VooDoo Follies (6 page)

"Oh, sorry," I was saying, but something
across the street caught my eye.

"Seraphine, I need to tell you
about..."

"Hey, look," I interrupted. "I think that's
him." I was pointing at a bum across the street with a shopping
cart. Before Stephen could get a word out I was crossing the street
and yelling for the bum. "Hey! You!" The bum looked back and then
looked all around him, as if I couldn't possibly be talking to him.
Then he started walking faster with his cart. "You, stop! I need
to..." He took off in a full out run with his shopping cart rocking
precariously in front of him. "Stop!" I shouted after
him.

The cart he was pushing so haphazardly hit a
crack in the sidewalk and tipped over. He stopped to try to pile
all of his belongings back in. "Wait, I just want to talk." I was
saying as he was scooping up his belongings.

"No, no, no." He swatted at me. "Go away, you
can't have any." He swatted again. By now Stephen had caught up
with me.

"That's not him, Seraphine."

"Then why did he run?" The bum was still
swatting at me, so I backed up a bit.

"Umm, because he thought you were trying to
steal his stuff." At the sound of the word 'steal' the bum all but
tossed himself over his cart to shield his belongings.

"Go away!" He swatted again, and began moving
away from us.

"I don't even really remember what the
zombie-bum looks like. It was dark and he was a lump of dead
nastiness. How am I supposed to find him like this?"

"Seraphine!" Stephen was not about to let me
get distracted again. "Seraphine, listen to me. I can help, but you
need to hear me out first."

"What? I know, don't go chasing off after bums
with shopping carts. It's dangerous, gotcha!"

"No, well, I mean don't do that either, but I
really need to tell you something." he looked so completely serious
I couldn't help but stop and listen to him. "I can find the bum for
you."

"How are you supposed to do that? Did you get
a better look at him?"

"It's what I have been trying to tell you.I
have an affinity for the dead, I can sense other dead things. That
guy," he pointed to the bum who was now a block away with his
shopping cart, "is not dead."

"Wait, you what? Oh," it dawned on me that
maybe I wasn't the only one who could tap into other-worldly stuff.
"You see dead people!"

"Uh, yeah, something like that."

"That's weird, how do you do it,
then?"

Stephen cocked his head to the side and looked
at me funny before he said, "you tell me."

"How should I know? I don't see dead
people."

"You see me."

"Of course I see you," my words cut off
mid-sentence as some things started clicking in place. Stephen had
never touched me, not even to accidentally bump into me. He had
never, to my recollection, even touched anything else around me,
aside from sitting in my car or on the chair in my room. He was
wearing the same clothes he had been wearing when we first met. I
wondered now how it was that I hadn't noticed before, but then I
thought about what we were doing out here on the streets in
Baltimore and I understood that I had simply been too busy and
stressed to notice.

"But how?"

"The accident, with Adrianna. I didn't die
right away, but I sort of left my body and couldn't get back. My
parents pulled the plug on my body and next thing you know I bump
into Adrianna outside of the school. Then, you could see me too. At
first I thought maybe I was alive and it had all been a bad dream,
but then you explained about Adrianna and what happened, and she
felt different than you did. Kind of like a dimmer energy radiating
off of her. I figured you being able to see me was voodoo magic and
that you knew what I was, until the other night with your
step-dad."

"But my mom saw you too!"

Stephen shrugged at me again. "It runs in the
family, I guess. Didn't you say you came from a long line of
witches?"

"Voodoo practitioners, but it doesn't make
sense. Why wouldn't she tell me she could see dead people?
Ghosts?"

Stephen shrugged at me again, his sandy hair
flopping down over his eyes again as he did so. "Maybe she just
doesn't realize she can do it. You didn't know until now either."
Stephen stopped talking and started looking around the street. "I
think we should find our zombie and talk about all this later. We
don't want too many of those things running around eating more
people."

"You said you could find it?"

"Yeah, remember I said Adrianna gave off a
different energy than you did. I have come to realize that the gray
kind of energy is that of the dead while the colorful stuff that
swirls around you represents the living."

"Wait, my aura?"

"I guess." There was that shrug again. I
wanted to throw my arms around those shoulders and cry with him
because he was dead. I wanted to have him hold me and tell me
everything was going to be alright. I wanted my only friend in this
part of the world to not be dead, but before I could even think any
further about what I wanted I had to find a zombie.

"Do you sense anything."

He held up his finger, asking for a moment
while he started spinning in slow circles, taking in the world
around him. I had no clue what he was doing or how it would work,
but after a minute or two he started walking and I
followed.

***

Command and Conquer

We wandered a little ways further down onto
Broadway. We were heading up the road when I saw a bum walk into an
alley. Stephen saw what I was looking at and nodded to me. We found
our zombie. Now, I just needed to convince it to come back to the
graveyard with me.

I was hoping that the zombie had just kept to
himself while he had been wandering around, but when Stephen called
out to him and he turned around my hopes were dashed. Blood
streaked his face. Some of it looked dried out, that was the stuff
that stuck on him up closer to his eyes. The blood staining his
mouth was fresh and still dripped a little from his chin. I looked
around quickly, hoping to spot the other corpse before someone else
did. It was mid afternoon in Baltimore now. The last thing I needed
on my conscious was a full blown zombie outbreak as everyone was
getting off of work and heading home for the weekend.

At first, the zombie looked as though he would
run from Stephen. I suppose he could sense on some level that the
boy wasn't human. Then the zombie-bum sniffed the air and looked
right at me. Before I could even move he was coming at me. I did
the only thing I could think of, which was to say, nothing. I
stood, frozen to the spot. Panic was like glue to my feet, keeping
me firmly in place as the zombie-bum charged towards me. My only
friend in the world was a ghost and could do nothing to help
me.

