by Adam Millard
“But’cha do voodoo?” Edie said, more hopeful than anything. “I mean, that’s the kind of job what runs in the family, ain’t it?”
“I’m a carpet-cleaner,” Roger Death said. “And since you don’t have any carpets, there isn’t much I can do for you.”
Edie Travers seemed to weaken in that moment. Her head fell forward; she was only an inch away from taking a severely-decayed finger to the eye. “Why din’tcha tell me that on the phone?” she wailed. “I got me ‘opes up that you was gonna bring back my Larry, and now look. I’ve made a right mess of me table-cloth with all these limbs.”
“I’ve got my gear in the van,” said Roger Death, never one to turn down an opportunity. “Carpets, table-cloths, curtains, it’s all the same, really.”
But Edie Travers wasn’t listening, for Edie Travers was wailing like a newborn baby, occasionally picking up one of the rotten limbs from the table and giving it a sniff. She sounded, Roger Death thought, like his PowerVac 5000™ (other high-powered vacuum-cleaners are available).
“Ooooohhhhh!” she moaned. “Oooooohhhh, it was going to be so special. I’ve got a lovely broth on the stove, and the chicken only just fit in the oven, and now it’s all gonna go to waste! Oooohhh, woe is me! Woe is me, etcetera, etcetera, and so on, and so forth!”
Now Roger Death, who hadn’t eaten since nine of that very same a.m. and whose stomach was now growling up a fierce one, had never been very good at voodoo, not like his brother Doc, but the thought of missing out on a decent repast before setting back for the city offended him. I mean, he thought, what could possibly go wrong?
“I’ll have a go,” said Roger.
“You what?” said Edie, pulling a severed finger from between her puckered lips.
“I, erm…” Roger glanced down at the vast array of body parts. Putting them back together with voodoo, and in the correct place, would be like trying to complete a Su-Doku puzzle blindfolded, and without the aid of a pen. But he’d gone and said it now. If only he could figure out what to say next. “Why did your, erm, son have seven arms and three legs?” That would have to do.
“Don’t be daft,” said Edie. “Some of these ain’t his, ‘specially that black one there, and that one with the butterfly tattoo.”
Roger was about to ask who, if not her son, they belonged to, then decided the resultant explanation would cut into his chicken- and soup-eating time, so he decided against it. “And a head?” he said. “I’m assuming your son had one when he was alive?”
“You taking the piss?” said Edie. “Course he ‘ad a head. How do you think he brushed his teeth?”
Confused, and rightly so, but not altogether put off, Roger stood from the chair and paced the length of the room. It wasn’t a huge room, but it was large enough to pace. Pacing was something Roger Death was good at, but that was only because he hadn’t had a crack at trundling yet. “I have had a little experience in voodoo and the like,” he said. “My brother might have been better at it than me, but I was definitely worse at it than him.”
It was Edie’s turn to be confused; she did so by grinding her roll-yer-own into her temple.
“Oh, Doc and I used to bring dead things back to life all the time.” He smiled and gazed off into the distance, as if in fond remembrance; he would have gazed a lot further had the cabin wall not prevented him from doing so. “Cats, ‘coons, insects. Momma said we’d best stop bringing dead shit back to life. She said it would come back to haunt us, that dead is dead, and it’s best left as such.” His smile faltered. “Pity, really, as the next thing to die was Momma, God rest her soul.”
“Is there a point to this, or can we just get Larry up and about again?” Edie stood and limped (she couldn’t trundle if her life depended on it) across the room.
“The last time I did this, I had the whole body to work with.” He motioned to the table and the pile of limbs. “If he comes back without a head, I can’t make any promises he’ll last the night.” Heads, as it were, are extremely important. You could have the most beautiful body in the world, but without a head, you’d look a little iffy.
“Just do what you ‘ave to do, and we’ll see what’s what,” said Edie. “I’ll go and check on the soup, leave you two alone for a bit.” She ran a cold, arthritic hand down his arm before heading for the door. “’Ere,” she said, turning back. “You ain’t one of them funny fuckers what likes to fiddle with folk after they’ve gone?”
