The Curse

by Charles L. Grant

  "All right, then," she said sullenly. "Damnit, all right, I'll keep quiet."

  Her eyes closed when William called out, opened again and watched the elder enter the room. Always before in the shelter of a corner, bent, mumbling, hair straggling as if it had never been washed, never been smoothed by comb or brush, she had caught only glimpses of his face here and there, an inadequate sighting her imagination had filled in. But under the halo of light, he was different, so completely opposite Terry wasn't sure she recognized him.

  His face was a mask of infinite tragedy; the madness of Lear, the pathos of Loman tracked across broad cheeks and high forehead through incredibly deep canyons of folded skin. The eyebrows were cloud white, the nose a distorted image of something once sharp and planed. The lips had vanished in the maze of wrinkles, the chin in an unbroken line to the wattles loose at his neck. A parody of age, eons, imbedded with agony. But it was his eyes that kept her from squirming away from his gaze. She could see scarcely any white at all, only a black that had no business being anywhere else but at the bottom of a midnight well. A screen for the century of his living, twin ebony lenses that stared directly at her, and through her. And when Mary took his arm and guided him to the center of the room so that his slippered feet brushed the edge of the fringed blanket, Terry knew he was blind.

  She looked away then, and down. Felt an acrid welling in her stomach. In the middle of the blanket was a bowl, and the mass she had not been able to identify from the window was the body of a rabbit, its throat slit, its blood spilling into the receptacle and caking on its fur. Against the wall under the window were four others, already drained.

  She remembered the rabbit in the gutter during that first night's walk. She swallowed and fought with those portions of her mind that needed retreat into insanity. She looked around quickly, at the thoroughly modern kitchen crammed with cabinets and shining new appliances. The cans of food on the counter. The water glass by the sink. Normal. All of it normal. Except for the people, and the bowl of blood.

  The elder shifted then, tilted his head—an ancient bird searching for a meal. He lifted a hand more bone than flesh and William released her arms. Gratefully she rubbed at them, feeling the now cold poncho on her legs and back, slippery beneath her buttocks as she wriggled in search of comfort.

  There was a sharp hiss, and Terry began to yield to surges of faint hope. Mary was standing with her back to the counter, leaning slightly backward. She was obviously in the first throes of labor, and Terry could see the fear in the perspiration that sheened her brow, the dry tongue that flicked at her trembling lips. Behind her she could sense William's sudden indecision; he was being torn now, between obedience to the elder and loyalty to his soon-to-be-born child. So, she thought, the bastard is human after all. Stall, then, and then might be a chance.

  "William," she said, barely above a whisper. His hand gripped her shoulder and she tried, failing, to shrug it away. "William, could you at least explain? I have a right to know, don't I?"

  The old man swiveled around at the sound of her voice. He had lowered himself on the blanket carefully, his palms down to meet the floor and arrange his legs before resting on his knees. The bowl he pushed to one side. He was facing just to her left, ear cocked, shoulder lifted. He uttered a series of sharp gutturals and William's hand tightened. Mary had closed her eyes and pursed her mouth to suck in a series of deep, painful breaths. William answered shortly, and the elder reached a hand over his shoulder, waggling his finger until Mary grasped them tightly. He stroked her wrist, murmuring to her until her breathing eased and she was able to smile, almost shyly. But Terry saw the pain that would not leave her face.

  "William," Terry said, more insistently. "Please! You owe me that much, at least don't you think?"

  The elder spoke again, nodding, his free hand darting as though the air in front of him was a loom.

  William released her shoulder and stepped around the chair to face her. When she looked up, the ceiling light was directly behind his head and she was reminded of the afternoon in the field when the sun had turned him to shadow.

  "You will be killed," he said flatly.

  Terry nodded. The bravado in the action merely a facade for the lurch in her stomach and the fear that churned dangerously in her bowels. She was suddenly hot. The poncho captured her body's heat and made her perspire until she could feel the sweater dragging her torso down. But the killing was to be expected, and since it was obvious to her that Syd was also dead, she no longer cared.

