WEEDS 2: the house of hoodoo

The Pruner at the controls of the hovercraft looked at his partner when suddenly; out of the corner of his eye, he saw a ghostly white object driftin’ jess above the craft. He did a double-take but the ghost was gone the second time around.

“You okay?” His partner asked.

“I’m always okay,” he replied, clamping the controls so hard his knuckles turned white.

He looked back and there it was again; two bewitching black discs in the shape of eyeballs protruding from its head.

I had seen the ghost floating ovah Yesterland befoe’. In times past, Yesterland use to be a haven but now, no matter how you looked at it, the town was an eerie sight to behold. Most of the houses and shacks was boarded up tight and whoever lived there befoe’ was long gone. The people who was left never seemed to acknowledge anything was wrong. But I knew better. I was determined to make sure everybody knew the town went from bad to worse when that ghost showed up.

The Pruner in the hovercraft froze like a deer in a headlight, staring at the ghost’s protruding eyeballs and heart-shaped face. The thing let out an ear-piercing scream and dove straight toward the hovercraft. The ghost smashed against the glass, shattering it like a spider web and causing a hairline fracture to sliver from one side of the windshield to the other. The spacecraft fell from the sky. The second Pruner ejected hisself. The vehicle continued to fall, tumbling and whirling through the air in an ever downward spiral until it smashed against the ground in Yesterland. Dirt flew in all directions. The spacecraft tumbled ovah and ovah befoe’ coming to a sudden stop ten feet from the ejected Pruner.

The lead Pruner could taste the purplish blood pooling inside his mouth and dripping down his throat. He rubbed his blood-soaked tongue across his teeth and limped toward the ejected Pruner, who was either unconscious or dead, lying on the ground near the fallen spacecraft.

I was the only one in Yesterland who knew the real story about the ghost. I kept tryna’ warn everybody but nobody took me serious. Some people called me irrational; even superstitious. But one thing I know for sure; nothin’ occurs by happenstance. Everything happens for a reason; be it luck, or fate, or magic. At first I didn’t understand the reason the Pruner was there but I was about to find out.

To the folks in Yesterland, a haint was a ghost or, in the Hoodoo belief, a witch-like creature contriving to chase its victim to his death by weariness.

The barn owl was the worst kind of haint. It could come upon you real quiet without warning, and it had been known to steal newborn babies from their bedroom windows at night. Shoot, if one is just heard hooting as a baby is born, that baby is doomed to live a life of misery. I’ve even heard tell of ‘em shapeshifting into witches and taking ovah the body of a grown man.

At times, I would paint my doe’ a haint-blue color to ward off the restless spirit of the dead. Other times I nailed a dead owl to the doe’ to hold off the harbinger of death.

The bird is such a strong source of evil that I don’t even grant it a name. I only refer to it as “the bird that makes you afraid.”

The day the Pruners came through; it was an eerie silence in Yesterland. The lead Pruner’s name was Dil. He was a tyrant from the git-go. By nightfall on the first day, Dil had took ovah the house where I lived; that being the biggest house in the town.

The place was too big anyway for me and my family, but it was a sight better than the Milk House out back; which was where we ended up staying. That place, as I can best recollect, was simply an old ram-shacked cabin in bad need of demolition. It had rain warped siding that allowed the elements to come in whenever it wanted to, and rotten soffits along the top that had gave way to mildew and made the house smell wet, and damp. It had a screened-in front porch that once had a swinging chair on yonder end, and whenever you would walk upon it, it groaned and moaned like it was trying to tell you something.

I cringed at the thought of living in the Milk House ‘cause the place was filled with haints. I knew it ‘cause I could smell an evil spirit a mile off.

The first night we moved into the Milk House it got ice cold. It was jess me and my wife and two kids. It was so frigid that night that it transformed everything into an icy wonderland, covered in a Calgon coated milk bath of frost. Kid was petrified to go to the toilet by hisself. That night he got up and woke his sister Googie, begging her to sit at the restroom doorway and wait for him to go tinkle. They bobbed and weaved their way through the narrow hallway in the dark, and when he had finished, she led him back to the bedroom, hot piss still steaming in the toilet bowl.

