Something like Voodoo

by Rebecca Hamilton

  My heart dropped to my gut. “Oh my God. No. No, Hazel, oh my God, do something, please.” My voice sounded so tiny, so far away, the world around me imploding.

  Tears sprang to my eyes, but Hazel kept chanting, louder now, faster. Her hand gripped my dad’s so hard his fingertips turned white.

  “You can’t leave me!” I yelled, lunging toward him.

  Noah held me back. At first, I wasn’t sure I’d truly seen what I saw next. Was that a breath?

  I wiped away my tears and stared harder at my dad’s chest, willing it to rise. I grabbed his wrist and began searching for a pulse, still staring, still hoping, trying to find a heartbeat, even if I had to imagine it.

  There! His chest rose and fell. Then again! A small beat pulsed beneath my fingertips, growing stronger. I let out a long, slow breath.

  “Dad?” I whispered. “Dad, say something. If you can hear me, please say something.”

  His eyes blinked open, a soft expression settling over his features. Then he whispered the most beautiful thing.

  “I’m right here, Squirrel. I’m right here.”

  Dad was alive. My body lightened, the air in my lungs moved more freely. I smiled down at him. “I thought I lost you.”

  “That would’ve been a story to tell. Top ten material, right there.”

  I shook my head, laughing. Because what else could I do after seeing my dad come back from the dead? “I think I have enough stories for now.”

  At first, Dad made no effort to move. I’d never thought his barrel chest and thick head would ever look frail, but damned if he didn’t right then. I grasped his hand and sat with him until he could sit up and eat a small plate of fruit, cheese, and crackers that Hazel prepared. He washed it down with a glass of room-temperature water, just the way he liked it.

  Suddenly he froze, his eyes staring off to some place in the distance. He set his water aside and looked at Hazel, then Noah, then me again.

  His brow pulled low over his eyes. “Are we still in danger?”

  I nodded.

  “I’m sorry, Squirrel. It’s all my fault.”

  “No –”

  Hazel’s arm shot out, silencing me. “Yes, sir, with all due respect, it sounds like this is your fault.”

  I glared at her, but she pinned him with her gaze, arms folded across her chest. Noah pulled me to his side.

  “Not to rush your recovery,” Hazel continued, “but we need information. Now.”

  She stared at me, and I wondered what she saw. Chipped purple fingernail polish? Dark circles under my eyes? Hair unbrushed? Mascara flakes on my cheekbones?

  “Your daughter needs you,” she added.

  My dad gave his signature resolute nod. “Tell me what to do.”

  Hazel sat in front of him, her legs folded like a pretzel. “First, you need to tell us what happened. Your daughter has been on Sarah’s radar for a while, but now she’s causing your family hallucinations. Any thoughts on how?”

  “I suppose I should start from the beginning.” He grabbed a tuft of Hazel’s shag rug, and his gaze dipped to mine. “After Emily’s mother died, I found a journal. Julie, my wife, never kept journals. She’d told me once she hadn’t even had one as a kid, because why write it all down when it was all up here?” He tapped his temple. “Journals were evidence of your thoughts, which were meant to be private. So when I saw it, I…I did what anyone in my position would do.”

  “You read it,” Hazel said.

  Dad crossed his arms with a heavy exhalation. “I did, because she must have wanted her thoughts to be heard if she wrote them down. Someone else might not feel that way, but I knew Julie did.”

  Hazel tilted her head. “You don’t have to defend yourself. Just get on with it.”

  “Right,” he said. “Well, I started with the first entry, which had been written only a few months before she died. Reading that was like stepping into the middle of things. I think I read three or four entries before I understood what was going on. She’d been trying to find out more about – about –”

  My dad’s gaze fell toward me again.

  “What is it?” I asked. “About what?”

  He shook his head. “There’s a reason I hadn’t told you. I didn’t want you to think her death was your fault.”

  I swallowed hard as Noah hugged me closer. “Go on.”

