The Curse

A chapter from Avery McShane and the Voodoo Witch

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I’ve excerpted for your reading pleasure a chapter from the third book in the Avery McShane series which, as you all know by now, I intend to market as a three book package (now that the rights to the original book have been reverted to me).

The action in the chapter I chose could be taken out of context, I suppose, because it comes a little more than half way through the story. A quick recap:

Avery and his buddies had been inadvertently shanghaied by the pirates when they stole their parent’s sailboat with the boys asleep onboard, and their parents onshore sleeping in hammocks. The boys hid from the pirates until they arrived at their hideout on Monkey Island.

By now, Smiley’s character has been fully fleshed out (and that is kind of a sick pun, because he was terribly disfigured in a fire when he was young).

The boys, hidden in the jungle at night, had already witnessed the Voodoo Witch perform a ritual beside the bonfire to protect the pirates before they returned to Margarita Island to kidnap the boys’ mothers and kill their fathers.

That said, this chapter does give the reader a good taste of the kind of dangerous adventures Avery and the Machacas get themselves entangled in.

Enjoy.

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The Curse

I knew I was getting close to the pirate base. The smoke from the bonfire drifted eerily through the trees like an early morning fog in the streets of London. It was like one of those creepy scenes from that Jack the Ripper movie, and I half expected to hear a wolf howl at the moon. I could see the red embers of the dying fire through the trees over to my right. I was guessing that the camp was to the left, in the direction that I’d seen Smiley go after Mamba had left with the rest of the pirates. A few minutes later I came to a clearing and hid behind the last tree trunk at the edge of it. On the far end of the clearing I saw a jumbled collection of wood huts with tin roofs that reflected the bright moon light. Only two of the windows had yellow light coming out of them, and they were both open to let in whatever little breeze they could. It was still warm even though it was the middle of the night. A mosquito bit my leg and I slapped at it without taking my eyes off of the windows. 

I would have already started sneaking my way over to the nearest building, but there was one little problem. In between me and the buildings was a cemetery full of wooden crosses and rock slab tombstones. It was one of the last things I wanted to see, especially in the middle of the night with a full moon that was so bright that the crosses were casting shadows. I could only imagine who had been buried there and how they had died; maybe some of Black Beard’s crew of buccaneers, maybe some of their victims. For sure the place was haunted by their souls, whoever they had been. They would know it when I walked over them. The worst of them might still be able to reach their putrid skeleton hands out of the ground and grab me by my ankles and pull me down into their stinking holes in the dirt. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see a black cat walk across the cemetery or a glowing wisp of a ghost floating around or, worse yet, a banshee. To me banshees were the most terrifying of the things that hung around in cemeteries. Their flesh and bones were almost invisible and the only thing you could see was their blue and purple veins that pumped poisonous blood through their dead bodies. And the worst was that they would scream a horrible wail that would freeze your blood into ice when they saw you. At least that’s the way I saw it.

I took a deep breath. I was wasting time and the Jolly Roger was on its way to Margarita Island with Mamba. I couldn’t wait around fretting about all the ghouls and things any more. I stepped out from the shadows of the jungle and started across the cemetery. My heart raced and I’m sure my eyes were as big as an owl’s. You could hear a pin drop. Even the forest animals were quiet. There were none of the sounds that you’d normally hear. No parrots arguing or cicadas making their piercing whine or monkeys screaming and throwing poo at you. It was as if they were as afraid as I was to raise the dead.

When I got to the other side of the cemetery, I hid behind a tall slab of rock that was wet even though it hadn’t rained since we had arrived at Monkey Island. The moonlight was so bright that I could read the writing on the tombstone.

Here lies One Eye Jack, killer of many,

Stab you in the back, and take your penny,

Scoundrel and thief, gone down below,

To hell and grief, gone down below. 

June 13, 1713

Well, that answered one question. It was a pirate cemetery and a very old one, which was perfect for ghosts and such.

