She smoothes down my hair and says, ‘We pour our love into the things around us, and it stays there for a long time and protects us. Remember, love is never wasted, not one word, not one gesture. I’ve filled Pablito with my kisses, so hug him, and he’ll make you feel better. He’ll keep you safe when you need him most. . . .’
The memory of my mother faded, just as the monster’s hairy lips were finding their way through a gap in my rumpled sheets. My teeth chattered as if they were keys banging away on an old Underwood, but I grabbed my little, stuffed dog. I thrust it with all my might through the gap at the awful creature’s muzzle. In an instant there was a sound like waffle mix dropped on a hot griddle. The room was filled with a searing, fleshy smell.
The creature howled in pain. ‘You son-of-a-bitch! You son-of-a-bitch!’ it screamed in rage. ‘What have you do-one to me-e?’
I heard it thrash about, sending my globe crashing to the floor, knocking over a shelf of books. I was startled to hear my own voice scream back at the creature, ‘I-it’s my little dog. H-he’s my t-totem. I loved him, and my mother did too! This love will kill you.’
The thing recoiled at my answer as if it had been struck again. Heaving back on its hind legs it gave the most awful, ear-piercing bray. I wrapped my head in my arms to block it out.
‘All ri-ight, you little ba-astard,’ it spat, its spittle sizzling hot against my sheets. ‘You’ve kept me at ba-ay tonight. But I’ll be ba-ack to-mo-orrow night, with another story just for you. And ano-other and ano-other! In six nights’ time, if you just lie there like a sick little baby, pissing yourself, then I’ll gra-ab you, and you’ll be mine for all ete-ernity!’
The thing shrieked one last time. I heard it spread—and saw the shadow of—enormous creaking wings. The shadow coiled and launched itself off my bedroom floor. With a rushing of wind like a thunderclap, it knocked the remaining books off my shelf, blowing out the candle and toppling the bookcase onto me. I was left alone in complete darkness.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I stayed balled up under my covers for the longest time, shivering and gasping for breath, because the bookcase had pinned me down across the chest. I didn’t dare move, until after I saw the first feeble rays of dawn appear through my sheets.
Then I cautiously emerged, covered in bruises.
My books and newspaper clippings of sailing boats were all torn up. I looked down sadly at the remains of my stuffed dog. Pablito was ripped to shreds and charred like a potato left too long in a campfire. I knew his magic was gone.
I was stunned to see that the rest of my room was intact. From the sounds of destruction the night before, I’d imagined the Muladona smashing through the walls in its escape. But by means of some evil magic it appeared to have simply dematerialised.
When my mind had cleared a little, I thought of getting hold of Sheriff Wilkinson. That man’s chiselled, scarred face scared the Bejeezus out of me. He’d been a ranger along the frontier when my grandfather had first settled in Incarnation. I’d like to see how the Devil’s mule fared against his double-barrelled twelve gauge! But even if I could get a message to the sheriff, what would I say? ‘Please, help me, there’s a demonic mule haunting me at night!’ He’d think I was feverish and throw me in quarantine with the flu victims in the old school house. I’d die there for sure.
There was no other way. I had to face the creature alone.
With that realisation, a strange sensation came creeping over me. Last night, when I’d fought back against the Muladona, it had been the first time I’d fought for anything. It wasn’t a great act of bravery, I guess, compared to what our boys did in Belleau Woods. But it was mine. What had Sergeant Daly shouted to his men, as they’d advanced under the withering fire of German guns, ‘Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?’
Guns. . . . If only I had a pistol or a shotgun! But Father never allowed weapons in the house. It wasn’t on moral grounds—from the pulpit he’d fiercely advocated the death penalty for war-time hoarders. But Father hated the popular saying ‘God made man, and Sam Colt made them equal’. For him, we were all equal in the eyes of God, to be saved or damned only in accordance with His Unfathomable Will. To presume that any material object—let alone a Colt .44—made men equal was blasphemy.
