Muladona

by Eric Stener Carlson

  ‘It is true,’ the doctor insisted. ‘I swear to God. But your father didn’t know that, because he was never told. After your grandfather passed, your father kept his first promise. He took over the church. He threw himself into his work. He became as severe a protector of the faithful as any holy man in Texas. But . . . he broke his second promise.

  ‘Your father eloped with your mother, while your grandmother was out visiting her people in Bosque county. When she got back the next week, the news killed her dead on the spot. I put “heart failure” on her death certificate, but the real reason was shame.’

  ‘Why did my father marry her?’ I asked in a low voice.

  The doctor responded, ‘I’ve always suspected that, just like your grandmother before her, your mother seduced him with her devilish, native ways.’

  ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ I shouted at Doc Evans. ‘Don’t you dare talk about her like that. You have no right.’

  ‘Don’t I?’ Doc Evans asked, his eyes suddenly bright and steely. ‘You say the Muladona is after you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I yelled back at him, ‘it’s been haunting me for the last six nights. I just have tonight to figure out its identity, or I’m damned.’

  ‘And you haven’t figured it out yet?’ he said, fiercely. ‘You haven’t heard the old stories, of how the Devil possesses those who lead the faithful astray, those wicked souls who engage in incest. . . ?’

  ‘Liar!’ I screamed at the top of my lungs. I clenched my fist and raised it far above my head, readying myself to strike the old man as hard as I could. But Carolina stayed my hand. I struggled with her for a few seconds, but she wouldn’t release her grip.

  ‘Verge,’ she said softly in my ear. ‘He’s just an old man. He’s tired and don’t know what he’s sayin’. Save your strength for what you gotta do tonight. All right?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, unclenching my fist. She let go of me slowly and put her hand in mine.

  I said to the old doctor, as slowly and calmly as I could, ‘It was wrong of you to hide this, Doc. You should have told the truth years ago. Then maybe Mother could have got away. She could have had a good life somewhere else. You’ll have to pay for your part in this someday, in this world or the next. You know that.’

  ‘We all will, Son,’ he said. ‘But just you remember what I said. Even if you don’t want to believe it, it may just save your life.’

  I turned to Corporal Riquelme and said, ‘You fought these things. You killed them back in Cuba, right?’

  He nodded his head.

  I continued, ‘So tell me anything, anything at all, I can use against it.’

  He said something barely audible. I bent down to him but he had closed his eyes and gone to sleep.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to Carolina. ‘It’s getting late.’ We left the doctor. He sunk far into the little chair; he’d become so dry and withered, that he was now a part of it.

  ***

  When we got to my front door, I turned to Carolina and said, ‘If I survive tonight, would you go away with me?’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘I don’t know . . . to Alaska to pan for gold. Or to the temples of Timbuktu. Or to go fishing off the Moskito Coast of Nicaragua. All the places I’ve only read about. Anywhere we can be together, just the two of us.’

  ‘Yes, Verge,’ she said without hesitation. ‘And we’ll do all that, as soon as this night is over. I promise.’

  ‘And it doesn’t matter to you that I’m . . . that my mother and father. . . ?’

  She didn’t let me finish my sentence. She kissed me, and she held me for the longest time. Then I took out my key and opened up the door.

  ‘Let’s go in and get ready,’ she said.

  ‘No’ I replied, ‘you’d better go back to your house and tell your father you’re okay. Or else, he’ll be worried sick. I’ll wait for you right here.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘But you’ll wait for me, right, so I can come in and help you?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said smiling faintly.

  I watched her go to her front door. Halfway there, she hesitated and looked back, making sure I was still there. ‘Oh, by the way,’ she said, ‘I almost forgot. Happy birthday. It’s All Hallows Eve today. You’re officially fourteen now, you know that?’

  ‘Thanks. With everything going on, I forgot.’

  ‘Well, we’ll celebrate good and proper when all this is over.’ She put her hand on the door knob to her house and smiled. I took in that smile, like the last glimpse of sun before a long winter’s night. I jumped inside my house and slammed the door behind me. Fitting the key in the lock, I turned the bolt. In a split second, she was pounding against the door. She shouted, ‘Verge, Verge, let me in. Don’t do this alone.’

