
                          THE DECAPITATION CURSE

                        
     "It's that damn house," Kenneth Carlton began.  The doctor
seated in front of him opened the top drawer in his desk and
pulled out a yellow legal tablet.
     "Are you going to write this down?" Carlton asked him.
     Dr. Anderson carefully took a Cross pen out of his front
shirt pocket.  "It is standard for me to take a few notes."
     Carlton relaxed into his plush, gray chair.  "Just so you be
sure that you're listening to me.  I don't want to ever have to
tell this again."  He paused and licked his lips before adding. 
"I'm not insane, or anything."
     "It's the house, you say?" prompted the doctor.
     "Yes, yes.  That old house in Byers on the corner of Jasper
Street and Third.  Took up damn near half a block.  Biggest house
in town, but it stood empty since before the first big war.  We
always used to make up stories about it--"
     "We?"
     "The gang.  My friends and I.  Donnie, Jim, Chris, Mark and
me.  We were inseparable that summer after the sixth grade."
     "Do you still keep in touch with these friends?"
     Carlton gripped the arms of his chair.   "They're all dead,
I told you!  You have to let me tell this in my own way.  First,
let me tell you about what happened in the house that night. 
Then I'll tell you about my friends."
     Dr. Anderson folded his hands over his note pad and waited
patiently, but Carlton didn't begin his story.
     "What happened in the house that night?" Dr. Anderson said.
     "The bad dreams woke me up again last night," Carlton said,
staring off into space.  "They were bad.  I knew then I didn't
have long to live.  I only have a few hours at most."
     "Why do you say that?"
     "Because today is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the night
we all broke into the old house, and I'm the only one who's still
alive."  Carlton sat back and closed his eyes.  "It was in 1969. 
I was twelve at the time." 
     Carlton's eyes popped open and strayed to the closed office
door.  Dr. Anderson swivelled his head around slowly to see what
had caught Carlton's gaze.  There was nothing there.
     Carlton glanced at the doctor for reassurance.  "No one can
hear us?  Right?"
     "No, it's just the two of us."
     "You see, I'm just so ashamed of what we--I-- did that
night.  Even after all this time, I've never told anyone else.
The first one to go was Donnie, when we were seventeen.  I--"
     "I thought you said you were going to tell me about the
house first?" the doctor interrupted.
     Carlton swallowed and wiped the sweat off his forehead. 
"Well, it's going to be harder than I thought.  I'll tell you
when I think I can trust you."
     "Just tell me when you feel ready."
     Carlton nodded.  "Anyway, Donnie died first.  But I wasn't
close to him anymore.  Actually, I wasn't that close to any of
them anymore, even though we all still lived in the same one-
horse town.  Donnie's death did come as a great shock to me, even
though I really didn't feel a loss."
     The doctor scribbled furiously.  "How did he die?"  
     "He'd gotten in the wrong crowd.  Every weekend, he and his
buddies would meet at one of their houses and drink half the
night away.  He was on his way home after one of those drinking
binges, and he lost control of his car."
     "So he died in a car wreck?"
     "He was in a car wreck, but I don't think that's what killed
him." Carlton swallowed nervously.  "He tried to take a curve too
fast, and his car skidded off Highway 21, smack into a tree.  The
police report had been pretty cut and dry.  I mean, he had more
alcohol in his bloodstream than they probably have in this whole
hospital." Carlton gestured wildly with his hands.
     "But that car accident was no one's fault but Donald's," the
doctor said.
     "No, you don't understand.  There was something else."
     "What?"
     "Donald's head was gone."
     Dr. Anderson blinked.  "You mean he was decapitated?"
     "The police always assumed his head was lopped off in the
wreck.  And why shouldn't they?  The mangled car and the rest of
Donnie's body testified to the gruesomeness of the accident. 
There was no reason for them to suspect anything else.  There was
no reason for me to suspect anything else-- not until later."
     "Mr. Carlton, a bad accident doesn't mean that--"
     "But you haven't heard it all!  You haven't heard about the
others yet."
