The Voice inside My Head

by S. J. Laidlaw

  “REESIE!”

  We both jump, and I notice for the first time that Jamie is standing behind his sister.

  “Don’t you shout at me, Jamie Greenfield. Not after what you’ve been up to. You’re no better than him. Why, you two should form your own club, Randy-ass Boys of Utila.”

  Jamie peers around his sister and catches my eye.

  “Well, go on then,” Reesie says, glaring at Jamie. “Go ahead and tell him the truth this time. That’s what we came here for.” She crosses her arms and taps her foot like she’s marking out time.

  “I’m sorry,” says Jamie, his shoulders drooping on his lanky frame, his dark eyes deep wells of pain. “I just didn’t see the point in bringing it all up. I know Trish didn’t tell you about me. Maybe she had her reasons.” He cuts a look at Reesie. “I guess we were both trying to keep it low-key till we figured out where we were headed.”

  “You mean you were lying to my face,” says Reesie.

  Jamie gives her a guilty look before turning back to me. “This sure isn’t how I hoped we’d first meet,” he sighs, “but I loved your sister, Luke, and she loved me.”

  “What?” I stare at him stupidly.

  “We were gonna get married,” he continues.

  “But we never even heard of you,” I exclaim. “You couldn’t have known her more than five or six weeks.”

  “Oh, that’s perfect,” hoots Reesie. “You’re gonna give him advice on not rushing relationships.”

  “I don’t know what happened to her,” says Jamie, ignoring his sister. “Drowning seems like the last thing that could happen, but they found her clothes on the dock, and I haven’t seen her since, and I know she wouldn’t disappear on purpose. She was making a life here.”

  “Come back to bed, baby,” calls Tracy.

  Reesie raises an eyebrow.

  “Look,” I say. “I want to finish this conversation, but I’m kind of busy right now.”

  “Oh, we can see you’re busy,” says Reesie.

  “I’m really sorry, Luke,” says Jamie. It’s not clear whether he’s apologizing for his sister or mine, but I’m relieved when he drags Reesie off the stoop. Of course, this incites her to new levels of outrage. She keeps up a steady rant as he drags her down the path.

  I rub the back of my neck before going inside. Tracy is under the sheet, which happens to be the only covering on the bed. She raises one corner invitingly and grins, but her confidence wavers when I glare at her and don’t move from the open doorway.

  “You have to go.”

  She waits a few beats, then finally leans over the bed and grabs her clothes, pulling them on under the sheet. She doesn’t say anything as she stalks past me. I’m just about to close the door when she gasps and drops to her knees. I think maybe it’s a trick to get back inside, but she’s reaching under the stoop, clearly after something other than me.

  “I can’t reach it,” she says. “Help me.”

  I come outside and kneel on the wooden step, looking through the opening in the slats to the thing Tracy is groping for. She moves aside and I take her place, feeling around underneath the steps till my hand hits soft fabric. I grab it and pull it out, turning it over in my hand. It’s a small, roughly stitched cloth doll with what looks like human hair glued to its head, straight black hair like mine — or my sister’s.

  “What is it?” I ask, glancing at Tracy, but the look on her face is enough to tell me I don’t want to know.

  “Tricia found one of these the day before she went missing,” she whispers.

  I don’t know who she thinks might be listening, but I’m more annoyed than scared. It’s late, I’m bone-tired, I’ve just learned my sister had not just a secret boyfriend but a secret fiancé, some ravenous, invisible insects are biting every inch of my exposed torso and I’ve had enough of this girl.

  I sink down on the top step, lean my head on the newel post and wait for her to continue because I know nothing short of a heart attack is going to stop her. She settles on the step below me.

  “It’s a voodoo doll,” she explains. “Some of the locals here, the Garifuna, practice the old religions brought over from Africa.”

  “Garifuna?”

  “African descendants, like Reesie and her brother.”

  “Don’t you mean Caribbean?”

  “Yes, but where do you think the Caribbean people came from?”

