by Gaby Triana
Scrambling to my feet, I walked past the twisted tree, fighting the urge to stop and stare at it. I didn’t want to witness creepy lights again, nor hear voices. I hurried back to the hotel. Wilky was gone. The others were slowly emerging from their sleep, Mori being the last to get up. Everyone got dressed quietly for the day, while I sat there contemplating what was happening to me.
If I was this receptive now, what would happen once we performed the ritual?
We headed out on I-4. Hot summer wind whipped through our hair, as we drove southeast toward Cassadaga in the back of Crow’s truck. I’d never been to Cassadaga before. I’d never even heard of it, actually. Somehow a town full of occult people with occult abilities had managed to exist all my life, a whole municipality with its own magickal City Hall, and I’d managed to reach the age of eighteen having never known about it. If that didn’t represent the bubble I’d been living in, nothing did.
Being surrounded by pool cleaning materials reminded me that when the clairs weren’t busy being clairs, they led normal lives. “I never see Crow leaving,” I shouted at Mori next to me.
“What?” they shouted over the wind.
“Crow. I never see him leave the hotel for work.” I gestured to the pool supplies.
Mori shook their head. “It’s his uncle’s business. The man rents his extra trucks out sometimes. Cheaper for Crow than renting a car, I guess.”
I nodded. Other people’s lives were so different from mine. I couldn’t imagine my own family charging me to use their extra car.
We arrived in Cassadaga to little fanfare. In fact, I didn’t even realize we were there until I saw a sign. The sleepy town was one, maybe two cross streets, a lake, a big cemetery, a fairy garden trail, enough houses to constitute a neighborhood, a hotel, and a “downtown” area. Coming from a city with the 3rd tallest skyline in the country, I was underwhelmed.
Crow pulled into a space outside a duplex where both units had signs displaying mediumship services. Citana Rose lived on the left side painted light green with garden gnomes all around, while Barkley Nichols lived on the right painted yellow where angel statues poked out of the grass and cherub chimes dangled off porch eaves. Evenly distributed between both houses were several welcome-cats.
An all-pewter gray kitty without a tail mewed a hello before honoring me with his fallen body at my feet.
“Hey, Bob Meowly,” Mori said.
I crouched to scratch under Bob’s Meowly’s chin, as a feeling of intense déja-vu overcame me. This house, the Sunlake Resort…I felt like I’d been here before when there was no way I ever had. Mori stepped up to the screen door, as Fae and Wilky sat on the porch swing looking through his drawings. Crow took a walk down a gravelly path. The door opened and a tall woman with tanned skin and a gray, shoulder-length blunt cut stood there with her arms out.
“My Mori!” she cried.
“You just saw me last week, Tata.” Mori chuckled. “Meet my new friend, Vale. Vale, this is my auntie, Citana. She’s exaggerating. We visit her all the time.”
“No. They don’t visit me. They pick up dinners I make them. Not the same.” As Mori rolled their eyes, the woman with the crinkly skin reached out to give me a hug. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.” I was happy to receive a hug from a welcoming older woman. Guilt bombs went off inside of me for feeling this was how a grandmother-type should be, and for ignoring Abuela’s texts over the last week.
Citana gave Fae and Wilky big hugs, as well. “And Crow?”
“Went for a walk.” Wilky smirked.
Citana shook her head. “That boy. I bet he’s tried to bully you, hasn’t he? Don’t let him bully you,” she said to me.
I had no idea what to say to that. “I love your house.” I stepped into the foyer. Wilky waved goodbye from the front porch. Guess this was between just us.
The house was filled with houseplants, stained glass birds, cushions on the floor, and a wide assortment of Seminole palmetto dolls. The wallpaper was flowery, and the small space smelled of copal and sandalwood incense. A plume of smoke rising from the east window confirmed it.
“Thank you,” she said. “Would you like coffee?”
“After, Tata, after,” Mori suggested, taking a seat on a couch that looked like something from the era of my mother’s childhood pics. “Let’s do the…thing first.”
