Cursed Be the Child

by Mort Castle

  Thirty-Two

  It was Monday morning, an hour before the alarm and sunrise. Not able to gauge when she’d left sleep and had become so wide awake she thought she could see through her eyelids, Selena Lazone felt a foreboding, heavy sense of the future weighing down on her. Next to her, David lay on his stomach, body subtly moving with the loose inhalations and exhalations of deep slumber. David’s naked body radiated warmth that failed to warm her.

  The hour before dawn, Selena thought, and I am afraid. There had been the omens and portents—invading her life, signs of her own past and the supernatural, ripping at the facade of normalcy she had created for herself. She couldn’t discount it or dismiss it or try to avoid reality by filling in her moments with the bits and business of day-to-day living. She had seen and recognized the threat that was always the ultimate threat—Death.

  Selena thought of Kris Heidmann, as she had thought of her and thought of her and thought of her. Dead Kris Heidmann! Kris had lived 14 years and had been dead eight days, dead by her own despairing hand. I could have helped her, Selena thought, if only, if only…

  Thinking of a child’s death and thinking of my own death, and in the hour before dawn, Selena thought, I am afraid. And I am so alone. She touched David’s shoulder.

  “David?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I want…to be with you.” She hated saying it that way.

  She looked into the darkness overhead. We are born alone and we die alone and in between there are so many hours in which we are condemned to our aloneness. That was it—the human condition.

  And without someone else, without love, life was too empty to endure.

  Then because she felt so damned bad, she said it aloud as she had never before permitted herself to say it. “David, I want you to hold me. David, I want you to love me.”

  She felt him stir and felt his breath on her face. He’d propped himself up on an elbow. His hand moved to her belly, patting and petting. It wasn’t foreplay, not yet; it was foreplay to foreplay. Then there would be sex.

  “No,” she said. “Not that.”

  “What is it you want?” he said. “Tell me.”

  I don’t want to be alone and afraid in the dark. I want to be held and loved and touched by you.

  She said none of that. She answered David Greenfield’s question with a question, the one she had promised never to ask.

  “Do you love me, David?”

  The reply took awhile, but it came, exactly as she feared it would. “No.”

  He moved away from her and lay back heavily. The distance between them felt wide and cold. “I love you, David,” she said. “You have to know that. Doesn’t it mean anything?”

  “Why are you doing this, Selena?”

  “I love you, goddamn you, and I want you to love me!”

  He sighed. “You’re asking the impossible, Selena. I do not love you. I cannot love you. Or anyone.”

  “That is bullshit, David Greenfield! You are a human being. Your mother and father gave you life. That makes you a person! And people want love and need love. They want and need to give love. David, it’s love that makes us human.”

  In a voice so calm and detached it could have been termed clinical, David Greenfield said, “Why me, Selena? What made you decide to share an apartment and a bed with me? You know the way I am. You know what I am.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe I know you better than you know yourself.”

  David’s tone remained flat. He could have been politely conducting a telephone consumer survey. “Did you choose me as your live-in punishment, Selena? I’m Selena Lazone’s cross-in-residence. Is that what I am? Or maybe I’m your case study in abnormal psychology.”

  She did not answer.

  David said nothing more, and then, after a little while, he got out of bed. She heard the whisper of his clothing as he dressed.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out,” he said and paused. “Do you want me to come back?”

  She thought about it. “Yes.

  “Things go back to what they’ve been?” he asked. “You can live with that?”

  She shuddered. “Yes,” she said, wishing for that much or that little, even as she realized it would not, could not be.

  There would be changes soon. That was Baht, momentous turnings and twistings of lives.

  And there would be endings.

  It had the feeling of deja vu, even though it was not precisely that. She knew the Barringers, felt she had met them before. That kept popping into Selena Lazone’s mind as she conducted the initial interview with the parents of her prospective new client.

