by Gaby Triana
I screamed, keenly aware of how odd my cry must’ve sounded.
How could I explain that while yes, I cared for my fellow human, at the moment, he’d been a murderer of innocent lives? That I felt he deserved his death for callously discarding infants of a majestic endangered Florida cat? A mother watching her children die was still a mother watching her children die, regardless of species.
I looked at Kane, tears blurring my eyes, but then I saw Sharon holding the shotgun. She pushed the butt of the gun into the peat and shot me a glare. The gators dispersed to the edge of the water.
“Don’t give me that look. I had to do it.”
Florida panthers were shy and wouldn’t hang around to torment us. Her reasons for doing so were now gone. I said nothing to Sharon, only watched through an excruciating headache, as Kane and Eve crept closer to survey the carnage. Eve covered her face, unable to bring herself any closer. She stepped into a small clearing and vomited.
I hopped out of the tree, doubling over for breath.
“What do we do now?” Sharon slung the shotgun over her shoulder. I didn’t feel any safer with her wielding it than I had with Quinn.
“Like I have a plan? This is a nightmare.” Kane coughed into his fist.
“Well, we can’t just leave Quinn here,” Sharon said. “The gators will get him.”
“We can’t bring him into the house either.”
“Why not?”
“Sure, let’s start a body pile, Sharon. Why not?” Kane scoffed. “Great idea. I love the smell of rotting flesh in the morning. Doubling the scent will draw them in faster. Hell to that. We have no choice but to move on. Our kids expect us to come home. I have to get my wife back. Do you see her? Look at her.” He pointed to a distraught Eve, sobbing and losing control of her breathing.
“We all have to go home, Kane. We all have lives, but what do we tell Amy when she asks where her husband’s body went?”
“We tell her the truth—that we had to leave him behind. There’s only so much we can do. End of story. Help me cover them, at least.” Kane had begun picking up underbrush, dead leaves, and foliage and carried them over to cover Quinn’s feet and legs. One of his shoes had come off, blood seeping out the ankle of his pants.
I staggered over to help Kane, my headache blinding me. I crouched, picked up armfuls of dried leaves and dumped them on top of Quinn’s torso, which was partially crushed by the weight of the large animal. About twenty yards away, the remaining gators basked in the sun after the warm meal.
“What about you, Cypress?” Sharon watched us. “What do you guys do when stuff like this happens?”
By you guys, she meant my tribe, my people, and her assumption that Miccosukee folks often had to dispose of people expired in the wild due to their idiotic choices was unacceptable. I wouldn’t give her the pleasure of a response. All my life, I’d heard questions like these, designed to provoke. Most of the time, I stood against them, but today, I wasn’t as strong.
“We dance around the body and pray to the panther gods,” I said without a hitch.
“Do you, really?”
“Idiot,” I muttered under my breath.
I thought of my mother and grandmother. Even Uncle Bob, as annoying as he could be, wasn’t the kind to fight back with words, but if Sharon kept this up, this attitude of supremacy, linked with the stress devastating us at the moment, it wouldn’t be long before I had no choice but to kick her ass.
“Very funny,” Sharon said, taking off toward the house. “Come on, Eve. Let’s find you some water.”
This. This was the dark spirit’s influence. All of it. This quarreling. It wanted us to argue and turn against each other. It wanted us to fail. What it didn’t realize was that we wanted to get the hell out of here just as much as it wanted us out, but now our chances of doing that were even slimmer than before.
Once Kane and I covered up the bodies, he headed to the house while I stayed outside, unwilling to go inside. I’d have to eventually—the afternoon rains were on their way again—but for now, I would only sit outside and ground myself. If I got too close to Sharon, I’d turn into someone I wasn’t. And with weird energies affecting us, possibly even causing the tragic events of the day, I didn’t trust myself. When Sharon had fired that shotgun, I’d wanted to rip her throat out, and nobody wanted that.
Least of all Sharon.
