Cursed Read online

  “I have never told another living soul about my nana, about what she can do. Neither had Amanda, I’m sure of it. Plus, our nana made us promise to never tell anyone.”

  “Or she’d curse you, too?”

  “Only if she had to.”

  I had lied to Amanda, but only about one thing: my marriage. Maybe that was a big thing to hide, but the bigger truth was more important. I loved her. But I had a feeling Tabitha wouldn’t tolerate lies, and would actually see right through them, whether due to her cop training or her innate ability to know things she shouldn’t know. And that veiled threat in her voice inspired me to lay out the rest of it.

  Of course, Amanda had apparently kept a secret or two from me.

  “Okay,” I said. “It looks like there’s only one person who knows more than she’s saying.”

  “Nana.”

  I reached for the bottle but her sharp command stopped me.

  “No. You’ve had enough.”

  Good. The booze wasn’t working, and that scared me almost as much as the mice and Gerda and fatherhood did.

  Chapter Nine

  “I’ve seen what Nana can do,” Tabitha said. “It’s powerful. We have to find her as soon as we can and make her stop this. Because you’re not a killer. I know killers, and you don’t have it in you.”

  “Thanks. I guess.”

  Like the two detectives, her instinct had been to look for the smoking crotch. Women who got dumped usually had relatively healthy ways to get over it, such as eating lots of chocolate, engaging in “What an asshole” crying jags with their girlfriends, and marrying boring but wealthy accountants. Men tended to engage in “If I can’t have her, no one else will” thinking, because of course we were all generously endowed alpha dogs that any woman would be crazy to reject. Murder was rarely cold-blooded, and, like witchcraft, was usually kept between loved ones.

  I was glad Tabitha was over killing me. However, curiosity was eating at me. “How is your nana able to do something like this?”

  “I didn’t go down that path, either.” Tabitha was already getting up and moving out of the living room and into the hallway, raising her voice as she did. “So I really don’t know. It’s probably safe to say that very few people in the goddamned world know how to do what she did.”

  “If she did it,” I said, not sure if she heard my voice, for she had disappeared down the hall. There I was again, clinging to the hope that it was all my imagination. Ironically, being cursed might actually give me a better chance of figuring out where Gerda and my kid were.

  We’ll see.

  A moment later, Tabitha returned, carrying Amanda’s black woolen trench coat. The sight of the coat took my breath away. Amanda had worn that coat religiously. With even the merest hint of nip to the air, the coat would go on.

  Tabitha didn’t notice that the blood had probably drained from my face. Which was good, for I was suddenly plagued with grief and memories and was sure my voice would have sounded like a croaking frog.

  “My grandmother did it, all right,” Tabitha said. “This is her mark. I’ve seen it before.”

  I suddenly found myself laughing. I was even holding my belly, feeling it heave upward over and over as I laughed, booze gurgling a little inside me. Through streaming eyes I saw Tabitha looking at me with her hands on her hips. She didn’t look surprised or upset—at least that’s what I thought—but looked concerned, as if she thought I might have finally surrendered to stress and disbelief.

  And her concern was completely substantiated by my loud, deep barks of laughter. I could not help myself. The thought of someone having a special mark of ownership to a curse just tickled my funny bone with a knife tip, even if I was apparently the subject of one of the curses.

  God, it was all just so insane.

  The tears of laughter streaming down my face soon turned to tears of pain, for the full realization of what had happened to Amanda came over me, the complete fear she must have faced when she knew she was going to die by the hand of someone so heartless and evil.

  Most of us imagine facing our last moments on earth with those we love around us, comforting us when we finally breathe our last; at least, that’s what I’ve imagined. I pictured Amanda, her throat slit, unable to draw in a last breath, and looking up at her grinning killer, wondering if her infant was going to be next. That was no way to die.

