My neighbor was into voodoo. He’s a nice guy, introduced himself, and a few days after I moved in next door. A few days after that we enjoyed a beer on my back deck. We talked about many things, our lives, our stories (he was ex-military, but he didn’t go into detail, and I knew better then to ask), our hobbies, and voodoo.

I had a fleeting interest in voodoo, cast some minor spells in Boy Scouts… but as the token liberal of the troop, I usually stayed back with the Quaker kids while the rest went to the range.

Ben, my neighbor, said he would like to take me to the range to cast some spells.

“I’d like that,” I said.

It was true… and kind of a lie.

I’ve always been one to try new things. But it seemed like everyday voodoo was on the news:

Two killed twenty injured in Miami by some guy who threw chicken salad into a crowd of shoppers.

Eight dead one injured at an Asian Spa in Atlanta by some neckbeard with a bag of mojo in the red light district, because sex addiction had ruined his life.

Ten dead two injured at a grocery store in Colorado, by a closet terrorist with a petite bâton de chèvre.

On the other hand, as a collector and a collector of information, I had an interest in Voodoo. Yes, some things may be dangerous, but no subject is too dangerous, the only true danger is ignorance.

In the winter, my neighbor started to ask me to go with him to the voodoo range. Sometimes I was busy, sometime just too burned out.

He was pretty persistent, he knew I would have fun, and I did want to go, so he kept chipping away.

In the spring, we finally went to the voodoo range.

I went over to his house, for what he called “classroom.”

“So what experience have you had with voodoo before?” he asked. “You told me it was limited.”

“I’ve done some spell casting with chicken salad at Boy Scouts. It’s been a long time.”

I forgot to tell him that I constructed cairns before too.

On one of the Boy Scout trips, we were instructed in the basics of stone piles. The War in Iraq had broken out that year, I had been outspoken with my opinions as a self-proclaimed pacifist… but come on, how could you pass up the chance to cast the same spells that our forefathers used in the American Revolution?

My mojo was better than the rest of the troop on that trip. Pacifism notwithstanding I had a portable CD player and a selection of death metal CDs (for cathartic reasons), and between that, the mojo, and my skill at shooting guns (yes they actually had guns, hard to believe) one of the adult leaders dubbed me “the angel of death.”

“Okay,” said Ben. “These are chapelle de poulet. A pair of chicken feet that have been bound and preserved, this is what the police use, some people don’t like them because they don’t have a counterspell attached to them. But I think it’s an advantage, when you’re in a defense situation, tenths of seconds count, and deactivating a counterspell can be all the difference.”

“That makes sense.”

He put on a pair of latex gloves and had me do the same.

“You see the way I’m holding the feet, only with my thumb and forefinger.”

“Yes.”

“That’s the way you always want to hold any apparatus until you’re ready to cast a spell.”

“Okay.”

He changed his grip to hold the chicken feet with both hands.

“We can hold them like this now because we’re wearing gloves,” he said. “They won’t activate without skin contact.”

I gripped them as he did.

“How does that feel?” he asked

“It feels right.”

“Good,” he said. “When we’re at the range I’ll give you some real spells, in the meantime try this.” He put some slips of paper in a small clay bowl that another neighbor had fired in her kiln (her hobby). It was written in orange ink. “Remove the gloves, and try to say that.”

I spoke the incantation… it wasn’t in English and of course, I spoke it wrong.

“Here try it like this,” he said.

He spoke the words, ancient words.

I repeated after him.

Fm’latgh air’luh fm’latgh.

I felt a channel of energy run from my head through my hands and into the pair of chicken feet. The small slip of paper burst into flames and smoldered out, but the bowl prevented it from doing any damage to his table.

“That’s just a training spell,” he said. “When we’re on the range the spells will be… different.”

“Cool.” 

Once we were finished with the chapelle de poulet we moved over to the canes.

“These are petit bâton de chèvre,” he said.

He picked up a black cane with the skull of a shrunken goat’s head for a handle. There was a goat farm across the road from us, and I wondered if he acquired the skull from them, but I didn’t ask. They made good cheese. The canes were probably made in Haiti, like all the best voodoo stuff.

