Cricket Hunters

by Jeremy Hepler

  She lowered the candle and moved it in a circle over Dolores four times clockwise, four times counter clockwise, and took her sister’s hand. She spoke each sentence in Spanish once, then English once, so Cel would fully understand.

  “Dolores Josefina Garcia-Ayala, Tia Dillo, Daughter, Sister, Friend, Witch, Healer.

  “By the firmness of the earth, you were grounded in the physical world.

  “By the swiftness of the air, you were open to knowledge and communication.

  “By the light of fire, you were inspired with passion and love.

  “By the flow of water, you were allowed to dream your dreams.

  “By the greatness of the Source, you were given access to life.

  “So now, by earth, air, fire, water, and the blessing of the Source, shall you pass into the next stage of your existence with strength, peace, and purpose.”

  Yesenia kissed her sister’s forehead, whispered, “Te amo, dulce hermana,” and blew out the candle. She clenched her teeth and swallowed to keep from bursting into tears before facing Cel. “Do you want to say anything to her?”

  Cel stood, and as she made her way to Dolores’s bedside, wrapped her arms over her chest as though hugging herself. Following Yesenia’s lead, she kissed Dolores on the forehead, and then whispered something into her ear, a short statement that Yesenia couldn’t make out. When she met eyes with Yesenia and was unable to stifle her sobs, Yesenia pulled her in and hugged her as desperately as she had Dolores after their mother’s death ceremony. Though separated by time and circumstance, the wakes of both instances were the same; two Garcia-Ayala females were left to share the pain of the worst losses of their lives.

  “Is everything okay?” the young nurse in pink scrubs asked as she stepped into the room, startling them despite her cautious tone.

  Yesenia rounded on the young nurse who was eyeing the candle, her expression suggesting she caught the hint of smoke clinging to the air. Yesenia glanced at the candle, dropped it into the bag on the ground beside the bed. “Yes. We’re finished here. Will you please see to it that the items we left stay with her?”

  The nurse’s sympathetic eyes met Yesenia’s. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll make sure everything accompanies her to the funeral home.”

  “Gracias.”

  Yesenia led Cel out of the room, past the nurses’ station where the elderly nurse in blue scrubs looked up from her computer and offered condolences, and down to the main lobby. To mollify her growing anxiety that she hadn’t specified the proper funeral home, she stopped at the check-in station and asked a large woman wearing a thick film of make-up and nametag reading SHONDA, to please call Dr. Bernard on the second floor to verify that Dolores would be transported to the Fernandez Funeral Home. Satisfied with Shonda’s quiet confirmation, Yesenia and Cel made their way to the car, serenaded by chirping crickets as their feet smacked on the tarmac beneath a starless night sky.

  They traveled the empty roads without speaking until Cel broke the silence two blocks from home. “I’m so sorry, Buela. If I hadn’t killed Frito maybe Tia Dillo wouldn’t have…” She dropped her face into her cupped hands, shaking her head. “I know you hate me right now.”

  “I don’t hate you, mija.” A deep breath. “And what Maria did to her was not your fault.”

  “But I made everything worse for her. I was trying to help, but I made it worse.”

  Yesenia agreed with the outcome of Cel’s actions. She had made things worse. But not for Dolores. Sure, Frito’s death, which she believed Maria had felt the second it happened due to their indelible connection, had hurt and infuriated Maria, but it hadn’t caused an escalation of Dolores’s death. Maria had already damaged Dolores beyond repair at that point. No, the impact of Frito’s death had fallen on Cel and Yesenia, the duo she blamed for stripping away her familiar. And now, with Dolores out of the picture, Maria could focus her vengeance squarely on them.

  Reciting a calming spell, Yesenia rubbed Cel’s back. She needed Cel to remain mentally and spiritually strong. “Esta bien. Everything you did for her, you did to help, and she knows that.”

  Cel looked at Yesenia. She had the same scared expression on her face that she’d worn as a toddler when thunder rattled the windows. “Do you?”

  Yesenia pulled the Starlet into her driveway and shut off the engine. She didn’t agree with Cel’s actions, but she knew her granddaughter’s intent was good. She made eye contact with Cel, hoping the unconditional love she felt for her was evident in her gaze, and touched the center of Cel’s chest with two fingers. “Conozco tu corizon, mija.”

  Cel let out a relieved sigh, and Yesenia hugged her.

  Inside, while Cel grabbed a fresh pair of pajamas and headed to the bathroom to shower, Yesenia placed the teakettle on the burner, turned the heat to low, and then made her way to her bedroom. She retrieved a mottled key from the tin Band-Aid box in her nightstand, and holding it between her lips, tugged the wooden chest filled with grimoires out of her closet. She slid the chest to the foot of her bed, sat down, and shoved the key into the lock that had protected the chest’s secrets for more than nearly two centuries. The key was hard to turn, the mechanism inside worn and clunky, but with some jostling, the lock finally released. Yesenia raised the lid and gazed down at the mess of books and scraps of paper, the handwritten recipes and spells and instructions.

