by SM Reine
I wondered if he was really “with us,” despite the butler’s assurances. Or maybe the phrase had a different meaning to the Meads, like maybe he was into astral projection or out-of-body experiences. With a body like that, I sure couldn’t blame him.
As we approached with a hush of reverence, his eyes snapped open. I hope they were bloodshot. Otherwise, he had red pupils.
He got up from his chair and hobbled over to us with the aid of a cane. He stood before us, though he was so bent at the spine that he appeared to be still sitting. He held out his arms and Amanda leaned down and gave him a hearty hug.
“Sorry about Nana,” she said.
He gave a dismissive wave. “Ah, she’ll be back.”
I didn’t get a hug. Instead, he eyed me coolly, squinting, his wrinkles getting wrinkles. He pointed his cane at me, nostrils quivering like frightened guinea pigs. My eyes followed the silver tip of the cane as it proceeded to outline the contours of my body. He leaned forward and sniffed a couple of times, causing his gray nasal wool to quiver.
“You are cursed,” he said simply. His voice sounded surprisingly young.
“How do you know this?”
He ignored me, but Tabby said, “He can see curses, Al. He can see them clinging to you. He can also see the trademark of the curse. He knows it’s from his own daughter.”
“Why has my deceased daughter cursed you?”
I told him all I knew. And some stuff I wasn’t sure about. And maybe a lie or two.
He tented his chapped, trembling fingers in reflection. Finally, he said, “I will help you—but for a price.”
I shrank back another inch. “A price?”
Tabby spoke up. “What price are you talking about, Dada?”
He stepped back, leaned on the cane, and was the perfect image of a man who looked as if he had lived far too long: loose skin, gray hair, with ears and nose much out of proportion to the rest of his face. He moved back around to his desk and sat down. “I cannot name a price, Tabitha. He must name the price.”
“Dada—”
He held up a now-steady hand, white and utterly colorless, the lifeline deep as a canyon. “Be still, Tabitha. This is now between the young man and myself. He has come here for my help. I can see the curse hanging over him like a dark cloud. It follows him everywhere, and it would do so until his death. It is a very powerful curse.”
“How about a hundred bucks?” I said, looking over my head, but all I could see were the ceiling fixtures. That much cash could probably pay the taxes on maybe a square foot of the place.
“Try again,” he asked, sitting back, crossing his hands over his small chest.
I looked around the ornate room. The books on the shelves were ancient and bound in well-preserved leather. Each one could probably fetch a pretty penny. “You don’t need money,” I said simply.
He raised his bushy eyebrows and rolled his fervid eyes in what I understood to be agreement.
“I’m not sure I have anything you want,” I said.
“Think again.”
Tabby touched my arm, and I looked into her face. Her eyes were huge and unblinking. Her eyelashes seemed astronomically long, and I again was struck by her deep beauty. “Al,” she said. “My grandfather is a hundred and twenty-two years old.”
I inhaled, and turned my gaze back to the old man. Beauty and the beast. He looked much younger than that. He didn’t look a day over a hundred and ten. There was an unhealthy eagerness in his flashing eyes. I felt like the last piece of bacon at a Denny’s buffet.
“You want to live forever,” I said.
He nodded, and his eyes glowed as if from some inner fire. “Not forever, my young friend. But I do not want to go just yet.”
I stood there uncomprehending. I felt light-headed, in need of oxygen, as if my lungs weren’t working correctly. I inhaled and expanded my chest slowly. I let the air out loudly between my lips. “I’m not sure how I can help with that,” I said, thinking of Michael Jackson’s aerobic chamber, cryogenics labs, plastic surgery, and other expensive methods of longevity.
Tabby leaned into me and whispered, “One of the rules to this, Al, is that he cannot ask you. You must offer.”
“Offer what?” I felt my heart pounding in my chest.
Her breath was hot in my ear. “You’d better figure it out for yourself.”
