7 Souls (27 page)

You fell into the ravine
, Mary thought.
You fell into that pit and couldn’t get out
.

Just like me
.

“And she
could
have pulled me out,” Mom said firmly, her lip trembling as she stared straight ahead, nodding.” Mary could have saved me; she was strong enough. But she just stood there on the ledge, watching me try to scratch and claw my way out. I
begged
her … I pleaded with her. ‘Mary, just reach down and help me,’ … but she
wouldn’t
. She wouldn’t even
try
—she just stared at me, watching me struggle, and then she turned around and walked off into the snow. I
screamed
for her to come back, that Mommy wasn’t joking, that I was
trapped
, but she was gone.

“I was in the hole all night long. There were snakes and worms and freezing water … I almost lost both my feet to frostbite, and I got hypothermia. The doctor said I could have died. As it is, the pneumonia ruined my lungs, and”—Mom shook her head, brushing gray hairs from her forehead, the crying apparently over—“and in the morning, when they found me, they found Larry dead from gunshot wounds, and Mort dead too, asphyxiated somehow, like the violence and the cold air had brought on some kind of toxic shock. ‘Domestic dispute,’ they said at the inquest, like it was some kind of
debate
or something. ‘Temporary insanity.’ But I lost everything permanently—and I never recovered. Not really. Why would she want to do that, Dylan? Why would Mary want to leave me alone in the cold? Like she
wanted
me to freeze to death?”

(She
tried to kill my mom!
Ellen had screamed.)

“But I know the answer. She didn’t love me, Dylan. Not at all. She hated me. And what just breaks my heart is that Mary hates me for being such a useless wreck … but she
did
it. She made me what I am, that day. They all did; everybody I loved. Everybody but Ellen.”

I ruined her life
, Mary thought.
It’s totally true—I’m to blame for all of it
.

“You could say it’s my fault for cheating on Mort. But you have to understand, that door”—Mom cocked her gray-haloed head backward, indicating Dad’s study—“was closed
all
the time. He’d be in there for days, smoking his pipe, with his patient files and his dusty old books. He stopped caring about me, Dylan, but that doesn’t mean I stopped caring about him. Look, I still wear the present he gave me—the only nice thing that happened that day.” Mom was fumbling at her throat, pulling a gold chain out from beneath the frilled collar of her nightgown. “On the morning of our anniversary, he gave me this necklace. It’s Egyptian—isn’t it pretty?”

She held the necklace’s pendant out, proudly, and Mary stared as it gleamed in the overhead light: an almond-shaped, ornamental Egyptian eye, carved from burnished gold.

Another Eye of Tnahsit. Another amulet
.

Mary felt a wave of numb dread flowing over her as she stared at the necklace, its curves glinting as Mom turned it over and over in her hand.

The spell!
Mary was thinking furiously. She could barely focus on Mom’s voice.
The Curse of 7 Souls! Dad cast it on Mom!

She put the pieces together. It was easy to understand what had happened, now. Her father, Morton Shayne, had cast the same spell—the Curse of 7 Souls—on his wife, Mary and Ellen’s mother, ten years ago. He’d done the same thing Ellen had done: given her an ornament depicting the Eye of Tnahsit. And she’d had the same experience as Mary, the same horrible day (with everyone out to get her) concluding in death and tragedy.

So who were
your
seven souls, Mom?

But Mary knew part of the answer.

(A giant figure, limned by moonlight, loomed over her, leaning down like a toppling granite statue—reaching for her. The huge man-shaped silhouette drew closer, its arm reaching forward, and she realized that its huge extended hand was holding something out toward her—a thin rectangle that glowed in the moonlight. A piece of paper—a note. There was writing on the note, which Mary couldn’t read in the dark, but it was like all the forces of the universe converged on that single page
.)

The vision wasn’t a vision—it was a memory. And as she recalled it all again, it was like a photograph coming into focus; the shadowed figure was suddenly illuminated as he toppled toward her. The dark man was her father, Morton Shayne, standing over her in the snow that covered the Riverside Park playground where he’d brought her, looming over her tiny seven-year-old figure like a giant. And the piece of paper he was giving her was clear; she could read it now.

WHOM DO YOU HATE THE MOST?
WHAT WOULD YOU DO ABOUT IT IF YOU COULD?
TODAY IS THE DAY
.