I was only a few paces from the nearest building and the single window with the yellow light coming from it. I didn’t hear any sounds or movement coming from inside, so I crawled on my hand and knees until I was directly under the window. I tried to keep from trembling but couldn’t. It was still so quiet that I was afraid someone would hear me breathing. I was about to stand up to take a peek into the window when a soft voice whispered to me from inside the building.

“I know dat you are der.”

It was a woman’s voice! She must have been sitting right next to the window. The witch knew I was there. I was a dead man. My blood did freeze in my veins. I held my breath and I wanted to run away, but I didn’t - I couldn’t. It was like she’d already placed an evil spell on my legs. They just wouldn’t move.

“You must leave dis cursed island. If here you be by de rise of de sun, you will nevah leave alive.”

She did not show her face at the window. It was like an invisible spirit was whispering to me, but this one did not sound like an evil one. It was not what I expected to hear from the voodoo witch I had seen with Mamba and Smiley at the bonfire. I decided to take a chance. It could’ve been that she wasn’t really sure I was there and she was just waiting for me to say something. It could’ve been that when I spoke up she’d come floating through the window with her purple veins full of poison, screaming like the banshee I had thought she was when I first saw her. But I sensed that she wasn’t going to do that. She was whispering, so that Smiley couldn’t hear her. I decided to take a chance.

“We do want to leave,” I whispered. “But even if we can escape on our sailboat, we do not know how to get back to Margarita Island. I came here to see if I could find a map.”

There was a long pause. Had I been wrong about her? Was Smiley in there with her? Was she wringing her hands like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, excited about what she was going to do with me? Boy stew, dinnah is served.

“De island is to de west. Not one bit to de sout’, not one bit to de nort’. To de west only.”

Well, that would be easy enough. We would just have to keep the compass pointing west if she was telling the truth, and somehow I knew she was. But why was she helping us?

“Okay, thanks,” I whispered.

“Now go young mon,” she whispered. “Before de Smiley hear. He hate de childrahn…hate everyt’ing. Go swiftly.”

I was just about to take her advice. There was no use hanging around anymore and I surely did want to put the cemetery behind me. I wanted to put the whole cursed island behind me, but now I was worried about her, for some reason. Why was she helping?

“What about you?” I said. “Are you a captive? You can come with us if you need to escape.”

She didn’t respond for a long moment, like she was seriously thinking about it.

“No, I cannot leave dis place,” she said. “Dey take me from Haiti many years ago, from my family. Dey know I have de powers. Dey make me use dem to protect dem. I will stay.”

“But they are killers,” I replied. “Even now Mamba is going to kidnap my mother. Why do you stay with them?”

“It is simple young mon,” she replied. “I stay for revenge. Tonight I take dat revenge on de Smiley. He de one kill my faddah, my muddah and my bruddah. Dis night I kill him! So go now. Der no one on de boat…go.”

For sure I didn’t want to be Smiley tonight. I didn’t doubt for a minute that the witch meant what she’d just said. He was going to die. I just needed to make sure he died after we had escaped from him first.

“Good luck,” I said, turning away from the hut.

“One more ting,” she said. “What is your name?”

Uh-oh. Why did she need to know? Maybe to place a curse on me some time in the future, when she got around to it? Maybe to name the voodoo doll she’d be making tomorrow, to know who it was that would be screaming in agony in some place far away when the long pins began to stab into the doll.

“Avery,” I whispered. “Avery McShane.”

I slinked away from the lonely window with the dull yellow light coming out of it, back the way I had come, back across the pirate cemetery. I didn’t stop moving until I was pretty sure that I was hidden from the buildings by the foggy smoke from the dying fire. And then I heard Smiley.

“Who you talking to witch?”

“I speak to meself,” she said. I could tell she was speaking as loud as she could to warn me. “I say da curses for you to find de childrahn in da morning.”

