A Bad Day for Voodoo

CHAPTER 13

It came running around the largest scrap heap, furiously barking. There was no way I could get the trapdoor back open in time, so I considered my options.

Option One: Try to—

Before I could finish considering my first option, the Rottweiler knocked me to the ground and pulled the doll out of my hand.

I expected all of my toes, fingers, and assorted facial features to jettison from my body at once. Fortunately, I didn’t feel an urge to shriek in unbearable agony, so apparently the dog’s teeth hadn’t punctured the doll yet. The dog ran off about twenty feet, then turned around, as if daring me to fight it for the prize.

“Good doggie,” I said. “Please don’t bite down.”

The Rottweiler shook its head back and forth like it was drying itself after an unwanted bath.

I immediately felt a wave of dizziness beyond anything I’d experienced in my life. My vision went completely blurry. My legs lost their ability to hold up the top half of my body, and I collapsed to the ground. The entire world was spinning, spinning, spinning.

I knew that I needed to fight through this, but the best I could do was dig my fingers into the ground and hope it was enough to keep the earth from flinging me off its surface deep into outer space, where I’d smack into Jupiter.

I threw up. More than once.

I was so dizzy that I didn’t really even care what the dog was doing. It was like the time when I was a kid, when I got on the chair in my dad’s office and just spun and spun and spun and spun until I fell off onto the floor and hit my head and had to go to the hospital, except a million times worse. I didn’t believe in interdimensional hyperspace vortex portals, but if I did, this felt like the way to open one.

I tried to push myself up, but my body said, “Nah, I don’t think so,” and kept me down.

When was this going to stop?

Maybe it was never going to stop. Maybe I was going to spend the rest of my life in this dizzy, spinny, pukey state.

The dog hadn’t yet ripped out my throat or apparently the throat of the doll. My initial thought was that he wasn’t a very good guard dog if those throats remained intact, but at the same time, I certainly wouldn’t be stealing anything from the junkyard on my way out, so maybe he was perfectly fine. I’d figure it out later when the Tilt-A-Whirl in my brain stopped.

The world was spinning a little less quickly. Or else I was just holding on to the earth better.

I thought I heard somebody calling my name, although they may have also been calling for Orville Redenbacher.

Okay, the planet was definitely slowing down. I could make out some shapes. I couldn’t identify these shapes, but at least now I knew there were shapes in my general vicinity.

“Tyler?”

Who was that? A leprechaun?

“Tyler!”

It sounded like a girl. I hoped it was a hot leprechaun.

Now there was an annoying clanging sound, as if somebody were rattling a chain-link fence. I tried to remember if I’d seen a chain-link fence recently. There was that one around the junkyard where that dog had stolen my voodoo doll, but that was years ago, wasn’t it?

I could see that there were colors attached to these shapes. One of the shapes was a black panting one that kind of looked like a mean dog. The other looked like a pile of scrap metal.

Junkyard. I was lying in the junkyard.

“Tyler!”

Yep, it was a girl. Adam? No, wait, Adam wasn’t a girl. I knew that voice. Kelley.

I looked over. Kelley was standing outside of the fence, maybe ten feet away. Or two hundred feet away. It was still hard to calculate distance.

“Are you okay?” Kelley asked.

“Not great.”

“Can you get up?”

With some effort, I got myself into a sitting position. My head felt like it weighed about forty pounds, but I was finally able to hold it upright.

“Do you think you can climb the fence?” Kelley asked.

I studied the fence. Maybe with an escalator I could.

“Do I have to do it now?” I asked. It sounded like somebody else was talking.

“Tyler, I need you to focus. You have to get out of there.”

“The doggie has the doll.”

“I know. We have to figure out how to get it back from him.”

“Do you have any dog biscuits?” I asked.

“No.”

“Do you have any chew toys?”

“No.”

“What about a tranquilizer dart?”

“Try to make friends with it,” Kelley suggested.

I turned my attention to the dog. Though it was a big, scary- looking Rottweiler, it wasn’t really growling or anything. It was just lying on the ground with the doll between its front paws. It could probably take the head off the doll in one bite. Actually, it could probably swallow the doll whole. What would happen to me then? Would my real body be sizzled by stomach acids while the doll made its way through the dog’s digestive tract?

I supposed there would be a lot of fame associated with being “the kid who was digested by a dog without actually being eaten by the dog.” But I’d be dead and unable to enjoy it.

