The Gentling Box Page 13

  Low and distant, I heard the soft screak of metal being gently, carefully drawn over stone. And I knew she’d gone into the tomb.

  -26-

  I took two long running steps, then stopped, puzzled. From inside the mausoleum I could hear voices. My heart thudded in my chest. What was this? Some tryst with a rich toff, a pervert with a taste for necrophilia? Had she suggested the tomb to make the pretend seem more real? In my mind’s eye, I saw Zahara lying atop a blanketed slab of marble. She was very still, scarcely breathing. Her eyes were closed. A young man with wavy brown hair leaned over her, eyes riveted on the sleeping figure clothed in the dark dress. One of his hands crept from his side toward her. His ringed fingers began undoing the buttons. He held his breath, stroked the winter chilled flesh of her breasts, traced the curve of her belly. A fevered thought jumped into his brain. You can do anything you want to a corpse, yes, anything at all.

  I clenched my fists, paced closer. A dim yellowish light gleamed inside the crypt, I saw the checkered shadows of the bars faintly etched against the ground. The archway over the door had been draped with a swag of black crepe, and I watched it stir, billowing lightly in and out against the marble facade. On the entry step were two bronze urns, and now in the dull light I saw they were banked with great masses of drooping flowers—frost stung roses, spotted lilies, the faded tumbling stalks of tall gladiolus. Someone was buried here recently—my thoughts broke off.

  From within came a low shuffling sound that drew me closer. Passion rising, would he tell her not to move? I wondered. And then I heard a man’s thick guttural voice, the words clotted in his throat. “Ask,” he wheezed heavily, “Ask of me what you will.”

  And I ran forward.

  ***

  In lightning sequence, I saw her standing before an open stone sarcophagus. A man sat on the marble edge, feet dangling to the floor. Behind him I saw the upraised wooden lid of an ebony coffin. Zahara’s hands were clutched deep inside the lapels of his black suit, her face hidden against the gleaming silk of a cravat. Over her shoulder the man’s head lolled downward, pale frizzy locks banding his shrunken scalp.

  My fingers were hooked through the bars, and as I stood there I was nearly overcome with the smell of rotting flowers, the ripe sweet odor of decay—

  “Ask,” he moaned, and the sound was no more than a piteous wail. At the same time his face came up, lids fluttering—

  One blue eye had gone filmy white and lay sunken deep inside the dead socket. His mouth hung agape, the blackish tongue unraveling from the dark shriveled lips. His face was the dark gray of tainted flesh that has begun to rot, his limp hands were livid, purpling. My eyes widened, bulged. I saw a maggot worming at the root of his nose. My jaw dropped with a painful snap and I screamed.

  Zahara turned, hissing, her face contorted with anger so black I felt it like a blow caving in my temples. The corpse toppled sideways all at once, thudding heavily into the padded coffin with a sound like a felled tree striking soft earth.

  She began advancing slowly. I was frozen to the spot, my hands locked onto the icy steel of the bars. Her heels clicked against the stone, her dark dress seemed to swell large and larger, her mouth turned up in a grin, and then a terror so great it crashed the walls of my mind took me.

  ***

  She was all things at once. Like the subtle images of a nightmare kaleidoscope, I saw her sweet, supple—the dreamy girl of my youth. The body and face shifted, bloated to monstrous proportions. Her gray hair lay dank against a thick scalp, her smirking mouth became a crumbling hole. Her hair went white. I saw the gleam of her scalp through the thinning strands. Her body shrank, narrowed, her skin lay pinched and wrinkled over the time eroded bones like glowing parchment. She walked stiffly with the measured stoop of age. Mimi’s words spiraled up inside me with sickening speed: She’s not dead! And at last I saw, I knew. She was the old sorceress-whore. She was Anyeta.

  “Visions,” Anyeta crooned, one hand floated up dreamily. I felt her dry fingertip brush mine. My head whirled, an inarticulate cry rose up in my throat. Zahara stood before me, tall, broad shouldered, the thick curling mass of her hair making the full red lips look fuller still.

