Voodootown

Chapter 34

Chapter 34

Shaunice

Shaunice stared down at her hands.  There was so much she wanted to ask.  She closed her eyes and tried to organize her thoughts.  But they wouldn't arrange themselves into an orderly line of inquiry, not with what she had just heard. 

Three years ago, her mother had disappeared.  She and her father had searched, but never found her, and her father had given up.  But now, Michael, the man who she had only seen as a school janitor, had told her that he was going to find her mother.  "You really knew her?"  It was all she could think to ask.

"Know her.  She's out there somewhere.  Let's talk about her in the present tense,"  Michael said.  She had given him the name Doctor Midnight just the other day.  He had more power than any doctor she had ever met, including her father.  He had already taken away the pain that had been growing in her for years, and if he found her mother, he would heal everything in her life.  She looked up at him and he nodded.

"We met in medical school," he said.

Shaunice pushed down the jumble of thoughts in her mind.  She couldn't remember the last time her father or anyone had talked about her mother.  As she sat there, she realized that was all she wanted to hear about.

Midnight seemed to sense her need.  "She was strong like you, smart like you, pretty like you."  A smile grew on his face.  "And she really knew how to piss people off.  I don't think she had one opinion in her life that she held back."

That made Shaunice smile too.  She could remember her mother before she started to change, started to become erratic.  They had fought often, yelling at each other from opposite sides of the kitchen or living room.

"Not many people would talk to me back then.  But she did.  She was opinionated as hell, but she was also kind.  She was kind to me," he said.

There was something about the way Midnight spoke about her mother.  There was something in his eyes that made her wonder.  Even though they had constantly fought, she had always felt a connection with her mother.  And though she never fought with her father, she never felt connected to him.

But in the last few days, she had grown close to this man.  Was there more to the connection?  "Are you..." she swallowed.  So much had happened in the last few days.  She had seen so many unthinkable things.  What she was asking might be possible.  "Are you my father?  Is that why you're here with me?"

Doctor Midnight rolled up his sleeve and put his bare forearm on the table next to hers.  His arm was white, pale even for a Caucasian.  Hers was black, without even a touch of white to lighten it.  She met his eyes, felt her face grow hot.

"You know how they say there are no stupid questions?" he asked.

The embarrassment grew.  "Except that one," she said.

He laughed.  "Actually, it's not as stupid as you think.  It's just on the wrong track.  Before things got really bad for your mother, she asked me to look after you.  She couldn't make it official because of your father, but she," he paused, shrugged his shoulders.  "She wanted me to be your godfather."

For a moment, Shaunice stared at the man.  "My mother?  She believed in something like that?  Like me having a god parent?"

Midnight held up a hand to stop her.  "Don't be surprised.  Your mother was different from most other doctors.  That was part of her problem."  He stopped, frowned.  Shaunice waited for him to think.  "Most doctors are mechanistic in how they treat things, even if they don't think so.  They treat symptoms and see the body as a complex machine.  Your mother didn't.  She looked for prime causes, and could figure them out better than anyone I've ever seen.  The two of us talked about metaphysics and ontology.  And when I told her about what I knew, she listened.  Just like you did."

Shaunice pulled out the charm necklace Midnight had given her.  The broken chain link still had the small button attached to it, though she couldn't see anything through the button anymore.  "Did you make one of these for her?"

"No," he said.  "I didn't know how.  Back then, I didn't know what I do now.  I knew my doll had been useless, but didn't know what to think of the rest of them.  They taught me, though."

"What do you mean?  What happened?" she asked.

"It started, slowly, when we were in medical school.  She started getting headaches.  I knew enough to wonder what was causing them.  It took a while, but I was able to capture one of the things.  I figured out how to talk to it and it told me that the dolls of the other students in medical school were going after her, through her doll."

He rolled his sleeve back down, buttoned it.  "You've got to understand, Shaunice.  These little dolls are worthless.  All they do is cause anguish.  I was your age when I locked mine in a jar."  He sat on a stool across the lab table from her.  "It got worse for your mother during her residency.  She was so good at solving problems, at finding the right diagnosis that she made everyone around her look bad.  She stood out, and it made her a target.  Do you know the Churchill quote?"

"Winston Churchill?" she asked.

"He talked about making enemies.  He said, 'You have enemies?  Good.  That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.'  She did, and nobody defended her.  I wasn't able to, I didn't know how then.  But I do now, and that's what I'm doing."

"But, what happened?  I don't understand," Shaunice said.

Again, Midnight nodded, paused.  "These things, these dolls that you've seen, they're spiteful.  What I've been able to figure out is that they bullied her.  They went after your mother's doll and hurt it.  They hurt it so much that your mother lost her mind."  He stopped, stared at Shaunice and she could tell he was waiting for her.

Some of her questions began to find answers.  Midnight had been nice to her since she had started high school.  He had talked to her, helped her in little ways with her projects.  She finally understood why.  But more than that, she saw the change her mother had gone through with a new perspective.  Her mother had been suffering, and it had grown so bad that there had been no room left for rational thought.  Her mother hadn't left.  She had been driven away.

She looked at Midnight.  "We're going to find her.  We're going to help her."

"That's right."

Then she remembered the portal that he had told her about.  The dolls used it to travel to anywhere in the world.  This man could send the dolls he controlled through it to anywhere.  "And we're going to make sure that it never happens to anyone, ever again." 

He nodded.  "But I'll need your help to make that happen."

Shaunice felt more emotions than she could remember feeling since her mother had disappeared.  They were more than she was used to, more than she could handle, but she made herself smile.  "Thank you."