Fachan
Is there a monster hiding inside all of us?
After taking two lefts, a right, walking straight for a block, then another left (or was it another two?) and ending up on a cobblestone close that looked a lot like the street we had just turned from, Noah and I agreed that we were officially lost. We also agreed that Edinburgh isn’t that large a city and eventually we’d get our bearings.
We were in the ancient part of the city, where many of the centuries-old buildings remained, the stones as cold and gray as when they were first laid. The densely-packed buildings that lined the narrow close gave me the feeling that this street hadn’t seen sunlight for hundreds of years.
A door creaked open and out popped a young woman. She hung a wooden sign on a nail that protruded from the door, which read, “Fortunes Told.” She smiled at us and stepped back inside, leaving the door ajar.
We peeked in through the open door.
A tapestry depicting knights at war occupied one of the walls, and another tapestry, more tattered than the first, showing a single knight in armor doing battle with a troll, hung from the adjoining wall.
The woman walked to the far side of a small, windowless room, lifted an opaque yellow bottle from a shelf lined with about twenty bottles of various colors and sizes, and poured its contents into a silver goblet.
She set the goblet on the table and flitted over to a bookcase lined with thick-spined books. The woman scanned the shelf with her forefinger, retrieved a book, opened it, and mouthed as she read for a minute. She then wandered to the other side of the room where a bird cage hung from the ceiling. She reached into her pocket, and slipped a sliver of lettuce between the cage’s bars, which the parakeet snatched with its enthusiastic beak.
In the center of the room was a small table with two chairs that faced each other. On the table sat three squat candles, a silver wand with an emerald or peridot at one end, and the goblet with the just-poured liquid. I expected to see a crystal ball or tarot cards, but to each fortune-teller, their own.
There was an incongruity about her. Here was a twenty's wisp of a woman with piercing green eyes the color of the wand's jewel, a slender, yet sensuous figure, and long, blonde hair, pirouetting around a room ages older than her.
I hooked my finger into Noah's belt loop and tugged him away from the door.
“It’s okay,” Noah said, aware of what I was thinking even without me saying it. “Fortune tellers are all a little weird.”
“It would be a waste of money."
“We’re on vacation, Luciana. We’re supposed to waste money.” Noah eyed the plastic bag in my left hand that contained Scotland snow domes, miniature whiskey bottles, a music box, and shortbread. “Right?”
With an unambiguous tone of disapproval in my voice, I said, “fine.”
After an hour, Noah exited the fortune teller’s shop. He said, “We wasted thirty pounds.”
“Oh?” I couldn’t help but smirk.
“She didn’t reveal anything. She just held my hand—”
My smirk became a glare.
“—mumbled nonstop in a foreign language and waved her wand. Weird lights blinked from the floor and ceiling, deep blues like a nightclub with UV lamps. And phew." Noah pinched his nose. "Have you ever been in an old forest, the kind where half the trees no longer stand? The room smelled like that, musty and sour. Then, five minutes later, it was over.”
“You were in there for nearly an hour.”
“Not.” He shook his head.
“Well, yes.” I tapped my watch. "What was in that goblet anyway?"
Noah pressed his lips together.
"Your face is red. You look like my cousin Amy who flushes when she drinks." I pressed a fingertip against Noah's cheek. His skin was warm, like he had a slight fever. "But you're not allergic to alcohol."
"She said it was herbal tea." Noah offered me a smile. “Anyway, you were right. It was a waste."
Instead of gloating, I exchanged my spousal winning points to be the one to choose our next activity. "It’s my turn to pick something fun. The National Museum of Scotland doesn’t close for another four hours.” I ignored Noah's groan and raised my arm to summon a taxi.
Back at our hotel, Noah pleaded fatigue and suggested we order room service for dinner. He was nice about it, and didn’t say, “I traipsed for hours through millennia of museum exhibitions, and I don’t want to move,” but I know that’s how he felt. Traveling is compromising. Traveling is learning about other countries, cultures, cuisines, and especially about your significant other.
So we met in the middle and agreed on a dinner in the hotel's first floor restaurant, which included local meats, lots of beer, and too much dessert. We chatted with the couple at the table next to ours, who, like us, were in their thirties. It was a pleasant evening.
After dinner, Noah got his second wind. We made love and fell asleep instantly afterward. I was vaguely aware that we both snored in awkward harmony, like an orchestra’s wind section tuning up.
We enjoyed the next three days as much as the first three. We didn’t visit any more museums, not because I was being extra accommodating, but the National Museum had been so fulfilling it cured me of my museum bug for the remainder of this trip.