  "There will be a reason for your dying."

  Then she realized William was translating the elder's grunts, the sing-song litany punctuated by his still moving hands. Mary shuddered, but her face was impassive, and Terry understood a new definition of hate.

  "Soon." His eyes drifted to a point just above her head, seeing nothing, focused on an expected future she wanted to believe had been painted in madness. "A man, Mrs. Guiness, came to the Nations of the West, as one who had come to us, the brother of Tecumseh. The man of the West was a seer, a prophet, who asked for the peace that never came as long as the white man rolled with his tide. The man died. He returned. He taught the Nations of the West, and they began to dance to gather the spirits of the long dead, the soon dead, the dead of the warriors whose numbers smothered the spring rains."

  It was hypnotic, Terry thought, and she kept her eyes moving around the room to keep herself from falling into the same trance-like state that had gripped William. He was talking, she knew, about the Paiute who had claimed death and transfiguration and who had inspired the Ghost Dance. William droned on, describing the reactions of the Nations as the Ghost Dance was picked up by some, ignored by others and moved inexorably across the plains to lodge in the homeland of the Sioux. The Miami; the Shawnee, the Cree, most of the Eastern tribes had virtually vanished under the assaults of generals like Andrew Jackson and were pushed aside by the unstoppable progress of a white population lured by farmland, furs, and rumors of gold and silver, iron and lead.

  "Another man came. He counseled silence. Patience. Some listened, others ignored, but it was not long before all believed and the silence continued. He moved, always taking on faces, clothes, the appearance of the year. He was not given a name or a sign. He was only HE, and only those who listened knew who he was, knew why he spoke on the wind and in dreams."

  Terry stopped paying attention and began to scan Mary's face to spot the moment when she would no longer be able to hold back the convulsions that had stiffened her spine and beaded her cheeks and brow. Soon, she prayed, and wrenched herself back to catch the tag end of the Indian's monologue. It was, Terry thought, an uneasy explanation of why there had been no mention of this legend. Without a name or a face, this mysterious figure would be effectively invisible to those outside Indian culture, would be able to keep their belief in the Ghost Dance a hidden thing. A clandestine messiah, she thought, and wondered how far she dared go in upsetting the moment.

  William stopped, muttered something to the elder, and glared at her. "I am boring you? I was under the impression that you wanted to know, Mrs. Guiness."

  "But I do," she protested meekly "And I also know more than you think."

  "Your book, Mrs. Guiness. You should never have started it."

  "It was your story, William, and Denver's, that got me into it. Blame yourself, if you have to blame someone."

  William smiled unpleasantly. "Then tell me, Mrs. Guiness. What do you know so that I may tell the elder.

  He hesitated, exaggerating her indecision to keep him from noticing the abrupt sag in Mary's knees, and the tightening of the elder's grip on her wrist; what magic he had woven earlier was rapidly dissipating.

  "This mysterious man you're telling me about, and in a nice way, too, this man who keeps the Ghost Dance alive. I know his name."

  The old man hissed angrily and William knelt in front of her, his fingers grabbing her ankles. "You can't," he said, and she delighted at his dismay, as if in her knowing
she would somehow defeat them.

  "Tecumseh," she said, grateful at least for one small triumph. "You think he's come back to free you all and lead you and your people to some kind of glory." She felt like laughing, but the look on his face sobered her instantly. "Denver," she added, unable to stop. "I saw him the other day, just after looking through a book. You think he is Tecumseh, don't you? You think he's the one who's going to whisper in your dreams and set you back on top again."

  There was a moment when she thought William would shift his hands from her ankles to her throat and throttle the victory before it could produce a smile of her own. But he only sat back on his heels and let his arms fall limply to his sides. He spoke to the elder; the elder answered at length. Then William grabbed her arms and yanked her to her feet. Thinking she'd finally pushed them too far, she began to struggle, but the strength in the man's hands made her whimper involuntarily, and his pulling kept her too far off balance to do anything but follow.

