The Sick Stuff (11 page)

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Quentin. "Pray...
continue."

Trevor did so, although with no pleasure.
"After his death, about the time of the conflict at Gettysburg, our
own individual curses came to be revealed. My putrescent state of
decay, poor Isabella's monthly bleeding, and your own nasty
condition. Our mother however, did not seem to suffer. She remained
in her room upstairs, indulging in brandy and narcotics, with the
door firmly barred and locked. And there she remained, until the
curse of Mojo Mama finally came calling on her in the dead of
night. But I have no need to speak further. You were here, in this
very house, during that grisly discovery at the stroke of
midnight."

Quentin shuddered at the thought. But he did
not wish to dwell on his mother's death at that moment. Rather he
was intent on finding a solution to the dire situation they now
endured. "I shall go to Mojo Mama and reason with her. I will try
to convince her that we, as children of the Deveroux name, had
nothing to do with her son's murder. Shall I saddle a horse so that
you may accompany me?"

Trevor laughed bitterly. "Are you mad? Me,
leave the confines of this house? Why, the beasts of the swamp --
the boars and the buzzards, the gators and the gars-- would lay
waste to my decaying carcass before I rode a quarter mile into the
bayou. It would be certain death for me!"

Quentin knew that his brother was correct. To
take him into the swamp would be like ringing the dinner bell for
every hungry creature south of the canebrake. He stood and went to
a side table. Opening an upper drawer, he took out a Colt Navy
revolver that he had taken off the body of a dead Yankee following
the Battle of Stones River. He checked the cylinder of the
36-caliber pistol. It was packed with powder and lead, and primed
with percussion caps.

"Then I shall go alone and take my chances,"
he said boldly, gathering his nerve. "We must have relief from this
ungodly curse!"

Trevor sighed. "The only relief we shall
find, dear brother, is in Death's firm grasp. I grow weary and pray
for it to come soon."

Quentin ignored his sibling's dark mood,
shaking his head in resignation as Trevor turned back to the fire.
If his brother was unwilling to reason with the old witch, then it
was up to Quentin to go on his behalf. As he left the parlor, he
turned to find that Trevor had stuck his head into the leaping wall
of flames. He did not die, but screamed as the meat of his face and
tongue blackened into living, breathing ash.

~ * ~

Daylight darkened into twilight as Quentin
Deveroux rode along a narrow path through the heart of the swamp.
His horse -- who had weathered calvary charges, cannon blasts, and
the cries of dying soldiers -- was skittish amid the dense thicket
and the water-logged columns of cypress shrouded with stringy, gray
moss. The bayou was heavy with unfamiliar sounds, as well. The
crying of loons, the rustling of unseen creatures in the brush, and
the distant bellowing of bull gators in search of their mates... or
an unwary meal.

As Quentin rode along the trail, he recalled
the night of his mother's death. It had been a humid evening, so
sweltering that nearly every window in the house had to be opened.
Still, there was no breeze and nary a current of fetid air stirred.
It was as though the wind waited, expectantly, for some horrible
event to occur before daring to ruffle a shred of curtain or cool
the heat-dampened skin of a single inhabitant.

Quentin had lain in his bed, bathed in sweat,
unable to sleep. Trevor and Isabella had retired early, dealing
with their own private portions of the Deveroux curse. Quentin
could feel worms, beetles, and only God knew what else scampering
through his intestines. They moved, en masse, through the moist,
warm darkness of his bowels, searching for a single ray of light
that might provide direction to the outside world. But there was no
moon that night. It was pitch black and his internal tormentors had
no such luck.

It was nearing the hour of midnight, when he
heard sounds echoing from the west wing of the mansion... where his
mother's bedroom was located. They were not the fitful thrashings
of a nightmare or the tearful grief a widow might express at the
loss of her husband. No, these were low moans and purring sighs;
the kind that suggested a passionate coupling. At first he thought
that Rosealynda was pleasuring herself. She indulged in the act and
with great abandon, when she drank heavily. But, no, Quentin could
also discern the creaking of the bed frame, as if tested by some
vast weight. He turned over on his pillow, intending to drive the
shameful sounds from his ears, when they turned from pleasure to
pain. His mother began to scream, crying for mercy, pleading for
her attacker to stop. But the creaking of the bed continued. The
ornately-carved headboard struck the wall behind it, again and
again, rending delicate French wallpaper and battering plaster into
dust.

