Family Skulls

by Luc Reid

  “This used to be Grant’s mom’s workroom,” she said. “She used to dig up bones and arrowheads. She really liked them. She died when he was a little boy. I think it was sad, but Grant never says. Grandpa Chet raised him until Daddy married my mommy, because Daddy had to work.”

  Seth caught Tessa giving Grant a worried glance, but Grant just gazed at the boxes. “Grandpa always said this room wasn’t for people to spend time in, but Mom overruled him.” He went to close the door, but Seth stepped forward and stopped it with his hand. He felt a strange pulling in his stomach, a sick feeling that drew him into the room. He walked in and shuffled toward a pile of boxes in a corner. There was a kind of echo inside his head.

  The Larshes were saying something, but he could hardly hear it, and he couldn’t concentrate on the words. His stomach clenched, and a blazing pain burst open in his head. The world around him misted over, and then he felt himself falling, and everything went black.

  *

  Seth woke to the sound of somebody playing a contradance tune on a guitar, like at the contradances Grandma Neddie had dragged him to a few times. He opened his eyes, focusing on Jerry Larsh. For the first moment, Jerry had a grim expression and a tired look around his eyes. Then Jerry noticed Seth and he wiped the look from his face so completely, it was hard to be sure it had been there.

  “So now you’ll have to stay for dinner, because you’re obviously fainting with hunger,” he said

  Seth sat upright and immediately wished he hadn’t; he was so dizzy he nearly threw up. He grabbed the arm of the couch and steadied himself, willing his stomach to quiet. What had happened to him?

  But Jerry was right: Seth wasn’t going to bike anywhere right away.

  Finding himself on the couch had been strange. If he had fainted anywhere else, even at home, no one would have done anything with him; he would have been left there on the floor until he woke up. Here, the very person who was perpetuating the curse had apparently carried him to the couch. It was hard to guess what was going on in Jerry Larsh’s mind, although if his expression the first minute was any indication, it was more then he let on.

  “Here: do you play the banjo?” said Jerry, getting up. He opened a dusty, frying pan-shaped case in the corner and held up a banjo. Jerry put it across his knees and turned one of the steel knobs, plucking at a string of the banjo with something as he went and every few seconds plucking a string of his guitar for good measure. He did this with each of the strings, for which Seth was grateful: by the time the banjo was tuned, most of the dizziness had gone away.

  Jerry got up and put the banjo in Seth’s lap. “Well?” he said.

  “I can’t play it.”

  “That’s OK: I’ll teach you. You can use mine. We need a banjo.”

  “I can’t …” said Seth, and trailed off. He had never taken music lessons, and no one else in his family had either—not for long, anyway. Even though they would be paying for the service, giving music lessons seemed to be one of those things that involved too much helping for anyone to do it to Seth or his family because of the curse. Seth’s mom had tried to take piano lessons from four different teachers before she had given up; she said the teachers just sat there, sometimes making comments about how bad her playing was but never showing her anything or telling her how to improve. If a Quitman or a Wall wanted to a learn an instrument, it had to be self-taught.

  Or taught by Jerry Larsh.

  “Give it a try!” Jerry said.

  “I don’t know how.”

  “Well, I learned it, so how hard can it be? Here, these are the frets—”

  Seth almost pulled his hand away: he wasn’t particularly interested in learning the banjo just then. But it would be an excuse to be at the Larshes’ house, searching for the thing he could use to make them break the curse.

  But now he was almost pretending to himself that Jerry didn’t know who he was, and Jerry did—he must. He had some kind of plan, obviously.

  “No thanks,” Seth said. It seemed a rude way to respond, but it was the best he could do.

  Jerry sat back on the couch, frowning, saying nothing for a minute. Finally he said, “have you ever passed out like that before?”

  “I think it was just the stress hitting me late,” Seth said.

  “Hmm,” said Jerry, unconvinced.

  “Your spaghetti’s turning to mush!” Tessa called out from the kitchen.

  Jerry grabbed the banjo and tucked it back into its case, snapping the lid shut. “I’ll have Tessa ask you. She’s better at it.” And he ducked out of the room, heading toward the kitchen.

