No Rest for the Wicked

by Krystal Jane Ruin

  “I don’t either.” For a moment, I continue to stare into the spot where he disappeared. I still feel his eyes on me, like a cold, slimy film against my neck. Ugh, what does he want?

  “You got it?” Mona asks, eagerness dripping off her voice. She releases my arm and rubs her hands together.

  I pull her vial out of my bag. “You remember how the draughts work?”

  “Always.” Her eyes glitter with mischief. She hands me a wad of bills that smells like spicy incense. “Did you see the new girl?” Mona nods to a pillar on the left side of the room. Kalin is there, smiling wide at rather greasy-looking peddler. “Someone should really help her,” Mona adds, though her tone conveys that she could hardly care less.

  “That’s my roommate.”

  Mona’s eyes widen. “You don’t say? What does she do?”

  “Palm reading.”

  “Well, that’s just fascinating.” She sounds bored, but she smiles. “Well, introduce us. And probably in the nick of time. It looks she’s about to get taken by that blood peddler.”

  A shiver rolls down the back of my neck. We maneuver across the room and get to Kalin just as she’s reaching for a small, darkly tinted bottle with a thick, dark liquid slugging around inside.

  I reach out and pull her arm back to her side. “Don’t touch that.”

  She turns to me, excitement and newness splattered all over her face like invisible glitter. “He said it’s dragon’s blood.”

  “It’s not that kind of dragon’s blood,” I say while Mona laughs into the back of her hand behind me.

  “This is much better,” says the merchant, his voice low and raspy, his face partially hidden behind a hood that’s pulled low over his head. “This tonic is infused with lavender berries. Straight out of the heart of Africa. Good for stress.”

  I ignore him and pull Kalin away from the shadows.

  “What are lavender berries,” Kalin asks.

  “No one knows,” Mona says. She holds out a hand in greeting. “Hi, I’m Mona. I sell voodoo dolls over there.” She points towards the center of the crowded room. “If you have someone you’d like to give a good scare to, or maybe just a good kick, I’m your girl.” She taps me on the shoulder and shakes her vial before stashing it away in the pouch tied around her waist. “Thanks again. Until next time.” She turns with a swish of colorful skirts and weaves her way back to her booth.

  Kalin laughs. “This place is so wild.”

  Tension fills my throat, but I swallow it down and try to smile. “Yes, well, the vendors around the pillars are up to no good, so try to stay closer to the center of the room?”

  “Sure, sure.” She nods, though I’m not entirely sure she heard me. Her eyes are already soaking in the other booths. “What’s safe to eat down here?”

  “This way.”

  She sticks close behind me as I lead the way to Francessa and say “hi” and “how are you” to every other person we pass.

  Francessa comes around her booth when she spots us and pulls me into a tight hug. “You brought a friend?” She looks to Kalin expectantly.

  “I’m Kalin,” she says. “I’m a palm reader.”

  Francessa’s gray-streaked head bobs up and down. “Oh. How nice. I read some palms when I was young.” She motions for us to follow her to her booth. “What do you like to eat, Kalin?” She points to a glass case filled with wrapped sandwiches. “These are all safe. I have nearly everything.”

  While Kalin leans over to inspect her choices, I peer around the room and lock eyes with Shepard within seconds. He smiles and waves, looking perfectly sane and trustworthy. For a split moment, I feel the urge to wave back. Instead, I shake my head and turn away.

  A tiny thread of guilt hums in the back of my mind. He’s been nothing but nice to me. It probably wouldn’t hurt to talk to him for a minute. I turn back to look at him. He’s still staring. And just like that I change my mind and extinguish the guilt. Nothing good hangs out in the shadows.

  I focus on Francessa. She slides a sandwich across the case to me and waves Kalin’s money away at the same time.

  “No, no,” old Francessa says, her smile crinkling the soft skin around her eyes. “Welcome gift.” She pats the top of Kalin’s hand. “Do come back and see us.”

  “Oh, I will,” Kalin says. “Thank you.”

  I nod my thanks to the old woman and drop my sandwich into my bag. “We need to head back.”

  Kalin’s face falls. “Aw, I’m just getting used to things.”

  “You can spend hours in here that feel like minutes.” I start for the escalators. “But what do you think?”

  “This place is great!” Kalin falls into step beside me as we clear the crowd. “I mean, it was a little scary at first, but it’s kind of fun, you know. It’s like being at a carnival. The old kind you read about in books or see on television, with the freaks and magicians and those people who can twist their bodies into pretzels. You come down here every day?”

  “Almost.”

  “Are they open at night? Now that your curfew is lifted, maybe we can come down here after work?”

  Being down here at night is the last thing I want. As much as it got on my nerves to have a curfew at my age, I’d much rather stay inside anyway. The shadows are always more active at night.

  I stop in my tracks. Shepard blocks the escalator and leans innocuously against the metal handrail that runs up beside it. He gazes down, as if watching something slither across the floor, but when I look down, I see nothing but the gray, sterile laminate.

  “Who’s that?” Kalin tugs on my arm, her neck craned towards him in interest.

  My jaw tenses. Who thought it was a good idea to make only one exit out of this place?

