Cursed

by J. R. Rain

  “Uh, she killed my lover and stole my baby. Do you think she has any rationality at all when it comes to me?”

  “I can see where you could have that affect on women.”

  Ah, she likes me. Except the part where she hates me.

  She must have seen my slight grin because she wrinkled her nose a little as if she’d stepped in a dead skunk. “Sarcasm, Shipway. Besides, this isn’t police work, remember? I’m off the clock.”

  “Well, I didn’t take ‘Action Hero 101’ in college like you did.”

  “Stick around. I might need you for bait.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Try making a sacrifice for once,” she said, moving ahead.

  “And I’m not a pussy,” I said after her. “Just cautious.”

  “Keep telling yourself that. C’mon.”

  “I don’t like you very much,” I said.

  She turned and looked me in the eye, and her pretty face finally cracked into a wry smile. “Yes, you do,” she said. “More than you should.”

  She moved quickly and confidently out from behind the tree trunk and strode across the dirt driveway, toward the garage door. I hustled next to her, trying to keep up. The woman had unhumanly long strides. Hell, she loped across the packed dirt like a jungle panther, and I was shocked to see I was watching her rear end as well.

  Good to know I had my priorities straight in these critical times.

  Still, I was having a hard time believing Gerda was even here, that Gerda had slaughtered Amanda and kidnapped little Petey. Until I saw it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t believe it. Despite all that serial-killer genetic code sewn into her spine.

  Whew. Just think. She would have been the mother of my own little budding psycho if not for a little twist of infertile fate.

  At the garage door, Tabby asked for a boost. I gave her one, careful not to smell her body or rub her butt against my face, and she peered through the smoky glass window of the pull-up door.

  “Your wife drive a Chevy Suburban?” she said.

  My heart skittered like a mouse in a maze. “Yes.”

  “She have any other car?”

  “Not that I know.”

  “There’s a red BMW, too.”

  I still didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  I followed Tabby around the corner of the garage and along a red brick footpath, past a fat ceramic toad with a mouth open wide enough to hide a milk bottle. Tabby moved cautiously and slowly, hunched over. I decided to mimic the cop as best as I could—and ran square into her back when she stopped suddenly.

  She oofed and stumbled, reached back, and caught hold of my T-shirt. She regained her balance and glanced back with a look reserved only for those destined for the lowest levels of hell. Like maybe Max Richter, assuming he wasn’t waiting in the kitchen, rummaging through the silverware drawer for a decent blade.

  I’m sorry, I mouthed.

  Shaking her head, she turned back and faced the house. There was a peephole in the heavy oak door, but other than that, there were no other windows in it. For all we knew, Gerda could be watching us now, having a good laugh at our impression of the Keystone Kops.

  Then again, Gerda never laughed much.

  Tabby cautiously stepped up onto the front porch. The redwood planking creaked once. Still, the sound seemed to ring out like a shriek of a banshee. My heart leapt up into my throat, rubbing against the peanut butter still coating it.

  But I had to remind myself that Gerda could be on the lam, and had parked her SUV here and caught a taxi cab to the airport. It was certainly possible. On nights when we had both been drinking, she would often force us to take a cab home together, and then retrieve our vehicle the next day. Back in the days before I only drank alone.

  So, to put it another way, Gerda was taxi savvy. And for all I knew, she’d mastered the art of broomstick riding somewhere along the way. But where had the BMW come from?

  Tabby reached for the doorknob—

  The ground suddenly wavered and dropped about a foot. I reached out and steadied myself on the rough wood paneling, driving a few splinters deeply into my fingers.

  Breathe, Albert. Breathe. Don’t scream in pain. Pain good. Pain friend.

  This wasn’t my bag. I wasn’t a hero. I wasn’t Jack Bauer and Dirty Harry and Lara Croft all rolled into one. I was an insurance claims negotiator, for God sakes. And if Gerda was in there, she was out of her fucking gourd, probably heavily armed, cooking up arcane herbs, and maybe dancing naked around a bound-and-gagged Petey.