  Seth stood up cautiously, feeling the room swimming around him a little, though not bad enough to prevent him from standing. He went to the shelves immediately and looked at the ones where he had seen the skulls the day before. Empty, yes, but the shelf was covered with a thin layer of dust broken by a number of clear, roughly oval spaces a little bigger than Seth’s palm.

  So the skulls had been moved. Why?

  Out of the corner of his eye he glimpsed the maroon-bound volumes again, and he moved over to these, picking one up—the one that said 1902 on the binding—and flipping through it. Notes in a long, scratchy hand filled about half of the pages, while the rest were blank. The ink that had been used to write in the book had faded to a pale brown. One corner of the book had become discolored and the ink there blurred as though it had gotten wet, but almost everything was still legible. He opened to a random entry from April of 1902.

  The river went down some. Spent most of the day walking the banks with the boys, pulling up the stones we set there every forty or fifty paces. It’s been draining these last few weeks. I’ve hardly had time for the keeping work.

  Seth flipped forward a dozen pages or so.

  Today I caught the Lavigne girl in the barn trying to bribe Jonas with what she had. I was behind the wagon when I heard them and waited to see what Jonas would do … (then there was a splotch where some blue ink seemed to have spilled) … by the arm and led her out. I was proud enough of him, although he shouldn’t have kissed her. She’s foolish to think I’d let one of my boys lift a curse I laid myself.

  A curse I laid myself. Seth sighed with relief, not understanding why for a moment. Then he realized it was because it had started to seem as though he was wrong about the Larshes, that they might not have anything to do with the curse, skulls or no skulls. But here was proof that they did cast curses. And it sounded as if the curses could be lifted by the curse caster, and maybe even by another person in the family. To think I’d let one of my boys lift a curse … Did that mean that one of the boys could have lifted the curse, but the man who was writing wouldn’t have allowed it? Or that the boys wouldn’t have been able to? Could Grant lift Seth’s family curse? Could Junie?

  “That’s private,” Jerry said, and he took the book out of Seth’s hands. Seth jerked away from him involuntarily: he hadn’t heard Jerry come up behind him, either. Did they use magic to move around so quietly?

  “Sorry,” Seth said. “Was that somebody’s journal? I couldn’t figure out what they were even talking about.”

  Jerry studied Seth’s face for a moment and put the book back. “It was my grandfather’s. He kept a journal of his work, kind of like a farm record.”

  “Oh,” said Seth. A farm record? More like a sorcerer’s notebook—but never mind that.

  “Come on in to dinner,” Jerry said. “The spaghetti’s nice and cheesy.”

  Plates had been crowded onto the dinner table, leaving barely enough room for a giant ceramic bowl of gooey-looking yellow spaghetti with meatballs as big as oranges. A platter on the counter nearby was heaped with biscuits that gave off a faint maple smell, and each plate had a neat pile of green beans on it, Junie’s plate (immediately identifiable by the cartoon unicorns) having green beans smothered with cheese.

  Seth’s mother would have swept everything but the green beans off the table and started something new. She didn’t go in for cheese, butte
r, or meat as major ingredients: she seemed to think that the four food groups were fish, spinach salad, long-grain rice, and chicken breast. Of course, there was always the key lime pie. Seth had always thought that meant she had a wild streak she never let on to.

  Jerry pulled out a chair for Seth and gestured grandly for him to sit. Everyone else was already in their places, waiting for him.

  The Larshes started eating without saying grace, which was a relief to Seth: his family didn’t say grace, and he didn’t know how to act when other people did.

  “So you know you’re welcome here any time you want to come, right?” Jerry said. “It’s not every day someone saves one of our lives. Not more than twice a month, is it honey?”

  “Only once last month,” said Tessa, deadpan.

  “Who saved our life, mommy?” Junie said.

  “Seth here’s going to pick up the banjo,” Jerry said.

  “He is?” said Tessa and Grant at the same time. Tessa began scooping up spaghetti with cheese and meatballs and portioning it out.

  “He’s just kidding,” Seth said.

  “You just wait,” said Jerry. “You’ll see. It’s an addiction, banjo. It gets into your blood.”

