"The Curse"
A Short Story By Lo Brewer
Taxidermy shop with table and walls covered with various pelts and furs, Stehekin, 1907© Lindsley, Lawrence Denny/Flickr
All this blood. I never thought there would be so much blood. Then again, I never thought I’d be here, like this, covered in blood, with the sheriff screaming at me, asking what I’d done. But I had to stop the curse somehow. This was the only way.
How did I get here? I could blame him, my brother. But it’s not his fault, not entirely. He was bread and born in sin, as was I. But he bore the brunt of the ungodliness. And how unfortunate for me, that I was forced to live with all of his sins.
As I said, we were bread in sin, our mother having been so driven by her immoralities that she sought to lay with our father’s brother. He too was of the immoral, or some would argue, amoral, sort. He gambled, he drank, and like our mother, hadn’t found his way into the house of the Lord for many years. It’s a wonder why father stayed with her. Thankfully, for him, the Lord saw fit to wipe Mother from this earth after she bore us, her final sin. As soon as we’d been expelled from her body, she expired, she ceased to exist. Although evidence of her sins would go on to live with us, her curse, the curse. And Father would have to live with that sin as well.
Father was a champion for Christ. He lived his life according to the laws of the Lord. And he tried his with all of his might to make sure that we lived that way as well. He taught us everything he knew about the bible, which coincidentally was everything that his father knew about the bible, and his father before him.
But Brother, he, he just couldn’t manage to do anything right in Father’s eyes. He was nothing like me. I always listened, and headed every word that departed from father’s lips. Please understand, this isn’t a story of conceit. I wish not to pump myself up, but rather to tell the truth, something I’ve always done. Brother fought all things good and true. That’s probably why father sat me at his right hand and Brother at his left. He explained that God had done the very same with his two sons, seating Jesus at his right hand and Satan at his left. He warned Brother that Satan didn’t remain at God’s side (good or bad) for long, and he was cast down to hell.
But for some reason, Father’s warnings didn’t seem to deter Brother from his evil ways. And as a result, father beat him mercilessly for it.
The first memory I have is one of these beatings. We were just four or five, and I recall my Father attempting to teach us the only skill he had outside of reciting bible verses at will, the art of taxidermy. Stuffing dead animals was my father’s profession. When he wasn’t in church, or home beating his bible, he could be found in his shop, which was adjoined to the side of our home, stuffing and mounting. I remember being so excited that Father would let us touch his tools he’d warned us against playing with so many times before. Brother, however, was less than enthused. He just sat quietly in the corner of the shop playing with a patch of hide that had been discarded.
Then suddenly, and inexplicably, Brother hopped up onto the table to get a closer look at what we were doing. Father yelled at him to get down, but instead of complying he hopped up on a stool and grabbed one of Father’s tools. One might think that Father would be excited that his son, his bad son, was eager to learn something new. But instead Father was enraged. He grabbed the tool from Brother and screamed at him.
“How many times must I tell you that the left hand is for Devil’s work?! You never listen! I wish you could be my good son! My good son always listens!”
It was true, I always listened. But Brother, he never did. He must have forgotten the rules. And he would pay for it handsomely. Father made us wait while he heated an iron in the stove that he used to burn refuse from his shop. Then he took the iron and held to Brother’s palm, lest he ever forget again that we aren’t to use our left hand again and engage in the Devil’s work. He could look at the scar left by the iron and be reminded.
It was many weeks before Father brought us back to the shop. This time, however, he spoke only to me while Brother sat in the corner, fingering his wound. I listened very closely to Father. And as time went on I became very skilled. And as I got older, Father even let me take over most of the jobs that came into the shop.
We were the only taxidermists in the county, a hunting county. So one would think that business was plentiful. But it wasn’t. And Father struggled to keep us warm and well fed. Father was concerned I would lose my taxidermy skills due to the lack of work. But thanks to Brother, I had plenty. Father let me practice on animals that had fallen victim to unforgiving passing trucks or discarded by hunters. And Brother, he wanted me to be good, even if he couldn’t be. So he would bring me animals to practice on. He always ‘found’ them. And they always had the same injury, a broken neck. I thought it odd that so many creatures would befall the same fate.
As we got older, Brother picked up some skills from watching me. He would quietly watch me from the corner as I worked. And when father wasn’t around he would try his hand at taxidermy, his left hand of course.
One night, while we were up working late, he showed me something he’d been working on. When he had the time to make it, I never knew. We spent all of our waking hours together. But his piece must have taken many pain staking days. What he crafted was a beautiful spectacle. He’d created a glove, a large monstrous beauty of a glove, out of pieces of hide and claws from discarded animals. It was perfectly fitted to his own monstrous paw, and covered his scarred mangled left hand, a hand that had been so tortured from years of abuse from Father.
I marveled at it. I always thought I was the one with all of the talent. But no, Brother had become quite the artist. If only Father could have seen it. Maybe he would change his mind about my brother. No, no that wouldn’t do. I told him to never show Father his creation. It would only anger him further. Instead he should only share his talents with me, which he did from that night on.
He would take me out on his excursions. He showed me what he did during the witching hours, how he found specimen to practice on, how he procured them. He was a hunter. He would lie in wait until some unsuspecting creature would take rest, and then like a sprite he pounced on it; and with the quickest, almost gentlest snap of the neck, the poor being ceased to exist.
The first night I witnessed this, I was horrified. But he assured me there was no sin in watching, only in doing. And he was willing to be the evildoer so as I could remain good and chaste.
His clawed masterpiece soon became his witching tool. He graduated from snapped necks to slit throats. There was a blood lust in him that couldn’t be quenched. I knew this needed to stop, but what could I do? I was always the meeker of the two of us. And somehow this increasing evil made my goodness all the more holy and pure. I needed him to be bad so that I could be good.
