Reality came crashing back upon me. It was some hobo looking for work! If only I could convince him to go for help, then I’d be saved. I ran to the door and pressed my ear against it. There was only the sound of the wind and rain. Then I heard the off-key music of the harmonica, closer now. I heard again the hobo’s cry, ‘Odd jobs for food! Knives sharpened, holes dug, fences fixed!’
I pounded on the door with all my might. ‘Here! Here!’ I screamed. ‘I’ve got knives that want sharpening. Come here!’
Heavy hobnailed boots stomped up the front steps. I pounded and screamed. A muffled voice came through the door: ‘Beg your pardon, you in there. Want your knives sharpened?’
‘Yes! For God’s sakes, yes!’ I screamed. ‘I want my knives sharpened. It’s just . . . it’s just that the door’s jammed. You see, it’s a funny story really, the key snapped off in the lock this morning. So if you could find some way to open it, or break the door down, I’ll give you all my knives to sharpen.’
There was a long silence. My heart knocked crazily against my ribcage. The muffled voice asked, ‘Are you Luke?’
‘No,’ I answered. ‘My name’s Verge. Verge Strömberg.’
The muffled voice said, ‘ ’Cause there’s this note nailed here on your door about a Luke.’
‘A note?’
‘Yeah, well, the ink’s kind a runnin’ in the rain, but it says, uh, “Lil Luke is sick with flu. Real bad. Don’t let him out. We don’t want him to die.” ’
I let out a long, involuntary scream. That crazy Mrs Bellows must have put it there! The hobo said, ‘You okay in there, kid?’
I shouted back, ‘Look, that note’s just a misunderstanding. I don’t have the flu, for God’s sakes. I’m just trapped here in this house, and I need to get out. You gotta help me.’
More silence, then the man said, ‘I can’t afford to get sick. I’m already soaked to the bone as it is, and I ain’t et a thing in the longest time.’
‘Wait, wait,’ I pleaded. ‘There’s really nothing wrong with me. I swear to you. If you get me out of here, you can sharpen all my knives. And scissors, too. I’ve got hundreds of ’em, and they’re all dull. I’ll pay you twice whatever you’re asking.’
‘I just can’t take the chance,’ the voice replied. ‘Sorry, kid.’
In desperation I blurted out, ‘And my mother’s jewels. You can have them, too. Please, just open up this door.’
More silence.
‘For God’s sake, at least go get the sheriff and tell him I’m trapped in here. I’m Verge, Verge Strömberg,’ I screamed. ‘I need help!’
I could hear the hobo’s harmonica further down the street as he moved on to the next row of houses. I was desolate. Crazy Mrs Bellows had ruined my only chance of escape.
After a few minutes I felt my guts rumble. ‘Oh, well,’ I thought, ‘I might as well die on a full stomach.’
I stumbled into the kitchen, slipping on the slimy floor, and opened the pantry door. I took down two cans of peaches Lupita was saving for Christmas, and worked them open with a rusty can opener. My thin wrists ached from the strain. If I couldn’t even open a can of peaches, how could I dream of leaving Incarnation and becoming an explorer?
When I finally got the first can open I held it to my mouth and slurped down the thick syrup. Some of it trickled down my shirt. Wiping my face on my sleeve, I felt ashamed I’d ever day-dreamed about being Amundsen or Scott. My favourite story about Scott was when he got lost and blinded in a snow storm. He had no idea where his camp was, so the first thing he did was to pound a spike into the ice and tie a length of rope to it. Then he walked in a circle around the spike, letting out a short length of the rope, and then a bit more. He walked in an ever-increasing circle until he finally touched the walls of his tent.
I finished the first can of peaches, and opened the other. I felt more lost than Scott—at least he had a team waiting for him. I had none. Looking at the two empty peach cans, I had a brain-flash. There was someone I might be able to count on, and she was just next door. . . . Carolina!
I wrenched open all the drawers and cabinets, searching for bits of string, but there were only shoelaces and rubber bands. Finally, in the far corner of a drawer I found the spool of twine Lupita used to tie up odd bits of beef for stew. I stabbed the bottom of the cans with the butcher’s knife and knotted the ends of twine into them. Then I rushed out of the back door and into the garden.
