Moon Child

by Gaby Triana

  Behind me, someone spoke. “Do you see them?”

  EIGHT

  I whirled, catching fragments of light sweeping across the floor, sparking like electricity. Crowley stood in the doorway leading from the central hall, his tall form a darkened silhouette in the illuminated space. His hand, curled around the strap of the camera slung across his body, was tense.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ve scared myself enough already.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. The sparkles of light were gone. “Do I see who?”

  “The ghosts.” He strolled through the room with ease, raising his hand in a twirling motion. “Spinning on the dance floor. Waltzing, having a great time.”

  “No,” I said. “Why, do you?”

  He stopped six feet from me. “Only in photos.” He looked into the old-style camera he was holding and turned it around to show me. A swirly ectoplasmic mist hovered above the ballroom floor. “See?”

  “Pretty cool,” I replied.

  “If I’m lucky, conditions are right. I have a great shot of this one mist, two, actually, standing right here. And I swear, if you look carefully, you’ll see two people dancing.”

  I contemplated telling him all the visions I’d had in the ten minutes alone since I’d arrived but ultimately kept them to myself. I wasn’t fully comfortable with Crow and kept scanning the outside veranda for the others.

  “Where is everyone?”

  He shrugged. “Scattered. We each have our favorite spots during the day. At night, we hang out more together.” Crow’s blue eyes really were beautiful; they were just so luminous, it was unsettling, especially when he stared at me as though testing how nervous he could make me.

  I cleared my throat. “Why’s there a ballroom in a tuberculosis hospital?” I asked.

  “Lots of old buildings have grand halls where they’d line up patient beds for fresh air. This was back before there was A/C. They’d open windows; the lake breezes would blow through. It didn’t become a ballroom until later.”

  “Because veterans wanted to dance?” I smiled, looking away. “Or because psychiatric patients needed to let off a little steam?”

  Crow fixed a setting on his camera. He aimed the lens at me. I looked away, embarrassed by his attention. “They entertained guests. Some families could only celebrate special events here. They weren’t allowed to take their sick loved ones off campus. It made sense to have a space for that. This was a new age resort, too. Maybe my mists are disco-dancing hippies.”

  “My grandparents used to hate hippies,” I said.

  “How could anyone hate hippies? They’re full of love and peace, man,” he said in a Californian drifter accent.

  “I don’t know, it’s just what my mother said. Her whole side of the family has always been very strict. She grew up with law and order, religion, and yeah…I guess it made sense that they hated ‘free spirits.’”

  “Hate’s a strong word.” His eyes fell on the cross around my neck.

  “I’m saying they did. I don’t hate anyone.”

  “No one?” Crow moved around me like a shark, his eyes taking in everything about me. It took me a moment to realize he was framing his next shot.

  Who I hated or didn’t hate was none of his business. Besides, I didn’t. Everyone deserved forgiveness, especially family. I wanted my father to know this so bad during the time he was away. I wanted to visit him, wherever he was living, to prove I wasn’t mad that he had another daughter. That I still loved him, even though he hurt me.

  “You don’t talk much,” Crow said. “You don’t trust anyone with your secrets.”

  “I don’t have secrets.” But right away, I knew it was a lie. Memories I didn’t want to share with a stranger weren’t really secrets, just thoughts I preferred to forget.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Valentina. So, to be clear, last night, Fae made it sound like we have superpowers. We don’t. That’s why we want to open the portal,” Crow said, moving to my left. “Don’t move.” He took a shot and then another.

  “Why?” I asked.

  He snapped another photo of me. I held up my hand, and he stopped. “Don’t you ever want confirmation that the stuff you experience is real? For just once, I’d like to see ghosts actually dancing in front of me instead of just catching glimpses of them there.”

  “Maybe there are none,” I said.

  Crow shook his head. “They’re there. Fae gets woken by the smell of blood. Isn’t that nice? Mori can feel people’s pain like it’s their own. Wilky hears screams.”

  “Screams?” I clutched my cross.

