Cursed Be the Child (41 page)

Vicki moved in front of the television.

“You’re in my way,” Missy said, and she sounded annoyed, even threatening.

The little girl smiled.

Vicki looked at the child’s face and turned to ice, afraid of what Missy might do to her.

And no less afraid of what she might do to this inhuman clone of her child.

Above her and seemingly very faraway, there was the too cheerful sound of the doorbell.

I have been programmed to respond to doorbells, Vicki thought, as she went upstairs. She opened the front door.

She saw them, the woman and the man, and flickering, angled sheets of light cut into her mind. The world tilted on its axis. She thought, I definitely have gone crazy.

“Hello, Vicki,” David Greenfield said.

— | — | —

Forty-Four

David Greenfield tensely waited in the hall by the closed bedroom door.
Baht,
he thought. This was where fate had brought him, had brought all of them. It would have been a lie to say he understood much more than that, but that much was enough for him.

And what did Vicki Barringer understand? He asked himself. Pleasant, shy, soft-spoken, too serious Vicki, one of the women from his womanizing days. He couldn’t, in all honesty, remember much more about her, about the Vicki Barringer of his past, except that she wasn’t one who had caused him any problems. There had been no attempts to define herself through her association with him.

Vicki had been okay. He decided it was a compliment to be able to say that about any of his affairs during that period of his life.

Poor Vicki Barringer. She had obviously been shocked when David and Selena had appeared at her door. It was apparent that this was only the most recent shock in a series of shocks. Fluttery tics along her jawline, eyes too big for her face, Vicki looked like she had just that moment been released from several months’ solitary confinement.

They spent nearly an hour talking. That is, Selena had done most of the talking, trying to explain and often having considerable difficulty in telling Vicki what she knew and how she knew it.

In the end, though, Vicki made it plain she understood all she needed to. In a tired voice, she said, “I couldn’t explain how I know it, but I believe, I really believe God has sent you to help my child.”

“Yes,” Selena said.

No, Vicki could not take part. She must not. She might be hurt, or she might bring about harm to others—David, Selena, or even her own daughter.

She had to stay out of the way. She could see that they were not disturbed. She should pray. She should trust in God and in God’s Truth. Good was more powerful than evil. That was what the Romany believed, that was what the Gaje believed, that was what all good men believed, even those who were unwilling to profess belief at all.

Truth to tell, David mused, he had scarcely a more active role than Vicki Barringer. He was to guard the door.

And in his hands he held the
mulengi dori,
the Romany string.

The Romany know of many magical
draba
charms and amulets, their power appropriate to the situations in which they are employed. Garlic, the Romany believe, affords protection against evil changelings even as it strengthens the blood. A silver knife, a
tschuri,
can be a weapon against minor wicked spirits. Sea shells ward off lesser, ordinary misfortunes, but a NAV sea shell, one which miraculously bears the name of God in its chambers and swirls, provides good luck for all of one’s life.

Far more potent than any other
draba
charm, though, is the
mulengi dori,
the Romany string.
Mulengi dori
could be more precisely translated as “dead man’s string,” but certainly no Rom who values his well-being would call it that. The
mulengi dori
is an inch and a half wide strip of white cotton (white is the Romano color of death) which measures the coffin of a Rom. The cloth strip is then cut into lengths of about 18 inches, each with a knot tied in the center. These
mulengi dori
are given to those who have reason to honor the
mulo,
the dear dead one, and to call on him for protection in the most threatening times.

The
mulengi dori
David Greenfield held had measured the casket of the father of Pola Janichka.

The
mulengi dori,
Selena had told him, would mean the destruction of the
diakka
—and Selena’s own salvation.

It was David’s responsibility to use the
mulengi dori
when it was needed; Selena could not call on its great magic herself.

She would not be here.

She would be in a world between worlds, a world that was neither the land of the living nor of the dead. She would be in the void with the
diakka.

“What do you want? This is my room. You get out! I don’t want you here!” The little girl was sitting at her small table when Selena entered.

Selena said nothing but approached cautiously. The child’s eyes beamed hate and distrust.

From her pocket, Selena took a half-ounce plastic squeeze bottle.

“What are you doing? Hey!” the little girl protested, hands coming up too late as Selena dribbled the water taken from a clear running stream onto her head.

