by Gaby Triana
Detached, I watched the crew scamper.
“Bring it all into the house!” Kane shouted through the deluge.
While I’d been caught in many Kahayatle thunderstorms during airboat tours, this one was special. I hadn’t seen it moving in. I was usually adept at telling when it was about to pour, but the raccoon death had distracted me. The ghosts in the woods had distracted me. I wasn’t myself, and that alone put me at unease.
Overhead, the sky boomed, raindrops splashed my sweaty skin and soaked my hair. A mixture of acrid and sweet scents rose from the earth, as rain hit peat moss, activating bacteria, living things from under the earth, even the stench of the dead raccoon through the garbage bag. Everything sprung to life. All I could do was stand there and watch. I loved the panic, felt like I’d seen this scene before in another lifetime long ago.
“Avila!” Linda shouted through the curtain of rain. “Avila, come on!”
Rooted to the spot. Like watching a dream unfold in my head through a different dimension than my own. I heard my name being called, but I couldn’t respond nor spring into action.
Like déja-vu.
One by one, the crew disappeared into Villegas House.
I wouldn’t join them.
Seeking shelter was the last thing on my mind, especially there. The storm infused me with an energy I couldn’t place. Closing my eyes, I heard them—the voices I’d heard earlier. Voices plotting in hushed tones. It frustrated me to know so many things, but not who was talking. The unmistakable sound of an airboat grew in the distance then whizzed by. I couldn’t believe that anyone would be out here boating at this time of night.
“Someone is here,” I said to no one.
I stared straight through the cypress trees to the riverbank.
My God, I felt like I was going crazy, but yes, that had definitely been the sound of an airboat. Were gladesmen out for a nightly hunt? Heading toward the shore where we’d left our airboat tethered, I heard the shouts of the crew behind me trying to coax me to come back. I picked up speed through the needles of rain headed for the riverbank. Several times now I’d been drawn to an area for no apparent reason.
When spongy land slowly gave way to water and my feet became soaked, I spotted our boat tied to a tangle of mangrove roots and squinted to make sure the sound wasn’t our own boat being stolen. I was sure I would hear the motor again, but there were no ripples or wake in the river, or any sign that anyone had been here. Less than twenty-four hours later, and already I was hearing things.
I wanted to be near the investigation—it was why I’d come—but I hadn’t asked for this.
For a sixth sense, a third eye, psychic vision, whatever you wanted to call it, but maybe this was what my mother meant by inviting it in. En maheem, Avila, I could hear her now. You asked for it. Opening myself up was a bad thing. Fine. But how could I make it stop now that I was here?
Take the boat, a voice said.
I could do that easily, but no—God—I wouldn’t. There was no way I could leave these people here stranded on this island to their own devices with a day’s worth of food and no means of getting back. They’d die, not the kind of thing I needed on my conscience.
Without my knowledge of these lands, these people would perish.
“Avila!” The distant shouts snapped me out of my trance.
I was soaked from head to toe through my clothes. It felt damn good. Like awaking from a long cyclical dream out of which I could not escape, a hamster wheel of the neverendingness that was my life. The sounds of airboats dissipated like an echo in a canyon but something new replaced it. There, in the pouring rain surrounded by darkness, the humid woods, and a whole island abuzz with invisible energy came laughter.
My skin erupted into goose bumps. Chills ran through me.
Men’s laughter.
They spoke to each other, the types of things men said when they were in on a joke and you were their female target. The types of things white gladesmen said when you walked into the Winn-Dixie on the edge of town wearing your patchwork skirt down to the floor instead of the shorts and T-shirts their little blond barefoot children wore.
Hey, dirty girl, your mama make you that? Come here.
I shook my head. The rain created a curtain of white noise all around. I shouldn’t have been able to hear the men. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see them. I could run to the house where everybody was hiding from the rainstorm and calling for me, the house I wasn’t supposed to visit, but now it was too late. I could stay out here with the trees that sheltered ghosts of the past wishing to taunt me.
I can give you some real clothes. They’re in my van…
I didn’t have to open my eyes to see them. They lived forever in my mind, as fresh as the day I’d run into them while my mother was cashing a check at the grocery store customer service. Most people were nice, but every now and then, they came out of the woodwork—hateful sons of bitches with no respect for other cultures, as if their nicotine-stained teeth and stringy hair hidden underneath Florida Marlins baseball caps were the finest examples of their kind.
Come on, come to my van. I put in a mattress just yesterday. It’ll be fun…
“Go away,” I gritted my teeth at them. “Go the hell away.”
I hated the fathers. And the children, too, even though they didn’t taunt me. I hated them because one day they would. The hate would be passed on like disease. Why did they have to be rude? I’d never felt hatred for anyone until that day. I’d done a pretty good job of putting the memories away. You had to, or else you couldn’t function. There was no use going around worried what people from other cultures thought of you.
“Leave me alone. Can’t you ever leave me alone?” I muttered.
“Who are you talking to, love?” I felt cold hands gripping my arm and turned to see Linda standing next to me getting soaked. “Come on inside, Avila. Don’t listen to them.”
She understood.
