Chapter 29 - The Man of Wind and Moss

The place was dark and empty and from the outside it lacked the sense of relief that greeted them that first time. Marco put his light towards the door and then towards the banister that wrapped around the back of the cabin where the hot tub lay and where Dean fired his revolver. More than before, the precarious nature of the cabin stood out to Marco. It was slanted, on a hill, yes, but the back half of it was on the edge, practically on a cliff that looked over the tops of trees and the expanse of the forest. One mudslide and the whole thing came down. Or if you weren’t careful, you, alone, could go over the edge of that balcony and fall for a long time.

“I gotta get off my feet,” Sasha said. “I’m wiped.”

Marco concurred silently and climbed the stone steps and put the babushka key into the door and pushed it open. He thought about telling Sasha how Paula had found them hanging there, but he didn’t bring it up. It didn’t make a difference. When Marco flipped on the lights he relaxed, or at least felt something like it for the first time in months. The place was warm again and full of the amenities it had been. He expected decay and ruin, like at Gaiety, or at least a dreary apathy that the exterior suggested, but that wasn’t the case. Paula had been renting out the place all the while. There was a fleeting presence in the cabin. A feeling of comfort was still there and when Sasha came in, he closed the door firmly behind her lest it escape out the door and into the forest.

They moved in and dropped their bags and Marco rested on the sofa just as he did before and just as before Sasha said, “There’s a letter here.” Marco’s heart stopped and his eyes shot open. Sasha read it aloud behind him: “Thanks for the stay. We loved it. Jackie and Burt.” Then she tossed the letter in the trash. “Some place for a honeymoon, huh?”

Sasha moved out of the kitchen and lugged her bags up to her own room. He waited for her to come back down but then heard her shower turn on. He closed his eyes again and listened to the sounds of the forest closing in on the house. Remember what nature is for. To hear Paula in his head like that was almost too much to bear.

Downstairs, past the steam room, was a storage area with boxes and holiday supplies and sitting among them, slanted, was Marco’s guitar still in its case. He nearly scoffed at the irony of it. It was haunting him, the guitar and his unfulfilled plan to serenade Pansy. It all seemed so humiliating. He reached for the case and unclasped it and grabbed the guitar out by its neck.

Passing by the steam room, this time, he stopped. He flipped on the lights, and the green and brass room stared back at him. He studied the seats where he and Sasha had sex. Everything hummed with the energy they had left behind. The guitar, the steam room, the couch, the hot tub. The place vibrated with a dormant type of entropy. Sasha and Marco coming back was sending out ripples and it felt like some evil sun flare was about to whip back at them. Marco recalled how Sasha described messing with the book: flashing a big light.

Remember what nature is for.

Do you know what a flock call is?

Know. Your. Place.

He sat on the sofa where Keith slept, and he plucked at the guitar, and he was simultaneously happy that Paula had kept it safe for him and saddened that he’d never get to thank her. What was that song he wanted to play for Pansy? Head Over Heels? Did he remember how it went? He started fingerpicking what he could. The song came out slowly, barely passable. He opened his mouth to sing but faltered when Sasha came down the steps.

“Sorry,” he said, putting it down.

“No, go ahead,” she said, sitting on the bottom step. She had changed out of her denim into a giant sweater. It practically swallowed her. “I wanna hear it.”

Marco fixed his glasses and obliged. It was weak and the melody came together in scraps, and when he sang, he didn’t know most of the lines and his voice cracked on the highs. By the time he finished he didn’t realize that he was crying. He knew his eyes were getting misty, but the cold tear ran down his cheek and fell onto the shoulder of the guitar. The only other time he played that song was for Pansy when she was black-out drunk, head bobbing like a baby, and hiccupping in his student apartment. Now he sang it for Sasha, and she glared at him all the while, stone-cold sober and with zero emotion. A minor improvement, considering. When he finished the song, he put the guitar down and wiped his eyes and looked at Sasha.

“I can’t believe you were actually planning to sing that to her,” Sasha said. Surprising himself, Marco busted up laughing and then Sasha did too.

“Could you imagine?” Marco said. He wiped another tear away.

