Water and Stone

by Glover, Dan

  Hajdani had gone like a sacrificial lamb into their midst as her emissary obstinately to bargain with them for her survival. In fact, however, and as she later learned, they were in cahoots with each other... Hajdani had hired the mob to frighten Evalena into giving over the piedra. Once he had it, he promptly vanished.

  It'd all been an elaborate ruse. When the gang of thugs showed up, they waited until Hajdani confronted them before appearing to beat him senseless. By the time he was able to escape and make it back into the house, she was ready to give over the stone in order to save the both of them.

  Yani was just a child. She didn’t deserve to see what transpired that night, especially after Evalena learned it had all been a set up... that Hajdani hired the men who attacked the house, and had done so knowing Yani would be witness to the man who she thought was her father being slaughtered.

  Some months later, Hajdani returned... not to the house, but to the island. When she got wind of it she ignored his entreaties to come back to her. Even when the man told a tale of single-handedly dispatching the dozen or so attackers bent upon forcing him to give up the piedra using but a handful of sand, she smiled and filed the information away for future reference. When she inquired about the stone, however, his demeanor changed. He told her it was lost somewhere, that someone had stolen it from him, and then he asked to see the child.

  "You promised to allow me into her life, Evalena... otherwise I never would have agreed to act as her father."

  Hajdani once told her how he had learned of a method that might duplicate the piedra many times over. It entailed treating the skin of a young girl with powder that had been dropped through the stone... in time, the outer surface of the victim would be harvested. He'd chosen Yani as the target for his atrocities partly because he knew how much Evalena cared for the girl but mostly on account of lusting after her himself.

  "Allow her to celebrate her quinceañera, Hajdani... then you may have her to do as you will."

  She had hopes the intervening years might diminish his heartlessness but her expectations were misplaced. The man had no heart to soften. Now, here she was decades later with Yani in hand and still without the piedra.

  She now wondered why Hajdani hadn't taken Yani already... he had ample opportunities both in Miami and in Cuba from what Yani told her. What sort of game was he playing now? He had his eternal youth... he was obviously wealthy, and he apparently had mastered the magic of the piedra even without having possession of it.

  How much greater would his powers be if he obtained it again? No one would be safe from his wrath. But then again, was it really Hajdani? Perhaps he was only a descendant of the man, a son or a grandson taking his name and glory.

  A soft knock sounded at the door.

  Expecting no one she hesitated to answer it fearing who might be standing there. Her curiosity got the better of her, as always, so she padded barefoot to the window where she had a vantage point of the front door.

  Church was there. Of course it would be him... who else would dare approach la casa de la bruja? Only a fool, and a desperate one at that. She hastened to open the door to allow him entry before he knocked more loudly and awakened Yani.

  "I came as quickly as I could, Tia Evalena. Is my mother here?"

  He had the piedra with him... she could sense it in his voice, see it in his eyes, feel it in the air suddenly electric like just before a sudden storm. The time of reckoning was finally upon her... the moment she'd dreamed about, planned for, and sacrificed in order to bring it to fruition.

  "Come in, boy... you might be too late but she yet lives."

  Wishing to give the boy a few private moments with his mother before the inevitable, Evalena went into her own bedroom after pointing out where Yani was at. She hadn’t realized how incredibly sleepy she'd grown... she couldn't remember the last time she caught a few winks. Lying down upon her bed she told herself she'd simply close her eyes for a moment... no longer.

  A bright radiance pried open her eyelids. For a second she thought someone had come into her room with a floodlight and was playing it upon her face but looking to the naked window she realized it was the sun. Day had broken... she must have been so tired she slept the night away.

  Rising from the sofa where she slept she couldn’t help but note how badly her throat hurt. When she spoke she scarcely recognized her own voice and for some reason she felt as old and tired as Yani looked when she walked into the house the day before. Where was the joy she should be feeling in knowing the passion was back in her life once more? The stone was hers again. She had only to ask for it and it would be given over.

  Someone must have carried her to the living room while she was asleep. She distinctly remembered lying down in her bed the night before... Yani was sleeping on the sofa.

  She barely had the strength to totter across the room before she had to sit down. Glancing into the darkling and dirty mirror hanging above the long unused fireplace she saw an old woman sitting in the same place where she sat. For a second she wondered who was sitting in her chair and why when she moved the old woman moved too.

  Chapter 57

  She fell for the longest time.

  What would it be like when she hit bottom? Would she feel any pain when her bones broke and her brains splattered on whatever surface she hit? Hopefully it would happen so fast she would simply blink out of existence... and how could something as small as the stone end up being so large?

  She should've listened to Church. He warned her not to touch the piedra... that it was dangerous and something best left alone. Yet as always her curiosity got the better of her. Still, she couldn’t remember actually touching it. She'd tried to poke at it with her index finger but found it impossible to make contact.

  Each time she put her hand close to the stone, it seemed to recede, as if teasing her. Then again perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her. Ever since Church showed her that thing in the box she'd been having one hallucination after another.