For that, I was grateful. Anyone else would’ve told me I was crazy for talking to thin air, whether from my own mind or another realm. “Yes…okay…” I mumbled, letting Linda lead me away back through the trees toward the clearing where the camp had been but now was mostly empty except for a few plastic bags and Rubbermaid containers.
Still, I looked back twice to make sure the men and their children were gone.
The house gaped at me out of the darkness, and every cell of my soul fought going towards it. I stopped short of the crumbling structure about ten feet, while Kane and others stood at the door beckoning me to come inside. They were alive and drier than I was, but at what expense?
I had to put aside my kid fears and just walk in already, tell myself it was like any other house, and maybe it would become true. If we lied to ourselves enough, eventually we’d make our own reality.
“Come on, Avila, honey. It’s okay.” Linda tugged at my arm. I felt bad that her pretty red hair was now a plastered mop of dark auburn punctuated by light gray roots on top of her head. Her age showed through.
I nodded, staring up at the house.
The rain imbued the energies, didn’t it?
A murder had taken place here. All for what? Over a house? For a spot of land which amounted to an invisible speck on a map? What was it with people fighting for land so damn much? Land didn’t belong to us anyway. We borrowed it, along with time, rented it from Mother Earth.
“God, why is this so hard?” I heard myself say.
“I know, honey. But come on. It may not want us here, but it’s not going to hurt us.” She said that just to get me inside and out of the rain, but I knew it wasn’t true. The thing that came for me in the dark when I was little…that thing wanted to hurt me. I’d spent my life hiding from it.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, just leave her out there if she doesn’t want to come in.”
The voice belonged to Sharon speaking just out of range near the open doorway. She must’ve thought I couldn’t hear her, though I watched the accompanying ha
nd flail to her words like I was a used rag to be forgotten about.
“Catching a cold for trying to help that woman is the last thing Linda needs. Come on, Linda!” Sharon bellowed.
Linda tugged on my arm, and finally, after a series of three quick bolts of nearby lightning in a row, I moved. Not because of the lightning, but because I didn’t want to get the poor woman in trouble, make her look like a fool for helping me out.
“There you go, honey. Come on…” She ushered me up the porch steps and through the front door into the darkest house I’d ever been in my life.
Inside were pine wood walls rotting away underneath a sagging ceiling that leaked with rain in multiple spots. The inside space felt warm, humid, and body-scented from the sweating pores of five individuals. In the middle was a staircase leading up into even darker recesses. To my right was a living room mostly empty except for a wooden cupboard inside which sat cracked old porcelain plates.
A wooden spindled chair sat lonely in the corner. To my other side was another empty room except for another two chairs that matched the one in what I suspected was a dining room. Everyone was scattered across both rooms, running their hands through their hair or fanning themselves with random objects—baseball hats, stapled papers from their belongings, or expired airline tickets. Rain leaked through the ceiling in the corners.
“We shouldn’t be here,” I said.
Everyone looked at me like I was an idiot. Being inside was the very reason they’d come, the whole purpose for the trip.
“We won’t be here for long, Avila,” Kane said. He knew I was afraid of this house. I’d only told him a hundred times the day I met him.
BJ walked up to me and handed me a mostly wet green towel with a few dry spots on it. “Here, for whatever that’s worth,” he said. It occurred to me that I hadn’t heard the tone of his voice before this.
“Thanks.” I took the towel and handed it to Linda, who’d begun coughing, instead so she could dry herself off. I couldn’t shake the feeling of dread inside me, but I told myself it would be over soon.
“Alright.” Kane turned on a flashlight-lantern combo and stood it upright in the middle of the floor before standing and addressing everyone with a big exhale. “Listen up, people. Things are not going well, obviously, and time is money. Looking at the radar is tough because cell service is spotty at best. I don’t think this storm will last long—”
“It won’t,” Quinn interrupted. “Everglades storms are flashes in the pan then they’re over.”
I loved how Quinn had suddenly become the Everglades expert.
“Well, this don’t look like it’s going to be over anytime soon,” Sharon mumbled under her breath. “In fact, it’s getting worse and all our equipment’s gonna go to shit.”
“Our equipment is fine. We came prepared. Watertight cases, plenty of plastic lining. Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Kane said to placate the hostess who had long ago gotten on my nerves.
For her lack of manners? For her brusqueness, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that she kept giving me dirty looks not unlike the ones I’d been reminded of outside with those old memories.
“We knew this could happen before we came, remember? We talked about the rainstorms and how they could put a damper on things, no pun intended.”
Eve, wanting everyone to agree with her husband, as always, sat on the floor looking up at him, nodding, checking the crew’s faces for understanding. “We did. We talked about it.” When her line of view caught mine, she smiled.
I looked away, not used to people being as nice. When I first met her, I thought Eve’s likeability was fake, but now I realized she was real. And she was some kids’ mom, too, which made me like her even more.
“Right. So, my suggestion is we wait here in the house for the rain to stop. Once it does, we film all we can. Alright, Sharon?”
“Assuming the fucking cameras work,” Sharon said.
