Noteworthy Women Any Month of the Year

DANI BROWN

Suitably labelled “The Queen of Filth”, extremist author Dani Brown’s style of dark and twisted writing and deeply disturbing stories has amassed a worrying sized cult following featuring horrifying tales such as “Ghetto Super Skank”, “Becoming,” “56 Seconds”, “Sparky the Spunky Robot” and the hugely popular “Ketamine Addicted Pandas”. Merging eroticism with horror, torture and other areas that most authors wouldn’t dare, each of Dani’s titles will crawl under your skin, burrow inside you, and make you question why you are coming back for more.




November Group
Persistent Artists

November Group were an alternative musical group, and a participant of the Boston New Wave scene in the early 1980s. The group was formed primarily around two female musicians, vocalist and guitarist Ann Prim and keyboardist Kearney Kirby. Other members included Joel Beale and Alvan Long. The band took their name from a group of early twentieth-century German expressionist artists known as November Group. The group's musical style has been described as cold wave.


Kearney Kirby

You could say Kearney Kirby came back for an encore. From playing folk songs on her acoustic guitar, the Massachusetts native switched to cover bands and then played in the electronica/new wave band November Group before semi-retiring from the stage in 1990 to engineer and produce. But life had another turn in store. In 2001, as Kirby faced cancer, she also got an unexpected project that gave her professional interests a new shape.

Six years and several similar projects later, she came to Berklee to get formal training in music therapy. Now she's completing her final semester of course work before starting her internship. She's one of several students in Berklee's music therapy major who are over the age of 50, using their combined life and musical experiences to help others heal.

Ann Prim

Based in Saint Paul, Prim’s background in graphic design, still photography, and music composition has guided her towards a unique filmmaking style. Her debut short, The Afterling (2010), achieves a surreal, ominous style of stop-motion animation reminiscent of the Quay Brothers, yet her next four films were all “non-traditional narratives,” approaching the complexity of human personality through implication and emotional tone. Her “Vellum Trilogy” explores three female artists—a painter, writer, and dancer—balancing their art and their lives; the first two parts, A Brief Conversation (2010) and Little Words (2012), have already been completed, while the third, Notes from There, is currently in pre-production. More recently, Prim has returned to an abstract, avant-garde aesthetic with the experimental shorts Time Has Peeled Back the Skin of Things (2013) and Filmetto Porta 241 (2014).



JO KAPLAN

Jo Kaplan is a lover of all things spooky, having grown up on a diet of Goosebumps and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark as a kid. Now she writes stories that creep up from the dark places of the psyche. Her novels include It Will Just Be Us and When the Night Bells Ring, and her short stories have appeared in Fireside Quarterly, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Haunted Nights edited by Ellen Datlow and Lisa Morton, and Bram Stoker Award nominated anthology Miscreations: Gods, Monstrosities & Other Horrors. She has also published work as Joanna Parypinski. In addition to writing, she teaches English and creative writing at Glendale Community College and plays the cello in the Symphony of the Verdugos.

Rebekah Kennedy
Starring in "Two Witches"(2022)

Now available to stream on Arrow.

The Darts
If Elvira & Wednesday Adams did shots of snake venom
at a bachelorette party, that's The Darts.

I

Love Tsunami, the latest from The Darts

now available to stream.

Les Femmes Grotesques

by Victoria Dalpe

A Modern Romantic Horror Anthology

Review by Anthony Servante

In Les Femmes Grotesques, Victoria Dalpe utilizes a malleable narrative style that can only be described as chameleon. Every narrator she creates is different from the last. For me, this is an accomplishment that is difficult to overcome for some writers. Such anthologies tend to have a similar-sounding narrator telling a different story in every tale. Dalpe's narrative style creates a unique spin on the tale at hand. Each narrator neither intrudes or dominates the story. Rather, they merely guide the reader through the story of our protagonist, allowing the horrors of his dilemma to accompany him and us to the story's conclusion.

It's easy to admire a great storyteller who lets the story speak for itself.

The language of the stories is tightly constructed with fluid narratives. The horror of each story mounts as characters interact. Much as we find in theater plays, the dialogue is crucial building suspense. We don't see the horror as much as we expect it to arrive. In the opening story, "A Creak in the Floor, A Slant of Light", each character interacts and reveals new details to a possible monster lurking in the building. Our protagonist cannot believe the accounts but questions their validity while his fears begin to exaggerate the situation he has been tossed in. By the time he realizes the truth, it is too late. So, too, is it too late for the reader to back out of the narrative. We face that ending along with the protagonist.

Victoria Dalpe creates seamless horror in each tale with such language and narratives. Good poets can do that. Good prose can too. But to merge both forms into story form so seamlessly is a lost art we haven't seen since the English Romantic writers. Shades of Mary Shelley and echoes of John Keats abound in this dark collection of short horror tales.Dalpe is a modern Romantic who shines through her solid writing and talented storytelling. She has created a rich work of literary horror here with Les Femmes Grotesques.

 

Off Kilter TV: 

Where Horror Rears its Ugly Head
on Family Television

A Critique by Anthony Servante:


The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Season 3, Episode 13—1965)

Where the Woodbine Twineth by Davis Grubb Directed by Alf Kjellin

The Off Kilter TV Concept:

Off-Kilter TV deals with traditional TV fare that has that oddball episode that doesn’t fit the premise of the show. For instance, on Gilligan’s Island, season 3, episode 18, “The Hunter”, Gilligan is prey for a predatory big gamesman who wishes to know what it’s like to hunt a human; on the old western show RAWHIDE (1958-65), season 5, episode 5, “INCIDENT OF THE FOUR HORSEMEN”, our cattle-herding heroes face the four biblical figures of the apocalypse: War, Famine, Death, and Plague. These unexpected episodes that find their way into the family hour I like to call Off-Kilter TV.

Rory Calhoun and Harold Sakata

Hunting a human.

We find one such episode on a TV program famous for its suspense rather than the supernatural. Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-62) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-65) provide TV viewers with dramatic and crime stories with the O’Henry endings, surprises where the bad guys get away with their crime. For example, in the episode, “REVENGE”, a wife is attacked while her husband is at work; when he returns home to find his wife victimized, he, at first, relies on the police for justice, but their justice proves too slow; so he drives his wife around, assured his wife will recognize her attacker. She does, pointing out the man who assaulted her to her husband, who kills the man. As the husband and wife drive off, the wife points to another man and says he’s the attacker. As sirens close in, the husband realizes his wife is still mad in shock and that he “WHERE THE WOODBINE TWINETH”, from The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, there are no criminal escapades. This is a straight-up off-kilter tale.

The Alfred Hitchcock Hour

The story is directed by Alf Kjellin, well-known actor and part-time director, known for his roles in “MADAME BOVARY” (1949), “SHIP OF FOOLS” (1965), and “ICE STATION ZEBRA” (1968). As a director, he focused on television shows such as "Little House on the Prairie," "Columbo," "The Six Million Dollar Man" and the two Alfred Hitchcock shows. The writer is Davis Glubb, author of “NIGHT OF THE HUNTER” and anthologies on horror and the supernatural.

Alf Kjellin, Director and Actor

The tale itself deals with a young girl named Eva, recently orphaned, who is taken in by her strict great aunt, Nell, sister to Eva's grandfather. It seems that Eva has imaginary friends, and Nell becomes increasingly frustrated as she tries to make the girl admit that she is making up these invisible friends. However, as the episode focuses on the growing influence of these friends on the child and their affect on the impatient aunt, who threatens to make Eva eat soap as punishment for not telling the truth. The child, however, insists that it is the aunt who denies what the girl knows to be real.

Eva comes to live with Grampa

The show indirectly deals with voodoo, although it is never mentioned. The black butler and repairman, and his wife, the cook, are more patient with the child and her “friends”. Even when the grandfather brings home a black doll the same size as young Eva, the help do not wonder at the choice of the doll’s color. But as soon as the doll is handed to the young girl, she insists that her “friends” foretold her of the doll’s arrival and would replace them, since Aunt Nell, according to the child, has chased her friends away from the house.

Nell confronts Eva about her imaginary friends.

Then the strange happenings begin. The piano plays itself. As young Eva plays with her doll under the bed covers, we can discern two figures playing under the blanket. The cook questions her husband’s forgetfulness for having forgotten to bring in the ham she requested, a chore he denies being given since he hadn’t seen his wife all morning. But the wife insists that he sat in the kitchen and ate breakfast. Also, Eva begins to use vocabulary unfitting for a five year old. She calls her aunt an “old maid” and “snippy” and tells her to “shut up”. The child is repeating what her friends had called her aunt.

Eva and the Voodoo doll.

