VooDoo Follies (2 page)

I walked straight into the middle of my room
before I realized I was in the wrong place. I wanted to cry, but
the tears wouldn’t come. I was so utterly confused. I stood, hoping
I hadn’t walked into the wrong house. ‘Oh, God, what if someone
comes home and shoots me?’ ‘No, see there, that’s my dresser.’ I
noticed the place where I spilled nail polish down the side and
tried to clean it off with nail polish remover only to take part of
the paint away with it. I walked over and touched the spot,
wondering where all my things had gone. I was backing away slowly
when I tripped over something. “Who leaves a box in the middle of
the floor?” My gruff voice was bordering on demanding and whiny.
The box had writing on it. “Adrianna’s clothes.”

‘Why are my things boxed up?’ I was about to
open the box when someone screamed behind me. I jumped up and
turned around, waiting to be shot after all. This was most
certainly some sort of freaky dream I was having that I couldn’t
get a hold of. I couldn’t wake up either, and that pinching
yourself thing didn’t seem to be working for me. A few moments slid
by as I watched my mother hyperventilating in her nightgown in
front of me before something triggered in my brain telling me it
was her. “Mom?”

She fainted.

It wasn’t long before my mom came to. I was
just sitting there, very still, on the floor in front of her. I
thought about calling 911 before she started to move again, but
then the questions started rolling through my head unchecked and
unstoppable. She started screaming again and all I could do was sit
there and stare at her questioningly. “Mom? What is going
on?”

She reached out a hand to me with such a hurt
look on her face, then she snatched it back out of the air before
she could make contact with me. “Oh, God!” Her sobs were growing
louder as she spoke, “I really have lost it then.” She tucked her
head down and cried softly for a few moments. Then with some sort
of fierce passion in her eyes she looked back up at me, “but if I
am loosing it, at least I get to see my baby girl
again!”

“Mom,” I spoke quietly so I wouldn’t upset her
as I had before, “what is going on? I am so confused.”

“I don’t know how this is possible.” Her
answer was not helpful in the least.

“How what is possible?”

“You. Here. You’re alive, but how?”

“I’m what? Wait...” I looked at her as if she
really had lost her mind. Obviously, she was a bit unstable today.
I couldn’t really say much about that with my lack of focus, but
this was ridiculous. She thought I had been dead. I guess that
explained the car for sale and all my things boxed up. “Dead?”
There, I said it. It was more of a question, but it was out there
for her to answer. She just stared at me with that unbelieving look
again.

“Where do you think you’ve been for the past
three weeks, Adrianna?”

“What do you mean the past few weeks?” Jumbles
of questions began their dance through my head again, but I managed
to push them back a little. “I was just at the game with Stephen
and...”

My mom’s wince cut me off. She looked as
though I had just broken her.

“Oh, my baby girl,” she was crooning to me as
she came closer. I sat still, waiting for that touch, as though I
had been without for a very long time and had missed it dearly. Her
hand was like fire when it connected with my face. “Mom,” I
squeaked out, but again she cut me off.

“You’re so cold.” Tears were flowing down her
face and her practiced nurse’s fingers traced along the delicate
line of my jaw down to the dirt encrusted column of my throat,
feeling for a pulse that I only just now realized wasn’t there.
“Oh!” She jumped. Then she began backing away from me. “What are
you?”

“I’m you’re daughter.”

“Where did you come from tonight?” She was
looking at me again. This time she was taking in everything about
me. I think it’s the first time she saw how dirty I was because her
nose wrinkled in distaste. The dress was enough to wrinkle my own
nose, but I could see where the dirt would be an issue. My thoughts
jumbled together again as I tried to put together the pieces of
what had just happened.

“How did you get here tonight?” She managed to
ask me while continuing to back herself out of my room slowly. She
was moving in the kind of slow speed backwards crawl you do when
there’s an angry animal in front of you that you want to get away
from, but don’t want to antagonize or startle with a speedy
retreat.

“I walked.” I watched her continuing to back
up.

“From where?”

“Grandpa’s cemetery. I was there with...” I
had to think. There was someone else there with me. “That new girl,
the one from my Algebra class.”

“You had Algebra last year,
Adrianna.”