  ‘It was a nice dream,’ I whispered, my back against the door. ‘It was nice to think we could have got away with it. But it’s all over now, Carolina. I’m tainted. I’m ruined. Even if I survive tonight, we can never be together. I can’t ask you to throw your life away.’

  ‘No, no,’ she wailed through the door. ‘I love you, Verge. I love you. I don’t care about any of that. I love you.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Carolina,’ I said. ‘Go back inside your house and lock all the doors and windows. Don’t come out, whatever happens. It’ll all be over in a few hours.’

  I left her sobbing on the front step as I walked into the darkness of my house.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  I hid in the dark, gripping my bayonet, feeling like I was trapped in one of those fresh pine coffins at the cemetery. Through the din of rain that drummed hard against the roof, I heard the mantel clock faintly chime 10, 11, 12 midnight. Each second that passed after that stretched on forever. My mind jumped in wild disarray to the events of my life. My mother disappeared. Pastor Olafssen abandoned us. Sebas ran away. My father and then Lupita left me. And now Lupita was dead.

  I no longer hoped Sebas would come back to save me. In fact, I prayed that he’d never come back, that he’d never know the awful secret I’d uncovered. I thought of my mother’s mother, an outcast carrying an unwanted child. What was going through her head as she flung herself from the tower? Was it her suicide that had called forth the Muladona? Or was it my parents’ unholy union?

  Perhaps the curse stretched back to the very founding of Incarnation. Had the discovery of gold set into motion the need for a sacrifice each generation, from the miners who’d died in the tunnels to the settlers who’d died of disease, to me? Maybe the earth didn’t want us. Maybe it never had. Maybe the war in France and the influenza was Mother Nature’s last effort to rid herself of locusts feeding off a dry land.

  I felt a sudden drop in temperature. Mixed with the gusts of wind that shook the doors and shutters came a hissing noise, and the monster’s fiery hooves clip-clopped across the floorboards. It filled the room with the smell of ash and pestilent flesh and the sound of the clanking chains the creature dragged behind. I prayed that the rolling thunder would mask the pounding of my heart and not give me away. I heard the thing enter my bedroom and circle round my bed. It heard it snuffle about the sheets for some way to enter. It snorted heavily, covering my bed with a sticky spittle.

  ‘So-oo, he-ere we are,’ it brayed. ‘The last tale. I must say, you’ve been a bo-othersome little whelp. But it’s been ple-easing to see you co-ower and shiver, weep and we-et your be-ed. All your dre-eams, and the hobo and the girl, didn’t help you, did they?’

  I didn’t answer. It pushed its nose against the covers and said, ‘What, ca-at got your tongue?’ It snuffled some more. ‘If you don’t want to come out and pla-ay, ma-aybe I should visit your gi-irlfriend next door? I can smell her desperation and her yearning even from here. Ve-ergi-il and C-arolina sitting in a cemetery, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.’

  ‘No!’ I screamed and burst out of the closet where I’d been hiding, right behind the Muladona. I had tricked it by stuffing clothes under my sheets.

  ‘Wha-at?’ it brayed in surprise.

&nb
sp; Before it could react, I swung the bayonet and cut its ear clean off. The lump of flesh dropped to the ground. In the flickering lightning, I saw it roll into a corner of the room and turn into a human ear. The creature screamed out in pain with a force that shattered my window overlooking the garden. A burst of rain spattered the room. I barely jumped out of the way of its back legs as it kicked the closet door into splinters.

  I screamed, ‘Now, I’ve cut off your ear, you’re free! I release you from your curse. Rejoin God and man.’

  Blood dripping down its face, it cried out, ‘That’s no-ot how it works, you fo-ool. You still have to gue-ess my ide-entity,’ it said, turning towards me and kicking the bed against the wall.

  This was the first time I’d looked the creature full in the face. It filled me with such horror that I immediately dropped the bayonet and covered my eyes. It was an obscenity so terrible, so overwhelming that I cannot describe it in physical terms.

  It was war. It was pestilence. It was resentment that never died. It was a hate that could never be mollified. It was innocence perverted. It was dreams turned to cynicism and despair.