“These are the ones that are in the news a lot right?”

“Yeah, yeah they are,” he said. “They’re powerful, but don’t worry, they’re in safe hands. If you look through the eye sockets you should see an upside-down chevron, it’s green.”

I looked through the eyes of the goat skull, and a variation of his kitchen seemed to materialize through the empty sockets, a world that was black and white and hazy. Regardless I couldn’t see the inverted chevron. In heraldic terminology, the symbol he was describing would be a pile, but I couldn’t think of the term at the time.

“Sorry, I don’t see it.”

“It should be in the middle,” he said. “Try looking at the wood of the cabinets.”

“Still nothing.”

“Here let me see.”

He looked through.

“It’s there,” he said. “See if you can see it through mine.”

I couldn’t see the chevron (or pile) in his either.

“I’m colorblind,” I said. “Maybe that’s why it’s not showing up.”

We packed up the apparatuses and left for the voodoo range.

“Does this place have any rules that I might accidentally break?” I asked while he was driving us to the voodoo range.

“There’s a good amount of club rules, but nothing that I think would get us kicked out. It’s a private club, and most of the people go there once or twice a year just to check the strength of their mojo before hunting season. Most of the time it’s just me. The one thing they are very strict on is paying your dues, if you’re a day late they’ll kick you right out.”

“How many people are in the club?”

“666,” he said. “It’s locked it at 666, and if you want to get in you have to wait until someone else leaves. Mr. Thrace, our neighbor on the other side of my house, he’s really into voodoo too, but he’s more into masks. I brought him here a few times and he wants to get a membership, so I’m sponsoring him.”

We pulled up to the driveway of the voodoo range and he swiped us in with a key card. We drove around inside the complex for a while, it seemed like an easy place to get lost, lots of winding gravel roads, and the aura of magic that protected the range seemed to make it confusing to newcomers, perhaps intentionally so.

There were any number of twanas hung in the trees around the range, lashed together stick men designed to protect the people inside the range and prevent their mojo from being released into the rest of the world. Voodoo ranges were becoming scarcer every year, and subject to all kinds of local ordinances.

We stopped at a phone booth, more out of place there than anywhere else (and that’s saying something), and he had me sign a piece of paper.

“You got a pen?” I asked. “Don’t have one.”

He smiled an apology, and handed me a lancet, the same device that diabetics use to prick their fingers for blood tests. 

“Sorry,” he said “Rules of the range, you have to sign in blood.”

I was hesitant for a moment.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s sterile.”

“Alright,” I said, pricking my index finger and signing the paper, which prevented any residue spells I might cast from being brought into the world outside.

Around the compound were any number of pavilions, clotheslines for targets, earth mounds to obscure the mojo, and twanas to look over it all.

At the first pavilion we used the chapelle de poulet.

“We’re going to put a pair of mommets at 25 yards,” he said. “And we’re going to make them walk.”

“Okay,” I said.

We walked onto the range, safely, we were the only ones at the pavilion, and placed our mommets on the ground. He gave me a stack of slips, each one the size and shape of a standard playing card, each one made of goat hide, cured in the ancient ways, with a spell written on it. Touching the slips of paper produced an almost electric charge.

“You remember how to hold the chapelle de poulet?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said, picking up the chicken feet and holding them safely like he had shown me earlier.

“Good you got it,” he said. “Now repeat after me.”

He said the spell.

L’ tharanak lw’nafh.

I repeated after him, focusing on my mommet.

The card with the spell written on it shivered a bit.

My mommet raised its arm, limply, weakly, and dropped. I was surprised it did that much. I’d never made something move with my mind before, it felt… powerful.

“You didn’t say it right,” he said. “Try it again.”

I tried again.

The card started to smoke and the mommet lifted itself up onto its elbows. It seemed to look at me with its primitive eyeless head and then dropped down again.

“You’re getting there man,” he said. “Try it one more time, remember ‘tharanak’ roll the R.”

I did as he said.

The card smoked.

The mommet sat up, rolled its head around, and then stood all the way on its feet.

It took one step, two steps.

The card caught fire.

