Hadrian's Wall (65 page)

“Oh, yeah!’
After all that had happened, I still had the
strength to make an ironic comment.
“
You’re absolutely right. Anyone
would have lifted a car with just one hand and then climbed a steep
hill carrying three people. Piece of cake!

“‘
I
didn’t do anything like that. You’re delusional. I just took you
from there and...’
He shrugged,
indifferent.

“Jumping over rocks faster
than a bullet...like Superman. That’s it, just like
that?

“Rather than play the game, Stephen frowned
and looked around, worried.

“‘
You’re
crazy. I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He started to walk away, but stopped with his
back to me.

“I had hopes that he’d
changed his mind and would tell me everything, but he turned to me
and said,
‘
Stop
following me!’

“But I haven’t stopped and
I began to realize that someone else was following me...’til he
came to me again. He pleaded for me not to investigate his family,
but by then I had some theories and a lot of information about what
he could be and what he could do.

“I started to dress myself
in black, I got a coffin, and I changed my makeup, hoping to ‘speak
his language, if you know what I mean.
Like
Close Encounters of the Third
Kind
when they’re trying code as
communication between humans and aliens.

“I thought that if I looked
like them, Stephen would take me into his group. I wish that
Stephen could appreciate me. Now I realize how much of the
information I collected is wrong—the myths and everything else.
They don’t live like the people think.”

“What I saw in Stephen’s eyes was anguish
and disapproval. He told me that the uninitiated humans couldn’t
give these demonstrations or something bad could happen to them. He
also said that I should keep the things I thought I knew in
secret.”

Delilah was silent for a
long minute and I took the opportunity to reflect on everything
she’d told me.

“Have you told someone else
about it?” I asked.

“No. Not Abby either.”

“Now tell me about
your
theory.

She stood up hesitantly,
not at all like the same funky girl who introduced me to her
friends on my first day at McPherson House. I think her mask has
slipped and now I was meeting the real Delilah—if it’s possible to
know really someone. However, to be honest, I liked her much more
now.

24

THEORIES

Delilah walked to the
corner of the room and squeezed herself between the cabinet and a
chest of drawers, pushing with her body to move them apart. At
first I didn’t understand what she was trying to do, so by the time
I got up to help her, she had already moved them enough that I
could see that there was a small door hidden behind the
cabinet.

“When I moved into this
room, I had no roommate
. I found
this
,” she said, indicating the door. Mine
is the only bedroom with an adjoining room, like a secret room.
It’s probably part of the original construction. I suspect they
forgot about it during the building’s renovation.”

She pushed the door open, lowered her head
and disappeared into the dark space. I followed her, unable to
contain a shiver of fear.

Delilah pulled a cord
hanging from the ceiling to turn on the single light bulb overhead.
There were no windows, only two small slits, partially hidden by
external grates, but incredible as it might seem, the secret
room
was not
stifling even though there was no air circulation inside. On
the opposite wall, I saw something eye-popping: a huge mural, with
newspaper clippings; news printouts from the Internet, photos taken
on a cell phone, and colored arrows. It looked like one of those
murals seen in TV cop shows, something like
Criminal Minds
and
Without a Trace
. When
the protagonists were looking for someone who’d been kidnapped,
they use murals similar to this one containing the victim’s
trajectory and possible suspects.

Delilah’s mural was better
by far. It was a detailed mapping of the Cahills’ actions and
people linked to the family. Some of them I knew—Jay O’Neal, Asia
Chadwick, Adam Barringer, Ian Talbot, and Keyra McPherson. Others
were complete strangers to me, but their names were also there
under their photos, all important pieces of a bizarre
puzzle.

Below each photo was a summary about that
person. Using colored pens, arrows were drawn connecting the
captions below the photographs to dialogue balloons, quotations,
and other explanatory information. There were also some questions
with answers. A red arrow linked the photo, the name, and the brief
biography of that person to past events in the region or their
actual position within the family hierarchy. Delilah had placed a
photo of Stephen in the center, preceding Adrian as if Stephen was
a barrier to prevent others from approaching him.

A blue arrow linked
Stephen’s picture to Adrian’s, to Vincent’s, and to Charity’s.
There was also another picture—a guy as blond as Charity.
Underneath it was written “Christian.”

So that’s the mysterious
Christian Wade
.

The arrows were
interrupted by documents printed from the Internet or by newspaper
clippings. Some collages were scattered across the wall, with
captions or explanations that had been typed by Delilah.
Wow!
She had taken her
obsession for Stephen to a high scientific level! That mural must
have taken a long time to put together. From what I could see, this
probably kept her so busy that she had neglected her studies. Her
sewing machine, mannequins, molds and other items were crammed into
a forgotten corner, with a jumble of fabric scraps thrown over
them.

“I needed to know...understand?” She
justified, trying to decipher my face.

Yeah, I understood...maybe
too well. It could have been me creating that mural, but about
Adrian. I also felt curiosity and compulsion to investigate the
Cahills, but I hadn’t had the courage to dig deeper. Adrian
realized that. He gave me every chance to find out, but I ran away
from the answers that real mattered. He gave me something easier to
accept realizing exactly how I felt...even when I tried to convince
myself that the truth didn’t matter.

Maybe I am a coward. I want
to know the truth, but at the same time I don’t want to be
confronted with the fact that Adrian is different from the rest of
us...from me, as if his wealth and the status of his family isn’t
enough. Maybe I don’t want to make the same choice that Delilah
seems to have made without hesitation.

