The Curse

(A short story)

First published by Open Pen (Issue 29)

***

Ellerby couldn’t tell whether the Old Oak still had leaves on its topmost branches because the Biodome spliced through its trunk forty feet up, obscuring her view of the top with its eternal sunny-sky simulation. But the bark was peeling. The lower branches had grown thin and bare, too, which worried her. The lower leaves used to be waxy, green, almost as big as her hand. She remembered warm evenings not too many years ago, plucking those leaves and letting them fall to the forest floor; back when she still needed Marnie and Amy to help her to scramble up to her preferred perch…

Amy.

The Outsiders would be returning soon with Amy. They would want to lean their ladder against the tree to leave – there was a removable panel in the Biodome somewhere up there; Marnie had pointed it out to her once. So Ellerby slipped off her branch, landing in a crouch among the rusty, dead leaves. She began to move back towards the Manor, but after a few steps she noticed something on the ground. She stopped.

It wasn’t unusual to find animals within the Biodome. The area was apparently large enough for small mammals to find food, shelter, company. Wasn’t even unusual for one to get right up close – they knew Ellerby, trusted her. But the utter stillness of the creature sprawled in the graveyard of leaves made Ellerby halt.

It was a squirrel. Red – that was rare.

It appeared to twitch, but when Ellerby looked closer, she saw that its skin was alive with insects. One dark eye peered up at Ellerby, not with fear or desperation, but with cold, sad resignation.

Pain clutched Ellerby’s chest.

Cursed.

Until recently, Ellerby’s interactions with Cursed things had been limited to invertebrates. Legless beetles, which she would flick to the side of the path with the sleeve of her jumper. Worms thrashing, drowning in dents in the Manor’s flagstone porch as it rained; burning in the sun. She would throw water over the drying ones, if she had any in her flask. Marnie would pointedly roll her eyes when Ellerby succumbed to her rescuees’ calling. But Amy – before that tiny black dot had appeared on her lily-white palm; back when she could sit and watch Ellerby from the porch’s swing-seat, and laugh, and speak – Amy used to say that Ellerby was just inquisitive about the preservation of life. That she would have been a researcher if things had been different, following in Mother and Father’s footsteps even though she never knew them.

Now, though, Ellerby knew that Marnie had been right to roll her eyes. By brushing the pitiful creatures aside, or dousing them in just enough liquid to continue to boil, she had probably doomed them to a longer, more agonizing demise than if they had been crushed under Marnie’s Wellington boot.

The squirrel continued to stare. Those deep, dark eyes.

There was something so eerily human about those eyes. Those sad, resigned orbs now seemed knowing.

It knew Ellerby couldn’t do a damn thing to save it.

She was about to turn, run away, block out the memories already seeping into her brain, when crashing footfall caught her attention. Out from the trees came Marnie. Still dressed for the funeral, apart from the waterproof jacket and the khaki Wellingtons over her black tights. Her long, ebony hair was tied in a green ribbon. Deep, dark eyes – just like Amy’s – met Ellerby’s, then travelled down to the creature at her feet.

“Marnie, don’t…”

Marnie took a penknife from her jacket pocket and crouched, held the tiny thing’s head for a second with two lace-gloved fingers beneath its chin.

The squirrel maintained eye-contact with Ellerby as Marnie removed its head.

Ellerby’s breath hitched.

Marnie’s gaze flicked to her. “They’ve taken her now. Come home?”

Ellerby hesitated. Then she nodded.

The forest thickened around them, an ever-changing mass of life and death, saplings struggling skyward, trunks growing tall and sturdy, bark and leaves rotting beneath bare boughs. Birds chirruped, a ghostly sound breaking the silence. Marnie kept her knife out, let it bounce and swing against her thigh as she made her way up the winding forest path. Two steps behind, Ellerby watched it move, like a pendulum, in time with her heart.

“It was going to die in pain,” Marnie’s voice drifted back to her. “No sense in letting it suffer.”

Ellerby hugged herself and thought of Amy. Thought of the day the little black spot had appeared on her palm, the tears rolling down her white cheeks as she rocked in strange, jerky movements on the swing seat. In an eerie imitation of her bedtime-story voice, she had explained to Ellerby about Mother and Father, how their research had helped the people Outside live longer than the Old Oak. About the rare but terrible Curses, which started as lumps under the skin, clusters of bruises, black spots, spreading too fast for new medicine to kill. Which made people’s lives short, like the animals’, and led to their being confined to Biodomes. Sobs drowning her words; Marnie, her emotionless tone, recounting childhood memories of the Outsiders: their hundreds of years, their medicines and technology, humanity peeling away with every passing year…

She thought of that little black spot growing feelers, travelling like kudzu up Amy’s lily-white arm. Then the lemonade, the blankets, the endless parade of pointless, pointless gifts shaking in her arms as she hovered in the doorway to her sister’s bedroom. Marnie pleading into the phone, telling the Outsiders they had to come, please, they owed so much to her parents’ research, a hospital, a hospital…

“Ellerby!” Marnie stopped behind a cedar. She beckoned Ellerby close.

The Outsiders appeared.

