The Curse

by Charles L. Grant

  Terry looked to the Indian, but Mary had already sprinted away from the store with Peg. Dumbly she watched, feeling like a stranger, then followed them up the trail to The Lane as fast as she could. She had no intention of engaging in a foot race to Pritchard's house, but she moved to keep up with them, to stay near her sister, in case she should be needed. She spotted immediately a patrol car and ambulance in Pritchard's driveway, their lights flashing mindlessly, silently.

  There was a small crowd bunched on the lawn and as Terry approached she noticed no sense of urgency—only expectation. The children, just the previous week released from school, stood close by their parents, clutching at hands and pockets and seeming altogether smaller than they were.

  Suddenly, Terry wished Syd would come home; she felt oddly out of place in spite of her nine months' residency, and hovered at the fringes, looking for Peg, giving up her questions when the first were met with politely silent rebuffs. The McIntyres stood apart, and she was surprised to see the elder with them, his white hair uncombed and veiling his face. The twins stood in front of Mary, each with his right hand resting on her swollen belly. Terry smiled at Denver but he appeared not to see her. Damn, she thought and took a pace toward the policeman who had remained in the car. Before she could say anything, however, the front door opened and the crowd sighed.

  Attendants in wrinkled white carried a wheeled stretcher down the steps. The policeman following them nodded a signal and his partner left the cruiser's radio and moved to intercept the slowly closing onlookers. Terry was standing by the rear of the ambulance when the stretcher was rested on its wheels so the door could be opened. She glanced up and saw Peg standing on the porch. There was a glinting on her cheeks from the red setting sun, and Terry knew she was crying. A child whimpered behind her, and a flock of crows raced raucously over The Lane toward the field.

  God no, she thought, and forced herself to gaze at the old man. His face seemed powdered with chalk dust, his neck muscles were taut, and lying outside the tight white sheet his arms were shadow thin. His eyes, however, were open, but Terry saw nothing of pain or fear, only a studied resignation. She wanted to look away, to call for Peg to say something to him, but as she turned, Pritchard's head shifted, he saw her and his lips twitched as though to smile.

  Then, one of the policemen began to issue quiet orders, and the interns readied the ambulances inside, though their movements suggested to Terry that they had little hope of getting him to the hospital alive. They moved to lift the stretcher, and Pritchard grabbed Terry's hand. He pulled and involuntarily she tried to break away. His fingers pinched her wrist, and she knelt before he could drag himself from under the sheet. Her vision blurred: the resignation had fled, what was left was pleading.

  Without knowing why, then, she whispered, "You'll be home, Alec. We'll watch the store, and you'll be home soon enough."

  He swallowed heavily. "I tried," he said, forcing her to lean closer to hear the voice rough and dry like a man thirsting. "I tried, Mrs. Guiness, but they wouldn't let me. Just like before, they wouldn't let me."

  He coughed and his grip tightened, and a coolness slipped into her palm. The policeman pried him loose as Terry began to wince from the pain, took her shoulder and helped her to stand. The stretcher vanished, and before the doors closed, Peg scrambled in.

  "What was it?" she asked the policeman who evidently thought she needed his moral as well as physical support.

  He watched the ambulance backing out of the drive. "Heart attack, the guys said. We found him trying to crawl to the door. In the living room he was." He pointed to Peg's face barely seen in a curtained side window as the siren shattered the neighborhood calm. "She his daughter or something?"

  "My sister," Terry said, and would have laughed at the policeman's look had the circumstances been different. "She worked with him in his store on Hawthorne. Sort of his manager."

  He nodded understanding and after a perfunctory query after her comfort, rushed to the car and drove off.

  The excitement, penned, finally broke and the children streaked down The Lane in a shouting game of tag. But she was still alone. No one questioned her, no one asked what the old man had pressed into her hand. She held it to her side, then looked down. It was a key.

  "We should have known better."

