Page 62 of Morena
Lucia waited outside Carmen’s house in her wheelchair, her body hunched, eyes shining, crying. I walked to her, and when her eyes caught mine, she finally spoke.
“I know you,” she whispered. “You came for me.”
I smiled at her. “Not yet, abuelita.”
I wheeled her away, the rubber tires screaming against the wet street, until we reached the apartment she still called home.
“My son Carlos bought a circus, you know?” she said suddenly. “He laughed when I called it the House of Clowns.” She smiled, “He collects people, people who are different, people who saw things.”
I nodded. I already knew.
“He is a good man,” she said, almost tenderly.
But he wasn’t.
He was a man who did good things just to mask the fact that he was a bad man. He was a bad man who knew how to do good things.
VI. (SPLIT)
July 2020.
Lifehadbeencirclingitself into an empty loop, but that day I saw something that broke it. A village boy stumbled upon a mirror with Morena inside, and he sold it to a monastery in the south of France. Soon after, they called for a priest to bless the monastery, for something evil had entered with the glass.
When the brothers searched the chapel, they found nuns dangling from the rafters. Each body hung by the left ankle, three knots tied into the rope like some blasphemous ritual. Their eyes were gone, scooped clean, leaving only dark, wet holes staring at nothing.
I arrived the night before in France, dressed as a Father, pretending to be a holy man. I arrived in front of a monastery,and as I stood before the doors, I felt it immediately. Death had filled the monastery, but no souls were here to collect.
A young novice opened the door. She wore pure white, not yet bound to her vows. She smiled softly.
“Father Matteo,” she whispered. “You finally came.”
I nodded and stepped inside as she swung the heavy door wide.
The place was not only a monastery but also an asylum. Patients shuffled through the halls, some in straitjackets and others in thin white pajamas. Their mouths moved, saying words no one should understand. And at the far window, in a wheelchair, sat a woman with red hair.
Isabella.
“I thought this was a monastery,” I said.
“It is,” the novice replied. “But we also take in the sick from families who cannot pay for asylums. Sister Teresa is their doctor. She has made progress, more than most. We are grateful for what it has become.” She smiled as if she believed it, although her eyes darted quickly, and she escaped, walking away.
I did not answer. I only moved toward Isabella. She couldn’t look at me. Her empty eyes were locked on the courtyard beyond the glass window, fixed on the cross standing in the yard.
As I looked towards it, the stone cross tilted slowly until it hung upside down. No wind moved, and no hands touched it. The silence around it was soon broken by bells from the tower.
Something was here.
Isabella’s hand shot out, nails digging into my skin so deep I felt blood bloom beneath her nails. Her lips trembled as she pressed her face close to mine.
“She’s coming,” she whispered.
“Who?” I asked.
Her eyes rolled as the doctors rushed to hold her down.
“Morena,” she hissed. “Morena.”
Confusion turned in my chest, though I already knew the name too well.
