Castle of Sorrows

by Jonathan Janz

  Between breaths, Christina said, “You take this very seriously, don’t you?”

  “You think I could charge so much if I didn’t?”

  The hand on her lower back continued to massage, the fingers pushing down the waistband of her silky black shorts.

  “Feels good,” Christina said.

  “Concentrate.”

  She concentrated. After perhaps another minute of this, Elena’s fingers left her skin. Christina opened her eyes and forgot for a moment to mask her disappointment. Elena sat cross-legged in front of her, a knowing smirk on her full lips.

  “We must focus on contacting your son,” Elena said.

  Christina blushed. She wished it were darker in here so Elena could not see how worked up she’d gotten. She hated this feeling, like she was some horny old woman. Was that how Elena viewed her?

  Elena took her hands, said, “It’s all right. I’m used to this.”

  Christina swallowed, pulled her hands away. “I didn’t mean…”

  Elena pushed up to her knees and leaned forward, her lovely face hovering alarmingly nearer. Then her lips were on Christina’s, warm and wet. Christina sat unmovingly, but she didn’t pull away. Elena held the kiss a moment longer, just a hint of tongue playing lightly over Christina’s lips. Then she drew away slightly and stared into Christina’s eyes.

  “It’s natural, okay?” Elena said, smiling broadly. The lovely face only inches from hers, she could smell Elena’s summery breath, could still taste a faint tinge of peppermint on her lips.

  Elena searched her face. “You are all right, no?”

  Christina nodded.

  Elena showed white teeth, sat back. “Good. Now let’s connect with the spirits.”

  Taking Elena’s hands, Christina began to breathe. But the spirits were very far from her mind.

  The music, Ben thought. The confounded music. Of all times for it to start up again, why did it have to be now, when music was the least important thing in the world to him? It was the same thing last summer. The mystery of the island had been deepening, Eddie’s behavior altering subtly with every hour they spent on the Sorrows. Of course, they had come to this place for musical inspiration, and though Ben had found it here, that revelation had not come without a cost. Who knew how differently things might have happened had Ben been less engrossed in the music and more attuned to his best friend’s moods? But Eddie was gone now, and the only thing Ben could do was concentrate on finding his baby girl, who’d been without food or water for…how long now? Ben began to calculate, then forced himself to stop. The math told a dire story, and he already felt bleak as it was. He didn’t need to make matters worse by mourning Julia prematurely.

  An unbroken ceiling of clouds hung over the island like a sooty bonnet. He and Teddy had been forced to move inland about twenty yards or so because they’d run out of sand; the coastline was now a sheer cliff wall against which the waters surged and dashed themselves with untiring masochism. Teddy was afraid they’d miss spotting the boat if they strayed too far from the coast, but Ben pointed out that it would be even more unhelpful for one of them to take a fall from the cliff. So they’d compromised, keeping as close to the cliffs as possible without actually risking life and limb.

  “I thought this island was supposed to be small,” Teddy said. “It feels like I’ve been walkin’ for hours.”

  Ben opened his mouth to answer, but again the melody pulsed through his brain, scattering his thoughts and replacing them with a haunting run of notes, slightly atonal but spellbinding just the same. Ben grimaced, fought to displace the melody, but predictably he remained its slave.

  Teddy eyed him. “You wiggin’ out on me?”

  “It’s nothing,” Ben lied. He had a hard enough time explaining the creative demons to Claire; how could he possibly articulate the sensation to someone who hadn’t the slightest inkling about music?

  “Worried about your girl,” Teddy said.

  Ben nodded, relieved Teddy had opted not to badger him about it. Ahead, the cliffs barred further progress, another rock wall rising straight into the sky. But before they moved inland, they edged out to the lip of the bluff and peered down to make sure the boat wasn’t tucked in some unseen alcove.

