Uninvited Read online

  I hadn’t signed up for that.

  But hadn’t I?

  Wasn’t reporting the news what I wanted to do? Didn’t I want to be the next Woodward and Bernstein? The new Judith Miller? One who doesn’t go to jail, of course.

  Would Chadrick or motherfucking Rockower have looked away?

  I don’t think so.

  “Next time, I won’t look away.”

  “You think the killer is going to strike again?” Gay asked.

  I looked at her in surprise. Had I said that out loud?

  But it was right then that I realized I did think there was going to be another killing, just like in the movies. I don’t know how I knew, but I did. I was sure of it. Did I have a reporter’s instincts after all?

  “Yeah,” I said. “I do think they’re going to strike again.” I downed the rest of my cocktail.

  Gay waved the waiter over and held up two fingers, so I quickly grabbed the pick with the olives so he could take the glasses away. I popped one in my mouth.

  “Brookhart seems to think it was witches or Satanists,” I said through a mouthful of olive, staring into the nothingness over my friend’s shoulder. I could see that body still. Horror movie special effects had nothing on the real thing.

  “Oh heavens no,” Gay said and made a clicking sound with her tongue. Was she tsking me? “Not witches. I don’t know about Satanists, but certainly not witches.”

  I opened my mouth to ask her how she might “certainly” know any such thing, when I remembered. She had a friend who was a witch. Gay might consider herself a Christian, but she had a very eclectic circle of friends. Hey, I was her gay best friend, after all. Or at least one of them. She loved her gay boys.

  “I knew her back in college when she was called Party Patty,” Gay had told me one evening while we were soaking in her hot tub and drinking G&Ts. “Now she’s Patricia the Prairie Witch.” She made quotes with her fingers in the air over that last part. “I couldn’t believe it when I saw her at Greta’s little soiree.” Greta was another of Gay’s friends and a rival for who threw the best parties. “It was actually kind of funny. Apparently it was some kind of coup getting Patricia the Prairie Witch to give a little talk at her party and perform a little Beltane ritual. So when Patty and I took one look at each other, screamed like college girls, and threw ourselves into each other’s arms, I thought Greta was going to shit.”

  Gay wouldn’t say “Jesus Christ,” but she had no compunctions about using the word “shit.”

  “So I can tell you right now,” Gay said as Dart delivered out fresh martinis and our noms, “that witches do not believe in human sacrifice.”

  Dart’s eyebrows shot up and disappeared under his gel-coated bangs—I sighed and gave him a “don’t ask me” expression—and he swiveled on one heel and flew away. Gay and I burst into laughter. And remember, Gay’s laugh was not a quiet one.

  When we settled down, she leaned across the little table, and in a conspiratorial tone, said, “Sounds a little closer to voodoo to me.”

  “Voodoo?” I snapped.

  She tossed a shoulder. “The skull face. The chickens. Doesn’t that sound all very Serpent and the Rainbow to you?”

  I sat up straight in my chair. “Well, damn. It does, doesn’t it?”

  She nodded, delicately picked up a crab cake that was no bigger than a KFC biscuit, and took a bite.

  Voodoo? Really? “In Kansas City? I mean, whoever heard of voodoo in Kansas City?”

  Those eyes of hers got wide again. “Oh, darlin’. There’s a shop and everything.”

  “Huh? A voodoo shop?” I couldn’t believe it. KC was hardly New Orleans. “Where?”

  She laughed. “Baby, walk out the front door, turn right, walk ten feet, turn right at the corner—walk maybe twenty feet? Look to your left, and there it is. Right across the street.”

  “You’re shitting me!” I looked at her, eyes agog.

  “I shit thee not! I went in there one day to buy stuff for my little St. Patrick’s Day party and got the surprise of my life!” She laughed nervously and rolled her eyes. “It’s called Lucky Charms, so what did I know? I mean, the place has a four-leaf clover painted on the front of it. I walked in and saw not one bit of green! It was all candles and skulls and creepy little altars on every wall. My hair stood on end! It did!”

