Chapter Twelve

I tried to sleep late into the morning. I tried to focus on the warm sun that settled over me. It should have been comforting, but it reminded me instead of the hot Aztecan sun. Pushing the image away, I tried to reassure myself that I was momentarily safe in my own time, not high atop a temple mesa. It worked a little. Although, however comforting that realization was it could do nothing to hold all that I had learned at bay.

Fears slowly seeped into my mind, leaving little room for anything else. Climbing off my mattress, I made my way to the bathroom. I did my best to push the disturbing thoughts out of my mind as I stood under the hot shower. The heat and water only reminded me of the dream girl sitting in a steaming tub of water being scrubbed by attendants in preparation for the sacrifice. I finished my shower quickly.

Dressing with much less care than usual, I considered the things my grandpa had told me the day before. He had surprised me with what he had revealed, but I felt that he had kept back even more. It was scary to admit that, because if he had kept anything back it was because it must have been even more horrifying than what he had already told me.

He had warned me that the mystery went deeper than I realized, and he was right. I had found out about the other girls, dead and forgotten. Perhaps if I showed my grandpa how serious I was about finding the truth, he would tell me the rest of what he knew. Remembering how his body had crumpled and sagged at the mention of his beloved sister and daughter, I did not relish the idea of asking him to relive those memories again.

Bringing that much pain to my grandpa again scared me more than I wanted to admit, but turning away from the truth was not an option anymore. Despite my despair the night before, I woke up still holding onto a tenuous belief that there might be a chance to change my fate if only I could find the truth. That slim hope took hold of me and refused to let go. I was on my way to my grandpa’s house with my new information before either of my parents had woken up. This time I did remembered to leave a note.

When my grandpa opened the door, I was not greeted with the same enthusiasm as I had been the day before. Studying my demeanor carefully, he welcomed me into his home. He knew exactly why I had come back.

“Come in Arrabella,” he said. “I thought you might be back today. Come in and tell me what you’ve found.”

I walked through the door and listened to my footsteps gently tap along the old wood floors. Glancing at the wall that enclosed the hallway I saw the rows of hanging pictures. Katie and Maera dominated the faces. At least he hadn’t forgotten, I though. Stepping into the kitchen with my photos and records, I was ready to find out the rest of what my grandpa knew. We sat down at the little round table and I told him everything I had discovered.

He patiently listened to me with a frown that deepened as the conversation continued. When I finished my explanation I looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to tell what he knew as well. Staring down at the table, the silence grew thicker.

“Well,” I asked, “what do you think?”

“Arra, I told you that you would find out all of this,” he said. I just stared at him. Surely he did not expect me to accept that as an answer. I opened my mouth to argue, but he continued first. “Are you sure you want to go forward with this? There won’t be any going back if you do. The knowledge will change things too much for that.” His gaze met my eyes, studying me intently.

“I need to know, Grandpa. I can’t live with this fear and not try to understand it,” I said, hoping I sounded brave enough.

He nodded. He must have expected that to be my answer. “I do know what is happening, Arra. I had truly hoped that it would never come to this, but it has. No matter what ideas I have, they could never be tested, until now.”

Pausing, he took a deep breath before moving on. “Well, now you know that Katie’s and Maera’s deaths weren’t just coincidence. You can’t change any of it, unfortunately. I told you to find the other names just so you would realize how old this is, how deep the trouble goes. No one else has ever been able to stop it, but I refuse to accept that no one ever will. Knowing doesn’t help the fear, but maybe it can help in other ways.”

“We can’t know for sure that nothing will stop it. I have to try, Grandpa. If this thing is going to come after me too, I won’t sit around and just wait for it to claim me. I will not give up that easily,” I said.

“Good, Arra. You will need to be strong for this,” he said, almost to himself.

I rubbed her arms absently, trying to get rid of the prickling feeling spreading over my skin. I could not rid myself of the bizarre sensation, though. Looking back at my grandpa, I wondered how long he had been preparing for this. “I want you to tell me what else you know, Grandpa. I can tell that you’re keeping something from me. I have to know everything. Please tell me.”

“I know that when you hear this, you’ll think I’ve lost what little sanity I have left, but please just listen,” he said, patting my knee. “I will tell you everything. You deserve to hear the truth. You need to hear it if you want to succeed.” Leaning forward in his chair, he brought his face closer to mine.

“Katie didn’t actually die instantly like I made it sound yesterday. Your father was able to reach her while she was still alive. Her head was bleeding from the fall, but not badly enough that your father thought she was going to die.

“She was coherent at first, but the longer he was with her the more unreasonable she became. Your father tried to ask her what had happened, but she wasn’t sure herself. She told him that someone was after her, but there was nobody else around. She was hysterical, begging your father not to let them take her. He asked her who was coming, but she couldn’t give him a clear answer.

“The more he tried to talk to her the more frantic she became. By the end she was screaming at him to save her. He tried everything he could think of to calm her down, but nothing worked. Your father stood up and starting yelling, hoping somebody would hear him. He was only a few steps away from her.

“He told me later that the most terrifying part of the whole thing was that she had been screaming for help and suddenly just stopped, for no apparent reason. At first he thought she had lost consciousness. But when he checked for her pulse, he realized that she was already dead.

“He couldn’t understand what had happened. No one could, really. The fall wasn’t bad enough to have killed her. Like I said, the coroner couldn’t actually tell us what had happened to her. He told us that she must have died from shock, but the look in his eyes said he didn’t believe it either.”

“Do you know what really happened to her, Grandpa?” I asked quietly. I knew there was more to tell and I found I was willing to push him into unpleasant places to get it. “Do you know who ‘they’ were? Do you know who was chasing Katie? Do you know who will come after me?”