  "Promise you'll stay with me forever, Tree... I don’t think I can go back to living without you ever again."

  Had Church really said the words or were they simply something she longed to hear? She liked to think the boy was as much in love with her as she was with him but if he was why wouldn’t he say it? I love you, Tree. Was that so difficult?

  "I love you, Church Gutiérrez. I always will."

  When she whispered the words into his ear Church seemed startled somehow... as if he might've thought they were moving too quickly. She hadn’t made a conscious choice to say it... the declaration of love had emerged on its own and she was as surprised as the boy.

  She told herself how it didn’t matter... that actions spoke louder than any words. But dammit, the words did matter. She longed to hear them whispered in her ear, to be carried away upon the winds of love as she'd always imagined. She'd waited too long for her dreams to be shattered.

  Was that when the stone allowed her to actually touch it? Or had it actually reached out to her? Did it sense her thoughts and her emotions? What was it that Allison Johns had told her about the stone? Something about it being the perfect possession... that whoever owned the stone would be granted all their desires, so they had to be careful what they wanted... they had to maintain perfect clarity of thought in order not to be overwhelmed by the power of the stone.

  At the time, the whole thing about searching for a hidden treasure by using an old map they found inside a book they bought on the internet seemed rather silly. It was a bad plan from the beginning. Allison had doubtlessly become disorientated in the desert and without food and water she began having delusions. She had been fortunate to have survived... Beth, not so much.

  She thought she'd seen her sister Beth's face reflected on the stone's surface. At first Tree told herself it was an illusion... a trick of the light. Perhaps she was overly tired... she hadn’t slept in two nights what with the excitement of finally leaving Guthrie and the thrill of making love for the first time. S
he set the box down while she rubbed her eyes with the palms of her hands.

  When she picked up the box and looked at the stone again, Beth was still there. She seemed to be mouthing words... was it a warning? Or was her sister inviting her into a magic realm—a trip down the rabbit hole—somewhere beyond all comprehension?

  As a child Tree remembered how Beth used to read to her. It was an escape from the endlessly incessant bickering of their parents. Even though she could still hear the shouts and the slinging of insults, the sagas had a way of drawing her into them until the real world ceased to exist but for a rumor.

  Their favorite books were fantasies like the Harry Potter books that the older girl would read to her over and over again. Tree liked how thick the books were... it meant the stories would go on for many months and each night she might find herself ensconced in dreams mirroring the tales.

  Was it possible that neither Beth nor the stone were really there? Maybe it was like a hologram that she'd seen in a museum in Dallas once while on a field trip at school. The image looked real. She could walk all around it, examine it from every angle, and even measure its size. But when she tried to grasp it, her fingers went right through the stone... or had they?

  Maybe it hadn’t been Beth calling out at all. Perhaps she'd jumped into the hole the same way she did everything in life... without thinking through the consequences of her actions... only doing what seemed right at the moment.

  Visions of her mother surfaced. Was she in here too? Was this hell? Lorraine Ford was dead... she'd read the obituary in the newspaper and talked to people in town about it. Why was she inside the stone?

  None of it made sense... oh, if only she'd listened to Church. Though she felt as if she was falling she had no real notion of speed nor did the wind rush up at her like she expected it would were she in freefall. Rather, she seemed to be floating like a red-tail hawk might who spread her wings and hovered nearly motionless in the blue and high summer Texas sky.

  It bothered her that she was naked. She'd been instilled with a dislike for her body from an early age and rarely had she ever gathered the courage to even look at herself in the mirror while she was unclothed.

  It also seemed odd that the temperature of the air through which she was falling seemed perfect... that she was neither too warm nor the least bit chilly. It occurred to her that but for the fact she could breathe quite nicely she might have jumped into an enormous vat of body-temperature water and instead of falling she was only floating.

  The darkness around her seemed to be gradually giving way to a mist... an infinite fog... yet she could sense a vastness far greater than anything she'd ever known. It occurred to her that the world had turned inside out and instead of standing upon the ground looking up into the enormity of space her perspective was reversed. She was outside the confines of the world looking upon an inverted globe that spread out before her in gigantic proportions.

  "You may begin breathing again now, Teresa... you're perfectly safe."

  Though she couldn’t see her she recognized the voice of Lorraine Ford. Tree hadn’t realized that she was holding her breath until Lorraine brought it to her attention... it was an old childhood habit. Whenever she became stressed out over something she quit breathing.

  "Where are we, Lorraine?"

  "You're right where you're supposed to be, Teresa. We only have a few minutes... it will be coming for you soon. Just do as it directs... there is no sense fighting."

  "What is coming for me? What are you talking about?"

  "The scene you see before you is all in your mind, Teresa. I've been delegated to guide you to your destination."

  "I don't understand... what destination? I thought we were inside the stone... isn’t that what you told me?"

  "Yes, and that is where we are... in a sense... but the stone only acts as a gateway into a greater world... by stepping into that hole in the floor you've entered a realm that we on earth know as hell."

  "But that's just a myth... a story told to those who don’t know any better... isn’t it?"

