Bad Juju: A Novel of Raw Terror (27 page)

“Like my vision.” Ree shuddered.
“Was I in the shop?”

“Don’t know. You know how dreams
are. I guess you were in dreamland.”

“Well, did he get me?”

“No, you woke me up before he
could. What time is it?”

She looked across his chest at the
red numerals on the clock on the bedside table. “One-forty-four.” She kissed
his shoulder and draped her leg over him so that her inner thigh rested lightly
on his genitals.

“Let’s get out of town for a few
days,” he said. “Take a little vacation. You can close the shop for a couple of
days, can’t you?”

“Well...”

“Go down to Florida. St. Augustine.
I love that place. You ever been there?”

“No, Ben and I used to always go to
Panama City.”

“Too crowded. Too many drunk, horny
kids. St. Augustine is quieter. A place where you can touch history.”

Ree slipped her hand between her
thigh and his belly and caressed his semi-flaccid penis. “I’d rather touch
this.”

“Damn, Shorty, you trying to send
me to an early grave?”

“No! Don’t say that.” She withdrew
her hand, but Luke caught it and drew it back to this groin.

“Just kidding,” he said. “I’m just
about too old for an early grave, anyway. Go ahead and do your worst—I mean
your best.”

She gave his stiffening member a
playful yank. He rolled over on top of her, and they made love once more. A
short while later, he fell asleep and resumed the dream of someone with a
bloody machete stalking Ree.

*** 

The fog was so thick he couldn’t
see the house. But he saw the last light go off in the writer’s window. What
was the name of that book he was writing? Corny couldn’t think of it. He
caressed the cool blade laid across his lap and tried not to think about what
the voices had told him to do. The pool of water he was sitting in no longer
felt so cold on his butt, but the coolness of the ground seemed to find its way
up through his bumhole and into his belly, twisting and turning through his
intestines, rising into his stomach and streaming into his chest. He hoped
those little hookworms they’d warned him about in school weren’t crawling up
inside him with the cold. Those things did bad things to you once they got
inside you. He didn’t remember what exactly, but he knew it was bad. The voices
that were inside him didn’t seem bad, though they wanted him to do very bad
things. But things weren’t always how they seemed. His mother used to say that
when she was still alive, and he figured that was the case with what the voices
told him he had to do. He’d always been a little afraid of Whisperer, but these
new voices didn’t make him afraid. They made him feel strong and sure. Like he
could do no wrong as long as he did what they said. They were pretty quiet now;
so quiet he could hardly hear them over the noisy singing of the tree frogs and
the crickets and whatever else was out there in the woods making all that racket.
A snake crawled out of the fog in front of him. It was impossible to tell what
color it was in the dark and the fog, but he thought it was black. And it was
slithering right for him with its head raised out of the wet grass. He raised
the machete and was about to bring the blade down on the little serpent’s neck
when the voices stopped him and told him it was their snake and that he
couldn’t kill it. They even told him the snake’s name. It sounded something
like Simon or Seemon, like a foreign name, but he wasn’t sure. He just knew he
wasn’t to hurt it. The snake paused at his crooked knee and lifted its flared
head over his jeans, flicking out its tongue, then it slithered over his leg
and into his lap. Corny moved his hand out of the creature’s way, and it darted
its head into the waist of his jeans. He didn’t like this one little bit, but
the bossy voices told him to hold still and let the snake have its way. It was
cold and icky against his belly as it disappeared into his pants. It slithered
down past his dick and balls and up the crack of his butt. He gasped as it
entered him, but the voices wouldn’t let him move to stop it. His anus tingled
as the snake’s muscles propelled it deeper inside him, but he couldn’t even
squeeze his asshole tight to stop it.

“Holy crap, I got a durn snake up
my butt,” he said, or thought he said, but probably just thought it real loud.
It didn’t feel bad, not really. Actually it felt kind of good, so good he got
another hard-on. It was sort of like the time when he was little, lying in bed
one night and for no good reason he stuck one of his mother’s clothespins up
his butt and beat his meat. He thought of beating off now, but the voices told
him it was time to go into the house and do what they wanted him to do. He got
to his feet and headed for the back door. As he turned the knob and pulled the
door open, he suddenly remembered the name of the writer’s book and he
whispered it out loud:
“Bloody Graves.”

