VooDoo Follies

by Butler, Christine M.

  The VooDoo Follies

  Complete Series

  Christine M. Butler

  ***

  The VooDoo Follies

  Complete Series

  Christine M. Butler

  Copyright © 2011 Christine M. Butler

  Book Cover © 2011 Christine M. Butler

  All rights reserved.

  Smashwords Edition

  ***

  DEDICATION

  For my daughter, Bella, the inspiration for Seraphine. You are so amazing, even in your clumsiness!

  For my other children, Devlin, Alex, and Lexy because you guys were always so patient with me when I was writing!

  For my mother, who has always been there to read my work and let me know when I screw up and my dad who humors me when I show him new book cover designs even though he'd rather be watching the news!

  To Tony, who never stopped believing in me.

  For Patria Dunn who was my inspiration to keep going with this series. If it weren’t for her constantly asking where the rest of it was, I would probably still be sitting here procrastinating! ;)

  And a special acknowledgement for the amazingly fun font that I used for the cover and the chapter titles in the paperback book unfotunately it does not pull over into the formatting for my E-Books at this time. The creator gives this font away for free with no strings attached, and therefor deserves a very special thank you!

  Demons & Darlings Font by Chad Savage

  http://www.sinisterfonts.com

  ***

  The VooDoo Follies

  Part One: The Source

  Original Publication Date:

  July 26, 2011

  I am Seraphine LaLande, VooDoo Priestess! Well, not quite.

  In order to be a priestess I have to first successfully raise a zombie, make it do my bidding, and then tuck it back in for the eternal dirt nap it was supposed to have to begin with. Of course, being me, things don’t go according to plan. The trouble all started when my zombie ran off into the night...

  ***

  Raising the Dead

  “I’m standing over the grave now. I’ve got everything, Auntie. Yes, I promise. Of course, I brought the powder.” My aunt continued to blab into my ear for what felt like forever, but was probably only five minutes. “Auntie! We’ve practiced. I’m ready. I’m standing in a grave yard waiting to either do this or have someone discover me. Okay, the laptop’s all set.” I clicked my cell phone off and stuffed it into the front pocket of my jeans. Then, I turned to my laptop which was sitting somewhat precariously on the top of Adrianna Sawyer’s headstone. I invited my Auntie Perrine into a video chat with me. As soon as she answered the call I shrugged at her. “There, now you can see everything. Just don’t do anything to distract me while I perform the ritual.”

  “Seraphine!” Perrine’s sharp tone caught my attention immediately. I knew I had just stepped over a line with my attitude, but I was nervous, grumpy, and the last place I wanted to be was in a cemetery at midnight when I had a paper to write on The Scarlett Letter for English class.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Child, I know you’re excited about this, but...”

  ‘I know,” I said, cutting off what could have been a very long lecture, “I have to focus my thoughts so nothing goes wrong.” Thankfully, my Auntie Perrine just smiled and nodded at me, choosing to stay quite this time so I could get on with the business of raising the dead.

  I couldn’t become a full fledged Voodoo Priestess until I completed the task of raising a person from the dead to do my bidding. A zombie. Even I had giggled at the idea when it was first mentioned. I mean, the CDC has a zombie outbreak plan on their website as a joke. No one believes zombies are real, and yet here I am standing in a grave yard about to try to make one while my Auntie watches via web-cam.

  She should be here in person for this. Really, I should be there. My mom got it in her head to up and marry the latest and greatest boyfriend that came strolling through her life. She wasn’t into the voodoo that our family had been practicing for generations, not unless it served her love life, anyway. So, my Auntie Perrine was the one to teach me. When I had to move away with my mom after she married the latest step loser-dejour, Auntie Perrine tried to keep up the lessons with modern day technology.

  “Okay, I’m ready to begin.” A nod from my computer told me that Auntie Perrine felt so too. I gathered up the salt that I would need to seal a protective circle around the grave, with me inside it. The circle would keep me safe from any wandering spirits and it would focus my will to this one particular grave. No one needs an Army of zombies rising from their grave by accident. I wasn’t even sure it was possible to raise more than one zombie at a time, but I didn’t want to find out the hard way.

  I was just completing my circle, salting the earth as I went, making sure that the salt circle sealed all the way around when I heard something behind me. It sounded like something falling or jumping to the ground and my body jerked out of reflex. Hey, Voodoo Priestess or not, cemeteries in the middle of the night were still spooky. A cat ran from behind a headstone looking a bit scared and none to friendly. I quietly turned back to what I was doing. Choosing to ignore the excitement and finish my zombie raising project for the night. I glanced up at Auntie Perrine. I had already started the ceremony, so she couldn’t say a word to me now. It was the way of our people. Learn by trial, learn by error, hope for another opportunity to set things right - should you fail. I hated that tradition at this moment, because my Auntie looked like she was biting her tongue pretty damn hard. I put the thought out of my mind and continued on with what I was doing. I fixed the bones, the blood, and the special powder within the ceremonial bowl just as I was supposed to, and then I put forth all my energy into chanting the words that were needed to raise the dead from the grave.

