Cursed Read online

  I felt myself being pulled to the side. I was in no condition to resist. I stumbled and almost fell, wondering if that was how his victims felt, limp and helpless as their fate approached in a sick, silver fury.

  Narrow but strong arms held me up. I suddenly was looking into the wide, concerned eyes of Tabitha. She was asking me something, but I was incapable of speech or really even listening. Instead, I twisted around in her arms and watched the big man move quietly down the hall, his feet touching the carpet in soft murmurs.

  At least he isn’t floating. Thank God for the little things.

  He made a left and in a blink he disappeared down the stairs. He did not look back.

  Tabitha stepped in front of me and said my name. It came to me as if through a wall of water, but the firm slap on the cheek brought me around.

  “Shipway, don’t get wimpy on me now. We need to do this.”

  My eyes refocused from the dark hollow of the stairwell to her concerned face. I was struck with the raw realization of how incredibly beautiful she was, how much of Amanda she carried inside her, and how she was the last surviving link between me and my son. It might have been a little creepy and maybe even incestuous to look for Amanda in her face, but right then, I wasn’t interested in morality. I was interested in any little lifeline to reality I could find.

  “Albert?” Her voice was little more than a harsh whisper now. She did not wish to wake the residents, or maybe she was afraid of what they might be cooking up behind closed doors. And no telling what might be lurking in the attic.

  “What’s wrong? Who was that? What just happened?” She had both hands on my shoulders, and she shook me with each question.

  “Something horrible is going on. We need to see your grandmother. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.”

  “Who was that? I haven’t seen him here before.”

  I took a deep breath, feeling the warm air from the hall pass along my tongue and down my throat. I seemed to still be able to smell the moist soil, but I couldn’t be sure, maybe it was just the memory of the smell, soil mixed with something very wrong, something that made my skin crawl.

  “Somebody I think I know.”

  “Why would you know anybody in here? You’re normal. Well, sort of.”

  “But it can’t be him.”

  “It’s just a guest of one of the tenants. I think you’re losing it, Shipway.”

  She’d taken to using my last name again. So much for that connection I thought we had established. But who could blame her, when I’d just told her I’d seen a ghost? Then again, she might be the only person in the world I’d have no problem telling.

  I shook my head, feeling the dizziness coming again. I breathed deeply and steadily, willing my mind to stay on its course. “You’re right,” I said. “That part about more going on than meets the eye.”

  “What?” The word was said loudly, and it echoed down the lonely hall.

  She made a movement to go down the hall but I reached out and grabbed her arm above the elbow. “Wait.”

  Tabitha stared at me. Her mouth was open slightly. She kept taking short breaths, which led me to believe she wanted to say something but didn’t know how to put it. Instead, she took my hand and led me down the hall.

  “Come on,” she said, yanking me forward. “We don’t have time for this.”

  We made a right in the hallway, rounding the same corner Gerda’s father had emerged from, and saw the open door. Either Nana had been expecting us, which wouldn’t have surprised me, or else she’d just had some rude company that had made a hasty departure.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Tabitha’s grandmother was lying prostrate on the floor, piled like a sack of rags.

  The room was dark, except for a few flickering candles set in a semi-circle upon the wooden floor. The room had the same corrupt, unwholesome smell that clung to the figure who so resembled Gerda’s father. The thick smell made my stomach turn. I associated a sense of death with the smell, for that was the only element I could recognize within its strangeness, a sense of something forever passed from a world of good and sunshine.

  Tabitha rushed immediately to her grandmother, calling to her, but her grandmother didn’t respond. She carefully turned her grandmother over. I braced myself.

  Yeah, that was her, and I realized what a slight old woman she really was. God, so small, but she could really pack a wallop with her words. The wizened face was slack, a thin strand of red drool leaking from one corner of her mouth. It was her eyes that said plenty, wide and dry and staring past this world into whatever hell awaits crazy old witches.

