Margga's Curse: A Vree Erickson Novel, Book One

by Steve Campbell

  Margga was her final thought.

  The crash sent the frog to the bottom of the ditch water and spooked a pair of sparrows from their perch on the telephone wires above.

  * * *

  VREE DID NOT feel the impact of the large grille crush the woman’s body and kill her instantly, but she did see the woman and parts of the car and van fly in pieces across the country highway. She even saw the driver fly through the shattered windshield and cartwheel into the field like some twirling rag doll, expelling blood and body parts along with loose change and bits of clothing into the patches of goldenrod, buffalo bur, nettle, and bindweed.

  She shut the book with a bang, put it down, and stood and crossed the room. Too many weird things had happened to her since awakening from her coma. She closed her eyes and pictured her father coming to her, telling her she was okay.

  His gentle face had formed in her mind when a floorboard squeaked at the stairs and Grandma Evelyn entered the room.

  “I hope you girls will like what I’ve done to this room,” she said, resting her smiling gaze on Vree’s face. She carried a white plastic basket of folded clothes in front of her, which she handed to Vree. “Your mother says these will fit you. I know they’re secondhand, but they’re like new and washing up nicely.”

  Vree peered at T-shirts, jeans, socks and underwear she didn’t recognize and thanked her grandmother despite the creepy feeling she got from knowing that strangers once wore the clothes.

  “Your grandfather is putting up more clotheslines and I’m beginning dinner,” Evelyn said. “I hope you’re hungry.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help?” Vree asked.

  “No, no. Dave and Amy are helping. I want you to rest. You’ve been through a terrible ordeal.” Evelyn’s green, sorrowful eyes scanned Vree’s face as she peered at the girl. “How are you feeling? Your mother says you’re not sleeping well and you’ve been talking in your sleep.”

  Vree’s face heated. Lenny was in the room, listening. She saw him sitting motionless. He was probably hoping Grandma Evelyn wouldn’t turn around and see the removed floorboard.

  “Dr. Jarvis says it’s a normal reaction after something traumatic happening,” Vree said. When she realized she would never see her family doctor again, she added, “That’s what he said, anyway. It’ll pass.”

  Evelyn’s gaze remained fixed. “Have you had any bad dreams, or any visions while awake?”

  Vree balked to answer the question. She looked at Lenny who stared at her, his expression filled with anticipation.

  Evelyn turned and peered at Lenny, the childhood treasure on the floor, and the removed floorboard.

  “My old hiding spot,” Lenny told her. When she did not reply, he said, “I’ll put the board back right away, Mrs. Lybrook.”

  “Good idea,” Evelyn said. “And make sure it isn’t loose. Nail it down if you have to. No one needs to break any ankles.” She turned to Vree. “We’ll talk later. For now, though, put away your clothes and return the basket when you’re able.”

  “I’m fine, Grandma. Seriously. And I’d really like it if you’d let me help.”

  Evelyn looked thoughtful. “I suppose I could have you pick some blueberries,” she said. Then, to Lenny, “Go with her and show her where the ripe ones are at.”

  Lenny nodded. “I will, Mrs. Lybrook. I know right where to look. It was Gam Gam’s favorite spot,” he said, looking melancholic for a moment.

  Vree smiled upon hearing his pet names for his grandparents again. She couldn’t imagine calling her mom’s parents anything but Grandpa and Grandma. And her dad’s parents, who lived in Charleston, West Virginia and were lawyers, were Grandfather and Grandmother Erickson, and nothing else.

  “But help her unpack first and be quick,” Evelyn said to Lenny. “I’d like to eat before five.” She studied Vree’s face once more. “We’ll talk later, just us girls, when we have some time alone,” she said before descending the stairs.

  Vree put away the clothes while Lenny returned most of his childhood treasure. He kept out the comic books and the book of poetry. He took the latter to Vree.

  “You were reading this,” he said.

  Vree bristled at his accusation and shut her drawer extra hard. “I simply looked and the words were there. Is that okay with you?”

