Bad Juju (8 page)

Ja
ke pried open the sealed window.  The opening created a wind
tunnel, instantly cooling off the whole trailer with a single arctic gust. 
He
ripped through the screen.

“Sure got cold in here.  You open the window?  Open the door
,
you little shit!  Now, before I beat you to a pulp!”  Pete pound
ed
down the flimsy door with supernatural
strength
.  Jake could already see it splintering on the inside of his room.  He had both legs
dangling
out
of
the window
,
balancing on his torso
through the opening
.  He looked down and realized the jump was only four feet.  He let himself drop out, landing on a fresh snow bank. 
Rhianna
cried as she looked out the window. 
He
got up and dusted
off
the snow. 
Thu
d
!
He didn’t know what hit him. 
Back on the ground, he
looked up
and saw
T.J. looming over him.

“Pete, he’s right here!  Before you leave
,
your uncle has something to say to you,” T.J. replied.  Jake was confused as to why T.J. would side with his uncle after just receiving a beating from him.

Pete
thundered down the half-finished wooden deck outside of the trailer’s entrance.  “Get your fucking ass back in the house now!”  Jake could barely hear him due to the whistling of the wind.  He doubted any of his neighbors heard him
;
it was so late. 
Forget about the
cavalry
being called,
he thought.
 

His uncle and T.J. carried him back inside.  T.J.’s jaw was swollen and his nose broken.  He
obediently
closed the window while Pete ranted.

“You stupid son-of-a-bitch!  Where were you going?  Another shitty group home?  Police?  What are they going to do?  You need to mind your own business!
”

“Pete, found this lying on the ground,”
T.J.
said as he tossed Pete the can.

“What the fuck is this?  Running away and planning on cleaning toilets?”  Pete examined the can and began to shake it.  He heard something solid and began to twist off the top.  Pete found the cut opening.  “What the hell, you’ve got over a thousand bucks here.  Where’d you steal it from?”

“No, I earned it from helping everyone here at the park.  I’ve been saving up for when I’m an adult,” Jake stuttered.

“Bullshit!  You’ve been stealing from all these here old people, you thief!  This here money is now mine. 
Gonna
use it to pay for that window you broke! 
And
I’m
gonna
teach you a lesson
that
you’ll never forget!”

Jake wondered where
Leah’s unconscious body
went.  The living room was now free from obstructions, giving
his uncle
free range of motion for
his third beating of the
night.  Jake could see blood
splattering
all over the carpet and walls.  Uncle Pete slid his belt out of his belt loops
and then
swung it in circles for added momentum.  There was an ornate bronze
belt buckle
of a cowboy at the end of the belt.  The whoosh sound that it made scared the hell out of Jake.

“Turn around and take off your shirt!  Now!  Or it’s
gonna
be that much worse.  This is how my daddy, your grandpa, showed me who’s boss!
  And stealing is a sin!
” 

Jake looked over to T.J.  Refusing to return eye contact,
T.J.
made it clear that he was finished playing hero
and stood
blocking the front door. 
Better me getting the beat
down
than him, asshole.
 
Rhianna
stood in front of his mangled bedroom door, crying.

Down
came the bronze belt buckle, again, and again, and again until Jake couldn’t feel anymore.  His vision faded.

By 6 a.m. Leah woke him up in his bed with a tray of cereal and juice.  Remnants of the hellish night instantly came back as the pain in his back
throbbed
.

“You okay?  It’s all my fault.  I’m what triggered everything,” Leah cried.
  “Take this.  It’ll help out a lot with the pain.”

Jake
could barely sit up.  He downed the pill without even asking what it was.  He
looked at her once pretty face.  It was purple and swollen
. 
An upper
tooth
w
as
missing.

“
Y
our shirt is saturated with blood.  Let me see your back.”

He agonized as he lifted his shirt.  The pain
pulsated
even harder as the cool air hit all of the sores.

“Holy shit!  I need to clean you up.  With all of the dried blood it’s hard to see how bad this is.”  She went into his bathroom and came back with a damp towel.  Once she was finished wiping off his back
,
the white towel was
a
filthy reddish-brown color.  “This isn’t so bad.  You need to take a bath.  Nothing some
Bactine
won’t heal up.  And you’re still stuck in the
Z
oo, right?”

“Yeah.  So don’t worry.  No gym class.  No one will see my back if that’s what you’re thinking,” Jake said with indignation.

“
Shhh
.  He’s asleep.”

“Don’t you worry about
Rhianna
?  Look at yourself.  Look what he’s done to you.  Your brother…
He was going to rape you until T.J. stepped in.  Wished T.J. would have
stepped in for me.
Pete
took all of my money
I worked so hard for
.  It was my ‘get the fuck outta here’ money. 
When I’m eighteen…I hate him, Leah.  I really hate him.”

