Chapter 16 Diantha
Diantha
Orfeo walks away from me on that frigid January night and right out of my life.
The days that follow stretch on in a feverish blur of pain. My bones ache, my head pounds. I feel like I ran a marathon through quicksand. I call out of work and spend the next day suspended between sleep and wakefulness, life and death.
Evie comes over with a container of soup in one hand and a black kitten in the other. She gives me long, slow looks as she hands me a warm bowl of butternut squash bisque and plops the baby on my chest for a cuddle.
“Did he hurt you?” she asks quietly. Being serious has never been our forte.
“No…” I shake my head, even though the motion makes my eyes feel like they might explode out of my head. “This one’s partially my fault.”
“Well.” Evie sighs, settling her head on my shoulder. “I have a hard time believing that.”
I flash her a weak smile. “You always see the good in me.”
That night, my dreams become oppressive, chaotic.
I find myself at the same kitchen table with my mother, but this time, we’re not alone.
Around us, women swathed in black fabric with black lace veils draped over their heads pace the length of the room.
They surround us like flies, coming closer and closer, and just when I flinch, terrified they might make contact with my skin, they blink out of existence before flickering back into the Dream Place, across the room. Then, they start their circle again.
Around and around they go, eyes vacant. Lips moving in silent prayer.
“Have you gotten into the crypt?” Mom asks, red fingernails running up and down her rosary beads.
“Mom.” I sound so young, so scared. “Who are these people?”
She looks up at me and fear grips my heart. My mother’s eyes have taken on the same milky, unfocused gaze. “This is your family, Diantha. The worshippers of Asteria. We’re all here.”
“I never noticed them before…” My voice trembles. This space, this flimsy halfway between life and death, is shrinking. The midday light flickering through the window has become hostile. It’s orange and hot. It’s almost impossible to look right at my beautiful mother.
“There’s nowhere else for us. He’s pushed us as far as he can. He thinks it’s funny.”
“Who is he, mom?”
She curls her lips over her teeth and shakes her head, lifting a hand to cover her face.
“I’m going to get you out of here,” I say, reaching for her. I feel like I have to shout; then I realize I do have to shout. A howling wind tears through the room, tossing around the lace curtains. “I’m going to get you out of here!”
Suddenly, the ceiling is gone. Above us, there’s nothing but an uninterrupted night sky, littered with stars and galaxies, blood-red planets and creatures made of stardust. They leap great distances, haunches expanding infinitely.
Meteors follow behind them, big balls of blue flames tearing through the darkness.
“What’s happening?” I try to yell over the wind, but when I look back toward my mother, she’s gone. The entire kitchen is gone.
The women have formed a circle around me and are closing in, gnarled hands outstretched, mouths frozen in silent screams. Their eyes flicker and roll in their sunken sockets.
Closer and closer they come. I try to run but my feet are frozen.
My palms sweat. My throat seizes. I try to scream.
Tears burn in my eyes as I choke on the wind.
And suddenly their hands are on me. Cold and wet and so strong.
They grab at my clothes and reach for my face.
They press on, closing in on me. They’re the blackened, beating heart of this realm.
Now, their rattling breath is so close I feel it, surrounding me until I can no longer stay upright.
My knees buckle. I feel the weight of their bodies collapsing onto me.
I feel my final scream catch in my throat and I—
I jolt awake.
Panting.
Covered in sweat.
Rolled up in my duvet like a damn burrito, my breath coming in quick, jagged pulls.
“Fuck,” I hiss, pushing aside my blankets and crawling across my bed toward my notebook. I grab my pen and scribble out the words:
Asteria
“He”
Days of class and work and avoiding Orfeo morph into weeks. I keep the aching memories of our fight at bay by spending every moment that I’m not busy with work and my dissertation researching my mother.
My nightmare loops over and over, with only small elements changing. Sometimes my mom’s there; other times I’m left alone in the kitchen with the big, wide sky yawning over me.
It’s fine, I tell myself. We’re better off without each other. Over and over, hoping it starts to feel real. But my life has become a cemetery of painful absences. It feels so ridiculous to count Orfeo amongst them, but nothing about the way he made me feel was ever balanced or rational.
