The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 24

He kissed the top of my head, ever so gently; I marveled that anyone who had witnessed such brutality could be so gentle. Revenant, yes, but I also began to believe him more than that. I began to believe him to be a sort of angel.

"I love you," he said as his feet lifted off the ground, and we floated back through time and s.p.a.ce, to Rancho la Curacion. He became light and warmth once more, and released me with a promise, unspoken but known to me as much as a breath is known to the lungs, deep down in my gut, that he would be by my side every free moment, even if I couldn't see him.

Then I was on the ceiling again, looking down at myself where I snored and drooled, and falling back into my own sleeping body, older than I'd ever felt, disgusted with what horrors the world unleashed on some children, and determined, with a ferocious conviction unlike anything I'd ever felt, to do something about it.

The next day after I'd worked out at the luxurious gym and had lunch in my room (grilled salmon Cesar salad and a Diet c.o.ke), I had a two-hour session with Dr. Bergant in my suite. As before, the fire burned brightly as a light snow fell outside. As before, she wore jeans and a sweater, with the same jewelry, and seemed very fas.h.i.+onably casual and fun. As before, she listened, and asked a lot of questions. This time, she got me to talk about my parents and my early life. I told her about the divorce, too, and it felt incredibly good to get al of my anger out in the open.

"My parents never divorced," she told me as she munched on some of the peanut brittle she'd brought for us, along with hot chocolate, "but they should have. Sometimes it's for the best."

"I guess you're right." I remembered my mom and dad fighting, and supposed it was a relief not to have to endure that anymore.

Eventually, the conversation turned back to Demetrio. I was still a bit shaken from the dream the night before, but reluctant to tell her about it.

"You know," she said, out of the blue. "Some of the girls who come here believe this place is haunted. How do you feel about that?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. Why?"

"Because, I think they're right," she said matter-of-fact. "I've seen them."

"Who?"

"The ghosts here. In fact, I've seen one in this very room."

"Really?" I felt goose b.u.mps coming, and folded my arms over my chest.

"Before this was a hospital, it used to be an artist colony. A woman lived here, a painter. She was married to a man who was unfaithful to her, and used to flaunt it in her face."

"That's sad," I said.

"He used to bring his different girlfriends home for dinner, and expect her to cook for them."

"What?"

"It's amazing what some men will do." Dr. Bergant shook her head. "But, yes, that's what her life was like. She put it with it for many years, but they say that one day, when he brought home her very own niece, she'd had enough, and went upstairs, to this very room, and hanged herself from that viga right there." She pointed to the third viga from the outside wall; the one directly over my bed.

"Tragic," I said.

"Does it scare you when I talk about ghosts?" she asked.

"Why are you asking me this?" I replied, suddenly suspicious of her.

She smiled. "I'll be honest, Maria. Your mother mentioned that you had told your friends that you were seeing ghosts. You haven't mentioned that, so I was trying to let you know it's okay to talk about that sort of thing here."

I sat with this information, unsure what to do with it.

"So, do you?" she asked.

"Do I what?"

"Do you see ghosts, like I do?"

I remembered what Demetrio had told me, about telling no one, and I shook my head. "Sorry, but no."

"You do understand that whatever we discuss here will remain strictly confidential," she replied, as though she had read my mind.

"I know."

"So let me ask you again. Do you see ghosts, Maria?"

I met her gaze, and felt its sincerity. She was a kind woman. She was trying to help me. Plus, everything else I'd told her, she had sympathized with.

"Yes," I said, finally. "Sometimes, I see ghosts."

Dr. Bergant smiled. "That's fine, Maria. I don't think you're unstable because of that. I believe there's a scientific explanation for the reasons some of us see these things sometimes. I'm glad you opened up about it."

"Can I tell you something?" I asked her now, feeling a complete sense of relief at having told someone about the ghost thing.

"That's why I'm here."

"I don't want you to think I'm out of my mind," I said. "Because I'm not."

"I have already figured that part out, don't worry," she said.

"The boy I told you about? Demetrio? He's - he's not exactly alive anymore."

Dr. Bergant smiled. "I figured as much."

"How?" I asked.

"Well, after you told me his name, I thought to Google it. What an unusual name, I told myself. I was actually just hoping to do a background check on him, to make sure I wasn't encouraging you to become involved with an actual criminal, which is what your mother thinks. Anyway, sure enough, the name came up in a few news stories, but they were all about a boy who'd died in a car crash exactly where you had your crash. I put two and two together."

"You don't think I'm insane?"

"Sweetie, no. If I hadn't had some of the same experiences, I probably would have, though. Which is why I want to spend the next part of our session talking about things you should and shouldn't say to people who might harm you. Ghosts, for instance. That's not something you should go around telling people. Especially not people like your mother."

"I know."

"It's not that you're denying Demetrio exists, okay? It's that you're protecting yourself."

