Page 91 of The Hacienda
The house curled around me with all the tenderness of a rattlesnake. Its rank breath trailed over my arms, curled around my neck. Too close. Too airless.
Visions intruded in my mind. At first they pushed like hands through curtains: prying and grasping, a dozen of them or more, their rhythm unpredictable as the thunder of fists on my bedroom door. But their ability to seize me was ultimately blunted by thick fabric.
The hands grew claws. Long, flesh-colored claws. They sliced through the curtains, through the barrier between me andit, carving my defensesto ribbons. They sank into my flesh, forcing visions that were not my own into my mind:
Juana’s face loomed over me: calavera-white, her footstep soft as a puma’s, appearing out of the gloom. The burning of alcohol in my nostrils. The steady beat of rain on the roof. Blooms of smoke; the fading of Juana’s face. I felt circled by her, trapped. I knew she disliked me, even resented me, that our argument that night was heated, but this—
The glint of steel in the darkness. Once, twice. Again. Pain blooming in my throat, my breast. A sour swoop of vertigo. The sensation of falling; a sickening crack. Darkness broken only by the thunderous drumming, of rain.
I tried to push them away. These were notmymemories. Their metallic tang was someone else’s fear.Cast it out, Andrés said. But the claws of the house held me too tightly, their needle tips sinking fang-like into the flesh of my throat. Cracking the fragile casing of my mind and sinking deeper, deeper, deeper...
Ana Luisa’s voice snapped through the gloom.
You acted too soon, Juana, she said. This wasn’t the plan.
Distantly, she came into focus over me, disgust carved into her face’s every line. She loathed me, I knew.
We cannot dig with the flooding, she said. It is impossible. Where will we hide her?
Juana materialized in the darkness. Her bronze halo of hair; a splatter of red bright on one cheek.
The north wing’s collapsed wall, she said, her tone flat and determined. I was fixing it today, she added. The mortar is still wet.
Distantly, I saw Ana Luisa nod curtly, and heard her voice; I could not make out words. I was falling, falling...
I struck stone. I was being dragged by two people, one hauling each of my arms, flagstones peeling away the skin of my cheek. Heavy panting; the scrape of brick on brick. Brick on brick on brick...
Juana, Juana. I know what you are, Juana. I know you slaughtered Rodolfo, Juana. I will rip your throat out with my teeth. Crack you like eggs. Grind your wretched bones in my jaws. Tear your flesh to shreds. Juana, Juana...
I rocked back and forth, sobbing silently. I was hallucinating. In the broad light of day, I was losing my mind. When the shadows grew long, when the sun set... I did not know if I had the strength to survive another night of the house.
Voices echoed through the gloom. Men’s voices. Real, mortal voices, with cadences that rose and fell with breathing, with echoes that began and stopped.
And Juana’s voice.
A sudden flood of light blinded me; I jerked away from it, startled. Unable to catch myself with my hands bound, I nearly lost my balance. The caudillo’s men had wrenched open the door. One seized me by my bound wrists and hauled me to my feet. If they saw my face streaked with tears, if they saw how I shook with the terror of the mad, they gave no indication that they cared. They led me down the hall, closer and closer to the chill of the north wing. My heart hammered against my ribs. My God, if they were taking me there, I should beg them to shoot me now. I could not face that cold, the glint of red in the dark...
They turned to the stairs.
I dug in my heels; they yanked me forward. Pain burned dully in my arms and shoulders.
“Where are you taking me?” I asked.
They did not reply. I discovered soon enough: Juana waited by the door of the study, my ring of keys in her hand. She tapped her foot impatiently.
“You know I didn’t do it.”
“That’s quite enough from you,” she said. “I will not tolerate further insult to my brother’s memory.”
She made a motion as if to wipe a tear from her eye and turned to the caudillo’s men. “She’s mad, you know,” she said in a voice so sweet I wouldn’t have recognized it as hers if I hadn’t been watching her move her lips. “Ask Padre Vicente, he knows the truth. She thinks this house is possessed.”
They couldn’t believe this act. Did they not know Juana Solórzano? She was no victim. She was rotten, as rotten as the evil that blackened this house.
“Best step away, Doña Juana,” one of the men said, a tone of concern in his voice.
Juana obliged, tucking a lock of her hair behind her ear. Her hair was dirty, yes, but her clothing so clean.
Though the door to the bedchamber was closed, I could still smell butchery. In my mind’s eye, all I could see was blood. Staining the floorboards, the walls. The sheets. My copal censer was in there, and candles—things I would need for the night ahead, but I could not brave it. I turned my face away for fear I would vomit again.
