by Claire North
How long had they driven, and to where? Charlie had no idea. Perhaps, if he was a more experienced kind of man, the kind of man who knew how to fire a gun or build a bomb out of glue and a tin of tomatoes, he’d have kept track of the seconds since his kidnapping, the turns of the car, orientating himself by some …
… some cunning technique …
… that he simply didn’t know.
He was a stranger in a strange land, at the mercy of the strangers he met, and so far the strangers he’d met had all been kind, considerate, generous people, and tonight they’d kidnapped him at gunpoint, and all things considered, it had probably needed to happen some day.
When they stopped, they were in a residential street, somewhere that could have been anywhere. Mexico City’s suburbs began and stopped, began and stopped a dozen times as the city had expanded, wiping out its new furthest border every five years until, in a very little time, outer edge was inner city, and inner city was vibrant heart, and vibrant heart was in decline as the centre of gravity swung towards another new commercial project, built on land that was once a swamp, and where the bones of the Aztecs now made for a stronger foundation bed beneath the soil.
The houses were reasonably new, blasted concrete painted the colour of cooked shrimp; tiles giving way to greedy weeds curling for the sun; graffiti sprayed across one long, flat wall, images of great green monsters leaping upon their prey, of comic-book heroes with swords longer than their flying bodies, of hands reaching upwards to a blood-red sun, fingers grey with dust and cracked with age. A zigzagging power line that swayed across the street had been tapped and re-tapped a thousand times, spider lines spinning away from it into open windows where TVs played. There was no tarmac on the roads, and a shallow gutter ran away down the middle towards a square hole in the ground where one day a drain cover would be fitted. Through an open door, a woman laughed, a huge high sound like the smashing of violins, before, hysterical at a joke Charlie could not hear, her laughter dissolved into the gasping hiccups of a body too contorted with merriment to breathe.
Some of this Charlie could faintly perceive as, still with a bag over his head, he was dragged stumbling up the street. A man passing by crossed over quickly to the other side, looked away. A teenage girl, glancing out of the window, gasped, and immediately called her best friend, demanding to know what to do—she said call the police, and the girl did, but they thought she was a prankster, and no car came. Not that it would have made much of a difference if it had.
Round a corner, through an open door. A low hubbub of voices, a change in the air, heat, dryness, the sound growing of folk rock? No—listen again a little closer, and through the sound of acoustic guitar, light drum kit and electric keys:
“… I give myself to you, I give myself to you, you are my creator …”
Voices getting louder, music getting louder, the light through the bag on his head not quite right, not electric, not car headlight. A hand on an arm pulled him to a sudden stop, the bag was removed and Charlie beheld
Death.
No—not Death.
A face of white bone, no eyes, no tongue, teeth grinning wide. On her head was a hood of sky blue, ringed with little white flowers. Round her shoulders and down into her body, which was a mere four foot high, swathes of blue and pink cloth, circled over with plastic wreaths and loops of string, on which were hooked scraps of paper and gifts of money, safety-pinned peso notes and pictures of loved ones, grinning children, absent husbands, sick partners and wives waving from hospital beds. At her feet a shrine of candles, beer cans, tequila bottles and plates of rice and beans; burning incense in little black bowls, thick spliffs gently filling the room with grey-green smoke. In one hand she held the world, a plastic thing with the holes still visible where it had been removed from its frame; in the other, a gun, the barrel pointed towards the floor.
The room had perhaps once been a living room or a kitchen, a wall knocked through to make it wider, scaffold columns shoved in to support the sagging floors above. Now it could hold some forty people; some kneeling, some with hands crossed over their chests. In a corner, two old ladies and a man sat in their wheelchairs, having been carefully positioned to get a good view. On the floor near his feet, a smear of blood. Charlie’s heart climbed into his throat, and stayed there when he saw the headless chicken, its body still dribbling the last drops of life into a yellow washing-up bowl, near the door through which he’d entered. Some of the people held candles; others made do with cigarette lighters, and the light spun and spat, distorted with the moving breath of worshippers lost in their own muttered prayers, offered up to the Lady of the Night, the White Daughter, Santa Muerte herself, glory to her name.
Charlie was at the very front of the congregation. No one moved to threaten him, no one paid him much attention. If he wanted to, he could have reached out and put a finger through the empty eye of the icon in front of him. The men who’d brought him to the house were already departing, except for one, who paused to kneel and cross himself, kissing rosary beads before scurrying after. The music had changed, still twangy folk, but now with a stronger rock tempo.
“… only he make the schools, only he bring us gold, only he, only he …”
Charlie risked a half-shuffle, a glance round at the worshippers rocking and swaying in this giddy candlelit mass. The old, the infirm, nodding along to a song only they could hear; the young, a child of five, playing with a crucifix between her fingers. Women, black leather skirts squeezed tight around their buttocks, scraps of shirt opened wide, bright lipstick, small handbags; some men too, in little cocktail dresses, high heels giving new curves to their calves, hair long, piled high, curling or permed around their heads. There, rocking on his heels, a taxi driver, and a pair there of musicians, eyes wide and pupils wider. A small gathering of street boys, white vests and low jeans, hips thrust out, faces set to glare, guns tucked proudly in their belts, a sign of identity, a sign of power, all that they were, some with eyes half closed as they whispered their prayers. A cluster of garbage collectors, the stench of their work clinging still; a policeman on his knees near the door, crying for an unknown sin, as a woman rested her hand on his shoulder to comfort him.