  Meanwhile, the music grew more insistent. The melody expressed itself in strings, but it played out an octave lower than most of Ben’s recent stuff. There was something feverish about it, impatient, in this way utterly dissimilar to the music for House of Skin. That one had been Hitchcockian, an interesting amalgam of Bernard Herrmann’s Vertigo score and the eerie foreboding of some of Rachmaninoff. But this song…this melody…

  A higher counterpoint began to overlay the strings. The lower register, he now realized, wasn’t the melody at all but was instead an intricate bass line. Unconsciously, Ben nodded his head to the rhythm, even began to hum it under his breath before he caught himself and bit down on the sound with an agitated grunt.

  “Ben?” Teddy said, an apprehensive edge to his voice. “I need to be worried about you?”

  Ben blinked at him. “I…”

  Teddy nodded impatiently. “I, what?”

  I don’t know how to say it, Ben thought. I don’t know how to tell you what’s happening, except now I’m not so sure it isn’t important—vitally important. Because it isn’t just the music that I’m hearing. It’s what I’m seeing. It’s…it’s…

  Something clicked in his head.

  “The castle,” Ben said.

  Teddy drew back. “Man, what are you—”

  “Now, Teddy. We’ve gotta go back now. They’re moving on us.”

  Teddy frowned. “You don’t know that.”

  Ben averted his eyes, his gaze turned inward. “We’ve been gone too long. They’re coming to finish us.”

  “Man, how can you know that?” Teddy demanded.

  Without answering, Ben turned and set off. To their left was a sharp rise and a thick run of oak trees. There was just enough room between the trees and the rock wall for them to sprint without turning sideways. Teddy was still barking out questions, but Ben had no time for them. He noticed as he ran that the path was verging right, wrapping around the wall like a muddy bracelet. They pounded down through a dip in the path and reached a gradually rising incline. The trail straightened out then, Teddy seemingly too winded to quiz Ben further. Ahead the forest became coniferous, the low spruce boughs encroaching on the strip of dirt and forcing them closer to the rock wall. Ben knifed through the dwindling gap, paying little mind to the sharp spruce needles that left stinging welts and pinpricks of blood on his arms. He bounded up a rise, veered left, then right, the path corkscrewing like some sylvan roller coaster. At last the cliffs gave way to intermittent crags inset along a gradual slope. Ben scampered down the declivity, which tended right and brought them nearer the coast. The rains had picked up again, and now, as the path abandoned the forest for a closer view of the ocean, Ben caught a glimpse of something down the shoreline. He immediately slowed, but moved to the left side of the path. Teddy moved up on Ben’s right, his back to the ocean. Teddy bent over, gasping for air, but he was clearly grateful for the respite.

  “What is it?” Teddy asked, his voice thin and strained.

  “Nothing,” Ben said. “Let’s get there before those bastards do.”

  Ben took off and worried for a moment that Teddy wouldn’t follow him. But soon he did, and for that Ben was very grateful.

  From where Ben had been standing a moment ago, he’d been afforded a view of the beach down below, as well as a small bay. Standing with his back to it as Teddy had been, the detective hadn’t seen what Ben had, but even if Teddy had been facing the same direction, Ben didn’t think he would have glimpsed it. Ben was more than half a foot taller than Teddy, and Ben could just make out a hint of something shiny.

  Dashing down the lane with Teddy just behind, Ben
stored the information away for later use.

  Marvin Irvin’s boat might just be their only means off the island.

  Chapter Eight

  “There’s a song in the tower. It’s music I’ve heard before.”

  Christina opened her mouth to ask a question, but the unnatural appearance of Elena’s face somehow forbade speech. It wasn’t that the medium didn’t look like herself—she did—but it was as though the lovely woman’s ordinary facial expressions had been replaced by someone else’s. It took Christina another moment to realize whose expressions they were.

  But when Elena said, “I’m in the tower. I see them,” Christina knew the expressions belonged to Christina’s son, belonged to Chris.

  Christina forced herself to keep breathing.

  “There’s…there’s a man without a mouth. The man is fused to a pair of others. They’re…oh God. The man is playing the music…the man cannot stop…and—someone is coming up the steps.”