I saw the flame out of the corner of my eye. It was on top of the other spells and would have burned the rest of them. I let go of the chicken feet and picked up the burning spell card. It burned my fingers of course. 

“You didn’t have to do that,” he said. 

He pulled out the next card and a zippo, showing me that it couldn’t burn.

“It only burns when you say the spell.”

“Good to know,” I said. 

“Sorry, I should have told you.” 

“No worries.”

“Try it again,” he said. “We got a whole stack of 50 spells here. And we’re going to use them all.”

“Alright,” I said. 

I held the chicken feet like he told me and said the spell again, feeling a heady rush as my spell brought the mommet to life.

He took three steps.

“You got it, you got it.”

And I did… for two more steps. And then the mommet fell.

“Alright,” he said. “You’re getting the hang of it.”

We spent the next hour or so casting spells onto our mommets. I was trying to walk mine into the pavilion. Or at least near it. I didn’t know if that was a bad idea, but Ben didn’t say anything, so I kept doing it.

He was doing some interesting things with his mommet, making it walk, several more steps at a time than mine, but he had a lot more practice.

After five maybe ten more spells from each of us, he told me to stop and put the chapelle de poulet down.

“Alright now shake.”

We shook our hands as though we had just lifted something heavy.

“This will help when you pick the chicken feet up again.”

A few minutes later I held the feet, a little more confidently.

I made the mommet walk a few more steps, and I felt the contact between me and the rope doll begin to fade, but then the mommet started to dance. It twirled around and even did a rudimentary moonwalk.

“Are you doing that?” I asked Ben. 

“No man,” he said. “That’s all you.”

It might have been a lie, but that was okay. Voodoo, like any other magic, or in fact almost anything at all, was largely in the head. If he told me I was doing it myself, and I believed it, I would be able to do it the next time.

It was fun. 

They never mention how fun it is on the news reports, I was a little afraid it might be. Voodoo is not the cheapest hobby to get into, and potentially dangerous.

Ben was using a different brand of chicken feet, mine was a Gustov, perhaps the best-known chapelle de poulet manufacturer, and understandably one of the better brands. He was using a Haitian Châtellerault.

“Man, you can drive nails with this thing,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s really accurate.”

He let me try his Châtellerault. The grip seemed to feel a little better than the Gustov, but I couldn’t tell much of a difference.

We used up all the spells, and I was getting pretty comfortable controlling the mommet like a marionette. On the last spell, I was able to make it walk from the mound to the pavilion and halfway back to the mound, doing a crab-walk in the last stretch.

“So what do you think?” asked Ben. 

“I’m enjoying it,” I said. “Didn’t think I’d be able to do that much. 

“Glad you are,” he said. “It’s like a zen thing with me. Out here, in nature, casting spells. There’s nothing but you, the apparatus, and the target. It really takes the edge off.”

I understood and said as much.

“Do you mind if I keep the mommet?”

“No man,” he said. “It’s all yours.”

“I’ll keep it with my action figures, as a sort of trophy.”

“Good idea,” he said. 

After we had cast the last of our spells, we collected our targets and cleaned up the pavilion. Then it was time to move onto the bâtons.

We drove over to the bâton range. I don’t know if the target was fifty or a hundred yards, but it was significantly further than the chapelle de poulet range.

We hung our own twanas on the clothesline provided to cast spells upon.

Back at the pavilion, we sat on benches. I held the petite bâton de chèvre, with the goat’s skull turned toward me, and looked through the eyes. In the daylight, I could see the chevron or pile that had alluded me in his kitchen an hour or two earlier. He had his bâton and he also had a telescope. I’m not sure if that’s what the device was called or not, but it served the same purpose.

“We’re going to be calling down lightning on the twanas,” he said. “Here’s the spell we’re going to use.

I looked at the card and read the spell.

Y’ uln mgyogor mgn’ghftor

It was hard to hold the bâton perfectly still, but again this was my first time using one. The chevron floated around the target and I said the spell (finishing the last syllable) when it seemed to float over the twana.

There was a slight rumble of thunder, but it seemed far away. At least I hoped that was the case, largely because I was having fun and didn’t want to get rained out.