  “Tatum!” Kalin hisses.

  I clear my throat, and Shepard raises two eyes to my face.

  “Hey,” he says.

  “We need to go,” I say.

  “Can we talk?” he asks.

  “I can’t. I have an appointment.” Not that I’m eager to get to it, but it’s better than watching him stare at me.

  “It’s important.” His tone is cordial enough, but there’s something heavy in his eyes. They focus intently on mine, unwavering.

  “I really do have to go.”

  Kalin checks the time on her phone. “Shit, yeah we do!” She gives Shepard a polite smile, and he begrudgingly slides out of the way.

  “Soon, then?” he asks as we squeeze past him.

  “Sure,” I say, though I have no intention of ever following through.

  We climb the moving steps like a staircase, and once we reach the top, Kalin glances back down to Shepard, who’s watching us leave.

  “He’s a tad intense.” She wrinkles her nose. “And did he smell a little like…”

  “Yes,” I answer without waiting for her to finish.

  “Why?”

  “He roots around in dumpsters. That’s what he sells down here.”

  “Ah.” She takes a deep breath like she’s trying to clear the faint scent from her nostrils. “But still. He looks clean.” She surveys the balcony as we head for the exit. “What does he want to talk to you about?”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Does he want one of those things you sell down here?”

  My steps slow. Funny, the thought hasn’t even crossed my mind. And it should have. Because that’s why most people approach me.

  “I don’t know…” I try to recall the look on his face. Did he look distressed? Desperate? Tired even?

  Kalin gently pushes me forward. “Tessandra’s going to blow a vein when she finds out I went down here with you!” She laughs.

  I try to return her smile, but I can only hold it for a second. Because now the guilt is back. I’m so busy being creeped out and paranoid, and he probably just wants an energy tonic or something.

  Nera gives us both a warm goodbye on our way out, and she tells Kalin that she hopes to see her again soon.

  “I hope so, too,” K
alin calls back.

  Back outside of the mausoleum, she turns to me and grins. “He’s kind of cute though, don’t you think? Dumpster-diving guy?”

  This time I do smile. “I haven’t noticed.”

  “So you say.” She knocks her shoulder into mine.

  “I’m busy.”

  Kalin laughs.

  No, not busy. Preoccupied. Obsessing. Watching the shadows, waiting for them to move, waiting for a dark hand to reach out to me.

  Kalin’s chipper voice breaks into my thoughts. She tells me about all the forms Nera made her sign. “Did you have to sign so many documents?” She chatters on ahead without waiting for a response.

  We dive into our sandwiches as we walk, and even with her company, I find my eyes trained to the shadows cast by trees and parked cars, and nearly everything. I even watch my own shadow strolling along beside me.

  In just a few minutes, I’ll be back in Renali’s office, forcing myself to face the past, for what? To prove something to Tessandra?

  Anxiety patters against my chest. I probably won’t see anything anyway. I just have to try. Or act like I’m trying. Two more hours until it’s over and we can forget the whole thing. In just a few more months, I’ll have my freedom, I hope, and then I can do whatever I want.

  Chapter Nine

  Silence hangs in the blue-tinted office like a cloud heavy with rain. Any second now, it will open up and pelt me, and there will be nothing I can do about it.

  “How did you feel about your father,” Renali asks.

  I shift my eyes away from the blue light. She watches me with the sharp, judging gaze of a hawk.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I ask.

  “How did you feel about him?”

  I shrug and resume staring at the wall. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know? Wasn’t he violent?”

  I look at her again. “Did Tessandra tell you that?”

  “Wasn’t he?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Renali sighs and leans in closer to me. “I saw the bruises on your mother myself. She told me what he did.”

  “I don’t remember.” If she was covered in bruises, I doubt it was my father who put them there.

  Renali narrows her eyes. “Do you remember him shouting?”

  “He didn’t shout.” At least not other than the one time. The last time I heard him say anything at all.

  “No?” Skepticism lines her brows.

  I start to sit up, and she pushes me back down into the cushions before I can get my head off the stiff over-stuffed pillow.

  “What do you remember?”

  “He wasn’t violent.”

  “Then where did your mother get those bruises?”

  The past is a steel wall, reinforced with iron locks and chains. “I don’t know. My father wasn’t violent.” How many times do I have to say that?

  “Where did the bruises come from, Tatum?”

  “I don’t know! Someone else. Why are you asking me this?”

  “The nature of your father’s death was so…different from everyone else’s.”

  “Okay.” This was a mistake. I try to sit up again, and again she pushes me back down.

  “How did you feel about your father?”

  I breathe out in frustration. “He was boring. I only remember thinking that he was boring. He didn’t do anything. He worked nights. He should have been at work that night…”

  Renali’s back straightens. “But?”

  “Um, he didn’t go out.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  She pinches her lips together and nods. “Tatum, I need you to close your eyes.” Her voice takes on a soothing quality that I’m not used to hearing from her. “I’m asking you about your father because I want you to focus on him as I speak to you. I want you to focus on him because it was his blood covering your hands that night.”