  I didn’t know Adrianna before she died. She had been in my Algebra class freshman year, but we never really talked. I picked her grave only because it was the freshest one we’d had in our little rinky-dink suburban hell-hole of a town, and even then I had to travel over to Baltimore’s Bohemian Cemetery in order to find her grave. You would think people would die more in the suburbs outside of a major city like Baltimore.

  I finished my chanting, and pricked my finger, adding some of my own live blood and wild magic to the mix. I waited, hoping I hadn’t failed, and looking at Auntie Perrine’s troubled visage in my laptop screen. Minutes ticked by and still I waited, shoulders slumping as defeat drew in around me. Then, as I was about to pack everything up, I felt a shudder in the ground. I looked down at the freshly planted sod and dirt beneath my feet when nothing else happened, thinking I must have imagined it. Then, my eyes bugged out a little as I felt it again, much stronger this time. The dirt and grass above the grave site were beginning to look a little disturbed. Then, I saw in the moonlight, one bone pale finger sticking out of the ground after another. No, not sticking out - digging out of the ground. My face must have told of my success because I looked up long enough to see Auntie Perrine nodding with satisfaction from her vantage point on the headstone.

  By the time Adrianna had all but clawed her way completely out of the ground I finally managed to pull myself together and help her the rest of the way. She stood there looking confused, started to speak several times, and then just didn’t, as if she had forgotten how. It was in that moment that I felt absolutely ashamed to have raised her from the dead at all. If this is what it meant to be a priestess to my people one day, to disturb the eternal slumber of someone I once knew in some capacity, then I no longer wanted it. I picked up the ceremonial bowl and was about to reverse the process and lay Adrianna back to rest without completing the task at hand. I was supposed to give her two command
s to follow and then lay her to rest, but commands be damned. This was more than I bargained for. Seeing the dead girl that I had Algebra class with only last year had hit a nerve inside me. Or perhaps I just lost my nerve all together. I didn’t get the chance to really debate that in my head because Adrianna was walking out of what was supposed to be a very closed circle. I looked up and saw my Auntie Perinne’s face go three shades paler than her already light skinned creole body could manage. Truth be told, I think even my spattering of freckles ran and hid amongst the pale pallor that now swallowed up my own face. All the blood rushed from my body in one solid sheet as panic set in. My zombie had just walked away. That definitely wasn’t supposed to happen!

  ***

  Adrianna sawyer comes home

  The thoughts were pinging through my head at warp speed.

  ‘Why was I dirty?’

  ‘What the hell was I wearing a prom dress for? No, not a prom dress, but something my mom used to make me wear to church when I was little.’

  ‘Why was I just standing in the Bohemian Cemetery with that weird new girl from Algebra class? And how did I get there to begin with? Maybe, I went to visit grandpa?’

  I tried to think about how I had gotten there, but the questions just kept plaguing my mind and repeating themselves, as if I had the answers my thoughts demanded. The last thing I remember was driving home from the football game. “Wait,” I surprised myself by speaking out loud and my thoughts got all jumbled up again. Something about my voice didn’t sound right to my ears. I sounded gravely and hoarse, like I had been sick or screaming too much. The football game hadn’t been that exciting. I just sat in the stands playing my trumpet and joking the cheerleaders’ stupid routines with Stephen.

  ‘Stephen.’ The thought was there like a voice in my head trying to remind me of something.

  I left the football game. I remembered that. Then, the memory was gone with a poof as I looked up and realized I had a long way to go to my house. I sighed and thought about calling my mom to come get me, but I didn’t really feel like trying to explain things I couldn’t remember. She would think I was on drugs! Right now, I thought maybe I was on drugs. And then I thought ten thousand other things all at once. I patted at the hideous, filthy dress I was in and no pockets were to be found. Apparently, I couldn’t call anyone with my cell phone since I didn’t seem to have it.

  I kept walking, wondering where I left my phone. My fingers twitched periodically, as if remembering how to text. A million more questions went unanswered in my brain as my feet walked the two and half or so miles to my house in Rosedale. All along the way I was being distracted by the blaring horns of cars on the highway as I accidentally shuffled onto the road oblivious. At least none of them hit me. My mom would be so devastated to find me dead along the road.

  ‘Where in the hell is my car?’

  My thoughts started racing again and my feet continued to shuffle until I looked up and realized I had reached my destination. I was home, but it didn’t look like anyone else was. Vaguely I recalled the hide-a-key that mom had cleverly stowed away in her garden gnome’s butt. I left the front stoop and went to look.

  I picked up the gnome and shook it until the key popped out. Smiling, I walked up to the door and got ready to open it when I noticed my car in the driveway with a for sale sign in the window. “What the hell?” I wondered out loud and was once again surprised by my own voice. It sounded gruff and unused. I looked down at the key I held in my hand and started walking to the car, ‘I’ll just drive home.’ I was thinking to myself before I looked down at the key in my hand and realized I was really dirty still. I thought better of getting in my car till I had a shower. I looked back up at my house and it occurred to me that I was already here. Before a million more thoughts could overtake my brain and confuse me I unlocked the door, put the spare key on the table just inside, and went to my room to get different clothes on.

