Moon Child

by Gaby Triana

  This was Fae’s clairalience, I was pretty certain. She gagged, folded over, and threw up into a sandy patch. “It’s gone…it’s going…”

  Wilky cast a solemn glance at us huddled around Fae, then went back to staring at the Devil’s Tree, hands on hips. That boy lived as much in his own world as Crow or even me, for that matter.

  We stayed with Fae until her moment had passed, then I stepped onto the veranda and caught my breath. What the hell had I experienced out there? I’d picked up on the resort’s sadness, and I’d seen weird things, but I’d never felt actual pain until now.

  I rubbed my neck and prayed for God to protect me, feeling like a hypocrite for both abandoning and asking Him to assist at the same time. Mori headed up the hilly slope, holding Fae’s narrow shoulders.

  “Are you okay?” I asked when they came up to stand where I was. She nodded weakly. It was weird to see Fae like that without her usual high energy.

  “I think we’re opening up,” Mori said. “There’s five of us now.”

  “And that’s without the full moon ritual. Maybe…” I thought about my words carefully. “Maybe we shouldn’t do it?”

  Fae and Mori both looked at me, wheels in their brain cranking away. “We just have to get used to it. It’ll be fine.” Mori waved to Wilky and Crow to let them know they were taking Fae inside.

  Enough for one day. An ice-cold drink was what I needed, but we had no ice. Instead, I chugged down a bottle full of warm water and headed off to bed, my head spinning. The ballroom felt heavier than usual, but that made sense given what we’d just gone through.

  I was in a bathroom—a public bathroom—surrounded by urinals.

  The tile was light green. There were cracks in some of them. The ceiling had a wide, ugly amber stain. Drops of water dripped through the stain, and I realized it was pouring outside. For some reason, as often happened in dreams, I couldn’t leave. I was stuck; my feet didn’t work.

  I texted Camila to come get me, but Camila wouldn’t answer. She was mad because I’d left the retreat. It took minutes to press each letter on my keyboard. I’d mess up and have to start over again. Frustration mounted. Tears slipped from my eyes into the corners of my frown. I looked up from the phone and saw I wasn’t alone. Antoni was there. Good ol’ fresh-shaven, clean-cut Antoni, leaning against the sinks with his hands pressed on the edge of one.

  You should be honored, he told me. Other girls would’ve done anything to spend that time with him. I got lucky. Couldn’t I see that?

  I told him to shut up and go away, I was trying to work my phone, to get us out of here before the campground closed and we’d be forced to stay overnight.

  Nothing happened, he said. He’d been polite. By doing his business at the sink, he’d left me out of it. He’d spared me. He hadn’t “used” me. He’d done the correct thing. Other guys wouldn’t have been as thoughtful. I needed to stop acting as though he’d done something wrong, because he hadn’t. I was making a mountain out of a molehill.

  He went on. He wouldn’t shut his mouth. I certainly hadn’t brought it up, so why did he insist on talking about it? I rarely thought about him during my waking life—yes, my waking life, because I was dreaming, I knew it. So, why wouldn’t he stop talking about it?

  My phone refused to work. I had to start the text all over again. Men had needs, he went on. All he’d done was act on impulse. He hadn’t hurt me. He’d respected me.

  Shut up, Antoni. Shut the hell up.

  A strong hand curled around my arm. I stared at his fingers, digging into my flesh. He had the balls to touch me? To lay his hands on my arm? I yanked it out of his grasp. Touch me again, I warned.

  Behind him, something bubbled in the sink. Something thick, gurgling up from the drainpipe. I didn’t want to look, though he wanted me to. He wanted me to see what was in the sink, what my hand had made him do. He was proud of the outcome, proud of how he’d handled the situation. Would I rather he’d done it there or inside of me? he asked.

  He hadn’t hurt me. And I needed to know that, he insisted.

  I don’t care anymore. Just fucking stop, I told him.

  My eyes opened to a nearly lightless ballroom. A few ribbons of moonlight filtered in, illuminating dust vortices closest to the windows. The rest of the vast space sat in obscurity. The ballroom felt like it had a pulse, or was that my heart? The dream had felt so real, I half-expected Antoni to be here.