“Oh, right,” Citana replied. “The thing.”
Not sure what that was about. Maybe whatever we were about to do required that we keep empty stomachs. She led me to a small round table by the incense window where a deck of Tarot cards awaited us.
“You read cards?” Citana Rose’s brown eyes searched mine.
I wasn’t sure if she was asking or if she already knew. I decided to go with truth. “A little. I just started. I don’t really know that much, honestly.”
“I’m not supposed to read them either, but my mother is long gone.” She smiled at the cross around my neck and tapped the chair. “Have a seat. Let me look at you.”
I sank into a wooden chair fitted with a flowery cushion and tried to act comfortable. I’d never been to a psychic medium before. Growing up, all my otherworldly messages had come via the flamboyantly fabulous Walter Mercado on my abuela’s Spanish channels. Funny how she had no problem with him, but tarot cards were off the path.
“This is informal, Valentina,” Citana said, taking a seat. “But we’ll get you protected in a jiffy.”
I sat mesmerized, fairly sure that Mori had said my name was Vale, not Valentina. I was also in awe that other people spoke the same lifestyle language I did without freaking out about it. First, she burned loose herbs in a dish, then she wafted it into the space between us. Citana shuffled her fraying deck of cards, muttering a prayer in a language I didn’t understand.
She smiled at me with a kind expression for a long time. I felt totally at ease with her reading me. Finally, she lay down four cards facing each other like a compass rose. They were all pages, one of wands, one of swords, one of cups, one of pentacles. All young people studying their craft, but the one in the middle was the High Priestess.
She looked at me. “You are gifted?”
“Uhh…sorry?”
“You don’t know your gifts. Of course, that’s why you’re here.” She said something else in her language, and Mori replied. Now I knew how gringos felt when we talked about them in line at Sedano’s back home.
Citana threw down another card—the King of Cups, reversed, followed by the three of swords piercing the big red heart. “Your father was a troubled man?”
Was. “I don’t know how to answer that,” I said. “He was separated from my mother when he passed away. My father held a lot in, especially around my mom’s family. He never quite fit in.”
She nodded through a sad smile.
“He’s with you. He’s always with you,” she said. It felt gratuitous, like something she would say to anyone with a loved one who’d passed.
“Do you see him?” My insides quivered at the thought.
She squinched her eyes. “I get impressions of a man around you, protecting you. He says he’s sorry for the way he passed.”
My eyes welled up. Dying hadn’t been his fault. He took care of himself as best as he could; he monitored his health. Bad luck happened even to healthy people. I wiped my eyes with a finger. “He died of a heart attack,” I sniffed. “Not exactly something to be sorry for.”
She gave me a tilt of the head. Next, she threw down the Moon card. “You’re drawn to the moon.” She pointed to the High Priestess she’d pulled and now this one. In my deck, it was symbolized by Hecate, Crone Goddess.
“Yes. Definitely.”
“Keep doing everything you’re doing.” She looked over at Mori with a nod. They smiled, lips smashed together. “There is a lunar eclipse next week, though we won’t see it in this hemisphere.”
“I heard.”
“The hidden comes to light.”
I kne
w that much about eclipses.
“Your magical self is emerging,” she said.
“Is it?” I doubted I had magic in me. I was interested, that was all. It was nice to hear I wasn’t a horrible little devil, though, hell bent on making my family’s life difficult. I almost cried at this more than her words about my dad.
Citana pulled out a smudge bundle and held it over the open flame of her candle, wafting the smoke over me with a feather while reciting an incantation. She told me to envision a purple light falling over me from head to toe, repelling negativity as it went. She told me to ask my spirit guides for help, or my father, or any of my ancestors, and they would be happy to assist.
I had a hard time imagining a spirit guide, only because I’d never seen one. It was hard to imagine what one couldn’t see, but if I could do it for Jesus, God, and love, I could do it for a spirit guide.
“You’re wise, Vale.” Citana reached for my hands when she was done.
“I am?” I would’ve laughed if I hadn’t felt her deepest sincerity. Reluctantly, I gave her my hands.