“You lie witch,” he yelled. 

I heard the sound of Smiley slapping her and the sound of her body as she fell to the wooden floor from the force of the blow. 

“If I see dat de boyz been here, I will kill you. Mamba is not here to protect you. I will finish wat I started in Haiti. I will kill de last of de Thibodeaux witches.”

I heard the slam of the front door to her hut. Smiley was coming for me.

I burst out of the cover of the jungle trees and onto the white sand of the beach. I hadn’t wasted any time getting the heck away from Smiley, because I figured he’d be coming this way first. I was super relieved to see the sail boat anchored about a hundred yards offshore, but I couldn’t tell if Billy and Todd were already aboard. I didn’t waste any time though. The witch Thibodaux had said that no pirates were on board and I believed her. I waded into the warm Caribbean water and pretty soon I was swimming. With the back pack and the waterproof bag slung around my shoulders it was hard work. I was about half way there when I saw Billy and Todd standing next to the steering wheel. Billy had his pistol aimed at me and Todd had the spear gun loaded and ready too. 

“It’s me,” I yelled. “Don’t shoot.”

I reached the ladder at the back of the boat and started to climb up when I noticed that they hadn’t lowered their weapons. They were still aimed, but not at me. They were both looking at something behind me. I turned around to see what they were looking at, all soaked and dripping on the deck. It was Smiley.

He stood there like a zombie. With the dark shadows of the trees behind him, it was hard to see his dark body, but it wasn’t hard to see the huge eyes without eyelids or the white teeth without lips. The moonlight reflected off of them making him look exactly like a demon from the nightmares of each one of us. 

“You cannot get away from me,” he yelled. “I am coming for you. I will kill you wit my bare hands. Rip your skin from your bodies, tear dem eyes out, tear dem lips off, wit de nails of my fingers.”

And just when he started for the water, to swim across to where we were, he stopped and looked behind at something. She was there, with a long piece of wood raised up above her head, and she swung it at him before he could get out of the way. It hit Smiley on the top of his head and he fell to his hands and knees screaming in pain. She hit him again, until he was flat on his back with his arms up trying to keep her from hitting him again.

“You will kill no more, demon mon,” she yelled.

She dropped the baseball bat of wood in the sand and pulled something out of pocket in her dress. It was a bottle. She took a big swig of whatever was inside the bottle and spit out a big spray of it on the helpless moaning man at her feet.

“Dat is for my muddah,” she yelled.

She did it again.

“Dat is for my faddah,” she yelled.

And then, one last time, she sprayed him with the liquid from the bottle, just like she’d done to Mamba’s dancing pirates around the bonfire.

“Dat is for my bruddah.”

She didn’t even bother to swig and spit out the rest of the liquid. She just poured the rest on him.

“No more…no more…mercy…” moaned Smiley. ‘Please…”

She didn’t listen to him. 

“And dis, you monster,” she said. “Dis for wat you do to me.”

Even as far away as we were, we could hear the click of the lighter opening, and the flick that brought out the bright yellow flame. 

“To hell and grief…to de place down below is where you go!”

And then she tossed the lighter down onto the wounded murderer of her family. Smiley’s body burst into a ball of yellow flame. The screams were horrible and, like a banshee’s, they froze my blood. He was burning. For the second time in his miserable he was burning. Only this time, he would not live to kill innocent people. He would no longer be taking out his misery on the children who had taunted him his whole life. He kept screaming and the flames seemed to grow with each scream. He started crawling through the sand toward the water, but he never made it. He died in a burning funeral pyre, just like a Viking king, only he had been alive before it started. The screams ended, but the fire kept burning.

The three of us stood there on the deck of the sail boat with our mouths open in horror. The witch looked up from the burning body and straight at us.

“Now go,” she yelled. “Go and nevah return.”

She turned her back to us and, just like a spirit, disappeared into the dark moon shadows of the jungle.