by Tim Marquitz
That Hoodoo, Voodoo That You Do
Edited by Lincoln Crisler
© 2015
Cover Artwork by J.M. Martin and Shawn King
Managing Editor – Stacey Turner
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Worldwide Rights
Created in the United States of America
Published by ANGELIC KNIGHT PRESS
An Imprint of Ragnarok Publications | www.ragnarokpub.com
Editor-In-Chief: Tim Marquitz | Creative Director: J.M. Martin
That Hoodoo, Voodoo That You Do
Introduction
This anthology is a love letter of sorts. I can hardly remember a time in my life when ritual wasn’t prevalent. In the months following the departure of my father from our lives, my mother turned back to the Catholic faith of her childhood, and my young self embraced it wholeheartedly, as children tend to do with something new they are curious about. When it failed to fill the same need in my life that it does for millions of others, I turned to the occult.
Though my taste in spiritual fare has tended more toward vanilla in the past decade, I also happen to be a United States soldier. Since I enlisted in 2000, my life has been no less filled with ritual than it was when I was lighting candles before Mass or praying around a campfire in the middle of the night. If anything, as I’ve risen through the ranks, I’ve gone from practitioner to priest, since I’m now responsible for showing newer soldiers how to perform the tasks that for me have been as automatic as breathing for years. If you think I’m stretching the analogy, I’m not. A quick search through the headlines shows how resistant we are to changes as simple as a uniform or how we conduct physical training. We soldiers can be as staunch and traditional as a church elder, I assure you.
I’d hazard to say that you, Dear Reader, don’t have a life too different from mine when it comes to ritual. If you feel inclined to argue, that’s fine; I can take it. I think I can win this one with two simple words, though: alarm clock. Most of our lives depend on a precision as vital as the timing in a witch’s grimoire. The world works on ritual. Things run smoothest when people perform their expected function. We tend to take other people’s roles for granted, as much as a parish priest expects his parishioners to show up on Sunday. As much as those parishioners expect him to be in the booth to hear their confessions on Saturday.
Of course, this book isn’t a pure, unabashed expression of admiration. The world doesn’t always work the way you want it to. People don’t always do what you think they will. Things don’t always go according to plan. And while in the mundane, when a ritual doesn’t achieve the desired goal, one can usually simply go back to the drawing board and find a new way, when it comes to horror—well, let’s just say the price is a little higher.
Lincoln Crisler
December 7th, 2014
Augusta, Georgia
Table of Contents
Sa fè lontan - Sarah Hans
Young Girls Are Coming to Ajo - Ken Goldman
Into the Mirror Black - Tim Marquitz
Severed - Brandon Ford
Afflicted - A.J. Brown
A Little Bit of Soul - Craig Cook
Coughs and Sneezes - James K Isaac
Secret Suicide - Amy Braun
Wounds - Greg Chapman
Sturm und Drang - Jeff C. Carter
Shades of Hades - E.J. Alexander
For Love - DJ Tyrer
Gingerbread Man - Rose Strickman
Thy Just Punishments - Edward M. Erdelac
Johnny Two Places - Mark Mellon
The Seed - N.X. Sharps
Late Payment - Jake Elliot
Masquerade - C.A. Rowland
Lessons from a Victory Garden - Jason Andrew
The Projectionist - Timothy Baker
The Right Hand Man - J.S. Reinhardt
Paper Craft - Leigh Saunders
Sa fè lontan / Long Time No See
Sarah Hans
Ayida’s eyes were blank. She was only a child the first time I met her, still unfinished, but even so, I saw the space where a soul should be. My skin prickled when she looked at me with her vacant face.
“Your daughter will become a powerful mambo,” I told her mother in the marketplace. “You should let me take her for training right away.”
“How can you know such a thing?”
“I can see it when I look at her. I can read the bones,” I offered, reaching for the pouch at my side. “The loa can prove my words.”
“That’s silly superstitious nonsense.”
Bile-flavored rage bubbled up in my throat. “I’ve built my life around such silly superstitious nonsense.” I bit back further angry words. “Let me show you, please. The hounfour is right around the corner. It will only take a few moments and it could change your daughter’s life.” Still she hesitated, so I pressed on. “My name is Erzulie Tio, and I’ve been reading the bones since I was not much older than your girl.”
“Erzulie Tio? I’ve heard of you.”
Of course she’d heard of me. “From your neighbors?”
“Yes. They said you freed their son from a demon.”
“Not a demon, a Petwo loa. But yes, I coaxed the spirit from the boy. Let me read the bones for your daughter. You’re part of our community now, so your spiritual welfare falls to me.”
She licked her lips, conflicting beliefs warring on her face.
“Mama, please?” The girl turned those big, empty pools up to her mother and the woman at last smiled and nodded.
“Yes, alright.”
I brought them to the hounfour and cleared a circle on the dirt floor, squatting beside it. “What’s your name, child?”
“Ayida Fazande,” she replied, kneeling and watching my hands with intense interest. I drew the bones from their pouch and she asked, “Are they real bones?”
