Cursing

by Lynne Murray

  This would have been the time my aunt would have us packing to move. She had designed our lives so that either or both of us could move with no notice. When I got old enough to wear a bra my aunt gave me silk pocket to attach so I could carry a credit card and enough large bills to constitute what she called “screw you” money and—well, she didn’t say screw. My name was on her bank account and mine on hers. It was like she was preparing to vanish. I kept checking her account and she hadn’t used it or her debit card since the day she disappeared.

  She had a special map she consulted. She never showed it to me, but I long ago guessed that the places we moved to were chosen in advance. She never had trouble finding work once we got to a new place. The map was the one thing she took with her when she left. If I decided to run, I’d have to travel blind.

  I didn’t want to move again. San Francisco was perfect to hide in. People minded their own business and didn’t stare too hard at strangeness in neighbors. I was closer to the trees across the street in the Park than to any people.

  I loved the apartment. The front room held most of my grandfather’s books in bookshelves that reached the ceiling. He was a formidable old man, but he encouraged me to read any book I wanted from the books in the front room. Some of them were in unfamiliar languages. I asked him what languages they were, but he just snorted and told me to read the ones I could read.

  Grandpa’s roll-top desk lurked in the corner of the front room. After my aunt disappeared I tried to open it, half expecting her to walk in and scold me for prying into the old man’s things. But it was securely locked with no sign of a key. I left it that way. The key might have been in Grandpa’s bedroom. I’d caught a glimpse of more bookshelves when my aunt followed him in to get him settled for the night. The shelves were crammed with other books, along with unknown rolls of paper and leather boxes lining the top shelves. All the things he didn’t feel like sharing. I left them gathering dust. Whenever I opened the door I half expected my aunt to warn me away with a sharp word. She didn’t yell but she made it clear my grandfather’s room was off limits. Even after my aunt disappeared, I tried to follow her rules because I’d grown up feeling that she was my only protection against some unknowable, terrifying force that was out to get us.

  If this group could help me control this dangerous temper of mine and stay in my place, it was worth exploring.

  I was ready to go when Chad and Sophie rang my doorbell, nudging each other like happy puppies. They were kind of cute together and the way he clearly adored her took the edge off of his super good looks. “My brother Wade took the truck, so we’ll have to take the bus,” he said.

  “It’s in the Sunset District, right across the Park.” Sophie hugged me hello as if we’d known each other forever. Somehow it comforted me. I missed my aunt’s hugs.

  Less than an hour later Chad led the way to what looked like a burned-out building on a street a few blocks from the ocean. The windows were covered with white paper from inside. A faded wooden sign read “Feeney’s. Closed.” The place looked deserted.

  Chad pressed a button next to the door and a buzzer echoed somewhere in the building. A shuffling sound came from inside and the door creaked open. An angular man wrapped in a thick, woven sweater and pants leaned through the half-opened door. His stiff crown of gray hair nearly brushed the top of the door frame. He had a high beak of a nose, a ruddy pink complexion and startlingly pale blue eyes.

  Sophie stepped forward. “Hi Feeney, this is Angie,” she said, “She’s come to meet Mr. Kirby.”

  “He told us he would meet us here,” Chad added.

  “He’s waiting for you. Follow me.” Feeney held the door open for us to enter. He led us through the front room, what had been a neighborhood tavern before a fire burned most of it and clouded the mirror behind the long-charred, bar. The floor squeaked a little like walking over charcoal. The room still smelled faintly of smoke.

  I took in all the damage. “Wow, this must have been quite a fire.”

  Feeney nodded. “Occupational hazard,” was his cryptic response.

  “Okay,” I envisioned a bar fight with blow torches.

  “Watch your step.” Feeney opened a door behind the bar into a hallway that stretched off into the distance with doors on either side. “There’s a mat here where you can wipe the soot off your shoes.” He watched as we scuffed the charcoal dust off our feet on the mat.

  The hall was disorienting. It looked longer than the bar we had just left.

  Feeney passed a couple of doors, all unmarked. He opened one and gestured for us to go in. Then he closed the door behind us.

  If I hadn't been paying attention when we walked through there the burned-out bar, I’d have thought we had entered the front room of a San Francisco Victorian. It had heavily curtained bay window, decorative wall scrolls and a sliding door in between the two front rooms that had been opened up to double the space. A polished antique table circled by five matching wood chairs dominated the room. A very pale man sat at the head of the table in a chair facing the door. His back was to the wall. His blond hair was cut so short that he looked bald. He had a forgettable face, bland blue eyes behind thick black glasses. Under a brown plaid blazer with a charcoal tie, a white shirt and chinos. He might have been a high school science teacher or a middle-level clerk. He gestured us in, rose and leaned forward across the edge of the table to offer a brisk, firm handshake.

  “I’m John Kirby. Sophie and Chad have told me about you.”

  That was quick, I thought. I’ve only known them for a few hours.

  “Angie has some pretty impressive powers,” Chad held out a chair for me to sit facing the blond man. “Angie, Mr. Kirby is our local leader.”

  I sat, noting that my back was now to the door. Chad and Sophie took chairs on either side of me.

