The Serpent Waits

by Bill Hiatt

  When we reached the ground floor, we exited into what looked like an old forest.

  “Ms. Winn had a lot of trees brought in full-grown. She wanted the landscaping to match the castle look of the main house.”

  The effect was amazingly immersive. I felt just as if I were in the middle of a real forest. Santa Barbara boasted some large trees, even on residential streets, but none to rival these, and certainly, none growing so close together. I wasn’t sure what all of them were, but I saw stone pines as high as a two-story house, coast oaks whose branches spread out much further than the ones at the Irish Gardens, Moreton Bay figs with intertwining multiple trunks any one of which would have been too big to wrap my arms around, and so many more that even a botanist would have been dizzied by them.

  The garden was great for sightseeing—bad for planning an escape route. I could only see a little beyond the path that led away from the elevator. The trees were dense, and they were tall enough to keep me from seeing where Winn’s property ended, and the outside world began.

  After a short walk, we came to a clearing—complete with a lake. Winn might be evil, but she didn’t skimp on landscaping.

  Next to the lake was a small table, already set for two. It looked as if someone had just delivered the food—steam was rising off my omelet. At the other place was oatmeal and mixed fruit for Nurse Rinaldi. Both places also had orange juice.

  “That’s odd,” I said. “Shouldn’t we have passed someone on the way here?”

  “There is more than one path,” replied Nurse Rinaldi. Looking harder, I could see that there were at least four other openings in the clearing. Not one of them gave me a view of the outside world, though. I could see the top of the GYL building, but it looked farther away than I would have expected. I wondered if someone looking out one of the upper windows could see us.

  I tried hard to put surveillance out of my mind and focus on the food. It was every bit as good as Rinaldi had said it would be, and I was hungrier than I thought. I had to restrain myself from wolfing it down. After all, she’d probably try to move me back inside after breakfast, and at least outside I could pretend I had some chance of escaping.

  “Nurse Rinaldi—”

  “It’s Carla. We don’t really need to be so formal. We’re part of the same family…corporate family, after all.” She studied my expression for a second, and added, “Maybe I’m presuming too much, but I understand your interview went well. I assume you’ll be taking the job.” Her voice rose at the end as if she were asking a question.

  “I was very impressed with GYL. Honestly, though, I haven’t had much time to think about the job.”

  “Oh, I know. There’s no rush. Just know there is a job once you’ve recovered—if you’re interested.”

  Lucas hadn’t offered me a job at the end of the interview. Had he interviewed whatever other applicants there were and then picked me? Since he knew who I really was, why would he want to keep me around?

  “I wouldn’t have applied if I hadn’t wanted the job, would I?” I said, watching her reactions. There was no hint in her expression that she knew I had other motives.

  “No, I’m sure you wouldn’t have. I’m not trying to be pushy—”

  “And you aren’t. I’m sure I’ll take the job once I’m feeling better. But as long as we’re talking, I have a few questions for you.”

  “I’m not that familiar with the inner workings of GYL, but I’ll be happy to answer any question I can.”

  “I know you don’t work for GYL, but you do work for Carrie Winn, right? I’m probably just having my usual nervousness over a new job, but, uh, I don’t know. She seems…too good to be true.”

  Carla leaned back in her chair. “You mean because she’s so attentive? That’s genuine. She cares about everyone who works for her. That’s why I used the family metaphor earlier.”

  “There’s attentive…and then there’s attentive,” I said slowly. “Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I did a lot of research before applying for the job. While looking up articles on Carrie Winn, I noticed some information on you, such as the coma you were in for part of your junior year in high school.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise, but only for a moment. “Yes, that’s true. That’s one of the reasons for my interest in medicine.”

  “I was a little surprised that Carrie Winn paid for all your treatment. She must hardly have known you then, and you certainly weren’t an employee at that point.”

  Carla smiled, but her eyes didn’t quite synchronize with her mouth. “Tal was already an intern of hers, though. You’d know him as Taliesin Weaver from the articles. Anyway, Tal and I were dating at the time. You might say I was part of her extended corporate family even then.”

  How much further could I press without arousing suspicions? Since Carla knew who I really was, she must already be suspicious. I didn’t have to worry about tipping my hand.

  “I’m glad she did so much for someone with such a slight connection to her, but you understand why that seems strange to me, right?”

  Carla’s smile was looking more strained by the minute. “No stranger, surely, than her taking you in and providing for your medical care.”

  This line of questioning had lost its shock value, so there wasn’t much chance Carla would slip and give me any new information. It was time to bring up leaving and see if I could throw her off balance that way.

  “About that—” A nearby noise distracted me before I could finish. I must have been hearing the wind in the trees, but it sounded uncannily like a whisper. No, it was a whisper. Someone was telling me to flee while I still could.

  I looked around quickly, but I couldn’t see anyone close enough to whisper.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Carla, her eyes narrowing.

  “I…I need to go,” I said, getting up abruptly. I wasn’t sure why I suddenly felt afraid. Sure, my situation was unsettling at best, but it hadn’t changed in the last couple of minutes.

  All that was different was the voice. It must have been imaginary, yet my survival instinct was screaming at me to pay attention to it.

