Jacaranda

by Cherie Priest

  “But we’re still quite firmly on earth. Is it some kind of punishment? Some kind of justice, for a sin left unconfessed?” the padre asked, knowing there wasn’t much time left. There couldn’t be. She couldn’t lose so much blood and skin and muscle, and remain upright for long.

  “It’s something like that.”

  Sister Eileen had questions, too. “What about the Pattersons? What was their sin?”

  “A swindle. An old man with money and trust, but little sense. They took everything, and left him to die alone…”

  The nun recoiled, ever so slightly. “Oh God…”

  “The Alvarez women had a matriarch once. A different one, I mean. She’s dead now, and you can guess…you can always guess. Silas Andrews had raped and murdered. There was a woman, feeble in the mind but gentle as a…” she swayed again. Her knees locked. “I don’t know about the rest.”

  Juan Rios caught her, and felt the press of exposed ribs through his frock. He tried not to notice the pulse of the woman’s breath throbbing through the shredded skin…the shivering spasms of muscles meeting air…or the warm dampness that soaked through to his wrist.

  He hoisted her up, and with the nun’s help, he drew her to the chaise where he placed her on her side.

  Sister Eileen grumbled, “I don’t suppose Sarah will be helping with the water or the rags after all.”

  “Don’t be so hard on her,” the padre urged. “The hotel is hard enough.”

  But Constance Fields agreed with the nun. “A woman shouldn’t…shouldn’t run off like that. Not in the face of a little blood.”

  “It’s not so much the blood,” he argued softly. He brushed a lock of hair away from her face, and left a smudge of crimson on her cheek. “And this is more than just a little.”

  Mrs. Fields nodded, and her lips fluttered. “Tell my husband…tell him I had regrets. Tell him that, would you?”

  “I will,” her companions vowed, their words knitting together as neatly as a verse.

  She closed her eyes, opened them again. Exhaled.

  And the only sound left was the drip, drip, drip as the blood seeped through the wicker and splashed upon the floor. One thin stream, one bubbled drop after another, until there was volume enough to spread through the grout on the lobby floor—snaking around the tiles in that sinister mosaic, staining the white bits red, and the black bits blacker still.

  Sister Eileen looked up at the ceiling, as if she’d meant to check the sky—but was surprised to find herself indoors. “I need to leave. Immediately. With my regrets, of course. Will you see to her?” She nodded down at the cooling corpse of Constance Fields in the chaise.

  He wanted to complain, to ask why both remaining women must flee and leave him to clean up. But instead he said, “Yes, I’ll see to her.” He didn’t believe that Mrs. Fields had been Catholic, but he’d say his prayers out of principle. “Go on, and do what you must.”

  The nun vanished, as fast as the flicker of gold that sometimes sparked in her eyes. For a moment, the padre wondered if her sudden disappearance hadn’t been a trick—or if she hadn’t been some small, peculiar specter all along.

  But no, he could hear her footsteps, light and fast.

  (Too fast, he thought. And too far away already.)

  He rose to his feet, and went to the office door. “Sarah?” He knocked, and he said her name again with his firmest voice. “Sarah, I need your help.”

  After half a minute’s silence, she opened the door. Her eyes were glassy and red with tears, and her nose was pink from having been rubbed with a handkerchief. She whispered, “I’m not strong.”

  He knew that already, but he didn’t say so.

  “I don’t need strength. I need a sheet or a blanket, and a shovel. Also, some information: Is there any church nearby? Her own, or anyone else’s?”

  “No sir. Not until you reach the far side of the Strand.”

  “A garden, then? Perhaps out behind the courtyard? We must put her someplace, and we’d better do it before the rain begins in earnest—or before the other guests awaken, and wonder what’s occurred.”

  Sarah furrowed her brow. “But what about the police? Should we call them?”

  “They must be tired of hearing from you, by now—and whatever occurs here, it occurs outside the Rangers’ authority. Besides, they’ve made it rather clear they aren’t coming. We’ll see to Mrs. Fields ourselves,” he concluded firmly.