     "Who died next?" Dr. Anderson continued.  "Let's see... it
would have been in 1979, is that right?"
     Carlton narrowed his eyes.  "How did you know that?"
     "I'm assuming by your earlier statements that one of you is
dying every five years.  Is that correct?"
     Carlton looked astounded.  "Yes, it is."
     "So the second person to die had to have gone ten years
after the big event, right?" 
     "What big event?"
     "You haven't told me yet.  The night you and your childhood
friends went into that old house."
     "Yes."
     Dr. Anderson looked up from his notes.  "Yes what?"
     "You're listening closer than I thought you would.  Maybe
you are able to understand." Carlton suddenly looked worried. 
"Listen, you aren't taping this conversation, are you?"
     "The hospital would never allow me to do that without your
per--"
     "You don't think I did it, do you?"
     Dr. Anderson blinked.  "Did what?"
     "Killed them.  Because I certainly didn't do it.  I already
told you I'm not crazy.  I'm not.  You'll see, tomorrow-- when
I'm dead.  You'll see it's not me."
     "Mr. Carlton, this is a maximum security hospital.  You're
safe here.  You aren't going to die."
     "I can see you don't believe," Carlton said.  "But you will.
Do you think locks and guards can stop it?"
     "Stop what?"
     Carlton stared at him hard.  "The curse."
     Dr. Anderson was so mesmerized by the desperation in
Carlton's eyes, that when his notepad fell into the floor, it
startled him.  Carlton looked at the pad on the floor like it was
diseased.
     Dr. Anderson picked up his pad of paper and spoke carefully.
"Mr. Carlton, curses are just superstition."
     Carlton's jaw twitched.  "You would know differently if you
were the one who were about to lose his fucking head!"
     Dr. Anderson licked his lips.  "Okay, Mr. Carlton, try to
calm down.  I'm on your side.  You haven't even finished telling
me about the others yet."
     "Do you believe me?  About the curse?"
     Dr. Anderson thought about a safe answer.  "Finish telling
me your story first.  Then I'll decide."
     Carlton was satisfied with the response.  "Well, like I said
before.  I wasn't really close to any of them anymore.  At the
time of the second death, I had just gotten my bachelor of
science in electrical engineering from the University of
Oklahoma.  I moved to Oklahoma City.  As far as I know, Jimmy and
I were the only ones who still lived in the state, but my degree
put an even larger gap between the two of us.   Anyway, I found
out about Chris's death when I was visiting my family in June."
     "On what exact date do all the deaths occur?"
     "June fifteenth," Carlton said, without hesitation.
     Dr. Anderson looked at his watch.  "That's today, all right.
There are only eight hours left until tomorrow."
     "I know!  That's why I have to tell you what's happening
before I die.  I have to tell one person.  I have to know this is
not my imagination.  Now, if you'd shut up and let me finish..."
     "All right.  I'm sorry.  I won't interrupt you again.  Chris
was the next to die, you say?"
     Carlton nodded.  "Yes.  I was at the store, Dan's Grocery--
the only one in Byer's-- and these two old ladies started talking
about some tragedy that had befallen the Crenshaws' son in New
York."
     Dr. Anderson started to speak, then thought better of it.
     "Chris was going to attend graduate school at Columbia,"
Carlton said.  "He'd graduated valedictorian of New York
University the same year as me.  Well, anyway, I went over to see
Chris's old lady.  Hadn't talked to her in years.  She told me it
was true, he was dead, but she wouldn't tell me how or why.  The
gossip I started hearing around town was too outrageous to be
true-- satanists and lunatics, and such, so I decided to check
out the story for myself.
     "As soon as I got back to Oklahoma City, I went to the huge
library downtown and loaded up the Microfilm machine with the
most recent week's issues of the New York Times.  Took me damn
near two hours to find four sentences about Chris on the last
page of the June seventeenth edition."
     Carlton eyed the doctor critically.  "Chris's body had been
found tied to a statue of the Virgin Mary outside of an old
church near Central Park.  Witnesses had seen him jogging in the
park earlier in the evening, though there were no leads on the
person who had killed him.  Still had his wallet on him, too,
imagine that."
