BAD MOJO
This short book is not a complete story. It is a free sample of my psychological thriller novel, Serial Quiller, a spooky tale of voodoo magic, murder, and make-believe.
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 by Sharon A. Austin
CHAPTER 1
Virgil awoke late at night to find his wife gone. He kicked off cold and clammy bedcovers, box springs screeched when he got up. A steady breeze, weighed down with humidity, carried the vanilla-like fragrance of Joe-Pye weed and the barely audible sound of laughter through an open window.
He stood behind fluttering white sheers and watched Marie trot across the back yard, her long black curls bouncing with each footfall. The opaque security light above the barn doors cast an eerie pallor through the limbs of an old elm draped with Spanish moss. He noticed her belly, in the narrow space between her shirt and shorts, seemed rounder than normal. He lazily scratched his ass, wondered what the hell she’s doing.
A man stepped out of the shadows, and drew her into an embrace. They kissed for a moment, then entered the barn.
Marie came back out. She turned her head side to side, looked up.
Virgil leaned back without thinking.
The man clasped her hand. “C’mere, baby.” He brought a shiny metal flask to his lips and took a long swig.
She giggled again. “Gimme some.”
“Sh! Not now.” He pulled her into the barn, loosely swung one door shut, the other already latched at the top.
* * *
Virgil slipped through the half closed door. Stood beneath the loft and listened to the rough’n ready sounds of raw lust. Glossy photos in his dog-eared girlie magazines flashed through his mind. He hiked the leather rifle strap onto his shoulder, gripped the sides of the wooden ladder. Slowly mounted the rungs; aware one always squeaked.
He found them in a clearing behind short stacks of hay. Virgil recognized him. He was the same slick salesman who’d come sniffing around last April trying to sell them some kitcheny crap. He didn’t know if his wife got any. He’d left the house to spend the rest of the mild and sunny morning planting eggplants to be sold at the farmers market and to local chefs.
A July heat wave made the guy come a-knocking again. Now he was a-rocking, in the hayloft, with a young wife and mamma.
His face was nestled against her neck. He grunted mightily with each slow thrust. She flexed her leg muscles, gasped. “Bring it home, baby,” he told her.
A metallic click.
Marie froze. Her dark eyes and reddish complexion oddly reflected the lantern light. She tried to speak but couldn’t. Too late to warn her loverboy, anyway. He shot the salesman named Russell Something-or-other when he raised his head and looked over his shoulder. She screamed bloody murder. Virgil yanked her up off the floor, got a whiff of the man’s scent, resisted giving her the beating she damn well deserved.
Shivering with fear, she used handfuls of hay to wipe the blood off of her. Watched Virgil load Russell’s body into the bed of his pickup truck. She stared at the back of the house through the open loft doors on the left side of the barn. Her gaze shifted from one upstairs window to the next. She thought she saw her four-year-old son, Bernie, rest his arms on the windowsill in his bedroom and stick his thumb in his mouth. Marie bowed her head and cried.
Virgil drove through the field, toppling crops in his path. He put the body in a rowboat. Filled a feed sack with the man’s belongings, and a cinderblock, then tied the bag around his scrawny neck. He thought he heard a small gasp. Tightened the rope. Using a pair of wire cutters he removed the guy’s wedding band with his finger still attached, and slung the bloody digit to the ground for the snapping turtles to fight over.
He rowed to the middle of a bottomless pond where dark green scum floated on the surface and mosquitoes multiplied by the hundreds, and chucked the salesman in. Red-hot bolts of lightning clawed the black sky. A roar of thunder soon followed. Straight-line winds almost flipped his boat. Virgil returned to the water’s edge without delay.
In the midst of a torrential downpour his truck got stuck in the mud. He made a mad dash to the barn. Jerked open the right door. Marie ran out screaming, waving her arms in the air, stringy hair covering her face. Crazy bitch looked and sounded like a banshee. His heart thumped erratically while he worked to unlatch the other door with wet hands.
He stepped into the salesman’s car just as a gust blew one of the flimsy wooden doors shut. Dammit. He carried two empty oil drums out of the barn, and stood them in front of the doors. He drove in, parked behind a do-it-yourself pegboard wall holding an array of hand tools, hooks and baling wire.
He wouldn’t allow Marie to change clothes or to sleep in his bed, making her spend the night in the living room instead.
Lamplight threw a shadow on a cheap seascape hanging to one side on the wall. He leaned against the worn banister, listened to her tossing and turning on the couch. Virgil was tempted to put her out of her misery. Decided a bullet would be too swift. He needed to teach her a thing or two about faithfulness. Too bad he didn’t think of that before he shot her loverboy.
