A Vision of Fire

Tiki figures, she recalled with a jolt. They had large mouths and eyes very similar to this. She whipped out her phone; took a photo of her drawing, wincing from the bright flash; and texted it to Ben with a message: I saw this in connection with Gaelle. Long story. Polynesian influence?

Then Caitlin did what she had previously avoided. She walked herself through the trip from the time she got off the plane, making detailed notes on everything that she could remember, without gloss, without explanation, and with only momentary hesitation when she reached her experience of the force that had thrown Gaelle against the wall. What could she even call it — energy? The Vodou push? She wondered if an electrical force could possibly account for it. It was worth researching later. She wrote until her hand cramped, until she was done. Folding the pages carefully, she numbered them in case they fell, then tucked them away before once again attempting sleep. Her mind would gather strength; it would not feed her dream demon, not if she could help it. She turned off the light.

Her last thought was of something she’d seen through the window of the Land Rover heading back to Port-au-Prince — a patch of new trees planted on one of the mountainsides. The government had recently announced it was going to replant Haiti’s decimated forests. Caitlin hoped that the madame and her son would see it on their way back to the city and trust that fumbling, faulty human beings did sometimes create solutions.

* * *

Caitlin arrived home at two in the morning but her father was awake to open the door, allowing her to walk into a bright kitchen and a hug. She dropped her bag on the kitchen table and sat down.

“How is he?” she asked.

“Fine, fine,” Joe said. “A little quiet, maybe.”

“When?”

“Earlier tonight,” he said. “He just kind of stared out the window for, oh, two minutes or so. I left him. He snapped out of it.”

Caitlin felt a shiver. Two minutes. That’s about how long she was in her bizarre trance.

Her father chuckled. “I’ll tell you, though. He crowed like Peter Pan when he got me to eat kale.”

Caitlin returned to the moment. “Eat it and like it?”

Joe grinned. “It was better than I expected. Don’t tell your mother.”

Caitlin chuckled. She opened her bag and sorted through it, separating items she would leave in the bag and items to put away.

“Cai, why don’t you unpack in the morning? You look like you need as much sleep as you can get.”

She shook her head and kept sorting.

“How did things go down there?” he asked.

She stopped, looked at him sideways. “Dad, what’s the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to you? Something that didn’t have an explanation.”

“Hunh.” He sat back and thought, staring around the room much like Caitlin did when she needed to think. He was a tall, broad-shouldered man with close-set Irish blue eyes and a sort of permanent youthfulness. “Well,” he said, “to be honest, it was you.”

Caitlin stared at him in surprise.

“You had your own personality from the day you were born,” he went on. “Well, maybe the day after you were born. You were always such a watcher, big eyes studying everything, and with very little to say.”

“Mom said I was always quiet.”

“Quiet but not — what — not drowsy or dull. You were always alert. I could see something in your eyes. To your point, the question you asked, I don’t know where souls come from but I know they exist. I saw yours.”

Caitlin felt tears in her eyes, the tears that had refused to come before.

Her father placed a hand on her shoulder. “What’s on your mind? Did Haiti get to you?”

Caitlin shook her head. He stepped back. He knew not to pry, and she was relieved when he changed the subject.

“I remember you loved ghost stories when you were a kid,” he said. “You read every one you could get your hands on. I always wondered whether you’d seen one.”

Caitlin laughed. “Really? I remember the mythology books, Edith Hamilton. Oh, and Nancy Drew and the haunted lighthouse or farmhouse or something like that.”

“Oh sure. We stopped letting you read them when you had nightmares.”

She turned back toward him. “I had nightmares?”

“Normal kid stuff,” he said. “That’s what the doctor told us. We ended up giving all the books away and they stopped.”

It was Caitlin’s turn to say, “Hunh.” She placed her papers on the “to put away” stack. Her drawing of the face was on top and Joe picked it up to look at it. He laughed.

“Where in the hell did you see this?” he asked.

“Do you recognize it? I think it’s some kind of Polynesian tiki figure.”

He grinned. “It’s not often that I get to tell you you’re wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

He patted her hand and held up the drawing. “This is from your ancient past, kiddo.”

CHAPTER 17