“What, like Calista Flockhart?” Roger had never been so offended in his entire life. So offended was he that it would take three bowls of soup later on to forgive the demented old sow. “How very dare you!”
“You never know,” she said. “You never know.” And with that, she turned and limped from the room, leaving Roger Death and the Table of Limbs (not to be confused with Harry Twotter and the Ladle of Pimms) alone, not for the first time that night.
“Right!” said Roger, slapping his hands together and moving toward the table. “Let’s have a little looksee, shall we?” He looked, and it didn’t take long to arrive at the conclusion that he had bitten off more than he could chew.
A promise is a promise is a promise, and the smell of the soup permeating the cabin jogged something in his memory, something that had, until now, lain dormant. “Yeeeeeesssss,” Roger hissed. “That ought to do it.” He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, clapped his hands together several times until they were sore, and said, “Ade due damballa. Give me the power I beg of you. Secoise entienne mais pois de morte. Morteisma lieu de vocuier de mieu vochette, and so on, and so forth, etcetera, etcetera…”
Well, it worked in the movies…
3
The Travers Cabin
Movies, Roger Death quickly realised, are awfully different to books. First of all the special effects in books are not as spectacular as their big-screen counterpart. Sure, an author can wax lyrical about blood and guts and monsters from the deep for pages and pages, but Ray Harryhausen could better that with just a tub of Play-Doh and a couple of pipe-cleaners. Secondly, Haitian Creole sounds beautiful on screen, but reading it from a page without skipping to the end of the sentence is almost impossible.
That was the reason why it hadn’t worked; even Roger Death had got bored around the halfway point.
“You can do this,” he told himself as he jumped up and down on the spot like a hundred-metre sprinter about to go hell-for-leather toward the finishing line.
“Everything going alright in there?” cried Edie from the kitchen. “Is he back together yet. Larry, are you back together yet?”
Roger stared down at the pile of rotten limbs on the table. He certainly wasn’t back together yet, not unless he’d looked like a pile of rotten limbs to begin with. “Any minute now!” he answered. “I think I’ve got to get rid of the ones which aren’t his!”
Yes! That’s what it was. How could he possibly magic a human back together if there were foreign bits present? It’s like trying to put a box of puzzle pieces together when no two pieces were from the same puzzle.
“Righty-ho!” said Roger Death, stepping up to the table. “Dum-de-dum-de-aahhh, this one’s definitely not his.” He picked the mangled leg up and tossed it across the room. “And I’ll be damned if this is his.” Out went the arm. “And this one.” He picked it up and…
“Ow, you bastard!” Edie said, emerging from the kitchen door. “Throwing limbs, are we? Is that what I’m paying you for? Look at the bloody mess you’re making! I only swept this morning.”
Roger Death scrutinised the floor, which hadn’t, he surmised, seen a brush since the Wright Brothers had decided that walking was for pussies. “I’ve figured it out,” he said, motioning to the table, upon which now sat the correct number of limbs, an axe, and a half-melted pig-mask.
“That’s spiffing,” Edie said. “Figured what out?”
“The reason why it wasn’t working.”
“I didn’t know it wasn’t working,” said Edie. “Are you telling me that my Larry�
�s gonna be in four pieces for the rest of ‘is life?”
“No, that’s the precise opposite of what I’m trying to tell you.” Roger Death took a deep breath and momentarily closed his eyes. He pitied the guy lying on the table, for his mother was an utter crackerjack; the humane thing would be to leave Larry alone, pretend he couldn’t do it, and get the hell out of dodge (though not before a healthy dollop of said crackerjack’s special broth. “Did you ever see that film, Body Parts?”
“Do you see a television, Sherlock?”
Roger Death sighed. “Okay, well it’s about this guy that loses his arm in an accident, but luckily for him, they manage to stick a new one on. Unfortunately, the arm used to belong to a serial killer, and this guy—”
“Other than the fact we’re standing here looking down at a bunch of body parts, does this ‘ave anything to do with Larry?”
No, it doesn’t,” said Roger Death. “I’ll just crack on with it then, shall I?”
