Margga's Curse: A Vree Erickson Novel, Book One

by Steve Campbell

  “Is this for real?” He sucked in a breath. “It is,” he said. “This is special, Vree. I mean, wow. I have to leave for a while but I’m planning to come back later. I want you tell me everything that happened. Everything.”

  “I’m done talking. Now go.”

  Lenny went to where the book lay. He paused, wishing he could get out of washing dishes at his mom’s restaurant. He could see Vree in the dresser mirror; she had been through something terrible. If only she would talk about her wounds.

  He turned and faced her and said, “Your brother is having a campout. Since it’s my birthday, I’m gonna ask my dad if he’ll let me spend the night. If he does, is it okay if I visit you?”

  “My mom doesn’t allow boys in my room at night.”

  “We can meet downstairs.”

  “I won’t come down.”

  “Why? I thought you liked me.”

  “I wanna be alone.”

  “Sometimes it’s better to be with friends.” Lenny stopped arguing and stared across the room. He pointed at Amy’s side of the room. “You should look at this,” he said.

  Vree turned her head and followed the direction of his extended finger. At first, she saw nothing amidst the boxes and furniture there. When she saw the white crow perched on the windowsill, she gave a yelp of surprise.

  “No,” she said as her hands found the edges of her bed cover, twisted it to her neck, and began to cry, sobbing like a child who had lost something dear to them.

  Lenny crossed the room and stopped a few feet from the crow.

  “The girl is not safe here,” it said to him. “She has killed Roualens; they want her dead. So does Margga. But if the girl comes with me, I can save her.”

  “Gam Gam told me about you,” Lenny said. “You’re Enit Huw, the soul of time—past, present, and future. You bring hope for healing and new beginnings in life.”

  “The girl chose to return. Now she must choose whether to live or die. I shall return soon for her answer.”

  The white crow of hope vanished.

  Vree rushed from her bed and down the stairs.

  Lenny returned to the dresser where he took up the book, his drawing, and the feather.

  On his way out, he passed Vree inside the upstairs bathroom. The door was open. He stopped and looked in. She leaned over the sink, her face buried in a fluffy blue towel that stifled the sobs that pushed from her. Her bare legs trembled below the yellow panties she wore.

  Even in anguish, she looked beautiful.

  Uncertain of what to say or do, he quietly closed the door and whispered, “Be safe until I get back.”

  Once downstairs, he took a deep breath to slow his heart and to regain his composure. But his mind was sure that he was in love, head over heels, so soon, with no time to get used to the idea that he had just met the girl hours ago.

  He took another deep breath, shifted the large book to his left arm, and looked at the time on his cellphone. He had seventeen minutes to be at his sister’s restaurant—the one that had belonged to their mother.

  He cursed Margga’s name under his breath, then rushed to the piano and hurried his goodbyes to Amy, Karrie, and Evelyn. “Do me a favor,” he said, placing the book on top of the piano. “Keep this down here until I come back tonight.”

  “Oh?” Evelyn lifted her head from the keys and peered at him. “You’re coming back tonight?”

  Lenny winced. “I was hoping maybe I could camp out with Dave,” he said, shuffling his feet. “I mean, if it’s okay with you … and my dad, of course.”

  Evelyn smiled. “I’m sure David will be delighted to have you spend the night.”

  Lenny matched Evelyn’s smile. Then, “I gotta go,” he said. “I gotta be at the restaurant in less than a half-hour.” He hurried to Jack still drinking coffee at the dining room table. Dave sat at the table, too, reading an Avengers comic book. He looked up and reminded Lenny to get permission to camp outside.

  Lenny thought about Margga next door. Would she try to kill him if he camped in the backyard that once belonged to her? If so, returning tonight could put everyone here at risk.

  But Enit Huw had said Vree’s life was already in danger with Margga.

  He rubbed the back of his neck and pulled at the chain that held the good luck pendant his grandmother had given him. He let go of the chain and hurried back upstairs. Vree cried out from her bed when he charged into her room and practically dived to the floor where his treasure lay buried.

