The Sick Stuff

by Ronald Kelly

  Nelson wept, his futile apologies muffled and broken, as he sat down heavily in a kitchen chair and gently cradled his precious Buddy.

  Later that evening, the phone rang. Nelson was getting ready for the unpleasant task ahead of him, gathering the things he would need. He left his preparations long enough to answer on the fourth ring.

  "Mr. Trulane, this is Detective Fowler," said the caller. "I'm handling the investigation of the attack on you by Tanya Wright and the, uh, abduction."

  "Yes," said Nelson. "Have you found the bitch yet?"

  "No," admitted the policeman. "She has quit her job at the university and abandoned her apartment. There's no telling where she went. But that's not the reason I called you. It concerns your son, Mr. Trulane."

  "Yes?"

  An awkward silence occupied the phone line for a long moment. "Well, during the course of our investigation, we did some routine checking and... well, your son... he's dead, Mr. Trulane."

  "Yes."

  Confusion was evident in the detective's voice. "Then who the hell is -- ?"

  Nelson hung up the phone. It was too painful to speak now. He returned to the kitchen and slipped on his raincoat. Then he took the cardboard box and a shovel from the utility room, and went outside into the darkening dusk.

  Thunder rumbled overhead as Nelson walked across the lawn, past the big maple tree and the colorful swing set where his son once played. He found a place near the back fence, a clear spot between two of Angela's rose bushes.

  Without hesitation, he began to dig the grave. Halfway through the chore, his exertion brought about an awakening of pain. He felt the stitches from the razor wounds begin to pull loose as he shoveled spade upon spade of dark earth from the deepening hole. His doctor had warned him of that when he checked out of the hospital ahead of time, but he hadn't listened. He had only been intent on returning home and waiting for Tanya to contact him. The cuts began to reopen and the salt of his sweat seeped into raw wounds, making movement nearly unbearable. Yet he continued his digging, despite the discomfort that wracked his body.

  It began to rain. It had rained the night that Angela and his son, Joseph, had died in that terrible car crash on the interstate just outside of Nashville. It had rained the day he attended their funeral and watched their two caskets buried beneath graveyard earth. And it rained now, as he performed a similar ritual for a very special friend.

  He dug the hole deep and, when he was finished, gently laid the cardboard tomb inside. Then he shoveled the muddy earth back into place, sealing away the prying eyes of neighbors and the hungry noses of stray dogs.

  As Nelson Trulane turned away and hobbled painfully back to the house, the ugly wound of his groin -- the irreversible product of Tanya's vengeful fury -- screamed in mournful agony. And, within the concealment of blood-soaked gauze, wept crimson tears for the loss of Buddy.

  MOJO MAMA

  Quite abruptly and without warning, a searing pain blossomed in the hollow of his throat, just above the junction of his collarbones.

  Quentin Deveroux reined his horse to a halt and coughed violently. He choked on the obstruction, feeling it move -- of its own accord -- up the narrow tube of his esophagus and into the chamber of his mouth. He sensed the motion of flailing legs and the tip of a stinger raking across the soft flesh of his palate. Then he spat, releasing the awful creature from its imprisonment. A small yellow-brown scorpion landed in the dust, then scampered off the pathway into the tall weeds.

  The taste of blood and poison filled the young gentleman's mouth and he cursed. "Damn that black bitch!" he rasped. "Damn that Mojo Mama!"

  Quentin sat in the saddle for a moment, regaining his composure and allowing the agony to fade from his throat. A few seconds later, the discomfort had subsided. But it would return. He knew that, deep down

  inside him, the potential for pain was endless.

  The first time Quentin realized that the house of Deveroux was cursed, was during the battle of Gettysburg. He had been leading his calvary division in a charge against the Northern forces, when a horrendous pain had engulfed his stomach. At first he thought he had been gutshot by a Union bullet or skewered by the sword of a passing calvaryman. But when he examined himself, he found no evidence of a wound... no blood at all.