  Terry spun around and couldn't help a gasp at the sight of Mrs. Denbeau leaning heavily on a tarnished metal walker. Her face was all angles, none of them softened by the dull gray hair that looked as though it had been hacked at rather than cut. Despite dark glasses, Terry could see the nearly purple shadows under her eyes, almost turned away from the blood-red slash of lipstick that smeared at the corners of her mouth. This was the first time Terry had seen her other than through a screen door, and the shock muddied her senses until she realized she was being spoken to, bitterly.

  "I'm sorry, Mrs. Denbeau. I'm afraid I wasn't listening."

  "Neither were they," the woman snapped, tossing her head in the direction of the retreating neighbors. "I said it wouldn't be the first or the last, but they said I was only grieving." She glared and poked at Terry's chest. "I did my grieving months ago, Mrs. Guiness. And I told them it wouldn't be the last. And it wasn't. That's why they're running away."

  "From what?" Terry couldn't help the sarcasm in her voice, and wasn't dismayed when Mrs. Denbeau opened her mouth, shut it and moved clumsily down the sidewalk. There was a moment when Terry wanted to chase after her, but she decided against it, staring instead at the gleaming bronze key in her hand. Why Pritchard hadn't given it to Peg, she didn't know. But apparently he'd been still conscious enough of his surroundings to want his home looked after. Not, she thought glumly, that he'll ever use it again.

  She checked her watch and sighed at the hour at least before Syd would be home to start his vacation. A restlessness made her blow out several deep breaths, then she decided to go inside and make a quick inventory. That way she would know if anything was missing when the estate's lawyers came to check his will against the fact.

  Slowly she walked around the two-story house, making an elaborate show of testing the windows she could reach. There would be neighbors watching her, no doubt some resentful of her abrupt responsibility. The back door was locked, the yard overgrown with weeds and dying grass. She nodded as though she saw nothing unusual, returned to the front and scanned the second floor. Nervously, then, she fingered the key, stiffened and let herself in.

  Eat your hearts out, she said to the curtains she knew would be fluttering all along The Lane. Theresa Ann O'Hare Guiness is in charge now.

  The furnishings were meager at best, and what there was was wooden and unfriendly. Suddenly unsure of herself, she hurried through the rooms, saving the living area for last: the only room carpeted, the only one with upholstered chairs. Crawling to the door, the policeman had said, and from the scuffs in the carpet's thick pile she could see he had fallen by the fireplace, struck or grabbed onto the glass-topped coffee table and had tipped it over. A pipe lay on the slate hearth and tobacco spilled brownly toward the rug. She stared, shrugged, and turned to leave when something caught her eye.

  Slowly she moved to the fireplace. She found a rusted poker lying beside a nearby chair and poked in the ashes until she had eased a small doll onto the hearth. "Well, I'll be damned," she said, and knelt to brush the sullen gray from its face and clothes. "A fella passing through, huh?"

  Syd stared when she dropped the doll onto the table in front of him. He jabbed at it thoughtfully with a pencil, then scratched behind his ear. "Beats me, angel. It could be the same one we saw, but...

  "Well, don't you even know?"

  He shrugged and pulled his cup to him like a soup bowl. "Ter, I just didn't get that good a look. And I never saw the ones in the store. I'm sorry, but I can't say anymore than that."

  She was frustrated enough to groan, but grateful that he was at least being honest. Which was more than she could say for the McIntyres. They had refused to see her after she'd
left Pritchard's. She had only wanted to give back the doll, but when she held it up for Mary to see through the front door, Mary had stepped back quickly and called for Denver.

  "Theresa," the big man had said before she could speak, "we are mourning the loss of a friend and ask not to be disturbed."

  "He's not dead yet," she'd said without thinking.

  "He is dying and will not return."

  "All right. I just wanted to give you this," and she held up the doll again. "I found it in Pritchard's living room. I saw it, or something like it, once in his store, and he said your father made it."

  Denver didn't blink. "I'm sorry, Theresa, but my father couldn't have made something like that. His hands . . ." and he stretched out his own and shook them violently. "I'm sorry, but Alec must have been wrong. Now please. . . ." He shut the door in her face.

