Mulengro, page 8
Oh, Owen, he told himself as he took a pull from his draft. You’re burning your own torch a little too bright. What he should be doing instead of crying into his beer was sending the manuscript around to a couple of other publishers—maybe even use another name like Ola did. He could almost hear his father’s voice in his ear: “Papa Owen ain’t raisin’ no crybabies. You just get up offen your lazy ass, Jeff-boy , an’ give ‘em hell.” He grinned. Maybe he should drop by Ola’s and have her mix him up a happy-potion. Berries picked only under the full moon and kept under the pillow of a virgin for three nights. Mix with powdered bats’ wings and a healthy dose of morning dew. Hey-ho. Drink while standing on one foot and facing west. Or maybe she had some spell he could slip their editor so that he’d buy anything he sent in.
It was a nice idea. Too bad it wouldn’t work. And he knew he really wasn’t being fair to Ola. Whatever he might say jokingly about what went into their books, he knew that there was no bullshit in them. Not really. Weird stuff—oh, yeah. By the bucket. But then Ola could be a little spooky herself. When you came right down to it.
Drinking another half-inch of his beer, he turned on his stool and looked around the room to see if there was anyone he knew that he could pass a couple of hours with, just to get the sour taste of the rejection letter out of his mouth. Most of the regulars were in, but nobody he knew well enough to foist his somewhat grumpy company on except for Jackie, but she was working tonight and the customers were keeping her too busy for them to exchange more than just a couple of words. He saw a couple from Brooke Valley sitting at a table with another of the waitresses who was off duty. There were three tourists or cottagers at one of the window tables, old John Danning who had a regular column in The Perth Courier was at the far end of the bar, and the girl who ran the craft shop on Wilson—he never could remember her name— was with her boyfriend near the back. There were a few others that he knew only to nod to on the street. Maybe he should just go home, type up a new submission letter, get up bright and early and mail the whole shebang out again in the morning. Or he could get drunk.
The door opened from the street and he turned to see Bob and Stan Gourlay come in. They were a couple of good ol’ boys who usually spent their time across the street in the Revere Hotel, known locally as The Zoo. They matched Jeff in height—he stood six-one without his boots—but were meatier around the chest and arms. Stan was the one with the big mouth. His brother wasn’t considered to be all that bright, but he was the one who liked to get things down to a fist and toe level.
Trouble with a capital T, Jeff thought. He started to turn back to the bar, but Stan’s gaze had already fallen on him.
“Say-hey. How’s it goin’, Owen? Still writing that fag shit?”
Jesus, Jeff thought. This he didn’t need. He glanced at Jackie behind the bar. She was looking a little nervous, fingers playing with the tie-strings of her Indian print skirt as she glanced at the closed door of the kitchen, probably hoping that Mike would come out. Jeff was hoping Mike would come out too. This wasn’t the kind of place to start anything, but he just wasn’t in the mood to put up with any shit from the Gourlay brothers. Not tonight. Tinkers was a quiet bar with a sort of Whole Earth sixties atmosphere. In the old days it had been an Irish drink-and-slug-it-out hole, but not anymore.
Stan settled on the stool beside Jeff while Bob leaned up against a pillar looking bored. “You still got that little black nooky stashed away up at the Ferry?” Stan asked with an exaggerated wink. There was no humor in that broad stupid face.
Jeff sighed. He set his half-finished beer down on the bartop and laid a two-dollar bill beside it. Without taking his gaze from the brothers, he slipped off his seat, turned and headed for the door. He didn’t know what had gotten into the Gourlays tonight, but he sure as hell wasn’t sticking around to find out. The alcohol on Stan’s breath was strong enough to knock a horse down at ten paces.
He reached the street without incident, but before he could get into his car, he heard the door to Tinkers open behind him.
“Hey, Owen! I was talking to you!”
Jeff started to turn, but he’d misjudged the distance between himself and the pair. Bob’s fist caught him square in the gut and he buckled over. He didn’t know who booted him in the head. Stars exploded behind his eyes and the sidewalk came rushing up to him.
