by Lea Nolan
He shakes his head. His eyes betray the panic he must have suppressed until now. “That’s the weird thing—it doesn’t. And it’s freaking me out because I think it should.” With his lips turned down, he stares at his fingers, and it looks like he might throw up. “Dang.”
I run my hand through my ratty strawberry-blonde hair, dragging it up off my forehead and behind my shoulder. “We’ve got to get you to a hospital. I know you didn’t want to tell Dad, but we don’t have a choice now.”
Jack pushes himself off my bed and paces across my bedroom floor, massaging his temples with both his healthy and swollen fingers. “Okay, but first we’ve got to stop by that crazy lady’s house to find out what she did to me. Maybe she poisoned me. We need to know what she used to tell the doctors.”
I shake my head. “No, I helped her do everything.” I toss off the covers and jump out of bed. “I know what plants she used so I can tell them.” I grab some clothes from the dresser and head to the bathroom to get ready.
He follows me down the hall. “But Em, you weren’t there the whole time. Remember? You left in the middle of it.” My trip to the elderberry bush suddenly flashes across my mind. “How do you know she didn’t slip something into that concoction she cooked up?”
I can’t help but think of Miss Delia’s kind face and gentle demeanor. There was something so, I don’t know, good about her that makes me doubt Jack’s right. We only met yesterday, but I can’t imagine her deliberately hurting him.
“Jack, I don’t think she did anything to you on purpose. Maybe you’re having an allergic reaction?”
His shoulders ease a little. “Yeah, I guess so.” Closing his eyes, he pinches the bridge of his nose. “But we still need to find out what she used.” He rests his head against the bathroom door. “I’m scared, Em.” His voice breaks.
I grasp his forearm and muster the most reassuring smile I can. “I know. But we’ll take care of it. I promise. Now go call Cooper while I get ready.” I shut the bathroom door and let the smile slip from my face as a wave of dread washes over me.
…
Within an hour, we’re standing on Miss Delia’s porch. I knock on her door and wonder how to get her help without accusing her of hurting Jack.
The door opens, revealing Miss Delia in a pale orange housedress. Her brow crinkles with confusion. “Emma? I didn’t expect to see you this morning.”
Before I have a chance to answer, Jack steps forward and thrusts his hand at her. “Look what happened.” The boils are even larger now, stretched taut over the fluid encapsulated inside, and throbbing.
She recoils. “What did you do, boy?” Her voice is suddenly at least an octave lower, deep and gravelly, and frankly, kind of scary.
“I used the stuff you gave us, just like you said,” he says.
She narrows her cloudy eye and sets her jaw. “That didn’t come from what I gave you. You best be on your way. Now.”
Cooper pulls Jack back and tries to smooth things over. “Miss Delia, we don’t want to bother you. But we’re taking Jack to see a doctor, and we hoped you’d give us a list of the poultice ingredients, in case he’s got an allergy.”
She huffs. “No doctor can cure what he’s got. I know bad magic when I see it.”
Jack’s lip curls. “What?”
She sets her hands on her hips and glares into his eyes. She’s a foot-and-a-half shorter than he is but seems twice as powerful. “You messed with something you shouldn’t have. Something dark and evil. Probably something belonging to Beau Beaumont.”
Jack’s head jolts back as if she’s punched him across the jaw. “No, you’re wrong.” He shakes his head and sounds dazed. “There was a treasure…and a booby trap.”
I jump in, eager to explain. “There was an explosion. That’s how he got burned.”
“I don’t care how it happened. I don’t want any part of what you got, boy.” She flicks her wrist, shooing us off her porch. “Get on now, before it’s too late.”
Jack’s gasp draws all of our gazes—to his hand. The boils pulse now, enlarging with each beat. The skin thins under the mounting pressure like a balloon filled with too much air. After one final, massive pulse, there’s a sickening ripping sound, and all four boils erupt.