Nell can no longer deal with the child’s insolence and takes the doll from her before going on an errand. Eva, however, steals into the locked room where the doll was placed and leaves the house with her. She carries the doll in the large box in which it arrived. He mentioned to the cook earlier that when she plays with the doll that they sometimes trade places in the box. The black maid finally becomes unsettled at the child’s words about the box. When Nell comes home, Eva is not in her room. The old aunt finds the child outside in the evening darkness by the forest, dancing with a little black girl. Nell pushes through the bushes and confronts the girl, who is dressed in the doll’s clothes, though Nell doesn't seem to notice it. She threatens the girl with a branch stripped of its leaves to make a whip and chases her off, telling her to never return.

Nell chases away "girl".

She then looks for Eva. In the box there is a doll who is the exact double for the young girl, even wearing her same bed-clothes. She realizes the truth too late. She chases after the black girl and begs her to come back. She doesn't. Nell picks up the doll that she now knows is Eva and carries her back to the house.

The Eva Doll

Upon viewing this episode, I googled the story “Where the Woodbine Twineth” and read it. Other than more references to “voodoo”, the story is basically and structurally the same as the Alfred Hitchcock episode. But this is not a crime against man-made laws. This was a supernatural tale of playful spirits and possession of a human body. It was a game of trading bodies with the one spirit in the doll, the spirit her other spirit “friends” told her would be arriving soon to take their place in the house that they found too threatening to play in, what with the strict aunt refusing to allow the girl to play with them. Here there was no revenge on a murderer or a perfect robbery that leads to an unexpected arrest. Here there was what at first was a child’s imagination gone wild, until we, the viewers realize this is reality. When the doll and Eva are playing under the covers, our fears are confirmed. There is a supernatural presence at work here.


This haunting episode worked on two levels. One, it tricked the viewer into believing it was just another Hitchcock episode that would end with a rational explanation for the strange occurrences around the house. It wasn’t. Two, it tricked the viewer by ending with the child being turned into a porcelain doll. Whether or not the spirit of the girl was set free and taken “far, far away”, as the spirits promised her, remains unclear. We can only define the emotions of the ending by its impact on the aunt who realizes too late that she could have avoided the outcome had she only believed the girl.


For those fans of Off-Kilter TV, I recommend you watch the show and read the story (see below). Only don’t expect a crime drama with a twist. Expect to enter the realm of supernatural creatures and their voodoo manifestations. 

