The Voice inside My Head (13 page)

“I hear my sister’s voice in my head, but she’s not dead.”

A chair crashes to the floor, and I whip round to see Zach, standing strong, staring at me.

“Tricia talks to you?” he croaks.

“Yeah,” I admit, torn between a reluctance to share this with him and overwhelming relief that he’s okay. Now that I’ve admitted it out loud, it sounds ridiculous. I expect him to challenge me or even scoff.

“Does she talk about me?” he asks, hope so plain on his face, it might as well be written in Magic Marker.

I hesitate. It wasn’t the response I was expecting. I’m not sure I’m even happy he believes me if it’s going to lead to a whole lot of questions.

“You’re her best friend.”

“I knew it,” Zach crows.

He really
is
feeling better.

“Luke, I need you to ask her something,” says Zach, suddenly serious.

“Yeah?”

“I always wanted to ask her out, but I never thought she’d go for a guy like me. Could you ask her if I ever had a chance?”

“I think she has a boyfriend, buddy. Remember Jamie, your friend?”

I glance at Martha, who’s leaning on the kitchen counter, a bemused look on her face.

“I never heard of no courtin’ the dead,” she says.

“She’s not dead,” I remind her irritably.

“Just ask her, man. I know it’s not likely, but the thing is, besides you, she’s the only person who never made me feel like a loser, and maybe if a girl like her could see something in me …” His eyes mist over.

“Okay, I’ll ask.”

“Wait,” he says urgently. He licks his hand and does his best to smooth down his hair, which is shooting up on one side from where he slept on it. Then he ducks his head and not so surreptitiously sniffs his pits. He straightens up, looking glum. “Okay, go ahead,” he says, folding his arms across his chest.

“Tell her I love her,” Zach gushes.

“She loves you too, buddy.”

Zach rights his chair and sinks down into it, overcome with emotion.

“I always knew we had this special bond,” murmurs Zach. “It’s like you and me, we’re connected.” His eyes burn into me, and I wonder if maybe he’s still running a fever. I walk over and put my hand on his forehead. It feels hot, but when I put my hand on my own forehead, it feels the same. Not surprising, since the room’s a sauna. I sit down in the chair opposite, and Martha comes over with a fresh bowl and dishes him out some stew.

“You want more?” she asks me.

I shake my head.

“I’ve been thinking,” says Zach. “Maybe we’re descended from the same Mayan family, and we ended up all over America but we were drawn back here because this is where we all started.”

“Weren’t no Mayans on Utila,” says Martha. “You coulda been Paya Indian, though. Can’t dig a ditch here without disturbin’ a Payan grave.”

“I don’t think we look much like Indian descendants,” I point out.

“We must be reincarnated,” Zach exclaims excitedly. “That would totally explain everything.”

I’m happy he’s feeling better, but I’m ready to drop from exhaustion and I’ve had enough of this spooky lady and her
spirit-infested house. We need to get down to business and get out of here.

“We wanted to ask you about this,” I say, pulling the doll out of my pocket and placing it on the table.

Zach jerks his chair back but leans in to get his bowl, keeping his eyes on the doll the whole time. Martha also stays well back from the doll. It lies there in the eerie lamp glow, sodden from our plunge in the swamp, its black hair muddy and matted. One eye is gone where the stitching has started to fray. As I look at it, my chest starts to ache; sadness overwhelms me, and I get a flash of something. At first it hovers just on the edge of my consciousness, like a forgotten memory, but as the light flickers across the bedraggled doll, the image crystallizes, emerging from the deep recesses of my mind. I’m no longer looking at the doll but at my sister.

It’s her hair, wet and matted but with blood and small white shards in it — bone from her shattered skull. And her eye, like the doll’s, is missing, gouged out, leaving only a gaping hole. Her shirt is ripped and twisted, exposing bare flesh, and her body sways as if it has life, but there’s no life in the one remaining eye that glares accusingly from her pallid, bloated face.

My stomach roils and my legs tremble as I stumble to my feet and dash for the door. I push through it, hitting the railing with a thump, and lean over, my breath coming in short bursts, stew churning inside the burning cauldron of my belly. The ground below blurs as my eyes fill with tears. It’s a relief when I finally start to vomit. Every spoonful of Martha’s stew plummets over the side of her deck, until I’m
empty. Still my stomach lurches and twists as if it could expel not just the contents of my body but every thought and memory from my entire screwed-up life.

I don’t realize Martha has followed me till I feel her hand on my shoulder. “Come inside, child. I’ll fix you some tea.”

She holds the door for me as I stagger back to my chair. Martha busies herself in the kitchen while Zach slurps his stew, trying to keep an eye on me and the doll at the same time. I stare at the floor and take deep breaths, still trembling with the horror I now feel for the doll. My heart throbs in my ears as I struggle to vanquish the images of my sister bombarding my mind. It’s a living nightmare. I know it can’t be true. But where did it come from?

“It makes me feel sick, too, man,” Zach says, polishing off his bowl and standing up to help himself to some more.

I stare at him in shock. Did he see Pat as well? But he nods in the direction of the doll.

