A Bad Day for Voodoo

CHAPTER 10

Before this moment, the most guns I’d ever had pointed at me was one, and that was during the carjacking a few minutes ago. I wouldn’t say that this was necessarily five times scarier, but it was at least three or four times scarier.

None of the criminals looked happy to see me.

I said the first thing that came to mind: “I’m not a cop!”

For a few seconds, they all just stared at me. Then Gary (who I did not yet know was Gary—I simply thought of him as muscular guy with goatee, black hair, and cruel eyes) chuckled. Scorp chuckled right after that, and they were quickly followed by Blood Clot, Shark, and Ribeye. Their chuckles never quite reached full-fledged laughter, nothing like what you’d see in a movie where the bad guys are all having a nice big guffaw, but they were all clearly amused by my comment.

“Not a cop, huh?” asked Gary. “They hiring a lot of terrified- looking teenage boys as cops these days?”

“I’m just saying.. .I’m not, y’know, wearing a wire or anything.” “Well, good.” Gary patted me on the shoulder. “Good to

know. Because I’ve gotta say, when you came in here, I thought they’d sent in the marines.”

The other guys chuckled some more.

I glanced over at my mom’s car. The tires had already been removed, as had both doors. These guys were scumbag thieves, but I had to admire their efficiency. The trunk remained intact. “What’s your name?” Gary asked.

“Tyler.”

“Tyler what?”

“Tyler Churchill.”

“Well, Tyler Churchill, would you mind explaining to me exactly why the hell you knocked on our door?”

My mouth went completely dry, and it was difficult to speak. “You stole my mom’s car.”

“I stole nothing of the sort. I’ve been here all evening. Do you know what I do to people who falsely accuse me of wrongdoing?” I shook my head.

He pressed the barrel of the gun against my forehead. “You can make an educated guess, right?”

I forced myself not to drop to my knees and start sobbing and begging for mercy. They hadn’t opened fire on me with all five guns the second I stepped into their chop shop, so he had to be willing to discuss things.

I wondered if, possibly, this had been a bad idea.

“I didn’t mean you,” I said, my voice barely a whisper. I halfpointed to Scorp. “He took the car. It’s.. .uh.. .right there.”

“Oh, okay. You’re saying that my associate stole your car. That’s different. I agree with that. How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“You packin’?”

“Heat?”

Gary looked at me as if glowing waves of stupidity were emanating from my forehead. “Yes, heat. Are you packing heat? Are you in possession of a firearm containing bullets with which you might try to shoot somebody?”

I vigorously shook my head.

“Ribeye, pat him down.”

Ribeye set down his gun on the roof of the car and then gave me a not-very-gentle pat down that I thought might leave bruises. “Kid’s clean,” he announced. He walked back to retrieve his gun. I wished I’d stomped on his foot and then done a double backflip over to the car, where I could have grabbed his gun and shot all five of them before they had had a chance to react, but the window of opportunity was now closed.

“No gun, huh?” Gary asked me.

“No.”

“Why would you show up without a gun? That sounds stupid to me. Very, very stupid. And I have a problem understanding acts of stupidity. Isn’t that right, Blood Clot?”

“Yep,” said Blood Clot. “You sure do.”

“I’m always saying to myself, ‘Why did that person do something so stupid?’ And most of the time, I can’t get a good answer. Which is why I’m so happy to have you here, right in the middle of one of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen somebody do. Explain it to me.” Now my mouth had gone so dry that I literally couldn’t speak. “Did you come in here thinking that my moral code would

not let me shoot a teenager? Is that it? I hope so, because I love irony.” Gary grinned. “Don’t I love irony, Blood Clot?”

“Oh yeah. You can’t get enough of that ironic stuff.”

Gary winked at me. And then his grin vanished, and his cruel eyes went dead serious. “It’s extremely important that you don’t think I won’t kill you just because you’re a kid. I’ll kill a little girl and not lose a wink of sleep.”

“I don’t think you won’t kill me,” I said, finding my voice again. That didn’t sound like what I’d actually wanted to say, but I wasn’t completely sure what I did want to say and didn’t correct myself. “You call the cops?” Gary asked.

“No. He stole my phone.”

“Your friends call the cops?”

“He stole their phones too.”