I was forced to revise my
previous conclusions—my belief that she selfishly wanted to take
advantage of all options, without having to sacrifice anything.
Well, perhaps she is selfish on a more superficial level, but what
really matters is that she’s ready to face the consequences.
Suddenly, I felt a certain connection with her. It wasn’t strong
enough for me to trust her, but it was something that changed the
way I perceived her.

I glanced back through the
photos of the Cahills, tacked to the mural. Here was absolute proof
that I’m not crazy.

“So you believe me?” she asked me, between
looking anxious and worried.

“Of course I do. You said
you have a theory,” I reminded her, still staring at Adrian’s green
eyes.

She sighed. “I think
they’re...vampires.”

I laughed, but it sounded nervous even to my
own ears. Suddenly, I felt a brick sitting inside my stomach.

“Vampires? They’re not
bats, for God’s sake!” I turned to her. “Get yourself another
theory because this one is flawed.”

Without waiting for an
answer from her, I turned back to the mural.
Vampire...
such an ugly word. It
didn’t match their beauty.

“Do you really think they are?”

“Bats of hell?” Delilah added wryly. “No,
but I wonder if they cannot turn into something else...” She
shrugged.

“What, for example?” While I asked the
question, my eyes fell on the photo of the Panthers Cliff and then
I realized I had my answer.

“I don’t know...panthers?”
She tried to sound lighthearted with her guess.

“How could they turn into
panthers? It is humanly
impossible.”
I’ve tried to challenge this idea, but deep down,
I thought the same thing.

“Well said... ‘humanely’...
but I don’t believe that they are...human. From all that I’ve
noticed, the theory that best fits is vampires. They have
sensitivity to light, they’re very pale, super-strong, super-fast
and they don’t eat. At least they don’t eat what we usually see
people eating out there. What else can I think?”

I
remained
silent for a moment and as
always seems to happen when I get nervous, I verbalize thoughts
that spring out of my head without applying any logical
filter.

“I hate bats, crows,
vultures, vampires...in short, anything that sucks the blood of
other living creatures. It’s ugly, degrading,
grotesque...
Ugh!
I can’t imagine Adrian and Stephen acting like vampires. Even
the word ‘vampire’ gives me heartburn.

“Let me remind you that
crows and vultures do not suck blood...and not all bats do it,
Delilah interjected with a tone of superiority. Gradually, she was
acting like the girl
I knew.

“Yeah, I don’t need a
lesson in zoology,” I replied. “There must be another explanation!
I accept that they’re supernatural, but vampires they are not.
Please!”

“Let me remind you that vampires are
supernatural creatures.”

She shrugged, as if to say that nothing
could be done. It was inevitable. Destiny.

“I’ve been doing my own
research and discovered that there are several
myths,”
I argued. Vampires are not
the only creatures that fit the description of the Cahills, you
know. There are demons, jinn, werewolves, evil spirits, and other
beings that don’t come to mind right now because I’m too nervous to
remember all of the different categories.

“For me, the legends of the
somber people have everything to do with our ‘friends’ here. In
ancient times, humans called them ‘somber’ because they believed
that they represented the dark side of the supernatural world. The
somber were described either as gods of destruction or as guardians
of the underworld and death. Just like the vampires, they appear in
all traditions. In Egypt, in the Viking lands, among the Roman and
Greek people...and so on. The people loved them and feared them.
The priests offered sacrifices in their honor to placate
them.

“The somber were
considered good in some respects—in the sense that they let humans
live under their protection. If someone happens to bother me, I go
to the altar of
any
temple
. I offer the blood of my best sheep
and, in exchange,
the somber god
literally
eliminates
my problem. I didn’t need
to be rich to curry favor from the gods. If they accept my
argument, I only need to compromise myself to them, devoting all my
loyalty to them. I think we can consider the somber as a kind of
shadowy vigilante from this time.

“However, there were bad
somber in many aspects. They could act as serial killers. They
killed animals and men. Do you remember the sacrifices to the gods
by the Aztecs? Well, the psychopath somber just kills and kills and
kills...
If they weren’t killing they sent
their heralds to kill humans in their name.
But suddenly all of them disappeared, inasmuch as someone
bigger than the somber had done a general cleaning to contain the
carnage. Mythology says a lot about them, but doesn’t provide much
explanation
about this subject.
Incredible as it may seem, I was getting some
info regarding the Celtic culture which has few written
records.”

“They cannot be gods,”
Delilah argued against it, as if only that small word in my
speech
was the one
that had been recorded by her brain. I became
outraged.

“No! I said they were worshiped by humans as
gods because of their extraordinary powers. The legends describe
them as seductive creatures with piercing eyes—yellow or black,
most of the time. They also describe them as having incredible
strength, even invulnerable. Our friends fit that description
perfectly.”

She snorted and opened her mouth to argue,
but I cut her off.

“The records of their passage are vague.
Because our history is human, it does not mesh with their history.
I believe that to discover who they really are, how they live, and
what they want, we have to get their records. I bet they must have
their files kept by...” Suddenly the light went on in my brain! The
Cahill codex was like a record that fit the mold that I was
describing.

“Kept by...?” Delilah said, wondering at my
sudden pause.

“Anyway, I doubt that they kept records.” I
shuddered, realizing what I almost said outloud.