Jacaranda

by Cherie Priest

  The padre put his satchel on the foot of the bed, and sat down beside it. The envelope from the nun was crisp and insistent in his pocket, so he opened it with his thumb and extracted the contents: a single sheet of plain paper. It read, “You can find me in room 203. We have so much to talk about.”

  Though his travels had been uneventful, they were tiring all the same…but she was right, they had much to talk about. And below his feet he could feel (without even listening) the rumbling churn of something that was not very happy to have him here. That was fine with him. He wasn’t happy to be there, but he knew where he was needed. It could fuss and grumble all it wanted.

  He went to the basin and splashed some water on his face, toweled himself off, and left his bag sitting on the bed.

  Room 203 was downstairs, but he preferred to skip the elevator.

  He walked a long carpet runner that went the length of the hallway, and noted gaslamp fixtures at regular intervals, keeping the area bright despite the lack of windows. At the end of the wing, closest to the elevator, he also spied a heavy, enormous fire door on a great hinge—a feature that was quite common, even in buildings as forward-thinking as this one. Fire does not care for architecture. It hungers for whatever it can find, and when there isn’t enough water to douse it, there’s nothing to be done except contain it and hope it dies. Close the great metal doors and seal off the flames. Let the fire consume all its own air, and suffocate.

  Just beyond these doors, he found a set of stairs.

  Down them he climbed, and on the second floor he strolled until he found number 203. He knocked, and within the room he heard the shuffling sound of someone roused from a seated position, as well as brief, hurried footsteps.

  Sister Eileen Callahan opened the door with caution.

  And then a smile.

  The nun with precise, pretty handwriting was a full head smaller than the padre; her hair was mostly hidden by her gray and white head covering, but a ginger curl escaped—accompanied by a wisp of gray—and her eyes were the color of burnt caramel, gold and brown. She could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty years old, and Rios was far too polite to speculate. Hers was an ageless sort of face, and neither pretty nor plain, narrow nor plump. She stood before him with the competent air of a woman who is very often expected to know things and do things—immediately, and correctly.

  “Hello, Father Rios.” Her accent cemented his suspicions. Irish, though she’d been in the Americas for quite some time, he guessed. He guessed something else, too…even though he wasn’t looking or listening. There was something else about her, some other foreign thing, distant and perhaps quite dark, but leashed for the time being.

  It intrigued him, but didn’t bother him. If there was something strange about her, that was just one more thing they had in common. It might even be why she summoned him. “Hello, Sister Eileen.”

  “I hope your trip was safe and pleasant.”

  “Safe enough. Pleasant enough.”

  “Good, because your time here at the hotel will not be.” She stepped into the hall, and closed the door behind herself. “Here, won’t you come with me? Let us walk together.”

  He welcomed the suggestion. The hotel was growing darker inside—maybe because the day was growing long, or the storm was coming closer, or he wasn’t wanted there. He was careful not to listen, and not to look. He deliberately put those senses away, lest he intrude by accident on the wrong party.

  He fell into step beside the small woman.

  She led the way. He led the questions.

  “I must ask, you understand: How did you learn of me?”

  “Rumors, mostly.” She, too, eschewed the elevator, in favor of the stairs. “You see things, you hear things. You know how it goes.”

  “I do,” he murmured. He stood aside, and allowed her to proceed first.

  Her voice carried up behind her, along with the barest hint of footsteps. “Stories travel faster than the telegraph codes, faster than magic if the stories are good enough. And yours are very good.”

  “You’re too kind. Or too trusting of your sources,” he demurred.

  “Neither one, I assure you. I first heard of your adventures in Juarez, through a young woman who survived the outbreak there.” She emerged on the first floor, and he joined her, stepping into the light that streamed in through the lobby windows. It was going pink—a coastal sunset the color of a shell’s belly. “She said that you saved her. She said you saved them all.”

  “My role in that matter might have been overstated.”

  “It might have been. But then I heard of your encounter at the hospital in Albuquerque. And the incident at Rose Hill, late last year.”

  “Three isolated coincidences.”

  “Or a pattern,” she countered. “One I’d be foolish to ignore, despite your objections. Particularly once I heard how you handled the rancher at Four Chairs.” She lowered her voice. “They found parts of the creature on both sides of the West Texas line. It was a masterful handling.”

  “It was…a tricky affair, but it was resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. Though I cannot guess exactly what you heard; I know how details are distorted in the retelling.”

  She stopped in the center of the lobby, between the staircase landings. Her small feet were planted at the edge of the large tile mosaic that decorated the floor there. The padre only just then realized that it was a swirling, blossoming pattern. It was less like a jacaranda flower, and more like a sunflower. No, that wasn’t quite right either. This was something else, then. A design for the sake of design, and not a depiction of anything at all.

  No. That was also wrong.

  The nun watched him keenly, as he watched the patterns on the floor. “Guess whatever you want,” she said. “I know what you are, and I know what you can do. I know this place needs someone like you, because God knows the Texans don’t have the first idea how to handle what’s happened here.”

  “Texans? I thought they were Texians, by their own preference.”

