Chapter 26 Feeding the Curse
Feeding the Curse
I drove down a gravel road that dropped off to a dirt drive. The humidity was thick, and cloud cover obscured the stars. I pulled off before a rusted trailer. It didn’t look like anyone lived there; the windows were busted out and the grass was up to my knees.
I stepped up to the front door and rapped. The sound echoed in the trailer, but I heard no movement within. I knocked again, still with no response. I looked down at Gibby. He didn’t alert to anyone in the trailer, being more interested in chewing his toes.
I circled around the back of the trailer, where a meadow sloped away to forest. In the distance, I thought I heard singing.
The hair on the back of my neck prickled. My hand came to rest on the butt of my gun, but my gun was missing.
An old pickup truck pulled up, driven by Owen Destin. He jumped down and nodded at me. He was carrying a backpack and wearing hiking boots.
“Thanks for coming,” he said. “She won’t listen to me.”
“You knew where she was this whole time?”
“Yeah.” He frowned. “Viv was looking for a place to lay low for a while. She said some meth heads had come by to threaten her. I told her I would help.”
I glanced back at the trailer. “Is she in there?”
“Nah. That’s my granddad’s old place. Nobody’s lived there for many years.”
“Where is she?”
“Follow me.”
Destin turned toward the woods.
We waded through the meadow, into the forest. Gibby trotted merrily along beside me. Rain began to prickle against my face and shoulders.
We wound into the woods, following old deer trails, walking in silence. I knew the trails, having followed many with my father. As we walked, my leg ached, feeling hot against my wet pant leg. Gibby pressed his nose to the ground, tail wagging, thrilled at the scents of foreign woods.
Owen paused before a series of rusted tanks and a small metal shack.
I poked at a rusty pipe. “Your granddad was into moonshining?”
“Yeah. Family business,” he admitted. Owen knocked on the shack door, three times, and it opened, spilling light on the muddy ground.
Viv stood in the doorway. She didn’t look good. Her tank top and shorts hung loosely on her body, and her cheeks were sunken. Dark circles spread under her eyes. Her hair had a gray streak. She took a drag on her cigarette.
“You’ve got a visitor.” Owen slipped inside with his backpack and started unzipping it. I saw bottles of water, fruit, and sandwiches inside.
Viv looked me up and down, looking a little pissed. “Come in.”
She closed the door behind me. Like most old moonshiners’ shacks, this one was well sealed to prevent light from leaking out and alerting the authorities.
The interior had a dirt floor, and water dripped down a wall.
A sleeping bag and camping lantern were tucked inside, and a stack of paperback books teetered beside the burning lantern.
The place reeked of tobacco smoke, and an overflowing ashtray sat on the floor.
Viv sat down on the sleeping bag. I knelt opposite her on the floor with Gibby, the ashtray between us. Owen leaned against the wall behind me, seeming to disappear into the shadows.
“Viv,” I said, “I have some things to tell you, things that aren’t easy to say.”
“Tell me what?” Viv demanded.
“I found Dana’s body. At the island in the oxbow near the Hag Stone. I’m sorry.”
She exhaled, and smoke rolled from her nose. “Finally.” Her voice crackled with unshed tears. “Can you tell what happened to her?”
“Not yet. She’s been taken to the coroner’s office to determine the cause of death.”
She nodded and swallowed. “You have other things to tell me.”
“Your house was tossed, and then burned.” I felt like shit telling her that her life was gone.
“Sinoe. Did they hurt my fox?” She leaned forward, her eyes glassy. “I was going to take her with me, but she didn’t show up for breakfast. I figured she’d be okay on her own for a few days…”
“She’s fine. I took her home.”
Viv closed her eyes. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” It seemed like the least I could do in this awful situation.
She steadied herself and opened her eyes. “You were in that house?” She looked at me carefully, and her nostrils flared, as if she could smell scorch on me.
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry for that.” She stared at the ember of her cigarette. “Truly.”
“Viv, what the hell’s going on?”
“The fucking Kings of Warsaw Creek are trying to get me before the curse is completed.” She grinned, and I saw that one of her front teeth had chipped. “They think that if they kill me, they stop the curse.”
“Well, they’re trying pretty damn hard.”
She shook her head. “I won’t stop it. Nothing can stop it now.”
“I know about you and the coven. Did you recruit those girls?” I demanded.
Viv laughed darkly. “Those girls are desperate for a sense of control over their world. I gave it to them. I just showed them their own power. I taught them to fight back.”
