by Gaby Triana
“Hello?” I called, reaching out to steady the cages. “You guys here?” I walked past the cages and peered down the hall. Puddles of water dotted the length of it. From above, drops of rain dripped steadily from the lanterns. Armed with new information about my father having died here, I fiercely resented the Sunlake today and wanted out as fast as possible. “Guys?”
I’m here.
I whirled.
The bird cage closest to the atrium was swinging again, vacillating back and forth. How could it pick up momentum so quickly when I’d just steadied it? I imagined at least a dozen unwanted scenarios. I floated over to it. “Hello?”
Dad?
The reason I’d joined the clairs in the first place, to try and communicate with my father, suddenly felt very possible. Meeting little Pablo Callejas on the veranda with his paper flower had been sweet, but I wanted to see my dad.
The cage stopped rocking.
I stared at it, bouncing around in tight circles as if steadied by some unseen force. Something was there. “Who are you?” My voice was hoarse from all the screaming.
Nothing showed. The winds continued to howl. Outside, the thunderstorm intensified. The rainwater collected in larger puddles on the floor, and papers blowing around got stuck in them and melted. Cooing wind whipped past my ears, morphing into words that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
…here…
…help…
I turned in every direction, wanting for someone to materialize, and not wanting at the same time. But that wasn’t how spirits manifested, not for me anyway. Charging to the bird cage, I gripped my hands around the metal bars and closed my eyes.
“Who…is there?” I demanded.
A brown-skinned man, whose clothes were torn, whose wrists were handcuffed to the cage from the inside, as if being locked inside weren’t enough to break him. The rancid smell of filth stung my nose. Uncracked sunflower seeds surrounded him, as well as scattered cigarette butts. On his arms and back were tiny, round burn marks. His eyes, red from exhaustion, implored me.
Tell her I’m sorry.
“Sir?”
My sister.
“You don’t need to be sorry. You didn’t cause this. You hear me?” My voice grew, as shouts of random men giving orders filled the corridors. I wanted to unleash hell at them for doing this to an innocent person. “This was not your fault!”
I’m next. He bowed his head.
And then I saw what he was referring to. In the other bird cage were three other men, all dark-skinned, all with burn marks, sitting in filth, chained to the metal slats. And I knew, in that moment, that their fate, judging from the jeers and laughter in the background, was to die—at the Devil’s Tree.
“Who is your sister?” I asked.
Bernice.
The cage swung once more, and then he, along with the other men, was gone.
As my fingers released the cage, I stood panting, sweating in the cold. Nodding, I tried to speak the woman’s name again, for my own sake of remembering it. I backed a few steps, rattled by the vision, and then I broke into a run, strategically avoiding the atrium, tucking into the ballroom. Nobody was there, though their stuff was. I headed out the side ballroom door, craning my ear for human noises, wending my way through each room and out onto the veranda.
As I entered the south hallway through an opened door, my sneaker hit something wet. More water seeping from the ceiling. “Guys?”
“In here!” Fae called back. I wove through the dining room, down through the secret door into the basement, and was shocked to find a pool of water about two inches thick.
“What are you doing?” I asked Mori and Fae. They stood beside the tunnel of death, the one used for disposing expired human bodies, looking into a fissure that had widened.
Fae jumped when she saw me. “Vale, come here, please.” She took my hand and pulled me closer to the wall, even as the minor lake by the broken window was still a concern. “Touch here, please. Touch the wall, down near the floor. I’ve been smelling it all day. I can taste it.”
“What can you taste?” I asked.
“The gold!” She clapped in a tiny way, trying to contain her excitement.
Mori shook their head. “Even if it was down there, there’s no way to get it without a bulldozer, Fae.” They settled into a better crossed-leg position and resumed writing on their notepad.
“I just want confirmation that it’s there. That alone would make me happy. Vale, touch it, please. If my nose is going crazy, your hands must be, too!” She shook my hand so hard, I had to pull it out of her grasp.
I didn’t want anyone using my hands for their own purpose again, not even Fae.
“Did you know I tasted butter while you were gone? Butter! In the dining room!”
“That’s great. Hey, have you noticed the water filling this room? The basement will be flooded in an hour.”
“All the more reason I need to know. Before that happens, Vale. I need to know if it’s there. Please, right here—touch.” Fae tapped the wall, beckoning me. “Please. Just this once, I promise.”
Sighing, I knelt on the transitional space between the bottom of the body chute and the concrete step up to the tunnel. I pressed my hands against the bricks and closed my eyes. I saw nothing but loneliness, the occasional roach crawling through the space. Water collected underground, as panicked ants scrambled for dry ground.
“Even the bugs know something is up,” I muttered.
“Bugs? Is that it? Oh, Vale, please tell me there’s more down there.”
I refocused my efforts. Took another deep breath and tried to think of nothing but the humidity in the room, the coolness of the bricks underneath my touch, the cavernous labyrinth between them. This moment.
Nothing but this moment.
