by Gaby Triana
The closer we got to the ballroom, the louder the drums beat, until we were on the veranda, looking toward the lake where Crow sat cross-legged, beating on a small leathery hand drum embossed with a mandala design. Mori and Fae cavorted around a bonfire, holding hands. All three had shed their clothes again, shades of light and medium tanned skin moving in the fading sun. Wilky did not hesitate to strip down to his dark butt and join them.
I averted my eyes at first, then snuck a look.
“Come on.” He reached out his hand.
I’d spent a few days with them in various states of undress, but not like this. Not the full monty. It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but to my Catholic sensibilities, it was. I needed to unfuck that immediately.
Fae was breathtakingly gorgeous with little wildflowers in her long, matted hair; Mori wore a woven crown of sawgrass on their head; both pranced like dancers in a Matisse painting against the violet sky, and Crow swayed back and forth on the ground.
Wilky raised an eyebrow. “You coming, moon child?”
On the horizon, the nearly full moon was rising—a luminous ball of rust. It called to me, challenged me to cast my fears into the fire. My shyness, my modesty. Shed the old Vale and become a new one, or risk turning into stone.
Crow beat on his drum, purple hair flipping with each pound of his hand or small mallet against the taut surface. Primitive rhythms snuck into my bones, navigated my limbs. The bonfire beckoned. The clairs wouldn’t be complete until I joined them.
“It’s okay,” Wilky said. “I promise.”
Without another moment’s hesitation, I kicked off my flip-flops, crossed my arms, and held fast onto the edge of my shirt. Lifting it over my head, I heard the pearl-clutching gasps of everyone I’d ever grown up with ring through my mind.
I ignored them—Get it. Get that freedom.
Their hisses were replaced by four happy cheers of my coven mates. Unhooking my bra, I tossed it, followed by my shorts and underwear, onto the veranda. And for the first time ever, I truly danced.
It’s the way we were meant to be.
Humans dancing naked since the beginning of time.
I fell into an easy rhythmic circle. I had no clue what I was doing, but it didn’t matter. I just danced. Side-stepped with each beat, lifted my arms to the stars, and twirled with Mori and Fae. Wilky gave me his hand. In it, I saw his ancestors dancing, too, white head scarves, white dresses, beads flying, raising energy, Yoruba chanted into the mountainside and palm trees, all in joyous harmony.
I got no hate stares from Crow either. He watched me the same way he glanced at everyone else. Nobody leered at my body. Nobody was “checking me out.” Nudity had felt shameful because people made it shameful. I’d learned that in CCD classes, that God punished Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden by making them carry shame forever and ever. We were born of sin.
What a shitty thing to tell a child.
What a shitty thing to tell girls, that they were to blame for the sins of the world, for every terrible thing that had ever befallen man, had thrown him off the righteous path.
But worst of all, what a shitty thing for boys to hear, that they were absolved of all fault.
Sinful, tempting Eve. Now good men will suffer because of you. Perfect, law-abiding Adam failed because of YOU. Wicked little witch.
I danced out my anger, flailing, knocking imaginary people out of my circle—CCD teachers, Cuco, Abuela, my family for trying to suppress me, my father for leaving me when I needed him most, the people who wrote cautionary tales to keep children in line, Hansel and Gretel for not listening to the warnings, for making it harder on us kids, the Little Mermaid for dying all because she wanted a life outside her realm. Because of them, I was taught to—
Fear everything.
God forbid we should stray from the rules.
God forbid we should make our own rules.
I danced.
And when the clairs lifted their arms and called to the spirits of air, I called to the spirits of air. And when they called to the spirits of water, I called to the spirits of water. To the spirits of earth. To the spirits of fire. Four of them knelt while I remained standing.
“Encircle us,” Mori instructed. “Bring us together.”
I painted an outer circle with twirls and jumps. I was Spirit, the all-encompassing force, the glue that made them all One. The opposite of shame and guilt. I was power, important power, good power. I never felt more beautiful, more needed, inspired and emboldened than I did now. This was God’s will for me. One thing my religious education got right—we were created in God’s image.
