Hacienda Moon (The Path Seekers) (21 page)

20

Tandie shot awake from yet another nightmare filled with echoes of Ella Maud Cropsey’s laughter. The bright afternoon sun beamed through the window, bathing Tandie’s face in nature’s warmth. The horror of the ill-fated love affair between the girl who lived in the house and a man related to Eric filled her with a keen sense of dread.

She came to the small town to write a thriller novel as a recovery tactic, and to heal from an eternal wound that no therapist could mend. During the past month, the tables turned, and she found herself traveling down an unstable road of emotions. One thing Tandie knew for certain, she chose this house and town for a reason. If what the librarian told her about the famed curse on the Bolivian residents held any truth then she had already figured out what that purpose might be.
Along with the visions, came a heightened emotional state. Alice’s memories reeked with sadness and it was almost as if she and the dead girl’s body had combined as one. Plus, she missed Eric as if she’d known him her entire lifetime.
 

The phone’s buzz-like ringer sounded out in the hallway. By the time she mustered the energy to head toward it the answering machine had picked up. Marsha Arrington’s voice sailed through the speakers. She stayed on the couch and listened.

“Hi, Tandie, it’s Marsha. I’m worried about you. I haven’t heard anything or received your revised manuscript. Did you find those missing pages? Give me a call. Geez.”

Tandie pulled her blanket up to her ears, unable to face the day’s word count. She’d fallen behind. Tandie’s visions consumed most of her waking moments since she’d discovered the diary in the hidden bedroom yesterday. She closed her eyes, fell asleep right away, and stumbled into a deep hole.

And then she was falling, screaming, and crying until she emerged in a forest on the other side of a vision.

* * *

A man ran through Chelby Rose Forest at breakneck speed. The men trailing him shortened the distance like a group of lions focused on a gazelle.

Tandie had somehow found a way to channel Enrique Fontalvo’s nightmare as he ran from Thomas Chelby and the other townspeople. They’d formed a lynch mob to capture the renegade who, according to local rumors, had raped and impregnated young Alice Chelby.

He had managed to keep his identity secret for almost a year. And with the help of the Chelby’s servant, a young girl named Nanee Atwater, he was able to sneak in and spend time with his beloved and their two-month-old son. That was until Ella Maud Cropsey and her horrid mother Mary Jean found out.

There was almost enough money saved from his turpentine business profits to leave this place
and take care of his family. No longer would Alice be locked away in an attic as if she were a deformed step-child.

He cradled a small box under his arms and tried to avoid the tree limbs scattered throughout the forest. Stumbling over branches made him lose precious time. He dropped his box. Tandie felt his panic in her own chest.

A bridge of time flashed and passed and now highlighted a very distinct patch of blue roses surrounding the base of a tree—the same type of rose Saul gave Tandie on the night they attended the Governor’s Ball. The blue curiosa.

* * *

Tandie walked out of the front door, her mind muddled in something like a trance. The continual visions drained her energy. She’d never known them to be so frequent before. Headed toward the forest, she knew exactly what she hoped to find. Crickets, birds, and small animals continued to sing their praises to nature as the world unfolded for Tandie one grim discovery at a time.

Following Enrique’s path she experienced in the vision, she trudged deeper into the woods until she came to a circle of pine trees with the middle cleared out. A maple tree surrounded by a halo of greenery caught her attention. She inched closer and inspected the foliage growing along the tree’s base. Miniature blue flowers grew in the weeds. The blue rose, the curiosa Saul had called it.
Alice’s favorite. Seeing them brought tears to Tandie’s eyes.

She looked down at the place where Enrique had buried the box he carried. Layers of dirt now covered its resting spot, almost three-hundred years worth of layers. Stabbing the ground with the shovel she didn’t remember picking up, she jumped on the tool and drove it through the soft mud.

What would Eric think if he saw her right now?

Then again, Tandie wondered if she’d ever see Eric Fontalvo again. He seemed pretty spooked about the curse on his family and with good reason. In the calm little town of Bolivia, the living and the dead were all connected. The curse on his family was the binding factor for them all; a mystery she vowed to solve for Eric, Saul, Eliza, and even Breena.

After obsessively digging for an hour or so, Tandie’s shovel thudded against something. She dropped it and hopped down in the four-foot deep hole, her chest heaving with the excitement. The mystery was becoming an obsession.

Dropping to her knees, she dug through the wet dirt with her fingers until they scraped across a box. She lifted the wooden box from the ground and examined the Spanish words engraved on the top. Inside the box was a necklace attached to a heart made of gold. A dirty, disheveled Tandie studied the necklace during her trek back to Chelby Rose.

She emerged from the woods and felt someone or something watching her. Two groups of about six or seven people stood in the trees along either side of the house. The women wore clothing similar to Ruth Ann Adams; but the men’s outfits varied from coveralls to pajamas to suits that were fashionable decades ago. The group consisted of both black and white people alike, along with a few children. The phantom boy from the Catsburg store stood among the group near the right side of her porch.

Tandie fearlessly walked by them, surprised by her bravery. A middle-age black woman with a striking silver and black afro stepped forward. If she didn’t have the strange glow surrounding her then Tandie might’ve thought she was a living human.

