VooDoo Follies (4 page)

“I went to look for you. I thought, I thought
she was dying. I mean, her toe fell off and she just looked at it
and stuck it in her pocket like a piece of gum she planned on
chewing later.” He looked as if he might be sick. Stephen was now a
very unnatural shade of pale and flailing his hands around as he
spoke, “I mean, how was I to know that the girl who couldn’t think
straight and was examining her own detached toe was going to be
accosted by a bum and then eat him?” He shook a little, his whole
form shook, in an almost ripple effect.

I thought for a minute that maybe I was going
a little crazy too. It had been a long, trying day on top of a
sleepless night. I was tired, my eyes were tired, and somehow I had
to manage to pull a ton of magic from the ether and get this girl
back in the ground. I looked back at her now, sitting at the edge
of the trees. I felt my own eyes growing wider as I noticed the
lumpy form slouched down on the ground a few feet behind her. I
knew what it was and I swallowed hard. "This is all my fault." I
said it out loud without a thought, but it stopped Stephen cold in
his rambling tracks.

"You didn't know." He said. He looked sad as
he spoke, but I could tell he was also trying to reassure
me.

"I should have known." I shook my head and
walked over to Adrianna's grave site. "I should have been more
prepared. Instead I was dabbling in things I had no business
touching. I didn't know they could think. I didn't know they came
out just like the person. My Auntie Perrine never told me. She
should have told me."

I was falling to pieces inside. The guilt of
having to kill Adrianna all over again was beginning to tear at me,
but what could I do? I couldn't turn her loose on the world. She
wanted to eat people like I wanted a chicken strip wrap from
McDonalds. She did eat a person already and that death would fall
squarely on my shoulders. Stephen knelt down in front of me and
gave me a little smile that said everything from 'I understand' to
'I'll help you.' I knew I wasn't alone in that moment. I knew that
I finally had someone here in this place that, for months, I had
considered hell on earth. I had him. We had this, whatever it was.
This crazy, zombie raising debacle in which his best friend just
ate a bum.

The thought of happily ever after left me just
as quickly as it arrived. Why would he ever stick around and be my
friend after this? I'm sure he'd rather forget what happened than
continue talking to the freak girl that brought his best friend
back from the dead to eat bums. I sighed and he stood
up.

"I'm going to go get Adrianna now. I don't
think we should leave her sitting so far away."

"You didn't want me to put her back earlier.
Have you changed your mind now?"

"I have to, don't I? I mean, you saw what she
did over there. What if the next time it was her mom, or someone
else. What if next time, it was you?"

I had not even thought about that. Here I had
been driving around with a zombie in the back seat of my car, not
even thinking of the dangers. I had been beyond stupid in all of
this. My Voodoo days were done once Adrianna was back in the
ground. I nodded my head at Stephen and he turned to go get
Adrianna. It was getting late already, the sun had already begun
setting. I pulled the pewter bowl out of the bag and sat it down in
the same place I had put an identical one the other day. I took out
all the rest of the supplies that I would need. Last, but not least
I took out the salt for the circle.

Stephen and Adrianna walked up behind me. I
quickly peered over my shoulder at them. "I'm ready."

"I don't want to." She whispered it, almost
too low to be heard, but I did hear it. I also ignored it. I
couldn't listen to her pleas right now. I had to tune them out. I
thought of the dead man in the trees. That helped.

"I need you to stand on your grave
Adrianna."

"I don't want to." She was louder this time,
but she was moving to stand on the grave as I had
instructed.

"I'm sorry." It was my turn to whisper. "I'm
sorry I did this to you." She looked at me with blood still
staining her mouth and I had to hold back the tears that threatened
to spill free of my eyes. Instead of letting go and crumpling in on
myself, I turned to Stephen. "I need to make the circle now, you
may want to come in here closer to me."

"No!" He said it so quickly, like he was
afraid of what I would do to him. "I mean, I think it will be
better if I stay out here and keep watch. You don't need any
distractions in there with you. Besides, what will happen with one
more person in the circle? Do you know?"

I didn't know. He had a very valid point.
"Okay, well okay." I didn't know what to say. Did I tell him to be
quiet, to be careful? I didn't know. So, I just left it at that. I
turned back to my duties and started building the circle around the
grave site. Once I was finished I set everything up just as I had
the other night. The ground beneath our feet rumbled once,
loosening to make an easier exit for the zombie that should be
beneath our feet already. This is where things would be different.
This is where I would lay Adrianna back down to rest in her
grave.

"I'm scared." She whispered it again. I
realized now that she had been whispering the same two words
throughout the whole first part of the ceremony. "What if I don't
die again?" "What if I go to hell now that I killed that
bum?"

These were things I didn't want to think
about. "Shhh," I wanted to try to calm her. "It'll be okay. Your
body will be there in the ground, but it is only a shell. The part
of you that thinks and feels will go back to where ever it was
called from."

She nodded her head and began to move. A
moment of panic set in as I thought she was about to bolt out of my
circle again, but then I realized she was just squatting down. No,
not squatting down. She laid down on top off her grave.

"I think it might be easier if I am already
laying down."

I nodded at her again and then she was looking
up at the sky. I turned my attention back to the task at hand and
found the words that I never got to chant the other night. The ones
that would send her back into the ground, and what ever part of her
that allowed for thought back to where it had come from. As I
finished the last words, I felt the ground tremble beneath my feet
again. This time, instead of hands coming clawing out of the
ground, it was as if the ground was opening up to welcome back what
I had taken. Adrianna's eyes were closed now. She was slowly
sinking into the ground and the earth was filling in the space
above her. When everything stopped shifting and settled down again
I set the contents of the bowel on fire. In a matter of minutes the
flame died out and ashes were left behind in it's wake. I poured
the ashes on top of Adrianna's grave, reciting the words that would
seal it from any further magical uses. When I was done, I packed up
the rest of my supplies and broke the protective circle. Stephen
was standing there waiting for me with his hands in his
pockets.

