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Voodoo Curse

Mel Waldman

    My office is a rectangular tomb of darkness where trauma survivors and other sufferers come to heal or die. I listen to their horror stories and sometimes, I’m infected with their toxic thoughts and emotions. My name’s Dr. Joseph Savage. I’m a shrink. But how can I fight supernatural forces?

    “Doc, I think my mother-in-law put a curse on me. A voodoo curse.”
    I gazed quizzically at my patient, a good looking middle-aged African-American man and a professor of physics at Columbia University.
    “You’re a scientist and yet, you believe in the power of voodoo?”
    “Until a week ago, I thought voodoo was a lot of nonsense, mind over matter stuff. But now, I know it’s real.”
    “What happened?”
    “My wife and I have only been married three years. I accepted the position at Columbia so she could live near her mother. She’s very attached to my mother-in-law. She just turned 21 and I’m 42. Seems I married a child from Haiti.”
    “How did you meet?”
    “Through a friend. Actually, he introduced me to her single mother Verona. I dated Verona a few times and then I met Alicia. It was love at first sight. I became obsessed. Fortunately, Alicia felt the same way. Her mother strongly opposed the marriage. I believe she was and is still in love with me. Yet her love for Alicia was stronger than her bitter feelings.”
    “Why do you think she put a curse on you?”
    “To stop me from taking her daughter away. I’ve accepted a high-level government job out-of-state. Verona’s furious with me even though I told her she could come with us. Since I told her, I’ve been very ill. I’ve never been sick a day in my life. But mysteriously, I developed heart disease and multiple growths on my body. I don’t know if they’re benign or malignant.”
    “And Verona caused this?”
    “Yes. For seven nights, she came to me in my dreams, laughed maniacally at me, and stuck pins into a voodoo doll that looked like me. I woke up screaming. And last night, I found a voodoo doll in my bed. I flung it against the wall and shattered it. I went for a long walk while Alicia slept. When I returned, she was still asleep. But the doll was gone.”

    Professor Robert Michaels left my office in a state of panic and distress. He requested an emergency session the next day. I found a time slot that was open. Before leaving, he showed me pictures of his mother-in-law and wife. Verona is an attractive Haitian woman with dark penetrating eyes that seem to reach into one’s soul. Alicia is devastatingly beautiful and sensuous with hazel eyes and long black hair. Yet she possesses a seductive quality of vulnerability too.
    “If something happens to me, I want you to know what really happened. I’m not mad, Dr. Savage, just cursed.”
    I did not tell him that his notion of evil voodoo dolls was irrational or that he had seen too many horror movies. Nor did I point out that voodoo dolls were, in reality, used to bless individuals. He would have felt misunderstood, for he was a full-fledged paranoid.
    He did not show for his session. When I called him at home, his wife answered and spoke calmly, dispassionately. He had passed away in the middle of the night apparently of a massive heart attack.

    She came to my office after my last patient left, and we made love on the couch in my office. I’m addicted to her and she claims she’s madly in love with me. She killed him in order to be with me, her former therapist. The untraceable poison worked perfectly. And now she will kill the other woman.
    “You’re my femme fatale, Alicia.”
    “And you’re my Big Daddy, Doc.”

    At home, I called Safe Haven, the secret government agency I work for, with a disposable cell phone on a secure line.
    “Did you get Professor Michaels’ papers?”
    “Not yet. But he’s dead.”
    “Get them soon. For the sake of your country.”
    “Once the girl kills her mother...”
    “By tomorrow night. Or you will become dispensable.
    “Yes.”
    “Kill both of them. Make it look like a murder-suicide. Use the voodoo paraphernalia to make it look like a black magic ceremony. Voodoo death works.”
    “Yes.”

    How can I kill Alicia? But they will kill me if I don’t. Tomorrow, I will get the papers and kill mother and daughter. Or I will run off with Alicia.
    In my dark dreams, a Safe Haven man breaks into my home carrying a bag of voodoo belongings. He shoots an untraceable poison into my arm. The poison triggers a massive heart attack. As I die a painful and horrific death, silently screaming into the black hole of death, the killer arranges the room with voodoo objects. The police will think I practiced voodoo and that I committed suicide.
    Before I die, the killer gazes into my psyche. He looks familiar. I open my eyes and I see my dark alter ego. And I fly into a black hole from which I will never return.

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