* * *
Marie knew it was out of meanness when Virgil woke her up at five o’clock one dark and rainy morning to come and get the rest of her things out of his bedroom. About to scoop up the last pile of clothing in her drawer, he grabbed hold of her hair and slung her onto the bed. She didn’t tell him she’s pregnant. Or about having frequent thoughts of murder-suicide.
As the months passed and her stomach swelled to the size of a ripe watermelon she started wearing the long baggy dresses she’d found in a trunk in the attic, where she’d also found a secret compartment inside of a closet. A place to run and hide.
By her seventh month, she couldn’t conceal her big belly anymore. She could under the dresses, but not...
“Jeebus Christ, woman, you gettin’ fat?” Virgil asked in a drunken manner.
She frowned. Is he that stupid?
He propped himself up with his arms, and stared intently at her. She shrank back. He moved to her side. “Get the hell away from me.” He pressed his foot against her hip and shoved her off the bed.
Marie bolted from the room.
Lying on the couch, she listened to him pacing overhead. Every creak and squeak of the floorboards was deafening. Her teeth chattered. She balled her hands around the top of a wool blanket, tucked them under her chin. The house was very hot. She was freezing cold. Teardrops disappeared in her hair.
Will this be the day that I die?
“I hope so.”
CHAPTER 2
Near the end of December, under the luminous glow of a full long nights moon, Marie went into labor. Virgil stood at the entrance of the living room with his hands on his hips, stared with morbid fascination as the pain worked its way up to her face. No sooner had she started making gross bodily noises than he turned and walked away. He clicked on the radio on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen. Fetched a bottle of whiskey and a shot glass from the cupboard.
He intended to get rid of the kid, he believed wasn’t his, soon after it’s born. Thoughts of killing the thing with his bare hands, though, gave him the willies. More than that, he felt sure God would strike him deaf and blind if he outright murdered it. Bad, bad mojo. He couldn’t bury it alive anywhere on his property, either, knowing the Almighty would be watching.
One thing he knew without a doubt, God truly approved of Marie’s punishment for committing adultery. The proof was in the abundant crop the Wentzel’s had that year.
He sat at the table, gospel music bouncing off the walls, and filled the small glass.
The first drink calmed him. Marie hadn’t fixed his dinner yet. Drinking on an empty stomach, the seventh shot of liquor made his head swim.
As Virgil lifted the glass for the last time she screamed. His hand jerked, spilling brown liquid down the front of his faded blue and red flannel shirt. He slammed the glass on the table, got to his feet after a couple of attempts, and stomped off toward the living room.
It occurred to him he hadn’t seen his son for a while. “Bernie? Where y’at? Get your ass in here and help your damn mamma.”
Virgil felt his blood pressure rising. He went to Marie. “What’s wrong with you, woman? You act like you’ve got a burr up your ass. You’ve had a kid before. You know what to do. Just squeeze the slimy thing outta ya same as any animal do. How hard can it be?” He angrily rubbed spittle off his chin, and returned to the kitchen.
He knew when the end came he’d have to help her. He’d have to cut the cord. The very thought made his stomach queasy. He turned up the music, sat at the table, and downed another slug of whiskey. He felt dizzy as hell but at least he’d worked up the nerve to face the task when or if the time came, which he hoped would be nev—
“Virrrgil. Anmwe mwen! Please, please help me.”
He slapped his open hands to his unshaven face and dragged them down where they rested on his neck. “Shit.”
* * *
Marie lay on the couch with her head turned away from Virgil. “It’s a girl,” she’d heard him mutter before she passed out from heat and exhaustion.
She awoke with a start. Her breathing had grown shallow and raspy. She wondered if she would bleed to death. She knew she and her baby belonged in the hospital. The delivery had been far more painful than she remembered with Bernie. Maybe because back then she was in a hospital. Bernard Jeffrey. An odd name. She didn’t know why she didn’t realize it when she saw the name typed below a picture of a porcelain boy doll in a magazine right next to a girl doll named Bonnie June.
She knew she would’ve loved baby Bernie had she loved his father. The boy had become nothing but a constant source of irritation to her. Every time she saw his face, handsome though it was, it was still Virgil’s. She’d made his life every bit as miserable as his father had made hers. She watched all the time for him to do something wrong so she’d have an excuse to punish him. She couldn’t lash out at Virgil so she directed her anger toward their son. Every once in a great while, though, he actually did something that pleased her. Not Virgil. Not ever.