  "They must have known each other a long time" Syd added more sugar to his tea, sipped, and grimaced. "Damn, but something must be wrong with the water. This tastes like—"

  "Syd!" She slapped the back of his head and laughed when he jumped from the table to avoid the liquid spilled from his cup.

  "You could have ruined my pants, dope. I spent nearly thirty bucks on them."

  "Wow, big spender."

  "I'll have more when that book of yours is done. How'd you do today?"

  "Not a word. Alec's accident. . ." They moved to the living room and sat on the sofa. The front curtains were open and they watched the last of the twilight shadows haze the air blue-gray. The foliage hastened darkness, made the hedge look carved from black stone. She felt depressed, and more so when Syd was unable to explain what Pritchard had meant.

  "And then there was Denbeau—"

  "You actually saw that old thing?"

  "Well, she's not so old, but she said something about warning the others. Weird."

  "Maybe she was talking about her husband. Denver told me something about that."

  She sat up straight. "You talked to him? Today?"

  "No, not today, dope. Months ago. Remember Enfallo said something about a guy being murdered?"

  She nodded, a moment later her eyes widened as she made the connection. "Her husband was the guy? Why didn't you tell me, Syd? I could have put my foot in it proper."

  He laughed, stood and drew the curtains. The lamp pushed his shadow to the ceiling. "It wasn't the most artistic killing in the world," he said as he rooted under his chair for his slippers. "It was around this time last year, and The Lane had just seen another family off. They'd been leaving by ones since the summer before when an impromptu rock concert in the meadow was raided by the state police and not a few drugs were confiscated, nor a few heads cracked. Some of the elderly began to feel nervous and wanted to leave before the youngsters returned to try again. It was more than that, though. Denver thinks it was the open space, all of it around them. Most of the people who have moved here were from the city, and they can't seem to get used to the idea of not having neighbors crowding them in on all sides."

  "I know what they went through," Terry said, huddled in the corner and wishing they had Pritchard's fireplace. "But we didn't run. We got used to it."

  "Because that's what we were after. Most everyone else is looking for escape from the dangers of the city, not the people per Se."

  She thought about it a minute, found a rebuttal or two, but let them pass. "The Denbeaus," she prompted, and Syd lighted a pipe, began to pace from wall to door.

  "Denver said the man, Oscar, was a salesman who seldom came home for more than a few days at a time. After one of these trips—I never did find out what he sold—he and his missus had a fight you could hear from one end of The Lane to the other. He accused her of hopping in and out of beds, hammocks and cars' backseats with every man on the street. Then he stormed over to McIntyre's where he wanted to fight with Denver. He must have been juiced to the gills to want to take on Denver. God, what an idiot!

  "Anyway, William took the first part of the guy's screaming with those half-closed eyes of his. Denver, though, wouldn't take any of it. He grabbed Denbeau by the shirt and tossed him out on his fat ass. The last time anyone saw Oscar alive was when he was weaving his way out toward the meadow. When William came back from the tavern, he went for a walk and found Denbeau's body."

  Syd paused for effect. "It, he, was draped over that wood monument on the other side of the hill. The police wouldn't let anyone near it. Denver said it must have been beaten pretty badly. Even the old lady was refused permission to see it until it had been taken to the county morgue."

  "Who did it?"

  Syd shrugged. "Who knows? Denver doesn't. There weren't any arrests. Mrs. Denbeau had a stroke that night, obviously in no condition to club her husband to death."

  Terry was still puzzled. She reached out a hand and Syd took it, sat beside her. "But what was she talking about, saying it wasn't a surprise about Alec?"

  "I don't know. Maybe she thinks those kids from the concert were taking their revenge on a neighborhood that spoiled their little orgy. Who the hell knows? She's a queer bird anyway."

  "Well, I feel sorry for her."

  "You'd feel sorry for a wounded cobra."

  They fell into a wrestling match that broke only when Terry heard Peg moving downstairs. She wrenched free and pulled open the door. There was only one light burning, and in the shadow at the foot of the stairs, Peg seemed frail and insubstantial.

  "Peg?"

