Chapter 27
27
“Man,” Ramit said softly as we walked away from the yoga tent. “That was intense.”
“Poor thing.” Karen crossed her arms.
“I wouldn’t call her that.” Dawne flipped her long ponytail over her shoulder.
I glanced at her in surprise.
“Don’t judge, hon.” Karen shook her head. “All of us have done stuff we’re not proud of.”
I remained silent, conflicting thoughts swirling through my mind. On one hand, it seemed dangerous for two nonprofessionals to force people to talk about difficult and sometimes traumatic moments in front of a group of strangers.
At the same time, Moon did have a point: Fuck your therapist. We got there in… what, five minutes?
But that was because she’d pushed. Therapists let clients get to those deep, painful places in their own time. What would it do to rip off the Band-Aid—no, the tourniquet—like that?
Was that what had happened to Catherine? Had the work retraumatized her, caused her brain to become overwhelmed, shut it down?
Ramit and Karen went to the veranda while Dawne and I walked on to the bathrooms.
“I’ve been cheated on a few times.” Dawne stared straight ahead. “So that was kind of triggering to hear.”
“I get that. I’m sorry.”
“And my mom’s boyfriends…” She blew out her breath. “It’s just caused so much pain in my life. I don’t know how Mikki could live with herself.”
“I think that’s why she’s here,” I said. “To change it.”
“Yeah.”
At the sink, Dawne smiled up at me. “What do you think Steven made for lunch?”
“Ooh. I don’t know.” I pulled my phone from my pocket; it was at 4 percent. “I need to charge this first, though.”
“There’s an outlet in the lobby.”
“Oh, thanks.” I’d brought my cord in my jacket so headed over. In the hall to the courtyard, I studied the framed photos. In a cluster of group pictures, there were several blank spaces, like several had been taken down. Had they contained Catherine?
In the courtyard, I passed the merrily bubbling fountain and turned in a full circle. The creepy eyeless heads stared back at me. I crouched to take a closer look. The older woman and younger boy, both impressively realistic, looked slightly familiar. Maybe I’d seen photos of these people when I’d studied the Center’s site.
I approached one of the mosaic-covered doors. Inside was a desk piled with stretched canvases and crumpled tubes of oil paint. The chemical smell caused a pang of nostalgia. I’d loved oils but hadn’t used them in years. The next room was a similar size and shape but looked to be a photo studio.
I stopped in front of the purple door and tried to peek through the lace curtain in the window, remembering how I’d felt someone’s eyes on me during the tour. The room beyond was dark and opaque. I tried to open the doorknob. Locked. I went to the next door, and the next: they were all unlocked.
What could be beyond the locked door? Or… who?
I continued to the musty-smelling, taxidermy-filled lobby. Behind the front desk, I spotted the wall socket. A new text from Dom popped up:
Any updates?
Not yet. We just started our “sessions” today. Constellation therapy–esque.
I plugged in the phone, then considered the desk. Quietly, I pulled open the top drawer. Two sets of shiny car keys sat atop a jumble of rubber bands, paper clips, and pens. It felt strangely reassuring to see them. If I needed to make a quick getaway, I knew where to go.
I started a slow walk around the room, eyeing the muddied paintings and staring into the dead animals’ glass eyes. Tucked into a corner was a framed black-and-white photo of Moon and Sol, sitting naked together in the hot tub. She was in his lap, an arm latched around his neck. They beamed at each other, and unlike the posed photos in their online interviews, these smiles looked real. I thought back to the tension between them by the bonfire the night before. What had that been about?
A metal scraping sound came from the courtyard. I slipped though the hallway just in time to see Steven locking the purple door. He glanced around and I ducked back. If he was coming into the lobby, he’d see me immediately. But instead, he exited through the opposite hallway towards the bathrooms.
I approached the purple door and tried to turn the knob even as I knew it was useless.
The back of my neck prickled. That same feeling of being watched arose. Was someone behind the diaphanous shield of the curtains, staring at me?
I knocked softly. “Hello?”
No response.
“Catherine?” I blurted out.
Nothing.
A creak from above. I took a few steps back, scanning the second-floor walkway that wrapped around the courtyard. I hurried to the stairs and raced up.
No one there.
Adrenaline zipped through me. I felt suddenly conscious of a whole unseen crowd in the castle. Grace had said their three full-time members left for retreat weekends. But who knew? This place was huge. They could be spying on me at this very moment.
I tried all the landing doors. They, too, were locked… except for the last one. It opened to reveal a rickety spiral staircase winding upwards. It wobbled beneath my weight as I climbed. Childlike paintings of colorful monsters hung close on the walls.