My headache hammered, a combination of stress and dehydration. For an hour I’d been hearing Eve sobbing inside the house, her husband consoling her, and Sharon arguing with Kane about whether or not he should leave to go find help. I heard them in a detached fog of head pain, like listening from behind a wall from another realm.
I couldn’t believe what a massive fail this expedition had been. How it had deteriorated from bad to worse. Couldn’t believe I hadn’t listened to my own intuition.
All my life, my instincts had kept me safe, even at the expense of others. If that weren’t true, my brother would still be alive today. Why hadn’t I listened now? The disappointment that awaited me at home would be unbearable and possibly insurmountable.
I wouldn’t be surprised if my family asked me to leave.
To make things worse, I couldn’t stop the invisible energies from surrounding me. Facing the house, I could see the aura Linda had talked about, the gunmetal gray atmosphere that surrounded it like a straitjacket. I felt a deep pain between my eyes like my forehead ripping open. In my soul, I knew it was more than a headache—it was gut instinct coming back to taunt me like I hadn’t had enough already.
A full-blown attack on my psyche ensued, and I could do nothing to stop it.
I heard crying and arguing, only this time it wasn’t Sharon and Kane. It was two other people, and I saw them clearly. An older gentleman on the steps of the house, wearing white pants and a white shirt to deflect the heat. He sported a thick, dark mustache and held a cigar clenched between his teeth. A woman collapsed against the steps in a long light-colored skirt stained with deep red. She cried into her knees, dark hair spilling onto the steps.
I wanted to look away but found myself riveted.
“He shot her,” she said. “Just…shot her. For no reason, amor. Oh, Gregory. I couldn’t do anything to help her.”
“Why didn’t you stop him?” the man demanded, nervously chewing on his cigar.
“How would you expect me to stop him? You mean to suggest I could have prevented this?” Her voice sounded irrational and wild, the voice of a woman who’d seen too much and could never be whole again.
“Darling, if this ever happens again, you take the rifle and meet them outside with it. Or better yet, alert me to the problem and I’ll do it!” He shouted at her. “Now we have to find help. Come and assist. We have to get her to a hospital before she bleeds to death.”
The woman bawled, blubbering about everything being so easy for her husband, because clearly, he had all the answers. She sobbed against the porch railing, while the man kicked a column and disappeared inside the house to fetch his things.
I blinked and tried to shake the vision. I was dealing with enough in present day. But when I reopened my eyes, the ghosts were still there, and there was Villegas House in its earlier days—pretty and cleaned up. Its inhabitants were in a world of hurt. A field of negative energy hovered over them, influenced them, ran unwanted thoughts through their minds. Curiously, the house’s aura was gray even back then.
It hadn’t turned dark because of the events taken place here.
It’d always been dark.
Something about this island, about this spot, made it that way.
The man I assumed was Rutherford ran out of the house with a bag over his shoulder, preparing to tell his wife something about Brigitte who I saw was lying inside on a bed. That was when another man appeared from the water’s edge, along with a little boy of about ten years old. The man was dressed in my tribe’s traditional colors, his long hair tied into a long ponytail. The child beside him looked familiar.
/> Billie. But that was impossible.
He greeted Rutherford and Elena and asked to know what was going on. He’d heard rumors in the camp that continued arguments existed between two families out here and wanted to know how he could help. As a tribal leader of the Miccosukee, ending conflict was his main concern.
My heart pounded inside my chest.
“Grandfather?” Night after night, I’d seen him in my photos. I’d spoken to him and told him about my woes, and now here he was, real enough to almost reach out and touch him.
Rutherford explained that his assistant had been injured and was lying inside the house. His wife had witnessed the senseless attempt at murder, committed by one of the warring brothers, though he wasn’t sure which, and he was about to take her back to the city.
“You should not have come here,” Rutherford said with a grimace.
“I came because a mediator was needed,” Grandfather replied.