  My heart jerks behind my ribs, but I close my eyes, and though I try not to, I picture my father—average height, slim, a short beard, black curls covering his head. He had really thick hair. Shiny. It’s what my mom said she liked best about him.

  “Good.” Renali’s tone is smooth and calming. “How did you feel about him?”

  Irritation flares up in my chest, but I focus on the only clear memory I have of him. I was five or six or seven, I don’t know. But that afternoon in the park was the first time I saw the unnatural movement in the shadows.

  My mother is playing in the sandbox with my sister several yards away. My father pushes me on a swing.

  Movement in the trees catches my attention, and my eyes focus on the tangle of branches above my head. An unformed and shadowy face stares back at me. It waves a shapeless hand and whispers my name. I grow hysterical at once, breaking the peaceful silence with my broken screams. My father stops the swing and kneels down in front of me.

  “What are you going on about?” he asks.

  I wave a pointing finger erratically at the smoky shapes. “There are faces up there! They’re talking to me.”

  He clenches his jaw and digs his flat fingers hard into my skinny arms.

  “Listen to me,” he says roughly, shaking me. “Don’t you ever let me hear you say that crazy shit again.”

  “I hated him,” I say to Renali. A shudder wracks through the center of my body. “I hated him because my mom hated him. She would tell my sister and me over and over again that she just wanted to breathe. That he wouldn’t let her breathe.”

  “What did you see,” Renali asks. “Did she seem unhappy to you?”

  “She started leaving the house at night. She would leave my sister and me alone.”

  “How old were you?”

  I push against the steel wall to find the answer, but it won’t budge. “I really don’t remember.” I don’t remember…or I don’t want to remember? In the back of my mind, I see myself in the living room of our bungalow. I can’t be more than ten, which would make my sister nine.

  We huddle under the window, watching our mom get in a lime-green convertible with some guy. I can’t see his face. Just the back of his head—dark, greasy hair—thick, hairy arms. She looks so happy as he drives away.

  “Tatum? What are you seeing?”

  I don’t say anything. I just keep staring out of that window in the past, looking into the trees around us and seeing the shadows slither down the trunks like lizards.

  A gasp escapes my throat.

  “Tatum?”

  Without any permission from me, my mind fast forwards me three years.

  My father stayed home from work because he found out from one of the neighbors that my mom was leaving us alone all night. We had been hanging out in the street around dusk, and they had driven us back to an empty and dark bungalow.

  I try to fight my way out of the memory, but it pulls me deeper into the current of the past, so deep that even after I open my eyes it still surrounds me from every angle.

  “They’re stronger than you give them credit for,” my mom argues, “I thought they were old enough to take care of themselves.”

  “And look where your reckless thinking has led,” my father says, his voice low and tight with controlled rage. “They are children. And you’ve been leaving them here to fend for themselves? For how long? How long? Years?”

  Shaina turns to me from her twin bed across the room, her eyes, identical to mine, wide with worry. They never fight.

  I slide from my bed and pad to the door. I press my palms and ear against the dark, painted wood.

  Mom is sobbing now. “She has guardians. They won’t let anything happen to—”

  “Shut up, Diamah. Shut up about your theories and your voodoo and your useless visions. Look what your recklessness has done to our family. We have to rip our girls away from their home, from their friends. And do what? Raise them underground like lepers?”

  “We have to,” Mom says, her voice pleading and desperate. “You don’t under
stand. They’ll look everywhere for me!”

  There’s a few moments of silence. Then Father says, “That’s why you’re staying here and I’m taking them with me.”

  “You can’t take my children from me!”

  “I have no choice,” Father says, his voice low and seething. “You have left me with no choice.”

  “I’m sorry.” My mother’s voice breaks as she dissolves into another round of sobs. “But you can’t do this to them. I don’t want them growing up denying their gifts like I have. I don’t want them to be normal. You’ll suffocate them, like you’ve been suffocating me!”

  Shaina creeps up behind me in the dark. “What’s going on?”

  I can only shake my head. I turn to look out the window between our beds. The trees are empty tonight. Empty and silent.

  “We don’t have time for this,” my father says, his voice laced with disgust. “Your excuses and your apologies mean nothing.”

  “Please,” Mother cries after him. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to get my daughters and get them out of here before it’s too late.”

  “Cas, please! I can protect them. Let me protect my daughters!”

  The next time our father speaks, his voice is just a few feet down the hall from our bedroom.

  “You can’t fix what is broken beyond repair. This relationship. Your children’s future. Everything is broken and ruined because you are selfish. And you are reckless. And you have brought those creatures to our home, knowing how dangerous they are.”

  Shaina and I lock eyes.

  “Creatures,” she mouths.

  I shrug and move across the room to the window. A rapidly moving bright light cuts through the dark, winding, tree-lined path to our house.

  “Please, just let me try,” my mother begs.

  “You’ll only make things worse,” Father says, now sounding exhausted and defeated. “As if it could even get any worse than this.”

  The lime-green convertible, filled with men, comes to a screeching halt at the top of our driveway, flicking bits of rock in every direction. Several hit the side of the house.

  “Shaina,” I whisper. “Get away from the door.”