The cottage’s door swung open as my truck sputtered to a stop.
I snuck one last glance in the mirror. Peeking out beneath the Wall were two rapidly blinking brown eyes. Bear was scarfing down his cracker as fast as possible.
I took a deep breath. “Everything is going to be fine.”
As I stepped out of the truck, fingers clenched around my leather cord, I couldn’t help but wonder how this place had pulled me back, yet again, nearly five years since I’d abandoned my PhD program. The sensation was so familiar, like falling into a deep, dark well.
The Girl
Maritza walked out, wearing a white apron covering a long linen dress, and brushed strands of dark hair from her face. She looked slighter than usual standing next to the priest, in his black cowboy hat and boots. Every so often, her eyes would dart around him and back to the door, to what she’d left behind.
Bear leaped out of the open window, tail wagging. “Stay here, boy,” I said, shielding my eyes from the harsh New Mexico sun. “And try to stay out of the sun.” Bringing a husky down to New Mexico might not have been the best decision, but I wasn’t about to leave him behind. I didn’t know if I could do this without him.
I cleared my throat to temper my nerves. For an anthropologist—or almost-anthropologist—I wasn’t terribly good with people, though it wasn’t for lack of trying. I’d read all the self-help books, had planned to dedicate my career to understanding them, and still always felt on the outside looking in, like humans were some species I was studying but didn’t quite belong to. “It’s nice to see you, Maritza.”
It wasn’t great being here, exactly, but Maritza had always been kind to me. Nurses brought this inner warmth to the sterile environment of a hospital. It was a nurse, not a doctor, who held me after they said my brother was gone. It was a nurse who helped me gather his things, who walked me through everything after.
The feeling wasn’t reciprocated, though, I guess, because she gave a curt nod and slid her gaze away from me and back toward the house.
I looked at the priest. The student must’ve been pretty bad off if they’d called him already. “What’s, um, what’s going on? I wasn’t told much.”
Why they were so insistent on my being here early, hours before the council meeting, was still a mystery to me. I had no medical training to speak of, had a difficult enough time taking care of myself and Bear, if I was being honest. Max’s cryptic hints hadn’t been any more illuminating. All I knew was there had been an incident with another student. A girl had wound up dead, and another was “unwell.” Whatever that meant.
The priest stepped forward. “Perhaps it’s best if we step inside, and you see for yourself.”
I nodded and followed the priest inside, Maritza trailing after us.
“I must warn you,” the priest said, “particularly if you’re of delicate affections … this may bother you.”
I’d been in the cottage before. I’d been admitted for exhaustion from spellwork more than once during my time at school. It had always smelled fresh and clean, like sage and soap and the dried red chiles hanging from Maritza’s doorway. The floor was smooth red tile; a Zapotec rug lay in the corner. A handmade broom leaned against the wall, below wooden cubbies full of bottles of herbs and ointments, and stacks of bandages and gauze. In the kitchen was a small stove and a wide copper sink.
Now, although the lights were on and the drapes only partially shut, it was like someone had extinguished all the light. It smelled damp and dirty, like something inside hadn’t been washed in quite some time. I resisted the urge to gag and followed Maritza and the priest deeper into the house.
I nearly asked why it was so dark, but the words died in my throat. There was a hushed, sepulchral silence to the room, and it felt somehow wrong to disturb it—like it didn’t want me to disturb it. I felt the hair rise on the back of my neck.
I stopped when I caught sight of the bed, my breath catching in my throat. A girl levitated above it, her hair hanging beneath her. An old nightgown went down to her shins.
“We can’t get her down, and the police haven’t been able to question her about her motives or what happened.”
The girl’s eyes were closed, her skin mottled and covered in scars. She had scratches down her arms and chest, and something told me there were more beneath her gown, on her stomach and legs.
I swallowed. “She won’t speak to them? Why? Is she in a coma?”
“No, she’s awake,” Maritza said, her eyes shifting downward, making the sign of the cross across her chest. Crucifixes were all over the wall around the bed, and the bedside table had been crammed with statues of Jesus and the manger, along with protective figures from folklore and Magic in a strange blend of mysticism, Magic, and Catholicism. “She hears everything we’re saying, too. She’ll speak every so often, but we can’t understand her.”
Seeing my puzzled expression, the priest explained, rubbing his fingers nervously. “She’s not speaking English per se.”
“She’s speaking in tongues,” Maritza blurted. The priest threw her a glance. I noticed leather straps had been tied to the bed, but they were released now. A shudder went through me.
“They said you had some experience with languages,” the man said.
“Spanish, Latin, and Duolingo Italian, but something tells me they aren’t going to help with this …” I glanced back toward the exit, not wanting to let it out of my sight. Whatever left that student dead was no illness. The priest’s use of the word “motives” stuck in my head like a needle. A student had been murdered, and this girl had more to do with it than Max had mentioned. My guess, a lot more.
I looked back up at the girl. Her eyes were no longer closed. She had turned her head and was watching me with a curious expression on her face, her mouth twitched with bemusement. My limbs felt shaky, as if I was standing on the edge of a steep cliff. I opened my mouth to speak to her, finding my throat dry as the desert outside.
“Don’t speak to her,” Maritza hissed. “The devil will take your soul.”
“She’s just a girl,” the priest said, keeping one eye on her, the other hand snaking to the cross at his chest. He cast a pointed glance at me. “We’re at a loss,” he said more quietly.