Here, to this shrine in the dark, came the children of the night. The dispossessed, the believers too strange for the high cathedral and stiff-necked bishops to welcome into the fold; the lovers who hid the truth of their affections; the prostitutes and the night-shift men, the women who had toiled in tasks without a name, the men who knew that no other god would answer their prayer. They all came to worship at her feet, the last saint who would love them, she who had been Mictlantecuhtli, the Skinny Lady, the Holy Girl, Death in flowers.
Charlie looked back at the image of the saint, and for a moment thought he might laugh, and heard the whispered prayers of the congregation all around, and knew he wouldn’t.
Then a woman, five foot tall and nearly two foot wide, stepped between Charlie and the statue of the skull-faced woman, glaring, and there was a kitchen knife in her hand, stained with blood, and when she spoke, the room fell silent all at once, and some sank to their knees, pressing their palms against their foreheads, then their fingers against their hearts.
“Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen.”
“Amen,” whispered the room.
“Hail Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee we cry, to thee we send up our sighs, mourning in this valley of tears …”
“Amen.”
“Soul of Christ, make me holy. Body of Christ, be my salvation. Blood of Christ, let me drink your wine.”
So saying, the woman removed the corpse of the chicken from the yellow wash bowl, tossing it to the side like an old tissue, lifted the bowl with one hand, put it to her lips and drank. Then she held it out to Charlie, who realised w
ith a start that he was the only person besides her still standing at the front of the room. He shook his head, and wordlessly she held the bowl towards him again, eyes bright and dark. She wore no ceremonial robes, just a plain green T-shirt, jeans and flip-flops. He could even see the shape of a mobile phone in her pocket. She pushed the bowl towards him again, and his eyes drifted to the bloodied knife at her side. He took the bowl, closed his eyes, raised it to his lips. The blood was still at that perfect temperature where it made no impact on his sense of heat, and only when he felt a thin dribble of liquid along the line of his tongue did he realise he’d let some of it into his mouth. The urge to gag came fast and strong; he pushed the bowl back into the woman’s hand to hide the sudden arching of his shoulders, the bending of his belly, and looked away. His mouth flooded with hot saliva; he washed it round his teeth, diluting the blood, and, the woman still watching, swallowed.
She nodded, satisfied, laid the bowl back down.
“Dies irae, dies illa.” Her voice, a strong mezzo-soprano, filling the room, a sudden power that surprised Charlie as it rose from her chest. “Solvet saeclum in favilla …”
Still standing, blood on his lips, fighting with every fibre of his being the urge to wipe his mouth clean with the back of his sleeve, Charlie felt the music enter some part of him that had long since detached itself from all other senses, a still, sacred place that now rose up to murmur at the back of his throat:
“Mors stupebit et natura …” Death is struck, and nature quaking, all creation is awaking, to its judge an answer making …
The woman’s voice, holding him now; she seemed to sing just for him, and he wished he had something to record her with, to hold this sound for ever, and then he was glad he didn’t, glad that only he and she would have this moment, this song, a magical thing sung to a skull-faced saint, to a silent god, to a church that had failed, to a congregation in the dark, to him, to Death.
As she sang, he wanted to join in, add the harmony line, he could feel it within him, catching on the tune, and so he sang it in his mind, and wondered if she too heard how beautiful it was, and thought perhaps she did. Were there other churches, he wondered, where a woman could sing this song?
“Judicandus homo reus …” The guilty man who will be judged, spare him, oh God, merciful Lord Jesus, grant them rest, amen.
“Amen.”
His lips shaped the word, but no sound came. Then the woman took the knife and held the tip of it against his throat, where the windpipe joined his chest, and he drew in breath, involuntary at the touch of the bloodied metal, and met her eyes and found he could not look away.
She moved the knife down, touched it to his heart, to his chest, to the base of his sternum, a cross in blood.
“In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost …” she breathed, and this done, gently put one hand on Charlie’s shoulder, and guided him to kneel with the rest.
There he stayed, kneeling on the floor before the statue of the skull saint, as prayers were said for a missing child, and a sermon was given on charity amongst neighbours, and songs were sung, some just the woman, some all the room.
“My heart will fly up to Jesus,” Charlie rasped, his singing voice gone, tongue stumbling over the sound. “My soul will soar with the dove …”
When it was done, a line of penitents came to the front of the room, knelt in a line in which Charlie found himself now the centre. The woman took the gun from the hand of Santa Muerte, and starting at the left end of the kneeling supplicants, put the barrel to the head of each man and woman in turn, and pulled the trigger.
The trigger snapped on empty, and Charlie’s body jerked, though all the others remained still.