I don’t want to think of the Italian vampire every time I reach for a box of spaghetti or try on one of my dresses. I don’t want to look through my balcony doors and imagine him smoking a cigarette in his slow, purposeful way.
Much like my mother, Orfeo’s right there and yet totally inaccessible. January melts into February, and I stem my feelings the way I always have—by acting like they don’t exist.
My mom’s personal effects don’t reveal much about who this “he” could be, and since I can’t reach through the chaos of my mind to get to her in the Dream Place, I’m forced to think outside the box.
I don’t know why I’ve never googled her before.
I guess it felt too…too cheap, maybe? And when she was alive, there seemed to be nothing my mother wouldn’t tell me.
How many times had I asked her not to introduce me to a boyfriend or steal my jeans or crawl into my bed after a night out playing pool and smoking cigarettes?
I type in her birth name—Theresina Moro—and the first link is to her obituary, which feels like a fresh hole punched through my heart. I force myself to keep going, but the links that follow are to old advertisements for her palm reading business and pictures pulled from her Facebook page.
It’s not until the fifth search page that I find an old news article:
Missing Brooklyn Teen Found Safe in Central Jersey; Newborn Baby Is Hers, Family Claims
I stare at the headline. My pulse thuds in my throat. The computer mouse grows clammy in my hand. All around me, the library is cloaked in total silence.
Finally, I click. The link takes me to an archived news page from February, twenty-six years ago.
Missing Brooklyn teenager Theresina Moro has been found after almost exactly 365 days of searching.
The teen was spotted wandering the side of I-95 last Friday.
Eyewitnesses reported that the young woman was first seen walking the median without proper footwear and with a swaddled infant in her arms as temperatures dropped to single digits.
A local woman pulled over when she noticed the teen, later contacting authorities when she noticed the teenager’s ankle tattoo matched a photo on missing posters.
When the woman approached Moro, she alleges the teen smiled and simply asked for the time despite having what appeared to be a number of open and bleeding wounds on her wrists, ankles, and forehead.
Moro’s unexpected return comes after many desperate pleas from the girl’s family. Missing person signs can be found on almost every telephone pole from Brooklyn to Princeton. Theresina’s mother tells us they never gave up hope.
The young woman was reported missing by her mother and grandmother after failing to return home from a double shift at Famiglia Three Pizza in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn.
Moro’s mother reported that her daughter had begun dating someone but had refused to share details with her family.
Concerned, Moro’s mother had asked her friends to keep an eye on her.
The now eighteen-year-old girl and infant were taken into custody Friday night before being promptly reunited with her family.
I exit out of the page, pushing back from the library desk and not giving a damn about how much noise I’m making. I grab my bag, rushing across the atrium and down the marble steps that wind into the archives, my footfall echoing around me.
The air down here is cold and humid, sharp with the smell of chemicals and disuse. I rush to the bathroom and lock the door behind me, my skin goose pimpled and slick with sweat. I slide down to the floor and focus all my energy on the sensation in my chest.
Please work, I think, begging the gods. Please. Please.
I focus on the kitchen table as it appears in my dreams. The sink behind Mom, the strange orange light, the way the light falls through the lace curtains and through her bottle blonde waves.
I focus on the women, spiraling around the room.
The cookies on the plate between us. The glass rosary beads draped over her hands. The faint smell of death.
Please work. Please.
The tingling begins. In my hands and feet, then it grows, reaching higher and higher.
Please.
The shortbread cookies. The stars over our heads that struck with that deep, wild fear.
Please.
I feel myself pulling away, drifting upward, stretching and lifting…
“Mom!” I collapse onto the table. I’m here, both in body and spirit. I gasp for air, trying to regain control of my breathing. I push myself up to look at her.
She looks the same as she has since the first time I met her here, in the Dream Place. “It worked.”
“Of course it did.” A smile flickers on her lips. “You look sick, sweetie.”
“Mom, what the fuck happened to you? You went missing? Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“Oh dear.” Another watery smile. “Oh, yes. Very unpleasant.”
“Am I the baby? The baby they found you with?”
She laughs. “Who else would it be?”
“Mom, I need to know everything. I don’t know what else to do, where else to look. I don’t know how long I can stay here. You need to tell me what happened—you need to tell me about Asteria.”