“Yeah, but that’s how I knew her.” I stopped,
trying to think again of how I got there and when I couldn’t I just
continued on. “Look, the last thing I knew I was at the football
game, leaving it actually. Then I remember being in the graveyard
with that weird chick and I walked home because I couldn’t find my
cell phone and I didn’t know where my car was, and then I got here
and every thing’s different and you’re scared of me.” I was crying
by now, only without the aid of the tears that I so wished would
fall from my face right now.

“Oh, Adrianna!” My mom looked like she wanted
to come wrap her arms around me and run from me all at the same
time. I’ve prayed day and night for God to give you back to me. I
have made deals, begged, screamed and cried. I don’t think God is
the one that sent you back to me though.”

“Sent me back?” The question rolled off my
lips as a hundred more rattled my brain. I had no pulse. My first
memory in weeks was of standing in a graveyard filthy, and
completely confused. And now my mom talks about praying to get me
back and how I wasn’t sent by God. I knew this meant something big,
but the pieces weren’t clicking together. They all kept getting
jumbled up with other questions and bits of information I had
gathered since... since I … “arrrgghhh,” I finally screamed out in
frustration, “I don’t understand.”

“You died, Adrianna.” Sobs racked my mom where
she sat sprawled before me on the floor, now half in and half out
of my room. “You are dead. You don’t even have a pulse. I don’t
know what sort of demon-thing you are, but you are not my
daughter!” She was panicking. I could see it in her eyes. The red
rims grew ever wider as she started to scream hysterically at me.
“You crashed coming home from the football game. You died! My
Adrianna died! I don’t know what you are or how you are possible,
but you are to leave this house and never come back.”

“Mom,” I wanted the word to come out forceful,
to snap her out of this craziness that she was spewing, but it came
out more like a whimper. I knew what she was saying. I could almost
taste the truth of it on the air. My things were packed, my car for
sale, I woke up in the cemetery from whatever sleep I had been in,
and here I was caked with grave dirt, dressed in my funeral best,
apparently. My mother, the good lapsed Catholic that she was, took
her crucifix out that she still wore around her neck, and started
chanting something over and over again under her breath. “Mom,
please!” This time it came out as no more than a whisper. What
happened to me? That girl, from the cemetery. She had to see
something. I knew then what I had to do. I had to go try to find
her. I didn’t have the slightest clue how I was going to make that
happen. I didn’t know her name. I couldn’t remember. I never really
cared to know it to begin with. And now my life, or I guess my
death depended on her and what she knew. My mom was standing now
saying something about casting out a devil. “Oh, God, do you mean
me?” I questioned, a sick feeling fluttered through my stomach. I
picked up the box marked Adrianna’s clothes and I took it with me.
I wouldn’t be able to get a shower here, obviously, but I would at
least have something to change into.

***

The Best Place to find a
zombie

I walked to school today. I could have driven
the car that the step-loser-dejour got me as a bribe for my
cooperation, but I needed the time to think about what I was going
to do. I had stopped by Adrianna’s house last night and talked to
her very freaked out mother. She wouldn’t say she had seen her dead
daughter walking around, but she definitely looked a little more
than freaked out when I mentioned that I had known Adrianna and
thought I had seen her earlier that evening.

Auntie Perrine charged me with finding
Adrianna and putting her back in the ground, but I raised her in a
cemetery in Baltimore, Maryland. I tried to explain that she could
be anywhere. I had no clue where to begin looking after her house
was a bust so I just decided to come here after a good night’s
sleep. Well, I didn’t even get the luxury of a good night’s sleep
with Auntie Perrine calling every hour to ask if I had found the
zombie yet.

I turned my phone off this morning after I
sent a text to my aunt explaining that i forgot to charge my phone.
I had never looked forward to six hours in school so much as I did
today. That was until I saw my zombie walking right up the front
walk of the school. At least she had found some clothes, but she
still looked like a filthy beggar that had been out in the elements
too long. I was actually thankful that she hadn’t gotten a shower
somewhere because the dirt and grime was helping to disguise her a
little. Or so I thought, until I realized she was talking to a boy.
I hung my head a little thinking of what Auntie Perrine would say
if she saw this. What kind of a dead girl goes back to school,
filthy and stinking of the grave, and flirts with a boy?

