THE WIND part 6

Copyright (c) 2018 by Randall R. Peterson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED This is a work of fiction. All persons, locations and actions are from the author's imagination or have been used in a fictitious manner.

 

By R. Peterson

Melania discovered a new life in Cloverdale. Having the largest house in town invited all kinds of social activity. Because Dorothy and Brian stayed mostly in the basement, she was kept busy opening the door. Townsfolk had been wary, even afraid of her before, but now … well, she was one of them … she herself had been attacked. Melania began to cherish the time after nine pm when the doorbell stopped ringing then she could tell the Momett to come upstairs into the kitchen and keep her company.

Immediately, both mother and child stared at the lit candles, then at the overhead electrical lights, with a puzzled expression. Then Dorothy’s gaze returned to the candles and she smiled, as though enchanted by their flickering light.

Brian skipped over to Melania and tugged at her hand. “What are we doing tonight?”

“Magic,” Melania told him. “We must first create a tri-punto before we can attempt to bring back your father.”

“What’s a tri-punto?” the youngster asked.

 “A Tri-Punto reunites three objects that belong together,” Melania explained. “It then creates its own ethereal powers that seek to bring together other things placed inside the triangle … but there is also danger.”

“What kind of danger?” Dorothy’s voice quavered. Obviously she was beginning to realize that being brought to life was very precarious.

“Good and bad are the two sides of everything,” Melania said. “You can’t create one Tri-Punto without creating another bad one somewhere.”

Dorothy shrugged her shoulders. Some things were beyond her understanding. “What do you want us to do?”

Melania was glad that Joseph Callahan had left the huge house completely furnished. The mansion was a treasure trove of books, souvenirs and artifacts obtained from all over the world. An ironwood cabinet with glass doors in the parlor contained blown-glass wine goblets. She took three of them and a container of water and sat them on an expensive Steinway piano.

She had an intuitive feeling that Brian, all Momett for that matter, were created with perfect pitch and she was about to test her theory.  She tapped the “E” key on the piano above middle C while she added small amounts of water to one of the wine glasses and then tapped the rim gently with a silver spoon. “Tell me when the two vibrations become as one,” she told the youngster.

Brian smiled when the two objects both vibrated at exactly 329.628 Hz. “There,” he said.

Melania, with help from Brian, did the same for the other wine glasses. Creating one that sounded the musical note “A” and the last one “D”

            “Are you going to play us a song?” Dorothy’s blue eyes glowed in the dim-light almost nocturnally and Melania knew she was infatuated with any kind of music.

            “No you are .. in a way,” she told her.

Melania blindfolded Dorothy and instructed Brian to lead her by apron strings through the numerous rooms while she gently tapped the rim of the glass. “Losing your sight makes your other senses stronger … especially hearing,” Melania whispered. “Listen for an answer to the tone you create … things that move to the same waves will call out to each other.”

Dorothy moved slowly through the rooms, assisted by Brian, tapping the wine-glass with the spoon … and listening. Melania was amazed at how quietly the Momett could move. The musical tone she created might have come from a concert hall. “Ahhh,” Dorothy gasped as she crept through an enormous library. “We have an answer!”

A tiny porcelain figurine of a soldier rested on a shelf next to four leather-bound scrolls that all looked as if they came from China’s late Ming Dynasty period.

            “Place the glass next to the mercenary warrior,” Melania told her, “… they belong together.”

Brian tapped the next goblet finding an answering tone in a half-filled container of unpasteurized milk cooling in cellar ice. “Remind me to leave a note for the milkman,” Melania told them as Brian placed the glass beside the jug. “This cream will have to be replaced … or we’ll have only sugar to lace our tea.”

Melania tapped the rim of the last goblet, But it wasn’t until they reached the attic that an answering ring responded to the “D” tone. It came from a hinged lock on a large banded trunk. There was no key in sight.

“Are we going to open it?” Dorothy’s eyes, when she whipped off the blindfold, were large and round almost filling the holes in the white sack that covered her head.

            “No, we have answering tones from things representing life, death and … secrets.” Melania said placing the wine glass on the chest. “This, I believe sums up the natural magica of most mortal lives.”

-------2-------

Lavar Hicks sat with Butch Fowler and Lemont Pool in a booth next to a window overlooking Townsend Avenue inside Spare-A-Dime diner. Hicks spilled sugar over the table as he tried to sweeten his coffee.

“I don’t know where Vern could have gone off to,” Lemont said staring out the window at the few cars rolling through town. “His truck’s gone. Not that I miss the oil-head. I still say he’s a waste of skin but Ma wants him there to help with the chickens. She don’t like the killing. She says it’s too damn messy and lets Vern do it. I stop by and chop off a few heads now and then but the old sow balks every time I ask for a few dollars. I don’t work for free … even for my own damn Ma!”

