The Gentling Box Read online

  I agreed. Our childhood landscapes have that power over us, and seeing the place that was home cracked and ruined is like feeling your insides blocked with the weight of hard gray stone. “Let’s go,” I whispered, thinking this was making Mimi more and more uneasy. “If you stay longer, this will be the memory you take away with you.”

  She sat heavily on a bench that had been built into the kitchen wall. “They left her to die, the least I can do is straighten the place and sweep it out.”

  “Mimi,” I said gently, sitting down and taking her hand, “after they bury her, they’re going to burn the caravan.”

  “Yag,” she said, repeating the word for fire in Romany. Her fingers were cold against my palm, she took her hand away and stood up. “You go to Lenore, I’ll just carry the mess to the loft, sweep. A few minutes—no more.”

  I thought I understood. Anyeta had been cruel, but to leave the place in such a shambles would disgrace a beast.

  Mimi kissed my cheek, pulled me up. “Go on,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

  I was on my feet, nodding agreeably when Joseph’s warning flashed through me. If they catch her alone, there’s going to be a lot of ugliness. Anxiety darted through me. I was her husband, but suppose they thought that was the same or worse than her being alone. I should’ve brought Joseph along, I railed inwardly; too late now. I sat down, folded my arms. “I’ll wait, but be quick about it.”

  Mimi found a broom, opened the door and began sweeping a great cloud of dust outside. I yawned, leaned my head on my chest. I remembered thinking—only half-humorously—that I hoped no one broke a leg or had a heart attack while we were still inside the old woman’s caravan. I peeked at the corpse under my lashes, then drifted toward a light sleep.

  ***

  “Goddamn them to hell!” Mimi shouted.

  I snapped awake. The door was ajar, a great deal of the mess had been tidied.

  “Those bastards!” Mimi stood holding the bedcovers in one hand, blocking my view of the body.

  “What, what is it?” I got to my feet, my spine crickled and snapped, I moved quickly toward the bed at the same time a great racking sob burst from Mimi. She dropped the covers and shrank against the wall, shaking her head in disbelief.

  Suddenly she rushed forward again, crying, “Bastards, bastards. Christ, oh Christ!” She jerked the covers back and pummeled the bed with her fists, jouncing the body. She slumped to her knees, then sat heavily, clinging to one of the drapes. I saw it strain against the rail at the top of the bed, then plummet in a heap between her hands. “Pull up her nightdress and look,” she said in a thick voice.

  I tweezed the thin garment between my fingers, and slid it up the old woman’s wrinkled flesh. My stomach tightened, I heard the blood singing in my ears.

  Above the shrunken cleft of her sex, in the center of her abdomen was a series of long jagged knife marks, as if someone had dragged the knife from her breasts to her belly over and over and over. Dark crusty blood clotted the wounds.

  “She was murdered,” Mimi whispered from what seemed far away. “They murdered her.”

  -7-

  “There’s no blood on the sheets,” I said. Someone had sponged and dressed the body, arranged it under the quilt; I felt my eye twitch, and before I could stop myself, I said, “Now it makes sense, Joseph was afraid you’d find out.”

  “What?” I heard her scrabbling, getting to her feet. She moved rapidly across the room, shook my shoulder hard. “What did you say?”

  “Joseph—he—”

  “He what? Don’t stop, go on—”

  “He told me not to let you come in here alone,” I said quietly. “He knew, but I don’t think he did it.” My mind jumped to the image of Constantin, the dangling chains. I told Mimi about him. I sat down on the wooden bench, rubbing my hands over my thighs, trying to think. “Suppose Constantin cut her up, he’s crazy, so he’s not responsible. Joseph finds out—he’s not trying to protect Constantin—only spare you.”

  Mimi flared. “And they hated her, and she was dying anyway, so if someone killed her, so what?” Her eyes glowed hotly, she paced rapidly, skirts swirling.

  “Of course not,” I said, wanting to tell her I was sad for her.

  “Look at her arms.” Mimi seized one limp hand. “No marks,” she said, letting it fall. “She never had a chance, she didn’t defend herself. They came at her when she was sleeping.” Mimi shook her head, then suddenly she was kneeling between my legs, looking up at me.