  He took from inside the floor a paper sack, and emptied the sack’s contents in his left hand. Then he returned the floorboard, went to Vree, and gave her one of the several arrowheads carved from flint.

  “It’s real,” he told her. “I got it when I visited a Seneca Indian reservation. Arrowheads are powerful forces against evil spirits.”

  Vree shook her head. “Stop it. I don’t wanna hear any more about evil spirits, witches, or—”

  “I don’t have time to argue,” he said, going to the stairs. “Keep that with you at all times. It will protect you.”

  He hurried downstairs and gave everyone an arrowhead. He left Dave, Amy and the two women admiring their arrowheads and headed out the backdoor with Jack to the garage.

  The rain from the first storm had stopped. The other storm would come around eight o’clock and last until nine, right around sunset. He hoped there would be no sightings of hellhounds tonight and that no one would hear the death howl of the creatures.

  Inside the truck, while Jack started the engine and clicked the wipers on to clear the windshield of the rain left from Vree’s rescue, Lenny turned and stole a peek at the attic window overlooking the garage. He hoped Vree was okay up there alone with the talisman he had given her. But more than that, he wished he were there, comforting her during her time of need, and going with her when Enit Hew came for her.

  Chapter Eleven

  IT WAS 6:35 p.m. when Amy opened Lenny’s book. She was alone. Mom and Grandma had gone to finish drying the laundry that Grandpa had brought in from the rain, and he and Dave were in the garage looking at the tents.

  She wrinkled her nose at the drawing tucked inside, but admired the white tail feather. Then she perused the pages of strange language written in English characters. Their patterns looked familiar. She sat up when she recognized musical notes and chords. Someone had crudely penned sheet music. Capital letters of A through G with the pound symbol had to be sharp notes, and the ones with lowercase b had to be flat. Numbers one through five, with pluses and minuses told her where the notes fell on the staff, had there been one, and she was certain the inclusion of an ampersand and number seven meant treble and bass clefts, respectively. And 4/4 had to be the song’s time signature. It took her several more minutes to decipher the rests between the notes. When she did, she began playing the song, slow at first, and then in true time as the cipher became easier to read.

  A haunting melody with suspended thirds filled the room and drifted through the house.

  Outside, Margga’s keen hearing alerted her to the music.

  “Yes,” she hissed, “an invitation. Keep playing, whoever you are.”

  She closed her eyes, brought her fingertips to her shoulders, and lay back, levitating above the wet grass.

  Inside the Lybrook’s living room, Margga’s curious face appeared in the oval mirror on the wall behind Amy.

  * * *

  UPSTAIRS, BEHIND THE closed bathroom door, Vree sat at the edge of the bathtub and listened to muffled voices and the hum of a dryer travel up the drain. Her grandmother spoke to someone, but Evelyn seemed too far from whatever was broadcasting her conversation for Vree to make out the words. A minute later, Karrie spoke distinctly about how musically talented Amy was.

  “She’s a real prodigy,” Vree mumbled in response.

  She guessed her mom and grandmother were in the laundry room, probably drying the clothes brought in from the rain. It had stopped drumming against the attic roof when Lenny had given her the arr
owhead.

  She listened for thunder and heard none. That didn’t mean the lightning had stopped, but she had waited long enough to take a shower.

  Her feet slapped against the cool, cream tiled floor while she crossed the room to lock the door. Outside, an unfamiliar song from Grandma’s piano drifted through.

  Amy played something new … always showing off.

  Vree passed a wall of oak cabinets with polished brass handles when she went to a box of toiletries that her mom had left unpacked on the white sink. She ignored her reflection in the lighted makeup mirror above the sink and inspected the box’s contents. Among the creams, lotions, powders, makeup, and bath oils and salts, were her purple T-shirt pajamas of Snoopy, somehow saved from the fire. The shirt was a leftover from when she was twelve, and it smelled of her mom’s sunflower and sunshine laundry detergent … and Daddy’s cologne. She found his bottle of Polo Black at the bottom of the box.

  She thought of him, hoped he would come to her as he had done in her bedroom, and waited.

