Black Canaan

by Robert E. Howard

While in New Orleans, Kirby Buckner is confronted by an elderly creole woman who whispers a bizarre warning: "Trouble on Tularoosa Creek!". Soon, the woman disappears into a nearby crowd. Buckner immediately realizes that his backwoods homeland is in peril and instantly departs for the Canaan region of his birth. He arrives after midnight and sets out on horseback through the bayous to the town of Grimesville. En route he encounters a mysterious "quadroon girl" who mocks him. Buckner is disturbed to find himself aroused by her provocative beauty. The woman calls forth several large black men from hiding to kill Buckner, but he shoots one and kills another with a bowie knife. As a third flees, he notices that the girl has vanished.

Buckner joins his fellow white men but finds himself strangely reluctant to speak of the black woman. He learns that the local blacks are now being led by a strange "conjure man" The scion of an important family, Buckner is looked to for leadership in the time of crisis.

The men of Grimesville had captured a frightened black man, Tope Sorely, and were about to interrogate him when Buckner arrived. One of the men offers a whip to use as coercion but Buckner, loath to beat the truth from Tope, attempts to calm him instead. Tope is afraid of Stark's wrath should he betray his own master. He fears Stark will use his magical powers to "put me in de swamp!" she gloats, and deep down the white man knows it is true. She tells him that that very night she will summon him to her, that he will witness the Dance of the Skull, and that he will be powerless to resist.

The witch woman melts mysteriously into the swamp and Buckner rides away. Along the trail, Buckner meets Jim Braxton, a friend who has come searching for him. Buckner admonishes Braxton to return to Grimesville and let him find and face Stark alone, but Braxton refuses to allow his friend to face the danger on his own. As the sun sets Buckner feels himself drawn to the black settlement of Goshen, unable to resist or even speak of the witch's spell to Braxton. He attempts to warn his friend away several times, but to no avail. Arriving at Goshen, the two men encounter the witch-woman. Buckner is paralyzed by the spell, but Braxton acts and shoots at her. Once more she vanishes, and they find no body. Suddenly they are attacked by something in the swamp that they cannot see clearly, and Jim Braxton is killed. Buckner, totally helpless in the grip of the voodoo spell, finds himself watching the rites of Damballah from a copse of trees. The orgiastic rites will climax with Buckner meeting a hideous fate at the hands of Saul Stark. Suddenly, amid a circle of Stark's followers, the witch appears, her body swaying rhythmically in the Dance of the Skull. Buckner realizes that she is the source of Stark's power, and at the end of the ceremony the conjure-man will consolidate his power over the black people of the region.

However, as the witch finishes her dance she collapses, dead, for Braxton's bullet had struck home, hitting her in the heart. Only her supernatural power had kept her alive this long. As she expires, Buckner feels the spell laid upon him lift. The black people flee in panic, the uprising is broken, and Buckner stalks out of the swamp and kills Stark. Afterwards, Buckner learns what was meant by Tope Sorley's cryptic words, "He'd put me in de swamp!" He discovers that Stark magically altered the bodies of his enemies, transforming them into mindless amphibian horrors. The burden of this terrible knowledge is a secret Buckner does not share with his fellow whites, creating an unspoken bond between himself and the black people of Canaan.