VooDoo Follies

by Butler, Christine M.

  "Hmm, well, the small screen then, maybe." Tina laughed at me as we pulled up to her house.

  "My mom said she was going to be gone tonight. I think she has a date that she's hoping will end at his place for the night." I raised my eyebrows up in question.

  "She's probably right, my mom's model gorgeous."

  "Well, it will be a good thing for us tonight. Hopefully my plan works and we won't have to worry about your Vampire Dave anymore."

  "I hope so, because if he tries to drink any more of my blood, I am going to die."

  "Tina, can I ask you something?"

  "Sure."

  "Do you believe in ghosts?"

  "Well, I definitely believe in magic, and now vampires, why not ghosts too?"

  "I can see them." I wanted to spill it all out there in the open for her, mostly because I wanted one other soul who wasn't like a parent to me to know what I was going through right now. I wanted to be able to talk to someone who wasn't one of the two ghost boys that I had feelings for.

  "You see dead people?" Tina laughed, "isn't that kind of movie-theater cliche? Who's the drama-queen now?" Tina stopped laughing when she saw the serious, and very disappointed look on my face. "Oh, you were serious?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, how do you know, I mean, is there one here now?"

  "No, but there was earlier today."

  "Oh my God! Who was here earlier? That's kind of creepy, Seraphine. I mean, it's bad enough I have to worry about a vampire killing me, now I have to worry about what ghosts want with me?"

  "Oh! No, it's not you!"

  "So, you have ghosts after you then?" Tina's face had flushed and she seemed genuinely worried.

  "No," I smiled and grabbed her by the shoulders, sitting her down on her bed. "Let me explain." Tina waited for me to get started.

  "You remember when I told you about raising zombies?"

  "Yeah."

  "Well, I really did raise a zombie, as part of my voodoo training. I raised Adrianna Sawyer a few months ago."

  "You did what?"

  "I know, I know... I shouldn't have, but she was the only person I knew who had died recently, and I didn't think it would matter that much, but things got out of control." I sat there and told Tina the whole terrifying story of how I brought Adrianna back, how she got away, and how I met Stephen - who helped me put Adrianna back in the ground. I told her all about what happened with Stephen and Trevor and my feelings for the both of them. Tina listened, and for her part she refrained from comment until I was done with my story.

  "Wow, Seraphine, no wonder you were so jumpy the first day I met you. I thought maybe you had a drug problem or something, but this more than explains a few things." She went to her mirror and took down the picture of Stephen. "You know, you were the one he was always looking at." She handed me the picture, "it's a shame you never noticed him when he was alive." I took the picture and fought to hold back the tears that wanted to fall. That's when I noticed the two spirits hanging around the doorway. I didn't have to be a genius to know that they both heard everything. The looks on their faces were enough. I couldn't really face either of them at the moment, so I tucked the picture into my pocket and got busy getting ready to hex the bag of blood that I had stolen from the hospital earlier.

  I noticed Tina shivering, "it got really cold in here all of a sudden, I think I'm going to go turn the heat back up."

  "Don't bother, it's Stephen and Trevor."

  "It's what? They're both here?" Tina looked around her room, confused. "I still don't understand how Trevor can be here. I mean, he isn't dead yet."

  "No, he isn't. That's why he's not a ghost in the usual sense."

  "I wish I could see them too. It must be really cool for you to be able to do it."

  I cocked my head up towards Tina and the expression on my face must have been enough for her to remember all the heartache that came along with being able to see both boys. "I need a couple drops of your blood to add to this."

  "Sorry about that. I didn't..."

  "I know, now just give me your finger so I can get the blood and get this ready," I looked over at her window and the darkening sky, "we don't have much time." I pricked her finger with a sewing needle and milked the spot on her finger for a few drops of her blood to add to the mixture. "May you now have the most undesirable blood in the world." I said to her and she smiled.

  ***

  De-Fanged

  "We're not sure if vampires can see you guys, so you need to at least hang out over in the corner out of sight until he's in the room."

