A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters (28 page)

“Kaylee, don’t touch that.” She pointed at the captured snake.

Kaylee nodded. True to her word, she did not touch it, but she did stare at the creature moving around inside it.

It took Melinda thirty minutes to hoist Paige back into her wheelchair. Paige grew heavier by the day, it seemed, even as her mother aged. The lack of tone in her limbs made it a race to fasten the straps before she slipped out and had to be lifted again. Finally, sweating and tired, Melinda got Paige secured and wheeled her toward the house. “Leave the snake; I’ll take care of it. Time to go inside.”

Reluctantly, Kaylee followed. Melinda knew her younger daughter would have liked to play outside for hours, but she had grown so used to Paige’s schedule that she did not bother to complain. It often took hours to feed the older girl; she drooled, swallowed slowly, and choked often, even on baby food. It took many jars to satisfy the appetite of a ten-year-old girl. Six hour- long meals a day cut deeply into their schedule.

Melinda wheeled Paige to the table and instructed Kaylee to sit in her chair as well. Then, she rushed upstairs and unlocked the gun case. In the days since she had shot the bull snake, she had handled the Mossberg 12-gauge enough to understand loading and unloading, the safety, and the bolt action. She had found the shells her husband had left and loaded three into the magazine. Shifting one into the chamber, she took it downstairs and outside to the container, where the snake hammered its nose against the plastic in obvious frustration and anger.

You have to leave it exactly where you found it,
the man had said. Melinda intended to do so. But he had not said what had to happen afterward. Cautiously, Melinda pulled off the lid. Holding it as far away from herself as possible, she dumped the snake onto the imprint left by Paige’s body in the grass.
Exactly where we found you.
She expected the snake to race away in the opposite direction. But, to her surprise, it whipped around toward her and coiled. She raised the gun and thumbed the safety, believing the movement alone would send it skittering. Instead, it hurtled toward her.

She pulled the trigger.

 

As Melinda described it later to her ex- husband and father, the snake died of “high-speed lead poisoning.” She expected them to chuckle, to praise her ability to handle a crisis without upsetting the girls or anyone coming to harm. Instead, they both expressed dismay and discomfort, each in his own way. Mike volunteered to search the entire property and to place a low fence to deter snakes from crossing the road, which she politely declined. Her father’s reaction surprised her more. He insisted on coming over, a two- hour drive, despite her protests; and he brought her mother’s Great Aunt Ruth with him. Melinda could not recall the last time she had seen her great-great aunt; the woman had to be in her nineties.

For a time, father and aunt reacquainted with Melinda and the girls, speaking of school, the past, and weather. But, when the girls went down for the night, the conversation changed abruptly. The adults retired to the living room, the television off, shoving aside Legos and a host of developmental toys and therapy objects. Melinda sat on one couch, her father and aunt on the other.

Her father sighed deeply, clearly intending to raise a matter of great import. “Melinda, honey, I had hoped to spare you this information.” He glanced at Aunt Ruth, who said nothing. She was short and deeply wrinkled, her hair thin and white. Her mouth pursed, her eyes recessed into folds, her expression gave away nothing. “Your mother’s family carries . . . a curse.”

Melinda turned her father a twisted expression of scorn. A molecular biologist, he believed in nothing supernatural. Or so she had always thought. “A curse,” she repeated dubiously. Her brows rose in increments. “A curse?”

Her father chewed his lower lip. “I know it sounds insane. I didn’t believe it until . . . until your mother . . .”

Mother.
Now, he had Melinda’s full attention. She had barely known the woman, who had died of a heart attack when Melinda was a child. As it clearly pained her father to talk about her mother, Melinda had learned to remain silent on the matter. “. . . died?” she inserted.

Her father nodded. “She was so . . . so young.”

“Thirty-one.” Melinda knew that much. Now that she had passed the same age, it seemed like an impossibility.
How does a healthy woman of barely three decades develop heart disease so severe.
She had seen pictures of her mother: smiling, slender, full of life.

Father seemed to read Melinda’s mind. “She knew the stories of her bloodline, had lived in dread of them since childhood. When the snake appeared—”

Melinda interrupted. “What snake?” It was the first time a snake had ever entered the story.