Virgil peeked in the living room. Saw she’d fallen asleep again. With all the liquor he’d consumed, he wanted some sex. He crept closer to her. Colorful imagery of the birth of the nasty-looking tot flooded his mind. He shuddered. “Bleh!”
He put the whiskey bottle in the pocket of his heavy winter jacket, picked up the thing wrapped in an old blanket, and headed out to his truck. Due to a rare southern Louisiana snowstorm, he drove slowly over the curvy rural route until he reached the Catholic Church three miles away from his farm.
He deposited the tiny bundle named Bonnie on the doorstep at the rear of the building. The church had been his parent’s place of worship. As a boy he wasn’t interested in religion. They beat him, on a regular basis, until he changed his mind.
It never occurred to him murdering his wife’s lover was a sin. Getting rid of the baby’s the only thing that would bring the fury of God down on him, right? Right! Halfway home, he made a U-turn and returned to the church.
CHAPTER 3
Virgil didn’t know whether or not he loved his son. Bernie was just there. He worked the boy as hard as he worked his mamma. There were no words of praise or any show of affection. His parent’s rules about childrearing were severe. He’d been the better for it. Three lashes across his bare ass every week, he also learned not to get caught anymore.
Virgil pretended he didn’t notice when Marie sent the boy to school – on his seventh birthday – wearing one of her dresses, to punish him for not keeping his zipper pulled up. Or the times when she made him wear the dress while tied to the live oak tree near the road at the rear of the farm. She didn’t care it wasn’t his fault he’d outgrown his jeans, or that his classmates taunted him. She decided his leaving the zipper down was a willful act of annoyance directed at her. Virgil kept his mouth shut. If the boy ended up getting his wires crossed the blame would be on her.
By the age of five, Bonnie began showing signs of being somewhat disturbed. One day when Virgil was in the hayloft he glanced down and caught her admiring a small homemade cloth doll she held in her hand. An unusually large raven landed on a branch above her. It cawed three times. Staring defiantly at the bird, she stabbed the doll once with a hatpin. Somewhere in the house Bernie screamed. Startled, Virgil stumbled backward and fell over a bale of hay. The bird flew off.
He peered down at her again, and saw her tie a string to a beetle’s hind leg. She let it fly like a kite until its leg broke off, then coolly hunted for another bug.
Spiders were different. Virgil listened, as Bonnie cried and told her mamma one had bitten her after she’d been locked in the dark attic overnight, her punishment for peeing on the couch while looking at pictures of people wearing guns and badges in one of Bernie’s library books.
Marie couldn’t find a bite mark so she whipped the girl not only for lying but also for wetting her panties a second time, as she sat on the cushioned seat of an old rocker in the attic.
Bonnie ran outside. She collected crickets in a jar. When the jar was filled to her satisfaction she bashed it against a tree trunk. Went wailing to her mamma again, claiming she’d accidentally dropped the jar and killed all the purdy widdle buggies.
As Marie patted her on the head the kid looked at Virgil with such a wicked expression on her face his blood chilled in his veins. The kid never smiled. Cried a lot, but never smiled.
* * *
Marie was three weeks pregnant. Once again, God worked his magic. She miscarried. Her mind was so far gone now, though, she thought she’d given birth. To another girl. One to replace the crazy one the salesman ran off and left behind.
Awakened by a nightmare, she stormed upstairs, and demanded to know where Virgil had taken her daughter, Bonnie, many years ago.
Her daughter? And the salesman’s, no doubt. Virgil let the thought sink in. The little spawn of Satan’s the direct result of transgression and lust. And he’d been stuck raising her. He kicked off the top sheet, swung his legs off the bed.
Marie put her hand over her open mouth, and backed away. Once she got in the hall she took off running so fast she hardly felt the wooden steps beneath her bare feet. She reached the bottom step by the time Virgil put a foot on the top one. She ran through the kitchen and out the door. Her toes swept up strands of fallen moss. She lost precious time removing them.
Inside the barn, she paused long enough to catch her second wind. Lifting one side of her nightgown to climb the ladder, she saw rivulets of blood trailing to her ankle. A wave of nausea washed over her. Virgil had refused to take her to the hospital. He’d seen animals miscarry before, he told her, and they survived.
She heard him slap the screen door open and stomp out into the yard. She gathered her waning strength, and climbed the ladder. Balancing perilously close to the edge of the loft, she tried to haul the ladder up.
