had said. Had Ruth been remorseless as she wandered through the house and delivered a bullet to her kinfolk? Just because Noemí had dreamed it, it didn’t mean it had happened that way. After all, in her nightmare the house had been distorted and mutated in impossible ways.
Noemí frowned, looking at her cup of coffee. She’d taken few sips. Her stomach was definitely not cooperating that morning.
“Trouble is there’s not much you can do about ghosts nor hauntings. You might burn a candle at night for them and maybe they’d like that. You know about the mal de aire? Your mama ever tell you about that in the city?”
“I’ve heard one thing or another,” she said. “It’s supposed to make you sick.”
“There’re heavy places. Places where the air itself is heavy because an evil weighs it down. Sometimes it’s a death, could be it’s something else, but the bad air, it’ll get into your body and it’ll nestle there and weigh you down. That’s what’s wrong with the Doyles of High Place,” the woman said, concluding her tale.
Like feeding an animal madder plants: it dyes the bones red, it stains everything inside crimson, she thought.
Marta Duval rose and began opening kitchen drawers. She grabbed a beaded bracelet and brought it back to the table, handing it to Noemí. It had tiny blue and white glass beads, and a larger blue bead with a black center.
“It’s against the evil eye.”
“Yes, I know,” Noemí said, because she had seen such trinkets before.
“You wear it, yes? It might help you, can’t hurt. I’ll be sure to ask my saints to watch over you too.”
Noemí opened her purse and placed the bottle inside. Then, because she didn’t want to hurt the old woman’s feelings, she tied the bracelet around her wrist as she’d suggested. “Thank you.”
Walking back toward the town center, Noemí considered all the things she now knew about the Doyles and how none of it would assist Catalina. Ultimately even a haunting, if you accepted it as real and not the result of a feverish imagination, didn’t mean anything. The fear of the previous night had cooled away, and now all there was left was the taste of dissatisfaction.
Noemí pulled her cardigan’s sleeve up, scratching her wrist again. It itched something awful. She realized there was a thin, raw, red band of skin around her wrist. As though she’d burned herself. She frowned.
Dr. Camarillo’s clinic was nearby, so she decided to stop by and hope he didn’t have a patient. She was in luck. The doctor was eating a torta in the reception area. He didn’t have his white coat on; instead he wore a simple, single-breasted tweed jacket. When she stopped in front of him, Julio Camarillo quickly set the torta on a table next to him and wiped his mouth and hands on his handkerchief.
“Out for a walk?” he asked.
“Of a sort,” she said. “Am I interrupting your breakfast?”
“It’s not much of an interruption, seeing as it’s not very tasty. I made it myself and did a bad job. How’s your cousin? Are they finding a specialist for her?”
“I’m afraid her husband doesn’t think she needs any other doctor. Arthur Cummins is enough for them.”
“Do you think it might help if I talked to him?”
She shook her head. “It might make it worse, to be honest.”
“That’s a pity. And how are you?”
“I’m not sure. I have this rash,” Noemí said, holding up her wrist for him to see.
Dr. Camarillo inspected her wrist carefully. “Odd,” he said. “It almost looks like you came in contact with mala mujer, but that doesn’t grow here. It’s a sure recipe for dermatitis if you touch the leaves. Do you have allergies?”
“No. My mother says it’s almost indecent how healthy I am. She told me when she was a young girl everyone thought it was very fashionable to suffer a bout of appendicitis and girls went on a tapeworm diet.”
“She must have been joking about the tapeworm,” Dr. Camarillo said. “That’s a made-up story.”
“It always did sound quite horrifying. Then I’m allergic to something? A plant or shrub?”
“It could be a number of things. We’ll wash the hand and put on a soothing ointment. Come in,” he said, directing her into his office.
She washed her hands in the little sink in the corner, and Julio applied a zinc paste, bandaged her wrist, and told her she should not scratch the affected area because it would make it worse. He advised her to change