HeX

By Bob Ford

During a show at a carnival held to benefit the local hospital, a psychic diverts from her routine and manages to conjure up the ghostly image of a young woman, Andelisa Parks. Dr. Mike McClary recognizes her as having been a patient. As we learn later, five people -Eddy Reese, Anderson North, Laura Drake, Crawford Spencer and Judy Simpson - also recognize her. Suddenly, a scream is heard and Eddy Reese, who has been working as a bar tender (and who we have learned has been very ill) drops dead.

Mike calls for an ambulance and takes him to the hospital where he meets Police Chief Toby Mitchell who has come to investigate. As Mike reveals the events during the physic’s show, we learn during a flashback that several years ago Mike had been called to a local motel where he found Andelisa bleeding and nearly dead from a botched abortion. As Mike and Toby are about to leave the hospital, a package arrives addressed to Eddy Reese. When they open it, they find a voodoo doll, clearly dressed and made up to resemble Reese. In its abdomen are several long silver needles.

We learn in a flash back that many years earlier, Mike had spent two years of his residency in the Ivory Coast where, over time, he’d seen and learned the secrets to what the natives called the great enchantment or the “ouanga” which translates to “the sending of death.” It was there that he witnessed and learned the deadly psychosomatic power of voodoo.

Anderson, Judy, Crawford and Laura receive death threats and one by one it’s revealed that each of the victims was at one time or another involved with Andelisa Parks and inadvertently and unknowingly played a role in her eventual death. Clearly voodoo is being used by an unknown someone as retribution for Andelisa's demise..

Anderson North, quickly gets fed up with Toby’s inability to find the person or person behind the hex and brings in Charlie Cole, a detective who has done some work for Anderson in the past, to conduct an investigation Slowly, he uncovers each person's involvement with Andelisa.

First Judy dies, then Crawford, in a confrontation with Anderson who he is trying to blackmail to give him enough money to leave town, dies in an car accident. In both cases, their bodies are found with their voodoo dolls nearby.

Mike, realizing that if he does not “turn the voodoo backward,” both Laura and Anderson will most certainly die. In an effort to find the person behind the hex, Mike remembers that once when he asked Andelisa where she was from, she told him “Paradise.” Paradise, Pennsylvania. Believing that the answer to “who” might lie there, Mike drives to Pennsylvania and discovers that at a very young age Andelisa Parks was married to the much older Charles Cole Parks. Even though she walked out of the marriage, Charlie never emotionally abandons her. When he learned she had died as a result of a drug overdose, he began to piece together the people and events that led to her demise.

Mike confronts Charlie who admits all and demands that Charlie give him the two remaining dolls so that he can perform an “unbaptism” on the dolls and save the lives of Anderson and Laura. Charlie refuses leaving Mike with but one option. He must perform the ceremony that he learned in the Ivory Coast designed to turn the hex backward and to make Charlie the victim. In a bizarre midnight scene on Charlie’s front lawn he performs the reverse ouanga. It works.

The next day Mike takes the two remaining dolls to the hospital and performs the unbaptism in front of Laura and Anderson. The hex is broken and both Anderson and Laura start to recover. But with people knowing that the head of the hospital has performed the grizzly rite, he has no choice but for he and Laura to leave Millport.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bob Ford
• Release date: Dec 12, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465785961

Bob Ford

In addition to having written and published three books – two fiction and one non-fiction - I have produced two off-Broadway plays. I spent 20 years as a TV commercial director. I have produced and written myriad projects from musical comedy reviews to film documentaries to magazine articles. I have appeared on NBC, ABC, FOX, CNN and a number of local cable TV and radio shows as an automotive subject expert. Currently, I own and do the creative work for a unique college-targeted website: Skrounge.com.

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