Moon Child

by Gaby Triana

  “I’m not here to pick up food, ma’am. I have questions.”

  “Oh! Come in. Come in…”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call first.” I stepped into her airy home.

  “Nonsense. You’re having a crisis.” She opened the door wide. I knew better than to ask how she knew I was having a crisis. “Avocado? I just sliced them. They’re from my tree.”

  “No, thank you.” If I ate, my body would reject it. “This is my sister, Macy.”

  “Hello, Macy. What can I do for you girls? You need a reading?” Citana pulled out chairs for us. Macy and I sat, perched on the edges.

  My hands were tense. I opened and closed them to relax. “Last time I was here, you said something about my father. I didn’t understand it at the time, but something I learned today made me remember it.”

  “What did I say?” Her eyes searched my face.

  “You said my father was with me. That he’s always with me.”

  “He was stepping forward at the time. I don’t see him now, though.”

  “Do you remember telling me that he apologizes for the way he passed? You said something about him apologizing. I thought that was odd, because he died of a heart attack. Do you remember? Please say you do.”

  She tapped her chin. “I seem to remember him showing me the way he died. Most of them do. But I didn’t want to mention it, because sometimes, the living don’t know the circumstances surrounding a loved one’s death, and you hadn’t come for information about your father. You came for a spiritual cleansing.”

  “But do you remember what he showed you?” I asked, my body trembling. “I need to know.”

  “Dear…” She sighed. “His neck was broken. I assume he took his own life.”

  I stared at Citana, my last hope that maybe all this was a misunderstanding. I kept hoping she’d retract her last statement, tell me, No, wait, that’s a mistake, tell me my father’s heart gave out, just like I’d thought.

  Inside, a part of me—the part that believed in miracles and Santa Claus, the goodness in people’s heart, and the Universe having my back—withered and died. Macy patted circles on my back.

  “And yet,” Citana Rose pulled out her tarot cards, shuffled them for focus.

  “And yet?” Macy said.

  “I’m not entirely sure about that.”

  The watery swirls in my eyes made it hard to see.

  “May I see your hands?” She put the cards back down and stretched her palms across the table.

  Oh, God. No. Not her hands, not someone so intuitive. I didn’t want to see my father’s death in anyone’s mind, even if I’d already seen it with my own third eye.

  “It’s alright,” Citana said, slipping her warm hands gently underneath my fingertips. She said a prayer in her language and, with her hand, drew a circle around my head, another around Macy’s, and another around herself.

  Right away, I saw the darkness, the murky hallways of the Sunlake Springs Resort. Specifically, the atrium where I’d seen the hanging spirit, before I knew it was my father, because my brain couldn’t fathom anything different than what I’d been told by my family. “Something else is there.”

  “At the hotel?”

  “Yes. I’ve told my grandniece many times before. I’ve never liked her or her friends going. That place has a reputation for the malevolent.”

  For a moment, I had no idea who she meant. Then, I realized Citana was using Mori’s dead pronoun. I forgave her since Citana was a million years old.

  “I’ve felt the same since I got there. Something doesn’t want us,” I told her.

  “Oh, it wants you. Believe me, it wants you. Which is why you must leave, before it gets its wish. It’s trapped thousands of other people over its hundred-year history. Same way your father is there.”

  “But I thought you saw him with me.”

  “He is with you. But he is also there. He can’t cross into the light to his final rest.”

  “Because he killed himself?” My lip quivered.

  “Because the hotel won’t let him go.”

  Macy and I looked at each other. “I don’t understand,” I said.

  Citana’s eyelids fluttered. I couldn’t see what she saw anymore. I only saw a vast blanket of nightfall covering the resort. “Something prevents him from leaving, the same presence that doesn’t want you to leave. It needs you.”

  “But if my father’s soul is trapped there, I have to go back. I have to help him. I have to try. I can’t just leave him there.” Hot tears rose into my eyes. I couldn’t bear the thought that my dad was trapped in an in-between state. “What do I do?”

  “Leave.”

