Mexican Gothic(57)

The letter, however, was not her cousin’s as she’d thought. It was older, the paper brittle, and it seemed to have been torn from a journal. It was not dated, although it seemed to be the page of a diary entry.

I put these thoughts down on paper because it is the only way to remain firm in my resolve. Tomorrow I may lose courage but these words should anchor me to the here and now. To the present moment. I hear their voices constantly, whispering.

They glow at night. Perhaps that might be endurable, this place would be endurable, if not for him. Our lord and master. Our God. An egg, split asunder, and a mighty serpent rising from it, expanding wide its jaws. Our great legacy, spun in cartilage and blood and roots so very deep. Gods cannot die. That is what we have been told, what Mother believes. But Mother cannot protect me, cannot save any of us. It is up to me. Whether this is sacrilege or simple murder, or both. He beat me when he found out about Benito but I swore there and then that I would never bear a child nor do his will. I believe firmly this death will be no sin. It is a release and my salvation. R.

R, a single letter as a signature. Ruth. Could this truly be a page from Ruth’s journal? She didn’t think Catalina would have faked such a thing, even if it bore an uncanny resemblance to the rambling letter her cousin had penned. But where would Catalina have found it? The house was large and old. She could picture Catalina walking the darkened hallways. A loose floorboard lifted, the elusive diary fragment hidden beneath the wooden plank.

Head bent over the letter, she bit her lips. Reading this scrap of paper with those eerie sentences could make anyone start believing in ghosts or curses or both. Of course, she’d never given credence to the idea of things that go bump in the night. Fantasies and fancies, that’s what she told herself. She’d read The Golden Bough, nodding at its chapter on the expulsion of evils, she’d curiously leafed through a journal detailing the connection between ghosts and sickness in Tonga, and been amused by a letter to the editor of Folklore detailing an encounter with a headless spirit. She was not in the habit of believing in the supernatural.

This is proof, Catalina had said. But proof of what? She laid the letter on the table and smoothed it out. She read it again.

Put the facts together, you fool, she told herself, chewing on a nail. And what were the facts? That her cousin spoke about a presence in this house, including voices. Ruth also described voices.

Noemí had heard no voices, but she’d had bad dreams and sleepwalked, which she hadn’t done in years.

One could conclude this was a case of three silly, nervous women.

Physicians of old would have diagnosed it as hysterics. But one thing Noemí was not was hysterical.

If the three of them were not hysterical, then the three of them had truly come in contact with something inside this house. But must it be supernatural? Must it be a curse? A ghost? Could there be a more rational answer? Was she seeing a pattern where there wasn’t any? After all, that’s what humans did: look for patterns. She could be weaving three disparate stories into a narrative.

She wanted to talk to someone else about this because otherwise she was going to wear the soles of her shoes off walking back and forth in her room. Noemí slid the paper into her sweater’s pocket, grabbed her oil lamp, and went to find Francis. He had been avoiding her for the past couple of days—she assumed Florence had also given him the speech about chores and duties—but she didn’t think he’d slam the door in her face if she went to him, and, anyway, it wasn’t as if she was going to ask him for a favor this time. She simply wished to chat. Emboldened, she sought him out.

He opened his door, and before he could properly greet her she spoke. “May I come in? I need to talk to you.”

“Now?”

“Five minutes. Please?”

He blinked, unsure; cleared his throat for good measure. “Yes.

Yes, of course.”

The walls in his room were covered with colorful drawings and prints of botanical specimens. She counted a dozen butterflies carefully pinned under glass and five lovingly painted watercolors of mushrooms, their names in tiny print beneath them. There were two bookcases laden with leather-bound volumes and books stacked on the floor in tidy piles. The smell of weathered pages and ink permeated the room, like the perfume from an exotic bouquet.

Virgil’s room had a sitting area, but Francis’s did not. She could see the narrow bed with a dark green coverlet and a richly carved headboard festooned with leaves, the pervasive motif of the snake eating its tail at the center. There was a matching desk, covered with more books. On a corner of the desk, an empty cup and a plate. That is where he must have his meals. He didn’t utilize the table in the middle of the room.

As she walked next to it, she realized why: the table was covered with papers and drawing instruments. She looked at the sharpened pencils, the bottles of india ink, and the nibs of pens. A box with watercolors, the brushes sitting inside a cup. There were many charcoal drawings, but others were inked. Botanical sketches, the lot of them.

“You’re an artist,” she said, touching the edge of a drawing showing a dandelion while she held the oil lamp with her other hand.

“I draw,” he said, sounding abashed. “I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you. I’ve finished my tea.”

“I despise the tea they brew here. It’s terrible,” she said, looking at another drawing, this one of a dahlia. “I tried my hand at painting once. I thought it made sense, you know? My father being in the dye and paint business, after all. But I was no good. Plus, I like photos better. They capture the thing in the moment.”