Darker Tales from the Den by Fox Dona

Author:Fox, Dona
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: James Ward Kirk Publishing
Published: 2016-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

Li Gran Toy Zombi

New Orleans, 1977

Lenard’s Story

I turned my face from the sight and smell of the man standing in front of me as his trembling gained momentum. He was a gorgeous young man with tight golden curls and pale skin so common in the quarter, but his clothes were shabby and soiled.

Suddenly, the night quieted. The young man’s body calmed. He scratched crosses on her headstone, reached into his pocket and placed an item on her grave, then lifted his wet face into the moon’s light. His body began to tremble once more, worse than before. He pounded his chest with his fist, then he reached into his pocket again, threw a handful of items on her grave, shook his empty, open palms at her effigy, and he babbled. Though I didn’t understand his strange words, I knew he bargained with the Voodoo Queen Marie LaVeau. His hoarse cries were unintelligible–maybe she understood, or maybe she saw into his heart.

My chuckle was irreverent. I was out of place in the dark cemetery.

Something deep in me must have believed. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have spent a month’s pay on the bag of crap I was about to lay on her grave, in the nebulous hope that my brother wouldn’t die. He had to die sometime. I guess it’s hard for a man to give up his only brother.

The beer and the jazz had seeped into my bones and led me to The Last True Voodoo Shop in the darkest alley in New Orleans. I’d paid through the nose for one last chance to keep my brother longer than God, or nature, had ever ordained, longer than was right.

A dusky woman with haunting eyes and promising cleavage, who smelled of oranges, had suckered me at the shop. She possessed strange, dark mysteries she’d never share with me. I walked away with directions to the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1–Marie LaVeau’s grave, a bag full of junk and an empty wallet. Waning faith in magic and resentment nibbled at me as I sobered.

Here I was in line, half drunk, waiting to offer my gift and plead for my brother’s life. The damaged boy moved on and I stepped up to the Voodoo Queen’s grave.

A hand pushed me from behind in the dark. “Come on, hurry up.”

I bent down to leave the bag I’d paid so much for, and I spied a toy snake someone else had left behind as an offering for the Voodoo Queen. Whispering my plea to Marie, I placed the bag down and slid the snake into my hand, then into my pocket in one fluid motion. Surely, no one had seen. After all the money I had spent for nothing, I deserved something. I would take the snake home to my niece as a souvenir. I set my teeth and moved on.

No.

I forgot to ask Marie LaVeau to keep my brother alive.

He choked to death that night, at home in Bridge Pass, Oregon.

Morning came; a horrible headache, chicory coffee and a toy snake on the floor.

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