Chuck Palahniuk - Lullaby

Her hand still in the air, she points an index finger at me and says, «I've heard of those. It's a culling spell, right?»

Highlighted in the book on her desk, it says: The ultimate product of death is invoking rebirth.

Across the polished cherry top of the desk is a long deep gouge.

I ask, what can she tell me about culling spells?

«All the literature mentions them,» she says, and shrugs, «but they're supposed to be lost.» She holds her hand out palm-up and says, «Let me see again.»

And I say, how do they work?

And she wiggles her fingers.

And I shake my head no. I ask, how come it kills other people, but not the person who says it?

And tilting her head to one side a little, Mona says, «Why doesn't a gun kill the person who pulls the trigger? It's the same principle.» She lifts both arms above her head and stretches, twisting her hands toward the ceiling. She says, «This doesn't work like a recipe in a cookbook. You can't dissect this with some electron microscope.»

Her dress is sleeveless, and the hair under her arms is just regular mousy brown.

So, I say, how can it work on somebody who doesn't even hear the spell? I look at the radio. How can a spell work if you don't even say it out loud?

Mona Sabbat sighs. She turns her open book facedown on the desk and sticks the yellow highlighter behind one ear. She pulls open a desk drawer and takes out a pad and pencil, saying, «You don't have a clue, do you?»

Writing on the pad, she says, «When I was Catholic, this is years ago, I could say a seven-second Hail Mary. I could say a nine-second Our Father. When you get as much penance as I did, you get fast.» She says, «When you get that fast, it's not even words anymore, but it's still a prayer.»

She says, «All a spell does is focus an intention.» She says this slow, word by word, and waits a beat. Her eyes on mine, she says, «If the practitioner's intention is strong enough, the object of the spell will fall asleep, no matter where.»

The more emotion a person has bottled up, she says, the more powerful the spell. Mona Sabbat squints at me and says, «When was the last time you got laid?»

Almost two decades ago, but I do not tell her that.

«My guess,» she says, «is you're a powder keg of something. Rage. Sorrow. Something.» She stops writing, and flips through her highlighted book. Stopping at a page, she reads for a moment, then she flips to another page. «A well-balanced person,» she says, «a functioning person, would have to read the song out loud to make someone fall asleep.»

Still reading, she frowns and says, «Until you deal with your real personal issues, you'll never be able to control yourself.»

I ask if her book says all that.

«Most of it's from Dr. Sara,» she says.

And I say how the culling song does more than put people to sleep.

«How do you mean?» she says.

I mean they die. I say, are you sure you've never seen Helen Boyle with a book called Poems and Rhymes from Around the World?

Mona Sabbat's open hand drops to the desk and picks up her lunch wrapped in foil. She takes a bite, staring at the clock radio. She says, «Just now, on the radio,» Mona says, «did you just do that?»

I nod.

«You just forced Dr. Sara to reincarnate?» she says.

I ask if she can just call Helen Hoover Boyle on her cell phone, and maybe I could talk to her.

My pager starts beeping.

And this Mona person says, «So you're saying Helen uses this same culling song?»

The message on my pager says to call Nash. The pager says it's important.

And I say, it's nothing I can prove, but Mrs. Boyle knows how. I say, I need her help so I can control it. So I can control myself.

And Mona Sabbat stops writing on the pad and tears off the page. She holds it halfway between us and says, «If you're serious about learning how to control this power, you need to come to a Wiccan practitioners' ritual.» She shakes the paper at me and says, «We have over a thousand years of experience in one room.» And she turns on the police scanner.

I take the paper. It's an address, date, and time.

The police scanner says, «Unit Bravo-nine, please respond to a code nine-fourteen at the Loomis Place Apartments, unit 5D.»

«The mystical depth of this knowledge takes a lifetime to learn,» she says. She picks up her lunch and peels back the foil. «Oh,» she says, «and bring your favorite meat-free hot dish.»

And the police scanner says, «Copy?»

Helen Hoover Boyle takes her cell phone out of the green and white purse hanging from the crook of her elbow. She takes out a business card and looks from the card to the phone as she punches in a number, the little green buttons bright in the dim light. Bright green against the pink of her fingernail. The business card has a gold edge.

She presses the phone deep into the side of her pink hair. Into the phone, she says, «Yes, I'm somewhere in your lovely store, and I'm afraid I'll need some help finding my way out.»

She leans into the note card taped to an armoire twice her height. Into the phone, she says, «I'm facing … ,» and she reads, «an Adam-style neoclassical armoire with fire-gilded bronze arabesque cartouches.»

She looks at me and rolls her eyes. Into the phone, she says, «It's marked seventeen thousand dollars.»

Her feet step out of green high heels, and she stands flat-footed on the concrete floor in sheer white stockings. It's not the white that makes you think of underwear. It's more the white of the skin underneath. The stockings make her toes look webbed.

The suit she's wearing, the skirt is fitted to her hips. It's green, but not the green of a lime, more the green of a key lime pie. It's not the green of an avocado, but more the green of avocado bisque topped with a paper-thin sliver of lemon, served ice cold in a yellow Sèvres soup plate.

It's green the way a pool table with green felt looks under the yellow 1 ball, not the way it looks under the red 3.

I ask Helen Hoover Boyle what a code nine-fourteen is.

And she says, «A dead body.»

And I say, I thought so.

Into the phone, she says, «Now, was that a left or right turn at the rosewood Hepplewhite dresser carved with anthemion details and flocked with powdered silk?»

She puts her hand over the phone and leans closer to me, saying, «You don't know Mona.» She says, «I doubt if her little witch party means anything more than a mob of hippies dancing naked around a flat rock.»

This close, her hair isn't a solid color of pink. Each curl is lighter pink along the outside edge, with blush, peach, rose, almost red, as you look deeper inside.

Into the phone, she says, «And if I pass the Cromwellian satinwood lolling chair with ivory escutcheons, then I've gone too far. Got it.»

To me, she says, «Lord, I wish you'd never told Mona. Mona will tell her boyfriend, and now I'll never hear the end of it.»

The labyrinth of furniture crowds around us, all browns, reds, and black. Gilt and mirrors here and there.

With one hand, she fingers the diamond solitaire on her other hand. The diamond chunky and sharp. She twists it around so the diamond rises over her palm, and she presses her open palm on the face of the armoire and gouges an arrow pointing left.

Blazing a trail through history.

Into the phone, she says, «Thank you so much.» She flips it shut and snaps it inside her purse.

The beads around her neck are some green stone, alternating with beads made of gold. Under these are strands of pearls. None of this jewelry I've ever seen before.

She steps back into her shoes and says, «From now on, I can see my job is going to be keeping you and Mona apart.»