From Twisted Roots

by Tobias Wade

  It was easier than I thought to get them outside. Allen was feeling fidgety and nervous, and that was making Grandma anxious. After a tense dinner, during which Allen kept looking through his food for insects, I asked if they wanted to go outside and walk around the yard with me. Allen seemed hesitant, but Grandma hurriedly agreed on both of their behalf.

  After making sure Priss was lounging safely inside, the three of us tromped out to the garden. We made the rounds to each of Grandma’s flower beds, Allen and I listening politely while she explained what plants were what. All the while, I had my sights set on the rose bush.

  I heard the tiniest of bell tinkles from somewhere in the tangled depths, and I knew Coilin was there. As agreed, I nonchalantly dropped the stone by the bush and called my brother over to look at something. I didn’t know exactly what Coilin was going to do, but if it were anything like his previous two pranks, it was going to be great.

  “I don’t see anything,” Allen said irritably, peering into the bush.

  “Look closer!”

  Grandma noticed our unusual interest in her roses and had started to come over. When she was just beyond arm’s reach, the stone at my feet flashed bright gold before its surface faded into a murky black.

  I fell back in surprise. Allen tried to as well, but something had him around the wrist. A vine from the rose bush, thorny and cruel, was biting into his flesh. He cried out and clawed at the vine, but another shot out and took him by his other wrist.

  “Grandma!” We both screamed. She tried to tear at the plant in vain, bloodying her palms and fingers on the thorns.

  I hugged Allen around the waist, trying to drag him back, begging Coilin to help. The vines continued to twist and turn up Allen’s arms until they were lost from sight. Grandma beat against the bush, wailing like a banshee from one of her stories. Allen looked to her, his eyes glassy and his pale lips flecked with blood, and then he was gone, yanked impossibly into the bush. Grandma collapsed to her knees in front of it, reaching for the spot where Allen had been.

  “Coilin!” I shouted. “Help! Help Allen!”

  At the sound of his name, Grandma turned to me, and I saw such fear, such anger, in her expression. I thought she was going to strike me, and maybe she was, but the sound of a tinkling bell froze her solid.

  “Consider your debt repaid, Eileen O’Hara,” Coilin’s voice sounded from somewhere far away, much too far to be in the bush. Then there was silence.

  Grandma Eileen came into some money in 1962 after the death of Grandpa Joe. A death she had arranged with the help of the Little People. All they had asked for in return was to give up the love of her first born son. She agreed and celebrated the end of her abusive, alcoholic husband before taking her money and fleeing to America. She thought she managed to escape, but the Little People are patient, and they do not forget.

  She knew they had found her again; she heard their whispers outside her window. She didn’t know how, not after so much time, and she tried to warn us, but we didn’t listen. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; the Little People came to collect, and collect they did.

  Dad’s relationship with Grandma was never the same after Allen disappeared. He said he didn’t blame her, that he knew she would have died before she let anything happen to my brother. There was no warmth in his eyes anymore though, no affection.

  We sold the house barely a year later. Grandma wasn’t invited to join us in our new home. They told her the new house was too small, but the truth was, it was just too hard for my parents to see her. With nowhere else to go, she ended up in a retirement community where she remained, alone, until she passed away in her sleep some time later.

  Mom convinced Dad to collect her things and provide a proper burial as a way to say our final goodbye. That’s when we found how little Grandma had kept: only a few photographs, some clothes, and a murky black stone that had reminded her of home.

  Moomaw’s Curses

  When you’re a scrawny, awkward kid from a poor family, you’re going to be teased. A lot. It’s just one of those inescapable universal truths that nobody questions. You may expect it to remain almost exclusively a peer-thing: something that your classmates do when there aren’t any adults looking. Even if the teachers happen to agree with what the others are saying about you, they’re not supposed to join in or encourage it.

  Not everyone gets that memo, though.

