Cursed Be the Child by Mort Castle Read Free Book Online Page B

forcefully scissoring her nipples.
    She experienced a moment of separation and fear, long enough for him to work his trousers and shorts down, and then he was between her thighs. She reached out to guide him and he thrust hard, and she enfolded him with arms and legs, cocooning him within her flesh. Sensation overwhelmed her, and she writhed and clawed and spasmed until the blinding shock of release slammed into her.
    She wept as, a few moments after, he hissed and stiffened and let out a deep groan.
    They rested awhile as WFMT broadcast Prokofiev’s sardonic, teasing Lt. Kije Suite. The next time was slower. They were completely naked, skin upon skin, long caresses and bone deep shivers and, at last, peace.
    In the still solemn moment before dawn, she told him what had happened. “It was an omen of diakka, ” she explained. It was Baht, her fate, to encounter a child’s spirit, a lost soul that had not made the journey beyond the waters, anda I thema, a spirit so hungry for life it could suck the very life from the living. No, she did not know how or when, did not know anything more than that—except that she was afraid as she had never before been afraid.
    David did not interrupt with a single question. When she was finished, he said, “I understand.”
    The sun rose over Lake Michigan, radiant orange and eternal. David went to the window and recited the Romany words she asked him to say, offered the incantation she could not bring herself to speak because she was marhime, an outcast, an unclean woman.
    Great Fire, Defender, and Protector,
    Celestial Fire Who cleans the Earth of foulness,
    Deliver us from Evil.
    There were other words Selena could not speak aloud, but she said them to herself:
    David, I love you.
     
    — | — | —
     

Seven
     
    “Good morning,” Laura Morgan said when Vicki walked into Blossom Time.
    “Hi,” Vicki Barringer said, for variety’s sake. She’d already said, “Good morning,” a half dozen times as, with the sun shining in a sky dotted with white puff clouds, she’d walked the two blocks to the flower shop. There was a greeting to Ralph Sorenson, Grove Corner’s retired postmaster who’d been coming out of Milly’s Family Restaurant, to Vera Pelman, the school crossing guard at Main and Lisle who stayed at her post an extra half hour for the late-to-class kids, to Chick, a bag boy at Knutsen’s Certified, who was carrying Mrs. Tremont’s bags to her station wagon, a greeting for each of her neighbors.
    Yes, Vicki thought, definitely a good morning, and a good day—Friday, her very first pay day! Tonight they’d have to celebrate; she would take the family out to dinner.
    Vicki set about watering the plants, then checking the cut flowers in the refrigerated case. Laura took a telephone order for a plant to be sent RFD to a hospitalized friend in the central Illinois town of Chenoa. At 10:15, the old gentleman with the plaid cap, Mr. Shelley, Vicki’s first customer of the week, was back. “Another spat with the wife,” he explained, with a sigh. “Last night at supper, ’cause she don’t want me putting so much salt on my food. Can’t help it. When you get old, if you don’t put salt on your food, you just can’t get any taste at all.” He needed the usual—a single reconciliation red rose. “Married fifty-two years,” he said, “so I guess the trial period is over. We do a lot of fightin’, lot of making up and just keep on lovin’ each other.”
    Time passed pleasantly. There wasn’t much to do, really, except smell the flowers, watch through the plate glass window as Grove Corner’s citizens walked by at a small town pace, and chat with Laura Morgan about this and that. One subject, of course, was “the kids.” Laura’s daughter, Dorothy, the same age as Missy, was in the same second grade class, and the girls had already taken the first tentative steps toward friendship.
    Three years older than Vicki, red-haired Laura Morgan was a tall, big-boned