by Lynn S.
After taking the stairs to the main floor and the kitchen, Marissa opened the fridge and helped herself to two glasses of water. She had woken up with a parching thirst, and even after gulping down the cold liquid, it didn’t seem to subside. Opening the kitchen door, she stepped outside, making sure not to disturb the sleeping women above her. Marissa looked up into Carla’s and Isabel’s rooms. Though the windowpanes were opened, neither a light nor a stir gave a clue to the women being awake. For a moment she was hesitant, wondering if she should venture beyond the path she had coursed with Carla. However, earlier, when waking from her dream, as she looked for solace, she opened the window and saw an unobstructed road beyond the short gate. Marissa knew quite well, just by stepping outside, she meant to follow it.
As she crossed, there was a flashlight, signaling the presence of the perimeter guard in the distance. He must have been doing rounds around the garages and was soon to cross into the inner courtyard. She was careful to close the gate, leaving it undisturbed so as not to call unwelcome attention. She kept walking toward the dock at the end of the dirt road. The construction was sturdy, as to support the advances of the lake.
Marissa hated water, and it being dark didn’t do much to improve it. However, it felt imperative to hop into one of those boats and let herself drift away with the current. The lake lured her in, and for a moment, instead of a darkened, heavy blanket of sweet water, she thought about it as one would a hungry animal. And yet she went for it, because she well knew that it was all connected: her waking, the night calls, the thirst. It all led her there and she must continue. Jumping into the boat, she tried to get hold of the oars but a heavy sensation settled in her limbs and soon she had no other remedy than to lay on the boat’s floor and allow that heaviness to engulf her while she drifted.
The boat went on its own, following a silent course, and Marissa, unable to move, just watched the stars above her. The vessel seemed to have floated for hours on end before touching close enough to the shore. It was only then that Marissa felt she could move again. Her desperation took over and she jumped off the boat, running against mid-calf deep water to reach the shore. She soon emptied the contents of her stomach on the sand. Alone and cold on the small island in the middle of the lake, coughing and spitting to get rid of the sour taste in her mouth, her thirst mounted. It was as alarming as prolonged hunger. Marissa stood and looked across to the other shore where a light moved in erratic patterns. The night guard probably noticed the missing boat and hurried back to the house to inform Isabel and Carla.
A voice inside her head assured her, “You must go on.”
“Esteban?” she heard herself whisper to the dark.
Marissa turned toward the fishing cabin. The door was half open and the stench of rotting fish almost made her stomach turn again. Her eyes, already used to the dim light of the moon, could make out several buckets of trout and chum lying about. It seemed the fish had been left there for days. Scales rolled off the fish skin and their heads sported eyes halfway soaked in a gelatinous and putrid substance. Flies buzzed, freely feasting upon the decayed.
“It is a distraction. You must go on.”
Marissa ran her fingers through her hair, nervous, but committed to work her way through that obscured labyrinth before her. The unfamiliar hall led to a small kitchen, and a turn to the left showed yet another door connected to a room. Against all odds, she kept going. The weak voice in her head was not hers at all. It didn’t make sense, but she grew convinced that Esteban was alive and that he was right beyond that door, stowed away in that gruesome place for God knew what reason.
Moonlight was a blessing as it shone in an angle that allowed her to take in what was going on inside that room. Soon enough she could make out Esteban’s features. O’Reilly rested on a twin bed, wrapped in tight, neat white, in full contrast to the nastiness about him. The bed was centered within a pattern quickly recognized, one she found beautiful in urn and garden, but now looked hideous and bizarre.
The stones were taller, smooth on the surface and carved with symbols she could not recognize. Yet she felt them humming and it took her no time to grasp the idea that the stones were singing in an effort to keep him anchored to that place, as if keeping him from both the realm of the living and the dead.
She tried to touch him. Esteban’s torso and face showed signs of hematoma and trauma. A deep gash ran down the right side of his forehead. Marissa remembered the blood on the steering wheel and felt a knot in her throat. Underneath the bed, a collection of flowers and moss covered the full extension of the wooden floor: Red sunflowers, tulips of intense purple, heliotropes of several colors mixed with rosemary, thyme, artemisia, and white thorn ash. It was an offering of life and sweet scent to keep death at bay. That was when she saw it clearly. The patterns in the stone created living entities, hands tracing words upon the smooth surface. Almost transparent in moonlight, their delicate fingers never ceased, sustaining the life of the man on the bed.
Her need to touch him was met with a repelling force. The violent energy made her lose balance and fall. Heat burned furious red on the tip of her fingers.
“If for some reason they find you unworthy, count yourself lucky. Run, Marissa! As far as you can. There’s nothing you can do for me.”
For a moment, the man on the bed seemed fully awake, turning his head toward her. His eyes, black as pitch, blinked, and a tear, product of pain or fear, ran down his cheek, unveiling dark patterns within his skin, runes tattooed beneath his flesh.
