Cursed Be the Child (31 page)

Just as they were about to merge onto the Dan Ryan Expressway, they were cut off by an old Cadillac that lacked a rear license plate, a trunk lid and a back bumper. Warren swore.

In the back seat, Missy laughed.

Then Warren said, “The goddamned world is full of goddamned crazy people.”

And you sound like one of them, Vicki thought.

Missy laughed. “Daddy is talking dirty!”

“Goddamn right Daddy is talking goddamn dirty, goddamnit,” Warren said. His hands were tight on the steering wheel. “‘Psychologist? She’s the one who needs a psychologist. Maybe plug her toe into the wall socket and give her some shock treatments, goddamn crazy woman.”

Missy giggled happily.

“Warren,” Vicki said, “please.”

“Sure,” he said, “no problem.”

Suddenly, he swung his head around, peering over his shoulder, his eyebrows question marks. His voice filled the car. “Missy, how about it? Are you crazy or what?”

“Warren, watch where…” Vicki sucked in a breath and tasted fear and dryness.

“No, Daddy!” A laughing response from the rear.

He whipped his head back to peer through the windshield.

That burning intensity on his face, Vicki thought, went beyond his drunken, vicious, the-hell-with-you and don’t-get-in-my-way expression; it was madness.

“Warren, stop it,” Vicki said tightly. “Just stop it now.”

He did not. “Missy,” Warren said, “Do you have a nasty demon or anything like that in you?” His mocking and cruel tone was, Vicki knew, for her benefit.

“No, Daddy,” Missy said.

“Goddamned right!”

“You’re so silly, Daddy.”

“I am silly,” he agreed, “and that Lazone lady is a certifiable nut. And that is that.”

“No, Warren,” Vicki said. “I know what Ms. Lazone was saying, and I know why she was saying it.”

Vicki did. One might pretend that all things were rational and logical, that simple-minded common sense was the key to all the workings of the universe, but it just wasn’t so.

Melissa Barringer, their daughter, was being assaulted by a wicked spirit. Diakka. That was a word Vicki had never heard before.

But she understood. She believed in wicked spirits, and she had good reason. A wicked spirit had attacked her, tried to kill her. It was not—she would stake her life on it—her child!

Superstition? Foolish mythology? How could you watch television news or read the daily papers, how could you be alive in the twentieth century and question that evil as a force above and beyond human nature really, truly existed?

Vicki Barringer did not know how to combat the evil, the diakka, but she knew that God was more powerful than evil, that God could defeat evil, destroy evil.

She needed someone who knew and understood God. Someone who walked with the Lord and in His ways.

She knew of such a man.

And it all somehow made perfect sense.

Now was the time for a healing, and not only a healing for Missy.

 
As soon as they got home, she would call Carol Grace and ask for the help of Evan Kyle Dean.

They were pulling into the driveway when she told Warren.

“What?” He slammed into PARK. “Bullshit! That goddamn charlatan, that snake oil salesman…”

Warren was positively screaming as they got out of the car. “Hi, you-all, I’m your Reverend Jimmy Bob Jumpsuit, preaching my fat, phony ass off! Put your hand on the nineteen-inch Zenith and I’ll cure your cancer or your constipation!” Warren waved his hands overhead, doing a spastically ludicrous impression of a television faith healer. “Jay-zuss! Jay-zuss!”

Then Missy scampered out of the car and took Warren’s hand.

As though a switch had been thrown, Warren instantly became calm. He shrugged and grinned apologetically. “Sorry, I guess that woman really got to me. I know I’m acting foolishly.”

All Vicki could do was stare at him.

“Sorry,” Warren said again.

Really, he assured her, anything Vicki thought they should do, why, that was what they would do. He had no problem with that. After all, they both wanted the best for Missy. Of course. No, no way he really thought there was anything to what Ms. Lazone had told them, but, okay, for Missy’s sake, he would be open-minded.

He was speaking too rapidly, too soothingly. It was not genuine.

He was trying to put something over on her, Vicki thought.

You…fake! Anger flared within her. What did he think he was doing with his placating, condescending attitude?

Whatever he was up to, whatever his game and his reasons for it, Warren was not opposing her. For the moment, that was all that mattered.

In the house, Warren and Missy making themselves scarce, she called her sister and cried when she heard her voice.

Carol Grace cried, too.

With all there was to say, there really was very little to say—not on the telephone, anyway. “I am sorry.” Both sisters said that. This was something that should have happened long ago. They both knew that.

Vicki needed her sister’s help, the help of the man her sister had married.

