I See You, You See Me

Something wasn’t quite right.

Everything looked familiar — the sky overhead was the same clear blue it had been for days, the still air still hot and dry. In fact, everything looked too familiar.  Marco was standing in the Love & War cemetery, wearing the same uncomfortable suit he’d just worn to Aleister Fairgood’s funeral. He could smell aftershave and funeral flowers.

Something wasn’t quite right.

He took a more careful look around. A group of mourners stood in one corner of the cemetery, huddled before an open grave. Marco immediately recognized the scene, as he’d seen it just a day earlier. He was watching Aleister Fairgood’s funeral.The grave was still open, the preacher standing over it reading from the Bible, a heady flower arrangement placed over the shining coffin. Sitting on folding chairs in the front row, Shira Fairgood stared unblinking into space.

Marco shuddered. He’d seen all this before. Reliving the funeral wasn’t anything he wanted to be doing.

Lifting his eyes, Marco saw movement on the opposite end of the cemetery. Moving in to take a closer look, Marco grinned as the apparition solidified into a familiar shape. Two Rabbit was beckoning for Marco with a quick jerk of the head, impatiently tapping a slender foot against the earth.

Quietly, Marco hurried away from the mourners, breathing a sigh of relief as he approached the rabbit. But his relief was replaced with confusion as he drew closer, his brow drawing together in a furrow. “You look weird,” Marco said.

“You’re a very rude young man, and I don’t mind saying so,” the rabbit retorted, obviously offended. “I don’t see why you should say such a thing, anyway — you are dressed in your finery, and I am dressed in mine.”

Marco wasn’t entirely sure what “finery” meant, but all the same, Two Rabbit did look weird. Unlike the first time they’d met, Two Rabbit now had a large, rectangular, golden ring running through his nose, and his face was painted half black and half red. Around his long ears was perched a golden, fan shaped headdress.

“But why are you dressed like that?” Marco asked.

The rabbit bristled. “Never mind that! We are not here for you to harangue me with you impertinent interview! If you knew the history of your ancestors, you wouldn’t have to ask these questions in the first place!”

Marco looked down, abashed, and the rabbit sighed, lowering his voice. “My apologies. I am not used to being questioned. I must remember to grant you a modicum of leeway. I will agree to remind myself of your unfortunate ignorance if you will agree to keep your questions and superfluous comments to a minimum. Are we agreed?”

Marco wasn’t sure what, exactly, he was agreeing to, but it seemed best to hold his tongue and nod his head, which he did. Two Rabbit sighed, visibly relieved.

“Very well. First things first. It has been a while since our last encounter. What, my dear boy, has taken you so long to return?”

Marco shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t know how to find you again,” he admitted.

“Well, how did you manage to find me this time?”

Marco’s face flushed red. “I think it’s because I got drunk,” he said, embarrassed.

The rabbit guffawed. “Drunk! Surely you jest! And what, pray tell, did you get drunk on?”

“Pulque.”

The rabbit nodded slowly, dark eyes twinkling. “It adds up, then,” he said. “Pulque is a sacred beverage, Marco, and it will always bring you to me. However, it is probably in your interest, especially at your age, to find another way to induce the state of mind which will initiate our meetings, don’t you agree?”

Marco nodded, relieved that he was going to be spared a scolding. He figured he’d subjected to punishment enough upon waking, whenever that may be.

“I don’t suppose, then, that you’ve managed to conjure up my name yet, have you?”

Marco gave a slow, dejected shake of the head.

The rabbit sighed. “I suppose it cannot be helped. Well, let’s get on with it, shall we? Tell me, Marco: why have you brought us here to the place of the dead? I rather preferred our last venue, if I’m to be honest. I’m not very comfortable with funerary rites.”

At this, Marco looked surprised, and shook his head. “I didn’t bring you here,” he said. “I just drank the pulque and fell asleep, and now I’m dreaming, but I’m not dreaming of the funeral on purpose. Believe me.”

The rabbit gave Marco one of his knowing smiles. “This is your dream, Marco,” Two Rabbit said. “If we are here, we are here for reasons that are your own. And, considering the subject matter, I suspect the reasons are important, even if your conscious mind isn’t yet sure what they are. Together we’ll work it out. Now tell me, Marco: why do you need to see the funeral again?”

Without realizing it, Marco had begun walking toward the funeral party, Two Rabbit hopping apace beside him. They were close enough now to hear the preacher’s voice, but not close enough to make out the words. Marco watched the woman in the front row crying silent tears, an older woman holding her hand. “That’s the widow, Mrs. Fairgood,” Marco whispered. “Nobody can find her daughter.”

“Is she the one you’re here to see?”

Marco shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Then look again.”