  The pain, however, had increased tenfold. It grew so intense that he doubled over and fell from his saddle. While chaos surged around him, he was on his knees, cramping and gasping as the agony in his belly traveled up through the narrow channel of his throat. He opened his mouth to scream and watched, mortified, as a swarm of red wasps fluttered past his lips and took flight into the bullet-ridden air. He had wheezed for a long moment, his throat and mouth swollen from their attack, stingers spearing his inner flesh in a dozen or so places. Quentin was certain that he would suffocate, when the inflammation suddenly receded and, within moments, he was back to normal again.

  He had suffered numerous attacks after that...from all manner of creatures and from the confines of his own traitorous body. It wasn't until the end of the War, just before the Confederate surrender at Appomattox, that Quentin had received a letter from his older brother, Trevor, informing him of the horrible curse that had been cast upon those unfortunate enough to share the Deveroux family name.

  Quentin urged his steed forward, past the deserted slave cabins, to the rundown stable. An old Negro gentleman named Percy took the reigns as he dismounted. Percy had been the last one to remain at the Deveroux sugar plantation. He was a free man but chose to stay out of convenience and a loyalty that the others had not felt toward their former masters. He eyed young Quentin curiously before leading the horse to its stall. "You've gots blood..." he said, pointing to the corner of his mouth. "Here."

  Irritated, Quentin raised the back of his hand and wiped the trickle of blood away. "Never you mind."

  As he started toward the stable door, Quentin felt Percy's eyes upon him. He could imagine the man smiling behind his back, perhaps in secret approval of the misery he and his siblings were enduring. But when he turned to confront the old uncle's glee, he found that he was already out of view, unsaddling the gelding and grooming its chestnut brown coat.

  Quentin took a cobbled walkway through the garden, toward the two-story manor. The once brilliant and well-kempt jardin des plantes -- as their Cajun-born mother had once called it -- was now forlorn and choked with weeds. The circular pond in the center was covered over with a dense scum of green algae and the marble statues that their father had imported from Greece stood dismally around the courtyard, devoid of their former luster and stained with a heavy coating of thick, black mold.

  He left the ruins of the garden and approached the main house. The Deveroux mansion had once been the finest in all Louisiana and their sugar plantation the most prosperous in the land. Then the War Between the States had come along and, fast upon its heels, the dreaded Curse of the Deveroux. It wasn't long afterward that everything that the Deveroux family had built their life upon -- health, wealth, and power -- had fallen into a vicious cycle of affliction, poverty, and disrespect.

  Quentin was almost to the mansion, when he heard the sound of mournful crying coming from a utility shed that stood away from the rear of the house. He hesitated for a long moment, torn between investigating the grievous sound or leaving the poor soul to their private misery. But, in the end, his love for his sister surpassed his own emotional discomfort.

  "Isabella," he said softly when he reached the shack's wooden door. He knocked at the panel with his knuckles. "Isabella... are you alright?"

  A cross between a harsh laugh and a ragged sob answered his foolish question. "No, Quentin, I most certainly am not alright! Now, go away and leave me alone."

  "Please, Isabella... I must speak with you," Quentin insisted of his sister.

  Inside the awful crying resumed, along with the sound of liquid falling into a metal basin...dripping, pouring, continuously. "No, Quentin. I'll not have you see me in such a way."


  Quentin himself did not desire to see his sibling in such a sorrowful state of physical distress, but he knew that he must talk to her and try to understand the extent of this the awful curse that they had been subjected to.

  "I am coming in, Isabella," he said and slowly opened the door.

  Despite her protest, Quentin entered the utility shed. The interior of the structure was dark and dusty, but the invasion of daylight revealed the horror within. His sister squatted, naked, within a large metal wash tub filled with blood.

  It was Isabella's own blood that she was awash in. For that was his sister's part of the dreaded curse. Once a month, during her womanly menstruation, she did not merely bleed from her womanly portal, but from every orifice of her body, including the pores of her skin. And that was not the most horrible aspect of her ailment. To prevent herself from bleeding to death, she was forced to ingest that which her body depleted.

  In an atrocious act of self-vampirism, poor Isabella had to drink her own blood in order to survive.

  His sister sobbed as he entered. "Please, brother... cast your eyes from my shame."

  Quentin did as she said, focusing on the earthen floor of the shed instead. It angered him to see his sister a victim of such an abominable infirmity. "Isabella, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Like Trevor and I, you are guiltless."