     There was a pause and Carlton swallowed.  "Well?"
     "Well what?"
     "Aren't you going to ask me how he died?"
     Dr. Anderson shrugged.  "He was decapitated also, is that
correct?"
     "Yes.  He was.  And I didn't make a connection between his
death and Donnie's until later that night.  It had been years
since I'd thought about Donnie and his accident.  I actually sat
up in bed when I realized the coincidence.  The connection was
that the five of us had been friends and gone into the house
together that night.  And the date.  Now two of them were dead,
their bodies found in similar conditions, on the exact date that
we'd gone into the house.
     "I started to freak out.  I became obsessed with the idea
that someone was getting their revenge on us.  Five years after
Chris's death, I started having the nightmares again, about that
house, and this chick I was sleeping with at the time, Diane, was
there with me.  I hadn't wanted to be alone.  Diane kept telling
me that my fear and nightmares weren't normal.  I told her to
shut her mouth and quit talking about things she didn't know
anything about.
     "The next morning was June the sixteenth.  On a crazy hunch,
I called up Jimmy to check on him.  I hadn't talked to him since
graduation from college, but I knew he still lived in Byers.  He
was a drama teacher at our old high school.  I wanted to check on
him.
     "You don't know how relieved I was when he came to the
phone.  We talked for a few minutes, but then he... he said he
had some news."
     "Mark was dead," Dr. Anderson said.
     "Yes.  But the funny thing is that I wasn't surprised."
     "That's understandable, Mr. Carlton.  You've explained how
you knew it had to be much more than coincidence by that time."
     Carlton nodded fiercely.  "Yes, yes.  Exactly.  Mark had
been a construction overseer in Illinois.  They were building a--
I don't know-- a hotel or something in West Chicago, and there
was an accident.  Some of the building fell and trapped Mark flat
on his back.  A saw blade fell from overhead and sliced his head
clean off."
     "That's a little difficult to believe."
     "Are you calling me a liar?"
     "No, but what are the chances of the blade landing directly
on his neck and nowhere else?"
     "But it happened!  What are the chances of these deaths
being coincidence?  By this time, there was no doubt in my mind
that someone was having their vengeance.  Jimmy had been thinking
the same way as I.  We started hanging out again, hitting the
bars nightly, drinking heavily.  We actually sat around and joked
about which one of was going to go next."
     "Why didn't you go to the police?"
     "And tell them what?  All the deaths except Chris's had been
an accident, and even that one looked like the work of some
deranged killer, nothing more.  It really would have looked like
a coincidence to them.
     "Anyway, we swore that we wouldn't let the other be alone
the entire day of June the fifteenth in 1989.  If it had to
happen, we were going to go together.  At least then we would
know.  We would know for sure, and the other wouldn't have to be
alone."
     Carlton stopped and Dr. Anderson looked up once again from
his notepad.  "So how did he die, then?"
     Carlton swallowed.  "Jimmy had moved to Oklahoma City near
me after Mark's death.  He'd always had a dramatic, creative
flair.  He'd often go down to coffee houses and read his poetry
every Thursday night.  He saw an ad in a local paper for play
auditions for a university fundraiser.  Even back in high school
this guy had been in drama clubs, the star in almost every play. 
He'd tried to get an acting scholarship to college, but it didn't
pan out.
     "Anyway, he tried out for the lead.  The play was some re-
enactment of historical events, a script written by a local
author.  He didn't get the part, probably because they didn't
want a thirty-two year old man, but they gave him a supporting
role.  The only problem was that the play ran for five nights
straight, from June the twelfth to June the sixteenth.  We
discussed it and figured that it would be safe for him to perform
the night of June the fifteenth.  How was he to die in front of
hundreds of people?
     "His character was sentenced to die at the end of the play. 
At the hands of a guillotine.  You can probably guessed what
happened."
     "Oh God," the doctor said.  "Are you saying that on the
fourth night of the play, the guillotine had an actual blade in
it, and he was--"
     "Yes.  Right there in front of me, in front of an entire
audience.  He was decapitated," Carlton said, his voice shaking. 