“For the best,” said Edie, who wanted her son back so desperately. There was a pile of rubbish in the kitchen so tall, she’d been talking to it for the last three months. Then there was Wilbur, whose sty hadn’t been mucked out since Larry’s passing. The saying goes, ‘He’s as happy as a pig in shit,’ but even Wilbur was starting to look pissed off with the state of the place, and Edie was fucked if she was going to clean it.
“Right.” Roger Death rolled his sleeves up, not for the first time that night. “And you’re sure you don’t have the head knocking about the place?”
“I would’ve noticed it,” said Edie.
“Okay. In that case, this scene’s gone on for far too long. Let’s get cracking.” He inhaled deeply, coughed and spluttered until he was blue in the face, made a mental note not to do it again, and said, “Ade due damballa, give me the power I beg of you…”
Before he’d finished the first line (a line that will probably, no doubt, almost certainly, cost someone a lawsuit) the limbs on the table began to tremble. Roger Death, of course, didn’t see them tremble, for he was in the moment and, truth be told, more than a little terrified to open his eyes.
“Secoise entienne mais pois de morte,” said Roger, which was equally as plagiaristic, but he reckoned he could get away with it.
“It’s a-workin’,” Edie said, mesmerised as the arms and legs began to draw together. “I don’t believe it! You’re doin’ it, you silly carpet-cleaner!”
“Morteisma lieu de vocuier de mieu vochette,” Roger said, because in for a penny, in for a pound. “Endonline pour de boisette damballa! Secoise entienne mais pois de morte. Endelieu pour de boisette damballa!!!” He dry-swallowed, opened one eye, saw the limbs squirming and writhing upon the table, and quickly closed it again. “I’ve never seen anything so fucking disgusting in my entire life,” said he. “And I was a choirboy.”
“I think we used that joke in the first book,” Edie said. “Anyway, keep it going. We don’t want to lose it now, do we?”
Roger Death took a deep breath, for he was an awful glutton for punishment, before pressing on. “Ade due damballa, give me the power I beg of you…”
“You’ve already done that bit,” Edie said, squeezing his arm.
“It has to be repeated four times,” said Roger Death. “And can you not squeeze that part of my arm. I’ve got a lump and it’s sore.”
“You should see a doctor about that,” Edie said. “Pity your brother isn’t still alive.”
“Can I continue?”
“I don’t know. Can you?”
“Secoise entienne mais pois de morte. Morteisma lieu de vocuier de mieu vochette.” By now, the limbs on the table were in full flow. The arms were up onto their elbows, arm-wrestling, which looked as awkward as it sounded, and the legs were kicking one another about the shins. If there had been a head present, it would have almost certainly been belting out the greatest hits of Rod Stewart – both of them. “Endonline pour de boisette damballa! Secoise entienne mais pois de morte. Endelieu pour de boisette damballa!!!”
“Look!” Edie said. Roger didn’t want to, but the old hag was prising his eyelids apart, and before he knew it, he was watching the pig mask as it stretched and moulded itself into a head shape. “See! I told ya we din’t need ‘is ‘ead. The mask’s ‘is ‘ead.”
For the first time since he’d arrived at the dilapidated cabin in the middle of the woods, Roger Death felt as if he was doing something he shouldn’t have been. It was the same feeling he’d had as a child, when his mother caught him with his hand in the cookie jar, and the same feeling he’d had as a teenager, when his father caught him with his hands down his—
“Squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” the mask screeched as it rolled across the dusty old table, coming to a stop between the severed arms. The sound of bones cracking as they snapped into place reminded Roger of the time he’d had a seizure in a bubble-wrap factory – probably the best place for those kinds of things, safety first, and all that.
A pair of thick shoulders stretched up from the arms and seemed to grasp tightly onto the pig mask as if they were lovers meeting for the first time – an impossibility, but nevertheless, the best description Roger could summon in that moment. With the head in place, a torso began to grow between the lower-arms of the thing, filling out quickly, as if there was a midget beneath the old table, tap-dancing on a foot-pump.