To the next praying figure the woman went, and rested the gun against his skull, and pulled the trigger, and Charlie found that there were tears brimming in his eyes and his breath was coming fast, too fast, and the woman went to the next man, and pulled the trigger, and Charlie thought that the saint was staring at him, her eyes not empty, but a living blackness, a living, spinning blackness that stared straight into his soul and saw his beginning, his ending, knew the day and the place and laughed to behold a thing he could not know.
The woman pressed the gun against the skull of the girl who knelt by Charlie’s side, pulled the trigger, and the girl bowed her head in gratitude at this, and her tears were tears of joy.
The woman put the gun against Charlie’s head, and there it seemed to linger a while. When she spoke, it was in English, heavily accented but clear. “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.”
She pulled the trigger.
After, a couple of people helped Charlie to his feet, the tears still rolling down his face, though he couldn’t say why. They stood him by the door, and put a large green laundry bag in his arms. Then the congregants filed out, and as they went, they nodded to him and murmured a few words of thanks, and put in the bag rolls of grubby pesos wrapped in rubber bands, and cans of beer and a few bottles of tequila, and watches, ranging from a woman’s watch in bright plastic pink to an underwater-safe titanium thing from off the wrist of a man with a gun. And they put in bottles of water, and pictures of loved ones, and copies of old newspapers, and a child’s doll, and two men put in flick knives, and a woman put in a lock of hair wrapped in paper, and soon Charlie’s arms were aching with the weight of gifts in his bag, but he held on tight until the last congregant was gone, and the house was dark, and the woman who’d led the prayer was the last to go, the headless chicken in a plastic bag at her side, her cheeks puffing as she blew the candles out, until they stood together by the glow of a cigarette lighter clutched in her fist.
She looked long and hard at the Harbinger as they stood on the porch, her head turning from one side to the other. His face was streaked with tears, his mouth stained with blood, his skin grey from grease and dirt from the bag that had been pulled over his head. The tears were still hot in his eyes, and he didn’t know why, and he clutched the green laundry bag to his chest like a mother holding a newborn child.
The woman saw all of this, and seemed to approve. For the very first time, she smiled, then blew out the flame. This done, she wound the plastic bag with the chicken three times round her wrist, and walked jauntily away up the street.
Later, she plucked the chicken and fried it with white beans and tortilla chips.
Charlie stood alone, arms aching, knees sore, and wondered if there was anywhere nearby where he could get a cab.
Chapter 94
“What is time?”
“When we talk about wave-particle duality, there is a fundamental misconception in how we define these concepts …”
“Positive attracts negative, yes, but how? And don’t tell me electromagnetism, what does that even fucking mean?”
“The model holds so long as ninety per cent of the mass in the universe is invisible to us.”
“Personalised medicine is the future, but the latest DNA testing technology seems only to make people worried for their health …”
“Why has Daddy gone away?”
“So you’re saying if you’re not baptised … but then what about people who never even heard of Christianity?”
“Imagine a swan taking flight through your third eye …”
“I suspect we’ll find out that it’s merely an extension of the strong nuclear force, once we’ve got the tools to examine it more closely.”
“If God is all-merciful, why would he let this happen?”
“I saw it! I saw the atom! It looked sorta flooshy.”
“Last year I had a heart attack, and I nearly died. This year I finally made peace with my son, and moved to Portugal to be nearer to him. I can’t fucking believe it took a triple bypass and two hours of CPR for me to get my fucking head straight.”
“Why’d we jump? For the fall. Dude, always, obviously—for the fall.”
Chapter 95
Prayer to Nina B
lancha, Lady Death
Lady Death, right hand of God
Commander of the seven angels
Mistress of the four elements
She who knows the secrets of every heart
You who laid with me in the crib
Pressed your finger to seal my lips
You who carried me through danger
Put the gun in my hand
Called me man
Our lady Death, lady of the white robes
Lady of the silver sword
Pluck a grey hair from my head
Pull the skin softly from my eyes
Let the blood run thin in my chest
All this is yours, as was promised
Only spare my child a little while more.
Chapter 96
The road, heading north.
Charlie wakes, and knows that this is the last time he will travel this road, and that is good, and he is at peace.
Baltimore.
“Black power!” shouts the woman.
Charlie says, “Excuse me, I have—”
“Black power!” she roars, turning the loudhailer towards Charlie’s face so that the noise of it pops in his ear. He struggles to keep up as they march, a group of maybe thirty strong, she in the middle, crop top and skinny jeans, hoop earrings and green eye shadow, roaring, “Black power!”
“Ma’am, I was sent to give you—”
“I don’t care what you were sent to give me!” blaring down the loudhailer again, forcing him to flinch. “I don’t want nothing from you white trash! Get out of my way, and get off my streets! Black power!”
In the end, he gives it to the much more pleasant man who walks three steps behind, and who promises he’ll pass it on. It’s a soldering iron. Charlie doesn’t speculate as to what it means.
“You saw the marchers?” A white woman, clutching to her a curly-haired daughter with almond skin. Two others from the march, dark skin, bright clothes, faces ashamed, comforting her. “I tried to walk with them, to show solidarity, show my child that she can be mixed race and still part of this, that all races are equal and together we are something good. But that woman—the one with the loudspeaker—she just shouted at me till we went away. How can I teach my daughter that we’re all human if that’s how people behave?”