  With a heavy breath, he continued. “She wanted to understand your gift. Where it came from. She started checking into family history. Hers. Mine. Medical records. Any sort of paper trail she could find. She scribbled little notes all over the margins of her journal, but by the time she started writing about her findings, she’d already found out enough to be in trouble. Someone had tricked her, got her to do something bad. The journal was vague – she was hiding something. She kept saying ’they’ and I assumed she didn’t know who the person was, but now I realize she meant more than one person – Sarah and her friends. At the time I started reading, all I knew was that something went down here. And the names involved – Williams, Caldwell, and my own, Bishop. At first, I assumed Sarah was somehow the victim. That’s why I thought Noah was to blame.”

  “So you moved us here?” My anger from earlier in the evening was returning. “You were using me to get to them?”

  His eyes widened. “No!” He shook his head, insistent. “I had to come here to figure this all out. You understand? But what were the odds of you getting involved with Noah? Or anyone else? You never had friends. Not anywhere else we’d lived. And once you were involved, I thought if I kept you safe, the information would come out on its own. Instead, I made things worse.”

  Hazel hmm-ed. “So you were following your daughter, who was with Noah, while Sarah was following you. Which means none of our safe locations are safe anymore.”

  “I only used the cell phone app to keep track of where Emily was. I didn’t actually follow her.”

  Hazel let out a bitter laugh. “If you can track her, so can Sarah. Now, not to be rude, but you need to wrap this up. It’s been twenty-four hours since you arrived here, and we need to take action.” She glared. “Like, yesterday.”

  “Right,” Dad said. “From what I understand, my wife had an encounter with Sarah and her friends. One of her last entries said she thought she’d finally found an answer about Emily. To get it, she had to steal from someone. She was paranoid. She thought someone was trailing her. She wrote about these headaches she kept having, unexplainable impulses, nightmares. She said it felt like sometimes she was on fire.”

  “Like Noah,” I whispered.

  Noah’s hand trailed reassuringly down my arm. He pressed his lips to my scalp, his breath soothing against my hair.

  “So Sarah tricked my mom into stealing something,” I said. “Same as she tried tricking me.”

  Dad nodded. “That’s what the diary said. She attributed her pain to whomever she stole from. And you know your mother. If she said it, it was true.”

  Hazel lit another joint and leaned closer to Dad. “That explains Sarah’s hold on her, but she took it too far. She ended up killing your wife.”

  My stomach twisted in knots. I’d sensed Sarah had something to do with Mom’s death, but hearing Hazel’s confirmation sent a boiling anger coursing through every inch of me.

  “Wouldn’t that mean our family can use voodoo on her?”

  Hazel frowned. “Not if Sarah acted out in revenge. What your mom did was not enough for Sarah to curse your whole family. Only your mom herself.” She turned back to my dad. “So, Pops, tell us what we’re missing.”

  “The other night, I found another entry.” Dad shifted in his seat. “Well, not exactly an entry. Tucked away in the fallout bottom of her jewelry box was a story about our ancestors. I think that’s what she stole – it appeared to be torn from someone else’s journal. I think you already know somewhere back down the li
ne, Noah’s family wronged Sarah’s, and they turned to magic as revenge, creating this curse.”

  “Riiight…” Hazel said. Like me, she was probably wondering where he was going with this.

  “My ancestors are the ones who put an end to it.”

  I sat forward, pulling out of Noah’s embrace. “How? And if they did, then why is Noah still under attack? Does this mean we can save him?”

  Dad shook his head. “When the Bishops stopped them, Sarah’s family thought we were defending Noah’s family. We said it wasn’t right to hurt descendants over the actions of their ancestors. But the Williams family was angry. They tried taking their revenge out on us with magic. When that didn’t work, they killed my great ancestor’s wife. Although the Williams still had a hold on the Caldwells, now the Bishops had a hold on the Williams.”

  “So we can stop them?” I asked, unable to keep hope out of my voice.