The smell of my clothes, drenched in urine and sweat, made me put aside these thoughts. I shuffled into the bathroom. Peeling them off, I opened up the shower-valve full blast. I stood under the stream of water pouring from the cistern on the roof. It was so cold, I felt like I was burning. My teeth chattered as I lathered myself, but I didn’t mind. It was wonderful to feel my skin break out in goose bumps. It was marvellous to feel alive.
My mind drew a pleasant blank. No flying mules. No medicine. No Spanish flu. Just the water streaming over me. I turned off the water and towelled myself down. With steam still rising from my body, I went into my room. I extracted some clean clothes from amongst the piles of scattered books and got dressed.
Grunting, I righted my bookcase and pulled the sheets off my bed. Then I balled them up and dragged them to the kitchen. Stepping around the mess of broken glass from my medicine bottle, I peered through the kitchen window at the high-walled yard. The back door was locked. The rain had let up for a moment; the early rays of light were filtering through the grey landscape outside. Swirling shadows were slowly replaced with solid objects.
I heaved the sheets into the old stone scullery sink. I dumped in soap powder and soaked and twisted them, then I lugged the sheets outside to the clothesline and hung them up. The perimeter wall surrounding the back garden was well beyond my climbing abilities, and the gate was locked. Cupping my soapy hands around my mouth, I called out, ‘Hello, it’s Verge. I’m trapped in here. Can anybody hear me? Hell-oo.’ I strained my ears for any response. There was just the sound of rain dripping off branches. A blue jay landed and screeched. It hopped across the grass, feathers all fluffed up, in search of worms. It reminded me that I was hungry, so I went back into the kitchen and poured myself a bowl of toasted cornflakes and some buttermilk from the icebox. I crunched the cereal in silence, wondering what I should do next.
What would Sebas do in my place? Where was he? Why hadn’t he come yet?
I couldn’t just wait for him to break down the door and rescue me. I had to try to work things out for myself.
What did I know about the Muladona? Not much besides the stories Carlos had told me. There had to be a book on the subject. Books, books . . . I knew my collection by heart, and I didn’t have anything on the Muladona. My father only had works of philosophy, most of them in Latin and Greek, which I couldn’t read.
Maybe there was something left of Sebas’ collection! After Sebas had run away, Father had thrown out everything of his that he could find. But there was a little cubby-hole under a loose board in the floor of Sebas’ bedroom that I’d never dared search, for fear of getting caught by Father. I got up decisively and ventured down the hallway towards Sebas’ bedroom. I put my hand on the brass doorknob, but I couldn’t open it at once. I hadn’t been into Sebas’ room since he’d run away. I guess I thought that if I never went in and found it empty, then he wasn’t really gone.
Taking a few deep breaths, I opened the door and walked in. I found Sebas’ bed stripped of its mattress. It was piled with boxes marked ‘Church Property’ that my father had rescued before the Sheriff closed the church. Broken springs popped up in between them like iron weeds. There was a wicker hat rack devoid of hats. An old sewing mannequin. A rusty, metal filing cabinet that blocked most of the window. I measured out five paces from the door, squeezing past a stack of boxes containing baptismal records from the 1880s. I bent down and pushed an old adding machine out of the way. Then I got at the edges of the board I was looking for. I struggled against it and, leveraging with my fingernails, I finally wrenched it out.
I stuck my arm in the dark hole up to my elbow. But there was nothing there! My heart sank as I reached in further, all
the way up to my armpit, feeling as if my arm would snap. I could just feel the end of a cord. I carefully pinched it and dragged it out, pulling up a packet wrapped in a burlap bag. I impatiently pulled open the knot and dumped out an old book onto the floor. To my joy, it was the jewel of Sebas’ collection, Edward Farnsworth’s Mythology and Witchcraft in Old Mexico. I quickly opened up the book to the colour frontispiece: a human sacrifice atop a ziggurat. Men’s and women’s faces twisted in agony. They watched in horror as an Indian priest, a mixture of ecstasy and madness in his eyes, held aloft a human heart and a bloody stone knife.
