Cursed

There was a dead person outside my house. And finding a body in real life isn't the quietly organized event I was used to seeing in movies. The noises from the street are what woke me. There was a high-pitched gut-wrenching scream from my neighbor followed by the sound of doors slamming and shouts.

Those unusual sounds from my typically quiet street had me wrenching upright in my bed. I rubbed a hand over my face, blinking away the exhausted blur from my eyes, my heart already thumping a wild rhythm against my ribcage. Leaning across my bed, I lifted up the blinds to peek through the glare of early morning sun to where a crowd was gathering on my tiny cul-de-sac. A cold sweat shivered along my skin. A few of my neighbors had crowded into a clump on the edge of the street near my house, sporting bathrobes and slippers, chattering loudly. Through it all, someone was wailing.

Wrenching back my sheet, I lurched out of bed. My sore feet protested at suddenly bearing my weight, and I winced as I pulled on the first thing I could find on my bedroom floor; the crumpled work uniform I'd stripped off last night before dropping into bed. The fabric still smelled like grease and coffee from the cafe, with stains visible in the black fabric. Ignoring the grubbiness of it, I shoved it over my head and stumbled my way out of my bedroom.

I don't remember the trip down the stairs, the next thing I was conscious of was standing barefoot in my driveway. It was already a scorching hot morning, the sun baring down in a bright haze, the soles of my feet burning on the searing pavement. The heat was like a wall bearing down on me the second I stepped out the door.

By the time I made it to the end of my driveway, a few police cruisers had already parked along the street. Officers had begun cordoning off the area and pushing onlookers off to the sidewalk and away from the body. I recognized a few of the gawkers—one of my neighbors, Lucille, was taking up the frontlines, chatting wildly with another older woman.

My neighborhood has always been an older one—most houses on my street were filled with elderly couples who left for the summer and came back in the winter when the weather was nice. There were a few like Lucille who was here year-round like me, so I knew her a little better. This morning, she was wearing a purple bathrobe, a pair of binoculars looped around her neck.

She and the woman she was talking to had to be approaching eighty—though they hadn't changed much over the years. Ancient wrinkles lined their faces, deep creases around their sharp eyes.

"Kassie," Lucille said when she caught sight of me as I stood next to her to peer into the street. A grim look passed over her face, "You might not want to be down here right now, dear. Nasty business afoot this morning."

One peak around her shoulder lent me a view of the street where the body was. Seeing a body in real life is vastly different than seeing it in a movie or on TV. There's an eeriness to it that doesn't translate to real life—something empty and unnatural that leaves you feeling raw and shakes you from the inside out. And this one appeared somewhat worse than what I even saw in movies.

My gut clenched, throat going dry as I viewed the carnage up close. It was much worse from the street than it had been through my second-story window. The body barely looked like a body. Barely looked human for that matter. The figure was mangled, limbs going in unnatural directions. And the blood—so much blood. The skin had been carved into with something—a knife maybe— blood pooling thickly onto the concrete beneath it.

I tried to take a steadying breath to calm the nausea bubbling inside me. But the thick, acrid smell of iron and rot didn't do much to soothe the rising horror. Through it all, the blood and clumping dirt, a glint of gold drew my eye away from the macabre scene. A few feet away from the body, lying unceremoniously next to the curb near my bare feet, was a flat circle of metal.

A familiar gold watch. A watch smeared in rust-colored blood. The sight had my stomach rolling, "Is that...?"

Lucille gave a grim nod, "It's George Morelli."

George—my neighbor. George, with his kind smiles and an understanding light in his eye when I lied about where my uncle was. Who made sure I got in okay after a late shift at the cafe. Who invited me over for holiday dinners even though I usually gave an excuse.

I didn't have many constants in my life, but George was one of them. And now...

The truth was too horrible for me to come to terms with. A stinging started up behind my eyes that I hurried to blink away. It was getting hard to swallow around the growing lump in my throat. I forced myself to take a few steadying breaths. I would not—I would not—lose it here in the middle of the sidewalk. Another dry swallow.

Despite my attempts at hiding the horror growing and the emotions roiling inside of me like a creature trying to escape, Lucille noticed. She lifted a wrinkled hand and reached over to pat me kindly on the shoulder. I had to make a concerted effort not to cringe at the contact—I wasn't good with physical affection even on a good day. And now, with my emotions high, it was even worse.

I forced myself to look back to where the body—George—lay in the street, "Who would do something like this?" The words slipped out, almost without thought.

"George didn't have any money. Whatever little bit he did have, he usually gambled it away at bingo night. And he didn't have any enemies that I've ever known of. Not even any family," Lucille said, conspiratorially. A thick wrinkle formed between her graying eyebrows. "But it seems too gruesome to be random. They took one of his hands—"

A narrowed look through the growing crowd of police officers confirmed what she said. There was only a stump where his hand used to be. Now that the shock was fading I saw a few other things I hadn't noticed at first glance. The knife marks on his skin didn't appear random after all—they looked precise. Like macabre symbols had been carved into his skin. Symbols that were swooping and jagged.

Despite the blistering morning heat, my skin turned cold, and a clammy sweat broke out on the back of my neck. I had to look away again as nausea bubbled back up in my stomach and I had to breathe deeply through my nose to keep myself from throwing up all over the sidewalk. The thick scent of blood didn't help. Or the other smell...something sickly and sweet.

Don't throw up. Please don't throw up. My jaw clenched as I forced myself to keep breathing.

I don't know how long I'd been standing there, forcing myself to breathe, when a police officer approached us. He asked each of us a few questions, getting our information down. I don't even remember what he said, what he asked. My mind was a hazy fog of shock and horror. I mumbled out answers to his questions until I heard what time it was and that pulled me out of the fog that had overtaken me.

"I need to get to work," I said offhandedly to Lucille as the officer turned his back to us. He was moving on to the group of other neighbors grouped nearby, "Will you tell me if they find anything?"

"Of course, dear," she lifted her binoculars back to her wrinkled face, "they couldn't rip me away from here if they tried." I believed her. I wouldn't want to get between Lucille and anything she was after.

She peered at the scene through the lenses for a moment before bringing her gaze back to me. A grandmotherly worry overtook her features, "Are you sure certain you should be working today? Can't you call in sick?"

I forced a smile I didn't feel, already stepping back up my driveway, barely feeling the burn from the pavement, "I'll be okay. Thank you, though." I didn't know if that were true or not. The sick feeling crawling through me and the familiar stiffness in my body from waitressing too many shifts in a row had me wondering how I was going to make it through the day. But there was no way I could afford to take a day off.

I waved to her numbly as I went back into my house in a haze. I threw up once in the sink. With shaking hands, I smoothed my hair back into a quick bun. I double-checked all of the locks on the doors, a worried uncomfortable feeling—a feeling that felt a lot like fear gnawed its way through me. I was already feeling like it was going to be a long day.

At that point, I didn't realize how much worse it would actually get.