The Hacienda(85)

That smell. It was alcohol. Pure, distilled alcohol. Like the rug. Like mezcal, but even stronger.

From overhead, the sound of a match being struck; a torch blazed to life.

Its light illuminated a woman’s face. Bronze hair, a thin-lipped visage, the shadows carving distinctive cheekbones, skull-like in their sharpness.

Juana’s mouth was set in a grim line, her gaze dispassionate as she took in my desperate appearance.

In an instant, I was back in the capital, watching Papá led away at bayonet point. Watching the remaining soldiers throw oil on the house and set it alight with torches. Smashing windows; waves of rippling heat. The acrid taste of smoke, my weeping, stinging eyes.

Fear enveloped me. I forgot all my pain. Every sinew of me was focused on that torch, on how it leaped and danced and cast wicked shadows across Juana’s face.

Oh, no. Not like this.

“No. Get me out of here,” I begged Juana. My throat was shredded; the words came out half a sob. “I’ll lie. I’ll cover for you. I’ll leave and never come back. I swear I’ll never come back.”

Something flickered in her face. Perhaps it was a trick of the light. Perhaps it was my own desperation, tricking me into thinking she would actually consider my plea.

She did not.

Without a word, Juana dropped the torch into the center of the room.





29





ANDRéS



THAT AFTERNOON, RODOLFO SOLóRZANO was buried, hastily and with little fanfare, in the plot behind the chapel next to the empty grave of Do?a María Catalina. After conducting the brief ceremony, attended by no one but myself, José Mendoza, and a smattering of other villagers—Juana had vanished without a trace—I retreated to the capilla.

I dipped inside and knelt in the pew closest to the door. I clasped my hands and thought of Mariana, the victim of my and Paloma’s attempts to help her. I prayed for her forgiveness. I prayed she found peace in the embrace of our Creator. I forced myself to search deep in my heart and find what little mercy I could summon for the man I had buried today, a man I had never loved, who represented everything I loathed.

And I prayed for his wife.

I reached for the house as I prayed, sending Beatriz comfort, sending her strength. I promised she would be safe. I had promised myself I would heal the house and free my home from its blight. These aims were now one and the same, and there was only one way to achieve them.

I prayed to the Lord for forgiveness for what I was about to do.

A roll of thunder drew me from deep in my mind. I stepped from the pew, genuflected before the altar, and let my eyes rest on the crucifix.

Deliver us from evil, the Lord’s Prayer pleaded. At the end of days, Jesus Christ would indeed deliver us from evil. In that I had faith and fear. Whatever end descended on Creation in the apocalypse was God’s to command, and it was His hand that would divide the faithful from the sinners for eternity.

But mankind had already seen much evil and not been delivered. It would continue to see so much pain between now and the end.

I made the sign of the cross. Yes, the Lord was my Savior. But I had spent years in the silence of unanswered prayer, years that taught me that I must also learn to save. The question that plagued me was how.

Prayers are empty talk. She needs help.

It was not enough to be a priest. But my hubristic insistence on trying to replicate Titi’s path had only harmed Mariana and Paloma.

You must find your own way.

My home and Beatriz were in danger. How could I do anything but take up the tools I had to deliver her from evil?

Deep in my chest, that locked box of darkness hummed, trembling with expectation.

Forgive me, I begged.

Then I rose, turned, and walked briskly to the door of the capilla. For better or for worse, I had chosen my path. I could not think of what I was sacrificing to do so, nor what punishment might await me at the end of my days.

There was no time to waste.



* * *




*

I STRODE DIRECTLY TO Ana Luisa and Paloma’s house in the fading light. Its windows gaped dark in the twilight, hungry and empty. The door swung open before me; as I crossed the threshold, I sensed something in the house invited me in, drawing me toward it like a moth to flame.

It was here, as I suspected. My inheritance. My birthright.

I fumbled in the dark for flint and a candle. When the flame’s pale light illuminated the room, I turned to the beds against the wall.

Ana Luisa must have gone through Titi’s belongings after her death and found it. How else could I explain the bastardized markings in charcoal that lined the doorway of the main house’s kitchen? How else could I explain the instinct that drew me to my knees beside Ana Luisa’s cold bed, to a small wooden box beneath its head? When I was last here, the morning Paloma found my poor aunt dead from terror, I was too ill from the blow to my head to think clearly; nausea deadened my senses to the dizzying pull that now drew my hands to the box. I set it on my knees and lifted its lid.

There it was. The pamphlet my father’s sister had left me.

Smudges I did not recognize darkened some of its pages. A thrum of grief beat through my heart. When the house went rotten, when the poison of Do?a María Catalina’s anger began to spread, Ana Luisa had been afraid. She sought help from this. She should have come to me. Why didn’t she?