And like that, Vincent had a new tale. And renewed hope. “No. No, you don’t understand,” he said, interrupting Mrs. West yet again. “I have to go. I have to. My father . . . he’ll be there. He’ll be there, and once he sees me, he’ll want me back, and then I can stay with him for good. I won’t have to come back here. It’ll be one less kid you have to care for. I don’t need an escort, Mrs. West. I can manage on my own. Please.”
“Vincent, I can’t. I’m sorry. You are a child of the state. And that makes you my responsibility. I can’t allow it. I’m sorry.”
“Please . . .”
She nodded toward the book he held so tightly in his hands. “You want to see your family? You will find them in there.” Then she got up and stiffly exited the room.
Vince’s head dropped into his hands. Tears began to fall between his fingers, splashing upon the leather of the book. The pain was almost unbearable. This couldn’t be happening. He pulled his grandfather’s tales close to his chest, stood, and headed upstairs.
Anthony kept checking on him, trying to comfort his friend, although it was clearly no use. “I was outside, at the window. I had to know if the hammer was going to come down on me. Vince, I heard everything. I’m so sorry, man. Anything you need. Anything.”
But what Vince needed Anthony could never give him. He needed to get out of this orphanage. He needed to get to his grandfather’s funeral. He needed to find his father.
Vince remained in his bed all day, crying, inconsolable.
Then, at night, as was the ritual, the children asked Vince for a story. He tried to ignore them, he tried to keep quiet, but they kept asking over and over.
“I don’t have any stories,” he said, finally snapping. “You keep asking. Night after night after night! I don’t have any stories anymore. Do you understand? None! They’re stupid! Grow up! All of you!”
Then he turned over in bed, pulling the covers over his tear-streaked face. He could hear the other children, the younger ones beginning to cry too. Their pain hurt him. He knew how they felt, but there was nothing he could do to help them. All he could offer were some stories he didn’t believe in anymore.
The blanket dropped from his face, and Vince opened his eyes. He saw his grandfather’s book sitting on his nightstand, illuminated by the moonlight. He reached out and grabbed it. Then he turned over to face the other children.
Sitting up, opening the book, he said, “Maybe I do have a tale to tell.”
The Curse
Vincent Elgin was born on the side of the road, in the middle of nowhere, two months too early. His mother, Anna, empty basket cradled in one arm, was on her way into town to buy some food—fruit, vegetables, meat from the butcher, and other assorted goods—which was part of her weekly routine. It was a long walk, several miles on a dirt road, nothing on either side but deep and dark woods, but she thought such exercise was good for the baby. She had done it for months now. In all this time, she never expected he would want to arrive so soon.
Almost halfway into her walk, with the excruciating heat of the sun shining directly on her head, she felt a bolt of pain streak through her swollen body. She collapsed straight to the ground, scraping her hands and knees on the rock-strewn earth. She knew something was wrong. Deeply and horribly wrong. She waited for a short while, hoping and praying the pain would cease, but it only intensified, and rapidly. Anna screamed out. But no one heard her cries.
The minutes dragged on, as such minutes do. The sun continued to pound relentlessly, not a cloud in sight, not a stretch of shade in which to hide. Anna was trying to control her breathing. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. In and out. Her face was flushed, dust and dirt clinging to her teeth. She was drenched in sweat. She felt feverish, sick. If she didn’t get help soon, she knew it was likely that neither she nor her unborn child would survive. And so she called out again. Still nothing. She looked down the road in one direction, then the other. Not a thing in sight. It was always deserted, she remembered.
On either side of the road the woods were silent. Nothing beyond them for miles. She looked deep into the treacherous wilderness and cried, “Please, somebody! I need help!” She screamed until her throat was hoarse.
Finally Anna’s head dropped in desperation. She closed her eyes and clutched at the earth, dirt lodging under her fingernails. “Please,” she whispered. “I’ll do anything. Just save my baby. Save my baby.”
An abrupt noise erupted from within the woods, slicing through the silence: a high-pitched squawk that echoed several times before fading.
Anna’s head shot up. She had never heard such a sound before. She peered back into the woods, focusing on a thick and twisted tree stump about thirty feet into the forest. She believed the sound might have come from this area. She cast her eyes about the forest, and when she looked back toward the tree stump, she saw something sitting upon it.
No, not something. Someone.
Could it be? Anna wiped at her eyes, a mix of sweat and tears and dust. Yes, someone was there all right, someone just as gnarled as the dead tree was: an old woman dressed in rags, hunched over, leaning on a staff of wood.
Without further hesitation, Anna cried out to her, “Help me! Please!” The pain increased with each scream, and she clenched her teeth and closed her eyes again. In the darkness behind them, she felt as if she could see her pain take shape in odd forms of light. It was as if the sun were peeking through. Seconds later, when she opened her eyes again, the old woman was beside her. Anna wondered, only briefly, how she could have traversed the distance so quickly, before her body was racked with another bout of pain.
“Please, you’ve got to help me,” she begged the old woman, “the baby’s coming now!”
“The pain, it overwhelms you, yes?”
