Buster Voodoo

A PERMUTED PRESS book

Published at Smashwords

ISBN (trade paperback): 978-1-61868-228-4

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-61868-229-1

Buster Voodoo copyright © 2013

by Mason James Cole

All Rights Reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Table of Content

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Afterword

About the Author

Dedication

For Rose and Skipp and Billy.

1

Dixon Green snuck out of the house while his sister read in her room and their mama helped rich white women with love potions or prosperity spells or something. It was a little after five in the evening. The September air was cool and damp. There weren’t any kids out, and the few grownups who saw Dixon told him to get his scrawny little ass home, where it was safe.

Over the past two months, six kids had vanished from the Faubourg Tremé. All of them were colored, which meant that the police weren’t breaking their backs trying to find out what was going on. Dixon had probably seen the other five kids around the neighborhood or down at Lincoln Beach, but he hadn’t really known them. Wynton Trevigne, the most recent child to disappear from the neighborhood, lived a few houses down from Dixon. They were good friends even though Dixon was nine and Wynton was twelve. They played ball together in the empty lot at the end of the block and sometimes they walked down to St. Philip Street and dared each other to throw rocks at Empty House.

No one really messed with Empty House. They might stand on the sidewalk bouncing rocks in their palms, but none of Empty House’s windows were broken. Kids in the neighborhood liked to talk about how the place was haunted, but kids weren’t the only ones—everyone believed the place was bad. Dixon’s mama most of all.

Don’t go playing around Empty House, she warned him more than once, but here he was, in the shadow of Empty House, looking up at its narrow grey face, with St. Peter Claver Church to his back, pointing at God. Over the past few days, he’d come to believe that Wynton and the other kids were trapped inside.

He thought about telling his mama, but he knew what she would say—that he was imagining things, that Empty House was dangerous and that he had to leave it be. But he couldn’t leave it be. If his friend was there, Dixon had to help him.

By the time he reached the place, there wasn’t anybody around. Just him and Empty House and the empty houses around it. It looked like every other house in the neighborhood, empty or otherwise—one story, long and narrow—a weathered shotgun shack, named such because you could shoot a shotgun at the back of the house and kill someone coming through the front door.

He stepped up onto the porch, looked around, and wrapped his fingers around the doorknob. The door was either locked or nailed shut, but that wasn’t going to stop him.

He checked out the side of the house and found a window that wobbled in its frame. He dragged an old trash can over to the house, flipped it over, and hopped up onto it. The window was not hard to open.

He crawled in and fell onto the floor, kicking up a cloud of dust. He sneezed once and got up. The place smelled bad. Not nasty like something was dead or maybe someone had been using one of the rooms as a toilet—just bad and stale, like he imagined the air must be in a tomb long after the bodies inside had shed their last leathery scraps of flesh.

He didn’t have trouble seeing because none of the windows were boarded up. The walls of the first room were painted dark blue, the window frame outlined in canary yellow. The floor was exposed wood covered in nicks and gouges, old smears of grout and dirty tile shards. The fireplace was empty, blackened with fires long dead. A cluster of wires hung from a hole in the ceiling, seemed to reach down toward his face.

Hello? he said, and of course no one responded because no one was there. He had been wrong. Wynton was not in this place. Neither were any of the other kids. But he was here—and there was no sense in leaving without at least taking a look around. He’d done what the other kids had only lied about doing: he was inside.

The front door, also trimmed in yellow, was locked, not nailed shut. He thought about unlocking it then decided not to. He could go out like he’d come in.

He stepped into the second room and looked around. The walls were green. The window and doorframe were trimmed in bright red. It made his eyes feel funny to look at the place where the green touched the red—the doorframe seemed to jitter in place. The room was empty save for a wooden liquor cabinet in the far corner. It wasn’t as nice as the furniture his family used to make, but it was too nice to have been abandoned here without reason. He walked over to it and traced a finger through the furry skin of dust, revealing the richly varnished wood grain beneath. He stared at the line in the dust and then he turned it into a D and spelled out his first name. Worried that someone might see it and know he’d been here, he considered wiping it away and then changed his mind—let it be. No one would ever move into Empty House, and his name would remain there until it was erased by more dust.