“He’s probably drunk … or in jail in Dillon,” Butch said grabbing the sugar jar from Lavar. “I hear they got a cathouse there. Your worthless brother probably tried to sneak out without paying. The sheriff in that town is part owner and probably has him locked-up or shoveling out stalls at the stockyards.”

“When he shows up I’m gonna thump his head,” Lemont said. “That truck ain’t just his!”

“Shut your yaps!” Hicks slammed his fist on the table s so hard that Lemont’s cup bounced, slopping coffee. “We got us bigger problems!”

The three watched as Melania drove past in Joseph Callahan’s 1934 Buick. The two Momett sat in the front seat with her like they were all family. “Blowing up her truck turned her into something like a hero,” Hicks snorted glaring at Fowler. “Before that, people thought she was behind the killings …. now they see her as one of them!”

            “It was your idea,” Fowler growled. “Don’t lay it on me!”

            “I need more than one Hodmedod if I’m gonna get people to turn against her,” Hicks said.

            “I thought you said that she monster was pregnant,” Fowler said. “You was gonna raise your own herd!”

            “I think they has to be two just like in people.”

            “Then how you going to make your army?”

            “I was watching when the old woman brought the scarecrows to life in the corn field,” Hicks said. “She was reading from the back of one of them fortune telling cards in the moonlight.”

            “So if you could get your hands on that magic card you could make your own … right?”

            “Tarot,” Butch said. “They call them Tarot cards.”

            “I damn well could,” Lavar said gulping the last of his coffee. “She keeps them in a small carved box, probably in her kitchen, like they was some kind of recipe.”

Mrs. Lee noticed their cups were empty and rushed over with a fresh pot. She wiped the spilled sugar and coffee from the table with a clean damp rag. Customers like Hicks, Fowler and Pool actually cost her money because they always found a reason not to pay. Still, she was pleasant to everyone … it was business.

            “Does that chink husband of yours still deliver fresh milk on Sundays?” Hicks asked her as she filled his cup.

            “Cows … him milk every day,” Mrs. Lee said. “Husband good man … work very hard.”

After the woman left, Butch snickered. “I didn’t know you was interested in some damn chink milkman!”

            “I’ve watched him deliver cream to the Callahan house on Sundays,” Hicks said. “He has a key to the mansion and lugs the milk to the ice-cellar while they’re at church.”

            “Then all we have to do is get the key from the chinky.” Fowler was smiling.

            “I think when a Chinaman has a bottle of whiskey poured down his throat and a naked Gladys Barlow screaming rape he’ll give you anything you want.” Hicks laughed. “If he thinks you might turn him into the sheriff.”

            “Which Tarot card was the old witch reading from,” Butch asked. “The Magician? The Hanged Man?”

            “These were very old cards … it said THE WIND on the front,” Hicks whispered as the three huddled together their heads forming a crude triangle. “And it showed a dark twisting storm lifting up and destroying an entire city.”

-------3-------

            Dorothy emptied the coffee can filled with all the bits of Bolger that they could find in their former barnyard onto the special table set up in the great room. There were buttons, bits of singed straw and shoe leather and the brass loops from a pair of bib-overalls. Melania had struck the three notes on the piano and by listening closely had determined that this was the exact center of the three-dimensional tri-punto. “I can’t believe this is all that’s left of my husband,” Dorothy sobbed. “I don’t think we have enough of him here to ever bring him back!”

            “Most of Bolger will be new,” Melania told her. “New clothes, hat, buttons, straw and that’s not a bad thing. It only takes a little bit of you to make you who you are.”

            “I remember jumping down from the cross and running through a cornfield,” Brian said. “How will we do that in town?”

            “Movement is what brings most things to life,” Melania said. “Why not have a dance party for Halloween with lots of tatty-boogles?”

            “But will this new Momett be my Bolger … the husband of my child?” Dorothy pleaded for an answer.

            “The most important ingredient in any person flesh and blood or straw … is love,” Melania looked at Dorothy’s grieving blue eyes. “I think we’ll do just fine!”

-------4-------

            It was an hour before dawn when Lavar Hicks stepped in the road in front of Tommy Lee’s milk truck. The old Chinaman stomped on his brakes and swerved to avoid hitting him. “My wife is sick in an upstairs room and I need help packing her down the stairs so I can take her to the doc,” Hicks told Tommy as he leaned in the window.

            “I know Descombey … he good doctor … I bring him here!” Tommy said starting to turn his truck around. He could smell liquor on Hick’s breath.

            “She can’t wait for you to go there and back!” Hicks opened the milk truck door and put a hand roughly on the old man’s shoulder.

            “Carry! Yes I help carry!” Lee said as Hicks led him to the farm house.

Tommy Lee was shocked when he saw the two grinning men holding bottles of whiskey and the naked woman lying spread-eagle on the upstairs bed. “This is your lucky day,” Hicks told him with a rough shove. “It isn’t every day that a chink gets invited inside a white man’s house for a drink and a free ride!”

TO BE CONTINUED …