“A simple garter snake.” Her father buried his face in his hands. “Completely harmless, yet she knew what had to come. And her heart could not take it.” He peeked at Melinda through his fingers. “Melinda, honey, your mother died of stark and horrible terror. Nothing more. I tried rescue breathing. I tried to bring her back, but I . . . just . . . couldn’t.”

Melinda had never blamed him. Now, she felt nothing but confusion. “What? She died because she saw a . . . a garter snake?”

Her father only nodded. Aunt Ruth’s head bobbed as well, rhythmically and silently.

“Why?”

Father spoke through poorly suppressed tears. “She had seen the curse take her own mother and knew what was coming.”

Dread crawled through Melinda, but she said nothing.

“I thought it best not to tell you,” he sobbed. “I worried you might live a life in fear, that you might react the way she did. The curse often skips generations. At times, it seems to disappear. Your mother hoped it was a legend, tried to believe it did not exist, that neither she nor you would have to deal with it.”

Melinda did not know whether to laugh or cry. If he believed the curse a hoax, why bother her with it now? If he believed it true, why wait until she had daughters of her own to infect as well? “Dad, this is insane.”

“Not insane!” Ruth spat out in heavily accented English.

Melinda felt a spark of guilt that she could not identify the accent. She knew her mother’s family originated in an area that had frequently changed hands: Austria, Hungary, or, perhaps, Poland at the time.

“The curse is real, and it will kill you all if you don’t take heed.”

The old woman’s tone sent a shiver through Melinda. She could almost imagine Ruth placing the curse upon her, if it did not already exist.

“It is called the
broch de shlang,
the serpent’s curse, and it has plagued our family for so long that no one knows the insult that brought it down upon us.” Ruth raised her arms, as if beseeching God. “Sometimes, it goes from mother to daughter, other times, it skips a generation or two, three, just long enough to nearly get forgotten. But it always returns.”

Melinda glanced at her father, who shrank into his seat. He gave her a pleading look, willing her to listen. Clearly, he had gone from doubter to absolute believer. For the moment, she played along. “How does this brock . . . this curse . . . present?”

“The
broch de shlang
always begins with a snake.”

“Snake,” Melinda repeated, not yet convinced. “I’ve seen about a hundred snakes. At the zoo, loose, on Girl Scout hikes. I’ve even played with them a bit.” She thought of the entertaining antics of the hognoses.

Ruth leaned forward. Her shriveled little body seemed to expand. “Ah, but the
broch de shlang
is different. It may start out innocent, but it never remains so. The interactions with snakes grow more intense and less normal until . . .”

Melinda waited for her great-great aunt to finish, but she did not. She sat back as if she had not yet spoken, a shrunken figure lost in the cushions of the couch.

“Until?” Melinda looked from her father to Ruth and back. “Until what?”

“Until,” Ruth whispered so low that Melinda had to lean toward her to hear. “Until it kills its host.”

Melinda’s heart skipped a beat, and with it came a suffocating feeling of imminent death.

Her father explained. “Nearby innocents, usually female relatives, may also lose their lives to it. It becomes larger, more powerful and deadly, until it kills . . .”

“. . . its host,” Melinda finished. A picture formed in her mind of the Masagua rattlesnake on the lawn. She had shaken it from the container, expecting it to flee. Every previous experience with snakes, everything she had heard or read, suggested that, so long as it was not cornered, a frightened snake would choose escape over attack. But this one had coiled and struck, as if in vengeance for its capture. She shook her head to clear it. “This is madness!”

Neither father nor aunt replied.

“I killed both of the snakes I encountered. Shouldn’t that end the curse, assuming it even exists?”

“The curse is real!” Aunt Ruth did not speak loudly, but her voice carried an intense authority. “To mock it is to succumb to it.”

Melinda’s father stayed the elderly woman with a touch to her shoulder. “As I understand it, the first encounters serve as a test. Each new one becomes more directed and dangerous until . . .”

