Muladona

by Eric Stener Carlson

  She turned her beautiful face to me, full of fear, tears running down her cheeks. Her eyes shone like two polished onyx stones in the moonlight. I heard the great wings creak closer. The creature let out a long, sustained bray; it was a bleating and a screaming, like voices from a ship full of drowning victims and taken and pounded together by a pestle.

  I burst out, ‘I love you, Carolina. I’ve always loved you. I wish I’d had the nerve to tell you long ago, so I could have felt what your love was like, if . . . if you felt the same. I wish I were stronger, healthier. I wish I were braver, too. But I just love you as I am. And in the minutes left to me, I will love you with everything I am. I will put as much love into this moment to last a lifetime.’

  I kissed her, soft and long, until the graveyard disappeared, and the demonic creature bearing down on us disappeared. I disappeared, lost in the touch of her warm, sweet lips. When I drew back, she said, ‘Oh, Verge, I’ve loved you all this time, too. I almost didn’t dare to hope you loved me back!’ Then she wrapped herself in my arms, and I felt her heart beating against mine. And we waited for death to come.

  I heard the thing land heavily on the mausoleum roof closest to the wall. Bricks shattered and bits of concrete flew everywhere. I hugged Carolina even closer as we were showered with debris. My face was stung by shards of mortar. I was startled by something moving at my feet and saw it was the marble head of an eyeless, grim reaper rocking back and forth. The shattered blade of its marble scythe stuck into the ground nearby.

  I didn’t dare look up at the creature. I couldn’t face its terrible, glowing eyes.

  ‘So-oo,’ it brayed, scattering some more broken bricks around us with a kick of its front legs, ‘this time, you-uu’ve brought along a gi-irl to defend you. Another ba-ad idea. I thought you’d have le-aarned by now you can’t trust wo-omen. They always let you down in the end.’

  Enraged, I shouted , ‘Go to hell, you rotten beast!’

  ‘Oh, I wi-ill, but so-o will you. Beca-ause you were stu-upid enough to face me out of doors, I get to drag you down with me . . . and her as well.’

  I looked up in defiance at the thing. Bathed in the irregular shadows cast by the broken statue of the grim reaper, I could only make out bits and pieces of it. The long muzzle had tufts of hair and bits of flesh burned off of it, exposing a cheek filled with broken teeth. Its right ear was cut half-way through and flopped to one side. It smelled like a freshly-burned cadaver rolled in manure.

  The sight of it, terrifying and pathetic at the same time, heartened me. I shouted up at it. ‘I shouldn’t trust women? Not even ones who give their babies to good homes, like . . . like my grandmother?’

  At this, the beast reared back on its hind legs and kicked more mortar loose. A few bricks whizzed past my face. ‘Wh-aat do you kno-ow?’ it demanded in its composite, shrill voice of the damned. ‘Wh-aat do you kno-ow?’

  ‘I know about 1878,’ I screamed. “I know something terrible happened to my grandmother. I found her grave, right here. My paternal grandparents knew all about it, and you’re to blame somehow.’

  ‘You kno-ow no-othing,’ it brayed. ‘If you did, you’d know it’s all her fault. Now tonight I get to gobble up your soul, and my suffering ends.’

  ‘Then go ahead and do it. Just try it. I’m tired of your threats. With the beating you took from Corporal Riquelme and how you got scorched in the fire, it looks like you can barely balance yourself on the wall!’

  ‘You think you’ve we-eakened me-e?’ it brayed. ‘You think I can’t exa-act the revenge that’s due me? Then ho-ow about thi-is?’ it cried, and, extending its creaking wings, bat-like and feathery at the same time, it rose up into the air. It extended the rusty chain trailing behind it like a prehensile tale. The beast wrapped it through the grate of the entranceway, crisscrossing the metalwork and barbed wire.

  ‘Watch my stre-ength and be a-awed, you worm!’ it screamed. Its legs flexed and pushed off the air it floated on as if it were firmament. It pulled against the gate with a great wrenching, grating noise. The iron hinges began to bend and tear apart like wet newspaper. The creature screamed again, and the gate crashed onto the meadow outside the cemetery with a force that shook the ground and knocked us from the bench.

