Jeff Strand - A Bad Day for Voodoo

Also, he constantly had his face all scrunched up in a grimace, which didn’t do much for him.

He was about six-one, six-two. Maybe 180, 190. Eyes that were a light shade of hazel. Teeth that were also a light shade of hazel. His neck was muscular but not so muscular that you’d see him and say, “Whoa! Look at that guy’s neck!” His feet were size eleven-and-a-half, I’d estimate, and I don’t know how ring sizes work, but I’d guess that he was about a large. He wore work boots, faded blue jeans, red boxer shorts that protruded from the top of his jeans—not in that style where people walk around with half of their underwear visible, just enough where you could tell it was less a fashion choice than him simply needing a belt—and a red T-shirt with a picture of somebody who was either a music star or a world leader. (I didn’t recognize him.)

When Ribeye smiled, he got a little crinkle over his left eye. It wasn’t adorable or anything, although I guess one of his close relatives might have thought it was kind of cute. His left ear was pierced, and he wore a simple silver star, which surprised me because I would have expected him to be more of a “skull earring” kind of guy or maybe a gun or a dollar sign, something more closely associated with a life of crime. The star earring must have been a gift, perhaps from his grandmother or a favorite aunt, and though it didn’t reflect his true personality, he still wore it to express his love, because even somebody like Ribeye has those he loves and who love him in return.

Finally, his chin was kind of pointy. But not too pointy.

“Stand up,” said Ribeye.

I got to my feet, which didn’t hurt as badly as I expected. I mean, it sure didn’t feel like I was walking on a fluffy cloud, but the pain wasn’t as intense as it could’ve been. I guess you don’t need your toes as much as you’d think.

Then I stumbled and fell. The pain was a little more intense now.

“I said stand up,” said Ribeye, pointing his gun at me.

Yeah, yeah, we both knew the gun was empty. It’s still scary to have a gun pointed at you. I got back up.

There was another timid knock at the garage door.

“Let’s go,” said Ribeye, shoving me forward. We hurried to the back of the garage. In the rear corner, he bent down and pulled aside a small rug, exposing a wooden trapdoor. He lifted the door, revealing a metal ladder that led down into complete darkness. Without waiting for Ribeye to say something threatening (for example, “Climb down there before I harm you!”) I began to climb down the ladder.

This didn’t seem to be a particularly foolproof escape plan, because I’d left a trail of bloody footprints and I didn’t see a way to get the rug back over the door after we closed it, not to mention that modern police officers tend not to be flummoxed by the rug-over-the-trapdoor trick. But hey, if Ribeye wasn’t concerned, I wasn’t going to be. It didn’t take long to get to the bottom of the ladder, and then we were cast into complete darkness as Ribeye shut the door above us. There was a loud beep that sounded like an alarm system being activated.

He climbed down and then poked me in the back. “Walk.”

I walked. The floor was still cement, but it was quite a bit wetter and slimier than the cement floor of the garage, and the aroma suggested that we weren’t as far from the sewer as one might hope. This couldn’t be very sanitary for my foot.

Though I’d just decided not to be concerned about the foolproof nature of Ribeye’s escape plan, my curiosity quickly became too much to bear. “Won’t they know where we went?” I asked.

“Don’t talk,” he said.

I didn’t talk for a few seconds. But I really wanted to know, and quite honestly, if Ribeye hadn’t killed me yet, was asking a simple question going to be the act that pushed him over the edge?

“They’ll know where we went,” I said.

“I’ve got it covered,” Ribeye assured me.

“How?”

“Good old-fashioned booby trap. Anybody lifts the door to come down after us, kaboom. Their upper lip and lower lip won’t be part of the same mouth anymore.”

I stopped walking for a moment until Ribeye smacked me on the shoulder to get me moving again. Were Kelley and Adam really headed into a trap? Should I shout out a warning?

“Kelley!” I shouted. “Don’t—”

The punch to the back of the head shut me up. I fell to the ground, my face landing in a very shallow but bacteria-rich pool of what may have once been water.

“Try that again, and I’ll rip the doll’s head off,” Ribeye said.

I had no reason to believe he was lying. I got back up, coughed a few times, and then resumed walking.

Something scampered over my foot.

Something else followed it.

“You.. .you may have a rat problem down here,” I said.

I hadn’t spent much time in the company of rats, so I didn’t realize until that very moment that they scared the hell out of me, at least when I was walking in a pitch-black sewer tunnel.

I forced myself to keep walking so that Ribeye wouldn’t hit me again.

Surely, these weren’t filthy, disease-carrying rats. They were cute rats, the kind you’d find in a pet store. They probably had pink bows around their necks. Nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

I smacked into a wall.

“Turn right,” said Ribeye.

My nose hurt but didn’t seem to be bleeding. I turned right and continued to walk, holding my arms out in front of me. My good foot slipped in some slime, and I lost my balance for a split second, but I saved myself from taking a comical spill.

I hadn’t heard any explosions or screaming. Hopefully, if Kelley and/or Adam did come into the garage, they realized that when you see bloody footprints leading into a dark pit, it’s best to go in the opposite direction.

More scurrying next to my feet.

Think of other things, I told myself. Bunnies. Goldfish. Pugs. Flowers. Amusing monkeys. Snoopy.

There had to be thousands of rats down here. Or maybe just the three. Somewhere between three and thousands. It didn’t matter. Even one rat—even half a rat—was too many.

What diseases did rats carry? Rabies? The Black Death?

No, no, no, I had to think positive. These were charming rats, like Remy the Rat, who wanted nothing more than to become a master chef in a five-star restaurant.

On today’s fine dining menu, teenager flesh! Nom nom nom!

I kept walking.

I didn’t feel it with my hands, but my face went right through a great big spider web. I frantically wiped it off of my cheeks and out of my hair. Don’t you hate walking through spider webs?

Don’t you hate how your neighbors see you and it looks like you’ve just suddenly decided to start clawing at your face for no reason? And you feel like you should go over and explain that no, you didn’t have a fit of insanity, you just walked through a web, but instead you keep walking and hope that they didn’t notice? I hate that.

There was something crawling on the back of my neck.

I yelped and slapped at it.

“What’s the matter with you?” asked Ribeye.

“There’s a tarantula on me!”

Okay, it couldn’t really be a tarantula, but it was a huge spider, and I had to get it off me before it laid eggs in my hair, which would immediately hatch into millions of other spiders. I smacked all over the back of my head until the spider scurried onto my fingers, at which point I yipped like a poodle and shook my hands as rapidly as I could.

Nothing seemed to be crawling on me anymore.

Was that a hissing sound?

I was definitely imagining things. There were no snakes down here.

“Are there snakes down here?” I asked.