I swung one can around my head, then let loose. It soared over the wall. I felt the twine give as the can hit the grass on the other side, and I waited anxiously for Carolina to pick up the other end. Minutes rolled by. Still nothing. It felt like hours.
I don’t know how long I stood there in the drizzling rain. I heard my father’s voice drumming in my head, ‘You don’t even have enough sense to come in out of the rain.’ I was chilled to the bone. Just as I was about give up hope, the line twanged and grew taut. I began to pray, ‘Please-don’t-let-it-be-Carolina’s-father, Please-don’t-let-it-be-Carolina’s-father.’ I spoke into the can, ‘Carolina, is that you?’
A faint voice came back. ‘Who else would it be, Verge . . . the tooth fairy?’
‘Oh, thank God!’ I shouted. ‘I need your help. I’m trapped in the house all alone and there’s this thing haunting me. And the stories, the stories are so terrible.’ I began to sob.
‘Slow down, slow down,’ said the distant voice. ‘I can’t understand what you’re saying. Take a deep breath.’
‘It’s long!’ I said. ‘It’s complicated!’
‘I got time, Verge. Papá’s found some work at the Franklin farm. He won’t be back ’til late. Tell me everything.’
‘Okay. Well, two days ago, my father left on an important trip.’
I didn’t leave out a thing, not the smell of the beast or how the mirror shook when it crashed through. Every single detail had been branded into my memory. I told her, word by word, the two tales of the Muladona. As I did so, I suffered a second time: I heard again the creature’s cacophony of gasps and shrieks. Somewhere along the line, I lost my sense of self entirely.
The sound of my own sobbing snapped me out of the trance. I was kneeling in the middle of the garden, my knees muddy, everything dark around me. My hand, sore and cold, gripped the tin can. I didn’t know if Carolina was still there. I wasn’t even sure she’d really been there to begin with.
I called out hoarsely, ‘C-Carolina, do you believe me?’
‘Yeah,’ said the voice on the other end of the line.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah, I believe you, and I’m gonna help.’
I was stupefied. ‘It’s all so crazy,’ I said.
‘Verge,’ said Carolina, ‘I know you like stories, but not even you would make up a story as. . . .’ She was cut off.
‘Carolina? Carolina?’ I called, but there was no response.
Then she whispered quickly, ‘Can’t talk, Papá just got back.’
‘Wait!’ I shouted into the can. ‘Are you gonna get the Sheriff?’ but the line went slack.
A tin can hurtled over the wall, heading straight towards me. I stepped out of the way. I guess Carolina threw it over the fence so her father wouldn’t suspect we’d talked. She always had the best aim. I remember how she once shattered a bottle with a peach pit with her slingshot from more than thirty yards.
I was shivering, soaked to the bone, and midnight was approaching! I groped my way to the back door, slopped through the kitchen. The mantel clock said it was 11:30. I went through the horrible ritual of lighting the candle and tucking in the sheets. I shrugged off my dirty clothes and towelled myself down. Just as I was putting on my pyjamas, I heard a screeching, rattling sound.
Was the creature coming early? My heart pumped like a piston, and a sudden hope sprang up in my heart. Perhaps Carolina had gone for the sheriff and they were rattling the vine-covered gate, trying to find a way in.
Or was it the beast?
If I stayed cowering under th
e sheets, the sheriff would think Carolina was making it all up. If I ran out now and called for help, I would finally be saved. I wouldn’t mind being locked up in the sheriff’s office, taken for a lunatic. Or put in quarantine with the sick. After hearing two of the Muladona’s tales, I feared the creature more than the influenza.
I put on my slippers and knotted on my bathrobe. Gripping my candle, I headed out into the garden. I steered myself over the slippery flagstones then crunched along the gravel path towards the front gate. I passed my grandfather’s old wagon, covered by a mouldy canvas tarp. I walked along the trellis, overgrown with grape vines. The clammy tendrils of the vines brushed against my hair and cheeks, like a sea anemone. I shivered as a raindrop found its way under my bathrobe collar and trickled down my back.
I held my candle up high and squinted into the drizzle. I tried to make out any shapes moving beyond the thick foliage that grew up around the rusty bars of the gate. ‘H-hello? Who’s there?’ I ventured.
With a tremendous thud, a figure dropped from the trellis above and landed on all fours in front of me. Scattering bits of leaves, plaster and rotten wood everywhere, it groaned, ‘Son-of-a-bitch!’