“Yes!” Anna screamed through gritted teeth. “Help me!”
The old woman hobbled closer. “All in due time. All in due time. I’ve been waiting for you. I’ve known this day would come for almost my entire life. Now, here we are.”
Anna gazed up at her, getting a good look for the first time. The old woman was hunchbacked so devastatingly that her chest was nearly parallel to the ground; the bump on her back matched that of Anna’s stomach. All her weight fell on her warped staff, an extra limb. Long, ratty gray hair was hanging from outside her tattered hood. It framed a hideous face, excessively wrinkled and laden with open sores. She was missing teeth while the rest were browned and crooked; her nose was so long it nearly sloped down past her mouth, sealing it closed. One eye was bigger than the other, and neither was the same color.
“What? What are you talking about?” Anna said. “Just help me. You’ve got to help me. The baby is coming!”
“I’m sorry. The child will not make it, dearie.”
“What do you mean?” Anna cried.
“He won’t survive, and neither will you.” With this the old woman howled with laughter. It was a disturbing, chaotic cackle.
Anna’s eyes widened with fear; the woman was insane. “Help!” she screamed into the dead air. “Help!”
“No one will hear you,” the old woman said calmly. “No one will help. There is only me.”
“What do you want from me?”
“There is always something, isn’t there? Always . . . an exchange.”
“Exchange? What do you want, you hag? I have nothing to give you.”
The old woman cackled again, her body pulsing with pleasure. “Is it not clear? I want the child.”
“Get away. You’re mad.”
“Perhaps slightly”—but here she didn’t laugh. Instead, she watched as a snake slithered their way. Slowly she raised her staff a few inches in the air. Then, like lightning, she dropped it, crushing the serpent’s head. She twisted her staff back and forth, grinding the snake into the ground as its tail twitched. Ever so casually, she turned back to Anna. “You may raise him, of course. I’ll allow you that much. He’s yours until he reaches the age of twelve. Then he belongs to me.”
>
She kept calling the baby a he. How did she know? She couldn’t possibly. But suddenly it was as if Anna knew as well. It was a boy growing inside her. “Be gone! You can’t have him.”
“If you don’t agree, no one will have him. And you will be no one’s mother, no one’s wife, no one’s daughter.”
“I don’t believe you.” But her voice wavered. The old woman smiled a broken grin, and Anna was crushed with tremendous pain.
“Believe your pain, my dear Anna. Believe that. It doesn’t lie.”
“How do you—” The pain overwhelmed her. She doubled over. “Ahhhh!”
“Just give me your word, and all will be well,” the old woman shouted over the cries. “Agree that the boy is mine.”
“I can’t!” Anna wailed.
More pain. Unbelievable pain. There wasn’t much time left.
“Do it! Agree!”
“He’s my baby, he’s my baby,” she sobbed.
Anna couldn’t see anymore. Her vision was blocked out with a white light. She felt like she was on both a pyre and a block of ice.
“Last chance, Anna! Agree, and you both will be saved!”
Death was so near, just above her; she could feel it hovering. It came for her and her son. In a moment it would reach out for her.
Anna screamed. “I agree! I agree! Help us!”
“Say the words! Say, ‘At twelve years of age my son is yours.’ Say it!”
Anna could hardly speak. “At twelve . . . at twelve years of age . . . my . . . my son . . . my son is . . . yours.”
The old woman’s hand sprang forward and grasped at the air, as if she were snatching the words right out of it. Then she slammed her hand to her mouth and swallowed. With yet another cackle, she dropped her staff and knelt beside Anna. She placed her hands on the distended stomach. The pain ceased immediately.
“You did a wise thing. This boy shall live,” the old woman said. “You both shall live.”
Anna cried. For which reason she did not know.
Minutes later Vincent was delivered. A healthy baby boy. Anna, cradling him in her arms, looked up at the hideous old woman. She wasn’t sure if she should thank her or not.
“There is but one more thing to do,” the old woman said.
“And what is that?”
The old woman reached out her hand. Her fingers were closed in a fist, all except a lone crooked thumb with a long, jagged nail. She brought it toward the baby.
Anna quickly pulled Vincent away. “What are you doing?”
“A deal’s a deal.”
Suddenly Anna found that she couldn’t move. The old woman’s thumb came closer. Closer. Soon the thumb was an inch away from Vincent’s face. The old woman pressed her thumb against his cheek, and the skin sizzled. Vincent cried out in pain. When she pulled her thumb away, his cheek was blazing red, and in the center of it was a large wound. And that was how Vincent came to bear the scar he was to carry for the rest of his life.
“What did you do?” Anna squealed, suddenly free to move again. “What did you do to him?”
“The mark has been made. The pact has been sealed. I will see you both again on his twelfth birthday.”
There were sounds coming from up the road. Anna turned to look. It was a carriage pulled by horses.
“Here!” she screamed. “Over here!”
When she turned back, the old woman was gone. Anna looked toward the woods, toward the stump, but saw no sign of her. Nor would she for a dozen years.
