The Gentling Box

by Lisa Mannetti

  “Oh, Lenore,” I whispered, but there was no answer. She made no movement, no sound, her breathing was too low for me to hear. “Lenore, don’t leave us.” I squeezed her hand, there was no response. I touched her hair very lightly, and it was then I saw the first thin welt—like the blackened runner of some insidious weed—creeping over her scalp. Realization sliced through me like a knifeblade. The poison was invading her brain, she wasn’t sleeping, she was in a stupor.

  I was only dimly aware of the sound of Mimi shutting the door and moving down the outer steps.

  ***

  I sat up and looked through the window alongside my bed. I heard the bare tree limbs click against the pane, the wind rose higher, and I felt cold air swirling over the thin sill. Lenore was crying on the other side of the glass. “Don’t leave me,” she sobbed. “Please don’t leave me.”

  Her dark hair whipped over her face, merging with the network of black welts. Her nightgown billowed around her legs. Rising from the fanned out hem of the white dress—as if it had a life of its own—was the blurred shape of a second nightgown; then Mimi’s small face appeared over Lenore’s shoulder. She stepped sideways at the same time Zahara emerged from behind Lenore’s opposite shoulder. The three of them stood in a ragged line, wringing their hands and keening. Their eyes were dark with pain, their mouths open as they wailed, the voices lost in the whine of the wind.

  I caught a movement: Just above their heads, Anyeta’s disembodied face floated like a ball. There was something greedy, watchful in her stare. Her obsidian eyes had a dull, piggy look, her teeth were broken, stained with blood. She’s been eating human flesh, I thought wildly. She’s grown fat on it. I felt a desperate surge of fear. The old sorceress began to laugh, and the sound was a rough noise like the hideous grut of teeth crunching down on broken glass.

  Lenore suddenly shrieked and ran toward me, her left fist shattering the window. I saw the sparkling shards toss and dance over my bed. Lenore’s bloody hand fumbled at the latch, her face as sly as Anyeta’s. My belly shriveled in a clutch of icy terror, a powerful spasm jolted through me, and I jerked awake all at once.

  My forehead was beaded with droplets of sweat, I was sitting in a straight chair next to the cot in Zahara’s wagon, but in the eerie way dreams blend with reality, I heard Lenore moaning.

  I shot to my feet, leaned across the bed. Her eyes were closed, but now I saw she was grinding her teeth and moving her head from side to side. Hesitating, I stretched my hand out, and I heard her whispering, “Papa.”

  “She’s much better this morning,” Zahara said, at the same time her hand fell lightly on my elbow and made me jump.

  “How did you get in here?” I said, confused and shaken. I took a step sideways, collected myself. “I mean, when did you come in?”

  She shrugged. “A few minutes ago. You were sleeping. I gave Lenore a glass of water, and she went back to sleep—”

  “Water—”

  Zahara nodded. “She said the pain was subsiding. I don’t think she’ll have any permanent scars. At her age, burns heal quickly.”

  “Burns,” I repeated, suddenly prodded by the memory of fire the others had seen in our wagon.

  “Lots of them are fading, and most of them aren’t any worse than sunburn.” She took hold of one of Lenore’s arms and held it up.

  I blinked. The skin was unmarked except for a few dark streaks and reddish patches. I drew the covers back. There were some blistery spots that someone had spread with a greasy ointment, but nothing like the nightmare map of oozing black welts.

  Lenore suddenly opened her eyes and sat up. “Can I have more water, Auntie?”

  “Of course, darling. Here.” Zahara reached for a glass on the nightstand. “This is still good and cold.” Zahara sat on the edge of the bed, and held the copper tumbler to Lenore’s mouth. “Are you hungry yet?”

  Lenore shook her head, wiped the droplets from her lips, and lay back. “No,” she yawned, “just tired.” She closed her eyes.

  I couldn’t make sense of it. I paced to the window at the other end of the room, fingered aside a flowered curtain, staring out. The room was hot, stuffy.

  “What’s wrong, Imre?” Zahara’s low voice was close behind me.

  I lit a cigarette, but Zahara put her hand out to stop me. “No, don’t. The smoke will just irritate her lungs more.” I heard Lenore cough weakly as if in confirmation, and I fanned the smoke, pinched out the cigarette end. I found myself staring hard at Zahara, and her eyes met mine.

