Jacaranda

by Cherie Priest

  “Do your investigations always leave you with so many things unanswered?”

  He ran his hand up and down the big door’s painted surface.

  He Looked, and he Listened. But he felt nothing.

  “Yes. As often as not.”

  “It seems like a shame, doesn’t it?” Sister Eileen stood in the lobby, staring up at the elaborate ceiling fans, and over at Violetta’s counter, and the system of bells and pulleys behind it that connected room to room—to housekeeping services, and the management, or whoever else a guest might require.

  “Not really. The faster this place burns, the happier I’ll be.”

  “Oh, you know what I mean. All this wonderful technology, in this beautiful place. On a beautiful island, at the edge of a beautiful ocean. All of it, turned so ugly. I’ll never understand it.”

  The padre remembered what the hotel had told him. He still hadn’t related it to the nun, and probably would never bother. He was still sorting through it all, deciding what had been true and what it meant, if anything. “It isn’t our task to understand; it is our task to help, when we are able.” He pulled out a box of matches and lifted one to strike it, then paused. “Look, do you see? Something has changed. You can see it in the floor.”

  The space between the two great staircase landings, where a whirlpool design was figured into the tiles…the design that sometimes grew, and sometimes moved, shifted, when no one was watching…it was not growing anymore, and it was not moving. It was the same size as the first time the padre had seen it, perhaps as long across as he was tall.

  “You’re right…it looks…ordinary, almost. Does it still speak? Does it still scream?”

  He struck the match. “Not to me.”

  They watched the place burn from a safe distance, across the street and past the lawn that the horse had nibbled upon. The horse was not very impressed by it all. He whinnied and snorted with impatience, not caring for the spectacle in the slightest—and rather wanting to return to his stable.

  But the nun and the padre stayed until the last corner had fallen to rubble, and the last beams had been reduced to glimmering coals. The Jacaranda Hotel fell down upon itself and simmered, crackling and popping, floors breaking and windows shattering from the heat.

  The hotel did not beg for assistance, or plead for any respite.

  Whatever had given it such sinister life was either quiet, or already dead. And no one else came out to watch it burn.

  No one came to see it at all, not until another three days had passed, and the ashes were cool enough to touch—the debris charred until it was light as feathers, and easily pushed aside by a big man with a broad back. Three days after the fire, Tim came alone with a shovel, an axe, and a broom. He’d taken them from the gardener’s shed, which surely had been destroyed in the storm. Unless it hadn’t been.

  It took him a full day to find his way to the bottom, to the center.

  It took another day to clear away what was left of the brittle, burned stairs and the skeletal wreckage of furniture, lost to the flame. By then, no one could have seen the yellow-straw hair or the freckles on his cheeks. He was covered in ash, from head to toe—the soot had worked itself into the cracks in his skin, and the ashes had filled his mouth, climbed up his nose. He coughed, and he was thirsty. But still he dug through the hotel’s remains.

  And he found what he was looking for.

  Carefully, for the task was delicate, now…he took his broom and swept the old smoke and ceiling tins aside. He scrubbed and scrubbed with its bristles, scraping them into the grooves between the tiles until it was exposed to the air once again—a great whirlpool mosaic, done in tiles of blue and green and black, flecked with white.

  It was smaller than he remembered, but things had changed, and that was all right. Things would change again, and that would be all right too. Sarah had told him so, when she’d finally found him the morning after the storm.

  Then again, she’d also told him to leave the hotel and go back home to Georgia—and he couldn’t do that, could he? No, because he’d made a promise to take care of the place. Not to Sarah, or to the nun, or the Ranger, or the padre. He hadn’t made it to Mrs. Alvarez, or anyone else.

  He’d made it to the Jacaranda Hotel, and he knew what happened when you broke a promise there.

  Table of Contents

  Part One

  Part Two

  Part Three

  Part Four

  Part Five