  “I don’t want Seth to come when I’m sleeping. I don’t want anybody but my family to come when I’m sleeping,” said Junie.

  “Or at least if you do come to play banjo in the middle of the night, play quietly,” said Grant.

  Tessa grunted with disapproval and dropped a huge serving of spaghetti and cheese onto Seth’s plate. Then she went back with the spoon and got a meatball to balance on top. She looked at him for a moment, as though waiting in case he said he wanted more.

  “Thanks,” said Seth.

  “If you do want to come late, you should have on your cold-blooded killer look,” said Jerry. “Give us your cold-blooded killer look!”

  Were they toying with him? Or was this what their family thought of as fun? Seth took a bite of the spaghetti with a chunk of meatball. It stuck in his mouth, but it was good. He wished his mom would make things like this sometimes.

  “No, really: give us your cold-blooded killer look. We all have one,” said Jerry. Suddenly he, Tessa, and Junie broke into horrendous expressions. Seth started laughing, but started to choke on his spaghetti, which stopped him. When he had chewed and swallowed, he looked around. The whole family watched him, apparently waiting for his cold-blooded killer look. He stretched out one corner of his mouth and rolled his eyes up in his head.

  “Yes, but like you’re going to kill us in our sleep. Like this, and make your eye twitch,” said Jerry.

  The dinner went on like that for quite some time.

  *

  Dessert was Jell-O for Junie, but everyone else had apple crisp, which Grant dished out. Seth was feeling more or less normal by then and would rather have just left, but it seemed rude. For whatever reason, the family still seemed to be treating him like an honored guest, and it was hard to be rude in the face of that. So he ate.

  A few bites in, he bit down on something hard. He tried to spit it out, but somehow he couldn’t make his tongue push it. He struggled with it as it worked further and further toward the back of his mouth, as though immune to being moved by Seth’s tongue. Finally he forced himself to swallow, and followed it with a long drink of milk to make sure it went down.

  “You OK?” said Grant.

  “Great,” Seth said carefully. “This is some good apple crisp.”

  Tessa patted Jerry on the back.

  As soon as the meal was done, Seth got up. “I really have to get home now. My parents will wonder where I am.”

  “You can call them,” Jerry offered.

  “It wouldn’t help,” Seth said. “Our family rule is ‘no excuses.’ I’d better just get back as soon as I can.”

  The part about the family rule could hardly be less true: everyone in Seth’s family understood that when you couldn’t get help with anything, you sometimes got home later than you liked. But people seemed to respect family rules, so Seth tended to make them up when he needed an excuse no one would argue with.

  Jerry stood up and brushed crumbs off his lap. “I’ll drive you.”

  “No! I mean, I have my bike.”

  “We’ll put it in the trunk of the cruiser.”

  “Mr. Larsh, if a policeman brings me home, my parents will think I’m in trouble.”

  “I’ll just explain to them—”

  Tessa put her hand on Jerry’s arm. “Honey, kids don’t want to be delivered anywhere in police cars unless they’re six.”

  “I’m six!” shouted Junie.

  “I’ll take you, Seth, honey,” Tessa said.

  “I’d really like to just ride my bike. Exercise before I go to bed helps me sleep.” Seth walked toward the door before they could offer him anything else. Jerry followed quickly.

  “Come back and visit soon. I’ll give you a banjo lesson, OK?”

  “I’ll try,” said Seth. In truth, he didn’t know whether he’d be coming back to visit or not. On the one hand, it seemed like a golden opportunity. On the other, it seemed like a trap. But he had to get his hands on those journals again; they were the one thing around the house that seemed like any kind of a lead on what Seth needed, other than the skulls—and the skulls were gone.

  Once off the porch, Seth nearly ran into the woods through the dimming light. He grabbed his bike, put it on the lumber road, and began pedaling. He didn’t feel safe until he was back on the main road, well away from the Larshes.

  He thought about the same thing the whole way back: opportunity or trap? Opportunity or trap?

  Maybe it was both.

  Chapter 7

  Grandma Neddie was cleaning up the dishes when Seth got home. “You returned the bike?” she said.