Jack screams as a fluorescent yellow liquid seeps across his fingers, bubbling against the skin. The scent of battery acid, tart and bitter, hangs in the air as Jack’s flesh disintegrates, starting at the center of the boils, then spreading to cover the length of his fingers. The top layer of skin fizzles away, revealing several thin, clear layers below, which, along with his fingernails, quickly give way, exposing the ivory-colored fat and crimson muscles beneath. It only takes a few moments for the tissues to dissolve, exposing milky white bones connected only by a few remaining ligaments.
The sizzling suddenly stops, and the remaining liquid drips onto the porch, scorching the wood and leaving Jack with skeletal fingers.
My stomach seizes, and I blink, trying to make sense of what I’ve just seen. But it’s impossible. Jack is shaking, gawking at the bony fingers cradled in his good hand. He flexes them, and the bones curl inward toward his perfectly normal thumb and palm, forming a tight ball.
Cooper leans over the porch railing and hurls his breakfast into a giant purple salvia bush.
The low moan I’m hearing is coming from my own mouth. What the heck is going on? I turn to Miss Delia for an explanation.
She purses her lips and glares at Jack. “You are cursed, boy.”
The pieces click into place. I gasp and turn to Jack. “It’s The Creep.”
Miss Delia’s milky eye whips around to stare at me. “How do you know about The Creep?” Her gaze bores into me, singeing my skin.
I struggle to answer in a complete sentence. “It was…in a letter…the one about the treasure…I tried to warn him, but Jack didn’t believe in it.”
She peers at Jack, who’s whimpering now, and points toward the yard. “Go sit under the bottle tree. Maybe it’ll soak up some of the bad spirits.” Then she turns to Cooper and motions toward his puke. “And you better clean up that mess.”
Jack stands there, his mouth hanging wide enough to catch a swarm of flies. I don’t think he heard a word Miss Delia just said.
She pokes his chest with a crooked finger. “Move. I don’t want that curse seeping into my house.”
Cooper gently takes him by the shoulder and guides him off the porch. “Come on, bro, we’re going to move over to the bench under that tree.”
Forget about the hospital and Dad. This is way beyond them. There’s only one person who can fix this.
“Can you help him, Miss Delia?” I pray she’s got some amazing secret magic up her sleeve that’ll poof this all away.
She crosses her arms. “I don’t want to fiddle with what he’s got.”
“Please?” My voice sounds as desperate as I feel.
She turns toward me. Despite how young and vigorous she seemed yesterday, she suddenly appears to have lived every one of those long ninety-seven years. Her shoulders slump, and she grips the doorjamb for support. “I don’t know, child.” She sucks her teeth, then turns around and shuffles into her house.
I’m not sure if I’m invited to follow, but I do, anyway. “Isn’t there something we can do?”
Leaning hard against her cane, Miss Delia heads into the kitchen and pulls out a metal spoon before settling on one of the stools at the island. “I need to know what we’re dealing with. Scrape up some of the pus that dripped on my porch. Mind yourself now, and don’t touch it. Just put it on the spoon.”
I bolt to the porch and grimace at the already thickening bright yellow goo, then scrape some up and race back to the kitchen. Miss Delia tells me to get her mortar and pestle and a large earthenware jar that’s tucked away at the back of one of her cabinets. Next she asks for a scoop of dirt dug from the yard under the bottle tree and a small glass of water.
Once I’ve collected everything, she empties the dir
t into the mortar, along with an equal amount of water, and mixes the substance into a dense, muddy paste. Then she rests the spoon in the bowl and reaches into the jar, retrieving a pinch of a fine gray powder. She chants a few words in a language I don’t understand—probably Gullah—and tosses in some powder as she blows a puff of air on the spoon.
The wind whips up in her backyard, shaking the trees and rustling their leaves.
A flash of fire erupts in the mortar, sizzling the gooey substance clinging to the metal surface. First the yellow fluid hardens, darkening until it looks like a shiny nugget of onyx. But then the burning intensifies, condensing and dulling the black blob until it fades to a dull gray and implodes on itself, crumbling to dust. It looks like an old charcoal briquette after a barbecue.
The wind dies down as suddenly as it arrived, leaving an eerie calm.