  Voodoo? Here? In Kansas City? I couldn’t be more surprised if it had been a church dedicated to the worship of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.

  “Maybe you should talk to them.” She nodded enthusiastically. “Yes! Of course you should. There’s no maybe about it.”

  Voodoo? I gulped.

  “I’ll go with!” She grinned.

  “I thought it spooked you,” I said.

  “Oh, it did. It does. Quite a bit in fact. But I’ll have you with me this time.”

  “I don’t know….”

  “Quick,” she said. “Down your drinkie. We’ll get a third round, and that should give us the courage to enter the lion’s den!”

  Good God. Was I going to do it again? Was it Lucy and Ethel on another ill-advised adventure?

  Of course, if she was right—if the murder was some kind of voodoo sacrifice—what better place to get information?

  But then again, it might also be a place to get noticed by a group of voodoo killers.

  The gin won out in the end, and armed with liquid courage, we marched out the door of The Corner Bistro, ready to take on a zombie army.

  BUT THE little shop, set back from the side street and looking ridiculously innocuous, would not get a visit from us that day.

  Marching back and forth in front of the little cement block building was a small mob carrying signs and sandwich boards. Protestors. God Will Prevail and On Your Belly You Will Go. Drive Out the Serpents, blared another, and, Suffer the Witches to Burn!

  There was even a man standing on a folding chair and yelling to all who would listen. “And the great dragon was thrown down,” he cried. “And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him!”

  The man was incredibly handsome, as such evangelical types are wont to be. He reminded me of Aaron Eckhart, the actor who played Harvey Dent in one of the Christopher Nolan Batman movies—I’m not sure which one. I mix the titles all up in my head. He was wearing a gray suit, of course, with a dark blue tie—I could tell that even from across the street—and I found myself hoping he was sweating his balls off. Not that he was. Preachers who knew they spoke the Word of God didn’t seem to sweat, not even in a revival tent on a morning when it was already topping a hundred degrees, even in the shade.

  I shook my head. I knew people like this. I’d seen them outside gay pride events.

  I took pictures. I even recorded a bit of it.

  And then Gay and I went home.

  I was tempted to stop for one more martini. But four is where I always forget the end of the evening, after all, and I had a story to write.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening researching voodoo online.

  The information was conflicting. Different essayists and bloggers couldn’t even agree on the spelling of the word. Besides “voodoo,” there was also “vodou,” “voudou,” “vodun,” “vudun,” “Vudu,” and hell, so many others. Even “hoodoo.”

  And yeah, Vudu was some kind of Internet service, wasn’t it?

  There was general finger-pointing as well, plus lots of my-version-of-voodoo-is-better-than-your-version, just like with every denomination of Christianity I’d ever seen. The Haitians said the New Orleans version was a bastardization of real voodoo, and the New Orleans “vodouisants” seemed to stick out their tongue and bang their assons all the louder—assons meaning ceremonial rattles. There was Santería as well, and apparently it was very different, and practitioners of either didn’t appreciate being lumped together with the other.

  I couldn’t
find any real information on a Baron Mange Key, although there was a reference to a Baron Manjè Kè. I could only wonder if he was the same guy. There was almost nothing on him at all except that he was a part of the whole voodoo thing. He seemed to be someone you didn’t want to mess with.

  I found out that the serpent shouter was quoting from Revelation 12:9. It had nothing to do with voodoo or snakes or anything creepy like that. It was a total out-of-context rant that in reality had to do with the Roman Empire being the devil or some such thing. But hey, taking verses out of context seemed to be commonplace. My mother had certainly done a lot of it in her time. I don’t like to read the Bible. Far too much of it had been pressed on me—read: shoved down my throat—when I was growing up. And Revelation had always been the most confusing and scary part of the whole damned book.