Gary shrugged. “Makes sense. However, since it’s no longer 1923, I’d guess that they wouldn’t find it too difficult to get in touch with the authorities. Time’s running out. Why are you here? Were you gonna steal your car back? It’s gonna be hard to drive right now.”

“I need something out of the trunk,” I said.

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“You’re here because you forgot something in your trunk?” “Yes, sir.”

“Are you slow of mind?”

“I don’t care what you do with the car. I mean, I do care— it’s my mom’s car, and she’s going to go absolutely berserk—but I’m not going to try to stop you. Not that I could stop you, but I mean, you know what I mean.”

“Could somebody please shoot him to stop the babbling?” “No, no! All I’m saying is that if I could please have the box in the trunk, I’ll get out of your hair and you can go back to what you were doing.”

“Must be valuable,” said Gary.

“Only sentimental value.”

“Uh-huh. There’s no sentimental value in the world worth getting shot over. Now you’ve gone and made me all curious. Scorp, open the trunk.”

“We should clear out first,” said Scorp.

“We’ll clear out when I say it’s time to clear out. That’s what the secret passage is for. It’ll be nice to get to use it again; it’s been too long. Get that trunk open.”

Scorp took out my set of keys and unlocked the trunk. He popped the lid, revealing the small wooden box.

“Nice box,” said Gary. “I like the symbols. Good tattoo ideas.” I wasn’t sure whether to thank him for the compliment or not. I decided on not.

As Scorp took the box out of the trunk, it occurred to me that a much better plan would have involved Kelley and Adam setting up some sort of distraction at a designated time. So Scorp would pick up the box, and he’d be juuuuust about to open it when a huge explosion knocked all five thugs off their feet. From there, it would be the aforementioned matter of acquiring one of the guns and shooting it five times. Then the taxi would plow right through the garage door. No problem.

Gary picked up the box. “Pretty light for something full of cash.”

“It’s not cash. It’s a doll.”

“A doll?” Gary rattled the box.

I gasped and literally clutched at my heart, which felt like it skipped a beat and then did six hundred beats in a half-second to compensate.

“Whoa, whoa, what’s your problem?” Gary asked.

“It’s fragile!”

Gary set the box on the cement floor and then lifted the lid. “It is a doll.”

“Right. Just a doll. My grandmother made it. On her deathbed.” “She made you a doll on her deathbed?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s why it’s not a very well-made doll. It’s doesn’t have any actual value, not even on Antiques Roadshow, but my mom will be heartbroken if something happens to it.” “And you think I look like the kind of person who cares if your mother is heartbroken?”

“There’s no reason not to give it back to me,” I said.

Gary lifted the doll out of the box by its arm. “What’s inside it?” “Nothing.”

“There’s something inside. I don’t care if your grandmother was the homemade meatloaf queen of the United States, you wouldn’t be doing this for a doll. Ribeye, get me a knife.” “Please!” I said. “Don’t cut it open.”

“I ain’t got a knife,” said Ribeye.

“Blood Clot, get me a knife.”

“I don’t have one either,” Blood Clot admitted. “I’ve got a screwdriver.”

“Screwdriver’s fine,” said Gary.

Blood Clot tossed him a screwdriver. Gary moved his hand out of the way, and the tool clattered onto the floor.

“Don’t throw it at me! Hand it to me! Do you want that thing to go right through my palm? What’s the matter with you?”

“I thought you’d catch it.”

“That’s how people get hurt, moron. Now pick it up.”

Blood Clot sheepishly walked over to where the screwdriver had fallen. He picked it up, handed it to Gary, then walked back to where he’d been standing.

“I swear to you there’s nothing inside the doll,” I said. “It’s really important that you not cut it open.”

“Why?”

“It just is.”

“I don’t know why you’re getting so bent out of shape over this doll. You realize that I’m going to kill you, right? You’ve captured my interest and all that, but this is gonna end with you getting a bullet in the head. Bloody corpses don’t care much about dolls.” “Please, I’ll do anything,” I said. “I’ll steal cars for you. I’ll mop the floors.” Yeah, I was no James Bond in the face of danger, but considering the circumstances, I think I could’ve been handling myself much worse.

“That’s a very tempting offer, but I think ol’ Ribeye would be disappointed if I let somebody else mop up the gore.” He picked up the doll and placed the tip of the screwdriver against its chest.