***

Where the Woodbine Twineth

by Davis Grubb

IT WAS NOT that Nell hadn’t done everything she could. Many’s the windy, winter afternoon she had spent reading to the child from Pilgrim’s Progress and Hadley’s Comportment for Young Ladies and from the gilded, flowery leaves of A Spring Garland of Noble Thoughts. And she had countless times reminded the little girl that we must all strive to make ourselves useful in this life and that five years old wasn’t too young to begin to learn. Though none of it had helped. And there were times when Nell actually regretted ever taking in the curious, gold-haired child that tragic winter when Nell’s brother Amos and his foolish wife had been killed. Eva stubbornly spent her days dreaming under the puzzle-tree or sitting on the stone steps of the ice-house making up tunes or squatting on the little square carpet stool in the dark parlor whispering softly to herself.
“Eva!” cried Nell one day, surprising her there. “Who are you talking to?”
“To my friends,” said Eva quietly, “Mister Peppercorn and Sam and—”
“Eva!” cried Nell. “I will not have this nonsense any longer! You know perfectly well there’s no one in this parlor but you!”
“They live under the davenport,” explained Eva patiently. “And behind the Pianola. They’re very small so it’s easy.”
“Eva! Hush that talk this instant!” cried Nell.
“You never believe me,” sighed the child, “when I tell you things are real.”
“They aren’t real!” said Nell. “And I forbid you to make up such tales any longer! When I was a little girl I never had time for such mischievous nonsense. I was far too busy doing the bidding of my fine God-fearing parents and learning to be useful in this world!”
Dusk was settling like a golden smoke over the willows down by the river shore when Nell finished pruning her roses that afternoon. And she was stripping off her white linen garden gloves on her way to the kitchen to see if Suse and Jessie had finished their Friday baking. Then she heard Eva speaking again, far off in the dark parlor, the voice quiet at first and then rising curiously, edged with terror.
“Eva!” cried Nell, hurrying down the hall, determined to put an end to the foolishness once and for all. “Eva! Come out of that parlor this very instant!”
Eva appeared in the doorway, her round face streaming and broken with grief, her fat, dimpled fist pressed to her mouth in grief.
“You did it!” the child shrieked. “You did it!”
Nell stood frozen, wondering how she could meet this.
“They heard you!” Eva cried, stamping her fat shoe on the bare, thin carpet. “They heard you say you didn’t want them to stay here! And now they’ve all gone away! All of them—Mister Peppercorn and Mingo and Sam and Popo!”
Nell grabbed the child by the shoulders and began shaking her, not hard but with a mute, hysterical compulsion.
“Hush up!” cried Nell, thickly. “Hush, Eva! Stop it this very instant!”
“You did it!” wailed the golden child, her head lolling back in a passion of grief and bereavement. “My friends! You made them go away!”
All that evening Nell sat alone in her bedroom trembling with curious satisfaction. For punishment Eva had been sent to her room without supper and Nell sat listening now to the even, steady sobs far off down the hall. It was dark and on the river shore a night bird tried its note cautiously against the silence. Down in the pantry, the dishes done, Suse and Jessie, dark as night itself, drank coffee by the great stove and mumbled over stories of the old times before the War. Nell fetched her smelling salts and sniffed the frosted stopper of the flowered bottle till the trembling stopped.
Then, before the summer seemed half begun, it was late August. And one fine, sharp morning, blue with the smoke of burning leaves, the steamboat Samantha Collins docked at Cresap’s Landing. Eva sat, as she had been sitting most of that summer, alone on the cool, worn steps of the ice-house, staring moodily at the daisies bobbing gently under the burden of droning, golden bees.
“Eva!” Nell called cheerfully from the kitchen window. “Someone’s coming today!”
Eva sighed and said nothing, glowering mournfully at the puzzle-tree and remembering the wonderful stories that Mingo used to tell.
“Grandfather’s boat landed this morning, Eva!” cried Nell. “He’s been all the way to New Orleans and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he brought his little girl a present!”
Eva smelled suddenly the wave of honeysuckle that wafted sweet and evanescent from the tangled blooms on the stone wall and sighed, recalling the high, gay lilt to the voice of Mister Peppercorn when he used to sing her his enchanting songs.
“Eva!” called Nell again. “Did you hear what Aunt Nell said? Your grandpa’s coming home this afternoon!”
“Yes’m,” said Eva lightly, hugging her fat knees and tucking her plain little skirt primly under her bottom.
And supper that night had been quite pleasant. Jessie made raspberry cobblers for the Captain and fetched in a prize ham from the meat-house, frosted and feathery with mould, and Suse had baked fresh bread that forenoon till the ripe, yeasty smell of hot bread seemed everywhere in the world. Nobody said a word while the Captain told of his trip to New Orleans and Eva listened to his stern old voice and remembered Nell’s warnings never to interrupt when he was speaking and only to speak herself when spoken to. When supper was over the Captain sat back and sucked the coffee briskly from his white moustache. Then rising without a word he went to the chair by the crystal umbrella stand in the hallway and fetched back a long box wrapped in brown paper.
Eva’s eyes rose slowly and shone over the rim of her cup.
“I reckon this might be something to please a little girl,” said the old man gruffly, thrusting the box into Eva’s hands.
“For me?” whispered Eva.
“Well now!” grunted the Captain. “I didn’t fetch this all the way up the river from N’Orleans for any other girl in Cresap’s Landing!”
And presently string snapped and paper rustled expectantly and the cardboard box lay open at last and Eva stared at the creature which lay within, her eyes shining and wide with sheerest disbelief.
“Numa!” she whispered.
“What did you say, Eva?” said Nell. “Don’t mumble your words!”
“It’s Numa!” cried the child, searching both their faces for the wonder that was hers. “They told me she’d be coming but I didn’t know Grandpa was going to bring her! Mister Peppercorn said—”
“Eva!” whispered Nell.
Eva looked gravely at her grandfather, hoping not to seem too much of a tattle-tale, hoping that he would not deal too harshly with Nell for the fearful thing she had done that summer day.
“Aunt Nell made them all go away,” she began.
Nell leaned across the table clutching her linen napkin tight in her white knuckles. “Father!” she whispered. “Please don’t discuss it with her! She’s made up all this nonsense and I’ve been half out of my mind all this summer! First it was some foolishness about people who live under the davenport in the parlor—”
Eva sighed and stared at the gas-light winking brightly on her grandfather’s watch chain and felt somewhere the start of tears.
“It’s really true,” she said boldly. “She never believes me when I tell her things are real. She made them all go away. But one day Mister Peppercorn came back. It was just for a minute. And he told me they were sending me Numa instead!”
And then she fell silent and simply sat, heedless of Nell’s shrill voice trying to explain. Eva sat staring with love and wonder at the Creole doll with the black, straight tresses and the lovely coffee skin.
Whatever the summer had been, the autumn, at least, had seemed the most wonderful season of Eva’s life. In the fading afternoons of that dying Indian summer she would sit by the hour, not brooding now, but holding the dark doll in her arms and weaving a shimmering spell of fancy all their own. And when September winds stirred, sharp and prescient with new seasons, Eva, clutching her dark new friend would tiptoe down the hallway to the warm, dark parlor and sit by the Pianola to talk some more.
Nell came down early from her afternoon nap one day and heard Eva’s excited voice far off in the quiet house. She paused with her hand on the newel post, listening, half-wondering what the other sound might be, half-thinking it was the wind nudging itself wearily against the old white house. Then she peered in the parlor door.
“Eva!” said Nell. “What are you doing?”
It was so dark that Nell could not be certain of what she saw. She went quickly to the window and threw up the shade.
Eva sat on the square carpet stool by the Pianola, her blue eyes blinking innocently at Nell and the dark doll staring vacuously up from the cardboard box beside her.
“Who was here with you?” said Nell. “I distinctly heard two voices.”
Eva sat silent, staring at Nell’s stiff high shoes. Then her great eyes slowly rose.
“You never believe me,” the child whispered, “when I tell you things are real.”
OLD SUSE, AT least, understood things perfectly.
“How’s the scampy baby doll grandpappy brought you, lamb?” the old Negro woman said that afternoon as she perched on the high stool by the pump, paring apples for a pie. Eva squatted comfortably on the floor with Numa and watched the red and white rind curl neatly from Suse’s quick, dark fingers.
“Life is hard!” Eva sighed philosophically. “Yes oh yes! Life is hard! That’s what Numa says!”
“Such talk for a youngster!” Suse grunted, plopping another white quarter of fruit into the pan of spring water. “What you studyin’ about life for! And you only five!”
“Numa tells me,” sighed Eva, her great blue eyes far away. “Oh yes! She really does! She says if Aunt Nell ever makes her go away she’ll take me with her!”
“Take you!” chuckled Suse, brushing a blue-bottle from her arm. “Take you where?”
“Where the woodbine twineth,” sighed Eva.
“Which place?” said Suse, cocking her head.
“Where the woodbine twineth,” Eva repeated patiently.
“I declare!” Suse chuckled. “I never done heard tell of that place!”
Eva cupped her chin in her hand and sighed reflectively.
“Sometimes,” she said presently, “we just talk. And sometimes we play.”
“What y’all play?” asked Suse, obligingly.
“Doll,” said Eva. “Oh yes, we play doll. Sometimes Numa gets tired of being doll and I’m the doll and she puts me in the box and plays with me!”
She waved her hand casually to show Suse how really simple it all was. Suse eyed her sideways with twinkling understanding, the laughter struggling behind her lips.
“She puts you in that little bitty box?” said Suse. “And you’s a doll?”
“Yes oh yes!” said Eva. “She really does! May I have an apple, Suse?”
When she had peeled and rinsed it, Suse handed Eva a whole, firm Northern Spy. “Don’t you go and spoil your supper now, lamb!” she warned.
“Oh!” cried Eva. “It’s not for me. It’s for Numa!”
And she put the dark doll in the box and stumped off out the back door to the puzzle-tree. Nell came home from choir practice at five that afternoon and found the house so silent that she wondered for a moment if Suse or Jessie had taken Eva down to the landing to watch the evening Packet pass. The kitchen was empty and silent except for the thumping of a pot on the stove and Nell went out into the yard and stood listening by the rose arbor. Then she heard Eva’s voice. And through the failing light she saw them then, beneath the puzzle-tree.
“Eva!” cried Nell. “Who is that with you!”
Eva was silent as Nell’s eyes strained to piece together the shadow and substance of the dusk. She ran quickly down the lawn to the puzzle-tree. But only Eva was there. Off in the river the evening Packet blew dully for the bend. Nell felt the wind, laced with autumn, stir the silence round her like a web.
“Eva!” said Nell. “I distinctly saw another child with you! Who was it?”
Eva sighed and sat cross-legged in the grass with the long box and the dark doll beside her.
“You never believe me—” she began softly, staring guiltily at the apple core in the grass.
“Eva!” cried Nell, brushing a firefly roughly from her arm so that it left a smear of dying gold. “I’m going to have an end to this nonsense right now!” And she picked up the doll in the cardboard box and started towards the house.
Eva screamed in terror. “Numa!” she wailed.
“You may cry all you please, Eva!” said Nell. “But you may not have your doll until you come to me and admit that you don’t really believe all this nonsense about fairies and imaginary people!”
“Numa!” screamed Eva, jumping up and down in the grass and beating her fists against her bare, grass-stained knees, “Numa!”
“I’m putting this box on top of the Pianola, Eva,” said Nell. “And I’ll fetch it down again when you confess to me that there was another child playing with you this afternoon. I cannot countenance falsehoods!”
“Numa said,” screamed Eva, “that if you made her go away—!”
“I don’t care to hear another word!” said Nell, walking ahead of the wailing child up the dark lawn towards the house.
But the words sprang forth like Eva’s very tears. “—she’d take me away with her!” she screamed.
“Not another word!” said Nell. “Stop your crying and go up to your room and get undressed for bed!”
And she went into the parlor and placed the doll box on top of the Pianola next to the music rolls.
A WEEK LATER the thing ended. And years after that autumn night Nell, mad and simpering, would tell the tale again and stare at the pitying, doubting faces in the room around her and she would whimper to them in a parody of the childish voice of Eva herself: “You never believe me when I tell you things are real!”
It was a pleasant September evening and Nell had been to a missionary meeting with Nan Snyder that afternoon and she had left Nan at her steps and was hurrying up the tanbark walk by the ice-house when she heard the prattling laughter of Eva far back in the misty shadows of the lawn. Nell ran swiftly into the house to the parlor—to the Pianola. The doll box was not there. She hurried to the kitchen door and peered out through the netting into the dusky river evening. She did not call to Eva then but went out and stripped a willow switch from the little tree by the stone wall and tip-toed softly down the lawn. A light wind blew from the river meadows, heavy and sweet with wetness, like the breath of cattle. They were laughing and joking together as Nell crept soundlessly upon them, speaking low as children do, with wild, delicious intimacy, and then bubbling high with laughter that cannot be contained. Nell approached silently, feeling the dew soak through to her ankles, clutching the switch tightly in her hand. She stopped and listened for a moment, for suddenly there was but one voice now, a low and wonderfully lyric sound that was not the voice of Eva. Then Nell stared wildly down through the misshapen leaves of the puzzle-tree and saw the dark child sitting with the doll box in its lap.
“So!” cried Nell, stepping suddenly through the canopy of leaves. “You’re the darkie child who’s been sneaking up here to play with Eva!”
The child put the box down and jumped to its feet with a low cry of fear as Nell sprang forward, the willow switch flailing furiously about the dark ankles.
“Now scat!” cried Nell. “Get on home where you belong and don’t ever come back!”
For an instant the dark child stared in horror first at Nell and then at the doll box, its sorrowing, somnolent eyes brimming with wild words and a grief for which it had no tongue, its lips trembling as if there were something Nell should know that she might never learn again after that autumn night was gone.
“Go on, I say!” Nell shouted, furious.
The switch flickered about the dark arms and legs faster than ever. And suddenly with a cry of anguish the dark child turned and fled through the tall grass toward the meadow and the willows on the river shore. Nell stood trembling for a moment, letting the rage ebb slowly from her body.
“Eva!” she called out presently. “Eva!”
There was no sound but the dry steady racket of the frogs by the landing.
“Eva!” screamed Nell. “Come to me this instant!”
She picked up the doll box and marched angrily up towards the lights in the kitchen.
“Eva!” cried Nell. “You’re going to get a good switching for this!”
A night bird in the willow tree by the stone wall cried once and started up into the still, affrighted dark. Nell did not call again for, suddenly, like the mood of the autumn night, the very sound of her voice had begun to frighten her. And when she was in the kitchen Nell screamed so loudly that Suse and Jessie, long asleep in their shack down below the ice-house, woke wide and stared wondering into the dark. Nell stared for a long moment after she had screamed, not believing, really, for it was at once so perfect and yet so unreal. Trembling violently Nell ran back out onto the lawn.
“Come back!” screamed Nell hoarsely into the tangled far off shadows by the river. “Come back! Oh please! Please come back!”
But the dark child was gone forever. And Nell, creeping back at last to the kitchen, whimpering and slack-mouthed, looked again at the lovely little dreadful creature in the doll box: the gold-haired, plaster Eva with the eyes too blue to be real.

