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

by Steve Campbell

  Why didn’t it move?

  “Roualens are a myth, just like Bigfoot,” Lenny said.

  Vree looked away from the fallen Roualen and pressed her face closer to Lenny’s. “Well, someone must have seen one or you wouldn’t have a drawing of it copied from a book, now would you?” She brushed past him and went inside, letting the wooden screen door slam shut behind her.

  “Lenny’s bringing the berries,” she said to the quizzical looks she received when she passed her mom and grandmother in the bright yellow kitchen. “I’m taking a shower,” she added and held up her stained hands, “if that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine, honey,” Evelyn said from in front of the large white stove. “But you’ll want to wait until the last load of laundry is done washing. Our pump can handle only one job at a time.”

  “But what about my hands?”

  “I already have a solution for that.” Evelyn went to Vree and guided her to the kitchen’s aluminum sink. “Cornmeal, toothpaste and lemon juice works wonders on blueberry stains.” She scooped with her fingers a yellowish paste from a ceramic cereal bowl on the windowsill and rubbed it on Vree’s hands. “Just let this sit for a few minutes, then wash it off with warm water.”

  Evelyn wiped the paste from her own hands with a dishtowel and returned to the stove where silver pots of cubed potatoes, kernels of corn and leafy spinach boiled, stewed and simmered. Karrie stood to the right and stirred the corn with a wooden spoon. Her shoulders slouched and Vree knew she was exhausted after their long drive. Vree turned on the water to wash her hands so she could relieve her mother when Amy stepped from the washroom at the right of the stove and stopped at Karrie’s side.

  “I can do that, Mom,” Amy said. “You should sit and relax after our long drive. Maybe take a nap.” She embraced her mother, took the stirring spoon from her, and turned her attention to the pots on the stove. Karrie stretched and released a yawn before heading in the direction of the living room.

  “You’re a sweet girl,” Evelyn said to Amy.

  “With Dad not around, I do what I can to help.”

  Vree quietly mimicked her sister’s words, scowled out the window above the sink, and watched Lenny trudge from the blueberry patch, carrying the two pans of berries. The Roualen still lay in the patch.

  Why doesn’t it move?

  She told herself she didn’t care. It wasn’t normal that she could see these creatures when no one else could.

  She washed the paste from her hands, dried them on Evelyn’s dishtowel, and hurried and met Lenny at the screen door.

  “Not a word to anyone about what happened,” she said through the screen.

  “Not a word about what?” Jack Lybrook asked as he stepped into view and stood beside Lenny. He carried a coil of clothesline around a shoulder and held a half-eaten sandwich on wheat bread. The smell of mustard and onion wafted through the screen.

  Vree stepped away from the door. “Nothing,” she said sheepishly to her grandfather who peered in at her. “I … I spilled some of the blueberries and they got dirty.”

  “Well, your grandmother will give those berries a good cleaning and rinsing. You can count on that,” Jack said before he proceeded toward the side yard and nearest T-post of clothesline. Someone had hung a colorful display of shirts and pants to dry on the two lines there.

  As Jack began adding more line, Lenny coughed and drew Vree’s attention to him.

  “Are you gonna let me in?” he asked as he held up the two pans of blueberries.

  Vree opened the door and let him inside.

  “I mean it,” she said. She stood in front of him and blocked his way to the kitchen. “I don’t want anyone else to know about what I saw. You got it?”

  “But, Vree—”

  She glared at him.

  “Okay. I got it. Not a word.” Lenny brushed past her and entered the kitchen.

  Vree looked out at the woods where the Roualen had run to get away from her.

  “I don’t ever want to see you again,” she said.

  Chapter Five

  SARLIC WAITED INSIDE the woods until the human activity ceased outside the house. The planet’s lone sun neared the third degree of the evening sky when the Roualen went to Yetka’s lifeless body. Sarlic turned the body over, switched off the dual amber lights of Yetka’s visor, and studied the breathing tube that had protected Yetka from the planet’s poisonous diatomic gas. By outward appearances, the tube looked undamaged, though it would require a thorough inspection inside the ship.