In Romany, the language not only of truth but of magic, and therefore the natural tongue of an
ababina
sorceress, Selena prayed:

As the water is pure

May the child be pure

May her soul be pure

As the water is pure

She passed her hand over the child’s head.

Spirit, I implore you, take your leave

and cause no more to grieve this child and

those who love this child, this tschai

may she be free of you

The child’s eyes glazed over. Her mouth opened slackly. She was no longer the same; something had left her.

No!

The voice snapped suddenly, not in Selena’s mind but in a domain of special consciousness that was hers by birth and learning.

I want to live! I must live!

Without uttering a sound, with her heart and her spirit, Selena answered the
diakka.
In a way that was not speaking but was ever so much more direct than speech, she said, “You cannot live. Now is not your time to live.”

I live and I will live!

“…but I can help you.” Selena spoke simply to the spirit child, her voice that was not a voice colored with the compassion she gave her clients in her work as a psychologist. “I can help you to get rid of all the hurt inside you. I can help you to find peace.”

Peace? I don’t know what you mean! I want to be alive! I want to be happy!

“Being alive doesn’t always mean being happy. You know that…”

Maybe I do. So what?

“I came to help Melissa. And I came to help you, Lisette. You told me your name. Do you remember?”

Yes…

“Lisette, there was more you wanted to tell me, more you needed to tell me. I know that. I am sorry. I could not listen to you then. I was afraid. Now I am not afraid. I know you have to get your hurt out of you, share it with someone else, if you want your hurt to go away.”

I don’t know. I just don’t know.

“Let Melissa alone, Lisette. Give her back her life. Let me help you to leave behind your pain and your anger and go where you will find peace.

“Lisette?”

There was a pause, an endlessly expanding moment in time, then hesitant and hopeful the voice came.

Help me…

Selena stroked the head of the dazed little girl seated limply at the play table. Her touch told her the child was Melissa Barringer and no one else.

“Sleep, Melissa Barringer,” Selena said. As though hypnotized, Melissa folded her arms on the table and rested her head on them. She slept instantly and deeply.

Please. Help me…

Selena sighed, squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them. “I will come to you.” Selena sat down on the foot of the bed. She wove her fingers together in her lap. She squared her shoulders.

And she willed her spirit to loose itself from the confines of her body and this earth and this time…

…as the soul of Selena Lazone traveled to a place that belonged neither to the living or the dead but to the lost and lonely…

The Void…

…where the
diakka
awaited.

— | — | —

Forty-Five

Where the spirit of Selena Lazone journeyed, the Void, Nothing was the rule and the reality. Selena Lazone, her essence unfettered by flesh, felt herself engulfed in Nothing, enveloped by it. She experienced in somber waves the dread and desolation, the cold discontent of those souls condemned and exiled here, the enduring and infinite unhappiness.

A sound came from everywhere/nowhere. It was an atonal chorus of those souls who lingered here, neither alive nor dead. Most sorrowful were the voices of the
detlene,
the souls of lost children, crying out in eternal loneliness for mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and friends.

And she heard one voice, singular and distinct from all the others.

Help me…

I am coming.

While here existed neither geography nor three-dimensionality nor time, the human mind cannot abide a vacuum, cannot cope with or make sense of sheer nothingness, and so Selena’s perception of everything was determined and prescribed by the familiar shapes and forms of the physical plane.

She saw herself, the spirit of Selena Lazone, as simply…herself, Selena Lazone. There was nothing at all
mulano,
ghostly, about her. She walked along a narrow path of twists and turns as sudden and sharply angled as comic strip lightning bolts, a path that led through black nothing and gray nothing and smoky nothing, non-colors that camouflaged flitting forms, lost souls of beseeching eyes, uneasy spirits that performed skittering staccato dances of despair, that imploringly reached out to her—and could not touch her.

Then Selena saw the
diakka,
as it appeared like a developing print coming into focus on photographic paper.

She was delicate and blonde, finely featured, clad in the too elaborate, ruffled dress and ankle shoes of a long-ago America. As Selena approached, she felt waves of emotion emanating from the diakka—the loneliness, of course, always the loneliness, and the rage, the outrage at the great wrong done her, the ravenous need and will to be alive, to have what she was robbed of.