*******

 

Cat Eyes and Puries

1.

The first thing Professor Jeffry Novacs noticed as he drove toward his new home was the signs posted on every telephone pole. They were printed in Spanish, announcing: SE LEEN CARTAS TAROT, $20. Novacs laughed and told his wife, “There sure are a lot of Tarot card readers in this neighborhood. What kind of a neighborhood have we moved into?” He returned to looking for the Porto Lindo Drive address as he turned the car off the main street and up the hill. This move was a new start for him and his wife Marge. He screwed up big time at Boston College by breaking the unwritten rule: Don’t mess with your teacher assistants. But how could he resist the sexy graduate student, Rosa Ramirez? She was a Latin beauty with deep green eyes and a bronze tan that hugged her perfect twenty-two year old body. He stifled the memory of Rosie’s beauty and resumed looking for the address of his new house.

The second thing he noticed was that his pregnant wife was jotting down 0ne of the Tarot card sign phone numbers. “They’re all rip-offs, Marge,” he said, glancing at the addresses on each house that he drove by. “Maybe it’d be better if you kept your eyes open for 1343. I can’t be driving and looking for the address.”

“I am looking. Besides, how do you know they’re rip-offs?” she asked with a challenge in her tone. “You sound like your mother warning you about the evils of Lotto tickets. It’s just harmless fun, like Astrology.”

“It’s a matter of money. First it’s twenty dollars, then fifty, and then once they have you hooked, it’s the mortgage money. My mother knows what she’s talking about: Don’t take chances. That’s another reason why I chose to move to LA—to be close to my mother during your pregnancy. I’m going to have to call her and have her visit with you while I’m at teaching my first class at the university tomorrow.” He sighed and realized he wasn’t looking forward to calling his Mom. But he needed someone to keep an eye on Marge. His wife loved spending his money. It was her way of getting revenge, according to his mother. She’d forgive him, but she’d never forget his affair with the teacher assistant.

“Look, there’s 1117. We’re almost there,” said Marge. “Besides, you don’t give me enough of an allowance to pay more than $20 for a decent Tarot reading.” She folded her arms in an exaggerated show of anger.

“We’ll talk about it inside,” he said as he drove into the hillside house overlooking the freeway. “That’s it. We’re home.” Jeff pulled the car into the shoddily constructed car port. The wood was warped and a lot of sunlight was shining through the gaps between the planks. “Damn port can’t keep out the sun, so how do we expect it to protect the car from rain?” he asked.

“It doesn’t rain in Los Angeles,” Marge said with a guffaw.

“The port needs to be rebuilt and the driveway is going to need to be repaved,” he said as he stepped out of the car and onto the rickety porch. “House is going to need a lot of work too.”

“It’s not as bad as you describe,” she said, making a mental list of all the junk and weeds in the small yard surrounded by a bent and rusty wire fence. Marge walked to the end of the driveway and looked down the steep hill. “We’re going to need a new fence in the back. There’s nothing to keep us from falling down the hill except for this rusty thing.” “Sure don’t want to drive over in the dark,” Jeff added. “Did you notice that there are no streetlamps up here? We’re going to have to install sensor lights in front of the house and in the back of the driveway.” Jerry’s left cheek twitched as he tried to smile through the anger. He saw Marge at the periphery of his vision taking inventory of the house, its dirty yard, the graffiti on the front walls, and the cracked cement in the driveway. He just couldn’t get a break. She wanted everything perfect. Nobody’s perfect, he almost shouted at her, but he promised he would learn to control his temper. This was their new start.

2.

Jeff and Marge sat on a blanket tossed across the floor in front of the kitchen and unwrapped the take-out Mexican food. Jeff had Googled the local cuisine and found a place called El Tepeyac that had perfect scores and impressive ratings. Marge called in the order and Jeff drove to pick it up. As she waited for Jeff, she walked around the empty house. She knew the furniture would be arriving in the morning. It was mostly the furnishings from their small Boston apartment; it wouldn’t come close to filling up the big house. Marge checked each of the three bedrooms and selected the biggest room facing north to be their bedroom. The room next to it would be the nursery. The extra bedroom would be Jeff’s study. He could buy his own desk and chair. She was concentrating on the extra furnishings the bedrooms would need. Whatever was arriving in the morning would have to suffice for the front room and kitchen, but the extra money that Jeff’s mother had given them was designated for the baby’s things and new beds. As Jeff chowed down on his omelet, Marge nibbled on her chile relleno. It was a bit spicy. She offered half of the stuffed pepper to her husband. “Is it hot?” he asked. “No,” she lied, and he readily munched on that as well. Marge smiled as she wondered if Jeff’s gastritis would flare up from the hot chili. “What’re your plans for tomorrow?” Jeff asked. “Meet the movers in the morning and shop online for new bedroom furniture,” Marge answered, then paused a second before adding, “and then I’m calling some of those Tarot card readers. I promise to hire a cheap one.” “Geez,” Jeff said with a whine in his voice. “My mother’s right about you. You are superstitious.” “It’s good luck to get a reading for our new house, especially on a hillside,” she said in a joking but ominous tone. “I read about all the landslides in this area during the rains.” “It never rains in California,” Jeff laughed. “They write songs about it.” “Anyway, that’s what I’m doing tomorrow,” she said, and that was that. Before Jeff could complain anymore, his stomach rumbled, he cringed and ran for the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. “Dammit,” he shouted, “there’s no toilet paper in here.” Marge began cleaning up the take-out food while she pondered Jeff’s dilemma.

3.

Jeff was sitting on the toilet all night and had to use the napkins from the take-out food to wipe his sore bottom. His hemorrhoids had flared up. Damn red chili sauce. When the movers arrived, Marge greeted them with fresh cups of coffee before putting them to work. Jeff had already cleaned himself up, showered, and headed for the university before the moving truck could block him in. Marge laughed to herself as she thought of Jeff moaning on the bathroom seat. Hope he wasn’t late for work. He can’t buy the bedroom sets if he loses his teaching post at the university. Oh, well. The security guard at the university parking lot kiosk gave the new professor his packet that contained a parking permit, faculty restroom key card, photo ID, and a map of the college with his classroom circled in red ink. There was a note from Dean Wallace Wasserman, head of the U.S. History Department; he wanted to see Jeff after his class. He placed the packet into his briefcase and made his way to his classroom. He was tempted to buy a cup of coffee from the vending machine by his classroom, but thought better of it. Chili and caffeine were his enemies right now. He stood at the door, took a deep breath, and entered the class for United States History 101: 1492-1702. Seated at the front of the class on the stool meant for the professor was the love of his life, the beautiful young Latina named Rosa Ramirez. He recognized the raven black hair tied with a red ribbon in a pony-tail resting on her left shoulder, her long shapely legs ending in the red four-inch heels, and the seductive smile that she wore as her eyes followed him each step that he walked down the staircase to the podium. The room was already packed with students. “Ms. Ramirez,” Jeff said slyly. “Professor Novacs,” she said somewhere between a hiss and a coo. As she unfolded her leg and scooted off the stool, half the males, and some of the females, tried to catch a glimpse of the sites made available by the shortness of her skirt. “I’m Professor Novacs,” he said to the class of nearly forty students, “and this is your TA, Ms. Ramirez. He wrote his name, office number and hours of availability on the whiteboard in black ink. He always liked the chemical scent of the drymarkers. He nodded to the TA to write her information on the board as well.As Rosa wrote on the whiteboard, her skirt rode up to the borderline of her asscheeks as if it were designed for that sole purpose. A couple of students whistled. Jeff turned sharply for the students, but he didn’t catch the punks.He pulled the textbook from his briefcase and gave the syllabi to Ms. Ramirez to distribute to the class. Jeff found himself mesmerized by her seductive dress and wiggles as she passed out the papers. She returned the extra handouts to the professor.“Let’s go over the syllabus, class,” Jeff said with a strong authoritative voice. Rosa Ramirez sat to the right of the professor, and as she watched him begin his lecture, she felt herself getting wet. Just like old times, she thought. Welcome to LA. After class, the room emptied until Jeff and Rosa remained at the front of the class. “How was the flight?” “Take it or leave it,” she said with hurt feelings. “Couldn’t you afford anything better than coach?”

“I’m married, remember?” Novacs insisted.

“That didn’t stop you before,” she reminded him. “You know I can’t live on a TA salary, right? You’ve got the big job now. You can afford to help me out a bit, right?. Just like old times.”