  “Not quite.” Dad grimaced. “Our ancestors didn’t want to use harmful voodoo curses. They didn’t want revenge. Instead, they performed a binding spell that was broken when your mother wronged Sarah. Julie didn’t know Sarah was aware of all this. The secret had been buried for centuries.”

  “Mom found out, so Sarah killed her,” I said flatly.

  “Not until after your mom wronged her,” Dad said. “I don’t think Sarah intended to kill her – that would have given us more power over her family than she wanted.” He paused a moment, then added, “The journal entries indicated your mother felt silenced, unable to speak or write certain things.”

  Hazel nodded. “You said she wanted your wife silent. Maybe she was trying to cause a stroke, but took things too far. That doesn’t change the fact she killed her, though. You and your daughter could be next.”

  Noah stood, towering over us on the floor. “Can we stop her now that we know this or not?”

  Hazel stood, too, meeting him. “We?” she asked, spreading her hands. “No. We can’t. But Emily could.”

  “Why only Emily?” Noah demanded.

  Hazel sucked in another hit of her joint. “Think about it. When you first met Emily, she could see visions Sarah didn’t want her to. She has a hold on Sarah. Follow me?”

  He nodded.

  “Good.” She blew a steady stream of smoke from her mouth. “This means whatever Emily’s mother did was enough for Sarah to use her magic on her, but not enough to break the Bishop binding of her family.”

  “That’s good, right?” I asked.

  Hazel shrugged. “It would be if your dad hadn’t ruined it.”

  Dad stared at his hands, his head hung forward, but she stared at him unrelentingly.

  “Mr. Bishop, you need to tell us what you did. ”

  “I only tried to scare her. To get her to leave my daughter alone.” Dad looked up, regret writ large on his face. “I wanted to do more than that, because she killed my wife. But I didn’t. I only tried to scare her.”

  He repeated the last part as if he was trying to convince himself.

  “How?” I asked, squatting in front of him. “Please tell me so we can move on. It can’t be that bad.”

  He rubbed his hand over his face. “I killed her cat.”

  “Dad!” I jumped to my feet. Sometimes the truth was ugly. I looked to Hazel. “Well?”

  She shrugged. “I wouldn’t go around broadcasting it. Wasn’t the cat’s fault Sarah hurt his wife. Still, it explains why Sarah has a hold on your family now.”

  I shook my head. This couldn’t be happening. “So what?” My pitch raised an octave. “Now she can control us like she does the Caldwells? How are we supposed to fight back?”

  Hazel held up her hand. “Hold on. I didn’t say she could control you. Just that she has more of a hold on you than before. This levels the playing field. Sarah can influence you the way she influences everyone else. At least enough to cause those hallucinations you saw.”

  “But you don’t know that,” I argued.

  “It’s an educated enough guess,” she said sharply, “and it’s better than any ideas you have. I haven’t led you wrong yet. You could afford to trust me a little.”

  I wanted to believe her, but the stakes were so high. All of our lives depended on it.

  Hers, too, I reminded myself.

  I had to believe she wouldn’t steer me wrong. Not on purpose, at least.

  “Listen,” Hazel said, her tone softening. “Try imagining ancestral magic between two families as being, like, a two-sided scale. Each wrong-doing carries a different weight. The balance can shift, allowing the ultimate ’control’ to change hands.”

  “How do you know it didn’t?”

  Hazel shrugged again. “She caused those hallucinations, but she couldn’t control you. That doesn’t sound like she has the upper hand. Ancestral magic is infinitely more complex than standard voodoo because no one in the present day is its originator.”

  Noah kicked a foot out across the shag. “What does that mean for us?”

  “It means,” Hazel continued, “that no one can completely harness or control it. You can cancel it out with an even trade – Sarah killing someone in your family or Emily killing someone in hers. Outside that, you can only shift the balance, which is what happened between Emily and Sarah’s families when her dad committed a lesser crime.”