We were powerful, like Him.
We were creators, like Him.
In the distance, on the edge of the woods between the copse of trees and the muddy blended edges of swamp, Lobo sat on his haunches, watching the raising of unified energy with worried determination in his fiery eyes. He howled, and we howled with him.
Vivid, wild dreams of flying around the hotel came to me that night, my arms out wide, soaring over the lake like an eagle. I was untethered, free to go where I pleased. When I awoke in the morning, I was disappointed to find I was a mere mortal once again, but at least I had no nightmares. Next to my head I found a pouch of mugwort, an herb to amplify dreams.
Fae caught my eye and winked.
The full moon ritual was tonight. We spent most of the day writing our intentions, sketching, or visualizing in some way. I did three tarot card spreads to see how things would go. Each presented the Tower—a brick, castle-like structure on fire, lightning zapping from the sky behind it. The Tower represented destruction and chaos. Most people were scared of the card just like they were scared of the Death card, though both were more symbolic of change than anything.
In the late afternoon, we performed the mock ritual again, only Crow invoked the Lady of the Lake using aquamarine, rosemary, and a Queen of Cups tarot card. To summon her, he recited an incantation, followed by a rapid-fire photo session to see if he’d captured her, but she didn’t appear in any of the pics. None of us seemed to see or sense her either. If I was able to see the kitchen ghost and the hallway ghost so vividly, wouldn’t I have also been able to see the Lady?
I felt bad for him.
At the end of the bonfire, the clairs gave me a progress report. I was tuning in, they said, opening up nicely. In just a few days, they’d seen drastic changes in me. I was no longer a timid newcomer and they seemed to agree I was nearly on the same vibration as they were. To help accelerate things, they suggested I take a hit of their weed. Though I’d never smoked pot before—cannabis, marijuana, ganja, hash, whatever you want to call it—I was all in.
If we were going to bond, let’s bond.
“Don’t hold it in your mouth,” Mori said.
“Breath it into your lungs,” Fae said.
“Finish the whole thing, or it doesn’t count,” Crow said.
Wilky rolled his eyes. “How about we leave her alone.”
I tried to make them all happy, but mostly, I listened to my gut instinct and only inhaled about 50%. That was enough for me, and I coughed—loudly—to everyone’s delight. Suddenly, quiet, little me was talking. I told them about my upbringing, my church life, my grandfather being my school principal. I told them about Cami and felt intense guilt for ignoring her texts. I told them about my encounter with the hysterectomy patient and the kitchen ghost. They were amazed I’d seen the hotel’s spirits as clearly as I had. Especially Crow—with envy in his eyes.
Had I seen anyone else? They wanted to know. Not yet.
Mori was concerned that both women couldn’t move into the light, that fear kept them tied in this dimension, doomed to relive harrowing experiences over and over for all eternity. They said both spirits might benefit from Mori’s trance writing exercises, so as the sun began to set, we set out to search for the bereaved ghost on the third floor.
We set up in the hallway where I’d seen her, said a prayer for protection then summoned
her, but she didn’t manifest. Mori did sense another woman, beautiful and radiant, drawn to me who lovingly stroked my hair, but I didn’t feel or “see” anyone.
“I want to try something else,” Mori said, heading to the south stairwell, as Wilky and Crow fell out, and only Fae and I followed.
“What do you want to try?” I asked.
“An experiment. Where do you feel the most heaviness?”
“In the whole building?” I asked. “The atrium, without a doubt.”
“Really.” Mori clucked their tongue, and before we knew it, that’s where we were headed, notebook tucked under their arm. They seemed determined to make contact tonight, come hell or high water. I wondered why we didn’t just wait until after the amplification ritual. “Why the atrium?”
“I can’t say for sure. It’s almost as though the room hates me.”
“Hates you?”
“It’s irrational, I know.” We arrived at the entrance to the atrium, where I looked up at the chandelier. “I don’t like that thing,” I said, tilting my chin up at the broken light fixture swinging softly between its chains.