They crashed through the forest like alien deer, their white masks, their bright orange jumpsuits shimmering between the trees. Two of them carried the ladder between them: its long silver form appeared and disappeared like a dragon sliding through the forest. Behind them walked a third. The black sack containing Amy’s empty form was slung over its shoulder.

Ellerby and Marnie watched the procession until it had vanished back into the darkness of the forest.

“Do you want to follow them?” Marnie murmured. “You might be able to get up the ladder behind them, if you’re quiet.”

Ellerby considered. “They have the Curse outside, right?”

“It takes a little longer to get to the Outsiders, with all the pills and the technology. But yes. You can’t deny Nature forever. All lives end.” She stared into the forest. “There are other Cursed people, too, out there. Other Biodomes. Not as nice as this one, though: we have Mother and Father to thank for this.”

Ellerby was about to ask why, if all lives ended, the Cursed were kept in Biodomes. But she knew why. She remembered how it had felt, seeing Amy slowly consumed.

“You can still catch up to them, Ellerby. Last chance?”

Ellerby looked at her sister. The Curse hadn’t affected Marnie yet: her cheekbones weren’t painfully visible, her skin free from the marks which had clawed their way up Amy’s wasting arms and legs. But she found she could imagine it. Inky black tentacles spreading up Marnie’s strong arms, constricting her throat, snaking up her neck to paint her eyeballs jet. Silent cries. A hand reaching out, begging…

Ellerby squared her shoulders and shook her head. “No. I’m staying with you.”

She tried to slip a hand into Marnie’s black lace glove. Marnie drew her hand away and kept moving.

As the elevation grew, they emerged from the cover of trees. The Manor lay ahead, on top of the naked hill; but Ellerby cast her gaze back, across the forest, to the wall encircling the estate. A steep, steep wall with no ridges for hands or feet. As Amy’s Curse progressed, Ellerby used to imagine finding something as she followed the wall: being suddenly eye-level with the first step, on which she could start to climb, up, up, to break through the Biodome into the real sky and fresh air and no Curse. It all seemed so childish now.

“Are you coming, Ellerby?”

Ellerby turned away, followed Marnie up the steps to the porch and through the Manor’s heavy wood door. As she stepped over the threshold in her muddy sneakers, behind Marnie in their mother’s black silk dress – only slightly distressed at the bottom with mud and tears from her search through the forest – she felt even more like a troublesome child.

The main hall was still dressed for the funeral, with black cloth tacked to the walls, little candles burning in the fireplace. Green candles. Amy’s favourite colour. Faded photographs from Ellerby’s old polaroid camera had been tacked to the mantlepiece. Marnie must have worked long and hard to set this up; even Ellerby herself had forgotten where she had hidden those pictures.

Amy, reclining with a book by the trunk of the Old Oak.

Amy, sitting in the swing seat, sunshine in her hair.

Amy, racing down the forest path, head thrown back, laughing and alive.

Surely she had known, even then, that the Nature she loved so much would one day swallow her up?

Marnie brushed a finger over the laughing picture. “They let me say some prayers and give her a proper goodbye. Said they’re going to bury her in the mausoleum, next to Mother and Father.” She sighed; the air whistled through the gap between her front teeth. “It’s strange. I remember watching them spraying Mother and Father’s research papers with disinfectant and backing out through the door. I remember them carrying their bodies away in bags, leaving us to cry. They were monsters. But they were so delicate with Amy’s body. I guess under all the technology, the hundreds of years… I don’t know, perhaps they’re just as human as we are.”

Ellerby nodded. “Nature’s going to take them back, just like us.” Marnie didn’t respond. Perhaps didn’t hear.

They lay together on the rug before the fireplace, watching the candles burn down, the light flicker and fade. When the final light had gone, Ellerby closed her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be. You did what you could for her. You couldn’t save her, El. Even if they took her to a hospital, they can’t fix what we’ve got.”

“I know. I mean – I’m sorry I ran away.”

Marnie sighed, her breath soft in Ellerby’s hair. “It’s over now.”

“No, it isn’t.” Ellerby flinched away and glared at her sister. “It feels like everything’s Cursed now. It’s everywhere! In here, out there… Like Nature’s just waiting to… You know… The insects, the squirrel, the old Oak…”

“Hush.” Marnie turned Ellerby around and hugged her to her chest. “I’m here, Ellerby. I’m alive. I’m with you.”

Ellerby stiffened. Then Marnie’s hand stroked her back, and she relaxed into the embrace. She nuzzled against the soft fabric of Marnie’s dress; heard the rush of her sister’s heartbeat in her ear, the fusty smell of old perfume still clinging to the velvet.

“Think about what Nature gives us, El. Moments, and memories, and beauty. It’s not meant to last forever.”

Ellerby swallowed. Above her, Amy watched from the dozens of photographs, healthy and vibrant.

It was okay. Even if they didn’t have hundreds of years like the Outsiders – so what?

Or – no. No, it wasn’t okay.

But it would be.

In the meantime, she could stay here. With Marnie curled around her. Amy watching from the fireplace. Safe in this one warm moment, where they were all alive.