The next evening, Sid awoke to find a large bouquet of white roses wilting at the front gate, their blooms unfurled and withering. They must have been sitting in the heat for most of the day, but the damage lent them an ephemeral sort of beauty, and Lacrima beamed when she saw them.
“For the most elegant flower in the city,” she said, reading the card out loud as she preened over them in the parlor. “Sid, he wants to take me to the opera tomorrow night. You know, I haven’t been to the opera in decades. You’ll have to help me pick out an outfit.”
“You’re going?” he said, still bleary from sleep. “For real, you’re going to go… like on a date?”
She looked at him as though he had asked if she were really going shopping or taking a midnight stroll through the garden. “Yeah. Like on a date. I was thinking of wearing lilac,” she said. “I know, I know. Black is more traditional. But everyone will be wearing it. Lilac will stand out. Like a debutante at a funeral.”
“Yeah, ok,” he said, uncertain as to her true intent. “The opera should be great. Want me to arrange a car?”
“Not necessary,” she said, delicately cupping a wide bloom in her fingertips. “I’ll let him secure the details. Call and tell him I’ll be ready by nine.”
“Sure,” said Sid. “No problem. I’ll just tell your little crush that he can swing by the house after sundown. Maybe we can invite him in too, serve some cocktails and assorted hors d’oeuvres.”
“That seems a bit premature, don’t you think? It’s only our first date,” she said as she ascended the stairs. “We barely know each other right now.”
“First? Did you just say first date?” Sid called as he followed after her. “As in the first in a series?”
“I don’t know, Sid,” she said from her walk-in closet, her voice muffled by the walls and the layers of clothes between them. “Maybe. God, I know it’s been a while, but surely you know how these things work.”
“Yeah,” he said, rounding the corner to find her leafing through a rack of evening gowns. “I know how first dates work. I didn’t think that was how they work for us, though. Lacrima, what the hell? Since when do we do this?”
“Do what?” she said, holding a flowing purple gown with a Grecian inspired neckline against her body.
“We don’t tell people where we go to ground. We don’t invite them over and then kiss them goodnight. We meet them, we feed, or we don’t,” he said. “Either way, we forget their names and we hope they forget ours. That’s what we’ve always done.”
“We?” she said as she examined her reflection in a full-length mirror. “We aren’t doing anything, are we?”
Sid felt her words like a barb caught just beneath his skin. They had been together for almost five years now, and despite Lacrima’s inscrutable moments, he had come to think of them as partners. But maybe their relationship was not as simple as it had seemed. Or maybe it was, and he had simply been reading too much into their contract. He left her then to preen and fuss over the exact combination of designer accessories to pair with the dozens of gowns she would try on. Normally, this was something she enlisted his help with, but her words had left him feeling sour, hurt, and just a little bit empty. Instead, Sid retired to his garden, where he sat amongst his herbs and flowers and roots and listened to the sounds of the cicadas. The goddam children of the night, he thought. What terribly mundane music they make.
Not long after their first encounter, the doctor and Lacrima’s relationship began to deepen. She started seeing him 3 night a week, leaving early in the evening and returning just before dawn. Then, Dr. Garcia began to come by the house. Sid would find them lounging in the sunken living room or beside the azure swimming pool, Lacrima laughing and tossing her hair flirtatiously while the Doctor’s hands fidgeted nervously with whatever objects were within his reach. He grinned and stammered in her presence like a child, Sid thought disdainfully one night when he came upon them sitting in his garden. What in god’s name could she have seen in him?
“Sid,” Lacrima called when she spied him heading back towards the house. “Sid, come listen. Alvaro’s reading me something quite lovely.”
Reluctantly, Sid obeyed, and joined them on the wicker lawn furniture he’d arranged between the leafy palms and plots of thriving herbs. The pair were seated on a loveseat with a single candle burning between them. Sid selected a chair opposite them and surveyed the two over steepled fingers.
“It’s Neruda,” she said. “Alvaro, read that last stanza again, would you?”
“Yes,” he said, scanning the pages of a well-worn little book with unremarkable brown binding. “Here it is.
The Doctor scanned the page and began reading in Spanish, enunciating the words of the poem slowly, his clumsy hands suddenly still as Lacrima watched him, her face like a stone. The candle light flickered and reflected green in her eyes, and for a moment, Sid felt the meaning of the poem in a way he found difficult to quantify. There was a pull between them in that quiet moment, as if the words had cast a spell, revealing an essential piece of Alvaro. Now it loomed between them, wholly naked and vulnerable before this cunning and predatory creature. In Lacrima, he sensed a tension. She could smell it like blood in the water, but for some reason, she had yet to pounce.
