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The ruins of Palatine Hill are haunted.
At night, in the still cold of the Mojave’s far western reaches in Flagstaff, you can hear sobbing from what remains of Edward Sallow’s headquarters. Through the broken panes of window glass and crumbling walls, you might catch a glimpse of a woman in red for a brief second.
The stories change with each telling: she might be the Weeping Woman, the Lost Wife, the Lady in Red, the Ghost of Flagstaff. She might have been murdered, or she might have committed suicide. She killed her children in a fit of rage, or her husband poisoned their entire family. She’s trapped in the mortal world because of her need for vengeance, or she’s an omen who can only be seen by those about to lose a loved one. Some pieces of the story do remain consistent, no matter the version: she was the wife of a high-ranking member of Caesar’s Legion, she lived in the Legion’s palatial headquarters before she died, and she lost everything to violence.
Only one man lives in the last of the Legion’s shadowy empire. If ghost stories about the Lady in Red were not enough to keep raiders away from plundering what little spoils were left in Palatine Hill, then his flesh-and-blood presence is enough of a deterrent. His name and story have been lost, like that of the Weeping Woman, and the truth behind whatever drove him to this solitary life in a crumbling haunted house will die along with him.
The ending of this story is simple: this man, who for decades has played caretaker to the spirits of Palatine Hill, will one day sit down for dinner at the ash-covered table where the rest of his family once ate their last meal. He will pour long-since soured wine into a dusty glass, and he will tell the weeping ghost of his mother that he loves her. By the time the sun rises in the morning, there will be nobody left to tell the truth of what happened to the haunted ruins of Palatine Hill.
The beginnings of stories are never as simple as their endings. Ghosts are echoes across time, the remnants of what once was but no longer is. Where does the story of a ghost begin? In their last moments, in their death, or at the beginning of their lives as humans? What details are the most significant? The stories of humans are always so much easier to tell, with clear beginnings and ends.
When the sun finally sets, the day after our story ends, a young man will knock on the door to the private quarters of Caesar’s family in Palatine Hill. His mother will answer, and tell him that she’s so glad he finally has come home. Their family has been waiting for him for so long, and dinner is already set out on the table when he’s ready to join them. The end of our story begins a new one, as it is with all ghost stories.
Palatine Hill was not always full of ghostly echoes. Before the Great War, it was a building belonging to a university. Almost two centuries after the war, it was the centerpiece of an empire belonging to Edward Sallow, who dubbed himself Caesar: his headquarters and residence, where his children and harem of wives lived. In the fall of 2282, thirty-two years after Sallow dedicated the building as his Palatine Hill, as his Legion prepared to fight on the Hoover Dam for a second time, it was filled with a never-ending buzz of activity.
By the spring of the following year, the only remaining occupant of the Hill was a man once called Tacitus.
In the future, maybe, historians will write about what happened to the Legion. They’ll trace its collapse like pre-war researchers once did for the Roman empire, and fill pages with theories on its organization and eventual ruin. They will not talk about murder conspiracies, the engagement of Edward Sallow’s teenage daughter to one of his infamously bloodthirsty Legates, the ghosts left behind. The echoes left by what happened on that winter day decades ago will fade away, year by year, until there is no more weeping to be heard in the ashes of a Flagstaff ruin.
“This place is empty, dude.” Frank kicks at a piece of rubble in the dusty hallway aimlessly. “All the good shit has gotta be gone by now.”
Turner shushes him with a wave of his hand, flashlight clenched between his teeth as he yanked the heavy padlock off the wooden door. He kicks the door open with more force than necessary, just to show off, and shines the flashlight into the new room. “That look fucking empty to you?”
“Holy shit,” Frank mumbles. Behind the door, it’s like a time capsule: furniture and decorations still in place, though covered in dust. It looks like some kind of hallway area, with more closed doors leading to more rooms.
