A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters

by Greenberg, Martin H.

  The future was too strong, too real in Melinda’s mind for that to be true.

  “I tried to hold her, but she slipped right through my fingers. She’s limp, like she doesn’t have any muscles or bones.”

  Melinda laughed. “She’s just born. All new fathers worry about dropping the baby.”

  Mike took Melinda’s hand, squeezing reassuringly. “There’s more, sweetheart. A lot more.” He caught her gaze with his stunning blue-green eyes, willing her to listen. “She has a hole from her nose to her lip. Her eyes . . .” He shrugged, unable to find the words. “Not right. She has more than ten fingers and less than ten toes. Melinda, there’s something wrong with our baby.”

  “Fingers and toes?” Melinda found it difficult to focus. The image of her ideal child refused to leave her mind. “So she has some flaws. We’ll deal with them.”

  Mike nodded. “Of course, we will.” But he did not sound as confident as Melinda. “As we can. But I think we need to realize that our child . . .”

  “Paige.” Melinda interrupted. Mike had chosen the name, his favorite, and she had come to love it too as the tiny life had formed inside her.

  “That Paige may have many more problems. Inside, where we can’t see them.”

  “We’ll fix those, too,” Melinda murmured, drifting into sleep.

  The diagnosis, confirmed two weeks later, was devastating. Trisomy 13, the doctor called it. Paige had an extra chromosome in every cell in her body that caused her to have these abnormal features. Most died within days of birth, and ninety percent never reached their first birthdays. Mike and Melinda had prepared for the worst, even as they took the best care they could of their severely mentally and physically disabled daughter. They vowed not to have another child until they had fully mourned the death of the first.

  But, as the years went by, and Paige clung to life, Mike needed more. Four years later, Kaylee came, all full of the normalcy and life that Paige could never have. To Melinda, it often seemed cruel to revel in Kaylee’s achievements when Paige’s were so few, so miniscule; yet Mike doted on his younger daughter, enjoying every moment that Melinda could not. Soon, Melinda found herself alone in caring for the daughter who so desperately needed her, every moment of every day, while Mike slowly ceased to acknowledge Paige’s existence, so caught up in the bright and beautiful reality of their second, healthy child.

  Then the fighting had started. The social workers had warned them about the stress of dealing with children like Paige, that the divorce rate for such families approached 100%. But as Paige bucked sensational odds, surviving not only her first year but several more, they felt certain their marriage would do so as well.

  Except that it didn’t.

  Melinda resented feeling like a single mother, dealing with Paige’s inordinate problems alone. Mike dared to suggest placing Paige in residential care or at least respite care so that they could do some things together, like a regular family, without having to worry about Paige’s many special needs, her startling and inappropriate screams, the stares and glares of strangers. He demanded at least one Paige- less day per month to spend at an amusement park, where they could all go on the rides together. A day at the beach where they could all swim. A long walk in a wooded park. They argued constantly about what was best for Paige, for Kaylee, for their family. Ultimately, Melinda had insisted that Paige participate in all things, that she be treated as much like a regular girl as possible, that she have every opportunity that Kaylee did. And Mike had left them.

  Though only three years old at the time of the separation and subsequent divorce, Kaylee knew her father well. He still spent every free moment with her, though he never asked for visitation with Paige, nor did Melinda offer it. The few times she had allowed Paige out of her sight for hours at a time, crises had developed, and Melinda trusted no one with her precious, fragile daughter, not even her father anymore.

  Melinda refused to let any bitterness color her tone as she explained to Kaylee, “Paige was born with something called Trisomy 13 or Patau’s Syndrome. When she was growing inside Mommy, something went wrong that caused her to have all these problems. God gave her to us because he knew we would take good care of her.”

  Kaylee nodded. That answer seemed to satisfy her, the right amount of information for a six-year-old. She went back to looking for clovers for a moment, then suddenly shouted, “Mommy, look!” Stepping up beside Paige, she lunged, then triumphantly held up her prize. She clutched a snake behind the head, the way her father had taught her to catch them. It writhed wildly, dangling from her hand.