  In the cloud of dust that rose up, the Muladona emerged, red-hot eyes blazing. ‘You se-e, worm?’ it gasped, foul, sewer-like fumes spewing from its nostrils, ‘you se-e how stro-ong I am? Now, come and face me, face me like a man.’

  I rose from the rubble and brushed myself off. I looked at Carolina, huddling by the faint image of the Virgin Mary etched into the wall. I hoped that, maybe, if I could delay the creature for a minute or two, Carolina could run and hide herself in the tombs. I signalled to her with my hand behind my back. ‘Go,’ I whispered, ‘go as soon as you can.’

  I took a step forward. Then I looked back, and saw how the dust swirled around the Madonna’s face etched into the wall: sweet piety, eternal comfort. The single word from the wooden headstone came to me: ‘MOTHER’. I stood, my feet planted in the ground, and stared at that image. On the wind, blowing in short gusts from the direction of Incarnation, I could hear my name being called.

  ‘Well, you ba-aastard, are you co-oming?’ the beast taunted, standing on the grass just outside the cemetery. ‘Or am I going to have to come ge-et you?’

  I was about to take a step, and then I paused as a thought took hold in my mind. ‘Well,’ I shouted, ‘if you’re so hell-bent on killing me, why don’t you come in and get me? Or . . . can’t you?’ I pointed towards the etching of the Virgin Mary and said, ‘Seeing as this is holy ground.’

  ‘Don’t ta-aunt me, bo-oy,’ it said, but I sensed the slightest note of doubt in its voice.

  ‘Or what? You’re going to drag me down to hell twice? Well, get on with it then. Come and get me.’

  The creature snorted, breathing in deeply. I could see a faint glow through its perforated cheek, and a smell of sulphur filled the night air. Before I could move, a burst of flames coursed out of its muzzle and nostrils, and lit up the darkness all around me. I held up my hands to cover my face, blinded by the glare. Although the heat was blistering and withered the grass all around us, the flames spewing from the Muladona’s mouth stopped at the boundary of the cemetery. It was as if an invisible shield stood between it and me.

  The mule breathed in deeply again and blew another cone of fire at us, but, again, it stopped at the boundary. It brayed so loud that the coffins piled all around us shook and bounced up and down. It was like the dead were trying to claw their way out. ‘Okay,’ I said, ‘here’s the new deal. You stay on your side of the fence, you evil brute, and we’ll stay here, safe ’til dawn.’ I sat back with Carolina on the ground and curled up against the image of the Virgin Mary.

  ‘You think you’ve wo-on, you li-ittle cu-ur?’ it screamed. ‘Is that it? Just for defy-ying me, I’ll tell you the worst, the most ho-orrible tale. I’ve told you about the past and the present. Now you’ll get a glimpse of the fu-uture I can see that you’re both so fo-ondly dreaming of. You think things will get better after the Wa-ar to End all Wa-ars? You think techno-ology will bring enli-ightenment? Fools! The only co-onstant in this world is blackness of the human he-eart. Listen and be ho-orrified.’

  I held Carolina close to me and covered her ears with my hands. ‘No,’ she whispered, pulling my hands down and holding them tight. ‘I want to share this with you. I won’t abandon you tonight . . . I never will.’

  The dust around us swirled and deepened. I focused on Carolina’s eyes as the hateful words came out of the Muladona’s mouth like ash being spewed from a furnace. But I soon lost sight of her as the story engulfed us both. . .

  THE SIXTH TALE

  Sandcastle

  At this moment, there’s a man in a white smock at Texas A&M University. He’s standing in front of an old blackboard—it has a moisture stain on its top right-hand corner—doing the first calculations with a piece of broken chalk. This professor�
�s shut himself up in his empty lecture hall, ’cause most of the senior class has been drafted for the war. And, anyway, classes are suspended because of the influenza.

  Such a situation might make any other man glum. But it’s a happy time for him! While the hopes of so many about him are dying, he’s doing the research he’s dreamed of, but for which he’s never before found the time. You see, ever since he was a boy, he’s dreamed of a place between places. A silent, still place, isolated from the rules and hypocrisies of adults. An ever and forever place. During the day, it’s always on the edge of his mind, elusive, a chimera. But at night, it bursts into life while he sleeps, and he sees it so clearly . . . the colonnades, the cupolas, so calm, so soothing!

