Page 84 of In the Garden of Monsters

“What happened to him?” I sighed as I stared down at the prone figure. He looked like the sweet brawny boy I had liked the moment we met, not the twisted creature that Ceres had turned him into.

“It’s this place,” Dalí said. “It gets into your head. Even I, the great Dalí, have felt its sinister pull. Come. We need to find your friend.” He guided me down the pomegranate-lined path.

As we made our way farther into the heart of the garden, an even stronger sense of dread began to rise within me. It wasn’t just Jack’s terrifying actions, but the fact that I already knew what we would find. I was anxious to get away from Jack and the pomegranates, but we were being herded in a specific direction—and I knew it was a trap, set with Lillian’s body as the bait. We would find her inside the Mouth of Hell.

The promenade before the statue of Neptune had a wall with dozens of large vases around its perimeter. One had to walk down toward the Casa Pendente, then past the statue of Ceres, before turning back toward the ominousorcoin the hillside, passing Hannibal’s elephant and the fighting dragon on the way. If we wanted to avoid Ceres, we would have to climb the wall, which wasn’t convenient—or possible, with the newly grown wall of pomegranate bushes.

As we came close to the statue of the goddess, I saw a ghost of myself standing near the path in front of her. It was growing dark, and her blue glow was faint as she flickered in and out of my vision. She—or I—wore a dress right out of the Renaissance, with a long, full brocade skirt, belted under the bust, the billowing sleeves slashed elegantly to show through thecamiciaunderneath. Her hair was intricately braided with ropes of pearl.

Suddenly, a memory surged through me, so vivid it was as if I’d been plunged into another lifetime. I found myself in my bedroom in Bomarzo, but everything was new, the walls adorned with tapestries and fine art, and the soft glow of candlelight filling the room. The door opened, and he walked in—his face a composite of lifetimes and love, the lines of Aidoneus, Ignazio, and Pluto woven into one countenance.

He approached me cautiously, holding a small vial filled with a dark liquid. “This is the last pomegranate potion,” he said softly, his eyes brimming with a cocktail of love, regret, and something I couldn’t quite place.

I nodded, knowing that in the society of that lifetime, an illicit child would spell doom for both of us. I trusted him, loved him, across all lifetimes. With trembling hands, I opened the vial and drank its foul contents. As I swallowed, I felt the familiar texture of a pomegranate seed slide down my throat.

Almost instantly, pain enveloped me, racking my body in torturous waves. His face, so full of contradictions, was the last thing my eyes grasped before darkness overwhelmed me. In that terrible moment, I realized it wasn’t just an unwanted pregnancy I was erasing—it was my very life, my existence in that cycle, sending me spiraling back to the Fields of Mourning under the weight of an eternal curse.

Back in the garden, the Renaissance ghost of me suddenly raised a single finger, a haunting warning echoing across the fabric of time itself.

Dalí obviously didn’t see her since he walked by without acknowledgment. I could almost hear the rustling of her gown as she disappeared into the fading light. Thankfully, the stone goddess behind her did not move.

Another version of me waited near Hannibal’s elephant. This ghost was clad in medieval dress, with flowing skirts, a corseted bodice, and long, belled sleeves. As I approached, I felt a strange pull, a kind of magnetic force that beckoned me into the depths of a forgotten memory. There I was, in a castle’s stone-walled chamber, standing near an expansive wooden table laden with rustic dishes—bread, meat, cheeses, and fruit.

This time, it was a goblet of wine that was handed to me by the same man, whose soul stretched over lifetimes. His eyes met mine with an inexplicable mix of love, sorrow, and inevitability. “For your health, my lady,” he said softly, urging me to drink. “Pomegranate wine.”

Hesitant but not wanting to offend, I lifted the goblet to my lips and took a sip, the single pomegranate seed sliding over my tongue. I was surprised by the taste for an instant, followed by a feeling of dread as I swallowed. A crushing weight settled over my chest, heavier and colder with each passing second. I looked at him, desperation flooding my eyes. “What have you done?” I wanted to scream, but no words escaped.

The room spun around me, and just like before, my last sight was his face, stricken with unbearable grief as he watched me collapse, my life extinguishing like a candle snuffed out by an unforgiving wind.

As we passed the medieval ghost in the garden, she, too, raised a single finger. The fabric of my reality began to unravel as I started to understand the threads of my past.

Again, Dalí passed without as much as a glance. She winked out as I passed her.

At the dragon fending off the wolves and lions, another ghost waited, arm outstretched, one finger pointed toward the sky. This version of me was dressed like all the women I had ever seen in ancient Roman statues, with drapes of fabric about her body and over her head like a hood, with sandals and bracelets ringing her thin wrists. I was reminded of something Dalí called me on one of the first days—Julia of the Julii. I didn’t understand why then, but upon seeing this ghost, I did, as some odd memory lit up in my mind. The Julii were an ancient Roman family of great nobility—the clan that Julius Caesar himself came from. This was a Julia from centuries past.

As we grew close to this Julia, a vision overtook me so powerfully that I nearly stumbled. I was in an elegant atrium, adorned with frescoes and opulent decorations, the kind that would be found in the house of a Roman patrician. The same man—this time dressed in a toga and wearing a laurel crown—offered me a plate of stuffed dates. His eyes were a deep well of mixed emotions: love, regret, and sorrow.

“Try one, Proserpina,” he said, the name as strange and familiar to me as the earlier incarnations had been. “They’re made just for you. I know you don’t like pomegranates, but try one more... You may just like this one.”

Reluctantly I took a date and bit into it. The sweetness enveloped my senses, but then my tongue touched something different—a pomegranate seed hidden within the treat.

My vision began to blur; my limbs felt weak. “What’s happening?” I gasped.

His smile faded into a look of terror, the joy in his eyes giving way to realization and then unbearable grief. “No, no, no,” he cried, rushing to catch me as I fell to the ground.

“Stay with me,” he pleaded, holding my limp body. “Please, stay with me. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Damn you, Ceres.”

I wanted nothing more than to stay with him, but a force stronger than both of us was pulling me away. The last thing I saw was his anguished face, immortalized in that moment, forever to be repeated over a string of lifetimes. My vision tunneled, the edges darkening. My spirit was being pulled away, traveling at an unimaginable speed through the fabric of existence, into the place where love had been thwarted—the Fields of Mourning.

When the memory cleared, I was back in the garden. The Roman ghost before me raised her single finger, a signal that reverberated through time, wrapping my newfound understanding in layers of tragic, eternal truth. It was a curse, a hundred-year cycle, and unless broken, it would carry on infinitely. My resolve hardened; something had to change. I would not endure this again.

We reached the base of the stairs leading into the open maw of theorco. If Lillian was in the Mouth of Hell, she wasn’t lying on the table that also served as the monster’s tongue.

Dalí led the way into theorco. We had only climbed a couple of stairs when Orpheus ran up beside me. He gave me an agonized cry. I stopped, my heart full of relief that he was alive.

Bending down to pick him up, I hugged him close. He licked my cheek and a burst of understanding washed over me. I saw myself in a black and beautiful palazzo in the Underworld, and Orpheus, the man, rushed into the room, his lute bouncing against his back. “Ceres is coming for you.” His voice was urgent, explaining that Ceres stood on the banks of the Lethe, ready to cross, raging about a curse.

“I brought this for you,” he said, holding out his hand.

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