A Fierce and Subtle Poison

by Samantha Mabry

  She was half my height and was wearing a purple cotton dress dotted with tiny red flowers. Her hair was cut short like a boy’s, and a network of deep creases crossed her face. The way she was squinting up into my face, with scrutiny and distrust, I was certain she’d recognized me from the news, but I soon saw that her eyes were so cloudy with cataracts she must’ve been nearly blind. Her lips curled back to reveal a toothless mouth. She was so ancient, I couldn’t tell if she was smiling or grimacing.

  “Si, señora?” I asked.

  “Es para ella.” Her voice screeched painfully, like hinges in desperate need of grease.

  The old woman put one clawlike hand over her brow in an attempt to block out the sun. With her other hand, she started jabbing me in the stomach with a folded piece of paper. She motioned with her head over my shoulder toward where Isabel was waiting with the scooter. When I took the paper from her gnarled fingers and started to unfold it, the woman slapped my hand.

  “No te miras! Es para ella.” Don’t look, she commanded. It’s for her.

  “Okay, okay. Lo siento. I’m sorry, señora.”

  The woman accepted my apology with a grunt. I watched her turn and begin hobbling over to the bus before I ran back across the road.

  Isabel was still chewing on the edge of her nail, and her expression was grim. When I was close enough, she snatched the señora’s paper out of my hand and read it quickly. I glanced behind me and watched the bus from Mayagüez pull away. Through one of the back windows, the woman stared at us with her blind eyes.

  “That old señora thinks you’re real,” I said. Isabel scoffed. “What does that say?”

  She handed me the paper, on which was written a single sentence in Spanish. The handwriting was slanted and shaky; the spelling wasn’t perfect, but it said something about a grandson and a doctor.

  “She wants her grandson to become a doctor,” Isabel clarified, retrieving her blanket of leaves and wrapping it tightly around her shoulders. “You should’ve told her I have no control over that.”

  “Why would she give you this? How could she even see you? She was practically blind. Do you know her?”

  “How would I know her?” Isabel grabbed the bottles of water from my hand, stashed them under the seat, and hopped onto the scooter. “She’s from Mayagüez. I’ve never been there in my life. Come on.”

  She knocked on the seat in front of her with her knuckles. I climbed on and started up the engine.

  “While I was in line I heard something on the radio about a missing eight-year-old from Hato Rey,” I shouted over my shoulder. “The announcer said my name. I’m a suspect in that now, too. The thing is, I’m pretty sure he also said that the police were searching near Bayamón.”

  “That’s back near the city,” Isabel replied.

  “I know.”

  “This means Celia’s alive. My dad might’ve given the police a bad lead and thrown them off your trail. He knew we’d come out to Rincón. I’m sure he doesn’t want to lead the authorities right out to where he has Celia. If she was dead and he’d dumped her somewhere, he’d have nothing left to hide.”

  “Or the police assume we’re listening to the radio, and they’re throwing us bad leads.” I revved the scooter’s engine. “Mara Lopez isn’t stupid.”

  “We have to go,” Isabel urged. “Quickly. I’ll bet my dad has taken this new girl and is headed back to Rincón. He won’t abandon the experiment as long as he can find girls to experiment on. And when those experiments fail, he’ll find a way to keep pinning the blame on you as long as you’re free.”

  The scooter’s tires kicked up dirt as I pulled out into the road.

  “I said quickly, Lucas,” Isabel shouted over the motor. “There’s going to be a storm soon.”

  I looked to the sky for any indication of an oncoming storm, but found none. The weather was clear, and there was not a single cloud in sight. The lightest of breezes came through, carrying with it the smell of salt water.

  Twenty-one

  A FEW MILES outside of Arecibo, the landscape started to ripple gently; then it rose and fell like two great tides. The chirps of the tiny tree frogs and the cackles of tropical birds, once soothing, were now roars and shrieks. The clear sky above was puckering, then wrinkling, then turning colors: ink blue, white, burgundy. I was losing my ability to steer the scooter, but I was hoping that Isabel wouldn’t notice. The asphalt road underneath the tires was turning to oil. I was certain we would sink any minute.