  "Seraphine," Tina looked from me to the empty space she was seeing me talk to and back again, "that's really weird. I mean, I know you're talking to them, but it's still..."

  "You should tell her that it wouldn't hurt to get some brighter colors in here. No wonder a vampire wants to eat her."

  "Trevor!" I was beginning to get a headache, between all the back and forth bickering amongst people who couldn't communicate with each other.

  "What did he say?" Tina had the good sense to feel insulted even when she didn't hear what he had to say. "I can't believe you ever liked him, he's such a..."

  "ENOUGH!" I yelled. All of you, just be quiet." Before I could say any more the bedroom door burst open and in sauntered Vampire Dave.

  "Ahh, my sweet, I see you brought a snack for me." A sneer was thrown my way, that I ignored as I backed further into the room and away from him. "You know, love, that your blood is the only stuff I crave though." I saw my opening, so I took it.

  "Speaking of that, what are you going to do after you drain her tonight? Then you won't have any more of her blood. Have you thought of that?"

  "Indeed, I have, and I am willing to wager that once my lovely has expired I will no longer have such a craving." He was probably right, but I didn't want him to know that.

  "And what if you're wrong? What if you continue to crave only her blood once you have drunk her dry? What then?"

  "I suppose you are going somewhere with this line of questioning, let's hear it before I decide I want your blood too."

  I pulled the thermos full of hexed blood off the top of Tina's dresser and held it out for him to take. "It's a spell reversal. It will stop you from craving Tina's blood so you can go about your regularly scheduled diet."

  "My Little Pony?" The vampire questioned with a laugh when he noticed the design on the thermos.

  I shrugged. If I were watching this scenario take place, I would have been laughing right along with the vampire. It was ridiculous to serve a vampire blood out of a My Little Pony thermos, but this is what we had to work with. "You don't have to love the container, just drink whats in it."

  "And what if drinking this means I will want to eat you when I am done, instead of your friend?" Stephen and Trevor both jumped forward, ready to protect me, if they could.

  Vampire Dave turned at the sound and jumped back, putting him in closer proximity to me. Not that he noticed, his eyes were all for Stephen and Trevor. "What sort of abomination..." Dave turned and looked at me then, keeping his body angled so he could still see the boys from his peripheral vision. "You are in league with the Unknown!" It was an accusation, not a statement.

  "They are just here to ensure nothing bad happens to me," I played on his fears and watched as he stood still as a statue, debating on what to do next.

  "Fine. I will drink your potion, and for your sake, hope that it works." He looked around the room from Tina, who stood in the far corner, to me, and then the two boys who stood on his other side. "Your protectors will not always be around." He picked up the thermos and drank from it, at first delighting in the taste that the lust spell had invoked, but as he drank more, I watched as his delight turned to disgust and he stopped drinking and set the thermos down. He reached out with lightening like reflexes and drew a clawed finger across my arm, drawing blood. He put the nail, full of my blood, in his mouth and gagged almost immediately. "What have you done to me?" Fear snaked across
his expression, the already pale visage that was staring at me with wide eyes lost the last bit of color it had gained from the blood he drank. "You've poisoned me."

  "No, I did not."

  "You did." Vampire Dave looked from me to Tina and then to the two dead boys in the room. "You will figure out how to undo this too, or I will see to it that you are the kind of dead that doesn't come back."

  "I don't understand."

  "I do," it was the first time Tina had spoken since Vampire Dave showed up. "He's lost his taste for my blood, and everyone else's too."

  "You knew this would happen?" I was aghast at the thought that Tina had known and put us all in danger anyway.

  "I wasn't sure, but when you mixed my blood with the other stuff, I thought it may have that effect."

  "Why? Why didn't you say anything?" I was beyond furious. "Why would you let me do this if you knew it could end up this way?"