Mori glanced at the chandelier full of crystals refracting sunlight through the broken windowpanes.
“I don’t like the moss hanging from that tree either. The first night I saw it, I thought it was an entity swimming in the air.”
“An entity,” Mori repeated, fascinated. They handed me the notebook and pen. “Sit here.”
“By the fountain?”
“Anywhere underneath. Don’t worry, I’m with you.”
“No offense, but that doesn’t help,” I said.
“You get used to it after a while, Vale.” Mori pulled out a sage bundle and lighter from their pocket, proceeded to set it ablaze, then wafted the smoke over me. “Imagine the violet light. It comes from above and covers you like a warm, loving blanket.”
Sighing, wishing thoughts would come to me that way and not like an army of red ants blanketing my frozen, panicked body, I closed my eyes and imagined the light I’d been taught to imagine. I envisioned a cocoon of love surrounding me, protecting me from all harm. Inch by inch, my nervous muscles loosened, I began to relax.
“Set aside all thoughts that don’t belong in this moment. Yesterday is gone, there is no tomorrow. There’s only now, this moment.” Mori’s voice was a warm honey embrace. “Be grateful…in the moment.”
I felt their fingers slip into mine. In their touch, I sensed a deep longing for love and acceptance that made me well up with sadness. I sensed a painful past and rejection no child should ever bear. Their soft voice lulled me into a weightless slumber. It was quiet in the atrium, except for birds chirping in the distance. A breeze whistled through the cracked glass panes. The heat felt like a doorway to an underworld.
All I have is now…
My little starshine, sleep, oh, so tight
My little moonshine, dream with the night
At first, nothing happened. Then, I rested my hands on the warm cobblestones and breathed deeply.
A male doctor stood next to another male patient lying on a bed. The doctor waited until the old man couldn’t talk anymore, then he unsheathed an injection. The patient had two missing legs, the stumps of which had healed long ago. He was old, with long white hair, long crusty nails, and he wore an eye patch. He’d been there a long time.
This doctor connected the man’s arm to an IV and plunged down on medication. It entered the man’s bloodstream. The old-timer slumped. The doctor turned to me. It’s better this way.
“Go,” I said.
“Go?” Mori asked. “Who should go?”
I had no answer.
Mori wanted to know what else I could “see.”
A nurse in a white dress, like the old-timey Halloween costume. Her hair was ragged, and her eyes almost bled from lack of sleep. They’re dying, they’re all dying…she cried. She flitted from one dead patient to the other, crying about none of the treatments working. They would all die.
None of this was happening in the atrium, but in the floors above it. I wanted to snap out of the vision, but it kept ahold of me.
I heard glass break. A woman’s body smashed through the atrium, landing in the plants with a sickening thud. Nurses abandoned wheelchair-ridden patients to see what had happened, finding the bloody pulp of a body broken in the landscaping. I saw her jaw broken in half, contents of her skull spilling into the pond, coy fish feasting on the chunks.
I suppressed a gag. “I see her.”
“Who?”
I clutched the pencil in my hand so hard, I felt my nails digging into my palms. “She jumped. From the tower.”
“Is it the Lady?”
“No.” Not the Lady—a young, beautiful woman whose spirit would remain at this property for the next hundred years. And yet, she might’ve been the lady in the paintings. I couldn’t be sure.
Another body, a man’s, well-built, dropped into my view from above. His neck bent in an awful, sharp angle to the rest of his frame. His eyes bulged grotesquely. His throat turned a sickly blue hue. His legs kicked wildly a moment before petering out. He wore modern jeans and T-shirt, not a hospital shift, and he swung from a rope dangling from the chandelier.
And a smell. A horrible, decaying smell filled my nostrils, as the man’s body decayed in fast-forward time lapse. His mouth fell open to speak, but I couldn’t hear his words—I was screaming too loud.
Mori gripped my forearms and shook me. “Shh, Vale! It’s okay, it’s okay.”