  My little starshine, sleep, oh, so tight…

  Crow stepped up to me, and for a moment, a shudder slid through me. “Screams. Of five thousand patients who died here during the sanatorium and hospital years. Of war veterans with ghost pains. Of God-knows-what. So many things happened here over the years, and not all of them during the open years either.”

  “What happened while it was closed?”

  “We don’t know,” Crow replied. “That’s part of why we want to tune in. Opening a portal can help us find answers.”

  “Maybe the building doesn’t want to give up its secrets.”

  He gave me a tilt of his head. “Why were you in here?”

  I tried not to let his proximity or the cloud of weed smell clinging to him bother me. I didn’t want him to think he made me anxious. “I was looking for you guys.”

  “Gotcha,” he said.

  “Look, I don’t care that you’re living here. I’m not going to inform anyone, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  He stared another few seconds, then blinked, as the corner of his thin lips turned into a grin. “I was wondering, actually. What do think about this place?”

  I sighed. “It holds a sad energy.”

  “What else? Of the building itself?”

  I studied the decaying surroundings. “It’s in bad shape. It’s sad the way it’s just rotting out here. Definitely beautiful, though.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Why’d you come back?” Crow pressed his hand against the wall next to my head, close enough for me to sense his warm breath. He could’ve been handsome by all typical standards—nice nose, strong chin, sturdy build with a hint of a colorful tattoo poking out of his sleeve—but there was something disingenuous about him that set off my internal alarm.

  I stepped aside and jangled the keys in my hand. “It wasn’t to snoop.”

  “But you were snooping. We’re not drug addicts, or a cult, you know.”

  “I was just curious. I’m trying to understand why you say you need me. Seems like you have it all under control.”

  “We need the right person. Are you that person?”

  I pulled out of his visual grasp. “I already told you I didn’t think so, but you seem to think I am.”

  He looked at my fingers, dabbing at my cross. “Why do you touch that so much?”

  I didn’t even realize I’d been touching it again. “My father gave it to me.”

  “Do you see him when you touch it?”

  “No. Do you? You’re the clairvoyant one.” It was a cheeky reply, but I didn’t like the way he was drilling me, as if I owed him anything.

  “You’re being snide.”

  “You’re getting personal.”

  He stared at me for the longest time. I wanted so badly to tear my gaze away, but I held it. It was a matter of control and showing him he didn’t hold sway over me. “The others told me I had Spirit. What does that mean?”

  Crow was distracted by something in the reflection of the mirrored wall. He turned and fired off a round of photos. “Spirit is all-encompassing. It’s the general sphere that holds earth, air, water, and fire together. Spirit’s job is to keep us from killing each other.”

  So, spirit was a little bit of everybody. “Like a mediator.”

  “Yes.”

  I could mediate. If I was good at anything in life so far
, it was making sure everyone was happy. Make Mom happy, make Dad happy, make my grandfather happy, make the church happy, make Camila happy. Hell, I could’ve started my own United Nations with my mediating skills. It was my own happiness I knew nothing about.

  The others arrived then, wandering in like dripping puppies from the rain, in various stages of undress, holding their clothes in the crooks of their arms, shaking water from their hair.

  “Heyyyy, she’s back,” Wilky said with a crooked grin. “Told you she would be.”

  I was surprised to see his mostly naked body, as he strolled toward his bundle of belongings on the floor and lifted a towel to wrap around his boxers. He may as well have been a sculpture escaped from a museum.

  Fae’s long blondish-reddish hair coiled down her fair shoulders like rat snakes, covering her small, bare breasts. She smiled at me, but I looked away at Mori who was half-naked as well. Two lateral scars across their chest told me Mori might’ve once had breasts in a former life but now was perfectly happy in their new shape.

  “Are you in, Va-len-ti-na?” Fae enunciated my name carefully, correctly, then strutted toward her stuff, dripping on her way to grab a green towel. “The amplification is next week. During the full moon. We kind of need to know.”