“Now who’s the moron?” Turner shoves his lockpick into his pocket and strolls into the room, tossing down his beaten-up duffle bag on the tiled floor and propping the flashlight up to act as an impromptu lantern. He pulls a wolf-shaped statuette off an end table and weighs it in his hand before he bites down on one of his legs. “This shit’s real gold.”
“Did you hear that?” Frank freezes in the doorway of the room, hand on his revolver in its holster.
“Hear what?” Turner tosses the statuette into the bag without even turning around, eyeing the gold frame around a mirror hanging on the wall. “This place has been empty for like thirty years.”
Frank pulls the revolver out anyway, clicking the safety off as he enters the room. “Sounds like someone’s crying.”
“You’re gonna let some old fucking ghost story keep you away from the biggest fucking raid of your life?” Turner laughs, shoving silver candlesticks into his bag.
There’s a faint creaking sound from further down the hallway, like an old door being pushed open. Frank aims his gun into the shadows. “Who the fuck is in here?” he shouts. “Turner, give me some fucking light here.”
“You’re being fucking paranoid, man.” Turner grumbles, but picks the flashlight up anyway, pointing the light down the hall.
In the still-shadowy frame of the furthest doorway in the hall, there’s a woman in a red veil and dress, her hands covering her face.
“What the fuck! You said this place was empty!” Frank yells.
“It is!” Turner fumbles as he reaches for his own gun. The woman takes a step forward, and suddenly Turner is unable to move at all. She’s crying: the sound is so quiet, muffled by her hands, but it’s unmistakable.
Frank is frozen, too, panic rushing through his body. “What the fuck is your problem, lady?” He blinks involuntarily, and the woman is gone completely.
“Have you seen my children?”
The raspy voice comes from right over Frank’s shoulder, cold breath against his ear, and Frank is no longer paralyzed: he jerks away, just as the woman’s chilled hand touches the top of his arm. “Jesus fucking shit, what the fuck--”
The woman’s face is distorted in a way that neither man can really describe, twisted in a way that’s simply wrong . Her dark eyes are red-rimmed, and dark red blood has left stains under her mouth. “Have you seen my children?” she echoes softly.
Frank stumbles backwards, into Turner. “There’s no fucking kids here, I swear to you,” he yells.
“Mater, is everyone ready for dinner?”
The weeping woman stands up straight suddenly, turning to face the main entrance. It’s hard to see what’s standing in the shadows, but it looks like a man. “Mater, is everyone ready for dinner?” the shadow-man repeats as he steps closer. His voice is deep, crackled with age. “Where are the girls?”
“Do you know?” The woman’s voice is much softer now, barely above a whisper. “Tacitus, do you know where they are? They keep hiding from me. It’s time for our last family dinner with Radania.”
Finally in the cast of the flashlight’s beam, the man is clearly just a human: maybe fifty, sixty years old, gray hair and a roughly-aged face, in some weird leather armor. Frank lets out an audible sigh of relief.
“You know this fucking bitch?” Turner shouts, waving the flashlight between the man and the woman.
Frank stomps on Turner’s foot as hard as he can. “Shut the fuck up,” hisses Frank.
It’s too late: the woman has turned her neck at an angle too sharp for any normal human, staring at Turner. “Did you hurt my children?” she snarls. Her fingers curl into fists.
“Mater,” the man repeats, “Where are the girls?”
The woman doesn’t fall for it this time. She strides towards Turner with a flat look in her dark eyes. “What did you do to my children? Where did you hide them?” Her voice is frantic now.
“You killed them, Mater.” The tone of the man’s voice has changed, from soothing to commanding.
“No.” The woman twists her sharp-nailed fingers into the fabric of Turner’s torn shirt. She’s close enough that Frank can smell her, this odd sharp scent like burning hair and old-world coins. “He hid them.”
“You killed them, Mater. Let him go.”
“I didn’t.” The woman drags the nails of her free hand over Turner’s face, leaving pinprick spots of blood behind. She’s begun to cry again, tears leaving reddish streaks down her cheekbones.
“You killed them. That’s why they’re hiding, Mater, they’re afraid of you.”