I used this opportunity to tell her about the disturbing dream I'd had the night before, and about how Demetrio said he couldn't see me anymore. She looked heartbroken, and shaken.

"Maria, do you believe in coincidences?" she asked me.

"No." I s.h.i.+vered at the coincidental mention, once again, of coincidences.

"Me neither. I mean, I believe they happen, but I believe that they are a sort of divine intersection of things that were meant to meet."

"Yes."

"Like us. Because, and I've never told anyone this before, but my husband, his grandfather came to me as a ghost, just as you've described with Demetrio, and it was he who helped me to meet my husband in the first place."

"Are you serious?"

"Dead," she said. "It happens."

"I'm surprised you haven't been disbarred," I told her.

Dr. Bergant laughed. "I would probably be expelled from the profession if anyone knew I believed this stuff. That's why we are keeping everything said in this room in this room, right?"

Dr. Bergant's speech was interrupted now by a knock on the door. It was four o'clock. Dr. Bergant opened the door to my room and we found Debbie standing outside next to Yazzie.

"There's a visitor here for Miss Ochoa," she said.

"h.e.l.lo," said Dr. Bergant to my art history teacher, reaching out to shake her hand. Yazzie shook, but there was a curious look upon her face as she did.

"I think we lost track of time," said Dr. Bergant. To me, she said "We'll pick up where we left off, tomorrow."

"Okay," I said.

"Now, I'll leave you two to visit," she said. "Enjoy the rest of your evening. Oh, and Debbie, can you give Maria a couple more tranquilizers?"

"I don't need them," I insisted. I'd thrown the ones from the day before down the toilet, and flushed it.

"Just in case," said Dr. Bergant.

Yazzie came in, and closed the door behind her. After hugging me, greeting me, and giving me a wrapped gift that felt like a small-framed painting, she got right to the point.

"I don't like this place for you," she said, pacing up and down the floor of my suite. "And I don't like your doctor."

"The place sucks, but Dr. Bergant is really nice," I said.

"You have a tail, Maria," she said, stopping to stare at the third viga from the outside wall.

"What?"

"A bad thing happened here, in this spot," she said, pointing to the viga.

"A painter hanged herself there."

Yazzie looked devastated. "Yes," she said, sorrowfully. "That's it. That's right. I feel that. Oh, that poor, miserable woman."

"It's amazing you picked up on that," I told her.

"I pay attention," she said. "As should you. You have a tail."

"I'm sorry?"

"A tail. That's what the Pueblo people say to someone who refuses to see the truth. They have a tail but they don't see it."

"Nice. I hope it doesn't make me look fat."

Yazzie cracked a grin and took a tentative seat at the edge of the floral sofa. "Do you remember the story from Isleta, of the two boys whose parents told them never to go South to hunt?" she asked.

"No."

"I gave it to you to read, some time ago."

"Sorry. I don't remember it."

"Here's the short version. The parents tell the boys not to go south to hunt, and do you know why?"

"Nope."

"Because there is a woman to the south who eats children."

"Ah. Good thing this hospital is North, then."

"North of some things, perhaps. But south of others." She watched me for a long time, as though waiting for me to understand something that, honestly, eluded me.

"Okay, I get it. Fine. You think Dr. Bergant wants to eat me."

Yazzie continued to stare disconcertingly at me. "These things are not meant to be taken literally, Maria."

"Fine. I'm glad no one will eat me, then."

"Do you know what happened when those brothers went south to hunt, disobeying their parents warnings?"

"Let me guess. They got eaten by an old woman."

"No. She tried to eat them. She sealed them in an oven each night, when it was very hot, and every morning she and her husband, who was also a witch, came out, drooling with hunger and antic.i.p.ation, only to find that the boys were inside, unhurt, and the oven was cold."

"Ah, good."

"They were able to do this, these boys, because they had learned much from their elders; they'd paid attention and they were clever. More clever than the witch."

"I see."

"If you had read the story, you would know that in the end, the boys outsmarted the witch again and again, by playing her game and letting her think she had gotten the better of them. In the end, they play hide and seek near a lake, and the old woman thinks she knows where the boys are, only they've hidden beneath the bright hot whiteness of the sun, and she cannot see them there. The boys know where each other are because they sing the hide and seek song, which goes like this."

In typically Yazzie fas.h.i.+on, she stopped and sang for a while. Like so many of the Pueblo songs, it sounded liked random syllables, half-chanted to an odd meter I could never quite figure out. I enjoyed having the company, but found her behavior extremely weird, even given all I'd gone through to that point.

"The boys eventually come out, and the witch woman goes to hide in the bottom of the lake. When she emerges, the boys remind her of the agreement she has made to them, and they shoot her with their bows and arrows, and the old man, too."

"Yazzie, I know you mean well, but these stories, they don't make sense to me."

"That's because you aren't listening."