  “But my father—”

  “Your father doesn’t want you there. He doesn’t want anyone there.”

  “But a black wolf led me there.” I was agitated now. “I think he’s my familiar or a spirit guide. That’s how I got there in the first place. Why should I leave?”

  “I’m not sure, dear. I just don’t get a good feeling.” She rubbed her forehead. After a minute, she reached for my hands again. I could tell she was exerting herself. “At the full moon ritual. You purified yourselves as I instructed?”

  “Yes. We did what we were supposed to.”

  “You were pure of heart?”

  “As much as we could be.” Although, I had just argued with Cami an hour before.

  “Why, were we not supposed to open the portal? Should we go back and close it?” I couldn’t squelch the panic in my voice. “We shouldn’t have done it, am I right? Crow kept saying that an entity wanted him to do it. I kept wondering why he was so desperate to please her. She told him that opening the vortex would help him finally see her in the flesh.”

  “You must close it. Tell the others it was a mistake. She’s there, feeding on anger, greed, and hate. I couldn’t see her before, but I see it now because you are amplified. She longs to escape the lake. She longs to be human.”

  “Human? What do you mean?”

  Citana started shaking. Her face twisted in agony, like she was seeing something horrible. I slipped my hands out of hers. “She’s been banished, cursed to stay there forever. That’s why she wants out. The hotel will soon be demolished, and she fears it. She wants to return to the living…” Citana was shaking so hard, the chair was scratching the floor.

  “What’s happening?” Macy asked.

  The old woman’s eyes opened wide. She shot her hands out and gripped mine.

  And I saw. God damn it, I saw.

  The immense inky darkness of the Sunlake Springs, only bleaker than I’d ever seen it, like a world flipped on its axis. Shadows lurking in every corner crouched behind walls, trapped souls parted to let a swirling dark spirit through. The same mass I’d seen throughout the hotel, the one that had woken me up, the one Lobo had snarled at.

  With every passing second, I saw further into Citana’s vision, the withering patients, the wounded veterans begging for assisted suicide, the doctors who performed them, the women robbed of their babies by doctors who’d deemed them unfit for motherhood, the victims of hate crimes by that awful tree, guests hoping to be healed being dunked into the waters of Sunlake Springs, only to emerge wanting to harm each other.

  I saw the Lady of the Lake emerging from the water, long hair fashioned of grass, green, putrid skin eaten by turtles and gators, turquoise eyes covered in algae. She attempted to break out of the lake, fought to become mortal, but she needed more. More what, I wasn’t sure.

  Energy? Flesh?

  Hate.

  Where there was hate and anger, there was enough traction to escape her swampy confines. She’d used the corpse of a suicide victim to begin her corporeal reanimation, rotten fingers sliding off bone, feet snapping off as she waded out of the lake, but she was still only a spirit. An entity growing stronger with each death.

  “I see her,” Citana said. “She is the color of pale aventurine. Sawgrass for hair. She wants you all to die, so she can live. This is what she
’s done for a hundred years. Feed. You must get the others!”

  “I will. But what about my fa—”

  “Get them out!” she screamed, “I beg of you!” With a thrust, she let go of my hands and fell off her chair, landing on the floor and shaking on the ground. She looked so frail, every bit her age, an old woman flailing pitifully against the floor.

  I felt terrible for coming here and doing this to her.

  Macy and I each took a hold of one of her arms. “Citana? God, please, please…” I prayed she wouldn’t be gone. I’d never seen anyone die in person and wouldn’t know how to begin explaining this to Mori.

  But the old woman’s chest rose and fell erratically.

  “You give her strength,” Citana whispered. “You and Crow both. Crow is a fallen child, and she knows what’s in his heart. But he can be saved. Remove him from her grasp. It may already be too late.”

  I thought of Crow the other night, the way he’d looked when he forced my hand on his face. The Lady of the Lake and Crow had looked like the same person. “I don’t know how,” I said.

  “She will manifest. And she’ll do it through one of you.”

  “You’re saying she’ll become a woman?”