Sasha stayed seated on the bottom step, her knees pulled in. In the amber light of the cabin her blue frames looked purple. Her sleeves were down past her palms, and her hands were together in prayer. They had the air of prisoners waiting to die. Anything could be said, any topic broached, everything had a little sheen of low stakes.

“You know I went to her house?” Marco said. “After the funeral.”

“For what?”

“I wanted to confront her about it.”

Sasha shifted uncomfortably. “What did she say?”

“Do you wanna take a guess?” Marco asked. “She said that all the times she had come over meant nothing and she thought that I could ‘handle it.’ Whatever that means.”

“That’s Pansy for you.”

“She said she got into my bed because I was sad that Ray left. Can you believe that? This guy leaving my life has activated more things than when he was ever in my life.”

“I’m still thinking about what you said to Dean,” Sasha started. “To his flower I mean. I think in the same way you compared yourself to Dean, I compared myself to Pansy. I was going why her, why her, why her? It didn’t make sense to me because you and I had more in common and we laughed more and we read the same things and she was this party girl you couldn’t get a grip on. And back at the flower shop, I was kind of hoping that the answer was that you loved her plain and simple. Because I can wrap my head around that. That’s just love, you don’t get to decide. I’d just have to deal with it. But now I know that the only real reason you and I didn’t become a thing was because of your petty macho rivalry against Dean. You just wanted to prove Dean wrong and be better and stronger than him and if you and I started dating and fell in love that wouldn’t do that. It would have no effect on him. So I wasted all my time feeling lesser than Pansy because you were feeling lesser than him. And that, to me, really, really blows.”

She inhaled sharply and blew out a long, cool, measured breath. “I mean look at me, Marco. I’m an adopted Chinese girl with the whitest parents on Earth. I’ve never been to China, and I can’t speak a word of the language. When you told me what was happening with Ray and how lonely you felt, I was there. I knew every aspect of what you were describing. I knew about what was going on with your brother before anybody else did.”

Marco shrugged. “I just thought you were my friend.”

“Oh my God. I cannot believe that I, a beautiful thirty-one-year-old woman, am being friend-zoned the night before I die.”

Marco laughed again.

“Nobody is dying,” Marco said. “And I think we’re well past the friend zone. We’re in the witchy, demon-killing zone now and the jury is out if that’s a healthy upgrade.”

“I’m really scared about what’s going to happen,” she said.

“I’m not going to let him hurt you.” This protector side of him was new. He had never worn a suit like it before, but he liked the fit. He liked the way the words sounded coming out. “I promise you, Sasha. I am here for you.”

“I’m going to stay up and do some reading,” she said. “I feel like I’m gonna have to know this book back and forth.” She got up and moved back up the stairs and brought Zaäper up with her.

Marco stayed alone for a while before getting tired, and then he locked up the cabin. He was too nervous to get into a bed, so he lay down on the couch and listened softly to the sounds of the woods and the cabin settling. Whenever Sasha moved at her desk, her chair creaked. When she dug around in her luggage, she mumbled to herself. He thought he heard whistling, but then he fell asleep.

* * *

The next morning Dean still hadn’t arrived, but when Marco woke up, he saw moss growing on the coffee table. He attacked it with a butter knife, scraping it off as much as he could before Sasha saw. He never went upstairs to her and while the idea of being together passed through his head, it sounded like she spent the majority of the night reading and studying, which was something he wanted no part of. Not that’d it make a difference, he realized, as whatever it was was already coming for them, growing on the table that he doggedly carved at.

To be frank, he had no idea what he was doing. He, like most people his age and his background, had never prepared for a siege. Back in college when he and Sasha were going through extreme horror movies and bloody, paperback thrillers, he read a few chapters of Jack Ketchum’s Off Season—purportedly the basis of The Hills Have Eyes. While he found the book mostly pulp, he was impressed with how valiantly the characters fought off the intruding inbreds. He decided that the most he could reasonably do was lock the doors and wait. Maybe another version of him in another world would rig some Home Alone style Rube Goldberg machine that threw down paint buckets and a scatter of marbles, but he wasn’t in that other world. He was in the one with a wooden block of kitchen knives, an isolated cabin, and what’s that? He looked closer. The one with mushrooms growing in the fireplace.