The staircase opened into a landing. Sunlight filtered through the dusty windows onto cardboard boxes, stacks of paintings, sheet-covered furniture. A storage room? The staircase continued upwards, so I climbed more steps until I reached another door.
It opened onto the roof. More precisely: the castle’s tallest turret: a flat, uneven black surface, about twenty-by-twenty feet, at least sixty or seventy feet aboveground. After leaving a shoe in the door to prevent it from closing, I walked carefully around the perimeter, which was ringed by about four inches of raised adobe—certainly not enough to keep you from tumbling over the edge.
From here you could follow the gravel road until it reached the needle-thin highway. Grace had said it was three miles away? An hour’s walk? In the same direction, two dark specks sailed through the cloudless sky. Hawks: I recognized their grand swoops from hikes back home upstate. I turned around. On the other side of the turret, the castle blocked the pool and veranda, but the yoga pavilion, firepit, greenhouse, and yurts were visible beyond. Sound carried here, and I could hear the burble of the fountain and the distant jangling of the wind chime by the pool.
A bell clanged below: a literal lunch bell. There, like roving insects, Moon, Sol, and Mikki walked back from the yoga pavilion. Mikki and Moon were holding hands. I paused, trying to make out their faint words, but the fountain covered it like white noise.
I hurried back to the door and down the staircase. On the junk room landing, I paused.
I needed to get back for lunch, but something was tugging at me. I circled the storage room, picking my way around the boxes and furniture.
A black-and-white painting on the ground caught my eye. A geometric border encircled several figures, painted in a simple indigenous art style. The two largest ones had skull-like heads and faced forward, their hands raised. A snake that twisted in a spiral separated them from the smaller people below. One was crouched and facing sideways, its body covered in stripes. Two others held staffs, a wavy line connecting their mouths. Two at the bottom were mostly covered by a patterned square that looked like a blanket. Above them, a figure with large eyes held an arrow.
I couldn’t look away. Why did this feel important? I reached into my pocket for my phone before realizing I’d left it downstairs. I tried to memorize the painting before pulling it towards me so I could see the others stacked behind it.
In the blank space behind, Catherine’s pale, severed head stared back at me.
I jerked back, the painting clattering to the floor. “What the fuck ?”
It was a sculpture. Like the ones in the courtyard, though this one was even more realistic. It still had blank holes for eyes.
I reached out to touch the sharp cheekbones, the slightly prominent upper lip. The likeness was remarkable.
“Uh… hey.” The peeved male voice caused me to scramble to my feet. Steven stood in the doorway, light filtering in from behind him.
“Hi!” I squeaked.
“What are you doing in here?” I’d barely heard his voice, but it was gruff, menacing.
“I’m sorry, I…” I tried to laugh. “I was charging my phone and I heard something and… I just ended up here.”
“This room is off-limits.” His face was absolutely unreadable.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know that.”
He strode towards me and I backed away; he bent to push the paintings back into place, hiding the sculpture.
I gestured at them, feigning ignorance. “Did you paint these?”
“No.” He straightened. “We’ve had lots of artists here. They’ve all left stuff behind.”
“But you did the mosaics?”
He looked down. “Yeah.”
“They’re incredible.” I tried to sound awed, which wasn’t hard—they really were. “How long did it all take?”
He stared at me for a beat. “A long time.”
He was answering my questions, at least. Now might be my only chance to speak with him one-on-one.
“How long have you lived here?” I asked.
“Since the beginning.” He held my gaze.
“That was, what… five years ago?”
“Something like that.”
“And you knew Sol.”
That made him scoff. “Nope.”
“Moon?”
“She wasn’t calling herself that back then.” He said it quietly, as if to himself.
“What was she calling herself?”
“You know, you signed an agreement.” His mouth turned downwards. “I don’t know why you’re sneaking around, but whatever you’re looking for, you’re not allowed to share it. If you’re, you know, a journalist or something.”
I held up my hands. “I’m not a journalist. Just curious.”
“We just put out lunch.” He turned, and I hurried to follow him down the stairs, out onto the walkway, back down to the courtyard.
“I just have to get…” I gestured with my thumb. He nodded and I scurried down the hall, grabbing my phone and charger from the lobby. He was still waiting for me when I got back to the courtyard.
“Dinner last night was incredible, by the way,” I said.
He didn’t smile, but made eye contact. “Thanks.”
“Grace said you lived in India?” I asked as we headed down the hall.
“I spent a few years there.” He paused. “With Moon.”
Had they been together romantically back then? I wasn’t sure how to ask without spooking him. He paused in front of the door that led to the kitchen, judging by the smells.
“Thanks for walking me,” I said. “Sorry again.”
He gave me one last indecipherable glance before he slipped through the door.