  “Imre, don’t you see? It wasn’t a madman, it was someone cunning. Someone who knew we were on our way and killed her before she could tell me—”

  “Shhh.” I grabbed Mimi’s arm, heard the sound of someone clumping through the weeds. “Someone’s coming.” I pushed at her, we scurried up into the rickety loft, laying flat on the floor behind a tower of footlockers and boxes.

  “We can’t see,” Mimi whispered in my ear. But the door was opening, and I didn’t think we should risk creeping forward to peer over the edge.

  I closed my eyes, listening for sounds—a heavy tread to indicate a man, the sweep of skirts. But whoever entered stood silently in the middle of the room. I could imagine the gypsy looking at the disheveled corpse, at Mimi’s work with the broom, wondering if we were still inside, and I expected to hear an earthy chuckle, slow stealthy steps advancing up the stairs.

  Instead, the room was plunged in cold darkness—as quick and sudden as nightfall in winter, and I felt Mimi shrink against me.

  There was a tinkling of glass—windowpanes being shattered one by one in a dread sequence coursing around the room. The wind gusted up. I heard the cupboard doors flying back, the sound of bottles ringing against each other and falling, of the bedcurtains sailing high and brushing the wood ceiling, and I knew something evil had swept in and stood waiting below us.

  I heard a low menacing laugh. “Rise,” a sexless voice whispered. “Rise,” it intoned, and then a kind of brittle excitement infused the voice. “Rise!”

  I buried my face against Mimi, trying to shut out sounds: the slow terrible hissing cataract of the falling bedclothes, the double thump of stiff wooden feet striking the floorboards and in my mind I could see the corpse—as pale as the lank white hair that streamed from its head—standing awkwardly in the center of the room and staring blankly with its good eye.

  “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,” the voice recited, and the words sank like acid in my flesh.

  I sensed the gypsy was watching, waiting.

  Then I heard the creaking sound of Anyeta’s jaw dropping: “As you have restored mine,” she said, and her voice was utterly empty, desolate. “Ask what you will.”

  My heart began to beat with a huge hollow resonance.

  “Ask,” she said again, and her breath whistled out of her chest in a high thin screeing—like the eerie moaning of winter wind swirling over rooftops—in the cold, nightfilled room.

  -8-

  “Nooooo!” Mimi screamed, and I felt her scrambling beside me. The footlocker slid forward, the boxes trembled as she lurched forward and struggled to her feet. I was up in an instant. We heard the boxes teeter and crash below. The caravan was suddenly filled with a thick bone-chilling mist. I peered over the edge and saw a white figure—the same I’d seen at the sight of the crash, I thought—receding through the door. The fog thinned, and now I could see the corpse toppled on the floor, one of the heavy wooden boxes rocking lightly against the body.

  Mimi trembled against my chest. “Obscene,” she wailed. “Imre, it was so obscene.”

  I put my hand in her dark hair, soothing her. She pulled away, looked up at me. Her eyes were dull with shock, and it frightened me. I leaned to kiss her or maybe take her face in my hands to let her know I was there, that she mattered. My thumb strayed to the angle of her small jaw, and with the caress I saw something flicker in her eyes. A
kind of painful knowledge swept across her face.

  She moaned, her hands covered her eyes, and then slowly she lowered the left—the one with the old scar—and stared at it. “I knew,” she said in a dusky voice. “I knew. My mother caught me the first time, and she burned my hand against the kettle, but after that I was more careful, and I watched her, and I saw where she hid the glass-topped box.” Mimi’s gaze went to the ceiling. She nudged a crate into place and climbed up, then leaned out over the loft and tapped at a board in the ceiling. “See the marks.”

  Under the coating of soot and grime was the outline of a small rectangle cut into the panel over Mimi’s head. She was straining to push at it. The sawed rectangle suddenly yielded, disappearing into the dark hole. She gave a little gasp, and I was afraid she’d fall. I darted toward her, clasping her around her thighs, my face buried in her skirts. “For God’s sake, be careful,” I said.