  “I thought voodoo came from Haiti.”

  “That’s just one form of it.”

  “You seem very well-informed.”

  “Of course. I looked into it after what happened to Tricia.”

  “So, let me get this straight,” I say slowly, though at this point my own mind’s so muddy, I’m not sure I’m capable of rational thought. “You’re trying to tell me Reesie and my sister’s boyfriend were practicing voodoo and did something to her?”

  She shrugs and stands up. “Believe what you want,” she says, in a wounded voice. “All I’m saying is that a lot of the locals still practice the black arts, and Tricia found a doll like this under her step the day before she went missing.”

  So much tension courses out of my body when I see her turn away and start down the path to her own room that I almost fall off the step. She stops when she gets to her door and turns back to me. Her face is completely hidden in the shadows, but her disembodied voice rings out, piercing the stillness of the night. “Be careful who you make friends with,” she warns.

  As she disappears into her room, goose bumps ripple across my flesh. I go inside, but despite my exhaustion, it’s a long time before I fall asleep.

  CHAPTER 5

  I go looking for Zach first thing the next morning. I want to pump him for information on this voodoo crap before hunting down Jamie to see what else he knows about Pat. I don’t get as far as Bluewater before Zach hails me from the front porch of a restaurant. I guess that’s an advantage of only one main street — you’re never too far from every other person you’ve ever met.

  I climb the rickety wooden stairs and join him on the veranda overlooking the street. Despite the early hour, I’m surprised to see quite a few other young people, most sporting rumpled beachwear, already tucking into hearty breakfasts. Everyone seems to be eating variations of rice and beans, which doesn’t appeal to me at this time of day, but I’m cheered to discover Zach with a traditional American breakfast. My stomach rumbles as I flop down in the chair opposite him, take a piece of toast off his plate and munch it thoughtfully. “How’s it going?” I ask.

  “I have to get someone to sign up for a dive,” he says glumly, spearing a piece of egg and shoveling it into his mouth.

  “Your boss still on your ass?”

  He nods.

  “Do you know anything about voodoo?” He perks up at the change of subject and leans back in his chair.

  “You’ve come to the right place, my brother.” He grins. “What do you want to know?”

  A waiter comes over and I order eggs, bacon, the whole nine yards. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long day. When he’s gone, I pull the doll out of my pocket and set it on the table. It’s a bit crushed and some of the hair has fallen off. Its mouth is a jagged line of red cross-stitching, with single black cross-stitches for each eye. Is it possible for a doll to look dead?

  Zach’s eyes grow big as he backs his chair away from the table. “Where’d you get that?” he squeaks, keeping his eye on the doll.

  “Stay cool, buddy. It’s not going to bite you.”

  “Oh man, oh man.” Zach’s voice rises hysterically. I look around to see if we’re attracting attention and notice for the first time that most of the patrons look either hungover or half-asleep. “Where’d it come from?”

  “I found it under my front step.”

  Zach leaps to his feet, knocking over his chair. “We’ve got to get rid of it,” he says urgently.

  He looks like he means right now, but I just ordered breakfast and I’m not going anywhere without some fuel.

>   “Sit down, Zach,” I say firmly, taking the doll off the table and shoving it back in my pocket. He stares at me like I’m crazy, but he rights his chair and sits down, keeping well back from the table. And me.

  “This is bad,” he says. “This is very, very bad.”

  “So you do know what it is?”

  “Don’t you?” he demands, keeping his eye on the pocket where I shoved the doll.

  “Tracy said it’s a voodoo doll. She said Pat, I mean Tricia, found one under her step the day before she disappeared.”

  “Did she?” Zach tears his eyes away from my pocket to look at me in surprise.

  “She never mentioned that to you?”

  “No, never. We were partying pretty hard that night, though. She was wasted.”