  Tabitha buried her ear into the black clothing, listening to her grandmother’s sunken chest. A sharp wail escaped Tabitha’s lips as she confirmed the obvious.

  “Nana!”

  I hung back, glancing around the room, wondering if hordes of mice might spring from the dusty crevices. The shelves were lined with books that were bound in either leather or some other ancient skin. Blue and green bottles held greasy-looking liquids, and odd-shaped vials and clay urns littered the top of the coffee table. The room had a fireplace, and some half-burned sheets of yellowed paper were scattered across the hearth.

  Tabitha stayed in that stooped position for a few moments, her head on her grandmother’s chest, rocking slowly back and forth. I didn’t exactly know what to do for either of them.

  “Any, um, sign of foul play?” I asked, playing cop because she couldn’t.

  “No.”

  “She was 97,” I said, feeling dumb by suggesting this woman might have died of natural causes. I had a feeling “supernatural” was the only label that could be applied to her life or death.

  “Meads live a long time,” Tabitha said. “She should have hit 120, easy.”

  Did she just say “120”? I tried wrapping my brain around that and couldn’t. Instead, I said, “That man in the hall...”

  “You think he killed her?” Tabitha was recovering a little, perhaps already so numbed by Amanda’s death that adding one more to the body count didn’t carry much weight.

  “I think somebody took Nana’s curse and supersized it,” I said. I knelt and swept up a few of the scorched pages. The fireplace was cool, so it hadn’t been Gerda’s father—er, the strange man in the trench coat—that had burned them. Nana must have been trying to get rid of something.

  Or maybe just warm those icy old bones of hers, my fast-vanishing sane mind offered.

  “We’d better call the authorities,” Tabitha said.

  “Come on,” I responded, a little impatient. “You’re the one who said the cops wouldn’t be able to handle this whole situation. It’s out of their league. We’re talking a whole new layer of law and order.”

  She sighed and stood over her grandmother. I guess blood ran thicker than water after all, and family ties still had a lot of power. I hadn’t seen my parents since they’d disowned me at 18, but I still would have hated stumbling in on their corpses. I guess I’d even get sentimental over a spell-casting, evil-eyed grandmother if I’d had one.

  “You’re right,” she said. “But we owe it to her to get a decent burial.”

  Burial. That was comforting; I couldn’t bear the thought of Tabitha cremating the old bat and keeping her in a jar on top of the refrigerator.

  She snapped back into cop mode, and my fifteen seconds of being the stable one were over. “You go tell the nurse and I’ll check around for anything that might ruin my grandmother’s good name.”

  I couldn’t imagine what kind of name Nana might have, but I obeyed. As I navigated the stairs again, I flinched in anticipation of Max Richter’s swiftly descending blade. But all that stalked me was the echo of my own boots on the stairs.

  I reached Mrs. Haggard’s desk and found her reading a frayed copy of Car & Driver.

  “Short visit?” she said.

  “I believe you should call an ambulance. No hurry.”

  Her eyes went wide and she sprang into action.
I imagine running the night shift at an old-folks’ home, even one filled with magicians and wizards, meant she had a lot of experience calling in fatalities.

  When she hung up, I asked her if a man in a trench coat had recently gone by. She nodded. “He said he was an old friend of Nellie Withers in 218. I assumed, considering the hour, it was a little moonlight romance.”

  “He didn’t sign in?” Which was a silly thing to ask, since I hadn’t signed in, either.

  “Not required. We run a guest house, not a prison. Who was he?”

  “I really don’t know who it was.” Which was the truth, I hoped. But I had a feeling the creature was more likely a “what” than a “who.”

  But it couldn’t have been Gerda’s father, right? He was as dead as forty doornails, as dead as disco, as dead as Paris Hilton’s acting career. But, of course, I was about at the stage where I would have believed anything. If Ronald Reagan had walked through the door joking that we were bombing Russia in five minutes, I probably would have saluted and asked the location of the nearest military bunker.

