Cursed Be the Child (40 page)

Selena Lazone was no longer
marhime.

She was Rom. She was
ababina. Cohalyi. Gule romni.
Sorceress, witch, magic woman.

She was Selena Lazone—healer.

Sitting at the table, the crystal ball between them, Selena asked, “What must I do, Puri Dai? How can I save the child, Melissa Barringer? How may I bring peace to the
diakka,
Puri Dai?”

“It will require great strength and power, Selena,” Pola Janichka said. “I mean no insult, but I simply do not know if you have such strength and power.” She sighed. “And as I am now, no matter the respect others afford me in my age, I could not confront this
diakka.
I do not have the strength. I do not have the power.”

Selena brought her hand to her mouth, knuckles tightly pressed to her teeth. At last, she dared to say what she had sensed since first coming tonight to the home of Pola Janichka. “Puri Dai, you are dying.”

Pola Janichka nodded.

“Is there nothing that can be done…”

Pola Janichka smiled. “I get the Christian stations on cable, but the Gaje preachers have done nothing to cure me.” Then she grew serious. “There is one sure death guaranteed everyone. It happens because it must.
Baht.
It is that sure death that dwells within me.”

Tears burned Selena’s eyes.

“Do not weep,
tschai,
my own little girl,” Pola Janichka said. “There are beginnings and there are endings. There is completion. You are complete because you have found your people and yourself And I am complete because you have returned to me.”

Pola Janichka smiled. “What God wills, Selena, what God wills. We will trust O Del and rejoice.”

“Bater,”
Selena Lazone said.

“You will need help,” Pola Janichka said. She took Selena’s hands and held them, her grip warm and strong. “Your man, go get him now. He will stand by you in this. He is Rom. He is
tacho rat.
His heart is good. There is much we have to talk about, much that I must teach you about draba and vila and O Del and O Beng.”

It was morning when Selena Lazone and David Greenfield departed. At her front door, Pola Janichka watched them walk into an ugly gray-black dawn. The wind blew fiercely from the north, a night wind that would not be banished by the day, cold and angry and strong.

“Akana mukav tut le Devlesa,”
Pola Janichka said.

“I now leave you to God.”

— | — | —

Forty-Three

It was a quarter to nine. He said, “I’m leaving a little early today. A few things to take care of at school. I’ll be home around the usual time, okay?” He smiled and saluted with a casual hand to his forehead. In his blank expression there was no sign there was anything at all worrisome, bothersome, or even annoying in his complacent, perhaps humdrum life.

For a moment he simply stood there as Vicki tried not to stare at him. In a gray-blue housecoat that felt particularly drab, she sat at the kitchen table. Distractedly, she thought, Who is he? This is my husband, and I do not know who the man is. She wanted to be more upset by that thought, but she was not. It was not the first time in the past few hours she had had it.

Warren had slept beautifully, while she had been awake the entire night. She had fitfully turned from side to side, trying to force herself to relax. She discovered itches and minor aches that ordinarily she never would have noticed.

After awhile, she tried thinking of absolutely nothing. No luck. Her imagination conjured up abstract, shape-changing horrors and inky, lurking fears. She attempted to picture soporific scenes of golden sandy beaches and green woodlands. Her mind’s eye could see only desolate snow or flickering, black-tinged flames. She tried to pray. The words, the pleas to God, had been in her mind, but despite her sincerity had been hollow and floating and utterly futile.

More than anything else, though, it was the wind, as all night long it encircled the house, awful and threatening.

Awake, so horribly awake, she lay beside her husband. Warren, damn him, slept like there was absolutely nothing at all wrong with the Barringer family, nothing whatsoever troubling Missy.

Sometime between three and four in the morning, she thought surely she would start to cry. She reached out and touched Warren’s elbow, then his hip. His breathing did not change.

“Warren.”

No answer.

“Warren?” She wanted him to awaken and hold her.

Warren did not awaken. He would not. He rolled heavily onto his side, his back to her.

She felt like shaking him, striking him, slugging him with her fist right between the shoulder blades, but then the moment passed. She had no right to expect anything of him because he was a stranger.

At the door now, seemingly puzzled by something, Warren asked, “You okay, Vicki?”

“Sure, okay,” Vicki told the stranger—and he left the house. Her pinched laughter surprised and frightened her.

Losing my mind, she thought, but there was no panic at the thought. Panic required energy, and she was drained. But she was going out of her mind. She felt distanced from everything, set apart from all those things and all those people that had once been a familiar microcosm of her world.

A few minutes later, with another cup of coffee, she listlessly peered out the window at the gray day. She heard the television set playing in the rec room beneath her feet, violent and demented cartoon-frenetic sounds she could feel rather than hear. Missy was down there, with coloring book and the morning kiddy shows. For the moment, she did not even want to look at Melissa…

Missy was another stranger in the house. I admit it. Right now, she scares the hell out of me. Right now, I wish she were gone!

