The Magdalena Curse

by F. G. Cottam

  Peterson took out his knife and tore a long rent with it in the fabric in front of them. He pulled open the rip and gestured for Hunter to step beyond him inside. Hunter looked and saw that the tear revealed a blackness even inkier than the fabric that surrounded it. It was as though the interior of the canvas cathedral absorbed and swallowed light. He swallowed, wondering what they had blundered into, knowing he had no choice but to keep going on. He could smell the sour secretion of fear on the sweating Peterson. He could smell its sharpness on himself. But there was a pervasive odour, gathering in strength all around the compound. It was the corrupt stench of decomposition. It brought to his mind images of defiled and looted crypts and midnight resurrection men. He felt momentarily less like a soldier than someone colluding in desecration.

  ‘Go on,’ Peterson said, from behind him. There was raw urgency in the Canadian’s voice. They struggled through the tear in the fabric of their new, dark world.

  Silence replaced the sound of martial carnage outside. It was completely quiet in the narrow, fabric corridor in which the two men found themselves groping. Orientation was almost impossible and as their eyes adjusted to the gloom, by the pinprick beam of Peterson’s tiny flashlight, all they could logically do was aim for the centre of the structure they had breached. It was very difficult. A maze of cloth corridors had been stitched into the marquee. They were narrow and claustrophobic. But their walls were taut, which was a mercy. Hunter imagined them slackening, their black canvas closing in and collapsing, the oily burden becoming flaccid and descending upon them with its silent, suffocating weight. He was not generally prey to such thoughts. Fear and defeatism were strangers to him and he had never known a moment’s panic in his life. It was as though these feelings were a contagion he was picking up from the very fabric of the place he was in. He could not see the face of his comrade in arms. But he would have bet Peterson was prey to feelings at that moment identical to his. You had to fight the infection, he thought. It could unman you and leave you helpless without a strong and sustained effort of will.

  They emerged eventually into a central chamber. It seemed vast, after the confinement of their maze of cloth corridors. Peterson chambered a round. It was an encouraging sound, a reminder of the Canadian’s bravery and belligerence and Hunter was glad of it. The man had saved his life, he realised then. But the thought was brief as what lay in front of them clarified in Hunter’s sight and mind.

  The scene was candlelit. The light in the chamber was feeble and haphazard, the candle flames seeming to struggle to find the necessary air to feed their flickering life. Pools of illumination dabbed and spat at a figure at the centre of things. She was middle-aged and enormously fat. She was floridly dressed and heavily bejewelled. The light, from a distance, was not strong enough to see her clearly by. It was as though she waxed and waned in the light with the flickering life of the candle flames. She sat at a card table, Hunter saw, as he and Peterson approached. The cards on the table were dull tablets of colour. The game had been set for two players. There was a second chair, more accurately a throne, opposite the one the fat woman occupied. But it was empty.

  Spacious tapestries were draped on hanging frames above the place at which the woman sat. Some of these showed figures. Some showed geometric shapes. The figures were neither human nor animal but at some subtle and unnerving stage in between. They had uneasy expressions. To Hunter’s eyes, their features combined the cunning found in humankind with the primal malevolence of predatory beasts. The abstract tapestries were more disconcerting, he thought. It was as though in them, geometry, its laws and logic, was somehow undermined. They described sly, anarchic angles and structures. They mocked reason. They defied proof. He thought that you might go mad in their intricate study. Above them, remote on the black concave ceiling of the chamber, a constellation had been painted. But it was a constellation true to no night vista from the Earth. It was alienating, this strange nightscape. It made him feel abject light years away from home and what he knew and understood.

  The seated woman turned her head towards Hunter. She wore a green satin turban shaped in complex folds. He knew with certainty that beneath it, she was bald. She opened her mouth abruptly, as if in a yawn so sudden it had surprised no one more than its originator. ‘There is something singularly charming about the river at that particular point, Captain,’ she said. She spoke in a high, clear voice and her accent was English and refined. ‘I can quite see why you chose it, with the curve and shimmer of the water towards the pale arches of the bridge. There is the verdant green of the island. There is the promise of the fun to come under elegant tents in the splash of the summer sun. It’s a lovely spot. There might be no lovelier along the entire length of the Thames. It’s a wonderful location for a sacrament and celebration. Magical, one might say. I know you agree.’ Her mouth snapped abruptly shut. Then she smiled. And the smile was the terrible invitation to share some secret joke.