  “They were Texians when they were a nation. Now they’re merely Texans.” She lowered her voice, and winked as though there were some conspiracy in the matter. “But don’t call them that, not to their faces. They don’t like the reminder.”

  He tried to keep from smiling, and succeeded only in hiding his teeth. “I expect they don’t. But it’s far from the worst they might be called.”

  Sister Eileen relaxed her smile until it faded away. “I know. I know there’s been so much tension between your nations. But you’ve come here to help, despite it all. I knew you would.”

  “My nation remains in doubt. No one can agree where the Mexico line was drawn in the first place, where it wandered over the century, or where it is located right this moment. I trust that one day, everyone will come to some agreement. Until then, I keep both sets of papers.” It was a question he tired of answering. “Besides, there are more important things than borders. More dangerous things than armies and mapmakers.”

  She murmured some soft assent. “Indeed, and beneath our feet, even as we stand here admiring the trappings of a rich man’s whims…there waits something much more awful than war.” She paused. “Everything is large here in Texas, they take great pride in it. Well, they’re right about the haint that makes this place its home, and they shouldn’t be proud in the slightest. It should fill them all with horror.”

  He could hear it again, even though he wasn’t really listening—or he surely didn’t mean to. It throbbed below the floors, something huge, heavy, and slow. A pulse like the heartbeat of something so enormous, so great, that it must be the size of the great round Gulf itself. “If they had any sense, they’d burn this place to the ground and salt the earth, never to return.”

  The nun said something in reply, but he didn’t catch it.

  He begged her pardon.

  She nodded, but her eyes were worried. “I said, they’ll never do any such thing. Not while they think there’s money to be made. It�
��s the way of the world.” She sighed. “Greed isn’t quite the original sin, but I’d call it a younger sibling.”

  “That’s perilously close to blasphemy, Sister…”

  The worry drained from her eyes, to be replaced with something harder. “I’ve danced nearer to blasphemy before, and so have you. Something tells me, you’re no more entitled to your vestments than I am mine.”

  Again he begged her pardon. “My apologies. It was a weak attempt at humor. I should have restrained myself.”

  She sighed, and rubbed at her eyes. “No, the apologies should be mine. My own self-restraint is insufficient; I mustn’t cast stones. But here, you see where we are?” she changed her tone and the subject at once, indicating the lobby around them.

  He followed her gesture, taking in the tiles with their dizzying patterns, and the tin ceiling tiles between the fan tracks—embossed with something more organic than the tiny squares that made up the shapes on the floor. The curved staircases in a sweeping pair. The elevator nestled to the left of them, its brass cage slid to the side, all angles and darkness within.

  Only then did he notice that they were alone.

  Sarah was not at the desk, and now there was no sign to indicate when or if she might return. The afternoon was dying and the gaslamps hissed on, one by one, so the light changed color—but did not leave them altogether.

  “Where is everyone?” he asked the nun.

  “Anywhere but here, I assume. They may not know the particulars, but no one wants to be alone under this roof. And especially, no one wants to be right here.”

  She tapped the edge of the mosaic with the toe of her plain black boot. Then she used her foot to point at the center, to a dark dot of marble the size of a dinner plate.

  “I doubt the architects and artists knew that the tree ever stood here. They could not have designed this with such precision. No, they were guided. The thing in this hotel…it remakes itself. It…” she struggled to find the words. “It re-draws itself, piece by piece—or it tried. It was a tree, it was alive. It twisted and flowed, and bent in the wind. But now it’s been supplanted by this place, so huge and square—such a block of boxes, stacked together. Nothing natural in here at all, except the wood that was cut and polished for the handrails, the doors, and the desk…but that’s not the shape it wanted. So it made another one for itself…it told them…”

  She stared down at the floor and traced her toes in circles along the lines; and the padre felt the same thing, some spiral, drawing down. Water draining out of a tub. That pattern of a dust devil. The turning of the earth, of a storm, of sand.

  He finished for her. “It told them it looked like this.”

  She looked up suddenly, as if she was startled to hear his voice. “Yes. So this is the only part that remains, the only thing that looks like what it means. This is…this is…” She stepped away, outside the pattern on the floor.

  She stared at it from the edge, seeing the whole thing instead of its pieces. “This is the shape of its soul.”

  Sarah returned, and found the pair of them standing by the great mosaic that spiraled both directions at once. She smiled broadly, the social smile of a woman who is paid to make it. “Oh, excellent—I see you two have found one another.”

  The nun smiled back, a similar expression with less contrived cheer, and more steady reasonableness. “Yes, dear. Thank you for sharing my message. I don’t suppose any new telegrams have arrived…?”

  “No ma’am, nothing new since yesterday.”

  “Ah, well. Any word about the weather, out of Houston?”

  “Only that the storm is coming, and it should make landfall soon. They say we should evacuate if we can—but if we don’t, everything will probably be all right.”

  The padre glanced out the nearest window and knew that the men in Houston were understating the matter, or perhaps the delay between telegrams and Mother Nature had gotten the best of them. The edge of the bone-white sky was tinged with purple, and a haze in the distance hinted that the horizon ushered something large and unpleasant towards shore.