  I don’t think I was crying as loud as I had been laughing, but I must have looked like a wet train wreck. The next thing I realized, Tabitha had her arm around me, a muscular, firm grip that provided comfort and sympathy. And damned if she wasn’t crying, too, her resolve finally finding an excuse to break. I took her in my arms as we shuddered and blubbered, both crying over a person we’d both loved, but in far different ways.

  Or maybe there is no different way to love. Maybe all love springs from the same source and we just give it different names and categories. The thing about love was it didn’t give you a choice. That’s why I’d fallen for Amanda knowing it would come to bad news, one way or another. The happy ending was just a lie I’d built to cover a lie, because I knew she would never be able to trust me once she found out about Gerda.

  “You wouldn’t have done anything to her, would you, Al?” It was a question someone would ask when they already knew the answer; the kind of question a person would ask when they needed to be reassured one last time. And she’d used my first name the way Amanda would. I felt almost absolved, at least in Tabitha’s eyes.

  I pushed myself off her chest quickly, noticing the softness of her lower chest against my lips and chin, even as I was shocked by her question. “My God, never!”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just that I personally know that my grandmother has...ways of knowing certain things.” Tabitha looked away from me. She stood and began pacing the small square of carpet that lay between the coffee table and the fireplace. The fireplace looked well-used and dirty. Amanda, as I well knew, loved the sound and smell of a fire, even if the weather didn’t exactly call for it.

  “My grandmother, to put it bluntly, has the means of discovering who killed Amanda, or get pretty damned close. She must have felt she had good reason to do to you what she did.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s in extended care at Fullerton LifeWay, north of town. She’s voluntary, even at 97, because she can talk a sane game when she sets her mind to it. That means she can get out on her own. Or slip away without anyone noticing.”

  “Sounds like a starting point.”

  “You’re thinking like a cop, Al.”

  “Yeah, and it makes me wonder why you didn’t think of it first.”

  She stopped pacing and stared at me. Was there fear in her dewy, bloodshot eyes?

  Jeez, if the witch’s own family is afraid of her, what chance do I have?

  I went on: “You said she knows things. It’s our best bet to find out where the baby is. And who really killed Amanda. And maybe when she realizes I would never have hurt her granddaughter—ever—we can settle this mess.”

  She nodded, but seemed lost in her own thoughts. I could imagine what she was thinking. It was apparent that she believed me, otherwise she would have gone after me with a knife, and then left me for her grandmother’s mice to finish off. Why she believed me, I don’t know, for she was just taking my word for it at this point.

  Maybe she could see that I loved Amanda too much to ever cause her any harm—knew, in fact, that I had given up on pursuing Amanda and had quit trying to make contact for quite some time. I hadn’t seen Amanda for ten months, though I’d often thought about her. I am sure that Tabitha had picked up on the fact that I had never before shown any signs of being an extremely jealous ex-lover.

  So maybe that’s why Tabitha believed me right then and there that I wasn’t her sister’s killer. She was, though, obviously plagued by the doubts that her grandmother’s damn magic had created. Her grandmother, seemingly, felt I had been the killer, and should be duly punished by a deat
h to fit the horror of the crime.

  There was only one way to solve this problem, or at least get to the heart of it. We needed to reason with her grandmother.

  But what’s that going to solve? I asked myself, still staring down at my shoes. Obviously her grandmother thought I did it. That seemed apparent. Would her grandmother listen to reason, listen to my heart? I didn’t know, but we had to see. Her grandmother had to call off the mice and use her magic to find the real killer.

  And the kid. I tried to picture its chubby little face, wondering if it had Amanda’s eyes and my nose.

  I stood up, suddenly dreading the thought of a mouse army waiting outside. I took a deep breath. Tabitha was glaring at me.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked, no hiding the alarm that suddenly filled my voice, squeezing my vocal chords tight, until I was almost squeaking like a mouse. I had to fight an urge to turn around to look for the mice that might be scuttling my way. After all, Mead magic probably worked best in a Mead house.

  “There’s no taking back a curse, Albert. Once a curse is in motion, it must be fulfilled.”

  “Shit.”