“Yapok knuckles.” I held out my palm studded with bones. Each knuckle was marked with mystical symbols.
“They look like dice.” The girl’s mother inspected the bones too, leaning down over her child. They looked so much alike, mother and daughter, nearly identical, Ayida the smaller and less scarred version.
One soul can’t inhabit two bodies.
“Please stand back, Mrs. Fazande.”
She smiled and took a step back, saying, “Call me Lourdes.”
I muttered a quick prayer to Papa Legba and threw the bones into the circle. They scattered and rolled, like they always do. I prepared to announce the fate I’d already determined for Ayida, but my breath hitched in my throat as the scattered knuckles told me a story. A story of power. A story of blood. A story of the terrible things that lurk in the darkness. Shrill screams made my ears ache and my nose burned with the stench of searing flesh. And through it all there was Ayida Fazande, flames dancing in her eyes.
“Erzulie? Erzulie are you alright?” Lourdes Fazande stood over me. “Should we get the doctor?”
I was prone on the floor, and the fire was gone. “No, no, I’ll be fine,” I assured her, sitting up. I scanned the room for Ayida. The girl was standing in the doorway, her empty eyes wide with fear and staring at me.
“What happened?” Lourdes asked, offering her hand to help me climb to my feet.
“The loa spoke,” I replied,
still watching Ayida.
“What did they say?”
“Your daughter has power. She is destined for…” I shook my head, conflicted. “…greatness. I should begin her mambo training immediately.”
“Mambo training? If she’s destined for greatness then she can do better than this.” Lourdes’s gesture swept over the hounfour. The mud-and-straw walls, the swept dirt floors, the glassless windows. Her gaze even included me, in my simple cotton dress, barefoot and childless. “I want more for Ayida than this life.”
#
A matter of disappearing chickens brought me to the Fazande’s doorstep not long after our first meeting. Neighbors had complained to me that their fowl were missing. I’d discovered the birds deep in the forest, following a trail of feathers and blood, thinking perhaps a wild dog was the culprit. Instead I found headless chicken corpses, a circle of blood, and dirt tamped down by dancing.
My feet carried me to the Fazande’s house. Lourdes and Ayida were working in the garden with the rest of the family. When Lourdes spotted me she called for all the children to hide in the house.
“What are you doing here? We don’t want to talk to you!” She brushed sweat from her forehead, leaving streaks of dirt, squinting against the bright sun.
“I found dead chickens in the forest,” I blurted. “Someone has been stealing them from your neighbors and using them for…for vodou rites.”
“What does that have to do with us?”
“I think it was Ayida.”
Lourdes scoffed. “Ayida knows less than nothing about your vodou rites.”
“Your daughter is special.”
“I know. That’s no reason for me to send her with you.”
“You must.” I looked up at movement on the porch. Ayida stood there, staring. I suppressed a shudder. “There’s something…I didn’t tell you.”
Lourdes followed my gaze and shouted for Ayida to get back in the house. “This thing you didn’t tell me, is it something that will convince me to send Ayida with you?”
“Yes. She’s…”
“You should have told me before. Now I don’t believe you. Now I think you’re desperate.”
“I am desperate. Your daughter…”
“No. I can’t make it any clearer. You should go before Papa comes home.”
“Your papa respects me. If you won’t listen, he will.”
“Papa also owns a gun. Are you willing to take the chance he’ll side with you?”
My retort was interrupted by a warm, salty breeze and the distant rumble of thunder. Both Lourdes and I turned to the horizon, where dark clouds boiled. We nodded to one another, an unspoken agreement that our human concerns could wait in the face of the coming storm.
I hurried back to the village. My neighbors were boarding up their homes and shops. With the help of a few neighborhood boys, I just managed to get the windows of the hounfour shuttered before the rain arrived.
The word rain is barely sufficient to describe a summer storm in Haiti. Torrent is a better word. The world was silenced and stopped by the force of the winds and the huge, pelting droplets. Even the human smells that always surrounded us, odors of sweat and garbage and cooking and sex and birth and death, were obliterated by the clean, fresh scent of water.
Alone but for a few guttering candles, I used the time to sweep the floors and clean the walls with my special tonic. The room filled with the scents of pepper and herbs, backed by the cleanliness of vinegar, the scent of a room purified both physically and spiritually. I always found comfort in that scent, because it reminded me of the mambo who trained me, who taught me to brew the tonic from wine, and cast the bones, and pray to the loa. I could feel her beside me, singing as I worked, and I felt less afraid.
I prayed for a while, seeking guidance from the loa, but the guidance never came. Eventually exhaustion won out over my vigil and I curled up on my cot in the back of the hounfour. Lulled by the grumble of thunder and the tap of rain against the aluminum roof, I dozed.
Pressure against my throat startled me awake. Ayida’s face loomed in my vision, her mouth twisted into a snarl. Her small hands were about my neck, strangling me. I shoved her back and sent her sprawling across the dirt floor.
“What are you doing?” I croaked, rising from the cot.
Ayida crouched on all fours like an animal. She bared her teeth and growled at me, snapping at the air. Her eyes were full of blind rage.