  Lenny blinked and stepped away from her. “I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said. “I just thought that … maybe because of … well, here.” He held out the book. “It’s yours if you want it.”

  Vree looked at the offering for a moment before she accepted it.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It freaked me out that I could understand the numbers and figures inside. I didn’t mean to get angry.”

  “It’s okay. And it’s really awesome you can read it … whatever it is.”

  “Poetry.”

  “Poetry? Why would someone write poetry in cipher?” Lenny shrugged. “I thought it was a book of codes, something top secret.” He looked at Vree, impressed. “So, what’s the key?”

  “What key?”

  “The key to the cipher. You know … the key that told you what the words meant.”

  “I dunno.” Vree set the book on her dresser. “They just made sense to me, that’s all.”

  “Well, I’m like ‘wow’,” Lenny said. The smile and admiration on his face beamed volumes at her. “So, let’s get you unpacked so we can pick blueberries.”

  Vree paused. No boy had ever taken a liking to her so quickly. His seemingly genuine interest in her made her cast timid glances at him while he retrieved all the boxes with her name scrawled on them in black marker. Finally, she joined him at her dresser where he opened a small box that held the birthday gift of DVDs she had received and opened the day after awakening in the hospital.

  “I love these,” he said, taking out the first two movies. He held Casablanca in one hand, Citizen Kane in the other, and looked at Vree with admiration on his face. “My mom got me interested in the classics when I was really young.”

  “For me, it was my dad,” Vree confessed. “When I replace my Blu-ray player and TV that burned up in the fire, maybe we can watch them … together.”

  “That’d be great,” Lenny said. His eyes glazed with a faraway look for a moment. Then, he looked at Vree, his cheeks flushing. “Except, nothing electronic here ever works right. TV, radios, telephones … even video games. Some kind of electronic interference on the ridge, ever since that sinkhole appeared at your grandfather’s old farm.”

  Vree studied Lenny’s face closely, looking for the slightest sign that he was kidding her. His look remained sincere.

  “From a sinkhole?” she asked.

  “Yep. Some scientists and professors from the university at New Cambridge came in April to look at the thing, but I never heard if they figured out what’s inside that’s causing the interference.”

  “So why doesn’t someone fill in the hole?”

  “Your grandfather started to, but that sucker is deep. Plus, it keeps widening and swallowing more property. He lost most of his cornfield last summer. And with his dairy business losing money over the years and the bank foreclosing on the farm, he finally sold his cattle and farm equipment to pay the bank and buy this house from my dad.”

  Vree took in the information, all of it new to her.

  “So what do you think is down there that would cause electronic interference?” she asked.

  “No idea. But when it rains, like when there’s lightning, it glows green inside. I saw it happen a few times when I helped plow the cornfield; it creeped me out every time.”

  “That sounds like fluorescent minerals glowing because of the lightning … maybe sodalite or fluorite.”

  Lenny shook his head. “No, whatever’s down there is emitting energy of some kind that’s converting to light.”

  “You mean radioactive energy?”

  “Precisely.”

  Their conversation stalled until Vree said, “Well, there’s always regular
TV to watch.”

  “There’s no cable on Myers Ridge,” Lenny said, “and satellite dish out here gets poor reception. Plus, your grandfather sold his TV before he bought this house from my dad.”

  “Well, that sucks.”

  Lenny nodded. “But at least there are no sinkholes here,” he said.

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “I am,” he said matter-of-factly. “My dad says it’s due to the underground mining done on that side of the ridge that ended a century ago. Now, the old mines are caving in and causing sinkholes because of the huge amounts of nickel, silver, and copper that were extracted from the ridge.”

  “Is that where the silver and gold you buried in the floor came from?”

  “Yeah. A relative of Gumpa’s was a miner. I used to pretend there were mines up here. I even playacted some of the old miners’ tales from books.”

