DELANCY: Secrets in the Shadows

CHAPTER 21

Madame Vadoma rushed to the door of her parlour, hastily turned around the Closed sign with trembling hands, and then shut it behind her, although the church clock had just rung six times. She stood against the door, trying to calm herself down. The wind was blowing like crazy and the waves crashed angrily against the few houses that dared stand next to the sea. This dreadful weather created more agony, more fear, more anxiety.

She still could not believe what had happened; she had been doing this damned job for about a decade, yet never until now had it felt so real, so vivid, so paralyzing. Is it possible that her late mother was right? Could she be a true psychic, a seer, and be able to see into the future? Or was it all just a figment of her imagination in combination with fatigue?

For years and years, she had been fooling most of her clients with jibberish about their presumed future, trying to sound as believable as possible, taking advantage of all the information she had collected about them through her gossiping (most of which was quite accurate; after all, she knew the right people all over the town). These gullible clients were the most loyal ones and kept coming week after week in their search for a silver lining in their dull lives.

On the other hand, Madame Vadoma could be considered a threat by many, because she also knew the dark secrets that her clients entrusted to her. Cheating husbands and wives, parents who could not find the courage to come clean with their adopted children, and even petty criminals had paid a visit to her parlour at least once, hopelessly trying to find comfort in her words. In retrospect, Madame Vadoma was more of a therapist rather than your usual, gypsy fortune teller.

She wiped the cold sweat off her forehead with the tail of her enormous turban and wandered a bit around the room. She had intentionally kept this wreckage of a building in this state so that she could sell her services more easily; however, tonight was the first time that she worried about its safety precautions. The wooden doors could be easily pushed open, the glassless windows provided no shelter, and the loose steps of the creaky staircase could be used as a weapon if properly dismantled. On top of that, the parlour was located at the edge of the city, on a narrow street that led to a dead-end; nobody was able to come to her aid if she needed help. And as if these were not enough, the building stood right next to the sea and the thrashing water slipped inside unobstructedly, making the entire place look like a horrifying underwater hut.

She needed to get this grisly vision out of her head. She started closing as many points of entry as possible, moved some furniture around to block the entrance from the inside and turned off the light of the fake crystal sphere that lay on her desk. She then took a few steps back and sat in the big armchair next to the staircase. She need not worry about the small upstairs hall; she had not unlocked that door in more than five years.

Madame Vadoma decided it was about time she took her own advice to heart. She began taking deep breaths and tried to forget what had happened. She slowly started clearing her mind and brought in peaceful images. Her childhood home near the mountain, the tall trees and the flowers, the little stream that flowed next to it. Such a soothing sight. She regretted not spending much time there after her mother’s death.

Her heartbeat slowed down and she sensed the sweat evaporating.

The sound of waves was no longer annoying.

The armchair felt as soft as a cloud.

Creak.

The blood went rushing through her veins again; she opened her eyes and stood right up. She took a quick look around and tried to locate the source of the sound. It was difficult to tell whether it was caused by something other than that raging wind. She ran to the window and looked outside. A black cat had just left through the alley next to the parlour and disappeared in the darkness. Could it have stepped on something while chasing the mice that occupied the next-door abandoned house?

There was that chilling sensation again. Sixty-six years of age and yet she managed to get goosebumps like a naughty student who was just caught cheating on a test. Deep down, she felt that this was her problem: what if someone had understood that she was a fraud and this was their way of punishing her? Or maybe someone believed that they had shared too much with her and must silence her?

But even if all that was true, how on earth had she received that vision? This could not have been fabricated by anyone other than a magician perhaps. She distinctly remembered that it had come out of nowhere: just as she had touched a deck of cards, she felt her body shaking, she lost sight of her surroundings, and simply succumbed to the images that were playing in her head; and no later than a second, she had returned to her senses.

Madame Vadoma decided that she had spent enough time speculating and should go home. It was not in a much better state than the parlour but at least the door could be locked and there were no windows to break in from. She approached her desk again and reached for the bottom drawer where she kept her purse and keys. Time to go.

No sooner had she emerged from underneath her desk than she felt it: a sharp pain below her chin, the acute ache of the skin that is being neatly torn apart, the warm blood flowing uncontrollably out of her arteries onto her long caftan and then straight into the pool of water that had formed beneath, slowly dissolving and losing its dark red colour.

Her hand instinctively went for the wound but the hooded figure in front of her caught both of her hands firmly with his and let her slowly bleed to her death. When it was clear that she had no power left to fight, the offender released her and let her slip back into her chair.

There she lay for a few seconds watching her first and final vision come true: a tall man dressed in black clothes and wearing leather gloves ending her life. The only thing she had not foreseen was the way and the weapon, which turned out to be one of her brand new tarot cards. Her eyes were starting to abandon her and now it was too late to see which exact card the killer had used; little did it matter though. The last thing she saw was the figure leaving the parlour after he had completed his gruesome mission, while the sudden realization of her death was sinking in.

Alas, such irony that the tools with which she had forged a short-lived commercial success would be the ones that would also cut her life short.