  Sarlic made sure Yetka’s cloaking device still functioned. Then he dutifully recorded Yetka’s death into his log unit situated inside his own breathing and feeding tube. With a flick of a switch, Sarlic spoke again, broadcasting over his communications device that they had a human seer in their company.

  A murmur of concern came over the line and Sarlic waited for it to fade before broadcasting the coordinates of the seer’s dwelling and telling them to stay away. Sarlic did not mention that Yetka was dead.

  Finished with the transmission, Sarlic lifted his friend by hooking two long appendages around Yetka’s shoulders and knees, and carried the dead Roualen in his arms. Sarlic aimed toward the ship buried deep below Myers Ridge. The walk and the descent would be long and grueling on the Roualen’s aging back. Five hundred and eight earth years of waiting for his home planet to respond to the ship’s distress signal had meant Sarlic lived a hypoactive life. Very few Roualens lived more than eight hundred years. The original crew had perished long ago, procreating children who begat more children, leaving behind history logs of their ordeal on a strange planet with stranger inhabitants.

  As he headed away from the Lybrook house, Sarlic wondered about the extremely young human female who was able to see through the Roualen cloaking field. Only three humans—all of them female, but in the latter stages of life—had been able to see through the cloak. And all had caused the Roualens’ breathing tubes to malfunction. The last event had killed nearly a hundred Roualens. No one knew why the tubes failed. But Sarlic was sure the disembodied spirit of the last murderer could shed light on the matter.

  The problem, of course, would be dealing with the volatile creature. Nothing was scarier on Earth than the transcendental remains of a mentally unbalanced human.

  Perhaps the better solution was a direct approach. After disposing Yetka’s body and holding a rite of passage with Yetka’s family, Sarlic could return quietly to the house and place a grenade under the girl’s bed. The explosion would kill the girl and everyone in the house and solve the problem. But Roualen law forbade killing intelligent creatures. And despite the intermediate areas humans fell under, Roualen council had determined them intelligent nevertheless.

  Sarlic’s visor recorded his stress while he hefted Yetka’s body and hoped the girl would cause no more deaths.

  A disturbance at the narrow brook between the Lybrook house and the field where Myers Mansion once stood turned Sarlic’s gaze to the black Rottweiler that emerged from brushwood across the brook. Behind the dog stepped the ghost of the old woman who had massacred almost a hundred Roualens. She wore her seventy-year-old death clothes of short denim coveralls over a solid red T-shirt; her long legs were bare and her feet were clad in brown leather sandals.

  “Margga,” Sarlic said, turning his back to her. “Look away, enchantress. Your gaze has killed too many.”

  “How nice of you to remember me, Sarlic. If you were a spirit, I would kiss you.”

  Sarlic remained motionless. He could still breathe.

  “I see death still frightens you,” Margga said. “You’re as afraid of me now as you were when I was alive, which excites me. But you needn’t be. I was stripped of my fatal powers when I was put to death and sentenced here.”

  “Yes,” Sarlic said, facing Margga, “you are dead according to my sensors. But you come clothed and speaking. How is that possible?”

  “I just told you that I was killed and that my soul was sentenced.”
r />   Sarlic said nothing while he tried to understand the meaning of her words.

  “That means I’m a ghost, a spirit, a spooky apparition.” Margga shook her head of very short gray-black hair, slightly elevated on the top and neatly styled to the side. A fringe of mostly white hair covered her forehead. She said, “Isn’t there life after death where you come from?”

  “I was born here.”

  “Then you must know how magic works by now.”

  “I only know science.”

  “And that’s your downfall, Sarlic. Haven’t you figured that out by now? Magic is stronger than science. Always.”

  “Was it magic that you used to kill my people?” The twin lights flashed thrice on Sarlic’s visor.

  The Rottweiler growled at Sarlic and Margga grinned large white teeth at the dog.

  “His name is Blood,” she said to Sarlic. “He is my ward, one of my hellhounds, a companion for all of eternity.”

  Sarlic shifted the weight of Yetka’s body.

  “The girl will kill more of your kind,” Margga said, looking at the dead Roualen, “and yes, with magic … more powerful than mine ever was.”