  Kirby looked at me in silence for what seemed like a full minute. Strangely it didn’t feel awkward. “Chad told me what happened today,” he said at last. “Sophie said you mentioned that things like this had happened to you before.”

  “Similar, not so extreme.” I was not sure how or even really whether I could talk about something that had been such a major taboo in my life.

  “How did your parents react?”

  “I don’t remember my parents. My aunt raised me. One of my earliest memories is her telling me she knew I was a good girl but I had to be careful. No matter where we went, I was a magnet for bullies.” I gulped, getting to the part I hated and couldn’t really explain. “Sometimes they’d try to hit me or shove me and bad things always happened to them. I had to change schools and we moved several times. Sometimes grown-ups said some very mean things to my aunt about controlling me better. Once…” I had to pause because the terror of the moment had crept over me.

  “What happened then?”

  “One man, a school principal, just collapsed on the spot. I guess he had a heart attack. It wasn’t fatal. No one blamed that on me. His assistant was right outside the office and the door was open. She could see I never laid a hand on him.” I paused. I’d never told anyone this story but suddenly I wondered if the open door and the assistant standing watch had been assigned because the principal couldn’t be trusted.

  “My aunt just hustled us out of the building. We went straight home, packed and left town that day.”

  “I see. You just sometimes find yourself lashing out?”

  I nodded. “Kind of like that.”

  Kirby sat still for a moment. “There’s a myth that some martial artists can strike a fatal blow without physically touching their opponent, had you heard of that?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s called Dim Mak which is often translated as ‘Death Touch’ but a more correct translation of the Cantonese would be ‘artery strike’ and sometimes it’s called Pressure Point Striking because it’s a martial arts blow to an artery or nerve. The myth is that the trained master can kill without touching, but that’s questionable.”

  “Okay
,” I shrugged, uncertain where he was going.

  “But you say you never had any training?”

  “Not that I can recall.” I didn’t say anything about the voices that sometimes popped into my mind.

  “You have a natural gift to do what a very few others can. Think of how toddlers play with their toys in the physical world they grab, pull, twist and push. With a lot of martial arts training, some people can shove other people with their energy or life force, whatever you want to call it. But my theory is that those tales of killing without touching at all came from uniquely gifted individuals. Maybe what you did today isn’t even the full extent of your power. Once upon a time, it might have been called magic, but we can genetically test for these abilities. You have the potential to do great things.”

  “You mean, the potential to kill people?”

  “That sort of power can be used for many things. But come over here for a minute and let’s get an expert opinion.” He rose and gestured for me to move into the open part of the room to stand on the deep burgundy Turkish carpet. He opened the door.

  “You can come in, Twins.”

  Two short, thin people walked in. At first, they seemed like very strange children, but that illusion only lasted a few seconds. Their skin was transparent and gave the odd impression of aquarium glass with seaweed-like strands moving behind their even-featured faces that otherwise resembled bland identical masks under hair that was brown-green kelp color and seaweed slick in texture. Both had gray-green, blank eyes with a disturbing thousand-yard stares that seemed to reach past the walls of the room. Wearing plain gray smocks and flat slippers, they approached Kirby even gliding steps and stood next to him, ignoring everyone else in the room. Standing a few feet away, I noticed a faint saltwater and fish smell.

  “These are the Dolianis Twins.” He nodded at them. No reaction. “Our genetic scans are more basic—”

  “Primitive,” the Twins cut in with high-pitched, stat icky, almost mechanical voices.

  Kirby forced out an unamused chuckle. “The Twins are the result of extensive cloning programs on their homeworld. They are almost but not quite identical to the rest of the clones in their generation. Most of their, um, siblings, prefer to live in large groups but our Twins, prefer each others’ company, which makes them eccentric--”

  “We are twisted, warped, unfit,” the Twins cut in. They paused and continued still overlapping but at a lower pitch. “We are still vastly superior at genetic reading by the primordial standards of this planet.”

  Kirby leaned close to the two and aimed his words at them. “Twins, this is Angie our newest candidate.”

  Candidate. Okay. I wanted to laugh but the Dolanis Twins creeped me out too much. “Hello,” I said.

  “Just stand still for a minute, Angie?” Kirby asked. “It won’t hurt, they won’t touch you. They just need to get close enough to sample your energy field.”

  I looked at the Twins, feeling anxious.

  “You’ll hardly be able to feel it,” Sophie said. “The information they read is really helpful—you’ll see.”

  “Okay,” I said reluctantly, keeping my eyes fixed on Sophie’s encouraging face. Chad leaned forward with his hands on the table, raptly observing the Twins.

  The two didn’t say a word. They glided over to stand on either side, close enough that the marine smell grew stronger. Facing me without making eye contact, they raised their long, pale hands up to above my head so that they tracked a few inches away from me, almost touching each other on either side, effectively caging me in.

  I instinctively flinched and would have recoiled if Kirby hadn’t called out, “Don’t move.” His voice was firm.

  I froze. I definitely did not want to make physical contact with them. Fortunately, they seemed to feel the same way about me.