  As a boy, he’d use watercolours and crayons. He’d draw for hours, trying to resuscitate the likeness of its walls, to trace the lines of that secret world. But it would always fade in his memory before he could find the entranceway. Years passed, and he forgot about these childish musings. He slowly replaced his fantasy world with an equally unreal, equally impractical one—academia. And he went from student to graduate student to professor in the blink of an eye.

  Then one chilly afternoon, his beard now a grizzled grey, the raindrops tap-tapping against the library window, he notices an old manuscript lying on the reshelving cart by his study carrel. Something about the title, The Number of Plato by J. Adam (1902), caught his eye. As he skims through the innocent little monograph, its yellowed pages brittle in his fingers, he finds it describes Plato’s myth of the creation of the world. In the time of Cronos, God created the world and set it on a spinning wheel. He pushed the world forward, and people were born, grew older, married and died. Then, when the world had gone through its forward-moving cycle, God let it go and the world swung backwards, and the elderly were born from the earth, grew middle-aged, young and disappeared to dust.

  But at some point between the careening forward and the careening backwards, there was an equilibrium, a harmony in the development of the world and in the development of the child, a place where time stood still, and Plato believed this place could be expressed by a perfect number.

  Suddenly it dawns upon this scientist that this number is the key to his imaginary kingdom. It flashes upon him all at once: yes, if he could only find that perfect number! And the machinery begins to whirr in his head. But this story really isn’t about this anonymous professor. He’ll die before he publishes anything, killed by a taxicab next spring while crossing the street for a pack of cigarettes.

  Years from now, a future professor will find his life’s work all bundled up in a box stuffed under his carrel. At first, it’ll seem to him just a bunch of chicken scratch on crumpled napkins and the backs of matchbooks. Then he’ll find the old article that started it all; and in its margins, compact and precise, the most magnificent calculations the world has ever known. The university will be shocked, both by the elegance as by the audacity of the long-forgotten scientist. They’ll form a team, reconstruct his thought processes. Some members will leave because of the moral implications. Others, the visionaries, will remain.

  Through much trial and error, they’ll build the first device, and the experiments will begin. First on animals and then on prisoners. Then on illegal immigrants. Then, on a long chain of homeless no one will ever miss. And then they’ll do what they always do in the end. They’ll use it on children. The first working model will be called the ‘Lone Star Protocol’. But they’ll finally settle on the brand name ‘Flicker©’, purely for marketing reasons.

  Personally, I think the new name suffers by losing its Texan flavour. But the biggest consumer will be China, so they have to find a name that has more universal appeal. Also, ‘Flicker©’ is decidedly more descriptive of the process (at least as seen by those on the outside).

  But this story is not about the inventor or about the invention itself. It’s about those heady days when it’s first approved for use with children. Like the artificial heart, it will be introduced when all other natural methods have failed—when the patient reaches a critical juncture, when the parents are at their wits’ end and desperate for a cure. I can see it clearly now, although the children in this scene haven’t been born yet.

  Picture, if you will, a small west Texan town in late April. The long winter’s ending. Children play in the little park wedged between the old railway station and the grain feed processing plant, both of which have been closed for years. It’s the first day in so many months that they don’t need to wear a wool hat. The sky’s a clear azure. Heavy, white, puffy clouds move slowly by. In the field nearby, where the yellow grass is slowly turning green, a group of boys run wild. They kick a half-deflated football back and forth, placing their coats on the ground for goalposts. A couple of girls are petting a tired old mare tied to a peg, and they’re braiding its hair. Then imagine, on the margins of this scene, a sandbox. It’s a regular old sandbox, just like we have today—a cracked wooden frame, damp, crumbled sand. From all outward appearances, the three children there are playing happily, oblivious to the excitement about them.

  In the centre of the box, there’s a young boy with raven-black hair and a long, gaunt face, kneeling. He seems to be the leader, which is strange, because he’s only five. But he talks forcefully and intelligently, and maybe that’s why the others are listening to him attentively. The other two are a boy and a girl, maybe seven and nine, both faces full of freckles, both with curly red hair. And what’s the focus of their attention? What’s making them so silent and alert? Why, they’re building a sandcastle, with an old, green bucket, that’s cracked and missing a handle.