  After three minutes, when he did not come, she sniffed the shirt once more before she went to the bathtub and shower adorned with fluted brass faucets and ivory handles that matched the sink’s and turned on the water, adjusting the temperature to her liking. There, she stripped, found shampoo and a fluffy towel next to the tub, stepped inside, and closed the sliding frosted glass door. The thought of the knife-wielding woman crossed her mind, but she pushed at the intrusion, not wanting it to lead to memories of the man losing his head.

  But the headless man was there at the edges of her thoughts, so she plunged her head beneath the shower’s pulsating stream of warm water and remembered better times.

  She washed her hair with shampoo that smelled like coconut and cleaned away the remnants of her trip to the pond with soap that smelled like cocoa butter. Done and feeling better than she had since waking from her coma, she slid open the shower door and stepped from the tub.

  When she reached for her towel, it was gone. So were her clothes. White cabinets had replaced the oak ones, and linoleum with daisies covered the floor. At the sink no longer adorned with fluted brass faucets and ivory handles, pieces of broken glass littered the water-stained basin.

  Her father opened the door and stuck his head inside.

  “How bad is the cut?” he asked. “Have you stopped the bleeding?”

  Vree stumbled backwards and put her arms around herself to hide her nakedness. Only, she wasn’t naked. She wore a dry white T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans. Green tennis shoes with yellow shoestrings covered her feet. They and her clothes were covered with splatters of light blue paint. So were her arms.

  “You’re gonna get blood all over,” her father said. Vree looked away from herself as he entered. He wore a white dress shirt open at the collar and black slacks held up with thin, black suspenders. She stumbled when he took her by an arm and led her to the sink.

  “Open your hand and let me have a look,” he said. He held her right hand, pulled open her fingers, took away a piece of glass, and dropped it into the sink. Blood dripped from where the glass had sliced her palm and fingers. She felt no pain.

  She looked up at the mirror over the sink. She had no reflection and it startled her.

  “What’s happening?” she asked. “You said you were going to a higher plane.”

  “Come,” her father said. “I’ll fix you up.”

  “Where?” It was all Vree could think of to say before he led her to the bathtub as plain and rusted as the sink. They knelt together and he ran warm water over the cut. Vree felt sickened as she watched her blood swirl down the drain. She pulled away.

  “Relax,” her father said, taking her injured hand again.

  “What happened to me?” she asked. “Why am I bleeding?”

  He made hushing sounds and told her again to relax.

  “Is this one of those weird dreamy things, like the one with the spinning chairs?”

  “Stop talking nonsense, Rebecca. I’m trying to look at your cut.”

  Rebecca?

  Vree looked across the room and saw that she had a reflection now. The woman from the pond stared back at her from the bottom portion of the mirror. Becca!

  Vree closed her eyes and wished the woman away.

  It didn’t work.

  Vree shook her head. So did Becca.

  “This can’t be real,” Vree said. She crinkled her nose and turned her head slowly from side to side. Becca did too, mirroring every move.

  Then Becca looked away and said, “I was trying to hurry before the first storm. You know how much I hate lightning … and being in this house, so close to the property next door.”

  “The weatherman says sixty percent chance of clear skies tonight,” Vree’s father said, though his voice’s pitch seemed to change before he finished the sentence.

  “We never have clear skies during July fifth on Myers Ridge,” Becca said. “The first storm will come between five and six and last an hour. The second will come around eight and last another hour before the haunting will start after sunset, just like every year. Let’s take the kids out of town tonight. We could stay at my parents’ camp overnight.”

  Vree’s father held Vree’s hand beneath the tub’s faucet. A man’s voice she didn’t recognize came from him.

  “I’ll try to convince my mom to come along,” he said. “But you know she won’t wanna go. And I won’t leave her by herself.”

  “Then I’ll take the kids and leave you two here.”

  “Or you could stay and help us find the book.”

  “What book, Howard? Don’t you think that if there was a book in this house, we’d have found it by now?”

  “I won’t give up helping her look. She says the special one is almost here. That could be tonight. Without the book, the haunting will continue.”

