Queen of the Dark Things (4 page)

“Something is . . . haunting my . . . my home.”

“A spirit? Hmmm . . .” She laid down another card, then frowned, looking up strangely at Carol. “Have you seen this spirit, or merely felt it?”

Carol hesitated, her eyes darting around nervously, her hands sweating. “I've seen her,” she said. “And heard her.”

“Heard her? Moving things you mean?”

“No. Screaming. Wailing. Crying.” She paused. “Speaking.”

Mother Ojeda laid down another card, looking mildly confused about the card facing up at her. “What did she say?”

“Nothing in English. I couldn't understand it.”

Mother Ojeda was quite serious now. All of her theatricality and pretense had vanished, her accent fading with it. “What does this woman look like?”

“She's tall, very thin. Skeletal. Her arms look longer than they should be. Bony, with elongated fingers.” She shivered a bit, the words getting harder to free, mired in the pits of terrifying memories. “She has long black hair and her eyes, they're gouged out. Holes with something glowing behind them. Like coals.”

Mother Ojeda clasped her hands together, wringing them tightly. “The words she spoke. Can you remember them?” She placed a final card, her eyes wide and unbelieving.

“I miss hee ohs.”

“
¿Ay,
mis hijos?
”

“Yes! She just kept screaming it. Over and over. What are the cards telling you?”

Mother Ojeda looked solemnly upon her. “That you're not lying.”

“Why would I be lying?”

“Mrs. Voss, do you have children?”

“Yes.”

“Two boys?”

“ . . . Yes.”

“Both still young enough that they need a sitter?”

Carol nodded.

“And you have a home by the water, don't you?”

Carol eyed her suspiciously. “Now wait a second, how did you know that?”

“By the river?”

“The lake.”

Mother Ojeda shook her head. “The lake is just a river dammed up. You have found yourself at the mercy of a terrible spirit. La Llorona.”

“Is it dangerous?”

Mother Ojeda nodded. “Once there was a beautiful young woman, every bit as stunning and radiant as yourself. But she was unmarried, widowed, her husband having died in a terrible accident, leaving her to take care of their two children—both young boys—on her own. She was in love with a wealthy merchant who, while having feelings for her, did not want to marry her. Instead he told her that he did not want children and thus
couldn't
marry her. This broke her heart and, desperately lonely, she went home, took both of her boys out of their beds, walked them down to the river, and drowned them both right then and there.

“She went back to the merchant, overjoyed at her new freedom, and told him that they could finally be together. Horrified by what she'd done, he immediately rejected her, saying that he never wanted to see her again. This destroyed her. She begged and pleaded for him to reconsider, but he wouldn't have it. He refused even to see her. Now even more heartbroken than before, she hanged herself.

“When her spirit arrived in Heaven, God met her at the gates and asked her where her children were. She shook her head. ‘I have no idea,' she said. ‘I thought they were with you.' God said, ‘No, I haven't seen your children. Go back to earth and find them. You cannot come into Heaven without them.'

“The woman was distraught, confused. She had no idea where her children were. So she came back to earth and began scouring the river. But they were nowhere to be found. Eventually she realized the current was too strong and she would never find them, so she hatched a plot. She needed two boys who looked like hers that she could pretend were her own. She would take them, walk them down to the river, drown them like she had her own children, then march them up to Heaven to prove to God that she knew where her children were.

“That woman is La Llorona. She wanders the world still, up and down the length of the Colorado, looking for her little boys—or ones who remind her of them that she can claim as her own—crying out, ‘
¡Ay! ¡Mis hijos! Oh! My children!
'
—
so she might finally get into Heaven. And now she has her eyes on your little boys.”

Carol stared at her incredulously, both horrified by the story and unsure of what was coming next. For a moment her brain spun dry, unable to process what was happening. Then reason began to take hold. She narrowed her eyes. “How much is this going to cost me?” she asked.

Mother Ojeda shook her head. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean nothing?”

“Nothing,” she said again, waving her hand as if refusing money. “I can do nothing at all for you.”

“Wait. What do you mean you can't do anything?”

“This is beyond my gifts.”

“Then what do I do?”

“Go home. Keep your children away from the water. Don't let them anywhere near it. Keep the doors and windows locked at night. If there is a knock at the door after sunset, don't answer it. Do you smoke?”

“No. Of course not. I have children.”

“Then consider starting. A lit cigarette in the hollows of her eye sockets will chase her away.”

Carol leaned back in her chair. “This is ridiculous. You're pulling my leg.”

Mother Ojeda shook her head, eyes cold and narrow, pointing sternly at her. “Have you really seen her?”

“Yes,” she said, swallowing hard.

“And have you really heard her?”

Carol nodded. “Yes. I have.”

“And as I sit here and say that I believe you, you don't believe me?”

“Isn't there something you can do? Don't you speak to spirits? I read that you speak to spirits.”

“I do speak to spirits. But I will
not
speak to her. There is too much evil there. Too much danger in even looking her in the eyes.”

“What
can
you do?”

Mother Ojeda took a deep breath, considering her next words very carefully. Then she reached behind her to a nearby end table and pulled from it a pen and a scrap of paper. She began writing. “The spirits, they speak of a boy. One said to be able to wipe a spirit clean off the earth for well and for good. One who scares them so much they won't speak his name loudly out of fear he might notice them. His name is Colby. He works in a bookshop. Here is where you'll find it.”

Carol took the slip of paper, tears forming in her eyes. “I don't . . . I don't know how to thank you.”

“Go home, kiss your boys. Love them and raise them to be good men. And whatever you do, do not let them anywhere near the water.”

“H
ER NAME IS
Beatriz,” said Colby. “She's been walking up and down the shores of the Colorado since the fifties.”