  Most of the snakes Melinda had seen on their acreage were harmless racers and hognose snakes. She liked the latter ones best, as they put on a grand display before playing dead. She worried more about the bull snakes. Though nonvenomous, they did tend to bite when disturbed.

  The snake thrashing in Kaylee’s grip did not appear to be any of those. It had light brown markings against dark brown, with a broad, triangular head. At first, Melinda assumed it was a hognose, but it lacked the tell-tale upturn of the nose. The body looked fat, the scales keeled. Sudden alarm seized Melinda. She had never heard of rattlesnakes in Iowa, but her attention leaped to the tail, where she saw exactly what she dreaded. It ended bluntly, with a series of oblong, bead-like rattles.

  Stay calm. Stay calm. Melinda reminded herself. If Kaylee panicked, she might get bitten or hurl the snake wildly onto someone else. “Hold onto it,” Melinda said, trying to sound as if nothing unusual were happening. “I’ll get something to put it in.”

  If any fear seeped from Melinda’s tone, Kaylee did not seem to notice. “OK.” She continued to hold the struggling snake.

  Melinda ran into the house, dumped the contents of a plastic cereal container, and dashed outside with it. Carefully, she guided the snake’s body into it, then helped Kaylee release the head so that it dropped inside with the rest of the snake. Melinda quickly affixed the lid.

  “Let me see.” Kaylee tried to take the container from her mother’s hands, but Melinda held on to it protectively. The girl contented herself with studying the snake through the clear plastic. “Shouldn’t we cut some air holes?”

  At the moment, Melinda’s least worry was the comfort of the snake.

  “Can I keep it? Please?”

  “No, honey.” Melinda took out her cell phone, punched in 4-1-1 and asked for the Department of Natural Resources. “This is a poisonous snake. Its bite can make people very sick. See the tail?” She made a mental note to tell Mike to teach their daughter to examine snakes before grabbing them.

  Kaylee pressed her face to the plastic. “Are those rattles, Mommy? Is this a rattlesnake?”

  “DNR,” said a voice on the other end of the line.

  “I found a rattlesnake in my yard.”

  “A rattlesnake?” A note of interest entered the man’s voice. “Can you describe it?”

  Melinda did so.

  “Ma’am, do you happen to live near a swamp?”

  Melinda had never thought of her neighbor’s property as a swamp. That brought to mind images of quicksand-like muck and algae hidden deep in uncivilized pockets of Louisiana. “There’s a peat bog across the gravel road. A working business.”

  “Yup.” Melinda could almost hear the man nodding knowingly on the other end of the line. “What you have is a Masagua rattler. It’s an endangered species.”

  Melinda glanced at Kaylee, still staring into the container. A shiver traversed her at the realization of what might have happened if Kaylee had moved a bit slower or the snake a bit faster. “Do you want to pick it up? Or should I bring it to you?”

  The man chuckled. “Ma’am, it’s an endangered species. That means you have to leave it exactly where you found it.” He added quickly, “You haven’t disturbed it, have you?”

  “No,” Melinda lied, not wanting any trouble from the DNR. “But it’s in my front yard. With my young daughters.”

  The man went silent for a moment, then said mat
ter-of-factly, “You might want to get your daughters inside.”

  You think? Melinda found herself speechless. She cleared her throat. “Well, thank you for your help.” She hoped she managed to keep sarcasm from her voice. There was no way in heaven or hell that she was going to loose a live rattlesnake back onto her front lawn. She set the container in the grass.

  “Kaylee, don’t touch that.” She pointed at the captured snake.

  Kaylee nodded. True to her word, she did not touch it, but she did stare at the creature moving around inside it.

  It took Melinda thirty minutes to hoist Paige back into her wheelchair. Paige grew heavier by the day, it seemed, even as her mother aged. The lack of tone in her limbs made it a race to fasten the straps before she slipped out and had to be lifted again. Finally, sweating and tired, Melinda got Paige secured and wheeled her toward the house. “Leave the snake; I’ll take care of it. Time to go inside.”

