Voodootown

Chapter 9 part 2

He curled his limbs in tight and thought about Voodootown, thought about Twister and Sticks.

When he came back, he was still curled into a ball.  No longer in a standing position, he toppled over when there was suddenly ground under him.  From his nearby bubble, Squat laughed.  "Smooth."

Sticks reached down, helped Blink up.  "Literally nothing," he said.  "That was not fun."  He didn't know what else to say, and saw that no one else did either.

Finally, Twister shook her head.  "Does it seem to anyone else that this curfew is a bad idea?  If everyone is disappearing from the surface, the human world, why should we be stuck there?"  No one answered.  "Yeah.  We have to protect our humans.  Can't do that with a curfew.  Stay in touch, okay?  I'll do some looking."

Blink thought about it.  He had started the night trying to protect Ash and others from Squat.  What good would that do if dolls were disappearing and their humans were left nearly helpless?  "I'll help.  As long as I don't have to teleport to wherever that was again."

Before he was finished volunteering, he saw Sticks shake her head and turn to walk away.

"I'm going to make sure Shaunice remembers her dreams tonight," Ribbon said.  Blink just stared at her.  "Say something.  Help me wake her up."

He continued to stare.  In the middle of all this, Ribbon was thinking of Shaunice's dreams.  He knew that the poor connection between Ribbon and Shaunice was starving the doll of energy, but it didn't seem like such a pressing issue compared to the disappearance of hundreds of dolls.  Then Blink saw an image from one of Ash's favorite old television shows...a poster of a dorky looking UFO over some trees.  He decided it wouldn't do any harm to humor her.  "I want to believe," he said.  It had said that at the bottom of the poster on the show.

The group went silent again, most of them staring at him.  "What?" he asked.

"Everybody stay in touch," Twister said.  She walked off with Flow and the rest of the group began to break apart.  Blink turned to Squat.

"Saved by the bell," Squat said.  "Too bad.  Let me out of here."

Blink looked down, realized he still had the needle in his hand.  He could bury it inside Squat's body or use it to pop the bubble.  Neither seemed like a good option at the moment.  He could see that Squat wasn't going to change on his own, and letting him off the hook might make the doll worse than ever.

He stared at Squat, felt Ash's feelings creeping in.  But with them came an idea.  He smiled down at Squat.  "I'm not done with you yet."  He slid the needle into a belt loop like a sword at his side and thought of Flow.

Flow jumped when Blink appeared in front of him and Twister. 

"Sorry," Blink said.  "But, could you make me some kind of portable fan?  Please?"

Flow smiled and nodded.  "Cool idea."  He conjured a battery operated fan with flexible blades that were open to the air.  Blink had to use both hands to hold it.

"Thanks!  Wait up, okay?" Blink asked before he disappeared.

Squat didn't look happy when Blink reappeared.  "Let's go," Blink said as he turned on the fan.

The bubble began to roll, slowly at first, but then faster.  Squat bounced around inside of it, a seasick groan coming from his stitched mouth.

They caught up to Flow and Twister in a moment and followed them out of town and to the sewer shaft that Twister usually used.  Blink had to teleport back and forth beneath the bubble to keep it moving up in the right direction, but got it out easily into the night air when Twister and Flow opened the manhole cover.  "Thanks," he said.  "I might have one more request tonight, Flow.  Is that okay?"

"No problem.  No problem at all," Flow said as he walked off with Twister.

The fan held out in both hands, Blink started rolling Squat down the street.  "Where are you taking me?" Squat asked.

"Your place.  There's a curfew, remember?"

A few blocks later, Blink heard a noise ahead.  He turned the fan off and listened.  A wordless shout came from down the street, somewhere beyond the glow of the overhead streetlights.  He looked down that way, then back to Squat.  "Wait here," he said.

"No!  Wait!"  But Squat's voice was cut out as Blink teleported forward.

He was in a dark patch of street, but it was nothing close to the dark he'd run into earlier in the middle of that nothingness.  There were parked cars nearby, trash cans waiting for pickup and the rustle of leaves overhead.  But no dolls, and no more shouts.

After three more tries down different streets, Blink gave up and teleported back to Squat.  When he appeared, he took an immediate step back.  There was a doll that he didn't know standing beside the bubble.  Inside, Squat spun, tumbled.  "Get it away!  It's weird."

The doll looked up at Blink and he saw that its clothes were dirty and torn.  Also, it had a metal ring around its neck, something like a collar.  "Hey, are you okay?"  He stepped toward it and it moved its mouth to form a word, but then jerked sideways and ran away.  "What happened?" he asked Squat.

"It just came up and looked at me, didn't talk at all.  Don't leave me like that again.  I mean it," Squat said.  Blink just turned the fan on again and kept walking.

Once they were outside James' bedroom window, Blink turned off the fan, dropped it to the grass.  He thought a moment, recalled the pain of Ash's broken nose before he pulled out the needle.  "So, I've still got this."  He tried to keep calm and serious, like he knew Twister would.  "And I'm pretty inclined to use it."

Squat just lay in the bottom of the bubble.

"I suppose it would be pretty silly of me to think that you'd be worried about what's going on, that you'd worry about the missing dolls and stop acting like a jerk."  He didn't feel calm as he spoke.  He was sure he sounded like an idiot.  But all he could do was keep going and hope Squat didn't catch on.  "That'd be naïve, right?  You need something else, don't you?"

He waved the needle around.  "And this isn't really enough, is it?"  He knelt down, closer to Squat's level inside the bubble.  "What is James afraid of?"

"What?"

"Tell me, or this goes in right now," Blink said.

Squat glared at him, finally answered.  "What's it matter anyway?  Its bugs.  He hates bugs."

"Huh," Blink said.  He held up a hand and heard Squat start to shout a protest as he disappeared.

Squat was still yelling when he came back a minute later.  The doll went silent when he saw what Blink had in his hands.  It looked like a mound of sugar.  "Bug lure hex," Blink said.

He teleported inside the house and held it above James' chest.  "Sorry," he said.  "I have to."  He dropped the hex on top of the tall boy and blipped back to Squat.

The grass around them began to rustle immediately.  Bugs of all kinds crawled out of it and began to swarm up the side of the house.

"I don't think I can get you to stop being an ass, but maybe James can.  This might make him put a little pressure on you."  Blink pricked the surface of the soap bubble charm with the needle.  It burst and Blink gave Squat a wave before disappearing.

He reappeared in Ash's room, found his human chuckling in his sleep.  "Bugs," Ash said.

Blink nodded, knew that Ash would take care of the rest.