“Yes, Arra, I know. At least, some of it I know,” he said. He turned to me and said, “It was the same thing that killed Maera. I was sure of that after Katie died.”

“Tell me what happened to her, Grandpa. Please,” I said, my fingernails digging into my palms.

His eyes closed tightly and he drew a deep breath. Seeing his pausing as a refusal to answer, I stood up to leave. “I can’t believe this,” I said angrily. “I did what you said. I found the others, and still you won’t talk to me?” He grabbed my arm and pulled me back to my chair. He took a deep breath, rubbed his wrinkled forehead, and looked me straight in the eye.

“Wait, Arra. I will tell you everything. I just needed a minute to prepare myself. I hoped that I would never have to do this, but I know that I must. I’m sorry. This isn’t easy for me. Sit down, please,” he said gently. “Katie didn’t die because of the fall or from shock. At first I thought that she had, or I wanted to believe she had, to be perfectly honest. I wanted to believe that it had nothing to do with Maera. But when the coroner couldn’t explain her death to us, and your father told me what Katie had said, I knew her death had everything to do with Maera’s.

“There has always been a story passed down in our family about a woman named Kivera. She was an Aztec woman who lived many generations ago when Aztec society still flourished. She was chosen to be a sacrifice when she was a young woman. She was so terrified that she pleaded with the priest to let her go. Nobody knew exactly what happened, but some kind of deal was struck over the sacrificial altar. Kivera walked away, but obviously that wasn’t the end of it,” he said.

Aztec sacrifice and deals made over an altar? I scoffed, pretty sure my grandpa was trying to feed me a bedtime story instead of telling me the truth. I guess I had come here expecting some fantastic reason for mystery of the dead girls, but still. My lips parted to object, to demand he stop treating me like a child, but he waved my words away and continued.

“I know that you don’t believe in stories like that, Arra,” he said, “and I didn’t either at first. I had heard the story before Maera died and wondered if the fabled curse had been what claimed her. Eventually I forgot about it. When Katie died I considered the curse again because of the strange circumstances. That’s when I found out everything you’ve found out. I know that the curse is real, Arra. I know it sounds crazy, but you believe it too, don’t you?”

I sat quietly wondering at my grandpa. I didn’t know what I had been expecting to hear, but an ancient Aztec curse sounded insane. I was sure he must be joking, but the devastated looked on his face stopped me cold. He looked as though he had just signed my death warrant himself, as if sharing his secret finally made it all too real.

His revelation was so far away from anything I had been expecting that I could not say anything in response. Wanting to laugh and cry at the same time, I bit the inside of my cheek hard to stave off doing either. I sat very still and considered everything I knew. There was no such thing as curses, that was certainly true, right? This was all crazy, wasn’t it? But all those girls had been taken by something. No coincidence could possibly reach that far. In the end I could not deny the possibility that it was not just a silly story.

If all I had to go on were the pictures and genealogy, I might have been able to convince herself that none of this was true if I tried hard enough, but my dreams rushed to the front of my mind in a crashing wave. The cleansing and painting, the slow march up the tower, the oily black blade assaulted me. The dreams were so powerful that I woke each night dreading falling asleep again. It was all too much for me to pass off as fantasy. My grandpa disturbed my dizzying thoughts by putting his rough hand on my arm. It was only the slightest pressure but the physical contact brought me back to the present.

“Arra, why don’t you tell me what else you know? You haven’t told me everything either, have you?” he asked me.

Without looking up at my grandpa’s face I shared my secret as well. “I’ve dreamed of her. At least I think it’s her, Kivera. For nearly a week I have dreamed about her, about what happened to her. I saw her taken from her home, dressed in ceremonial clothes and paint, and paraded up to an altar. She was terrified. She was crying the whole way.”

The remembered terror of the dreams made me pause as I tried to push away the all too familiar tears. I looked up at my grandpa’s patient face and tried to continue. “She looked just like me. I thought it was me at first, but I know now it must be her. The fear is so real that they can’t be just dreams,” I said. “It’s her. She’s trying to warn me, to tell me what happened to her and what is going to happen to me.”

My grandpa put his arm around my shoulders and hugged me to his chest. I thought this dream would be a revelation to him, but the calmness in his eyes said it was not. “You’ve heard this before?”

“Yes, I have,” he said. “Being Twins, Maera and I were very close. The week leading up to her death she had started acting very strangely. Normally she was a happy, excitable person, but suddenly she started staying mostly to herself. I tried to ask her what was wrong, but she brushed me off. All she would say was that she had been having bad dreams at night.

“After Katie died I was packing up her room and I came across her diary.” He smiled warmly. “I probably shouldn’t have opened it, but I just wanted to know what she had been feeling and thinking before she died. I wanted to feel close to her. I was shocked to read about the dreams she was having, how they scared her and kept her awake at nights. They sound like the same dreams you just described. I wish she had told me about the dreams then. Maybe it would have made a difference. Who can know? She didn’t even tell your father.”

I simply stared at him. Had all the girls shared these awful dreams? The connection I felt to them just kept getting stronger. I hoped that did not mean that I would share their fate as well. I could try to deny what my grandfather was telling me, but I knew there was no use. My head sagged. My hands came up to rub my arms once again. The cold foreboding feeling refused to give way.

“I’m so sorry, Arra,” he said. “I’m sorry this is happening to you. I’ll help you with anything you need. We’ll find some way to stop this. We won’t give up.” He was crying as he held me. I think I was too.

I didn’t think he believed his words any more than I did, but I tried to hope there would be a way to free me. Despair washed over us as we cradled each other. I wished again that I had never seen Katie’s photo. I wished I had never left New York and found any of this. Pulling closer to my grandpa, I knew that in two days none of what I had learned would matter anyway.