  Christina could make no sense of what the medium was telling her, but she had a fairly good inkling of who was ascending the tower.

  Elena said, “It’s Dad, Dad’s coming. He’s…he’s got a gun. He’s pointing it at me. He’s…”

  Elena began to shake her head slowly, her forehead wrinkling the way Chris’s used to when he was a small child about to bawl. Chris cried often when he was younger, and because Chris’s father viewed this habit as a sign of weakness, it invariably fell to Christina to console him.

  Abruptly, Elena’s eyes opened.

  “What is it?” Christina asked.

  “Your husband,” Elena said.

  “Yes?”

  Elena made a pained face. “You’re sure you want to hear this?”

  “Yes! For goodness sakes, it’s why I brought you here!”

  Elena withdrew her hands, her expression sobering. “Your husband tried to murder your son.”

  Christina could only gape.

  “There’s more,” Elena said.

  Christina waited.

  Elena studied her face a moment, then apparently deciding Christina was suitably prepared, she said, “Your son escaped because of the spirits. One was named Gregory…another was Rosa—your Rosa…”

  Christina felt hives forming on her throat and brought up a hand to cover them.

  “The spirits, they attacked and…tore your husband apart. He died horribly.”

  “Good,” Christina said at once.

  Elena watched her steadily. Then she nodded, frowning at the floor. “Your son then escaped from the tower.”

  Christina drew in shuddering breath. “Then what?”

  “You are ready for this?”

  Christina made a vague gesture. “Of course I’m not ready. How could I be? But tell me anyway.”

  Elena eyed her uncertainly, chewed the corner of her mouth.

  Christina offered her hands, palms up. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

  Elena took her hands, closed her eyes, and began to breathe slowly. Christina followed suit, and it was as Elena had said it would be, a habit now rather than an effort.

  After some time, Elena said, “I am…I am holding a gun on…Gunderson?”

  Christina’s eyes shot open. “Granderson,” she said.

  Elena didn’t react. Christina saw that the tortured childhood-Chris expression had come back into Elena’s face. Breathe, she told herself. You won’t do yourself any good by breaking down now. This isn’t your son; she’s a medium. And she’s about to give you what you came here for. So breathe.

  “I shot him,” Elena said in a tight voice. “I shot Granderson. He’s dying. I…” Elena’s mouth worked for a moment as though she might speak. Then the tortured expression transformed into something hideous, her mouth hinging wider, a mask of inestimable horror contorting her features. She thrashed her head, gasping. She appeared to rise an inch off the floor.

  My God, Christina thought. Levitating.

  Elena screamed, batted at something, and then her Adam’s apple started to bob, her face leaning backward as if to avoid some unseen menace; her hands balled into fists and pummeled something directly before her.

  Christina’s trance broke. “Elena!” She clambered forward, saw with dry-mouthed disbelief that the medium’s whole body was indeed hovering several inches off the ground, was still rising, rising, her head thrashing, a ghastly choking sound issuing from her mouth. Elena’s blonde hair whipped from side to side, her face a livid red, now purple. If Christina didn’t do something, Elena was going to asphyxiate right here in the bedroom. She seized the medium’s feet, which had risen to chest level with Christina, but the small woman rose higher, a horrid bronchial cough barking out of her blue lips. Christina got her around the legs, but they too began to kick and scissor, one knee smashing Christina in the jaw. It broke her hold, sent her crashing sideways into the wall. And when she turned and looked up at Elena she was stunned to see the medium rising eight feet off the ground, her body parallel to the floor. Floating, she now saw, toward the open windows.

