‘But now I fixed it. I fixed it, see? I balanced it out.’ He pointed to a thin ribbon of blood that trickled out of the canal of what used to be his good ear.
‘Oh, God, Erland, what have you done to yourself? I’ll call the doctor. I’ll call him right now. We can fix this.’
‘You see?’ he said. ‘I evened it out. I don’t feel sick no more. And now I hears what you’re thinkin’ loud and clear,’ he snarled.
He got up and knocked over the bottle of whisky. ‘Ya mean to murder me,’ he shouted. ‘Ya mean to finish me off, so ya can keep the house, the house I built with my own two hands! That’s what I hear. So you can enjoy all the fruits of my labour and shack up with someone else.’
‘What nonsense are you talking about now, Erland? You built it, all right, but it’s me that keeps it from fallin’ about our ears. You don’t work. You don’t pay for food. I do all of that. The last time you did anything around here was when you tried to clear out the gutters, and you did it half drunk. It’s your house in name only.’
Erland didn’t hear her words, although he saw her jaw move up and down. He’d deafened himself to her lies. All he could hear were her thoughts . . . vile, spiteful and full of recrimination.
‘Bunch o’ hypocrites, that’s what ya’ll are. That old witch, the widow Agata, murdered her husband, and Néstor killed his father, and those awful little girls who were playin’ by the fountain. . . . Poor li’l puppy don’t know what’s comin’ for him. And that fornicatin’ pastor . . . not just with white women but Indian squaws as well. Hypocrites, every one of you.’
Now that he could hear the truth he wasn’t going to play the fool any longer. He wasn’t going to let them get away with it.
‘What are you saying, Erland? I don’t like the way you’re looking at me.’
Erland picked up the whip and tightened its leather thong against his wrist. He tossed the table aside as if it had been doll’s furniture. He was filled with the truth and it strengthened him.
He advanced on Kajsa who, retreating, scalded her hand against the steaming kettle. She let out a shriek, but Erland didn’t hear it. Sobbing, Kajsa cowered in a corner by the stovepipe. As he raised the whip, Erland didn’t hear her screams. He brought it down again and again, his arm strong, his head clear.
What he did hear was pure and crystalline. It was like ice breaking on a lake during the first thaw in spring. It was like a baby’s cry when it comes into the world. What he heard was a choir of heavenly angels.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I cowered by the stovepipe, taking lash after lash, screaming as loud as I could for Erland to stop. With both his ears dead, he couldn’t hear a thing.
The beating carried on for a day, a week, an eternity. . . . No-one came to help. Then I heard a voice, hissing and sputtering, from the still steaming kettle:
‘If you wa-ant the pain to sto-op. Just get u-up. Just get u-up and take my hand, and I will e-end your sufferi-ing.’
My body was lacerated, my blood ran freely. I was willing to do anything to stop the blows. I tried to get up, but I was suffocating. Something pinned me down like a burial shroud. I pulled and pulled at it, loosening the winding sheets. Just a little more, and I would be free!
‘The-ere, the-ere,’ the voice brayed. ‘No inte-erfering hobo will stop me from having my reve-enge.’
‘Hobo?’ I said groggily. There hadn’t been a hobo in Erland’s story.
The voice cried, ‘That drunka-ard of a soldier who da-ared confront me-e.’
Corporal Riquelme! I stopped trying to get up. I checked my body for the welts from Erland’s whip and realised I wasn’t hurt one little bit. It was all an illusion. I wasn’t Erland’s wife, cowering in the kitchen. I was Verge, back in my own bed! The bed sheets that wound around me were my only protection from the Muladona.
I strained my ears and distinguished in the whistling of the kettle the evil, rasping sound of the Muladona’s voice. I heard the liquid gurgling in its lungs and realised it was hurt.
‘The hobo stuck his knife in you didn’t he?’ I said defiantly. ‘And you’ve still got the blade inside you. You can be beaten yet!’
‘Fo-ool!’ the beast cried. It began to buck wildly about the room, trampling everything around it with its massive hind legs. It kicked the headboard of my bed which collapsed. I almost toppled out from under the covers.