“We were just bein’ sociable, you know?” he heard Stan say. The voice seemed to come from a long distance away. As he began to lift his head, Bob kicked him in the side. What breath remained in him went out with a whoosh and he found himself curling up into a fetal position. His throat filled with puke. He wanted to get up, but his muscles didn’t seem to work anymore.
“We just wanted to have a drink with our old pal, Owen the Boneman.” Stan punctuated every few words with a kick. “You got a bone big enough to fit that black pussy, Owen? Whadaya think, brother Bob?”
Bob picked at his ear and looked down at Jeff. “He sure as hell won’t be pluggin’ her tonight.”
“You got a point there, brother Bob. You surely do. And I think it’s our duty, as Owen’s pals, to see that she don’t miss out on any fun just because Jeffy here’s feelin’ too poorly to go out and pay her a visit.”
“I don’t know, Stan. I don’t think I could get it up for no black pussy.”
“Shit. We’ll just keep the lights off. All pussy’s black in the dark, brother Bob.”
Jeff could hear their footsteps retreating, then the roar of their pickup starting up. Dimly he was aware of someone bent over him, but his left eye was already swelling shut and the face swam before him. He knew he had to say something so that Ola could be warned to get out of the house, or at least call the cops, but the words wouldn’t take shape on his lips. All that came out was a moan. Darkness rushed up to swallow him.
nine
Ola was asleep before ten o’clock that night. She had been reading on the porch, trying to shut out the whining of the mosquitos on the other side of the screen, when she began to drift off. Her hands went limp and the hardcover she was reading closed with a slow flip of pages and a final quiet twap as the book shut. It slipped between her legs onto the sofa cushions. Her chin rested against her chest. A loon called out on the lake—a long low sound that she didn’t hear. In the living room, Boboko watched the lights dim around him as Ola’s breathing evened out and deepened. When she was finally asleep, it was as dark on his side of the windows as it was outside. Rising slowly to his feet, he padded out onto the porch and settled on her lap, ears twitching until he too was sleeping.
When the Gourlay brothers walked into Tinkers in Perth, Ola’s dook stirred, but she didn’t waken. Boboko cocked open an eye and regarded the shift of expressions on her face. He could see the movement of her eyes behind her closed lids. Her breathing quickened. Just as he was about to wake her, he heard the television set go on in the other room. He continued to study her for a long moment, then hopped down from her lap and went into the cottage proper. The TV threw a flickering light across the living room, awakening weird shadows that chased each other across the mantel and into the kitchen, but the cat ignored them. He sat on his haunches in front of the set and watched Ola’s dreams take shape on the screen through the power of her dook.
The picture was in black and white, grainy and soundless. Two men were kicking another man who lay at their feet on a sidewalk. Their mouths worked and eyes sneered, bringing a low grumble to Boboko’s chest. He recognized the man who was being beaten and shot a quick glance to the doorway of the porch. Was this the future, or was it happening now? Either way it didn’t bode well for Jeff. He thought again of waking Ola, but then the picture on the screen flickered and dissolved into a meaningless dotted pattern. For a long moment Boboko stared at the pulsating dots. The hair along his spine began to prickle and rise.
There was something about the two men who had been beating Jeff . . . the way that they had left him lying on the pavement . . . a look in their eyes. . . . He knew enough about Ola’s dook to know it wouldn’t show her anything in her own future. But those men . . . Boboko’s own dook, a curious combination of a feline’s sixth sense and the something more than sentience that Ola had awoken in him, buzzed a warning. It was past midnight and the darkness outside had taken on a witchy quality. Events were shaping, moving in the ether, drawing closer to fruition. Those men meant her harm. He knew that. He had to wake her, to warn her that—But then the dot pattern on the screen cleared enough so that new images could take shape there. It was another of Ola’s farseeings. Her dook was bringing her another vision. . . .
