Jacaranda (12 page)

He collected himself, tried not to lean on the nun, and rejoined the group out by the doors—just in time to catch a fight between the McCoy brothers and Ranger Korman.

“Both of you, sit yourselves down!” the old Texan ordered.

“But we
heard
him,” George insisted. “And David saw him! You’ve got to let us check, at least—you can’t just leave him locked out there, to die!”

“Who, Tim?” the padre asked, still trying to get his head around the situation.

“Oh no…where
is
Tim? Has anyone seen him?” asked Violetta, but the nun quieted her with a look before too many other voices could add to the query.

“It was Matthew,” George said. “Our brother, he’s here. He came here to meet us…”

Exasperated, and still finding his feet—still shaking the wool and the cogs and the springs from his head—the padre said, “Your brother Matthew is dead. You told us that already.”

“But he’s not!” David swore. “He told us, it was a mistake! He’s here—he’s stuck on the north wing, on the other side of the door!”

The Ranger had drawn his gun. “It’s the
hotel
, you damn fool. It’s lying to you, same as it lied to that girl over there, and same as it lies to everyone. Now sit yourself down, and
nobody
is opening that door, do you hear me?”

Outside, the storm begged to differ.

They could all hear it, and those who weren’t watching the human drama unfold were looking up anxiously toward the ceiling, listening and wondering if everything would hold after all. They’d told themselves over and over that of
course
the place would stand, and of
course
it would weather the hurricane—but all those promises they’d made to themselves didn’t mean much when the wind was ripping away tiles, yanking loose the sub-roofing, picking up furniture from the top floors and throwing it into the ocean like a spoiled child tearing down a dollhouse.

Sister Eileen whispered, “Father, do you still have those guns?”

“No.” It would’ve been more honest to say he didn’t have them presently, for they were in his bag upstairs. He always carried them, even if he never used them. Without temptation, there was no virtue in resistance.

Or it might’ve just been that he liked them, and he didn’t want to let them go.

And dear God, he wished he had them in his hands right that moment—when the Ranger was trying to keep the situation managed, and Valeria Alvarez was crying, and her mother was yelling at the McCoy brothers to sit down, and David McCoy was standing behind his brother, reaching into his jacket.

There was no time to shout, not even that small space to take a breath and let it out with a warning…when David retrieved a six-shooter and drew it and fired it, and then the women were screaming and even Frederick Vaughn was awake and shouting unintelligibly, and no one knew where the next bullet would fall, or who it would hit.

No.

That wasn’t what happened.

The moment froze. The Ranger was the one who’d fired, and his shot had been true—not through the heart, because George was in the way; but through the shoulder, and David toppled backward onto the sofa where he’d been playing cards.

The gun was still in his hand, and then it wasn’t.

George called his brother’s name, and turned to help him—no, he turned to take the gun away—but the Ranger was faster than him, too. He didn’t shoot. There was time for a warning, just this once.

“Boy, I swear to God you point that thing at me and it’ll be the last stupid thing you ever do. Hold it up…” he urged. He was all lawman, and no one in the room budged to intervene. No one spoke, no one moved. Only the driving rain, the tearing, rending, shredding wind against the hotel broke up the quiet that had fallen in the wake of that shot.

George didn’t move. He was fixed, the gun in his hand but aimed at the ceiling, or at no place in particular. He stared down at his brother, gasping and fretting, maybe dying—or maybe not.

“Hold it by the handle, just two fingers, and put it down on the table,” the Ranger instructed more precisely.

“It’s Matthew,” he breathed. “I know it was him, and they shut him out.”

“You’re not an idiot, you’re just wrong. This place, boy—it does things to people’s heads, you know that now. Everybody knows it. You think you owe your brother something, and that’s your weak spot. That’s what it pokes with a stick, trying to make you do something that’ll get you killed. It likes to see us fighting, you know that, don’t you? It likes to see us kill each other. It saves it the trouble.”

The padre stepped up slowly, his hands aloft to show he was unarmed—and had no plans to join the fray. “If you die here, the hotel can use you. It turns you into a servant, that’s what Sarah told me.”

George looked like he wanted to spit at something, but he didn’t. He just hovered there, above David. Gun still in hand, still directionless. “Oh, for chrissake—what would that yellow-haired girl know about it, anyway?”