‘The damage is only te-empora-ary,’ it bellowed. ‘Once I have you in my power, I shall be-e beyo-ond the power of the worm and the mo-oth . . . and you will roast in the eternal fla-ame.’
My mattress was now at a forty-five degree angle to the floor and I tried desperately not to slide out from under the sheets. ‘Is that what you get in exchange for killing me?’ I gasped, gripping the bed slats. ‘Eternal life?’
It stomped its hooves against the floor and the bed shook. I had to brace my leg against the frame just to keep myself from tumbling out. The bayonet that I’d hidden beside me slid out from under the covers and clanged onto the cold stone floor. I reached for it instinctively, and realised, too late, that in so doing I had exposed my hand!
The Muladona clamped its fiery teeth onto the ring finger and pinky of my left hand. It sliced through the meat and pinched the bone in a searing metal press. I howled in pain as it melted my flesh.
‘There, you li-ittle ba-astard,’ it grunted as it held me tight, ‘I’ve got you now. Now gue-ess my name, gue-ess! Who-o am I?’
My thoughts flew to Miss Dawson, my old teacher. She was cruel and pedantic . . . but it didn’t make any sense. She could easily have killed me when my back was turned at the schoolhouse.
Oh, how my hand burned!
I thought about the other women I knew. What if (may God forgive me) it was Carolina? After all, hadn’t she, just a short time before, tried to insinuate herself under my sheets? Isn’t that what the Muladona had been trying to do all along?
The skin on my trapped hand burst into sizzling boils. The pain was like a live wire sticking in my brain.
It couldn’t be Carolina! She’d risked everything to save me. She’d retrieved my keys. She’d defied her father. She cared about me.
So who could it be?
From the depths of pain, a suspicion sprung. It had been forming over the last few nights without me even realising it. What if it were ——? But no! I would die rather than entertain the thought. I wouldn’t let it be so.
‘We-ell?’ demanded the mule, its hairy lips crawling like a caterpillar about its teeth, ‘what’s it going to be-e: face me now and end this ni-ightmare or let me dra-ag you to hell?’ It tugged against my fingers ever so slightly, pulling the rest of my hand out from under the sheets.
I had a flashback to one of my father’s marathon sermons at the start of the war. Clenching the edge of his pulpit, his knuckles white, he’d railed, ‘And if your hand causes you to sin, better that you cut it off than for your entire body to burn in the hellfire of eternal damnation!’ For the first time in my life, I was thankful of my father’s advice.
I gritted my teeth and said ‘There’s another option.’ I interlaced the fingers of my free hand with those pinned by the Muladona, and then yanked with all my might. There was a snapping noise, like the breaking of a pencil. I fell back under the sheets and the bed collapsed completely, sending up a cloud of splinters. My hand was bathed in a warm liquid that hissed across the hot, bubbling surface of my skin. Afraid to even look at what I’d done to myself, I clenched my good hand around my wrist and pulled the sheet closer about me.
The Muladona’s teeth made a crunching sound, like the breaking of walnuts. It whinnied in pleasure, ‘A-ah, ye-es, you taste as swee-et as I had ima-agined.’ I felt the pain of each bite as my fingers splintered into bits and went sliding down its fiery throat. It was as if the bones were still attached to me, like the sailor who’d lost his leg to a shark.
‘I hope you choke. I hope it makes you sick!’ I screamed.
‘Oh, no-oo,’ said the creatur
e, ‘no fear of dyspe-epsia from devouring your swee-et me-eat. I look forward to dining on the rest of you.’
‘You’ll have no more of me tonight!’ I shouted. I felt light-headed, and began to cry. ‘Go back . . . go back to hell!’ I cried, and then everything around me spun around and went black.
***
I was roused by a bothersome buzzing. There was a strange black shadow on my sheet. At first I thought it was the Muladona’s head pressed close to me, taunting me with the awful static in Erland’s dead ear. But in the pale light of dawn I saw how the shadow bristled, formed as it was by many, separately-moving shapes. The sheet had become encrusted with blood and a thick blanket of flies had gathered there. They had laid a mass of white eggs. A wave of nausea passed through me.