  “Something’s wrong, what is it?” she asked.

  I wanted a cigarette worse than before but shoved the craving aside. I sat at a small square table and kneaded my forehead. I didn’t know how to explain what I’d seen, it sounded stupid, crazy. “There’s something so peculiar—so bizarre happening.” I paused. “But if I tell you, you’ll laugh.”

  “No, I won’t.” Her onyx eyes were soft, understanding, and she made it easy for me to talk. “What happened in Anyeta’s caravan?”

  “That’s part of it,” I whispered, “but there’s more.” I told her about the locust-like insect, the hideous welts covering Lenore’s flesh.

  “Joseph,” she nodded.

  “Mimi saw him in the old woman’s caravan, but I didn’t, I—” I stopped, ashamed to say I thought I’d seen her. “We heard him raise the old woman from the dead.” I shuddered.

  “It’s part of the power; they say the animated corpse can prophesy.” She leaned across the table, her white hand clutched my arm. “He’ll kill you—all of you. Take your caravan and flee, while there’s still time.” Her eyes flashed. “Where’s Mimi?” she asked suddenly.

  “She—” I bit my lip.

  “She hasn’t gone to him? To Joseph?” I felt Zahara’s nails digging through the fabric of my jacket. I shook my head. “Tell me!” she whispered fiercely, shaking my arm.

  “She’s gone to the caravan to claim it herself.”

  I saw the color drain from Zahara’s face. Her skin had an ashy pallor, her mouth was tight. Her voice came out sluggishly. “Claim it?” she breathed. “Oh no, Imre, no.” She hugged her arms across her body, and rocked back and forth on the edge of the chair. “Do you know what that means?”

  I spluttered helplessly. Images of a rite with burning candles, incantations and mutterings flitted through my head. I recalled Mimi saying she’d used the dead man’s red coffin string to charm me, saw her miming how she sat winding its knotted length round and round her slim wrist—

  Zahara stopped moving. “You don’t know what she’s going to do, do you?”

  “She wants to save Lenore,” I said, absently tugging at my collar and glancing at the glowing woodstove.

  Zahara stood up, pushing her chair away. “Oh Christ, c’mon,” she said, and yanked me to my feet.

  I looked dumbly toward Lenore, then back at Zahara.

  “Your daughter’s fine, we have to save your wife,” she said.

  “Save her?” I muttered. It was so hot, I thought, it was hard to concentrate.

  “Yes, save her—” Zahara said, and I saw her mouth moving, but I couldn’t seem to hear what she was saying.

  My mind went numb, I was rooted to the spot. I felt Zahara’s hands shoving the center of my back, urging me toward the door. My legs felt wooden, unconnected to my body as she pushed me along. She was talking, explaining, her voice was like the huge swelling roar of a crowd in my ear. Just outside the caravan she suddenly stopped, faced me and put her hands on her hips.

  “Imre, listen to me,” she said.

  I nodded. It was much cooler outside. The wind ruffled, then lifted a dark sheaf of her hair. Her red lips began to move, and this time I caught her voice over the clamor, but I stood mute, shaking my head because what she was saying couldn’t be true. I looked down at the bent, autumn-sere blades of grass, and suddenly she was throttling my shoulders, forcing me to hear, and the panic in her voice rumbled through me:

  “Imre,” she screamed, “w
hen your wife claims it, she’s going to cut her own arm off!”

  In my mind I heard the sound of shattering glass, saw the small bloody fingers reaching for me. The dream images of Lenore blurred and became Mimi and roiled in my brain.

  When I looked up Zahara was racing through the tall grass toward Anyeta’s caravan, and I followed.

  -13-

  “She’s locked the door!” Zahara shouted. From inside the old woman’s caravan came the sound of thick rhythmic pounding thuds. I thought of the copper box lodged in the ceiling: Mimi was shattering the thin roof to get at it. There was the rapid whickering of wood being driven through the air, the huge hollow crash!

  We screamed her name over and over. I lunged against the door. Mimi must have barricaded it. We pushed and heaved together. It was useless. We could not budge the thick heavy wood.

  Zahara ran around one side of the wagon, and I heard her groan with frustration. “She’s latched the shutters over the windows,” Zahara cried, trying to insert her fingers in a narrow crack, then tugging so hard her face went red with the effort. With the shutters closed, I saw that the surface of the yellow caravan was smooth, solid, impenetrable.