  He listened to her dip a china cup into the sanguine pool around her and, with great thirst, swallow her own bodily fluids. The noise nearly made him retch. "My only crime is possessing the filthy name of Deveroux. It is our dear, departed patriarch who has brought this awful curse upon us all. I hope his heathen soul burns in Hell for all eternity!"

  Her brother was shocked to hear her speak of their father in such a cruel manner. Isabella had once been Everett Deveroux's pride and joy; a "daddy's girl" in every way imaginable. But her current state of despair and indisposition had changed her opinion of him considerably.

  "But what did our late father do to raise the witch's ire and bring such a heinous curse upon this family?" he asked. He lifted his eyes from the floor and looked at his sister. She sat there, blood dripping and dribbling from her nose, mouth, and ears. A steady stream coursed from both eyes, running down her alabaster cheeks like crimson tears.

  "Did Trevor's letter not reveal to you the shame and depravity that our dear parents cast upon this house?" she asked. As she looked at him, her eyes widened. "Good God Almighty... Quentin!"

  Isabella had glimpsed his own personal angst before he himself had felt the burning sting in his nasal passages. A long, black centipede exited from his left nostril, its multitude of legs clawing for release. It dropped to the floor, covered with blood and mucus. Quentin attempted to crush the offending insect beneath the heel of his boot, but it escaped, skittering across the dirt of the floor and vanishing into the dank shadows.

  Quentin wiped the bloody snot from his nostrils... a gesture that was more habit now than from conscious intention. "No, he said only that father was dead and that Mojo Mama had placed a curse upon our family. He did not go into details."

  Small, thin streams of blood squirted from Isabella's nipples. Humiliated, she folded her slender arms across her breasts and wept. "Then go and demand that he tell you all. I cannot bare to speak of the awful business myself!"

  Quentin regarded his sister's pitiful form, sitting in a bath of congealing gore. "Isabella... if I could only reverse this horrid curse..."

  "Perhaps you can, brother," she said. "But speak to Trevor first." She lowered her head. Blood pooled from the openings around the follicles of her ebony hair, turning her lovely mane into a nasty, purulent mess. "Now go. Abandon me to my own wretchedness."

  Not knowing what to say to relieve her distress, Quentin quietly closed the door to and turned toward the house. Anger flared within him. He must confront Trevor and demand to know the extent of the purgatory in which they had been unwilling cast into.

  As he entered the rear door and made his way toward the main hall, he thought of how he had found the Deveroux mansion upon his return from war; rundown, deserted of their trusted servants, and in a state of perpetual decay. His mother, Rosealynda, had been alive then, but only in a physical sense. Her mind -- once so sharp and full of good humor -- had retreated unto itself. Quentin had found her in a stupor born of madness and intoxicated with liquor and morphine. She had scarcely recognized who he actually was. But, as far as he could tell, she had not been touched by the Deveroux curse... not with the horrible aliments that Quentin and his siblings suffered. No, her torment had come later... several nights after his unexpected return.

  Quentin pushed the awful fate of his mother from his thoughts. He had more urgent questions on his mind at the moment. The young man pushed through the double doors of the grande parlor. "Trevor!" he called. "Trevor, I must speak to you at once!"

  When he stepped through the doorway of the parlor, it felt as though he was entering the white-hot belly of a blast furnace. Despite the humidity and heat of the summer afternoon, Trevor kept the great marble fireplace stoked and blazing. But, then, his older brother had reason to keep the fire going from morning until night.

  Cloaked in a dark, woolen blanket, Trevor turned and regarded him. "Then speak, brother. I am here... as I always shall be."

  Quentin intended to approach his brother boldly and with no hesitation.

  But the hideous stench of decay that filled the room caused him to gag and consider retreat. He stood his ground, however, and covered his nose with a handkerchief from his vest pocket. As he crossed the fire-lit chamber, he found thick mats of green flies and black gnats seething upon the velvet drapes and the cushions of the furnishings... waiting, hungering, but hesitant to approach the heat of the fire.