  It was one o’clock in the afternoon. The Barringers had the Danish modern armchairs in Selena’s Michigan Avenue office, Melissa on her mother’s lap. In a blue dress, knee socks and shiny black shoes, two ribbons in her hair, the little girl might have stepped out of the pages of a catalog offering “Fashion for Bored Children.” She exhibited none of the agitation or curiosity one might expect in such a situation. She hardly even blinked.

  Facing them in a straight-backed chair, the window behind her to turn her into a more or less anonymous silhouette, Selena had a clipboard on her knee, a pen in her hand and questions to ask. She’d already thoroughly reviewed the preliminary evaluations from Lawn Crest, and, frankly, she didn’t see much validity in most of the standard tests administered as a matter of course by the hospital. Once in awhile, a projective test might reveal a psychotic, perhaps a paranoid schizophrenic, but the majority of tests were valuable in confirming only what a psychotherapist already suspected.

  Actually, the questions in this introductory interview were not all that important for informational purposes. Later, if it was agreed to proceed with psychotherapy, there would be more meaningful, even painful questions for Vicki and Warren Barringer. For the present, Selena wanted simply to observe the Barringers to form initial assessments of the family’s dynamics.

  Warren Barringer: Brusque but articulate responses. Seems to think this is all a waste of time. Amusing, maybe, possibly interesting—but a waste. Obviously a bright man. No less obviously a man who thinks himself bright. Seems relaxed, self-confident. Too relaxed, too self-confident?

  Had she read something of his? He does seem so familiar—they both do—but she didn’t recognize the titles of the novels he mentioned. She asked him what he was writing currently. He explained he didn’t like to dissipate creative energies talking about projects until they were well along. She noted unease and thin hostility in that response.

  Somewhat sensitive and secretive about your writing, Professor? Selena wondered. Do you have other secrets to hide? Well, who doesn’t?

  Vicki Barringer: So straight-forward, albeit on the shy side, that you can read her not like a book but a child’s primer. The kind of woman that you think of as Midwestern. Not plain and not really pretty and fairly comfortable with that reality as shown by natural hair color and a style to suit her face and not fashion. She’s worn down now, really worn, but discovering strength of character she probably didn’t know she had. A deep rooted and powerful spirituality.

  Selena frowned. Spirituality? Where did I get that? Selena asked herself. No, what makes me feel that?

  Dukkeripin? Second sight? A little flash of Gypsy-style ESP?

  Suddenly a picture exploded in her mind of David. Somehow, David was a link!

  David was the connection.

  Other connections were tenuous and strong, dark and light, subtle, dangerous, good and evil and spiritual, all working together in inexplicable, inevitable consort.

  It was Baht. It was fate.

  It was not happenstance that had led the Barringers to her office. Mother and father and daughter were here, right this minute, because here was where they had to be. And David, too, his presence was here.

  But why? What was the will of Baht? What did Fate hold for the Barringers?

  And David?

  And me?

  There wa
s a way to find out.

  Selena rose, putting the clipboard on her desk and smoothing her skirt. “Well, now I think it’s time Melissa and I had a talk.”

  “Missy,” Vicki Barringer said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Missy, that’s what we call her.”

  “Yes,” Selena said. She held out her hand. “Would you like to come with me, Missy?”

  The little girl smiled. She slipped off Vicki Barringer’s lap. Her long fingers reached out.

  Selena felt the chill and the challenge in the little girl’s grasp. And she knew that Baht, fate itself, held her by the hand.

  — | — | —

  Thirty-Three

  The three-foot-tall teddy bear on the top shelf had dark brown fur, a small, friendly smile, and a nasty-looking raw patch where its left eye had been. A year before, a four-year-old girl had gouged out Mr. Bear’s eye. She was explaining, “This is how my aunty hurt my eye.” That wasn’t exactly correct, since the child was missing her right eye, not the left.

  The playroom, shared with another psychologist, was just down the hall from Selena’s office. At first glance, it could have been a classroom in a day care center or kindergarten. There were the shelves loaded with toys, a blackboard, two felt bulletin boards and bright posters. There were huggy blankets and bean bag chairs large enough for adults and kids.