“I can’t explain it either,” Sasha said. Her voice was behind Marco, already in the kitchen making herself some coffee. She was referring to the mushrooms. “It doesn’t seem fair, does it? He’s bringing the woods to us.”

“Maybe it’ll end with Dean,” Marco suggested. The little mushroom caps were white and bright and so obviously out of place in the hearth that they almost seemed like something on display.

“Do you wanna talk plan of attack?” Sasha asked.

Marco looked over his shoulder at her. He could tell she hadn’t slept. “He’s going to break in here and we can’t let him separate us,” Marco said. “We have to blitz him. Don’t let him talk. Don’t let him trick us. Don’t let him bargain. If we can hurt him, weaken him, we can get him outside and finish him off. That’s when you summon Erether with the book.”

Sasha pulled a large knife out of the kitchen block. She gripped the handle and turned the knife around in the morning light.

“Are you going to choke when things get real?” she asked.

“I don’t plan to.”

She practiced an underhand stabbing motion. “It feels awkward.”

“It’s not supposed to feel natural,” Marco said. He hated seeing her do that motion. It felt like a ritual that beckoned something evil to appear. Like when you nudged an empty rocking chair. The energy around it threatened to bundle up and manifest someone just because.

“I’m gonna keep reading,” she said. She took the knife and her coffee and headed for the stairs. “Cute coffee pot by the way.” Marco saw that she had used la greca. It made him feel nice.

* * *

Hours passed. The rest of the day inched along, and Marco’s anxiety tightened with the arc of the sun. A little after noon, Sasha came down and picked through the fridge. Marco didn’t hear her quiet socks, and he surged with panic, spinning around.

“It’s just me,” she said. She was holding bread and some tuna salad. “I’m just getting something to eat.”

“What are you even doing up there?” Marco asked.

“I’m practicing spells,” she said, deathly serious.

Of course, Marco’s first instinct was to scoff and roll his eyes, but he was proud that his next, immediate instinct was to believe her. More than that, to support her. Just like he did in college. She was a witch. He could never forget that. “And how is that coming?” he asked.

“Bad,” she said. “I’m too jumpy and distracted. I keep looking out the window ready to see him.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“What are you doing down here?”

“Pacing. Scanning. The usual.”

“Any signs?”

“No.”

“Doors locked?”

“Yeah.”

“Any ideas?”

“Not really, no. Is there some insight in your book?”

She thought it over. “Not for this part, no,” she said. Then she went back upstairs with the bread and tuna.

“Not sure what that’s supposed to mean,” Marco said to her back. He recalled their first drive up when she confessed to caring about him. “Sasha, you’re being ominous again.” Her skinny shoulders only shrugged in response.

On the balcony, Marco stood at the banister and looked out over the trees. The tops of them were bright green and birds fluttered here and there, disappearing among the branches only to reappear further away, heading off to the horizon. The day was warm and hinted at the approach of a grueling summer. He stood and remained quiet. He listened intently for the sound of an approaching truck and then realized he’d hear no such thing. Dean would come on foot. Probably not from the trail they had arrived on, but via his own route, scrambling through the forest, eyeless and muddy.

To distract himself, he thought of Monchito. He tried to conjure up some sage advice regarding bullies and self-defense, but nothing showed up. Ten cuidado was all that came to mind. Hell, maybe Monchito had predicted everything from the start. What was that crass little tidbit he left in Marco’s voicemail? Something about white girl pussy? Jesus. He took out his phone and listened to the voicemail again. It made him upset. Then he listened to the birthday voicemail, the one where he got banned from PR. On the third or fourth playback, the fear in Monchito’s voice finally revealed itself. The words being literally said were frustrated and upset, but that was always Monchito’s way. Dramático, their dad would say. This time around, though, Marco heard the shakiness in his brother’s voice. When Monchito talked about losing Puerto Rico—an abstract thought that never quite straightened out for Marco—the latest playback made it sound like it was imminent. Like the land itself, like the new life Monchito had found, was about to turn its back on him.

