I looked at Juan. We had stolen Eddie’s hair so we could learn his story. Maybe he had realized. Juan looked back at me and I understood the instruction in his eyes: not a word. I tried to compose myself, but I couldn’t stop thinking about how the doors of the house weren’t locked.
What can he do, exactly? Tara finally asked. Eddie can’t have power over anything or anyone, he can’t control his actions. That’s not true, said Juan.
You’re not going to find me. There are always methods to change how a person feels, I only have to find the words. I can write them on my skin. Does the lion have scars? All your children have scars. I never wanted to die, because there’s not so much difference between death and life, mother, you taught me that in this house and I learned it from the pits, the deep holes, something living died and it wasn’t so different. The pregnant one knows, that’s why she visits me. She was taught wrong. You all teach wrong. You should stop teaching us like that, with the hands, with the night and the pain.
The pregnant one is Encarnación, said Laura, but not everyone listened. A lot of Initiates don’t know the medium was pregnant when she killed herself, they only know about the massacre and the suicide. Sandy stood up: my distress had spread to her. We have to search the house, she said. We all understood. We had to find Eddie if he was hiding there. Juan took me by the waist and whispered into my ear: Don’t worry if they open the door. All they’ll see is a bedroom. The key to the Other Place is mine.
This house isn’t safe anymore, said Stephen. Let’s get out as fast as we can. We have the cars, we have our passports. We have the bodyguards. The needle lifted off the record and we were left in silence. We divided into groups to scour the house. The kitchen, every one of the drawers, and the cupboards. I heard someone lifting the loose floorboards on the stairs: it was Laura, the only one who knew about that defect. I don’t know how much time we spent like that, drugged, jumping in fright, uselessly checking every corner, sometimes rolling with laughter, sometimes shrieking in fear because at the back of a drawer we felt the squeeze of a ghostly hand. We performed a ritual to find him, but we couldn’t concentrate and Laura annulled it. I don’t remember it clearly, either. I drew the circle, as always.
We slept with the house locked up using all the keys we found. We were sure there was no one else inside, but we were scared anyway. I don’t know why we didn’t leave. We were too high to hold on to a decision. We all shared beds: I remember five of our friends settled into one. Stephen managed to get hold of Florence in the early morning. She was already in Cadaqués. He read her the letter and she ordered us to get out immediately. Eddie couldn’t leave England, he didn’t have a passport and there was an all-points bulletin out for him at the borders. We didn’t listen to Florence.
I go back over it, but I can never reconstruct exactly why we didn’t leave the next day. The acid is the excuse, but it’s not enough. Sandy felt bad, I’m sure about that: it hit her hard when she mixed acid and alcohol, and she’d been doing it all night. But Sandy didn’t matter: the ones who had to get out of the country were Juan, Stephen, Laura, and me. Our frantic search of the house had lasted a lot longer than we thought: even Juan woke up after noon. We hadn’t packed our suitcases. The bodyguards reassured us: there was no one on the property, there was no danger. This was one of the poshest streets in London, we lived surrounded by rich and famous neighbors who had security of their own. An intruder would have been detected. We were hungry, so Susie and Tara threw together some spaghetti, and somehow the mood changed. We were young. We started to remember the previous night as a bad trip, the ghost of the Order’s lost son, the one we, somehow, had avoided becoming. Though as Eddie said in his letter: all the Order’s children have their scars.
We spent the afternoon sprawled on cushions and rugs, as always, drinking wine to calm our nerves because weed might turn us paranoid again. We did nothing but lounge around the house, listen to the storm, jump at claps of thunder. We packed our suitcases with abnormal slowness, or at least that’s how I remember it. I spent hours deciding whether to bring one or two saris, for example, and I never wear saris. Genesis made tea and we ate a gooseberry pie that the cook had left for us. The storm was intense and we convinced ourselves it was impossible to go out in weather like that; we were sure, too, that the ferry wouldn’t be able to leave the dock. None of our friends left, either. As if something was keeping them from going.
Genesis and Crimson embraced under a blanket and were the first to go to sleep. The others withdrew one by one: they yawned, stretched, said the stress of the night before had left them exhausted. Stephen said we could go anyway, the four of us, and leave them there, but he didn’t seem very enthusiastic. I was the one who gave the last word: It’ll be better if we leave when it stops raining. Tomorrow morning. Early, he said. Very early, I replied. I’ll set the alarm for six.
I let Juan take me in his arms. There was a smell of wine and earth on his hands and his breath. I kissed him, but we didn’t have sex that night. We fell asleep under a white Afghan blanket that I can’t forget, and still dream about.
The shot split the night: a thunderclap that awakens, a rock shattering a window, a frozen lake cracking. Juan sat up in bed, and I jumped to my feet. It wasn’t the storm, it wasn’t a fallen piece of furniture, it wasn’t a magical or supernatural phenomenon: it was a gunshot. I knew that dry sound because my father and grandfather had taught me to shoot. It was a large weapon, for hunting, and I recognized it too, because my father hunted his whole life, and because when he was drunk, he would fire it inside Puerto Reyes.
The second shot came accompanied by a man’s indecipherable screams. Juan got out of bed too, barefoot. A sudden modesty made him quickly throw on pants. When I started to peer out into the hallway he grabbed me hard by the arm, but I pulled away to go and look out the window. We could normally see the bodyguards from our room. They weren’t at their posts. I heard Genesis’s unmistakable voice, the Scottish accent, begging please. Saying Eddie’s name. There were running feet. Bodies hitting the floor. More screams. Some minutes later, the door opened. I screamed, I couldn’t help it. It was Stephen. He was half-naked, pale, and furious as always when he was afraid. It’s my brother, he said. He’s coming for you.
Another scream, a woman’s, along with another gunshot. Laura. More screams and crashing furniture. Three more shots. The progression was slow. Eddie had to reload the shotgun, but he was killing everyone. After each gunshot, a howl.
He was here, then, said Juan.
But we checked every corner! I yelled at him.
He was in the Other Place, Rosario, Juan murmured.
I understood, but it was too late. Juan had also understood late. I’m a fox, I thought, and I know how to move better than him.
No running, whispered Stephen. I had covered myself with the white blanket, because I was naked. The goal was to reach the service stairs at the end of the hall, which led to the kitchen. We heard more gunshots, and slamming doors. The running footsteps didn’t get very far. Neither did we. Another gunshot, and Eddie came out of the corner bedroom, turned around, and saw us. His face and clothes were spattered with blood. The hallway light was off but we could see him clearly. On his young, freckled face, with its light eyes and halo of hair as red as his mother’s, an expression of relief appeared. He had found the one he was looking for. And he took aim. Incredibly, he missed Juan. Only by a little. He’s missing a finger, I thought. He can’t handle the gun well. The shot grazed my arm, which bled and stained the blanket. It was a superficial wound, but it was enough to enrage Juan: when Eddie tried to reload the gun—clumsily, because a hunting shotgun takes two cartridges—Juan lunged at him, and in a single movement he wrenched away the gun and threw it over the railing. It fell to the floor downstairs. I don’t know how he dared do it: the maneuver required the reflexes of an animal. I wasn’t afraid for him, I remember. I always intuited he was going to win that fight. I wanted to help him, I remember that, too, but I didn’t know how. It wasn’t my story, I think now. They had to resolve it between the two of them. Juan grabbed Eddie by the neck and dragged him to the door that led to the Other Place. He opened it. I followed them. My arm burned like it was in flames. Juan kicked Eddie into the Other Place and dragged him to the end of the passageway. I followed them, running silently. Juan knew what he was doing. He walked with the assurance of a predator.