They sleepwalked back to the bed and crawled in.

Kid caught the bitter end of life in the Milk House; particularly with the clacking and fidgeting sounds coming from the attic; along with Mama’s violent and frequent tirades.

“Pappy,” he asked, “what’s orange and sounds like a parrot?”

I hunched my shoulders.

“A carrot.”

Then he flipped ovah the coloring book, jumped up from the flo’, and ran down the hall. Mama ran after him. He ran to the bedroom, the kitchen, and the bathroom. He found his orange Crayola, ran back and settled on the flo’ and started coloring again.

“Future illustrator,” I said, looking at Mama and smiling. She plopped down in the chair, gasping for air. Then she stared at me with a wicked look on her face; her jaws tense and arms folded tight across her chest.

That night, Kid heard some screeches in the attic and woke up in soaked drawers. He was too terrified to go tinkle so he just lay there in his own smelly, self-made waterbed.

Mama heard the screeches too! I don’t know what came ovah her, but she suddenly jumped up at 2 a.m. and brutalized Kid with a butt-naked beating until his skin peeled. She flogged the boy with a belt within an inch of sanity, then afterwards forced him to slide those same salty urine drenched underwear back onto his skinny little legs. He wiggled them up his burnt thighs and almost passed out from the searing pain. Mama went back to bed and in the morning swore she remembered nothing about the night befoe’.

When I first laid eyes on Dil I was taken aback by his grotesque appearance. He summoned me to the Big House and started asking me questions about technical stuff. Dil didn’t care about people. In fact, he didn’t care about anything ‘cept getting back home.

It being Sunday the next day, we spent the time preparing for church. I didn’t too much care for it myself, but Mama did. She wanted everybody to go on the moaning bench and get Holy Ghost filled.

The moaning bench was a special pew in the front of the church. During revival, it was reserved for anybody who wanted to be saved. All they had to do was come to the front and sit on the bench under the watchful eye of the church elders. The person was ‘sposed to moan and groan and confess they sins in the hope of being visited by the Holy Spirit.

I woke up early Sunday morning ‘cause I couldn’t sleep anyway. I looked in the mirror and there it was, clear as day, staring at me right ovah my shoulder and down the hallway. It was the bird that makes you afraid!

It had a white face shaped like a heart and dark eyeballs like a human skull. My mind thought to run but I was froze in place. I felt an icy chill creep to my heart.

I turned around and looked behind me.

The hallway was empty.

Then a bloodcurdling shriek and I was face to face with misery. Then the thing flew right ovah my head. I hit the flo’ like a ton of bricks. The blood drained from my brain and my heart pounded like thunder in my ears. It was a warning of impending doom.

I must ov’ stayed on the flo’ for hours until I caught the aroma of the breakfast food. I got a whiff of a pork assorted aroma and I could feel the clanking pots and pans amidst scuffling feet in the kitchen. My mouth started to water and I began hoping for buttermilk biscuits, red-eyed gravy, and green ham. I followed my nostrils and felt dumb as a brick when I was expecting food, but instead, was welcomed by a bellyful of fright. I stood in the doorway staring into a cold empty kitchen. The only thing I saw was a cold wood stove.

Then something grabbed me on my shoulder and wouldn’t let go. I leaped up against the wall and spun around.

It was Mama, staring me down from the dining room doorway.

“Where’s them vittles ya made?” she said.

“What food you talking ‘bout woman? I was almost for sure that I felt you cooking breakfast this morn’ Honey.”

She shook her head from side to side, knowing that we both smelt the food cooking and sensed the activity in the kitchen.

“We was jess too tired then from last night,” she said. “Jess too tired.”