  ‘What’s the old bitch talking about, Captain?’ Peterson said. He kept his voice deliberately low. ‘Sounds like a fucking travelogue.’

  ‘She’s just described the place where my wedding reception was held a month ago,’ Hunter said. He was aware of being so dry-mouthed that his own voice sounded shrill, like one belonging to someone else entirely.

  ‘Oh, Jesus,’ Peterson said.

  The woman turned to Peterson. Hunter thought it had grown darker in there, the light even further diminished. The painted constellation above them grew remote, as though they orbited through space away from it. The figures on the tapestries were reduced to shadowy spectres. There was a glow to the old woman’s eyes that the candlelight could not explain or justify. This glimmer looked to Hunter like the external manifestation of some dark internal energy. He thought the vapid green glow in her eyes was generated by thought. She was a woman, if she was a woman, capable of willing things. Hunter had an instinct for danger honed over years of exposure to the risk of violent death. His hand was greasy with fear when he placed his palm over the butt of his sidearm. The metal felt cold and gnarled and familiar and not at all comforting. On the table, the cards in front of the woman began to curl and then to smoke and smoulder with a harsh stink.

  ‘You should not have interrupted our game,’ the woman said.

  Peterson said, ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I am Miss Hall. That’s immaterial. But you have gravely offended my hostess, Mrs Mallory. And that is not immaterial at all. Goodness me, no. It is something you will greatly regret.’

  On the other side of the chamber, beyond where Miss Hall sat enthroned, there was a whimper of noise. Hunter pulled his pistol free and released the safety. With the weapon in both hands, and giving Miss Hall a wide and cautious berth, he jogged towards the source of the sound. It was a prone figure in battle fatigues. It was Rodriguez. Blood was smeared around the lower half of his face. Gore congealed in his moustache. He was unconscious and he was missing his hands. His hands had been severed raggedly at the wrists. His wristwatch, the strap still buckled, lay beside him on the floor.

  ‘Get over here,’ Hunter screamed at Peterson. ‘Morphine, field dressings. Do you have anything we can use to bind his wrists, stop the bleeding?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Peterson said. He dropped to his knees, spilled items of medical kit from the pouches on his belt. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘One of the dogs,’ Hunter said. ‘A pack of them, maybe.’ He had cut a length from one of his bootlaces and was using it as a tourniquet, binding one of the Major’s wrists.

  ‘Not a dog,’ Miss Hall said, from her throne beside the card table away behind them. ‘Mrs Mallory was most put out when your commander interrupted our game. I’ve never seen her so angry. She said he would never play the piano with his daughter again. And nor will he. That was his chastisement. She made him eat his hands.’

  ‘Fuck this,’ Peterson said. He got to his feet picking his rifle from the floor where he’d put it to tend to Rodriguez. He turned and aimed it at the w
oman who termed herself Miss Hall. Hunter remembered he already had a round in the barrel.

  ‘No,’ he said. He reached and pushed the point of the weapon towards the floor.

  ‘How the fuck can she know that stuff about the major and his daughter?’ Peterson said. He was wide-eyed, hyperventilating, on the point of losing control completely. ‘How can she possibly know?’

  ‘Same way she knows about my wedding,’ Hunter said. ‘Let’s all try to live through this, Peterson.’

  ‘Point that weapon at me again, young man, and I will have you turn it on yourself,’ Miss Hall said to Peterson. Her eyes switched between them. ‘The fault lies entirely with you. You have come here without invitation. You arrived with hostile intent. You have sabotaged something it took me years to arrange. Be thankful you were not here to experience Mrs Mallory and her wrath. I am sorry about your commander. But his chastisement was not my doing. Leave before I change my mind about allowing you to do so.’

  Hunter said, ‘Where is Mrs Mallory now?’