"Stop!" I screamed out, not thinking the
blood-crazed monster would listen, but he did. He stopped dead in
his tracks, so fast in fact, I thought he would topple over from
the inertia that was still pulling him forward. I wasn't sure if it
was just the scream that startled him or if he was listening to me,
so I thought I would take a chance and test it out. "Move forward
three paces." I commanded the zombie to do my bidding, but as I did
so Stephen was nervously shaking his head. Three paces would put
the zombie within arms reach of me. "Don't worry," I told him as I
watched the zombie come closer with each step.

"Seraphine, this is not a good idea." Stephen
came closer to me, positioning himself to step in front of me, as
if that would do any good.

"Stop," I commanded the zombie again once he
took the third step. I freaked out a little as he stood in front of
me licking his lips. "Where are the others that you have killed?"
The zombie raised his finger to point behind me. "Take us there."
Before the zombie began to move I amended my command with, "and you
are not to harm a soul while we travel, including me." I could have
sworn the zombie-bum groaned at me, but I chose to ignore it,
because it was just too creepy to think of this creature on the
same level as a child who had just been told no more
candy.

We crossed the street and ended up in the
opposite alley. I saw her before I realized what I was looking at.
There, behind a dumpster, was a pair of legs that I could have
sworn just twitched. By the time we got to her she was trying to
stand up. There was a gaping hole in her neck where she had been
attacked. She looked at me, in much the same way the other zombie
had, as if I were the most delectable steak waiting to be carved
into. I really didn't like that look. I immediately tried to give
her a command, before she could attempt to eat me. "You are not to
hurt me." I said, but she continued to look at me as though I was
her next meal. "Come stand over here." She moved to take up a
position where I had pointed. A little bit of the tension fell from
my shoulders as she listened. Then I remembered that she wasn't the
only one. I noticed that the zombie-bum was sniffing the air. He
was already walking again, down the alley further. We walked back
behind the shops that lined Broadway. There in the back alleys of
Baltimore was a miniature tent city. My heart broke, seeing how
these people had been living. Some lived this way by choice, others
out of sheer necessity. Either way, it was just as painful to see
for an outsider looking in. The sight became so much worse when I
realized what I was really seeing. There were five people sitting
around the campsite, which consisted of a shopping cart full of
supplies and a few cardboard boxes. Only, the people weren't living
anymore. They must have been the first meal my zombie-bum had. One
right after another.

"Is this all of them?" I asked the zombie-bum,
hoping he could communicate the way Adrianna had. I was mistaken
though. These bums definitely were unable to communicate on any
intelligent level. I did manage to get a head nod out of him. I
would have to take him at his word, or lack thereof. I asked each
of the other bums in turn if they had any victims we should know
about. They all just stared at me, lifeless nothingness reflecting
back at me from their eyes. I took a good look at each one of them,
and while they were all filthy, I couldn't see the tell-tale blood
staining them anywhere, outside of their own wounds.

"All of you must follow me. You will harm no
one." I began walking away, winding my way back to the Bohemian
Cemetery. Stephen stayed behind the zombies so he could shout out a
warning if something went wrong. I wondered how I must look to
other people, if they had been paying attention. Here I was, a
sixteen year old girl, playing pied-piper to seven zombie-bums. I
was leading them to their end, or perhaps to their salvation.
Sadly, each one of their lives, the loss of them, landed squarely
on my shoulders. It was my fault that they had all died. I stumbled
a little with that thought and Stephen called up to me.

"Seraphine, are you okay?"

I managed to choke out a yes as I wiped the
tears from my eyes. I couldn't get them to stop falling, despite my
many attempts. It was all just a little too much for me to fathom
in that moment. After what seemed like forever, we managed to make
our way to the cemetery. I took them all over to the place just
beyond the other graves where we had first seen the bum laying
there lifeless. I figured it was the closest I was going to get to
a grave for him, and I couldn't very well disturb the concrete
ground in the city, so this would have to do for the rest of them
as well. I sat them all in a circle facing inwards, looking at one
another. Then I walked the circle behind them, making my salt line
of protection. It was unfortunate that I had to be inside the
circle with the zombies. I was more than a little scared by the
prospect that if anything were to go wrong I was in the middle of
seven, very hungry, walking dead. A shiver stole over
me.

"Are you okay? Are you sure you can do this?"
Stephen wasn't purposely trying to deflate my confidence, but he
managed to diminish it just a bit anyway.

"I'm okay." I looked around at the dead and
went back to work. With the protective circle in place I took out
the other implements I needed from my backpack. A pewter bowl, some
herbs, bones, and my knife. I followed the same ritual I had used
to put Adrianna back in the ground. I sprinkled the herb powder and
a bit of my blood on each of them. I spoke the words that would
send them into the ground, felt it rumble under my feet, and
watched as those bodies were absorbed into the earth around them.
In the end I spilled the ash in a circle around their new grave
site to seal their bones in.

I walked out of the circle when I was done and
went to stand near Stephen. The tears were back again. "They are my
fault. Every one of them, they are dead because of me." I shook
with the onslaught of wracking sobs that began to hammer through
me. For his part, Stephen looked for all the world as though he
wished he could throw his arms around me. I wanted that more than
anything, but it couldn't happen.

"I'm sorry, Seraphine." He spoke in a gentle
voice that was nearly a whisper. "I know this is hard for you, but
look." He nodded back towards the circle where I had just laid the
dead back down to rest. There was a ring of purple flowers
sprouting inside the salt ring I had put down. A small smile
escaped me as I saw that. "You didn't mean for this to happen. I
think whatever is out there beyond this life, those people who were
infected, they all know it wasn't your intent to harm anyone. I
know it wasn't what you wanted. I can't hug you and make everything
better, but I am here to talk when you need me."