  Ninth grade was a particularly rough year for me. At fourteen, I was still one of the shortest guys in my class. I wore thick glasses that gave me an owlish appearance, and the only clothes I owned were hand-me-downs from my much larger brother that made me look even smaller than I actually was. Saying I made an easy target was like saying Michael Jordan was kind of ok at basketball.

  I wanted to complain to my grandmother, Moomaw, about how embarrassed I was just to be me. I knew she was doing the best she could with what little she had though. After my parents divorced and both skipped town, she’d been saddled with two teenage boys that required her to go back to work as a cleaning lady after five years in retirement. She never griped about it, so what right did I have?

  I like to think that I held up pretty well in the beginning. I didn’t want to bother Moomaw with my problems, and I knew my brother Devon wouldn’t care one way or another. I kept them bottled up instead.

  When Kelsey spent a few days convincing me she liked me, then laughed in front of all her friends when I finally asked her out, I stayed quiet.

  When Glenn shoved me in his gym locker with his unwashed PE outfit and held it shut until I started to gag, I stayed quiet.

  When my lunch was stolen, when I was forced to give over my homework to be copied, when my art project was torn up, I stayed quiet. I thought if I didn’t react and just kept my head down, they’d get bored and move on.

  And then Mr. Farkle started.

  He was a young teacher, fresh out of college and all too eager to be liked by the popular kids. When he noticed that I was a favored target for teasing, he joined right in. It started out subtly enough with him asking me to go to the board and solve a problem he’d written high up where I couldn’t reach. Once could have been a fluke, but after the third time I had to struggle in front of the class’s barely concealed laughter, I knew it was intentional.

  He ignored me when I had my hand raised to answer a question, but call on me when he knew I didn’t know what he was asking. He kicked my bag whenever he walked by, no matter how far I tried to tuck it under my desk, and tell me off for being careless with my things. He was open and generous with his praise, but only had disparaging remarks for me.

  I still stayed quiet. I just tried to do better and show him that I was just as good as any other student. No matter how hard I worked, though, nothing changed.

  My grades, which had always been exceptional, started to drop. Food lost its appeal, as did simply getting out of bed. My stomach ached constantly, my head throbbed, and I was always on the brink of breaking down into tears.

  It didn’t take long for Moomaw to notice.

  “What’s wrong, Brad?” She had come to wake me for school, but when I just rolled over, she sat next to me and rubbed my back.

  Her voice and touch were so gentle and warm, something I’d been lacking from anyone else for so long that I couldn’t stop the tears from falling. Through messy sobs, I told her about Mr. Farkle and what he’d been doing. Storm clouds gathered in Moomaw’s eyes. She mimicked spitting at my floor when I was done.

  It was what she always did before she recited one of her curses.

  “That man,” she said, “may he find a fly in every one of his meals!”

  Moomaw didn’t believe in wishing ill on others. When she was upset, she’d think up something benign, but annoying, instead. Usually they made me laugh, but that morning, I wanted far worse to happen to Mr. Farkle.

  “Don’t you worry, Brad, I’m going to take care of this for you.”

  Before I could beg
her not to get involved, she’d stomped out of the room.

  Mr. Farkle’s behavior did change a bit after that. He now ignored me completely except to grade my work with almost painful pettiness, taking any excuse to mark me off. He must have told some of the other kids that I’d gotten him in trouble, because suddenly I was being pelted with spitballs and crumpled paper throughout class.

  I just bit my lip, clenched my fists, and tried to endure it as best I could. I even managed a small almost-smile when I saw him waving irritably at a fly buzzing around his open soda bottle a few days after Moomaw’s “curse”. Any enjoyment I got out if it was quickly squashed, though, when a wet, sticky wad of paper hit me in the back of my head.

  There was a brief respite from the abuse when Mr. Farkle was out sick for almost a week and we had a no-nonsense substitute. Being able to complete my math work in peace was almost magical.

