Lots of her spells required organs. The darker incantations involved human ones. It’s not that she practiced dark arts, but something motivated grandma in these last years to do stronger enchantments that apparently needed human remains. I’d appeased her with weekly deliveries from the morgue that carried boxes of hearts, livers, and lungs to her cottage beyond the vegetables. Those visits made her happy, yet still she complained once a month, explaining that she needed the organs as fresh as possible. For all I knew, she would’ve gone to the garden, spotted the girl, rushed off to her cottage for an ax, and been hacking at body limbs by the time I had the good sense to go looking for her.
It was stupid of me to think I could leave for two days with nothing major happening.
I called the police immediately and begged for them to give my family some discretion due to our status in the community as well as reminded them of the large sums I’d given to their charities. Several cop cars and official vehicles came through the back entrance where Hex and our other guests never went. Our property was massive. Not many people would have known anything if not for the idiot ambulance driver that drove up to the front. Grandma had said the girl’s name was Brenda. My grandma made an effort to introduce herself to all of Hex’s models and artist friends who stayed on the property with us. We gave any information we had to the police. Once the cops took pictures, interviewed me, and grabbed fingerprints and whatever their crew of men did with plastic gloves and bags, they instructed the EMT to take the body and then they left.
I told that fat bastard to get his vehicle and drive to the back. Did he listen to me? No. He just puts the girl on a cart and pushed her from the far back of the property all the way to the entrance. What an idiot. How many people saw? Surely, the servants and guests are gossiping by now.
Currently a police detective named Mr. White sat in my office, waiting for me to discuss God only knows what. I shoved those thoughts away and battled with focusing on the present problem, Hex and his hiring of yet another new model. I followed them as we entered his art studio.
“Elle, this is where I do my work, which means this is where you’ll be working for most of the summer.” Hex switched on the light.
A blue glow bathed the space. Elle took her time entering the room. Her head moved from side to side as she drank in all of the wonders of my brother’s imagination—transparent funeral caskets full of torn condom wrappers, painted hypodermic needles dangling from a statue of Mary mother of Jesus, bedazzled lighters stuck on paintings of child nurseries on fire, mountainous sculptures of bodies rotting to the bone, holy crosses dipped in blood, haunting murals done in oil that captivated most viewers’ eyes while taunting their ideas of immortality. Half of his works got him locked up in jail for obscenity, banned from art galleries in certain countries, and verbally brutalized by every art critic with more love for religion than skill.
My brother’s curse was not that he said so many crude things with art. It was that he had too many vulgar things to say, and most of it no one longed to hear. Nevertheless, his stuff sold all over the world. In the end, no one else could do what he did, and do it so well that you had to love it, even though the deep crevices of your heart yearned to hate it so much.
Grandma always said, “Your brother and you carry curses. Each is different. I know yours, Al, but I just can’t figure out what his is.”
Whereas Hex replied, “My penis is the curse I carry.”
And though a shadow fell across the kitchen that night, we laughed at his joke and sipped our glasses of wine. Those were the good days, when we lived in a tiny shack in the center of Key West with grandma’s garden, Hex’s dreamy goal of ruling the world with his art, and my sweet memories of being out to sea on US Naval ships as thousands of brilliant stars painted the sky. If I knew what I realized now, would we ever have left? The more we bought and spent, the harder my life became.
Who killed this girl and why did they do it on our property? Should I even consider my family? No. I can’t. I . . . just can’t.
“Your art is amazing.” Elle stopped at a face that was the size of her whole body and carved in black glass with dips of gray and white spots near the eyes and nose. She extended her hand out to it but didn’t touch the smooth surface, as if brushing the few inches of air in front of the piece was enough to satisfy her need. “Why did you choose to carve such a dark-shaded surface instead of forming it from a clear block of glass?”