Cursed Be the Child (42 page)

“Lisette,” Selena said, and she took the diakka’s hand, the lost child’s hand. “Your pain and your anger, Lisette. I want to know, Lisette.”

Do you? Do you really?

“Yes.”

All of it overwhelmed her, a crushing, smothering avalanche of overwhelming pain, psychic and physical.

Uncle, please Uncle…Oh, don’t, don’t, you’re hurting me…

««—»»

abandoned

Mama? Mama, please come back. Don’t leave me alone. Don’t die…

the need for love,

a need that was exploited and twisted

and turned to something foul

…touch you, be nice to you, do what you want, do whatever you want, love me, lovemeloveme…

the tortured

last

moment

of

life

No! I won’t die! I won’t!

that should have been

the ending

but was

the beginning of

the diakka

Selena Lazone understood.

“It is all right, it is all right,” she said, gratified she did not have to use clumsy words so that all she meant would be clearly understood by the tormented spirit, the lost soul, the lonely little girl.

There are moments when there are no meaningful differences between an act of the spirit and an act of the flesh.

Somewhere in a Void that lay between worlds, a woman put her arms around a weeping child and hugged her close.

In the hall at the bedroom door, David Greenfield tapped his foot and rubbed his fingers on the ends of the
mulengi dori.
As tense as a garage door spring, David Greenfield waited.

Downstairs, in the kitchen, the room that would always mean assurance and stability, Vicki Barringer prayed and tried to tell herself that it would all be over soon, that God would deliver and protect. For flickering instants, she believed it; she had to or go mad.

And Selena Lazone, in the Void, very close to a house in Grove Corner yet at a distance that might not be measured in miles or inches or minutes or weeks, said, “Now, child, you must go on. There can be no place for you in the Nation of the Living. You belong…”

No!

“… in the Nation of the Dead!”

But I want to live…

“You cannot. It is not your time.”

The
diakka
turned and fled.

Selena pursued her.

He had to get home.

Later, there would be moments when he puzzled over the how and the why of that thought, trying to determine how that powerful obsession had sprung to his mind. He would sometimes think that she called him and he came.

But now, acting because he was compelled to act, he hurried from his university office, wiping off his list of concerns the appointment with a student he was scheduled for in ten minutes. He buttoned his coat as he ran to the parking lot and jumped into the Volvo.

“Your pain, Lisette. I will take it from you. It is your hurt that has kept you here, that has made you seek life that is not yours to have. Give me your hurt and move from here to a better place. Give it to me.”

Lisette quizzically tipped her head. Her eyes were puzzled and suspicious.

Can you? Can you take away all my hurt?

“Yes,” Selena said. “Give me your pain.”

And the solitary pain of the
diakka
speared her, radiating throughout her being. Though she had no body, though she was just and only the soul of Selena Lazone, the anguish manifested itself as though physical, with a twisting of her guts and a brutal thrusting invasion into her sex—and with dozens of dull, thudding aches on her arms and legs.

The pain filled her. The pain consumed her. The pain flared, subsided, then attacked again more furiously as she said, “Lisette, now you are free to find peace. Go from here to the Nation of the Dead.
Akana mukav tut le Devlesa.
I give your soul over to God’s keeping.”

No! I will not die! He loves me! He won’t let me die!

He burst through the back door, screaming, “Who is it? Who is in my house?” Vicki was terrified. She thought he had truly gone totally insane. She tried to explain, to tell him what was going on.

He heard the name Selena Lazone, and it registered faintly. He heard the name David Greenfield, and that registered with a reverberating clang. David Greenfield, the goddamn philandering bastard, the old hurt, the old fury, the long suppressed and nearly forgotten hatred!

And then he heard her, he was certain he did, heard her calling him!

“What are you doing? What are you doing?” Vicki tried to stop him. He pushed her aside. He wanted to smash her face in.

She called him!

He ran out of the kitchen, up the stairs, Vicki trailing behind, trying to hold him back and failing completely.

Face glowing like a madman, eyes bulging, he confronted David Greenfield. “You…in this house…our house!”

“Calm down, Warren,” David Greenfield said. “We’re here because of your daughter.”

“You fucking sonofabitch!” Warren roared, and the punch he threw had all his weight powering it.

It caught David flush on the jaw. The back of his head thudded against the doorframe, and blackness rapidly pooled throughout his mind.

He ordered himself not to lose consciousness, but his legs couldn’t hold him up, his knees wouldn’t stay locked, and he was sliding down the wall, getting punched again.