  Miss Hall grinned at him. Her teeth were large and yellow and too plentiful for her mouth. With a meaty shuffle of enormous thighs, she settled deeper into her seat. ‘You would not wish to encounter Mrs Mallory,’ she said. ‘Not with your marriage bed barely slept in, you wouldn’t, young man.’

  Hunter had bound both of Rodriguez’ wrists, tightly, with his makeshift bootlace tourniquets. Either the ties or shock had staunched the bleeding. Bone protruded white in candlelight from the Major’s ragged wounds. He was deeply unconscious. Peterson had pumped two ampoules of morphine into him. Now, the big Canadian put Rodriguez over his shoulder. He handed Hunter his rifle. Hunter had lost his own rifle when the dog had felled him outside. Rearmed, he began to look around for an exit, for an escape route out of the waking nightmare they had blundered into.

  From the centre of the room, Miss Hall exhaled a sigh of exasperation. ‘You are quite safe. Mrs Mallory left hours ago. Her retinue and their canine charges are long gone.’

  ‘Hours ago?’ Peterson frowned. He hefted the burden of Rodriguez on his shoulder. ‘That can’t be right.’

  ‘You were in the canvas labyrinth for longer than you suppose, Captain. That was Mrs Mallory’s doing. She wanted to take her time over the chastisement of your commander. You are quite safe to go outside and return to your camp. The immediate danger has passed.’

  Hunter saw that there was a sort of door over in the remote wall of the marquee to the rear of where Miss Hall was sitting. Narrow chinks of daylight defined it subtly in a tall rectangle in the pervading gloom. Out there, dawn had come. He pointed the exit out to Peterson without a word and, cautiously, they began to edge towards it. Miss Hall indulged her exasperated sigh again.

  ‘Come here, Captain Hunter,’ she said.

  Even with Peterson’s assault rifle in his right hand, he thought it wise to obey her. As he got close to her, he began to smell the odour she gave off. It was sour and sharp, like rancid butter, he thought. The closer he got, the stronger it became. It was not like rancid butter. It was worse. It was like some rich, buttery cake spoiled by the intensity of heat and damp. It was all he could do not to retch. He had to overcome revulsion to get close.

  ‘No, Captain,’ she said with a yellow smile. ‘You are right. I was never pretty. Take off your tunic.’

  It was only when he did so that he realised his left arm was hanging, throbbing at his side. The adrenaline that had enabled him to help dress the Major’s wounds was entirely spent. He struggled out of his battle dress and saw that his arm, from elbow to wrist, was a suppurating mess of swelling and puncture wounds. The flesh was yellow and puffy and the pain from the bite intensifying all the time. He did not think they had any penicillin back at their makeshift camp. They had no antibiotics. The bite, he knew, was infectious.

  There were scarves of silk and satin coiled under Miss Hall’s whey-coloured double chin. She unwound one of these. ‘Give me your arm.’

  With effort, Hunter did so. He was very close to her. She wrapped the lower half of his extended limb in satin. She muttered something in a language he knew he had never heard spoken before. She closed her eyes and opened them again and expelled a plump, fetid breath. ‘There,’ she said. She let the scarf slip, sticky with blood and puss, to the floor. ‘You have proof that I am more good than bad, Captain Hunter. My scarf is ruined. But your arm will be fully recovered in an hour or so.’

  He examined his arm. The limb looked ripe for amputation and the pain had not receded in the slightest. ‘A whole hour?’ he said.

  Her expression became petulant. ‘Yes. I cannot work miracles.’

  Hunter looked back towards where Peterson patiently bore the weight of their commander.

  ‘I can do nothing for Major Rodriguez. Even if I could, I would not dare undo what Mrs Mallory has done. She is much more bad than good, you see. I would not wish to cross her.’

  ‘Then thank you. I’m grateful for what you have done.’

  Hunter made to leave and then hesitated.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There were some tourists in this region a few weeks ago.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘They vanished.’

  Miss Hall shifted on her throne. ‘Your travellers were food for her dogs. No more. As I have told you, Mrs Mallory is much more bad than good.’