“El no entiende,” said Lacrima. “In English, perhaps?”
“I understand,” Sid corrected. “Perfectly.” He excused himself then, having seen all that he cared to see.
The game progressed as summer turned to winter, the change in season remarkable only by the occasional evergreen trussed up in red and gold in the shop windows around town. For Sid, the holiday season was bittersweet, reminding him of rituals once shared with friends and family, now synonymous with long, mild nights full of lonely nostalgic strangers. The Solstice, which used to be a time of so much promise, was now a night to thank the Goddess for the bounty she had provided, and to say goodbye as the long nights gave way to a prevailing sun.
Despite himself, Sid became accustomed to having Alvaro around, listening like a fly on the wall as he shared his stories of life in the Miami city hospital with Lacrima in animated fashion. He began to see that although Alvaro was young and lacking in the experience of his peers, he did indeed have a gift for the healing arts that even he failed to fully grasp. Once he told them he convinced a little girl on the precipice of death that if she could just find the strength to wait for the snow to blanket the city, she could ask God for any Christmas wish she wanted.
“She had her last chemotherapy treatment today,” he said, holding a glass of Lacrima’s favorite red in one hand, his other arm wrapped around her shoulders. She appeared to be asleep, her head lying on his chest, her eyes closed as she drew in long, steady breaths. “She will live, I think. Long enough that she can see as many snow-covered days as she wants. Provided she leaves this town, that is.”
“Alvaro,” said Sid. “Have you ever thought of leaving? Going to another town, another state. Maybe one where the sun isn’t quite so brutal.”
“Another town?” he said slowly, as though the thought were like a foreign concept to him. “No. I could never go. There is… There’s too much for me to leave behind here.”
Lacrima’s eyes opened, and she stared at Sid through narrowed slits. No, she said. Leave him be, baby-bat.
As always, he obeyed, though even then, he knew the consequences. But the slow deterioration had already begun. What was the point in fighting the tide for a man who may as well have already drowned?
The changes were subtle at first, only recognizable when he stumbled over his words or lost his train of thought in the middle of one of his meandering stories. Alvaro’s decline could only be chronicled in the things that went missing: the spring in his limbs as he awakened from a daydream, the sweets that he would no longer consume when Lacrima refused them, and the light that never faded completely, but ceased to spark except for when his new Mistress called to him. Alvaro was dying, his life draining slowly away as an ancient monster took her sustenance.
Sid hoped and prayed that it would end soon, his heart aching like a phantom limb as he watched Alvaro grow grayer. All the while, Lacrima became more vibrant. Her once tempestuous mood swings steadied, her spirits lifted, and she ceased to leave the big house on the water, preferring instead to take her meals within its walls. Alvaro too began to spend even more time with them, and in the spring, he seemed to move in completely, leaving only for the short daily trips he would take to the hospital.
Just before then end, he remembered seeing them together, the two of them strolling the perimeter of the property. Lacrima was laughing, the musical sound of it carrying in the humid night air. Alvaro hobbled behind her, moving as fast as his wasted legs would carry him, the same stupid, child-like smile plastered across his face. In those moments, Sid could almost convince himself that none of it mattered. Whatever else was happening between them, they were bringing each other happiness. Regardless of the shapes and textures, was it really his place to police that?
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
On one of his last nights, Sid found the Doctor sitting in his garden, mindlessly prodding a patch of new earth in front of the bloodroot Sid had planted one week back. His once smooth, youthful skin was dry and discolored, his thick hair now thinning and gray at the temples.
“Alvaro,” said Sid as he approached him from the house. “You’re still here. Did you go home? To sleep?”
Alvaro shook his head vigorously. “No… Nonononono. Can’t go home. Can’t go home and leave her here. Alone.”
“Alone?” said Sid, taking slow steps as though Alvaro were a starving, stray dog. “She has me. She’s not alone.”
“No.” He shook his head again, this time jumping up from the loveseat with the thick palm leaves draping over the back. “She needs me. You… You’re like her. You sleep during the day. You can’t protect her when the sun rises.”
Sid nodded. “Yes, I understand,” he said placatingly. “It’s good that you were here.” He lowered himself into the chair opposite Alvaro, and the Doctor followed suit on his loveseat. The two men sat in the little garden, the remnants of the sun still glowing along the horizon, and Sid felt the desperation in Alvaro as the very last pieces of him clawed for the surface.