  “You’re right, I know you’re right. I don’t know why I even suggested it. I should…I should clean this up.”

  “First, you must help me. There’s a groundskeeper’s shed, isn’t there?”

  “Tim’s not there,” she murmured, her gaze darting restlessly between the body, the mosaic, the doors—which still trembled ever so slightly in their frames. She hugged her own shoulders. “If he was, he’d help you dig. But I can…I can get some sheets. You want me to wrap her up?”

  He did his best to remain patient. “Please cover her, at the very least. I can take care of the rest. And never mind the shed,” he said under his breath. “I’ll find it on my own.”

  The shed was locked when he finally stumbled upon it, but that did not stop him for long; and it was dark inside, but the lamps in the nearby courtyard cast enough light to show him what he needed. In stark outlines he saw a row of rakes, hoes, and shears; he ran his hands over shelves and found buckets, trowels, burlap bags, pouches of seeds, paint brushes, and other things he couldn’t quite identify by touch. And there, in the backmost corner, he found three shovels of varying sizes.

  He chose the largest, and while he was at it, he grabbed a hoe with sharp metal tines.

  Back inside the lobby, Sarah had found some sheets, a bucket and mop, and a length of rope—and one of these sheets was tucked around Mrs. Fields.

  Juan Rios told her she’d done a good job, and while the girl occupied herself with the cleaning supplies, he lifted the corpse and swaddled it—using the rope to secure the wrappings around her waist, feet, and neck. He put her over his shoulder, where she hung as angular and lifeless as a sack of sticks.

  Wet sticks, he thought, as dampness seeped through his sleeve, and smeared against his neck.

  And he set out to dig a grave.

  Behind the fountain, between the shrubbery and the cold-brick wall of the hotel itself…he lifted the sharp-tined hoe and used all his weight to slam it into the ground. Over the years, and over too many graves, he’d learned efficiency.

  Don’t start with the shovel. Start with the hoe. Better leverage. Easier on the back.

  He brought the hoe down again, rocked it back and forth, and lifted forth a chunk of turf the size of a dinner plate.

  Rain still came down in fits and starts, speckling his black cassock. But the night air was mild enough that he could remove it, and he did—giving his shoulders and elbows better range to swing, again and again, until there was a long, shallow hole.

  And now it was time for the shovel.

  Scoop after scoop, alone in the dark, naked from the waist up. He dug until there was enough depth and enough width, that if he folded Mrs. Fields’s knees up to her chest, she’d still be eighteen inches deep.

  He would’ve preferred the traditional six feet, but it was dark, and he was tired, and there was still so much work to be done.

  If it might have waited until morning, he supposed, he could’ve imposed upon Tim—he could’ve let Sarah offer directions, and allowed someone else to handle this part of Mrs. Fields’s death. In the morning, he could’ve given the strange and violent demise of the poor woman a closer examination. The light of day might have told him more than the shadows did.

  But in the morning, who knew?

  Maybe Sister Eileen was wrong, and the storm would bring its full force to the island sooner than expected. For all he knew, in the morning, everyone and everything might lie in pieces, murdered by the carnivorous hotel—their remains unceremoniously scattered about the lobby.

  Maybe none of
them would live to see the dawn, and there would be no one left to dig any graves.

  He finished his task and returned the tools to the shed, closing it up behind himself. Although he’d removed his frock, he hadn’t done so in time to keep it from all of the sweat and mud. It was filthy, and so was everything else—but what could he do about it? He considered the sink in his room, but upon second thought, the hotel must have some sort of formal laundry.

  Without too much difficulty, he found it down a corridor on the first floor. Lined against the wall were washing machines the size of wheelbarrows, but he didn’t know how to use them; so he was relieved to discover a huge sink of the ordinary variety. Beside the sink sat a bar of soap as big as his shoe.

