A Girl's Guide to Guns and Monsters - Martin Harry Greenberg [90]
“Not insane!” Ruth spat out in heavily accented English.
Melinda felt a spark of guilt that she could not identify the accent. She knew her mother’s family originated in an area that had frequently changed hands: Austria, Hungary, or, perhaps, Poland at the time.
“The curse is real, and it will kill you all if you don’t take heed.”
The old woman’s tone sent a shiver through Melinda. She could almost imagine Ruth placing the curse upon her, if it did not already exist.
“It is called the broch de shlang, the serpent’s curse, and it has plagued our family for so long that no one knows the insult that brought it down upon us.” Ruth raised her arms, as if beseeching God. “Sometimes, it goes from mother to daughter, other times, it skips a generation or two, three, just long enough to nearly get forgotten. But it always returns.”
Melinda glanced at her father, who shrank into his seat. He gave her a pleading look, willing her to listen. Clearly, he had gone from doubter to absolute believer. For the moment, she played along. “How does this brock . . . this curse . . . present?”
“The broch de shlang always begins with a snake.”
“Snake,” Melinda repeated, not yet convinced. “I’ve seen about a hundred snakes. At the zoo, loose, on Girl Scout hikes. I’ve even played with them a bit.” She thought of the entertaining antics of the hognoses.
Ruth leaned forward. Her shriveled little body seemed to expand. “Ah, but the broch de shlang is different. It may start out innocent, but it never remains so. The interactions with snakes grow more intense and less normal until . . .”
Melinda waited for her great-great aunt to finish, but she did not. She sat back as if she had not yet spoken, a shrunken figure lost in the cushions of the couch.
“Until?” Melinda looked from her father to Ruth and back. “Until what?”
“Until,” Ruth whispered so low that Melinda had to lean toward her to hear. “Until it kills its host.”
Melinda’s heart skipped a beat, and with it came a suffocating feeling of imminent death.
Her father explained. “Nearby innocents, usually female relatives, may also lose their lives to it. It becomes larger, more powerful and deadly, until it kills . . .”
“. . . its host,” Melinda finished. A picture formed in her mind of the Masagua rattlesnake on the lawn. She had shaken it from the container, expecting it to flee. Every previous experience with snakes, everything she had heard or read, suggested that, so long as it was not cornered, a frightened snake would choose escape over attack. But this one had coiled and struck, as if in vengeance for its capture. She shook her head to clear it. “This is madness!”
Neither father nor aunt replied.
“I killed both of the snakes I encountered. Shouldn’t that end the curse, assuming it even exists?”
“The curse is real!” Aunt Ruth did not speak loudly, but her voice carried an intense authority. “To mock it is to succumb to it.”
Melinda’s father stayed the elderly woman with a touch to her shoulder. “As I understand it, the first encounters serve as a test. Each new one becomes more directed and dangerous until . . .”
Until. Melinda already knew how that sentence ended. She forced herself not to consider. To contemplate her own demise proved terrifying enough. She scarcely dared to consider what would happen to her daughters. By law, Kaylee would go to Mike, who loved and adored her; but Paige would surely wind up institutionalized. Melinda refused to allow images of that fate to enter her consciousness. “Isn’t there any way to defeat the curse?”
Now, a smile wreathed Ruth’s face. “I was hoping you would ask that, child. Because you seem, at last, the one strong enough to do it.”
“How?” Though still uncertain whether her aunt was wise or crazy, Melinda had to know. “What do I have to do?”
“It is said,” Ruth intoned clearly. “That the curse will lift when the broch de shlang is killed at the same moment as its host.”
Melinda remained in place, leaning forward on the couch, waiting for the words to