  And what about this golem thing? I mean, I had seen the damn thing with my own eyes. It was alive and well, made entirely of clay, and looking exactly like the thing Gerda feared most: her psychotic serial-killing father. And wasn’t a golem easier to handle than a ghost? At least there would be something to punch or shoot or roll out into nice little ceramic bowls that made great Christmas gifts.

  Breathe, Albert. Breathe. You withstood the mice, you can withstand this. Tabby’s going to need your help. Little Petey’s going to need your help.

  No time to be Albert the Pussy. No time to drive back down the hill and pick up a pint. Nothing left but to do it.

  The doorknob jiggled quietly in Tabby’s hand. She turned, completely unaware of the drama behind her, reached up on her tippy-toes, and whispered into my ear: “Think we should try the back?”

  “Why are you asking me?” I whispered in return. She made that “I’m going to punch you” face but I raised my hand in reflection. “Wait!” I almost snapped my fingers.

  Tabby shushed me.

  I moved back down the red brick path and stuck my hand inside the fat toad. There, among rolly-pollies and a full-grown black widow spider that had probably just eaten hubby, was a spare key. I grabbed it triumphantly, brushing away the cobwebs, and handed it to Tabby.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “That’s where Gerda would hide a key if she lived here. That’s just how she thinks.”

  “Like, here’s a hole, better stick something in it? That sounds like something she learned from you, Al.”

  “There’s no pleasing you.”

  “Oh, I can be pleased. Just not easily, and probably not by you.” She looked like she wanted to twist my nose hard. But then she turned and slowly inserted the key. She tripped the tumblers and turned the knob.

  We were in.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  The door pushed open with a wheeze of hinges. A cool breeze met us instantly, which suggested to me that a back entrance was open.

  There was something else in the air as well. Something metallic. Coppery, perhaps. Or maybe like fresh lizard skins tacked to a wall.

  Tabby stepped into the house, her gun before her, held with both hands like they teach fake cops on TV. Her arms were taut and her steps were agonizingly slow, although her head pivoted rapidly, taking in the entire scene. There wasn’t much to see. The door opened into the front living room. The room was dark, the curtains drawn, and no lights were on.

  I gasped when I saw the bright gleam of eyeballs, and I grabbed Tabby’s shoulder and blinked. Then the shadows resolved and I realized that it was only an elk’s head, hanging on the wall above the sofa. Could have been worse. Gerda might have taken up the family practice, or else Max himself might have been rounding up some fresh trophies.

  The elk was staring at me from the darkness, following me with its glass eyes. Tabby trained her gun at it briefly, perhaps surprised to see a head leering at her from the shadows, or maybe just warming up for the big show. She grunted quietly and pulled the gun down.

  We stepped deeper into the cabin. The breeze was steady, but it couldn’t erase the rusty-nail smell.

  The living room was small and looked out toward the front yard. To the right of the living room was an opening that led upstairs. We stepped through the foyer and Tabitha immediately swung her arms around the corner, should there be anyone waiting for
us.

  There wasn’t, although her sudden movement almost caused me to lose my pee.

  Around the corner was a small hallway that led to a kitchen. The kitchen itself appeared to have been little used, without so much as a salt shaker on the counter.

  The iron smell was stronger. Now I could almost taste it on the breeze. Sharp, acrid, pungent.

  Tabby paused, raising her hand up to make sure I paused as well. I didn’t bump into her this time.

  The scritching sound of digging was louder, seemed to be coming up through the house and carried on the wind. The wind was busy today.

  Tabby turned back and looked at me, and it was a look that I will never forget. Her face was slightly green, eyes filled with something close to horror and panic as if expecting the worst for Petey, but through it all, her jaw was set in grim determination.

  Wait here, she mouthed.

  I opened my mouth.

  Head shake. Firm gesture with her hand. The same hand holding the gun. I waited where I was at the head of the hallway.