“I got you this job. I know how much it pays,” he said without conviction, and Rosa noticed there was no anger in his voice. “I’ve got to see Dean

Wasserman. I’ll see you afterward. I’m sure a dozen professors will want you in their classes if you need the extra cash.”

“You’re not planning on sharing me with your colleagues, are you?” Rosa said, placing a soft hand on Jeff’s. He didn’t pull it away.

“My mother’s going to be keeping Marge busy this afternoon. Did you make the arrangements?” he asked. “Marge’s even calling Tarot card readers to

bless the house.”

She nodded yes and said, “Tarot card readers? Really?”

“You know how she is,” he said in a pathetically apologetic voice. “She’s looking for a cheap reader, something in the twenty dollar range.”

Rosa wrote down an address on a piece of paper and handed it to Jeff. “Meet me here in two hours. That’ll be more than enough time for your meeting with the Dean.”

Novacs looked around and without meeting eyes with Rosa, took the piece of paper with directions to an address on Marengo Avenue, and left the room. The TA slipped into the women’s restroom, where she placed a call on her cell phone. Jeff called his mother from the faculty restroom. He asked her to drop in on Marge and make sure she was all right, that he’d be stuck at the university in meetings all afternoon. She was more than pleased to do a favor for her little baby boy, the professor. Besides, she was quite anxious to see what kind of house her son had purchased for himself and his pregnant wife.

“Thanks, Mom,” Jeff said. “I’ll see you tonight for dinner.”

4.

Marge couldn’t believe she had found a Tarot card reader for less than twenty dollars. After mentioning that she was expecting, the reader promised her a discount on the first reading of only ten dollars. The Taroist, as she called herself, set their first appointment for 1:00 p.m. that afternoon. The movers had finished their work around eleven that morning, so that left her a few hours to shower, lunch, and arrange the kitchen table for a reading. Everything went as planned until 12:30 p.m. when the doorbell rang. There was absolutely no reason for the Taroist to be early, and Marge lost a bit of confidence in the woman if she couldn’t be on time for a meeting. She even considered cancelling the reading. What did she expect for ten dollars, right?

However, she was relieved when she found her mother-in-law Regina Novacs at the door.

“Hi, Margie,” said the older woman. “Jeffrey asked me to drop in on you and make sure you had everything you needed.”

Marge exchanged superficial hugs and air kisses with her in-law before inviting her in. Regina noted the social awkwardness but entered the domicile with a sense of entitlement. After all, this was her Jeffry’s house. “You’re using the same furniture from Boston, I see. I thought you’d have all new furnishings. Jeffry can afford it now, you know. And I did contribute a bit for the baby.”

“I’m starting with the baby’s room,” Marge said apologetically. “I was looking at cribs online right before you came. It’s just bad timing.”

“What do you mean?” Regina asked, hearing a little hostility in her voice.

“Well, I invited a Tarot reader over to do a reading of the house,” she said proudly. “You know, a glimpse into the future, so to speak. Boring stuff. You don’t have to stay if you’d rather not.”

“Really, Majorie,” she said, emphasizing her full name condescendingly. “Why throw away good money on that?”

“It’s only going to cost ten dollars,” Marge said.

“It’s still a waste of good money,” Regina insisted.

“Please, Regina—Mother, but the Taroist will be here in a few minutes. I’ll make some coffee and expect your best behavior if you intend to stay,” she said in an akimbo position for emphasis.

“I appreciate the visit, but I will not have my beliefs mocked. Truce?”

“Truce,” Regina agreed. “I take my coffee black.

#

“I am Madame Cortez,” the Taroist said, extending her hand to Marge. Her eyes darted to Regina Novacs and she bowed in her direction ever so slightly. She pinched Marge’s fingers lightly then pulled her hand away. She turned away as if looking at the front room when Regina offered her hand.

“Please sit here,” Marge said, pulling out the sturdy wooden chair that went with the dining room set.

The Madame sat and scooted up till her huge bust pressed against the table. She wore a black velvet cloak that covered her oddly flowery dress. She withdrew a red velvet pouch from her long black leather bag. “Before we begin, I’d like to dispense with introductions,” Cortez said, eying Regina

suspiciously.

“I’m Marjorie Novacs. We talked on the phone. And this is my mother-in-law Regina Novacs.”

Neither Regina nor Cortez offered up their hands.

They both gave a courtesy nod.

Madame Cortez passed the deck of Tarot cards to Marge. It was a reproduction deck of the D’un Tarot de L’an 1736, Spain edition, containing both the Major and Minor Arcana sections. “What a beautiful deck,” Marge said sincerely. “But I’d like only the Minor Arcana reading, if you don’t mind.”

“As you wish,” the Taroist said and removed the Major cards from the deck. “I take it you already have your question in mind?”

“I do,” Marge answered. She was surprised that the Madame didn’t express curiosity or interest in her request for a Minor reading.

“I understand, Ms. Novacs,” she said as if reading Marge’s thoughts.

“Good,” Marge said. “Then let’s get to it.”

Regina cleared her throat and asked, “What happens now?”

“Mother, you promised.” Marge scolded her with a cold stare.

“All right, all right,” Regina apologized and turned the invisible key to her lips.

Cortez held out her hand and Marge handed back the deck to the Madame, who then waited for the words. “No shuffle,” Marge said. And the Taroist

turned the top ten cards of the deck to arrange them in classic reading formation. The past, present and future were represented by the layout: six cards forming a crucifix and four cards in the shape of a staff. The cross showed the four directions of the compass and the staff was the needle that pointed to the direction relevant to the reading. Often times the face cards were misinterpreted; for instance, the Death card did not mean death—it denoted sudden and unexpected change. And if the card next to it were a card like The Water Bearer, then the change might mean good fortune; however, if the card behind it were The Hanging Man, then the change meant bad fortune—no “might”. Marge was aware of all the subtleties of a good reading, so she was keeping a close eye on the Madame’s interpretation of the cards.

But Cortez did not read the cards. She reached into the red pouch and produced five marbles, three Cat’s Eyes and two Puries. Each of the Cat’s Eyes were placed on the North, West, and South position of the crossed cards; the remaining clear marbles were placed one at the top of the staff and one below. They formed a pyramid tilted on its side. “The marbles,” the Madame explained, “fill the gaps left out by the omission of the Major Arcana cards. The oblique pyramid contains the flow of spiritual energy; it prevents the escape of lost spirits. For we open a door with our reading, and should a spirit seek to leave its realm, it will hide in the Canicas, what you call Marbles. These are special to my family and we have passed them down many generations since the time of the Mayans and Aztecas. Listen carefully.

“The Mayans sacrificed humans for the gods, but the corporeal flesh is but a vessel for the spirit. The sacred blade of the Mayans ended the life of the flesh and freed the spirit to join the gods. The Aztecas beheaded the bodies with the Blade of a Thousand Deaths, so that the corporeal being was sacrificed to the gods, but the head itself contained the spirit. From the head the spirit was transferred to the Canicas, what you probably know as ‘crystal balls’, fortune teller instruments, brujerias. These marbles are smaller versions of the spirit catchers. The Cat’s Eyes, or Ojos de Gato, imprison the spirit in its maze, whereas the Puries, or Crystales Claros, allow the spirit to gaze out at the world from its cage. I am ready to begin.

“Please do not express concern,” Cortez said with a bow. “I see the doubt and anxiety on your Mother-in-Law’s face.”

“Proceed with the reading,” Marge instructed the Taroist. “Do not mind the doubter.”

“As you wish,” Madame Cortez said, fighting back a smile that was neither good nor evil.

5.

“Sorry, babe,” Jeff apologized, “but that was my Mom and she sounded freaked out. I’ve got to get home. I’ll see you in class on Thurday.”

“Here we go again,” Rosa said and ducked under the covers of the queen-sized motel room bed. “I guess I can catch the Metro train home from the college. Oh, right, it doesn’t go by the college.”

“Don’t be like that, hon,” said Jeff who sat on the bed and caressed Rosa’s shoulder under the sheet. “Why don’t you stay here the night? That

way I can come back later tonight when Marge is asleep? Why don’t you visit your mom for a while? Have you seen her since you arrived in LA? Is she still into that witch stuff?”

“We prefer the word ‘brujeria’. It’s like the midwifery of the old days. Nothing mystical or Black Magic, that you need to worry about anyway. Why don’t you call me after you know what’s going on,” Rosie suggested and peeked out over the covers. “Then we can decide who’s staying where and who’s coming when. Sound like a plan?”

Jeff nodded in agreement, kissed her on the forehead, and dashed to his car in the Marengo Motel parking lot.

6.

“What happened?” Jeff asked with worry in his voice.