“Voodoo doll! Voodoo doll!” I shouted. I’d meant to be more articulate than that, but I hoped that got the point across.

“Say what?”

“It’s a voodoo doll,” I said, more calmly.

“It does look like a voodoo doll,” said Gary. “How about that?” “So you can understand why I don’t want you to rip it open with a screwdriver.”

Gary let out a high-pitched laugh. “This is a voodoo doll of you? Aw, man, that’s some bad luck, huh? Hey, Blood Clot, didn’t you try to make a voodoo doll of your ex-wife that one time?” “Naw, man.”

“Yeah, yeah, you did. You were all like ‘I’ll teach her to come home from work early and catch me with that tramp,’ and you were jabbing pins into a SpongeBob SquarePants doll.”

“Wasn’t me.”

“Yeah, it was. No, wait, it was Ribeye. Hey, Ribeye, didn’t you try to make a voodoo doll of your ex-wife that one time?” “Ex-girlfriend.”

“Right, right. How did that work out for you?”

Ribeye shrugged. “I don’t know. As far as I know, she didn’t complain about any pain, but we weren’t living together anymore, so I wasn’t around to say for sure. Made me feel better, though.” Gary slowly slid the tip of the screwdriver across the chest of the doll. “You’re sweating a bit there, buddy,” he said to me. “You really believe in this thing, don’t you?”

“Yes,” I said.

“You’re serious. You’re deranged but serious. What do you think is gonna happen when I jab this screwdriver in here?” “Hopefully nothing.”

“Oh, hey, there are a few pins in the box. How convenient.” He tossed the screwdriver back at Blood Clot. “No sense wasting all of the fun on gouging your chest out right away, huh?”

Blood Clot picked up the screwdriver and glared at him.

I was in a state of absolute panic, but what could I do? Should I attack him? That seemed risky. Should I wait around and hope that he was only kidding? Though I hated to not be proactive, there were still multiple guns pointed at me.

Gary selected a nice long pin with a light blue head. “This one is perfect, don’t you think? I’ve always liked the color blue. Especially this particular shade. Now where should I poke it? Hmmm. Decisions, decisions.”

“Black magic is not something you should take lightly,” said Ribeye. “There are forces in this universe more powerful than anything you can imagine, things we cannot see with our regular five senses, and you shouldn’t be taunting them.”

“Shaddup.”

“I agree with Ribeye,” said Scorp. “That voodoo stuff, it can be nasty. What if all of this playing around gets you a voodoo priestess coming after you? That what you want?”

“Get lives, all of you,” said Gary. “I’m just having some fun with Paranoid Boy here. Now where, where, oh where should I stick this pin?”

What would you do in this situation? I’m not actually soliciting advice—it’s too late for that—but I’m curious. The most common answer is probably “I would never have gotten into this jam in the first place, because I wouldn’t have messed with the voodoo doll, even under peer pressure,” and the second most common is probably “Well, I at least wouldn’t have knocked on the damn garage door!”

But let’s pretend you did do all that. What would you do now?

The way I looked at it, here were my options:

1. Faint. Advantages: Easy to do. Everything is less scary when you’re unconscious. Disadvantages: Could hit head on floor. Would probably be dead before I woke up.

2. Scream for help. Advantages: Easy to do. A kindly individual might hear and help. Disadvantages: 99.9997 percent chance that Gary & Co. would shoot me before I finished the first scream.

3. Acquire invulnerability. Advantages: Bullets would bounce off of me, and the voodoo doll would be powerless against me. Disadvantages: Unlikely to happen in the next few seconds.

4. Try to fake him out. Advantages: If it worked, I might not die. Disadvantages: I was not immediately sure how to go about such a thing.

All of my options pretty much sucked raw eggs through a straw, so I went with the fourth one. “What makes you so sure that doll isn’t of you?” I asked.

Gary raised an eyebrow. “Are you trying to fake me out?” “That doll needs somebody’s essence to work. By touching it, you’ve transferred your essence into it. You jab a pin in there, you might as well be jabbing a pin right into your own brain.” “That’s not how voodoo dolls work.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m comfortable with my decision,” he said, jabbing the pin into the corner of the doll’s foot.