He picked me
, Mary realized.
He knew how much I resented her—all that time waiting for Mom out in the cold. I complained to him, so he picked me as one of his seven. And, under the spell, I got my revenge—I left her in the snow to die
.

It wasn’t me. It was the spell
.

“That’s why I can’t
remember
,” Mary croaked. Her head was spinning like she’d had six shots of vodka—she could barely make her mouth form the words. “That’s—that’s what the book said.”

“Oh my God, Dylan, you’re delirious—”

“No! I
understand
it now,” Mary insisted, rallying her strength to raise Dylan’s scruffy head off of the floorboards. “You forget it when it’s all over. That’s why Dylan couldn’t remember anything, in the car. That’s why I’ve never been able to remember that day! And Ellen doesn’t
know
that.”

“Dylan—”

“Ellen thinks it was me. She thinks I left you there—and it wasn’t me! It was the fucking curse … and I can explain it.” With a supreme burst of effort, ignoring the agony in her—Dylan’s—abdomen, Mary rose on her elbows, getting ready to stand. “If I tell her, she’ll forgive me,” she panted, her vision doubling with the renewed pain. “She’ll forgive me. And she won’t go through with it—she’ll stop—she’ll stop the curse.”

“Dylan Summer, you lie back down this instant!” Mom cried.

“I can’t.” As Mary’s vision doubled, cleared and doubled again, she saw the page from Horus’s book on the floor next to her—the page Dylan had accidentally torn out.

(the Minions will forget all that they have done in Service of the Curse)

“What are you doing?” Mom asked, alarmed, as Mary groped on the floor with Dylan’s numb, bloodied hands. “Stay right where you are! You can’t go anywhere!”

Yes I can
, Mary thought grimly, struggling not to pass out as she pressed on the floor and raised Dylan’s body to a sitting position. Her fingers were trembling as she reached for the stray page and shoved it into Dylan’s pocket.
Yes I can—I have to
.

(Jesus, this is wrong. Ellen needs to see this—)

“I have to go,” Mary rasped, coughing as bubbles blood of spurted from her lips. Entire new galaxies of pain were sweeping through her as she moved, but she had no choice. She realized she was rambling, deliriously. “I have to show her… have to show Ellen what the spell says. Minions can’t remember … not my fault …”

Her mother was staring at her, white-faced. Mary could only imagine what Dylan’s blood-soaked, wild-eyed body looked like, but, judging by Mom’s facial expression, it must have been pretty bad. She tried to force herself to speak clearly.

“She didn’t—Mary didn’t do it—on purpose,” Mary managed to tell her mother. “She loves you very much—she always did. She’s”—Mary could barely speak from the pain of wrenching herself upright and lurching toward the apartment’s front door—“she’s sorry for what she did. She’s very, very sorry.”

M
ARY WAS DRENCHED WITH
sweat, leaning on the edge of a No Parking sign in the dark shadows of Columbus Avenue, spitting up blood. There was a spattered, wet-blood trail behind her, leading out of her apartment building.

Incredibly, miraculously, she had made it to the street. Her vision was fading in and out as she slipped against the cold, rain-slicked metal sign and staggered forward, splashing her sneakers in a wide puddle as she reeled from the pain. She turned away from the howling wind, looking up at the dark shadows of the surrounding buildings.

Taxi
, she thought desperately.
I’ve got to get a taxi
.

Mary clutched her bleeding abdomen and stared down the deserted avenue, her vision doubling. She could see the red embers of the traffic lights change to green and she could hear the rumble of approaching, southbound traffic, but she couldn’t make out the details—she extended her arm, hoping that one of the oncoming cars was a cab and would see her.

“Taxi!”
Mary wailed.
“Taxi!”

A rumbling, sliding yellow phantom had appeared beside her, its cold steel surfaces still beaded with rain. Mary grappled with the door handle, watching Dylan’s fingers smear blood across the door before she managed to wrench it open and tumble inside. Fresh pain lashed out at her from her abdomen, as if someone had just kicked her there, and she clenched her teeth against the agony and leaned over, mustering the herculean strength necessary to heave the cab door shut.

(
heaved the cab door shut)

“The Peninsula Hotel,” Mary shouted. She could only see a blur; she hoped the cabdriver had heard her. He must have heard
something
, because the cab started moving. She stared at the roof of the car, hoping she wouldn’t throw up, hoping that Dylan’s body wouldn’t die before she got where she was going … and recalling the memory—Dylan’s memory—that had just sprung to mind.