  It didn’t last. When Mr. Farkle returned, he was in a worse mood than I’d ever seen him. He’d lost a lot of weight while he’d been out, and his skin was pale and drawn. Dark circles rimmed his eyes. Severe food poisoning, we learned.

  “Bugs all over everything in this damn school,” I overheard him telling his little groupies. “It’s no wonder I got sick with how often I’ve been having to brush them off anything I eat.”

  I thought of Moomaw’s curse again, quietly delighted in the coincidence.

  He must have sensed that I wasn’t exactly upset he’d been out, because it wasn’t long before I was on his radar again. The brunt of his foul temper was unleashed in a rant over how I needed to pay attention in class after I couldn’t figure out a problem quickly enough. He screamed until my face was burning with shame and tears had built up in my eyes. I tried to discreetly wipe them away, but he saw and sighed with disgust.

  “Go to the girl’s room if you’re going to cry, Pierro,” he said.

  The class giggled and whispered behind me as I hurried out.

  Moomaw was livid when she found out.

  “That man,” she was shaking with anger, “may his shoes fit poorly and pinch his toes! You sit tight—I’m going to call the school.”

  She bustled into the kitchen, and I heard her speaking in a sharp whisper to whoever was unfortunate enough to answer. If I had thought of it at the time, I might have told Moomaw about the amusing timing of her fly curse and his food poisoning. My mind was too filled with self-pity and sadness to focus on anything else though.

  “We have a meeting with Mr. Farkle and the principal tomorrow,” Moomaw said once she’d hung up.

  But the meeting didn’t occur as scheduled. Mr. Farkle had been walking down the stairs to reach the principal’s office when he tripped on his untied shoelace and stumbled down the last few steps, twisting his ankle and hurting his foot.

  The next time I saw him, he was on crutches and his foot was in a black medical boot. He propped it up on a stool to teach, and the ends of his bruised toes, too swollen to fit comfortably into a shoe, were just visible.

  I reminded myself to mention it to Moomaw that afternoon when she came down to school for the meeting. I figured she’d get a kick out of the timing of the accident, but the seriousness she carried herself with when she arrived told me it would be better to just stay quiet.

  Our conference with the principal did not exactly go well. Moomaw and Mr. Farkle were almost shouting over each other about what was going on in his classroom.

  “He’s a lazy trouble maker!” Mr. Farkle said.

  “You’re a horrible teacher!” Moomaw replied.

  They went back and forth until Ms. Haggarty, the principal, had to step in. The conversation didn’t become any more productive than that and, when it ended, exactly nothing had been accomplished. Ms. Haggarty did agree to check what other math classes might be open to me, but she couldn’t make any promises. In the meantime, Mr. Farkle and I would have to try and maintain a “professional relationship”.

  “That man,” Moomaw mimed spitting before slamming her car door, “may his car stall at an inconvenient time!”

  “It’s ok, Moomaw,” I said quietly.

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure something out.”

  The drive home was quiet. Moomaw fumed the whole way, and I just did what I did best: I stayed quiet and kept my head down.

  I didn’t sleep at all that night. I was too afraid of what the following day would bring. No doubt Mr. Farkle would take out his anger on me and try even harder to ensure I was miserable. I appreciated Moomaw sticking up for me, but the cost was going to be way too high.

  I was already up and dressed when Moomaw knocked on my door at 5:30 the next morning.

  “I’m up,” I said, trying not to sound too upset about it.

  “Can I come in?” Moomaw asked through the door.

  “Yeah.”

  Her expression was grim as she let herself in to sit beside me on the edge of my bed.

  “I have some unfortunate news, Brad,” she said. I nodded for her to continue. “I just saw on the news that your teacher, Mr. Farkle, was involved in an accident.”

  “Ok?” I said slowly.

  “He was driving home last night and got a flat tire. It was dark, and he was standing next to his car when a truck came down the road. It didn’t see him in time and, well...Mr. Farkle didn’t make it.”