CHAPTER 3
“Wait, why’d you stop?” one of the children asked.
Vince had closed the book. He now held it in his slightly shaking hands, silently staring at the cover long enough for it to blur, as most of the other children chimed in with similar queries to the first’s.
Why had he stopped? He wasn’t exactly sure. The story had made him feel uneasy; that much he knew. The part about the curse especially: that hit too close to home. Maybe his grandfather truly was cursed, he began to wonder, and maybe that curse was passed down to Vince’s father and from Vince’s father finally down to him. Cursed. It certainly felt that way.
“That’s it for tonight,” he said, tossing the book back onto the nightstand.
The children moaned and complained, but it was clear that they were happy to have their storyteller back.
A few minutes later, when most of the children were beginning to drift off and thunderclaps boomed just overhead, Anthony walked over and sat at the end of Vince’s bed. “That’s how your grandfather was born? The one who just died?”
“It’s not real, Anthony.”
“How do you know it’s not real? You don’t know. You said you barely knew him.”
“A witch? Curses? Come on. You believe in curses? You believe in any of these stories?” Even as he said it, though, there was a certain fear beginning to overwhelm Vince’s consciousness, a paralyzing fear that he would never be able to shake this single thought from his mind: he was cursed.
Anthony thought about this and shrugged his round shoulders. “Why not?”
It wasn’t the answer Vince wanted to hear, and so he turned away and faced the wall.
“Vince,” Anthony said, with all seriousness, “you really think your father will be there?”
Still facing the wall, Vince shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”
“Tell me a story about him. A real story. Nothing made up, no fantasy, no dragons. Tell me a story about your father.”
Vince turned around and moved closer to his friend. “He was always busy, my dad, traveling a lot for work and everything. He kept jumping from one company to another. He said he was helping them learn to walk again, like they were hurt or something. I didn’t really get it. All he said was that people make mistakes and he tried to correct them so their lives could get better. So one day, when he was leaving again for who knew how many days, I stopped him at the door and said, ‘Well, what about the mistake you’re making right now?’ I told him he should be home with me and Mom. I said we were the ones hurting. I saw the look on his face. He was stunned. Pained. He dropped his suitcases at his side and sat with me on the couch. ‘I am trying to help you,’ he said. ‘Why do you think I’m doing all this? You think I like leaving you guys? It kills me. It tears me apart. But I want you to have everything I never had growing up. I want you in good clothes and in good schools. I don’t want you to ever worry about where your next meal is coming from or if they’re going to turn the power off on us. I don’t ever want you to suffer like I did.’ I told him I didn’t want him to leave, but he said he had to. I begged; I cried. He told me he would be letting a lot of people down if he stayed; some might even get angry. And with everything he said, I just turned it around on him. I said he’d be letting me down. I was getting really upset now, and whenever I did that, I used to slip his ring off his finger and play with it. I tried to slip it on each of my fingers, but it would always slide off, even on my thumb. I think I just wanted it so bad because if he did have to leave all the time, at least I would have a part of him with me, and I think, watching me, he knew that too. ‘You know what we’re going to do?’ he finally said, pulling me close. ‘We’re going to spend the entire weekend outdoors, and we’re going to finish that tree house we started. We’re not coming in until it’s done. I’m serious.’ ‘What about your job?’ I said. ‘So they get mad. What can I do? You’re my boy. You’re my reason for living. I want you to know this, to remember it: there’s no trip, no matter how far, that can keep me from you. The next time you tell me you need me here, I don’t care if I’m halfway around the world, I’ll walk to you if I have to. I’ll fight through anything to get to you.’”
“Vince, you need to go to that funeral.”
Vince shook his head and sighed. “It’s impossible. I’m not allowed. I’m never getting out of here. Not now, not ever. I’m going to be the next M, just you watch. I’ll take over when he’s gone.”
“No way, man. Not you. Listen to m
e,” Anthony said, licking his lips. “I know I’m not the brightest, but I can get us out of here. I’ve been dreaming of busting loose for years. I think we can do it.”
“You would,” Vince said with a roll of his eyes.
“I’m serious. One hundred percent.”
Vince stared long and hard at his friend. Anthony really was serious; it wasn’t just another prank. It was written all across his face and deep within his eyes. “There’s a guard at the gate.”
“So what? It’s not like he’s armed or anything. He’s just there to let visitors in and out. Forget the guard.”
“Forget the guard? There’s no other way out.”
“You’re leaving tomorrow, and that’s the end of it. All you have to do is pack a little bag and sleep in your clothes. Leave everything else to me.”
Anthony was probably being ridiculous; most likely it was just another one of his hare-brained schemes. But even so, Vince got dressed and packed a bag, just in case. It was important for him to pack clothes that were somewhat formal, an outfit that would be appropriate and respectful for a funeral and something his father would be proud to see him in. Unfortunately, he didn’t own much that fell in that category, and so he had to put something together by waking up a few of the other boys in the house and asking them to borrow some pieces that might fit. The result wouldn’t be what he hoped for, but it would have to do.
The Dyerville Tales Page 3