  He rinsed his frock and left it to dry, hanging beside a row of pillowcases clipped upon a line. He hoped it would air out quickly; he felt naked without it. But in the meantime, he borrowed a uniform shirt—something too large, something that might have been Tim’s. It was free of blood and mud, and Tim wasn’t present to object, so the padre buttoned himself inside it.

  Back in the lobby, he found nothing.

  No one. Just a large wet spot on the floor, and a chaise with a missing cushion. Sarah had vanished, and so had her pail and mop, and whatever rags she’d used to scrub the place.

  “You should see this.”

  He jumped, and turned around.

  “I’m sorry,” said Sister Eileen. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  He waved her apology away. “It’s fine. I’m glad to see you again,” he confessed, and only then realized that he’d been worried for her well-being. In such a place, with such a terrible darkness swirling at its center, he was comforted to see that she was still standing. She made him feel less alone.

  “I’m sorry I left you, but I was overwhelmed. Now come with me, if you don’t mind. You should see her room. You should see where it happened. You should see what it did.”

  Constance Fields had been dead a little less than two hours.

  In that time, she had been buried and the evidence of her death had been largely erased; and in that time, Sister Eileen had gone to the woman’s room and let herself inside. “I found it like this,” she said, nodding toward the ceiling, the walls, the bed, the curtains, and every other surface that had been splashed with blood. It was all drying to a brownish crimson, leaving the linens stiff and the floor sticky.

  “It’s strange,” the nun said, and then let out an awkward little laugh. “I mean, it’s all strange, obviously—but the front of Constance’s dress didn’t have a spot of blood upon it—not until her nose began to bleed. All the damage was behind her; she must have turned her back on it, and refused to look. Isn’t that…strange? Don’t you think?”

  “Not in the slightest,” the padre replied with a shrug. “If something with that kind of power attacked me, I wouldn’t want to see it either. We’re speaking of something that kills with creativity and malice, and so far, no one’s set eyes on it, and lived to tell. If it seizes a woman from behind, and uses her body to paint a room with blood, or if it grabs a couple and hangs their skin like wallpaper…there’s no pattern to it, no rules the dark force follows, as far as I can tell. None apart from strangeness.”

  “And just like that, the strangeness becomes the ordinary. It’s the one thing we can predict.”

  He agreed, but did not mention it—for his attention was dragged away from their conversation, yanked from detail to detail in the ruined hotel room. A broken bedpost, a long, curved arc of blood spray on the mirror. A steamer trunk half unpacked, its rumpled contents strewn across the floor—where bloody footprints were ground into the rug. “It’s a mess, that’s all. No message spelled out, no notes left behind.”

  “But why Constance? What did it want with her?”

  “Why not Constance?” he countered. “Why not any of us?”

  The nun shrugged softly, uncertainly. Then she straightened and said, “Oh dear…what should we tell her husband, when he arrives? If he arrives,” she amended.

  “Should the time come, we will tell him the truth. A gentle version…perhaps she died in some strange accident.”

  “What if he wants to claim her body, and bring it home to a family plot?”

  “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he said, just a hint of crossness in his words. “She’s dead, and we don’t know why.”

  “No, we don’t,” she agreed diplomatically. “And there’s a chance we never will. Do you think there’s anything to be learned from the room? Any reason we shouldn’t have Sarah clean it?”

  “It’d be better to do as Constance suggested, and burn the place to the ground.” He thought of Sarah, so fragile and nearly useless; he thought of the next guest who might occupy the room. “But leaving that option aside for now, I suggest we lock the door and leave it. There are many other rooms, ready to collect other unhappy souls.”

  Sister Eileen sighed. “I have no objections to that plan—and I’d be surprised if Sarah did. Besides, it’s getting late.”

  “We’re on the far side of late; we’ve nearly come around again to ‘early.’ We should rest, while there’s still time and peace enough to do so. If the storm comes tomorrow…” he wasn’t sure where he meant to take the thought.