(
heaved the cab door shut)

S
HE’LL COME HOME WITH
you tonight
.

She’ll come home with you if you ask
.

The thought hit Dylan suddenly as he heaved the cab door shut. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he knew something about Ellen was different tonight. He could feel it in the way she’d stepped into the cab as he held the door for her. Usually, she ducked past him and shuffled herself along the black vinyl seat until she was pressed up against the opposite window, but tonight she grabbed onto the lapels of his gray overcoat, looked him right in the eyes and backed herself in. She planted herself dead center, leaving only a third of the seat for him as he climbed in after her, and she let her entire leg press against his without the slightest hesitation. She even pushed her fragile shoulder against his, as if a third person had piled into the backseat with them, crushing them against the window like lovers.

Like lovers. Finally like lovers
, Dylan thought,
even if only for the few seconds it took her to realize she was sitting too close
.

“We’ll be making two stops,” Dylan told the driver, as he always did after their Saturday-night Chinese dinners at Empire Szechuan Palace. “We’re going to drop her home at Ninety-second and Amsterdam, and then I’m going up to One Twenty-fourth and Morningside Drive.”

But he secretly prayed for Ellen to correct him. He imagined her telling the driver to forget that first stop and just take her straight to Dylan’s apartment. He imagined her falling into his lap and staring up at him for as long as he could resist leaning down to kiss her.

A first kiss. Right here, right now. It didn’t have to be in some gondola in Venice, or trapped at the top of some cutesy malfunctioning Ferris wheel on Mott Street; it could just happen in the back of a cramped New York taxicab, surrounded by half-ripped Urban Underground stickers, and the babbling ABC news anchors on Taxi TV, and the overpowering odor of the coconut air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror. They could race up the empty highway, buried so deep in their first kiss that they’d barely notice the Hudson River rolling by, or the George Washington Bridge lit up like a giant prehistoric bird in the black sky. They’d sprint up the dusty stairs of Dylan’s third-floor walk-up and crash against the door to his apartment—kissing so passionately after a year of pent-up anticipation that the loose change would be raining from his pockets as he dug blindly for his keys. They’d burst through the door, and he’d scoop her wispy frame up off the floor as she wrapped her legs tightly around his waist, and glide her down the hall to his bedroom, where they’d fall onto his creaky twin mattress with their arms and lips entangled, never even bothering to turn on the lights….

“Dylan?”

“Huh?”

Ellen’s voice snapped Dylan back to the quiet reality of the taxicab.

“Where were you just now?”

“I was right here,” he said.

“Hmmm.” She smiled dubiously out of the corner of her mouth, and then she leaned her head on his shoulder, clasping her hands tightly around his arm. She had never done this before. Maybe they locked arms when they came out of a movie, but this was different; this was more.

He could smell the faint traces of rose water in her short, tousled hair and a hint of Ivory soap on her face. Her black hooded sweatshirt was buried under her black parka, but the hood had gotten caught on his shoulder, stretching her collar out to expose the long, graceful neck that she always tried to hide. The collar was actually stretched far enough to expose a patch of her vanilla skin, running from the base of her neck to the beginning of a beautifully naked clavicle bone. He wanted so badly to follow the entire line of that clavicle, but it disappeared back under her sweatshirt—back under her thick black armor.

That, he supposed, was why he was so in love with Ellen. Because he could never see all of her, no matter how hard he tried. There was always more to uncover, more to figure out, more to learn, just like all those ancient languages that obsessed him. He hated obvious girls with obvious beauty—girls like Ellen’s sister, Mary. Mary was just another one of those porcelain-doll girls who bounced around the Meatpacking District on Friday nights, screaming for love and attention with every skintight outfit, every overbearing splash of designer perfume, every studied feminine pose. Everyone seemed to think that Mary was the Pretty One, but they had no idea what they were talking about. Dylan had the Pretty One right here in the cab with him, resting comfortably on his shoulder, holding his arm just as tightly as she held that beat-up Paddington Bear in all her childhood pictures. He wanted them to stay this close for the rest of the night, and on through the next day, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. How many more times could he ask? Her answer was always the same and her reason was always the same.