Miss Delia shakes her head. “This is a very ancient and powerful curse. It must be The Creep.”
“Is that a good thing? I mean, since you know what it is, you can reverse it, right?”
She leans on the butcher-block counter top. “Until this moment, I didn’t know if it was real or a story my great-gran told me.”
I bite my lip. “What’d she say about it?” I’m almost afraid to find out.
She rests her head in her hand. “As far back as anyone can remember, folks said a powerful doctress used the elements to work a revenge curse.” She points to the mortar. “This is an elemental curse.”
My forehead crinkles. “What does that mean?”
“It can only be broken with wind, fire, water, and earth. It’s almost impossible.”
“But if it isn’t, what will happen to Jack?” My voice cracks because I’m pretty sure I already know.
Her face softens to deliver the bad news. “It will spread, little by little, until he is consumed.”
A surge of fear, anger, and power shoots through me. I pound my fists on the counter. “We can’t let that happen. You have to do something.”
She reaches her withered hands to grasp my own. “Child, I’m an old woman, and this is an evil curse. I don’t have the strength to fight it.”
An idea pops into my mind. “Could I do it?” My voice rises with hope. “You could teach me what to do, and I could do it for you.”
She stares at me like I just announced I’m running for president. Her face fills with pity. “Child, I know you mean well, but I’ve never seen a comeyah or buckrah who could work hoodoo, at least not as well as you must to break this curse.”
Tears well in my eyes. She can’t say no, at least not that easily. Jack might be a total jerk, but he’s my jerk, and I can’t let him go without trying. “But I can learn, especially if you teach me. He’s my only brother. He’s my twin. I can’t lose him.”
She pulls back and assesses me for a long moment, chewing on the side of her lip. “You said your father grew up on Sa’leenuh?”
I sniff away my tears and nod. “Yes. So did his father and grandfather. And I’ve been here every summer for the last eight years.”
She purses her lips. “Then I suppose you’re not really a comeyah. And you do know your plants.” She strokes her chin with her crooked fingers, and I clasp my hands in prayer, sensing she might be willing to go along. “There’s no official rule against buckrah working hoodoo. I could pass the mantle to you and take you on as an apprentice.”
I exhale as relief pours over me. “Thank you, Miss Delia. I won’t let you down.”
“It’s not me you should be worried about. Your brother is the one who needs you.” The lines around her eyes seem deeper now, chiseled into her frail brown skin. Her good eye looks cloudier than before.
“I’ll do whatever it takes. Just tell me where to start.”
She reaches a liver-spotted hand across the counter once again. It lies heavy against mine, as if she doesn’t have the strength to pull it back. “For now, you best get him home and be sweet to him. I need some rest after all this so I can figure out how to break the curse. You, too, while you’re at it. We’re going to need all the energy we can get.”
CHAPTER NINE
I tap on Jack’s bedroom door for the hundredth time today. “Jack?” I wait for him to respond, determined not to leave until I at least know he’s okay.
He’s been holed up in there ever since we got back from Miss Delia’s yesterday. No matter what Cooper and I have tried, including begging and threatening to break the door down, all we’ve gotten is silence. At least my twin sense is telling me that he is alive.
After another long minute of silence, I knock again on the hollow maple door.
“Yeah.” His voice is so flat and deep, I almost don’t recognize it.
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah.” He sounds cold and colorless.
I turn the brass handle, and the door squeaks open. Jack’s lying on his bed in the same clothes from yesterday, staring at the ceiling. His arms are propped behind his head on his pillow, and his hand is tucked under his jet-black hair.
I slink toward his bed. “You okay?”
He doesn’t bother to look at me. “I’m dying.” His voice quivers.
My stomach wrenches. “No, you’re not.”
“Yes. I am.” He says it with surety and conviction, like he’s lost all hope.
I sit on the side of his bed. “I’m not going to let that happen. I promise. Miss Delia’s teaching me how to reverse this curse, and we’re going to fix you.”