“Nothing that I know of,” Marge said with a shrug. She resumed peeling potatoes.

“My mother called and told me to come here,” Jeff explained.

“Your mother left about thirty minutes ago,” she said, dropping the potato into the bowl of water. She then began peeling another spud. “Your mother

gave the Tarot reader lady a ride home. They left right after the reading.”

“Tell me about this lady,” Jeff insisted.

“Calm down. Your mother sat in on the reading, enjoyed herself with a cup of coffee and offered the Tarot lady a ride home.” Marge smiled as if that’s all there was to it.

Jeff dialed his mother’s cell phone number. There was no answer. Then he called her land-line phone at her Montebello apartment. No answer.

“Any luck?” Marge asked, feigning concern.

“Do you know the reader’s home address?” Jeff was surprised by the quick response.

“Sure do. Here’s her card. Address is right on it.” She plopped the other peeled potato into the bowl of water. “You going over there? Don’t do your scary routine on the old lady, please. Your mom will show up somewhere. Don’t worry so. Wish you worried like that about me.”

“I’ll be back in a few,” he said, ignoring her, and rushed out the door to the car. He set the GPS with the Tarot lady’s address and backed up. A car driving too fast around the blind corner of the hillside road almost swiped his rear bumper.

Marge watched the whole thing from the kitchen window and whistled in disappointment that the car had just missed her husband. That accident might have sent her husband’s car careening down the hillside, she thought and went back to peeling potatoes.

7.

“Professor Novacs,” said Madame Cortez, “please come in.”

“I’m here about—“

“Your mother,” she said, finishing his sentence.

“Would you like some coffee?”

“Please…”

“I’m Madame Cortez, by the way. Sorry to keep interrupting you. Continue while I get the coffee.”

“My mother called me and said something horrible was happening. Did she mention anything to you?” Jeff asked, unsure what he had just gotten

himself into.

“I did a reading for your wife. Your mother observed. I finished and mentioned I was catching the bus home, and your mother said she could drop me off in East LA since she was headed for Montebello. I was very grateful.” Cortez asked Jeff to join her at the kitchen table. He eyed the Tarot card layout on the pink table-cloth.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“The cards or the marbles?” She watched the confusion on his face. “I bet you’ve never seen this layout before. It’s Azteca in origin. But I’m sure you’ve played with marbles in your youth, am I right? Now you’re a man of learning and need to understand the Canicas in a new way; or rather, in the old way. I’m sure you can appreciate the history to this design. The Cat’s Eyes are prisons for evil spirits. The Puries are cages, like the cages

in a zoo, for innocent souls. Do you see the oblique pyramid? Look at the bottom corner, just under the sixth card, the card of the past. What do you see?”

Jeff leaned closer to the green Cat’s Eye, the marble with the spiral inside, his favorite as a child. Suddenly his mother’s face appeared in the round piece of glass. Her mouth was screaming silently in agony. His mind went into shock. He confused his memory of cat’s eye inside the marble with the image of his mother’s face writhing within the glass ball. Was this real? He didn’t dare answer the question, and though his rational mind, what little there remained of it, tried to grasp the sight before him, he couldn’t understand how this flesh and blood head had shrunk small enough to fit into the marble.

Before he could turn to the old woman behind him to ask her if he had one mad, he felt the Tarot lady’s arm wrap around his forehead, pulling it back, exposing his throat. Her strength was unnatural. She slid the Azteca blade with all the ornamental encryptions inscribed into the handle across the Professor’s carotid artery. The razor sharp edge of the knife needed only three more strokes to decapitate Jeffry Novacs.

Madame Cortez held his head above the Tarot card and Canica arrangement on the kitchen table as a strange breeze swirled about the cluttered room, rattling dishes and sweeping the dusty curtains. The blue Cat’s Eye at the north end of the oblique pyramid sucked in the breeze and Jeff’s face filled the marble. Before the agony overtook him and he tried to scream, he saw Madame Cortez holding up his bloody head from her fist. She was laughing.

8.

Marge answered the knock at the door. The Taroist entered and sat at the kitchen table. The potatoes were boiling in a large pot with some chopped carrots, celery and chayote. The chicken was baking in the oven. “Smells good,” the Madame said in all sincerity.

“Is it done?” Marge asked.

“Almost,” she said. After moving the dishes aside, Cortez rearranged the Tarot cards and Caninas. “There was the matter of ten dollars.”

“Of course,” Marge said, reaching into her kitchen apron. “Here’s your money.”

“Is this a joke?” Cortez had anger in her eyes as red as the velvet pouch she held in her hands. “Don’t pretend to be so naïve to believe ten dollars doesn’t mean ten thousand dollars. A dime is ten dollars. A C-note is one hundred dollars. Ten dollars is ten thousand dollars. Always has been.”

“No, you said ten dollars over the phone,” Marge pleaded.

“Maybe over the phone, but not when you requested the Canicas.” She opened the pouch and retrieved the two Cat’s Eyes. Jeffry was trapped in

one, Regina in the other. Their tiny heads writhed and their faces contorted in agony and disbelief.

“I’ll get the money,” she said, clearly frightened now.

“Too late for money. The ritual of vengeance must be performed.” She removed the Crystal Ball from the red pouch and placed it in the center of the Canicas in the oblique pyramid shaped by the Tarot cards. The lifted the Azteca Blade of One Thousand Souls, spun around, and slit Marge’s belly open like a C-section. As Marge fell to the floor in terror, Madame Cortez wrapped her fingers on each side of her own head and twisted her neck back and forth till she yanked her head off her shoulders. Her gaping neck was like a mouth sucking and writhing for air.

The Madame positioned the head next to the grotesquely sized Boulder marble, the Canica at the top of the pyramid.

Marjorie watched in horror as the headless Tarotist reached her fingers into the gaping wound of her bleeding pregnant belly and pulled out the fetus and held it to the Crystal Ball. A sweet breeze slipped into the kitchen and swirled around the unformed baby. The fetus was suddenly inside the large Purie.

Marge could not move as the blood drained from her body.

Then the Tarotist placed the large Canica on her headless neck. A sucking noise coming from her open throat held the Crystal Ball in place. The head of the fetus turned to its mother on the ground, its eyes opened and Cortez looked through the child’s eyes at Marge. Before Marjorie Novacs died, she saw the old woman wearing the fetus in glass atop her shoulders and felt the old woman wrapped decapitate poor Marge. The spirit of the ex Mrs. Novacs entered the last Cat’s Eye Canica.

Then someone entered the room and witnessed the horror.

“Mother!” came the scream from behind Madame Cortez. “You were not supposed to take Jeffry from me.”

It was Rosa Ramirez Cortez. She snatched the Azteca Blade from her mother.

The Tarotist tried to speak, tried to explain herself to her daughter through the fetus’s undeveloped vocal cords, but only high-pitched shrills shrieked from the Crystal Ball atop her neck. It wouldn’t have mattered. Jeffry was dead. She saw his grotesque face in the Cat’s Eye on the table, alongside the

faces of Regina and Marge in the other two marbles.

Rosa buried the knife into her mother’s chest again and again. It was so easy; the blade was so sharp. It tore through tendons, veins, arteries, everything holding the huge Canica to her neck until the Crystal Ball fell and broke. The fetus tumbled out like a broken doll. It was dead. A gentle breeze, soft as a newborn baby, flittered about the room, landing inside one of the Puries. Mother and child were reunited in the neighboring Canicas.

Then Rosa Ramirez Cortez plunged the knife into her mother’s head resting on the kitchen table. The mouth on the face of the unholy decapitation tried to talk. A long dying hissing sound poured out. Then Madame Cortez’s spirit was sucked into the final Purie.

Rosie held the five marbles, watching each of the five faces contort in the throes of pain and suffering. This was not Hell, but it was pretty close.

9.

The pregnant woman answered the phone. “May I help you?”

“I heard you do Tarot readings,” the timid woman said, waiting for a response, hoping the answer was no.

“I believe I can help you. You are having trouble with your husband and seek some spiritual advice. I have access to spirits that know your problems and can offer personal insight. The charge is ten dollars. Do you understand?”

“That’ll be no problem,” the shy woman said. “My husband is an attorney.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. I already know the address.” Rosa ended the call and rubbed her huge belly. She carried the child of Jeffry Novacs. If the plan went right tomorrow, she’d exchange the spirit of Jeff for the body of the attorney. That is, if she could trust the instructions of her mother, the late Madame Cortez.

After all, who could trust a old Tarotist in a Crystal Ball?

"Cat's Eyes and Puries" by Anthony Servante, as it appeared in "Simple Things"  Lycan Valley Press (2016). 