  She closed her eyes. “She’s no woman. She’s a beast.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Macy and I worked to get Citana on the couch with a glass of cold water, then promised to tell the clairs to vacate the hotel. Outside, we ducked into my car under the pouring rain and blotted ourselves dry with napkins from the glove compartment.

  For a while, we just stared at the watery swirls on the windshield.

  “That was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Macy said. “But you’re not really going back there, are you?”

  “I have to. They’re in danger.”

  “You’d be in danger,” she said.

  “I know, but you heard her—there’s evil feeding off fear and hate, and Lord knows Crow has enough for all of us. We were stupid enough to open the portal to let it through. Now we have to close it back up.”

  “How do you do that?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Macy’s hypnotized voice blended with the rain. “Do you think the beast she’s talking about had something to do with Dad and the way he…”

  “Yes.”

  In my heart, I knew my father would not have taken his life. Yes, depression was not always visible on the outside, but Wilky said my father had screamed. Something was blocking his path to the light. Something was there with him. “I need proof he was on duty at the hotel.”

  “Should I search county records?” Macy said. “I have access to that and more.”

  “You told me you wouldn’t find evidence anyway.”

  “Of the details of his death? I haven’t looked into it. Of the hotel’s history?” Macy sighed. “There’s a whole slush pile of unpublished accounts of goings-on dating back a century in Florida history. I can use my access as an editor, but I’m not supposed to unless it’s for a video I’m designing.”

  “Will that get you fired?”

  “If I’m caught, probably.”

  I didn’t want Macy to get fired. She worked hard enough as it was. I wanted her to reach her next-level dreams, and no amount of information would bring our father back anyway.

  “If you can find the free-access stuff, like public records, sure. But don’t worry about researching misdeeds of the Sunlake. It’s not worth it.”

  Wilky, Fae, Mori, and Crow needed to accept that their time accessing the untold stories of the Sunlake Springs was over.

  “Actually…” I turned in my seat toward Lucinda’s box of stuff in the back. “Can you reach that? Maybe there’s a work order in there or something.”

  Macy reached for the box, pulling it forward. There wasn’t much in it. Dad’s clothes, which I resisted touching. A few thriller novels, a map of historic Florida buildings, a photo of him and Lucinda from a long-ass time ago. As the rain came down hard, I was mesmerized by the photo and the obvious love between them. At the bottom of the box were the little crushed paper flower and the stained-glass sun.

  And something else.

  “Can you grab that for me?” I asked Macy.

  Macy pulled up an old flip phone. “This?”

  “Let me see.” I’d never seen it before. Probably an old phone from his younger days.

  She handed it to me.

  I felt the smooth plastic in the palm of my hand. I closed my eyes. Maybe I’d hear phone conversations between him and Lucinda, or with my mom. Maybe, as happened at Macy’s house, I’d hear a woman begging him to stay—Lucinda. I did hear something, but it was a male voice. Deep, baritone, half Spanish, half English.

  Loosely translated, the man was saying: Stay away from her. She doesn’t need you. She needs a man who can step up to the plate.

  I can do that.

  If you insist, Pablo, I’ll make your life a living hell.

  You already do, Berto. Cuco—it was Dad talking to my grandfather, Cuco, or Berto Santander. I’m coming home and making good on my promise to marry her. You’ll grant me this, or I’ll tell everyone about the students you’ve been fucking.

  Cuco laughed. You don’t have that kind of power, hijo. There’s too many willing to vouch for me, and you know full well, those hijas de puta wanted it. They’re all cut from the same cloth as their mothers.

  I dropped the phone and stared out the windshield at the rain swirls now becoming waterfalls. I knew it. Deep in my heart, I knew. I’d heard the whispers, seen the flashes of truth in Cuco’s belongings, the glimpses of his secrets in Scary Mary.

  “That’s an amazing gift you have,” Macy said.

  I pushed back tears at my lid line. “It’s a curse.”

  “Then I wish I’d had your curse for the first eighteen years of my life. I might’ve saved myself some heartache.”

  “Believe me, you don’t wish you had this.”

