Page 37 of The Hacienda
The white sheets and mattress were torn to pieces. Shredded as if by a hundred sharp knives, savagely pierced as if by bayonets. Long marks scarred the wooden headboard; the pillows were carved into chunks, the feathers that had once stuffed them floating serenely on the air, unaware of the carnage they overlooked.
The birdsong had fallen silent.
I stepped forward to touch the bed, to make sure it was true. The sheets I had been holding were gone from my arms in the slippery way of dreaming, and when I put my hand on the bed, it came away red with blood. The sheets were clean. I frowned.
The sound of footsteps on carpet sounded softly from the study.
“Padre Andrés?” I said, because in the dream, it was natural that Andrés should be somewhere in the house. He needed to see this.
I turned to the door. A figure walked into view in the study: a woman with a shock of long hair as pale as corn silk, her dress the fashion of the capital and sewn from gray fabric that shimmered in the light. She faced me, a glint of gold winking from her throat.
Her eyes were pits, pits that burned with the crepuscular glow of embers, of hellfire. Her stance shifted, her shoulders curling like a puma’s, and she hissed at me, baring hundreds of long, needlelike teeth that grewlonger, longer. She raised her hands, which ended in long, curving flesh-colored claws.
The door of the bedchamber slammed shut.
I woke with a start, my heart in my throat.
Slam.
I shoved myself upright. The candles had burned low—I must have been asleep for hours—but the amount of copal in the room had not lessened. Andrés was pale; beads of sweat glistened at his hairline. He was still murmuring Hail Marys, his watchful gaze on the door.
Somewhere upstairs, I heard a long creak—a door swinging open. Expecting it to slam shut, I edged closer to Andrés, close enough to be arm to arm, our legs touching, ankles brushing.
Silence lengthened, thick and slow as the creep of a mudslide.
One of the parlor doors down the hall opened with an anguished groan. Then another, closer.
As if someone were going methodically through the house, room by room, looking for something.
I pressed against his shoulder, my heart in my throat.
We waited.
Tense, silent, fixated on the door, we waited. We waited for the door to swing open... and for what? For the red eyes to gleam in the dark? To rush toward us, toward the circle?
And then what?
Shredded pieces of dream flashed in my mind’s eye: long, deep claw marks in my wooden headboard. Sliced sheets. My hand coming away from the ruined mattress slick with blood. Footsteps behind me...
“I have a theory,” Andrés breathed, “about houses. I think... I believe that they absorb the feelings of the people who live in them. Sometimes those feelings are so strong you can feel them when you walk through the door. And when those feelings are negative... evil begets evil, and they grow to fill the house. That is what I usually deal with. But this is different.This...” His pause stretched agonizingly long. “I think whatever you found in that wall—whoever—is still here.”
“Here?”My voice cracked over the word. “In the house? Orisit the house?”
“I don’t know.” He was leaning into me as much as I leaned into him. “It’s only a theory.”
Somewhere in the north wing, a door slammed shut.
We jumped.
A theory.
Only atheory.
13
I WOKE STIFF-BACKED ANDbleary-eyed, a blanket smelling faintly of copal pulled up to my nose. Birdsong and the distant neigh of a horse floated into the room through the windows. With a tumbled rush of images, I remembered where I was.
The green parlor.