“You did so at your own peril. This island is good for no one.” Rutherford rushed into the house. From the moment they’d arrived two years before, terrible things had happened, he explained. Arguments with his wife when they had always enjoyed a peaceful marriage. Animals left dead on their doorstep and around the property as a warning to get out. The gladesmen brothers were possessive of the home their father built, a home without a deed, one he had abandoned of his own free will.
The house was fair game, he said. It’d been empty, abandoned.
My grandfather explained how Roscoe Nesbitt had meant to raise his family there, but they hadn’t been able to live here long. The house had been cursed. It was understandable that the Nesbitt sons would feel possessive of the home.
“Well, he was right,” Rutherford said. “Because cursed is how I feel.”
Then he asked a favor. Would my grandfather be able to stay and take care of his wife and the other biologist, Peter, while he traveled with the injured Brigitte?
“I can do that,” my grandfather replied.
The little boy tugged at his arm, as if to argue against staying, but I sensed that my grandfather had brought him as a buffer, hoping his presence would force the two parties to act respectfully and peacefully.
Things moved quickly after that.
At times, it was like watching a movie playing out in front of my eyes, step by step. My grandfather’s gaze, at one point, seemed to burn right through me, as though I had caused the problems here. I felt so ashamed, I had to look away. At other times, the blurry visions shifted quickly, like film on fast-forward, and one moment later, Brigitte had been loaded onto my grandfather’s dugout canoe while Rutherford pushed off, on his way.
The ghosts moved about at will. At times, they hovered in front of my face, their eyes dark and faces gaunt.
Rutherford’s words as the boat drifted down the river: “Keep a wary eye out, old man,” he called out. “This island changes you.”
My grandfather watched him leave, entered the house, and a moment later, the video in my mind’s eye fast-forwarded again then flew backwards. And back. And back in time again. Suddenly, the front yard was covered in still, bleeding bodies. Dozens of them. Some wore traditional Seminole colors, others wore U.S. uniforms of the old days.
They’d been killed in battle, because they’d refused to leave their land and relocate west to Oklahoma. They’d resisted force, resisted bullies. As a result, death had come to these lands. They’d been promised safe haven but the Seminoles knew it was a lie to get them to vacate. In the end, they knew their way of life would never be the same again as long as these foreigners were here to stay.
When I blinked, they were all gone, only a handful of dead lay scattered across the peat moss. One of them was my grandfather. Three other men lay sprawled in poses of sudden death, two I recognized from the woods. They were buried here, all of them. The energy here was intense because they had not rested in peace.
Standing, I shook my head and squeezed the visions from my mind.
When would it ever end? I was ill-equipped. The wrong person to be shown visions of the past. Never had I wanted to be home so much, living my ordinary life instead of this.
Off to the side was a dead body, dark eyes wide open, face and neck bloated and puffy. From the reddish hair, I knew it was Linda, though she’d been decomposing a long time. Her skin was gray, black, and mottled. Slowly, she sat up and looked at me with expressionless eyes, as spidery cracks spread all over her rotting face. She spoke straight to my soul.
Stop fearing your visions, Avila. Listen to them.
Her putrid body collapsed back onto the ground, her head snapped off, and my scream echoed through my mind before my world turned black.
EIGHTEEN
Rotted planks of wood, grains of sand and dirt, and deep grooves covered the wooden floor. It was raining again. And screw my life, I was inside the house again, the house that wanted to kill us. Water dripped in through the ceiling, as someone twisted my face and poured a small capful of fresh rain into my mouth.
“You fainted.” Eve’s face came into view. “Also, you’re dehydrated.”
My tongue and throat felt dry, and my forehead felt like it had seized up. Suddenly, I remembered the visions. The battleground, the Seminole, the dead bodies from 1967. I’d suffered another psychic attack, only this one had been mammoth. For what felt like hours, I’d traveled through time in this very spot. Floating above it, not really there but witnessing it just the same.
I had smelled the burning scents of dry land, the sulfuric smoke of warfare.