Marco watched the scene before him with an eerie sense of déjà vu, though in truth, it wasn’t just that he felt he’d already seen this before. He really had. The funeral he watched now was the same one he had attended. He saw Bibi Armstrong and her husband (whose name Marco didn’t know) standing with Jackson and Hannah Davey. He saw Gracey and Tiny dressed in matching black dresses, their hair pulled back from their faces. He even saw himself sitting between his mother and Alejandro, and Alma (who had not been invited, Marco noted) playing by herself in the last row. Everything was exactly as it had been just a day or so ago. He’d already seen all of this once. He didn’t understand why he needed to see it all again.

And then Marco saw her.

He didn’t remember seeing her the first time, but perhaps he had seen her and just not noticed her — otherwise, would he be able to see her now, in his subconscious? Noticing her now, Marco felt as though an itch in his brain had finally been scratched. Standing just behind the widow and next to the magician  Simon St. Laine was a small, dark woman, her downturned face hidden behind a mass of shiny, black curls. She stood erect, shoulders back, unmoving. She was perfectly still, more like an image than a real woman, but what called his attention to her was not the way she looked.

It was that Marco could hear her screaming inside her own head.

Her screams were wordless, animal, the sound of pure terror and suffering. Emotions radiated out from her like waves from an earthquake’s epicenter, and Marco gasped as they rippled through him: fury, hatred, desire…and bone-chilling satisfaction.

“It’s her,” Marco breathed, his voice thready. “She’s the one. I didn’t notice her before. That’s why I had to come again.”

He’d barely said the words when everything came rushing back to him in a whirlwind of images and feelings. The graveyard at nighttime. The ouija board. The spirit that had beckoned to him, cajoling him into bringing it over from wherever it was to Love & War, where it wasn’t supposed to be. The high-pitched laughter that had seemed directed at him, and Rubio Bautista’s ruined body hanging from that tree. And then, worst of all, the humiliation he’d felt at having been unable to resist doing something he’d known he shouldn’t have done.

Two Rabbit narrowed his eyes at Marco, his expression stern. “Do you have her name, Marco? If you own a thing’s name — ”

“ — You own a thing,” Marco finished. He licked his lips and clenched his hands into small, determined fists. “I know it. I remember. Her name is Minerva Katherine Auckland.”

He spoke her name with crisp clarity, and felt every hair on his body stand at attention as he said it. The moment her name left Marco’s lips, the woman’s head snapped up, and her attention was on Marco, her bright, intense eyes staring daggers at the boy. They stared at each other across the funeral party, across dimensions of time, across dreamtime and reality. As he stared at her, Marco felt his skin grow terribly hot as though he were on fire. After a moment, a slow, thin, cold smile spread across the woman’s face, and she mouthed the words, “I see you, Marco.”

Marco felt like he might be sick.

Breaking eye contact, Marco took a few frantic steps backward, stumbled, and toppled to the ground beside the rabbit, his eyes rimmed with tears. His skin seemed to have grown cool again. “I have to put her back, Two Rabbit,” he said. “She’s terrible. She’s hurting people. I brought her here and now I have to put her back where she belongs.”

“Taking responsibility for one’s actions,” the rabbit proclaimed in a bombastic voice befitting one so prone to pontification, “is the first irrefutable sign of a noble heart. However, it must be pointed out, Marco, that you’re just a little boy, and such an undertaking might be even beyond your abilities, such as they are.”

“You said I was a warrior,” Marco reminded him, his voice full of reproach.

The rabbit, at least, had the decency to appear appropriately rebuffed. “A warrior in training, perhaps, that you are. Still, one warrior cannot accomplish much of anything on his own, which is why kings and emperors form allegiances. So tell me, Marco, who are your allies? Who can you trust to help you banish the evil that you’ve unleashed?”

His mind was not as filled with possibilities as he would have liked. He immediately dismissed his mother as a candidate, for her weak heart and propensity for melodrama made Marco suspect she wouldn’t have the strength to help him in his quest, even if she believed him, which she probably wouldn’t. He similarly dismissed his Aunt Conchita, for even though she might have been of some help, she could be relied upon to divulge Marco’s predicament to his mother.

His stepfather Chucho was not around often enough to be helpful, but even if he were Marco wasn’t sure he could confide in him; the two weren’t especially close. He considered Satsuko, with her wise eyes and obvious affection for him, but although a teenager, she was just a kid, too.

Who could he trust, who could he trust?

He scanned the funeral, looking for someone, anyone who could help him, who would believe him, who would share responsibility for putting that unholy entity back in her grave.

A gentle breeze blew, bringing with it the unmistakable aroma of buttery crust oozing with blueberry juice. He closed his eyes, savoring the smell, his stomach rumbling with hunger. And just like that, Marco had his answer: Gracey Daylittle. Gracey would help him.

His body was getting heavy, and the world around him was beginning to fade; he was waking up. He turned to Two Rabbit and smiled. “I’ll see you soon?”

The rabbit hopped close and nuzzled Marco with a twitchy nose. “Any time you need me,” he agreed.