“Yes. You’ll develop skills in no time. Nothing to worry about.”
“Thank you so much,” I said. Her hands were warm, a little dry, and the image of a child with long, braided hair laughing as she ran through sawgrass flitted through my mind. “Do you see them?”
“Who? Your spirit guides?”
I nodded. I loved how she knew what I’d meant.
Folding her hands in her lap, she successfully evaded my question. “Tell me, Valentina, how do you like Yeehaw Springs?”
“It’s quiet. A lot quieter than where I come from. Weird name, too—Yeehaw Springs.” I laughed a little.
“It’s Creek.”
“Oh.” Now I felt bad for calling it weird. “I thought it was yeehaw, like what a cowboy says.”
“Everyone thinks that, but it’s not. It’s a bastardization of the Creek word ‘eyahah,’ meaning wolf.”
My ears perked up at the mention of the word wolf. “Is that because there’s lots of wolves around here?” I asked.
“Oh, no.” Citana shook her head, little rose earrings dangling off her ears. “There are no wolves in Florida. Not anymore. Last species was the black wolf years and years ago. Went extinct in the 1920s, I believe.”
“But…” I’d seen one. I’d heard it howling, too. I wanted to dispute, but I doubted that Citana Rose would be wrong about her Florida history. “I didn’t know that either.”
“Now, you do.” She smiled, her eyes disappearing into her sunny face. “And knowing is half the battle.”
“What’s the other half?” I asked jokingly.
She smiled. “Being protected. Which, now you are.”
For the rest of the day, I went around in a dreamlike fog, wondering if spirit guides were with me. Wondering if I’d seen someone’s emaciated German Shepherd instead of a wolf. Wondering if I’d be able to talk to my father after the full moon “amplification.”
After receiving Citana’s protection spell, Mori explained that they took me to see her “just to be safe.” I felt empowered and legit, ready to tackle anything. And I’d finally gotten Citana’s coffee along with amazing gingersnap cookies. Bonus! We meditated at a nearby lake in Cassadaga that was rumored to have healing powers. Mori meditated longer than we did, engrossed by the water’s surface. I wondered if they were scrying, gazing at the water as a means of divination. Fae said they were hoping to hear answers.
To which questions? I wondered.
In early evening, strips of bright orange sunlight slashed across the hotel’s cracked walls, highlighting its intense physical damage. I stood by the atrium, staring at the mermaid fountain, thinking of the hundreds of thousands of people who’d died here. I had no doubt that a certain sadness permeated this particular room, putting me on the verge of tears. I left after a minute.
On the veranda, Fae made a delicious dinner of roasted eggplant and summer squash on the camping grill they kept plugged into the generator. For dessert, we ate a few more of Citana’s cookies. When the moon was high, the clairs plucked strands of hair off their heads and threw them, together with mine, into a mason jar filled with essential oils, water, and…
“Spit,” Fae ordered, holding out the jar.
They each spit into the glass. I hesitated, questioning the process. Then I remembered that using hair and spit had been part of Roman Catholic rituals, too, a practice dating back to ancient times. Bodily secretions, skin, hair, and nails enhanced the power of any spell.
“Complete the circle, together we grow, powers combine, secrets flow,” Fae chanted, holding the jar up to the moon. She dug a hole in the grass using her hands and pressed the jar into it. Then, they all stripped to their underwear again and dove into the lake, while I sat on the shore mesmerized by it all—their sheer lack of inhibition and the sense of family.
“Aren’t you coming in?” Fae called when she came up for air.
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Are you scared of being naked?”
Mori and Wilky both shushed her.
“Maybe,” I called back.
“It’s good for energy flow,” she said. “Gets that sacral chakra lit up, so chi can flow all the way through you. Oo!” She shook as though having an energetic orgasm that made Wilky and Mori laugh.
Crow watched on, quietly seething. I felt his disapproval of me growing. I wanted to tell him how unlikely it was that anyone else would come along to complete his circle besides me. I was the best he was going to get.