He was horrible to look at, hanging there from the chandelier, swinging like meat on a butcher’s hook.
“What is it?”
I fell into Mori’s shoulder and wept. “I can’t. I can’t do this…”
“Vale, they can’t hurt you.”
“Like hell they can’t.” Emotional trauma classified as “hurt,” damn it.
“Who did you see this time?”
I pointed without looking. My whole body trembled. “A man. He’s dead. He said something, but I…” I couldn’t put the words together. Of all the things I’d seen so far, this was, by far, the worst. I watched a man die.
“‘Tell them I love them?’” Mori asked.
“Huh?” I sobbed.
“You said, ‘Tell them I love them.’”
“I did?”
“Yes.”
Now that Mori said the words, I heard them in my mind, uttered from a broken neck or another layer of time. Tell them I love them.
Pulling away, I glanced down at the pad of paper in my lap. I hadn’t written a damn thing. The pencil fell from my fingers. I stood, sucking in lungs full of air, and staggered to the entryway. I would never come back to this room, not willingly, not if I could help it.
I stumbled into the hall, relieved to be back in the present when a very normal, very welcomed text came in. Where are you? Macy.
With friends. It wasn’t a lie.
You might want to come back.
Why? Everything OK?
The gray ellipses of composition wiggled a few seconds. She was writing an essay. Was she mad that I was out? But she’d assured me I had the freedom to do as I pleased. Maybe I’d gone too far. When her reply finally appeared, it made no sense. I had to read the words three times, each time reeling me back harder, like a marlin losing its fight and getting dragged into a boat.
Camila is here.
FIFTEEN
By the time I pulled into Macy’s driveway and spotted Cami’s car sitting there, my stomach was ready to purge. In the ten minutes since I’d left the Sunlake Springs, I’d gone through every single possible reason I might give Cami as to why she couldn’t stay. None of them would go over well. She would fight me. I knew this.
I stepped out of the car and hopped up the steps to the house. No matter what happened, I would convince Cami it’d be best if she got back in her car and drove six hours back to Miami. Tonight. After she’d driven six hours to get here.
Okay, sure.
> I opened the screen door and strolled in like I’d just gone out for a quick Frappuccino. Macy’s rolling bag stood in the foyer. She must’ve just gotten home when Cami arrived. I jingled my keys to signal I was home.
Macy and Cami stood talking in the kitchen at the small island. Macy saw me before Camila did. She had that look in her eye when someone has been holding down the fort for you while you’re away doing bad things. I threw on my best fake enthusiasm.
“Oh, wow…” I faked surprise.
Cami’s face whipped my way. She gave me a bright smile, as though she were the best gift I could possibly receive.
“You’re here? No way!” I floated into her orbit, as she reined me in with her gravitational pull.
“Surprise!” I was swooped into the Cami hug, and I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t like coming back to Earth after visiting Saturn.
Macy’s expression was mixed worry, relief, and admiration. Right before I pulled away, Cami got a whiff of my sweaty-ass, weed-stinky body and gave me an odd look.
“Yeah, sorry. Need a shower.”
“Good Lord, girl, where’ve you been? Dumpster diving?”
“He, he, funny.” Immediately, there was tension. The old me would never smell like baked armpit.
Macy pulled out a stool and sat to watch the show. “Cami was just saying how it rained the whole way on 95 until she got here, then the sun came out.”
Cami beamed. “Yep. It was a sign. I was getting closer to you. My sweet sis.” She swung her arm around my shoulder. Something was off. I could read Cami like a book. She’d come all this way as an ambassador from Youths for Jesus, possibly even my family.
After a few pleasant exchanges, I invited Cami upstairs so we could talk in private in my room while Macy shook her head quietly and popped open a bottle of wine. Thank you, I mouthed over my shoulder at her.
She nodded.
As we headed upstairs, Cami made small talk about the cars that had cut her off, how hard it was to see through the driving rain, and Praise Be to Jesus she’d made it in one piece.
