The Hacienda(69)

Somewhere in the house, a door slammed.

I wrenched myself awake. In this house, in San Isidro, I sucked in lungfuls of air crisp and free of smoke. But that air crackled. It was alive, alive with the fey energy of kindling about to catch.

Another door slammed. Closer, this time.

My heart echoed the act against my ribs.

There was no one in the house. No one but myself and Rodolfo, who turned in his sleep, murmuring something unintelligible.

Slam.

I was going to die in this house. The knowing swept through me, heavy with grief, cold and oracular as the whispered words of a saint.

San Isidro was my tomb.

But not tonight.

I threw the blankets off my legs. The room was black as the Devil’s shadow. I could not see my hands before me as I pawed desperately for matches. Two strikes; light spat into being. My reflection peered back at me as I held flame to wick.

Yellow flesh peeled away from my face, dry as parchment. Like the corpse at the foot of the stairs, it stretched too thin, revealing the hollows of my eyes and a line of too many teeth stretching back to my ear.

I shut my eyes. It was a vision, like the night of the failed exorcism; it could not hurt me.

Or could it?

Ana Luisa was dead, her heart stopped by fright. Andrés was snatched from the air and flung against the wall of the green parlor. In the capilla, the blood on his face did not vanish. Injury inflicted by the house did not vanish like the visions as dawn streaked the skies above San Isidro’s roof. Death would not dissipate like a nightmare.

I stood and stepped toward the doorway. Reached for the handle, hands shaking. I did not care if Rodolfo woke.

If I stayed, this house would kill me.

I opened the door and fled.

Darkness clawed at me; cold hands yanked my hair, pawed my nightdress. Drumming erupted beneath my bare feet, thundering through the floor and following me to the head of the stairs. Unseen hands planted on my shoulders. Cold as ice. Hard as death.

With a powerful shove, they pushed me down the stairs.

The world spun; the candle went flying. Was this how I died? I flung out my arms to slow myself, but cold hands forced me down, down toward the flagstones with steely determination. Poor Do?a Beatriz, fell down the stairs. Shattered her skull. Spilled her brains everywhere. Poor Do?a Beatriz, such a tragic accident . . .

Not tonight.

Anger caught light in my ribs. I curled myself into a ball as if I had been thrown by a horse: knees to chest, elbows tucked in, hands curled over my ears.

I caught the flagstones forearms first, then rolled. Cold air stung my grazed elbows as I sprang to my feet and stumbled to the door.

Beatriz, Beatriz . . .

I wrenched the door, almost pulling my arm out of its socket. It did not move. Yet it was not locked. I could see it was not locked, but it would not open.

Cold enveloped me like a wet cloak, covering my nose, my mouth, smothering me. I clung to the door handle. I could not breathe. I gasped and felt nothing; my lungs burned, my eyes strained against the dark. The darkness would strangle me. Unless I fought, I would drown.

Not like this, I thought.

I gathered all the strength I had and slammed a balled fist against the wood of the door in frustration. Soft, pale sparks haloed my darkening vision. I needed air. My chest was caving in, collapsing from the weight of the darkness. I struck the door again. Harder. Anger sparked in me like kindling, catching and blazing with a hunger that lit me anew. She was holding me here. She was trying to kill me.

I would not let her.

“Not tonight, you bitch,” I forced out.

I reached for the handle and yanked.

The door opened. I stumbled backward with its weight, catching myself as air rushed into my lungs. A shock of cold, wet wind struck my face. Sheets of rain slaked the courtyard, the sound of it striking the earth like shattering glass.

A gust of wind tolled the bell of the capilla once. It echoed through the courtyard, a hollow, lonesome knell.

I sprinted toward it.





23





ANDRéS



WHEN I WOKE, THE fire was embers; my room was silent. The slam of a door echoed through my mind. Had I dreamed it? Did the house plague my nightmares?

No. Something tugged at me. I touched bare feet to floor; from beneath it, the earth reached up into me, stirring my clouded mind into sharp wakefulness.

Someone was in the capilla.

I felt the hum of distress like someone grasping my wrist, and I followed it.

I kept thick candles lit in the capilla all night long, to let the villagers know they had a refuge at any hour.

I froze when I saw who the light fell on.

At first glance, I thought it was the apparition we called the Weeper. A woman in white with black hair falling into her face. She stumbled up the aisle, sobbing uncontrollably. Water trailed behind her, leading from the door.

But I knew the Weeper well. It was not her season, not her time. Nor her place to appear.

This was not a spirit.

Beatriz.

She reached out and clung to the side of a pew, half collapsing into it. Her knuckles were white where she clutched the pew; her whole body heaved with sharp, gasping breaths. They came too quickly, too suddenly.

I should not have left the house. It was an irrational flash of feeling—of course I could not have stayed. Rodolfo’s presence prevented it. But it was a mistake.

She looked up at the sound of my approach, her green eyes so wide I could see the whites around her irises. Ana Luisa’s face flashed in my mind. Her heart had stopped from terror, her eyelids peeled back, leaving her gazing into the void in horror for eternity.