  She eased forward. She held the gun once again with both hands before her. The barrel was tilted slightly down. She acted like she knew what she was doing.

  Me, I didn’t know what I was doing. I looked around for something to grab, a convenient baseball bat, fireplace poker, or maybe a Medieval mace hanging on the wall as a misfit decoration. I even considered the elk, with those gnarly, yellowed horns. I waited uneasily in the hallway. I glanced back over my shoulder once, to make sure the bedroom door had remained closed. The elk seemed to glare with evil intent.

  Look. I didn’t kill you, and I didn’t eat you, and I most definitely didn’t stuff you. Just give me a break already.

  Yeah, but you’re alive, and that’s reason enough to hate you, its eyes seemed to respond.

  Oh God, I think I’m going crazy.

  I turned back. Tabby was continuing her slow-motion creep down the hallway. She kept her knees bent and her arms straight out in front of her. The iron ore smell was segueing into another smell. Meat. Old meat. Maybe human bacon. That thought alone was enough to turn my stomach.

  Tabby reached the end of the hall, at a point where she had a wide view into the kitchen. I heard a creak in the wood above me and glanced up.

  What if Gerda—or, heaven forbid, Max—was up there and would be coming down the steps while Tabby was blissfully tip-toeing through the Twilight Zone? I tried to remember if Max Richter had made any sound when he’d breezed by me after murdering Nana. A heavy clay husk of a man would make lots of noise, right?

  I craned my neck and dared a step until I could see into the kitchen. A clock with unmoving, dead hands hung on the cream-colored wall.

  The moment Tabby reached the counter, her mouth fell open. She released her left hand from the pistol grip and used it to cover her mouth. A second later, she composed herself and swept the room carefully, both hands once again on the gun. The room was apparently clean. She looked back and motioned me forward.

  Her face was pale white now. Even from here, I could see that her lower lip was trembling.

  Ah, shit.

  Do I really want to make that walk? What did you see?

  Tabby gestured urgently, prodding me forward. I took quicker steps than she did, aware that the coast was clear and I didn’t have to be as cautious. However, as I neared the corner of the hallway, the pungent smell of iron and copper, pennies and rust, meat and rot, was almost overwhelming. My pace slowed as if my own legs were turning to clay.

  When I reached the corner, just before I turned to look around the edge, Tabby put a hand on my chest. “It’s bad,” she whispered.

  So much for clean.

  She didn’t look at me, but kept her eyes on the kitchen, her left hand holding the pistol up.

  Then she dropped her hand, and I moved forward, around the hallway corner, and took in the entire kitchen.

  She was wrong.

  It wasn’t bad.

  It was horrible. The most horrible thing I have ever seen in my entire life. Worse than the mice. Worse than Max Richter’s cold face. Worse than seeing Amanda’s smiling face in that picture with Petey. I turned back around the corner and heaved out my entire lunch, doing my best to do so as quietly as possible.

  You try seeing what I saw, then having to puke up a peanut butter sandwich sliding on a cognac rainbow.

  Chapter Thirty-four

  There was blood everywhere. On everything.

  But at the moment, I was looking down into a pool of my own vomit, my recently eaten lunch hardly digested at all. Tabby was kneeling next to me. She patted me on the back.

  “Pull it together, Shipway.”

  “You need to call backup,” I managed to say.

  “I already did, while you were throwing up.”

  “How long was I throwing up?”

  “Long enough for me to call backup.” She straightened and stepped into the kitchen. She had gotten over her own case of the shakes, and some color had returned to her face. Even with her training, a nightmare was still a nightmare. “Get up, Al. This is some serious shit.”

  I didn’t want to get up. I wanted to run back the way I had come.

  But there was a killer here in this house, and this was no time to be a pussy. In fact, it was damn well time I quit being one. In fact, I could think of no better time for me to not be one.

  And every nerve in my body screamed at me to scramble away, dash back through the house, say “Nice hanging with you” to that damned elk, and tear away in the Jag.

  And because that was my first instinct, I knew it was wrong.