  “You sound pleased with our deaths,” Sarlic said.

  “You creatures with all your sophisticated technology blame me for something I had no control over.” She shook her head again. “No. I’m not to blame for what happened.”

  “You knew you were killing us.”

  “Did I?” She batted extra-long eyelashes.

  Sarlic looked away. Behind the ghost, large rusty gates and shoulder-high brushwood nearly hid the foundation of her prison—a black cavity inside tangles of weeds and vines that had supplanted the once beautiful bluegrass yard.

  “Return to your incarceration, witch, and leave me to tend to matters at hand.”

  “And risk you trying to kill the girl as you tried killing me with those useless grenades?” Margga pouted light pink lips. “Like I said, you’re dealing with magic. You need magic to defeat magic.”

  “I would rather take my chance with a grenade.”

  “You would put yourself on trial with your people again for trying to kill a human? And a child, no less.” She shook her head. “No. You need me. But my spirit is only here until midnight. After that, I’m gone for another year.”

  Sarlic’s visor flashed again. “I do not understand.”

  “Tonight marks another anniversary of my crimes against Reginald and Cathleen Myers and the day of my death. I am sentenced to return here on this day and apologize to them. But I never will. I abuse their spirits and curse their family. I will see their lineage ended.”

  “I do not understand your vengeance.”

  “I have my reasons, just as you have yours for wanting the girl dead. But she is powerful.” Her chocolate eyes widened. The stare from them seemed to penetrate Sarlic’s visor. “If I had my spells, I could lure the girl to step onto this property and cast a powerful death spell on her. But I need your help, Roualen. I cannot leave this property. Therefore, I need you to find my book of spells and bring it to me before midnight. Then, both of our problems will be solved.”

  Sarlic looked down at Yetka. “I need to bury my friend. Our ritual lasts for three day—”

  “You would allow the girl to live another year? How many more of your kind will die before you realize you need me and my magic to stop her?”

  Sarlic mulled her offer. Margga had always been a seductress when she was alive, wanting things her way, and always for selfish reasons. And when she discovered she could kill a Roualen by shutting down its breathing apparatus with her mind, she never stopped until the powers that govern death for her kind finally stopped her.

  “Why do you care if I or any of my people live?” Sarlic asked.

  Margga drew down the corners of her mouth. “I am destined to remain trapped to this hellish death for all of time, so let’s just say it lightens my heart to know I can have fun saving you Roualens from another bout of destruction. Besides, the witch who has killed your friend has many years to live and become much more powerful. Is that the future you want for you and your people?”

  Sarlic’s visor blinked. The dead witch presented a good argument about the girl.

  “Where can I find your book of spells, Margga?”

  Margga puffed out peach colored cheeks. Sarlic cocked his head while his visor’s two red lights flashed rapidly, recording his puzzlement.

  Margga exhaled and said, “That’s the rub. It was in this house when I died.”

  “You breathe, yet you have no reason to do so. Why?”

  Margga scowled at Sarlic. “Pay attention, please. This is important.”

  “But I am very curious. I have never observed this aspect of human death before. There is no need for your lungs to take in your planet’s atmosphere.”

  “It’s reflex,” Margga said, “though I don’t do it often.” She pointed at the house, at the room that was Jack and Evelyn’s upstairs bedroom. Sarlic’s visor lights stopped flashing. “Focus on what I’m telling you, Roualen. The people who bought the house after I died likely moved the spell book. But I sense it is still there, upstairs, probably packed in a box in someone’s closet, or in a trunk, perhaps in the attic. You must go there, find the book, and bring it to me.”

  “Before midnight.”

  “Yes.” She ran a thumb across her throat.

  “I do not understand,” Sarlic said. “What will happen?”

  “The girl will die.”

  “And be like you are now?”

  “No. Her death will be permanent as long as I have my spells.” She waved a hand in front of Sarlic’s visor. “Listen. Every year Reginald’s ghost and the shadows of his two dogs return here to remind me of the crimes I committed. And Blood chases those stupid mutts around for fun.” She grinned at her hellhound who seemed to grin back. “Along with that quidnunc Cathleen who returns to haunt me with her screams while she relives falling to her death at the cliffs, it’s all quite spectacular to the mortals around here. But if I had my spells, I could end this sideshow once and for all.”