  There were, however, a number of differences between this room and what you might find in a school. Instead of cold tile marked with circles, squares and the classic hopscotch design, the floor was thick, soft, beige carpeting, suitable for crawling, rolling or pitching a fit. In a locked cabinet were such items as whiffle bats (“You want to hit something really hard? You can use this.”) and anatomically correct dolls so that, for example, a three-year-old child whose vocabulary didn’t equal the horror of his experience might reveal the homosexual rape performed on him by Daddy’s friend. The mirrored east wall was one-way glass; there were concealed microphones and a video camera so that the playroom could be monitored and recorded from the small adjoining room.

  Releasing the little girl’s hand and glad of it, Selena said, “Now we can talk and get to know each other.”

  She had no response. The child walked to the toy shelves.

  Selena settled herself into one of the bean bag chairs. “Is there a toy you’d like to play with?”

  No reply. A silent little girl, with her back to Selena, picked up a green-faced Oscar the Grouch puppet and put it down, picked up a G.I. Joe doll and put it down, picked up a Skipper doll and put it down.

  “If you could be any one of the toys on that shelf, which would you be?” Selena asked.

  The child didn’t seem to hear.

  “Melissa?” Selena said.

  The girl did not turn around, but she quietly said, “Is that my name?”

  “Do you want me to call you Missy?”

  “Is that my name?”

  “You tell me, okay?”

  No answer.

  “Are we playing?” Selena asked. “Is this like a name game?” No answer. “Is that what you’d like, to play a game?”

  A shrug.

  “You know, I’ll bet Oscar the Grouch could tell me your name,” Selena said. “Why don’t you slip him on? It’s okay if you don’t want to talk, but maybe Oscar wants to say something for you.”

  Nothing. Then slowly, as though she barely had control of her movements, the little girl took Oscar the Grouch, slipped her hand in and pulled the long, furry puppet down her arm. She turned around. Oscar’s mouth moved awkwardly. The child’s mouth moved silently with it.

  Together like that, Selena thought, the little girl and the puppet were scary as hell.

  “Hello, Oscar,” Selena said.

  Oscar growled, and the sound, pinched and threatening, did not seem to emanate from the little girl’s throat.

  “Do you want to play a name game with me, Oscar?” Selena asked.

  Again there was the tiny menacing growl, but this time, Selena saw something in the child’s eyes.

  Am I merely imagining it? Selena asked herself.

  But it was there. She knew it.

  It was a plea, a silent cry for help.

  And she knew, too, it was neither normal eyesight nor trained psychologist’s vision that enabled her to see the sorrowful, yearning message in the child’s eyes.

  Deny it though she might, deny it though she had, it was her gift, her cursed birthright. Dukkeripin—the intuitive, paranormal, sixth sense of the cohalyi, the Gypsy wise woman.

  She had a painful thought. Had Kris Heidmann sought help from that Gypsy cohalyi, would the teenager be alive right now? But the troubled girl had come to Ms. Selena Lazone, the liberated modern woman who after her name had those college-awarded letters to prove just how much she knew!

  Kristin Heidmann died.

  What of this child?

  Could Selena Lazone help her? Selena Lazone, psychologist?

  Or Selena Lazone, Gypsy gule romni, Selena Lazone, Romany witch!

  “Name…game...” The little girl’s lips moved, but the hoarse words appeared to come from the puppet’s mouth in eerie ventriloquism. “You…know…her? Know…her…name?”

  Selena leaned forward. She pointed at the child. “Your name is Melissa Barringer. You are Missy.”

  Melissa Barringer’s sigh was deep and grateful. As though reciting a magical incantation or a prayer, she said, “My name is Melissa Barringer. I live at 1302 Main Street, Grove Corner, Illinois. My zip code is 60412…”

  “No,” interrupted the harsh voice of Oscar.

  “I…I…” Melissa Barringer’s head snapped left, then right, as though she’d been slapped. “I am Melissa…”

  “No!”

