Page 63 of Eldritch

“Can we talk, Maria?” Letisha said without missing a beat.

Maria looked disconcerted as she glanced around the Great Hall. Her hair tumbled in a mess around her face. She usually had it tied back when working.

“Can we talk somewhere more private?” Maria asked. “Like back in the office?”

All three of them entered the office. Letisha sat in the chair behind the desk, while Sybil remained standing, and so did Maria.

Maria cleared her throat. “I haven’t been drinking. I was in here finishing some dusting that Pauline missed. Last time I was in here, I realized she hadn’t done everything. I thought I’d get it done and no one would need to know. I didn’t want Pauline to get in deep shit with you guys.”

Sybil frowned, a little startled by Maria’s unusual vehemence. Sybil and Letisha exchanged glances.

“Now that there are security cameras in all the downstairs rooms except for the bathrooms, we’ll be able to see if we’re all working where and when we need to,” Letisha said.

Maria wrinkled her nose, then looked at Sybil. “He didn’t put cameras in the bathrooms, right?”

Sybil laughed softly. “Oh hell, no.”

“About the empty bottle of whiskey,” Letisha said as she rubbed the back of her neck. “What’s that about?”

Maria sighed. “Yeah. Well, I brought a half bottle with me and thought about drinking it. Instead, I poured it down the sink.”

Maria huffed a little like an impatient teenager. “I wanted to but...”

Letisha leaned forward in a casual way Sybil had seen her present before. She knew the tactic. Like Sybil, she’d learned survival skills, and that included placating someone who might want to fight. Sybil knew, though, that Letisha’s came from a far different reason than hers.

“But?” Letisha asked quietly.

Maria heaved a breath. “I’m here. With a Masters in Psychology.”

Sybil frowned. Where was this going? Maria had explained when they interviewed her that she found working with people in psychology stressed her out too much. Something that had mortified her. After all, she’d thought she wanted to help people. But maybe she’d just wanted to understand them instead. She’d decided that a job like cleaning houses was a lot less stressful.

Maybe it had been. Until now.

“And?” Letisha stayed leaning forward, eager for an answer.

Maria fiddled with her silver cross necklace. She stared at the desk and the closed Alderan Cleaning Service laptop.

Maria’s eyes filled with a not too subtle fear. “This cross around my neck conflicts sometimes with the psychology graduate in me. It’s one reason this place confuses me.”

Letisha’s gaze snagged Sybil’s. As Letisha’s childhood friend, Sybil had seen that look more than once when Letisha didn’t want to deal with another person’s issues.

Sybil kicked into gear. “So the scientific part of you, the skeptical part, conflicts with your religious side. You brought the bottle because...” Sybil shrugged. “Because you already had conflicting thoughts about certain things. Then you stepped into this house and your skepticism wore away.”

Maria’s mouth dropped open for only a second before she laughed in disbelief. “Forgive me but...how do you do that?”

“Scary, ain’t it?” Letisha waggled her eyebrows. “They didn’t call her hocus pocus in school for nothing.”

Sybil took that as a compliment rather than the hurt she’d felt in high school when people had first called her hocus pocus. She also welcomed an inevitable ego stroke when she plumbed the depths of someone’s feelings and thoughts with accuracy. If she’d lied to herself, she could’ve said it all was about helping others understand themselves better. Yet that same understanding served her as well as it did them. It had taken her a long time to realize her skills were as much survival for her as they were empathy for someone else’s pain.

Her father’s condescending voice came out of the past.

You aren’t so good, are you, Sybil? No. Not so good. Not so pure.

Sybil jerked away from the thoughts. She observed the pain in Maria’s eyes, and then Sybil felt it. Sybil’s eyes stung, understanding that soul deep hurt. Maria’s eyes moistened, and Sybil witnessed that, too.

Sybil slumped in her chair a little. “Tell me...you said you don’t believe in ghosts. And your degree tells you not to believe in them now. But that cross maybe tells you they shouldn’t exist, too. Or that you should ignore them.”

Maria nodded again, this time even more emphatically. “I know you’ve all had experiences here. Unless you’re all trying to drive me out of mind, I know you’ve seen things just like I have.”

---