I moved back into one of the plush chairs, sinking down into its depths. I held my head in my hands and stared through my fingers at the crazy old man in front of me. And he was old. Terribly old. Too old. But he somehow looked so indestructible.
“Time,” I whispered. “You want more time.”
“Yes,” he hissed from across the study, his hearing just fine despite the nest of wiry hairs that protruded wildly from his ears.
“Are you a vampire?” I asked.
He shook his head vigorously, and Tabby giggled next to me. “Vampires aren’t real, silly,” she said.
“I do not kill, ever,” Dada said. “I just take...a little.”
I swallowed hard. “How much is a little?”
He paused, and his eyes flared like a struck match. “Five years.”
“Dada!” Tabby’s tone was almost teasing.
“Okay, three years.”
Tabby put her hands on her hips, her jaw set in firm determination. It must have been a Mead character trait, because Amanda used the same expression.
“Two years,” he said sheepishly.
“How does this work?” I asked.
“You will lose two years of your life,” said the great-grandfather, “and I will gain two years of life. How exactly it works involves magicks that you cannot begin to understand.”
“Knowledge is power and you’re keeping it all to yourself, huh?” I glanced around the room at the opulence that now seemed like extreme decadence. “I will give you six months.”
“A year and a half!” he squealed.
“One year.”
“Done!” he said, and slammed his wrinkled little hand down on the desk.
I had made a deal with the devil. Or as close to the devil as I would ever come.
At least for a while.
26
I lay on the brass-studded sofa that was upholstered in a skin I couldn’t recognize and was afraid to ask about. Tabby’s great-grandfather hovered over me like a wrinkled specter. He breathed loudly through his slightly open mouth. His front teeth were small and so remarkably clean that I wondered if they were still his own. His breath smelled medicinal and stale, not like the corpse-rot I’d expected. His short white hair hung to either side of his small head like dead grass. Outside, through the massive French windows, sunshine retreated behind storm clouds. I hadn’t been aware that it was going to rain.
The old man arrayed votive candles around the room, mumbling constantly in what sounded like Latin. Tabby was gone, waiting in the hallway outside. It was just me and the old man, and I wondered how many other unlucky people had lain on this couch and given the old geezer a bit of their souls.
He had me stretched on my back on the couch, arms and legs straight. Except that my left arm kept flopping off the couch and trailing on the shag carpet. Each time it did, he would reach over and place it along my body and shake his head. Finally, I just tucked my unruly hand under my buttocks.
I lay prostrate on the couch, trying to get comfortable. The old man sat on a wooden stool and held in his hand an ancient book. The book was frayed along the spine, and the gold lettering was no longer legible. Besides, I doubted it was in English. He licked his fingers and flipped through the book, frowning and mumbling. I turned my head and looked toward the door, wondering what Tabby was doing and if she was worried about me.
The old man slapped the book with the palm of his hand and teetered on the stool, which wobbled on uneven legs. Or perhaps the polished wooden floor was uneven. He kept his balance, looked over the book, and met my eyes with his own. He looked completely insane, like I imagine Adolf Hitler had l
ooked the first time he’d held a glowing ember to a grub worm and considered the possibilities. Sweat stood on his wrinkled brow, and his frayed hair stuck in the sweat like flies on flypaper. He absently wiped the sweat away. Dada had looked as dry as parchment before, but the excitement must have gotten his juices flowing.
“Are you ready, young man?”
I tried to shrug in my position on the couch, but couldn’t. “About as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Good.” He clapped his hands, then rubbed them together like a great chef eager to concoct a world-class meal.
He turned the book and laid it across his bony knee like a misbehaving child about to be spanked. He closed his eyes, clenched his fist, and mumbled a few words. He rocked back and forth on his stool, which thudded rhythmically against the wooden floor in a perfect metronomic tempo.
“Close your eyes,” he whispered hoarsely.