  In here, this was a world run by witchcraft. So of course the impossible was likely. Nana and Max Richter played in the same sandbox, one of evil power and twisted manipulation.

  Why shouldn’t Max Richter come back from the grave and kill a witch? After all, this whole insane turn of events was one big bundle of weird, and I was the connecting line between all the different dots. And there was one tiny little dot that I hoped and prayed was still breathing and untouched by the madness: little Petey.

  With that troubling thought, I headed back upstairs.

  Tabitha was sitting up on her knees, knuckles grazing the floor, crying softly. She had placed both of her grandmother’s shriveled hands together just below her bosom. I half expected to see a bloody gash in the clothing, but I guess supernatural knives could cut without leaving scars.

  Tabitha gave me a truly defeated look, and I realized me and Petey were the only family she had left.

  Me. I had included myself in the equation. Selfish, pathetic me. But it made me feel good, needed in a way I hadn’t felt since Amanda left me. Needed in a way that I’d never felt with Gerda, who had always been cold and distant, though she’d been sociopathic enough to run a good con game of romance.

  I walked over and placed my hand gently on Tabitha’s head. In the distance came the sirens of the ambulance.

  I gave the room another once-over, just in case there was some clue to what we should do next. The walls were bare, except for a scroll that hung from the wall, which was, upon closer scrutiny, a calendar of some sort. Today’s date was filled in with a black marker, as if she’d known something dark was coming.

  There was a bed, a small oaken cabinet, and a closet, which was closed. It was easy to imagine a writhing mass of mice behind the closet door, skittering and clawing at one another in their desire to come eat me alive.

  Next to the rumpled bed, fallen open on the floor, was a fat book. It was lying near the still-burning candles. Quietly, I walked over to it and, just before picking it up, looked back at Tabitha. Her eyes were shut, her wet cheeks gleaming in the flames of the candles.

  The book was heavy, and I grunted as I hefted it, careful to place my finger where the book had been open. The title was, predictably, Curses. I walked over to the light of the hall and opened the book to where my finger was wedged. And almost dropped it.

  The title of the page was straightforward, as if it were mentioning a great new recipe for macaroni salad: “Bringing the Dead Back to Life To Do Your Bidding.”

  Couldn’t happen. I mean, c’mon. Shit, this wasn’t some video game where you got three lives to get to the next level.

  Except you saw him with your very own eyes. The Surgeon of Silicon Valley.

  Seen him and smelled him. Hell, if there was a factory smell to a serial killer, that had been it. Not to mention I heard him walk away. Tabitha and the night nurse saw him, too. Max Richter, in the flesh.

  And this very book within my hands defied death, defied that very fundamental and rather necessary law of nature. Almost seemed to laugh at it.

  Shit, just flip the damn book open and bring back someone from the grave. Hell, we should all give it a try. Fun for the whole family.

  Better yet, keep it handy for when the woman you love dies. You just bring her back to life, keep bringing her to life, in fact, as many times as it takes. Plus, she has to do your bidding, so she’d never be able to leave you.

  Sarcastic or not, this whole episode made me sick. I wasn’t big on religion but it didn’t seem right that someone could just write up a new rule book for heaven and hell. There was only one word I could think of to describe it, and it was a word I’d always thought was corny until now: Evil.

  I looked over at Tabitha, and she hadn’t moved. The sirens got louder, then stopped. I flipped through the book, finding a rather odd little bookmark. It was a thin, gray, fuzzy cord—

  I quickly pulled my hand back. It was—it had to be—a mouse’s severed tail.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At one in the morning, we found ourselves at a little bar off Overton Street. We’d left before the ambulance arrived. I didn’t need another go-round with the cops and Tabitha didn’t have any interest in explaining her grandmother’s little eccentricities. Plus there were bound to be questions about the man who’d fled the scene shortly before Nana’s death, though by all appearances the death was due to natural causes. I wasn’t prepared to make up a lie and I couldn’t come up with a reasonable truth, either.