  I walked straight into the middle of my room before I realized I was in the wrong place. I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. I was so utterly confused. I stood, hoping I hadn’t walked into the wrong house. ‘Oh, God, what if someone comes home and shoots me?’ ‘No, see there, that’s my dresser.’ I noticed the place where I spilled nail polish down the side and tried to clean it off with nail polish remover only to take part of the paint away with it. I walked over and touched the spot, wondering where all my things had gone. I was backing away slowly when I tripped over something. “Who leaves a box in the middle of the floor?” My gruff voice was bordering on demanding and whiny. The box had writing on it. “Adrianna’s clothes.”

  ‘Why are my things boxed up?’ I was about to open the box when someone screamed behind me. I jumped up and turned around, waiting to be shot after all. This was most certainly some sort of freaky dream I was having that I couldn’t get a hold of. I couldn’t wake up either, and that pinching yourself thing didn’t seem to be working for me. A few moments slid by as I watched my mother hyperventilating in her nightgown in front of me before something triggered in my brain telling me it was her. “Mom?”

  She fainted.

  It wasn’t long before my mom came to. I was just sitting there, very still, on the floor in front of her. I thought about calling 911 before she started to move again, but then the questions started rolling through my head unchecked and unstoppable. She started screaming again and all I could do was sit there and stare at her questioningly. “Mom? What is going on?”

  She reached out a hand to me with such a hurt look on her face, then she snatched it back out of the air before she could make contact with me. “Oh, God!” Her sobs were growing louder as she spoke, “I really have lost it then.” She tucked her head down and cried softly for a few moments. Then with some sort of fierce passion in her eyes she looked back up at me, “but if I am loosing it, at least I get to see my baby girl again!”

  “Mom,” I spoke quietly so I wouldn’t upset her as I had before, “what is going on? I am so confused.”

  “I don’t know how this is possible.” Her answer was not helpful in the least.

  “How what is possible?”

  “You. Here. You’re alive, but how?”

  “I’m what? Wait...” I looked at her as if she really had lost her mind. Obviously, she was a bit unstable today. I couldn’t really say much about that with my lack of focus, but this was ridiculous. She thought I had been dead. I guess that explained the car for sale and all my things boxed up. “Dead?” There, I said it. It was more of a question, but it was out there for her to answer. She just stared at me with that unbelieving look again.

  “Where do you think you’ve been for the past three weeks, Adrianna?”

  “What do you mean the past few weeks?” Jumbles of questions began their dance through my head again, but I managed to push them back a little. “I was just at the game with Stephen and...”

  My mom’s wince cut me off. She looked as though I had just broken her.

  “Oh, my baby girl,” she was crooning to me as she came closer. I sat still, waiting for that touch, as though I had been without for a very long time and had missed it dearly. Her hand was like fire when it connected with my face. “Mom,” I squeaked out, but again she cut me off.

  “You’re so cold.” Tears were flowing down her face and her practiced nurse’s fingers traced along the delicate line of my jaw down to the dirt encrusted column of my throat, feeling for a pulse that I only just now realized wasn’t there. “Oh!” She jumped. Then she began backing away from me. “What are you?”

  “I’m you’re daughter.”

  “Where did you come from tonight?” She was looking at me again. This time she was taking in everything about me. I think it’s the first time she saw how dirty I was because her nose wrinkled in distaste. The dress was enough to wrinkle my own nose, but I could see where the dirt would be an issue. My thoughts jumbled together again as I tried to put together the pieces of what had just happened.

  “How did you g
et here tonight?” She managed to ask me while continuing to back herself out of my room slowly. She was moving in the kind of slow speed backwards crawl you do when there’s an angry animal in front of you that you want to get away from, but don’t want to antagonize or startle with a speedy retreat.

  “I walked.” I watched her continuing to back up.

  “From where?”

  “Grandpa’s cemetery. I was there with...” I had to think. There was someone else there with me. “That new girl, the one from my Algebra class.”

  “You had Algebra last year, Adrianna.”

  “Yeah, but that’s how I knew her.” I stopped, trying to think again of how I got there and when I couldn’t I just continued on. “Look, the last thing I knew I was at the football game, leaving it actually. Then I remember being in the graveyard with that weird chick and I walked home because I couldn’t find my cell phone and I didn’t know where my car was, and then I got here and every thing’s different and you’re scared of me.” I was crying by now, only without the aid of the tears that I so wished would fall from my face right now.

  “Oh, Adrianna!” My mom looked like she wanted to come wrap her arms around me and run from me all at the same time. I’ve prayed day and night for God to give you back to me. I have made deals, begged, screamed and cried. I don’t think God is the one that sent you back to me though.”

  “Sent me back?” The question rolled off my lips as a hundred more rattled my brain. I had no pulse. My first memory in weeks was of standing in a graveyard filthy, and completely confused. And now my mom talks about praying to get me back and how I wasn’t sent by God. I knew this meant something big, but the pieces weren’t clicking together. They all kept getting jumbled up with other questions and bits of information I had gathered since... since I … “arrrgghhh,” I finally screamed out in frustration, “I don’t understand.”