  “If the storm comes tomorrow,” the nun echoed, and the padre saw exhaustion on her face, in the shadow of her habit. “Then we’ll all be trapped inside until it’s finished. And even should the hotel stand when the worst is over, I don’t know if any of us will escape the place alive.”

  “It’s only a storm. We mustn’t assume the worst.”

  The padre ate breakfast alone in the oversized hall that presently passed for a dining area. It was early—far earlier than he’d prefer to be awake, given the previous night’s adventures, but he’d never been able to sleep very long past dawn. In drips and drabs, the surviving guests came and went, taking coffee and toast, fruit and milk. Some sat down at the large round tables with a newspaper for distraction, and others carried the meals back up to their rooms.

  Unlike the evening before, when everyone clustered together, that morning they scarcely spoke to one another—or to Mrs. Alvarez either; and when they moved, they shuffled about like phantoms in a daze. The light made all the difference.

  Their calm, passive demeanor belied the scene outside the great hall’s windows—where the clouds churned low and slow, as gray as mop water; and the trees leaned and strained, branches whipped out and leaves stripped away with the wind that rose, lifted, lilted, and hummed against the corners of the big brick building.

  The storm was coming, yes. Sooner than the absent nun expected, and no one was ready. Or maybe that wasn’t right at all. Maybe they all were ready—as ready as they were going to get.

  But it didn’t feel that way to the padre. It felt like a lie, one they told to themselves and each other: Nothing is strange, and no one is dead, and no one has anything to be afraid of. The storm will come and go, and leave us all behind. We will all go on with our lives. We will all leave this place, one way or another.

  And so they refused to speak any ill of their surroundings, as if lending the weight of words to the hotel’s curse would give it more power.

  Or else they knew there was nothing to be done, except look away.

  When the padre finished eating, he went to the lobby in search of Sarah. She wasn’t present, but one of Mrs. Alvarez’s daughters had taken up a post behind the desk. In Spanish, he asked her name because he could not remember it. She told him it was “Violetta.”

  “Can you tell me, is Sarah all right? She had a late evening, I know. She helped me with a task,” he exaggerated.

  “Sarah can’t be here all day, and all night too. Sometimes I stay at the desk, sometimes my sister does. Between the three of us, there’s always someone here.”

  “Very good. And have you seen Sister Eileen this morning?”

  She shook her head. “No, but she rises late. She often appears for lun
ch, and treats it like her breakfast. Some people are funny like that.”

  “Indeed,” he told her. He might’ve made more small talk, except that the front doors shuddered, unfastened, and whipped open. The wind almost unmoored them, knocking them back and forth with a violence that left cracks in the plaster.

  Outside the sky was sinking, and the water was rising.

  But standing on the threshold of the Jacaranda Hotel was an older man, perhaps seventy, with pale gray hair and a salt-and-pepper mustache sweeping from cheek to cheek. He wore a hat and a duster, and when the wind snagged at his clothing it billowed aside, revealing a badge on his belt and a pair of guns.

  He seized the doors’ handles, stepping inside and drawing them both in his wake. Securely, firmly, and with greater strength than his lanky frame suggested, he wrestled them into their jambs until the wind outside gave up, and let them remain closed.

  “Hell of a storm shaping up out there,” he muttered. He adjusted his hat, and smoothed his long brown coat.

  All around him the room was settling too, the curtains collapsing into their traditional folds, the leaves of the potted plants no longer quivering in the gale. The guest-book’s pages ceased their flapping, and the only motion left was the slow, steady churn of the ceiling fans on their chains.

  “Hell of a storm indeed,” Juan Rios said agreeably.

  “I beg your pardon, padre?” He’d retrieved the cassock from the laundry before breakfast. It gave him away.

  But Violetta responded before he had a chance. “A hurricane, that’s the news from the mainland. At first, they said not to worry; but now the man in Houston sends word that all of us should leave, before we’re washed away.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I heard, too,” he told her, every vowel radiant with a deep Texas twang. He approached the desk, flashing a polite smile to Violetta and a raised eyebrow to the padre. “But here I am. You got any open rooms?”