  “At least, that’s what Nana once told me. She hasn’t told me much, but that much I do remember.”

  “Well, let’s talk to her anyway. There has to be a way. And maybe along the way, you can tell me everything you do know about these curses.”

  She nodded slowly, her eyes seemingly fastened onto an object a million miles away. She pulled on the coat and my eyes about bugged out of my head. In the jacket she looked so very much like Amanda, for the bulkiness of the wool hid Tabitha’s hard, wiry frame. I had the illusion again that Amanda was standing before me.

  What a cruel curse it would be if this were really Amanda and she was made of cold spirit stuff, something I could long for but never wrap my arms around.

  “Are you okay?” Tabitha asked.

  “God, no.”

  Chapter Ten

  Before stepping outside, I put my helmet back on. Tabitha refused to wait inside while I made sure everything was fine.

  She shoved past me, muttering something about not being the one who was cursed. Maybe she was immune to the threat of the mice, or something, and that they would only attack me.

  God help me. This was all so very insane. All of it except for the murder of Amanda.

  However, the mice were a very real threat to me. You know how deep a phobia can get. It had been in my head longer than any other fear I could remember, not that I had that many. Even my fear of Gerda wasn’t as strong as that of creepy little furry rodents with white stripes.

  “Why couldn’t my greatest fear have been Gerda?” I said aloud, mostly to myself. “Then we’d kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Nana doesn’t work that way,” Tabitha said. “What good is a curse if it gives you what you want?”

  As we made our way down the winding cement path through Amanda’s front yard, I was greatly relieved to see that there wasn’t a horde of killer mice waiting for me. At least, as far as I could tell. I still had the horrible image of mice running up my legs and then swarming over me, finally forcing myself to my knees from their sheer weight, their powerful little jaws making short work of my jeans and leather jacket. And then I saw them crawling over my naked body.

  Jesus Christ, that gave me the willies. I had to stop walking and catch my breath. I felt Tabitha’s hand touch my shoulder. It was a reassuring feeling. I continued down the path to my bike parked on the street.

  Tabitha insisted on riding on the bike with me, even though I had assumed we would take her car, the Honda Accord I had parked my bike behind. Not once could I talk Amanda into even a short ride on my motorcycle. Tabitha was different from her sister, and I had to keep reminding myself of that fact, despite their shared features.

  I had a spare helmet latched to the tail bar, and as I began unlatching it for Tabitha, I suddenly feared that a mouse would come shooting out of the helmet. Nothing moved in there, but I was a nervous wreck.

  “You want me to drive?” Tabitha asked.

  “You can handle a bike?”

  “I had some CHiP’s training,” she said, with confidence and a little disdain. “Or does that threaten your manhood?”

  I kicked the bike to life, and Amanda stepped from the curb to the small seat behind me. She could have held onto the tail bar behind her, but she put her hands at my sides. Despite myself, a warm shiver of pleasure ran through me, originating from where she touched my waist.

  God, if I wasn’t a grab-bag of emotions right now. If I wasn’t quaking with fear, I was laughing hysterically. I told myself that I was only seeking comfort, a natural reaction to the death of a loved one. We were family, in a weird way. But I tried not to let my mind wander down that road, because there was a real road—a hard, dangerous one—rolled out before us.

  “You don’t mind me holding onto you, do you?” she asked loudly, leaning forward, her whole body pressed against my back. “It’s just that I feel safer holding on to you rather than that little bar behind me.”

  I eased the bike forward, and Tabitha’s grip tightened. I wondered what Gerda would think if she saw me now, snuggling up to another Mead woman not 16 hours after she’d killed one. I had the feeling Tabitha would be a little tougher to victimize than Amanda had been.

  Someday, Al, you’re going to have to be strong and divorce that woman and begin a new life. Someday. Like maybe when she’s safely locked away in prison.

