CHAPTER XIX

VOODOOED

Coming to the dark cemetery, I paused to get my wind, my eyes anxiously seeking the path that I had to take among the tombstones in order to reach my chum. How weird the white shafts looked in the filtered light! They seemed to be crouching, listening. I shivered, dreading at the moment to enter the spooky place.

Then I got a grip on myself. It was only a person’s fear of dark cemeteries, I told myself, that made such places dangerous. It wasn’t the scheme of the dead to harm the living.

So, entering the cemetery in bolstered courage, I hurried along the gravel road, trying not to let myself believe that something was following me. But I kept looking back as a sort of precaution. I couldn’t help it. Try going through a cemetery some dark night and see how _you_ feel. Once a branch twisted under my foot and slapped me on the leg. Boy, did I ever jump!

The pines that I passed under were a hundred years old. And there were tombstones in the cemetery fully as old as the trees. Once upon a time a Scottish church, called a kirk, had stood on this hill. A fire had wiped out the church. But the manse and the churchyard remained.

I had to pass close to the empty grave. And at sight of it queer thoughts crept into my mind. Had Caleb actually ordered it for his own use in strange foreboding of his early death? Had he been voodooed? Was he dead, as the Cap’n suspected?

“Dea-a-ad!” mournfully whispered the pines, picking up the thread of my thoughts. “Dea-a-ad! Dea-a-ad!”

Coming to the old manse, a black pile in the crowding darkness, I put my head in at the door.

“Red,” says I, breathing my chum’s name.

There was no answer. Remembering about the cat signal, I gave a loud, “Meow!” Still no response from within.

“Red,” says I, louder. “It’s me--Jerry. I’ve got some good news for you.”

Lighting a match, I stepped, trembling, into the building, my eyes seeking a safe path. The frying pan and ham, I noticed, were on their respective coffin-case shelves. But of the runaway himself there was no sign.

“Red,” says I again, raising my voice. “_Red._”

What I didn’t know was that the “runaway” had gone home, like the big baby that he was at heart. His “Montana” talk was all a bluff. In sending the note home he had figured that his mother would make me tell her where her “erring son” was. Then, of course, mamma and Aunt Pansy, all flustered, would hurry around to the front door of the manse with the family sedan, begging Sonny, on bended knees, to please come home again and give up his intended scheme of scalping Indians and Gila monsters. In getting him back into the family circle their joy, of course, would be so great that they would forget all about wanting to punish him.

Oh, Red’s tricky, all right! But what had sort of upset things for him was the unexpected absence of his folks. His mother being away, I had been unable to deliver his note, and consequently no one had come for him, as he had expected they would, with the willing promise that all would be forgiven. He had held out until sundown, and then, shaking, had lit out for home. Late that night his folks found him sound asleep on their back porch, the empty custard dish in his lap.

But, of course, I didn’t know about the runaway’s deceitful scheme until later on. And searching for him unsuccessfully in the old manse, I became terrified at the thought that something had happened to him.

“Red,” says I in a trembling voice. And going to the doorway into the cellar I peered down the stairs. “_Red._”

The rotten stairs suddenly collapsing under my weight, I was pitched, screaming, into the dark, foul-smelling hole. Plaster and rubbish showered around me. Feeling about to get my bearings, my left hand suddenly touched something yielding. Like an inflated football. I froze in sudden horror. For I knew that the thing I had touched in the dark was no football, but _a dead man’s face_.

I fumbled in my pocket for a match. Getting one, I struck it. The small blaze gave me a glimpse of a stretched-out form that had been hidden from our sight that afternoon by the stairs. As I had suspected, it was old Caleb Obed!

I hadn’t believed the voodoo story in first hearing it--it was a crazy tale, I had said. But after the mysterious appearance of the black parrot in my bed I had been doing some thinking. And now I knew the truth of the matter. There was no longer room for doubt. The parrot’s story was only too true.

How I got out of that stairless hole I don’t know. But I did get out, somehow. And, screaming, I ran out of the cemetery and down the road into town, where, completely forgetting about my promise to the Cap’n, I sounded the alarm of the tragedy in the street. When the story got to Bill Hadley’s ears he loaded his flivver full of excited men and drove up the Happy Hollow road on the tear.

Realizing that Dad ought to know the truth about my part in the death parrot’s escape, I ran home, still trembling, determined to tell my parents the whole story from beginning to end. For I realized that immediate steps should be taken to kill the weird parrot. Otherwise it might voodoo some one else. Every minute that it was permitted to live human lives were in danger.

Finding the house still in darkness, I switched on the lights. As I did so the clock struck ten. How queerly I felt! I suddenly noticed it. I worked my dizzy head on its rubbery support. Then I noticed a peculiar pain in my left foot.