  ‘Gue-ess my ide-entity now!’ it screamed, a more human voice breaking out from amongst the cacophony of animal voices that twisted in agony.

  I dropped to my knees. I sighed, beaten, forever beaten, ‘You are my mother. You are the illegitimate daughter of my grandmother. You were all I loved, now turned into an instrument of hate.’

  The Muladona put forth a horrible whinny. It was a great, drawn-out braying that I took as pain and devastation. But, as I looked up, to my horror, I understood it was a cry of victory. The creature reared up on its back legs, rippling its muscles. I saw the hairy member dangling between its legs.

  The Muladona was a man!

  ‘That’s the fu-unniest thing I’ve he-eard in my enti-ire life,’ it whinnied in its appalling voice. ‘You were so clo-ose, you little ba-aastard. But close only co-ounts in ho-orse shoes and ha-ndgrenades. Now you’re mine!’

  I cowered on the floor before the creature. I was confused, ashamed at having suspected, even for a moment, my mother. Not only was I going to pay for my mistake with my soul, but I had wronged the memory of my beautiful mother. I no longer deserved to live.

  The creature gnashed its teeth so forcefully that sparks flew, one of which lit upon my cheek and burned it to the bone. At that very moment, a large figure burst through the door, just behind the hellish creature. As a flash of lightning lit up the room, I saw it was Mrs Bellows. In her huge, burly arms, she held an axe. Sweat rolling down her face, she panted, ‘Is this bad pony botherin’ you, Lucas?’

  ‘Yes,’ I gasped in disbelief.

  ‘A mama knows where her boy’s in trouble, don’t she? You were so naughty, Luke, lockin’ the door like that. I had to break it down with an axe.’ She turned to the Muladona and screamed, ‘So, we meet again, Beelzebub.’

  ‘What are you saying, you simple-minded fool?’ the Muladona spat, turning around to face her in the cramped room. ‘Get out of here!’

  ‘I knew you’d try to take my boy again, Prince of Darkness. But this time, I’m here to stop you,’ she said and swung the axe at the creature’s head. The Muladona was quick to react and clamped down on the axe handle, shattering it. Without hesitation, Mrs Bellows launched herself at the monster and wrapped her burly arms about its throat. I heard a hissing noise, and she screamed in pain—as her flesh burned against the monster’s scalding hide. Her attack knocked the Muladona off balance for a moment. Mrs Bellows took advantage of this to grasp the beast with one hand and pummel it between the eyes with the other. The blows she meted out sounded like sixteen pound hammers on a railway tie.

  ‘Run, little Lukie,’ she shouted at me. ‘Run.’

  Even in my panic, I stayed. How could I let Mrs Bellows face certain death? But she admonished me with such anguish in her voice, ‘Mommy will protect you! Now, go, my love. Go.’

  They blocked the door. The only way out was for me to push myself through the shattered window leading to the garden. As I struggled out, I slashed open my arms and legs on the broken glass. Over my shoulder, I took one last glance at the infernal scene behind me. The Devil’s mule bit huge chunks of flesh out of Mrs Bellow’s shoulders, face and chest, and she screamed bloody murder. All the time, she gripped it in a wrestler’s hold. Even as her life’s blood spurted against the bedroom walls, she interlaced her fingers tightly around its throat and leaned her massive weight against it.

  The last time I saw Mrs Bellows, she bent her head close to the Muladona’s muzzle and bit a chunk out of its remaining ear. I fled headlong into the garden with no other thought than to lose myself in its depths. I had no time to fathom Mrs Bellows’ timely appearance or to consider her fate.

  Then I heard the bellowing cry of the Muladona. With its ungodly might, it smashed through my bedroom wall and sent bricks flying onto the patio. I scrambled through the dark foliage, driven by fear. It called after me, ‘But so-on, I can’t let you go to bed without your last sto-ory. What sort of a fa-ather would I be-e, if I did that?’

  At last I understood the terrible truth. I understood it all.