Trevor and Isabella joined him in the
hallway. By candlelight, they ran down the upstairs corridor,
toward the western wing. A scream of immeasurable torment rang
throughout the house, but grew silent as they reached the door of
Rosealynda's bedroom. They found the door locked and barred from
the inside. It took them several minutes to find something heavy
and sturdy enough to batter the oaken door from its frame, but
eventually they succeeded.

When they entered the room, candles held
before them, they made a discovery that would haunt them the rest
of their lives. Their beloved mother lay limply across the
blood-soaked bed. She was naked; her once-beautiful face now a
rictus of horror and agony. Her pale abdomen had burst from crotch
to breastbone, as though she had been split open from the inside
out.

They had rushed to the open window to see a
huge form, dark and glistening with sweat, running across the lawn,
toward the black expanse of the swamp. The three thought that the
lack of nocturnal light was playing tricks on their eyes. The
escaping attacker seemed to possess nothing above his broad,
muscular shoulders.

Since that night, Quentin and his siblings
had not had an easy moment and their individual shares of the
Deveroux Curse seemed to grow stronger and more relentless. Now,
heading into the swamp on a mission, Quentin hoped to end their
distress once and for all.

The pathway gradually widened into a clearing
and, suddenly, he found himself before the tin and tarpaper shack
of Mojo Mama. The sagging porch of the structure bore fronds of
dried herbs and swamp plants; obviously the ingredients to the
various potions and poultices that she concocted. The tanned hides
of rabbits, possums, and raccoons hung, stretched, across the outer
walls of the old shack, along with the skins of critters that he
could notidentify.

He reined his horse to a halt and swung down
from the saddle. "Come out here, old woman!" he demanded. "I am
here to have words with you!"

For a moment, he thought that she was not
there. Then the door of weathered planks swung back on leather
hinges and she appeared.

"I believe I smell the stench of Deveroux in
the air."

Mojo Mama was far from the imposing figure he
expected to find. She was small and frail, no more than five feet
tall, dressed in ragged clothing and a dark blue bandana around the
crown of her head. She was old -- at least in her eighties -- and as
wrinkled and lined as the bark of an ancient tree. Only her eyes
looked bright and youthful, twinkling with both malice and
amusement as she regarded him.

"I've come to -- " Quentin began.

"Beg for my mercy?" she asked. "If that be
so, you'd best get on back home to your suffering. The curse I've
cast upon the house of Deveroux stands... and always shall
stand."

The old woman's proclamation enraged Quentin.
He started forward, his hands balled into angry fists. "Now, see
here, witch! Can we not bargain for a resolution to this damnable
grudge of yours?"

Mojo Mama laughed and smiled, revealing
toothless gums as blue as a skink's tail. "Bargain? Did your
hot-headed fool of a father give my poor Jonathan such a choice
when he found him with your whore of a mother? Did he show
compassion before he swung that broad-axe and cleaved my son's head
from his shoulders?" She pointed toward the side of the yard with a
gnarled finger. A wooden headstone stood in the weeds beneath a
weeping willow tree. "All that he left for me to commend to earth
lies there, severed and burnt, in the soil."

Quentin attempted to calm down and reason
with her. "I promise, I will help you locate the rest of your son's
remains, if only you will --"

Mojo Mama grinned and idly fingered a dried
chicken foot that hung from a lanyard of gator teeth around her
scrawny neck. "Oh, the remains of my beloved Jonathan are around
here somewheres... lurking, hiding....
watching.
"

The young man's anger flared once again.
"You'd best not play games with me, bitch, or I'll -- "

Eyes gleaming, Mojo Mama raised her left
hand, her dark fingers curled toward the night sky. "Or you'll
what
, young Deveroux?"

