Page 33 of Castle of the Cursed
But then excitement takes over his features as the borders between stones begin to darken, the rock physically separating—and the outline of a doorway appears.
I touch the apple-shaped stone again, and the door swings inward. Sebastián beats me through the opening, and I follow him inside.
The room is no longer purple. The wallpaper is blackened and scorched, the scars reaching all the way up to the ceiling.
The fire was real.
A wave of dizziness crashes over me again, only this time it’s so intense, I feel nauseous. Shutting my eyes, I’m swept back in time with the tide.
I’m in the center of the room, black flames blazing all around me.
I can see Mom’s agonized face as she screams from the doorway. She’s looking into the room, her gaze jumping from me to someone else. A third person.
Beatríz.
She stands in the far corner, just beyond the fire’s reach. Only unlike Mom and me, she doesn’t look afraid or horrified.
She looks triumphant.
I open my eyes as the lightheadedness recedes, along with the memory.
“What happened here?” asks Sebastián. He’s inspecting a ribbon of wallpaper that’s curled away from the wall.
“A black fire,” I whisper, “when I was five.” I gravitate to the place where I’m standing in the memory. “I was here, in the middle of the flames. Only the fire didn’t hurt me.”
Just like the black smoke on the subway.
“Beatríz was at the far edge of the room. Watching me.”
“The human who lives here?” asks Sebastián, sounding mildly surprised. He drifts to a corner of the room, and I assume he’s pacing while he thinks—until he reaches down and pulls up a stone from the ground.
From the hole he retrieves a handful of documents. He reviews them years before I do. When I come over, he hands them to me.
The first three papers are photographs of a small girl.
Me.
In the first, I’m sniffing a purple flower in the garden. In the second, I’m crawling up the staircase. In the third, I’m smiling to someone and baring a small chip in my front milk tooth. Something about this last picture feels off, and I wonder who I’m looking at off camera.
The fourth paper is the only official document. Bile rises up my throat because I’ve seen this kind of paperwork before, only then it bore my parents’ names.
A death certificate.
The text is in Spanish, and I stare at the letters of the name for a long time before I finally read them.
Estela Amador.
Me.
CHAPTER 10
I’VE BEEN DEAD A DOZEN YEARS.
Somehow, it makes sense.
Now I know why the black smoke couldn’t touch me. Why I’m having nightly conversations with a shadow beast. Why I didn’t die with my parents.
“I don’t exist.”
