by Kenya Wright
“And you checked the security tape on the cameras out here?” I asked the guard.
“Yes sir. Although. . .”
“What?”
The guard shifted from side to side and looked around. “All the cameras up here shut off after ten at night.”
“Excuse me?”
The guard rubbed his hands together. “I’m sorry, sir. I wasn’t going to say anything about it. In fact, I was asked not to say anything since the cameras are now fixed to record all the time, but I heard that a young girl died yesterday and that she was around both of my sisters’ ages. I didn’t feel right about lying.”
“Who’s in charge of the cameras?”
“Mr. Brewster.”
“Okay.” Today will be Mr. Brewster’s last day of work. “Consider yourself promoted to his position. Who else knew about this?”
“Just me, his wife, and him. We’re the only ones allowed up here.”
“His wife?” I scrunched my face up in confusion.
“Mrs. Greer. She uses her maiden name.”
So they can work here together without me knowing that they were married.
They’d both come with a lot of credentials and recommendations from very trusted associates. I would’ve probably hired them regardless and understood their need to be together. The positions were practically twenty-four/seven. Grandma relieved her at times, but Mrs. Greer pretty much lived, slept, and ate up here. She would’ve wanted to see her husband every now and then, maybe even have a few late night visits. She had a big bedroom in the attic and didn’t think it was a big deal to have her husband slip by whenever everyone else was asleep.
It probably wouldn’t have been a big deal to me, either. I would’ve just gotten another person up here. Why hadn’t I listened to Grandma?
She’d said that two nurses and three guards should be up there to relieve each other. I assured her it would happen, but I never had the time to do the hiring. Grandma volunteered to hire people herself. No way. I imagined Santeros with paint on their faces and bone necklaces flanking the door. There was no way Grandma could be in charge of such a delicate task. My assistant had offered, too. She’d been standing next to my grandma while we argued about it. Reece knew who lived in the attic and understood that the person’s presence served as a major migraine for my battered skull.
I’ll have to hire new nurses and guards upon the hour. Mrs. Greer’s and Mr. Brewster’s need for conjugal visits may very well have caused the young girl’s death.
“Excuse me. I’m going inside.”
The locksmith pulled the door back. I entered. Little mirrors in the shape of stars hung from the ceiling. Sunlight bounced off them and reflected onto the black paint on the walls. It was like stepping into space. On the right wall, strips of various types of wallpaper were tacked onto the smooth surface. Wherever I traveled or met someone on business, I made sure to get a strip of pretty wallpaper from a local store. Dayanara relished the different textures and colors. Every now and then I’d give her a basket full of chocolates and sour candies, maybe a bottle of lovely smelling perfume, or even an expensive doll dressed in silky ribbons. She never opened or explored those gifts. It was always the strips of wallpaper that she rushed to with open shivering hands.
Yes. I’ll have to replace Mrs. Greer tonight.
Mrs. Greer lay asleep on the gray couch in the far back of the space. Ragged snores escaped her opened mouth. The television played a game show. The host screamed, “And now we have the final round. Are you ready to bet it all?”
The audience cheered.
I headed to Dayanara’s door. The knob turned with no problem. Anger boomed in my chest. I’d ordered Mrs. Greer to keep the door locked at all times. Dayanara could have fled with no problem if security and the locksmith weren’t here.
Maybe I’ll let Reece hire a temporary nurse. I can’t handle that and all the other things that have been thrown to the side today.
I opened the door. Shadows broke out and cast darkness everywhere.
“I’ll bet it all, Jim!” One of the contestants said.
“Are you sure?” the host asked.
“Yes! I bet it all!”
People clapped. A coppery scent filled the air. My heart raced as I slid my hand across the wall and searched for the light switch. No windows were in this room, so when the lights were off; only the black of night remained. The rough edges of concrete blocks scraped against my skin. Dayanara never allowed me to decorate her bedroom. In there, she only wanted the hard concrete bricks and cement cracks to look back at her.