  This time, Becca said nothing.

  Vree looked away from the mirror and tried to pull away her right hand, but the man’s grip tightened.

  “You’re not my daddy,” she said to the man who looked like her father, “so I’m gonna leave now.”

  His grip tightened more, so she pushed him hard and yanked her hand from his. As he fell inside the tub, she pushed away and ran.

  Outside the bathroom, she hurried down the hall, found the stairs, and flew down them, her feet barely touching the steps.

  Downstairs, her feet found a solid floor of unfamiliar carpet. She tore through the living room filled with furniture that must have belonged to the people in the framed photographs she passed. She saw Becca in two of the photos—large studio shots done professionally. Becca stood next to an unknown man behind three girls and a boy in the last one. The boy looked like Lenny, but several years younger.

  Vree called for her mom and grandparents as she ran through the dining room, to the kitchen that looked unchanged from Grandma Evelyn’s. No one was there.

  She fled to the kitchen’s backdoor and entered a white blank sea of nothingness. She stood on the nothingness and saw nothing. She turned around and saw the house was gone.

  Something cold—a wet hand?—touched her right shoulder. She almost screamed until she heard the drumming sound of the shower water striking the bathtub.

  Vree opened her eyes and pushed away from the shower door. Her cheek was warm where she had pressed it against the glass door. She turned off the water that had gone cold. The tub drain gurgled until the last of the water passed through. When all she heard was the slow drip from the showerhead, she stepped from the tub and wrapped her body in the fluffy towel from where she had left it on the rack.

  As she crossed the room, she saw her reflection in the mirror at the fancy sink that held no broken glass. A shiver crawled across her back before she unlocked the door and headed to her bedroom.

  Moments later, Margga’s curious face looked out from the mirror between streaks of condensation. She squinted at the room, looking for Sarlic. Not seeing him, she left to search from other mirrors in the hou
se.

  * * *

  AMY STOPPED PLAYING the unknown music on the piano. Upstairs, Margga’s face vanished from Vree’s bedroom mirror as Vree entered the room. A moment later, after Vree sat on her bed and examined the arrowhead she had left there, the white crow appeared on Vree’s bureau.

  “Have you decided?” Enit Huw called out, almost cackling.

  Vree closed her eyes and recalled the attack along the highway. She closed her left hand around the arrowhead and said, “Go away.”

  “You are like her,” Enit Huw said, “full of magic, the power that stalls their equipment and kills them.”

  Vree’s grip tightened, but her voice remained low. “I haven’t killed anyone, so go away and leave me alone.”

  “He’s in this room right now, terrified that you will look upon him and stop his breathing apparatus.”

  Vree’s eyelids flew open.

  “Who’s in this room?” she asked, glaring at the crow.

  “Across the room, stooped in the shadows near the corner.”

  Vree heard Sarlic’s voice before she saw him.

  “Do not look at me,” he said, cowering in the far corner and turning his back to Vree. “Spare my life. Please.”

  “Look away,” Enit Huw said to Vree, “if you wish him no harm.”

  Vree looked at the crow still perched on her bureau. “Get out of here, both of you. Now!” She pointed at the stairs.

  “Sarlic needs the book of spells,” Enit Huw said.

  “Yes,” Sarlic said, still cowering. “Give me the book and I will leave here and never return.”

  Vree looked down at her clenched fist. A strand of wet hair dripped water on it. She pulled the bath towel tighter around her and said, “Why? What is the book to you?”

  “It is a way of protecting the lives of my people and me.”

  Vree recalled the book’s strange language. “It’s mostly poetry,” she said to the crow. “Why did you call it a book of spells?”

  “It’s filled with magic,” Enit Huw said.

  “I don’t have it,” Vree said, remembering she had given Lenny the book. “So, go, both of you.”

  “You must be stopped from killing us,” Sarlic said. “If I leave here without the book, you will make enemies with many Roualens tonight. Their fear will bring you harm.”

  “Is that a threat?” Vree glared at Sarlic who had stopped cowering. He now stood and faced Vree.