  They’re shovelling sand in with their hands and schloop-schlooping it out to create a series of turrets and then carving out doors and windows and crenellations with their fingertips. The wind blows in gusts, snatching up words here and there. The little, serious one, their leader, lisps: ‘The th-oldiers attack the ca-thle juth-t before dawn.’ The older children, serious, attentive, don’t make fun of how he speaks. ‘They th-lip in-thide, ju-th like Ody-theus.’

  Some words are lost in the wind, but, for sure, the last words float out, ‘ . . . and behead the king and queen.’

  To this, the freckle-faced girl wrinkles up her nose and replies, ‘Both the king and queen. That doesn’t seem fair.’

  ‘Look,’ the little one says, ‘It-th my turn to tell the th-tory. We agreed fair and th-quare. No back-thies. When I’m done, you can take your turn.’

  ‘All right,’ says the girl. ‘And then my brother,’ she says hopefully.

  But the brother doesn’t look like he’ll be taking his turn any time soon. He just stares fixedly at the castle, a blank look in his eyes. There’s a bit of drool at the border of his lips, and his head tilts down and to the left. While the children play, the parents look on. The fathers lean against the old park benches, holding beers in one hand, tapping off ash from their cigarettes in the other. The mothers chit-chat about the latest fashions and the local gossip about who’s been sleeping with whom.

  Suffice to say, the future isn’t so different from the present.

  The uninitiated asks the expert, ‘Better than Ritalin, you say?’ Let’s call him Alonso.

  ‘Oh, there’s no comparison,’ says the other man, let’s say Eduardo. ‘None at all.’

  ‘And no side effects?’

  ‘Alonso, like I said, it’s a process, not a pill or a shot. You know what I mean?’

  ‘Yeah, sure,’ says Alonso, trying to sound more worldly than he really is. ‘It all sounds convincing. But, look, I don’t want to offend you, but. . . it’s not a scam, is it? You know, like you buy ten sessions, and each additional session goes for a higher rate? My sister went to a kinesiologist once like that, and her back still. . .’

  ‘No, it’s just one session.’

  ‘Just the one?’

  ‘Just the one. And it’s a set price.’

  ‘And what if. . . ?’

  ‘Look, Alonso, it’s not like I
own stock in the company. Either you do it, or you don’t. But I gotta tell ya, it’s the best decision I ever made.’

  ‘And Dan’s . . . docile now?,’cause my Jimena’s so unruly, disrespectful. After what she did to that puppy, I’m afraid . . .’

  ‘He’s not just docile, Alonso. Dan’s good, decent, respectful. He does his homework, makes his bed. He even washes the car on Saturday mornings for God’s sake. Course, at first, he was kind of blank, you know? But that’s just like the ads say. They’re quiet for the first few days, then they bounce right back. Look at the three of ’em, my Dan, and that’s Katrina and Rosario, the neighbours’ kids. A week ago, they’d be at each other’s throats. But they got the treatment the same day, one after the other. Now they’re playin’ over there, like the sweetest li’l kids in the whole world.’

  Then Alonso’s wife sidles up, a fashion magazine rolled up in her hand. Not wanting to be left out of the conversation, she asks, ‘So, what’s it look like, you know, when they do it?’

  ‘Well,’ Eduardo considers, ‘like the name says, they just kind’a flicker. I don’t know how to describe it . . . like a candle. I didn’t see it myself when it happened. But when they play it back for you on the screen, you can see it, just for an instant: it’s like they vanish.’

  ‘So,’ the wife asks, ‘where do they go?’

  ‘Go?’ Eduardo asks, blinking. ‘They don’t go anywhere.’

  ‘God, Mariela,’ Alonso says to her, puffing out his chest, ‘why do you have to sound so ignorant?’

  ‘Don’t you be talking down to me like that,’ she says, ‘like you’re some sort of scientist, when you can’t even install the garage door opener.’

  ‘Mariela,’ Alonso hissed, ‘what did I say about bringing that up again? I told you I didn’t have a Philips screwdriver.’

  ‘Look, look, you two,’ Eduardo says, ‘don’t squabble about it. I unnerstand your interest, but, unless you see it happen, it’s hard to describe. Again, I’m no expert, but they say it’s just the body and mind harmonising themselves, getting into sync, that’s all. It’s their two halves vibrating. That’s what calms them down. And it’s instantaneous.’