by Gaby Triana
She lifted a hand in greeting.
I nearly threw up my breakfast.
“If it’s early enough in the morning, I can smell cooking in here,” Fae said from far away.
The woman lowered her hand, dusted it off on her apron, and vanished. I couldn’t speak or move. She wasn’t a vision like the others. She was a person right in front of me, a solid human for a whole minute until she disappeared, and neither Fae nor Mori had seen her.
“Vale?” Mori called.
“Yeah, I…” I hurried off toward the dining room, unable to put what I’d just seen into words.
Mori had caught on to something wrong with me, but Fae was going on, running her delicate hand along wooden tables devoid of tablecloths. “Sometimes I get the taste of coffee in my mouth. Sometimes I smell cigars over in the smoking room. Wilky hears the clink of silverware in here. Isn’t that cool?”
That woman had seen me. She’d looked right at me. She’d said hello, happy that someone had finally noticed her. But I couldn’t get over the burns covering her body. That was a ghost, wasn’t it?
“Vale, you okay?” Fae asked.
“Yeah.” I decided I would wait before letting on that I could see them—I could see the ghosts of the Sunlake Springs Resort. The clairs hadn’t, but I had. “Speaking of Wilky,” I said. “What happened to him last night? After I felt that pain in my head?”
“Oh.” Fae’s expression fell flat.
“Wilky’s got his own shit he’s dealing with,” Mori said, showing me through the dining room. It really was gorgeous with soaring, floor-to-ceiling windows, half of which were cracked or had holes in them. “He deals with it in his own way. Don’t take it personally. It’s not you.”
“I won’t. Did something happen to him here?”
“Not to him, but family members, yes. There’s no evidence of it, of course. The state does a fantastic job of keeping stuff like that out of the public eye. But Wilky hopes to find proof. I don’t think it’ll change anything. It’s more of a peace of mind thing.”
“What happened to his family?”
Mori and Fae looked at each other. “I’m sure he’ll tell you in time.”
So, unspeakable things happened to people Wilky knew, and he was here trying to make sense of it before the hotel got torn down. I hoped he’d find it and that I could help somehow.
Fae stretched my hand out to look at. “You have pretty nails. Mine are horrible.” I tried to leave my hand in hers. I was never going to form relationships with people if I kept being afraid of what my hands would see. For the brief instant she held it, I saw a world of sadness heavy enough to fill a chasm. It made me admire her positivity that much more.
“Yours are great, Fae. Everything about you is.” I had to tell her that. Something about Fae struck me as needing lots of love, like maybe she hadn’t gotten enough as a kid. “All of you is great. I’m in awe of your abilities.”
“Awww, Vale. We’re so glad you’re here!” Fae clung to my arm.
I let her.
We headed down a set of steps, sinking into cooler air compared with the rest of the hotel. “Vale, we’re all born with them, but the older we get, the more we lose that innocence needed to wield magick. We lose ourselves in tech and tune out energies. Gut instincts come from your solar plexus, by the way.” Mori pointed to my stomach. “Part of developing your senses is learning to get out of your own way. Trust those instincts.”
They were so right. Being away from home, here in this place, with no other distractions had helped me tune into the world around me. I wondered how strong I’d become if I stayed long enough.
“Yay, now comes my favorite room.” Fae tapped her fingers together with delicious anticipation. “Welcome to the basement.”
Mori gestured to a horrible underground made of all brick walls. The thinnest slivers of light filtered in from two windows near the ceiling. The north wall boasted a tall, wide set of metal doors, one of which was open and tilted sadly on its hinge.
“I thought Florida didn’t have basements because of limestone,” I said.
“Some buildings do. I don’t know…this one does.” Mori leaned against a wall and watched me. If I didn’t know better, I would’ve said they were waiting to see what I felt in here.
My initial impression of the basement was that I immediately wanted to leave.
Fae twirled and danced across the filthy floor. “Don’t you love it? Do you smell the mustiness? I can’t get enough of that smell!”