Until.
Melinda already knew how that sentence ended. She forced herself not to consider. To contemplate her own demise proved terrifying enough. She scarcely dared to consider what would happen to her daughters. By law, Kaylee would go to Mike, who loved and adored her; but Paige would surely wind up institutionalized. Melinda refused to allow images of that fate to enter her consciousness. “Isn’t there any way to defeat the curse?”

Now, a smile wreathed Ruth’s face. “I was hoping you would ask that, child. Because you seem, at last, the one strong enough to do it.”

“How?” Though still uncertain whether her aunt was wise or crazy, Melinda had to know. “What do I have to do?”

“It is said,” Ruth intoned clearly. “That the curse will lift when the
broch de shlang
is killed at the same moment as its host.”

Melinda remained in place, leaning forward on the couch, waiting for the words to sink in. “So, either way, I die.”

Ruth shrugged.

“Surely, there’s a way to kill it and . . . not . . . also . . . die.”

Ruth dismissed Melinda with a wave. “Feh. Weak as water, like the rest.” She turned away. “And I thought you might be the one to end it.”

Melinda considered aloud. “If the snake dies first, it returns, stronger. If the host dies first, the curse . . . continues. So, it has to be . . . the same moment . . .” She shook her head. “How does a person kill herself at the exact same moment as a snake?”

Aunt Ruth said nothing.

Melinda’s father shifted nervously. “Melinda, I don’t know what to make of all this. But no one,
no one,
wants you to die.”

Melinda glanced toward the oldest of her relatives.
Aunt Ruth does.
She did not speak the words aloud. “Except, apparently, this
broch de shlang
.”

As if reading Melinda’s thoughts, Ruth spoke into the air in front of her, her back still to her great great niece. “It is not what I want, but it is the only way.” With that, she rose and headed for the door.

With obvious reluctance, Melinda’s father followed the elderly woman. “Melinda, do you want me to come back after I drop off Ruth? Do you want me to take the girls with me tonight?”

“Thanks, but no.” Melinda shook her head, barely dislodging the swirl of thought that left her dazed and wondering. “I need some time to think, a chance to do some research.”

“They all say that,” Ruth intoned from the door. “They all think that, for them, it will be different.” Finally, she turned to meet Melinda’s eyes directly. “But it never is. Simultaneous destruction; it is the only way.”

Melinda’s father took the old woman’s arm and led her outside. “We’ll check on you tomorrow,” he said firmly, closing the door.

Melinda leapt up and locked it behind him. A shiver traversed her. Still in a fog, she ascended the stairs to the room she shared with Paige. The familiar snorting breaths of the sleeping child brought a strange sense of normalcy. Early on, she had spent most of her nights diligently clearing Paige’s airways with saline and suction, as the nurses had taught her. Eventually, Melinda realized that these actions did little more than prevent both of them from sleeping. Paige’s nasal passages invariably reclogged mere moments later.

This time, Melinda walked to her desktop computer and typed in “broch de shlang” in the Google space. Only a handful of entries came up, defining “broch” as curse and schlang as “snake” or, more vulgarly, a slang for penis. Nowhere did she find a site that linked the terms together, although she did find an interesting Yiddish proverb: “A snake deserves no pity.” At the moment, it seemed singularly apt.

The familiarity of the room soon lulled Melinda into a state of normal exhaustion. The curse seemed like a distant joke, silliness that dwelt only in the mind of a addled and elderly aunt. Trading her day clothing for pajamas, Melinda performed her evening toilet, then climbed into the double bed she had once shared with her husband, Michael Carson.

She missed him tonight even more than most.

 

The dream came to Melinda the moment she drifted into sleep, first in blindness, a whisper of sound: “She is dead already, dead from the moment of conception, yet she has ruined your life, your family, for a decade.” The words seemed incongruous, wrong, and out-of-place. Melinda rolled, but the voice followed her. “He loves you desperately. He loves you both. He would return, and you would all be happy, if only she had gone where she belonged. Gone from this horrible death within life, gone from a world where she knows nothing, where she can only suffer without understanding why.”

Melinda managed a moan, but she could not awaken. A picture of Paige formed in her mind, eyes unblinking, expression unfeeling, like a mindless broken doll.