“Okay. He’s going to bet it all.” Some upbeat jingle played and then the television went hushed for a few seconds. Where the hell is the light switch? I would have called out her name, but I didn’t want to wake her if she was asleep.
“You get three guesses to name this animal,” the game show host explained.
“I’m ready.”
“The suricata suricatta has been known to kill their mother’s, sister’s, and daughter’s offspring. Scientists have reported infanticidal raids from this species as well.”
“Jim, my first guess will be a mongoose.”
A beep came.
“The judges say you need to be clearer. This species is from the mongoose family.”
“Then it must be a meerkat, Jim.”
Horns blew. People roared with applause.
I found the light and flipped it on. The room illuminated with white light. Cold seeped into my skin until I was nothing but a block of ice. Dayanara sat on the floor in a pool of blood with a doll in her hands. Her long legs lay in the sticky substance. Red liquid slicked back her already crimson and gray strands. Sores dotted her forehead as if she’d tried to stab her eyes out. She blinked and swayed a little. A paint brush lay on the floor drenched in green paint and red liquid. She must’ve used the end of the brush on herself. I ran to her, wrenched the doll away, and checked her hands. A large hole in her wrist spit out warm blood.
“Mrs. Greer! Wake up and get a doctor. Now! Call nine-one-one.”
“Don’t.” Dayanara’s voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “Let me die.”
I tensed as the wound gurgled a tiny stream of blood onto my hands.
Would it be that simple? To let her die, right here? Maybe all the problems would be solved.
“I can’t.” I yanked off my suit jacket and wrapped my sleeve tightly around the wound. “Mrs. Greer! Damn you! Wake up!”
Dayanara tried to pull her arm away, but she was too weak. “Just let me go.”
That warm liquid stained my pants and stuck to my knees as I kneeled in the puddle. “And then how will I survive it? If I let that happen?”
“You always survive.” Her eyelids fluttered as she fell back. “But no one else will when he returns.”
“Who?”
“Snyder, my love. Snyder is coming.”
“He’s dead. He’s long gone.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Mrs. Greer!”
“It doesn’t matter that he’s gone. He figured out a way to come back.”
Stomping boomed behind me.
“Oh my god!” Mrs. Greer screamed and collapsed in the doorway.
* * *
Two hours later, I paced in the living room. Blood soiled my clothes and smeared across my shoes. The day got worse and worse. Yesterday morning began with a dead girl. Today seemed to end with another almost dead woman. If I saw any more blood today, I would sink into myself and not come out. Then what would happen to everyone? Then what will become of Grandma and Hex? The host tree could die among the thick roots and strong branches of a banyan, but nothing else could rot, because then it would all be for nothing. I couldn’t let that happen, so I stomped back and forth, muddied with dry red liquid and stress that dripped from every pore on my body.
How much could I deal with today, without breaking down like all the rest?
The door opened. I paused and caught of view of Grandma lighting a bushel of green herbs and sing
ing a chant. The earthy scent drifted out of the opening as Dr. Rosenberg left and closed a passed out Dayanara and chanting Grandma into the room.
“What’s my grandma doing?”
“A purity spell to cleanse the room of bad spirits.”
“Will the smoke bother Dayanara?”
“She’s out cold with the stuff I injected her with. She won’t wake up until tomorrow.”
“Thank you for coming so quickly.”
“Don’t thank me, just take my advice.”
I raked my fingers through my hair. “Not this again.”
“Dayanara should be in a mental facility where people can treat these things.” Dr. Rosenberg yanked off his plastic gloves, stained with Dayanara’s blood, and slung them in the trash can. “There’s nothing here that will help her.”
“And a facility will? We’ve tried her being away. It didn’t work.”
He walked over to the kitchenette I’d had built in the attic and washed his hands. “She wasn’t the reason it didn’t work. Your grandma Needa’s constant group séances in front of the facility is what got her kicked out.”