“
He takes my money every night.  I know how you feel. 
You just
gotta
hide it better. 
Somewhere that’s not here.  Your uncle does
pay the bills,
and
keeps things
running.
Please
, no more fights.  He’s not all bad.  Just when he drinks is all.”

“I’ve
gotta
bus to catch, so if you don’t mind,” Jake said.  He washed up, got dressed, and waited at his bus stop thirty minutes before the bus was scheduled to arrive.  He needed to get out of that hellhole. 
While waiting on the corner he cried.  His
cries
escalated into shrieks with tears falling out of his eyes like rivers.  He didn’t know what upset him the most.  His mutilated back?  Perhaps.  It would heal, leaving him the souvenir of scars for the rest of his life.  The money?  It represented a piece of his freedom he had
planned for after
turning eighteen years old.
  And then there was his unadulterated grief.  Cancer or not,
his m
om left him behind to be tortured. 
One way or another
Pete
was
gonna
pay dearly for
what
he had done.

Chapter
1
0

Lucien
Nazaire
descended
from a
legendary line
of Caribbean
bokors
.  His great-great-great
-great
grandfather, Plato the Wizard, was
a runaway slave
who
practiced Obeah,
a West Indies form of sorcery
.  His magic seduced loyal followers and threatened
all who got in his way
, drawing lots of
attention to the wrong people.  In 1780
he was convicted of
heresy. 
Plato
infamously
promised to bring a terrible storm onto
the shores of
Jamaica
by the end of the year
right before he was executed
.  In
October
of the same year,
Jamaica and
other nearby islands
suffered a deadly hurricane. 
Plato the Wizard’s
secret
s were passed on to relatives
. 
Part of
his
family w
as
sold
off
to
the St.
Domini
g
ue
slave owners
, currently known as Haiti and Dominican Republic
.

On Lucien’s twentieth birthday, he inherited
Pl
ato’s
generational Obeah and Voodoo secrets. 
This k
nowledge
grew exponentially
over the centuries
.  Soon he became an i
mportant man in Haiti
. 
A few decades later, l
ike
his great-great-great-great grandfather,
Lucien
was indicted for
occult rituals
and faced with execution
.
 
Murder was the official police charge with his motive linked to sorcery.  Unlike Plato the Wizard, Lucien had figured out a way to
escape. 
He prayed to Baron
Samedi
and was last seen
running on the beach, and diving in the water, never coming back to shore. 
Most believed he died
in the Caribbean Sea,
but some still had doubts.  Only a
select
few of his
family members knew he
made it to America
.

Now, nearing a century of age,
Lucien
feared his craft would die with him.  He
loved Jake like a son
and began
g
room
ing
him
in the dark arts
. 
First, he taught
Jake
common symbols
used within the
hounfours
where worship took place. 
Jake caught on instantly
.
  Lucien
moved onto the
mystical side of the religion,
showing him
healings, protective powers, and hexes.  He regretted never teaching his wives or children.  Jake was his
last
hope in continuing on his family’s legacy.

Although they had grown
close, both kept secrets from each other.  Lucien
suspected
a great deal of abuse
in Jake’s home
. 
H
e wanted
to adopt
the boy
,
but
his age and
U.S.
legal status would be under fire.  For the time being,
he enjoyed their relationship and vowed to help the
boy
under any circumstances.

***

By the time Jake’s school bus arrived, his eyes
felt
as dry as
sandpaper from
crying. 
Like magic, he no
longer pitied himself
, shifting to fantasies of revenge
.  He was grateful to his aunt for making him go to school.  He certainly didn’t want to stay home.  Henry lurked by his locker, excited to see
him.  They both walked to the
Z
oo together and began their day.

Like the day prior
, Mrs. Powell allowed them to watch more news coverage about the Haitian earthquake.  The aftershocks were causing widespread alarm.  The Red Cross was already delivering food, water, and medical supplies.  Makeshift camps were in the process of being set-up for the thousands and thousands misplaced.  Jake thought of the worry Lucien must be going through.

“Can we go to Lucien’s again?” Henry whispered.  He looked like a puppy begging for a hamburger.

“Sure.  As long as your mom takes us there.”

After school Henry’s mom again
was
gracious enough to drop them off at Lucien’s.
“Same time as yesterday?”  Henry nodded. 
She
waved goodbye.

Lucien automatically made hot cocoa
.  Jake
needed
to
unload, but wasn’t sure if Lucien or Henry wanted to hear his problems.  After reiterating earthquake news, Jake took a chance.