“Have you seen your son lately?” asked Sid. “He must be getting old enough to start speaking, right? I thought you were planning a visit soon.”
Again, he shook his head. “No, I haven’t seen him. I won’t. I can’t. My work here is much too important.”
“You’re work,” Sid repeated. “How is that? Do you still go to the hospital?”
At that, he nodded. “I’ve gone. I go. I was there today. Or yesterday. I don’t remember. That’s when I found the child.”
“The child?” said Sid. “What child?”
“The baby,” he said as though it were just so simple. “The one born with the little heart. It wouldn’t beat, no matter how much it was coaxed.” He stared down at the dirt turned loose between his feet. “I felt the life drain from it as I held it in my hands. I felt it die, and I thought… This is our child.” He looked up at Sid then with madness glimmering in his dark eyes. “She always wanted one, you know. Did she ever tell you? About the babies? The ones that didn’t make it.”
“No,” said Sid. “She never told me about them.”
“They passed away. Before she could even hold them, they were gone. Do you know what that must be like?”
Sid didn’t speak, but watched the golden glow on the horizon turn to a lavender haze. “Do you?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. “No. I only know what she shows me anymore. She’s everything now. In my head, she’s… She… I can’t shut her out.”
Sid nodded again. “Alvaro,” he said after a long pause. “You should go home. And you shouldn’t come back. If you can.”
Alvaro looked at him, the madness fading from his face, replaced by a dull sadness. “I want to,” he said. “Sometimes more than anything else.”
“Then do it,” said Sid. “She’s going to kill you.” He was not accustomed to using his gift on people so overtly, but the spell that Lacrima had cast was like an invisible steel web. Alvaro was reaching out, but Sid would have to tear through his bonds using brute force. “Run, Alvaro. Run far away.”
Alvaro stood up again and looked around urgently, the missing spring in his movements temporarily restored as he took a series of halting steps towards the purple horizon.
Don’t stop, urged Sid. Not until you’re at home in your bed. Sleep. And forget her name.
He sat and watched as Alvaro limped out of view, his shadow becoming smaller and smaller, until at last, the deepening darkness swallowed him up. He would be safe now, thought Sid, provided he did as he was told.
A short while later, the sky began to weep, and distant peels of thunder boomed across the water. Lacrima emerged from the house wearing a long white night robe, her eyes flashing green, her black hair uncombed and disheveled. Sid knew immediately that what he had done was unforgivable to her, and even the sky seemed to reflect her rage. The wind picked up, stirring the leaves of the plants around him and whipping drops of stinging rain against his face.
“Where is he?” she demanded, her bare, white feet seeming to float above the soft ground as she crossed the space between them. “What did you do to him?”
“I couldn’t watch anymore,” said Sid, raising his voice against the howling sea breeze. “I let him go.”
“He was MINE,” she said, driving the last word into his brain like a brutal spike. “You had no right.” Tears began to fall from her glowing eyes, mingling with the drops of rain that fell against her cheeks. She might kill him, Sid thought as she loomed over him, seeming impossibly giant and terrible. Lightening flashed in the sky above her, and Sid recalled the night they met, when she had allowed him to glimpse what she was: a perfect creature not of this earth but of the next, wholly removed from the passage of time but choosing to dwell within its tides. She had chosen him to walk beside her through the darkness, and he was hers for however long she would have him. If this was the end, it had all been worth it. Sid readied himself for the blow, fully prepared to have his heart rend from his chest by this beautiful monster, when suddenly the wind began to calm.
Sid felt Lacrima’s rage and anger collapse, falling down into a yawning chasm of despair inside her heart. Her bare feet sunk into the muddy ground, her hair fell in lank strands over her face, and she crumpled down onto the loveseat behind her. “I have nothing, Sid,” she whispered. “All these years… Eternity. For nothing.”
Sid ran to her and took her in his arms, his heart breaking for her as she wept into his chest. “No,” he said. “That’s not true. You have me.”
She looked at him with her deep brown eyes and stroked his face. “Yes, my love. I have you. My sweet baby-bat who feels so much of their pain. How can you stand it?”
“I just practice, I guess,” he said. “It gets easier.”
“You keep me here, Sid,” she said, her eyes fixed on the fresh earth now a drenched and muddy puddle. “When I want nothing more than to join them, you take my pain.”
