Paula Guran - The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu

“Cousin, I trust you had a good trip,” she said, smiling and with the smile came recognition: Imelda.

She’d been a child of nine when he had left, carrying an antique doll under her arm.

“Very good, thank you,” he said.

“You must forgive us. My father wanted to greet you himself but he is indisposed and Aunt Celeste is watching over him. He’ll speak to you tomorrow. But today you will have supper with me. You must want to take your nap.”

A nap. Yes. He’d forgotten about that. They’d sleep until the midday heat had dissipated.

“I can show you to your old room,” she said.

Old was the right word. He recognized the faded wallpaper, the great armoire, the four-poster iron bed with its white sheets. Nothing had changed. The paintings were the same and so were the prints he’d left on the walls. In a corner, forgotten and lonesome, was the rocking horse of his childhood, which was no horse, actually, but a seahorse with a curling tail. The only new element in the room was his suitcase.

He was glad he had not brought Natalia. She would have found the place alien, depressing. He himself could not help the disappointment as he looked around. Everything seem so worn and faded.

“Thank you,” he said. “May I use the telephone? I should call my fiancée.”

“Have you forgotten?” Imelda said. “There is no telephone.”

Eduardo frowned. “But you phoned me.”

“Our lawyer phoned you, from his office in He’la’,” she said. “If you want to send a telegram you can give the message to Mario and he’ll send it for you.”

“No, it’s fine.”

He did not plan to stay for long. In fact, he wanted to leave the next day but first he must speak to his uncle. Zacarias was the head of the house and he had been generous with Eduardo’s allowance. Eduardo was aware that this generosity could cease. If his uncle summoned him, he must present himself.

“I’ll let you rest,” Imelda said. “Mario will fetch you when it’s time for supper.”

Alone, he explored the room, opening the armoire and running his hands over the hangers. He browsed the dusty books he’d left behind, and even gave the old seahorse a little kick, setting it in motion.

He fell asleep quickly and the warmth of the jungle inspired wild dreams. He dreamt Natalia was in labor and he was attending the delivery of his first child, but what pushed out from between her legs was not a baby. It was a pale, strange thing that had no legs and in place of a face only a maw full of sharp, needle-like teeth. It let out a piercing scream and he woke covered in sweat, his heart hammering in his chest.

Mario — that was the name of the young man who had picked him up at the station — came for him a couple of hours later. He took him to the formal dining room. The dishes were the fine porcelain ones, which were ushered out for special occasions. He sat across from his cousin.

“Is it just the two of us?” he asked.

“Aunt Celeste is still watching over Papa and the young ones have eaten already.”

He recalled the girl with the pink dress. Yes, he’d heard Aunt Isabel had married and had children. The little girl might be her daughter.

“Are they the only elders left at La Ceiba? Where is Aunt Isabel?”

“She’s left. The change came upon her last summer. Bartolomeo and Patricio changed two years ago. Juana is in He’la’, and it seems she will not change, so I imagine she’ll remain there.”

“Then it’s just Celeste and your father.”

“Well, there are the other branches,” Imelda said, with a flicker of her hands. “There are plenty of elders in Los Azulejos and others in Principio.”

“But this is the main house.”

“I know,” she said.

The servants brought in the dishes. Pale fish fried with capers and alcaparras, turkey in red-squash seed sauce. There was also toksel and a myriad of other things. An impressive bounty and he knew much thought had been put into it.

“So you are engaged,” Imelda said. “I hear she is not of the blood.”

“No,” Eduardo replied.

“I have not told father. He’ll be upset.”

“It is 1965, cousin. Our medical issues should not isolate us.”

“Our medical issues? Is that what they’ve taught you in Mexico City?” she said, smiling at him.

“Superstition hangs thick over the family, but I believe we are not the monsters of old legends.”

“What do you think we are?” Imelda asked, chuckling with skepticism.

“We have certain genetic issues and I will not argue that heredity has not gifted us with a strange mutation, a degenerative condition, but these tales of gods and—”

“Tales!” Imelda exclaimed.

“It’s all it is. We are flesh and blood, like anyone else.”

“You have been away from home for far too long.”

“I’m a modern man, not some superstitious peasant.”

She was upset. He knew she would be. But were there not stranger people than them? Conjoined twins, people missing limbs. Julia Pastrana, born covered in fur, who had toured the world as the Ugliest Woman in the World. Yes, his family had its collection of oddities but also its set of healthy, regular folks. Juana, for one, but also Grandmother Susana who had died at the age of seventy-five, wrinkled and bowed by age, but otherwise perfectly normal. Eduardo’s own father had perished in a car accident, handsome as he’d ever been, with no medical issues. And Lucia, Imelda’s mother, died giving birth to her, but no abnormalities marred her body.

They ate in silence. Once in a while Mario would walk in, refill their glass, then walk away.

“When our lawyer phoned he said your father needed to discuss an urgent matter with me. Do you know what it is?”

She glanced at him, uncertain.

“Please, tell me.”

“Father will not last through the summer. He wants to . . . he’d ask you to be head of the family.”

“Head? Me?” Eduardo said with a chuckle.

“Who else?”

“Well, I should expect that would be you, quite frankly,” Eduardo said.

“A woman? It’ll never do, you know that. The family won’t let it be, Tomas will come from El Principio with his lot to set us straight. The minor branches will object, too.”

All of a sudden she was on her feet, rounding the table, and she was sitting next to him, clasping his hands between her own.

“You don’t need to do anything. I can run this household, I’ve been running it for the past couple of years and doing quite well at it. All you need to do is marry me.”

He recalled when they were children. On one occasion she’d forced him to play the groom and she the bride, they’d been married with her doll officiating the ceremony. It was not an odd thing for cousins to wed, not for the Marins. The blood, after all, mattered very much. But he’d grown out of those peculiar notions long ago. His family was old-fashioned, trapped in the past; he was not.

“I am engaged,” he muttered.

“To a stranger.”

“To a nice girl.”

“You’d have Tomas come here, to handle the affairs of the house? My father sent him away for a reason.”

“Imelda, I have a life in Mexico City.”

She released his hands and stood up, her eyes cold.

“You did not write. You said you would but you didn’t write a single letter.”

She left him with that.

His uncle called for him the next morning. Eduardo had seldom been admitted to his room. It felt like a sacrilege to walk past the paintings of long-dead Marins hanging from the walls and approach the bed where Zacarias lay. Even more of a sacrilege to stare down at the pitiful man, old and shrunken, completely bald, drowning in the pillows. He had a rash on his face, his hands were gnarled, stiff with arthritis. How odd and different he seemed now.