***

Boots Birdwell couldn’t sleep. He
hadn’t been afraid of the dark since his childhood in Florida, but now, as he
lay abed, the darkness of his room oppressed him and filled him with
apprehension. He reached up and turned on his bedside lamp, and the darkness
fled into shadowy corners, still there but weakened by the light and not quite
as scary.

He got up and crept down the hall
to his granddaughter’s room and peeked in to make sure she was all right. The
nightlight gave a soft illumination to her room, and he could see that Eartha
had her head stuffed beneath her pillow, but that she was breathing. Sweet
girl, and smart, too. She was going places, better than the places he’d been
to, he was sure.

Boots was in the bathroom trying to
pee when the phone rang. His prostate had been grieving him a lot lately, and
he suspected the worst: cancer. He put himself back in the folds of his pajama
bottoms and padded on his bare feet to the phone in the kitchen. “’Lo,” he
said.

“Brother Birdwell? Somethin’ bad’s
’bout to happen in town. You got to try an’ stop it.”

“That you, Miz Odessa?”

“’Course it’s me,” rumbled the old
lady. “Get on over to that boardin’ house on Poplar Street. That’s where they
are.”

“Them?”

“Yes, Lawd,
them
. The
Yawahoos. It come to me in a vision. They found their puppet an’ they ’bout to
pull his strings.”

“You know who it is?” His pulse was
thudding and whooshing in his ears.

“I don’t know his name, but look
for somebody who ain’t right in the head. They always seek the lowest level,
like foul water flowing into a sump. Get on over there now.”

Boots sighed, his windy breath
feeding back to him in the phone’s earpiece. “But you said there ain’t nothin’
we can do. We too old, remember?”

“I know what I said, but I had this
vision and I think I was wrong about that.”

“What did you see?”

“Killin’. Lots of killin’. Ohhh, it
hurt my heart to see it. So much innocent blood shed.”

“Miz Odessa, how can
I
stop
it? I’m just uh ol’ worn-out preacher.”

“We ain’t got time to argue ’bout
it,” she said, raising her voice. “You an’ me are the only ones who seen it
before. Now get on! I’ll be doin’ some spells here that might help. Somethin’
will come to you. Now go!”

She hung up. Boots replaced the
receiver and stared at the yellowed kitchen wallpaper, noting how much the blue
flowers had faded over the years, and it made him feel sad and terribly old.

***

Corny stole up the stairs, wincing
each time a stair step creaked underfoot. He held the machete down by his right
leg and he could swear he heard the blade ringing softly in the darkness as if
an invisible clapper had struck it. The blade was alive and hungry. It
translated its hunger through his hand and all the way up to his head, turning
hunger into what felt like lust. The snake in his belly was coiled into a tight
spiral of cold-blooded passion, and he knew that the snake was directing him as
much as the voices were, commanding his actions and overcoming his resistance.
When he reached the top of the stairs, he crept softly down the hallway to his
aunt’s room. The single nightlight plugged into the outlet halfway down the
hall threw odd shadows, splotchy and somehow cold. His own distorted shadow
moved along the floor and the lower wall like a slithering serpent, and Corny
knew in his heart that his shadow was not merely his own—the things inside him
were casting their shadows with his. He reached out, turned the heavy glass
doorknob and gently pushed the door inward. He stepped into his aunt’s room and
moved soundlessly to the brass bed where she lay sleeping. She was on her back,
her head resting on a thin pillow. Even in the dim light from the hallway he
could see the white flesh of Aunt Mattie’s throat, and he knew this was the
place to strike. He raised the machete over his shoulder. The blade sang softly
to him, and the chorus of voices in his head sang along in delirious harmony.

Cut the vine
, they sang.
Cut
the vine and free the soul.

A familiar voice cut through the
din of voices inside his skull: “Corny, no. Don’t do it. It’s murder.”

He looked up and saw his dead
father standing on the other side of his aunt’s bed. Big Bill Weehunt stood
tall and proud in the faint light, just as he’d always stood when he was alive.
His father’s eyes were alive with sadness and pleading.