  Lenny went to the floorboard, removed it, and fetched an old pad of yellow writing paper. He brought it to her and showed her a crude drawing done in crayon of a tall, humanoid creature that looked like a giant orange and blue anteater standing upright on two long, blue, hairless legs. No hair grew from the top of its bulbous orange head, either, or down its long blue arms to its three-fingered hands. Its orange face had a pair of tiny eyes that were dots drawn with a black crayon, and its nose and mouth were identical to an anteater’s, though the appendage hung past the creature’s chest. A long flagellate tongue protruded from the snout and hung past the creature’s knobby knees.

  “That’s a Roualen,” Lenny said when she looked up from the drawing. “They’re a native folklore here, said to be invisible. They live underground and eat bugs and worms. Stories have it that miners would use their burrows and caves as mines. This was during a time before modern machinery, when miners used dynamite. But someone discovered that Roualens love eating sugar, so miners often covered the walls with sugar water before leaving. They would return later to find that the Roualens had dug into the walls to lap up all the sugar, thus safely expanding the size of the mines and unearthing precious ores and minerals in the process. But after a while, they stopped. The miners had to return to using shovel, pickax and dynamite.”

  “What happened? Why’d they stop?”

  “I dunno. I only know the story from books of local fables at the town library. That’s where I copied this picture from.”

  Vree frowned as a realization came to her. “If Roualens are invisible, how does anyone know what they look like?”

  “Exactly. For whatever reason, someone with an overactive imagination made them up,” Lenny said. He crossed the room and returned the tablet. Vree’s stomach rumbled with hunger, which caused Lenny to grin.

  “We should skip getting you unpacked and go get those blueberries,” he said after he closed the hole.

  “Agreed,” Vree said. She followed him downstairs to collect pans from her grandmother. The thought of eating wonderful food replaced her thoughts about the poem, Lenny’s creepy drawing, and weird tales concocted by a bunch of over-imaginative miners.

  Chapter Four

  AT 3:15 P.M., Vree was glad the blueberry patch was behind the house and not far from the back door. Even though the day was sunny and birds sang merrily and flew across the kind of sky summers are famous for, she had read that lightning could strike anywhere and anytime on a clear day.

  She paid close attention to the cloudless sky and ignored the shadows in the woods almost fifty yards in front of her. Besides her fear of lightning, she was in no mood to see another pair of red eyes. She stayed close to Lenny, who walked at her side and guided her across the backyard toward an open field of wild grass and weeds.

  Along the way, they passed a line of three white, canvas camp tents in front of a square fire pit made of cement blocks.

  “The bedrooms aren’t done yet, so your grandfather thought you and your brother and sister would enjoy sleeping outside,” Lenny explained.

  “Sweet,” Vree said. Then, “Where’s your tent?” she asked.

  Lenny shrugged and looked wistful, as if something troubled him. “I can’t tonight. It’s my birthday … my dad has other plans.”

  “Happy birthday,” Vree said. “How old?”

  “Fifteen.”

  “Me too.”

  “I know. Your grandparents already told me.”

  “I hope you and your dad have a good time tonight.” This time, Vree looked wistful while she and Lenny entered the field.

  “Where are the blueberry bushes?” she asked, looking around when they stopped.

  “We’re standing in them.”

  She looked down at clumps of both ripe, plump, light-blue blueberries, and unripe, tiny green and white ones. Following Lenny’s instructions, she knelt low to the ground and picked only from healthy, full bushes that were in direct sunlight. She ate some of the ripe berries, of course, which tasted sweeter than any her mom bought at the store, and she soon forgot about scary lightning and red eyes.

  She had her pan almost filled when she heard a cat meowing. An orange, mangy tabby ran to her and rubbed its body back and forth against her knees, purring loudly. Vree hesitated to pet the cat. Pus oozed from its closed right eye, which the cat rubbed repeatedly against her pants.

  The cat was definitely malnourished and sick, and its cries were steady and weak. Its body trembled.

  “You poor thing,” Vree said, still hesitant to touch the animal. “Would you like me to get you some milk? My cat loved milk. His name was Mr. Whiskers because he had long whiskers. But he died when lightning burned down our home.”