“Obviously,” Kane replied. “Catch whatever we can on tape, get the hell out of here. If it’s a loss, it’s a loss. This was risky from the beginning, best laid plans, and all that. Now—”
“So, you’re saying we came out all this way for nothing?” Sharon crossed her arms. “Because I don’t think I’m ready to go.”
Nobody said anything. It seemed that nobody would dare. Only Kane, because he was in charge. Or was Sharon in charge?
“It happens, hon,” Kane told her, flipping his palms up.
“Don’t ‘hon’ me, Kane.”
“Okay, what do you want me to do?” Kane bit back.
Sharon scoffed. “Don’t you think we should stop at nothing to get what we want, especially since we’ve already been through so much? I mean, shit. First, the flights were delayed, then we had to pay triple for the damn airboat because nobody was a licensed operator when we rented it. Then Linda here tells us we’re going to DIE, then a fucking raccoon up and flips over. Then, the rainstorm from Hell nearly ruins all our equipment. I mean, we’re here, damn it, let’s just do this.”
From across the room, Quinn nodded. He of the gun agreed they should stop at nothing. That didn’t make me feel any better. Everyone else seemed to have mixed thoughts, from the way they avoided Sharon’s gazes.
“Like I said, we’re going to give it a go,” Kane said as calmly as a man in his position could. “Once it stops raining. But like I said, some gigs are a loss, Sharon. You need to accept that.”
“I don’t need to accept shit, Kane. I came here to find the truth.”
The truth?
I looked at Linda, but she played with a ragged thread hanging from the hem of her shirt. Was it me, or was everyone starting to get on each other’s nerves now that we were inside the house? What was this about the truth? Some cases were a lost cause and Villegas House was one of them.
Kane sucked in a breath, looked at me, then back at her, as though this was not one conversation I was privy to. “I know this episode was your idea, Sharon, but you’re asking me to bypass circumstances. We’ll do what we can, but some houses don’t want to speak with us, and I’m not going to stick around while wild animals get killed and the elements bear down on us just so you can find your answers.”
I agreed wholeheartedly with Kane, though I wanted to know what answers it was that Sharon wanted. “Why the interest in this house?” I asked out of the blue.
Again, all eyes fell on me.
“I mean, most people have never even heard of it, but you talk like it’s meaningful to you. Why?”
“Doesn’t matter, Cypress. Just let it be.”
“Tell me.”
“I told you, let it be!” Blue eyes narrowed and warned me.
I looked at Linda who widened hers at me, as if urging me to do just that—let it go. Did Sharon have a connection to this house? If she did, I wanted to know about it. Hell, I deserved to know about it, considering my grandfather had been killed here. “What do you know about Villegas House?” I asked again.
Sharon whipped her head around at me. “Alright, you know what? The problem isn’t what I know, it’s what I don’t know. So, since it seems we’re going to be losing our time and money here, Kane darling, why don’t we hurry things up then and do what we always do when we’re pressed for time and the spirits won’t cooperate?”
“No,” Eve said, shaking her head. “Absolutely not.”
“Why not?” Sharon asked her. “You know it’s the easiest way when the ghosts don’t want to speak. Let’s do this already.”
“Do what? What is she talking about?” I leaned toward Linda.
“A séance.” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. “She wants me to conduct a séance.”
TWELVE
In all the episodes I’d watched, I hadn’t seen them do a single séance, which was perfectly fine with me. The idea of having one always freaked the heck out of me. A bunch of people sitting around a table, holding hands, inviting the spirits to speak and possibly take over your body? No, thank you.
; Not even would I participate in a séance to talk to my own brother.
What was dead was dead.
Let the spirits rest.
But the only thought skating through my mind at the moment was Uncle Bob and my mom at dinner two weeks ago telling me that, by telling ghost stories on my airboat, I’d be inviting in dark spirits. I didn’t believe it at the time, didn’t buy the connection they were trying to make, and yet here I was two weeks later, sitting crossed legged on the floor of Villegas House listening to Sharon Roswell suggest they hold a séance.
Why was I scared by the thought of one if I hadn’t believed my mother?
The crew looked at Linda and waited for her input. Kane, Eve, Quinn, and BJ all seemed to be in favor of holding the séance if it meant possibly getting out of here faster, and Sharon was, of course, waiting on pins and needles. I thought for sure Linda would object. After all, she knew all about the negative energy associated with this house, so imagine my surprise when she shrugged and shook her head in defeat.
“This is the last time I’ll do this, people.”
“Linda, you don’t have to do this,” I whispered.
She ignored me. “I already told you the spirits don’t want you or anybody in this house. It upsets them, shows them what they can no longer have—a life. But let’s do this and get this over with. Maybe we can be done with it and leave by morning.”
“Sounds like a plan.” Kane clapped in that way he loved to do to get himself motivated.
I couldn’t believe this.
It was almost five in the morning, we hadn’t slept, and now we were about to invite the spirits to speak through a fragile woman. I wouldn’t participate. I couldn’t. When judgment day came for me and my camp asked if I had led this group of non-Indians to our most reviled, feared location, I would admit to taking them here and endure their disappointment, but I could not participate in these rituals.
I would sit nearby and observe from a safe distance, if there were such a thing.