  Reluctantly, Kaylee followed. Melinda knew her younger daughter would have liked to play outside for hours, but she had grown so used to Paige’s schedule that she did not bother to complain. It often took hours to feed the older girl; she drooled, swallowed slowly, and choked often, even on baby food. It took many jars to satisfy the appetite of a ten-year-old girl. Six hour- long meals a day cut deeply into their schedule.

  Melinda wheeled Paige to the table and instructed Kaylee to sit in her chair as well. Then, she rushed upstairs and unlocked the gun case. In the days since she had shot the bull snake, she had handled the Mossberg 12-gauge enough to understand loading and unloading, the safety, and the bolt action. She had found the shells her husband had left and loaded three into the magazine. Shifting one into the chamber, she took it downstairs and outside to the container, where the snake hammered its nose against the plastic in obvious frustration and anger.

  You have to leave it exactly where you found it, the man had said. Melinda intended to do so. But he had not said what had to happen afterward. Cautiously, Melinda pulled off the lid. Holding it as far away from herself as possible, she dumped the snake onto the imprint left by Paige’s body in the grass. Exactly where we found you. She expected the snake to race away in the opposite direction. But, to her surprise, it whipped around toward her and coiled. She raised the gun and thumbed the safety, believing the movement alone would send it skittering. Instead, it hurtled toward her.

  She pulled the trigger.

  As Melinda described it later to her ex- husband and father, the snake died of “high-speed lead poisoning.” She expected them to chuckle, to praise her ability to handle a crisis without upsetting the girls or anyone coming to harm. Instead, they both expressed dismay and discomfort, each in his own way. Mike volunteered to search the entire property and to place a low fence to deter snakes from crossing the road, which she politely declined. Her father’s reaction surprised her more. He insisted on coming over, a two- hour drive, despite her protests; and he brought her mother’s Great Aunt Ruth with him. Melinda could not recall the last time she had seen her great-great aunt; the woman had to be in her nineties.

  For a time, father and aunt reacquainted with Melinda and the girls, speaking of school, the past, and weather. But, when the girls went down for the night, the conversation changed abruptly. The adults retired to the living room, the television off, shoving aside Legos and a host of developmental toys and therapy objects. Melinda sat on one couch, her father and aunt on the other.

  Her father sighed deeply, clearly intending to raise a matter of great import. “Melinda, honey, I had hoped to spare you this information.” He glanced at Aunt Ruth, who said nothing. She was short and deeply wrinkled, her hair thin and white. Her mouth pursed, her eyes recessed into folds, her expression gave away nothing. “Your mother’s family carries . . . a curse.”

  Melinda turned her father a twisted expression of scorn. A molecular biologist, he believed in nothing supernatural. Or so she had always thought. “A curse,” she repeated dubiously. Her brows rose in increments. “A curse?”

  Her father chewed his lower lip. “I know it sounds insane. I didn’t believe it until . . . until your mother . . .”

  Mother. Now, he had Melinda’s full attention. She had barely known the woman, who had died of a heart attack when Melinda was a child. As it clearly pained her father to talk about her mother, Melinda had learned to remain silent on the matter. “. . . died?” she inserted.

  Her father nodded. “She was so . . . so young.”

  “Thirty-one.” Melinda knew that much. Now that she had passed the same age, it seemed like an impossibility. How does a healthy woman of barely three decades develop heart disease so severe. She had seen pictures of her mother: smiling, slender, full of life.

  Father seemed to read Melinda’s mind. “She knew the stories of her bloodline, had lived in dread of them since childhood. When the snake appeared—”

  Melinda interrupted. “What snake?” It was the first time a snake had ever entered the story.

  “A simple garter snake.” Her father buried his face in his hands. “Completely harmless, yet she knew what had to come. And her heart could not take it.” He peeked at Melinda through his fingers. “Melinda, honey, your mother died of stark and horrible terror. Nothing more. I tried rescue breathing. I tried to bring her back, but I . . . just . . . couldn’t.”

  Melinda had never blamed him. Now, she felt nothing but confusion. “What? She died because she saw a . . . a garter snake?”