  I stood. My legs were shaky. I braced myself on the wall. In the near distance I heard more digging, more sounds of a shovel scraping hard into dirt. I turned and headed toward Tabby’s side.

  Before me was a rather small and rustic kitchen. The walls were painted prison white, with half a dozen country paintings of roosters and hens and other farm-type animals. It looked like rent-some-art that had come with the house purchase, because I couldn’t see Gerda ever selecting such paintings, much less taking the time to arrange them along the walls.

  There was a round kitchen table with two red candles knocked over. Next to one of the candles, cut neatly below the second knuckle, was a human finger. The blood had drained and pooled around the digit, and the bone gleamed shockingly white.

  The gorge started to rise again, though I didn’t have anything left. I fought the rising with everything I had, shoving my fist into my mouth. I used my other hand to cover my nose, to filter air—anything to arrest the warm, penny-like smell of fresh blood.

  It didn’t work. The smell was all-pervasive, even over my own acidic stench.

  Covering everything on one side of the room, from the kitchen table to the small dinette, to the ceiling and walls, to the stove and microwave, was fresh blood. Some if it, where it had splattered the thickest, was still sliding down vertical walls and doors, leaving behind coagulating trails that looked like Jackson Pollock’s most demented wet dream.

  “Do you think it’s the baby?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

  She shook her head. “Too much blood. Keep quiet.”

  I nodded. Maybe not scientific, but it made sense. I didn’t know how much blood a body could hold, but this one looked like a couple of five-gallon buckets’ worth.

  There were a few other things on the table—an open book with frayed edges, a pair of scissors, needle and thread, and a pile of cloth. It looked like someone had been making a little puppet.

  A plaything for Petey, or a death doll?

  Tabby moved again, and I followed, shaky but alert. I could almost make it through without stepping on blood, but it required ballet moves. I imagined the blood would have been quite slippery, but we were moving carefully enough not to lose our balance.

  We eased across the linoleum where great puddles of the stuff had pooled in the floor’s slight indentations. Streams and splotches of it were crisscrossed acros
s the refrigerator. A fine mist of blood had swept across the cabinets. Two huge, gooey lines ran parallel together up a cupboard, as if jetting from twin arteries.

  I tried not to imagine the condition of the vessel that had once housed the fluid. I swallowed hard and glanced at the fridge door, wondering what was behind it.

  Jeffrey Dahmer, eat your heart out.

  I followed Tabitha through the kitchen of horror, picking my way over the bloody floor. Behind me, I left macabre footprints. The soles of my boots sometimes stuck and sometimes squelched. A sickening sound, one that grated on my nerves like few sounds ever had, perhaps even the worst part of this whole kitchen experience.

  Spluch spluch spluch.

  Finally, thankfully, we stepped through a sort of squared arch and into the dining room. There was carpet here, and a thick trail of red footprints and a bloody smear ran across the carpet before us and hung a right down the stairs that must lead to the back yard. Something big and bloody had been dragged out of the room and down the stairs.

  Tabby did her thing, swinging her pistol around corners. I guess that’s how you had to do it, expecting the worst, then feeling a little relieved and silly to find yet another empty room after all that build-up.

  No one was waiting for us in the dining room.

  The digging was louder, sharper, more distinct. It was coming up through the stairwell. The house was built against a side of a hill. Although we were on the first floor, the stairs down would have been needed to reach the backyard beyond.

  Despite it all, the blood, the digging, everything, Tabby had the wherewithal to pause next to a stack of papers on the dining room table. There was a suitcase on the floor and a purse on its side in a chair. It looked like someone was ready for a trip.

  Keeping her gun trained on the stairwell, she rifled through the papers and produced a passport booklet. She flipped it open. She glanced at it and tossed it to me. I promptly dropped it. It landed on a clean section of carpet. Thank God. I wondered how the hell Gerda was going to clean this place, but then again, she probably had learned some pretty good pointers from her serial-killing father. And resale value seemed the least of her concerns at the moment.