  “I am Lisette. I don’t want to be, but Lisette…”

  “No!” the puppet seemed to say, but not in the tone that a moment previous had belonged to Oscar the Grouch. This was a child’s voice. It was furious and frightened and incredibly lonely.

  And it was not Melissa Barringer’s voice.

  You cannot tell! It is a secret! A secret!

  “I have to!” Melissa Barringer cried, choking on a sob. “I want to!”

  No!

  And as Selena struggled to hold her expressionless mask in place, the little girl and the puppet argued.

  A furious voice.

  A pleading voice.

  Shouting.

  Whimpering.

  Multiple personality, Selena thought. Despite the notoriety of several cases, multiple personality was an extremely rare neurotic condition. Most psychotherapists never encountered even a single case.

  Tshatsimo! The truth. She desperately wanted to believe that the child’s affliction was multiple personality. That was a psychological aberration. That was crazy, but a psychologist could treat such a patient and such a condition.

  But Baht had not brought Melissa to the office of Selena Lazone, psychologist.

  Baht had nudged and pushed and led Melissa Barringer so that she might meet Selena Lazone, ababina, Gypsy sorceress.

  But I am not an ababina, Selena silently declared to herself. No more of that!

  Yet cautiously, Selena rose. The little girl was silent. Oscar was silent. But child eyes and puppet eyes focused on Selena Lazone as she approached. Selena moved like a slow motion mime or a trained soldier, on guard and alert.

  “I must know,” she said quietly, and she felt the entreaty of the child’s eyes and the furious threat radiating from the eyes of the puppet.

  Go away! You cannot! You will not!

  Selena hesitated. She heard the warning without hearing words, the menacing promise flashing red and black in her mind. She wished a dozen futile wishes, and then she did what she had to do, what Baht commanded her.

  She leaned down. Her lips lightly touched the center of the child’s forehead in a kiss, a cohalyi’s kiss. There was the heat, a blazing fever not of the body but of the spirit. And the taste of salt and sul
phur was inevitable and awful.

  Selena straightened. She was beginning to understand, and that knowledge filled her with tingling terror. The adrenalin rush triggered a nauseating roiling in her stomach; she took a deep breath, pushing away a feeling of faintness.

  The trushul, Selena thought, the blessed cross, as she made the holy sign above the little girl’s head. Once, twice, three times.

  Eyes half closed, Selena whispered in Romany the ancient incantation:

  Evil Eyes that have gazed on thee,

  May those Eyes extinguished be

  Evil Eyes that have gazed on thee,

  May those Eyes now cease to be.

  Is that a song? I know songs, too. Listen. Come along with me, Lucille, in my merry Olds-Mow-Beeyel…

  The voice peeped, teasing and small, in Selena’s mind, and in her mind, Selena responded. Who are you?

  I am…Oscar the Grouch!

  The puppet’s mouth flapped stupidly, a moving caricature of a laugh.

  Who are you? Selena demanded.

  My name is Melissa Barringer. I live at 1302 Main Street, Grove Corner…

  I want the truth, Selena insisted.

  Do you?

  Yes, Selena responded.

  You know the truth.

  Yes, Selena admitted. You are diakka.

  A silence that seemed to echo with taunting laughter followed Selena out of the playroom.

  ««—»»

  She was sorry, but there was nothing she could do. There was nothing any psychotherapist could do. Yes, the doctors at Lawn Crest Hospital had been correct. There wasn’t a physical problem.

  Nor was there a mental/emotional problem.

  Melissa Barringer’s problem was spiritual.

  That was when Warren Barringer arched an eyebrow. The Barringers and the psychologist stood cramped in the small observation room adjoining the playroom. “Spiritual?” he said. “You mean Missy ought to be enrolled in Sunday School?”

  Selena ignored him. How could she expect him to believe that his daughter has been…obsessed by a diakka? Groping for words, she tried to explain.

  “You know, Ms. Lazone, this is not amusing,” Warren Barringer interrupted. “You’ll notice I am not laughing. My wife is not laughing. We came here because we thought you might help our daughter, and you’re handing us this nonsense about her being possessed…”