[MUSIC PLAYING]
HAMILTON MORRIS: That morning,
I wake to find a gaping burn
in my forearm oozing
a purulent gleet.
I stir and begin to vomit,
begging for an antidote.
I find Jean-Claude sitting
next to me.
And he encourages me to
remember that the
antidote is my mind.
Alex knows a bokor who knows a
bokor, who knows a bokor in
Artibonite.
So we drive for many hours until
the road disintegrates
and the wheels of our
Mitsubishi Montero
will turn no more.
The peristyle is located
over five miles
from the nearest road.
And we cross the path in the
midday sun without water, each
step bringing me closer
to heat stroke,
collapse, and death.
The ground is still wet from the
previous night's rain, and
the air vibrates with
bloodthirsty insects.
Alex tells me that this region
is notorious for the use and
sale of zombie slaves and that
the bokor we have come to
visit might even keep some
in his rice fields.
After hours of walking, I enter
the bokor's peristyle
surrounded by goats,
mango trees, and a
fence of living cacti.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: I'm introduced
to the bokor, Crescent.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Unlike the last
bokor, Crescent carries
himself with total confidence,
like he has nothing to prove.
He's laid back.
And looks at me in such a way as
to suggest not only that he
knows, but that he knows
I know he knows.
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Could
I see the bottle?
ALEX: Not the powder,
the bottle, right?
HAMILTON MORRIS: Yeah.
I hold the glass bottle with no
more than 300 milligrams of
beige powder.
It's impossible to say anything
about its potency or
authenticity just from
looking at it.
But it's still exhilarating--
my first glimpse of the
legendary powder.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Crescent dares
me to try the powder.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Casually
mentioning he is equipped with
a powerful antidote.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Ask him how
confident he is that he'll be
able to reverse the effects
with a lemon.
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: He said, yeah,
he's sure that you
won't have any problem.
HAMILTON MORRIS: OK.
What is your thought
on this, Alex?
ALEX: You know, for myself,
I was offering to try it.
But if you are, too,
you can go for it.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: When he
suggests I use the powder, I'm
torn between scientific
skepticism and the desire not
to die an agonizing death deep
in the Haitian countryside.
I decide Crescent is offering
me the poison as a test.
Should I demonstrate
my strength, I will
have gained his trust.
And should I be wrong, Crescent
assures me that he
has an effective antidote on
hand, one half of a key lime.
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Though the lime
provides me with little
comfort, even the most
well-equipped hospitals in the
world have no antidote for TTX,
because thus far, one
does not exist.
Ask him what the dose is.
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: Some of the feather.
The feather with take some.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Crescent frowns
and leans away for me,
insisting that I do not
let any catch wind
and blow onto him.
Some powder is on the
end of the feather.
I dip the chicken feather into
the glass bottle, allowing a
mote of beige poison to cling
to a single barbule.
I brush the mote of zombie
poison onto my arm.
I don't feel anything at all.
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: That's
going to be a lot.
Crescent changes his attitude
and leans in towards me.
He grabs the bottle and pushes
the mouth to my skin, turning
it upside down, revealing a ring
of white powder the size
of a quarter.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Over the course
of six minutes, I allow
the powder to dissolve on the
wet, hot skin of my forearm
with two millimeters of skin
between the powder and my
thirsty Russian capillaries.
I am not a hypochondriac, but
there is nothing that will
make you more aware of your
throbbing, roiling, bubbling
physiology than waiting for one
of the world's most potent
neurotoxins to kick in.
Reeling through a mental
checklist of symptoms, I am
still not experiencing
anything.
ALEX: What do you feel like?
HAMILTON MORRIS: I don't feel
anything at all, other than I
feel some mild terror
that I'm going to
die, but nothing distinct.
The powder is ceremonially
removed from
my arm with a lime.
The poison is encircled and then
circumscribed with two
strokes forming a cross
and that's all.
If the powder did contain TTX,
the ascorbic acid in the lime
would have only increased its
water solubility and helped it
cross into my blood.
But even then, not enough time
has passed for the paralysis
to have set in, unless the dose
was truly massive, in
which case, I will
be dying shortly.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: As I wait for
the TTX to present its
symptoms, I feel it an
appropriate time to breach the
subject of zombie slaves.
Well, thank him for
allowing me to
experiment with his powder.
Ask him if there are zombies
in the building behind us.
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: After
negotiating a price with
Crescent, we agree to donate a
generous sum to his peristyle
in honor of the Loa,
Jean Zombie.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Entranced,
Crescent begins a ritualized
door knocking and key jingling
ritual, finally pausing before
a locked door I have
looked at all day.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
-[MOANING AND MUMBLING]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Alex, can you
ask him what's beneath the
cloth?
-[SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
WADE DAVIS: The first thing you
have to do when you start
thinking about zombies
or vodou is step
outside of the cliches.
And this really forced me to
realize that, you know, I
might be on the outside looking
at the zombie thing in
a certain perspective.
But when you're on the inside,
Narcisse, or a Haitian like
himself, wasn't sitting
there thinking, do or
do not zombies exist?
I mean, he knew in the very
fiber of his being since
childhood that zombies
existed.
He knew exactly how
one was created.
He knew exactly why
one was created.
And so, that's sort of the
template upon which all these
drugs are going to work.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
ALEX: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: To our
surprise, the Loa Jean Zombie
refuses to take the
local currency.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
HAMILTON MORRIS: Crescent is
irate, but tells us he will
have prepared a new poison
the following Saturday.
CRESCENT: [SPEAKING CREOLE]