On the flight back, Noah complained of painful skin. His skin looked raw like he’d been in the sun too long. “It itches.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Everywhere.” He scratched his head, palms, neck, and as far to the center of his back as his reach would allow. Noah unfastened his seatbelt, removed his shoes and socks (an act that doesn’t win you friends among other passengers), and scratched there, too. “Every inch of my skin is red.” Noah lifted his foot toward his face, as if he was practicing an in-flight stretch designed to prevent blood clots. “And a little scaley, too.”
“Does eczema run in your family?”
“No.” Noah held his arm out and scrutinized the underside. “Maybe I got sunburned.”
“It’s probably an allergic reaction to food," I suggested. Even albinos can't get sunburned in Edinburgh in October. "Like hives. We ate many foreign foods, plus—” I pointed to the uncollected meal trays in front of us, “—airline meals can be tricky.”
A sudden panic swept my mind. “You can breathe okay, right?” I wondered if the crew had an EpiPen in their first aid kit, just in case. If not, chances were that somebody on board carried one.
“I can breathe.” Noah took in a bucket of air and exhaled. “No problem.” He raked his fingernails over his body. “It’s just the itching.”
“Maybe you should have a drink to help you sleep.”
“Yeah, good idea. Maybe two.”
“I’m going to have a drink, too.” We toasted a wonderful trip. Noah scratched again and fell asleep.
By the time the flight landed and the alcohol had worn off, Noah said he felt better. His skin tingled, but it was no longer painful or itchy. He said he expected to feel one hundred percent after a good night's sleep in his own bed, but if his skin hurt again, he’d high tail it to the doctor.
Which, of course, meant that he’d wait at least forty-eight hours, and then he’d decide if we should discuss whether he should see a doctor.
After landing, it took another seven hours to get through customs, retrieve our luggage, take a taxi to Grand Central Station, and catch a train to Albany. I think it was one o’clock in the afternoon Scotland time when we finally collapsed onto our bed. Despite our bodies being half a dozen time zones out of sync, we fell asleep the moment our heads soft landed on the pillows.
Noah woke as Noah does. Grumpy. Unpleasant. Ill-tempered. Unable to be a part of the civilized world until he had his coffee. Mornings I felt like a zookeeper who understands it’s only safe to enter the lion’s cage after the big cat’s been fed. Or more precisely, had its coffee.
I decided to wait to ask Noah about his skin until he’d finished his coffee, but it seemed like everything was okay, because even to my non-medical eyes, Noah's skin looked healthy, and free of any marks, rashes, or growths. I made myself a cup, too, and scrolled through emails on my phone while Noah sipped his.
A few times during the day, Noah curled his arm around and behind his neck to scratch his back, but besides that, he didn’t mention any of the symptoms he experienced on the plane. We spent the remainder of the day unpacking and deciding where to put our souvenirs, some of which were destined for the dark bottoms of our sock drawers.
The following morning was our rebound morning, the day jetlag cast it's soporific shadow over us. Noah urgently needed coffee. I needed it, too, but we were moving in slow motion. The coffee that typically gets brewed in under five minutes didn’t. The longer we took to make it, the longer it took to make.
When I pressed the brew button on our Bonativa eight-cup coffee machine, there was a loud popping sound and a flash of red light. For a split-second I thought the coffee maker had shorted out, but the sound and the light came from behind me, near the kitchen door. I spun around.
Noah had metastasized into a monster.
His head morphed into a misshapen, mound of protoplasmic flesh that looked like a beehive coated in liquefied wood. A cyclops eye glowed in the center of this creature’s grotesque forehead. One thick hair, like camel’s hair, grew from the top of its head. Its ears tapered into distorted triangles. A long incisor extended down from the top of its expansive mouth, like a stalagmite in a haunted cave, and four shorter, but also sharp, teeth crowded the left side of its lower mouth. A single, armless and taloned hand protruded from the middle of Noah’s — or what had been Noah — chest. This hideous creature stood four feet tall and balanced on one horse-like leg.
Its stomach rumbled, a sound I understood to mean, "I'm hungry and you look tasty."
The monstrosity bellowed. My scream was louder than its roar. I backed up against the kitchen counter.
I should have made a run for it. Now it's too late.
The small kitchen island stood between me and it. The beast roared again, expelling a hot mist. It stretched its single hand toward me, its claw opening and closing in terrifying rhythm. I was less than three feet from the kitchen island. For a hopeful moment I considered dropping to the floor, opening the cabinet, and hiding inside. But the cabinet didn’t lock and, besides, it was packed with pots and pans, which meant no space for me.