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
I closed my eyes and swallowed. Do it for Petey’s sake.
“I will first remove the year from your life,” he said. Cold fingers touched my neck. Deathly cold, like those of Arctic mummies. The fingers tightened, and I opened my eyes to slits.
“No peeking!”
I sighed and closed my eyes again, and his fingers continued to tighten until I found breathing extremely difficult. My instincts told me to fight back, but I restrained myself. I tried to relax and get by on a limited amount of air. I heard each breath rasp in my throat, and I thought I heard Tabby gasp from somewhere outside the room, as if she’d been listening through the door.
But the room suddenly seemed so far away. Tendrils of black smoke swam behind my closed eyelids, pierced with flashes of white light. I felt as if I were viewing a very personal and malevolent aurora borealis. And then his grip loosened, and cool air poured freely down my windpipe like water, cool and welcome. I’d lived through it.
Unable to help myself, perhaps even drawn to the sudden, curious slurping sounds I was hearing, I opened my eyes.
The old man was greedily gobbling like a hungry mongrel in the dumpster of some alley. I sat forward, repulsed but unable to not look. In his hand was a gelatinous substance, yellowish and streaked with lace. It oozed between his fingers, and he lapped it up with his long pink tongue. Eyelids closed, he looked as if he were in his own corner of heaven.
Good Christ, what was that stuff?
He shoved the last bit into his mouth and licked his fingers clean, and my body went limp with weakness.
“What were you eating?” I asked. My breathing was difficult, as if my chest muscles couldn’t handle the weight of my ribs.
He nibbled under his fingernails contentedly, like a fat Henry VIII celebrating being a bachelor at yet another after-beheading banquet. “Your life substance, Albert. Very, very good stuff. Even for someone who has abused his liver as you have.”
“But what was that?”
Tabby came through the door, apparently hearing my panicky question. “That’s what it looks like, Al; or, rather, when it’s magically rendered down to its base elements, using, of course, advanced principles of the black arts.”
The old man’s eyes were closed, and his face looked slightly flushed. He was breathing deeply, strongly, as if he had just gotten his second wind. He’s a vampire, I thought. Maybe not a blood-sucking batboy, but a vampire all the same. An old decrepit leech, feeding on others.
“Now,” said the old man, “it’s time for the hard part.”
27
You’d think getting some of your life force gnawed on like a Happy Meal From Hell would have been the hard part, but there was more.
The pain was excruciating at first, but then I got used to it.
What I couldn’t get used to, though, was the sound of thousands upon thousands of claws scratching and scrabbling around the house. Apparently, the little shits had found me. So much for the theory that they were somehow instructed to go to my house. Hey, I was new to this curse shit—I was still figuring it out as I went. Anyway, the little pellet packers seemed to be trying to gnaw their way through the glass. The scrabbling of tiny nails against wood and glass blended into one giant buzz.
Sweat poured from my brow, down through my hairline. I felt myself losing it. Trust me, you would, too.
Christ, this can’t be happening.
I risked a glance to the left and the window was a sea of churning little bodies, each more desperate than the other to reach me. Soon, the sheer weight of them was going to rupture the glass.
The old man grabbed my jaw and forced my head straight.
“Better if you don’t look. You are hyperventilating.”
“Sorry. I get that way when a million mice want to eat me alive while I’m undergoing psychic surgery.”
“Slow down. Powerful magick. Powerful magick. Takes time. Mu-u-u-uch time. You made her very mad, indeed.”
Yeah, I was in a living nightmare. I glanced over at Tabby, who was near the couch but knew enough to keep a safe distance. Her face was white. She was shaking, staring at the window.
And now others were being forced to live in the very same nightmare. Nana’s curse had gone overboard, and I was counting on this greedy old goat to toss me a lifeline.
An old goat, incidentally, whose kid had died because of all this.
Because you cheated on your wife.
