Louisiana at midnight is a sensory overload: the thick, humid air smells like moss and swamp water, cicadas scream in the trees, and everything feels just a little… off. I thought I was prepared. I wasn’t.

Morizumi and I had been called to a plantation house outside New Orleans. The owners reported a doll—no bigger than my forearm—that seemed to move on its own. Every night it appeared in a different room, always with new pins sticking out of it. Pets vanished, mirrors cracked spontaneously, and one unlucky cat scratched the doll’s face… and died.

When we arrived, the house looked charmingly decrepit: white paint peeling, shutters swinging, Spanish moss dangling like nature’s confetti. But the air inside was electric, heavy with a feeling that something was listening.

The voodoo doll was on a table in the parlor, lit by a single candle. Its head was tilted slightly, stitched mouth crooked, and one button eye glinting in the dim light. I could feel it before I even touched it. Something in the room wanted me afraid.

Morizumi crouched beside it, examining the threads. “It’s old,” he said. “Carefully made. Strong intent. Whoever created it… they wanted this to hurt.”

“They?” I asked nervously. “Is it possessed?”

Morizumi’s gaze didn’t leave the doll. “Not possessed. Commanded. It doesn’t sleep. It waits.”

The candle flickered. I jumped. The doll’s head had turned just slightly. And then it grinned.

I yelped. Morizumi remained calm, standing, voice low. “It knows we’re here. That’s bad for it.”

I didn’t get a chance to ask why that was good for us, because the doll leapt from the table—or rather, was pulled by invisible strings—and landed on the floor with a thud that echoed like a heartbeat. Pins jutted from its tiny hands as if ready to strike.

I grabbed my camera, but Morizumi shook his head. “No. It can see through that. Photographs will make it aware of you in a way that will kill you. This… requires hands-on work.”

Hands-on? Me?

Morizumi walked calmly toward the doll, chanting softly under his breath. The temperature in the room dropped. The candle flame bent away from him, the shadows trembling. The doll spun in place, its stitched mouth twitching like it was laughing.

I could hear the scraping of pins against the floorboards. I wanted to scream. Instead, I just watched as Morizumi extended a hand, letting his aura wash over the doll. It froze mid-motion, then began to shriek—not audibly, but in a sound that rattled the bones.

With another gesture, Morizumi crushed it—no, he unmade it. The threads unravelled, the pins dissolved into smoke, and the doll’s tiny body disintegrated into ash. Silence.

I exhaled shakily. “That… that was insane. You just—just destroyed a voodoo doll with your hands.”

Morizumi sipped his tea, calm as ever. “It wasn’t the hands. It was the intent. The doll obeys because someone gave it rules. I… changed the rules.”

I shivered. That’s the part he doesn’t like to mention: after one of these encounters, the spirits—or constructs—don’t forget. They remember him. And they know now that he can reach inside the rules that bind them.

We left the plantation as dawn cracked over the swamp, the moss swaying gently.