  It was still quite distant, just a smudge on the cusp of the world. Maybe the worst would not fall tonight. Maybe it’d find them tomorrow, or the day after.

  But soon.

  The nun may or may not have known the signs; the padre didn’t know how versed she was, in the ways of coastal weather. She accepted the answer gracefully, as if it didn’t matter either way. “That’s good to hear. And one last thing, Sarah—if you’d be so kind as to indulge me: Is there any news from the Rangers?”

  Sarah’s smile slipped; it cracked at the edge, and for a small, short moment, it looked a little bit desperate. “None yet, I’m afraid. You do think they’ll send someone, don’t you? After what became of the Pattersons?”

  “I’m quite certain they will.” And now the nun was lying, if only with intent to comfort. He knew it in his bones.

  “The Pattersons?”

  “I’ll explain before supper,” she told him. “Speaking of which, Sarah? Is it served in the community room again?”

  “Yes ma’am. We haven’t yet finished…you know…so meals will be taken in the community room until further notice. I hope we’ll have everything refreshed and restored by tomorrow, but you never can tell.” She brightened again, and added, “At any rate, supper is served in half an hour. Until then, you’re welcome to make yourself comfortable. Take some tea or coffee, as you like.”

  “Thank you, Sarah. We’ll find our way there—after I finish showing Father Rios around the premises, if you don’t mind.”

  “Do you mean to show him…the dining hall?”

  “I do. But don’t look at me like that,” she chided gently. “Do not be afraid of his reaction. The father is here to help, just as I am.”

  “By all means,” she said, but her faith in this matter did not seem particularly strong. She struggled to muster it, flashing a worried glance between the padre and the nun. “Father, you may as well know it: We need all the help we can get.” With that, she withdrew to her position behind the counter—where she picked up the newspaper and pretended to read it.

  Sister Eileen drew Father Rios toward the north wing of the building, to another grand corridor with another imposing set of fire doors, open but available in case of disaster. He did not feel much reassured by their presence.

  “Come along, Father. I’ll show you what became of the Pattersons.”

  She drew him toward to a pair of doors that were fastened with a chain. “In here,” she said. She took the chain in her hands and unwound it, un-threading it from the handles.

  The padre didn’t see a lock. Maybe the chain didn’t have one, or maybe she’d removed it earlier.

  She pushed the doors inward. “I’d warn you to brace yourself for the worst, but I haven’t seen the place since two nights ago. I don’t know how much progress the Alvarez ladies have made while I wasn’t looking, and besides, I have a feeling you’ve seen more terrible things, somewhere down the line.”

  “Undoubtedly,” he agreed. He joined her with more curiosity than dread.

  The hall was enormous—larger even than the lobby. The oversized effect was heightened by the tall ceiling, decorated with an oversized crystal-and-iron chandelier which occupied an astonishing portion of the space above them. Laid out across the room, a series of round tables were large enough to seat eight to ten people apiece, and they were draped with linen tablecloths the color of the ocean. Some tables still featured their silver place settings and folded napkins. Some did not.

  The chandelier was not lit, but the last of the weak, milky daylight spilled through the hastily drawn curtains, all eight panels of which ran the length of four tall windows spanning the western wall.

  The padre squinted, letting his eyes adjust. Letting them show him more. He needed to look.

  He closed his eyes, and opened them again.

  At first he saw only the circles: the tables, the chandelier, the round place setti
ngs, the bulbous glass lamps on the walls. The splashy blue pattern in the tiles. Circles upon circles. A room that made him feel dizzy, even as he stood still—just inside the doorway.

  He let the dizziness take him, only a little.

  He looked, and he let the lines blur between now, and before.

  Now, he saw dark streaks splashed across the curtains, up and down them in no pattern at all. Before, they had been fresh blood, running in rivulets and cast about in a spray. Before, there had been a man’s body, pierced and twisted, wrung-out like laundry and thrown to the floor where it landed so hard it’d left a dent—a shattered place in the tiles. An impression of a corpse, cast with such force that every bone had turned to powder; a man hurled with such intensity that the outline of his shape was as clear as if someone had taken a mold of it.

  Now, there was a broken table pushed aside to a corner, and covered with a sheet. The sheet was stained and rumpled, and the table’s lines jutted up in unlikely angles. Before, there had been a woman, lifted from the floor…

  The padre’s eyes found the spot, a place where something had seized her, clutched her, and dragged her screaming across the room—her fingernails splitting as she clawed the ground, leaving small streaks of blood behind her. Her arms breaking against the chair legs as she was flung past them and tried to clasp them, anything to slow herself; her teeth smashing against the wall as she was hurtled headlong into it, and then pushed up—vertically, painting a long path of gore behind her, between two windows like a ghastly bunting.

  He looked and he saw the angle of her neck when she hit the ceiling, and he was glad (in some small way) that she felt nothing after that.

  When he looked again, harder, he saw pieces of her dress and tangles of her hair snagged in the crystals of the great light above them. Hanging there like so much moss, or so many cobwebs.

  He cleared his throat. “Did anyone witness…what became of them? Or merely the aftermath?”

  “A boy who worked in the kitchens found them. He was bringing in the soup, and by then, it was all over.”