Tabby inched toward the window. She kept one hand over her nose and mouth, as if filtering the air through her fingers. Or perhaps an unconscious desire to keep the swarming little critters from running up and filling her mouth. She continued to edge forward, and I continued following her with my eyes until she was just about out of my line of vision. I didn’t dare risk turning my head, or risk another scolding from the old man and another shower of spittle. Plus, I really didn’t need to see a thousand black-and-white mice hurling themselves at the glass, either.
I heard the drapes rattling closed, plunging the room into further darkness, for the mice had yet to completely cover the massive floor-to-ceiling window.
I was thankful. I knew she was terrified, and even as she threw the drapes, a little squeak escaped her mouth. Then again, it was getting difficult to distinguish human squeak from rodent.
Please hurry, please hurry.
“I’m hurrying, young man. Don’t rush me.”
Great, now he’s reading my thoughts.
“Yes. The passing of essence is an intimate thing. I know most of your deepest, darkest secrets, and I must say, Mr. Shipway, I don’t approve of much of your life of late.”
“Thanks,” I said. I wondered if he could translate the word “asshole” into Latin.
He spent the remainder of the day hovering over me like a decrepit Macy’s Day Parade balloon, his skin aglow with new life—my life—prodding, poking and jabbing me with his cane. Each time, the tip flashed with electricity. Each time, I howled in pain.
“Nasty business, this curse,” he muttered.
I couldn’t help but feel he took a little longer than usual, just to torture me some more, and of course I had no way of knowing if he’d stuck to the bargain and only taken a year. I might be a bottle of Geritol away from adult diapers, for all I knew. But before I could dwell on it too much, Tabby shrieked.
“They’re in the house. They must have found a way in, or gnawed their way in.”
I could hear them. Scrabbling over the Italian tiles and polished wood, running over French statuary, swarming the Queen Anne furniture. Thousand of little feet pattering away.
Oh, God.
Tabby suddenly pointed and, despite myself, I looked up. There was an old-fashioned window vent over the library’s door. The window was slightly ajar, no doubt to air out the dusty library. Through this vent poured dozens and dozens of mice. More than likely, on the other side of the door, the mice were using themselves as a rodent ladder, piled high, stacking themselves, and then running up each other.
Pouring into the library.
A
squeak escaped my lips.
Little feet clawing the library’s wooden floor. Tabby screamed, very un-coplike.
“Get on the desk,” I yelled.
Tabby did so, standing in the center of the desk. She’d grabbed a fire poker from the hearth and waved it around menacingly. From my peripheral vision I could see little black-and-white bodies scuttling across the floor.
“What about you?” she asked.
I was helpless. The old man was still on top of me, still hovering over me as if he had all the time in the world. His lips continued mumbling. I could almost understand what he was saying as if I were myself thinking these very strange and arcane thoughts.
Patterns crossed my mind, ancient words, complex arrangements of sound and sub-vocalizing, and sonorous chants.
They came up my legs first, crawling almost tentatively over my jeans, as if they themselves could not quite comprehend that their prize was so near at last. They were oddly docile, as if waiting for the word to charge. I could feel the weight of them, feel their tiny claws punching through the denim.
Oh, God. It’s bad enough to die. But to die like this. In the midst of my worse nightmare.
But wasn’t that the whole point? Wasn’t that the curse Nana had put on me?
“You will not die,” said the old man. “And I am not God. Close, but not quite. Give me a few years.”
I opened my eyes and could not believe what I was seeing. The couch was completely covered with the mutant mice. In fact, the whole room was covered with them. The old man himself was a sea of living rodents as they scrambled over him from head to feet. He cocked his head to one side and about fifty mice cocked with him.
And that’s when I lost it completely. I screamed bloody murder. Or maybe it was “Jimmy.”
My mind reeled. Hysteria and panic and something close to madness overcame me. I could not think, and I could not function. My fear, my worst fear, gripped me completely, and I was lost to anything and everything—