I know what I smelt and nothing could convince me that it was jess a figment of my imagination. It all started when I first came across that haint. I been flipping out and losing control of my mental faculties ever since I started warning people about that bird.

I turned and looked at Mama, then started opening and shutting empty cabinets. Echoes reverberated throughout the icy kitchen. Mama didn’t say a word; jess turned and walked away. She never did cook in that kitchen ever again after that.

In Yesterland we didn’t have the fancy spacecraft like the Pruners did. We jess had a big hunk of metal that kinda’ resembled the vehicles from the old days. It hovered but it would only float about an inch or two off the ground, which made for a bumpy ride if it was ovah rough terrain. It didn’t get much speed either, so it took us a while to get from the Milk House to the church.

When we jumped in the vehicle, Kid said, “Go ahead Pappy, tell ‘em bout the haint you seen.”

“Pappy ain’t seen no haint,” Googie said.

“He did too.”

“What’d he look like?”

“Shut yo’ mouth!” Mama said. “Ain’t no such thing as no haint.”

I turned to look at Mama and then I looked back at the kids. “I seen it,” I said.

At church, a deacon kneeled down on the end of the bench by me and began to pray. The congregation sang some sad songs and then one kid jess begin to jump and shout, throwing his hands in the air and dancing all ovah the place.

Then it jumped on me too! Some words started coming outta’ my mouth that I didn’t understand and I commenced to running around the church and throwing my hands in the air in a helpless fit. Maybe it was the Holy Ghost, but then again, maybe it was the haint.

I wrapped my arms around myself and started rocking back and forth. Then I started wringing my hands together and buried my face in my lap. When I looked up again, I swear that deacon had grown ten feet. I couldn’t hardly make out his face but it was an oblong shape, oscillating from side to side, like a distorted carnival mirror.

Then his face stopped moving and there it was again. It was the skull and black beady eyes of the bird that makes you afraid; looking at me with its heart-shaped face and staring into my soul. The bird was slowly driving me mad. I buried my face back in my lap. I don’t recall nothing much after that.

The next thing I remember I was sitting in the local tavern talking with the bartender, who seemed to be washing and drying the same glass ovah and ovah.

“I been hearing things. And seeing things too,” I told the bartender.

“You ain’t never told me ‘bout that,” he said.

“I tell you everything?” I blurted out; somewhat annoyed. “I’m telling you now, that house got haints!”

“Come on man,” he said. “You telling me that an owl is living in yo’ house?”

“I’m serious. I gotta get it out.”

“What did Mama say?” he asked.

“She think I’m outta’ my mind. But I’m telling you, the bird of doom is in my house!”

“Well then, if you really got a haint inside yo’ house, you need an exorcist.”

“What ‘chu talking ‘bout Willis?”

“You ever heard of a medium?”

I looked at ‘em and shook my head from side to side.

“It’s somebody who can communicate with haints.”

“So?”

“So if you wanna get rid of this bird of doom, you gotta talk to somebody who know. I ain’t saying I believe it. I’m just saying you need to talk to somebody.”

I looked at the man like he got two heads.

“Go see her!” He insisted.

The old shack was sitting off a bit from the dirt road and was mostly hidden by trees and surrounded on three sides by a swamp. My vehicle hovered just above the dry land. I stepped out of it and into some red mud that covered my shoes up to the ankle.

The witch doctor wasn’t a witch herself; but rather she had remedies to protect other people from witches; or in my case, haints.

I was kinda’ taken aback by how she looked, which was normal as anybody else I had seen, if you don’t count all the weird stuff that was lying around the shack and her jet-black skin. She said she didn’t really want to be a witch doctor, but when she resisted, she had become mad for three months. Then she got saved and became a born-again Christian.

She picked up a small syrup bottle from the dusty flo’ and drank some sort of liquid substance, which, according to her, made her see and hear from the gods.

