Not Just Voodoo

by Rebecca Hamilton

  I spun on the spot, my eyes searching the rapidly growing gloom for his denim clad legs and white T-shirt.

  “Where are you?” I strode past a building with a red door, came to a junction, turned right and carried on.

  “Daria. Dammit.”

  What the hell was he getting so irate about? He was the one who’d left me to go swanning off on his secret mission.

  “Coming.”

  I continued forward and then stopped abruptly as something in the periphery of my vision caught my eye. I turned my head and stared at the red door.

  Hadn’t I just run past that building?

  It looked the same. I glanced back up the street and saw the tree.

  What the heck?

  I stumbled away from the building, taking the left this time. I broke into a run.

  “Daria, come on, come back to me.”

  What the hell was going on? A figure appeared up ahead and I skidded to a halt, the hairs on my arms prickling.

  The figure was huge, at least eight feet tall, if not more, hulking and draped in darkness except for the eyes, amber orbs that pinned me to the spot. It smiled, revealing rows of bright white, razor sharp teeth. My arms burned as if trapped in a vice and a scream erupted from my throat.

  My face stung, my head whipped to the side, and when I opened my eyes it was to the setting sun and Ethan’s panicked face.

  “What the heck, Daria?”

  I sat up, pulling myself away from the tree. What the heck indeed…

  “So tell me, why are we here?” I asked.

  We were standing in the square in the gathering dark. The sun had truly set and it was creepy as hell. The buildings around us looked like silent gaping mouths, waiting to devour us.

  “We’re here to help the town’s people,” he said.

  “I figured that, but what’s their problem?”

  He looked at me then, the whites of his eyes bright in the gloom. “They’re all dead.”

  I waited for the punch line, but he was silent. “What do you mean they’re all dead?”

  “I mean they died, weeks ago, when the Pockets developed. The town was hit by a blast of energy so strong it killed them all.”

  “So…ghosts?”

  “They wish.”

  Oh god, this was gonna be bad, I could feel it. “Explain.”

  “They died, but their souls are trapped in their bodies, unable to move on. Their flesh is dead and yet they’re trapped inside it.”

  The awful gag-worthy smell in the bar made perfect sense now. Oh god, a whole town of rotting bodies. No wonder the bar guy had suggested that we meet in the square, in the fresh air.

  “It’s why they don’t come out during the day, the heat speeds up the decay.”

  I held up a hand. “Okay, I get the idea. So what? We’re looking for a way to help them…move on?”

  “We’re looking for the reason that they’re stuck here, and so far I’ve been unsuccessful in finding anything. No runes, wards, strange monuments. Nothing.”

  “So what now?”

  “Now we question the townsfolk, see if we can pick up any clues.” He was looking at me in that strange way again, the way he’d been looking at me ever since my nightmare under the tree. Apparently it had taken a good shaking and a slap in the face to wake me up. My cheek still stung. I’m sure he hadn’t needed to hit me so hard.

  “I’m fine.”

  He opened his mouth to say something, probably admonish me for falling asleep on the job, but we were interrupted by a stench so putrid it had my eyes watering.

  “Keep it together, Daria.”

  Ethan stepped forward as the smell enveloped us. The bodies surrounded us and it took all my willpower not to scream.

  Torsos sans limbs, heads sans eyes and teeth, balding, melting figures, grey and black and twisted and gross. It was a visual nightmare and I knew that I would see this image every time I closed my eyes for a very long time.

  “Thank you for coming. So sorry about the smell.”

  I recognised the voice from the bar, and here under the moon I got a good look at him, six-feet of decay, a man that was once large, probably barrel-chested if his rib cage was anything to go by, and I could see enough of it to gauge.

  “No worries. So, this is the town.”

  “Yes, aside from the infants and children.”

  My heart squeezed painfully in my chest. Children…babies, I couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must be like, the horror, the devastation the parents would be feeling, to be unable to ease their child’s pain. Ethan’s pause told me that he was thinking the same. When he spoke his tone was softer.

