A Cult of Two

by Harrison Kim

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Mexico City, November 1976

I’d ritually rubbed my underarms with confidence oil and “master of all situations” potion, so why did I feel uneasy telling Anna what happened between myself and her sister Estrella?

As I spoke, Anna’s face whitened beyond her skin powder covering. She breathed fast, leaned forward: “Harrison, did you really have sex with her?”

I said, “Quite a few times.”

I always told the truth. It was vital to be honest, for there were many evil forces that would suck liars into bigger and bigger falsehoods. I was a student of the religion known as Santeria, and could not afford setbacks on my journey to become a Master Wizard, a Santero.

I told Anna that I did not pursue Estrella. After we sang together as I played guitar in the hotel courtyard she leaned against my shoulder and asked, “How about we go to your room and do some more singing?”

I knew what that meant. I was twenty-one years old and always ready. My Santeria power confidence made me irresistible to women. It was a natural consequence of offering food and morning prayers for the voodoo goddess Orisha.

Jimmy Toussaint, the Santero Master Wizard himself, said that he’d been with all three sisters. “Orisha is good to me,” he said.

What was the problem with Anna, I thought, why was she biting her cheek like that? Didn’t she know all this already?

“Harrison, I didn’t sleep with Jimmy,” she said. “Neither did my sister Silvia. She’s married to Karl, don’t forget.”

I looked around the room and smelled its perfumed air. One of my powers was understanding the nature of a situation by its smell.

Anna stared hard. “You will not go with Estrella again,” she said. “This will be a pledge between me and you.”

“If you say so,” I said.

Anna seemed so angry. Maybe the pockmark like scars across her face were signs of evil possession, a consequence of her inner fury. Perhaps the bad spirits were bubbling under there even as we spoke. I didn’t want any encounters with them. “How did you get those lines across your face?” I asked.

She didn’t pause. “My last husband beat me with his belt,” she said. “A belt with a metal buckle.”

“Those scars aren’t old?” I asked.

“No.”

Wow, I thought. Anna has suffered. She is wise. And I wondered for the first time: Maybe I have been deceived.

Perhaps, I mused, Jimmy was the liar, the Santeria Master himself, my wise and esteemed teacher, his witness called into doubt by Anna’s power words.

She knows things, I thought. She has experience.

“That Jimmy is no good,” Anna continued. “He’s a wicked man.”

“He might just be misguided,” I said.

I wanted to believe in the Master, even then. I needed the feelings of confidence and purpose that I received as ongoing benefits from my Santeria training. I desired the safety and certainty of its framework. Santeria explained the inner workings of the world, how underneath our surface reality, spirits of light and darkness struggle for truth and power.

What we perceive on the surface are only reflections and illusions sent by these spirits. All objects are possessed by degrees of good and evil that can be tapped. Jimmy — the Master — and I manipulated this flow of instinctual spiritual power, used it to gain dominance over our demons. Our goal was to help others fight for their true identity, for a certain price.

“We’ll be rich, Harrison,” Jimmy told me. “We shall work miracles for our future clients.”

All I needed was to learn the fundamentals of the discipline, immerse myself in becoming a Santeria Wizard, then graduate and get to work. I’d been studying for a month now. I filed Anna’s statements in the back of my mind, for future pondering.

Proceed to Chapter 2...

Copyright © 2021 by Harrison Kim