“Well . . . it still didn’t do anything for the situation.”
“Every time I visit her, this gets worse.”
“I only call you when things are bad.”
Dr. Rosenberg sighed. “What does Needa say?”
“My grandma has nothing to do with where Dayanara will go or stay.”
“Then I give up.” He turned the faucet off, wiped his wet fingers with a towel, and headed out of the space. “I’ll send my bill to Reece.”
“Good.” I trailed behind him and didn’t say any more as I turned off to my own floor and made it to my bedroom. A shower couldn’t be held off any more. Clanking, banging, and booming sounded from the level below. It must’ve been the crew who showed up to decorate, cook, and fill the castle with incessant noise for the festivities being held tonight. Sometime between X-Lab’s opening and this morning, Hex had decided to hold an even bigger event than the party he’d intended.
I entered my room and drew back the curtains to see what all the noise was outside. “What the fuck?”
Men dressed in glittery wings and sequin coated leotards stepped around the yard on tall stilts. Others loaded boxes out of a big gray truck and marched into the castle. What’s in those? On the side, a man stacked long poles attached to what looked like fireworks. A woman rode an elephant through the gate.
Dear God. I’m trying to avoid a murderer from killing the people I love, as I try to stop the people I love from killing themselves, and Hex is putting on a bloody circus!
I shut the curtain and took off my clothes, button by button, with each one that I loosened a pounding headache hammered at my skull. No pain killer would fix it. The headache had been birthed long ago, in the moment I realized my family would always need me and that there was nothing I could do about it.
I’d tried to get free, but things became worse.
As soon as I turned eighteen I left for the navy. I started boot camp the day after graduation, so ready to get away from everyone that I raced into training without even a bag of clothes. Guilt hit me at times, but I could always swallow it down back, always push it to the back of my mind and think about something else.
God, those were the days.
I turned out to be an excellent sailor. I dealt with any of the abuse that the recruit division commanders threw my way. By the end of boot camp, I’d graduated with a promotion and they recommended me to one of the best aircraft carriers traveling the sea, the USS Constellation. Sea duty lasted for three to six months. We sailed off to the Gulf Coast, under the dark blue sky that glittered with so many stars. I spent hours upon hours lying on the deck and staring at them with a huge smile on my face. The sea air tickled my nose. The waves rocked me to sleep at night and during the day they kept a steady rhythm of movement to push me along my way. The surrounding waters soothed me. It went on and on, never ending or breaking apart until land approached, and even then the presence of the sea remained.
And the women at port.
I met hundreds of them—exotic ones with bronze silky flesh and thick hair that kept me busy thinking about them as I worked on the ships, daydreaming about when I would see those beautiful faces again. I’d made love to so many pretty ladies that my brothers at sea nicknamed me lover boy.
And then the letter came. My chief petty officer called me into his office to read it to me. After he finished, he gave me the option to separate from service due to family emergency, with the possibility of returning later if I could still pass the necessary standards.
What else could I do but say yes? For god’s sake, the cops had pulled Hex out of bodies upon bodies of dead women.
A knock came from the door and pulled me from my memories.
“Yes?”
“It’s me, sir. Can I come in?” Reece asked.
I grabbed my robe from the edge of the bed and put it on. “Go ahead.”
She entered with a big box in her hands. “I’m sorry about what happened. I’ll have a new nurse and security in place upon the hour.”
“Thank you. What’s that?” I pointed to the box she set on my mahogany nightstand.
“Those orange blossom candles you asked for yesterday. Do you want me to light them?”
“By all means, yes.”
“How many?”
I glanced at the candles in the box and thought about all of the insane things that had happened in the past few days. “All of them.”
“Okay,” she called back as I went into my bathroom and closed the door. “How is Dayanara doing?”
“As fine as can be expected.”
“Did she say anything?”