"At first, everyone thought it was great.  I mean, they thought
it was some great stage trick.  But there was too much blood.  As
soon as it happened, I knew.  They tried to trace the prop back
to the stage hand who had readied it, yet no one remembered who'd
set it up, and everyone had been handling everything all night. 
It was written off as accident.  Someone had made a mistake and
left the blade in the guillotine."
     "How.. how could something like that happen?" the doctor
said.  "That is remarkable."
     "But it happened!  It happened!  Don't you see?  There's no
way to stop it," Carlton screamed, his voice wavering
dangerously.  The fear in his eyes was unmistakeable.  "Oh God..
I'm going to die."   
     "Okay, Mr. Carlton.  Calm down."
     "I can't!" Carlton cried.  "I can't.. don't you--"
     "We will have to discontinue the conversation and I will
have to sedate you if you don't calm down."
     Carlton became silent, his breathing ragged as his eyes
bulged and he pondered.  "I.. I still have to tell you about the
house.  The conversation is not over."
     "Then I suggest you take a deep breath, Mr. Carlton. 
Continue when you're ready."
     Carlton blinked a few times and pushed his dirty brown hair
out of his eyes.  "We.. we weren't supposed to be there," he
said, his voice quivering.  "We just wanted to see what was
inside.  That was all.  We didn't mean to hurt anyone."
     "What happened?"
     He licked his lips.  "Jimmy busted a window around back, and
we all climbed inside.  We just wanted to look around, you see. 
Not disturb anything.  Just look.  The house had-- well, it had
always been there.  It was old, it was.. interesting to twelve-
year old boys.  Do you understand?" 
     Dr. Anderson nodded.  "Of course.  It's understandable."
     "Good." Carlton's face changed from tight panic to one of
relief.  "We got inside, you know, and it was really dark.  We
couldn't see anything.  So Mark pulls out a book of matches and
begins to light them one at a time.  We look around-- old rotting
furniture everywhere, I swear it looked like we were the first
living things who'd been inside in fifty years.  But I guess that
wasn't so, cause we found this--" His voice cracked.
     "What did you find?"
     "This place... in the fireplace in the den.  It was stuffed
full of money.  Stacks of hundred dollar bills.  It-- it was like
a dream.  To this day, I have never seen so much cash all in one
place in all my life.  You can't imagine how shocked we were. 
Then Chris and Donnie start grabbing at the money, putting it in
their pockets, you know.  Mark is on his last match, so he grabs
a piece of rotting wood out of the fireplace and lights it when
it looks like we're gonna be in there for awhile.  And Jimmy and
I were trying to figure out what to do, when suddenly there
was a creaking noise on the stairs.  I turned around and almost
pissed in my pants."
     "What was it?" Dr. Anderson tried to hide his anticipation.
     Carlton shook his head.  "It was... a man standing way up on
the third floor, staring at us.  I don't know who it was or where
he came from," he said, his eyes darting around nervously.  He
said, 'Hey you little bastards, what are you doing in here?' And
then he started coming down the stairs and he says, 'That's my
money, I earned it, goddammit, I'll kill you for taking my
money,' and I'm already starting to move for the back part of the
house and the broken window, but then Mark does the strangest
thing.  He hurls his make-shift torch at the old man and it hits
the wall next to his head and bounces off the banister and onto
the middle of the staircase.  The dry wood instantly catches
fire, just as if.. as if it was planned that way, and the man
jumps back in surprise, tripping over the stairs.  His ankle
gives out and he falls forward, and I see his arms reaching out,
trying to catch hold of the banister, but he falls anyway,
through the fire and down the stairs, crashing into the ground
floor with a sickening clunk.
     "I'm standing there, and my heart is thumping like it's
about to tear through my chest, you know, I'm watching the guy
across the room, he's just lying there and the fire is spreading
down the stairs, kind of licking its way down the handrail and
Jimmy says, 'We should check on him,' and Donnie says, 'No way,
let's get the fuck out of here,' and I nod, unable to take
anymore and once again start moving for the broken window, but
when the others don't follow me, I turn around and they're
grabbing the money, stuffing it now wherever they can find a
place, in pockets, in shoes, in underwear, and finally they join
me and we push our way back through the window, get on our bikes
and pedal away, none of us saying a word.