  “I’ve done a sweep of the town and I didn’t find anything that could be responsible for your predicament.”

  The big guy’s shoulders slumped. “So…you can’t help us.”

  “I didn’t say that.” Ethan smiled. “I asked you all to gather here today so that I could ask a few questions, maybe gather a few clues as to what might have happened. The answer could be in any one’s memory and it’s my job to jog it.”

  “Okay, fire away.”

  Ethan delved into his backpack and pulled out two notepads and a couple of pens. He handed me a set and then turned back to the group. “We’re gonna interview you all, one by one, and ask you a few questions. After that, my colleague and I will go through the answers and we can reconvene tomorrow evening, hopefully with some answers.”

  I blinked in surprise. He was letting me off the leash, letting me be more than bait. This was…amazing, or at least it would be if these people weren’t in so much pain.

  “We just want it to end. We want to find peace, wherever that is. This…this is a nightmare, so whatever it takes. Ask your questions.”

  I found myself standing taller, the smell wasn’t so bad anymore, or maybe it was my olfactory system getting accustomed to it. Whatever the reason, I was grateful.

  We split up and Ethan bee-lined for the bar guy. I moved with him and stopped beside a woman, slight and completely bald. Her one eye stared up at me, and when she lowered her lid in embarrassment it flapped and fell off. She bit back a gasp of horror.

  “It’s okay, it’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

  “I was beautiful once. Everyone dies, I know that, but I wanted to remember myself as I was…not like this, a disgusting, decomposing mass of flesh…” She trailed off, dropping her gaze.

  I didn’t know what to say. I mean, what could I say? There were no words to comfort her, not unless the words were ‘we found a cure’ or ‘we can reverse the whole thing’, so I lifted my notepad and clicked my pen.

  “What’s the last thing you remember before…before you died?”

  “A bright light, like lightning or a camera flash, blinding and searing and cold, and then…I was floating toward another light. It was soft and warm and welcoming and it was…beautiful, and then the light winked out, and I was back in my body. I thought I dreamt it, you know, but then the others they started to say the same things and then….Doc Finn pointed out that my heart wasn’t beating, none of our hearts were beating, we were all dead. My Jacob…he saw the light too, so many others did, but none of us made it. We just…we’re stuck here.”

  “Jacob?”

  “My husband. Married two weeks we were. Not enough time. He refused to hide from the sun. He said if he was dead and stuck in his body then he might as well live best he could.”

  I could tell there was more to this story and it wasn’t pretty. “Where is Jacob? Is he here?”

  She shook her head. “He rotted, his skin, his organs, all gone. I found him under the Acacia, it was his world-watching spot. He was nothing but bone…talking bone. He can’t get about now, not without the ligaments and muscle to move him.”

  Acacia! That was the type of tree it was.

  “That’s it, that’s all there is. We’re simple folk here. We go to church, we raise our babies, and we take care of our own. We don’t have much to do with the outside,
their rules and laws. We keep to the old ways, to God’s justice and we nurture our own. Why, Old Man Freddie planted the Acacia only last spring as a replacement to the old one that upped and died. Brought it all the way from two towns over; they were gonna cut it down to make room for a mall. Anyways, Old Man Freddie saved it, brought it here, roots and all and gave it a home. People said it wouldn’t take, that it was surely dead, but Old Man Freddie was adamant. They said it was a sign, an act of God when it thrived and bloomed.” She shook her head, moving closer and inhaling. Her eye rolled. “You smell good.”

  I shrugged. She was obviously a sucker for l’eau de perspiration.

  She took a step back. “I’m done.”

  I opened my mouth to object, but snapped it closed again as she disappeared into the crowd. What more could I ask her? I didn’t know, and one glance in Ethan’s direction showed him talking to another person. He was moving fast through the crowd. I moved on to the next body.

  The quicker we solved this case the quicker we could get out of this strange town.