  I let out a slow breath. Our conversation still lingered in my mind. I was shaking. From the dream, but also because the stupid incident wouldn’t leave me alone. It was still in my psyche despite my insistence that it wasn’t. This asshole was still in my subconscious, a demon who needed exorcising.

  “Shit…” I sat up.

  Rubbing my face, I stood and moved to the window to peer out at the filthy veranda overgrown with weeds, the grassy slope to the lake and Fae’s garden. Far in the distance, the gnarly, twisted tree hid in the shadows of the quarter moon high in the clear, still sky.

  I looked away.

  Last thing I needed was another memory invasion. The burning and tugging sensation had not been my own—I knew that. Staring out the dusty glass, I watched the stagnant lake shimmer with a glow of its own. In this half-wake, half-sleep state, I knew in my bones that we were not alone.

  The clairs were asleep—I counted three bulky lumps (Mori and Fae slept together tonight). Someone stood a few feet away, invisible, scrutinizing eyes watching me from the darkness.

  Judging.

  But I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  I imagined my eyes widening like a cat’s, irises adjusting to take in as much light as possible. I tried to make sense of the hotel’s scattered, discarded objects. What might’ve been a bar or fallen stools could’ve been a dead man lying in his own filth next to a piano. Gossamer cobwebs hanging from curved archways, dancing in the draft, could’ve been a woman dangling from her neck. The one column just outside the ballroom in the central hallway, lined up with the entrance arch could’ve been a person watching me.

  The feeling of displaced air intensified.

  Why are you here?

  It sounded like a woman’s voice.

  Another woman replied, Leave her.

  The ballroom felt alive, simmering and waiting.

  I needed to use the bathroom, but hell if I was walking past the Devil’s Tree again, and hell if I was going anywhere near a bathroom in the dark. I was haunted enough as is. I forced myself back to bed. It wasn’t until the soft rays of sunrise lit up the room’s faded red wallpaper that I was able to finally sleep, even if it was half-baked. By then, my feelings over the dream had subsided, but resentment ate away at me like tapeworms devouring the lining of my stomach.

  TWELVE

  I awoke to a viciously hangry stomach, but Wilky saw my head pop up and immediately brought me a plate of sausage and eggs balanced on his sketchpad. “I kept it warm for you.” He pushed the plate into my hands, along with a fork.

  “Thank you.” I stared at his hands. He had nice hands, clean nails. “I barely slept last night,” I said, digging into the food.

  “You’ve missed half the day. Did the Sunlake keep you awake?” He sat cross-legged, sketching a drawing of what looked like a landscape with lots of trees.

  “The Sunlake, or my own brain, one of the two,” I said between bites.

  “I had wild dreams. But I always have wild dreams.” His Haitian accent reminded me of home.

  “What did you dream about?” I scarfed down the last of the eggs, working in a glance or two at his inquisitive brown eyes. “If you don’t mind my asking.”

  Wilky saw I was done and handed me his cup of orange juice. “You can have the rest.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I always dream about people…shadows…torches.”

  I stared at him over the rim of the cup. I thought about the glowing orbs in the trees I’d seen last night, the bright blobs of light I’d seen yesterday morning, too, how much t
hey reminded me of people carrying torches. “They move like a line of people walking?”

  “Yes. Like this.” He turned around his sketchbook. His drawing was of the trees behind the lake, with the Devil’s tree in the background. Walking toward it was a line of shadow people holding what could’ve been perceived as torches.

  “I think I saw them last night.”

  He stared at me. “By the lake?”

  “I think so. It was hard to tell, my head started hurting so bad, but I’m sure it was torches. That would make sense since Fae smelled burning, right?” But she hadn’t smelled torches—she’d smelled cooked flesh.

  Wilky looked like he had at least a half million things he wanted to say. His gaze was focused on Crow taking photos in the hallway. “I think it’s more likely that Fae was smelling the fire.”

  “Fire?”

  He looked at me again. “The one that closed this place down when it was a resort. A kitchen fire in the late seventies. Lots of spiritualists died.”

  “Oh.” I put down my plate.

  “Haven’t you seen the burnt kitchen?”