  The cat had quit rubbing its sore eye and now looked at Vree with its healthy yellow-green one. It still trembled and meowed pitifully.

  “I’m sorry you’re so sick. I wish there was something I could do to make you better.”

  You can do anything you put your mind to.

  She ignored the memory, turned to Lenny, and saw him stooped low and picking berries at the far edge of the patch, thirty yards away. She wanted to ask him if there was a vet on Myers Ridge, but the sound and sight of the cat running from her kept her from calling out.

  She watched the cat disappear into the field at the edge of the woods before she returned to picking a few more berries. The cat was likely a stray and would be back. Maybe her mom or grandparents would drive her and the cat to the vet. She still had her birthday money, which she could use to pay toward the visit. Maybe they would let her keep the cat when it was in better health.

  Satisfied with the amount of berries in her pan, she turned again to Lenny.

  The sound of bees buzzing fell on her and made her dizzy. She braced herself with an outstretched arm and waited for the sound to stop.

  It did.

  When her head cleared, she looked at Lenny and saw a tall creature with an orange head and blue arms and legs standing next to him, its back to her.

  Afraid to move, she watched.

  The creature stood still and watched Lenny pick berries.

  Vree swallowed the lump in her throat.

  Is that a Roualen?

  She debated whether to call out, to warn Lenny of—

  What?

  It didn’t look threatening.

  She remained motionless while she watched it observe Lenny scampering from bush to bush, putting ripe berries in his pan. Suddenly, the creature stumbled, dropped to its knees, and fell forward into some bushes. Lenny continued picking berries, apparently unaware of what had happened.

  Vree watched and waited, but the creature lay motionless face down in the blueberry patch while Lenny kept busy picking berries, moving away from it.

  The buzzing sound returned like a sudden scream for a second. Then it quieted, but not completely. It shifted to somewhere right of her. She turned in that direction and wound up looking at a pair of blue, leathery knees inches away from her face. She emitted a small screech that should have been a scream as she recoiled, both startled and frightened. She landed hard on her backside. Berrie
s from her pan scattered to her lap and the ground. She looked up at the face of the creature Lenny had called a Roualen. Her breath and the voice she tried using to call for help felt locked in her chest.

  Beady, bright red eyes like the ones she had seen across the road and downtown, looked down at her from an orange leathery face with an anteater snout for a nose and mouth, just as Lenny’s drawing had depicted.

  “Don’t hurt me,” Vree managed to say.

  The buzzing stopped. A sudden voice similar to the one downtown entered her mind.

  It sees?

  Vree swallowed. She nodded when she realized the creature had spoken to her. “Yes. I see.” Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat and caught her breath. “I see you.”

  You see?

  Vree winced from the panic in the creature’s tone.

  “Yes, I see,” she said again.

  You see Sarlic?

  “Your name is Sarlic?”

  She thought she heard it squeal as it turned and loped away from her. When she stood, she saw it turn and look over a shoulder at her before it quickened its pace and hurried through the blueberry field and into the woods where the trees and brush were thick and dark and hid the creature from her.

  She turned back to her fallen berries, scooped up the pan, and hurried to Lenny, not looking at the fallen creature on the ground along the way. She was sure it was a disgusting Roualen creature, so she gave it a wide berth, certain it would leap at her if she got close.

  “I saw your Roualens,” she said when Lenny looked up at her. “Next time, use a red crayon for its eyes instead of a black one.” She tossed down the pan, scattering more berries, and spun and headed toward the back door, leaving him watching her, a frown and confused look chiseling his face and brow.

  She was almost to the door when he caught up and stepped in front of her. He had left behind his pan of blueberries, so he had his hands up, turning the palms toward her.

  “Wait. Whaddaya mean you saw Roualens?”

  She saw his stained fingers and thought of the creatures’ blue leathery skin.

  “I’d rather not talk—”

  “But how is that possible?” he asked.

  She stepped back and sputtered, “Well, it is … and it was just there, looking down at me with two red, unhuman eyes.” She scanned the woods, looking to see if it peered out at her. The other one still lay face down in the blueberry patch.