  “It’s no good, leave off,” I shouted to her.

  Inside, the battering noise stopped. There was a short sharp gasp. The chilling cadence of a high wild laughter broke over me like a cold wave. The downy hairs rose along the back of my neck, my flesh chilled, broke out in mottled rows of goosebumps.

  I felt a sharp pull. Zahara was yanking the hem of my coat, and it seemed to me in a flash we were underneath the wagon, lying on our backs close to an old abandoned hen coop and staring wide-eyed through the cracks in those ancient, warped floorboards.

  My eyes adjusted to the deep gloom within the caravan. Mimi had dragged a table into the center of the room, climbed on it maybe to catch the glass-topped box as it dropped into her arms. One of the sheared-off bedposts lay tossed aside, and I thought that was what she’d used to smash the gaping hole in the ceiling.

  I could hear her walking back and forth, just out of sight. Her feet were thumping the floor, her skirts trailing. She was whispering. I closed my eyes, listened to Zahara’s rapid breathing close by, smelled the dry rot and the sharp tang of guano from the crumbling hen coop just beyond my head.

  The footsteps suddenly ceased. I held my breath. I heard the rough grating rasp of something being dragged over the planks, the barely audible creak of an old hinge. Was she looking at the foul charm? Waiting? For whom? Nothing happened for what seemed a long time, and then abruptly the sharp clatter of a belt buckle struck the boards just over my feet. My eyes flew open.

  I craned my neck. Mimi dropped her skirt, slowly removed her blouse. She skimmed a chemise over her head; the wispy fabric made a low susurration in the dead silence of that room.

  I strained, watching, scarcely aware of the pull of tendons in my neck and shoulders, and then in the most terrible dream-like slowness, she got on her bare knees, and through the dark cracks I saw her lips draw back, saw her grit her teeth. The back of her hand lay still against the floor. She squeezed her eyes shut. A whine came out of her throat.

  There was the high silver flash of a glinting blade, a heavy chopping sound: the splintering of bone and muscle and wood. The blood flew up in a bright arcing spray, and I felt it dripping through those old boards, spattering my legs, my chest, and I wanted to scream, I told myself to scream, but my voice was locked inside my throat. I opened my mouth, but there was nothing, Christ there was nothing.

  I cringed at the sharp squeal of metal being wrenched from the wooden floor. The blade rose up. And fell. Again.

  The blood dripped and ran, dripped and ran, and I was suddenly aware of the thick pit-patter of liquid striking skin. Zahara’s cheek was red, drenched. My wife’s blood was glistening wetly on Zahara’s face, her chin, in her hair. Zahara curled up, turned aside. Her shoulders heaved and I heard the thin sound of violent retching. The smell of vomit mingled with rotting wood, sweet grass, hot blood.

  Above me, Mimi’s voice was empty—an echo against damp stones in a ruined crypt:

  “I claim it, I have given of myself, and I claim the power of the hand of the dead.”

  In nightmare sequence I saw the ends of ragged flesh, the raw wet knob of bone. The whitened fingers of the severed limb twitched slowly, an idiot crab that would not walk. Mimi’s bloody heels skidded over the planks. I glimpsed the backs of her thin white calves. And, as she quickly passed over my head I saw—in the place where her pretty hand had been—the crude end of the jutting stump.

  She hastily tied it up with the chemise. The white cloth bloomed with dark red blots. Shivering, I shut my eyes at last. My mind gibbered, spinning the same words over and over. I don’t think I’ll ever get warm again. No, I’ll never be warm. Never.

  I heard Zahara turn toward me, sobbing, “No, no, no,” and I felt her bury her head against my chest.

  -14-

  “Listen,” I whispered to Zahara. Overhead I heard the sound of swift footsteps, of liquid being splashed with abandon in the corners of the caravan. The sharp reek of kerosene stung my nostrils. “Christ, she’s going to burn it!” I began to push Zahara, urging her to hurry. We squirmed from under the wagon, got to our feet, bolted like fear-maddened jackrabbits, then hunkered down in the tall grass.

  I heard the huge whump! of air being sucked away in one tremendous gulp. Towering flames shot through the roof at the same time the caravan door—under its massive carved lintel of twisted leaves and vines—crashed open. Mimi began to run, zig-zagging through the clearing.

