The Witch and the Red Castle.
Being Chapter 3 in the tale “The Only Way was East.”
The house really was owned by a witch. You might never guess it from the way she was tapping her foot in those flats and crossing her arms in that turtle-neck sweater, waiting impatiently at the top of the stairs for Calluna and I as we strolled down the cobble hacienda street, but a witch she was. This became clear when we entered the house.
Aside from the typical comforts expected by travel-brats like ourselves, the home was also replete with mystical items. These items included but were not limited to:
- A tarot deck turned face up with one card visible from the bottom: the lovers
- Small crystals and gems of every color. They were left around the house in places so precarious that they must serve a purpose, I thought.
- Finger cymbals. They were little bells, much like the ones that the toothless man would use to hypnotize me with. I would be in his home, the 50 Street subway station in New York. He would stare into my soul. He would click his fingers together at the side of my ears and that singing little sound would strip away another layer of my consciousness until he was staring at not my eyes but the universe itself, and stars and stars and stars. I would be all alone in Manhattan at 3 am on the other side of the island from Esjay and the rest of my friends, high out of my mind. But we won’t get to that story for quite a few chapters yet.
“It took you long enough,” the witch said in perfect English.
“Lo siento, tenía que comer mi primer taco de Mexico en Tijuana.” I replied, similing.
“Well, while you’ve been stuffing your face I’ve been here waiting for you. I was supposed to meet my friend for lunch an hour ago.” My ego was bruised when she wouldn’t speak Spanish back to me. Not like I would be able to understand her though if she spoke as fast in Spanish as she did in English.
“Oh, we’re sorry,” Calluna said, taking the lead. “You have a beautiful home though.”
And it was beautiful. It sat above the garage giving a view of the entire little neighborhood from the balcony. The brightly colored homes of pink and green and orange and blue varying from splendor to decrepitude. Their beautiful gardens. The palm trees blowing in the pacific wind. “I’m Calluna and this is Gio. You’re Stacy right?”
“Yes. I really have to get going though. The bathroom is over there. I pay for the heat so keep your showers short if you can. That door to the right is your bedroom. The one on the left is mine. Don’t ever go in there.”
She grabbed the key from the fortune-telling table where it was sitting. Next to the key, I saw the crucifix which was lying next to her black candles, crystal wands, and throwing bones. What a contrast, I thought. A Catholic-Bruja. And then I looked at both Calluna and I and realized that we were walking paradoxes ourselves, carrying both the blood of slaves and slavers inside of us. But still, I couldn’t help but be creeped out by that giant crucifix with the bloody Jesus on it, waiting to pass judgment on us. Does she realize that they used to burn people like her?
Just then, she flicked her head in my direction as she tossed Calluna the key. But she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking just above me at the white and green spark floating over my head. The one nobody sees. But she said nothing. The slight indentations of crows feet only perked up around her brown eyes.
She led Calluna out of the house and down the steps. But didn’t I see something at the crack at the bottom of her bedroom door? A shadow of something moving around in there? I must be crazy, I thought, and I followed them out of the house.
“When you check out, use the key to lock the door behind you. Then, toss her on to the balcony. I have her twin sister and will come back to the house tomorrow evening. After you’ve left Mexico.” And then, for the first time, she smiled. Before walking up the street into Rosarito and disappearing forever from our lives she looked at me (or above me) and said: “try not to burn the place down.”
We walked the short distance to the ocean, but there was no beach. Just an ugly black jetty and the graveyard of homes that had fallen to the appetite of the pacific.
Up the coast and across the water I saw a small adobe mission and a priest walking toward the rocky shore. When he got there he stopped and looked south. It felt like he was staring directly at me. I had to tell myself to stop being such an egoista and realize that not every priest in the world was out to get me.
But the more I stared the more I could feel some pull toward that man across the water. Like his eyes were on me. Like we knew each other. A small boy was next to him, almost swallowed by the black robes of the priest as they flapped in the wind. But they weren’t talking to each other. Just staring, patiently.