While her body slept, Ola’s spirit was drawn out into the night. Swift as a thought it sped over darkened fields and lonesome highways until the dull glow of Ottawa’s skyline beckoned on the horizon. In moments she was above the city, passing it by. She crossed the river, hovered above Hull. Here there were more people on the streets. The bars were still open—they would be open until three. Taxis and police cars took turns cruising the side streets and main thoroughfares. Her dook prickled the hair of her scalp back in Rideau Ferry as it drew her spirit down into a low-rent district, down to quieter streets grimy with refuse and to front yards littered with car parts and other less-recognizable junk. On a run-down porch she saw an old woman in a wicker rocking chair, an old Gypsy woman with an air of expectancy about her. She didn’t appear aware of Ola’s presence, or if she was, she gave no sign of it. She seemed to be waiting for something else.
Ola turned at the sound of footsteps on the quiet street. Though she was present only in spirit and invisible to sight, she drew back into the shadows of the porch when the approaching man came under the glare of the one streetlight still working on the street. He was dressed all in black and she knew him from her visions. She wanted to shout a warning to the old woman, but had no throat to speak the words. She could only watch the man come near. Wisps of fog clung to his lower legs. They were present one moment, like a tatter of corpse-veil fluttering as he moved, gone the next. And his eyes . . .
“Mulengro,” the old woman hissed, naming him.
In Rideau Ferry, goose bumps lifted on the arms of Ola’s sleeping body.
The pickup truck passed the Rideau Ferry Inn and crossed the bridge beyond it, pulling off to the left on a small side road that led to Frost Point. Bob Gourlay killed the truck’s engine and joined his brother who’d stepped out of the cab as soon as they’d come to a halt.
“Nice night,” Bob said.
Stan grinned. “Beauty. No doubt about it.”
They started back for the highway on foot, turned right and crossed the bridge.
Old Lyuba rocked back and forth, bird-bright eyes fixed on the approaching stranger. His leather shoe soles clicked softly on the pavement. The sound died as he turned into the yard. Lyuba continued to rock. The rattle of her chair’s slats on the uneven boarding of the porch seemed to grow in volume. When the stranger reached the top of the stairs and finally stood in front of her, she stopped the movement of the rocker and faced him silently.
He was a dark Rom, tall and slender, with abruptly chiseled features and thin lips. His eyes were ghostly pale-blue against the deep tan of his complexion. A web-work of fine scar tissue atop each cheek drew attention to the eyes and gave him a wolfish look, as though he wore a mask. Determined though she’d been not to let him frighten her, Lyuba couldn’t suppress a shiver. Her old heart began to work overtime, pumping the thin blood through her body. She had seen eyes like his before. They were a fanatic’s eyes. In his prikaza black and with that face, it was as though Martiya the night spirit, the Angel of Death himself had come for her.
“What do you want of me, murderer?” she demanded suddenly. His very silence made her speak. “Is this old woman marhime, too?”
The thin lips pulled back into a tight humorless smile, almost a grimace. “An old phuri dai such as you should know better than to fill the heads of Rom with nonsense,” he said finally. His voice was cold, like a draft issuing from the grave. “You should not point out roads . . . or tell secrets. Not to those who are marhime. Did no one tell you? Na may kharunde kai tshi khal tut.” Not to scratch where it did not itch.
“I spit on you!” the old woman began. “I call down a plague of—”
The man in black slowly shook his head and the words died in Lyuba’s throat. Mist arose from between the floorboards of the porch like whorls of smoke. As the frightened woman watched, shapes formed in the mist. Two . . . three of them. They were like dogs at first, then rose on their ghostly hind legs to take the appearance of men. A smell of rot came from them and hung heavy in the air. Lyuba thought she would gag. They had no features, only shape, and as she watched, their paleness darkened until they were as black as the ebony diklo that hung at the stranger’s neck. They were mule, Lyuba knew with dread. Ghosts of the dead.
“When you speak with those who are marhime, “ the stranger said, “you only dirty yourself. And now you have become an itch that I must scratch.”
The mule moved closer as he spoke.
Boboko stared at the television in fascinated dread, his calico features weirdly lit from the play of light and dark that spilled from the screen. It was so quiet in the cottage that his own breathing was raspy in his ears. He heard Ola stirring on the sofa in the porch. The images on the screen flickered but didn’t die, so he knew she wasn’t awake yet. Best he called her now, he thought. Then he heard a sound from outside, a sound that didn’t belong.