“So the story? It's true?” asked Carol.

“Parts of it. There are a lot of stories, few of them entirely true. But that's the point of stories, I guess. The part about her drowning her sons is true. That and the part about her walking the earth looking for children who remind her of her boys. But the part about God is superstitious bullshit. God doesn't make creatures of the night. We do. Beatriz made herself out of her own madness and guilt. That's all that's left of her now. She's a shadow of everything that was wrong with her, walking, feeding, wailing.”

“So you know her?”

“Yes.”

“And you'll stop her?”

“Well . . .”

“Well, what? I can pay. My husband does very well—”

“It's not about money.”

“You work in a bookshop. And it's always about money.”

“Ma'am, I'm going to stop you right there.”

“No. No,” she said, waving an authoritative finger. “I am not taking no for an answer. These are my boys we're talking about. They are the point of my whole life. They are everything. I will give you whatever you want—anything—if you protect them for me. So quit negotiating and name a price.”

“Look, ma'am—”

“Carol,” she said, bringing herself half a step closer, her eyes softening.

“Carol. I'm not an exterminator and this isn't a raccoon in your gutter. La Llorona are exceptionally dangerous creatures. They don't just go away when asked. I don't know what you think an exorcism is, but it's not about shouting loudly and sprinkling holy water. It's about doing battle with something made of hate, anger, and fear. You're asking me to risk my life.”

She took another half step closer, putting a gentle hand on his upper arm, sliding it up into the short sleeve of his shirt. “I'm asking you to save my sons.”

Colby gulped. Women didn't get this close to him; women didn't touch him on his upper arm. “Ma'am.”

“
Carol
.”

“Keep your sons away from the water. Buy some dried tobacco leaves and keep them burning outside your door after sunset. That's the best I can do.”

Carol's eyes hardened again, just for a moment, as she reached into her purse for a scrap of paper and a pen. “Here's my number. You call me when you figure out what it will take to get you to do better than that.” Then she turned quickly, making her way out of the shop before she found herself hiding her own tears.

Colby crumpled the scrap of paper in a tight fist, slid it into his pocket, cursing once more beneath his breath. He shook his head. Those boys had a week, at best, before they turned up in the river. But that wasn't his business. Not anymore.

C
HAPTER
5

K
EEPSAKES
AND
M
EMORIES

E
wan Bradford, once Ewan Thatcher, had been dead six months now—the pike that killed him resting on two pegs drilled into an otherwise empty wall. The blade was clean, polished, not a hint of the blood it spilled still anywhere on its haft. This was the pike that took the hand from a changeling, slew that changeling's mother in a lake, pierced the heart of a Leanan Sidhe, and, most important, robbed Colby Stevens of his longest, and best, friend. It pulsed with that power, having grown stronger with each strike, the legend surrounding its deeds still nowhere near doing justice to its potential.

And Colby Stevens hated it. He sat across from it on his couch, staring, remembering the feel of it in his hands, its heft, the way it swung. He'd made it. Though he hadn't forged it himself, it only existed because of him. And now it stood monument to the worst night of his life. Colby rubbed his chin, thick, abrasive stubble like sandpaper in his hands, and he thought of his friend.

“Are you going to stare at that thing all night, boss, or are we going to go for a walk?” asked Gossamer, the golden retriever resting his head on his front legs in front of the couch. The dog's thick, red coat was well groomed, his face developing only the hints of a white mask in the fur around his muzzle and brow. Colby looked down at him, roused at once from his daydream.

“What?” he asked.

The dog spoke again. “I said, ‘Are you going to stare at that thing all night, boss, or are we going to go for a walk?' ”

“Oh. I don't feel like going out tonight.”

Gossamer flipped his tail a bit, thumping it on the floor impatiently. “I want a beer.”

“We have beer here.”

“I want a sausage.”

“We don't have sausage.”

“I guess that means we have to go for a walk then.”

“Gossamer, we're not going for a walk.”

“What? Are we going to sit here all night, staring at a thing on a wall?”

“You used to do that all the time.”

“I only stared at things that moved.”

“I'm sure it makes all the difference.”

Gossamer grimaced. “Have you ever watched a possum shimmy along a telephone wire? Knowing that at any moment it could drop into your yard for you to play with?”

“No.”

“No, you haven't. You don't know. Don't judge. I want to go for a walk.”

“And I want to stay here. And stare at a thing on the wall. It's why people buy houses. So they can sit in them. With their things. And stare at them.”

“I want a beer. And a sausage.”

“I never should have helped awaken you.”

“You didn't have a choice. I was waking up without you.”

“I should have let you become a Black Dog.”

“That's racist.”

“That joke is still not funny.”

“It is to dogs.”

“WHY ARE YOU BEING SO ANNOYING TONIGHT?”

“Because. I want you to stop thinking about him.”

Colby looked sadly down on Gossamer, his gaze softening. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh. We've got to get out of this house.”

“He was in the paper again.”

“I know.”

“And how would you know that?”

“Because this is what you always do when he's in the paper. Or on TV. Or the radio. You mope, you pout, and you stare at the wall. Why don't you get rid of that thing?”

Colby shook his head. “It's too powerful. In the wrong hands it can kill even the longest-lived of creatures.”

“But it's safe here?”

“Of course it is. It's got you to protect it, doesn't it?”

“That doesn't exactly instill confidence in me, you know.”

“I know. But what do you want me to say? That I'm the great Colby Stevens? That I can evaporate a soul with a dirty look and no one in this town wants to fuck with me?”

“I'd rather you not. That conversation usually ends in an entirely different style of self-loathing.”

“You really are being a pain in the ass today.”

Gossamer nodded, nuzzling against Colby's leg. “I know.”

“A walk?”

“Yes, please.”

“I'll get the leash.”