Taking off my shoe and stocking, I found a swollen ankle. The foot had been bleeding, too. There were matted drops on my big toe.

Puzzled at first to account for the injury, I suddenly remembered that _this_ was the foot that had touched the voodoo parrot in the bed.

Say, if ever there was a scared kid in the whole history of the world it was _me_. The terrible thought jumped into my head that I had been voodooed. The parrot had nipped me in the bed without the slight injury showing at the time.

I tried hard to fight down my fears. I didn’t want to believe that I had been voodooed. For, if I had, I would die. There were no “if’s” and “and’s” about that. The result of the voodoo was _death_. The Cap’n had said so, and Caleb Obed’s death had proved it. The bare thought of it drove me out of my senses.

“Dad!” says I, running madly through the empty house. “Dad! Mother! Dad!”

But there was no one there to help me.

Then to my great joy the front door bell rang. In the hall my hand touched something cold ... the marble-topped table. _Marble!_ I shrank back in horror. For marble was what tombstones were made of.

“Good evening,” bowed the man at the door, and I saw in added horror that he carried a bouquet of calla lilies. “I am a stranger in town. Can you direct me to the home of Mr. W. W. Graves?”

_Graves! Calla lilies!_ I slammed the door shut in the stranger’s face, for I could think of him only as an omen of death itself. Suddenly weak in the knees, I dropped, panting, into a seat in the hall. _Marble! Graves! Calla lilies!_ The sweat ran down my cheeks.

The dizzy feeling was now in my crammed stomach. Everything that I had eaten for supper was going around and around. First the strawberry shortcake chased the dill pickles, then the jello played horse with the pepper salad. To vary the lively program, the pears and everything else lined up in a game of leapfrog.

I had turned on the parlor lights, wanting to drive away every particle of darkness. And there on the parlor wall within range of my eyes, nodding at me in the bright light, was my dead Grandfather Todd’s picture. The eyes held a new expression. They seemed to be _beckoning_ to me.

Was I crazy?

I ran out of the house. The shortcake now had a strangle hold on the jello’s windpipe. The latter’s death struggles grew fainter and fainter. Then the beefsteak, galloping to the jello’s rescue, kicked the shortcake in the seat of the pants and the fight started all over again.

I bumped into a man in the street.

“Howdy, Jerry,” says Mr. Ump. My eyes bulged at sight of the long package under the sexton’s arm. All I could think of was a new shovel.

Ten minutes later, having tripped on the sidewalk in front of Mr. Kaar’s undertaking parlor, I tumbled into Doc Leland’s office, where I faced six or seven surprised men, among them Bill Hadley and Scoop’s father. A meeting of some kind was in progress. But the meeting broke up in a hurry, let me tell you, when I galloped into the room, capless, wearing only one shoe and stocking, yelling to Doc to get busy and save my life.

Springing up, Bill took my arms and drew my face close to his.

“Why, Jerry!” says he, searching my eyes. “What’s the matter?” Then he laughed. “Have you found another ‘dead man’?”

The whole story came out then--how we had let the death parrot escape and how it had voodooed Caleb Obed, killing him, and how I had been voodooed in the Cap’n’s bed, and, in consequence, had been seeing graves with marble tops and sextons carrying long-handled strawberry shortcakes trimmed with calla lilies.

“Um ...” grunted Doc, getting the hang of my wild story. “H’ist up that foot that’s bin voodooed an’ let me take a peek at it.”

The men were laughing now. And I wondered at it.

“Um ...” says Doc, examining the inflamed ankle. “Bin swimmin’ in the creek, hain’t you?”

I nodded.

“P’ison ivy,” says he, with a grunt. Thumping me in the stomach, he inquired what I had had for supper.

“Beefsteak and fried potatoes,” says I, “and strawberry shortcake and pepper salad and dill pickles and jello and apple pie with ice cream on it and pears and----”

“That’ll do,” says Doc, and he acted as though he was sort of disgusted with me. I guess he had the idea that I had been eating too much. I was beginning to think so myself.

Bill was laughing his head off now.

“Why, kid,” says he, patting me on the back to brace me up, “you hain’t bin voodooed. That fall of your’n into the cemetery cellar upset your nerves. You’ve bin lettin’ yourself imagine things.”

Mr. Ellery winked at Doc.

“I think,” says he, laughing, “that the boy’s stomach has been upset worse than his nerves.”

“Old Caleb hain’t dead, Jerry,” Bill went on. “You thought he was. But he hain’t. We brought him home a few minutes ago. He’s drunk, that’s all.”

I was still dizzy.

“And he wasn’t voodooed?” says I.

Bill laughed and gave me another friendly pat on the back.

“Kid,” says he, “you’re funny.”