Now the dog growled. It was a long, low growl. My family had never owned dogs, so I wasn’t entirely sure how to translate this. My cat’s communication was simple: Any noise it made meant either “Feed me” or “I hate you.” Though I knew enough about dogs to realize that the growling didn’t mean it wanted to be stick-fetching buddies, I didn’t know how close it was to biting the doll in half.

I put out my hand. “Hey, boy.”

The dog did not stop growling. I wished I had something to toss it as a treat. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought either of my toes.

Dammit! I should’ve asked Adam to get them for me! They could be sewn back on!

“Who’s my precious baby?” I asked. “Who’s my lovey lovey wiggle wuggums?” I didn’t say this in the standard baby-talk voice, which probably reduced its impact. The dog looked at me as if to say.. .actually, I have no clue what the dog was thinking. Nothing good, I assume.

“Do you need me to climb over and help?” Kelley asked.

The fact that she hadn’t already climbed over the fence to help made it clear that she didn’t really want to do it. I didn’t blame her. At this point, I wouldn’t blame her if she lassoed me with a steak necklace and fed me to that beast.

“No, it’s cool,” I said. “I’ve got this covered.” I crouched down, putting myself at eye level with the ferocious monster. “What’s your name, buddy?”

There was a name tag on his collar, so I crept forward a couple of feet, v-e-r-y slowly, to get a better look.

The dog’s name was Tyler.

“Hey, we’ve got the same name,” I said. I gave the dog a great big friendly smile to show him that we were awesome friends and I meant him no harm. “That’s pretty cool, don’t you think?”

I’m not sure why I thought Tyler the Dog would give a crap that we had the same name. His growling continued. My hands were sweating like a zookeeper in a sauna (or, I guess, anybody in a sauna—I don’t know why I singled out zookeepers), so I wiped them off on my jeans and then crawled forward a bit more.

The growling definitely got louder.

“Maybe you should just leave it,” said Kelley.

Not a chance. If I was going to go after gun-toting thugs to get the doll back, I sure wasn’t going to leave it in the jaws of a ginormous dog. One of our neighbors had a dog, and I’d occasionally seen the white cotton innards of its stuffed toys scattered throughout the yard.. .and that was a wiener dog. If I didn’t get the voodoo doll back, I had no doubt that Tyler would shred it down to the individual threads.

I crept a bit closer.

The growling got even louder.

I crept back a bit.

The growling didn’t get quieter.

“You know, Tyler, we’re alike in more ways than just our name,” I said to the dog, not quite sure where I was going with this yet. I thought about it for a second. Nope, nowhere to go with that line of logic, so I switched gears. “If you give me back the doll, I will find you the biggest, juiciest strip of bacon that has ever been gouged out of a pig, and we’ll—”

“What do you think you’re doing?” asked a gruff voice behind me.

What was I doing exactly? Having an English-language conversation with a dog in an effort to persuade him to give me back a doll. It’s probably good that I was interrupted.

I glanced over my shoulder. It was an old man in a brown jumpsuit with lots of grease spots on it. He wasn’t pointing a shotgun at me, but from the looks of him, I suspected that he had shotguns hidden all over this place for easy access.

“Your dog has my doll,” I said.

“That’s not what I asked.”

“That’s kind of what you asked, isn’t it?”

“No.”

“Okay, maybe not. Your dog has my doll, so I’m trying to get it back.”

“You need to move along. You’re not welcome here, you thieving bastard.”

“I’m not thieving anything! I’m trying to get back what your dog thieved. Stole. What your dog stole.”

“If you don’t want to lose a hand, you’d best be going.”

I stood up.

“Please, sir, I’m not trying to cause any problems. All I want is my doll back.”

“You punks are always throwing stuff at my dog. He’s a good dog. Never hurts nobody who’s pure of heart.”

“I didn’t throw anything at him. He knocked me over and took it!”

“Well, that’s your side of the story.”

I stood up as straight as I could, which was kind of difficult because my foot was really starting to hurt again. I hadn’t quite noticed that it had gone numb. Maybe I couldn’t negotiate with a canine, but I was not leaving this junkyard until I got my doll back.

“Sir, you have stolen property. You can give me back the doll, or I can come back here with my dad’s lawyer. Do you really want that?”

The old man spat out a small brown blob of something nasty. “I ain’t scared of lawyers. My nephew’s a lawyer. I think he’ll give your poppa’s lawyer a run for his money.”

