Spiral

am spiritual advisor to Jeanette, but much of what we talk about is her daughter.”
    ”Veronica.”
    ”Yes. Jeanette for a long time was very worried about her.”
    I felt as though a confidence was being breached, but I wasn’t the one charged with protecting it. ”Worried how?”
    ”Many things. Jeanette does not like Veronica singing for her husband’s band.”
    ”Because?”
    ”Because of the way her daughter learns to... move her body, use her body to...”
    ”Give off an aura?”
    Malinda Dujong stopped, her face perfectly neutral. ”You now make fun of what I do?”
    I shook my head. ”A little, probably. I’m sorry.”
    A smile showing bright, short teeth. ”A man who can apologize is a man who can learn.”
    ”Philippine saying?”
    Better smile. ”Malinda saying.”
    Back on track with a quality-control question. ”If Mrs. Held didn’t like Veronica being in her father’s band, why not pull her out of it?”
    Dujong stopped, no more smile for me. ”You already ask Jeanette this question.”
    ”She told you.”
    ”No. I just feel you did.” The questioning stare. ”Please, Mr. Cuddy, do not play games with me. There is something very dangerous here.”
    ”Veronica’s killer.”
    ”Yes, but more than this only. Something... evil.”
    ”You feel that, too?”
    Dujong’s face sagged, and she suddenly seemed older than the thirty or so I’d estimated. ”I know about evil, Mr. Cuddy. My village in the Philippines is small but close to the ocean. My father, my mother, my brothers go to the beach for fish, for sun, for... life.
    ”But there is also death, of course. And stories of it, too. The crab-monster, who lives in a cave and kills anyone who enters it because he wants the cave all to himself. And the jungle-monster, who hangs a person by the feet from a tree and eats one part at a time, every day. But for what happens to me, there is no story, just truth.”
    Dujong drew in a long breath, let it partway out. ”One time when I am four years old, my family go to beach for fun. My brothers find a piece of driftwood, beautiful but strange. They carry home this piece, put it next to my bed that night before they try to find a rich person or tourist to buy it. I am asleep in my bed when I feel something bite me, sting me. I slap with my hands all around, but I cannot see anything.”
    Dujong fixed me with those deep, black eyes. ”Except the driftwood falls over and breaks into many pieces, little pieces. I did not touch it, still it falls by itself.”
    She began looking down now at her knees, folding her hands on them. ”The next day, my brothers are mad about the driftwood, because now they cannot sell it. I am sick, I think then from their anger. I cannot eat, that next night I cannot sleep. I begin to sweat badly, to cry out in fear.”
    ”Ms. Dujong—”
    ”Please. You ask about me feeling the evil. I am telling you now.”
    I nodded.
    She took a breath, returned her words to her hands and knees. ”Two days later, I am blind. I cannot see my mother’s face, my own fingers. I have only the difference between day and night. My father takes me to the clinic in a village fifteen miles away. The doctor examines me, he cannot tell anything is wrong. My father brings me home. My mother sings to me, and my brothers make toys for me, but I think I feel something moving inside me.”
    ”Moving?”
    ”Yes. Like a small... lump. It moves through my chest and belly, and up and down my arms and legs under the skin. But I am blind, and as a little girl, I curse what I do not understand.”
    Dujong looked at me, trying to gauge something, I thought. ”You still listen to me?”
    ”I’m listening.”
    ”After I am blind almost a year, one night I get up to... to go to bathroom outside, because I can make my way without seeing. I fall down. I think I trip on something, but no. I cannot get back up. My legs fold under me, like kind of knife.” Dujong raised up on her sandaled left foot, bending her right leg double like a jackknife under her rump, leaving her sitting on the right foot. ”I cry out, my mother come. Next day, my father and my brothers carry me to village with clinic again. The doctor say same thing: He cannot tell anything is wrong. We go back home, and I cannot see, I cannot walk. My family must carry me everywhere, to beach, to bathroom outside. I am like a little baby but now five years old.”
    I kept listening.
    ”Then my mother say there is a healer visiting