  “I’m working on it,” he said, and he tried to slip past her into the hallway.

  “Working on it?” she said. He stopped: it wasn’t a good idea to walk out while Grandma Neddie was talking.

  She rinsed her hands briskly and dried them on her apron. “And how are you working on it? It looks to me like you’re trying to slip upstairs unnoticed.”

  “I can’t return it tonight, Grandma,” Seth said.

  “Then why didn’t you come straight home from school?”

  “I had some stuff I needed to do.”

  “What you need to do is return that bike. You’ll return it tomorrow, no excuses.”

  Why was she lecturing him? He knew he had to return it.

  “OK. Will you give me a ride?”

  Grandma Neddie turned back to the dishes. “Hmm?” she said. It was a game Seth and Kurt used to play sometimes, asking for help and seeing what would happen to prevent it.

  “I wondered if you could give me a ride down to return the bike,” he said loudly.

  “I can’t hear what you’re saying, Seth. Speak up.”

  “Would you please drive me down to return the bike?”

  “Did you have dinner already?” Grandma Neddie said. She hadn’t heard him at all that last time. It was usually like that, but every once in a while you’d get the message across and then it would just turn out that helping was impossible for whatever reason. If Seth kept pushing Grandma Neddie, if he actually got her to try to give him a ride, then maybe her Oldsmobile wouldn’t start, or she wouldn’t be able to find the on ramp to the highway. Things like that had happened more than once.

  “Yeah. I ate at a friend’s house.”

  “Well, call next time. I made ambrosia salad. There’s some in the refrigerator if your brother hasn’t gotten to it already.”

  Seth went to the refrigerator automatically, still thinking about the stolen bicycle. The borrowed bicycle. It was only “stolen” if he didn’t return it. Would they even miss it? Well, that was probably beside the point. Tomorrow, which was Saturday, he’d offer Grandma Neddie some beans for a ride. He needed the time to think anyway. What he wanted most was to be alone in his room, to work on
the new bridge, and mull over what had happened without being interrupted.

  He hadn’t even reached the stairs when a heavy hand fell on his shoulder. He smelled the sour, old-cigarette smell of Uncle Guy before he even turned around. What was Uncle Guy doing out of his room?

  “Can they hear us?” Uncle Guy said.

  “Who?”

  Uncle Guy’s voice dropped to a whisper. “The Larshes, damn it, the Larshes. Can they hear? There’s a … they might be able to hear us.”

  Uncle Guy was almost normal sometimes, but he had bad days, even bad weeks, when all he could do was mutter about the curse and about the conspiracy against him at the spring factory. He’d made up the conspiracy story after he’d gotten fired for not showing up to work eight days in a row, and it got a little more complicated every time he told it.

  But he wasn’t completely paranoid. The curse was real, at least.

  “They can’t hear us, Uncle Guy,” Seth said. “But I have some homework to do, so …” And he did have homework to do. He’d have to start that before long. Particularly, he had a history paper due Tuesday.

  “All right. All right, come on,” Uncle Guy said, and he half-guided, half-pulled Seth into his room.

  Seth avoided Uncle Guy’s room as much as possible. It stank horribly of cigarettes, because Uncle Guy smoked constantly and was usually afraid to open the window. And of course being in Uncle Guy’s room meant having a conversation with Uncle Guy.

  Other than the bed, Uncle Guy had three mismatched armchairs and a huge, battered steel desk with two tall filing cabinets next to it. A tiny dresser, spray painted black, held up a 12-inch black-and-white television. Ranged down one side of the room and piled on the radiator were stacks of papers, neatly arranged, some of them two feet high. On the desk was an open plastic package of graph paper, the kind Uncle Guy favored for making notes. An old encyclopedia set took up the back half of the desk, where Uncle Guy would pull up an armchair and sit for hours on end, smoking and scratching out notes. No notes were visible right now, and as usual, everything in the room was freakishly neat. Even the corners of the papers in all of the piles were neatly squared. An open Charles Chips can by the bed was partly full of ashes and cigarette butts, and oversized, colored glass ashtrays were scattered around the room.