  I gazed at Moomaw, my mouth hanging open and my eyes wide. I struggled to find the words for all the thoughts racing in my head.

  They kept circling back to one thing, though. The last thing Moomaw said about my teacher the night before.

  “Your curse,” I stammered, “you wanted his car to stall and his shoe not to fit and the flies!”

  “What?” she looked baffled, so I reminded her of her curses and told her everything that had happened to Mr. Farkle after each one.

  “Y-you wanted this to happen, didn’t you?”

  Moomaw tutted her tongue and smoothed my hair away from my face. “Of course not, Brad! You know I don’t wish ill on anyone!”

  “But—”

  “You know me better than that, young man. Now finish getting dressed and come downstairs for breakfast.”

  “Everything you said happened, Moomaw,” I said earnestly as she got up. “How?”

  “You think an old woman’s silly words could kill a man?”

  “I dunno,” I said doubtfully, knowing how dumb it sounded. “Maybe?”

  She paused in the doorway and half turned to me. “No, dear, that’s ridiculous. It wasn’t what I said that hurt Mr. Farkle; it was what was listening that did.”

  “What?”

  She just smiled and walked out.

  “Moomaw?” I called after her, but she did respond.

  She just left me sitting in my room. I stared at where she’d been long after she’d gone, very confused, and more than a little afraid.

  The Past Repeats

  Sage had always been a very normal kid, except for the stories. It wasn’t that they were disturbing or horrific: they were just unusual. Sometimes they seemed exactly like the kind of thing you’d expect from a little girl, but other times, I’d have to look at her and wonder how she came up with such things.

  It started when she was four, shortly after her deadbeat dad split, leaving the two of us on our own.

  I’d just finished reading her a bedtime story and was tucking her in with a goodnight kiss when she yawned, smiled sleepily. “You’ll always be my mommy, right?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Good. I’d miss you if you weren’t. You’ve been my mommy for a long time.”

  “Yup, your whole life,” I replied, smoothing her hair back.

  “All my lifes,” she murmured into her pillow.

  Her eyes fluttered shut, her breathing deepened, and she fell asleep while I sat next to her. Kids really do say the darndest things.

  I didn’t dwell on it; it was just an off-the-cuff remar
k by a child with a very active imagination. The same child who, a few weeks before, had told me that rainbows are unicorn slides and clouds are their trampolines. Sage didn’t even seem to remember saying it the next morning. She didn’t mention it anyway, which was pretty much the same thing as she had a tendency to say whatever popped into her head.

  I thought it was a one off thing until we were watching a show with princesses in poofy dresses.

  “We used to dress like that,” Sage said casually.

  “Oh yeah?” I asked with that indulgent parent tone used when a kid is about to tell a tall tale.

  “Yup, yours was blue and mine was red, and we wore them a lot.”

  “We must have looked very pretty!”

  “Yup, but I didn’t like mine ‘cos it was hot and you didn’t let me play in it,” she said. “You used to-used to be a lot meaner.”

  “I was?” I played along and raised my brows in surprise.

  “You didn’t let me do a lot of stuff.”

  “But I’m better now?”

  “Yeah,” she giggled, “you’re nicer now!”

  “Well that’s a relief!”

  It was certainly an odd conversation, but one I attributed to the TV show that was on. It had a “mean” mom with lots of rules, a daughter who was getting into trouble for bending them, and a lot of the stuff she was claiming we had done. It was kind of cute, really.

  Until it started to become a more frequent occurrence.

  She’d see sor hear something and it would “remind” her of something we’d done together in a previous life. Foods she’d never tried, places she’d never even heard of, pictures of clothing and items she had no way of knowing about; she claimed to have memories of them all. I made up excuses for it, convincing myself she must have heard about it on TV or at daycare. It was the only thing that made sense.

  “Honey,” I said with a laugh after she asked if I remembered teaching her to use chopsticks back when we had black hair and lived in the mountains, “where do you come up with this stuff?”