  "If you peel away the layers you'll find that all myths have a nub of truth hidden deep inside of them. The stone is the origin of the myth of heaven and hell, and so much more. It's responsible for the creation of the human form and so in a way the stone can be looked upon as a god, though an impartial one to be sure."

  "I'm afraid, Lorraine... I don’t want to be in hell."

  "No one does, Teresa."

  "But why me... is it because I touched the stone?"

  "No, of course not... that hasn't any bearing upon anything in this realm. You know why you're here, Teresa. You brought yourself here."

  "It's because of my mother... what I did to her... is that the reason, Lorraine? I'm sorry... I know it was wrong but she was going to kill me. I could feel it."

  "You still don’t understand, Teresa. The guilt you carry over your mother's death is what brought you here, not the deed itself."

  As the fog began to lift she could detect a red glow on the horizon. Thinking the morning might be at hand she looked up into the sky. The hole was still there, black and bloated like an enormous sun gone dim.

  Her bare feet touched some sort of surface, spongy and wet. The odor of raw sewage engulfed her senses... she could taste it as well as smell it. She was standing in a cesspool and what was more excruciating, she was sinking into the filth with each passing second.

  "Help me, Lorraine! Pull me out?"

  The woman had vanished. Perhaps she'd never been there at all... maybe she was merely a fragment of her overactive imagination... someone she wished was there. Above her the hole loomed so large it had become the sky.

  The sewage was up to her knees. Though she tried lifting her legs in an attempt to walk out of it the sludge pulled at her feet with a grip impossible to break. In fact the more she struggled the deeper she sank.

  She was up to her waist in a foulness so profound it nearly caused her to retch. In the middle of her misery she could feel things brushing against her living flesh... tiny creatures taking nibbles out of her skin from the way it felt. Even if she managed to somehow find a way out of the pit the pestilence invading her bloodstream would kill her in a matter of hours.

  What had Lorraine said? Something about the guilt that she carried over her mother's death... not the deed itself. What on earth could that mean? She had no remorse. If she hadn’t strangled her mother, the woman would've killed her. She knew it viscerally... otherwise she never would have acted.

  If that was true, however, why did she cut up the body and hide it? Was that the key to her predicament? By now the mire had made its way to her neck and though she tried to tread in the sewage like she was in water, it did no good. Something was pulling her inexorably down. Her breathing now came in short brutal gasps in a futile attempt to minimize the stench invading her lungs.

  She remembered reading a newspaper article about a fat man who while walking in his back yard had inadvertently fallen through the covering of the septic tank. When his family missed him and began searching, they discovered the hole in the ground and fearing the worst called the authorities who using a long pole were able to retrieve the man's body from the pit.

  The article had entrenched itself in her mind. Tree couldn’t imagine a more horrendous death. She wondered what it must've been like for that man... had he tried to stay afloat? Had he called out for help? Had he finally succumbed to the sewage by breathing it into his lungs? Or had he died of fear before that happened?

  Now, she was facing the same prospect. The sewage was up to her chin... she found herself having to tilt her head all the way back in order to keep breathing as she furiously paddled in the filth trying with all her physical might and with all her mental willpower to raise herself up.

  "I had to kill my mother. I know that. If I have to die for it, then I'll die... but I'll go with a clear conscience. I had to do it. She left me no choice."

  She felt something solid under her right fo
ot, like an old rotting log, perhaps, or maybe... it was a stairway... moving forward with every fiber of her being she found a second step, this one a little higher, and then a third.

  Slowly she walked up the stairway out of the pit as the filth fell away from her naked skin and she finally was able to take a full breath of clean air.

  Chapter 58

  "I brought it, mother... will the piedra help to heal you?"

  It had taken her what seemed like ages to awaken, almost as if she'd begun to drift off into the land of death that waited so patiently for her. At first she thought it was Hajdani come for her but then the shadowy features morphed into Church.

  There was both surprise and guilt in his voice. The last time she saw Church she was still a young woman and she wondered how the boy even recognized her now. She was glad it was so dark in the room that he couldn’t see her, only hear her voice.

  She didn’t have time to wonder what he was doing in Cuba nor did she understand the words that he whispered. The dream was still vivid in her mind... she had done the impossible and switched places with Evalena... instead of looking into a mirror and seeing an old hag staring back, she saw a beautiful young girl.

  But it'd only been just that... a dream. But if Church had the stone with him, perhaps its magic might indeed set things to right. Still, to saddle Evalena with the age that belonged to another didn’t seem right. Despite their many differences and even while she was staring down the barrel of the gun at her, Yani felt the splendid love of family for the girl.

  She'd missed shooting her on purpose. Even if Evalena had raised her arms to the sky offering herself up for the sacrifice the bullets would have missed. Damn love all to hell... to what right did the woman she once called sister have to her heart?

  She couldn’t see her son so much as she felt his presence. Either it was still dark outside or else her eyesight was failing... she gathered it was just another sign of her impending death but still she longed to gaze upon the stone once more.