“How?” Though still uncertain whether her aunt was wise or crazy, Melinda had to know. “What do I have to do?”
“It is said,” Ruth intoned clearly. “That the curse will lift when the broch de shlang is killed at the same moment as its host.”
Melinda remained in place, leaning forward on the couch, waiting for the words to sink in. “So, either way, I die.”
Ruth shrugged.
“Surely, there’s a way to kill it and . . . not . . . also . . . die.”
Ruth dismissed Melinda with a wave. “Feh. Weak as water, like the rest.” She turned away. “And I thought you might be the one to end it.”
Melinda considered aloud. “If the snake dies first, it returns, stronger. If the host dies first, the curse . . . continues. So, it has to be . . . the same moment . . .” She shook her head. “How does a person kill herself at the exact same moment as a snake?”
Aunt Ruth said nothing.
Melinda’s father shifted nervously. “Melinda, I don’t know what to make of all this. But no one, no one, wants you to die.”
Melinda glanced toward the oldest of her relatives. Aunt Ruth does. She did not speak the words aloud. “Except, apparently, this broch de shlang.”
As if reading Melinda’s thoughts, Ruth spoke into the air in front of her, her back still to her great great niece. “It is not what I want, but it is the only way.” With that, she rose and headed for the door.
With obvious reluctance, Melinda’s father followed the elderly woman. “Melinda, do you want me to come back after I drop off Ruth? Do you want me to take the girls with me tonight?”
“Thanks, but no.” Melinda shook her head, barely dislodging the swirl of thought that left her dazed and wondering. “I need some time to think, a chance to do some research.”
“They all say that,” Ruth intoned from the door. “They all think that, for them, it will be different.” Finally, she turned to meet Melinda’s eyes directly. “But it never is. Simultaneous destruction; it is the only way.”
Melinda’s father took the old woman’s arm and led her outside. “We’ll check on you tomorrow,” he said firmly, closing the door.
Melinda leapt up and locked it behind him. A shiver traversed her. Still in a fog, she ascended the stairs to the room she shared with Paige. The familiar snorting breaths of the sleeping child brought a strange sense of normalcy. Early on, she had spent most of her nights diligently clearing Paige’s airways with saline and suction, as the nurses had taught her. Eventually, Melinda realized that these actions did little more than prevent both of them from sleeping. Paige’s nasal passages invariably reclogged mere moments later.
This time, Melinda walked to her desktop computer and typed in “broch de shlang” in the Google space. Only a handful of entries came up, defining “broch” as curse and schlang as “snake” or, more vulgarly, a slang for penis. Nowhere did she find a site that linked the terms together, although she did find an interesting Yiddish proverb: “A snake deserves no pity.” At the moment, it seemed singularly apt.
The familiarity of the room soon lulled Melinda into a state of normal exhaustion. The curse seemed like a distant joke, silliness that dwelt only in the mind of a addled and elderly aunt. Trading her day clothing for pajamas, Melinda performed her evening toilet, then climbed into the double bed she had once shared with her husband, Michael Carson.
She missed him tonight even more than most.
The dream came to Melinda the moment she drifted into sleep, first in blindness, a whisper of sound: “She is dead already, dead from the moment of conception, yet she has ruined your life, your family, for a decade.” The words seemed incongruous, wrong, and out-of-place. Melinda rolled, but the voice followed her. “He loves you desperately. He loves you both. He would return, and you would all be happy, if only she had gone where she belonged. Gone from this horrible death within life, gone from a world where she knows nothing, where she can only suffer without understanding why.”
Melinda managed a moan, but she could not awaken. A picture of Paige formed in her mind, eyes unblinking, expression unfeeling, like a mindless broken doll.
“What kind of mother dedicates herself to a shell while her living, breathing, feeling daughter is forced to lead half a shackled existence that barely resembles a life? You dedicate everything to this . . . this thing, torturing the man and daughter who need you, making them suffer the greatest evil so you can comfort she who cannot be comforted, except by death.”