  My head was chiming. I could hear the swish of blood behind my ears.

  Isabel tapped me on the shoulder and pointed up ahead to a slice of gravel road that led into the trees. She spoke. Her words came out too slow.

  I maneuvered the scooter to the left. Even in the middle of the day, it was dark under the canopy of trees; only bits of sky burned through the gaps between the leaves high above our heads. It was quiet, but not quiet. Of course, there was the constant sputtering of the scooter’s engine, but in addition to that, I could hear the movement of things large and small scampering through the underbrush and leaping from limb to limb. Those large and small things had sharp eyes that watched us with distrust and wondered who we were to come this way.

  The gravel road eventually narrowed until it was little more than a dirt path not three feet wide.

  The air in the forest was thick, made thicker by the mosquitoes. I swished the saliva in my mouth then swallowed. It tasted wrong, like rust.

  Dry as a bone. Mad as a hatter.

  The scenery wasn’t changing: I was. Isabel had been too close for too long.

  “I need to stop,” I said. My voice boomed against my eardrums.

  “We’re almost there!” Isabel threw one arm out from under the blanket to point into a gap in the trees up ahead, and her thumbnail grazed my cheek. It felt like a razor blade. I had to bite the inside of my mouth to keep from crying out.

  “There’s a field up ahead.” Her breath hit my ear. It burned. “There should be a cabin just on the far side of it.”

  I narrowed my eyes and saw only a shimmering expanse of green. I’d remembered something like this happening before, when I’d fallen into Isabel’s courtyard. The plants were breathing. I could hear them, taking in a collective, sucking breath and letting out a huge, hot sigh. Icy beads of sweat trickled down my face from my hairline to my jaw. The trails they left sizzled against my skin.

  Hot as a hare.

  I couldn’t steer anymore. I mumbled an apology as the scooter veered to the side into the high grass, where it almost immediately ground to halt. Isabel’s hands were around my waist, pulling me away from the falling scooter by my belt loops. Together we tumbled into the mud. I landed faceup, staring at a blazing yellow sky. Isabel’s arms were around me again. She was trying to turn me over and position me onto my hands and knees.

  “Put your finger down your throat!” she demanded.

  I did as I was told, placing the tip of my pointer finger against the very back crest of my tongue. My stomach heaved violently, but nothing came out. In my blurry peripheral vision, I could see the white corners of Isabel’s blanket. They were fluttering. The trees continued to breathe: in, out, in, out.

  Some . . . thing appeared in front of my face. I blinked. That didn’t help.

  Blind as a bat.

  “It’s water,” I heard Isabel say. “Drink.”

  With trembling, mud-caked fingers, I gently took the bottle as if it was a newborn creature. I drank and immediately spit. The water tasted bitter and thick. Isabel cursed in Spanish.

  “Lucas, can you stand?”

  Before waiting for an answer, she wrapped her arms around my waist from behind and hauled me to my feet.

  “I can see the cabin,” she shouted. “It’s just a little ways up. Walk. Walk!”

  The command made sense, but I had no idea how to put it into action. Isabel latched on to the folds of my jeans and started tugging. Oh, yeah: walk.

  I took a couple of awkward ste
ps before turning my face to hers. What looked like small white bugs were walking down her cheeks, leaving nearly invisible trails of ooze on her hair and skin.

  No. Not bugs, stupid. Rain. It was raining. It was always raining.

  “You saved me,” I muttered. It was a dumb, drunk thing to say, and Isabel knew it.

  “Just walk, Lucas,” she groaned. “At least try.” Then, under her breath, “Let’s hope the snakes leave you alone.”

  The fact that she didn’t say “us” didn’t escape my addled brain. The snakes—like the mosquitoes—had better instincts than to take a bite out of her.

  I was aware of the cool drops that were falling on me from above, but still, I was burning up. Sweat poured down my neck and leaked from my armpits down the sides of my torso. My mouth felt like it was stuffed with wadded-up pieces of paper and glue. When my eyes were open I saw only piercing white light and the surreal, pulsing leaves of grass, so I walked with them closed, letting Isabel guide me.