  I leaned heavily against the bars, ached for her, and of its own accord my head turned and yawed, tilting to take a lover’s kiss. My eyes closed. I felt a delicious warmth coming off her skin as she drew closer, closer.

  From far away I heard myself moan, a deep yearning welled inside me. The soft skin of her lips nearly brushing mine, tingling, the bars between us somehow arousing something dark and hot and passionate inside me. I saw myself wanting her, straining to clutch her breasts, her body, my desire growing, until it was like an agony and I could bear it no longer, and I had to pull the door aside and take her.

  Her lips trembled on the verge of touching mine.

  She laughed lightly.

  And on the cold air came a smell that was the stinking miasma of charnel houses, of decaying teeth and foully crusted gums.

  My eyes flew open.

  An aged Zahara looked at me with greedy piggish eyes, dark slits nearly hidden in the chunky flesh of her face.

  And I fled.

  -27-

  Afterwards I never remembered the details of my flight. I could call up vague notions of trying to scale the rusted fence, taking off my boots, tossing them over and pushing myself higher and higher with my bare feet, my frozen fingers. Landing with a rocking thump on the cobbled street and running for what seemed like half a mile, my boots clutched in my hands, until I stopped in a doorway, my breath heaving, a stitch in my side. I sat on a stone threshold and my naked feet burned with the cold and the pounding frenzied run, and I put my boots on and I walked the streets for hours, too stunned and dazed to think, until one idea took hold of my brain. Drink. I wanted to get stumbling, falling down sodden drunk to blot out the hideous memory of the tomb.

  I found myself in the steamy lobby of a tavern. It wasn’t until I went into the bar room, my mind on fire with the idea of blessed, numbing brandy that I realized I’d half registered the sight of a red and black gypsy caravan hitched to the curb.

  Constantin was there, his back to me, his small round face barely cresting the top of the tall bar. Laid out between his hands were what looked like several flat wooden tokens, painted and cut in the shapes of an ale stein, a wine glass, a tumbler. He gave a small grunt and pushed the likeness of the tumbler toward the innkeeper. A brandy bottle appeared, the bar-keep filled his glass with rachia, the really strong stuff. Constantin raised his arm in a little toast of thanks, took a swig and grinned.

  He tapped the tumbler again. The barkeep motioned for the glass to refill it, but Constantin pulled it away, covered it with his hands and shook his head no. “N-n-nuh,” he muttered. He pointed ahead at a rank of clean glassware ranged along the shelves.

  “N-no-t muh-e,” he tapped his chest, shook his head again. “Fre-ehn.” I saw the puzzled look on the barkeep’s face. Constantin’s voice was low and muffled, thick in his throat because of the missing tongue. But I knew what he was saying.

  He turned around suddenly and pointed at me, his face beaming with delight. I began to walk across the room. The barman’s face cleared with sudden understanding.

  “Want to buy a drink for your friend, do you?” he said, and Constantin nodded cheerfully. “All right.”

  I moved alongside, Constantin clasped my arm, said hello with his eyes. The barkeeper set a cork coaster out, filled the glass he laid on it with rachia brandy.

  I raised the heavy tumbler to my lips, watching the barkeep suddenly duck his head, nervously swab the wood counter with a polishing rag. His eyes floated up to mine, and I nodded a greeting.

  “Friend, right,” he muttered, and his gaze dropped to the swishing cloth. “But there’s twenty people in here,” he said, lifting frightened eyes, looking over the tables, toward the roaring hearth. “The door’s been swinging open half the night. He never turned around—not once. So how did
he know you was in the room?”

  Constantin smiled at me, then his eyes tipped closed like those of a small wise buddha.

  “He was waiting for me,” I told the barkeep, and in the act of saying it, I felt the truth of it shine, like a small brilliant gem. I recalled the brightly painted wagons I’d seen the day before; the rest of the troupe was close by, but Constantin had sought me out.

  “Oh,” the bartender said. His face showed his mind was still working how that could be. Then he let it go and moved down the bar toward another customer.

  I thought of the pictures Constantin had drawn, the old woman, the hanged man, the stick writing: Witch. He wasn’t mad, merely different. Mad—that was my word, not the truth.