  I’m glad for the arrival of my food so I don’t have to speak for a few minutes. No matter how many times I hear it, I can’t wrap my head around the idea of Pat partying. She’s had this road map for her life for as long as I can remember — work hard, go to an Ivy League school on a full ride, study marine ecology, save the world. And she was not a girl for detours. Even Mark was part of The Plan. Presentable, but not too good-looking. Grateful for the tiny corner of her life she let him inhabit. She could take him to events that required a boyfriend and park him when she didn’t need him. I always thought he got a raw deal, but that’s the thing about Pat, she’s like a meteor rocketing through your life. You grab on to what you can, even if all you’re left with is cosmic dust.

  “Did Pat often get wasted?” I ask. Is it possible Tracy was right? Maybe Pat was getting threatened by someone who left the doll under her step to scare her. “Did she seem upset that night?”

  Zach looks out at the street. It’s still early; most of the shops haven’t opened, but there are already lots of people around — old ladies sweeping, a man pushing an empty cart toward the pier, some dreadlocked teenagers looking like they haven’t been to bed yet. Zach leans one arm on the porch railing as he considers my question.

  “Maybe,” he says finally.

  “So tell me,” I demand.

  “It was like weeks ago, man, and I was stoned.… ”

  “Just tell me what you remember, buddy.” I force my voice to remain calm. “Do it for Tricia.”

  “Well, it’s just that the night she disappeared, she was drinking, but she wasn’t drinking like her, you know?”

  “She wasn’t drinking like her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re losing me, Zach. If she wasn’t drinking like her, who was she drinking like?”

  “Me,” he says solemnly.

  I think about this for a moment. “You mean, she was drinking a lot? So she didn’t normally drink a lot? Just that night?”

  “Exactamundo.” He crosses his arms on the table and puts his head down. The effort of remembering has taken it out of him.

  “You okay, buddy?”

  He lifts his head and passes a hand over his eyes. Tears are seeping out. I exhale slowly before getting up to go round the table and pat his back. I should be charging for the amount of time I spend cleaning up the fallout of my sister’s recklessness. This was just supposed to be a simple summer gig. She’d get a bit of work experience, spend some time with the fish she loves so much and, most important, get a break from our mother. She wasn’t supposed to take up drinking or fall for some local guy. And she sure as hell had no business swimming at night, all by herself, after a night of drinking.

  ME: What were you doing, Pat? How could you let things get so out of control?

  PAT: Suck it up, little brother. You spent seventeen years letting me deal with Mom and every other problem that came our way. Don’t you think I deserved a bit of fun?

  ME: What was fun about getting drunk and jumping in the ocean at night?

  PAT: Well, you’re the authority on getting drunk. You tell me.

  ME:

  “Come on, Zach.” I stand up. “Let’s pay the bill and get out of here.”

  Zach pulls himself together, and we go inside to look for our waiter. We find him on the back porch, which is built right up against a steep wall of rock that’s part of the town hill. Zach insists on running back to our table to fetch food remnants for the iguanas that he claims live in the rocks. I’m skeptical, but sure enough, when he returns with a bit of bacon and tosses it across the railing, massive reptiles emerge from every nook and cranny.

  “I love this place.” Zach grins, and I’m so grateful to see him happy again that I grin right back. “We need Lemon Larry,” he says as we leave the restaurant.

  “Lemon Larry?”

  “Yeah. He’s this guy who’s lived here for like thirty years, and he’s always talking about this witch-doctor lady he visits way out in the bush somewhere. I don’t know if she’s practicing voodoo, but it’s definitely something like that. If Pat got a doll and disappeared and now you have a doll, we’ve got to get help quick before you disappear, too.”

  I doubt I’m in any real danger, but it’s very likely that the same person who tried to scare my sister is now trying to scare me, and that’s a lead I can’t ignore. “Do you know where this Larry guy lives?”

  “Yeah, but he won’t be there. He has breakfast at the Crackerjack.”

  So in this town not only do you see everyone you know, but you see them so often you learn their routines. I understand now why Dr. Jake was convinced something was wrong when Pat didn’t show up for her shift. Ten minutes of walking through the town, twenty if he stopped to chat with people, and he’d know she was well and truly missing.