I looked down at my charred hand and saw where my fingers had been sheared off: all that was left were two stumps of white bone, a mass of charred flesh and a blob of yellow fat. I threw off the sheets and fell down on my hands and knees and vomited. Afterwards, I was wracked with dry heaves, my empty stomach clenching and unclenching. I got up and stumbled towards the front door, intent on escaping the nightmare.
The key was stuck in the lock, but with an effort that almost broke my wrist, I turned it. As I opened the door it swung in on me and a body that had been leaning against it tumbled into the hall. A neighbour had fallen dead on my doorstep, another victim of the flu.
The body stirred, rubbed its eyes and got up. To my relief I saw that it was Carolina. ‘Thank God you survived the night!’ she said, embracing me. ‘I was pounding on the door for the longest time. I guess I fell asleep.’ She nearly squeezed the breath out of me.
I gasped, ‘How long have you been waiting here?’
‘Hours, I guess,’ she replied. ‘Papá’s finally left his room. He’s gone out of town to do some fence mendin’ for old Mrs Anderssen, which is good, ’cause, God knows, he needs the work, and we need the food. As soon as he left, I snuck out.’
Carolina saw my bloody hand and exclaimed, ‘Oh, Verge, what’s happened to you? Let’s clean this up, and you can tell me everything.’
She led me to the bathroom where she disinfected and bandaged my fingers. We went into the kitchen and she sat me down and rooted about for something to make for breakfast.
‘You need something with iron in it ’cause it looks like you lost a lot of blood. Ah! Here!’ she said, coming across a packet of liver in the icebox, ‘this is just the ticket.’
Soon she was frying up a huge pan of liver and onions helped along by large dabs of butter. While she cooked I repeated for her, word for word, the latest tale of the Muladona. That familiar awful feeling came over me, as if the mule were whispering each word in my ear. The creature and I were connected, without a doubt.
I stuffed down every morsel of liver and onions and dabbed up the juice with a piece of sourdough bread. When I had finished I sat back and asked, ‘Well, Carolina, what do you think?’
She looked at me in silence, then shuddered and said, ‘If they were just ghost stories—groans in the attic or rattlin’ chains—I think I could deal with ’em better, ’cause they’d be otherworldly and such. But hearin’ these stories is like lookin’ into the heart of your neighbour and seein’ only blackness. It makes me doubt everythin’ and everyone. I guess that’s what the creature wants.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I said, staring at my bound-up hand.
‘And that’s just from hearin’ you repeat what the monster said. I don’t wanna think ’bout what it’s like for you, night after night, livin’ it. Thank the Lord the stories ain’t real.’
‘That’s just the thing,’ I slowly replied. ‘I think they are.’
‘Oh, Verge,’ she said in a rush, ‘remember, your brother told you not to believe a word that creature says. It’s all lies.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I know I’m vulnerable to this thing, and I need to be careful. But I’m sure there’s some truth in its tales.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The Muladona’s describing actual events . . . but like in dreams, you know, where you see things you saw during the day, but they change. It’s hard to explain.’
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘Like, the first tale about the Indians. I’m not sure it happened exactly the same way as the creature described, but the Spanish settlers who were dying in the story, they were here, in Incarnation.’
‘How can you be so sure, Verge?’
‘I don’t know. I just am. Like I know the tale of the young Texas Ranger happened in the mountains close by. And when we took Corporal Riquelme to the doctor’s and I saw the tower of the old gambling hall, I knew in my heart that’s where I’d killed the succubus.’
‘Oh, Verge!’ Carolina said with a look of fright in her eyes. ‘Don’t! . . .’
‘I mean, where someone killed her. She actually died up there. Last night Erland heard the voice of the dead in the old gambling hall. I can almost hear it now. It’s like there’re two stories intertwined—the creature’s lies and the truth, faraway and underneath.’
Carolina asked, ‘Like in Aesop’s fables, when it’s about animals but there’s a moral about people, too?’
‘Yeah, I guess so.’
‘But how can you tell the lies from the truth?’ Carolina asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘But the same themes keep popping up again and again, so they must be important. There’s always a woman who’s to blame, or who the Muladona thinks is to blame. That tells us something about the creature, right?’