     "Jimmy lived right across the street from me, so we had to
go in the same direction and when we get to our street, he stops
me and begins pulling wads of hundred dollar bills out of his
pockets.  'Here take some of this,' he says, and I shake my head
and back away, but he shoves some in my coat pocket, 'Come on,'
he says, 'Don't be stupid, take the money,' and my hands reach
out and grab the cash that he's offering me and I absently tuck
it into my front pockets and say, 'What should we do?' and Jimmy
looks at me, kind of surprised, you know, his eyes filling with
panic for a second, and says, 'We're not going to do a thing. 
Don't tell anyone, Ken, my dad will beat my ass.  I'm not getting
into trouble over this,' and I nod and we each go home and my
mother and father are watching television in the front room when
I get home. 'Hey, you're home early,' my father says and I nod
and leave the room in a hurry, rushing quickly to my bedroom to
take the burden of the money oout of my possession.  Someone
calls the house about half an hour later, gossip travels fast in
a small town, you know, and they want to be the first to tell my
family about the fire in the big house on Jasper Street and Third
and my father comes in to my room and asks, I mean he actually
asks me if I want to drive down there with him and my little
brother to watch them put out the fire.
     "The fire did damage, no doubt about that, but the house was
still standing in the morning when I passed it on the way to
school.  But it looked... different somehow... wary, you know...
and I got to school and no one could talk about anything but the
fire and crazy rumors about who set it and why, but when I asked
if anyone had gotten killed, if they had found any bodies, no one
seemed to know.  I read the evening paper that afternoon before
my father got home, a front page article about the fire, and
there was no mention of any bodies being found.  None.
     Carlton paused, swallowing, his eyes fixed on a place in his
past.  "That evening, I took two hundred dollar bills to this
trade store that we used to like to hang out in.  They had this
baseball card in there, see.. in a special little glass case. 
Autographed and everything.  It was the only thing I could think
of that I wanted that my parents wouldn't notice that I had
gotten.  So I went in to buy it.  I told Bob, the owner, that it
was my birthday and my grandmother had given me the money to buy
it.
     "I remember the first time I held it.  As I gave Bob my two
hundred dollars and he placed the card in my hand, I thought it
would feel great to hold it, like I had finally achieved
something, a goal of mine.  Here was the only thing I wanted--
something a boy my age should never have had the money to buy--
and when I got it.. it somehow, just.. didn't feel right.  I took
it anyway, putting it in my front shirt pocket while I rode my
bike home, all the way feeling like it was burning a hole through
the fabric and into my skin.  When I got home, I put it in the
bottom of my top dresser drawer, behind my socks and underwear
and tried to forget about it.
     "Two weeks later, I ended up once again stuffing my pockets
full of money and taking out the card and riding out to the lake
past the old house and the school.  I also had a little lunch
sack with me and when I got there, I pulled it out and stuffed
the money inside, along with the card.  I rummaged around on the
ground, looking for a few rocks, you know.. and I did find a
couple.  I threw them in and wadded up the top of the sack and
threw it into the water.  As I watched the water pull it down
into it's depths, the weight on my chest lifted enough to let me
breathe, but not enough to make me forget it was there,
threatening.. always threatening...
     "I never talked to the rest of the guys about what had
happened.  But sometimes, the way they would look at me, I
wondered if they hadn't felt this need.. this urge.. to get rid
of their share of the money as well..." His voice trailed off.
     Dr. Anderson cleared his throat.  "That's quite a story."
     Carlton nodded, pleased with his listener's reaction. 
"Yeah, I think so."
     "And you never found out who the guy in the house was or
what became of him, huh?"
     "No.. but..."
     "But what?"
     "He must be responsible for the deaths of Donnie, Chris,
Mark and Jimmy somehow."