‘Muladona!’ I screamed. It had set a trap for me, and I’d fallen for it. I took off towards the kitchen door, and, as I ran headlong down the path, I could hear the Muladona thundering after me, kicking up the gravel and snorting.
‘Make it to the bed, make it to the bed!’ I told myself. As I reached the back patio I fell, sprawling, into a puddle. I dropped the candle. It bounced along the flagstones and extinguished with a hiss. I tried to get up but the creature landed on top of me, pinning me down.
Shaking me with all its might, it whispered hoarsely, ‘Why did you run? Why did you run?’
‘Oh, don’t eat me!’ I begged. ‘Please don’t eat me. I haven’t done anything wrong.’
‘I ain’t gonna eat ya,’ the thing whispered. ‘I’m here to get you out.’
The thing grabbed me by the shoulders . . . but they were human hands that lifted me, and I realised it wasn’t the creature after all. Then I heard a click and a bright light dazzled my eyes. At first all I could see was the outline of a person. Hoping against hope, I ventured, ‘Sebas, is that you?’
‘Who?’ the voice asked. ‘You sure you ain’t sick, Luke, ’cause you sound like you’re hallucinatin’.’
‘Luke?’ Then it dawned on me. ‘You’re the hobo . . . I mean, the odd jobs man, right?’
‘Yep, that’s me,’ the figure said. As my eyes adjusted to the glare of his flashlight I could see a wiry middle-aged man with a grizzled beard. He had on a worn, olive-green army jacket patched and pocked with rain. He also wore breeches and puttees.
‘ ’Course,’ he said, ‘you can call me Thomas Riquelme. Or Corporal Riquelme, as they used to say of late, of the American Expeditionary Forces. Honourably discharged and at your service.’
Shading my eyes with my hands to keep out the blaze of electric light, I said, ‘Could you, uh, please let go of me? You’re kind of hurting my arm.’
‘Sure, sure,’ the man said, letting go. ‘Sorry about that. I was a bit shook up by your screamin’ an’ all.’
‘You’re shaken up!’ I said, rubbing my arm. ‘You nearly gave me a heart attack jumping down from the fence like that. How in the world did you ever get over that thing? It’s ten feet tall with spikes on the top.’
‘Yeah, well, you should try crawlin’ through a mess o’ barbed wire on a moonless night. Once you’ve learnt to split a man’s belly open with a bayonet when you can’t even see your hand in front of your face, there’s nothin’ you can’t do.’
‘Right,’ I said warily. ‘Say, why didn’t you just go to the sheriff and ask him to open the door?’
‘Yeah, me and the law,’ he said, ‘we don’t get along too good. I had to see if there was any other work for me first. Nothin’ doin’. Most of the houses are all boarded up, the rest won’t answer.
‘Then I had a bit of a smoke, then a bit of a drink to think over your proposal. By the time I got around to decidin’, it was dark. I had nowhere to bed down for the night. You see, I only hoofed it into town today. It’s a long way from the railroad tracks.’
I said, ‘Uh, look, why don’t we get to the door?’
‘Sure, sure, that’s what I like,’ my visitor said. ‘To the point and businesslike. Yeah, that’s what I like. . . .’
We went into the house, side by side, guided by his small leather-covered flashlight. The odd job man snorted, sucking in what sounded like an enormous ball of phlegm. He swallowed it down and asked, ‘So, where’s your mom’s jewels?’
In the light of the flash bulb, I could just make out a thick scar that ran from his right cheek, over the bridge of his nose, ending at his left temple. He smiled at me—there were teeth missing here and there.
My mother never had a jewel in her life. Father ‘didn’t believe in those trifles’. And if she’d had any money herself, she would have spent it on me and Sebas.
I said, ‘Look, first we get the door open, then we get the jewels. Okay?’
For a long time the man didn’t say anything. My heart beat furiously and I felt like I’d swallowed my Adam’s apple. Then he said, ‘Yeah, okay, Luke. It’s just . . . you know . . . I could really do with some extra help. What with the flu and all, people ain’t openin’ their doors to me like they used to, even though a dull knife’s more dangerous than a sharp one. And it’s not like I’m doin’ this for the jewels, you know, ’cause I want to help you out in a neighbour-like way an’ all.’
