Olga - A Daughter's Tale by Marie-Therese Browne (Marie Campbell)

where bicycles are repaired. Mrs Clarkson, who lives next door, saw a small blaze in the workshop and raised the alarm. The fire brigade arrived very quickly, put out the blaze so not too much damage was done.
    And then something else happened that really scared Sydney.
    He told us he was walking home one night when he felt warm air on the back of his neck which he described like someone’s hot breath. This happened more than once and cook said she had found out that Didnot Williams had set a duppy on Sydney and that an Obeah man must have caught his shadow and now the shadow will do whatever the Obeah man demands. According to cook the best way to stop the duppy from following Sydney was to carry a piece of chalk and, whenever he felt the hot breath on the back of his neck, Sydney was to make an x on the ground with the chalk, representing the figure ten.
    Cook said duppies can only count up to nine and will spend the rest of the night trying to count to x.
    She said duppies are clever, but I wasn’t too sure about that if they can’t count any higher than nine. But she said they are because they can do similar things to living people, like talking, laughing, whistling and singing, even cooking. That made me wonder if cook was a duppy too.
    Anyway, believe it or not, putting a cross on the ground worked for a while and Sydney stopped feeling warm air on his neck and he was more confident walking home.
    But then one lovely clear moonlit night Sydney and Ruby were walking home together and they saw a big owl sitting in the cotton tree outside Mission House. When cook heard she got everybody worked up again and said that was a very bad sign because the duppy was still on Sydney. She said he had now to find a powerful Obeah man to remove the curse or he would be in serious trouble. Of course, cook knew one and Sydney agreed to go with her but said I had to go with him. I said I’d only go if Dolly could come as well. And reluctantly Dolly agreed.
    So off I go again to another balm yard and went into a very dark, smelly room. I remember it only had one window and the light couldn’t get through it was so dirty and grimy. Oh, Lord, was I terrified.
    The Obeah man’s name was Ali Acquabar, an old man, with a short sharp looking face. He sat at a table in the middle of the room and beside his chair was a walking stick with the head of a serpent on the top. He told us to sit in the chairs facing him. I noticed a nail with three different size rosaries made out of bloodstained beans hanging from it and there was a mirror on a wall. On the table was a pack of cards and a dark blue piece of cloth with some sulphur, what looked like human hair, small bones and feathers.
    By now I just wanted to get out of there but, once again, my courage failed me and I stayed.
    There were two other chairs and on one of these he put a glass and filled it with water and put a 1/- piece in the glass and on the other he put a candle which he had taken from a small bag nearby and asked Sydney to light it. Ali then opened a pack of cards, which he separated into four piles.
    He selected one and said to Sydney “this is death”; then selected another and said “this is Jesus Christ”;
    Then he selected a third and said “this is the Ghost” and with the fourth card he looked Sydney straight in the eye and said
    “ Your life is in danger”.
    Then he took a bottle of rum off a shelf and threw some of it around the room.
    “ I am feeding my ghosts” he chanted and then looked in the magic mirror and turned to Sydney.
    “ It is a pity you are not able to see, if you could, you would behold two duppies who are working on the case against you”. My brother is a tough man, you now, and I didn’t think he could scare easily. But, sitting on that chair, he looked very frightened to me.
    Ali looked in the glass of water on the other chair and said
    “ It is the brother that is after your life. I charge you £5 to take off the ghosts”.
    Sydney gave