Wisp of a Thing

33

Rockhouse’s raspy breathing was the room’s only sound. He looked down at Rob, his eyes actually brimming with tears. Rob felt a throb of regret that he’d hurt this ancient, petty, pathetic tin god.

Then Rockhouse screamed in rage, drew back his arm, and drove the microphone stand’s base down at Rob’s head.

Something shrieked like a wild animal as it flew over Rob and slammed into Rockhouse. The mike stand hit the ground an inch from his cheek, dropped rather than thrown. Rob pulled his blood-sticky head free of the riser.

Curnen was wrapped around the old man, hissing and screeching as she clawed his face, his hands, his clothes. Where had she come from? The tattered dress tangled around his hands as he tried to grab hold of her. She ripped into his skin, and blood splattered those nearest the fight. Rockhouse staggered toward the crowd, hands reaching blindly for help, but people moved out of his way. No one, not even Bliss, offered any aid.

They thrashed in the middle of the dance floor in a display of Grand Guignol flatfooting. “Help!” Rockhouse yelled. “Get her off me!” But no one answered his cries.

Curnen bent the old man’s head to one side. Her suddenly-pointed teeth gleamed when she opened her mouth, and her head darted snakelike to the soft flesh of his neck. He howled in renewed pain and fury. An arterial jet of unnaturally bright red blood shot straight up and splattered on the ceiling. It was only for an instant, but Rob swore he saw Curnen with a fist-sized chunk of flesh in her teeth, ripped whole from her father’s neck. Then they fell backwards into the crowd, which moved to surround them.

Rob tried to organize his rattled thoughts. For the moment, everyone had forgotten him. He rolled off the riser onto the floor, then got first to his knees and finally to his feet. Dizziness spun the room around him, and blood trickled down the back of his neck. Teeth gritted against the pain, he shook his head to clear it, which almost sent him to the floor again. But he stayed upright, and the last of the dazed sensation vanished. He looked around for Stella.

She huddled against the wall behind Stoney, her arms wrapped around her body as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Stoney watched the fight with slack-jawed amusement and surprise, smiling even as he wiped his own bloody face.

A shriek that could shatter glass cut through all the other noise. Berklee charged across the room, Doyle’s pocketknife in her hand. Before he could react, she stabbed Stoney in the groin, holding the knife there and twisting it. He screamed, too, but she held the knife in place, using her whole body to push it deeper. He fell to the floor with Berklee on top of him, screaming a lifetime’s worth of torment into his contorted face. His spells were broken, too.

Rob stumbled across the room and grabbed Stella by the arm. He looked around for Curnen, but the crowd still blocked any view of the fight between father and daughter. Doyle pulled a still-screaming Berklee off Stoney, and together the four of them made for the door. Then they were outside in the still-roaring wind, running for their vehicles.

Suddenly Stella yanked free of Rob’s grasp. “I can’t—!” she tried to say, her face distorted with panic.

“Goddammit!” Rob said, and grabbed her by the shoulders. “Listen to me! Your husband is worrying himself sick about you! Doesn’t that count for anything?”

“But… what I did!”

“It wasn’t your fault! It’s over now!”

Her mouth moved, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, she wrenched away from him and ran, not back into the Pair-A-Dice, but across the highway into the forest. He started after her, but a wave of nausea made him clutch at the nearest car, and by the time his head cleared, she’d vanished.

He looked at the huge wall of green and wood before him, as solid in its way as any fortress. Stella, rather than face either her husband or her lover again, had chosen to burst through that wall and disappear into whatever lay beyond. And Rob knew he could not follow; these woods belonged to the Tufa, and anyone who ventured into them gave themselves over to Tufa rules.

Doyle was suddenly next to him. “We’re going,” he said urgently. “You need a ride?”

Rob shook his head, but the movement made him dizzy again. By the time it passed, he heard Doyle’s car roaring off down the highway.

He stumbled to his own car, managed to get the keys into the ignition and start the engine. In the rearview mirror, he watched the Pair-A-Dice entrance, but no one emerged. He considered going back for Curnen, but a fresh wave of nausea hit him.

Finally he put the car into gear and gunned it out of the parking lot. He headed back toward Needsville alone.

Moments later, Bliss burst out the door, dragging Curnen by one wrist. The younger woman snapped and snarled like a mad dog at the people inside. Her ripped white dress was streaked with Rockhouse’s blood. None of them attempted to stop or follow the women. Rockhouse’s high, keening moans carried over all the other noise.

The door slammed shut, and Bliss threw Curnen to the ground between two trucks. Curnen skidded on the gravel, then glared up defiantly. The dust raised by the wind surrounded her like the smoke of her fury. Blood soaked her face and upper torso. She growled, low and menacing, like a coyote.

Bliss gathered her hair and held it back against the wind. The dream she’d had the day before she met Rob included an image just like this. It had seemed ludicrous then. Then again, so had the dream’s other warnings.

Curnen growled again. “You don’t have to do that anymore,” Bliss said wearily.

Slowly, Curnen got to her feet. She wiped her mouth with the back of her arm. It left a bright red streak across one cheek. She stood upright and faced her sister.

“How does it feel?” Bliss asked.

Curnen, in a whisper made raw and thin by disuse, said, “I don’t know yet. Is he dead?”

“In all the important ways. What will you do now?”

She licked her lips and looked off, searching for words. “I think… I’ll leave.”

“Needsville?”

She nodded.

“Good God, Curnen, haven’t you learned anything? That’s what started all this. You can’t leave. None of us can.”

Curnen struggled to form the words. “Not for good. Just… until people remember me. Until I become myself again.”

“You think you can do that better somewhere else? You’re a Tufa. A full-blood Tufa. What better place than here?”

She shook her head. “No. Here I almost became—” Again she paused to search for the words. “—a wisp of a thing. I want to be more.”

“You’re all the family I have left,” Bliss said.

Curnen stepped closer. “I will be back. I will.”

They hugged. Then Curnen turned and looked up. The Widow’s Tree was totally bare now, its limbs like black veins against the sky. She began to laugh. After a moment, Bliss joined her. Curnen’s laughter became a howl, the only cry she’d been allowed for so long.

Bliss stared at her, and laughed at the absurdity. Then, above the roaring wind, the Overbay sisters howled together, expressing their amusement and triumph at the world. The sound reached every part of Cloud County.