I didn’t care for it. It was more like mold. And I didn’t care for how far underneath the ground the room was either. Felt totally wrong for a state where the subterranean levels were mostly water. “Why is this your favorite?” I asked Fae.
She floated over to the metal hatch and jumped into the open doorway, posing with her legs up against the wall and a hand in the air. She reminded me of a forest nymph flitting from flower to flower. “Because this is the treasure roooooom,” she cooed.
“Well…” Mori rolled her eyes. “Nobody knows that.”
“This is where we think my great-grandfather’s money is buried. In his journal, he wrote how they shoveled fifty yards west of the south end of the lake just before they started building the hotel. He never reclaimed it after he got out of prison.”
“You’re sure it’s still here?” I asked.
She flipped her palms up. “No. For all we know, a construction worker found it and kept it for himself. I know it’s stupid to think it might still be here, but wouldn’t it be sublime if it were? Mori thinks I’m insane, but I can almost smell it!” she cried. “Right here, behind this wall!”
“You smell dead bodies, love,” Mori said. “And we don’t say insane.”
“If only I had a sledgehammer!” Fae pretended to smash the wall with a mighty mallet.
I stared at them both.
Mori raised an eyebrow. “This chute is where dead tuberculosis patients were dumped. Bodies rolled down the tunnel and came out by the north side where the elevation is lower. Trucks came every morning to haul them away.”
“Sounds…lovely,” I said.
“It’s not,” Mori said flatly. “Sometimes I do trance writing in these rooms, and I feel them crying. They want to go, but they can’t.”
“Want to look inside?” Fae gestured to the black hole in the wall.
“Tempting, but no.” I backed away. A watery sound was coming from the wall. A thin, steady stream dripped out of the brick and trickled in a mini river onto the floor where it drained into a hole in the corner of the basement.
For a moment, we stood in quiet reverence. There were no words for this. Centuries slid on past, while walls held secrets. It was up to us to discover the events that took place using all the clues at our disposal. Energies changed. Mori seemed worried about the trickling water, same as I was, while Fae’s dreams of finding gold spun through her head like cotton candy around a paper core.
Crow would have a hard time convincing anyone to restore this hotel. I was no architect or engineer, but there was just too much structural damage. “Let’s find Wilky. He’ll show us the rooms,” Mori broke the silence.
I couldn’t get out of the basement fast enough.
In the evening, we did more group meditation, carefully smudging ourselves with sage and asking our deities and spirit guides to envelop us in protective light against negative energies. I envisioned the purple light that Citana Rose taught me to envision, sweeping over my body like cascading paint, from head to toe, creating a cocoon of impenetrable strength.
At first, I found it hard to concentrate, but eventually, by the end of the hour-long session, I felt like our breaths were in synch. So were our hearts. It wasn’t all that different from that part in Mass when we all take communion then recite the Our Father, then face each other to shake hands.
Community. Love. Brotherhood.
I didn’t see a scowl on Crow’s face. For the first time, he shook my hand and gave me a playful sid
e-eye. “Valentina,” was all he said.
“Crowley.”
They headed inside for food Mori had picked up from Citana, while I stayed on the veranda, studying my tarot cards, staring out over the still lake. It was peaceful but I wasn’t at peace. I was experiencing too much at once, and I couldn’t help the feeling that the hotel hated me and wanted me out. That was ridiculous, though—how could it? Why would it?
Something moved on the south side of the lake. Nervous energy, flitting. I saw the pair of golden eyes before I could make out the rest of the shape. The wolf, or German Shepherd, or coyote, whatever he was, paced back and forth along the shoreline.
“Hey, Lobo.” I waved. “Nice to see you again.”
Lobo’s tongue lolled. He scanned the resort from right to left, lowered his head in that way dogs do when they don’t know how to get around an obstacle, and watched me. He seemed panicky out there in the tall sawgrass. I called to him to come. I wanted to see him up close, make sure he was real, that I wasn’t imagining a black wolf, even though they were supposedly extinct.