He wiped his finger on his shirt and eased the cabinet doors open. It was empty. He closed the cabinet doors and noticed a scattering of dark splotches across them. He palmed away more dust, sneezed three times, and leaned in close. The stains were old and dark and flaky atop the thick varnish.

Oh, Lord, he said, wiping his hand on his shirt, as if some of the old blood had actually gotten onto him. He turned around, took two steps, and stopped. There was a chalk line across the windowsill in this room.

His heart hammering in his small chest, he ran into the first room. His scalp tightened. There was a blurry and broken chalk line across the sill of the window through which he’d just come. He tugged his shirt forward, saw the powdery smear across the dark fabric above his stomach.

The window rattled in its frame.

Oh, Mama, Dixon said, taking a few steps backward into the second room. I messed up real good.

Blues in the air and the tink of glass on glass behind him. He spun around.

A short, round-faced colored man wearing a rumpled purple zoot suit stood in front of the liquor cabinet, looking a little like a child wearing his father’s clothes. He turned around with a shot glass in each hand, held one out.

"I’m sorry, sir, I thought that this…" Dixon said, but the man did not see him. Something fluttered like a moth behind Dixon’s forehead and his eyes watered and burned like he’d gotten a face full of stinging black smoke. He rubbed his eyes and stepped backward. His back touched the wall and he slowly peeled his hands from his eyes.

You wanna tell me what happened tonight? the short, thick man said, knocking back his drink and placing the empty glass atop the liquor cabinet, which was now lined with glass bottles bearing fancy, colorful labels. The room was different somehow, though it hurt Dixon’s eyes to look at anything but the man, who with his ratty beard and his boneless face and his bloodshot eyes appeared solid enough to touch. Everything else, including the form that stood holding the other shot glass before the little man, was sketchy. There and not there.

The sketchy form standing before the old man gesticulated, said something, its voice a faraway whisper.

That right? the man said, sliding out of his oversized jacket and tossing it onto an unseen chair. The armpits of his puffy shirt were dark with sweat. He pushed his sleeves back to reveal thick, muscled forearms marked with barely-discernible tattoos. The somber blues number wilted into silence quickly filled by cheers and applause. The thin gold chain that hung from the pockets of the little man’s high-waist pants glinted in electric light that was not there. "Yeah, well, you can’t do that."

The form said something, brought the glass to its lips. Sipped.

" ’Cause I said you can’t. That’s why." The short man smiled, shook his head, and stepped forward. Drove his right fist forward. The shot glass clattered across the floor and the sketchy form crumpled.

"Bitch, I fuckin’ tell you when you done workin’ f’me."

Tears streamed down Dixon’s face and he fought to hold back the scream that grew in his chest. His heart pounded in his throat now. His hands were cold and numb. He eased himself toward the door leading into the blue room. The window was so close.

Dixon pulled his attention from the man, tried to see who the other form was, what it looked like, but the moth flapped its wings behind his eyes again and he had to look away.

The little man in the lumpy suit leaned forward and slapped the form upside the head, pulled it to its feet. It was a head taller than he was, but he was strong. He leveled a finger at its face.

Now you listen to me right now, honey the man said, and he was no longer smiling. His eyes were black. You try this shit one more time, and—

The little man gasped and stumbled forward into the sketchy form. It shoved him away, and he crashed into the liquor cabinet. Bottles of whiskey and gin wobbled and bumped into one another like drunks, and the little man in the zoot suit gasped and gurgled, his hands pressed to his throat, slick with blood. The form surged toward the man, its right arm rising and falling, rising and falling, and the little man’s sweaty white shirt went red like a bouquet of roses and you don’t ever put your filthy fucking hands on me see what happens when you do?