  “Amplification?” I asked.

  “Opening of the portal,” Mori added, throwing on jeans and a T-shirt. “It’s going to be an eclipse, too. Makes for a powerful cocktail.”

  “Right, so if you don’t join us, we have to wait ‘til next full moon and eclipse. Pretty rare combination. That’s what the Lady of the Lake said anyway.” Fae slipped into a brown dress that reached the dusty floor.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “I’m shocked Crow didn’t tell you in the time you were alone with him. It’s all he talks about,” Fae laughed. Crow shook his head and walked to the windows to look out. She stage-whispered, “It’s a ghost.”

  “A spirit guide,” Crow said. “Not a ghost.”

  “Sorry, a spirit guide,” Fae corrected, still stage-whispering. “She’s a tuberculosis patient. She jumped from the bell tower the first year this place was open, crashed right where the atrium is now, where it used to be just a garden. Splat!”

  “Fae, be sensitive,” Mori scolded.

  “Sorry. Now she roams the resort, asking Crow for favors.”

  “That’s not…” Crow shook his head, then looked at me. “That’s not how it is. She comes to me in my dreams. I have conversations with her. Sometimes, I think I see her roaming the hotel.”

  “Is that why you take photos? To try and capture her image?”

  “Yeppers,” Fae replied.

  “I can talk for myself,” Crow shot at her. “Yes,” he said to me.

  “What does she say to you?” I asked.

  “She predicts the future. She said Fae and Mori would join me, and they did. She said another would show up, a man seeking truth, and that was Wilky.”

  Wilky raised his hand in silent confirmation.

  “She also says she sees the building coming back to life as a grand resort, filled with people, enjoying a new era.”

  “She wants Crow to take the best photos he can,” Fae said. “So the historical society can—”

  “Okay, okay,” Crow interrupted. “She doesn’t need to know everything. Not if she’s not committed to helping us. What if she goes and tells the county everything we just told her? Then what?” Crow slung his camera onto his back. Disgusted, he walked out of the ballroom.

  Fae’s shoulders slumped.

  Mori shook their head at their girlfriend. “Valentina, it’s really simple. We all have something we want from this place. Crow wants to meet his Lady of the Lake, I have my reasons, Fae has her reasons, Wilky, too. Haven’t you ever wanted answers?”

  I understood wanting answers. “Yes, for sure.”

  “Right. So, if you help us, we get to see better, hear better, feel better. What little abilities we have would become stronger, and maybe we’ll finally be fully psychic, and in being fully psychic, we’ll find answers. Get it?”

  If their abilities were vague, then mine were even vaguer.

  Would I still be here next week? I thought about my mother at home, doing her best to give me space but texting once a day to see how I was faring without her. She wanted me home. I wasn’t sure I was ready. Macy said I could stay as long as I wanted. But would Macy be okay with me spending more time here than with her? It wasn’t like she had much time for me anyway.

  “Is that all? No other urgency?” I asked.

  Mori, Fae, and Wilky exchanged glances. Wilky came clean. “The Sunlake might be demolished soon.”

  From the other room, Crowley groaned. “Dude.”

  “Bro, it’s not like I’m telling her a fucking secret,” Wilky shot back.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Mori’s aunt in Cassadaga overheard people from DeLand talking about it,” Wilky explained. “And, I mean, just look at the place. It’s entirely possible.”

  “And if it’s true, there’s a lot we need to know before they tear it down,” Mori said, running a hand through their half-shaved hair, flumping back against cushiony bags.

  “I’m sure you can find answers with the county’s historical society. Researchers, historians…” I suggested. “What do you need to know?”

  “I have a great granddad who was a rum runner.” Fae twirled in her dress, dancing with an invisible partner. “My grandmother kept his journal. He says he hid money here in the 1920s. That was before the hospital was built, when the Coast Guard was after him, but his name is in absolutely zero of the historical society’s documents.”

  “Fae doesn’t care about her grandfather. She’s just a gold digger,” Crow laughed.