“Well, this sucks,” Calluna yawned, “I thought we could like lounge and smoke on the beach or something.”
“Does that guy look familiar to you?” I said in a low whisper, but I was talking to myself. I know him, I thought. I know that I know him.
“That’s OK, I’m hungry again anyway, let’s get more tacos!”
“Yeah,” I said, looking back at her. “That sounds perfect.” When I looked up the boy and the priest were gone.
We took our time and stopped often to look at the gardens filled with roses and cactus’ and statues of La Virgin de Guadalupe. I took a few pictures of her squatting in dramatic poses against the richly colored casas, ass toward the camera, face fierce as fuck. Calluna I mean, not La Virgin.
“Look at that house!” Calluna said, her face lighting up “it legit looks like a castle.” And she was right, a red castle made entirely of brick with huge rot iron gates covering the patios which were wrapped with rose vines, prickly pears, and palm trees. It had a tower that wound all the way up to its cone roof which cut through the sky. The house had a certain c’mere to it. I felt drawn to the red monster in ways I wasn’t sure that I liked. It sang a silent siren song. It held a patient presence.
I stepped into the street when Calluna grabbed me by my collar and pulled me back toward her. A rusty Toyota, more brown than blue, was driving by us and (as per usual) I wasn’t paying attention and would have walked right into him even though he wasn’t going very fast.
In fact, he was crawling across the avenida. Loudspeakers were tied to the top of the truck and connected to his microphone. He let out a grito: “Tamales, tamales, tamales MUY RICO y Baratas!”
“Oh my fuck, I could eat like ten tamales right now I’m so hungry,” Calluna said, grabbing her belly.
“Do you want me to wave him down?”
“No offense, but I don’t want to eat a tamale that literally came off of the back of a truck. I saw a taco place just at the end of this street.”
“For sure, but let’s check out this castle first.”
“Ok but please remember how hungry I am, OK?”
“No! Not there! Otro lado! Otro lado, Paco!”
We looked up and saw something we thought we’d left behind in California: a gringo standing over a group of Mexican workers, ordering them around. The gringo was in his rocking chair on the second terrace of the red castle. The workers were in the garden of the small house directly across the street. That was when he saw us.
“Well, hello there!” He yelled from above. He had to be at least 70, but it was hard to tell, he was so high up.”
“We were just looking at your house!” Calluna yelled up with a smile. “It’s a freaking castle, I love it.”
“Thank you, I built it with my contracting company,” he said. “I lived here with my wife and kids for a while, but the kids are all grown up and my wife and I are separated.”
“Oh,” She said.
“Yeah, so I don’t need all this space anymore. And the guy across the street needed to renovate his house to get a new tenant. So I’m fixing it up for him in exchange for a year's rent and selling this house.”
“Well that’s cool I guess,” I said.
“Yeah, it really is a beautiful home. I’m sad to leave it. My name’s Jerry by the way. Anyway, the entire thing is made of brick, which really just feels better to live in, I don’t know why. Maybe it’s the calcium…”
He had us in the classic old man web of conversation. The one that forces you to walk away from him while talking if you ever want to leave. But the more I looked at the house the more it patiently called me inside. I knew all I had to do was ask and he would let us in. And I was insatiably curious about what could be in that huge tower jutting out of the face of the building like that. That’s a place where something happens, I thought.
Calluna glared at me. She knew what I was thinking. She grabbed her stomach again and raised her eyebrows at me as if to say “Don’t do it Gio. Don’t do that thing you do, you KNOW how hungry I am.”
But I’m simply incorrigible when I’m curious. I smiled at her and yelled up to Jerry: “You’re right. It’s absolutely gorgeous. Do you think we could see what it looks like from the inside?”
He didn’t even reply, just smiled and disappeared into the doorway. I knew he was running down the stairs to unlock the gate. Calluna gave me another look as if to say “I hate you,” and that only made me smile wider. Jerry unlatched the white iron mouth to the red monster and we willingly stepped inside.
How could I possibly have foreseen the mess I would unleash by going into that castle?