  When he came within six feet of the form hunkered before the fire, Quentin stopped. He could draw no closer. Even where he stood, the bile threatened to roll from his belly and into his mouth. But he dared not vomit. To do so would bring a new nest of horrors from within him, and he was afraid such an expulsion would dampen the indignation he now directed toward his elder brother.

  "I demand that you tell me all concerning this sordid business between the house of Deveroux and that witch in the swamp," he said. "What sin did our parents commit to bring such sorrow upon us?"

  "What would the telling of the story resolve?" Trevor said sadly. "Best leave it in the darkness where it belongs."

  "No!" snapped Quentin. "Tell me... if only for my own peace of mind."

  Trevor laughed. "Peace of mind? That is hilarious, little brother. Never again shall our namesake enjoy such a luxury."

  Quentin watched in disgust as Trevor's right hand emerged from beneath his cloak. The flesh of the appendage was raw and decayed. Plump white maggots teamed within the bloody meat, feeding, crawling along the jointless nubs of what had once been his fingers. Trevor stuck his hand into the crackling flames of the fireplace. Instantly, the larva sizzled and popped, and the exposed meat of his failing flesh turned black with cauterization... but only temporarily.

  That was the elder Deveroux's personal curse; the constant decay of his outer skin and the muscle underneath. Beneath the woolen blanket, Quentin sat naked, his fingers and toes, even his manhood, rotted away, leaving gaping wounds. It was the same with his head and torso. Within the dark, bloody cavity of his chest and abdomen, his internal organs continued to function, though turning gelatinous from gangrene and infested with parasites and the eggs that would produce a thousand more.

  Quentin tightened the cloth upon his nostrils. He felt the contents of his stomach threaten to rise, with the assistance of the creatures that grew and generated within the dark recesses of his own body. With much effort, he quelled the sickness that threatened to overcome him.

  "Brother, I beg of you, tell me the truth," he said, his anger smoldering into despair. "Perhaps I can do something. Perhaps I can reverse this damnation that we have been subjected to."

  Haughtily, Trevor cast back the hood of his co
ver. His face was a glistening red skull, devoid of hair or ears. His lips had rotted away, revealing strong white teeth that had once charmed the belles of the sugar district. It was true... Trevor had once been a dashing and handsome gentleman. But that was no longer evident, given his deteriorating condition.

  "All right! If you must know, then I shall tell you!" His bloodshot eyes glared from the lidless pits of their sockets. Several blue-bottle flies had grown bold and lit atop the membrane-thin flesh of his skull. "It was all begat by adultery, dear brother. Debauchery and unbridled lust."

  Quentin baulked. "But our father had no such tendencies!"

  A look of disgust crossed Trevor's disfigured face. "Oh, it wasn't he who performed the offending act. Rather it was our dear, sweet mother."

  Quentin's rage resurfaced. "Liar!"

  "No, I speak the truth. It is a hard potion to swallow to be sure, but genuine none the less." Trevor stretched out his leg and laid it upon the blazing logs of the fireplace. Soon, the stench of gangrene was replaced by the odor of rancid meat, cooked to the bone.

  Heavily and with dread, Quentin sat on an ottoman. "Then tell me all that you know."

  Trevor looked into the fire, as though seeing all that had transpired within the ebb and tide of the flames. "Unbeknownst to you, lovely and genteel Rosealynda Deveroux had a dark passion... a carnal desire for pleasure other than what was consummated in her marriage bed. She particularly hungered for the attention of the male slaves that Father worked from daybreak to dawn in the canebrake. One in particular held her fancy... a strong, young buck named Jonathan. You remember him, don't you? Nearly seven feet tall, strong as an oak and as black as pitch. And, crudely put, rather well-endowed. That was how our mother liked her taboo lovers... as strong and jolting as a cup of Mammy Sophia's fresh-brewed coffee."

  Quentin felt an agonizing pain seize the center of his brain. He gasped aloud and felt the discomfort gravitate toward the side of his head, through the narrow channel of his left ear. He reached up as the invader emerged. With a curse, he pried an earwig free from the confines of his ear. It's long, jagged pinchers gnashed, coated with blood and brain matter, as Quentin flung it into the flames of the hearth.