The kitchen knives were only three feet away. Could I reach them before it reached me? Could I stab that beast that had been my husband and still was? Would a knife stab kill it or just enrage the creature?
The monster leapt onto the island, its solitary eye locked on me.
I screamed. It jumped off and hopped two steps past me to the coffee machine.
Now’s my chance to escape. My leg muscles tensed and coiled. I sidestepped and launched to the left side of the island, which was farthest from the monster.
And slipped.
I fell onto my bottom as if the force of gravity had quadrupled.
I’m dead meat.
I watched in terror and surprise as the creature curled its fingers around the coffee carafe’s handle.
What?
The creature tilted its head backward and emptied the carafe, three cups of coffee worth, into its mouth. Over the next few seconds, the monster cracked and snapped like popcorn in a microwave, as its bones, organs, and flesh reassembled.
It became Noah.
My heart stopped, beat as fast as a hummingbird’s wings, and then stopped again before returning to a safe, steady pace. I wiped the sweat off my brow and took a cautious half step forward. I tilted my head to the side to take in Noah from a different angle. My husband is back.
What just happened? I tried to speak, but the words were locked inside my throat.
Noah said, “I became Fachan.”
“Who?”
“A monster.”
“What is Fachan and how do you know this?”
Noah shook his head. “I don’t know what it is, only that I became that creature. Everything happened fast. My brain lost its higher reasoning. I didn’t know where I was or who you were, except that I sensed you were important to me. All I could think was Fachan. I am Fachan, the terrible, the ancient. I saw stone circles in my memory, not ruins either, but new and unbroken.
"Then the coffee smell jumbled my senses. I felt the coffee smell, like I was swimming in an ocean of it. The aroma was waves of blue and red and green. This sounds crazy, but I think I even heard the coffee, sounding like an isolated note of a wind chime.”
Noah looked at me sideways. “I knew what I was, but was only vaguely aware of what I had been, of my human past.” Noah kissed my lips. “You saved me.”
It was my turn to shake my head. “I didn’t save you. You drank coffee and were no longer Fachan.”
Coffee.
I had to know. Could this happen again? Would it? Was Noah’s becoming a monster a one off, or was he destined to be like this for the rest of our lives?
Without saying a word, we gathered the blankets from the bedroom and the spares from the closet and carried them into the kitchen, where we built a nest on the floor. Like camping out, but on stone tiles. I wondered how my back would feel in the morning.
Mostly, I wondered what Noah would be in the morning.
I brewed a pot of coffee and filled two travel mugs. I then brewed another pot and left the machine on warm mode. The coffee would become unpleasantly bitter in a few hours, but it would still be coffee.
At six a.m. something pushed me off our makeshift bed. I rolled into the wall and surveyed our impromptu, indoor campsite. Noah had become Fachan. Somehow it managed to rise up from the floor on its single leg.
I stood, too.“Noah,” I said, “It’s me, Luciana.” Keeping my eyes on the creature, I retreated until my butt bumped into the counter next to the sink. I found my way to the insulated travel mug we had filled the night before with medium roast Guatemalan coffee. Carefully, I unscrewed the lid.
The Fachan pitched forward, snatched the cup, and drank the coffee in one gulp. While I was reaching for the second pre-positioned cup, the Fachan transformed back into Noah.
“May I have another cup of coffee?”
Noah!
Noah became a monster one more time before we concluded that as long as he had a cup of coffee within five minutes of waking, he would stay Noah. Whatever that fortune-teller — that sorceress — had done to Noah, coffee was the remedy.
Over the next week, Amazon delivered two or three boxes a day. To our kitchen, we added a Nespresso machine that made both coffee and espresso, a programmable Krups Grind and Brew, a programmable Cuisinart coffee machine, and an electric kettle. We set the programmable machines to start brewing at 5:00 a.m., just in case Noah woke early.
Every night we filled a thermos with coffee, which we placed on Noah’s side of the bed.
We purchased a plethora of electric and hand coffee grinders, as well as pour over coffee cones and two French presses.
We installed a $20,000 brass and glass Royal Coffee Maker in our living room where the cabinet with the china used to be.
We joined four coffee bean clubs and made sure that we always had at least a month’s supply on hand.
We made room on our bedroom’s bureau for a small Nespresso machine, the kind that you find in good hotels.
We drew up a list of coffee shops and gas stations that served coffee, and convenience stores within a five-minute drive.
Six months later, we returned to Edinburgh in search of that — whatever she was — but couldn’t find her. We never figured out why she cast a curse on Noah, either. But we did discover some new, great coffee shops.