The Unwanted (Black Water Tales Book 2) (3 page)

“You are early. There is no room ready for you. We have to fix up a room. Come back tomorrow.” The facial expression on the old crone had not changed since her very first question to Blaire.

“But we don’t have anywhere to go. The last train has left Borslav
and
—”

The unwavering woman interrupted Blaire and hurled a cutting response. “You are early. Come back tomorrow!” she ordered before slamming the door, causing a heap of dust to surge into Blaire’s face.

“Who was that?” Travis asked, as he hopped up the porch steps.

“I don’t know. Where were you?”

“It’s been a long trip, and I had to go. You need help with your bags?”

“We’re not staying.”

“What? Why?” Travis’ jaw dropped.

Blaire pointed a stiff finger toward the front door. “That…that woman just told me that we are not expected until tomorrow; consequently, our room is not ready.”

“Tomorrow? Today is the seventh.”

“I know,” Blaire said, as she plopped down on her luggage.

“So, we can’t stay until tomorrow?”

“That is what I am told.”

“The last train is gone. What are we supposed to do...camp?” Travis asked.

“What an adventure this is turning out to be.” Blaire’s hand caressed the side of the suitcase.

“Well, you know what goes great with camping?” Travis shifted his stance.

“Marshmallows?”

“Booze.”

“That too.” Blaire agreed as she hopped up.

CHAPTER THREE

T
he crash of a bottle hitting a hard surface and shattering into hundreds of pieces was the sound that greeted them as they approached Berek’s Beer House. Artificial tangerine lighting served as a comforting contrast to the darkening street where shadows were beginning to play, hiding and seeking in and around the dismal alleyways and deserted buildings.

A few couples danced wildly on the makeshift dance floor created in the middle of the tavern when several tables were shifted to one side. Two open stools at the far end of the bar welcomed them. A couple of beers later and the world was not so bad looking to the United Care volunteers.

“Are there any hotels around here?” Travis asked the buxom,
fair
-haired bartender who leaned into him seductively before she answered with a smirk. “No. Sorry, no hotels in Borslav. We don’t get many tourists.”

“What time do you close?” Blaire asked.

“When there are no more customers,” she said in a bubbly tone that could make anything including directions to the bathroom sound overtly sexual.

“I’ll drink to that!” Travis held up his beer bottle to meet Blaire’s in a toast. “Shots,” he proposed abruptly.

Blaire erupted in a volcanic laughter that she had not heard from herself in years. Hung over and stinking of vodka was not the way she pictured herself showing up to her first day of volunteer work at the orphanage, but she also never pictured that she’d be sleeping in a bar the night before; inarguably, one justified the other.

Travis ordered two shots of vodka to celebrate the fact that they may not have to camp outside overnight after all. They may be forced to drink themselves into an acute coma, but even that sounded like a more inviting option than crashing on the streets of Borslav.

“Two vodka shooters!” the young blonde said, as she sat the two small glasses down in front of the foreigners.

“What’s your name anyway?” Travis asked.

“Vana,” the young woman said in a
chocolate
-covered voice that intrigued Travis. Blaire gave a furtive eye roll at the ease with which Vana
oozed sex.

“Vana,” the name rolled off
Travis’ lips as he dramatized it with smoldering eyes. Then he held up his shot glass and pronounced, “Cheers.”

Immediately after slamming the shots, Blaire and Travis stared at one another as their throats closed with a forceful clench, their eyes filled with tears, and their chests felt the slow onset of raging wildfires.

“Whoa!” Travis cried out as he held the drained glass up to look at it in disbelief.

Blaire broke into a hideous laughter as she chased the foul liquid with her beer. Instantly, the vodka took effect, and they sat for several dazed moments listening to the music that came from the jukebox.

Finally, Travis spoke, “Tell me about yourself, Blaire Baker!”

Blaire took a deep breath. “Nothing much to tell, I grew up in a quaint little town called Black Water. I went to college for teaching because I want to make the world a better place, blah, blah, blah,” Blaire slurred on euphorically.

“Tell me more about this curse.” Travis’ fingers played in the condensation on his beer bottle.

Blaire grinned and seemed pleased that Travis wanted to know more about her. “It’s an old wives tale mostly, but they say that bad things happen there, and if you are unfortunate enough to be born there, you can never escape it.”

“Hell, bad things happen everywhere.”