The burn, provoked by white wood ash, spread viciously from her fingertips to her elbow, and soon her arm was covered with painful yellow blisters and white, hardened tissue. She sprinted to her feet and ran just to stumble down the hall and fall, hitting the side of her face against the brick borders of the archway. Blood rushed into her mouth and she swallowed, warmth flushed her throat, and for once, that ever present thirst seemed to dissipate. On her feet again, she rushed outside. Esteban’s voice had been drowned in the buzzing of a thousand delicate dark wings. Trapped between water and nightmare, Marissa saw how the dark of night exploded in tiny fragments, taking the shape of living, breathing entities. Hundreds of hummingbirds, black of feather, crimson in their eyes, moved about her. The incessant strumming in her ears became a high-pitched noise and Marissa succumbed.
“Miss Salgado, can you hear me?” Pinpoints of light traveled fast from eye to eye, measuring response in her pupils. Marissa moved back, burying herself in the softness of a pillow and screaming in confusion.
“Where am I?” Though she demanded to know, it was quite obvious she was in the main house’s living room. The doctor’s white coat made him look like yet another element of the impeccable decoration. Her last memory was all encompassing dark, and now white overwhelmed her, making her uncomfortable.
“You had an episode. It seemed you fainted while walking about in the inner courtyard,” Isabel offered. Carla was sitting beside her, but Marissa turned away from her offer of a comforting hand. She looked around, accounting for those present in the room. The doctor, recently arrived, the night guard sitting at the table completing some sort of report. Carla and Isabel right beside her.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“It is three fifteen in the morning.” Carla answered.
“It’s impossible…just fifteen minutes,” she mumbled in response. Looking at her clothes, Marissa noticed she wore her pajamas, her bare feet humid with dew. She had been dreaming, specifically sleep walking. It was impossible for them to know she had gone through similar situations when she was a child. Yet something felt out of place. Her attention then turned to the doctor.
“How did you get here so fast?”
As the man opened his mouth, Isabel quickly volunteered, “Doctor Roberts is a dear friend of the family, and a neighbor. He was kind enough to make a late house call.”
Roberts simply smiled, pointing to the odd combination of white coat, t-shirt, and shorts underneath.
Marissa gave a nod and agreed to do so.
“I’d like to call my mother, if you don’t mind,” she told Isabel before the woman walked the doctor out.
“Sure, anything you need.” She handed Marissa the mobile, granting the privacy she dearly wished for earlier that night.
The phone rang three or four times, enough for Marissa to almost hang up. It felt forced and inadequate to call her mother. The days they had spent together after Esteban’s death, well, in a matter of speaking…the death brought them together enough. Adriana was cold and slightly detached as a mother and it seemed she had filled her quota of affection and understanding in a week or so.
She didn’t even make it to the wake, quoting scheduling difficulties. Marissa knew better. As much as her mother adored Esteban, she despised Carla and Isabel, finding herself silently judged by women who deemed themselves of a higher moral ground.
Adriana answered, as one obliged to pick up the phone would. She didn’t even bother to play down her laughter as the line opened. The deafening sound of techno music told Marissa all she needed to know: her mother was out on the hunt, looking for some young man to bring back to her place. Marissa found her antics scandalous and slightly disgusting.
“Mariushka, darling. Is this you by any chance?”
“Indeed, Mother.”
“Is everything okay, sweetheart? You went upstate, didn’t you?” The lessening of noise levels pointed toward her mother having the consideration to at least leave the club to tend to the call.
“Yes. I’m at their country house. Everything is fine, but tonight I had an episode. Doctor said I fainted; it might have been sleep walking.”
Silence, followed by a sigh. “Oh dear! Have you been eating properly? You know, you can’t just drown your sorrows in diet cola. You need to eat—”
“You know, I rather…everything is fine.”
“No, sweetheart, there is something else, isn’t there?”
“This is ridiculous, Mom, but I had this vivid nightmare and I just felt like telling you about it.”
“Children never outgrow their parents, darling. I’m happy you still confide in me when staying with those holier than thou birds stuck on a wire…”
Marissa had had it. Adriana always made it about herself, in this case, about her feelings toward Esteban’s family, the need to combine it all with her instinctual repulsion of the women. Taking a page right out of Isabel’s manual, Marissa called her mother by her given name.
“You know what, I’m not even surprised you made this all about you and your feelings. It only took you two minutes. I’ll leave you to your usual hauntings. Keep the meat fresh and all. Sorry to interrupt your night, Adriana Popescu.” She hung up. Anger somehow soothed her, made her focus.
Isabel stepped into the kitchen and Marissa didn’t even bother to explain herself. Giving back the mobile, she went upstairs. It must have been close to 5:00 a.m. by then and through her window she could see the outline of the fishing cabin, now easily distinguished. The windows were opened and the cabin was aired out. As daylight advanced, she saw there was no extra room, just the kitchen and a small living room with an array of delightful wooden furniture. But now she was as tired as a body could be and her eyes closed fast and heavy.
Carla and Isabel also went back to their rooms, but daughter didn’t hesitate in stopping mother on her way in.
“There is something about her, Carla. Esteban’s proximity, his love for her caused it somehow. Now I am certain. Even with the ring on her finger, she was able to break through the illusions. I’ve never seen a mortal being capable of doing that. Just to make sure, I’ll close the door that lies within the cabin’s isle. Though in nightmarish visions, she accessed half a truth and—”
“And that was all, a nightmare. Needs to be nothing more. You are reading too much into too little,” Carla answered sternly.