“Remember to roll the R’s,” he said.

I spoke the spell as best I could, and this time a bolt of lighting did come down.

I jumped back, not expecting it.

Ben didn’t jump, he was used to this sort of thing.

The card with the spell on it smoldered away to ash.

“About an inch out, three o’clock,” he said.

I spoke the spell again.

Seven o’clock, about a quarter of an inch.”

Another spell.

“You nicked it,” he said. Happy and perhaps a little surprised. “Can you see it dangling on the wire?”

I squinted and saw what he was talking about.

“Okay, my turn.”

He handed me the telescope and took aim.

“You’re about an inch and a half to the right,” I said. “Three maybe four o’clock.”

He spoke the incantation four more times, while I called where the lightning landed.

I was not the best spotter in the world. I fully admit that now though didn’t let on at the time. I don’t know my left from my right and can barely read a digital clock. After the first bolt of lightning, it was hard to tell where the next one landed. But I did my best, and I did okay, considering.

“Just not landing them right now,” he said. “Okay, your turn.”

He grabbed the telescope and I grabbed my petite bâton de chèvre, or that is the one I was borrowing for the afternoon, took aim and spoke the incantation, as another lightning bolt came down from the sky.

“Nicked the left arm,” he said.

I called down another couple of bolts, just grazing the twana, each time. The last spell hit, right in the center, knocking it off the wire it was hung on, and catching fire.

“Awesome,” he said.

He took aim, spoke the spells.

I called where the lightning landed… as best I could.

After a few more rounds he killed his twana as well.

We bumped fists.

In the next pavilion was another guy who had been shooting a rifle, no idea what kind. Guns were very foreign to me, probably to Ben as well. Maybe two hundred years ago they were a possible threat, but today, nearly everyone carries a bulletproof charm on them, nobody carries guns, and getting shot is as rare as hen’s teeth. I suppose in a different world, where voodoo was not so prevalent, guns may have been more… interesting, but in today’s modern world, such is not the case.

“You let rifles in the voodoo range?” I asked Ben.

“Yeah,” he said, somewhat dejectedly. “Some guys are just real into guns, I don’t get it. But they don’t have anywhere else to practice, so we open the voodoo range to them.

The shooter had two women with him and they were having a picnic lunch.

“That’s a great idea,” said Ben, going over to him. “I never thought of having a picnic here. Are you new to the club?”

“Yeah, just got a membership a month ago, I used to belong to the Media Range, it’s a long drive here, but it’s worth it.”

“Yeah,” said Ben. “I heard the Media Range is getting a little crazy.”

“It is,” said the man. “They’re even considering banning guns altogether.”

He may have given his name, but I don’t remember.

“Do you do any voodoo or just shooting?” asked Ben.

“I do some voodoo,” said the shooter.

“I just got this Châtellerault,” said Ben, holding the chicken feet by the cord. “These are the best chapelle de poulet I’ve ever used right out of the box. I didn’t have to adjust my stance or anything. You can drive nails with it.”

“What do you mean?” asked the man.

We went back home and had a beer while he showed me some of the projects he was working on in his back yard, a very nice picnic area with a gazebo, a smoker, a grill, lighting, etc. 

“So do I owe you anything for today?” I asked.

I was under the impression that it was his treat, but it didn’t have to be.

“Nope,” he said.

“Are you sure, I know spells are getting scarce.”

And it was true. There was a Democrat in the White House, and Democrats were very good at selling mojo. I didn’t make that comment out loud of course, we avoided discussing politics, which these days seems in good practice to keep a good neighbor.

And he was a good neighbor, the best one I’ve had so far, and I’m looking forward to our next afternoon at the voodoo range. 

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Zach Smith is a writer of creative non-fiction and short fiction in a variety of genres from the suburban Philadelphia area. Recent stories of his have appeared in Grandpa’s Deep Space Diner and New Pop Lit. He is currently working on publishing three story collections: “Clouds Over Pancake Mountain,” “Tales Along Turtle Heart Road,” and “Realms Beyond Midnight World: A VHS Mix Tape.” You can find links to some of his other stories and obscure reviews at: theobscuritysymposium.wordpress.com.