  "Why not? He would have drank me dry. If you fixed him, do you think he would have walked out of here and never done that to another person? He deserves this. He would have killed me, and then he would have killed you just for witnessing what he did."

  "Holy crap! Every time I think I've made a friend here, every time I think I can trust someone... I just... someone take the God-damn knife out of my back already." I grabbed up my bag and started for the bedroom door, about to walk away from all the craziness that my life in Rosedale had led to. That is, I was about to walk out the door before a very strong grip on my arm stopped me short.

  "You will go nowhere until you get this fixed and you had better do it right this time, because it will be your last attempt should you fail." I did not even question the violence I saw in those eyes. Nor did I question the fact that it shouldn't have been turned on me. This was my punishment for caring enough to try to help someone out of an impossible situation. This was my punishment for dabbling in magic that I had no business messing with. I flopped down to the floor, staring at my bag of supplies and wishing I was anywhere else in the world right now. "I do not have time to watch you sit and mope. You need to get busy."

  My anger got the best of me as I stood again and started yelling right in the vampire's face, "Listen here, Vampire Dave, I don't really care what you have time for. I don't have any ideas at the moment, and until one comes to me - I can't exactly act on it, now can I? You saw how my last idea panned out. Would you like me to jump on something and do it in an half-assed way again, or would you like to shut the hell up and let me actually think?" I would probably ask myself later what the hell possessed me to yell at a vampire that could kill me in less time than it took my heart to beat, but in that moment, I was just ready to be done with my life as I knew it. So, I didn’t care what the consequences were.

  "You have de-fanged me. I don't care how you do it, all I care is that you cure me before the night is out." He pushed me aside and went to sit in the fuzzy black chair I had slept in last night.

  I sat again, not thinking, staring off into space. I can't say that I wasn't thinking, it was more like there were too many thoughts coming so fast that I couldn't keep pace with everything. I only knew that I wanted to be done with all of it. I wanted to go back to leading a quiet life without all the drama. That's when I heard the beeping. Trevor jumped up and Tina's laptop, that we had left sitting on her bed earlier now had a pop-up asking if she wanted to turn on the filter keys. Trevor had sat on a key too long. He realized it at the same time I did and turned around to try to type. It didn't work, his hands kept going through the keys.

  "Maybe, if you type with your magic ass, it will work!" Stephen wasn't amused with how everything had gone down tonight either. He walked over to the laptop and carefully lay his finger on top of one of the keys. Again, the loud beep and the warning about filtering keys.

  "Tina, pull up a word program, quick." She did as she was told and started communicating with the boys on her own that way while I thought of what to do about the vampire situation.

  An hour later and I felt a kick to the arm that had been holding my head up. "I do believe you bypassed thinking and went straight to a nap. Get busy fixing me, or we shall greet the sun together for a final time."

  "So, you guys are going to switch bodies?" Tina stopped and thought a second, "wait, you know what I meant. Seraphine's going to do a spell so Stephen will end up in Trevor's body and Trevor will remain a ghost-unknown-thing forever?"

  The word "YES" appeared on the computer screen. I stopped paying any attention to their conversation after that. My thoughts went back to the vampire beside me.

  "Seraphine," Trevor sat down next to me on the floor. I noticed Vampire Dave pull his legs back a little further. "I've been thinking."

  "Well, good for you, Trevor! It's about time." Vampire Dave actually laughed, as did Stephen.

  "Ha ha," Trevor mocked as he continued on, "your blood hex only backfired because you couldn't get enough of her blood to use, so you had to mix it with donor blood right?"

  "I think so, yeah."

  "So, what if you use the rest of the donor blood, mixed with some of yours and Tina's and then instead of doing a lust or anti-lust spell, you do a need spell. Allow him to feel the need to feed his hunger, but not the blood lust that nearly killed Tina." Trevor got quieter, "it might have a nice side effect of him not wanting to kill his victims anymore. He will only take what he needs to survive and then be turned off again by blood until he needs more." I thought about it. Trevor had actually come up with a sound plan. I just wasn't sure if it would work, but it was better than any of my non-existent ideas.