  THE SEVENTH TALE

  The Garden

  As I ran head-long into the garden, blind from the driving rain and the tree branches slicing my face, the oddest sensation possessed me. I was both the reader of this final tale and a participant in it. The feeling I’d fought from the first night the monster had visited me, that blending of its ghastly tales with my reality, finally enveloped me completely.

  I was the Muladona’s seventh tale.

  The branches that clawed at my face, the tall weeds that cut my fingers to the bone, were real. They caused a world of pain and made me cry out under the pelting rain. At the same time, the wicked branches were words on a dog-eared page. So were my cries. I ran my index finger over the description of my flight, reading as rapidly as I fled from the creature at my heels.

  I looked up towards the heavens, and the words, ‘It rained mercilessly,’ soaked my face. I read, ‘The boy scrambled over the pile of metal junk blocking the garden and cut a wide gash under his left knee.’ Sure enough, as I surmounted the barrier, I slipped and fell upon a rusty bedspring, and it cut the fleshy part under my knee. The pain sent me tumbling down the other side of the pile. I righted myself as quickly as I could and limped on.

  The lightning flashed, and a realisation exploded in my brain.

  I knew why I’d been paralysed by the sight of cutting myself with the rusty bayonet. It’s because I’d seen my father stabbing Pastor Olafssen with it again and again in the chest. Father had looked at me in fury, the blood splashing all over his face and neck. I’d witnessed that murder in our parlour when I was seven. Just as I’d watched the crumpled body of my beautiful mother lying on the floor, twitching. Fragments of a teacup were scattered all about. Her black eyes were wide open and staring. She was gasping for breath like a goldfish out of water.

  Over the years, the atrocity had buried itself deep in my mind. But now, with each lightning flash and thunderclap, the memories came back to me in rapid, dizzying succession, like the fiery burst of a Maxim gun. In many of the tales the Muladona had told, there’d been a woman, hunted, demonised . . . murdered. My own mother. And the repetition of the priest character—‘Father’ Anselmo who’d brought me to kill the succubus, the Indian father mortally wounded by the hunting accident, the man captured and bleeding in the village—all were Pastor Olafssen.

  On the page, I read, ‘The boy cried out, “Father, father!” At these words, he realised why he was so physically different from Pastor Strömberg, why he was dark-haired and not blond like his brother.’ Why had Pastor Olafssen always brought me those books? Why had he taken such an avid interest in feeding my dreams of adventure and escaping Incarnation? Why had he shown a father’s pride in me, while my replacement father only heaped on me words of ridicule and shame?

  The words said, ‘The boy saw clea
rly now the fleeting look between Pastor Olafssen and his mother around the fire. It was the same way Carolina had looked at him at the cemetery when they shared their first kiss. It was the look of love.’

  Pastor Olafssen was my father!

  I heard the Muladona clip-clop after me on the wet grass. It spread its creaking wings and soared over the pile of junk effortlessly, crashing down on the other side.

  ‘Ye-es, y-es,’ it whinnied, reading the infernal text within me. ‘You understand the truth now, you ba-astard.’

  I screamed out loud as the words typed themselves upon the page, ‘The boy’s mind flashed back to the murder scene again. He recognised the thick, black sludge, like coagulated treacle, on the bottom of his mother’s broken teacup. He knew what it’d meant. He’d known it all along.’ But as I reached the gnarled branches of the peach grove, I had no idea what the teacup meant. The pain from my knee was overwhelming, and it blotted out all my thoughts. I had to scrunch down to fit between the twisted branches. I scraped my scalp so hard that blood started dripping down my face. I carried on into the underbrush, pushing through gaps in the tightly-woven branches. Then I had to crawl through the briars on my hands and knees. It was rough going for the creature, too. I heard it chew and kick its way through the matted mess.

  What had been in the teacup? The only thing that looked like it, black and thick like treacle, was my medicine! All this time, I hadn’t been sickly! My mysterious disease was no disease at all. My father had been slowly poisoning me! Every time I got stronger and healthier, every time I came close to escaping my house, he’d make me take my ‘medicine’. That’s why I’d been feeling better the last few days without it.

  The knotted mass of trees behind me exploded in a great billowing of fire, like a burst from a flamethrower. There were three or four more bursts, smelling of sulphur and brimstone. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ I cried out.