The woman sobs and lets go of Turner, hunching over as she stumbles towards the man. “I didn’t. I didn’t kill my babies. Tacitus, I didn’t kill them. I love them so much, I couldn’t do that.”
“Leave,” the man says, staring directly at Frank.
Frank wastes no time, grabbing Turner by the elbow as they rush out of the room. “I fucking told you, Turner, I told you,” he pants out. In the distance, he can still hear the woman crying: no, I didn’t, why would you lie to me?
The woman was once named Severina, though neither Frank nor Turner know that. The records of Edward Sallow’s Legion make few mentions of her, aside from her status as one of Caesar’s wives and the mother of his six children. A list of slaves taken as spoils by Caesar after the siege of Mesa in 2247 is the only instance that mentions her birth name and parentage: Esperanza Magro, daughter of Lalita Suresh and Victor Magro, age seventeen, tan skin, brown eyes, black hair. Some historians will use the lack of information as an excuse to paint her as wrathful or power-hungry. Others will paint her as pathetic or tragic, driven to insanity by her husband marrying off her eldest daughter. Neither group will not speak kindly of her.
It’s December, and the cold is biting at Maria’s toes and fingertips. Mateo snuffles in the sling as Maria pulls him closer, wrapping her jacket tighter around them both. The building smells of mildew and dust, but it’s a few degrees warmer than outside. She shivers as she paces down the hallway, through rooms with broken windows or missing doors that do nothing to keep the winter out.
Maria freezes in front of a set of wooden double doors. It sounds like a woman is crying behind them. “Hello?” she says hesitantly, hand on the doorknob. “Are you okay?”
The sobbing fades off. Mateo squirms, making the little noises that Maria knows is his preparation for a big cry, so she rubs his back soothingly and shushes him as she knocks on the door. “I’m alone out here, with my baby. I promise I’m not going to hurt you. My name is Maria.” She pushes the door open slowly.
The space beyond the door looks like the entry hall to the fanciest house Maria could imagine: candles in sconces on painted plaster walls, well-made furniture unlike anything she’s encountered in the tiny rented rooms she’s known for most of her life. An older woman in red stands in front of a doorway, her face swollen like she’s been crying for a while, but she puts a smile on anyway. “You shouldn’t be out in the cold with a baby,” she says, in the same fussy way that Maria’s heard dozens of times from older women before.
Maria lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding. She closes the door behind herself with a little laugh. “Is it okay if I come in for a bit?”
The woman nods, pushing back the red scarf she’s looped over her shoulders and graying black hair. “Of course. You may call me Severina,” she says as she bends over to coo at baby Mateo, his pink-cheeked face just barely peeking past the patchwork fabric.
“Mater, what are you doing?” A man about the same age as Severina looms in the doorframe, dressed in an old red tunic. He’s staring at Maria like she’s done something wrong.
“We have a guest, Tacitus.” Severina smiles and pats Maria on the shoulder. “Two guests, actually. Maria and...”
“Mateo.” Maria nods her head politely at the man—Tacitus. “I’m sorry to bother you, really, it’s just cold and things have been hard lately, and Mateo is so small—” Maria’s voice cracks a little. It’s been over a month since she slept anywhere like a real room.
“You don’t want to lose your children.” The smile is gone from Severina’s face, but her tone is still cheerful. “My children were the only good thing that ever happened to me.”
“Mater, why don’t we sit down in your room?” Tacitus clears his throat pointedly and gestures to a room, and Severina wipes at her face with the edge of her scarf as she steps into it.
This room is the size of the schoolhouse Maria once attended, the walls covered in rich red wall hangings. A large bed takes up the far corner of the room, across from a stone fireplace. The windows running along the far side of the room have been boarded up against the Mojave winter chill, and a few chairs are arranged in a cozy semi-circle in front of the fireplace. Maria hesitantly lets Tacitus help her take her coat off and hang it on a peg by the room’s entrance.
“You’re a mother too?” Maria asks as she takes a seat opposite Severina in the chairs near the fireplace.
