The Sick Stuff (9 page)

"We'll see about that," was all Tanya had
said as she stuffed the barbed and buckled contraption into the
overnight bag and made her exit, still dressed in the garb of a
dominatrix.

A month had gone by without incident. Life
returned to normal for him and Buddy. Nelson was sure that Tanya
had forgotten about him and found herself another pathetic victim
to torment. But he was unaware that he had made a horrible mistake.
He had neglected to get his house key back from the woman.

Then, scarcely a week ago, the night of the
seductress's wicked fury took place.

Nelson had fallen asleep watching TV, but he
awoke abruptly when a weight on his chest forced him into groggy
wakefulness. Tanya straddled his torso. She was dressed in the same
leather costume she had sported the night he had banished her from
his home.

He could not see her face; it was in dark
silhouette against the pale glow of the television. But he could
imagine her features -- skeletal and leering, twisted with an evil
satisfaction at having caught him off guard. Then Nelson saw the
object in her hand. It flickered like silver fire between her long,
black-nailed fingers. He yelled out and raised his hands in
defense, but the straight razor swept down furiously, slicing
cleanly through the meat of his palms, then past his flailing arms
toward his face. Nelson gasped as the blade bit into the flesh of
his forehead, cheeks, and jaw. Blood spurted, filling his eyes and
blinding him.

Nelson knew he must escape the cruel bite of
the razor. He grabbed Tanya and tried to throw her off. But she
clung firmly to his struggling body, her long legs entwined around
his lower back, the spiked heels impaling him like angry spurs. She
laughed insanely, her free hand reaching for the nightstand.
Something hard and heavy smashed into his temple with devastating
force, sending him sinking swiftly toward oblivion. He later
realized that she had used the heavy glass ashtray to render him
unconscious.

He had no idea how long he was lost in that
velvet black void. He remembered waking up once to find himself
tangled in agony and blood-soaked sheets, and recalled reaching for
the phone and dialing 911. He had lapsed into darkness again, and
awoke a second time, finding several paramedics standing over him,
trying desperately to stem the flow of blood.

There had been a policeman there, too,
telling him that Tanya was gone.

And that she had taken little Buddy with
her.

Two days after Nelson had delivered the
ransom to Tanya beneath the park bandstand, a UPS truck pulled up
outside his house. The driver -- a lanky acne-pocked fellow dressed
in dark brown -- strolled up the front walk and rang the doorbell.
Nelson was there, wrenching the door open before the man could
press the button a second time.

There was a cardboard box tucked beneath his
arm.

"I have a package for Nelson Trulane," he
said.

"That's me," replied Nelson, his voice a
harsh whisper.

Soon, the truck was roaring down the street
and Nelson was left standing on the front porch, holding the box.
Numbly, he stepped inside and closed the door, then walked slowly
down the hallway to the kitchen.

He set the box on the wooden chopping block
and stared at it for a long time. The shipping label had a return
name and address, but the name -- Maria De Sade -- was obviously
bogus, and a cruel joke as well. The handwriting was the same as
that on the ransom note.

Nelson took a carving knife from the rack on
the kitchen counter and held the thin blade poised over the box,
afraid to do what he knew he must. Then he sliced into the packing
tape, parting it with one stroke. As he laid the knife aside and
opened the flaps of the box, the smell of decay snaked into his
nostrils.

Inside the carton was a trash bag; the shiny
black kind that you line your garbage can with. Whatever exuded the
awful odor, was concealed in the inner folds of the bag. Again, he
took the knife. With tears welling in his eyes, Nelson slit the
black plastic from one end to the other.

He parted the trash bag. A cry of intense
anguish rose from his throat, filling his mouth, then the air
beyond. Soon, every room in the house rang with Nelson Trulane's
horrified screams.

Tanya's razor had done a thorough job on
little Buddy. Nelson recoiled at first, turning away from the sight
of slashed and bloodless flesh. But, soon, his love for Buddy
conquered his squeamishness and he reached into the box. Buddy's
skin was cold to the touch. Nelson was certain that it had been
that way for quite some time.

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.

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.