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    The Dead Don’t Die
    The Dead Don’t Die
    The Dead Don’t Die
    Ebook106 pages1 hour

    The Dead Don’t Die

    By Peter Halder

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    About this ebook

    Macabre Supernatural Tales of Guyana

    Blood-curdling, mind boggling and hair-raising supernatural tales embroidered with murder and mayhem. The cemetery, spirits and dark forces add unreal backgrounds to the tales. The Dead Don’t Die portrays a butcher practicing his trade on his wife and a murder for hire black magic business. Satan spawns The Serpent of Le Repentir cemetery to launch an evil plan of conquest. The Bush Dai-Dai is a lascivious female bush spirit who oft changes into human form to beguile men to their death. The Churile is the spirit of a pregnant female who dies in childbirth along with her baby and seeks out living pregnant women. And the fifth tale is about The Tacouyaha, a water demon who lives at the bottom of a creek and preys upon innocent persons who travel on the waterway.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherProglen
    Release dateJul 7, 2014
    ISBN9786167817514
    The Dead Don’t Die
    Author

    Peter Halder

    Peter Halder is the pen name of Burnett Alexander Halder. He was born in Guyana, formerly British Guyana, and educated there, the United Kingdom and the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago.Peter worked as a journalist and later joined the Government Service. He served in District Administration, Licence Revenue and Foreign Affairs. As a diplomat, he was Deputy Head of Mission, Guyana Embassy, Washington D.C., U.S.A. and subsequently appointed High Commissioner to Canada. He resigned and accepted an appointment as a Consultant with the Government of Fiji. He later became a Consultant with the Fiji Embassy to the U.S.A. and after, with the Fiji Permanent Mission to the United Nations.Peter received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Guyana Cultural Association of New York, USA and Editor’s Awards from The National Library of Poetry, Maryland, USA. His first book, The Cat of Muritaro, was published in 2012. He has a blogsite at www.peterhalder.wordpress.com/ at which his nostalgias, articles, short stories, and poems can be read.He is now retired and lives with his family in Virginia, U.S.A.

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      Book preview

      The Dead Don’t Die - Peter Halder

      The Dead Don't Die

      Macabre Supernatural Tales of Guyana

      By Peter Halder

      The Dead Don't Die

      Copyright © Peter Halder, 2014

      First Published 2014

      Smashwords Edition

      eBook Edition published by

      DCO Books

      Proglen Trading Co., Ltd.

      Bangkok Thailand

      http://ebooks.dco.co.th

      ISBN 978-616-7817-51-4

      Cover Design and Editing by Ronald H. Lammy

      All Rights Reserved

      This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and other elements of the story are either the product of the author's imagination or else are used only fictitiously. Any resemblance to real characters, living or dead, or to real incidents, is entirely coincidental.

      This book is dedicated to my wife, children and grandchildren

      Contents

      The Dead Don’t Die

      The Serpent of Le Repentir

      The Bush Dai-Dai

      The Churile

      The Tacouyaha

      About the Author

      THE DEAD DON’T DIE

      X Marks the Grave

      It was midnight in the Le Repentir cemetery in Georgetown, the Capital of Guyana. The area surrounding the Mortuary was pitch black. South of the Mortuary was the burial ground trench, as it was known by the residents of Albouystown. The trench was adjacent to Sussex Street which was the northern border of Albouystown.

      The area was pitch black because south of it, on the other side of the trench was the backdam. The latter was a collection of small farms, bordered on the south by the Sussex Street trench. The backdam began opposite Callender Street in Albouystown and ended at the Lamaha Canal, a distance of about a mile and a half. A narrow zigzag path alongside the Sussex Street trench ran from west to east. There were no street lights or house lights at night to illuminate the backdam or the cemetery area next to it.

      Perched on top the red-painted zinc roof of the Government Mortuary was a huge black crow, larger than a carrion crow. It was unlike the black jumbee (spirit) birds and black who-you birds that frequented the cemetery at night. No one knew or tried to find out where those birds were during the day. Some speculated that they lived in the graves during daylight hours. The one-of-a-kind crow was never before seen in the cemetery.