As we passed by the mirror, I looked the other way. I had seen a large crack in it. ‘Here we are . . . the front door. Can you get it open?’
‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘Here, hold the flashlight on the lock, nice and steady like.’ In the pale gleam of the flashlight he pulled out a jagged-edged combat knife with a pair of brass knuckles for a handle. Pointing its tip towards me, he said, ‘So, Kid, the deal is, I gets the door open, and then you give me the jewels, right?’
‘Y-yeah, definitely,’ I said. ‘The jewels for the door, no problem. Just, please get it open. It’s almost midnight.’
‘Patience, Kid,’ he said, as he began to pry the tip of his knife under the brass plate of the lock. ‘It’s not like you’re gonna turn into a pumpkin or nothin’ at midnight, right?’
‘Yeah, that’s real funny,’ I said, looking over my shoulder. ‘Now, just get the door open. Please.’
‘Almost got it . . . almost got it, Kid. There,’ and I heard a screw snap. The brass plate went pinging off into the shadows of the parlour. My hand was trembling almost uncontrollably, making the flashlight dance every which way.
And then I heard the sound I’d been dreading . . . the first ding of the mantel clock striking midnight! I shouted to the hobo, ‘Stop what you’re doing, and get out of here. Get out of here now!’
‘What’re you talkin’ about, Kid? I almost got this. Give me just a little bit longer.’
As the clock continued to chime, I began shivering uncontrollably from head to feet. I grabbed the man by the shoulder and shook him, saying, ‘Look, you’re in danger. We’re both in danger. Get over the fence the way you came. I don’t have time to explain.’
‘Kid,’ he said, brushing my hand off him and turning back to the lock, ‘you gotta have the fever bad fer sayin’ all this nonsense.’
‘Just go, I beg you!’ I bleated.
He was about to reply when I heard the banging of the mirror, then, as the last chime sounded, there was an awful braying sound. He stopped working the knife against the lock and said, ‘You got an animal in here?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said, ‘a big, horrible animal. Now, for God’s sake, run!’
The mirror frame in the hallway stopped rattling. Something heavy landed on the floorboards and the chains scraped out from the nothingness on the other side of the mirror and along the floor.
‘Oh, God, it’s here!’ I scre
amed. ‘Oh, God, just run! Save yourself!’
The hobo stood up and swivelled towards the sound of the creature’s hooves clip-clopping towards us. He hissed, ‘I ain’t run from nothin’ in my entire life, Kid, and I ain’t about to start now.’ He raised his knife to eye level and bent his knees, ‘Now, what you got in there? A Rottweiler?’
The Muladona slowly emerged from the shadows . . . its awful snout, the long devilish ears. I couldn’t see it all because my hand was jerking the flashlight in a spasm of fright. The light glanced off the mantel clock and the beams of the roof. I couldn’t scream; I couldn’t run.
‘So-oo,’ the Beast brayed at me. ‘You’ve brought yours-eelf a little friend to prot-eect you. But it’s not going to do you any g-ood. I guess it’s two souls for the pri-ice of one, toni-ight.’ It turned to the hobo. ‘You path-eetic vagabo-ond. I bet your pea brain can’t even fa-athom what I am.’
To my surprise, instead of cowering in fear, the hobo stood his ground. He slurred, ‘I knows what you is, all right.’
‘Re-eally. . . . You know me from your mama’s bedtime stories?’ the Muladona mocked.
‘Naw. I seen your kind when I was with Teddy’s Rough Riders back in Cuba. It were past midnight, in the jungles ’round Las Guasimas. I was laid up with a bullet in the gut. Creatures like you were feedin’ on the dead and dyin’, chompin’ on their bones. Them’s were Spanish who sold their souls for magical powers. And I knows,’ he said, brandishing his knife in front of him, ‘that you’re afraid of iron, jus’ like your master, Beelzebub. And I’m gonna cut your stinkin’ heart out.’
‘You baa-astard!’ the Muladona brayed, and launched itself at him. The man jumped out of reach of my dancing flashlight. He must have moved quicker than the mule, because I heard the creature smash into the sofa, splintering it to pieces. I saw the horseshoes on its back hooves glint. Then it raised up its rear legs and kicked ferociously, sending the hobo flying against a tea trolley. It smashed our good set of china tea cups and scattered silverware everywhere.
Muladona Page 11
