Bernard was one of those shoppers who spends more time than money. A friendly chap who liked to talk, had a treasury of stories which were not all pointless: he was pleasant enough on a slow day but at other times kept work from being done.
The keeper of the dark, dim antique shop watched him enter; but went on sorting the old postcards.
Bernard glanced at the heavy-lidded woman, with somewhat heavy body parts festooned with tattoos involving black cats and bats. Many sorority girls in his college days had such tattoos. In fact, Rebecca…maybe she’d be interested in that story. But he needed an excuse to start a story. Having no ink art himself, he could hardly lead with tattoos
His eyes fell on a little glass case at the center of a table filled with art objects. He’d seen it every time he came into the store, guarding a statue about two feet tall of a young woman on her knees, looking back over one shoulder.
He tapped gently on the case to attract the proprietor’s attention. “Do you think you’ll ever sell this?”
She smiled her usual broad smile, and added a warm chuckle. “I do sell it.”
Bernard nodded. “You have more than one, then?”
“No,” she said, inclining her head. “It’s ensorcelled.”
Bernard regarded the statuette. “Under a curse, is it?”
She lowered her head so she could look up at him through dark, ling lashes. She was not smiling now. “Do you believe in curses?”
“No, not really.” Bernard moved closer to the counter, feeling a story (and an excuse to tell one of his own) on the way.
She gave him a quick nod. “It isn’t. An uncle of my great-grandfather made it years ago. When the person who bought it dies, it returns to the family.”
“Ah, you sort of rent it out,” Bernard looked at the case with new interest.
“True enough.”.
“Nice statue, at least.” Bernard thought the style crude and sentimental, the sort of trash a previous century loved. “Do people buy it just to test out the spell?”
“The maker gave it other powers.” She set down the last card of the handful she’d been working on, and reached into the battered shoebox for more. “Its main function is to return curses.”
“Return to sender?” said Bernard, chuckling.
“Exactly. If you perform the ceremony, any curse put upon you by an enemy will bounce back and befall that enemy. You can see why people who believe in curses would find it useful.”
Bernard looked from her to the statue. “People believe that?”
She nodded. “It’s nice, really, to have something to blame your problems on. When there’s an accident, or a sudden financial loss, or unexpected health problem, superstitious people find it easy to believe in curses.”
Bernard understood. If he believed in curses at all, then the diagnosis of fast-acting cataracts which had come out of nowhere…. And his supervisor would be glad…. He shrugged.
“It’s attractive enough.” He picked up the heavy case. “And I don’t need to believe in its power to like it.”
“That’s true.” She watched him turn the case around, thought things over, and added, “Don’t look in the eyes, then.”
Bernard studied one shoulder and then the other, considered her deplorable hair style, and then her collar bone. It would be an interesting story to tell people, of course. He looked at the price sticker, the metal corners of the glass case, and then, giving in, the statue’s closed eyes.
They looked back at him open without the lids moving. He felt the gaze as a warm coat, a blanket of protection. Any enemy of his was an enemy of hers, and she would do her best to see that their evil deeds would be visited on them tenfold. He knew this to be true
“I’ll take it!”
In return for a visit from his plastic card, she gave him a bag, the statue—case and all—and a cheap booklet which contained the ceremony to be performed to start the process of returning curses. The ceremony was no less crude than the printing of the booklet but, after all, it made the story he could tell that much more interesting. He mentioned this, at length, to the proprietor, but finally moved back into the sunshine, allowing her to continue sorting the old cards. She did not get up to rearrange the display the glass case had dominated.
The following Tuesday, the young lady and case were back at the center of the display. The proprietor wondered how it had happened this time. He hadn’t seemed like a man who owned guns (and he had never looked at her display of fine antique firearms, not all of which were counterfeit.) She hoped he had taken swift poison, and hadn’t hurt other people by jumping out of a window or off the platform in front of a train.
It usually took longer. But once they figured out their problems weren’t caused by a curse, but by their own stupidity or dumb luck….
With a sigh, she took up another shoebox of old cards and sat down behind the counter. Maybe a few good baseball cards had gotten mixed in this lot.
Blogsy Babbles 