  “Dr. Florence will be here soon, and—”

  “I can’t wait for her, and there’s no reason I should have to. This isn’t a hospital. Even if it were, I could sign a release form and get out.”

  “You’re seeing something, aren’t you?” asked Carla. “Something that doesn’t make sense.”

  “The only thing that doesn’t make sense is why I’m still here.” Before she could reply, I jumped up and ran down the path toward the house.

  Yeah, doing that was impulsive, maybe even crazy, but the fear freezing its way through my veins me told me I had to make the attempt. At least now I was on the first floor, so the fingerprint-controlled elevators wouldn’t be a problem.

  Or would they? The path led back to an elevator, but I knew there had to be a more direct way into the first floor. Rinaldi had told me there were several paths. If I ran along the back of the house, I would eventually have to come to a door.

  The path was narrower than I remembered it. I was scraping myself on the tree branches and tripping over exposed roots that broke the path I had been sure had been smooth on the way in. The path also seemed to be curving, even though it had been more or less straight before.

  I had to be hallucinating again. That was the only possible explanation. Maybe I was having an especially vivid dream and would wake up back in the guest room.

  If it wasn’t a dream, though, if I had taken a fork in the path I hadn’t seen on the way in, I had to keep going. I could hear Nurse Rinaldi calling for me. Then she stopped yelling.

  It was likely she was on her phone, getting security down here to catch me.

  My legs felt rubbery. I wasn’t quite myself, but the certainty that I could not afford to be caught kept me plodding ahead.

  I must have lost all sense of direction because suddenly I found myself back in the clearing. I stumbled as I tried to turn around—a
nd ran straight into a blank wall of trees too close together for me to squeeze between. The path had now vanished completely.

  I turned to face Nurse Rinaldi, who was an incredibly good actress. She looked with concern at the bleeding cuts on my arms and said something about getting a first aid kit.

  A disturbance in the center of the pond drew my eye. Ripples were extending outward from the center. I should have tried to find any path out of the clearing, but instead, I stood there, mesmerized by the movement of the water.

  The pond bulged in the middle, then broke as someone rose from it, ascending as if such a thing required no physical effort. I gasped and took a step back.

  The figure stood on the surface of the water, then walked toward me in a twisted parody of the gospel scenes in which Jesus walks on water.

  I’d only seen her in pictures, but there was no mistaking the confident bearing, the facial expression that looked like a portrait pose, or the determined look in Carrie Winn’s eyes as she stepped onto dry land.

  “We need to talk.”

  Revelations

  Every muscle in my body was pulled tight as a spring. I was either crazy or trapped in a drug-induced hallucination. Every instinct was screaming at me to run—but run where? I’d already demonstrated I couldn’t get out of this forest and back to the house. Anyway, how do you run from your own insanity?

  “What were you thinking?” asked Carla angrily. “She’s in bad shape already. The last thing she needs is your theatrical entrance.”

  Winn looked at Rinaldi as if she were barely worth wasting time on. “It was the fastest way to get here, and we have to stop trying to baby her. She needs to know the truth so that she can start adjusting to it.”

  “Dr. Florence—”

  “Viviane is not in charge here.” Winn looked in my direction and tried for a more sympathetic expression. “I know this is hard. You’ve stumbled into a situation almost no one could handle. Unfortunately, you need to get a grip. If you don’t, the results could be—”

  “I want to leave—now.” My voice was shakier than I would have liked, but at least I got the words out.

  Winn stood there for a second with her mouth open. She must not have been interrupted very often. Carla grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

  “Amy, will you at least listen to us? I don’t know what you think is happening—”

  “What…what’s happening is that you’re holding me prisoner here.”

  “It’s for your own good,” said Winn with a perfectly straight face. She was another expert liar.

  “If you leave now,” Winn continued, “you won’t survive for more than a couple of days.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “Amy, we’re not the bad guys here,” said Carla.

  “Then you won’t mind letting me out of here.”

  “We’re only trying to help you.” Lucas’s voice came from right behind me. I jumped despite myself. There wasn’t any way he could have gotten into the clearing unless the trees behind me had parted to let him through.

  Yup, crazy or drugged. Those were my two choices.

  When I turned around, I saw Lucas and Khalid. Was the kid involved in this? If I remembered correctly, Lucas, Carla and the rest of their group had started as Winn interns, the same as he was now.

  “I know this is weird,” said Khalid. “There really is an explanation, though. All you need to do is listen to it.” If he didn’t believe what he was saying, he must have been the best teenage actor I’d ever seen.

  I was shaking. I tried to get control of my fear. I needed to think clearly if I wanted to have any chance of escaping from this place.

  The wind, which had been whispering earlier, was blowing harder now, rattling the branches instead of gently moving them. Winn looked up in concern.

  “We need to take this inside.”

  If she wanted me inside, I should stay outside. What I needed was a distraction. If I pretended I was willing to hear what they had to say, maybe that would at least buy me some time.

  “All right, Khalid, I’ll listen.” The wind became calmer.