  The Twins ran their hands slowly down way too close for comfort. I made myself stand still by envisioning a couple of over-efficient airport security screeners who also checked passengers’ dental work. True to Kirby’s words, they didn’t actually touch me.

  “So?” I said to them in a feeble attempt at a joke. “You come here often?”

  Both Twins halted with their hands at about my shoulder level. “No,” they said in unison. “We rarely visit this location.”

  A muffled giggle came from Sophie and Chad hissed to shush her.

  The Twins resumed moving their hands on either side of my body.

  “The Twins come from a race of record keepers,” Kirby’s voice took on a soothing tone. I concentrated on listening to him and watching Sophie and Chad. With difficulty I managed not to move as the Twins stood way too close and their hands moved so slowly a few inches from my skin.

  “They don’t see in our spectrum but they sense dimensions and genetic components for all most known humanoid races.”

  “Most, not all,” the Twins said in their melded voices. The Twins stopped scanning just below my hips. “We sense shielded genetic material.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief, having envisioned them squatting down and scanning all the way to my feet.

  “Humanoid.’ There’s a word you don’t hear every day,” I remarked.

  “Our race is not genetically compatible with yours,” the Twins said.

  “No offense, but I’m just fine with that,” I said, trying not to look into their pale eyes.

  Kirby seemed amused. “The origins of human-like beings are lost in time, but we may all have developed from some common ancestors that traveled through our galaxy a couple of million years ago. Even in the GDB our origins are filled with speculation and legend.”

  “GDB?” He seemed to think I’d know what that was.

  “Sorry,” Kirby tilted his head apologetically. “I meant the Galactic Data Bank.”

  “You’re spinning a wild tale here. Where are these Galactic Data Banks located?” I was still skeptical despite the weirdness of the Twins and the whole encounter.

  “You can access it at the station on Angel Island,” Kirby said.

  “A computer installation on an island in the Bay? Isn’t it a national park?”

  “The island is part of the Golden Gate Recreation area, yes. But our station is in another dimension anchored in folded space.” Kirby’s tone was matter-of-fact. “There’s a well-concealed portal on Angel Island, to enter and exit the Station. You can get there through any portal.”

  “Oh, well, once you express it in gibberish it makes so much more sense,” I couldn’t hold back the heavily ironic tone.

  “I’m sorry I can’t explain it better, but it’s like describing a jetliner to a medieval peasant.”

  “Not much clearer, but thanks for calling me a peasant.” I was nearly twitching from the Twins’ slow hands so near me, their persistent, fishy smell and the stories he was throwing at me that I had no way to check against any sane reality.

  “Sorry, bad example,” Kirby shrugged. “It will be easier to show you.”

  “Okay, I’ll believe it when I see it.” I shifted my feet, anxious to get the Twins out of my space.

  “That’s usually the way it works,” Kirby replied with a nod. “For the record, I’m totally serious, Angie. If you decide to join our group, you can access any information we have.”

  I left the whole joining bit alone for now. “And you feel safe telling me all this secret stuff?”

  Kirby shot me an ironic look. “Who are you going to tell? And how would they react if you told them?”

  “Good point.”

  “So,” Kirby said briskly. “Is this where you get up and walk out, or do you want to know more?”

  “Um.” I didn’t think they were dangerously crazy, harmlessly deluded, or... “I guess I’ll hear more.”

  “First let’s get you assessed. For your safety and everyone else’s.”

  “And the Twins can do that just by...what they’re doing?”

  “They’re almost done. They’ll take the information they’re gathering and check it against the
GDB and their own sources.”

  I was intrigued by the idea, but not quite enough to convince me there wasn’t a scam going down here.

  “The Twins took a liking to Earth several thousand years ago.”

  “Wait, you’re saying these twins are from another planet and also several thousand years old?” My mind was stretched close to the snapping point. “That’s pretty unbelievable.”

  “Clones are infinitely repairable.” The mechanical whine in the Twin’s voices had the edge of a microphone about to squeal. “We visit the less polluted oceans of your world and found them pleasant.”

  “When our organization was formed, The Twins volunteered to examine our new candidates. The Agency pays for their expenses and all they ask is to add the information to their own database. They also insist that we make cleaning the oceans a priority.”

  “We work for the sake of this planet’s oceans.” The Twins’ hands fell back by their sides and they backed away from me. I instantly felt relieved as if fresh air had rushed into a stuffy room.

  “That’s not asking much—just save the planet. What’s this Agency?”

  “I’ll explain more soon. You’ve had quite a lot to absorb today.

  The Twins spoke in unison in a language like none I had ever heard before.

  “I’ll have to see the readout,” Kirby told them.

  They nodded, a perfectly synchronized motion, turned and glided out of the room without another look or word.

  “Did you understand what they said?” I asked, mystified but relieved to see the door close behind the Twins.

  “Basically.” Kirby touched his glasses. “These are modified to translate the widely known languages. The Twins speak the Galactic common tongue to clients.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Death Dealer, normal human and something shielded. They might be able to find that, maybe not.”

  “A Dealer of Death? That doesn’t sound good.” Suddenly a great weariness came over me as if all the stress of the day hit me all at once. I sat down heavily in the nearest chair.