I found myself smiling at the gruesome scene, for Sebas had forbidden me to touch the book. He’d bought it by mail-order from an antique bookstore in Austin and engaged Lupita’s help to smuggle it into the house. I put the book under my armpit and fitted the floorboard back into place. As I did so, I accidentally bumped into an old steamer trunk piled with newspapers. A hatbox teetering on top of it came crashing down on my head.
For a few moments, all I saw were stars. Rubbing the welt on my head, I gazed at the contents of the box scattered about me. Pressed flowers and a St Francis bookmark. Then I picked up an old handbill that had fluttered to the floor. The printing was so faded that I could barely make out ‘Application to the Missionary League of America. Are you Good Enough for God?’ On it was paper-clipped a note in a girl’s flourishing handwriting, ‘Thank you for sending this to me. I think it’s wonderful that you’re going to apply.’ The handwriting seemed familiar, but my head ached from where the hatbox had struck me, and I couldn’t think straight.
Next I picked up an old dog-eared Baedeker guide to The United States with an Excursion into Mexico. On the inside cover was an inscription in the same writing, ‘You may travel far from home, but I will always guide you back. I would see you through hell itself.’
Then I saw a packet of six or seven letters, tied up with purple ribbon. I felt a strange compulsion to untie the bow. Before I knew it, I was reading the letters.
In precise, Spartan handwriting the first one began, ‘My Dearest Guide. . . .’ It was a love letter of sorts, although it didn’t mention the word once. It was filled with words like ‘admiration’ and ‘appreciation’ and contained descriptions of someone’s classes in ethics and medieval philosophy. There were also a number of quotes by Thomas Aquinas. It was signed, ‘Your faithful servant, Calvin Justinius’.
No, it couldn’t be! Was this a cache of love letters and mementos from Father’s seminary days! Who was this woman who inspired such an outpouring of emotions from Father? How was this in any way possible?
A thunderclap broke so close that I almost jumped out of my skin. I remembered my sheets hanging in the yard. I had to get them dry before the Muladona came again. I ran outside. I wrung the sheets out again and draped them in front of the kitchen fire.
To the sound of the rain pummelling the roof and the sheets dripping on the floor, I pored over Sebas’ book. The tiny, close-set words were almost too painful to read by the firelight. I skimmed the chapters on witchcraft, demons and apparitions, looking in vain for any mention of the Muladona. Nothing.
Then I read through the chapters on poisons and voodoo dolls. Still nothing about the creature that had visited me.
I was about to toss the book aside in despair when I came across a faded daguerreotype that made my blood run cold. It was of a creature with the body of a mule and the head of a beautiful woman. Bare breasts hung from above its front limbs. Long hornlike ears poked through its mane of flowing hair. Spewing from its mouth was a cone of fire.
The caption read ‘Muladona or Donamula comes from the Catalan for “mule woman”.’ I was no longer in the realm of mythology. The demonic creature in the picture was as real to me as a grizzly or a coyote: after all, I had seen it the night before. The section continued:
The first stories of this creature come from the Old World. According to Höenniger, the subject of this transformation was believed to be a woman cursed by God for her illicit actions. For its otherness among God’s creatures—neither horse nor ass—and its sterility, the figure of the mule has long been associated with the Lord of Darkness.
As she was cursed, so this wicked woman in turn cursed the man who had wronged her. If he was a horse herder, she would, in beastly form, blend in with his herd and start stampedes in an attempt to trample him to death.
By the time the conquistadores brought the story to the New World, it had undergone a change. The Papists promoted the story of the Devil’s mule as a woman who had been seduced by a priest. While this zoomorphism seems a conflation of pagan and Christian beliefs, the Church used the story to warn their clergy not to take advantage of their female parishioners. Another aim was to instil fear in the savages, so they would keep their heathen daughters away from the Spaniards.
There are different versions of the story throughout Latin America. In the Argentine, the monster is called the Mul’anima or Alma Mula. In Brazil, it is Mula sin cabeza, the headless mule. This variety is supposed to breathe fire on its victims through a ragged hole in its throat.