Vicki felt as though she had been viciously and irrevocably cut free from everyone and anyone to whom she had ever been emotionally tied.

In a world too full of people, she was alone.

No!

She did have a friend, a good friend, Laura Morgan…

Or she had had a friend.

After that awful Sunday, there had been a rift in their friendship.

As she had told Laura, Vicki had not gone in to work at Blossom Time on Monday. But then, five minutes after she had told Laura that, everything went berserk.

So Vicki had not gone to work on Tuesday nor Wednesday nor the whole week.

But Laura had not called her. Laura didn’t seem to care.

No! Laura Morgan was a friend—a true friend.

Vicki called Blossom Time and, when Laura answered, Vicki said “Hello,” and that was the only word she could say without a stammer. Laura sounded cold and businesslike. No, she was actually more wooden and brusque than that; Laura would have had a professionally courteous tone had she been responding to an inquiry about the price of tea roses or even to a wrong number.

Vicki tried to explain what had happened.

Then she stopped talking. I…I sound insane; Vicki said to herself I know I do.

Laura Morgan said, “I’m sorry, Vicki. I don’t know what your problem is. I’m not so sure I want to.” Laura’s voice was as thin as the edge of a sheet of paper. “I’ve given this a lot of thought. I don’t like what I’m saying, Vicki, but it’s the truth. You see, you didn’t get in touch with me. I didn’t get in touch with you. I think that’s the way I wanted it to be.”

With a sinking heart, Vicki listened to a long silence, and then Laura said, “and I am afraid that’s the way I still want it to be. For now, anyway.”

“I see,” Vicki said, as she thought, I want to cry.

“Vicki, I’ve got to think of my child,” Laura said, her tone softening. “You understand.”

Again Laura paused and then said, “Vicki, there is something seriously wrong with Melissa. I think we both know that.”

She knew Laura was speaking but she did not hear an intelligible word. This is it, Vicki thought, the moment in which I snap and go stark raving mad.

She did not cry but forced herself to tune in Laura Morgan. “Maybe I’ll feel differently after awhile. Maybe we can get together then, sort of play it by ear…”

“Yes, I do understand,” Vicki interrupted. And with Laura’s voice still coming from the receiver, she hung up.

Then she looked at the telephone and studied its shape and color, then touched its smooth plastic. Reality! She had to concentrate on the real world and nothing but if she were to maintain her sanity. She had to use her five senses and only those senses. No imagination.

And no memories. Not now. Cross out memories and imagination. Look there. A single blip of water hung from the kitchen sink faucet. She gave all her attention to it. When it swelled to drop size and tore free, she tracked it all the way down. It fell at a normal realistic speed, not too fast, not too slow. No special effects here.

Reality. The world as it is. No problem. No craziness.

God, Vicki prayed, please help me. Help us!

The telephone rang. She clenched her teeth and answered it.

“Yes?” She thought she sounded rational and calm.

It was her sister, Carol Grace.

“Yes, Carol Grace and how are you?”

Carol Grace had just been contacted. They had notified her as soon as possible. It was all so confusing, she didn’t know…

Yes. What had happened? What was it?

It was Evan, Carol Grace explained, telling her all that she knew, which was not really all that much. She’d be up on the next flight and…

As though someone else with a humanlike intelligence had taken over her body, Vicki found pencil and paper and scribbled down the information Carol Grace shakily presented.

Oh, God! Vicki hung up the phone. She remembered the awful night wind, that wind of insanity and nightmare. She felt that wind now as, powerful and deathly cold, it blew through her.

From the rec room below came the muffled sound of the television. Faintly, the sound of chilly metallic synthesizer music came to her—the standard all-rhythm, no-melody, kids’ show soundtrack.

Missy. All right. Missy. God help her. God help me! Damn!

Those were Vicki Barringer’s more coherent thoughts as she went downstairs.

Missy sat cross-legged on the floor less than three feet from the television. The program, a syndicated rerun of Hulk Hogan’s
Rock ‘N’ Wrestling,
was jumping reds and blues and blockily drawn characters without shadows. Their figures moved in grossly stiff animation against the background of a sterile two-dimensional world. The television picture kept intruding on Vicki’s peripheral vision as her daughter ignored her.

“Missy,” Vicki said.

The little girl did not reply as the thin shifting colors of the TV screen played on her face.

“Your Uncle Evan…” Vicki said.

“…We were hungry,” said a cartoon Nicolai Volkoff, “Soviet. Get it? So. Vee. Ett! Ha, ha!”

Missy laughed.

“Something happened to him, something very bad…”

Missy kept on laughing.