Without warning, a horrible pain shot
throughout Quentin. It was an agony unlike any he had ever felt
before. Something long and sinuous began to travel up from the
depths of his stomach, filling his throat and forcing itself into
his mouth. Quentin fell to his knees and retched. In horror, he
watched as the head of a snake pushed past his lips. It contorted
within him as it struggled for escape. Soon, the last of it left
him and dropped on the ground. It was a copperhead, perhaps two
feet in length. It hissed at him with venomous fangs, then
slithered off into the darkness of the swamp.

"Do you wish for me to conjure another?" she
asked cruelly. "A rattler or a cottonmouth perhaps? You hold more
than you could ever imagine."

Quentin staggered to his feet, his throat raw
and bloody with the serpent's passage. "Why do you torment us so?
We had nothing to do with our parents' sins. Why do you not leave
us be?"

"Because you are Deveroux," she said firmly.
"And, as long as I hold breath in my lungs, you shall know the
horrors of Satan's lot within your own treacherous bodies."

"Then your lungs and yourself be damned!"
declared Quentin. Angrily, he drew the Navy revolver from beneath
his coat and thumbed back the hammer.

The witch simply stood there as he emptied
the contents of the .36 pistol into her chest. She wavered on her
feet for a long second, smiling at him as she belched blood and
bullet-shredded tissue. Then she dropped to the boards of the
porch, never to move again.

That should be it then, he told himself with
satisfaction. With the witch dead, then the curse shall be no
more.

Quentin Deveroux stepped into a stirrup of
the gelding's saddle and swung astride. He looked at the crumpled
form of Mojo Mama one last time, then with a scowl, headed back
toward the bayou trail.

An hour passed. Two. Quentin began to realize
that he had somehow taken a wrong turn. He was lost in the
dangerous darkness of the swamp with no idea of where he was. The
Deveroux plantation was to the north, but he could no longer
discern which direction was which. The pale orb of a full moon hung
overhead, visible through the Spanish moss and the gnarled limbs of
the cypress trees, but somehow it seemed to shift at random,
providing no aid to his bearings.

As he rode through a tall stand of wild
canebrake, he suddenly heard the sound of something behind him. It
was the noise of bare feet in the brush, moving stealthily like a
cat. But he knew that it was no feline who pursued him. Its size
was immense as it picked its way through the stand of bamboo. And
that was not all that he heard. With the sound of footsteps came a
peculiar whistling noise... like air forced through a narrow, wet
opening.

Quentin urged his horse onward. The gelding
grew skittish in the darkness, unable to see where it was going.
The canebrake grew thicker, pressing in on the trail like opposing
walls, making it difficult to navigate. The young man strained his
ears for sound. He was thankful to find that he could no longer
hear the sound of the footsteps... as well as the moist wheezing that
accompanied them.

"Let's take leave of this damned place and
get back home," he told his horse soothingly. His eyes peered into
the darkness, trying to gauge his surroundings in the pale
moonlight.

Abruptly, they were set upon. From out of the
canebrake, two dark arms extended. Strong hands -- calloused from
grueling work at the urging whip of the overseer -- grasped the
throat of the gelding. With a powerful yank, the horse's neck was
broken. Its eyes rolled into the back of its head and it dropped to
its side, pinning Quentin Deveroux underneath.

Frightened, he struggled to pull himself
free. He looked around frantically, but the arms of the demon in
the canebrake had disappeared.

With some effort, Quentin managed to wiggle
from beneath the weight of the dead animal. But something was wrong
with his leg. He shrieked as he attempted to stand. Quentin looked
down to see a jagged shard of bone protruding through his trousers,
just below the knee.

He tried several times to walk, but fell each
time. "Lord help me!" he cried out, teeth clenched against the
agony that throbbed through his shattered shinbone. "Please...
deliver me from this hellhole."

Slowly, he began to crawl on his hands and
knees along the muddy pathway between the towering stalks of sugar
cane. It was slow going... one torturous inch at a time. Once a swamp
adder slithered across his path, scarcely a foot from his nose. He
nearly screamed, but he knew he didn't dare. It would only alert
his whereabouts to the wild creatures and gators who hunted in
darkness, searching for a helpless morsel such as himself.