  Above me I heard her saying the same words over and over into the dim recess. “My mother meant me to have it.” Her voice had a peculiar lilt—like that of a miser, whispering and sifting through his gold. She went on tiptoe, her hands flailing inside the small space. “The hand of the dead belongs to me.”

  A shudder racked me, and without thinking I pulled her down from the box. She cried out. I saw she’d skinned one wrist against the sharp edge of the panel. She stumbled against me, stepping on my ankles and feet, throwing us both off balance, but I had her now by one arm and I righted us.

  “What are you doing?” she said fiercely, trying to pull her hand out of my grasp. I held on.

  “Obscene,” I whispered. “You said it yourself.” I jerked my chin toward the corpse. “Is that what you want?” She began to struggle toward the crate, crying for me to let her go, and I lifted her up and carried her down the stairs.

  I set her on her feet, held on to her arm, made her look at the graceless, crumpled body lying gape-jawed like a mechanical toy that spent its gears and collapsed.

  “That’s what you want to wind up?” I asked, panting heavily.

  “The hand can bring healing,” she said calmly, and I felt her muscles slacken under my grip. I let go and she stood quietly.

  “Leave it alone.” The gypsies would burn the caravan, and with it the savage charm.

  “All right, Imre,” she sighed, but I saw her eyes lift toward the cutout in the ceiling.

  I put my arm around her and led her toward the door. She suddenly stopped near the threshold. “The box isn’t there,” she whispered. “Someone took it.”

  “I imagine the woman—whoever she was—thought she’d use it for good, too—” I began.

  “I saw a man in here.”

  “It was a woman with dark hair in a white dress.”

  Mimi shook her head. “Visions, confusion, it’s part of the power—” She stopped. “It was Joseph. He knew we were watching. He wanted me to know he claimed it. Imre, please, just let me look once more—”

  “No—”

  “Just to see if it’s really gone,” Mimi pleaded, and all at once I saw a way to end it.

  “All right,” I nodded. “But you’re too short, you’ll kill yourself leaning out over the loft.” I started for the stairs, moved along the edge. I could see there’d been a railing at one time to prevent falls. The small round dents where the spindles had rested were obvious; some of the boards had a splintered, powdery look and it occurred to me they might be rotted. We’d been lucky—with two of us up there we could’ve collapsed the whole structure.

  I began to move carefully, testing for mushy places. I stepped over the pile of sheets, and now I saw they were stiff, streaked with dried blood. Hidden by whoever killed Anyeta, I thought. The boards moaned under my heels.

  I realigned the crate Mimi had used, stepped onto it and palmed the ceiling. Then I leaned over the edge of the loft and felt inside the cutout with my right hand. The first thing I touched was the rectangle Mimi had pushed aside, and I nudged it lightly with my fingertips. I stretched further out, my weight shifting to the arm that was shoved inside the hole, my mind spinning with irritation. I wondered how the hell the old woman had reached it.

  “Is it there?” Mimi called from down below, startling me, and I tottered, felt my heart rattle, then caught myself.

  “Doesn’t seem to be,” I said. It came out neutral enough, but a spurt of annoyance rushed through me. I was up here doing what she wanted, couldn’t she just let me do it without hocketing at me on top of it all? Buggerandsod, I thought, tell her the thing’s gone and get down. I danced my fingers around for effect.

  “No.” I shook my head and glanced down at her upturned face. “Not here.” I prepared to shift my weight back. I leaned, withdrawing my hand carefully, and that was when I felt it.

  The copper side was slick, loathsome, but I felt a strange longing to touch it again. I paused, and my fingers crept toward it. It gave off some odd vibration—a low persistent hum I sensed rather than heard—and my fingertips began to tingle.

  I brushed the cold greasy surface of the box, and the tender skin of the quicks throbbed the way they do when your fingernail suddenly shears off. I drew my hand back, the pain dulled. My brain pulsed, I felt a power that reviled and drew me, like the sickening sensation of holding ice against the hot battered fingers you’ve slammed hard in a door. I wanted the copper box with the glass top and yet I wished it were a thousand miles away instead of idling on the edge of my grasp.