  “Very well,” Sarlic said, hefting Yetka again. “I will put Yetka’s body in a maintenance chamber and return in what you call twice hours.”

  “You mean two hours.”

  “Two hours. Yes.”

  “Let the fun begin,” Margga said to Blood, looking pleased as Sarlic left them at the edge of the brook that divided the two properties.

  Chapter Six

  WITH EVERYONE BUSY at the back of the house, Vree excused herself quietly from that area and sat on the front porch swing. The air tasted sweet and was warm on her tongue as she rocked and observed a dark blue house surrounded by evergreen hedges two hundred yards away and across the road.

  Lenny entered the porch from the living room and stood to the side of the swing. He pointed at the house. “My dad and sisters and I live there,” he said. “My Gam Gam owned that house and this one until she died and willed them both to my dad.”

  Vree sighed and halted the swing. “Why are you following me?” she asked.

  “It wasn’t intentional. I kept getting in the way inside the kitchen, so I left. But I didn’t wanna be by myself.”

  “So it was intentional.”

  Lenny shrugged. “Is it okay if I sit with you?” he asked.

  Vree scooted over. “I notice you never talk about your mom,” she said.

  As he sat, the wistful look returned for a moment. He shrugged and said, “She died.”

  Vree frowned at her decision to be nosey. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Everyone has something crappy in their lives to deal with. It’s just nice to have friends around when we do.” Lenny stood up and took two sticks of gum in aluminum foil from a back pocket.

  Vree accepted one of the pieces of Juicy Fruit when he sat down closer to her. They chewed in silence until she apologized for her behavior at the back door.

  “Totally my fault,” Lenny said. “
I got overly excited when you told me you saw a Roualen. The most I’ve ever seen is my great-grandfather’s ghost when…” Lenny’s voice trailed off.

  He leaned forward, put his forearms across his knees, and stared at the dark blue house. His muscular back and shoulders seemed to harden while he stared.

  Lost in a bad memory, Vree thought.

  “I hate her,” Lenny said, his voice low and growling. He sat up straight and said, “Sorry. This time of year puts me in a bad mood.”

  Vree peered at the side of Lenny’s face, his clenched jaw, and said, “Birthday blues?”

  Lenny sighed. Then he chewed his gum and looked thoughtful. “You’re gonna find out about the Night of the Hellhounds sooner or later, so I may as well tell you a few things.”

  Vree raised an eyebrow. “Night of the Hellhounds?”

  “That’s what some of the locals call it. They’re the ones who’ve seen ghost dogs or heard stories about them running around at the property behind us.”

  Vree turned to look at the property behind them. She changed her mind when Lenny began swinging the swing by pushing his feet off the porch floor.

  “It began a long time ago, when my great-grandparents mysteriously died,” Lenny said. “My great-grandfather, Reginald Myers, was a famous Broadway playwright and Hollywood screenwriter. He and his wife lived in a big Victorian house at the property next door, before my Gumpa and Gam Gam had it razed.” Lenny put an arm across the back of the swing and behind Vree. She smiled at his gesture. He stopped swinging the swing, fixed his gaze ahead again, and said, “Gam Gam claimed she destroyed the house because she found my great-grandfather and his two hunting dogs frozen inside the house on a sweltering July evening. She also said she found my great-grandmother dead at the bottom of the cliffs on Myers Ridge, at a place called Widow’s Ravine. A witch named Margga killed them.

  “Since then, my great-grandfather’s ghost returns on this night. So do the ghosts of his two hunting dogs. But the creepy part is people have seen a third dog—sometimes a fourth and more—all of them black and with red eyes. Gam Gam called them Margga’s hellhounds and told me to always stay away from them.”

  Lenny turned and looked at Vree. She saw him studying her, his gaze serious. He waited for a response, she knew, but she found it difficult to speak or move. Her time spent with Lenny got weirder and weirder.