Amused, he stopped to watch. Since he’d already seen her hiding place there wasn’t any point in struggling with the damn thing. “Dumb stupid idiot.” He hopped up, grasped the bottom rung. She hooked her right arm around a support post at the end of the loft railing, and hung on with both hands. For one split-second the tension on the ladder was just right in their dangerous game of tug-of-war. She let go, causing him to fall backward, ladder and all. Embarrassed, he exploded in a tirade of expletives.
She scooted away from the edge, at long last understanding her predicament. Her mamma, a descendant of Madame Laveau, died in unexplained circumstances along with her husband, Marie’s stepfather, whose smarmy gaze lingered too long on a young girl’s body.
Marie never had any friends. Virgil said her place was in the kitchen. He never knew she married him because she lived in her car behind the feed and seed store where he’d met her, or that the only reason the married proprietor had given her the job in the first place was because she’d agreed to frequently perform the act of fellatio while he sings hallelujah.
No one in the whole wide world would ever ask what had become of Marie Alma Wentzel – who tried to make a life for herself on a farm outside of New Orleans – except for, maybe, her weird daughter and a preteen son she barely knew anymore.
I held the power of life and death in my hands, but mamma disapproved of Madame Laveau’s voodoo magic so much she forbade me to ever practice what I knew. Now, in a time of great need, I can’t recall a single spell to save my soul. She frowned, viewed the loft in one glance. Where is my grimoire? And my special box?
Virgil tossed the ladder aside, disrupting her thoughts. He spread his legs wide, parked his fists on his hips and glared up at her. The familiar stance reminded her of the green giant on an old television commercial. She would’ve laughed had the look in his eyes not been so deadly serious.
Marie crawled to the far left corner, and got in behind several hay bales. Knees drawn up to her chest, she crossed her arms over them and buried her face. She sobbed, quietly. She had nothing. No television to watch. No newspapers to read. She had no idea what went on outside the perimeter of Virgil’s fifty-acre farm–
She jerked her head up. What was that?
Another eerie sound pierced the silence. She stopped breathing. Recognized the squealing sound of nails being forced out of wood.
Her heart jumped into her throat when she identified the source.
Originally, the barn had a dirt floor. Below the loft, in the far left corner of the building, a rectangular section of the floor had been hollowed out. Measuring seven feet deep, five feet long, and three feet wide, the hole was intended for cold storage. The first time Marie saw it she thought it was a grave. Virgil got tired of the dirt becoming a muddy mess every time windblown rain found a way in, so he hired a contractor to install flat-timber flooring.
And now he’s tearing it up.
Marie returned to the start of the loft. Lying flat on her stomach, she inched her body under the railing that stretched from her right to the wooden post in the center. Careful not to drop any hay, she craned her neck to see over the edge.
A long board was tossed to the middle of the barn by unseen hands where it landed with the sound of gunshot. She screamed. Moved fast to her hiding place. She lay on her side, curved her body into a fetal position. Intense abdominal pain nearly took her breath away. Wracked with chills from a high fever, she piled hay on top of her nightgown. She raised her head and saw the bloody trail she’d left behind. A new sound alerted her. She sensed it no longer mattered if he saw her.
She hobbled back to the railing.
He had propped the ladder against the wall, and now stood in the open doorway. “You’re pretty good at getting up there. Let’s see if you can get down.” He shut the doors fast, cutting off her screams, and slid a pitchfork through the metal handles.
* * *
Virgil returned to the barn several days later. He knelt beside her, covered his nose with a soiled handkerchief. She was as stiff and bloated as any dead armadillo he’d seen on the side of the road. Flies and beetles had arrived to feed on maggots and the decaying flesh.
He managed to keep her balanced on his shoulder the way he would a side of beef, while descending the ladder. Wasn’t until he touched bottom it occurred to him he should’ve just shoved her off the loft. Wouldn’t have matter none if she’d broken a bone or two. He laughed a little at his lack of common sense. Remembering the bugs, he swiped a hand down each shoulder. A deep sigh. “Ah well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles.” He got the whiskey bottle out of his hip pocket. Sat on the floor beside her.
CHAPTER 4
Bernie turned seventeen the month he was released from the county jail after having been found guilty of criminal mischief in the fourth degree. With time served he’d done an additional three months, and fined $500. He apologized. Told the judge he’d found God, and his feet were on the path of righteousness.
Virgil had sent Bonnie to live with his brother’s family in the swampland near Chalmette soon after her mamma died. Jessup sent her back when she turned thirteen declaring he and the missus had literally beaten the Devil out of her.