The Ranger answered him: “She’s dead, that’s what she’d know about it. Hadn’t you figured that out by now? Everyone who ain’t standing here, right in this room, right now…everyone else is dead.”

“The hotel’s picked up quite a staff by now,” the nun mused, her eyes wandering toward the awful sounds above them, where the east wing was coming apart, board by board and brick by brick. There was no more glass breaking, not anymore. It’d all been pulled free and cast out into the night.

The padre couldn’t argue with her there. “They’re tearing the place apart at the seams, opening all the doors and windows. I don’t know why they can’t open the fire doors.”

“That
is
an excellent question,” the nun mused. “I wonder why that is…”

George hesitated, his arm drooping from the weight of the gun, and with uncertainty about how he was going to use it.

“George,” Sister Eileen said gently. “We have bigger problems, right now. You have to leave the doors shut, and you have to put the gun down. Let me look at your brother. I’ll clean him up and bandage him.”

But Mrs. Alvarez screamed, “Don’t let her near him! She’s a monster! She won’t help him, she’ll eat him alive!”

Everyone turned to look at the frantic woman, out of pure surprise.

Even the Ranger turned to look, and he shouldn’t have.

George raised the gun, and hardly aimed it. He pointed it, that was all—and he pulled the trigger twice. A third time. And he would’ve gone for a fourth except that something stopped him, a blur of motion shaped like the nun, more or less. She was on him before anyone could or cry out, or gasp.

The padre ran to Horatio Korman.

One bullet had blown his hat off. One had caught him in the temple, and then it was over before he hit the ground.

He didn’t hit it immediately, but joint by joint, he folded. He fell. He didn’t drop the gun, but he didn’t fire it, either. His hand lay beside his hip and the empty holster, a solid grip still lingering on the piece.

The padre gently pried his fingers free, and slipped the weapon into his own hand, and then into the pocket of his cassock. He said a fast, breathless prayer in Spanish and closed the Ranger’s eyes, then retrieved the old man’s hat and placed it across his face.

That’s how fast it’d happened.

Faster than a blink.

When Juan Rios finished his prayer and sat up, he was struck by the sudden feeling that he wasn’t alone now—and that was ridiculous, because of course he wasn’t alone. The stunned bystanders scarcely breathed, scarcely cried. They were as silent as a photograph, so it was something else he heard…at the very edge of his senses, just under the rampaging noise of the storm outside. Something else wanted his attention.

He exhaled, and listened.

He heard only the rain and the trembling sky.

He listened again.

Violetta was behind the counter with her mother and sister; Frederick Vaughn cowered behind one of the sofas; the Andersons clutched one another on the floor beneath the coffee table; and one by one, or two by two, everyone had taken cover except for David McCoy, who had passed out from the bleeding.

He wondered where Sister Eileen was, and like magic, she stood up to reveal herself. She’d tackled George to the floor and rendered him either unconscious or restrained—he didn’t know which, because he couldn’t see him. Two of the candles had been knocked over and extinguished, and a third was guttering.

The light was all but gone. The Ranger was dead.

And overhead, the storm was not finished yet—it had not quite given up on its prey, and the hotel was not yet satisfied that it must stay put on Galveston Island. But when the padre listened he heard beyond the ruined wings and the barricaded doors that some peak had been passed, and the hurricane’s power waned.

The raindrops were only as big as grapes, and the thunder was only loud enough to make his teeth shake. The lightning came only twice a minute, and the seething, screaming wind had lost its highest notes.

“It isn’t over,” the nun whispered.

Juan Rios Looked at her. He saw eyes that were as round and gold as doubloons from a galleon, and he saw a shadow of a shape—an outline around her that looked in profile like it was not human, though it might have been once. He recognized the shape, and crossed himself. He understood what the vortex had meant by “afflicted,” and he marveled at her tenacity…and wondered if he ought to.

She was not even breathing hard, and there was blood on her hands. Perfectly ordinary hands, dainty like her feet. Petite, like that small bow of a mouth with just a smudge of dried blood left beside it on her jaw.

“It isn’t over,” she said again.

“But it
will
be. The hotel will stand until morning. The storm was not enough, but
we
were.”