A new image blossomed, a memory of six years into Melinda’s marriage. She had awakened to the light touch of Mike, brushing a stray hair from her forehead. He was close, staring at her with an expression that defined devotion. She had asked the time, and he had told her 2:15 AM. He said he often studied her in the dead of night, reveling in her beauty and the unique, natural perfumes that defined her, scarcely daring to believe, even now, that he had won her. It was at that moment she realized how lucky she was to have a man who adored her, who prized everything about her, who gloried in even her most disheveled state.
Mike still loved her, she knew, even after the divorce. It was in his eyes, in the kindness he showed her, so unlike the exes despised by relatives, friends, and colleagues. When others droned on about post-divorce vengeance, she could not complain in turn. Mike listened when she spoke, he never missed a visitation or a support payment, and he spent as much extra time with Kaylee as she allowed. Only one thing stood between reconciliation.
Melinda rose from the bed, opened the trunk, and removed the 12-gauge. Carefully, silently, she eased a round into the chamber. She walked to Paige’s bed, an enormous crib with the pillow tacked safely beneath the sheet and the blankets carefully loosened to prevent suffocation. Without a real thought, Melinda pointed the barrel through the slats, directly at Paige’s head.
“No one will know,” the voice cooed softly. “Everyone understands that she can die any moment, that she should have passed away in her first year.”
The words prodded Melinda. She removed the safety. The sight of Paige’s familiar, flaccid body, the chest moving rhythmically, the breaths loud and snorting, seemed so normal. Melinda imagined the shot, the roar of the gun, the buck of the stock against her shoulder, the tiny head exploding, brains and bone splattering the walls and ceiling. Blood would pour through the bars, staining the bedspread, the carpet.
The voice grew louder, accusing. “You demon mother! Would you murder your own flesh and blood!”
Melinda staggered backward with a squeal of realization.
“What kind of vicious creature could murder her own daughter? The girl is innocent, her suffering untold and unfair. You have no right to call yourself mother, no reason to live.”
Melinda found the gun turning toward herself. Yet logic intervened. A handgun, she could press to her temple, but she saw no means to commit suicide with a shotgun, no way to place it against a vital organ and still reach the trigger. That confusion brought salvation. The voice was not her own, did not even originate inside her. It was an external force, one clearly bent on destroying her. “Broch de shlang!” she shouted. “Show yourself.”
Something heavy dropped from the ceiling. Melinda tried to dodge, too late. It slammed against her, seeming heavy as piled bricks, pinning her to the ground. The 12-gauge spun from her grip, bumping across the carpet. Before she could move, massive coils swung around her, and she found herself cocooned by a massive serpent. Melinda screamed, then immediately wished she had not. As the air rushed from her lungs, the coils found room to tighten. Desperately, she fought for breath, but only a strangled wheeze defied the serpent.
“Kill . . . me,” she gasped out. “Leave . . . daughters . . . alone.”
The snake eased up ever so slightly, just enough for Melinda to catch a slight breath. “I can’t. It’s my job to kill every member of your family I can.”
“No,” Melinda rasped, struggling. The coils pinned her arms. She could move her legs, but only up and down,
in a pointless tantrum. “Spare them . . .” Ruth’s words came to her mind, unbidden: the curse will lift when the broch de shlang is killed the same moment as its host. Melinda no longer doubted. Her own death seemed certain, but she saw no way to end the curse, no means to take the monster with her.
“Mommy!” Kaylee stood in the doorway, clutching the gun with clear effort. Too heavy for the child, it sagged in her arms. Her eyes looked as large and round as half-dollars.
Suddenly, Melinda knew. “Kaylee, shoot it!”
“But, Mommy, I might—”
The snake hissed, coils constricting.
Melinda wasted her last breath on two more words. “Trust me.” Then, dizziness overturned thought. Her lungs screamed in agony, her bones seemed to creak and shudder, she felt as if she floated in a sea of pain.
A bang crashed through Melinda’s ears. At last it’s over. The pain vanished in an instant, leaving only a dull ache. As if from a distance, she saw Kaylee collapse from the kickback, the shotgun tumbling from her grip. Melinda appreciated that she saw this much in what had to be the moments just after death. She could not imagine the buckshot penetrating the snake and not her as well.