I grabbed the nub of an old pencil. With trembling hands, I underlined ‘sterile’, ‘wicked’ and ‘zoomorphism’. The welt on my head where I had been hit by the hatbox began to throb. A migraine came over me like a poleaxe splitting my head. The pencil dropped from my fingers.
Everything around me went black.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I started suddenly from my hunched position over the kitchen table. My head ached. My face was smeared with drool and ink from Sebas’s book. The room was pitch-black, except for the tiny blue flames from the oven, flickering behind my hanging sheets. It reminded me of the Old Testament story of the three brothers, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, who were thrown into the furnace alive to test their love for God. Blurrily, I thought, ‘Did God really need love that desperately?’
As I shook out my muddled thoughts, I realised it was already night-time. The Beast could be approaching any minute! I scrabbled to my feet, my pulse racing. I lit a candle from the stove.
I stumbled down the hallway, not daring to look at the gilt-framed mirror in case the Muladona stared back at me. Straining my eyes to make out the position of the mantel clock hands, I saw it was 11:45pm. I’d slept most of the day. And it was coming! It was coming!
My chest constricted. I began to hyperventilate.
I stumbled back to the kitchen and grabbed a paper bag. Forcing myself to breathe into it slowly, I thought of what Sebas would do in my place. Even when he was lost in the snow, even with a broken leg, he hadn’t lost hope. I had to do him proud.
Still wheezing, I wrenched free the sheets from where they hung. Pots and pans scattered everywhere, making a tremendous din. I ran to my bedroom and set down the candle. I tucked the sheets in tighter than ever before.
I was about to jump under the covers when I had an idea. I rummaged around the closet and pulled out Carlos’ old tool box. I lugged it back to my room. Then I knelt down and quickly recited the Lord’s Prayer over a handful of nails. I nailed the sheets into the bed frame, smashing and bending their heads down, with both my arms swinging madly. Beads of sweat burst from my forehead. As I smashed the last nail into place, I accidentally sent the hammer crashing down onto my thumb. Blood spurted everywhere.
I cried out in pain. I grabbed Sebas’ book and jumped under the covers. For a moment, I heard nothing except for the pounding of my own heart. Then I heard the ping of the clock striking midnight. The creaking of the old house. The pitter-patter of rain on the tin roof.
Time passed.
What was that sound? Was it the Beast, or just the trees rubbing against each other in the backyard?
Maybe Sebas had tracked it down and found its lair. Maybe he’d killed it. Was my nightmare over? I began to shiver. I thought it was just my nerves, but soon my whole body was shaking violently, as if I’d been plunged into the cold store of a meat packing plant.
Then I he
ard the scratching, scraping sound of chains being dragged along the hallway, and all my hope vanished. I closed my eyes and rolled myself into a ball, praying that God would give me the strength to endure one more night. The dank, grave-like smell permeated the air as the awful creature clip-clopped its way into my room.
‘A-aaah,’ it brayed. ‘I see you’ve been a bu-usy, li-ittle boy, with your ha-ammer, just like the Prophet Jeremi-iah. It’s go-ood practice for when they bury you in your little co-offin.’
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t think anything. I didn’t want to exist.
‘Oh, poo-oor ba-aby. Cat got your tongue? Maybe you don’t have enough space to breathe in there.’
It got very close to my face, still covered over by the sheets. I heard its teeth clamp down on one of the nails. With an awful screeching sound it slowly wrenched it out then let it fall with a small ping onto the floor. It circled my bed, biting on each nail and wrenching it out effortlessly, then dropping them on the floor. With every ping, I flinched.
When it had finished, the Muladona said, ‘See, little baby? Nothing can protect you. Not your feeble mind. Not your God. Are you ready to end this torture and guess who I am?’
I told myself I’d been through this before. I told myself I could survive it again. But I didn’t believe it in my heart. Fear flooded through my body uncontrollably. There was one glimmer of hope: I felt just a little stronger than the day before. In spite of not having taken my medicine, I had a small reserve of energy. It was strange, not having my body betray me, and I hung onto that feeling as hard as I could.
I summoned all my courage and stuttered, ‘N-no.’
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