  "He's dead, Terry. He woke up once, just before, and he smiled at me. Then he died." Her head dropped to her chest, lifted and she turned away. "I'm going to bed. If anyone asks, the store's closed until after the funeral. Good night."

  "But Peg, wait a minute—"

  "Good night, Terry. Please!"

  Terry closed the door silently, raised a finger to Syd's questioning look and beckoned him into the kitchen.

  "She loved that old creep," he said. "It's your dad all over again."

  They fixed a sandwich snack, but their mood was somber. Only Syd talked, mainly about the painting he was going to do on his three weeks off. They had been planning to take two of the three and drive as far west as they could, stopping whenever they felt moved to, seeing whatever struck them interesting. And Terry became guiltily angry at Pritchard for dying.

  "Maddy called today," she said while they were cleaning up.

  "Witch. How much did she cheat you this time?"

  "Oh, Syd, be fair. She's only trying to do her job. And she didn't cheat me out of anything. She got the first illustrations and chapters today and was, for her, so excited she nearly climbed through the wire to kiss me. She said she was making precedent by doubling the advance. The check should be here by the end of the week. I can hardly wait to get it!"

  Syd stared, then grabbed her hand and shook it, pulled until she was close enough to kiss. "But why didn't you say something earlier, angel? I mean, this is the big time for my girl. For crying out loud—"

  "Please, Syd."

  He stuttered, then softened his smile to a gentle grin. "Okay, I get it. But in spite of the trouble and the day, I'm damned proud of you."

  "I'm going to blush," she said. "It still hasn't sunk in yet."

  "You've already spent every penny, I'll bet."

  She nodded, just to keep him quiet, then excused herself and went into the bathroom. It was cold and she shivered as she stripped and turned on the water. The shower thundered into steam and she rubbed at her arms and thighs until the temperature adjusted itself to her liking.

  Talk about mixed blessings, she thought, sucking in her breath when the water pelted her skin; the biggest move of my career and all I can think of is that poor old man, and my poor old sister. Old. That's exactly what she is. Too old for somebody that young.

  The rest of the evening was quiet, spent in front of the television until Syd's yawns infected them both.

  Once in bed, however, Terry propped her pillow against the headboard and sat staring at the fractured light of the street
lamp. A breeze kicked and the light shifted. She wanted to think, but she felt her eyelids drooping, casting her into a darkness she felt instinctively wasn't what she wanted.

  On a field. Brown with fall's dying grass. In the distance, a troop of figures moving toward her. The sighing. Rhythmic, chanting, welling from the ground to form a dome under the noonday sky. White light, white heat, ribbons of heat lifting from her feet. Behind her, another sound. Counterpoint grunting. She wanted to turn but there was nothing for her body to do but stand as a statue and watch the slow fall of the sun. The figures moving, never growing closer, while the grunting increased and lifted until it seemed to come from above her. The ground grew cold and there was snow, just as quickly melting and bringing green to the field. A shadow slithered to cover her own, stretching to meet the figures still indistinguishable, still distant, still walking as on a treadmill. The shadow was formless. Black, gray, white, pink, red, it turned to liquid and fell toward her and she realized she was standing at the bottom of a slope. Her back tensed, and she knew there was a sharp outcropping of earth behind her, a wall, a cliff, a mound. A rush of air and something was falling toward her, screaming, though there was no sound but the sighing, the grunting. A screaming, nevertheless, and suddenly it froze, all of it, a mural she recognized but could not put a name to until it began to shrink, slowly at first, then rapidly until it was falling away too fast to keep her from becoming dizzy. A new sound, thunder, and she wanted to call out against the illusion of falling, then stood in stunned silence when the colors faded to black and white and she was staring at a picture fastened by pins to the frame of her easel.

  Her head jerked forward and she rubbed at her eyes. Her feet slid off the bed, but she stopped herself. "In the morning," she whispered. "In the morning."

  Chapter VII

  She moved quietly, not wanting to wake Syd. The circles under his eyes, the strain at his mouth even in repose—the agency's cutbacks were moving closer to his office every week. Already he was scouring the want ads for new positions, cursing his inadequate training for little else than what he was now doing.