“No. Well . . . nothing that made any sense.”
“What did she say?” Reece asked.
“Nothing. Go ahead and take off for the night. If anything else crazy happens, I’ll contact you.”
There was no way I would repeat Dayanara’s words.
“Snyder is coming,” Dayanara had said as blood leaked all over her. “Snyder found a way to come back from the dead.”
Well good for Snyder and me. Maybe this time I’ll get a chance to kill him like I’ve done in my dreams.
In the bathroom, I rubbed my eyes and laughed out loud at the absurdity of Snyder’s return.
He’s just a bag of bones rotting in the ground while I walk the earth cleaning up his messes.
The image of a bloodied, fifteen year old Hex flashed in my head. I’d picked him up from the hospital three days after the navy honorably discharged me. Shadows had soaked the cold room. Hex was nothing more than bones in loose hanging skin. His eyes had lost the joy that had swum in them when I’d given him a hug and left for the navy. His fingers trembled any time he moved. He didn’t talk for a month, just sucked his thumb and cried. Grandma took a flight from Cuba and moved in with me to help Hex come back to himself.
Then one day at the breakfast table, Hex turned to me, took his thumb out of his mouth, and cried, “I didn’t save them like I promised.”
His psychiatrist was the one who’d encouraged Hex to paint, to put all of his pain and grief into his art. Two years later an old rich woman spotted his work at a local festival near our house in Key West. She spent the rest of her weeks searching for the artist. When she discovered it was Hex and arrived at our house, all of our lives changed.
That sweet fragrance of orange blossoms infused every air molecule in the bathroom.
How long have I been standing here?
Still dirty and in my robe, I opened the bathroom door to see if Reece was still in there. She’d left so long ago the dozens of candles had melted down an inch or two. I must’ve been standing there for a huge amount of time, thinking about those dreary days.
“That’s Elle’s scent.” I inhaled the aroma some more and got into the shower.
Warm water caressed my skin. Bubbles and earthy soap lathered and washed away the spot
s of blood that had seeped through my shirt and pants. Yet, my whole mind concentrated on Elle’s smell. I closed my eyes and imagined another day, one that could never come. A moment far off in time where dead girls didn’t sprout up in gardens and a deranged woman didn’t sneak away with a paint brush during her scheduled art time and stab herself in the wrist, just to be free of life and all the mounting remorse inside her heart.
The fragrance of orange blossoms was so thick the sensual aroma seeped into my flesh and filled my chest.
I sank into lovely visions of Elle and journeyed to a starry night, in a distant land, where Elle stood before me naked, begging me to stroke my fingers through her hair and capture her mouth with mine.
Chapter 9
Elle
My dreams always began this way.
I ran fast, so fast my feet swelled with pain and my legs wobbled in exhaustion. Cold rain battered my face and dripped into my eyes.
Once I arrived at Michael’s house, I didn’t take the time to grab a rock and sling it at his window. I just climbed the tree and hoped I wouldn’t slip. The jagged bark dug into my skin. The bottom of my sneakers barely gripped the tree, but somehow I made it to the top in no time. As if he sensed me near, Michael appeared at the window and tugged it open. It was always that way. I never had to call or warn him I was coming, he just knew and welcomed me in.
“Did your dad hit you again?” Michael seized my hands and helped me balance as I climbed over the ledge and into his arms. “That bastard better not have hurt you.”
“H-he didn’t.” I battled with catching my breath. “B-but he came home drunk so I just left like you said I should.”
“Good.” He held me for a few minutes before letting me go. “My parents are gone tonight. If I’d known, I would’ve picked you up. I didn’t know until I got home and saw the letter on the table.”
“Where are they?”
“Another medical convention.” He shut the window. “Are you cold? Take off those wet clothes. I’ll get you a blanket.”
“No.” I wrenched my shirt up and yanked it over my head. “I don’t want anything except you next to me.”