  After reading all I could read about voodoo online, I headed over to Video Obsession and rented everything I could find. Luckily, the little independent store hadn’t been killed in the great Blockbuster explosion/implosion debacle a few years back—due mainly to the gay porn and movies like I was renting. Voodoo Island. The Zombie King. The Skeleton Key. Isle of the Snake People. I Walked With a Zombie. And yup, even The Serpent and the Rainbow, which was supposedly based on a true story. I watched them all night, drinking lots of coffee from The Shepherd’s Bean, often with my finger on the fast-forward button. I only had to watch a small part of The Believers because it turned out that movie was all about Santería, and yeah, that was something different.

  There was one powerful line from the movie though: “Name me one religion where atrocities have not been committed in the name of a god.”

  It made me think. What religion, indeed?

  But still. Human sacrifice?

  The Internet said vodouisants didn’t practice human sacrifice. Of course, it also said Herb Morrison was fired for going off the air when he was covering the crash of the Hindenburg. So, what to believe?

  Or maybe this murder wasn’t voodoo, vodou, Vudu, whatever? Maybe it was Santería after all?

  I guess I was going to have to go to Lucky Charms.

  So early in the morning, exhausted but pumped up on caffeine, I put together a story I hoped Mencken could tolerate and sent it off, along with an e-mail that said I’d talk to the owner of Lucky Charms.

  “You read that right,” I wrote. “Kansas City has a voodoo shop, and the only reason I haven’t talked to the owner yet is because the protestors wouldn’t let me by.” It was a bald-faced lie, of course, but I had to say something he might accept.

  Lucky Charms had a website—who doesn’t these days?—and I knew they would be open at 11:00 a.m., and I planned to be there with bells and rattles.

  After I got some sleep, that is. Although that turned out to be sleep filled with dreams of zombies and a strange-looking black man with a crow on his shoulder and a bright red heart painted on his face.

  THERE WAS nothing about Lucky Charms that was anything like I expected. Even the building, which I could see, now that the protestors were gone, was rather uninteresting. It was a simple cinderblock, shoebox-shaped structure, the front a pale butter yellow color, along with the store’s name in large green letters stretching from one side to the other. Above that was painted a large four-leaf clover (the easier to fool Gay into looking for St. Patrick’s Day decorations), what I think was supposed to be a rabbit’s foot, a horseshoe (end’s facing upward, of course), a lady bug (I wasn’t sure why), a rainbow (gay friendly?) and a penny on the facade.

  It looked nothing like Marie Laveau’s shop in New Orleans. I’d stopped in front of it once when I had gone to Southern Decadence—the big gay version of Mardi Gras that often attracted as many as 125,000 people. I even peeked inside the place but hadn’t gone in like some of my friends. The small, white, weatherworn building with the black shutters had creeped me out a little bit.

  Lucky Charms, on the other hand, looked harmless. I could see how Gay hadn’t realized what lay within. How many times had I passed it and not even noticed it was there?

  The inside was nothing like the Voodoo (Vodou?) Queen’s store either. Hers was small, almost tiny, and crammed to the rafters with all kinds of crap. Dolls, skulls, bags, candles, hats, oils and liquids, bones and herbs, and strings of beads, cowrie shells, and necklaces. The ceiling dripped with the stuff. But Lucky Charms? While it had some of the same stuff, it looked positively empty compared to Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo. It was two or three times as big, quite spacious inside, full of the light that came in through the big plate-glass window, and the interior walls painted even brighter than the outer. There were banners on the walls that reminded me a bit of those in the meeting hall of any church—nothing sinister about them. Common saints, it appeared, but with names like Ezili Danto, Legba, Marassa Dosou Dosa and La Sirene (although this last looked more like a mermaid than a saint).

  The first third or so of the shop had some long tables and tiered displays with books, tarot decks, candles (including some shaped like men, women, penises, and female genitalia), soaps, and other novelties. On one wall was a set of shelves lined with tiny bottles of oil with labels such as Stop Gossip, Lavender Love Drops, Return to Me, Clarity (I could use some of that!), Cast Off Evil, Bend Over (I was dying to know what that was), Jinx Breaker, and my favorite, Bitch Be Gone.