  It was a struggle to just drag one foot in front of the other. My head throbbed and my skin was on fire. The feeling in my stomach had moved past nausea to searing pain that was trickling down my arms and into my fingers. The rain, as it fell on my face and my shoulders, felt like thousands of tiny pinpricks.

  I thought of Celia, and was so pissed at myself I nearly fell to my knees. I’d never get to her because I was going to die out in some godforsaken field in the middle of Puerto Rico.

  “Stop,” I slurred, opening my eyes to slits and smacking my dried-out lips together. “Isabel, stop for a second.”

  She did as I asked, turning to put one hand on my chest to steady me. “What?” she demanded.

  I swallowed, furrowed my brow, and focused on forming words that made perfect sense in that delirious moment: “I want you to kiss me.”

  For several seconds, Isabel stared at me in silence. Then she yanked on my jacket to get me moving forward again.

  “Shut up, Lucas. Just keep walking.”

  “Please,” I implored. “I want you to. Your mouth . . . it reminds me of . . . ”

  Isabel shoved me forward, hard. The side of my body collided with a rough surface, and I slid to the ground, my legs now completely useless. The right side of my face landed in a puddle of cool, muddy water. The fingers of my right hand crept across the ground for something to latch on to and found a hunk of old wood.

  Isabel crouched down directly in front of me, but I could barely make out her face. With the bright sun at her back, she was all shadows and black hair. Her blanket must’ve fallen from her shoulders.

  “You’re sick,” she snarled. “You always say stupid things to me while you’re sick.”

  Isabel disappeared. I lay there, the muddy water splashing gently against my cheek. My hand clung to the slick, wet chunk of wood. I took comfort in touching something solid.

  When Isabel came back, she knelt down and told me we were alone, that her dad must have taken the girls to the other cabin. She said something else, but her words were starting to sound more and more distant. I closed my eyes. They were sore and tired. I needed just a moment to rest them.

  I passed out, and of course, I dreamed. I dreamed of Rico and Carlos and me swimming at Condado Beach. I was out in the water, far away from my friends, floating on my back. Something bumped my shoulder. I looked over and saw a foot wrapped in leaves. Something bumped my knee. It was an arm, bloated and shark-bit. Fingers under the dark water started pawing at my back. Hands broke the surface, grabbing at my arms and legs and trying to pull me under. Ragged fingernails tore at my skin. I opened my mouth to scream, only to have the black water fill my lungs. I sank. Down, down.

  The dream changed. I found myself standing on the shore of an unfamiliar beach, in the stark light of day, watching an old man and his three-legged dog emerge from the tree line and limp toward me. When they were close, the old man finally spoke. He said that strange and uncertain gods once roamed this beach, but they had decided not to come here anymore. They’d been waiting for the return of their bohique, he said, but they got tired. The spirits of the people, though, they’re still around, but they’re almost deaf from not being spoken to for so long. The old man leaned in and smiled a toothless smile. His breath smelled sweet, too sweet, like red licorice.

  He told me that I’d have to yell very loud to get the gods’ attention, but even then they might ignore me if I insisted on speaking to them in my brittle, ugly language.

  Eventually, the man and his dog hobbled away, and I turned to face a rough sea and a sky in which a storm was swirling.

  Twenty-two

  MY EYES FLEW open. Someone was pounding on the walls so hard that the floor underneath me was shaking. There was a shrieking sound, familiar yet terrifying.

  The pounding stopped. I thought I might’ve still been dreaming until I drew a slow breath, and the bitter stench of dried sweat filled my nose—not the stuff of dreams. I pushed myself to seated and noticed by the dim light that I was caked in mud: my fingers, my hands, my knees. My once-black canvas shoes were now two crusty, indistinct masses.

  Again, that shriek. The walls rumbled. The wind pushed itself through tiny cracks. I looked up and saw a lit oil lantern, the metal kind someone would have taken camping fifty years ago, rattling on a rickety table behind my head.

