CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"Wailing Woman," Callie blurted, cutting into the tense reticence of the room.
Everyone turned to her. But it was her friend that asked her what she meant.
"When everything was going crazy, Elise spoke to me," Callie explained. "She said the spirit was a 'Woman in White' aka, the Wailing Woman."
"La Llorona," Valentina said with a shiver, sharing a tense look with Raul.
Callie chose not to comment on the look. "There's a legend like it in almost every culture. The story almost always goes the same way. A woman marries a man and has a family. The man strays, the woman is hit with momentary insanity and kills her children. Usually by drowning or smothering of some kind. Then when she comes out of it and gets hit with the guilt and grief over what she's done, she kills herself. And spends eternity crying over it. Or acting out of revenge. Part of that whole unfinished business stuff."
"Maybe she even cries blood," Valentina said, going to the nightstand and retrieving Teresa's drawing of a dark-haired woman crying blood.
"She must be one of the other spirits with Teresa," Nate surmised. "Maybe she's using her eternity to try and make up for her crimes against her children."
"What – by taking others?" Raul said, eyeing comatose Teresa with worry.
"In her own twisted mind, she might think she's protecting them," Callie said. "That they're hers and she loves them and only she can keep them safe."
"She did say Teresa was with her brothers and sisters," Valentina remembered out loud. "Teresa might not be the first child she's stolen."
"I don't care what her problem is, she can't have my sister," Marco snarled. "What do we do now?"
"Try again," Callie said earnestly. "We have to try again."
"But their stuff got smashed," Valentina gestured to the remains of Nate's laptop on the floor.
"Then we go old school," Nate said, walking back to the living room. The others followed and watched as he dug around in his bag and pulled out a palm-sized leather box. He pulled off the lid and crouched down over the floor and spilled what looked like dice onto the hardwood panels.
"Word dice?" Callie asked. "Like Carl's?"
"These are Carl's," Nate answered. "He left them to me in his will."
"What are you guys talking about?" Raul asked, inserting himself in the center of the action.
"He asks a question and rolls the dice, and they create a word," Nate said. "Like Ouija scrabble."
"Remember that not only Teresa is around though," Callie cautioned. "Anyone could be communicating with you through those dice. Carl was tricked before, according to Specs and Tucker."
"I remember," Nathan said. "Well, not literally, I wasn't there – neither were you, I guess – but I remember the story…"
"We get it," Callie cut him off kindly.
"Just gotta be careful and specific," he said, mostly to himself. He knelt on the floor where the coffee table used to be. "Teresa – are you here?" he asked the room and then rolled the dice onto the wood. They spelled out nothing but random letters.
"What does that mean? Where is she?" Raul demanded.
Nate held up one hand as he regathered the dice with the other. "Is someone here with us?" He rolled the dice again and this time, they did spell out a word.
'YES'
A camera that everyone had forgotten was set up in the living room suddenly went off with a bright flash, startling them.
Nathan kept his composure. "Can you tell us who you are? What is your name?" He tossed the dice.
'CANT'
"Can't?" Callie frowned, crouching down to look over Nathan's shoulder.
"Why can't you tell us who you are?" Nathan asked. The dice clattered on the floor. Callie and Nathan both peered at the mix of letters to look for a now-less obvious answer within. Everyone else watched them anxiously. "H-I-D…"
"Hiding," Callie said, rearranging the word so the dice were pushed closer together. "They're hiding from someone."
"Who are you hiding from?" Nathan asked as he regathered the dice and tossed them again.
Callie was the one able to find the word again. "Mama…" She shuddered as she looked up to see the others' reactions. They were just as confused and wary as she felt. She dipped her mouth close to Nathan's ear and whispered emotionally, "It's a child…"
Nathan seemed to sense the extra gravity of the situation they were in. But he carried on. "Do you know where Teresa is?"
'YES'
Raul, Marco, and Tina all shifted closer at that answer. "Where is she?"
Nathan gave him a look before re-asking the question with the dice in his hands. "Is Teresa alone?" It took a moment for him to line up the words so he could make sense of them. "With my sister…"
"Who…?" Callie started to ask without thinking – just thinking out loud. But before she got more than the first word out, a strong gust of wind came over the room and the dice tumbled, seemingly by themselves. And spelled out something else.
"Carmela…" Nathan read.
"How did you…" Shin started to ask Callie, but she had instantly stood and went over to her bag in the corner of the room. She pulled out her touchpad and started typing and swiping on the screen.
"What are you doing?" Valentina asked.
"Looking for any young girls named Carmela that were drowned by their mom in Santa Barbara," Callie murmured quietly. "We need to know who we're dealing with." She sat behind Nathan on the couch and kept scrolling until she found something. The others watched her eyes whip back and forth across the screen until she spoke. "Got it. Young siblings, Carmela and Tomas Velez were drowned in the ocean by their mother, Maria Esther Soto Rivera de Velez – what a mouthful – after the scandal of her Spaniard husband, Pablo's, affair with another woman. After it was revealed what she'd done, she ran and drowned herself. Here in Santa Barbara, in 1929."
"There's our La Llorona," Valentina murmured.
Callie tentatively leaned over Nathan's shoulder and asked, "Are you Tomas Velez?"
Nathan re-tossed the dice and they spelled out the word 'YES' again. This time, he asked the question, "Are Teresa and Carmela also hiding from your mother?"
'YES'
"Can you tell us where they are? Are they in this house?"
The dice spelled nothing.
"One question at a time," Nathan scolded himself. "Are they in this house?"
'NOT NOW'
"Where are they then?" Raul snapped.
Nathan kept from chastising him and instead spoke to Tomas. "That's Teresa's oldest brother. He misses her and wants her back. She doesn't belong in your world. We're all really worried for her. Please, Tomas, help us. Please, tell us where she is." He tossed the dice again.
'HIDING'
"Where are they hiding, Tomas?" he asked as he tossed the dice.
'CANT TELL. SHE'LL HEAR'
"What do we do now?" Marco asked, despondent.
Nathan thought on it as he gathered up the dice. After a moment, he asked, "Can you get her and bring her to us? Bring her home?" He tossed the dice and searched for words.
"Too scared," Callie read out loud. She frowned deeply and could feel her eyes going misty.
"I know you're scared," Nathan said. "I'm so sorry for what's happened to you. But we need your help to save Teresa. Please help us get her home. Or tell us where she is. Can you do that, Tomas?" He rolled the dice slowly and carefully let them fall from his hands.
'CAN TAKE YOU'
"You can't travel," Shin said. "That won't work."
"Right, Tomas, my abilities are limited to communicating with you from this side," Nathan said. He tossed the dice.
'NOT YOU'
Nathan's brow furrowed together. "Who can you take to Teresa, Tomas?" He tossed the dice again and searched them for a name. "C-A-L…"
"Callie," Valentina finished for him. And all eyes turned to Callie Lambert, who looked like a deer in the headlights.