  I shook my head.

  He sketched for a minute. “What I experience is something else. I hear screams, I see torches, and it always, always feels like I’m there.”

  “Like you’re in someone else’s body,” I guessed.

  “Yes.” He stared at me. “Like, I’m experiencing someone else’s memory.”

  Exactly what I’d experienced last night by the Devil’s Tree—someone else’s memory. “Do you wake up right away?”

  “Not always. I usually get to the part where they reach the tree, but I don’t know what happens after that. I wake up sweaty. But uh, you don’t want to hear about this. Finish your breakfast. Mori and Fae will show you around when you’re done.” He stood with his sketchbook.

  He didn’t wait for my reply, that I did want to hear about his dreams. I wanted to know who was carrying the torches, who did the screaming. I wanted to share my crazy-ass nightmare about Antoni, explore why he was still on my mind. He took off, though.

  My phone vibrated—a text from Cami, asking how I was doing, and could I call her. No, not now. My mind was far away in another world.

  After a short walk, I was throwing my hair into a ponytail, thinking about Wilky and watching Crow move through the halls with his camera, trying to capture his spirit guide lady when Mori and Fae approached me, hands clasped together.

  “You were up last night,” Mori said. “We could see you standing by the window. Ghosts keeping you up?”

  “Ghosts inside my head,” I replied.

  Fae reached out, and I flinched. She was only trying to run her fingers through my hair to detangle and drape it over my shoulder. “The worst kind.”

  “True,” I said.

  “When we got here a year ago, we couldn’t sleep either,” Mori said. “We thought we needed getting used to the hotel, but it turned out the hotel needed getting used to us.”

  I never thought of it that way before, a building needing adjustment to new inhabitants. “I’m fairly sure The Sunlake Springs doesn’t want me here,” I said.

  “Why do you say that?” Fae asked.

  I shrugged and checked my phone absently. Five new texts from my mom, three from Abuela, and a couple more from Camila. Shutting off the screen, I slid it into my shorts’ pocket. “I don’t know. It’s just the feeling I get. How long do you plan on staying?” I asked, changing the subject. “A year seems like a long time.”

  “I have no other place to be.” Mori looked at Fae.

  Fae was now behind me, braiding my hair. “Me neither. As long as it takes to find what we all want. It’s not like anybody’s missing us. My mother thinks I live in Atlanta with my rich boyfriend.”

  “Seriously?” I laughed.

  “Yeah. I’ll tell her the truth one day. Right now, she doesn’t need stress. Better to make her think I’m fine.” Fae tapped Mori’s chin then bottom lip. “Which I am.”

  Mori smiled, but I could see they probably felt bad about Fae living a lie. I understood. We lied when we were afraid of hurting people. We lied when our loved ones couldn’t accept us. I longed for a day I could be completely honest about who I was.

  “Nobody cares about us, Vale. We’re totally okay with that.”

  “I care,” I said.

  Fae swung around my side and stared into my soul. “That means a lot. It really, really does. Thank you.” She popped a kiss on my cheek and went back to braiding my hair.

  Mori reached out to take Fae’s hand again, or to make her stop touching me, one or the other. “Come on, let’s take a walk.” Mori led us out the ballroom and down the hall. At first, I thought we were headed toward the atrium, and I was glad I wouldn’t be alone inside it, but then they turned and faced the lobby with an upward sweep of the hand. “Voilà. Zees ees ze grand lobby. Bee-oo-tee-full, right?” they said in a bad French accent.

  “It is. Every time I pass by it, it blows my mind,” I said.

  In the full sunlight, the old rusted bird cages glinted with flecks of gold paint. I remembered the odd feeling in my stomach when I’d touched one the other night.

  “It’s one of my favorite parts of the hotel.” Fae did a grand jetté across the floor, landing, then another leap in a different direction. “What room are you in, ma’am? May I help you with your bags?” She giggled.

  I admired the hippie child in Fae. I wasn’t sure I could dance the same way knowing my family didn’t care about me.

  Mori pointed to a spot near me. “Right here is where Crow took a photo of a white figure that looks like a mermaid. You can even see her tail. It’s pretty cool.”