  “You’re up.” Isabel’s voice came from several feet away. She was sitting in front of a darkened window with her back toward me, her now-filthy blanket of leaves draped loosely around her shoulders.

  She winced, pressing her right hand against her ear as if to protect it from a loud, sharp noise. I couldn’t hear anything except the persistent sounds of rain and wind.

  I glanced at my watch, but the face was cracked. The time had stopped just after two in the afternoon.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Not long,” Isabel replied. “A couple of hours.”

  “Better than three days.” I dragged a cold, mud-caked palm across my forehead. “That must mean I’m becoming immune to you.”

  She laughed, and I wished she hadn’t. It sounded terrible, phlegmatic and low. “I seriously doubt that. I think it has more to do with the fact that you didn’t put your lips on me this time. Despite your persistence. And the extra layer of that jacket might have helped.”

  I frowned, confused. Memories, dreams, and stories were all colliding and melting together in my head. “Did I . . . ?”

  The wind was a constant whistle that was high, urgent, and horrifying. I shivered even though I wasn’t cold, and the hairs on my arms stood on end. I felt like I was surrounded by something huge and determined to tear me apart.

  My head burst with pain. I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead. “We have to keep going.” I swallowed. My mouth was dry and tasted like metal. “Just give me a minute.”

  “I told you there would be a storm.”

  “Your hurricane goddess is mad again.” I leaned against the wall behind me and extended my rigid legs, grimacing as my knee and ankle joints popped.

  Isabel was gazing out the window in front of her, but for what, I had no idea. The entire pane of glass was obscured by a sheet of falling water. “You don’t believe in her,” she said.

  “Of course I do.” Of course I did.

  She sighed. “You aren’t like my dad. It took him so long to believe. When my mom told him about being cursed by her brother, he didn’t believe her. He told me that while she was pregnant, she kept insisting that, instead of a baby inside her, there was a monster, turning and twisting in poison. When she dreamed at night, she could see its green skin. She would die, she was certain, when she gave birth because the poison inside her belly would seep out and seize her heart. She was convinced that I would live and carry her curse, but that I would only survive if I was surrounded by poison, like I’d been inside her. My dad had always kept some of his specimens in the courtyard, but my mom begged him to go out into the forests and find more. She wanted him to fill the courtyard
with plants, and she cried when he wouldn’t do it.”

  As Isabel spoke, I searched for my pulse. When my fingers found it, it seemed to be vibrating rather than pulsing. “That’s why he started keeping all the plants?”

  “No,” Isabel scoffed. “He told her that he thought she was marvelous, one of a kind, but he didn’t believe her stories about gods and curses. My dad said I refused to nurse for days. My mom went silent and would sit there, blank-faced and motionless, as I wailed for food. My dad would try to take me from her arms, but my mom would only scream and hold me tight against her. Or she’d threaten him, dare him to step closer, say that if he did, she’d toss me over the courtyard wall and into the ocean. Days passed before my dad ran across town to find formula. When he came back, my mother was gone. I was alone, on the floor, asleep, wrapped in a blanket stuffed with cup of gold and sucking quietly on a columbine flower. I wish she’d taken me with her, wherever she went.”

  “Why didn’t he take you to a hospital?”

  Isabel gave me a pitying glance. “Because I wasn’t sick.”

  “How many girls have there been, Isabel? You have to have an idea.”

  “Maybe ten,” she said. “All in the last couple of years.”

  Ten girls, all gone to the water—all of them, for the most part, forgotten. Until Sara, the girl from Florida, the non-island girl.

  “Who are they?” I asked. “What are their names?”

  “I don’t know.” Isabel paused, gazing into the corner of the room. “I search my dad’s bags and files to find things. Of theirs. Scraps of paper from pockets: receipts, to-do lists, gum wrappers. Bobby pins, barrettes, rings made from cheap silver with plastic stones. I keep them—like I keep the wishes. I used to make up stories about these girls based on the scraps they left behind, but I don’t anymore.”

  “Why?”

  Isabel let the question hang, like she was ashamed and wanted me to learn from my mistake of asking it.