  “So what my mom did allowed Sarah to take revenge on her without repercussions to the balance of our families, but what my dad did changed the balance because Sarah had never wronged him?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But she killed my mom.”

  Hazel’s frown deepened. “I know it’s not fair, Emily, but she did it under the protection of her voodoo. It was revenge. It didn’t count against the balance of things.”

  “But what my dad did was revenge, too.”

  “What your dad did wasn’t voodoo,” Hazel countered.

  “And you’re sure my dad killing that cat didn’t shift the power in Sarah’s favor?”

  Hazel frowned. “To me, killing a cat is a bit like killing a baby” – she glared at my dad – “but luckily for you, the voodoo gods don’t see it that way. In the end, your actions haven’t changed anything in terms of the ancestral bonds. In fact, I would venture the hallucinations only affected you because your father was there with you.”

  “Got it,” I said, starting to feel a bit defensive about my dad’s stupidity. “Voodoo isn’t politically correct.” I stood, half-regretting leaving my father on the shag carpet alone. “So what do I do now?”

  “What do we do now,” Noah corrected.

  Hazel took a deep breath and rocked back on her heels. “I have no idea. But we’re going to find out, aren’t we?”

  24

  I PUT A SPELL ON YOU

  My dad insisted on coming with us. But in his current condition, we couldn’t risk him facing Sarah and the It Girls. If Hazel thought my dad’s presence caused my hallucinations, I would be better off confronting Sarah without him.

  My dad was none too happy about us splitting up, but it was our best shot, and we only had one. Hazel would stay at her apartment with him, while Noah and I went to the asylum. I texted Hazel’s number to Heather and told her to contact Hazel as soon as she got my messages.

  Heather didn’t respond. By now she probably realized what an awful friend I was, and chose to ignore me accordingly. Who would blame her? Nothing I could say to get her to answer my calls or texts would work without telling her things that weren’t safe for her to know.

  My stomach twisted. Something told me Sarah wouldn’t hesitate to go after my friend. All I could do was hope Heather wasn’t in any trouble and that she would reach out if needed. Hopefully she considered me a good enough person to help her in a life-or-death situation.

  As Noah pulled onto the dark and rainy highway, my body felt like it was a live wire. H
eather had nothing to do with any of this, but my sketches never lied. If I drew someone, they were in danger. Even my dad hadn’t escaped that fate. We’d only narrowly managed to bring him back.

  What if this is what my sketches of Heather had been warning me of?

  Ugh. I couldn’t think about that right now. There was nothing I could do but keep moving forward as planned.

  I pressed the heels of my palms into my eyes. “God, Noah, I’m scared.” I peered over at him. “Part of me wishes we were already at the asylum so this could be over. The other part of me dreads going there at all.”

  He breathed in deeply, his chest rising in the low light of the Chevy’s dashboard. He pressed his lips together, but otherwise didn’t respond.

  “Crazy how all this is happening because I bumped into you, isn’t it?” I asked, smiling nervously. I needed him to talk, to help me take my mind off things.

  His fingers unraveled from the steering wheel, then just as quickly wrapped back around, squeezing it tighter. “That’s not quite how I see it, Emily.”

  Noah had been dealing with his curse for years, and now he had more to fear than ever before – but also more hope. I wouldn’t even try to fathom his perspective. Maybe now wasn’t the time for me to need him, but for him to need me. I folded my hands into my lap and mumbled an apology.

  He exhaled and reached for my hand. “I don’t mean it like that.”

  I stared at his hand holding mine. “Then how do you mean it?”

  He released my hand. “I don’t think any of this is because of you or me. It’s because of Sarah and her ancestors and our ancestors. This is bigger than us.”

  I twisted in my seat to face him. “Nothing is bigger than us, Noah. Nothing.”

  A few moments later, he reached over and turned on one of our playlists. These were the songs we would take with us if we were ever stranded on a deserted island – assuming that island somehow had electricity.