It’s terrible! Roger thought. Horrible…so horrible! But the scent of the broth emerging from the kitchen – parsnips, carrots, some sort of meat the likes of which it was best not to ask too many questions about, considering his surroundings and the fact he was trying to reanimate a dead person – was almost unbearable. His head told him to run, RUN! Run and don’t look back! But his heart said, “You haven’t had parsnips since Christmas.”
“I’ll just go and check on my parsnips,” said Edie, before scampering away to the kitchen. “Give me a yell if he’s done before I get back.”
Roger looked down at the sinewy veins as they weaved together upon the table, over and under, over and under, like worms trying to figure out whose turn it was to go on top. I’ll go mad soon, he thought. Mad, like Gary Busey or The Hoff.
“Oh God!” Roger said. “I’m going to be eating burgers off the ground. I’m going to be shaving my head and trying to thwack the paparazzi with an umbrella. They’re going to throw me in the looney bin!” And he’d heard all about such establishments from his buddy, Razor-Wrist Bill. Dry mashed potato three times a day…reruns of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on the TV every single waking hour…wardens sneaking into your room at night and rearranging the contents of your sock drawer…if you weren’t mad when you went in, you bloody well were when you came out.
“Ya like a dumplin’?” Edie said, leaning against the kitchen doorframe like a geriatric saloon wench.
“Am I?” Roger said, unable to take his eyes off the body on the table as it continued to form. “I’ve never been called one before.”
“Would you like a dumplin’?” Edie reiterated, licking the wooden spoon in her hand as if it had paid up front for her services, and hadn’t been a tight-fisted bugger about it, either. “With yer’ broth?”
Roger couldn’t fathom what was happening, how she could be so damn calm. “YES I’D LOVE A DUMPLIN’!” he shouted, because that’s what any normal person would have done in that moment. Upon the table, one leg clicked into its socket, and the mask said, “Squeeeeeeeee!” which was getting to be something of a catchphrase, though not as annoying as “Nice to see you, to see you nice,” or “You are the weakest link. Goodbye.”
“This isn’t right!” Roger Death said, all of a fluster. “Do you have any idea the kind of abomination we’re invoking here?”
Edie Travers, still fellating the wooden spoon, said, “Well a’course I do. I gave birth to the little sumbitch, din’t I?” And with that, she spun and ventured back into the kitchen, where parsnips and carrots and questionable meats were simmering together, oblivious that they were about to be serve
d upon the very table that a pile of rotting limbs had recently become a writhing, twitching, stinking, transmuting, heavy-breathing, squeeeing, willy-fiddling mess of a man.
“Squeeeeeee!” the thing cried. It sounded as if it might be in pain, and Roger Death, in a moment of absurd valour, stepped closer to the table and reached for the axe which lay there.
Surely, putting such a horrible beast out of its misery was in the best interests of all involved parties? Granted, it might result in a reduced serving of broth, and possibly only one dumpling, but separating the thing’s still-forming face with an axe was the right thing to do, wasn’t it?
“Don’t even think about it.”
Roger whipped his head across, saw the old biddy in the kitchen doorframe, and froze. His hand was almost touching the axe. Just a few more inches and he’d be able to lop the abomination’s head off, convince its mother it was for the best, then settle down at the table with a bowl of something warm-but-dubious and a glass of something tepid-and-dirty.
“What happened to the wooden spoon?” he said, motioning to the large blade that had replaced it. Unsurprisingly she wasn’t dragging her dark, hairy tongue across this one. “Look, I don’t want any trouble, okay? I just want to get out of here and leave you and your boy” – he pointed to the squelching mass on the table – “alone. I’m sure you’ve got plenty to catch up on. Was he around for True Detective?”
“We don’t—”
“Have a TV,” he said, taking tiny steps away from the table. “I know that. Would you like me to run you through the entire first season of—”
“We’ve never heard of Breaking Bad,” said she. “You were going to chop ‘im up.” Her tone suggested she couldn’t believe he was capable of such a thing. “You were going to re-chop up my Larry.”
“Look at it!” Roger said, gesturing frantically to the writhing form upon the table. “That’s not right! I never signed up for this. I thought I was going to be giving your hall, stairs, and landing a good once over, not reviving a fucking serial killer, pardon my French.”