Long bouts of heavy drinking had taken its toll on Virgil and his farm. Wild Joe-Pye weed had crept across the land, and stood at least five feet tall. Observing his property from an upstairs window he realized he should’ve stayed in his house in the city and kept his job at the water company, but when old age caught up to his parents and the family lawyer told him he’d inherited the mortgage-free farm, he was eager to move. Now, all he wanted to do was sell the place and get out from under it.
He summoned Marie’s kids to the barn. Told them their mamma was a no-good selfish whore who had an affair with a salesman. He showed them her final resting place.
Virgil awoke late at night to the hum of machinery. Went out and stood in the yard. Lightning bugs darted in and out of view. He followed the noise though the dry and rotted field where eggplants no longer provided an income. As he got closer to the source a sudden flash of light blurred his vision.
“What in the hell’s going on?” He shielded his eyes from the brightness, bobbed his head behind his outstretched hand and tried to see who’s there. “What’re you doing? Get your damn ass down off–”
The monotone sound of chanting reached him right before he was struck deaf and blind. A single gunshot to the forehead, he fell backward into the water.
The chug and churn of a small backhoe lumbering back and forth sent bullfrogs leaping into the darkness. Scoop after scoop of mud and rock was lifted and dumped until nothing remained of Virgil Wentzel or the shallow end of a mosquito infested pond.
Note To Readers
I hope the sample chapters piqued your interest enough to find out what happens next.
Thank you,
Sharon
http://sharonaustin.blogspot.com
Serial Quiller
(psychological thriller)
Moved by the success of her debut novel, twenty-six-year-old BJ Donovan of New Orleans, Louisiana, can’t handle the thoughts of being a one-hit wonder and never feeling special ever again. Using her position as the executive chef and owner of a popular restaurant in the French Quarter to blend in with the community, she embarks on a killing spree, with the aid of voodoo magic, and uses details of the murders to help sustain her best-seller status with a planned thriller series. While the body count rises – from her brother’s girlfriend, found mutilated at an abandoned farmhouse, to an undercover cop murdered in a dark alley on the riverside – BJ tries to remain above suspicion as she continues to write the wrongs in her world.
By Sharon A. Austin
BAD MOJO SERIES (psychological thriller)
Bad Mojo – Special Free Preview of Serial Quiller, a spooky tale of voodoo magic, murder, and make-believe.
Serial Quiller – A crime writer embarks on a killing spree to help sustain her best-seller status. (novel)
Serial Quiller 2 – BJ Donovan seeks out a bokor and then goes on a murderous rampage after someone at a Florida writers retreat steals her manuscript, an unpolished first draft of a thriller novel, packed with unpublicized details leading up to the murder of Detective Lucas Cantin of New Orleans in Louisiana. (short story)
Serial Quiller 3 – With a little help from BJ Donovan, Alma Lejeune exacts revenge on the descendants of the people who had willingly participated in the unfair conviction and public hanging of a young Irish woman in 1735. (short story)
THE HELLFIRE TRILOGY (mystery)
A Burning Desire – Special Free Preview of Smoke on the Water, Book One in the Hellfire Trilogy, three interwoven tales of love, murder, and lies.
Book One – Smoke on the Water – A sheriff tracks a psychopath targeting members of a retired mariner’s family. (novel)
Book Two – Fire Flicks – A reporter furthers his budding career as a crime scene photographer by filming new construction being set ablaze by his older brother, who has a dark secret of his own. (novel)
Book Three – Ashes of Vengeance – A deadly game of geocaching leads authorities on a wild goose chase that ends with a murdered kidnapper and a missing victim. (novel)
NON-SERIES (mystery)
A Simple Plan – Special Free Preview of Killing Summer, a gritty tale where one partner in crime concocts a plan to extricate himself from murder.
Killing Summer – Blackmailed for murder, unable to prove his innocence, a man involves a rural sheriff in his plan for revenge. Inspired by a true story. (novel)
SHORT STORIES
Night of the Dark – On Halloween night, in the midst of a blackout, a subterranean creature wreaks havoc on a small Texas town. (horror)
Shrinking Violette – Leland literally puts heart and soul into his flower garden. (sci-fi horror)
Bonnie Parker Smile – To earn the much-coveted Bonnie Parker smile, a man hones his skills in highway robbery. (supernatural crime)
Gar – A small group of amateur anglers learn payback bites when they try to get rid of a very large alligator gar before the start of a major fishing competition. (horror)
Stay With Me – A senseless act of murder unites two lonelyhearts. (paranormal romance)