  They rushed awkwardly down the hall, turned and stumbled up the narrow staircase to the second floor. It was dark, and she cracked a kneecap against a low table pushed against a wall. The pain jolted into lights that added to her blindness and paradoxically cleared her head and set her searching for a way to escape. With the elder blind and Mary in no condition to wrestle with her now, all she needed was a way to get free of William and at the front door.

  He stopped, reached through a room and turned on a light. "Denver's room," he said, stepping aside.

  The room was empty. No bed, bureau, not even a small chair or rug. She frowned, and saw in a corner a glittering silver necklace. "I don't get it," she said finally. "What is this?"

  "He doesn't sleep here. He doesn't sleep in this house, Mrs. Guiness. He never has. You know now he is not my father. My father, my real father, died twelve years ago, an alcoholic. He couldn't wait."

  "But—"

  William pushed her inside and followed, standing in the doorway to block a possible run. "He fashioned the necklaces here, Mrs. Guiness. For the people who thought they knew what he was." He laughed, then . . . "But they all thought he was a murderer. You were the only one, you and your husband, who knew he was—"

  "Rubbish!" she said, and flinched at his angry glare.

  "We tried to warn you, Mrs. Guiness. But you were not frightened." He smiled. "You do not frighten easily at all."

  A scream turned him around. It rose to a long sobbing wail, sank to a moaning before rising again like an ocean swell. William hesitated, then spun around and raced toward the stairs. The screaming persisted, underscored by a hoarse shouting, and Terry uttered a quick prayer to all the gods she'd known, before following as quietly as she could. Mary had finally broken the hold the elder had had on her nerves, and the pains of immediate childbirth shattered her stoic silence.

  The commotion centered in the kitchen. Terry took the steps two at a time and twisted around in the first floor hall to see the woman lying on the floor, the elder and William hovering over her in helpless uncertainty. Terry wasted little more time yanking open the front door.

  The storm had ended; only remnants of the wind cooling her face and sifting up under the poncho to turn the perspiration into rivulets of ice around her waist and thighs. She considered again calling the police, Jim Griffith, anyone at all, but the only one on the block she knew would believe her, want to help her, and could not was Mrs. Denbeau.

  Without thinking, then, she turned right and ran for the stand of birch separating her from the field. Denver would be somewhere around the hill, she thought, and Syd . . . Syd would be there, too.

  There was no battle plan, no time at all for formulations of strategy. What measures she would and could take depended on what, if anything, Denver was doing.

  She ran through the underbrush and broke into the open, stumbling once and flailing to keep on her feet. Why The Lane? Why her? She tripped and fell headlong into the high grass. The blades whipped her face, blinded her as her hands broke her fall and scraped over rock. The clouds were breaking, and behind them the white of the moon. She lay still, sucking for air, clawing at the poncho until she pulled it off and tossed it away. To her knees, then to her feet. And she felt the ground rise, saw, as her eyes adjusted to the pale silver, the crest of the hill. She swerved to skirt its base, and her boots slid on an open patch of mud. Again she fell, striking her head on a fist of rock.

  Lights. Brilliantly red, burning gold, swirling nebulae that forced nausea to roil uncontrolled. She pushed up with her palms and vomited, tears stinging, nostrils flaring and closing against the acrid stench. She cried loudly, no longer believing silence would protect her, cried and wiped her mouth with her sleeve, ran heedlessly forward. The moon had found a breach in the cover and the meadow was a silver-gray sea, using the rain to turn its surface into facets of diamonds that blurred as the tears refused to halt, kept burning, kept blinding.

  She called out once, and thinking she heard an answer, reached somewhere for additional speed and rounded the hill, staggered to a halt against a huge boulder. She could see the marker clearly, and there was a body lying at its foot. She stared, gulping, wiping at her chin. The body moved, and she called out again.

  Syd was stretched out on his back, and she took his head, cradled it, rocking and crooning, brushing back his hair and kissing eyes, nose, lips, brow until he blinked and looked up.