  Fae shot Crow a middle finger. “Have you noticed it’s always rich people who talk like money doesn’t matter?”

  “Everyone to you is rich.”

  “Anyway.” She looked at me. “I want to find the stash. Because money, sure, but also so my family can know the truth. Wilky isn’t as greedy as I am.”

  Wilky didn’t deny it. He didn’t explain his reasons either.

  Fae did a squat then launched into a scissor-like leap. The girl never stopped moving. “Mori wants to help the souls trapped here move on.”

  “They’re in pain,” Mori explained. “I can’t stand to feel what they went through. We all deserve to move on into light and peace. I would want someone to do it for me.”

  “I get that.” Once, Camila called me an empath. She said I picked up on the thoughts and emotions of whoever I was around, but I’d never tuned into the pain of the departed before. “What does Crow get from the amplification?”

  “I get to be right,” he called from the other room. “When the portal doesn’t open, and the ritual doesn’t work, you’ll know it was because we invited the wrong person to help us.”

  Wait. I was the wrong person?

  What had changed between last night and today?

  “You don’t know that, Crow,” Mori muttered. “She knew where to find us.”

  Apparently, they’d talked after I left. Apparently, now he wasn’t sure of me.

  “You don’t think it’s me?” I asked. No wonder he was drilling me before the others came in.

  “Him, not us,” Fae said. “He thinks you’re full of shit. He thinks a different clair will show up by next week.”

  I found myself seething at how much I wanted to prove Crow wrong. What if I did have a clair ability? What if it simply hadn’t developed, but with training, I could make it work? I did find them, after all.

  “What does he really get?” I whispered.

  Fae dropped to the floor in a heap, arms raised over her head like a ballerina. “The Lady of the Lake will show herself to him in person. That’s what she told him, so that’s what he wants.”

  “To see his spirit guide,” I said.

  “He’s a little obsessed with her,” Mori said.

 
“Right?” Fae giggled. She turned into a zombie, eyes bugged out, arms straight out. “I…am…the lady of…the laaaaake.”

  Crow returned, throwing his lens cap into his heap of belongings. “You’ve both told her enough. There’s such a thing as being too empathetic, Mori.”

  “Oh, yes, too much kindness and inclusion. I can see how that might be a problem in today’s world.”

  “When you lose your ability to take on criticism, or the cruelness of the world, or knowing where a limit is, yeah—it is. How about you and Fae shut up already?”

  “How about you bite me?” Mori scoffed.

  “That’s enough,” Wilky spat. I was beginning to see what their dynamics were. Clearly, Wilky didn’t care much for Crow, and clearly, Crow thought himself this group’s leader.

  “Yeah, Crowley, enough.” Mori waved him away and walked out, muttering, “Fucker.”

  I felt bad for Mori. I may not have known them that well, but the stuff Crow said sounded uncalled for. “What do I get from helping you?” I asked.

  “That’s for you to decide.” Fae took me into her arms before I could protest. She twirled me, and I politely stepped out of her generous hold. In her hands, I felt sadness, a life without much to go on, hunger. “Aww, nobody wants to dance with me.” She pouted.

  “Isn’t there anything you want?” Wilky asked.

  I wasn’t about to tell them I wished I could have a real life, a reason to wake up every day, numbness gone from my life, my own decisions to make, my dad around to talk to…

  “Whatever it is…opening the portal can help you find it,” Wilky added. “It’s like a kundalini awakening for a location’s soul instead of a person’s.”

  I didn’t know what a kundalini awakening was, but I knew I would search it up the moment I got back.

  My brain screamed at me to get back to Macy’s. Go home. Go to church. Get back on the straight and narrow path my family had laid out for me. Stop hanging with strangers who dabble with the spirit world. If I accidentally invited something dangerous into my life, I’d never be able to put it back. Opening an energy vortex inside a haunted hotel sounded like a pretty terrible idea.

  Suddenly, from the far reaches of the resort, someone screamed.