Maybe he was one of the last, hanging on like a final soldier, hiding out like Sasquatch from mankind, his sworn enemy. But Lobo didn’t want to come around, or maybe he couldn’t. The lake itself presented a challenge, as though he’d forgotten how to circumvent it. I watched him for a while, until he finally gave up and receded into the shadows.
On my duffel bag, I found a flower. A pink, five-petaled bloom similar to the hibiscus that grew in my backyard. I twirled it in my fingers, looking around amusedly to see who might’ve given it to me. Whoever didn’t matter. What mattered was that, through this flower, I was a member of a new family. Welcomed and appreciated, which was more than I was at home.
Mori smiled. “It wasn’t me. I’m not the one with a love of swamp rosemallows,” they laughed, lifting their chin to Wilky sitting on his bed, drawing on his sketchpad.
“What?” He had the worst fake-innocent look on his face I’d ever seen. “It wasn’t me.”
“Sure, it wasn’t.” I laughed, slipping the bloom into my hair over my ear.
He broke into a lovely smile that made my stomach knot up. “Welcome to the Sunlake Springs Resort, moon child,” Wilky drawled. He turned his sketch around. It was of me with the very same swamp rosemallow over my ear. He’d perfectly captured my stance, my body, my long hair over my shoulder…the curve of my calves.
Behind me were four silhouettes. Stringy and bony, long-haired Fae, stocky, bold, and strong-armed Mori, tall and lanky Crow with his spiky hair, and muscular Wilky with his signature boxer stance. Rising behind us, bright and bold in a dark background, was the fullest, largest of all moons, watching over us.
“I love it. Thank you so much,” I said, my heart full of gratitude. I’d found friends with which to hang, after all.
THIRTEEN
I sat on the floor of the old meditation room, staring at Buddha. Despite having new friends, I felt unsettled. I’d seen a ghost yesterday when no one else had, and that was cause enough for worry, but I couldn’t figure out why else I felt this way.
Ignoring every message my family had sent me in the last few days was making me feel too rebellious. Maybe I was too far gone. I’d also traded Camila for a coven of witches. Who was I anymore?
The amplification ritual was in two days, and the clairs seemed excited. I, however, was beginning to think it wasn’t a good idea. The Sunlake Springs didn’t need help getting its message across. In twenty-four hours, I’d seen odd things in the atrium, the kitchen, the Devil’s Tree, and felt an odd sensation of dread in the basement. I’d seen the spirit of a burned woman. I shuddered to think what else I’d experience after the amplification.
Macy texted from Orlando to see how I was doing. I’d said fine, and when she asked if I could find something in her office that she needed for one of her meetings, I had to admit I wasn’t home. Nor would I be for a bit. At least I didn’t lie. To her credit, she responded with a simple “okay,” which blew my mind. I felt proud for telling the truth, but it made me feel out of my body, like I was living someone else’s life.
Mori and Fae wanted family to love and accept them. I had family that loved me but didn’t understand me. My family went so far as to isolate my dad’s few relatives, all because they weren’t religious. I never got to know them. My grandmother died long before I was born, so my mom’s family was all I had.
It made me sad, and I spent a good twenty minutes crying by myself. I hadn’t lived a terrible existence in my eighteen years, but I hadn’t really lived either. Fear of God had made sure of that. I’d been a prisoner all this time, a finch inside a golden cage of lies. A week at Yeehaw Springs and four days at the Sunlake, and now look at me—a veritable wild child.
I cried so hard, I had a coughing fit and spent the next several minutes breathing deeply to calm my sobs.
Citana Rose had said Crow could be a bully, that I shouldn’t let him intimidate me. So, my first order of business today, aside from further cultivating my “gifts” was to meet him head-on. His disappointment was still palpable, and giving a shit what people thought of me was a special skill ingrained in me since birth by the women in my family.