  “Oh Jesus no!” Christina gasped, stumbling over and trying to crank the nearest window shut. But Elena’s body kept floating farther down the row of windows, toward the same one, Christina now realized, out of which Rosa had once fallen. And underneath the tempest of horror churning in Christina’s mind she could hear a familiar melody play, one she hadn’t heard since the night Rosa died. Christina raced to the window, climbed up onto the sill, got a hand on Elena’s floating shoulder just as the medium’s body began to breach the invisible barrier between safety and death. She clutched the flesh beneath the woman’s short-sleeved shirt, but the body kept drifting, drifting, her whole torso hovering over open space now. Christina was dragged out with it, now leaning back in the window frame, one hand clutched against the inner sill. They were both going to die, both of them would tumble five stories to their deaths, and beneath the white noise of fright filling her mind, Christina heard “Forest of the Faun,” the song she’d heard that long-ago night when Rosa was being murdered and she, Christina, had done nothing at all to save her.

  Elena’s body went slack and the medium crashed down on her. For a moment Christina thought they would both fall, that the collision would send them plummeting toward the castle lawn. The medium’s limp body flopped back into the room, but Christina hung half in, half out of the window, her upper legs on the sill but her buttocks pressing the downward slanting concrete outside. She had a hand hooked around the inner part of the frame, her torso yawing out over the precipitous drop. She would have screamed had she still possessed the strength, but now, though it was the worst possible moment, she felt herself drained of energy, a kind of resigned torpor shadowing her like a nimbus cloud. She heard Elena coughing and gasping on the floor. Christina’s body slid gradually, inexorably backward, her grip on the frame ebbing to three strengthless fingers. She felt her body going, her thighs sliding over the sill, her fingers losing hold—

  Hands clutched the belly of her tank top, jerked hard. Christina snapped her head up in surprise, stared into Elena’s grimly resolute face. Something of the medium’s resolve seemed to communicate itself to her, roused her from her fatalistic lethargy. She wrenched her shoulders forward—grateful for the yoga and the ab work she’d been putting in—and was able to brace herself on both sides of the frame. Teeth bared, Elena drove her little feet against the wall beneath the casement window, and they were soon tumbling onto the floor, Christina beside the smaller girl, whose body seemed gripped by an uncontrollable spate of coughing.

  She pushed to a sitting position and rubbed the medium’s back. Elena’s body continued to tremor with the raw, croupy coughs. Christina winced and helped Elena sit up, a hand on her back to steady her. Elena’s cough persisted, a mixture of blood and saliva leaking from one side of her mouth.

  “We were so stupid,” Elena muttere
d. “We almost let it claim us.”

  Christina couldn’t seem to find her voice. What was there to say? The medium had saved her life, such as it was. What there was to live for…

  Elena’s coughing slowly dissipated, but her eyes were red-rimmed and watery.

  “It’s okay now,” Christina managed to say. “You saved us.”

  “You saved me first,” Elena said.

  “Deep breaths,” Christina reminded her. “Don’t try to—”

  “Your son was killed by a monster,” Elena said.

  Christina shook her head. “Stephen?”

  “Not your husband. A beast. Something from a nightmare.”

  “You’re not making any sense.”

  Elena tilted her head. “You’re lying.”

  “I don’t—”

  “You’ve seen the creature. I know you have.”

  Christina’s stomach did a slow, sick roll. She thought of the vision she’d witnessed through the peephole. The beast appearing behind Elena…

  She swallowed. “You think that…that creature killed my son?”

  “I know it did.”

  Christina allowed it to sink it. When she regained the power of speech, she said, “What do you propose we do?”

  “We arm ourselves,” Elena said. “We go to Jessie right now and demand weapons.”

  Elena got up, went over and slipped on her shoes.

  Christina watched her. “You know how to use a gun?”

  “No,” Elena said, “but Jessie can show us. Now get up. I think the bad men are coming.”

  In the back hallway, Jessie eyed the women and told herself it was a bad idea. But Chad Wayne was nowhere to be found, and the others had gone off who knew where. Castillo was in bad shape, and besides, she no longer trusted him. Maybe arming these two was the right move.

  But still, she hesitated. “You know you both stand a greater chance of harming yourselves than you do one of Marvin’s men.”