by Kevin Singer
The first nights Vickie couldn't sleep. While in town, every tall and slender woman made her heart race and skin flush. By the second week she began to ease. Sleep returned, just deep enough to smooth her jagged nerves. Maybe Eula's spell worked, she reasoned. Or maybe she'd just imagined the whole thing.
A voice told her to keep her nephew Randy away, but she had promised he could visit. He was moping, his mother told Vickie, and he needed sunshine and escape. He arrived with a duffel bag, his bicycle, a cardboard box that he held close, and a blanketing solitude. Vickie hoped his sadness would pass and he'd go back to being that maddening boy who always teetered on the edge of breaking something.
Halfway up the steps the bottom of the cardboard box gave way. Out splashed several comic books. Vickie bent down to help gather them. She picked one up and thumbed through it. It was Batman, but one far darker than she remembered.
“I'm afraid I don't know much about comics.”
Randy grabbed each as quickly as possible. He kept his eyes away. “I like them.”
“Your dad was crazy about comics when he was your age. He had so many.”
“I know.”
They got the last of the comic books back into the box and went inside the cabin.
"Are you hungry?" she asked. He was twelve and small for his age. Surely he'd be growing, ravenous.
"No."
"What do you want to do?"
He shrugged.
"You remember Shark from last time you were here, right?"
"Yeah." A smile hid on his face.
"Why don't you go say hi?"
Vickie walked him to the porch. He hopped on his bike and pedaled off. "Be back by five," she called after him. "I'm making spaghetti."
He turned and waved. Still no smile, but closer. He was a Velasquez through and through, so much like her own father, though minus the gloom – until now. She watched him vanish over a rise.
She turned around and screamed.
Yani sat in the wooden rocking chair. "I wish so bad I could make this move. I long to rock back and forth. I've watched you do it. It seems like so much fun."
"What are you doing here?"
"Visiting."
"I don't know what you are, but you're not welcome here."
Yani scowled. "I know. That old woman's spell. I don't like her."
"You stay away from here."
Yani jumped up and lunged toward Vickie. "Don't think you can tell me what to do."
It took all of Vickie's will to remain strong. "Leave me alone."
Yani sniffed the air. She scanned the horizon. "But you're not alone."
Randy! Vickie panicked. What was she thinking letting him come? "No, I am. I'm always alone."
"That boy. Who was he?"
"No one. A neighbor."
Yani inspected Vickie's face, and Vickie saw how barren and blank her eyes were. She imagined she was staring into an endless black well. If she tumbled into it she would fall forever.
"Oh, you're so beautiful," Yani said.
She raised her hand to Vickie's forehead and shoved her phantom fingers inside Vickie's head. Vickie gasped as the fingers started to dig inside her brain. The hand was ripping her mind apart. She couldn't escape. All she could think of was the crushing loneliness she'd felt for so long, sadness breathed in daily like air, the pain and grief that had infiltrated her bones. So much, too much.
Yani's eyes glowed like the moon. "Oh, yes, so beautiful." Finally she pulled her hand free.
Vickie slumped to the ground. She was fever-weak and couldn't recall the day or the hour.
Yani crouched down and cocked her head. "You have so much sadness. It's delicious."
"No more. Please." Vickie's heart thumped with terror.
"I'm afraid it's only the beginning." Yani grinned and walked away.
The next day Vickie felt stuck in a fog but she had to be alive for Randy. She took him into town and together they ate tacos. She listened halfheartedly as he described his adventures exploring the desert with Shark, adventures she knew couldn't be true anywhere except in the mind of a 12-year-old.
This boy. He wasn't safe here; that was clear. Should she take him back to his home? But what if that thing followed them back? What about her sister-in-law? Her nieces? No, she had to keep them apart until she could figure out how to deal with Yani, whatever she was.
They left the restaurant and walked across the plaza under the shade of the sycamore trees. A breeze masked the searing heat. Randy zigzagged ahead and she followed close, her eyes alert, always now alert.
"Ew, look at this." Randy hunched over, his back to her.
Vickie peered over his shoulder. It was another dead bird. This time a parrot, with its brilliant greens and yellows and oranges – and red ribbons spilling from its belly.
Randy poked it with a branch. A moist clump of intestine plopped out. "It's so disgusting."
It was mutilated, purposefully, by some evil. Evil: not a vague idea but a fact. Evil: woven into this world. Vickie had to turn away. "Leave it."
A church bell chimed. Vickie stared at the Catholic church that loomed at the end of the street. She'd attended mass there, occasionally, out of nostalgia if nothing else. The bell chimed again. Was it a sign? "Randy, come with me."
He tossed the stick aside. "Where?"
"Church."
"Aw, that's boring. Can't we go to the movies instead?"
"Tomorrow, honey, tomorrow. I promise."
Vickie hauled the door open and crept in, Randy right behind her. The nave was dim and shadowed. A quartet of tourists huddled near a stained glass window. She inhaled the hint of incense and grew a little calm. Surely no evil could enter this holy place.
"I'm tired of church," Randy whispered.
At her brother David's funeral Randy looked so stiff and alien in his too-big suit. Vickie wondered how that death would taint his life. "Oh, honey, I know. We'll just be a few minutes. I need to speak to the priest. Why don't you sit here, okay?"
He nodded and edged inside a pew. She rested a hand on his shoulder and walked past the altar. She knocked on the door to the sacristy. She waited. No response. She knocked again, harder. The tourists turned her way. Still no answer. She tried the handle. The door was unlocked. She slipped inside.
The tick of a clock bounced off the white walls. A bureau rested beside a maroon curtained window. Two wooden chairs sat askew of a table draped with a white cloth. A picture of Jesus stared out at Vickie, his blue eyes calm and distant. One hand extended out, the other held his heart coiled with thorns. The picture was faded, but the drops of blood on the thorns almost seemed real. Peace. Finally. She breathed it in. She wished she could stay there forever.
But she couldn't. She needed to find the priest. She turned to leave.
Yani blocked her path.
"No, no, no, no. You can't be here."
Yani wore a dress of stretched leather, soft and thin. Her hair hung down her sides. She was barefoot. "This building doesn't scare me. I was here long before the first stone was laid. I am older than your martyr god and his sky father."
Vickie inched backward. The tick of the clock banged in her ears. Yani advanced.
"Why are you doing this to me?"
"I need you. I'm so hungry. And you are so delicious."
Vickie remembered the pain, the melancholy, the crippling fog from the last time. She took another step back. "Please don't."
Yani moved closer. "It won't be much longer."
Vickie felt as if she would crumble on the spot. She stepped back and said with a cracking voice, "I won't let you hurt me."
Yani came closer. "Such brave words. How would you stop me?"
Fear and fight spun inside Vickie. She struggled to breathe. "I'll find a way."
Yani laughed sweetly. "Oh, dear. I'm sorry but you'll fail."
"No."
She reached out her hand. Vickie tried to back away. She couldn't. She was pinned against the bureau. She arched ba
ck. Her necklace, the one with the gray stone, the one that Yani told her to get rid of, eased higher on her neck and slipped from underneath her shirt. Yani fixed her eyes on it and froze.
Vickie lunged forward. She passed through Yani, almost losing herself in the feeling of dry water, a strange drowning thirst, a clash of two utterly separate sensations that formed something entirely grotesque. She broke free, opened the door and then slammed it behind her.
5.