  I turned to Constantin and we clinked glasses. The tinkling sound rang in my ears, kept time with the simple thought humming through my mind:

  Constantin knew things, had a kind of clairvoyance, I guessed.

  -28-

  “Anyeta,” I said, pointing to the drawing of snaky-haired woman

  kneeling in front of another figure.

  Constantin nodded.

  We were sitting at a table near the fire. I’d asked the bartender for pencil and paper and Constantin was trying to answer my questions with sketches.

  I looked at the picture, feeling something like a missionary trying to read a sand map drawn by a savage. Anyeta was staring up at a body that floated over a rectangle. “Coffin?” I said.

  “Y-uh,” he nodded, and sipped from his glass.

  “What’s this?” I pointed to a bubble enclosing a scattering of hatchmarks that streamed from the body’s mouth.

  He mimed talking with his hands, pointed to his mouth.

  Like a newspaper cartoon, I thought, and nodded. “She makes it speak?”

  He shook his head. He touched his lips again, furtively, and now added a sawing motion. I swallowed, yes she’d taken his tongue, I thought queasily, and tapped his arm to show I understood.

  “N-nn-o,” his head turned back and forth in a sharp negative.

  He pointed to the rendering of the words, tapped his chest. “J-uh,” he muttered, then laid one finger along his nose.

  “Joseph?” I asked. I couldn’t read his face. Constantin suddenly smiled, his round face looking ruddier in the fireglow. There was a rush of cold air as the heavy door wheezed open. I followed Constantin’s gaze.

  I felt the hairs rising along the back of my neck and shivered. The old man himself came into the tavern, his great cape swirling around his thin body. Without meeting our eyes once, he walked directly to our table.

  ***

  “Where’s Mimi?” I said. I wasn’t sure how much I liked this intrusion. Constantin had laid his hands on my arm several times, blinking to signify Joseph could be trusted, called him friend, and bought the old horse dealer a drink. But as I watched his gaunt impassive face, I wondered if Joseph had managed to fool the younger man. Constantin had a child’s trust. “Where is she?”

  “Not far.” He tapped a cigarette against the tabletop, lit it.

  “I want to see her.”

  “She’s very angry, jealous; sick with jealousy, if you want to know the truth,” Old Joseph said, and a wave of guilt swept over me.

  “In her mind Mimi understands,” he touched his brow, “that you were tricked into sleeping with an illusion, but emotionally,” his long bony index moved to the center of his chest, “it cuts her.”

  “How does she know?” I glared at him.

  “She knows because over time the power of the hand grows. She knows because she’s seen it.” I started to say it was more goddamn likely that he’d told her, planting evil seeds of doubt between us for his own purpose, but he held up his hand to stay my interruption.

  “This is what Anyeta wants—to divide us.” The old man’s dark eyes pierced mine.

  My hand tightened on the glass, I gave a small grunt.

  “Whatever you feel about me—now is the time to cast those feelings aside.” He paused. “If you have the desire to put your life—your family’s life—together again.”

  “Lenore—” I began, and felt his thin hand and Constantin’s small warm fingers touch my wrist at the same time.

  Joseph spoke gently. “It will be better for you to fight armed with knowledge than to blunder in ignorance,” he said. “Will you listen?”

  I nodded. I would.

  “Anyeta owned the hand of the dead for years,” Old Joseph said, leaning over the table. The bar was emptying, the fire burning low and hot. “But there is something in the charm that works in the mind, fastening, feeding on it. Like a worm in the belly, eh?”

  “Yes.”

  “At first Anyeta was like a woman given a treasure—happy to look at it before she sleeps or when she wakes. Then she needed to see it. She went to it more often, touching the copper box, stroking it, singing to it.”

  In my mind’s eye, I saw the old woman compelled to run her hands over the shiny metal, the brilliant glass, groaning with a mixture of delight and fear; I realized I was seeing it through Joseph’s eye as he—and Constantin—had seen it.

  “As power grows, so does knowing, and Anyeta was dying when she learned the secret of the hand.”