I fumbled for the bottle of tonic and the broom. Ayida lunged at me and I poked her in the belly with the broom, keeping her away from me, while I called for Papa Legba. “Take this loa from this child,” I called, and splashed the tonic at the girl.
Ayida screamed and covered her face, crumpling to the floor. I dropped the broom and wrapped one arm around her, still clutching the tonic bottle in my other hand and calling for Papa Legba. “Call the loa back across the divide, Father of the Crossroads! Release this girl!” I sprinkled more tonic onto her hair, the scent of pepper and vinegar surrounding us like a caustic cloud. My eyes burned and I squeezed them shut.
Thunder exploded all around us and Ayida shrieked with fear, writhing in my grasp. I wish I could say that it was my tonic that drove the loa away, or perhaps the intervention of Papa Legba, but I have to give credit to Agau, the spirit of thunder. His voice rolled and clashed and encompassed us for a few moments, as if the house were in the center of the storm. His brutality was so frightening that the loa gripping her body fled and Ayida went limp in my arms when the thunder had passed.
I lowered the girl to my cot. She whimpered and curled into the fetal position, tears streaming down her face to leave silvery tracks across her dark skin.
“I’ll get you some water.” I rose, but her hand shot out and grasped my arm. “What is it, child?”
Her voice was small and distant when she spoke. “Can you make them stop?”
“Make who stop what?”
“The loa. Can you make them stop?”
My chest felt tight in sympathy. “With training and hard work, yes. Together, we can make them stop.”
She released me and I went to find her water. She stayed the night in the hounfour, draped across my lap, and I sang her the songs of the mambo while I wiped the tonic from her face with a wet cloth.
The thunder gradually grew less and less fearsome until it stopped altogether, and not long after the rain stopped as well. The crickets and frogs returned to their chirping and buzzing. I threw open the shutters to greet a hot morning that was quickly becoming stifling.
Ayida was asleep on my cot and I was boiling plantains for breakfast when Lourdes Fazande appeared. She threw open the door, glanced about, issued a strangled cry of relief, and ran to her daughter. Behind her followed her father, an imposing farmer holding a gun, and two of the young men who worked on his farm.
I nodded greeting to the men. “You’ll find the girl unharmed.”
Kneeling by the cot, Lourdes checked her daughter for injuries. “Her face is swollen. What did you do?”
“A loa was riding her.” I gestured to the now-empty bottle of tonic on the floor near the bed.
“Mama? Mama, Erzulie Tio hurt me.” Ayida’s voice sounded nasal and strange, but Lourdes didn’t seem to notice.
“What did you do?” Lourdes demanded of me as she pulled her daughter to her feet and clutched the child to her side.
“I defended myself and saved her from the loa. Nothing more.”
“She hurt me,” Ayida insisted. She pushed away from her mother. “She touched me here.” She cupped her nether regions.
Lourdes’s mouth puckered in fury. “This ends now. If you touch my daughter again, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
“She came to me. I didn’t take her, and…”
“I don’t care! If she comes to you again, if you so much as speak to her in the marketplace, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born. Come, Ayida.” She grabbed her daughter’s hand and tugged her toward the door.
&nbs
p; Ayida didn’t move for a moment. Dark intelligence flickered in her eyes. Her lips curled in a sneer. “A pi ta, Zulie. See you on the other side.”
#
The trek through the jungle was not an easy one. It required the better part of a day and a full pack of supplies. When I finally approached the clearing where an old man crouched over a fire pit, afternoon was preparing to give way to evening.
“Erzulie Tio! Sa fè lon temps nou pa we!” The man squatting by the fire stood and waved. His voice was the same booming bass I remembered from years gone by, though he was no longer the towering giant of a man he once was. Twenty years ago I had likened my friend to a wild boar, substantial and intimidating, but now he reminded me more of an ancient tree, with brown limbs so frail they looked like they might break in a strong wind.
“Manno Roche!” I called. “Bonswa, my friend.” We met halfway between the path and the fire pit. We clasped hands, and Manno pulled me into his embrace. I kissed his cheek and then, overwhelmed by emotion, I planted another kiss firmly on his mouth.
He laughed. “I’m happy to see you too, Erzulie.” He turned to the house. “Sylvenie! Come quick, it’s Erzulie Tio!”
Manno’s wife emerged from the house. She had barely aged since our last encounter, still beautiful and shapely. She smiled reluctantly and waved from the porch but didn’t approach.
“What brings you all the way out here?” Manno asked.
“Let me sit and have some water and I’ll tell you.”
We went to the porch and Sylvenie brought us a table, two small chairs, and a big pitcher of water. I drank and made small talk, asking about their life in the jungle, and then when I had recovered my breath, I told them about Ayida Fazande.
When I finished, Sylvenie disappeared silently into the house. Manno sat back in his chair and stared off into the distance for a few moments before speaking. “You’re sure it was Baron Kriminel?”
“No one else calls me Zulie.”
Manno stared at his own hands. “What do you want me to do?”