  “Imre,” Mimi began, and I wondered if she’d seen me hesitate, seen the mix of fear and wonder on my face, and guessed. “Imre,” she said again, and I heard the hush of caution in her voice at the same time I was aware of the steadily increasing sound of wood and metal giving way.

  I turned my head, saw the breach: The floor of the loft dipped alarmingly, exposing a series of bent nails driven into the wall. There was a groan, a ripping sound, the loft swayed.

  “It’s coming down!” Mimi shrieked.

  I swung out over the space, the box skittered deeper into the recess. Behind me I heard the loft splinter and crash. The ceiling was thin, I knew it wouldn’t hold me. “Move, move!” I shouted, and let go.

  I landed badly, the bottoms of my feet stung like fire. I lost my balance, tumbling backward. A jagged piece of the ceiling plummeted and struck my knee.

  Mimi was at my side helping me to my feet, pulling me toward the front of the caravan.

  I looked back. The other end of the wagon was a crazy litter of boxes, rubble, sifting dustmotes. The bed was demolished; its dirty drapes lay in a flummox of wood and fabric. One leg of the corpse stuck out from under a broken board. I didn’t care if they left the old woman to burn in her caravan or dragged her out of the mess.

  My eye went to the crushed stairs, then up to the torn ceiling. No one can get at the filthy thing now, I thought. My head throbbed at the memory of how the charm enticed me like a siren song and made me yearn for it. I saw Mimi standing on the crate, whispering My mother meant me to have it and realized it had drawn her with deadly fascination when she reached for it. I was sick, thinking I’d touched the slippery box.

  I moved toward the threshold gingerly, conscious of the sharp pain in my feet, and I wondered if I’d managed to break one or both arches when I jumped from the loft. My boots seemed tight, the stiff leather pressing on swollen flesh. I limped a little, and it felt good. I eased myself down the first step. “C’mon,” I called over my shoulder, and I turned to see her gazing up at the ceiling.

  “He tried to kill you,” Mimi said.

  I shook my head. “The whole place is falling apart.”

  “It’s there,” she said, “I sense it.” Her eyes were riveted on the ragged hole.

  A wave of guilt rushed through me, my throat tightened. “There was no copper box,” I said in a thin papery voice.

  “How did you know it was made of copper?” she asked, staring at me. I looked away.

  “Please,” I said, “let’s go before someone sees us.” It was near
ly sunset now; the men would be returning to camp, the women bustling around cookfires.

  Mimi shut the yellow door, then hooked her arm in mine and let me use her shoulder for support. We ambled down the steps. I was relieved to see the clearing was deserted. A dog barked in the distance. At the entrance to our caravan, Mimi stopped and looked back. Anyeta’s wagon was a dark monolith in the dying light.

  “It can be used for healing.” A little sighing breath heaved out of her. She stuck her hand out briefly—palm up, waist high—and I saw the old scar in the center of her hand, the raw abrasion on her wrist. For the first time I wondered if she’d scraped herself on a sharp corner of the box, not the wooden edge of the cutaway, and whether, like some deadly infection, its power was working inside her.

  I wanted to look at her face but I didn’t. I knew her violet eyes held an odd capering light, and I knew its source. After all, the lure of the box was strong.

  -9-

  “Where’s Lenore?” I asked, brushing through the green drapes that separated our daughter’s sleeping compartment from the main part of the caravan. I was in the kitchen area, I could see clear to the other end, down the two short steps to our bedchamber.

  Mimi’s back was to me, and she was rummaging through one of the kitchen cupboards. “There was a gang of kids outside earlier, she’s probably with them.”

  “I didn’t see anyone out there,” I said.

  She shrugged, pulled out a roll of gauze, and patted a wooden chair, motioning for me to sit. Away from the old woman’s caravan and the savage charm, she seemed more at ease, more her self, I thought with relief.

  I pulled off my boots, a pair of wool socks, and we both looked my feet over. She handed me a jar of salve and wincing, I rubbed it on my feet.

  “Hurt much?” Mimi asked, probing lightly with two gentle fingers.