“You can’t just—”
“I can’t what? Show them there’s a world out there that’s more just than the one they grew up in? I can’t show them they’re being victimized, try to help them?” Her hands had curled into fists, and she was nearly shouting. “Those men have to be stopped by any means necessary.”
I dropped my voice to a whisper. “Viv, did you and the girls kill those people?”
She lifted her fingers in a Girl Scout salute. “Scout’s honor. No. That was the curse’s doing. The girls just helped me wake it up.”
“What exactly is this curse?” I asked, impatient. “Tell me how you did it.”
“It’s more of a summoning.” She smiled. “We called up a spirit, an old one who found our goals to be in harmony with hers. Think of her like a Rusalka.”
“Rusalka…” I echoed, as if I were in a dream. My skin crawled.
“She’s a spirit who feasts on the tears of evil men. She lies at the bottom of rivers and pools and drowns the unlucky. She’s worn many faces over time, but she understands the rage of women who can’t fight back.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “Viv, innocents—children—are being hurt. A little boy almost died.”
Viv shrugged. “Dana was innocent. Nobody cared about that. So was Leah, and the other girls.”
“Leah could still be hurt.”
“Rusalka won’t touch Leah. She’s a girl. The curse is going to work as intended.”
I stared at her. Viv was too smart. That wasn’t an admission of guilt.
Casting curses wasn’t against the law. I could prove she was in touch with the girls, from cell phone records and the girls’ confessions.
But I couldn’t prove that any of them had committed murder.
Besides, they all could be lying to me. They were a sisterhood, one I was not a part of.
“Viv, you need to eat.” Owen rustled in his backpack and handed her a sandwich, which she picked at.
Viv shrugged. “I will.” She put the sandwich down. Gibby snooted at it until I gave him a warning look.
“You don’t look good,” I said.
Viv grinned. “I feel it, you know.” She spread her fingers out on her sharp clavicles. “All that power…being pulled out of me. Given to her.”
I shook my head. Viv was fucking crazy. But she was in danger, too. “Viv, I have no doubt in my mind that these men are trying to kill you. They killed an investigator. I don’t want you to be next. You need to be in a safe place.”
Viv leaned against the shack’s metal wall and gestured up to the leaky roof. “I’m in a safe place.”
Owen shook his head. “Viv, you need to be someplace where you can sleep. Someplace with a lock on the door, and three squares a day.”
“Sounds like jail. Not going.”
“That’s not what we mean,” I said. “I want to take you into protective custody until we get those guys arrested.”
Viv smiled at me. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, bringing these guys to justice. Believe me, I’m glad to have someone finally on their asses. But I’m not interested in being babysat by the cops.”
Owen reached out and touched her arm. “Viv, this isn’t good for you. I mean…your sleeping bag’s wet. There’s no clean water. At least go someplace where you can rest comfortably. The curse will work better if you have more energy.”
Viv stared at him, hard. “Are you kicking me off your land?”
Owen shook his head. “I don’t want to have to do that, Viv. I don’t want to see you deteriorate and die here. I also hate the idea of having to dig a big hole for you, because we’ve had three weeks of drought before tonight. That rain was over quick, and that clay is still hard as rock.”
Viv sighed and stubbed out her cigarette. “I guess I’m coming with you.”
—
Viv was in worse shape than she let on. She walked slowly, refusing to take Owen’s arm. She was unsteady. I would’ve thought she’d been drinking or doing drugs in the shack, but I’d seen no empty bottles or drug paraphernalia.
“She needs medical attention,” I told Owen when we got to my rental car. I bundled Viv into the passenger seat and closed the door. “I’ll take her to the hospital to get checked out.”
“Then what?”
“I’ll see that she gets to a safe house, someplace where the Kings of Warsaw Creek can’t find her.”
“You promise?” Owen said.
“I swear.” I meant it. Even if I had to take her home.
But the hospital was first. The ER took her right away.
I sat with Viv behind a curtain in the ER. She was hooked up to an IV and seemed to be dozing. Tonight was probably her first night in a bed in a while.
I flipped through the TV channels as she slept.
I clicked off advertisements for the sheriff’s reelection campaign, and ultimately wound up on the local news.
The newscast showed an aerial view of a retaining pond outside of an apartment complex.
The parking lot surrounding it was swarmed with sheriff’s vehicles and the coroner’s van.
“…Local police aren’t sharing the identity of the elderly man, but witnesses say he was found floating in the pond.”
Viv awoke and chortled, her fingers knit together over her sternum.
“He was reportedly walking his dog and vanished. His wife called the police, who found him in the retention pond off Meadoway Boulevard…”