“Tell me about it,” Blaire responded. “What about you?”

“What do you want to know?” Travis laughed as if there were too much to tell, but began explaining anyway. “Just started nursing. I grew up in the country on the outskirts of a small city in Virginia with a
picture
-perfect little family: a
hard
-working father, a doting mother, and two older, strapping brothers.”
Laurely
crossed his mind briefly but was gone as soon as she came, like an obscure sound in the night. “I love my family, but I was dying to get out of that place; hunting and freezing through the winter months, which were most of the year
was just never my idea of a good time. When I was old enough, I moved to Miami for school and never looked back.”

“You’re single? I wouldn’t believe it if you said you were.” Blaire laughed at her joke.

“By choice, of course.” He snapped back playfully.

Blaire became more serious. “That’s the right attitude. So your parents are okay with you…?” Blaire began, but stopped abruptly when she noticed a formidable change in Travis.

“Oh, sorry, is that personal? That was a dumb question.”

“Nah, it isn’t. I told them recently. They seemed okay at first, but I don’t think they’re taking it too well, to be honest.”

Blaire nodded as if she understood, but she didn’t. She would never get the chance to tell her parents any
life
-changing news.

“But they’ll get over it.” Travis finally spoke.

“Yes, I’m sure they will.” Blaire added as she decided she would shut up for a while.

The beers went through them like water down a slide; smooth. They laughed, danced and somehow fell in with a rowdy local by the name of Petro. He was a burly man with bushels of reddish brown curls and a wavy mustache that filtered down into a thick goatee. Round the floor, Petro whirled Blaire like a
feather
-weight rag doll, while Travis and Petro’s wife, Soreena, scooted around them in an energetic dance.

“DRINK!” Petro yelled.

“DRINK!” Everyone in the room responded creating something like a drunken choral reading. Blaire’s eyes quickly found Travis’, and they both exploded in amusement. Petro, Blaire, and Travis headed to the bar, but Soreena waved them on and continued to dance, taking up with someone else.

“Three vodka shooters!” Petro instructed Vana, who poured up three more shots of the intensely potent liquid.

“This is it for me.” Blaire made the announcement as if she were in a state of mind to make such a firm commitment.

“Agreed,” Travis said.

Petro lifted his glass to long life, as Blaire and Travis raised their glasses to meet his before throwing back the alcohol.

“Hooooooooo,” Travis groaned as he sat his empty glass on the bar. Just as Blaire finished her shot, she felt someone standing close to her.

“Another?” the man asked. His eyes deep and dark like the sea that crested on the beach below St. Sebastian.

“Uh, no. I couldn’t.” Blaire told the stranger.

“Latif,” he said, extending his hand.

“Latif…I’m Braaairrre, Blaairre Baker.” She immediately became embarrassed at hearing herself slur her own name. “Blaire Baker” came the words again as she made a concentrated effort to speak clearly this time.

“Nice to meet you, Blaire Baker,” Latif said as he turned his shot glass up, threw his money on the table, and disappeared back into the crowd.

“So, you two are American, no?” Petro’s voice boomed.

“Yes,” Travis answered for the both of them.

“I always wanted to go there.”

“You should go, Petro. You would probably love America,” Blaire said.

“One day,” Petro responded, smiling at the newcomers. “Who do you know here in Borslav?”

“No one,” Travis explained.

“We are volunteers with a program called United Care. We’re donating a year of our time to help the staff at St. Sebastian,” Blaire said.

“St. Sebastian?” Petro’s brow furrowed and an inquisitive look spread across his face. “Why?”

Blaire and Travis caught one another’s glances.

“Just to help,” Blaire explained.

“The Americans...always just wanting to help,” Petro said with a grin.

“Is something wrong with that?”

Petro’s voice lowered to express his deep concern. “You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. That place is a black hole, something you don’t know about, and won’t ever understand or want to for that matter. That place it…it’s…” Petro moved closer to Travis and Blaire as his voice fell lower, conveying the intimacy of his message which was unexpectedly disrupted.

“Drink!” Soreena shouted gleefully, as she threw her arms around her tree trunk of a husband. Like a switch, he flipped and exploded in jovial howling. He spun his wife around in a circle, before purchasing another round of drinks, resolving to dissolve the matter of St. Sebastian into the four shot glasses that were soon in front of them.

