Cursed Be the Child (30 page)

“If you could be any one of the toys on that shelf, which would you be?” Selena asked.

The child didn’t seem to hear.

“Melissa?” Selena said.

The girl did not turn around, but she quietly said, “Is that my name?”

“Do you want me to call you Missy?”

“Is that my name?”

“You tell me, okay?”

No answer.

“Are we playing?” Selena asked. “Is this like a name game?” No answer. “Is that what you’d like, to play a game?”

A shrug.

“You know, I’ll bet Oscar the Grouch could tell me your name,” Selena said. “Why don’t you slip him on? It’s okay if you don’t want to talk, but maybe Oscar wants to say something for you.”

Nothing. Then slowly, as though she barely had control of her movements, the little girl took Oscar the Grouch, slipped her hand in and pulled the long, furry puppet down her arm. She turned around. Oscar’s mouth moved awkwardly. The child’s mouth moved silently with it.

Together like that, Selena thought, the little girl and the puppet were scary as hell.

“Hello, Oscar,” Selena said.

Oscar growled, and the sound, pinched and threatening, did not seem to emanate from the little girl’s throat.

“Do you want to play a name game with me, Oscar?” Selena asked.

Again there was the tiny menacing growl, but this time, Selena saw something in the child’s eyes.

Am I merely imagining it? Selena asked herself.

But it was there. She knew it.

It was a plea, a silent cry for help.

And she knew, too, it was neither normal eyesight nor trained psychologist’s vision that enabled her to see the sorrowful, yearning message in the child’s eyes.

Deny it though she might, deny it though she had, it was her gift, her cursed birthright.
Dukkeripin
—the intuitive, paranormal, sixth sense of the
cohalyi,
the Gypsy wise woman.

She had a painful thought. Had Kris Heidmann sought help from that Gypsy
cohalyi,
would the teenager be alive right now? But the troubled girl had come to Ms. Selena Lazone, the liberated modern woman who after her name had those college-awarded letters to prove just how much she knew!

Kristin Heidmann died.

What of this child?

Could Selena Lazone help her? Selena Lazone, psychologist?

Or Selena Lazone, Gypsy
gule romni,
Selena Lazone, Romany witch!

“Name…game...” The little girl’s lips moved, but the hoarse words appeared to come from the puppet’s mouth in eerie ventriloquism. “You…know…her? Know…her…name?”

Selena leaned forward. She pointed at the child. “Your name is Melissa Barringer. You are Missy.”

Melissa Barringer’s sigh was deep and grateful. As though reciting a magical incantation or a prayer, she said, “My name is Melissa Barringer. I live at 1302 Main Street, Grove Corner, Illinois. My zip code is 60412…”

“No,” interrupted the harsh voice of Oscar.

“I…I…” Melissa Barringer’s head snapped left, then right, as though she’d been slapped. “I am Melissa…”

“No!”

“I am Lisette. I don’t want to be, but Lisette…”

“No!” the puppet seemed to say, but not in the tone that a moment previous had belonged to Oscar the Grouch. This was a child’s voice. It was furious and frightened and incredibly lonely.

And it was not Melissa Barringer’s voice.

You cannot tell! It is a secret! A secret!

“I have to!” Melissa Barringer cried, choking on a sob. “I want to!”

No!

And as Selena struggled to hold her expressionless mask in place, the little girl and the puppet argued.

A furious voice.

A pleading voice.

Shouting.

Whimpering.

Multiple personality, Selena thought. Despite the notoriety of several cases, multiple personality was an extremely rare neurotic condition. Most psychotherapists never encountered even a single case.

Tshatsimo!
The truth. She desperately wanted to believe that the child’s affliction was multiple personality. That was a psychological aberration. That was crazy, but a psychologist could treat such a patient and such a condition.

But
Baht
had not brought Melissa to the office of Selena Lazone, psychologist.

Baht
had nudged and pushed and led Melissa Barringer so that she might meet Selena Lazone,
ababina,
Gypsy sorceress.

But I am not an
ababina,
Selena silently declared to herself. No more of that!

Yet cautiously, Selena rose. The little girl was silent. Oscar was silent. But child eyes and puppet eyes focused on Selena Lazone as she approached. Selena moved like a slow motion mime or a trained soldier, on guard and alert.

“I must know,” she said quietly, and she felt the entreaty of the child’s eyes and the furious threat radiating from the eyes of the puppet.

Go away! You cannot! You will not!