  "Ok, let's try it." I put the mixture of blood together, despite the fact that Tina seemed less than thrilled at having to give up anymore of her own. I performed the ritual to allow Vampire Dave to feel the need for blood and to drink enough to sustain him. Throughout the process I kept praying to any gods that would listen that it worked, because I really just wanted to go home and crawl in bed. I was supposed to be leaving for New Orleans in two weeks. I didn't want to end up dead before I got to hug my Auntie Perrine again.

  I handed the blood mixture to Vampire Dave and practically had to force him to drink it. Once he did, he claimed he felt better and that he would test it out for a couple days and see how things went. He promised to be back for a visit should he be unable to drink blood from anyone. I packed up my things and left Tina's house without another word. She offered me a ride home and I refused. Both Trevor and Stephen walked with me, neither of them spoke, which was probably a good thing.

  ***

  All The Fun is Gone

  Two weeks went by in the blink of an eye. The dread that had sunk into my chest about Vampire Dave returning had finally begun to subside a bit. I was getting ready to head to New Orleans to see my Auntie Perrine for the first time in a year. I would be able to see and hug my old friends, to feel at home in the hot and humid south of my youth. I was about to be back in the land of the deep south, where Jazz and Blues music filters out of the various establishments, and drinking sweet tea on your front porch is a favored past time. While I wasn't in any hurry to jump back into magic and voodoo, I was excited that Stephen would finally be given the body and the normal life he longed for. And Trevor could continue on without fear of being pulled back into his body.

  I was dropping the last of my shorts into my suitcase when my mom walked in the room.

  "I'm still not sure about letting you drive down there by yourself."

  "Momma, I won't be by myself, you know that."

  "Two ghosts don't exactly count as not being by yourself, Seraphine."

  "Which is exactly why I can't fly. I mean, think how it will look if I accidentally answer them on the plane ride there. Do you think I really need fighter jets escorting my plane to an airport so I can be strip searched and tossed in a loony bin because they think I'm crazy?" I hugged my mom to help reassure her, "besides, I love to drive. I have my cell phone, I will call and update you along the way, and if anything does happen, the bo
ys can pop right back to let you know so you can get me help."

  "I'm not changing my mind. I already said you could go. I just worry, Seraphine! You're my only baby."

  "I know momma, I'll be careful, I promise!"

  My mom gave me a little extra squeeze and got ready to walk out of the room. "Roger and I are going to go grab a pizza for dinner tonight and stop by to pick up some drinks and thinks for you to take tomorrow. Any special requests?"

  "Anything will be fine. Thanks."

  "Okay, let me go try to pry him away from the computer, he's having a blast chatting with the boys, now that they can talk to him he doesn't feel so left out."

  I looked at the clock, it was 8:30 pm already. I promised I would be in bed by 10 since I wanted to leave so early in the morning, but if my mom took too long getting the pizza, that would never happen. I heard them leave and turned around to close up my suitcase only to find Vampire Dave standing in front of my window. I guess I screamed at some point because both Trevor and Stephen were by my side instantly.

  "You have ruined me, witch. And now, I will ruin you too, starting with your guardians."

  My cell phone was ringing on the dresser.

  "No doubt that's your little witch friend, calling to warn you that I paid her a visit tonight too."

  "You seem to have the healthy glow of the freshly fed about you, so what seems to be the problem?"

  "The problem is..." His voice rose higher and higher with each word, "you have taken all the fun out of being a vampire!"

  "Wait, I did what?"

  "I used to be able to decide who lived and who died. I used to toy with my pets. I used to lust after the blood in such a way that when I finally got to taste it there was an explosion of desire, and fulfillment in my mouth as I drank." He came a little closer, not daring to get too near us though, "now, there is nothing. There is only the desire to feed in order to not wither away. I do not anticipate feedings, do not revel in them. They just are. You took the fun from me, and I want it back."