  To assure herself she had done all she could to help her sister, over the past week Yesenia had spent many of the quiet hours in the hospital recounting the exact dates and ingredients of every healing potion she’d concocted for Dolores, the step-by-step details of every ritual she’d performed over her, and the full list of protection spells and counter curses they’d cast. In the end, there was only one potentially potent ritual she knew of that she hadn’t performed. She and Dolores had discussed the ritual, one of the strongest they’d come across, one evening shortly after Dolores had moved in and they were flipping through the grimoires. But the recipient of the ritual had to have a familiar, which Dolores did not have. Her latest familiar, an albino ferret named Aurelia, had inexplicably died about a month before the crickets’ songs began tormenting her.

  Yesenia’s familiar, however, was alive and well. Yesenia had walked out onto the back porch to water her plants one morning and found the grey, skeletal kitten hiding behind a pot. When she met eyes with the kitten, she felt a surge of recognition. She immediately knew its name, knew they were spiritually bound, knew that Mina had come to protect and serve her. Their bond wasn’t as seasoned as Yesenia would prefer for this particular ritual, Mina being barely a year old, but, at this point, she had to try. She wanted no regrets.

  She rifled through the chest and found the tattered purple grimoire with the word FAMILIARS stitched in gold thread on the cloth cover. The book was thin, maybe around sixty pages, and filled mostly with information on how to recognize and spiritually bond with familiars. There were only a handful of minor spells written in the margins here and there, and only instructions for one ritual—the taking (tomar) ritual on the second to last page. Yesenia ran her finger under each Spanish word as she read the instructions, making a mental note on what she would need to gather and prepare.

  When Cel emerged from the bathroom and walked into the kitchen an hour later, Yesenia had already placed a tourniquet on Mina’s front right leg just below the shoulder. She was sitting with her back to the stove. Mina was wrapped tightly in a small blanket on her lap, only her gray head visible. A mug of steaming tea, a candle, a knife with a bone handle, a length of twine, and a lock of her hair were on the table in front of her. A pot of water seasoned with the proper herbs was slowly heating on one of the stove’s back burners, a searing comal on a front one.

  Cel stopped toweling her hair when she noticed Mina. “What are you doing?”

  “Sit down.”

  Cel glanced at the stove and items on the table before obeying.

  “I know it’s late and you’re tired, but I need your help with a ritual.”<
br />
  “Okay.” Cel set her towel on the table. “What’s it for?”

  “It’s a taking ritual.” Locking eyes with her familiar, Yesenia stroked the gap between Mina’s eyes with her index finger.

  As Cel appraised Mina, Yesenia could see the gears turning in Cel’s head, grinding through the information, trying to make sense of it. “A taking ritual?” Cel asked, more to herself than Yesenia. Her eyes lit with recognition. “You’re going to take power from Mina.”

  Smart girl. Yesenia nodded. “It’ll help strengthen my healing spells, counter curses, and protection abilities.”

  “How can you do that?” Cel’s eyes swiveled to Mina, the knife, back to Yesenia. “Do we have to kill her?”

  “No. She has to stay alive for it to work. But I do have to cut off one of her legs, which is why I need your help. I gave her some calming drops and tied her back legs together, but you’ll still have to help hold her down for me.” Yesenia scratched behind Mina’s ears. “She knows what needs to be done and understands, but it’s natural for any living thing to fight pain, so she’ll struggle.”

  Yesenia glanced at the clock. It was a little after one in the morning. The tourniquet needed to be on for at least two hours before they began. “We’ll start around two.”

  Over the next hour, Yesenia and Cel sat at the table in the center of the kitchen sipping tea and chatting. They talked about Maria and Frito, Jose and the fair, Parker and the hunters. They recalled Tia Dillo stories, some eliciting laughs, some tears, some both. Five minutes before two, the conversation turned back to the ritual.

  “It’s time,” Yesenia said. She stood, pushed in her chair, lit the candle, and laid Mina on her side on the table. Cel stood, too. “You need to put one hand on her hip and the other on her back, and then push down hard enough to keep her from moving. I’ll slide the blanket down just enough to expose the leg and hold her head.”

  Cel nodded and did as she was told.

  Yesenia readied the sanctified, bone-handled knife she’d purchased from a curandero in Mexico many years earlier, partially removed the blanket, and pinned Mina’s neck and head down. After giving Cel a single nod, she whispered the ritual’s opening line and placed the blade just below the tourniquet. Mina fought and caterwauled as Yesenia sliced through her flesh and snapped through bone. Only a small amount of blood spilled onto the table when the lifeless leg fell free. Yesenia set the knife down and ordered Cel, “Pick her up, and hold her tight.”

  As Cel pinned Mina to her chest, Yesenia slipped a pot holder on her hand, picked up the screaming hot comal, and pressed the edge to Mina’s wounded nub. She rolled it back and forth multiple times. The fur crackled, the skin hissed and sizzled like frying bacon. Mina yowled and jerked and bit down on Cel’s hand, causing Cel to yowl, too.