 

Introduction:

Nickolas Cook has captured a moment gone wrong between drug dealer and drug lord, and through this moment we see the big world of street drugs in motion. Warning: Violence and torture. 

"Mexican Radio"
By
Nickolas Cook


The knock at the door startled Craig.
He pulled his gun from under the pillow he'd been laying on and waited, listening.
Another knock-knock-knock pounded at the cheap hotel door.
Craig sidled up to the hotel door and stood off center of it, peeking through the peephole, feeling his heart thumping in his chest.
It was just Toby.
Relieved, he opened the door, and Toby hustled inside, holding a zippered black gym bag against his chest. He looked harried and anxious.
“You got it?”
“I'm here, ain't I,” said Toby. “Think I'd risk this shit if I couldn't get the stuff? Close the door, man.”
Craig shoved the door shut.
“Lock it,” Toby snapped.
Craig locked the door.
“You weren't followed, were you,” he asked.
Toby gave him an irritated glance and shook his head. “Well, hell, Craig,” he said. “I don't know. What am I? Fucking 007 or something? How would I know if I was being followed?”
Craig sat on the bed, his shoulders sagging. “Maybe this was a bad idea, man.”
“A little too late for second thoughts, bud,” Toby told him. “We made the deal and now we're on the hook for it.”
“We could just give it back and tell him we changed our minds,” said Craig.
But Toby shook his head, frowning at his friend. “Dude, that's not how this shit works. We made the deal. They don't handle 'we changed our minds' too good,” he said. “They'll kill us. And not with a simple bullet through the head, either. These Juarez guys...man, they torture motherfuckers before they set them on fire and watch them burn alive. But that's cool. Because by the time they get to that part, you'll be begging them to do it just so's you don't have to hurt anymore.”
Craig looked at Toby and gulped, his eyes wide and wet with fear.
“Okay,” he said. “I get it. We can't turn back now.” He nodded and motioned towards the gym bag. “Have you checked the stuff yet?”
“Hell, no,” said Toby. “I just wanted to get my happy ass back here and off the streets. Know what I mean?”
Craig knew exactly what he meant. Juarez was scary as hell during the day. But at night it was like a war zone in some places. You could hear gunfire on the streets, screaming sirens, and yelling people most of the time. Coming across the border for product had become downright dangerous these days. You never knew who you could trust. You never knew who was watching you. Especially if you were two white guys from Texas with a nice car and money.
Even their over the border contact, Jorge, was sketchy. He didn't have a last name and used only burner phones for everything. So they didn't have any way of knowing he was on the up and up before they handed him the money for the stuff. It had been a gamble. But one they had both agreed was worth it at the time. They knew selling just one bundle of this shit in the US would set them up for a long time to come. Neither of them would have to work ever again if they played their cards right.
“Come on. Let's open the bag,” said Craig.
Toby sat down next to him on the rickety hotel bed and unzipped the gym bag.
Inside was a large duct taped roundish bundle.
“Damn,” Toby said. “That's a lot of fucking tape. Give me your knife.”
Craig pulled his folding knife from his pocket and handed it to Toby, who unfolded and locked the knife in place. The blade snapping into position seemed too loud for the quiet room, so while Toby went at the thick layers of tape, Craig reached over to the small bedside table and flipped on the ancient looking FM/AM alarm clock radio. An upbeat mariachi song filled the room, lending the whole scene a weirdly festive feel.
Toby's brow was furrowed in concentration, the tip of his tongue sticking from the side of his mouth, as he sawed at the duct taped bundle.
“I don't know, man,” he said. “This doesn't feel right.”
“What? You think they ripped us off?” Craig leaned in anxiously.
The knife blade hit something soft and squishy under the last few layers of tape.
Toby pulled it out of the package.
The blade was wet with blood.
“What the fuck…”, he muttered.
“Jesus, Toby,” said Craig as he pulled back in disgust. “Is that blood? Is that fucking blood?”
Sickened but knowing he had to see what was under the tape now, Craig used his fingers to peel the last layers apart and the remaining tape came away with a sticky sound.
The coppery stench of blood wafted from the open hole.
Staring back at them with dead eyes was Jorge’s head.
Toby threw the head from his lap with a high squeal.
Craig back pedaled on the bed until the headboard stopped him.
Then the door crashed open.
Three men in black ski masks rushed in.
“Puta Americano gringos, bastardos (Whore American men, bastards),” one of them shouted. “Consíguelos (Get them)!”
Before either of them could reach for their hidden guns, the masked trio was on them.
He saw Toby kick one of the men in the groin and he doubled over with a curse and a moan, but another was on him before he could strike out again.
Craig heard his friend gasp and cry out as the other masked man laid into him with his fists.
Before he could try to help him, Craig felt some kind of wet fabric being suddenly clapped over his nose and mouth from behind. He tried to scream, but his throat and lungs were filled with a choking chemical stench and a curtain of darkness fell over him.
He woke slowly to the muffled sounds of someone screaming and sobbing.
When Craig tried to move, he realized he was sitting up and his hands were tied in his lap. He made a small groggy sound of confused protest and tried to move. But he felt weak from whatever had been used on him.
“Está despierto (He's awake)”, he heard a man say from nearby.
“Está bien (That's good)”, another man said.
Craig's eyelids weighed a ton, but he forced them open.
Four grinning Mexican men were standing around him.
Looking past them, he saw he was in the middle of a warehouse. Street lamp light was pouring in from the night outside through a series of large high broken windows, hitting the dirty, trash-littered warehouse floor. There was a large fire burning in a barrel a few yards away.
Toby was near the burning fire, naked and also tied to a chair.
His face looked lumpy and bloody and he was shaking and sobbing. Craig could see several long gashes along his arms and legs. It looked like someone had been at him with a knife.
One of the grinning men stepped forward, blocking his view of Toby. He leaned down and shoved Craig's chin up so he could gaze into his bleary eyes. “Hablas inglés, señor (You speak Spanish, mister)?”
It took Craig a few moments to process what the man had asked. He shook his head.
The man stood, towering over him. “That's okay, senor,” he said with a thick accent. “I know your English well enough.”
The other three men backed away, giving the other man room.
“Your friend over there.” He motioned towards the quivering bloody Toby. “Do you know what he did?”
Craig managed to raise his head to look up at the man. He shook his head, feeling the world spinning from the after effects of the drug they'd used to knock him out.
The tall man began to pace back and forth.
“Your friend,” he said. “He stole from us. Along with your other friend Jorge.”
Craig heard Toby wailing and sobbing.
“They gave us counterfeit money as payment for your drugs, senor,” the pacing man said. “Do you know how disrespectful it is to do such a thing, my friend? They thought we were fucking stupid. It hurts to be disrespected, you know?”
Craig shook his head slowly, trying to keep the dizzy world from spinning.
“I-I did-didn't know,” he muttered, his voice still weak and slurred.
The man stopped pacing, smiling down at him.
“Oh? You didn't know, eh? You. Did. Not. Know.”
He looked around at his men, who were also smiling and chuckling now.
“I...didn't...know,” he said again, his voice weak and trembling. Once more, Craig lifted his heavy head and gazed up at the smiling men and their smirking leader.
“So, your friend lied to you, too, eh?”
Craig nodded.
“Well, my friend,” he said. “You should appreciate what comes next for your unfaithful friend.”
His smile faded and he turned to give a nod to his three men.
They moved towards Toby.
One of them drew out a long blade that reflected the leaping flames of the barrel fire.
Toby saw them coming and began to twist in his chair, his sobs growing louder as he begged for mercy in a sloppy wet voice filled with terror.
Craig tried to turn his head, but the leader grabbed his hair and jerked his head up.
“If you close your eyes, senor, I will take them out,” he said in his ear. “Do you understand me?”
Craig felt sick to his stomach and lightheaded, but he nodded.
The man with the knife held Toby's twisting head. Then he sawed off his ears, tossing them into the barrel fire. They sizzled and hissed as they burned to cartilage and flesh ash in the roaring flames.
Toby screamed so loud his voice cracked.
When the man with the knife was done he released his head and Toby leaned forward and puked.
The lead man called over his shoulder, “Toma su nariz a continuación, Hector (Take his nose next, Hector)!”
Hector took Toby's nose next, slicing through flesh and cartilage like it was warm butter.
Toby yowled like an animal, his cries echoing in the dark warehouse, thrashing in his chair.
Hector threw the nose into the fire as well.
Craig tried to turn his head away, to close his eyes. But the man before him pulled a small blade from his pocket and held the point of it against Craig's right eye; he could feel the sharp tip digging into the soft flesh half an inch from his eyeball.
“I mean what I say, senor,” the man said, pressing the blade. “Turn away again and I take this eye first.”
Craig felt hot tears roll down his cheeks but he didn't fight the man's grip on his face as he forced him to watch what came next.
The man called to Hector again. “Su polla siguiente (His dick next)!”
Craig saw Hector lean in and roughly snatch at Toby's genitals, getting a firm grip on his dangling penis.
