lørdag 1. januar 2011

Voodoo Dolls

Posted by: The Jabberwock

Becka was a little batshit. I had originally met her my freshman year of high school, and she was two years ahead of me. The only reason I ever knew her was because I became fairly close friends with her younger brother Andrew, who was in my class. This was in my junior year, 2003, when I had gone over for a weekend of hardcore D&D and gaming until our kidneys burst with mountain dew. Becka had gone off to college, and her old room had been turned into a guest room. So of course, it was a logical place for me to stay when I was over.

Now I never once had a negative perception or emotion connected to anything in that house. I was pretty iffy on the idea of supernatural entities, but I knew when a building or a room creeped me out. I got no such vibe from this place.
So needless to say, when I suddenly felt faint walking into the guest room, I tried to figure out what might be the cause of this. I sat down for a moment, collected my thoughts, and waited for the light-headedness to subside. I looked around the room for a while, and after a bit, my head cleared. Now my eyes were drawn to something, or rather, things, I had never seen here before in previous visits.

Becka collected dolls. That's right. Dolls. Now I never had an aversion to anything doll like in my life, but she collected them in large quantities. This wouldn't have been a huge problem, if it weren't for the pair of the most eerie, cold black dolls I had ever seen in my life. I called Andy in and asked him about them. I could tell from his expression that he could see I wasn't feeling well, and when he saw the dolls I was pointing at, I could see the color drain from his face. "What happened..?" he asked me. That's a confusing thing to say after I had just asked him where they came from.
"I was just feeling sick for a second...dude..what the fuck are those?"
He was keeping his eyes off them intentionally, and that made me more nervous.
"My sister went on a road trip to New Orleans over spring break...she picked those up there. Fuck if I know why.."

Becka had bought herself a pair of real, authentic, Louisiana Voodoo Dolls.
Why? She thought they were unique. Unique doesn't begin to cover it. Both of them had twisted black hair, not like doll hair, and it seemed like it had to be lightly greased to keep it together like it was. I currently had no desire to intentionally come within arms reach of these things, but one of them looked like it might've been made out of leather. It had that sort of soft, worked shine to it. The other was a duller gray/black. They had white, glassy eyes, and by far, the worst feature between them, were the nails. These dolls, probably only 7 inches long, had nails made of smoked glass, 3 inches long. They were so intricate, 1 glass talon to a finger.

"..dude I am not fucking sleeping in the same room as those things. I'll sleep on the couch or something"
Andy shrugged a little. "..We can put em in the dresser or something if they really bother you. They're creepy but they're not goin anywhere. Chill out dude.."
Hey he was right. They were just dolls. Fucking creepy Creole Voodoo Dolls. Put em in the dresser. Won't bother me. Plus, who wants to act like a pussy and be afraid of dolls when you're a big bad junior? Andy went ahead and took them off the shelf they had been sitting on, and stuck them in the top drawer of the dresser.

So the videogames commenced. We shot the shit and played into the wee hours as we usually did. Eventually we retired and I slept. I don't recall much of the first night. I just remember having all sorts of trouble getting to sleep, and chalked it up to the copious amounts of sugar coursing through my 16 year old body.

The next night, we had done a similar routine. Andy's mom had made the bed for me, which was of course, pretty normal in high school. So I shouldn't have thought too much of the fact that the two dolls were back out on their shelf where Andy had taken them from.

"Andy's mom probably went in and got them. I guess the spot on the shelf was pretty bare. TOO FUCKING BAD YOU'RE GOING BACK IN YOUR DRAWER."

I picked them up and sure enough, the darker one was made out of supple leather. The lighter one might've been suede or some other soft fabric. Despite the fact that I was trying to play tough guy and recover a man point or two from my initial shock, I remember my arms shuddering as I held them, and I very, very hastily stuck those puppies in the top drawer of the dresser. I thought for a moment, then decided that trying to wedge the drawer shut would negate any of those mystical man points I might have gained back....but of course I did it anyways. I crammed a pair of pencils into the bottom corners of the drawer, so that I thought that they would wedge it fairly securely, certainly securely to negate any doll strength.

So I went to bed. It was probably 3am when I did, so I must not have been out for very long before I woke up. It was still dark, and the room was tinted that very slight blue of well past midnight. This was no drowsy awakening. I was totally awake. Wide awake. It was like I had never closed my eyes, and I felt sick to my stomach in the instant that my eyes were open. I looked around, and my eyes were drawn to the empty white spot on the shelf where the row of dolls sat across from the bed, and as I shifted to sit up further, I felt my foot bump something through the sheets. Sitting at the foot of the bed, to the outside of my right foot, was that dull, black leather doll. I remember how badly my eyes watered the moment I saw it. It was just sitting there facing me and I remember my eyes wet and tears steaming down my cheeks even though I wasn't crying or making a sound. I didn't move and I felt the wave of ill paralysis intensify. I managed to tear my eyes away from it, and saw the black figure sitting on the flat white pillowcase to the left of where my head had been lying. I thought I was screaming when I threw the pillow across the room, tossing it with everything I had and kicked the sheets off like they had caught fire. I remember my feet hitting the ground and I was outside, on the back porch, and I didn't have a clue what the fuck had happened.

Apparently, I hadn't made any noise beside my running out of the house. No lights came on, and after a minute, Andy's mom came out in her nightgown looking sleepy and confused.
"Michael, what on earth are you doing out here?" she asked me with a bewildered expression.
I shook my head. I'm sure she couldn't see how wet my cheeks were in the dark, and she fumbled for the patio light while I told her "...I can't sleep in your house tonight.." Eventually, she coaxed me into sleeping on the couch. I didn't sleep. I just stayed up for the night with the lights on, paying attention to every flitting shadow and corner.

The next day, Andy talked to me about how 'freaked out' his mom had thought I was. He asked me about the dolls, and I told him what had happened. Of course, he now takes the time to tell me the things he had kept from me on Friday. Since his sister had brought the dolls home, no one had slept in her room, but occasionally, their mom used it as a sewing room, and watched television in it. Twice, Andy had been walking down the hall, and thought he heard voices coming from his sisters room. He assumed it was the TV, but the second time, his Mom wasn't home. When he checked, the room, the TV was off. Nobody else home, and the whispering just stopped as he came to her door.

I haven't stayed a night at that house since, granted it's been like 6-7 years now. I *HAVE* considered the possibility that Andy was just fucking with me, snuck in that night and placed the dolls to scare the ever living fuck out of me. Problem number 1) I am an extremely light sleeper. The door wasn't locked or anything, but I ALMOST always wake up when anyone enters/exits the room I'm sleeping in. This rule does not apply to Stealth, Glass-clawed voodoo dolls. 2) Andy was never the type to pull a prank like that. Andy told me more things about what they would do sometimes. They moved the other dolls around, and pushed them off the shelves. My freshman year in college, he told me how he wanted to do something to destroy them before he moved out. He didn't want to leave them in the house with his Mom and Dad. We ended up putting them in a small, wooden packaging crate. Covered them in an inch or two of charcoal, and a hefty dose of lighter fluid and enough wood to keep a fire going for a few hours. We wanted the glass all melted and unrecognizable. We burned them, and never even looked through the ashes to be sure. I didn't want anything to do with them after that. I feel unbelievably ill after having written all this.

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