Jesus, Dixon said, pulling away from the wall, and spun into the first room. The man in the zoot suit stood before the window with the broken chalk line, holding his hands out like a man warming himself in front of a fire. He was unmarked. He wore his lumpy, big-shouldered jacket. Still open, the window rattled in its frame.

Now the little man saw Dixon, who screamed and turned to run, tripped on his own feet, and toppled to the floor in the second room, which was empty except for the dusty liquor cabinet. Standing in the front room, the man in the zoot suit stared down at Dixon, who threw his forearms across his face.

Help me, Lord, he said, gasping, trying to find the words his mother would have him speak. "Help me, Mama Laveau. Help me, Mother Mary. Make this man go away. Make him go."

He peeled his arms from his face, opened his eyes. The man was still there. He’d returned his attention to the window, which seemed to be trying to rip itself from the wall. The short man’s large suit rippled around his body as if buffeted by a great wind. He reached for the window, touched its wooden frame. He winced and pulled his hand to his chest.

Dixon clambered to his feet and ran deeper into the house. The third room had been the kitchen. The walls were orange. The cabinets were gone. Pipes jutted from the wall beneath two windows, both of which had been painted shut in thick, careless globs. There were symbols written in chalk on the wall beneath each window.

He looked back down the length of the house. The man in the suit had not moved from the window.

Toward the back of the house, a short hallway fronted a small lavatory with a black hole in the floor where a flushing toilet had once been. In the fourth room, the walls were dark red and the trim was white. There was a large bed with an ornate wooden head-board and a bloodstained mattress heaped with bloody sheets. The stains were old and brown.

Meaning to climb onto the bed and attempt to open the window above it, Dixon stepped deeper into the room. He looked back—the man was once more reaching for the rattling window.

Dixon took one more step toward the bed, and a pretty white woman in a billowing white nightgown brushed past him. She giggled, hand in hand with a shirtless young colored man, who she led to the bed. They stood, kissing, their hands sliding over one another’s body. The woman seemed older than the man. She grunted and pressed her body against his, sucking his bottom lip into her mouth.

His face growing hot, Dixon drew in a deep breath and looked back. The man in the baggy purple suit was gone. Dixon looked back in time to see the young man lift the nightgown over the woman’s head and toss it onto the bed, where it concealed much of the dried blood. She was naked.

The couple spun slowly in place, kissing and groping and nibbling, their knees bumping into the bed, and Dixon tried to take her all in—her heavy, pale breasts, her large nipples. The curve of her full stomach and her large, dimpled ass. The long hair down her back. The thick dark hair between her legs, which tapered in a thin line up to her deep bellybutton.

The man grabbed hold of one of the woman’s breasts and squeezed it out of shape, pressed his face to it, sucked the nipple into his mouth. His other hand slid down between her legs, and Dixon had to adjust himself. He wasn’t a dumb kid—his Mama made sure he and his sister knew about the world, and he knew just what he was seeing here. He’d seen pictures of people doing this—Wynton had a few black and white photos of people making love stashed under his mattress—but he’d never actually seen it with his own eyes.

He remembered to breathe. His knees weakened, and he steadied himself against the wall as the woman slid to her knees before the man, kissing his chest and his flat, dark stomach. She unbuckled his pants, tugged them down, and the man’s rigid penis dropped forward, came to rest against the woman’s face. They laughed, and then the woman seized the man’s thing and slid it into her mouth.

Gah, the man said, and Dixon slid down the wall and sat watching as the man lowered himself to the bed and the woman’s head rose and fell, rose and fell. There were a series of moles between her shoulder blades. The bottoms of her feet were dirty. Her ass was pointed directly at Dixon. He stared at her privates through a hot rush of shame, wonder, and revulsion.

God, the man said, moaning, balling his fists in the woman’s dark hair. God, baby. He squeezed his eyes shut and drew his lips back from his clenched teeth in an expression that seemed almost animal to Dixon.