“It looks like a puchinga doll,” says Martha from the other side of the kitchen, where she’s cutting leaves for my tea.

I put my head in my hands and close my eyes, trying to replace the horrible image of Pat with the one that usually comes to mind when I think of her — green eyes that darken when she’s angry, her teasing smile that always makes me feel no problem is as bad as it seems.

I listen for her voice but it’s strangely silent.

“I’ve heard tell there’s some who be practicin’ the old ways,” says Martha. “Where’d you find it?”

I take a minute to realize she’s still talking about the doll.
She puts my tea on to boil and returns to the table, circles the doll twice, examining it from all angles.

“It was under my doorstep.” I take a shaky breath. “A girl told me my sister found one under her step just before she disappeared.” It sounds silly when I say it out loud, but Martha’s not laughing.

“Is he cursed?” asks Zach, still wolfing down stew.

“Could be,” says Martha.

Zach and I look at each other. His eyes are round with fear. I struggle to keep my own fear in check. Just because Martha believes in voodoo magic doesn’t make it real.

“My people aren’t no witches,” says Martha, setting a cup of tea down in front of me.

I sniff it. It smells pretty good so I take a sip. It tastes even better than it smells.

“Doesn’t mean there aren’t no witches around,” she continues. “There always be some who prefer evil when they could as easily do good. You got any idea who might want to harm you?”

I shake my head.

“The same person who took Tricia,” says Zach. “That’s his sister.

“And my girlfriend,” he adds.

I choke on my tea and start coughing.

Martha stands up to pat me on the back. “I can help you,” she says. “How much money you boys got?”

This starts a whole new coughing fit. Zach immediately pulls a soaking wad of cash out of his pocket and plops it on the table. He’s already produced more than I want to spend on what’s probably a scam, and I start calculating
how much I can afford to repay him from my meager funds.

Martha picks up the money and it vanishes into her skirt. She looks at me for a moment, but I just take another sip of my tea and don’t meet her eyes. She huffs a little before going over to her footstool and pulling down jars again. Zach plays witch’s apprentice this time, while I watch in silence.

“Witchcraft be practiced all over the Caribbean,” says Martha, “but the Garifuna, my people, we aren’t climbin’ into that crazy boat.”

So Martha doesn’t believe in witchcraft either. This is the best news I’ve heard all night.

“The Good Lord doesn’t hold with no witchcraft,” she continues. “It’s not Christian, if ya get what I’m sayin’.”

I’m not sure I’m on board with the God stuff, but I can set that aside for a fellow skeptic.

“There be angry souls among the dead.”

She’s lost me.

“We don’t be callin’ on their sort.” She starts boiling another brew. “But that doesn’t mean we won’t try to make peace with them.”

I’d really like to know how much Zach paid for us to appease people who can’t hold their temper, even when they’re six feet under.

Martha starts her spooky singing again as she mixes the new potion. I notice there’s a pattern to it. She pauses every once in a while like she’s giving someone else a chance to respond. Zach and I don’t speak Crazy, so no one answers. In fact, the way she cocks her head like she’s listening, I’m not so sure she isn’t hearing a response.

I’m so relieved to hear Pat’s voice that I have to bite my lip to keep from grinning, but I play it cool. I don’t want her thinking I expected anything less.

Martha comes over and puts her pot down on the table.

“What’s your name, child?”

“Luke.”

She sticks her finger in the pot, then smears her mixture on my forehead. I can feel her making the shape of the cross. She chants the whole time, her voice wheedling. My name keeps coming up. I wonder what flattery she’s laying out, whose favor she’s trying to secure to protect me. The ceremony, if you can call it that, lasts only a few minutes. As she resumes her seat, the paste hardens on my skin, pulling my flesh tight around it. It feels itchy and I want to rub it off, but instead I stand up.

“We should be getting back,” I say.

“It won’t be light for an hour,” she says.

Zach shoots me a nervous look.

“It’s a long walk,” I say firmly. “We need to get started.”

Zach sighs, then gets to his feet and Martha with him.

“I’ll set you on the right road,” she says, “and give you my flashlight.”

“We can’t take that,” I say. Despite our recent cash infusion, this woman doesn’t have enough to be giving things away.

“It’s just a loan,” she says, fixing me with a knowing look. “Something tells me you’re going to be around awhile. We might even make a Utilan out of you. Just remember, child, the spirits are always there when you really need them, but there will come a time when you need to let them go.”

I
say almost nothing on the long five-hour hike home. We emerge from the forest much closer to town than I expected, which means we must have overshot the path the first time. Zach and I part ways at Bluewater, and I head back to the Shark Center alone. I turned down his suggestion we get breakfast and he didn’t push it. He was gleeful about our success in finding Martha and enlisting her help. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I think it’s a load of bull. I rubbed off most of the voodoo protection before we even left the woods. Uppermost in my mind is that we just wasted almost twenty-four hours. It’s the start of my third day in Utila, and I’m more confused about Pat’s disappearance than when I arrived. I didn’t expect she’d be easy to find, but I certainly didn’t expect she’d been targeted by someone practicing voodoo, and I’m still unsettled by her apparent personality transformation and secret boyfriend.