  The bar was busy, mostly young people juiced and on the hunt, but there were a couple of old-timers with their elbows glued to the bar and their eyeballs glued to championship poker on the corner TV set. Raucous riffs of The Rolling Stones growled from the speakers, glasses clinked and people laughed, and in the back room pool balls clacked liked spastic castanets. It was all so normal that I had to fight an urge to jump up on our table and scream, “Hey, people, black magic exists!”

  Since this was Southern California, they’d probably all just applaud and buy themselves another round.

  Instead, I ordered a side of French fries and a beer, trying not to lick my lips. Tabitha ordered a cup of coffee. We sat in silence when the waitress left.

  When beer had been placed safely before me, I tore my gaze off the tattooed, be-ringed bald man sitting in the booth behind Tabitha. I kept trying to imagine the logic of piercing one’s tongue, and couldn’t. At least the thick silver ring that pierced the area between his eyes and sat on the bridge of his nose had some practical use for, I don’t know, maybe mountain climbing. Just run the line right through the ring and you’re safe as can be. An oversized key-ring also came to mind.

  I sipped on my beer and tried to keep from snorting foam. At least I haven’t lost my famous sense of humor. And if the skinhead could have read my mind, he might have asked me to dance. Outside, with the weapon of my choice.

  I tossed back half the mug and looked at Tabitha. She looked ghastly. Her skin had lost its color and the lines of her face were evident under the white lights. She hadn’t touched her coffee and didn’t appear to have even noticed it had been placed before her on a white lacy thing. The steam rising up from the porcelain cup and obscuring the features of her face created an otherworldly feel.

  Hell, this whole night had an otherworldly feel.

  “You okay?” I asked when my fries came. Truth be known, they tasted great, and I chowed them quickly, not stopping to splotch ketchup all over my plate. Two things even death couldn’t take from me: hunger and thirst. And apparently French fries, too.

  Tabitha didn’t give me an answer. Or maybe she said something and I couldn’t hear it over Keith Richards’ distorted guitar. Talk about defying death, Sir Keith sounded just as cocky and wired as always.

  “Want some fries?” I asked.

  No answer.

  I finished the beer and motioned the waitress for another. I went on eating. Five minu
tes later, I pushed the plate away. I saved Tabitha a handful of fries anyway. And they say chivalry is dead.

  From under the tabletop her hand appeared, shaky and lined with thick rivulets of blue veins, to take hold of the still-steaming cup. Her hand seemingly welcomed the pleasant warmth the cup offered. Finally, she lifted the cup and took a careful sip. She did not look into it. God only knew where she was looking; it sure as hell wasn’t anywhere in this bar.

  She grimaced, meaning she was at least present enough to acknowledge the black tar that had probably been cooking away for the last six hours. She put the cup back down without a sound and I considered this a minor victory for her.

  “Tabitha?”

  She looked at me, really looked at me for the first time since finding her grandmother dead. Her eyes were wide and scared.

  “You okay?”

  “I’m all alone, Albert. I’ve got nobody now.”

  I reached across and gently held her strong wrist. I felt the small tremors in her. For a moment I felt as if I were holding a scared animal, a shivering little puppy that I wanted to protect from the horrors of the world.

  I didn’t say anything. There was truly nothing for me to say. I did not know her well enough to tell her that I was there for her, and even if I did, what guarantee was that to make her feel any better?

  Her hand continued to tremble, and my heart broke for her. We’d already shared one loss, and that one had been equally hard on both of us. Try as I might to empathize, I couldn’t get too worked up over an old lady who had fetched a rodent horde on me. Still holding her wrist, I got up and walked around the table and sat next to her. I threw my arm around her and held her close to my body. She put her head to my chest, and my lips began to move and I found myself whispering in a hoarse breath: “You have me.”

  She began to cry. I heard bodies shifting in the booth behind me, and knew that Tattoo Boy and the gang were watching us. I held Tabitha close and let the rest of the world slip by without notice or bother. The wetness of her tears spread on my chest.