      The crow flew from the roof of the Mortuary to a grave on the western side of the red gravel road that led to the white brick road which ran from east to west. The latter was a continuation of Broad Street in Charlestown. There was a deathly silence in the cemetery as the crow landed on the grave. The burial ground’s small black who-you birds stopped screaming who you, who you. The crickets stopped chirping. The owls in trees alongside the edge of the trench stopped hooting. Frogs and crapauds (toads) ceased croaking. Even the dogs across the way in Albouystown stopped howling. Something macabre and supernatural was taking place.

      The giant crow stood out in the Stygian darkness on the white top of the rectangular concrete grave. A large X marked the spot where it perched. The mark was visible only to very sharp eyes between midnight and one in the morning. It was about two feet away from the head of the grave. The barely visible X marked the nameless graves in which criminals, executed by hanging, were buried.

      There was no headstone or headboard on the grave. It was nameless for a reason. The large X was the only mark on the grave.

      The crow spent about five minutes on the grave while the silence around it prevailed. It was speaking to the spirit of the dead person in the grave. It shook its head up and down and side to side from time to time. It suddenly shrieked and flew away. The who-you birds screamed out their questions once more, the crickets resumed their chirping, the owls hooted, the frogs and crapauds croaked again and dogs in Albouystown began barking.

      The crow flew in a westerly direction, past Albouystown, La Penitence and Ruimveldt to Alexander Village on East Bank Demerara. It landed on the step next to the wooden back door of a cottage. The door was painted white with a large black square in the middle. It used its long wide beak to knock on the bottom of the door. The door opened and the crow walked into the house.

      The cottage was next to the narrow trench which abutted the East Bank Public Road. In front of it were several jandhi flags mounted on tall bamboo poles. The red flags paid respect to the Hindu God Hanuman. There were several glass windows along the front of the house, from the east to the stair platform, and a door on the western side. The cottage was on nine square wooden greenheart posts. It was about six feet above the ground to prevent water from entering it when the trench overflowed because of heavy rainfall. The front stairway had seven steps, the same as the back. The front door, like the house, was painted in white but in the center was a small black square on which was painted in gold, the flat heads of two cobra snakes. There was a brass door knocker. The zinc roof was painted dull red and there was a weather vane on it, at the top of which was a small black crow.

      The Butcher of La Penitence

      Khalil Kadir Khan was a butcher. He was a dark-skinned Moslem of medium height and slim, with broad shoulders. His arms were muscled from sawing, chopping and cutting beef for sale. He was unmarried and lived in a one-bedroom cottage in La Penitence, next to the Punt Trench, so named from the black-painted punts that used it to transport sugar cane stalks to the sugar mill near the Public Road, La Penitence. His cottage was opposite the Capital Cinema in Albouystown, on the other side of the Trench.

      He bought a quarter side of beef from the abattoir or slaughter-house every morning at around 5.30 a.m. The abattoir was located on upper Water Street, obliquely opposite Weiting and Richter soda biscuit factory. He put it on the handle bar of his Rudge bicycle and rode with it to Bourda Market where he rented and operated a butcher stall. The shop opened at 7.00 a.m. and closed at 2.00 p.m. Khalil usually sold all his meat by midday. He cleaned and sharpened his butchering saws, hatchet, cutlasses and knives and placed them neatly in a store room at the back of the stall. The room was secured by strong heavy steel fencing with a door that was locked top, middle and bottom with padlocks. The scale and weights and meat hangers he used were also securely locked in the room. It was also his daily routine to clean his stall before leaving. The stall was not shuttered.

      It was his practice after he left his business to go to the cookshop towards the north western side of the market to buy his lunch from Sonny Bacchus and his wife Jamilla. He enjoyed their cuisine. They were great cooks. The menu changed daily. He also bought food to take home for his dinner so he did not have to cook. On Sundays, he would eat at the Chinese Restaurant near the High Bridge on Public Road.

      Khalil barely eked out a living. He had to buy the beef he sold and his profit margin was small because there were many other butcher stalls in the market.

      He was sitting at home one Sunday afternoon thinking about his future when his thoughts were disturbed by the sounds coming from the movie being shown at the cinema across the Punt Trench. He was further disturbed by a rap on his door.

      He got up and opened the door. His nose was immediately assailed by the stale and rank stench that flowed from the trench. He grew accustomed to it over a period of time.

      Khalil’s visitor was a Moulvi from the Moslem Mosque at Peter’s Hall, some three miles south of La Penitence.

      Salaam aliekum, Sir, said the Moulvi, dressed in the usual garb of a Cleric - long white cotton kurta reaching his

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