     "Why do you think he would go to such lengths especially
after all this time?  You were kids..."
     "I don't know.  But there is no other explanation, now is
there?  It's as logical as any other conclusion I have been able
to draw.  And I've been thinking about it for twenty years now,
since Donnie's death.  Remember that.  I don't believe
coincidence can happen four times in a row."
     Instinctively, Dr. Anderson looked at his watch.  It was
after seven o' clock.  "You have certainly mentioned some things
worth thinking about, Mr. Carlton.  This is a strange story,
indeed."
     "Yes.  I feel better having told it." 
     "Do you?" the doctor said.  "I really think the best thing
now would be for you to retire back to your room and for us to
resume this conversation tomorrow.  That will give us the night
to think about what's been said."
     Carlton's face went white, and his expression changed from
one of contentedness to one of rage.  "You don't understand.  I
will be dead tomorrow.  I thought I made that clear to you. 
Obviously you are too much of a technical, logical, book-
devouring asshole to understand that.  You think I'm crazy, don't
you?  Don't you?"
     He suddenly leapt out of his chair and attacked his doctor,
his hands grasping at the doctor's throat.  "You do something
right now.  Do you understand?  I didn't sit here and tell you
all this for nothing.  Do you understand?  Do you?  Do you?" The
chair fell over and both Anderson and Carlton toppled into the
floor, Carlton still dominating, his hands still closed around
Dr. Anderson's throat.  "Do you understand?"
     Suddenly the door burst open and two men in white coats
entered the room, quickly pulling Carlton off of the doctor. 
Gasping for breath, Dr. Anderson put his hands to his throat. 
Carlton fought against the grasp the men had on his arms.  "You
fucking liar!" he screamed at the doctor, who was still lying on
the floor.  "You said we were alone!  You said--"
     Dr. Anderson stood up shakily and hurried to the counter
along the back wall, opening the top drawer and pulling out a
syringe.  He quickly glanced at the struggle once more, then
pulled a bottle of clear fluid out of his coat pocket.  He dipped
the needle inside and pulled back on the plunger, watching the
tube fill with the liquid.  He then hurried to Carlton.
     "No-- no!  None of that.. please," Carlton said.  "I can't
fight if.. no.. please..." He suddenly burst into tears, and Dr.
Anderson took that opportunity to plunge the needle into
Carlton's right arm.  Carlton sobbed as the doctor withdrew the
needle and motioned for the two men to take Carlton from the
room.  
     He sighed deeply, his hands shaking, his nerves still shot,
and sat heavily in his desk chair.  Fucking crazy bastard, he
thought, rubbing his neck.  He looked down at his yellow writing
tablet.  Not even half a page of notes in a four hour session.    
    He pondered for a second, then he opened another drawer and
took out a tape recorder, rewound it the tape inside, and pushed
play.  He lit a cigarette and listened.  When the tape was over,
he rewound it and listened to it again.

     "I can see you don't believe.  But you will.  Do you think
locks and guards can stop it?"
     "Stop what?"
     "The curse."      

     Dr. Anderson rubbed his eyes and looked at his watch.  It
was fifteen after twelve!  He had to get out of there.
     Walking down the hallway towards the locked glass doors, he
was suddenly hit with a thought.  He hesitated only a second
before turning back to the elevators, stepping inside and
punching the number seven.
     The elevator doors slid open noiselessly after reaching his
floor and he glanced down the deserted hallway.  His footsteps
echoed loudly in the silence corridor.

     "I mean he actually asks me if I want to drive down there
with him and my little brother to watch them put out the fire..."
     
     "I've been thinking about it for twenty years now, since
Donnie's death.  Remember that..."
     
     "You don't understand.  I will be dead tomorrow... You think
I'm crazy, don't you?"

     Dr. Anderson stops at the door to room 728.  It is dark
beyond the glass-paned window that is situated at his eye level. 
He pauses for a moment, looking down the dot pattern on the floor
tile, while he pulls out a set of keys.  Then, his heart
thundering, he opens the door.








@ 1994 by Black Sunshine     