  "My God," he said, and pulled her down, and she held him like a shield against the night. Then his arms tightened and she felt the heaving of his chest, the salt that touched her lips when she kissed his cheek.

  She laughed. No superhuman was her husband, nor was she; and however much time had passed was not nearly enough to keep them from sitting up and, while touching faces, chests, fingers, palms, telling their stories.

  Syd had indeed confronted Denver, practically threw the doll in his face and demanded to know what the hell he was trying to do to his wife. There were denials and feigned reactions of indignant hurt. But Syd pressed until he found himself bound by William and dragged into the kitchen. Denver had taken off his clothes and strode around naked.

  "If that man's fifty, I'm a hundred," Syd said. "He's got to be no older than me, angel. Christ, you should see his arms!"

  They had explained, as they had to Terry; and like Terry, Syd had grasped for belief in places other than the legend. And had failed.

  "Peg," he said suddenly. "They admitted killing all those others, and working on Peg." The name was a question and Terry told him what she had tried to do. "No," he said. "Can't be. Can't be."

  "Syd, right now I don't know and I don't care. Let's go home and get in the car and get the hell out of here! Go someplace and try to make some sense. . . . What's the matter?"

  Syd passed a hand over his face. "I came to just a few minutes after Denver conked me. He told William to get the potion. Tonight, he said." He reached behind him and pulled out a doll. "I saw him bury this by the marker."

  Terry started to laugh, keeping her lips pressed tightly together to stifle the sound.

  "He told me I was needed, angel. To bring it about."

  "He's going to kill you?"

  Syd shook his head, then exposed his arm. She gasped, cried out and turned away. There was a gash on his forearm, bound now, but the cloth was stained dark rust.

  "He let the blood sink into the ground. He told me how he did the same to Denbeau. And Marsha Pritchard."

  "God!"

  "This is the gate, he said."

  "Shut up, Syd."

  "He—"

  She slapped him, winced at the pain in her hand, and slapped him again.

  Above them there was a cry, a shout, a commandment. Thunder exploded. The moon disappeared. Terry screamed, Syd grabbed her and pulled her face-down to his chest. The world flared white, and there was lightning walking across the field. Each succeeding flash cracked ozone and thunder, and she was deafened though she knew she was still screaming. The world was splitting apart, and she had a vi
sion of falling into a pit rimmed with red fire that burned an unnatural black. And when she looked up, Syd's face was pale, bloodless.

  She followed his gaze to the top of the hill. At first she could see nothing beyond the bewildering electrical display, then nothing but the grass that bent against the rising wind. She rubbed at her eyes, shook her head, rubbed again.

  There was a figure standing on the edge, arms raised to gather the thunderbolts to his chest. He was dark, naked, hair streaming out behind him. He was tall, and growing taller.

  Scrambling to her feet, Terry pulled until Syd followed her behind the marker. It was a false sense of security, but it was something she could grasp as she watched the legs of the figure rise and fall in time to the thunder, stamping hard on the ground, the hands into fists yanking downward, reaching up and yanking down again. A noise above the wind, part of the wind, riding with it and sustaining—had she been on her porch, she knew she would have heard it; the chanting of the elder, the chanting of her dreams.

  "Denver!" Syd shouted into her ear, and she nodded, unable to look away.

  The chanting.

  The stamping.

  Thunder and the streaks of lightning that sounded like sheets tearing in the wind. Terry clamped her hands to her head and bent over, shaking her shoulders when Syd tried to get her to look back to the hill.

  The chanting.

  The answering thunder.

  It was mad, and maddening, and she prayed for a way to end it, to keep the world from drowning in her nightmare.

  She screamed hatred, spitting on the marker.

  "Angel!" Syd shouted and pulled her back.

  The ground began to shake. The marker heaved upward, split in half and burst into blue flame untouched by the wind.

  She looked up, and in the violence of the storm, there was a moment of calm that allowed her to regain her breath and accept, finally, the giant on the hill.