Jacaranda (The Clockwork Century 6)

Sister Eileen drew Father Rios toward the north wing of the building, to another grand corridor with another imposing set of fire doors, open but available in case of disaster. He did not feel much reassured by their presence.

“Come along, Father. I’ll show you what became of the Pattersons.”

She drew him toward to a pair of doors that were fastened with a chain. “In here,” she said. She took the chain in her hands and unwound it, un-threading it from the handles.

The padre didn’t see a lock. Maybe the chain didn’t have one, or maybe she’d removed it earlier.

She pushed the doors inward. “I’d warn you to brace yourself for the worst, but I haven’t seen the place since two nights ago. I don’t know how much progress the Alvarez ladies have made while I wasn’t looking, and besides, I have a feeling you’ve seen more terrible things, somewhere down the line.”

“Undoubtedly,” he agreed. He joined her with more curiosity than dread.

The hall was enormous—larger even than the lobby. The oversized effect was heightened by the tall ceiling, decorated with an oversized crystal-and-iron chandelier which occupied an astonishing portion of the space above them. Laid out across the room, a series of round tables were large enough to seat eight to ten people apiece, and they were draped with linen tablecloths the color of the ocean. Some tables still featured their silver place settings and folded napkins. Some did not.

The chandelier was not lit, but the last of the weak, milky daylight spilled through the hastily drawn curtains, all eight panels of which ran the length of four tall windows spanning the western wall.

The padre squinted, letting his eyes adjust. Letting them show him more. He needed to look.

He closed his eyes, and opened them again.

At first he saw only the circles: the tables, the chandelier, the round place setti

ngs, the bulbous glass lamps on the walls. The splashy blue pattern in the tiles. Circles upon circles. A room that made him feel dizzy, even as he stood still—just inside the doorway.

He let the dizziness take him, only a little.

He looked, and he let the lines blur between now, and before.

Now, he saw dark streaks splashed across the curtains, up and down them in no pattern at all. Before, they had been fresh blood, running in rivulets and cast about in a spray. Before, there had been a man’s body, pierced and twisted, wrung-out like laundry and thrown to the floor where it landed so hard it’d left a dent—a shattered place in the tiles. An impression of a corpse, cast with such force that every bone had turned to powder; a man hurled with such intensity that the outline of his shape was as clear as if someone had taken a mold of it.

Now, there was a broken table pushed aside to a corner, and covered with a sheet. The sheet was stained and rumpled, and the table’s lines jutted up in unlikely angles. Before, there had been a woman, lifted from the floor…

The padre’s eyes found the spot, a place where something had seized her, clutched her, and dragged her screaming across the room—her fingernails splitting as she clawed the ground, leaving small streaks of blood behind her. Her arms breaking against the chair legs as she was flung past them and tried to clasp them, anything to slow herself; her teeth smashing against the wall as she was hurtled headlong into it, and then pushed up—vertically, painting a long path of gore behind her, between two windows like a ghastly bunting.

He looked and he saw the angle of her neck when she hit the ceiling, and he was glad (in some small way) that she felt nothing after that.

When he looked again, harder, he saw pieces of her dress and tangles of her hair snagged in the crystals of the great light above them. Hanging there like so much moss, or so many cobwebs.

He cleared his throat. “Did anyone witness…what became of them? Or merely the aftermath?”

“A boy who worked in the kitchens found them. He was bringing in the soup, and by then, it was all over.”

Even though the padre wasn’t looking anymore, he saw a slender boy in his teens with dark hair and sun-kissed skin, and eyes like coffee. He saw the boy drop the tureen, his mouth agape but silent. Such was his shock and horror that he could not scream. He could not breathe.

“I don’t suppose we could speak with him.”

“He fainted, and when he awoke he never said a word. They found his body yesterday. The poor lad threw himself into the ocean.” She stepped into the center of the room. She stood beneath the gore-splattered chandelier. “Before the Pattersons, there was Silas Andrews. Before Silas, there was Maria Chavez. Before Maria, there was Mr. Martin and his daughter. And that’s only been this month.”

The padre stayed where he was, just inside the doors. “God in Heaven…then why would anyone come here?” he wondered aloud.

She shrugged. “Word has gotten out, but not so far and wide. For reasons that elude me, the Jacaranda’s danger is nothing but a faint rumor. That said, it’s the finest resort on Galveston Island, which is an easy stopping place on the way to the Caribbean. Merchants, travelers, sight-seers. Bankers and financiers. They call this the Wall Street of the South, you know—at least that one neighborhood, down on the Strand. And as for the rest…some of us are drawn here, whether we care to be or not.”

“Some of us? You felt called to this place?”

The nun nodded. “At first I thought…well, I thought whatever was here…perhaps it wanted assistance. But now I know,” she said, almost to herself. “It doesn’t scream for help. It merely screams.”

Having finished their inspection of the dining hall, the padre and the nun were first to arrive in the community room for the evening meal. The next to appear was a lean older woman, who greeted the nun as she approached the table. “So nice to see you again, Sister Eileen.”

“And you as well. Father Rios, this is Constance Fields. She’s been here since Tuesday.”