  “But why would a mermaid be walking in a hotel?” I asked.

  “Why would a hotel by a lake have paintings of mermaids?” Mori asked rhetorically, gesturing to a large painting high up on the wall. I had, in fact, not noticed the enormous work of art featuring a gorgeous siren coming out of, not the ocean or beach, but a lake’s surface. The trees behind it and the rowboats were the giveaway. “There’s siren symbolism everywhere. Check out the columns.”

  “Those I’ve seen,” I said. “They’re beautiful.”

  “We’re not that far from the ocean,” Mori said, “and Florida is nearly an island anyway, so it’s not a surprise they’re a big part of The Sunlake’s Art Deco history.”

  “Some people say the Lady of the Lake is a species of mermaid,” Fae said.

  “More like a water spirit,” Mori told her. “Trust me, I know my water spirits.”

  “True, but I like to think of her as a mermaid. So, there. Anyway, Crow took another photo over there.” She pointed to the chained and locked double door entrance. “Of someone pushing a woman in a wheelchair out the doors.”

  I imagined people from long ago moving through this space, like escapees of Crow’s photos. I saw multiple layers of time overlapping each other, playing on 1.5x speed—doctors, nurses, patients, orderlies, veterans, hippies, all criss-crossing in time and space. I even saw the little boy from the atrium, cutting through the lobby with a toy in his hand.

  A toy—or a craft of some kind.

  “Where is he anyway?” I almost missed his grumbling about the clairs agreeing to let me stay. “Crow?”

  “He’s in the north wing today.”

  “What’s in the north wing?”

  “The north wing was used for veterans, the south for women’s psychiatric ward,” Mori explained, taking us past the atrium. I stared at the mermaid perched on the fountain, holding up her sun. She watched me intently, as we walked past.

  “That’s not an accident, by the way,” Mori said. “North was considered higher, closer to God, war heroes deserving of Heaven. And south…well, closer to Hell.”

  “Yay! Women are the root of all evil!” Fae said sarcastically.

  “Same reasoning behind blue for boys, pink for girls,” I said. That was another thing my wonderful patriarchal religion had taught me—
that, as a woman, I was the cause of everybody’s misery.

  Fae’s eyes widened. “I never knew that, Vale. You just taught me something.”

  “I’m a treasure trove of useless information,” I replied. “What’s Crow’s photography project about?”

  “Preservation.” Mori took us down the central, dividing hallway. Above were Moroccan-style lanterns hanging from the ceiling, the glass tiles of which were pretty intact. “He’s trying to convince the county to restore the hotel. I think the place is beyond saving, but I don’t tell him that. He hates hearing it.”

  Suddenly, my foot sank into a depression in the tile floors, and I twisted my ankle. “Ow, damn it…”

  Mori and Fae hung onto my arm. “Whoa. You okay?”

  I winced. My ankle hurt like hell. Walking through the Sunlake was like stepping through a fun house at the fair. Floors were wonky; walls strained under the weight of the tall ceilings. Crow’s wish to see this place restored would make for a breathtaking sight, but it shouldn’t happen. They’d have to raze the place to the ground and start all over to make sure it was all to code. My father had seen less damaged buildings demolished for more minor offenses.

  “So, we’re headed to Hell now?” I chuckled, hobbling into the south wing.

  “We never left,” Mori made a mock eerie voice.

  We stepped through a double doorway to a vast room with rusted metal counters and carts knocked onto their sides. Brick walls were charred black, while other black circles of soot radiated throughout the floor. The low ceiling’s wooden beams were also charred and broken up in spots where water leaked in and dripped down the moldy walls.

  “Here’s the kitchen,” Mori said. “A fire killed twenty people here in 1979. They never opened again. Through there is the dining room, which you’ll see has beautiful floor to ceiling windows.”

  Mori and Fae stepped over puddles of water toward the dining room, but I stayed behind. Through the double doors stood a woman, watching me. She was perfectly still, arms by her sides with straight brown hair that hung below her waist on one side. The other side of her hair was gone. Her scalp was a bloody, singed mess. The skin of her face was missing, exposing ligaments and an eyeball about to fall out.