  We walk for a full three minutes before hitting the restaurant where Lemon Larry eats with such frequency that the pattern has penetrated even Zach’s brain. I follow Zach up the steps and remind myself to ask him why every restaurant, hotel and most homes are built on stilts several feet above the ground. Zach weaves through the tables and slides onto a bench opposite a man with wrinkled brown skin the consistency of bark (obviously not a fan of sunscreen), but with startling blue eyes and a shock of blond hair. I’m guessing some Scandinavian blood, but when he starts talking, it’s impossible to be sure.

  “Zachary, my mate, where you been hiding yourself? I haven’t seen you for days.” They high-five.

  “Had to go to Ceiba, on the mainland,” says Zach.

  “Ah, well done, lad! After some Spanish lovin’, were ya? The mainland girls are the best. Most of them don’t speak a word of English. So much the better, I say.”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Get as much as you can while you’re young, lad. No lady can resist a hard body. And who’s this handsome fellow? How you doing, boy?” He holds out his hand.

  “This is Luke and he needs to see your friend, Lemon. The lady bush doctor.”

  “Like that, is it? Well don’t worry, lad. So what’s the problem? Can’t get it up? Don’t worry, she’ll fix you right quick.” He leans forward and whispers confidentially, “Had to take the cure myself a few times.”

  “He doesn’t have that problem!” Zach exclaims.

  “Oh, I see, the other then, is it? You need a love potion?” Lemon gives me a sympathetic look. “Strapping boy like you, I should have known. Your girl caught you with someone else, did she?”

  “He got a doll.”

  “A doll?” Lemon shakes his head. “That’s not going to work. She’s not a kid. It’s going to take a lot more than a doll to get back in her pants.”

  “Someone put a hex on him.”

  “Well, that’s a shame. Some girls are just spiteful. Are you sure she’s worth the trouble?”

  “Actually,” I say, “the thing is —”

  “Can your bush doctor friend get the spell off him?” Zach interrupts.

  “Likely, but don’t tell her what you did to deserve the hex, Luke, my boy. Had the very same problem last year. Needed a love potion for the Missus. Old Martha sold me the potion, then right down the river. Told the Missus everything.”

  “Where can we fi
nd Martha?” I ask.

  “I’ll draw you a map. She lives deep in the bush, so you want to set out early. It wouldn’t do to get caught out there after dark. There are crocs in the inner lagoons. Damn tree-huggers have brought ’em back from the brink of extinction. All well and good till you find yourself providing ’em dinner.”

  Lemon draws a complicated map on his paper napkin. In place of street names, he puts down landmarks, like Fentiman’s Folly and Blackish Point. He walks Zach through it. I try to follow, but it’s clear I’m going to need Zach’s help to find the place.

  “Stay on dry land” is Lemon’s final instruction. “If your feet are wet, you’re too far west. She’s a fair piece off the road, but she’s on the edge of the swamp, not in it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we’re walking out of there. Zach has the napkin in his pocket.

  “Can’t go till this afternoon,” says Zach. “If I don’t help with the dive this morning, I’m fired.”

  “No problem. Meet you later, then?”

  It’ll give me time to grill Jamie on his relationship with Pat. I might even bring up the voodoo doll, though if he did put it under my step, he’s not likely to admit it. We walk together toward Bluewater, since the Shark Center’s just beyond.

  The heat’s already making the air shimmer, and wet patches form under my arms. I’m out of clean shirts. Maybe I should do a wash before I head up the hill to look for Jamie. I could use another shower as well. For the first time, I look with longing at the snatches of aquamarine ocean peeking out from between buildings.

  “I need to bring in some new divers,” says Zach.

  Okay, not that much longing.

  “Good luck with that.”

  “There’s no one on the island who isn’t already certified or signed up for courses.”

  I glance at him and wish I hadn’t. He gives me a pleading look. “Sorry,” I say and speed up a little. We’re almost at Bluewater.

  “You wouldn’t have to do the whole course.”