By the time we were in our teens I was barely sleeping. I would go to school all day while he stayed at home and slept. He never went to school. He’d been expelled, not by the headmasters, but by father. Father deemed him too bad to go to school, too evil to be deserving of education. When I returned home I would spend hours doing school work, reading the bible with Father, or working in the shop. And when father retired to bed, it was time for Brother’s witching. I tried refusing his pleas for company. But how could I deny my brother? He never wanted me to participate, only to watch. It was as if sharing with me these deeds brought him the greatest of joys. And so, I went. And so, I watched.
While I was at school I missed him terribly. I could think of nothing more than when he would take me out next, on one of his excursions. I was almost obsessed with him, that is until she came along. She transferred into my literature class halfway through the year. She was beautiful. And though I didn’t know exactly what love was, I was pretty sure that was what I was feeling for her. She was kind to me at first, allowing me to walk her home from school and carry her books. But when Father caught me giving her a kiss goodbye one day, he dragged me into the truck and drove me straight home. He read to me every scripture about heathenish women that he could find in the good book. He beat me until I understood that she was evil and what I felt for her was lust, not love. I started seeing her differently. And when she asked me to the dance I called her a whore in front of the entire school.
At first Brother didn’t understand why I’d stopped speaking to her. He too thought her beautiful, having only my description to paint a picture of her for him. But after father beat him for putting lustful thoughts in my head, he started to understand that she was bad for me. And he vowed to make things right.
When he went from squirrels to dogs, I gave no protest. And when he ventured further into town and for nights on end made me sit in wait with him outside of her house, the girl from my literature class, I said nothing. But when he dragged her from her bed I begged him to stop. He said very plainly that he couldn’t stop, that he was doing this for me, and that when he was done punishing her for what she’d done to me, I could make her beautiful, respectable, deserving of the love I held for her. And so, I silenced my protests. And so, I watched.
He cupped her mouth with his gloved hand and snapped her neck. Then, after dragging her back to the shed behind our house, he used that gloved hand to carve her up from the inside out. He said he was cleansing her of her sins.
I asked him if he had done this before. He seemed so skilled, clinical as he removed her womb. He confirmed that he’d ‘practiced’ on a few others, the women in town who’d gone missing a few weeks before, he was responsible for their grieving families. He told me if I looked closely in the stove in the shop that I could see their bones mixed in with the discarded bones of animals that father and I had worked on. I should have been horrified. But I was mesmerized by his tales of murder and dismemberment.
Once she’d been thoroughly cleaned out, and his deeds done, I took her into the shop and made her whole again. I’d never touched a dead body before that night, not a human one. And I’d never touched a girl. But I did my best. Not having the experience or tools for such a task I improvised. I stuffed her with hemp and sawdust and wiped her down with formaldehyde. I gave her face color with the paint we use on the fish. It wasn’t perfect. But I thought she looked beautiful, and he agreed. We brought her back to her house and I laid her in bed, making sure to tuck her in bed nice and tight. I gave her a kiss, my second kiss ever and my last kiss with her, before I heard him whisper from outside the window that we had to go. The sun was coming up and Father would be awake soon.
When I slipped into my bed, and my few short hours of sleep were filled with dreams of her, of Brother and me, of what we did.
I was awoken by father’s screams from downstairs. The police had phoned and asked to speak with him. They’d discovered her body. And considering the way she’d been put on display, sought out the only man in the county who could have been responsible for such an act, Father.
I ran to him and found him sitting with his head in one hand and the bible clutched with the other. He asked me what I’d done. Why would he think me responsible? I looked at brother for a confession. But he, who was now standing next to me offered nothing but a shrug.
I grabbed Father by the hand and lead him to the shop to explain. I told him everything, about the animals, and the women. He sat in shock offering no words, just a trembling lip and warm tears escaping from his eyes. I wanted him to see that Brother wasn’t evil, that he’d helped me. He wasn’t evil, he was skilled and did for me the things I was too weak to do. I pleaded with Brother in hopes he would defend himself. But he sat quietly in the corner of the shop saying nothing.
I was distraught. I didn’t know what to do, I looked again to my brother, who was sitting toying with his clawed paw, distant as if he weren’t even there. I begged for him to help me. A smile came over his face and he stood slowly and walked over to me. He put his arms around me and gave me a reassuring hug. Then, in a move so swift I barely saw it, swiped his gloved hand across father’s neck. Father barely managed to gurgle out, “But my son…why?” before he fell to the ground.
The next hour we worked in silence, cutting Father up, feeding him to the fire, cleaning the blood from the shop. Brother took off his glove and kissed it before tossing it into the fire as well. He knew that his deeds were over, that they needed to end. But I knew that destroying the glove wouldn’t stop the deeds. And somehow, he knew this too. So without telling him to do it, Brother held out his left hand and I used a hack saw to cut it off. He didn’t flinch at all. He didn’t wince one bit. But it must have hurt, it had to.
And so here we sit, waiting for the iron to be hot. Once I burn the wound, I think we’ll both finally be free. As I touch the iron to the place where his left hand once was I hear a blood curdling scream. But it’s not him screaming. He’s just standing there before me, smiling a knowing smile. He holds his finger to his lips and tells me to quiet down, and points to the window, from which the police can be seen approaching.
But before I can say amen, the door flings open and the sheriff runs over just in time to catch me before I pass out. The last thing I can hear before everything goes dim is, “Son what happened to your hand?”
Confused I look down to see the seared flesh of my wrist. I lift my eyes for some type of explanation from Brother, but he’s gone. And somehow, I can smile, because if he’s gone, so is The Curse.
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