Below the concrete foundation, atop natural layers of dry dirt, was a texture incongruously blended with the rest of the earth. Same dull brown, but the items were cloth. Canvas bags, the kind used for carrying sand to block against flooding during hurricanes. The kind you might find holding potatoes, only in this case, something not biodegradable was inside. Dull yellow. Round coins. Not many, but Fae had been right all along—her great grandfather’s rumrunning money was under this chute.
“It’s there.” I took my hands away. “It’s been there a while.”
“I knew it! I knew it!” Fae spun on the bare balls of her feet, slipping on the encroaching puddle of collected rainwater and landing on her ass. “Ow!” She laughed and crawled her way over to me to kiss me haphazardly on the cheek.
My head hurt with a dull ache. I hadn’t eaten much on a stress-filled day. But even through the pain, I could tell something else was down there. I had to see it again to be sure. I put my hands back on the brick.
“You’re double checking, yes, good, good.” Fae breathed down my neck.
“There’s something else.”
Again, I saw the canvas bags containing coins, but above it was a crevice stretching upward, opening its maw as it flared toward ground level. Time shifted in time-lapse again, the concrete opening, splitting, yawning apart until broken bricks lay scattered in heaps, unearthing the coins. Complete devastation of the foundation. Underneath one of the fallen piles was a slender broken body, pale hands clutching the bag, skin bloody and raw, skull crushed open by bricks like a coconut. The dead person’s hair was long and blonde. And matted.
I scrambled back. “We have to get out.”
“What is it?”
“We have to get out,” I repeated.
Mori’s eyelids fluttered, their fingers nimbly scribbled a message on the paper. I bent to see what it said. There was no message, just the static scratches of a nonsensical drawing. Someone walked by us, someone who hadn’t been there a moment before—a man in a white coat.
He didn’t seem to know we were there, he simply reached down and pulled on the crank that opened the chute and peered inside.
“Do you see him?” I asked Fae
, my words coming out as wisps.
“Yes,” she replied, backing away from the wall. “Finally, I do.”
Whoever he was began leaving but made sure to beam me in the eye with his gaze as he did. “We’ll see you soon.” Then he disappeared through Mori who leaned forward in a coughing fit, sputtering and choking, and vomited straight onto the floor. They leaned back to suck in a gasp, eyes wide in horror. “What the fuck was that?”
“We’re being warned again,” I said.
“We saw a man.”
“A doctor.”
“He told us he’d see us all soon. I don’t like this.”
Finally, some concern. I might be able to get them out of here after all. “Guys, I have to tell you something. The Lady of the Lake is real. She’s not just a legend or the beautiful spirit Crow thinks she is. She’s some kind of abomination. A creature, a…a…”
“Demon?” Mori asked.
“Whatever it is, it’s trying to become mortal. It’s using us. It’s using Crow.”
“This is why the spirits can’t move on,” Mori said. “She’s blocking the portal, keeping them from ascending. That’s why they cower in corners. How did you find that out?”
“I’ve had a bad feeling since the day I arrived. I saw her during the ritual, and then I saw her inside of Crow’s body last night while you all slept. Today, I visited Citana to ask about my father, and she sensed it, too.”
“The portal opening must’ve affected her, too,” Fae said.
“We need to leave. This place isn’t safe.” I didn’t tell them about my vision just now, the one of Fae’s dead body amid a pile of bricks. Nor the one of the man inside the cage. We had to find Wilky and Crow to warn them.
“Let’s go.” As we headed upstairs, something fell behind us, jolting the living shit out of us. A piece of concrete ceiling had fallen, outright disengaged from the rafters and landed at the foot of the stairs a few inches away.
The Sunlake was trying to kill us.
TWENTY-FOUR
“We can’t come back to this room, under any circumstances,” I said.
“What about the gold?” Fae puffed up the stairs.
“Fae!” I barked. “A few days ago, you said you’d be happy just knowing where it is. That would be enough, you said. Do not tempt fate.”
“Fine. You’re right.”
We searched the flooded ground floor for the boys, weaving in and out of every room before eventually stealing out through the ballroom exit. They weren’t on the veranda either. Rain pelted us sideways, and Fae paced the floorboards, like a dog sniffing out a cut of juicy meat.
“You smell that? It’s sewage.” She turned up her nose.
“I smell rain, grass, the lake. Nothing bad.” I peered into the silver cascade. Surrounding areas were starting to flood, creating mini lakes on the Sunlake Springs property. If the rain continued this way, the hotel would soon become an island.
“What is that?” Fae held onto a column and pointed to something out by the lakeshore. Rushing water spilled out of the lake and poured into what looked like a fissure in the earth, draining the surrounding pooling water.
“Was that there before?” Mori asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said moments before the air sizzled, and a crack of lightning hit about a half mile away. I covered my ears. Rain washed down my face in rivers that soaked my neck and shirt.
We heard a shout from the distance. Out by the Devil’s Tree, someone stood waving. Wilky cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled something incomprehensible.
“What is he doing out there?” Mori asked.
I jogged the length of the veranda. “I don’t think he’d be out there unless it was important. He’s calling us. Let’s go see.”
“And go near that tree again? No, thank you.” Fae pressed her back against the outer walls. “I’ll wait for you here.”