The knife flashed in the firelight.
The sound Toby made next was unearthly.
Blood splashed across the dirty warehouse floor.
Hector laughed and threw Toby's dismembered penis into the fire.
The smell of burning fleshy parts wafted through the air, making Craig want to turn and gag. But the knife point was still pressed into the flesh under his right eye, so he called on all his willpower to keep from turning away from the hellish and grisly scene.
The leader yelled once more to Hector.
“Cállate (Shut him up)!”
Hector nodded and went behind the yowling, bleeding Toby, pulling his head back to expose the tender flesh of his throat. He ran his knife blade across the struggling man's neck, and a long final dark line appeared and arterial blood spurted into the air.
Toby gave one last small animal mewl and bled out, convulsing as he died.
Craig felt like he was going to pass out.
Toby's body slumped in his ropes, his nose-less, ear-less head sagging to his gore-covered chest.
Hector pulled Toby's dead head up by his hair to make sure he was gone.
“El Jefe (Boss),” he called to the man with the knife point to Craig's eye. “Está muerto (He's dead)!”
“That means you're next, my friend.”
El Jefe tucked his knife away and grabbed the back of Craig's chair.
Tipping him back, he began dragging the chair to where his dead friend was slumped.
“Wh-what are you doing,” Craig whimpered. “I didn't know anything about this shit. I didn't know!”
El Jefe chuckled.
“Senor, this has to happen,” he said. “If I let you walk away, everyone will know I mercy and mercy is bad for business.”
He thumped the chair down next to Toby's corpse.
Craig closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Please, please, please,” he begged. “Don't do this!”
But El Jefe ignored his teary pleas and nodded to his man Hector.
El Jefe and the other two men stepped back so he could get to work.
Hector leaned in and jerked Craig's head up so he could see his terrified, hopeless eyes.
He smiled at him with yellowed, broken teeth, stinking of blood and raw booze, showing Craig the bloody knife. He felt his whole body trying to get away from the blade, straining futilely against the tight ropes holding him in place.
Then the door to the warehouse suddenly exploded.
The impact of the explosion sent Craig's chair over and he hit the dirty concrete floor with a grunt of pain.
Startled, the men in the warehouse whirled around, drawing their guns.
Smoke boiled into the warehouse, obscuring the scene.
Armed men appeared out of the clouds of dark smoke, rushing through the devastated opening, yelling in Spanish and firing wildly at El Jefe and his stunned men.
A bullet hit Hector in the head and his body collapsed without a sound.
The knife skittered across the warehouse floor and came to a stop next to Craig's tied feet.
Chaos was all around: the deafening sounds of screaming men, gunfire from all directions, choking, blinding smoke.
Craig used his bound legs to scoot himself around, gazing at the fallen knife so near.
Someone's booted feet ran past him. The man turned and fired into the smoke, yelling curses in Spanish at the small army of intruders pouring in through the blasted doorway.
Craig used his bare foot to kick the blade closer to his hands.
Someone fell nearby, choking on blood, and then dying.
Craig ignored him, getting closer to the fallen knife.
He managed to get his right hand on the hilt and pulled it to him, almost sobbing with relief.
He sawed at the ropes at his wrist, slicing his own flesh more than once in his hurry to get loose.
The gunfire was beginning to become less random and the intruders were taking aim now, firing only when they had El Jefe and his surviving two men in their sights.
The ropes fell away and Craig went at the rest of the ropes securing his legs to the chair.
After a few quick slices, he was free.
Panicked and gasping for air, he skittered on hands and knees, making his way towards a side door across the way, feeling bullets whiz and sizzle overhead, the yelling and gunfire fading behind him.
He half crashed and half rolled against the door and it popped open from the force of impact.
Fresh air roiled in.
Naked and terrified, Craig staggered to his feet and stumbled into the humid Juarez night, the knife still clutched in his hand.
He didn't stop running until he found a dark alleyway, where he crouched down in the shadows, heaving and shaking.
After a few moments, he looked around and realized he didn't recognize any of the immediate geography. Craig had been unconscious after the three men had kidnapped he and Toby from their ratty hotel a couple of miles from the Texas border, so he had no idea where he was.
He was lost and he was naked.
But, unlike Toby, he still had both of his ears, his nose and his dick, and he wasn't dead, tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse.
Toby...
That bastard.
How could he have screwed him like that?
One of his best friends had almost gotten him killed over a stupid act of greed. Part of him was furious. But the other part of him felt sick to his stomach knowing his friend was gone. He would never forget the horrible grisly images and the terrible sounds of his torture and murder.
Minutes passed and he decided he couldn't sit here and wait for someone to find him.
First thing, he needed some clothes, but he had no money and no credit cards.
Craig looked around the alleyway and saw a collection of overflowing garbage cans filled by the nearby shops. He clung to the deeper shadows, avoiding the bare streetlamp light near the alley entrance, and dug through the cans until he found some old newspapers and garbage bags. He opted for the garbage bags, using the knife to cut apart and then tying the ragged plastic pieces together to fashion something to cover his genitals and his bare ass. Then he made his way out of the alleyway, looking down both sides of the well lit and still busy streets beyond. Barefooted, he started walking to the left, looking for anything he recognized.
He soon found a road sign that said the Rio Grande River was two miles ahead and he almost sobbed with relief. The Rio Grande ran between the southern border of both the US and Mexico. There would be border stations and, as an American, he knew he could get help. All he had to do was find his way to one of those stations.
Craig chose to keep to the backstreets as much as possible, staying away from the more trafficked areas, avoiding the tourists and vehicles moving seemingly without pause up and down the busier streets. Out this far from the main routes, there were still people and bars and vendors. He even passed a stand selling BBQ iguana.
He eventually came upon a bar that rumbled and thumped with Mexican pop and mariachi music, filled with young American college students drinking cheap beer and tequila and listening to very loud music on a jukebox.
He stopped when he saw a large doorman kick open the front door and toss a young white man out onto the street.
“Stay out, you puta,” he shouted as the kid landed on his ass and rolled over.
The young man tried to sit up, but it was obvious he had imbibed in way too much border fun and he kept falling back to the trash-littered street. Other tourists stepped over him or went around him, ignoring his futile attempts to get up.
Craig paused, looking the guy up and down from across the street.
The other drunken tourists ignored him as well as he walked casually across the street and helped the kid to his feet. A naked, barefoot man wearing a jury rigged garbage bag diaper and a shitfaced college boy weaving into an alleyway was a seemingly typical sight here in Juarez because no one said anything to him or even looked twice at them.
Down in the shadows of the alley, Craig laid the other man down and stripped him of his clothes and shoes. The clothing was all baggy white kid American college stuff, so it was loose enough to fit him even though he was slightly larger than the now naked and passed out guy laying on the urine scented alley ground. The shoes were at least half a size too small, but Craig forced his feet into them.
Exiting the stinking alleyway, he headed for the busier border streets.
With any luck, he figured he could cover the last mile or so and be in a border station in an hour or less.
He made quick time, weaving through the crowds and traffic and saw the bright signs of the Texas-Mexico border station ahead. The wet earthy scent of the river wafted into the night air across the way.
But apparently lady luck had abandoned him, because as he was crossing the street to get to the border station across the river when El Jefe spotted him.
The smirking bastard had somehow survived the attack on his warehouse. He had a gash across one cheek. His face and clothes were covered in grime; dark splotches of drying blood speckled his torn shirt. He looked grim and enraged, and gleeful he'd found Craig once again.
“My gringo friend,” he called. “I see you made it out as well!”
He started across the street towards Craig, smiling with his big predatory teeth, his dark, murderous gaze locked on him, death in his every move—the lion coming upon the gazelle.
But Craig smiled, too.
He walked towards El Jefe.
“See? I know you puta Americanos,” the Mexican said, getting closer by the moment, his nasty grin getting wider and more sadistic. “I knew you'd run for your border patrol. I knew—”
As soon as the man was close enough, Craig thrust the hidden knife deep into his stomach, puncturing his soft organs.
El Jefe's eyes went wide with pained surprise.
He twisted the blade, feeling the bastard's intestines tear apart, watching the murderous drug lord's mouth opening and closing, gasping for air.
Craig pulled him close as if they old friends hugging one another. And as El Jefe's body began to sag against him, he drew him towards a bench next the Rio Grande burbling and singing in the night between the two nations.
He sat him down on the bench seat and left the knife deeply embedded in the dying man's torso.
Craig walked past him for the border station entrance, smiling.
And the Rio Grande kept on running.



THE END