“Are you kidding me? It’s just a stupid doll! What are you going to do? Play make-believe with it?”

The old man whistled, and Tyler (the dog version) bounded over to him, the doll still in its mouth. The old man took the doll from him and wiped off some slobber.

“Grandpa?”

“Now I told you to wait inside,” said the old man to the little girl who’d also come out of the structure. She looked about six years old, and she had golden curls and big eyes and wore a simple pink dress.

“I know, Grandpa,” said the little girl. “I just got scared.” She lowered her eyes. “I get scared a lot now that Mom and Dad passed on.”

“I know, Gertie, I know,” said the old man, “It’s hard. Is there any way I can make you feel better?”

She wiped a tear from her eye and then looked up. “I sure would like that new doll you’ve got.”

The old man nodded. “Well, Gertie, I don’t know anybody who would be coldhearted enough to refuse a doll to a precious little girl.”

“Right here,” I said, waving a hand in the air. “You don’t want that doll. That doll is garbage. It’s gross.”

“It’s the most beautiful doll I’ve ever seen,” said Gertie.

“That doll is crap,” I said. Was six years old too young to hear the word crap? “I mean crud,” I corrected. “And it’s not mine. It belongs to a little girl on a farm who looks a lot like you.”

“I’d give anything to live on a farm,” said Gertie. “She’s so lucky. I bet she has hundreds of dolls.”

I looked over to Kelley for assistance. She was staring through the fence at the unfolding events as if unable to believe what she was witnessing.

The little girl’s eyes widened. “Oh! Your foot is bleeding! Grandpa, we need to call a doctor!”

“We’re not calling anybody but the cleanup crew to gather his scattered remains if he doesn’t get out of here,” said the old man.

As if on cue, Tyler the Dog let out a threatening bark and then growled some more, keeping his mouth open enough to reveal what looked like about six thousand sharp teeth.

“I’m not leaving without the doll,” I said.

“You don’t have a choice in this matter,” the old man told me. “You are trespassing on private property, and the doll now belongs to my granddaughter. I don’t know what’s so special about this doll that you would deprive a dying little girl of the joy she would receive from it, but it’s time to let it go. Walk on out of here.”

He handed the doll to the little girl, who beamed and hugged it to her chest.

What was I supposed to do? Tackle the little girl? Let out a battle cry and wrestle her to the ground? I guessed that the doll was about as safe as it had been since the car had gotten stolen, but still, to be this close to getting it back...

What would happen if I did tackle her?

Tackling a terminally ill six-year-old girl with deceased parents, angelic features, and golden curls was probably not good for one’s karma, but I didn’t believe in karma, so.

No.

No, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No.

Of course, I didn’t have to tackle her. I could just grab it out of her hand. Yeah, she might cry, but I’d cry if I lost any more toes, and which would be more pathetic?

I tensed up, ready to do what needed to be done.

“Ew, it’s covered in dog spit!” said Gertie, tossing the doll back to the Rottweiler. It caught the doll in the air and shook it, and as the world began to spin again, I flopped back onto the ground.

I realize this chapter is running a little long, but I don’t want to use that as the cliffhanger. It’s too close to what’s already happened, and I don’t quite trust that it will keep you reading to the next chapter, not with so many other entertainment options available to you.

As the blur became shapes and then objects with color and then something that passed for the real world that wasn’t being very nice to me lately, I realized that I was moving. Not gracefully, but I was on my feet, doing sort of a zombie-like stagger as Kelley held my hand and tried to keep me upright. We were no longer in the junkyard, but we were, unfortunately, still in the dangerous part of town that contained the junkyard.

“Watch your feet,” said Kelley. “Uneven sidewalk.”

I looked down at my feet and wished I hadn’t. I really needed some shoes. All of this blood was truly horrific and unfair to the people around me who had to look at it.

But hey, I was still conscious. Still fighting to stay alive. I’m not saying that I’m a Greek god or anything, but you’ve got to admit that my bravery was pretty impressive. I mean, sure, James Franco cut off his own arm in 127 Hours, but that was a movie, and this is real life. And I mean, sure, the movie was based on a true story, and I’m not trying to say that losing a couple of toes is as traumatic as cutting off your arm to free yourself from being pinned underneath a boulder, but.. .give me my moment, okay?

It really is past time to wrap up this chapter, so I’m going to do the best I can with the whole cliffhanger thing, and I hope you’ll stick with me.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?” I asked Kelley.