“What are you so afraid of?” Marco asked his phone. And then, again, but this time a shout. “What are you so afraid of!!” he screamed.

He loved his brother, he hated his brother, he was furious for being left behind, and not even aware of what was being escaped. And for what? The scrying revealed the truth. Made it even worse. “What are you so afraid of!” It came out a third time. Marco’s voice shot far and wide over the balcony’s edge. “Just tell me!!” he shouted after it, screaming at the sky. “I saw what you picked! I fucking saw it!”

Monchito had left. He was the first to do it but friends and family followed and the world will too. People get to an age, and they begin to look around and pack up their bindle sticks. And just like with the knife in the air, or the rocking chair, the thing you left comes alive for the chase. And what’s worse is that the people guiding you along are self-serving and inauthentic, pushing you further into fog and misery. Monchito found somewhere where he could just sit still. Maybe Marco just needed to leave him alone.

* * *

In the evening, Marco abandoned his post on the couch and went upstairs to Sasha’s room. He knocked on the door and she beckoned him in and he sat with her on her bed and rested his head on her chest. He breathed heavily and she stroked his hair. Her heartbeat was steady, and her chest was warm. He could feel her ribcage. For all the ways it felt like he could break her, shove her, throw her around, it felt like she could slip through his grip and out of his life entirely. Like the very act of letting his clumsy self lay on top of her was something polite. Marco strained for the word. Grateful. Yes. He was grateful.

“When we first got back to New York, I really missed you,” he said. “I tried very hard to be alone because I thought that was for the best. But it’s so hard having nobody. And I was so scared of you.”

She put her arms around him. Zaäper was on the desk in the corner of the room, and the book was opened to a page he hadn’t seen before. The lamp was on, and the shadows reached for the edge of the bed.

“I think I always knew, deep down, that it was never about Pansy. It was always about Dean. I had convinced myself that nobody liked me and I kept internalizing it and I think I shackled it onto my skin and my face and my culture. Like my brother left me because I wasn’t Puerto Rican enough. And Pansy didn’t like me because I wasn’t white enough. And this guy had everything. And I was just so self-centered, so self-conscious, that I couldn’t see you right there the whole time, feeling the same way. Even when you grabbed my face to show me, I still couldn’t see. I was just so certain that if I looked like him, sounded like him, and fucked like him, then people would stop leaving me. But I see you now.”

He lifted his head and looked at her.

“I see you too.”

“Outside of the show,” he continued, “back when you first got the book, you said you wanted your life to start. What do you think now?”

“I think it’s started,” she said. She twisted a strand of his hair. “It’s been a nightmare. And I can’t believe I’m saying this out loud, but it’s been a nightmare from my choices. So, no matter how bad it’s gotten, I feel like I still have agency. I mean, when I practice magic, I feel like I belong to myself. For as long as the ritual lasts, even if it’s one evening, I feel like I’ll never need other people’s validation.”

“Good. I’m glad.”

“But when I’m not practicing magic, I like when you look at me.”

He wanted to cry. “Sasha, I’m so tired of hating myself.”

“I’m tired of it too.”

He reached forward and kissed her, and he was conscious of his weight on her but she kept her arms around his back and didn’t let him move around too much. As they kissed, he felt her smile, and he pulled back to see what she was grinning about.

“You’re not going to run away this time are you?”

“I’ll never run away again,” he said.

A part of it felt like making love while the world ended. Like something you did to take your mind off of things. The forest was trying to kill them, and occultists prayed for their downfall, but it was a relief to focus on flesh and touch and each other’s lips. Another part of it felt like the first real time he’s been touched, the first real time he’s been loved. When she pulled his shirt over his head. When he awkwardly shimmied his jeans off, shimmied her shorts off. The steam room caught him by surprise, and he had been so mentally prepared for Pansy that he couldn’t process it. The switcheroo sex was ghastly—erotic, sure—but too bogged down in paranoia and blood. But this time, nobody caught the other off guard, and nobody was trying to make a spell work. It was just for them. On equal footing. And, thankfully, finally, in a bed this time.