Mexican Gothic(84)

The gloom, shivering and waiting, like a spider’s web, and them sitting on a silvery bit of silk. The lightest movement would reveal their presence and the spider would pounce on them. Such a dreadful thought, and yet she considered the possibility of entering that cold, foreign space willingly, which she’d never done before.

It terrified her.

But Ruth existed in the gloom, after all, and she wanted to speak to her again. She wasn’t sure how to accomplish that. After Francis left, Noemí lay in bed with her hands at her side, listening to her own breathing, and tried to visualize the young woman’s face as it looked in her portrait.

Eventually she dreamed. They were in the cemetery, she and Ruth, walking among the tombstones. The mist was thick around them, and Ruth carried a lantern, which glowed a sickly yellow. They paused before the entrance to the mausoleum, and Ruth raised the lantern, and they both raised their heads to look at the statue of Agnes. The lantern could not provide sufficient illumination, and the statue remained half in shadow.

“This is our mother,” Ruth said. “She sleeps.”

Not your mother, Noemí thought, for Agnes had died young, as had her child.

“Our father is a monster who comes at night, creeping around this house. You can hear his footsteps outside the door,” Ruth said, and she raised the lantern higher, the light shifting the pattern of lights and shadow, obscuring the statue’s hands, her body, but revealing the face. Unseeing eyes and the lips pressed tightly together.

“Your father can’t hurt you anymore,” Noemí said. Because at least there was that mercy, she supposed. Ghosts cannot be tortured.

But the girl grimaced. “He can always hurt us. He never stops hurting us. He will never stop.”

Ruth turned her lantern toward Noemí, making her squint and hold a hand up to shield her eyes. “Never, ever, never. I’ve seen you. I think I know you.”

The conversation was fragmented, yet it remained more coherent than any other exchange Noemí had conducted with the girl before.

In fact, it was the first time she had the impression she was speaking to an actual person rather than the faint carbon copy of one. But that’s what she was, wasn’t she? A faded carbon copy, the original manuscript long destroyed. One could not blame Ruth if she didn’t make much sense, if she muttered and lowered the lantern and raised it again repeatedly like a wind-up doll.

“Yes, you’ve seen me around the house,” Noemí said, stilling Ruth with a gentle touch on the arm. “I need to ask you a question, and I hope you’ll have an answer. How strong is the bond between the house and your family? Could a Doyle leave and never come back?”

she asked, because she kept thinking about what Francis had told her.

Ruth tilted her head and looked at Noemí. “Father is powerful. He knew something was wrong, sent Mother to stop me…and the others, the others too. I tried to keep my mind clear. I wrote my plan down, concentrated on my words.”

The diary page. Like a mnemonic device? Was that the key to the gloom? Tricking it in such a way? Focus on commands and instructions and let them lead your steps?

“Ruth, could a Doyle ever leave this house?”

Ruth had stopped listening to her; her eyes were glassy. Noemí stood directly in front of her.

“You thought about running away, no? With Benito?”

And the young woman blinked and nodded. “Yes, I did,” she whispered. “Perhaps you could. I thought I could. But it’s a compulsion. It’s in the blood.”

Like the cicadas Francis talked about. I’ll carry him out if I need to, she thought and her resolve grew firmer even if Ruth’s words had hardly been the solid reassurance she’d sought. There was at least a possibility he could be pulled from the grip of Howard Doyle and his noxious house.

“It’s dark here, isn’t it?” Ruth said, looking up at the sky. There were no stars, no moon. Only mist and night. “Take this,” Ruth said and handed Noemí the lantern.

Noemí grabbed it, her fingers curling around the metal handle.

Ruth sat down at the foot of the statue, touching its feet and contemplating it. She lay next to the base of the statue, as if she were about to take a nap on a bed made of mist and grass.

“Remember to open your eyes,” Ruth told her.

“Open your eyes,” Noemí whispered.

When she did, turning her head toward the window, she saw that the sun was out. She was to be married that evening.





24

It occurred in reverse, the farce of a marriage. First the banquet, then the ceremony.

They gathered in the dining room, Francis and Noemí sitting side by side, Florence and Catalina across from the groom and bride, and Virgil at the head of the table. Neither Howard nor Dr. Cummins was present.

The servants had lit many candles, and dishes were piled upon the white damask tablecloth. Wildflowers were crammed into high turquoise glass vases. The plates and the cups that evening were silver, and though carefully polished, they looked very old, older than the silver Noemí had cleaned. They must have used these to feast some four hundred years ago. Perhaps even more. Treasure troves from their vault, carefully placed in crates, just like the dark earth Howard had packed, so that they might reassemble the world where they’d reigned as masters.