Vicki spoke with Evan Kyle Dean. It was so hard to explain. It sounded, well, quite frankly, like she was utterly insane.

But she wasn’t. I need God’s help! I need this man of God, Evan Kyle Dean, Vicki told herself.

Despite her stumbling words, Evan Kyle Dean assured her he did understand. He promised he would help. He had encountered similar situations.

She was not to bring the child to him.

The evil must be confronted where it had beset the little girl. There, the wickedness must be banished from this, the rightful realm of God and His children.

Tomorrow, he would be there. For now, trust in God.

In Vicki Barringer’s thanks, he heard a wet, heartfelt sob.

“God loves you,” he assured her.

“Yes,” she said.

He hung up the phone. “God loves us all!” Evan Kyle Dean sank to his knees. He folded his hands. He did not pray, did not speak to the Lord God, but instead listened with his most secret heart and his most secret mind.

God spoke to him: Evan Kyle Dean, servant and prophet of the living God, in My name will you cast out evil? In My name, will you work miracles and wonders?

In his most secret heart and his most secret mind, Evan Kyle Dean replied, “In Your name, Lord, will I cast out evil. In Your name, will I work miracles and wonders.”

God spoke: My name be your shield. My name be your sword.

Evan Kyle Dean answered, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

It was past one o’clock in the morning and Warren could not sleep. Just as he’d start to drift off, he would get this urge to laugh and had to stifle it. What struck him as funny?

Everything struck him as funny!

But no, he was not laughing, not out loud.

That doesn’t mean he wasn’t laughing inside.

Quietly, he slipped out of bed, although he was positive he could have unloaded a truckload of church bells without waking Vicki.

So what to do with these wide-awake moments? Say, he was a writer, right, so down to the writing room.

His room. His typewriter. His desk. In the drawers of his desk, some secrets.

The little doll!

Our secret.

He saw it was nearly three o’clock in the goddamn morning!

Time sure flies when…when…

When what?

A gear clicked, and within a part of his mind that had been blocked off, there was a shifting and a linking as he answered himself:

When you are fucking out of your mind! When you are hop, skip, and a jump crazy! When up looks like down and down looks like up and every way is sideways! When you’ve lost it, really lost it all, and your whole life is no deposit and no return. When she makes you do what she wants you to do.

The moment of clarity and its overwhelming feeling of loss vanished.

He stood up and left his room, remembering to shut off the light. He went up the stairs slowly, so slowly.

He walked into Melissa’s bedroom and gazed down at the underwear-clad child. She slept on her stomach. The blankets had been kicked away.

He did nothing but stand there in his daughter’s room.

The child rolled over and sat up.

She was so beautiful.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you,” he said.

— | — | —

Four: o Drom Le Baht
The Way of Fate

The Romany are unfailingly light-hearted and optimistic, a joyful people. Often compared to carefree grasshoppers in a world of hard-working ants, Gypsies live by the creed: “Now is our moment and tomorrow will take care of itself.”

The quotation comes from
Travel on the Wind
, the book written by noted anthropologist and researcher Dr. Milos Bartok, who spent more than half of his life with the Rom. When the
Rawnie,
the great lady, Pola Janichka, was told of the doctor’s assessment, she agreed. How could she not? After all, Dr. Bartok was only repeating what she had taught him.

To the Gypsy, the world is dark and grim. Man is small and weak, helpless against natural and supernatural forces he can sometimes vaguely perceive but cannot understand. Animistic magic and shamanistic religion offer the Gypsy small solace and minimal protection in such a hostile universe. Philosophically, the Gypsy stands with head bowed in fatalistic acceptance of the whims and workings of a cruel cosmos.

The quotation is taken from
Modern Man and Primitive Religions
, the textbook written by Dr. J. L. Popovich, the noted philosopher and sociologist who studied the Rom for over 20 years. When the
Rawnie,
the great lady, Pola Janichka, was told of this doctor’s assessment, she agreed. How could she not? After all, Dr. Popovich was only repeating what she had taught him.

Both doctors knew something of the Rom.

But neither doctor was Rom.

Thus neither doctor would have understood this swato of Pola Janichka:

“Puri Tibbo? What is there that has not been said about old Tibbo,
Rom Baro
among
Rom Baros,
a
Rai,
a chief, a king! Strong? Why, once Tibbo lifted up a grai on his shoulders and, as the horse neighed its surprise at this turnabout of events, carried it all through the camp. ‘After all,’ Tibbo laughed, ‘this horse has often carried me on his back! Why should I not return the favor?’