“Throughout the service, I struggled not to scream or cry from the pain, certain that by the end my grinning skull would be exposed.”
And then I’d dropped my camera in the water.
“Then everyone would see me for what I truly am now. They would see the monster.”
The buzzing noise returned full force, and I squeezed my eyes closed, willing it to stop. A few seconds later I could barely make out Lidia’s words.
“But a peek in the mirror revealed my looks had not changed. I wish I could say the same for my soul.”
For a split second, the world went silent. My head felt like it was gripped in a vise, the pressure so intense I couldn’t even scream. Then it released, and I gasped for air, leaning heavily against the bones. There was a shout and a crash, but my vision was too blurred to see what was going on.
The room was loud now, everyone talking at once, chairs scraping back. When I blinked and squinted, I half expected to see them all crowded around me. But when things came back into focus, I saw they were all surrounding Mi Jin, who had dropped her camera. Jess was still filming as Lidia helped Mi Jin inspect her equipment for damage.
“It just . . . it was like someone knocked it out of my hands,” Mi Jin was saying, her voice shaking a little.
Guzmán smiled. “Brunilda is with us,” he said. “Back to your seats, please.” His students sat quickly, their expressions ranging from excited to nervous. Dad eyed Guzmán with suspicion as he returned to his chair.
A light pulsation on my chest caught my attention, and I looked down to see my Elapse turning off and on, lens extending and retracting over and over. I pressed the power button a few times, but it wouldn’t stop. Oscar watched me, but didn’t say anything.
“It’s rolling,” Mi Jin said, the red light on her camera blinking back on. I gripped my Elapse, worried that the light mechanical whirring would disrupt the séance. But no one seemed to notice.
“Brunilda Cano . . .” Guzmán’s voice was soft, almost hypnotic. His students all wore intense expressions of concentration, except for Inés, whose face was growing steadily redder. “Welcome back. We’d like to talk to you about your exorcism.”
The room was still. I stared down into my camera lens, watching it open and close like a blinking eye, catching my reflection every other second. Who are you?
A sliver of an idea crept into my mind, like that first thin line of brightness on the horizon at sunrise, but it slid out of sight before I could fully grasp it. Guzmán was still talking, his words nothing more than a drone. Because it was here. I could feel it. The monster, whatever it was, the one I’d sensed at the willow tree. It was in this room.
Someone cried out in shock. I watched in a detached sort of way as the table, the entire table, rose up off the ground an inch, two inches. For a few seconds, everyone froze. Then the table fell with a heavy thud, and chaos erupted.
Inés shot to her feet, rapidly screaming at Guzmán in Spanish. The other students looked shocked at first, though it wasn’t long before understanding dawned on their faces as they listened to her rant. Turning to Lidia, Inés clenched her fists at her side. “Show him the journal,” she pleaded. “Please.”
Lidia exchanged a glance with Dad before slowly pulling the journal from her bag and holding it up for the others to see. “We got this from a shop in Plaza Dorrego,” she explained, flipping through the blank pages for Jess’s camera. “Identical to yours. And we have proof that the woman you claim is Brunilda in that photo is actually Sister María Carmen Romero.”
“There are no records of a nun by the name of Brunilda Cano at this church,” Dad added somberly. “Would you care to explain, Professor?”
The room fell absolutely silent. It was as if we were all collectively holding our breaths, staring at Guzmán and waiting. He clasped his hands, exhaled slowly, and smiled.
“Yes. I created Brunilda Cano. She never existed.”
Inés sat down heavily in her chair, glowering. But two of his other students began yelling like she had, while a third stomped out of the room. Jess and Mi Jin were doing their best to capture all the reactions; Lidia and Dad looked disappointed but unsurprised, and Guzmán seemed weirdly calm, even pleased. Sam was running his hands under the table, brow knitted. He turned in our direction with a questioning look. I glanced up and saw Roland was smiling.
“What?” Oscar asked. “Why are you so happy?”
“Because Guzmán’s experiment worked. It’s brilliant.”
“What? He made her up. She doesn’t exist.”
“He made her up,” Roland agreed. “But she exists.”
Oscar looked as bewildered as I felt. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Sticking his hands in his pockets, Roland surveyed the unfolding chaos as Guzmán attempted to calm his angry students. “The table levitated,” he said, apparently enjoying himself now. “A force knocked Mi Jin’s camera from her hands. The temperature dropped. Brunilda might be fake, but the paranormal activity? That was real.”
I couldn’t process what he was saying. Oscar kept asking questions, but all the talking and yelling blurred into a dull noise. Someone was looking at me. Someone standing on the staircase. I turned slowly and saw the shape of her in the shadows. She beckoned for me to follow and I did, slipping out before anyone could see, my camera still pulsing on-off, on-off against my chest.