His eyes are like two pools of ice—frozen dead zones of doom. “You can’t fix me. And neither can she. This thing is going to spread until it kills me.”
“Don’t say that, Jack. I won’t let it take you.” I bite my tongue to keep from crying.
He shrugs. “Whatever. I know what’s going to happen.” He pulls his unwrapped hand from behind his head.
It’s different than yesterday. Now the flesh at the edge of his bones is exposed and frayed, though somehow not bleeding, and his palm is swollen and red, even though his thumb still is normal.
Oh, my God. It is spreading.
He wiggles his bony fingers in front of his face. “Soon the blisters will come, and they’ll get bigger until they finally burst, and my whole hand will be like this. And then little by little, it’ll spread until I’m a walking, talking skeleton.” A long, rolling laugh escapes his lips. But it’s not his normal laugh. It’s hollow and empty and sends a chill up my spine.
“What’s so funny?”
He quiets. “It doesn’t even hurt. You’d think dying would be painful, but I can’t feel a thing.” He thrusts his hand into my face. “Here, touch it. I won’t feel it.”
I get a whiff of something chalky and gag, realizing it’s his bones. “No, I can’t.”
“Sure you can.” He pushes his hand closer, and his eyes glisten with maniacal insanity.
Recoiling, I cry, “Stop, Jack!”
His face falls. “You want to save me, but you can’t even touch it.”
Ugh, he’s right. I draw a deep breath and inch my finger toward his, bracing myself for what has to be the most disgusting thing I’ve ever imagined. Or anyone’s ever imagined. My fingertip grazes the smooth bone before my reflex kicks in and I jerk my hand away.
His face is grim. “Dang, Em. Touch it for real. It’s not going to kill you.”
I stare into his steely blue eyes and realize I have to do this for him, to build his trust, and convince him I’m serious about breaking the curse. With a gulp, I reach out and grasp what used to be his index finger. It’s cold and moist, like a piece of sidewalk chalk that’s been left out in the rain. The three joints hang together by only a thin piece of stretchy tissue, which is probably a tendon. I run my finger over the top bone that’s curved in the middle and rounded at the tip. It’s like a chess piece, a tiny ivory pawn at the end of his finger.
He hikes up his eyebrow. “You know what it’s called?”
“What?”
“That bone. It’s the distal pha
lange. I looked it up in one of the old encyclopedias in the middle of the night. And this one’s the intermediate.” He points to the middle section with his good finger. “The bottom is the proximal.”
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, lowering my gaze to my nearly normal foot. It’s surreal that I could heal so quickly, but he’s only getting worse.
He swallows back the welling tears, but one escapes and trickles down his cheek. “Nah, don’t worry about it.” He brushes it away with the back of his good hand and sniffs. “At least I’ll be the coolest living anatomy lesson ever, right?” He forces a smile, but I’ll take it, because it means he hasn’t totally given up. At least not yet.
I reach over and grasp his knee. “We’re not going to let it get that far.”
“I want to believe you. I just don’t know if I can.” His eyes get glossy again, and he rubs them with his healthy hand. When his tears are under control, he tucks this arms behind his head and changes the subject. “So what’s your plan to save me?”
I bite my bottom lip. “Um, Miss Delia needed some time to think on it. But she’s got some ideas.” I decide not to mention how difficult, if not impossible, she said the curse was to break. He needs all the hope he can get.
“That’s good. I guess Maggie was right about her.”
“Yeah, that’s weird, right? I mean, how did she know we’d need a root doctor? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad she took us to Miss Delia, but it just seems really coincidental.”
Jack rolls his eyes. “God, Em, when are you going to get off her case?”
Heat flushes my cheeks. “I’m not on her case. I’m just saying it’s strange she got us to the exact right person to deal with this. I mean, seriously, what would have happened if we went to the hospital? They’d have you locked up in intensive care or zipped behind one of those plastic biohazard barriers.”
“It’s not weird at all. She’s my girlfriend, and she cares about me. And she’s a local. I bet all the binyahs know Miss Delia and her freaky hoodoo magic.”