“And those doors. Something about them…”

An enormous crack of thunder assured them that the hurricane had life in it yet, but the next roll suggested that it was moving along all the same. Everything dimmed by bits and pieces, by a quieter howl to the maelstrom…by less and less rain, clattering against the windows that remained.

It dimmed into the silence that eventually followed, after the last candle had burned down to a puddle and a piece of ash.

By dawn, it was only raining.

Without a word, without opening the fire doors to return to their room or collect any of their belongings, the survivors unbraced the entrance doors and left for the ferries, or for the Strand—if any of it still remained. There was no chatter of plans, no whispering about the police, and no idle questions about what would become of the hotel now.

No one cared. All anyone wanted to do was escape, and when the sun came up, everyone who was still alive…did.

The padre and the nun remained behind long enough to close and lock the front doors behind themselves; and using some paint they’d found in a storage closet, they scrawled a great warning across them: CHOLERA, KEEP OUT.

You could always find cholera, or typhoid, or any number of similar illnesses in the wake of a storm like that one. No one would question the message, and it was more likely to keep curiosity seekers away than any mere admonition against trespassing, or a declaration that the building had been condemned.

And it
was
condemned. Not in any official sense, but heaven only knew how long it would take for word to reach the building’s owners. They were all somewhere deep in the heart of Texas, the padre assumed…and he had no plans to leave the Jacaranda Hotel standing long enough for anyone to claim or restore it. He’d made up his mind, and the nun agreed with him.

But the island needed to dry out first.

For a full week after the storm, the padre and the nun waited at the convent—which yes, remained standing, and fairly unscathed. They tended to the injured, composed letters, sent telegrams, and made themselves as quietly helpful as innocent, ordinary people might be.

And then they went back.

In the light of day, without any rain, it was clear that the Jacaranda had sustained terrible damage from the hurricane. The east wing was all but lost, and the north wing was missing its top floor. The bottom two floors might collapse in on themselves at any moment, or then again, they might not.

But the center had held, as everyone had prayed and promised.

The nun unlocked the great doubled doors, using the keys Mrs. Alvarez had left behind—not remembering she’d ever had them, or wondering what had become of them. Everything had been so foggy, in those first hours afterward. Everything was abandoned, even things that once had seemed important.

Like the hotel itself, tomb that it was.

It had been too wet to dig any more graves, so the nun and the padre had left the McCoy brothers where they were, and wrapped Ranger Korman in some blankets—then placed him in the dining hall. It didn’t seem right to leave him there in the lobby with the others, or with the terrible pattern on the floor, that swelling, hungry maw that would eat the whole world if they fed it long enough.

It didn’t make much sense, but it felt like the right thing to do.

Even with the front doors open, the lobby was bleak and dark. It smelled like rotting wood, wet rugs, and old blood. And it absolutely reeked of death.

The McCoy brothers were stacked on the far sofa, their lifeless limbs free of the rigor that held them taut for a while—and now they settled into a slumped puddle of parts that were drawing flies and rats. When the nun approached the bodies, she covered her nose and mouth with her sleeve, shook her head, and crossed herself.

“You aren’t going to bury them, are you?”

“I had not planned on it. The Ranger, though. He deserves a grave. Just in case it matters, I’d rather not leave him inside.”

She nodded, and said, “I’ll get the shovels out of the cart.”

They’d arrived in a small horse-drawn number, loaded with the tools they expected to need. By the time the nun returned, the padre had relocated the Ranger’s body to a spot in the garden—not far from where he’d buried Constance Fields, who had mercifully remained underground, despite the flooding.

They dug together, shovels sticking in the muddy earth, moving scoop after scoop. Juan Rios did not comment on the small woman’s strength, for she kept pace with him as he jammed the tool down into the muck, and heaved it out again, over and over; both of them flinging the earth in great, dirty arcs that left a ring around the hole.

When they were finished, they held a brief, private service and covered up the Ranger. They did not have a stone, but they improvised a cross with rocks and seashells, and they said their final prayers.

The farewell was brief, but heartfelt.

Their farewell to the hotel was likewise heartfelt, but longer in the making—and much grander in scope.

Back at the cart, where the patient old horse chewed a mouthful of grass it’d nabbed from the lawn, there were three large barrels of kerosene lamp oil and an equally sized container of gunpowder.

“Do you think it will be enough?” the padre wondered.