  4

  RUNNING BAIT

  Turned out we didn’t need to sleep in the car after all. There was a perfectly clean and empty motel at our disposal. The bar guy, Gerald, had some tinned goods sent over. There was no fresh produce anymore, just what was left of the non-perishables. Being dead kinda killed your appetite.

  Ethan cleaned out a tin of beans and licked the spoon. “So what did you find out?”

  “Well, aside from the fact that they seem to like the way I smell, nothing much.”

  He frowned.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. What else? Anything unusual or out of the ordinary?”

  I flipped through my pad, gnawing on my lip. “Not really, aside from the fact that the sun will make you decompose a whole lot faster. The first woman I interviewed said her husband spent all his time in the sun under the Acacia and he’s just a bag of bones now.”

  “Acacia?”

  “Yeah, the tree I fell asleep under.”

  Ethan sat up, his eyes flicking from side to side. “Dammit, I wish we had a laptop.”

  “We do, just no technology, why?”

  “I’m not sure…there’s something about Acacias…I just need to get onto the internet.” He waved his hand in front of his face. “It’ll come back to me, let’s just…let’s get some sleep.”

  I stood. “I’m gonna take a shower.”

  He grinned. “No running water.”

  I cursed.

  “Language.”

  “English.”

  He smirked. “Use the wet wipes in your pack, they’ll have to do until we get out of here.”

  I grabbed my bag and locked myself in the small bathroom. After a thorough scrubbing with the wet wipes, and feeling a little less grubby, I re-entered the bedroom. Ethan was stretched out on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. His face was blank, his eyes glazed. He was doing that thinking thing again.

  I slipped onto my bed and curled up on my side. I was exhausted. My eyes fluttered closed, my body grew heavy.

  Ethan’s colourful cursing jolted me out of my comfy drowse.

  I rolled onto my back. “What?”

  The bed depressed at my hip as he scooted onto it.

  His face hovered above me. “I think I remember…about Acacias…tell me about your nightmare.”

  “Well…I was running through the town and it was getting dark and I could hear you calling me, but I couldn’t see you…and then I went past this red door and turned a corner, but the red door was there again.”

  “The same building?”

  “Yes, I think so. Anyway, it got really confusing and then I saw this thing, this figure, about eight-feet tall, sharp white teeth, and then I woke up.”

  “That’s it.”

  I was so confused. “Please explain.”

  Ethan licked his lips, and I was suddenly aware of how close our bodies were, on the same bed… I cleared my throat.

  “It’s a Kapre.”

  “A whatre?”

  “A Kapre, a tree demon. The Acacia is one of its favourite abodes.”

  “The first woman I interviewed said that some guy, Old Man Freddie, saved the tree from being chopped down and brought it to the town to re-house it, roots and all, last spring.”

  “It has to be the answer…” Ethan rubbed his bottom lip with his forefinger. It meant he was running a sequence of events through the powerful processor that was his brain.

  I waited, almost holding my breath.

  “Okay, so this demon was brought here, made a home here, but then magic exploded back into the world and its magic must have been amplified, twisted somehow…it makes sense.”

  I had to ask. “What’s its MO?”

  “Mischief. It confuses people, causes them to get lost, but this…this is unnecessarily cruel.”

  “Lost souls?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So it should be able to reverse what it’s done, right?”

  “In theory, yes.”

  “So let’s go ask it.”

  Ethan quirked a brow. “It’s not that simple. These demons are highly territorial and pretty aggressive when they feel threatened.” He was staring at me strangely again. “Did it…say anything to you?”

  “No…” Had it? And then I remembered the voice just before the nightmare.

  “Um…maybe.”

  “What did it say?”

  I felt my cheeks grow hot. “Pretty lady, nice lady, that kind of stuff.”

  Ethan caught his bottom lip between his teeth. Was he trying not to laugh?

  “Anything else?”

  “Yeah, he may have, um, stroked my cheek.”

  Ethan smiled. “And that, there, is our solution.”

  “It is?” I stared up at him, totally confused.

