet away from the coop. Her heart soars before it plummets to her belly. It isn’t Hattie, but Benny. She calls to him as duppy appears and stands in the doorway. Her feet betray her by turning to stone.

When duppy come, you should run ‘way.

Duppy is long and tall, with skin blacker than she own and darker than any night. She has never seen such red, raging, vengeful eyes. Duppy moves to Benny lying on the ground not moving. Duppy bends its body over him, twisting itself until its curls like a hook. Duppy puts what Kiyane thinks is its face next to Benny’s head. Duppy doesn’t have a mouth but she knows it is smiling. 

Without taking her eyes of her friend, she paws at the ground, finds a rock, picks it up and grips it tight. Duppy looks up as her fingers wrap around the rock. Those terrifying eyes glow dark red. Duppy stares her down and her hand lets go of the rock all by itself. She doesn’t know how long duppy looks at her that way. It may have been a minute, or an hour, or a day. The evening is humid but her body runs cold. The only thing she thinks to do is run, from duppy, and Benny, and she wipes at her face as her eyes rain. She sprints away as fast as she can.

How did everything happen so fast? She was cleaning and dressing mistress house with candlelight, so her fancy guests could enjoy them fancy dinner party. She wiped down the figurines and ornaments mistress had collected over the years like she had her slaves. She did what mistress did want and dusted her favourite showpiece that rested in its wooden rack, a katana, that did come from a place where female emperors reigned. She saw Benny squirming in the fancy suit mistress made him wear to greet she fancy guests. She blushed as Hattie proudly kissed her cheeks, and told her to mind her face if mistress guests talked and laughed at big words like ‘abolition’. She stood in her place on the wall of the dining room, and watched mistress and she fancy guests stuff them mouths with salt fish, and cured pork, and yams, until the sun grew full and started to slope down the bay window.

Which guest first heard something outside? When did Hattie do what mistress ask and go look, and where did she go? When did duppy, with its bloodied eyes and no-smile-smile get into the dining room to feast on mistress and her guests, and the other serving folks, as if it made no difference who anybody was?

Kiyane’s bare feet pound the ground in time with her worries. She runs to the village that mistress built so that her slaves could play house. She doesn’t see no one else around and thinks on calling out, but remembers duppy’s eyes and clamps her mouth shut.

The fire pit where everyone fries and boils their rations sits alight and alone. Firelight waves at the hut doors standing agape and dark, and makes embers of the puddles of blood on the ground. It shines up something else – the katana.

Kiyane swallows a breath. How did it get there? It must mean someone else did run from duppy, too, maybe tried to fight.

Kiyane doesn’t know what to do. If she searches for Hattie in the trees surrounding the village, she might dead. If she can’t find her, then why bother with anything ever again? If she tries to escape on her own, she would only make it so far because of guilt. If she grabs up the katana, she might live.

“Kiy?”

Hattie’s voice sounds faraway. Firelight grazes the shadow of a hut where her injured body lays crumpled.

Kiyane freezes. Hattie isn’t there, so beaten up and broken.

“Run,” Hattie breathes.

From the side of the hut, red eyes glow, looking Kiyane’s way.

When duppy come, them nah speak but them stay

The katana is lighter to hold than the rock she’d picked up in the hope of saving Benny but dropped in fright. Firelight caresses its blade. The hilt is sticky with blood – Hattie’s, she knows now – and sweat. It neatly fits her callused palm. 

Duppy is mean, but duppy is few
When duppy does come, who are you?

Kiyane doesn’t know if there is anything else to do. She charges at the duppy, her heart beating its fists against her chest. She swings the katana as hard as she can, wildly, angrily, terrified.

The blade meets something that feels like jelly and molasses. The katana cuts its way through duppy, the way lightning slices through the sky from the heavens to mother earth.

Duppy staggers backwards and clutches at itself with its mess of limbs. Its red eyes are murderous. It does have a mouth! A perfect black hole that opens and screeches wretched, terrible sounds.

Kiyane reaches Hattie and helps her to her feet, hoisting her up by her waist and pushing away her cries of pain with her mind. She grips the katana and it doesn’t drop. Hattie is heavy and Kiyane’s body rides tremors, but they make their way into the night with duppy cries at their backs. If duppy comes again, she will swing at it for as long as her arm holds out.

Slowly, they cross the invisible line that does see mistress land end and their freedom begin.

(c) Clarissa Angus, 2023

Clarissa Angus is a proud Londoner raised by two wonderful Jamaican-born parents. Her writing has appeared in various places over the years. In 2020, she won the Adam Kay Scholarship for Black Writers on a Curtis Brown Creative Three-Month Novel Writing Course, and she is working on her first novel, Duppy Season.

 

 

 

Sophie Cartman is a British Urban film festival award winning actress. She studied American Theatre Arts at Rose Bruford College. Theatre credits: The Wife of Willesden, A.R.T Boston and BAM Brooklyn; Richard III, All’s Well That Ends Well, Royal Shakespeare Company; Manor, National Theatre; The Space Arts Centre; Soho, The Space, ADC & Arcola theatres, The Crucible at Buxton Opera House and Death of a Salesman at the Piccadilly Theatre. TV/Film/Radio credits include: Sexy Beast, Doc Martin, EastEnders, Twirlywoos, Across the Ocean, Four O’Clock Flowers, A Very Short Film About Longing (BBC). Radio: Eulogies (Fizzy Sherbet Plays); Monster 1983 (Audible), A Tokyo Murder (Radio 4).