  * * *

  Since we ended up using the bike, I knew that whatever story Tabitha had of her grandmother’s curses in action would have to wait. Her mysterious “I’ve seen it before” plagued my imagination, and I desperately wanted to know what it was that she had seen before. Most importantly, I wanted to know how that one had turned out.

  I had no real stomach to meet the old lady again, for by now she had been elevated in my mind to rivaling the Wicked Witch of the East. Her dark mojo was real. God, did I know it was real. But we had to see her. I had to explain to her that I was innocent, that I could have in no way killed her daughter. This nightmare had to end.

  Because I couldn’t find Gerda and save my child if I was obsessing over little critters that wanted to strip me to the bone.

  We cruised at a moderate speed down Chapman Avenue. Probably because it was a better grip, Tabitha’s hands slid forward, closing the gap at my naval. I took a deep breath, slightly light-headed from her strong grip. A few lights later, driving along the quiet street, Tabitha touched my right shoulder and directed me to turn left at Raymond Avenue. I did so.

  Raymond Avenue reminded me of the time I had decided to be environmentally correct and had saved my newspapers, bags, and junk mail for months. Along this street was the recycling center for North Orange County. Proudly, I had loaded the Mercedes with my month’s collection, feeling at one with the Earth, and drove to the recycling center. They weighed the car before taking out the paper, then they weighed the car after I took out the paper. The difference was sixty-five pounds. Wow, I had thought. I actually saved sixty-five pounds of paper.

  I went up to the cashier and asked for the money owed to me. She had laughed and asked if I was serious, looking at me as if I was putting her on. Feeling as if I had missed something, I said sure. She gave me fifteen cents.

  I never recycled paper again. Was it because of the money? No, though I felt one should be rewarded a little more than that. Because I had been laughed at? Probably. Here I had made an effort to help a little and I had been ridiculed. There was a bigger message there, maybe something like “Why worry about saving the world when you can’t even save yourself?”

  I was so absorbed in self-pity that I hadn’t noticed Tabitha tapping my right shoulder. Finally, she slammed her hand down on my shoulder as a judge would a gavel. I turned right on a dark residential street. I didn’t catch the name of the street. We passed under the lonely hanging wisps of weeping willows, and I discovered that my skin was crawling aga
in. I briefly wondered if I would ever be normal again, and concluded that I was probably never normal to start with.

  God, I’m going to see that face again.

  Hell, Nana was probably going to spit a hex on me right then and there when she saw that her precious mice hadn’t done the trick.

  Sweat formed on my brow. My stomach was roiling and scorching with acid from the booze, and when Tabitha touched my left shoulder, I was thinking that I was going to have to quickly get my fucking helmet off if I was going to puke. Well, thankfully I didn’t puke. This time.

  To the left was a big house. Very big and as spooky as they come, an Addams Family terror tower straight from a Stephen King wet dream. I pointed, while slowing down. She gave me a thumbs up. This was the place.

  I stopped the bike and Tabitha got off first. I booted the kickstand into place. My watch beeped suddenly, and I looked at it, pushing the Indiglo button. Midnight. The witching hour.

  Just perfect.

  My mouth was dry and I could have used another beer.

  Or a dozen.

  Chapter Eleven

  The weeping willow’s whip-like branches swayed in the wind. The tree could have been a giant witch-head, its long and narrow branches the tangled and dirty hair. The branches reached down to my face, and I moved them away a little nervously, my imagination turning traitor. I could see the branches as claws, brought to sinister intent by an old bag’s curse.

  We moved past the huge tree and before us was an iron fence. The fence encircled the big piece of property and was shaped in a crusted, antique design. The fence was topped with iron spikes shaped like fancy arrowheads; the message was clear: Stay out!

  Trust me, I would have. But I had no choice.

  And on the heels of that thought came another, that maybe the fence was designed to keep people in as well.

  There was cultivated grass beyond the fence, with scruffy hedges and sagging flowers and a long driveway, but the house itself was set back and enshrouded in darkness. I could only make out the fact that it was huge and nothing more, and what I couldn’t see, my imagination more than happily filled in.