Yet, the moments before the end seemed to stretch into an eternal, ringing silence. She watched Kaylee throw the gun aside, watched the girl run to her side and reach for her hand. “Don’t bother,” Melinda said, shocked that she could speak. “I’m—” I’m what? I’m clearly not dead. The realization came in a shock; and, to her surprise, it disappointed her.
Melinda sat up, backpedaled from the bleeding snake, and caught Kaylee in her arms. “You were so brave, Kaylee-Kitten. So brave.”
Kaylee caught her mother, tears wetting through the fabric of her pajamas. “Mommy, I think Paige . . . I don’t hear her . . . sleeping.”
Paige. Melinda pressed Kaylee gently to the bed and ran to the crib. Paige lay utterly still, her eyes closed, her expression more peaceful than Melinda could ever remember. A slight smile touched the corners of her scarred lips. She made no snoring sounds, and her chest did not move. “Paige?” Melinda shook her body, limp, as always, but, somehow, more so. “Paige!”
The eyes did not open. The expression did not change. Only then, Melinda noticed the chips on the bars, the holes in the bedding, the single tiny opening in Paige’s pajama shirt, at the level of her heart. She died. With the same shot. At the exact same moment as the broch de shlang.
Kaylee sat on the bed, talking. “Mommy, I was scared to shoot it, scared I might hit you, too. But then, Aunt Ruthie was here, and you both told me to trust you. And she helped me point the gun just right . . .”
Just right. Melinda stared at the hole in Paige’s pajamas; and, suddenly, it all made sense. I wasn’t the host. Paige was the host. Realization went deeper. The curse is over. Kaylee is safe. And her children. And their children. She wondered if her father would find great-great Aunt Ruth dead, too, in the morning. God bless her ancient spirit.
Melinda ran to Kaylee, catching her into an embrace. “Oh, my brave, brave, dear child. I wasn’t the one strong enough to save our family. You were.”
Kaylee could not possibly understand. “I love you, Mommy.” Her gaze went past her mother. “And I’m so sorry about Paige.”
Melinda looked at the massive and bloody snake corpse on the floor, still as stone, clearly dead. “Paige went quickly, without pain.” She felt certain of her words. The expression on Paige’s face convinced her.
“We knew God would take her sooner than later; we had thought much sooner. But she had ten years to live, a whole decade of kindness that only a scarce few with her condition ever get.”
Kaylee clung to her mother. “Mommy, can we call Daddy?”
Melinda could use some understanding. Though still shaken from the events, though grief had only just begun to fill her soul, she needed a kindred soul beside her, the only one who could truly share her pain. She lifted the phone and prepared to dial 911. “As soon as I finish calling the police, you may.”
“He’ll come, you know. Anytime. He loves us.” Melinda spoke words she had not in years. “You know, Kaylee, I believe he truly does.” She could scarcely imagine their family coming together again, hated to think that such joy could spring from the death of loved ones. And, yet, she felt certain it would. Once again, they would become a family.
Melinda had often wondered why God had chosen their family for this trauma, why he had cursed them with such significant handicaps. Now she understood. For, without Paige, there could have been no happy ending. In her own quiet way, Paige, too, had lived and died a hero.
THE WOOLY MOUNTAINS
Alexander B. Potter
Harold bats long eyelashes at me and snuffles my hair. I give his nose a gentle push. “Yes, hair is tasty. No, you cannot eat it.”
The llama snorts and stamps, ears twitching. He pushes past me, stops, stamps again. I follow, but he refuses to move further.
Sheep clump to my left in a jostling mass. I scan the pasture. Couldn’t be a coyote. Harold would already be kicking the interloper into the next county. A few more feet and a dark blot on the grass up ahead catches my eye. Flies hover over it.
Standing over the remains, only two small clumps of bloody wool identify it as sheep. The rest is eaten beyond recognition. Or possibly attacked with a chainsaw. Lots of blood, lots of bits.
“Hell.”
“You’re sure it’s not normal predation?” Dean settles across from me, stirring his coffee.
“I thought maybe, when I heard about the other attacks, but Harold takes care of coyotes. That’s all we’ve got.”