As the crowd thinned and the tunes on the machine became separated by more extended bouts of dead air, Blaire’s head felt as if it weighed hundreds of pounds as she struggled to lift it from the cool, hard surface of the table. Travis, Petro, and Soreena’s voices sounded far away even though she saw that they were sitting right next to her.

“How did we get to a table?” Blaire asked, trying her best to clear away the brain fog.

“You okay?” Travis asked.

Blaire enjoyed the occasional drink, but this night she was in rare form. Only once could Blaire recall being this drunk and, as horrible as she was feeling at that moment, she remembered that it was the next morning that had been the true debacle, causing her to dread waking up tomorrow. Travis looked almost as bad as she, but Petro and Soreena were flawlessly composed.

“Time to go!” Petro laughed heartily, while his wife screeched a giggle as if her husband had told a hilarious joke. Petro stood up from his chair causing it to clatter onto its side. In one fluid move, he threw his wife over his shoulder, and Soreena roared. It seemed to be one of their signature couple tricks, obviously performed numerous times for the entertainment of spectators as much as their own. Blaire’s hand shot up to her mouth to catch whatever might come out of it at the thought of being upside down.

“You want a ride to St. Sebastian?” Petro asked, not bothering to alter his tone in order hide his adverse feelings.

“Our room won’t be ready until tomorrow,” Blaire responded. Petro paused then put his wife on the ground.

“We’re stuck here,” Travis chimed in.

“Ah, okay, you stay with us!” Petro replied. Everything that he said erupted from him in a
mini
explosion.

“What?” The American pair perked in unison.

“You stay with us tonight, and we take you to St. Sebastian in the morning,” Soreena said with a sly smirk that was both welcoming and unnerving. Blaire could not tell if her hosts were gracious, psychotic, or just drunk, and she cared little at such a time when the vodka and beer worked doggedly to shut her down.

“Oh, we couldn’t,” Blaire replied, her refusal superficial at best, and one she hardly planned to stand on if the couple insisted.

“Yes!” Petro’s wife screeched into the conversation. “We have extra room, so you stay with us, and we take you tomorrow!”

“Well…” Travis said, vacillating as he looked to Blaire, and she could see that he had little objection to the proposed accommodations when considering the alternative.

It was a modest home, no more than a
five
-minute drive from the pub. It was devoid of any luxuries, but it was clean, warm, and better than sleeping at a bar. Blaire took her time moving through the living area that reeked of stale beer and quiet desperation. This place had to be something inherited, a home with all of its old spirits passed down through Soreena’s family from generation to generation. Above the fireplace, Blaire noticed family photos that dated back further than any of them had been alive, peculiar ancestors watching the place with prudent expressions drawn tight at the sight of the strangers.

Soreena offered water to her guests before dispatching them to the extra room that sat just off the living room. Blaire and her partner climbed into the bed, snuggling deeply into the scratchy comforter, both undisturbed by this mutual act to survive the night and both fell into a deep unconsciousness within minutes.

“Holy mother!” Blaire spoke in a prickly whisper that was dry and matched the texture of the comforter, as she grabbed her forehead. Narrowing her eyes, she spotted her glass of water on the nightstand, which she gulped down in three deep swallows. Blaire caught a whiff of herself and frowned; she smelled as if she had just finished the graveyard shift in a gin mill.

As she lifted herself further from the bed the unfamiliar room shifted to a tilt. She was dizzy and felt as if some grotesque load was creeping up into her throat toward her mouth. After a few moments she regained her balance and willed control over whatever was in her throat, forcing it back down. Light that was neither warm nor comforting crept into the bedroom through the blinds. Blaire grabbed her purse and found a small bottle of pills inside, wrestling with the top on the painkillers before tossing three into her mouth. For a moment they became lost in the invisible cotton that filled her jaws, and then she felt their gritty texture at the back of her throat refusing to go any further down. She gathered up a bucket of saliva and pushed them back hard, and they disappeared.

Blaire looked around and realized Travis was gone. She reached over, sweeping her hand across the cool sheets on his side of the bed. She felt hollow and dehydrated as she pressed the covers back, placing her feet on the frigid floor like a vampire emerging from her coffin for the first time in many years.

Lumbering toward the door, she observed a splotch of blood at the end of Travis’ side of the bed, and she immediately focused on the hushed whispers floating into the room from the living area.