‘Okay,’ Carolina said cautiously, ‘so, the creature hates women. Does that help us figure out who it is?’
‘Maybe. Also, it hates Indians: it sees them as destructive and cruel. In the first tale, the Indian mother brings death to everyone around her. In the third tale, they’re portrayed as superstitious savages. I think that’s significant, too. It’s like the Muladona can’t keep its own thoughts from bleeding in.’
Carolina screwed up her face, ‘Okay, I see where you’re goin’. It’s the same thing with the priest. There’s always a priest or pastor in the tales, ain’t there?’
I thought for a moment. ‘You’re right. Padre Anselmo and the succubus. And the priest who infected the Indians.’
‘And the pink-eyed Indian girl. She said her mother learned from a priest. And Erland talks to the pastor in the church.’
I gulped, ‘You mean my father’s church? When Erland stepped into the church in the tale, I saw it, I felt it. Just like when the town’s folk stopped attending my Father’s services and he dragged me there to help fill the pews. Oh, Carolina! The Muladona said such awful things about the pastor. And the widow and the Indian girl. You don’t suppose . . . ?’
‘Don’t!’ Carolina said, shaking her head from side to side. ‘This is just what the creature wants, Verge, for you to doubt your friends and family. It’s suckin’ you in with more of the Devil’s tricks. You’ve got to stop this speculatin’. ’
‘No, Carolina. I’m not being fooled. I know the pastor in the story wasn’t my father. For one thing, the clothes people were wearing and the way everything looked in town was from a long time ago. But it was Incarnation, I’m sure of it. I think . . .’
‘What, Verge?’
‘I think the pastor was my grandfather.’
‘Stop this!’
‘Look, I’m not saying my grandfather did those terrible things. But the Muladona put him in its tale. For some reason it hates my family and wants to show us in the worst possible light. That means this creature knows us personally. Like you said, there’s always a priest and a girl trying to save herself. And . . .’ I gulped, ‘she always dies . . . doesn’t she?’
‘I still don’t see where this gets us.’
‘What do you suggest?’ I said, rubbing the bandaged stumps of my fingers.
‘I suggest we get outta here.’
‘I wouldn’t get three feet out of the town limits before the c
reature swallowed me whole.’
‘I’m not talkin’ about runnin’ away, Verge. I’m sayin’ we take a page from the Good Book: God helps those as help themselves. If you think these things actually happened here in Incarnation, then let’s get out of this house and have a look-see for ourselves. Do some investigatin’.’
‘Okay,’ I said cautiously, ‘where do we start?’
‘We go to the place that appears again and again in its stories. ’Cause that must have some special meanin’ for the beast. We go to the tower.’
***
An hour later Carolina and I stood in front of the abandoned gambling hall. There was no one else on the muddy streets, and no animals to be seen. In the late, rainy afternoon, the dingy tower loomed over the town square. It was a forbidding thing with broken windows covered over with newspaper and shingles missing here and there. The front entrance had been boarded up to stop hobos from sleeping inside.
I never wanted to enter a place less in my entire life, but I knew I had to.
In my shaking hands I held an iron bar we’d taken from the pile of junk in my backyard. Stuck in my belt was the old bayonet I hadn’t had the courage to use against the Muladona. Carolina was clad in her father’s horse-hide coat and riding boots. In one hand she held a hooded kerosene lantern, with the other she was shaking a section of the rusty barbed-wire fence that went around the perimeter. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘I found a loose section. If we push it up with that bar of yours we can just shimmy under.’
‘That’s how I went in the last time,’ I said sombrely. I jammed the metal bar into the muddy ground and lifted the wire of bristling barbs, making just enough space for us to crawl through. Carolina smiled at me, but I could tell she was nervous. The fact that I was familiar with the place even though I’d never been there before, made the nightmare-story that much more real.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘you hold the lamp while I squeeze under.’
As she knelt down I had a terrible thought. I touched her on the shoulder. ‘Carolina, what if the tale about the succubus isn’t about the past, but the future? Or the present? In the story I got under the wire just like this and I killed a girl. What if that’s what the Muladona wants? What if it’s luring me here, so that, when we’re both inside, the Devil can possess me, and force me to push you. . . .’
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