“Thought you said we have bear? Harold wouldn’t—” He breaks off, eyes narrowing. “Or were you just trying to scare me?”
“Would I do that? A macho, fearless guy like you?”
“You’re mocking me.”
“Mock mock mock.”
He smacks my hand with his spoon. “So no bear?”
“Actually, yes. Unlikely though. Black bear are shy and mostly after garbage. No one’s had any tracks. Normal predators leave tracks. No, I’m thinking Uncanny.”
His spoon taps a nervous beat. “Werewolves?” His hand makes an abortive reach for the scars on the left side of his face, then stills.
“I don’t . . . think so.” Wolves and sheep. He isn’t the first to suggest it. But something doesn’t ring right. “Werewolves leave tracks, the locals know better than to take livestock, and we’re hardly running short of deer, as the garden can attest. Zombies maybe? They don’t fall under the Integration Policies. All that shuffling around might wipe out tracks, and sheep have fairly large brains.” I catch Dean’s arched eyebrows and clarify, “By volume.”
“But there hasn’t been a zombie alert in Vermont in ages, right?”
“Nine months. Bernie put them down.”
Dean grins. “Bernie? For a guy in his seventies, he wields a mean shotgun.”
“You better believe it. He offered to teach me when I first got here and he saw I didn’t ‘have a man around.’ And realized I wasn’t likely to get one.”
“He gets it? Is that why he hasn’t assumed we’re a couple?”
Our closest neighbor took a shine to me the day I arrived in Vermont a year ago, but hasn’t much more than nodded to Dean since he moved in two months back.
“He asked about us, but seemed relieved when I confirmed his initial impression.”
“Relieved you’re a lesbian?”
“Relieved because he likes me, and doesn’t trust you.”
“What did I do?”
“Showed up with a penis. I don’t think he trusts many men. Lot of daughters, remember. Fathers with daughters get cagey around pretty young men like yourself.”
“Not like I’d have designs on his daughters.”
“I think he figured that out, too.”
“Astute.”
“Definitely. He used to be part of the Service, you know. Though he wouldn’t shoot a werewolf to sav
e his life, even before Vermont instituted the Policies. Always made me wonder . . .” I trail off, but fall short of elaborating on my suspicions in deference to Dean’s nerves. “Anyway. Dead sheep.”
“Vampires don’t make any sense.”
“Gnomes are out of the question and ghouls don’t deal in animals.”
“Dragon?” Dean hazards. “They don’t pay attention to any policies, do they? Could account for the lack of tracks.” He mimes an attack from above with one hand swooping down, fingers curved, but I’m already shaking my head.
“Don’t be silly, everyone knows there aren’t any dragons.”
“Oh, right. They’re a New Hampshire problem. You told me.”
“They’ve never crossed the Connecticut River yet; I doubt they’re starting now.” Who the hell knows why, but they don’t.
“So what now?”
“Clean the guns.” Always an appropriate response. “Visit Bernie. I’ll take care of the weapons, if you’ll card the merino.”
“You get the weapons, I get the wool. Reesa, there’s something seriously fucked about our division of labor.”
I lead the way through the woods. The midday air hangs still and close, my forearms damp with sweat under the sheaths of the VisiBlades. My Sweet’s Harvester rests heavy against my shoulder, the extra clips of iron, copper, and silver dragging at my belt. Since moving to Vermont I gave up arming during daylight, especially since Integration. Feels odd.
Dean tugs the heavy braid hanging down my back. “You sure we shouldn’t take the truck?”
“Why waste gas? Enjoy the spring! You bitched enough about the snow in March. Appreciate the exercise. You know how much I love exercise.”
“Another good reason to drive.”
“I may not love it, but I could always use it.” I slap the full curve of my ass with my free hand.
“You don’t either—” he protests, obviously ready to leap into an ode to zaftig women.
“Relax,” I laugh. “I’m perfectly happy to be full-figured. The ladies like me voluptuous. As do the gentlemen, when I bother with them. The heart still needs exercise. You could do with some, yourself. Too much sitting around knitting and you’ll lose muscle tone.” I poke his stomach. “Nothing will attack in full daylight.”
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