I’d seen my grandfather, the little boy that could’ve been Billie in modern times but was impossible since he hadn’t been alive back then. I tried sitting up but my head exploded into a field of stars.
Eve held me down gently. “Don’t try to get up. You hit your head out there. See?” She swiped my temple and showed me half-dried blood on her fingertip.
The house smelled like shit. It had to be Linda’s body. We couldn’t keep her here much longer or her decomposition would take an ugly turn with all this heat and humidity. At this point, there was no guarantee we could bring her back either and may have to cover her with dry grass just like we had Quinn.
Two were dead.
Hard to believe since just yesterday, we’d arrived bright and early and tried to make a day out of this production. Less than twenty-four hours later, it had all taken a turn for the worse. It made me wonder which of us would be next and if we’d ever make it out of here. Shock wore off, replaced by anger, exhaustion, hunger. I thought of BJ. If I ever saw that asshole again, I would surely kill him with my own hands.
My nostrils flared from the rage running through me. I had to look up at Eve’s feminine features to remember that not everyone in the group had turned out to be a jerk. Not everyone thought only of themselves. Though Eve could sometimes drown in a glass of water, at least she had a nurturing side to her.
“Shh…it’s okay, Avila. Keep sleeping. We’re figuring out a plan to get out of here.”
I couldn’t sleep. And that plan better present itself quick.
Because behind her, hovering from the ceiling came a dark mass that swirled but wouldn’t take shape. The core, the entity that had spoken through Linda was making its way toward us. Right now, it watched us, observed, attempted to intimidate us, made me feel that rage, even as the others were oblivious to its presence.
I closed my eyes against it. Somehow I had to fight its power over me. Kane and Sharon were arguing again at the far end of the room, a pissing match to drive anyone crazy.
“The moment the rain stops, I’m out of here,” Kane lashed out. “I don’t care how far I have to walk, but I have to find a cell signal.”
“Your phone is dead, Kane.”
“I’ll take Avila’s. It has 5% left. For all we know, the edge of cell service might only be a mile away, and we’re here all worried for no reason. I have to at least try.”
“So, you’re just going to leave three women alone in th
is house.”
“No, you can all come with me.”
“It’s not safe, babe,” Eve said, eyes brimming with tears. For a woman who cried a lot, she held on pretty strongly. Maybe that was the secret. “There could be gators or other panthers. Snakes, wild hogs…” She slapped at her leg. “Mosquitos, rain, lightning…”
“Baby, what do you want me to do? Sit here and pray and hope to be found? That might never happen. By the time any one of our families realizes we’ve been missing and calls authorities, we could be dead. I can’t let that happen.”
The dark shape hovering near the ceiling still watched us. Listened. Then, it floated down and swirled near Sharon and Kane. Sharon slammed her hand against the wall, vibrating the weak integrity of the inner wall. “Damn it. There’s no way out of this. We’re not thinking!”
“Like hell we’re not thinking, Sharon!” Kane shouted in her face. “If you think you can do better, then by all means, suggest something. But I haven’t seen you come up with a single solution to this situation but you sure as hell are full of criticism!”
“Stop! Can’t you guys stop arguing for one minute?” Eve’s tears squeezed out of her lids and landed on my face. She continued feeding me small sips of water, as though the action itself were keeping her sane.
Kane rushed over and squatted next to his wife. He drew her face into his hands and kissed her hard and full of determination on the lips. “I’m sorry, but what kind of man would I be if I stayed and did nothing? I have to go find help and I have to do it while I still have energy.”
“Then I’m coming with you.”
Kane took his wife’s hand. “Right now, we can’t go anywhere. But the minute this rain stops, we leave. I’m going to try and doze while I can to save up energy.”
The thought of staying with Sharon, just me and bitch-face alone in this house while the Parkers went on a mission to find civilization was not doing my headache any favors. I was too weak to speak my mind, mentally and physical exhausted, emotionally drained and channeling a storm of anger. I hated the thought that now I was one more problem for these people to have to handle.