  I saw a muscle working in the old man’s narrow jaw, felt my pulse quicken. I recalled the day in the old woman’s caravan when I’d seen the corpse raised. The words bubbled to my lips. “Who owns the hand of the dead brings healing. Who owns the hand of the dead breeds destruction. Who owns the hand of the dead can take a life or restore it.”

  Joseph nodded, and I felt a tiny click in my head—his mind locking into mine. He went on. “Yes, the dead can be raised to life. And the purpose is prophecy.”

  I saw now what Constantin had been trying to tell me with his drawing—the body floating, words streaming from its mouth. Recent graves, I chuckled bitterly; if the body was too far gone, it was useless, and—

  I suddenly stared hard at Constantin, remembered the old man’s words. He cut out his own tongue.

  Joseph’s dark eyes glittered. “How much more powerful to raise the corpse of a clairvoyant, eh?” He touched Constantin’s hand. “She was trying to kill him.”

  My stomach turned over, he’d pretended to be mad, mutilated himself to save his life. Zahara’s son, weaker perhaps, had been driven to suicide and hanged himself. “Prophecy.” I shook my head. “All to see what lies in the future.”

  “You’re forgetting, part of the power lies in taking a life.”

  “Killing—”

  “No taking it. As Zahara was taken.” Joseph twisted the gold ring on his middle finger, took a deep breath. “Anyeta was afraid Mimi wouldn’t come to her in time. She needed a victim. So she tricked Zahara into claiming it.”

  “If the old woman wanted the power for herself, why would she—”

  “Because to die owning the hand of the dead is to suffer eternal torment, unless another life can be found. Zahara realized the old woman duped her. She went into the caravan . . . .”

  As the old man talked, I saw it. Zahara claimed the hand of the dead and was suddenly overwhelmed by the knowledge of a terrible secret. I sensed Zahara’s frenzied panic: she’d cut her own hand off, healed herself, then had a terrifying vision of what her own death would be like. She felt her coffin swaying as the gypsies carried it to her grave and lowered her down inside, heard the thick clots of earth covering the casket, heard the muffled sound of their footsteps moving away in the sunlight while she lay buried in the cold earth, the flesh falling from her hands, her mouth locked in a silent scream, while her mind churned endlessly in the cramped space where she lay paralyzed, trapped.

  Through Joseph, I saw her creeping into Anyeta’s wagon, jerking the covers back from the sleeping figure. Zahara raised the knife-blade. “You lied to me,” she screamed at Anyeta, “I didn’t know what it was!” She plunged the knife into the dying woman’s breast and belly, dragging it through the puffy flesh. Anyeta’s black eyes jerked op
en, her hands fluttered around the haft of the twisting bloody blade. The glittering knife rose and fell over and over.

  “Die, I want you to die, you goddamn bitch! Betrayer! You’ll go into the ground a stinking, rotting corpse. Suffer throughout eternity, awake, aware in torment,” Zahara shrieked.

  I saw blood fly up, spatter her clothes, her face. Zahara’s breath came heavily. She threw the dripping knife aside, it clattered on the floor. She stood panting, staring at the ruined corpse. One arm came up, she wiped her mouth, smudging the blood across her lips. Reflex, impulse, habit. Her tongue swiped at her moist salty lips, and in the instant, she staggered back, stunned, felt the change, heard Anyeta’s mocking voice inside her head, the shrill trumpeting laugh of triumph.

  I can make you do what I want, whenever I want. I own you, girl.

  Zahara screamed, her hands flew up to her ears, trying to shut out the voice. She clamped her eyes shut but she couldn’t shut out the picture. She could see Anyeta capering, gloating, see the old sorceress as if the two of them stood side by side before a mirror in an empty room.

  Who owns the hand of the dead can take a life; I sighed. Zahara had killed the old woman in a fit of vengeance, hadn’t known it was the most dangerous thing she could do, and Anyeta’s spirit had found its way inside her.

  “There was no scar on Zahara’s wrist,” I pondered aloud. I felt Constantin’s hand clamp my arm.

  Joseph said, “There was no Zahara, not really. She was weak-willed from the beginning. Anyeta just sucked her up over time, drained her dry, and made herself stronger in the process. My boy, you were sleeping with the old sorceress whore herself.”