Page 61 of An Immaculate Deception

“Doctor Lobo, I must warn you…Joaquina can be very persuasive.”

He smiles. “So can I.”

36

I always knew you’d be the death of me.

Mother’s face glows in the moonlight. Her eyes are open, unseeing, unblinking, clouded by a white film. A dozen candles of varying heights gleam atop the dresser. The rushing wind sporadically knocks the window sash back against the wall. I am holding her hand in mine. It feels cold, colder than I remember it feeling before, as if her life force has started to slip away since I abandoned her down in the senzala. But at times it feels to me that she holds my hand back—it’s a subtle pressure, but I am almost sure it is there. She is present still, though this may yet be the final sign of life I get from her.

“Don’t leave, Mother. I won’t let them take you away.”

I would rather rot under the earth than see you consort with a demon.

“All that is over now. Doctor Lobo is purging the house of the evil spirits. He is a brilliant man, and he is helping us. I will be rid of her, of the influence of Satan.”

I repeat the lines over and over until it becomes a chant, an incantation. I repeat them until I believe them.

The sand slips through the hourglass. Traces of a deep male voice reach my ears from below. Curls of laughter, sporadic hushing. I cannot make out a single word. Perhaps that is for the best. A cold spiral of wind enters through the window and the candle flames quiver. A slight shaking, a reverberation beneath the soles of my feet. In the hourglass, half of the sand is now at the bottom.

I hold Mother’s hand tightly and repeat prayers under my breath. When I can no longer endure the ache in my legs, I kneel. I rest my damp forehead against the bed frame and continue the prayers. Alone in this house, the solitude will be so complete, so devastating. My mind will shed its sanity as a serpent sheds its skin.

Then: sporadic whimpers and weeping. The faint, broken sounds escape through cracks in the wallpaper and gaps in the ceiling. An old oil painting vibrates against the wall so hard that its frame cracks. I smell a faint burning, like charcoal, though this house has no fireplace, only the kitchen hearth.

The whimpers soon turn into moaning, wailing, sobbing. My heart jerks in my chest. Is it Joaquina in tears, or is it the evil spirits I hear?

You must not interfere no matter what you hear.

I shut my eyes and try not to think.

A cold chill sweeps up my spine. My teeth chatter uncontrollably. My hands grow so cold, though my forehead feels hot. The whimpering and wailing last an eternity, turning my blood to ice. Out of my peripheral vision I see shadows dance in the corner of the room like distended, twisted figures. They shift and pulse, closing in on me. They hover like figures cloaked in black, and I want to face them head-on but I cannot. I want to rise, but a heaviness permeates my insides, a deep fog in my mind, obstructing my thoughts. Inhuman whispers crawl through the floorboards and fill me with terror. My neck is too stiff to turn. It feels as though a chorus of infernal demons are present in the house. Maybe they are, maybe they stir in the depths below, speaking an evil tongue that seeps into my skin through my pores. Their force pulls me downward, whispers my name, seeks me. A pressure in my skull, like a voice turned inward, searing and scraping and burning. Reviled. They make me bang my forehead against the bed frame over and over again, and I can’t stop even when it hurts. My thoughts scramble, my vision blurs, the agonizing pressure twists and turns in my brain.

Mother groans. It’s a continuous guttural croaking emerging from her throat. The sound breaks me from my trance. I manage to draw away from the bed frame, and my forehead throbs with pain. I try to sit up, to look at Mother—why is she making that terrible noise?—but I collapse on the floor instead, facing the ceiling where lines stretch in the wood, and a dark liquid gathers in the cracks. I am struck by the pressure again, and a terrible, harrowing thirst. It is what I did to her, I neglected her and left her dehydrated. My insides twist but I cannot leave the room no matter what. My teeth gnash, and I bite my tongue and taste blood.

An unnatural, deep silence falls.

Then a skull-splitting scream.

I push myself to my knees. I take Mother’s hand in mine and feel a subtle pressure, as though Mother is holding my hand back. I look at her. Her eyes are open as before. The scream comes again, and this time it seeps through the floorboards, like wind rushing through a crack in the window.

“Joaquina,” I mutter, blood pulsing in my head.

I have a sudden instinct to go to her, but Mother doesn’t release my hand. She squeezes it with a bone-crushing grip.

He is doing what you could not.

37

I wake in my own bed, a headache pulsing in my skull. I raise my hand to my forehead, and it feels swollen. My skin feels tender and hot. Last night, I followed Doctor Lobo’s instructions to the letter, and after the sand finished pouring through the hourglass, I left and went into my own room. I did not expect to sleep at all, between the pressure in my skull and the throbbing in my forehead. Yet somehow I fell into a shallow and tormented sleep.

And now, hideous flashes of last night return to me: the evil whispers, the vibrating painting, my head uncontrollably banging against the bed frame, the voice whispering a backward tongue. Bloodcurdling screams.

It is strange. As I sit up, I hear birds chirping outside and pots clanging down in the kitchen. Downstairs, Maria das Dores is cooking. I smell fried eggs. The sun shines in the window and the blue sky is clear. Perhaps it worked; the darkness was stirred up during the purge of the house, and maybe the dark spirits are gone.

Maybe it worked.

And if this did not work, then there is no more hope.

As I step out into the corridor, my heart pounds inside my chest. I brace for unnatural sounds. The wooden floorboards creak beneath the soles of my feet as I make my way to the room where Mother sleeps. My mouth and throat feel as though I have eaten sand. I desperately need water. I cannot recall when I last drank water.