Diavola

by Jennifer Marie Thorne

There was something careful about the energy here. Not calm, exactly. More … preserved in amber.

“This house has funny, like, echoes. I keep thinking I hear someone talking when everybody’s outside. Or footsteps but there’s no one there.”

“There’s a room in the tower. Nobody thinks that’s weird?” “That there’s a room in there?” Benny asked, teasing. “What, did you expect it to be a grain silo?”

“Why is it locked?”

“Why is the key so fancy, then?” Christopher said to Benny. “What? It is. It’s a fancy key.”

There was a red puddle on the tile in the entryway. Someone must have spilled their wine. That sloppy already. She grabbed a bunch of paper towels from the kitchen counter to dab it up, but when she turned back, she couldn’t find the stain. Trick of the light. So many tricks.

Anna realized she didn’t trust anything in this house. Not even the walls. Definitely not the people.

Less amusingly, shadows had gathered over it, creating the effect of something dangling. Almost a figure. Hanging. But only if you squinted, which Anna decided to stop doing.

Just before she drifted off, in the in-between between consciousness and oblivion, she realized what had bothered her about her nieces whispering in the hall. They’d been speaking Italian.

It seemed to Anna that the concept of “vacation” was antithetical to the concept of “family.” Vacation required vacancy. The abandonment of all scraps of everyday life.

“The tower?” she asked. La torre? He glanced behind him. Sighed. “I should not tell you anything.”

“The tower. Do not open it.”

“Be careful of your family. Do not open that door.”

She called after him, “Are there ghosts?” She wasn’t sure she’d gotten the word right. Spiriti could mean souls. Was it fantomi? Fantasmi? He paused, turned back. “Molti.”

The tower, the waiter had said. Do not open it. It sounded like a dare to her now.

The smell hit Anna first. Stale. Dust of ages, a pharaoh’s tomb. Then she felt the weight. The air in here was active. It had intent. She felt it on her shoulders, the top of her head, pressing in on her chest. Yeah, okay, bad idea, I need to get out of here, she thought,

The scream came just before dawn.

“It was a shape.” “Triangle? Pentagon?” She couldn’t quite smile, but she could keep her tone sardonic. “Pentagram?” “Human shape. Dark. And then gone. But not gone, just not.” He swallowed. “Visible.”

“I thought I was dreaming, but then I felt it sit on the bed and it, it like, it dipped?” He sounded on the verge of tears. “And I reached out to feel it and it moved over me. Onto me. And I couldn’t breathe, it was like it was putting all its weight on me and it was not good, Anna, it was like a smothering … cloud? I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.”

This Mary hadn’t quite made it to holy virgin.

There was a distinct smirk to her expression, an arrogance, like she knew it was coming, had arranged it all herself.

“I think they might have lived in the villa.”

“Can we go play with the neighbors?” Waverly called. “Yeah, sure, have a blast,” Justin said, then turned to Anna, conspiratorial. “There are no neighbors, right? I’ve got weird kids.”

Three of them. Men, vaguely limned by the evening’s last light. They were stooped over. Pouring something onto the ground from a bag. Seeing her, all three turned and took off running. “Hey!” She waved over her head. “This is not … Non va bene!”

Instead, she bent to look at what they’d been pouring. Some clearish-white grit, in a line. Maybe an intended circle, all around the house, if they’d managed to finish. Was this what was killing the grass? Some chemical? It was dark, no way to know without testing it, but Anna could swear it was … salt.

It was an ornament, a pendant without a chain, red—a pepper? It looked familiar.

Cornicello, Anna remembered, as they descended the tower in a careful, dizzy spiral. That was the name of the charm the old woman had offered her. It was meant to ward off the evil eye.

They were alike, Anna and her father, but often in the wrong ways. They were identical magnets, she thought, turned to repel.

The living room was upended. Carefully so, and that was what made it all the more alarming.

It didn’t smell clean either. It smelled, frankly, rank.

“There’s three of them.” Waverly drifted into the utility room, idly scanning the shelves. “Two boys, one girl, different ages, I guess. The girl is like sixth grade maybe?” “They wear weird clothes,” Mia said. “That’s not nice, Mia,” Waverly snapped. Mia stared at her feet. “I think they’re lonely.”

They’d left the front door wide open. Anna didn’t remember that.

Mia shook her head. Her lips were very white. “I don’t want to go in either,” Waverly whispered. “It feels bad.” It did. It felt like it was breathing. Waiting.

“She said … when you were little … you killed a guinea pig.”

I’m not sure pets and Anna are a great combination.

She sat in the open window, listening to the cicadas outside, the string orchestra of the Tuscan countryside—when abruptly, all sound stopped, like someone had muted the world with a remote control.

“I wasn’t asleep yet!” Waverly snapped, offended. “I saw her, the monster.”

“I saw J-Jenny Greenteeth, but she wasn’t g-green, she was all yellow, and she pushed on me. She wouldn’t let me up from the … the bed…”

“Does Mia ever sleepwalk?” she asked Waverly, her voice so tight it sounded warped. Waverly nodded. “A lot.”

“È qui,” he said, and blood spilled from his mouth.

A blurred figure, standing so close it could lower its chin to her neck and bite her. Taller than she was by an inch or more. Hair more yellow than blond, hanging lank. The faint outline of a gown, also yellow, staining the steam.

Jacopo da Sellaio. Florentine woman. c. 1500, Tempera on wood. An unnamed subject, no reference in description or landscape to Monteperso, thirty miles from the center of Florentine life. But somehow, Anna knew. This was the same model as the Madonna in the church. Not the strained Mary of the Pietà. The smug one awaiting God’s impregnation.

This was it. The thing in the villa. She knew, somehow she knew.

Christopher yanked the bottle away from Benny, spilling some onto the table, never breaking eye contact with Anna. “I bought this. I’m not your daddy.” “Wooooow,” Anna muttered. “What’s mine isn’t yours. That’s not how the real world works, beyond this weird little bubble you’ve set up for yourself. You’re not going to steal my prom. I’ll tell you that much.”

I’m saying goodbye now, Ben. Don’t bother calling. I won’t pick up. Pretty obvious I haven’t passed the Anna test. Enjoy the rest of your life in her shadow. Christopher

something fundamental was needling her, beyond the blame for their breakup that Christopher had laid at her feet like a parting gift—when

“You’ve got cuts, hon. On your back.” Three stripes, down the length of Nicole’s back, like something had scraped at her with a gardening fork.

“What happened yesterday, Waverly?” Anna crouched low. Tried to keep her voice from going shrill. “What did we do? Can you remember?” “You went to Florence, and we went to the water park,” Waverly said, right away, though she looked a little bewildered, questioning herself. “My head hurts.”

Mia piped up, “I remember yesterday, Auntie Anna. We played Uno and I won one time and you won lots of times, and Benny pretended he was mad, but then he beat you and that was the last game, and then we watched iPad and we swam in the pool, and you were Jenny Bluetooth.”

The door to the tower. Calling her.