“Daddy?” whispered Corny.

“I taught you better than this,”
said his father. “Didn’t I?”

The voices in his head grew louder,
hissing and chanting their commands. Corny’s unnatural shadow came off the bed
and the wall and leapt upon the ghost of his father, obscuring the fragile
spirit-body, and Corny knew they were eating his daddy’s soul. A tear ran down
his cheek as his father was lost to him forever. The serpent in his belly began
to uncoil, setting off horrible cramps in his gut. His churning intestines
threatened to foul his shorts.

Cut the vine
, the
shadow-voices screamed.
Cut the vine and free the soul.

***

Luke grabbed the phone before the
third ring. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.

“Mistuh Chief? This is Boots
Birdwell. Now I know you ain’t chief no more, but I can’t call Chief Keller
’cause he thinks I’m just a crazy old nigra. So you got to call ’em and tell
’em to get over to Miz Weehunt’s boardin’ house quick. Something bad’s gone
happen there. May be it already has. Somebody got to get over there.”

“Boots, what the hell are you
talking about? Have you been drinking?”

“No, suh, I ain’t been drinking.
Now you got to get somebody over there fast. Maybe they can stop him before he
kills too many.”

“Stop
who
?”

“I ain’t sure, but I think it’s
probably that Weehunt boy whose head ain’t right. He’s the only one I can think
of who’d make a good puppet.”

“You know how crazy you sound?”

“Cain’t help that. Just get over
there. You’ll see what I’m saying. I got to go. I don’t know if I can stop it,
but I got to try.”

The line went dead. Luke hung up
the phone.

“What was that all about?” asked
Ree, touching his shoulder.

“Damned if I know. It was ol’ Boots
Birdwell, the black preacher who does janitor work for the department. He says
something’s going on at Mattie Weehunt’s boarding house and that I’ve got to do
something about it before people get killed.”

“My goodness.
Did
he sound
drunk?”

“No. He’s never done anything like
this before. He’s a devout Christian, and smart as a whip. This isn’t like him
at all. I don’t know how he knows, but if he says something’s going on there,
then it probably is.”

Luke picked up the phone and called
the station. Alvin Snow answered, and Luke told him that he’d had a tip that
something was happening at the boarding house and suggested that Snow send a
squad car over there to check things out. Snow said he would. Then Luke got up,
found the phone book and called the listed number for Matilda Weehunt. He hated
to wake her up in the middle of the night for nothing, but his gut told him
that this was no false alarm.

After the tenth unanswered ring, he
cradled the phone and started getting dressed. “I’m going over there. I think
something really is wrong.”

“Are you forgetting you aren’t a
cop anymore?” Ree asked, sitting up and hugging the sheet to her breasts.

“Hell, Shorty, I’ll always be a
cop. I guess I’ve got donut jelly in my blood.”

He pulled his boots on, stood and
kissed her lips.

“Be careful,” she said with arched
brows. “You better come back to me in one piece.”

***

The phone stopped ringing just
before Corny ripped its cord from the wall. He avoided looking at the bloody
thing in his aunt’s bed. It wasn’t Aunt Mattie anymore, not really, but he
didn’t want to see it again. He didn’t understand how the things inside him
could make him see so clearly in the dark, but somehow they did, and he’d seen
all too clearly the way the machete’s blade had hacked into the old woman’s fat
neck and opened up her throat like the pale belly of a skinned rabbit. The
blood had gushed out like oil from a well, making him think of that theme song
from
The Beverley Hillbillies
, and the song started running through his
head. The “bubbling crude” from his aunt’s throat looked oily, darker than
blood was supposed to look, and Corny knew then that the things inside him
craved blood and that they were feeding on it, even though he couldn’t see them
doing it. They robbed the blood of its redness and turned it dark like oil. If
he cut himself now, would his blood be black, too? The snake undulated in his
belly, and warm liquid squirted out of his bumhole, fouling his shorts. The
stench drove him from the room, but that was stupid, he realized, because the
source of the stench was in his pants. The voices told him to go to the next
room, where the soul of Kirby Cone waited to be freed by Corny’s magic blade.