  “Kapre are aggressive, nasty demons, but they also have a tendency to get enamoured with ladies, and this one seems to have taken a shine to you so. I want you to-”

  “Whoa, no way. That thing is massive. Scary, crazy massive. I am not luring it, seducing it, or anything else to get it anywhere.”

  Ethan stared at me deadpan. “I was going to say I want you to talk to him and ask him very nicely to remove the hold he has on the townspeople.”

  He was crazy. “You’re crazy.”

  “It’s the only way. If it was enamoured with me then I’d happily do it.”

  Yeah right. But he was right. We couldn’t leave these people to suffer any longer than they already had, especially when we had an answer to their problem.

  “Fine.” I sat up and swung my legs off the bed. “No time like the-”

  “Hush.” Ethan pressed his finger to my lips and I resisted the urge to bite it. I could probably have gotten away with it though because his head was cocked, eyes closed as he focused, listened, and my heart sped up as I realised what that meant. There was someone out there…someone sneaking around outside our room.

  The door handle rattled and Ethan removed his finger from my lips and placed them on his own, indicating that I remain silent. I nodded, my eyes wide in my face. The room was really dark, the only light filtered in through the gap in the curtains at the window, but Ethan moved with fluid grace toward the door. He put his ear to it and waited.

  Nothing happened for a long minute, and then Ethan jerked back, his face a mask of horror.

  I wanted to ask what was going on, what was happening. As if sensing my need to blurt, he shook his head and indicated my backpack, making a wrap-it-up motion with his hands.

  Crap.

  I did as I was told, throwing my stuff back into the bag and zipping it up. He ushered me toward the window and I glared at him as he cracked it open.

  We were on the second floor.

  He ignored me, pushed the window wide open, climbed onto the ledge, and jumped. I bit back a scream as he landed on the ground as soft as a feather.

  He waved his arms, urging me to jump and made a cradlin
g motion, which I hoped meant that he would catch me.

  I hesitated.

  Behind me the doorknob rattled, urgent and impatient and then the whole door vibrated with a thud.

  Sod this. I pulled my backpack onto my back and jumped.

  Ethan hurtled toward me, or I hurtled toward him, didn’t matter, what mattered was that he caught me, set me on my feet, grabbed my hand and pulled me into a sprint.

  We ran around the side of the hotel and peeked around to the front. I almost lost it then. They were there, a hoard of them, waiting for us.

  The townsfolk.

  Ethan pulled me away and we sped off in the opposite direction.

  We stopped to catch our breath outside the church. Keeping to the shadows, we crouched down and waited.

  “We need to get to the tree. We need to get the demon to release these people,” Ethan said.

  “They want to eat us, don’t they?” I don’t know how I knew this, maybe it was the ecstatic roll of the woman’s eye when I had interviewed her, the way she’d inhaled me.

  “I think so.” Ethan sounded confused. “I don’t understand, they’re not zombies, they’re just-”

  “Dead, they’re dead, Ethan, and they’re stuck inside their rotting bodies. We can’t make assumptions, this is…new. I mean, zombies are reanimated corpses without souls, these are dead bodies with souls. I don’t know.”

  “You’re right. It’s too much of a risk. We need to get out of here.”

  Oh, man, how I wanted to do just that, but these people didn’t deserve this. They didn’t deserve to become monsters. “No, we need to get to the Kapre.”

  He shot me one of his indecipherable glances and then nodded. “Okay, let’s do this. But we move fast and we stop for no one.”

  We broke away from the church and legged it.

  A cry erupted behind us.

  They’d found us!

  “Keep running, the tree is down the next street on the other side of the square.”

  Something dark and solid smashed into us, taking us down. The stench of rotting flesh filled my throat and I couldn’t breathe.

  Hands gripped my arm and I was hauled to my feet.

  Ethan dangled opposite me.

  Gerald spoke softly. “I’m sorry. I was hoping you’d be different, that you’d find a solution, but there is no solution. We know that now and we’re so hungry. It’s the only thing that eases the pain, for a while.”