  Her father only nodded. Aunt Ruth’s head bobbed as well, rhythmically and silently.

  “Why?”

  Father spoke through poorly suppressed tears. “She had seen the curse take her own mother and knew what was coming.”

  Dread crawled through Melinda, but she said nothing.

  “I thought it best not to tell you,” he sobbed. “I worried you might live a life in fear, that you might react the way she did. The curse often skips generations. At times, it seems to disappear. Your mother hoped it was a legend, tried to believe it did not exist, that neither she nor you would have to deal with it.”

  Melinda did not know whether to laugh or cry. If he believed the curse a hoax, why bother her with it now? If he believed it true, why wait until she had daughters of her own to infect as well? “Dad, this is insane.”

  “Not insane!” Ruth spat out in heavily accented English.

  Melinda felt a spark of guilt that she could not identify the accent. She knew her mother’s family originated in an area that had frequently changed hands: Austria, Hungary, or, perhaps, Poland at the time.

  “The curse is real, and it will kill you all if you don’t take heed.”

  The old woman’s tone sent a shiver through Melinda. She could almost imagine Ruth placing the curse upon her, if it did not already exist.

  “It is called the broch de shlang, the serpent’s curse, and it has plagued our family for so long that no one knows the insult that brought it down upon us.” Ruth raised her arms, as if beseeching God. “Sometimes, it goes from mother to daughter, other times, it skips a generation or two, three, just long enough to nearly get forgotten. But it always returns.”

  Melinda glanced at her father, who shrank into his seat. He gave her a pleading look, willing her to listen. Clearly, he had gone from doubter to absolute believer. For the moment, she played along. “How does this brock . . . this curse . . . present?”

  “The broch de shlang always begins with a snake.”

  “Snake,” Melinda repeated, not yet convinced. “I’ve seen about a hundred snakes. At the zoo, loose, on Girl Scout hikes. I’ve even played with them a bit.” She thought of the entertaining antics of the hognoses.

  Ruth leaned forward. Her shriveled little body seemed to expand. “Ah, but the broch de shlang is different. It may start out innocent, but it never remains so. The interactions with snakes grow more intense and less normal until . . .”

  Melinda waited for her great-great aunt to finish, but she did not. She sat back as if she had n
ot yet spoken, a shrunken figure lost in the cushions of the couch.

  “Until?” Melinda looked from her father to Ruth and back. “Until what?”

  “Until,” Ruth whispered so low that Melinda had to lean toward her to hear. “Until it kills its host.”

  Melinda’s heart skipped a beat, and with it came a suffocating feeling of imminent death.

  Her father explained. “Nearby innocents, usually female relatives, may also lose their lives to it. It becomes larger, more powerful and deadly, until it kills . . .”

  “. . . its host,” Melinda finished. A picture formed in her mind of the Masagua rattlesnake on the lawn. She had shaken it from the container, expecting it to flee. Every previous experience with snakes, everything she had heard or read, suggested that, so long as it was not cornered, a frightened snake would choose escape over attack. But this one had coiled and struck, as if in vengeance for its capture. She shook her head to clear it. “This is madness!”

  Neither father nor aunt replied.

  “I killed both of the snakes I encountered. Shouldn’t that end the curse, assuming it even exists?”

  “The curse is real!” Aunt Ruth did not speak loudly, but her voice carried an intense authority. “To mock it is to succumb to it.”

  Melinda’s father stayed the elderly woman with a touch to her shoulder. “As I understand it, the first encounters serve as a test. Each new one becomes more directed and dangerous until . . .”

  Until. Melinda already knew how that sentence ended. She forced herself not to consider. To contemplate her own demise proved terrifying enough. She scarcely dared to consider what would happen to her daughters. By law, Kaylee would go to Mike, who loved and adored her; but Paige would surely wind up institutionalized. Melinda refused to allow images of that fate to enter her consciousness. “Isn’t there any way to defeat the curse?”

  Now, a smile wreathed Ruth’s face. “I was hoping you would ask that, child. Because you seem, at last, the one strong enough to do it.”