“Come on, Vale! We’ve all seen boobs before!” Fae shouted.
“No, thanks.” I smiled. “Algae’s not my favorite.”
“It’s not that bad,” she replied.
Getting naked would feel too much like a departure from my puritan upbringing. It was fascinating to see their bodies, though, so different, all colors, shapes, and styles, young and beautiful, cavorting in the lake. The clairs raised enormous amounts of positive energy that reminded me of little kids who simply didn’t give a shit. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t try to catch glimpses of the boys occasionally, but I managed to avert my eyes for the most part.
I’d always been shy.
Antoni hadn’t helped that aspect of me either. The way he’d taken my hand, forced me to touch him, when it would’ve been just as easy to ask if I wanted to. The more I thought back, the more I was convinced he’d used me. To get off and to explore his sexuality. I’d had fleeting visions when I touched him, and I was pretty sure Antoni had been under pressure to be “normal,” to be straight.
He’d used me as his experiment.
I’d told Cami a dozen times I was fine. I was over it.
Then why did the incident still haunt me?
I wished I could discard anger like a jacket when it got too hot. I wanted to get naked and play with the clairs underneath the moon, feel what it’s like to not give a shit what others think, not be judged all the time. I’d never be free, though. Every CCD class and lecture about modesty I’d ever been given made sure of that.
On the northeast side of the lake was that odd tree again—the gnarly, mangled, twisted one I’d seen earlier that looked like it’d lost a fight with a Category 5 hurricane. If a tree could look like it wanted to hurt you, wrap its branches around your neck and strangle you until you choked and sputtered, it’d be that tree.
Just then, I felt a pulsating throb in my ears followed by a pain so sharp, I sat up, dropped my face between my hands, and rocked to try and make it stop. No accompanying sound or ringing, just a radiating pain in my brain.
“Are you okay?” Wilky called from way out in the water. He was already dripping next to me on the grass by the time I looked up. “Vale…”
“My head.” The burning sensation spread from my neck all the way down my spine. I couldn’t focus. The pain stole every ounce of my attention. I felt distant from my body, as if I’d gone into someone else’s. For a moment, I saw the glowing orbs of fire b
obbing up and down in the woods again east of the lake.
“Where does it hurt?” Wilky’s hands, cold from the lake, cradled my face.
“Here.” I pointed to my ears, my neck, my whole forehead. “This whole area is hot. But it’s going…it’s gone.” And then, that was it. I labored to catch my breath, craning my chin up to take gulps full of air.
Mori had scrambled onto the shore. “What happened?”
“Pain. Is this normal for you?” Wilky took my hands.
I immediately slipped mine out. I couldn’t handle any more pain that wasn’t my own. I shook my head. “I’ve never felt that. Not even a migraine.”
Mori patted my upper back. “Know what? You’ve had a long day. My aunt opened you up energetically. I was wondering if you’d feel alright.”
“Wasn’t she supposed to protect me?” I asked. I used their hands to stand. I needed to get inside and off to bed, start over tomorrow.
“She did, but it’s the vortex. You could be highly susceptible. More than us.”
“Great,” I muttered.
“What were you thinking of when the pain started?” Wilky asked.
“I was looking at that tree over there, the twisted one with the big roots.”
Wilky and Mori followed my stare then exchanged glances. Abruptly, Wilky stood and walked off, placing his hands on the back of his neck, as he paced along the lakeside.
“Did I say something?”
“The Devil’s Tree,” Mori said.
“What about it?” Whatever it was, I didn’t care for it.
Fae waded out of the water, breathless, sniffing the air like a dog. She gagged and winced. “Ugh, do you smell that? It’s like something burning. Like…flesh.”
ELEVEN
I tried catching whiffs of whatever she was smelling, but nothing even remotely resembling burning flesh came to me. Only the slightly putrid smell of the stagnant lake. “I don’t smell anything. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t either, love,” Mori said, their hand on Fae’s back, as they tried to get on Fae’s same level of sensory perception.