Hunkering down, I hustled into the downpour with Mori following close behind. It took us a minute to navigate the land, as we ran around deep puddles and jumped over a few. On one, I lost my footing and fell to my knees. Mori gave me their arm to help me up.
We reached Wilky, and he held out his arms for us to grab to keep from slipping. “Why are you out here?” I chastised. “There’s lightning—you’re standing by a tree! Come inside,” I beckoned.
“Not until I find it.” He crouched, raking his open hands through the mud. “Can you guys help me?”
“Find what?” Mori and I screamed at the same time.
“I heard them.” His eyes roved the ground. “More shouts. I saw them, a row of Black men, standing right here in this spot, hands tied behind their backs.” Wilky’s nervous energy was unlike anything I’d ever seen coming from him.
“Wilky…” I knelt beside him with Mori. Together we began digging. “I saw something, too, just a while ago.”
“They’re here. I know they are.” He ignored me.
“Did you hear me? Inside the lobby, inside…” God, I couldn’t even say it without feeling sick to my stomach. “The cages. Have you seen what’s in the cages, Wilky?” Maybe he already knew. Maybe, by now, he’d filled his sketchbook with renderings of the atrocities but had kept it to himself.
Mori asked, “What’s in the cages?”
I didn’t want to describe it and hurt Wilky more than he was already. I shook my head at them. Another bolt of lightning within a half mile hit, charging the atmosphere with sizzling heat before releasing its thunderous boom.
“They died by this tree,” Wilky said, a maniacal quality to his voice. “They’re here, you know. They’re here. The screams never stop.” He shook his head, as if to dislodge the haunting.
“Wilky, it’s not important to find evidence,” I tried telling him. “We know it happened. You know it, I know it. You don’t need to risk your life trying to prove it.”
“Easy for you to say, Valentina.”
“We’re in danger here. Citana said we are. Please, can we just go?”
“I’m not leaving. I can’t stand the screams anymore. I have to quiet the screams!” Wilky raked aside more and more mud, but it was futile. As soon as he’d make one hole, more water would rush in and fill it.
I saw a certain madness in his face I knew I’d never be able to fully comprehend, not until I’d lived a thousand lifetimes in his skin. I didn’t know what it was like to hear the screams of people you were powerless to help, day and night.
“It’s not your family.” His voice broke. “If you’re not going to help me, then leave me alone.”
He was right. Of course, he was, I only wanted him to be free of his torment. This was how, though, by shutting the hell up and digging alongside the man. But I did have one last thing he needed to hear. “Who’s Bernice?”
He looked up, finally. “What did you say?”
“Bernice.”
He stared at me through pained eyes. “My great-aunt. How did you…”
I kept digging, scooping up handfuls of mud. “I think he spoke to me, your great-uncle. He probably knew I could see him. He knew we’re all connected now. He told me to tell Bernice he was sorry.”
Wilky stared at me, chest heaving. “What else did he tell you?”
I wrestled with his great-uncle’s last words to me—I’m next. Another crack of lightning hit. If I told him, he’d never stop digging, but I realized that even weeks of more of digging would never be worse than not finding closure. “He said he was next.”
“Next.”
“Next,” I repeated.
“Next for…?”
“I don’t…” No need to lie. He knew. I knew. “You know for what,” I said.
He watched me a few moments longer, as he absorbed the news. Then, he fell onto his hands again with renewed fervor and we dug. We dug until the hole was six feet wide and nearly two feet deep. We dug until our fingers bled, but nothing came up. Mori and I looked at each other but said nothing.
“I need a shovel,” Wilky’s voice broken.
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“There’s one in the back of Crow’s truck,” Mori said to me.
“On it. You stay here.”
Mori nodded.
I sprinted off, bounding over puddles, skidding and sliding across mud to get to the veranda, spilling into the hotel, as I left a trail of muck behind me. I ran through the ballroom, soiling parquet floors, cutting across the hallway, blinding my view of the bird cages until I made it to the auxiliary door. Crow’s truck was parked away from the covered driveway. I ducked back into the rain.
Reaching the truck, I searched the flatbed, rummaging through hoses and plastic chemical buckets filled with rain. I found a coil of rope that sent a jolt through my mind the moment I touched it.
Fight through it, I told myself.
I curled my fingers around the rope again, afraid of what I might “see.” Crow used it to rip coconut palms growing too close to backyard pools out of the ground.
I grabbed it and searched the cab of the truck. Still no shovel. I slammed the truck door and sloshed back to the auxiliary door, dripping into the hotel like a wet towel. Cutting through the hallway into the ballroom, I slowed when I felt another presence, caught a whiff of something putrid on the wind. Shadows flitted in my peripheral vision.
I hurried to the end of the room, to the corner that opened onto the veranda, when I heard a scraping sound. Checking behind me, I saw Crow there when he hadn’t been a moment ago. In his hand, he held the shovel.
“Looking for this?”
“Yes.” I held out my hand. “Can I borrow it?”
Crow stared at me a long moment, his bioluminescent eyes scanning my muddy clothes, his sweaty face the color of algae. The smell was getting stronger, wafting off of him in sheets. Pooling underneath his feet was lake water with a greenish tint. Goosebumps broke out over my arms.