  Oh. And there were statues. Statues of Catholic saints. I still found that weird. The hair on my arms moved as I remembered the hotel room and the ceramic Virgin Mary figurine lodged in a dead man’s throat.

  I had just noticed a cabinet with little baskets filled with Charms! Only $5.99! when a man spoke. “Good morning!”

  I jumped as if someone had snuck up behind me and shouted, “Boo!” and all but pissed myself. I spun around—

  “May I help you?”

  —and nearly gasped at the sight of the man walking toward me.

  He was that guy.

  He looked to be in his late twenties, around my age. He was taller than me (of course), with a perfect dark olive complexion and short ringlets of jet-black hair that framed a breathtakingly beautiful face. His eyes were sparkling black, and my friend Gay would have killed for his dark, thick lashes. (“Boys aren’t supposed to have such beautiful eyelashes! It’s not fair!”) His nose was large but not overly so—strong, I would say—and those lips. Christ! So full. What must it be like to kiss lips like those? I wondered.

  I could see he had an athletic build, even in his baggy white islander shirt, and with the top buttons undone, it was apparent he had a smooth, probably hairless, chest. He was wearing what looked like a shark’s tooth on a leather thong around his neck, and it seemed to point downward—or maybe that was just me grabbing an excuse to look downward. I had to force my eyes to stay on his beautiful face, those dark eyes, wide nose, and full lips.

  He was gorgeous.

  He was fucking gorgeous.

  He was “that guy.” That rare type I see at a bar, who sends a bolt of lightning right to my crotch, and I can’t stop looking at, and desperately want to approach, even buy him a drink, but never, ever actually have the nerve to do so. That guy I try not to stare at, but I can’t stop.

  Everyone knows “that guy.”

  And then, “that guy” spoke to me….

  “Are you all right?”

  Could it have been a worse question? What kind of total doofus was I in his eyes? And dammit, even his voice was beautiful.

  He was looking at me with those eyes like polished obsidian, waiting—I could see he was waiting for me to say something—but the goddamned words wouldn’t come out of my mouth. It was as if there were some kind of misfiring going on in my brain, and the thoughts weren’t getting translated into actions.

  Finally: “I-I, yes?” I felt a rush of heat travel up my face. Jeez! Get your act together. He’s just some dude. “I’m sorry, but it’s just…. You’re….” Watch what you’re saying. “Ah. You’re… not what I was expecting.”

  “You were exp
ecting Angela Basset, maybe?”

  “Huh?” I so intellectually asked.

  “You know. As Marie Laveau? From American Horror Story?”

  “I’ve never watched it,” I replied, finally able to speak. American Horror Story had apparently not been an offering at the video store.

  “You should. It’s great. Nothing like real life, of course—they got a lot mixed up. People got all bent out of shape about what they did with Papa Legba. Seemed to mix him up a bit with Bawon Samedi.”

  Bawon Samedi? Could he be any relation to Baron Manjè Kè, I wondered.

  “Papa Legba would never kill babies. But I still love the show. Can’t help it. I love to be scared.” He grinned, and sure enough, he had perfect teeth, and those eyes of his seemed to spark with electricity.

  This is ridiculous. I mentally slapped myself. I was acting like a fool. “I think maybe I was expecting a crazy little old black lady.”

  “Well, I’ve certainly been called crazy,” he said. “But I’m not a little old lady—although there is some African a few generations back.”

  That explained his lovely complexion. I would have to lie out in the sun all summer long to get that color.

  “It was my great-grandmother. She married my Italian great-grandfather. It was scandalous, I guess.” He waggled thick brows.

  I nodded, at a loss for words once more. What did you say to that? That’s nice? I’m sorry? Cheers?

  “So, you’ve never been in the shop before,” said the pretty man. It was a statement and not a question.

  I shook my head.

  “I would remember if you had,” he added.

  He would? “Why?”

  “Why what?”