The thrumming behind Dixon’s eyes returned, intensified, and there was only rage and hurt and pain and you fucking lying dog don’t even look at me you dirty white bitch—

The white woman leaned against the bed, weeping, feebly attempting to conceal her nakedness while holding one hand out before her like an equally feeble shield. The man moved to stand up—don’t move—and the white woman screamed and begged and there were two muted pops and two holes appeared in her chest and began to sputter blood like freckles onto her breasts. She fell to her side, gasping, sicking up a bright red gout of blood, and the man leapt to his feet once more. There was another pop, and the young man stumbled to his knees, clutching his stomach. Blood poured down over his flaccid penis. A sketchy form rushed over to where he knelt, struck him across the face, cursed his name with words Dixon felt and did not hear.

Out front, the yellow-framed window rattled and rattled. Wailing, Dixon scurried into the last room of the house. Behind him, the man said something about being sorry, and there was a final distant pop.

There was no furniture in the last room. The walls were sweaty and slick and, along with the ceiling, had been painted black. Names and words he didn’t understand were scrawled in red chalk along the crown molding on all four walls. Three horseshoes hung on the back wall. They were lumpy and uneven, like they were caked in dried clay, and they were upside down. The windows were opaque with moisture.

He stared at the horseshoes, wondering what they meant and who could have hung them there, and then, grit crunching beneath his right foot, he turned to face the doorway.

The shirtless man stood there. His pants were still on and he had not been shot. To his back, sketchy forms churned and writhed. The window out front rattled and rattled, and Dixon’s knees gave out one final time. Black splotches blotted out his field of vision, and the shirtless man walked over to where he sat and knelt before him. Took one of his small hands in both of his. The man’s hands were rough, and Dixon tried to look him in the eye.

The man smiled.

You let go of him right now, his mama said, and Dixon spun into darkness. He opened his eyes and sat up and he was on the front porch of Empty House, his head buzzing. It was almost dark now. Pale light glowed in the windows of the houses across the street. A nasty smell clung to his face and there was a sickly taste in his mouth. He crawled over to the edge of the porch and threw up.

The front door opened and his mother emerged from Empty House, bringing with her the pungency of incense. She had on the clothes she wore when she went helping folks keep their dicks up or get revenge on an unfaithful spouse or maybe make sure a horse won a race: her prettiest green dress, the scarf on her head. By daylight, the scarf seemed to have been spun from gold. By this light, it was little more than a fading hint of yellow atop the dark oval of her face.

She whispered something in French and held her eyes shut, and her face tightened with pain, like she was kneeling on broken glass. There was a piece of chalk in her left hand. She slid it into a small pouch at her waist and looked down at him.

Mama, I…

Seconds dragged into minutes, and Mama stared at him, her face like murder. Dixon’s heart returned to something like normal, the sky darkened, and his mama sighed. She looked a bit like she wanted to collapse right there.

"What did I tell you?"

Mama, I’m—

Stop. She pulled a key from a pouch at her waist. She locked the door, and when she looked at Dixon he wanted to ask her why she had a key to Empty House. He wanted to but he didn’t because the look in her eyes told him she was thinking about whipping his ass real good.

Just shut up for a minute, she said, sitting on the porch steps. She slid the key into the pouch and produced a hand-rolled cigarette, brought it to her lips, and lit up. It smelled funny, not like a regular cigarette—he’d smelled it before, drifting into his room after he’d gone to bed sometimes. She took a few deep drags and then stood up, looked back at him. What did you see?

Uh.

What did you see?

I… he said, trying to make sense of what had just happened to him. Everything was slower. His body was heavy. It was bad, Mama.

This place is no good. I told you that. Here.

She held the cigarette out to him.

I—

Take it.

He did. He brought the cigarette to his lips.

Fill your mouth first. Let the smoke cool.

He stared at her with his cheeks puffed up