“You see that, brother Bob? A fuckin’ cat watchin’ TV!” Stan drew back from the window when the animal’s head turned towards it. “Weird shit. Weird movie.”
Bob shrugged. “Maybe it’s one of those vid-ee-os.” “Could be,” Stan agreed. “But who really gives a horse’s ass? So long as she’s in there with her legs spread—waitin’ for little Jeffy Owen who’s pullin’ a no-show. . . .” He moved around the building as he spoke, towards the front door. Bob followed.
Lyuba couldn’t move. She watched the mule approach, saw her own death reflected in the stranger’s mad pale eyes. A hand of shadow reached for her, entered her body like icy smoke passing right through the pores of her skin. Inside her body, the shadow grew solid and gripped her heart like a vise, smoky fingers tightening. Her back arched. A scream rose up in her throat but died before it could pass her lips. The hand on her heart squeezed harder. A cold wind whistled through her, whined in her ears, froze the blood in her veins. Then her heart burst and she slumped back in the chair.
The mulo withdrew its hand once more. It passed immaterially through her flesh and the fabric of her blouse. There wasn’t even a bruise on the skin to leave evidence of its passage. The man in black smiled his tight-lipped smile and nodded. The mule lost their dark hue, drifted apart like smoke before a wind, and were gone.
“I gave you a clean death, old woman,” the stranger said to the corpse, “for you meant well. But the marhime must die and nothing may stop me. God gave me this task, as he gave me my mule to complete it. Mulengro you named me and it is a good name. I might keep it.”
In her hiding place, Ola was numb with shock. The casual brutality of the murder skittered through her like a trapped bat. The natural inclination of a Rom to best a foe by wits rather than force was swept away by a piercing red anger. She wanted to hurt the murderer as a Gaji would, to strike him with a club and feel the bones break under her blows. But her body was miles from her. She was nothing more than a wraith—as insubstantial as Mulengro’s mule had been. No, less so, for they could kill while she was no more than an observer. Helpless. Only able to watch, with the anger burning inside her. . . .
She moved a half step out of the shadows, then paused, eyes flaring wide. Out of the dead woman’s body a dark shadow was wreathing, taking shape in the air between the man in black and the corpse.
Boboko turned as the door to the cottage was kicked open. He recognized the two men from Ola’s earlier farseeing. They stood in the doorway for a long moment, then one of them crossed over to the phone and ripped the line from the wall.
“Say-hey,” Stan said as he dropped the phone on the floor. “Guess the little lady’ll know we’re here now.” He turned to grin at his brother, then cursed as a calico shape hurled itself at him. The cat landed on his upper thigh, claws digging in. It bit at his crotch, but all it got was a mouthful of jean and zipper.
“Jesusfuckgetitoffame!” Stan roared. He swept his arms down, succeeded in dislodging the spitting, clawing animal. He aimed a kick at its head, but Boboko moved out of range too quickly. Holding onto his thigh, feeling his own blood wet on his hand, Stan tried to back the cat into a corner. “I’m gonna kill you, you little fucker,” he told it. “You’re worm-food!”
Bob moved in from the other side. He picked up a heavy book that was lying on a side table near the door and hefted it in his hand.
“Christ!” he said. “What if it’s rabid?”
“I don’t give a fuck if it’s got cancer,” Stan said. “I’m gonna rip its guts out.”
Boboko backed up slowly. “Just try,” he said.
The two men stared at the animal, their jaws going slack.
It was the old woman’s muli, Ola realized as the new shadow stood before the man in black. It was thinner than the other mule had been and not quite so black.
“Now you are free,” the stranger said. “Free of what marhime you had, free of that worn-out body you wore beyond its time. Join me in my work. Help me make the Rom clean once more in the eyes of God.”
Never. The disembodied voice seemed to come from all parts of the porch. I will never join you in your dilo ways. You are mad, Mulengro. You are a monster.
“Perhaps,” the stranger said. “But if I am mad, then God gave me this madness to see where others are blind. The strength to complete the work He has given me. And you will join me.”