"She's really gone now?" He looked sad and
relieved all at once.

"Yeah, I think she is."

"What about the body? Should we call someone
about the bum or let the police discover him on their
own?"

We walked back over toward the tree line to
get a better view, but I think the lack of light in the night was
affecting our barrings because the body wasn't where we thought it
was. "Where is it?"

"I don't know, he was right here. Look,"
Stephen bent down and pointed to the puddle of congealing blood in
the leaves. "This is where he was."

"Oh, no!" I whispered. "Oh, no!" This time it
came out louder, riding the edge of panic in my voice.

"Seraphine?" Stephen was trying to get my
attention and finally he managed. "Can a zombie make another
zombie?"

"I don't know, but we need to find that
bum!"

***

The VooDoo Follies

Part Two: The
Infection

Original Publication Date:

Aug. 9, 2011

I am Seraphine LaLande, and I have a zombie to
find and put to rest. The only problem is I have no clue where the
dead bum took off to. Finding him is not proving as easy as I had
hoped and to make matters worse, I am grounded for having a boy in
my bedroom!

Stephen was my only hope for tracking down
this zombie, but now I wonder if the price we had to pay was worth
it. The secret Stephen revealed to me, well let's just say, it's
hard to know how I feel now!

***

The Missing Piece

"Oh, Stephen, what are we going to do?" I
looked at the sandy-haired boy standing beside me, hoping he
wouldn't simply ditch out on me now that his best friend was dead
again. What in the world was I supposed to do about a zombie bum
running around the streets of Baltimore?

"We could try following his stench. Adrianna
was rambling about him smelling like pee when she told me what
happened." Stephen shrugged and looked back at me.

"Great, do you smell anything?"

Stephen shook his head at me, "no,
you?"

I inhaled so deeply I thought my lungs would
strike back, and sadly that intake of breath didn't yield anything
beyond the decaying fall leaves and dirt. "Okay, you go that way,
I'll go this way, we'll circle through the trees and out the other
side by the rec center. Maybe, he's just wounded and crawled off.
Maybe, it's not as bad as it looks." Maybe, I would tell myself
three more lies, but before I could spit them out Stephen was gone
to scour his own area and I turned to do the same.

Twenty minutes later we both met up by the rec
center, neither of us having found our zombie-bum. I was beyond
tired. It suddenly seemed like ages ago that I had performed the
ceremony that would send Adrianna back into her grave. It hit me
then that it had been mere hours since I had done so. I glanced up
to the sky regarding the moon and the few vague stars that managed
to shine through the city's light pollution. I missed home. I
missed the comfort of the stars shining on me at night, the sound
of bugs chirruping instead of car horns blaring, and most of all I
missed those warm southern nights with the dense, humid air that
captured the local scents of magnolia trees and sweet bays in bloom
allowing their fragrance to linger longer than it should have.
Beyond that, I missed having my Auntie Perrine there to help me
along when I screwed up. If we still lived in New Orleans none of
this would have happened.

I was suddenly looking up into Stephen's eyes.
They were an odd mix of blue and gray, but I honestly wasn’t able
to see them enough to figure the coloring out, because that sandy
brown hair of his kept falling flat across his face, hiding his
eyes from my view. If I hadn't been here I never would have met
Stephen. I hadn't known him long, but he was definitely leaving a
lasting impression on me. In that moment, I wasn’t sure if I would
give Stephen up for all those things that I missed about New
Orleans. I did know that I had no time to sit here and think about
things I couldn’t change. I had to get some rest and I had to find
that zombie-bum before he wreaked havoc on the city.

"Come on," I told Stephen while motioning
towards my car, "let's go to my house and try to come up with a
plan. I need some food and to just sit down for a minute." As soon
as I thought about how tired I was again my body decided it wasn't
enough and made me feel ten times worse. I slogged my way back to
my car, feeling Stephen’s eyes on me the entire way.

“Are you okay?” He sounded genuinely worried
and yet there was no trace of the exhaustion that was so evident in
my own body in his. He seemed fresh and ready to go. That made me
feel just a little bit worse than before.

“Yeah, just tired.” I sighed out loud,
“performing that ritual must have worn me out more than I thought
it would.” I opened the car door for him, since I was on that side
and my electronic locks had stopped working a few weeks ago. He got
in and I shut the door, heading for the driver’s side. Once I was
behind the wheel I had to fight myself to stay awake long enough to
get us back to my house.

I wasn't sure how my mom and new step-dad
would react to me bringing a boy home, but I knew that Stephen and
I needed some time to come up with a plan. I figured that we would
just march right into the house and if nothing was said we would go
to my room and work out the details of how to find my zombie-bum.
We did just that. I walked in the door first with Stephen trailing
behind me. I hadn't seen my mom's car outside, but Roger was
sitting in the living room and looked up, waving at us as we walked
in. I whispered to Stephen, "this is easier than I thought. Be
thankful my mom wasn't here to see you walking in. Roger is
apparently still trying to get on my good side."

Stephen gave me a knowing nod and said nothing
else until we got to my room. I watched as he looked around, the
surprise showing on his face. "What?" I asked him, suddenly
defensive of my bedroom.

"Well," he started to say, then lowered his
eyes from me, "I just thought your room would be, I don’t know,
different some how."