I found Crow in the south wing, taking photos of what looked like patient rooms. His camera made soft clicking sounds, as he captured image after image of the peeling paint, outdated dressers, and bed frames. I stood inside the doorway, watching him. He had passion for his art, that much was true.
“It’s weird, isn’t it?”
He spun around startled. He saw it was only me and went back to peering through his viewfinder. “What is?”
“This whole wing, the way they never refurbished it, not even when it was a wellness resort.”
“Only the north wing was used as the resort. The owners were hoping to make enough money to refurbish the rest of the building, but then the fire happened.”
In my mind, the charred ghost woman waved in greeting.
Crow aimed and shot some more, each time looking at his viewfinder to see if he caught something worth keeping. “Besides, it belongs here. It’s part of the hotel. You can’t remove it.”
Click, click, click…
“I guess you’re right. I mean, it’s over forty years sitting here.” I waded into the room. “What are the photos for again?”
Crow ran a hand through his spiky, purple hair. I was sure I heard the most imperceptible sigh, then he moved closer to the window to frame a shot of the broken glass. “I’m putting together a proposal to present at the county next month. Hopefully, the historical society will vote to give this place another shot. There’s too much beauty here to just leave for dead.”
“No doubt.” I walked around the room, skimming the walls with my fingertips. I saw patients lying in their beds, nurses serving them trays of food, and a few who wouldn’t eat. They simply stared. When I blinked, it was a debris-filled room again. “Do you think it’ll work? There’s so much damage.”
He cocked his head, then righted it for another photo.
I remembered Mori mentioning how Crow didn’t like to talk about the possibility of it being torn down forever. “I’m asking because my dad was a code enforcer for Miami-Dade, and I know for a fact he would’ve—”
“Your dad’s not here,” Crow snapped.
I recoiled. “No, but…” I stared at him. Mori was right. “Why do you want it restored so badly?”
He put the camera down. “Can you…not?”
I held firm. “It’s just…if I’m going to be helping you during the ritual, I need to understand what you’re getting from this. I know Mori, Fae, and Wilky, but I know nothing about you.” You haven’t made it easy.
He sighed, went back to framing his shot. “What do you want to know?”
“Why are you so obsessed with the Sunlake?” I asked. “You’ve lived here a year, roped your friends into your project. I just want to know what’s so worth saving. Seems to me like all that ever happened her
e was death.”
“You mean besides historical and groundbreaking architectural significance?”
“Well, sure, but…”
Crow faced me. “I was asked to do this. I don’t expect you to understand. You just got here.”
“I can try,” I said.
He dropped to his knees, sank onto his back, and aimed his camera at the ceiling to capture the cool molded designs rotting away that no one would ever see again.
“The Lady of the Lake,” I guessed.
He sighed. “She wants the place revived, and yes, I fight for her, for what’s left of this building. If they knock it to the ground, an entire century of history will be gone. She…” Snap, snap, snap. “Will be gone.”
“So, you’re scared if that happens, you’ll never see her again,” I wondered aloud. “And if you don’t see her anymore, you won’t feel special anymore. I can understand.”
“No, Valentina. Like I said, it would take you a year to understand.”
Fair enough. “Can I ask you something else, then?”
He held his breath, shot a vibrant blue-eyed glare at me, then stood to his feet, brushing dust off his jeans. “If you feel so compelled.”
“Why do you feel like you have to help her? What’s so special about the Lady of the Lake?”
“You’re saying this isn’t worth my time.”
“I’m only asking. We’re all obsessed with something. I just want to understand.”
He moved to the doorway. He was done with this room, or maybe done with me. “When I was a kid, we went to church. A lot. My father taught Sunday school; my mother played the organ. In third grade, I checked out a book from the school library. It was called Religions of the World. Near the back were photos of skulls and candles, of voodoo priests covered in feathers, of chickens bleeding from their hands, and caskets being carried in the streets.”
“That must’ve been a shock,” I said.