“How is it too little,” Isabel questioned, allowing emerald green to slip through her dark eyes, “when she was able to see my son, and I’m not yet allowed to?”
Chapter IV
The Places We All Come From
Ireland, 1914
The O’Reilly family didn’t amount to much in Ireland. They didn’t even have strength in numbers, considering that back in the day, six or seven kids was the average. In all honesty, their greatest achievement was enrolling ten cousins as part of the building crew in one of the most ambitious engineering projects ever to grace Ireland’s shipyards: the construction of a colossal transatlantic vessel for the White Star Line. The company was meant to excel on levels of craftsmanship, finally putting Belfast ahead of the rest and providing the O’Reillys if not with notoriety, at least with a steady stream of work to come. The Titanic proved there was no such thing as the luck of the Irish.
Daniel O’Reilly gathered the last of his savings and took his kids with him to America. They packed whatever fit in two trunks. Daniel also took a battered missal and a bunch of raw quartz he should have left behind. But his friend Donovan always said that God took pity on the poor and made it a point of oversight when the needy dealt with the Devil. He had nothing to lose. The man left the Emerald Isle in a time of peace, and while at sea, a shot that killed an archduke echoed through the world. By the time his feet touched Ellis Island the world was at war.
Propaganda touted that this was the conflict to end them all, but if Daniel O’Reilly was certain of one truth, it was this: the taste for war was not easily forgotten. As countries around the world joined a test for strength, history dictated that the victors would never be at ease and the conquered not entirely obliterated. Each side was about to feed their war machines in a never-ending cycle—some to gain back their status, other to stay in power. And so, Daniel O’Reilly joined the fight, provided with the new national identity he acquired in America, crossing the Atlantic under stars and stripes to fight in a continent he thought he’d never see again.
Before leaving for the front, he gave his son Nathan the best advice he could give: “Study your numbers, ’cause you are bright, lad. When people return from war, they usually do two things. Either they forget it, or relive it. Those who can’t take it off their heads will fall in the never-ending circle of loneliness and paranoia. Those who’d rather forget will come back looking for a dream of a good woman, a house, and children. The cost of that piece of mind is measured by whatever money they have to afford it. We all must work, and we can’t all be our own bosses. But if you do it right, you’ll help people make wise use of their money and find more than a bit for yourself as well.”
***
Nathan listened to his father and became an accountant. Life wasn’t easy, but then it was never meant to be. It took him a while, but with dedication and commitment to the trade, the young O’Reilly made a name for himself in the emerging world of investment banking. Nathan was, after all, dedicated to the core. He had the upper hand on that stubborn streak inherited from his ancestors.
When misery knocked at New York’s—and eventually the world’s—door in 1929, Nathan O’Reilly refused to leave the city. In consequence, whatever he had was crushed under the weight of the most disastrous economic downturn of Western finances. He was desperate, and at any given moment Nathan thought about returning to Ireland, holding to the hope that bad times fared better on the other side. That was when his father told him, “Nah, going back is not an option, son. Those who leave the Isle incur the wrath of the good peoples and they will not be granted safe passage back until they have forgiven and forgotten.”
Daniel, now an old man, dragged his feet to gather a bunch of quartz he kept in a tin can. Nathan was used to seeing those trinkets. His father rolled them like dice or placed then in little plates with cream, brea
d, and honey while wishing on winning the lottery. They were a testimony to Daniel’s contradictions. He was a man wise enough to give sound advice, yet superstitious and given to flights of fancy. The passage of time has made it all the worse and now what used to be private little rituals were coming out in the open.
The son venerated his father, and if someone had a hand on the welfare of his old man, it was undoubtedly Nathan, who stuck with him through thick and thin. After the death of their mother, his brothers and sisters took off to lead their own lives and hardly ever kept in touch. Nathan, however, being the oldest, never fully let go of his father. By the time Daniel’s physical and mental state started deteriorating it was a given his son meant to take care of him for as long as he may live. They had never incurred a rift, let alone a fight, but now the son looked at the father, face hinting mockery and tongue confirming. It was a little cruel, but Nathan couldn’t help it.
“Da, really? The world is collapsing on itself and your alternative is a fairy quest. Believe me, if I had money to spend in fresh baked bread and cream or milk, I wouldn’t let it go to waste on a plate.”
“Have I ever failed you, Nathan?” His father’s voiced sounded beyond tired. Daniel was disenchanted. He had lived enough to hear ridicule and disbelief in his son’s tone. Other people might have been used to it, but this was too close to breaching that “honor your father” line. The old man’s face darkened and silence took over. Though a grown man, Nathan understood his words had done damage when it wasn’t his intention. So he put an arm around his father’s shoulders and smiled in a conciliatory gesture.
“What I meant is there is no need for worries, Da. True, I thought about crossing but this morning I heard of a chance as a ranch hand in Cimarron, Oklahoma. Well, you know, we got a good set of hands, and I might as well take it to chores as to numbers. You won’t have to do a thing, not even whisper a prayer.”