Severina closes her eyes and takes a sharp inhale. “I lost my children.” Her voice breaks on the word children and a sob escapes. “Five little girls. The only good thing I ever had and I lost them.”
“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know—” Maria stammers out.
“Do you want something to drink, Mater?” Tacitus interrupts. He stands up abruptly, heading towards a chest of drawers near a long dining table in the room. Severina nods as she tries to force her composure together.
“How long have you lived here?” Maria asks. She watches as Tacitus pulls a bottle of water and elaborately-cut crystal glasses from a drawer. “I mean, the rest of this place is so empty and dark, I didn’t think anyone else was here.”
Severina suddenly jolts upright in her seat, quicker than Maria’s ever seen anyone move before, her expression blank in a way that Maria can’t make sense of. “What?”
“It’s called Palatine Hill. We’ve lived here a long time,” Tacitus says, setting a glass of water down on the small table beside Severina’s chair before he settles in to his own seat.
“She’s the same age as Radania, isn’t she? My Radania.” Severina’s face hasn’t shifted at all, still vacant. Is this what her grief looked like? “My Radania was seventeen.”
“I’m nineteen,” Maria says quickly. “I’m sure Radania was wonderful. I’m sorry for your loss.” Suddenly, Mateo fusses, squirming until Maria pulls him out of his sling and holds him in her arms. She can feel the exhaustion of the day creeping up on her.
“You’ll stay tonight, won’t you? Too cold to be out there with a baby.” The previous motherly concern has replaced the blank look on Severina’s face.
“Would that be alright?” The idea is wonderfully tempting: a real bed in a warm room is a far cry from the abandoned pre-war ruins Maria’s become accustomed to now.
“Of course.” Severina smiles. “You shouldn’t be out in the cold with a baby.”
The guest room that Tacitus shows Maria to is just as richly decorated as the rest of the rooms so far, blue painted walls and a soft bed with a wonderfully heavy blanket on it. There’s even a wicker bassinet for Mateo that Tacitus drags out of a corner. It’s a little dusty, like it hasn’t been used in a while, and Maria remembers Severina’s weeping. Her heart aches for a second. Five daughters, all gone at once.
“Please excuse Severina. She’s... not the same person she once was. She gets lost sometimes.” Tacitus brushes the dusk off the bassinet with a spare washcloth he pulls from a dresser drawer.
“You take good care of her. I’m sure she knows it.” Maria unwraps Mateo’s sling and shushes him as he grumbles in complaint. “Good night, Tacitus.”
For just a second, Tacitus looks almost confused, but he just nods and closes the bedroom door. “Good night.”
“I love you,” Maria murmurs as she settles Mateo down in the bassinet. “I promise. One day, we’ll have a house of our own.”
In the morning, the room is chilly. The fire Tacitus had started in the fireplace has turned to ashes, and a thin layer of dust has settled over everything. The wallpaper is peeling at its corners, and the silver candlesticks are tarnished with age. When Maria tip-toes out of her room, Mateo snugly cradled against her chest, what was once a beautiful series of halls and rooms now looks like it’s been abandoned for at least a decade. It’s like everything was left exactly as it was the day its original occupants vanished.
The door to Severina’s room has been locked, but Maria’s coat is sitting on a bench by the main door. A stack of golden coins sits on top of it, maybe thirty or so, all stamped with the text CAESAR DICTATOR around a man’s profile. Maria takes a sharp breath. Gold like this would be more than enough for a real apartment for the rest of the winter, at least.
There’s no sign of Tacitus as Maria hurries out of the crumbling building, a chill settling into her bones. When she turns to look back at Palatine Hill on the dilapidated steps, though, there’s what looks like the shadow of a man in one of the windows, watching her. She shivers, but not because she’s cold. Whatever chill exists in Palatine Hill during the empty daytime hours is more than physical.