“Join who?” asked Sid. “Who are they, Lacrima?”
“They were born to the world only to die in my arms. Their graves are an ocean and a lifetime away from here.” She smiled, still staring down into the pool of dirty water between her feet. “The first of them almost took me with her, and I would have gone willingly. I was still human then, and my husband decided that rather than let me pass into the shadows of death, he would give me his gift. And with it, he tied me to this earth and to him, cursing me to wander the night.” She looked up from the water-logged grave and for the first time since he’d known her, Sid could see beyond the mask to what she was: a broken spirit, just as he had been when she had found him.
“I used to sit beside the place where they were buried and sing to them,” she continued. “I don’t know if they ever heard me, but it made me feel a little less…”
“Lost,” said Sid, pulling her closer as she began to shiver.
“Alvaro brought her here,” she said. “A sweet little girl just like mine, with a heart too soft to beat in this world. He told me to sing to her, and maybe mine will hear it too.”
Sid nodded. “Of course they can,” he said, doing his best to make her believe it. “Wherever they are, they can hear you. They know.”
She pulled away from him and fixed him with an incredulous stare. “You say these things because you don’t know, Sid. You don’t see it, even now.”
“See what, Lacrima? What am I supposed to see?”
“Life can never come from death,” she said, a bitter smile forming on her lips. “I’ll never have the chance to create it again. Wherever my children are, I pray that it’s far away from me. My only purpose now is destruction.”
Destruction, thought Sid, of course. All of her games and all of her exploits had been to that end. But did it have to be, he wondered? Though he lived in the night, the sun-worshipping plants he tended thrived. Maybe they could find a way to balance their voracious appetites if they could just stave off their darker compulsions.
“Alvaro was a good man,” said Sid. “You didn’t need to do what you did.”
“Didn’t I?” she hissed with flashing eyes and extended fangs. “You say he was a good man, but he was still just a man; prone to base instincts and lusts that rule even the purest heart. Do you know what they do when they’re done with you, Sid? They leave you, turn you to dust, and they scatter your ashes so that every piece of you is erased from the earth.”
“So you kill them first,” said Sid, not sure exactly who or what she was talking about. “And they never leave.”
“You unmake them,” she said emphatically. “You strip away the layers of humanity, the trappings and airs they wear to seem like more than the fragile animals they are, and then, before the last, sometimes you catch a glimpse of it.” She looked out towards the horizon where Alvaro had disappeared. “They’re so beautiful like that. If only you knew.”
Sid followed her eyes and tried to imagine what she meant. He had never quite understood what he had felt between them when Alvaro had read his love poem, but he had sensed that it was something that ran deeper in a man than blood and bone. If there was ever such a thing as a soul, perhaps that was what he sensed in Alvaro, waking up and rising from a long slumber beneath the ground. Was that what she wanted from him, why she had played such an elaborate game?
“I need him Sid,” she said softly. “Please. Bring him back to me.”
Sid sighed, desperately wishing he could ignore her, walk away, and leave her to her life of chaos and destruction. But he couldn’t, not just because she had saved him from an existence filled with loneliness and death, but because in spite of the storms that raged in her heart, he had come to love this monster. “Go to him and give him this,” he said, reaching into his pocket to find a small bag of powder. “He’ll be yours again, and you can do what you want.”
“Thank you,” she said. She took the powder from him and stood facing the horizon where Alvaro had disappeared. “I won’t make you watch, Sid. And I’ll do it quickly.”
Sid never asked what became of Alvaro after that, and he did his best to block out the creeping thoughts that tried to worm their way in during his waking hours. But in his dreams, the images found their way past his defenses, and he could see Alvaro, naked, gray, and wasted, clinging to the body of his Goddess. The drugs were only a formality, something to lower his fragile inhibitions enough to revive Lacrima’s carefully laid enchantments. Then, as she coaxed out whatever it was she needed from him, his weak heart, which had been failing from the stress of her games, would succumb to the side effects, hastening his inevitable end. His friends and family would find him like that, alone and decaying after Lacrima left him, and they would ask an endless series of questions. How did this happen? Why? And what god would allow a man called to heal the sick to die alone and in such a meaningless way? Ultimately, their search for answers would never be satisfied, because thanks to Sid, they would never think to ask about the Goddess of Death who lived in the house on the water. Sid would be her protector, secret keeper, servant, and savior for as long as she would be his and longer, forever keeping her from the brutal daylight and the throngs of humanity that couldn’t understand the beauty of decay.