Jeff Strand - A Bad Day for Voodoo

“Should I keep watch while you guys drag him?” Adam asked, in a tone of voice that implied that he thought he was being very helpful and selfless.

“No, you can help us drag.”

“What if somebody sees us?”

“We’ll all keep a lookout while we drag.”

“I think it’s a mistake.”

“Kelley can keep watch then.”

“Zombie Click wasn’t trying to eat Kelley.”

“He wasn’t trying to eat you either. He was just opening and closing his mouth. You take his leg. Kelley and I will take his arms.” We dragged him over to the manhole and dropped him in. He landed with a splash and a thud.

That’s it. No wacky hijinks. He didn’t get wedged in the manhole or stuck on the ladder or land on his head or anything like that, and the cops didn’t show up at the exact wrong time, and he wasn’t immediately swarmed by thousands of rats and skeletonized. It pretty much worked out just the way we planned.

Alternate but made-up version of previous scene for those of you who were disappointed by the lack of conflict:

“Oh my goodness!” Kelley’s lungs bulged through her chest from the intensity of her scream. “His skin is splitting open!”

“And beetles are coming out!” Adam shouted in horror.

Millions of beetles spilled out, far more than should have fit into Mr. Click’s body. I had no idea where he’d been keeping them.

“They’re mutating!” Kelley screamed in horror.

As we watched in horror, the beetles began to sprout extra legs. They sprouted more and more legs until even millipedes didn’t have as many legs as these beetles did. The legs kept popping up until the thousands of beetles were nothing but legs. And then the legs began sprouting legs.

“Too many legs! Too many legs!” Adam screamed in horror.

And then I felt a sharp pain between my shoulder blades. I turned around and gaped at Kelley in horror.

“That’s right,” she said. “I was evil all along.”

“And so was I,” said Adam. Kelley pulled out her knife, and then Adam stabbed me in the same place. “All these years of friendship were a fiendish lie just to get to this moment.”

They both stabbed me a few more times, being very fair and taking turns.

“This bites,” I said in horror. Then I died and came back as a ghost with the ability to use a computer to write books.

And now back to the completely true version of the story, for those of you who understand that in real life there aren’t always complications when you’re shoving a zombie down an open manhole:

I feel like I should apologize, because the actual book isn’t as cool as the stuff I made up. I hope you aren’t disappointed with the rest of your reading experience.

Anyway, with the Mr. Click problem thoroughly dealt with and certain not to come back to haunt us at any inconvenient moment later in the evening, we turned our attention to the pressing matter of the frickin’ voodoo doll having been stolen again.

A brief history lesson: In the olden days, people weren’t smart enough to know how to make cell phones. If you were at home, it wasn’t any big deal, because you probably had a phone in your house and you could just make the call there. If you were at a friend’s house, it was still fine, because he’d probably let you use his phone, unless you were making what was known as a longdistance call. It doesn’t make sense to me either, but that’s the way it worked.

If you were outdoors or at a mall or something, you had to use a pay phone where you’d insert a dime (later a quarter.. .now two quarters), and the bulky contraption would let you make your call.

In the digital age, most citizens owned cell phones, making pay phones much less essential. People who owned them used to be able to roll around in their piles of quarters, cackling with glee, but now they could only roll around on a couple of quarters, which made it look more like they were just too lazy to pick the quarters up off the floor before they started rolling around. With pay phones being much less profitable, there was no longer as much need to keep them in working order. So when a quarter would get jammed inside or somebody would have a fight with his girlfriend and smash the receiver against a brick wall or the phone would get struck by lightning or some jerks would say, “Hey, let’s do us some vandalism, huh, huh, huh,” the phone would not be repaired.

This history lesson became important to me as we walked around trying to find a pay phone that was in working order. They don’t exist. By the time we found the third nonworking phone, we were all ready to have individual nervous breakdowns, and it became clear that a different strategy was in order.

“Let’s cry,” said Adam.

“It’s going to be okay,” I assured him, even though now I knew that the world was a dark, scary place that hated teenagers.

“It seems like we’ve been walking too long to still be in the bad part of town,” said Adam. “Shouldn’t we have reached a highway or something by now?”

“It feels like we’ve been walking longer than we have because I’m slowing us down,” I said, jiggling my bloody foot for emphasis.

“It does seem like we’ve been walking a long time,” Kelley agreed. “I don’t know this area, but I don’t remember it being this big.”

“So what are you saying?” I asked.

“I’m not saying anything,” said Adam. “It was only an observation.”

“We need to start knocking on doors,” said Kelley.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?”

“No, Tyler, I suggested it because I think it’s a bad idea, and I wanted to make sure we continued with today’s trend.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“Do you think I’m being sarcastic?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“We can’t fight amongst ourselves,” said Adam. “That’s what it wants.”

“That’s what what wants?”

“I’m not sure. But don’t you sense that? I can’t quite describe it, but don’t you have the feeling that something’s just a little bit off?”

“Well, yeah, once Mr. Click’s leg shot across the classroom, I started to think that the universe might have gone a bit askew.” “See, more sarcasm. It wants us to be sarcastic. Snark is its weapon.”

“You’re an idiot,” I told him.

“That’s not snark. That’s just rude.”

“Look, we need to not turn this into something bigger than it is. We’re not wandering around The Twilight Zone .”

“Twilight Zone !” said Adam. “That’s what I was trying to think of! Yeah, it’s like we’re in The Twilight Zone! Thank you! That was driving me crazy.”

“I’m serious. You need to stop getting carried away,” I said. “We’re still in the real world, except that voodoo exists. Everything else is normal.”

“Look!” Adam said, pointing ahead. “That pay phone is the exact same one we just passed! We’re in a loop!”

The three of us walked over to the phone. “No, it’s not,” said

Kelley. “The other one had different graffiti, and the nine key was missing. This one doesn’t look anything like it.”

Adam studied the phone, then nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. Also, this one doesn’t have a cord.”

We each cursed in turn and then resumed walking.

“I think we’re getting close to some houses,” Kelley said. “Somebody is going to be nice and let us use their phone.” “What if we knock on the door of a meth lab?” asked Adam. “As long as it’s a meth lab with a phone, I don’t care.”