Nightmare Magazine Issue 24 by Nightmare Magazine

Author:Nightmare Magazine
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horror, Dark Fantasy, Short Stories
Publisher: John Joseph Adams
Published: 2014-08-29T16:00:00+00:00

Two

“You don’t believe in Buster Voodoo?” Marie asked. She looked pretty in her light blue dress. They’d gone to Sunday Mass with their Mama not long after breakfast. Dixon had changed out of his suit as soon as they’d gotten home. It was itchy and uncomfortable, and he wasn’t sure why he couldn’t go to Church in his regular clothes. Marie, on the other hand—if Mama let her, she’d wear her pretty blue dress until it fell apart.

“Be quiet and read,” Dixon said, shooting his sister a dismissive glance. Their Mama had some things to do after Church, and they were staying at the Glapion house until she returned. She usually trusted them while she was away, but Dixon’s trip into Empty House had changed things.

She’d walked them to the Glapions with their daily reading assignments. This month, Mama had Marie reading The Confessions of St. Augustine. Marie hated it, and she hated Dixon because he’d fared so much better this time around—he’d gotten Treasure Island.

Marie enjoyed scaring her baby brother. It didn’t work as well as it used to, but she could be relentless. He knew exactly where this was going. He pretended to be caught up in his book, but he was really just waiting for her to open her mouth. She wasn’t done.

“You think he took Wynton?” she said, staring at him until he looked up. Her big brown eyes were somehow bigger, and he couldn’t tell if she was really afraid or if she was just setting him up. “Think Buster ate him?”

“Why you wanna be like that?” he asked. “Mama says we should be praying for him, not talking foolish.”

“I’m just saying,” she said, and now he could tell for sure—she was having fun. “Y’all two spent a lot of time together. What if Wynton had your smell on him? You think maybe Buster Voodoo can smell you out like a bloodhound?”

“You ain’t right at all.”

“Stop talkin’ low, Dixie,” she said.

“Mama ain’t here, and you’re talkin’ low, too, so shut up.”

“What you think he looks like?”

Dixon had heard one of the older boys in the neighborhood talking about Buster Voodoo when he was five or six, and the story had frightened him to tears. He’d heard the story countless times since, and though there were always variations, the key details remained.

Buster was a massive Creole man who’d lived in the Tremé with his frail little wife, Aldena. She’d learned Voodoo under Marie Laveau herself and had danced the trance in Congo Square, and Buster had fawned over her, giving her everything she desired. She bore eight children, all boys, and when the oldest boy, Buster’s favorite, was nine years old, Buster learned a horrible truth:

None of the children had belonged to him. He was big and stupid, and Aldena did not want stupid children. In a rage, Buster attacked his wife. Over the years, he’d secretly become quite the conjure man, and the two of them had lobbed curse after curse at one another, until Buster could get close enough to close his large hands around her scrawny neck.

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