Histories will tell of Tacitus as a broken man, purposeless without his father’s empire, either dead in the chaos of its collapse or living a hollow life. If records of the Legion exist past December of 2282, they’ve been lost to the burning and pillaging of its temples and offices. Tacitus vanishes right along with those records; the only mention of him at all is hearsay that he still lived in Palatine Hill.
Some scholars and storytellers will paint Tacitus as the living victim of the Weeping Woman’s anger, or as a tragic hero. Those would might have told the truth about what happened never spoke of that fatal night, and why Tacitus seems to have survived when his mother killed her husband and their five other children remains a mystery. The obvious answer--that he simply wasn’t present--seems too easy of a solution for the stories they’ve woven about Severina as a calculating villainess or a heartbroken mother.
“Would you have killed me too?”
Severina, face distorted from her weeping, jerks her body to face Tacitus. “My children,” she rasps out.
“Mater, if I had been there, would you have killed me too?” he repeats. It’s been forty-two years now, and Tacitus has never gotten an answer yet. He’s lived longer amongst the ghosts of Palatine Hill than he did amongst the real world.
“I would never kill my children.” Severina’s tears are running bloody now. The tears leave red tracks against her jaundiced skin. “Never. I just lost them.”
“Could I have stopped you?” Tacitus’s voice shakes slightly. To the annoyance of historians and storytellers, reality cares little about dramatic tension and prose. Tacitus was almost two hundred miles away when he got the radio transmission that his family had died, though it makes for a poor story. By the time he finally reached Flagstaff, his mother’s body had already been burned at stake by a mob as punishment for her crimes and his father was resting in his great marble tomb.
Severina vanishes into the shadows of the hallway, reappearing a short distance away from Tacitus with her face buried in her hands. “I didn’t kill my children. Don’t lie to me.”
“Why didn’t you kill me?” There is a moment where Tacitus longs for the ability to be angry again, to feel that blinding rage at his father for trying to sell his sister off like a prize to a bloodthirsty Legate or at his mother for making them all eat a meal laced with cyanide. But Tacitus has spent so long alone in Palatine Hill that he has become a better ghost than a living being: the years have hollowed him into an echo of the man he once was and might have been. “Tell me, Mater. Why not me, too?”
“I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. They’re still here, I just have to find them.” Severina flits in and out of the shadows cast by the moonlight in the hall windows, until she’s close enough that Tacitus can smell the ozone and blood scent of her presence. “Have you seen them?”
“You were supposed to be my mother too. You killed Caesar, you killed my sisters. Why not me, too? I would have been home in two days for Radania’s wedding to that bastard.” If Severina is an infinite loop of grief and anger, then Tacitus is one of bitterness and regret. Their conversations can never be productive, but Tacitus knows nothing else by now. “You wanted to destroy Caesar’s bloodline. But here I am, your son, still alive. Why not Tacitus?”
This is the first time Tacitus has ever gotten this far in this argument without Severina turning into a sobbing monster that he has to lock away in her room. “Answer me, Mater. Why didn’t you kill me?”
Severina’s ghost freezes, flickering as if she’s forgotten how to hold herself into a solid form. Her tears are gone, and her face is clean, and for just the briefest of moments she looks almost like she did in Tacitus’s memories, a sad-eyed echo of the mother he’d known. He almost expects her to say something coherent: because he was better than the rest of them, because he would have tried to stop me, because I loved him too much.
But Severina gives no such answer. She vanishes into the darkness, and leaves Tacitus with only his own tears for company. She does not weep for the rest of the night, and Palatine Hill is silent.
Tomorrow night, Tacitus will find the last bottle of soured wine in the kitchens. He will find the yellowed paper envelope of cyanide powder in a drawer of Severina’s dressing table. He will sit down at an empty dining table and pour himself the glass of wine his mother might have mixed for him if he’d been there on a chilly December night in 2282. He will tell the shadow of Severina’s presence that he loves her.
And when Severina’s ghost opens the doors to the imperial family’s living quarters for her son, finally home after such a long journey, the only thing Tacitus will say is that he’s sorry he ever left.