I made a bee-line straight for Adrianna and
her friend. I didn’t even stop when I got to them. I simply hooked
my arm in hers and started dragging her away before she could
realize what was happening.

“Hey!” Her head snapped around to see who was
dragging her before she went on. “You! I’ve been looking for
you!”

“What a coincidence, because I’ve been looking
for you too. Now, let’s get out of here before you scare someone.
You’re supposed to be dead, you know!”

She poked her lips out in what was supposed to
be a pout, I suppose. It didn’t really work for her. “I know. I
talked to my mom last night.” She turned her facial expression into
that of an over-exaggerated frown-y face and continued, “she tried
to exercise me from the house with her crucifix and some
prayers.”

The boy laughed. It was the first time I
realized he had followed us. “Excuse me, but she and I have some
business to discuss and I think it would be best if you just go on
to school now.”

“Well, I don’t really feel like I belong there
anymore, besides, I want to know all about how Adrianna came back
from the dead!” He was excited. I could see the glint in his eye
and I knew that he understood that she was dead. Maybe, if nothing
else I could make a friend out of this mess I had gotten myself
into. A real friend that would understand the Voodoo and that dead
people really do get up and walk around, when they’re called
to.

“Fine, suit yourself.” I nodded my head for
him to follow. Adrianna turned and started walking of her own free
will and I suddenly found myself wishing I had driven to school
after all. I shuddered at the thought of being seen with a walking
dead girl and her apparently unshakable, yet faithful
companion.

“You’re Seraphine, right?”

“Um, yeah. How did you know?” I looked him up
and down, trying to remember if I had seen him at school or not. I
couldn’t place him, but then again I had transferred to the school
mid-year last year and it was still early in the school year for
now. Besides, not that I was a snob or anything, but I hadn’t
bothered to make friends here. I was hoping against all hope that
things wouldn’t work out with my mom and her new husband. I wanted
to go back home to New Orleans.

“We had French together at the beginning of
the year.” He looked at me like I should remember.

“Oh! Well, how come we don’t now? We’re only
in the third month of school.”

The boy looked sad all of a sudden. “I was in
an accident. I just never came back afterwards.

“Oh.” It was the most clever thing I could
think of to say. How pathetic of me.

“Stephen.” It was the first thing Adrianna had
said in a few minutes.

“Yea, A?” He answered her, so I had to assume
Stephen was his name.

Adrianna seemed to come out of some sort of
trance or something, “hmmm? Oh, nothing. Sorry, I can’t seem to
keep a single thought in my head too long.”

I tossed a worried look over her shoulder at
the sandy haired boy that joined us. He just smiled briefly in my
direction and shrugged. We all walked in silence for a bit, heading
for my house so I could pick up the car and some supplies. I also
needed to consult with Auntie Perrine, because I was pretty sure
that I had to wait until nightfall to put Adrianna back in her
grave, but I was really hoping she would tell me it could be done
during the day too.

I couldn’t help but notice how Adrianna must
have been pretty when she was actually clean, and not dead. She had
cute little elven features. Adrianna had an almost pointy set of
smallish ears and perky petite nose, finished off with her normally
velvety brown bob that was currently a little matted and tucked
behind her ears. I remember when I first saw her in Algebra class I
was jealous of those elven features. I’ve had people tell me they
wished they could have my mass of curly creole hair. It held it’s
own beauty, I suppose, with the golden sun-bleached highlights that
always ran through my light brown curls. I was tired of it though.
Everyone who fell in love with my curls never had to actually take
care of them. My head was a mess when I woke in the mornings. If it
weren’t for fifty pounds of styling product it would be one giant
kinky afro nestled on top of my all too white looking complexion.
The only thing good that came out of being Creole was the magic. My
gran was the last one of the family to speak French, aside from
little endearments my Auntie and momma had picked up from her. In
fact, I was failing French in school at the moment and was certain
that my long line of magical, French speaking ancestors were
rolling over in their collective graves at the disappointment that
was me. First, I fail French, then I loose a Zombie. I let out an
audible sigh that broke the silence for the rest of the
walk.