“You mustn’t be discouraged, dear. Continue to tell Chelby Rose’s story. Let them know. They must all know. Finish the ending the way it should be done. Only then can you show them the light,” the strange woman said in a raspy voice.

“I don’t know what to write.”Tandie stood among the ghosts gathering around her.

A different woman stepped forward this time, a blonde in her mid to late thirties. “But you must know. You have all you need now.”

“Why have you chosen me? I’m not a savior. Not even close. Besides, I’m too dirty,” Tandie whispered.

“Alice knows what to do. Be strong, path seeker. Young Fontalvo will return,” the black woman’s spirit said and stepped forward to where she stood merely inches away from Tandie’s face.

The woman’s kind, round face and soulful eyes reminded her of Grandma Zee. Tandie’s heart ached from all the losses she’d suffered over the past decade; but she felt strong in the presence of these people, these lost souls who looked up to her. For the first time in what seemed like forever, Tandie’s life had a purpose.

“No tears. No more, baby girl. Save your strength.” The woman beamed a kind smile, turned around, and floated away.

Tandie watched them all drift away in a shadowed unison. Somewhere deep in her mind, Tandie heard Norma Atwater’s voice repeating what she’d told her about the Bolivian townspeople.

“Sometimes the spirits don’t know they’ve moved on, the dead among the living”.

Tandie watched them until they all faded away in the night.
 

* * *

The shower water beating down on Tandie’s skin was like fingers massaging the evening’s events away. The liquid flowed through her hair, over her eyes. She leaned over on the shower wall and let the water wash away her fears, tears, and burdens. She kept seeing the face of the old woman’s spirit combined with Grandma Zee’s. And then her grandmother’s image fully materialized before her closed eyes. Tandie caught her breath.

“Hey, my baby girl, open your eyes. You gotta pay attention, now.” Her gaze focused on something beside Tandie. “The trinity of love can stop those witches: the rose, the heart, and the lucky one. Find them all, unite them as one.”

“Don’t go, Grandma. Please.” Tandie’s voice wavered as the water flowed over her lips. Her grandmother reached out to her just before her image faded. From in the darkness, her voice echoed and said six final words: “Look up, girl! They’re above you.”

“What? Who’s above me, grandma?” Tandie felt along the wall until her fingers raked across the three-prong shower head, and then turned the water off. Everything was quiet, now.

Tandie wiped at her eyes. At once ants and spiders started moving down her skin, crawling in her hair, and tickling her naked buttocks with their feet.

Gasping, she cleared all of the water away from her eyes; but it wasn’t liquid on her face. Something that had a grainy texture was falling over her skin.

Forcing her eyes all the way open, she focused on the shower walls. The faux marble tiles were gone. She spun around and found herself surrounded by a circle of dark brown walls. Dirt. She was standing in the bottom of a ten-foot deep hole.

“Look up! They’re above you,” Grandma Zee had warned.

With hesitation, Tandie glanced upward. A gaping hole had replaced the ceiling over the shower. As she focused on this new vision, a pile of dirt plummeted down on top of her head. She swiped the dirt away from her pale-blue dress
, Alice’s favorite one given to her by Enrique. What
she thought were spiders turned out to be dirt particles easing between the dress and her skin. Her shower became an open grave. More dirt shoveled down on her head and went into her eyes. It stung worse than being poked with a mascara brush.

“Stop! Somebody’s down here. For God’s sake, hear me, please!” Tandie screamed, but her voice now belonged to a stranger, Alice Chelby.

Ella’s face—or someone who looked a lot like her gardener—appeared over the hole. She glanced down at Alice, laughing hysterically.

“Whining is for babies, Alice. Should we be merciful, Mama?” Ella’s high-pitched voice called to someone she couldn’t see.

Mary Jean Cropsey’s face appeared over the grave. But it was shrouded by the shadows so her face wasn’t completely visible.

“Thomas Chelby will pay for spurning my love like your Enrique will pay for hurting my Ella,” Mary Jean threatened. So that’s what started all of this—two women that got hurt by men who were in love with someone else? 

“Please, don’t do this. Oh God in Heaven! Enrique will find me. He’ll kill you both for this monstrous act,” Alice hissed.

“They won’t find you, Alice. No worries, though. My Ella will comfort your ailing Latin lover,” Mary Jean said, laughing.

Ella dumped more soil on Alice’s head. She raised her arms to protect herself, feeling the true horror of a mother unable to defend her children: her two-month-old son left with Nanee Atwater and the second child inside her womb. She was thankful that she’d had sense enough to send her child away with Nanee. Her faithful servant and her father, Jacob, would protect Enrique’s baby as if their lives depended on it.

“Please. I’m with child. Have you no soul?” Alice pleaded, her voice cracking from all of the screaming, her mind tortured by the image of a man who would never see the face of the child he loved ever again. Oh, the pain that Enrique will experience once word of this terrible moment reaches him. Thinking of his reaction ripped at Alice’s heart worse than the horrid act about to be committed by the two women above. Hysterical laughter and falling dirt were the only responses she got.