  “There’s no easy way to say this,” said Lucas. “The world doesn’t work the way you think it does.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “It might be easier to show you.” Lucas made sure I was looking right at him, then ran to the other side of the clearing so fast his body motion blurred. He ran back to me equally fast.

  “Didn’t you wonder how I knew you needed a hospital right before you had all that pain?”

  Oddly enough, in a situation full of discrepancies, I had missed that one. I nodded to him.

  “Aside from being very fast, I sometimes get glimpses of a possible immediate future, sometimes just a few seconds ahead, sometimes longer.”

  I laughed. “What are you saying? That you’re a superhero? That’s ridiculous. What’s your origin story? Radioactive spider bite? Gamma-ray overdose? No, I’ll bet you’re the last living member of a dying alien race!”

  I was talking faster and faster, and I sounded hysterical even to myself.

  “No,” said Lucas very quietly and calmly. “I’m not entirely human, though. I’m part Encantado and part Xana.”

  My mouth hung open. I couldn’t get words out.

  “Encantados are Brazilian faeries. Xanas are faeries native to Galicia in Spain, but a few of their descendants made it to this hemisphere.”

  “Fairies?” I asked. Maybe I wasn’t hearing him correctly.

  “On the Brazilian side of my family. On the African side, I’m both descended from and am a reincarnation of Jakuta, the third king of Oyo who eventually became Chango, the orisha who brings lightning and revels in fire, patron of war and of dance.”

  He sounded too proud of his alleged heritage, as if he believed every word. Was he crazy? Better him than me. Aside from what he was saying, he seemed calm and lucid, though.

  My arms started to tingle, but I ignored the sensation. I just stared at Lucas, though I did manage to close my mouth.

  “Orishas are powerful spirits once worshiped by the Yoruba,” he continued, looking into my eyes as if he wanted to make sure I hadn’t fallen asleep standing up. “I was only able to access Chango’s full power once, though. I can channel him a little bit by dancing.”

  “I think Amy needs a general frame of reference to make sense of all the details,” said Carla. “What Lucas is saying is more reasonable if you understand that magic is real. Magical races such as the faeries are real, too.”

  “That can’t be,” I said. Lucas had seemed to move very fast, though, and he had known I was about to collapse. Maybe Lucas did something that made me collapse. I wasn’t willing to throw my whole worldview out the window just because highly suspect strangers told me to.

  “I would have said the same thing if I hadn’t seen the evidence with my own eyes,” said Carla. “We all would have.

  “There were several us who all went to Santa Brígida High School—and who all were somewhat…unusual. We just didn’t know it to begin with. Tal was the first of us to find out the truth. When he was twelve, he was hit with a spell we call the awakening spell. The name doesn’t really capture the essence of it. It’s a cruel way of forcing past life memories to the surface. Usually, it only brings out one past life persona.

  “Tal is unique, though. In one of his past lives, he was Gwion Bach, a servant of the witch, Ceridwen.”

  Well, if there were fairies, why not witches? If I hadn’t felt as if my brain was about to liquify, I might have found this story entertaining.

  “Gwion Bach accidentally drank a potion that Ceridwen was brewing for her son. It was a potion of knowledge—all knowledge. He instantly knew magic, for example, and fought a shape-changing duel with Ceridwen. When he became something small—a fly, I think—she swallowed him. Nine months later, Gwion Bach was reborn as Taliesin and eventually became King Arthur’s bard.”

  I wasn’t sure which was stranger—tha
t Carla was telling this fairy tale in the first place, or that she actually expected me to believe it.

  “The potion gave him a mind structured differently from anyone else’s. Tal inherited that structure, but it lay dormant until the awakening spell. At that point, he remembered not just the original Taliesin, but every life in between. The information overload nearly drove him crazy.”

  So that was the cover story to explain Weaver’s collapse at age twelve. Someone had a very good imagination.

  “With the help of the original Taliesin persona, Tal managed to get control and integrate all the other personas, including all their memories and abilities, into his own, leaving more or less his original personality in charge.

  “Unfortunately, the witch Ceridwen had been waiting for a chance to get the knowledge back. It was she who developed the awakening spell in the first place, and she who laid a trap for Tal and the rest of us. We defeated her, but at a cost—Stan and I were both hit by the awakening spell, which we couldn’t handle well. Because I was hit twice, I ended up in a coma.”

  So they also had a nice, neat, supernatural explanation for Carla Rinaldis’ coma and Stan Schoenbaum’s breakdown. Why bother? No one was ever going to believe this nonsense.

  “None of this can be true,” I said. I probably should have let her keep babbling, but I just couldn’t take it anymore. My headache was coming back, and the wind had picked up again.

  “Well, I suppose you’d know all about truth,” said Winn, glaring at me. “You’ve been lying to us the whole time. Isn’t that right, Amenirdis?”

  “This isn’t the time!” snapped Rinaldi. “What’s the point of upsetting her?”

  The tingling in my arms had stopped. I glanced down. There was still blood on them, but the cuts from the branches had disappeared completely.

  As if by magic.

  I had to choke back a scream. What was happening to me? To the world?

  Khalid put his hand on my shoulder. I jumped again. I felt like a complete idiot.

  “It’s all true,” he said. “Really. Just watch.”