And through wavering black puddles, he watched the
mulengi dori,
the Romany string, slip from his fingers.

Selena’s words were Romany words, imploring and commanding. “Lisette, unhappy child, as the knot is untied, so may you be set free to journey beyond,
anda I thema.
As the knot is untied, may I be set free of your sorrows and pain and return to dwell once more among the living,
o juvindo.”

In a voice that was not the product of lungs and vocal cords and lips, Selena Lazone called to David Greenfield.

The
mulengi dori
must be undone.

Now!

Just before he blacked out, David Greenfield heard her.

He came to in less than 30 seconds to a scream that filled the world. It was Selena’s agonized scream.

Groggily, he managed to stand and stumbled into the bedroom and into pandemonium.

On her knees, Selena looked as though she had just barely survived a terrorist bombing. Blood seeped from her ears and ran freely from her nostrils and the sides of her mouth. She was groaning, a throaty bubbling of blood and mucus.

The little girl sat at her table. She looked confused. She shook her head as though she’d just awakened from a wispy bad dream.

Kneeling by Selena, an arm around her, David saw the jagged red lines cutting through the whites of her eyes. The pupil of the left eye was the size of a dot, the right as big as a teddy bear’s. She is dying, he thought, as she tried to talk to him.

“Pain, all her pain…in me. The pain…” Each “p” sprayed his face with coppery droplets of blood. Her left eye rolled up and disappeared.

“Gone…” she said.

“Let me go!” The little girl broke free of Vicki’s arms and knelt by David and Selena. Gently, she touched Selena’s graying face.

“The
diakka
…” Selena said, her voice thinning on each syllable.

“You saved me,” the child said. “You saved me.” Tears rolling down her cheeks, she whispered, “Thank you.”

She pressed her lips to Selena Lazone’s bloody mouth and kissed her.

With that kiss, Selena Lazone died.

— | — | —

Forty-Six

It was the second week of November, turning seriously and consistently cold, and when it turns cold outside, Vicki thought, it was fine to be warm inside. Eyes half-closed, leaning back, she luxuriated in the heat of the bath water and the fragile bubbles on her skin. She was not unhappy, nor could she say she was happy. There had been too much terror and dread, too much pain and loss, and so she could not trust any feeling of happiness.

But at last she was starting to think there would be a time when she would be happy.

Indeed, when they could all be happy.

The doorknob rattled and she sat up, putting her arms across her bosom. Curiously, she felt as though she had done something embarrassing. She’d thought the bathroom door locked. She liked, even demanded, her bathroom privacy, but…

“Melissa? What is it?”

“I’ve got something neat to show you. It is just totally rad.”

“Couldn’t it wait?”

“Uh-uh.” A giggle. “It’s something I want to show you now!” She skipped over to the vanity, stooped and opened the cabinet. “I saw this on a television show. It is just so cool.”

“No!” Vicki said. Hands on the rim of the tub, she pushed herself up but knew she wouldn’t be able to move quickly enough. Her knees were still bent, her buttocks brushing the bubbly water.

And the red plastic blow dryer was plugged in and a small thumb had pushed the “on” switch and a small hand and thin arm swung the slowly rotating dryer up and toward her—and it fell.

And Vicki was horrified, but, more than that, she was sad, she was just so sad, as one lucid and oddly comforting thought filled her mind: it is not my daughter who is killing me.

Then the hair dryer plunged into the bubbles and the water sizzled and the overhead light dimmed and Vicki Barringer’s muscles jerked and knotted into tight cramps as she slipped down into the bath.

Her final sight, a placidly smiling little girl’s face, was obscured by a watery film as her blood boiled and her brain burned.

Midnight approached, and the jukebox played Merle Haggard. The television showed a truly ancient rerun of Hollywood Squares, so old that Wally Cox occupied the center box.

He sat at the bar, drinking whiskey. He drank fiercely and steadily as he had been drinking for weeks. He drank because Selena was dead.

And he drank here because this was where he belonged.

The Pit Stop was a workingman’s bar as well as a bar for those who got welfare instead of wages. Cigarette smoke, residual and new, hung heavy. No one ever ordered white wine. The Pit Stop was rough and raw-edged, a place to bring your sorrows, so that to jukebox accompaniment and the click of pool balls, you could feel that sadness in all its heavy intensity. It was no less a good place to bring your anger and to vent it in a fight in which you beat someone and perhaps got beaten yourself.