I didn’t turn up my nose at the stench ‘cause I didn’t wanna’ tick her off. I didn’t bother to wave the flies away either, I jess let ‘em light on my face for the same reason. “It’s a haint been living in my house,” I said. “I mean, it ain’t exactly a haint. It’s moe’ like the bird that makes you afraid.”

She picked up a cup from the flo’ and filled it with dirt. She took a candle and lit it. She waited for the flame to stabilize, then with a sudden motion, she turned the candle upside down, extinguishing it in the dirt. She put the burnt part of the candle in her mouth while it was still smoking and bit off the end, then lit it again.

She started chanting something that I didn’t quite understand. She kept holding the candle with one hand and picked up the syrup bottle with the other, shoving it into my face like she wanted me to drink from it. I turned the bottle up to my mouth and drank. Then I got awfully groggy and drifted straight off to sleep.

I don’t know what it was, but I could feel the witch doctor reach into my pocket and take something out. She picked up a piece of tree root from the flo’, broke it in half, and wrapped a string around it, along with whatever she took from my pocket. She took the other half of the tree root and placed it in a cup of boiling water, which she poured into a tub of hot bath water.

She stripped to her birthday suit and then she undressed me. She picked me up like I was a rag doll and placed me into the tub. When my butt hit the scalding water I woke up quick. I jumped out the tub, grabbed my hat and ran out the shack. I ran down the dusty road as fast as me feet would take me, wearing nothing but my birthday suit and my fedora perched in front of me, tucked neatly ovah my private parts.

I was getting indignant ‘cause nobody seemed to take me serious about the bird.

The next day I heard something in the attic at the Milk House. I heard a loud shriek. Then something struck me a blow to the left side of my face. It was the poker from the fireplace. Water welled up in my eyes and I could barely make out the image of Dil through the fog.

Dil was a harbinger of death and his sadistic blow was a sign that the bird had shapeshifted into pure evil. The barrier between the physical and spiritual world had become thin enough to allow the bird to take control of Dil’s body.

My ear started ringing and I couldn’t get used to the sounds that was pouring into my head. The noise was deafening and I kept losing my balance. I stumbled against the wall and then fell to the flo’ flat on my face.

When I woke up, Mama was lying dead next to me in a pool of her own blood. The fireplace poker was in one of my hands and a chunk of her scalp was in the other. Blood was everywhere. It was on her hands and feet and splattered up the walls and on the ceiling.

They said she died from being beaten repeatedly to the back of her head with fireplace poker. My motive, according to the authorities, was that I got fed up with how she treated the kids; plus about ten-thousand credits of cryptocurrency from an insurance policy.

I told ‘em it was the bird who did it but they thought I had gone loopy. They put me in a straightjacket with the sleeves wrapped around my chest and the ends tied around my back. I was in a cage with nothin’ but time on my hands so I kept looking ovah the situation in my mind. Then something jumped out at me.

A bird feather!

It was in the wad of Mama’s bloody hair. That’s how I got the theory that she was attacked on the head by the bird that makes you afraid. It dug it’s talons into her head and a chunk of her scalp came out mixed with hair and feathers. She fell to the flo’ and was knocked unconscious and that’s where I found her dead body.

Everybody laughed at my theory about the murder, just like they laughed when I tried to warn them about the bird that makes you afraid. But I know what I know. The bird that makes you afraid is the only bird in the world that have microscopic feathers that go all the way down to their legs, down their toes, and all the way to the talons.

The infernal thing left a calling card! The sharp wounds on Mama’s head that they claim was caused by the fireplace poker could have also been caused by the sharp talons of the bird of doom.

After I was locked up, the bird was once again perched in the attic at the Milk House.

The bird murdered Mama and framed me for the deed; making it look like I was outta’ my mind. They laughed at me but it was true. The bird of doom brought Dil to Yesterland, took ovah his body, and set me up with the fireplace poker.

I tried to warn the people but now it was too late. The Milk House was empty again and there was nobody left to sound the alarm about the bird that makes you afraid.