“I don’t see why not. There’s water on the top floors, where there are any top floors left…but if we set the center alight, and open the fire doors…if nothing else, the place will collapse. Don’t you think?”

“Let’s find out.”

Carefully, methodically, they splashed and dashed and spread the flammables on every promising surface. Then they released the remaining fire doors, one by one. “I still don’t know why they worked,” the nun said, cranking the last to a fully open position. “I still can’t imagine why they held it all at bay.”

“Something about the metal, perhaps,” he guessed. “They’re very heavy—with these steel sheets for armor. There are a thousand stories about dark things being held back by lead and its kin. For that matter, there are wood beams in the center, beneath the metal. It could be rowan, or some other helpful tree.”

“Do your investigations always leave you with so many things unanswered?”

He ran his hand up and down the big door’s painted surface.

He Looked, and he Listened. But he felt nothing.

“Yes. As often as not.”

“It seems like a shame, doesn’t it?” Sister Eileen stood in the lobby, staring up at the elaborate ceiling fans, and over at Violetta’s counter, and the system of bells and pulleys behind it that connected room to room—to housekeeping services, and the management, or whoever else a guest might require.

“Not really. The faster this place burns, the happier I’ll be.”

“Oh, you know what I mean. All this wonderful technology, in this beautiful place. On a beautiful island, at the edge of a beautiful ocean. All of it, turned so ugly. I’ll never understand it.”

The padre remembered what the hotel had told him. He still hadn’t related it to the nun, and probably would never bother. He was still sorting through it all, deciding what had been true and what it meant, if anything. “It isn’t our task to understand; it is our task to help, when we are able.” He pulled out a box of matches and lifted one to strike it, then paused. “Look, do you see? Something has changed. You can see it in the floor.”

The space between the two great staircase landings, where a whirlpool design was figured into the tiles…the design that sometimes grew, and sometimes moved, shifted, when no one was watching…it was not growing anymore, and it was not moving. It was the same size as the first time the padre had seen it, perhaps as long across as he was tall.

“You’re right…it looks…ordinary, almost. Does it still speak? Does it still scream?”

He struck the match. “Not to me.”

They watched the place burn from a safe distance, across the street and past the lawn that the horse had nibbled upon. The horse was not very impressed by it all. He whinnied and snorted with impatience, not caring for the spectacle in the slightest—and rather wanting to return to his stable.

But the nun and the padre stayed until the last corner had fallen to rubble, and the last beams had been reduced to glimmering coals. The Jacaranda Hotel fell down upon itself and simmered, crackling and popping, floors breaking and windows shattering from the heat.

The hotel did not beg for assistance, or plead for any respite.

Whatever had given it such sinister life was either quiet, or already dead. And no one else came out to watch it burn.

No one came to see it at all, not until another three days had passed, and the ashes were cool enough to touch—the debris charred until it was light as feathers, and easily pushed aside by a big man with a broad back. Three days after the fire, Tim came alone with a shovel, an axe, and a broom. He’d taken them from the gardener’s shed, which surely had been destroyed in the storm. Unless it hadn’t been.

It took him a full day to find his way to the bottom, to the center.

It took another day to clear away what was left of the brittle, burned stairs and the skeletal wreckage of furniture, lost to the flame. By then, no one could have seen the yellow-straw hair or the freckles on his cheeks. He was covered in ash, from head to toe—the soot had worked itself into the cracks in his skin, and the ashes had filled his mouth, climbed up his nose. He coughed, and he was thirsty. But still he dug through the hotel’s remains.

And he found what he was looking for.

Carefully, for the task was delicate, now…he took his broom and swept the old smoke and ceiling tins aside. He scrubbed and scrubbed with its bristles, scraping them into the grooves between the tiles until it was exposed to the air once again—a great whirlpool mosaic, done in tiles of blue and green and black, flecked with white.

It was smaller than he remembered, but things had changed, and that was all right. Things would change again, and that would be all right too. Sarah had told him so, when she’d finally found him the morning after the storm.

Then again, she’d also told him to leave the hotel and go back home to Georgia—and he couldn’t do that, could he? No, because he’d made a promise to take care of the place. Not to Sarah, or to the nun, or the Ranger, or the padre. He hadn’t made it to Mrs. Alvarez, or anyone else.

He’d made it to the Jacaranda Hotel, and he knew what happened when you broke a promise there.