Selena hesitated. She heard the warning without hearing words, the menacing promise flashing red and black in her mind. She wished a dozen futile wishes, and then she did what she had to do, what
Baht
commanded her.

She leaned down. Her lips lightly touched the center of the child’s forehead in a kiss, a
cohalyi’s
kiss. There was the heat, a blazing fever not of the body but of the spirit. And the taste of salt and sulphur was inevitable and awful.

Selena straightened. She was beginning to understand, and that knowledge filled her with tingling terror. The adrenalin rush triggered a nauseating roiling in her stomach; she took a deep breath, pushing away a feeling of faintness.

The
trushul,
Selena thought, the blessed cross, as she made the holy sign above the little girl’s head. Once, twice, three times.

Eyes half closed, Selena whispered in Romany the ancient incantation:

Evil Eyes that have gazed on thee,

May those Eyes extinguished be

Evil Eyes that have gazed on thee,

May those Eyes now cease to be.

Is that a song? I know songs, too. Listen. Come along with me, Lucille, in my merry Olds-Mow-Beeyel…

The voice peeped, teasing and small, in Selena’s mind, and in her mind, Selena responded. Who are you?

I am…Oscar the Grouch!

The puppet’s mouth flapped stupidly, a moving caricature of a laugh.

Who are you? Selena demanded.

My name is Melissa Barringer. I live at 1302 Main Street, Grove Corner…

I want the truth, Selena insisted.

Do you?

Yes, Selena responded.

You know the truth.

Yes, Selena admitted. You are
diakka.

A silence that seemed to echo with taunting laughter followed Selena out of the playroom.

««—»»

She was sorry, but there was nothing she could do. There was nothing any psychotherapist could do. Yes, the doctors at Lawn Crest Hospital had been correct. There wasn’t a physical problem.

Nor was there a mental/emotional problem.

Melissa Barringer’s problem was spiritual.

That was when Warren Barringer arched an eyebrow. The Barringers and the psychologist stood cramped in the small observation room adjoining the playroom. “Spiritual?” he said. “You mean Missy ought to be enrolled in Sunday School?”

Selena ignored him. How could she expect him to believe that his daughter has been…obsessed by a
diakka?
Groping for words, she tried to explain.

“You know, Ms. Lazone, this is not amusing,” Warren Barringer interrupted. “You’ll notice I am not laughing. My wife is not laughing. We came here because we thought you might help our daughter, and you’re handing us this nonsense about her being possessed…”

“Obsessed,” Selena said. “An obsession is a spirit’s attack on a living person. It can lead to total possession of that person. It’s not to that point with your daughter. Not yet.”

“Whoa!” Warren Barringer held up his hand, palm out. “I write fiction, but I don’t live it, okay? Ms. Lazone, are you listening to yourself? Do you have any idea how crazy you sound?”

“Yes,” Selena said.

Then Selena’s eyes met Vicki’s, and Selena knew she understood—and believed.

So Selena’s next words were directed to the woman. “There’s nothing I can do, Mrs. Barringer. Your daughter needs a minister, a priest, or a rabbi…”

“How about Shirley MacLaine?” Warren cut in. “Or maybe we can get Mary Baker Eddy’s ghost! We’ll certainly want to get Missy fixed up before she starts spitting green pea soup at us or spinning her head around 360 degrees!”

“I can do nothing more for you,” Selena said.

Warren said, “Just for the sake of adding a moronic question to a ridiculous conversation, how do you know all this voodoo, black magic, poltergeist stuff anyway? Are you a witch, Ms. Lazone?”

“No.”

That was all she said to Warren Barringer.

But to herself she admitted that once she was a
cohalyi,
but no longer.

Not ever again.

Bater.

May it be so!

— | — | —

Thirty-Four

As soon as they got the car at the underground Grant Park parking garage, Warren started in. “I’ve never heard garbage like that in my life! Metaphysical babble! That Lazone woman has to be goofier than any of her…”

At the exit, he rolled down his window. “The ticket!” he snapped. “You have the ticket, right?”

She did. She handed him a ten-dollar bill to pay the $7.25 parking fee. Warren snorted his annoyance at “Chicago, City of the Big Rip-offs.”

Vicki thought he was upset in a way she did not understand. She was worried. She was worried about him, about Missy, about everything. She was worried and frightened and in her belly, behind the rib that still hurt, she felt an irregularly shaped, impossibly heavy weight.