  There was no sign of their men in the compound grounds in the daylight beyond the marquee. There was no sign of them either when they got back to their camp in the ravine two miles to the north. They made the most comfortable bed they could for Rodriguez in the tent that had been their command post. Hunter thought about their plan of attack. He thought about their shared embrace of comradeship. It wasn’t twenty-four hours since their airy philosophising about cocaine cartels and their impact in the world, and the moral implications of armed forces opposing them. As Peterson busied himself brewing coffee, Hunter thought about the letter he had written his new wife in the event that he might not return from battle. The more he thought it over, the less anything of what he had just experienced had to do with soldiering. He had known tenacious enemies in the field, but he had never before fought men who could not be killed. Of all things, it reminded him of Beowulf, of the sorcery of the epic poem he’d read in translation, of the contents of the slim volume signed by Seamus Heaney occupying a treasured spot on his bookshelf back at home. His arm had stopped hurting, he realised. He rubbed it, knowing it had healed and that the power used to heal it confounded nature.

  ‘What happened to us?’ he said to Peterson, when Peterson proffered a mug of coffee from the pot he’d just brewed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Peterson said, on the ground, on his haunches, staring at nothing. He was like that for so long that Hunter thought he would offer nothing more. Then he said, ‘Hypnotic suggestion might have been a part of it.’

  Hunter glanced briefly towards the little tent. ‘What hypnotist possesses the power to make you consume your own hands?’

  Peterson grimaced and he turned and looked Hunter full in the face. ‘I’m as clueless as you are, pal. I’ve had guys I’ve rated very seriously tell me they’ve been up close and personal with UFOs.’

  ‘We all have,’ Hunter said.

  ‘Unless we were set up, unless it was some kind of Pentagon-inspired behavioural experiment, then I honestly haven’t a fucking clue.’

  Hunter blinked up towards the blue sky. The birds were very loud. It was a vivid day, even beautiful, depending on your frame of mind. ‘Rodriguez is going to die, isn’t he?’

  ‘We haven’t the drugs to treat him even if we had the know-how,’ Peterson said. ‘This is an operation so covert we don’t have any comms equipment at all. The plan is to walk back to a base over the border in Brazil. It’s fifty miles, give or take. He’s running a high fever. I checked on him just now. Both wounds are infected, unsurprisingly, given how they were inflicted. We don’t even know how much blood he lost. I’d estimate more than he could afford to.
So, yeah, I’d say the Major’s chances of survival are slim.’

  ‘Unless we carry him down to Magdalena,’ Hunter said, ‘which is what we should have done in the first place.’

  It meant blowing their non-existent cover. It meant compromising themselves completely and exposing their failed mission to an always curious world. But what Peterson thought of the suggestion, Hunter never discovered, because at that moment, Major Rodriguez emerged from unconsciousness and cried out aloud to them.

  The air in the small tent was suffocating, gangrenous. Rodriguez was sweating and shivering and porcelain pale. They had cleaned the blood from his face. They had bound his wrists to his thighs for fear that he might raise them and, unprepared for it, see the damage done.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, when they entered the tent and squatted at his side. ‘I cannot feel my hands. I cannot feel them at all.’

  ‘What do you remember, Sir?’ Peterson said, gently. He trickled water into the Major’s mouth from the bottle taken from his belt.

  Rodriguez swallowed water and laughed. ‘A dream,’ he said. ‘An hallucination. I happened on two witches conferring and one of them cursed me. She cursed us all. She did so in a Coptic dialect so ancient I only half understood it. But most of it I got.’

  ‘I’d be disappointed if you hadn’t,’ Hunter said. ‘With languages, Sir, you have a prodigious gift.’

  ‘I can’t feel my hands, Captain Hunter. Why is that?’

  ‘It’s just the morphine, Major. It’s numbness only. Tell us about the curse.’

  Rodriguez frowned, recollecting. His breath was coming only in shallow gasps. It was an effort for him. He was not wholly aware. That was a blessing. He was unaware in the cramped tent of the rising stink of his own corruption. ‘She said I would not sit at the piano and help teach my daughter to play again. She said you, Peterson, would avoid the sea or pay for the pleasure it gives you with your life.’

  ‘And me?’