  I was done. Done being afraid. Done holding back. I didn’t care how bad a light it put people I loved into, I needed to know what else my father said to Cuco. I picked up the flip phone again with shaky hands, as voices from beyond spoke.

  Give me one good reason why I should let you marry my daughter, Cuco told my father. You’ve humiliated her con esa negra, you’re a dirty orphan, and your mother was a sinner bruja.

  My father didn’t deny it.

  He only replied: Because I love her.

  Throwing the phone into the box, I threw the car into reverse, drove to the lake where the clairs and I had meditated not too long ago, and with hands gripping the steering wheel, screamed my head off. My rage filled the space, my ears, my soul.

  The students you’re fucking. My grandfather had been waiting for underaged girls to come into his office. The Scary Mary visions had shown me this.

  And my grandmother had the nerve to defend him. My church called him a pillar of the community. Did my mother know? Did school administrators? How long had my grandfather been taking advantage of young women?

  HOW LONG HAD THEY ALL COVERED FOR HIM?

  I continued screaming until my heart nearly gave out, until I realized another scream had joined mine. Two screams filled the car. Macy was screaming with me. Our pains were different, but they belonged together like a chiaroscuro painting. Her hand grasped mine, and I broke into sobs when I “saw” the guilt she felt over Dad’s death.

  Because of her, he’d left Miami, left me.

  Because of her, he’d come back to Yeehaw Springs.

  Because of her decision to take the DNA test and reach out to him, he was dead. Macy had been holding a lot inside.

  “I’m so sorry.” I threw an arm around her.

  “No, I am.”

  We sobbed for a minute.

  “Let’s get home,” her voice cracked. “You go warn the clairs. I’ll take care of the paperwork and trying to find his death certificate. But Vale, be careful. If you can’t get them to leave of their own free wi
ll, promise me you’ll come back.”

  I couldn’t even speak, much less make a verbal promise.

  “It’s not that I don’t care about the others, it’s that—I don’t want to lose you. You’re the only family member who’s been straightforward with me, and it took a long time to find you.”

  She, too, was the only one I could trust. “I promise,” I said.

  And meant it.

  I dropped Macy off, so she could do what she did best—research—while I headed back to the Sunlake Springs to do what I did best—get into further trouble.

  Florida people know how heavy summer rains can get. At times, it’s all anyone ever talks about. Rain comes down in sheets so thick, you have to pull over on the side of the road because your weak-ass windshield wipers can’t handle it. Today’s rain was almost there. I managed to navigate my car, almost a boat at this point, up to the hotel gate, where I got out under the deluge to push the metal grate open.

  Today, the grate wouldn’t budge. Rain was responsible for many things, but I’d never heard of it stiffening up a gate overnight. It seemed, to my puny arms, like its swing angle had shifted, and its bending hinges could not support this new slant.

  I dashed back to the car, took the keys out of the engine, and slipped through the open space. The car would have to wait outside. I ran through the deluge, water soaking my shirt and dripping into my eyes.

  Behind me was a long, metallic screech. The gate creaked open. My car, which had been sitting on uneven, broken asphalt a moment before, was pushing against it, forcing it open, barreling through the space toward me at an unnatural speed.

  What the hell?

  I ran from the car, leaping over potholes, smashing down on one knee before rolling out of the way. As the car passed by, I sprang up and grabbed the driver side door, yanking it open and stepping on the brake pedal until it stopped. The car was in neutral. I was certain I’d put it in park before I got out.

  I tilted my head back against the headrest to catch my breath. Was the ground that uneven or had my car just tried to kill me? I put the car in park, staring at the “P” to make sure I wasn’t crazy. Then I stepped out and dashed toward the driveway, ducking into the hotel through the auxiliary door. I shook off the rain. It felt freezing inside, even though it was easily 96 degrees out, but I was also soaked to the bone. Loose papers and dust vortices spun across the lobby’s Mediterranean tile. A hollow cooing sound emanated through the halls. The bird cages rocked, creaking over and over in tune to thunderstorm winds.