  Zahara cowered more deeply against the ground, holding one arm up to shield her face from the fierce heat. The wagon burned at a furious rate. One end suddenly collapsed, and I saw the brilliant yellow sparks fly up against a column of black smoke.

  I stood up, shouting over the roar of the fire. “Mimi,” I screamed. A cape fluttered behind her racing form. I could see that her left hand was somehow intact, her arm still wet with sticky runnels of blood. She never looked back, but ran on and on toward our wagon.

  “Mimi,” I moaned, a lump burned in my throat, and I felt the terrible sadness of despair welling up inside me. “Please,” I begged, “please.” She didn’t hear me. It was too late, she’d found and claimed her mother’s power. And there was nothing to be done, no way to turn back. Defeated, I sat suddenly, heavily in the grass and watched my wife’s lunatic flight.

  Jouncing in her frail arms—sunlight arrowing from the surface in vicious, glaring darts—was the shimmering rectangle of the copper box with the glass top.

  Part 2

  _____________________________________

  Zahara

  For I thought the dead had peace, but it is not so.

  —Tennyson

  -15-

  It was close to sunset. Zahara and I had gone for a grim silent walk after Mimi left. I sat on the bank of a muddy brook, watching the drifting sticks I’d thrown twist and spin downstream. She seemed to sense my mood—what little she’d said was spoken quietly. After a long while I got up, brushing grass from my trousers, and we slowly walked back toward the clearing.

  Now from a distance I saw the gypsies begin to stream from their caravans like bats on the wing in the dying light. One by one they stopped, fastening on the sight of Anyeta’s smoldering caravan. A young man ran through the clearing toward Vaclav’s oversized wagon and pounded frantically at the leader’s door.

  The gathering gypsies ringed the blackened corpse of the caravan. I heard them muttering, saw an old woman cross herself then draw a fringed shawl tightly over her frail shoulders. Mimi and Lenore joined the throng. I began to move ahead and felt Zahara’s hand blocking me, her palm brushing my stomach lightly.

  “Stay back,” she whispered. “Mimi’s healed herself and the child—there may be those who are suspicious of your wife. Wait.”

  I saw a hook-nosed man named Old Feri grimace and suddenly spit through his gnarle
d fingers, and it occurred to me that Zahara might be right—there was an ugly mood in the air. I watched through the thin scrim of trees, keeping one eye on Mimi and Lenore.

  Vaclav was suddenly among his people, his big shoulders bulled this way and that through the crowd. His voice boomed, “Christ has sent us a sign!” He pointed at the glowing hulk of the caravan.

  “Or the devil,” an old woman began to cackle, then fell into silence under the spell of Vaclav’s angry look.

  “Through the power of the Savior we have been delivered from this evil!” he intoned, and in the wavering torchlight I saw the gypsies bowing their heads, clasping their hands to their breasts. “Is it not written? Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” And as if he’d given an order, the men rose up.

  Some threw buckets of water over what was left of the wagon. Great clouds of steam roiled upward, fogging the air with the gagging smell of charred wood. Others began to dig a deep pit alongside the caravan, and we saw the gravedirt flying faster and faster.

  Full dark fell, and by torchlight we watched the men raising heavy iron hammers. Their faces and chests gleamed with sweat, they battered relentlessly at the metal axles, at the round iron stove—at whatever was left in the rubble.

  From inside the soggy pyre a sudden shout went up: “Found it! I found it!” I saw Vaclav turn, and without hesitating he leaped into the midst of the ruin.

  He teetered crazily on the back edge of what was left of the caravan—a slanting heap of boards and joists piled atop collapsed wheels and broken furniture. He bent down swiftly, then stood up, holding his thick soot-streaked arms high over his head. “Here!” he screamed. “Here is your witch!”

  Like a sacrifice offered to the shrieking crowd, again and again he raised and shook Anyeta’s blackened torso between his hands. The head lolled back on the neck, and bits of charred flesh and matted clots of hair clung to the fire-scarred skull. The face was a pitted grayish blur. One leg was gone; the runny meat where it would have joined the hip had fused into a sickening humped shape. The dark stiffened sticks of her arms swung wildly; at the end of each was a small shriveled lump of flesh that had been a hand.