  Yesenia set down the comal and helped Cel retighten the blanket around Mina’s entire body. “Sit and don’t let go of her.”

  Yesenia continued, whispering the words she’d memorized from the grimoire. Using the sanctified blade, she cut the removed leg in two at the middle joint, knotted twine around the lower half, looped it around her neck, and tied it off. Then she wrapped her lock of hair around the upper half and moved it back and forth over the candle flame, purposefully inhaling the scorched-hair scent. Once the flesh was exposed, she tossed the leg into the pot of boiling water and started chanting. She chanted the curing verse one time for each year of her life, and once for each year of Mina’s as well, before retrieving the leg with tongs.

  Cel’s chin dropped in awe when Yesenia took Mina from her and then began chewing on the boiled leg. Eyes locked on her familiar, whispering as her mouth worked, she ate what little leg flesh there was and then gnawed the bone until it broke in two, completing the ritual.

  After slathering Mina’s wound with a homemade salve and giving her two more Aspirin, Yesenia spent the next hour recasting every protection spell and counter curse she knew while Cel looked on in silence.

  SEPTEMBER 2013

  Chapter 22 - Cel

  Detective Hart called Cel at a quarter past nine and told her they’d finished searching the house and she could return home. When prodded, he wouldn’t elaborate on what, if anything, they’d found, saying they needed more time to process the items they’d gathered and fully examine the electronic devices. She told Yesenia what Hart had said before heading out to the back porch where a moonlit sky and a choir of distant crickets greeted her.

  Two hours earlier, the sun had been burning bright when she’d walked to the edge of Hunter’s Haven. She’d followed the tree line south until the only dirt road leading into the woods came into view. Peeking around the trunk of a giant elm, she watched officers in yellow vests come and go from unmarked cruisers parked on the road for twenty minutes before a Mickey’s Towing Services truck emerged from the forest with Parker’s Camry in tow. The sight twisted her insides and brought tears to her eyes. She gripped the rough trunk and clenched her jaw to keep from sprinting over to the car. She wanted to rip open the door and catch a whiff of Parker’s Stetson cologne that always clung to the seat. She wanted to see what radio station he’d last listened to. She wanted to see what he’d left behind. She wanted answers. But she knew they’d deny her request. The car was not her property. Or Parker’s, for that matter. Like their house on Matador Lane, the Camry technically belonged to Beverly Lundy. She’d bought the car for Parker three years earlier, after his Buick’s engine crapped out, and she’d never transferred the title into his name.

  Cel inhaled a deep breath and pushed it out in the form of a calming spell as she slipped on her chanclas and stepped down into the backyard. She hoped the cops had finished their search, or had at least left Hunter’s Haven for the evening. They would find it suspicious if they caught her, the spouse, a suspect, sneaking around a potential crime scene. They would never believe she needed to stand where Parker stood, walk where he walked, to see if she could sense any residual aura he’d left behind, any hint if he was in distress when he was out here or not. They would think that was ridiculous and stupid, a lie or a ruse. Cops were fact people. Physical world people. They didn’t believe in spiritual detective methods.

  She followed the tree line south like earlier, but this time found the dirt road vacant, as white as chalk under the moon’s glow. No cruisers. No tow trucks. No cops or canines, flashlights or voices. Thankfully, they’d left. For now, anyway. They’d probably come back at the first sign of daybreak. She quickly skirted the tree line back north until she reached the field separating Hunter’s Haven from her abuela’s backyard and then cut into the forest.

  Fewer and fewer shafts of moonlight penetrated the canopy the deeper she progressed, so she pulled her cellphone out of her pocket for a ready light source. Although she hadn’t ventured into the heart of Hunter’s Haven in almost fifteen years, since the searches for Abby seemingly a lifetime ago, it only took a couple minutes and a few quick bursts of light to locate the game trail she’d used hundreds of times as a kid, a trail which led her to the dirt road.

  As she walked down the center of the road, intermittently moving her phone’s flashlight left and right, ahead and behind, a lump of anxiety filled her stomach, bulky and cumbersome, the size of a soccer ball-sized tumor. She had recited the finding spell three times like Yesenia had insisted, and she was trying so hard to reach out with her feelings, to focus on connecting with Parker, but the uncomfortable sensation in her gut coupled with the incessant cricket choir dampened her concentration.

  “Parker?” Desperation spilled out of her. “Where are you?”

  She stopped dead in her tracks when her phone’s light hit on a length of yellow police tape wrapped around a tree in front of her. The visual brought her mental dialogue to a halt. Sadness clogged her throat. She swam the light around, revealing large sections of pounded down flora on either side of the road. She was there. Where Parker’s car had been found. Where the cops and canine had trampled and scoured the earth, searching for
clues.

  Her eyes and light flitted from the flattened greenery to the tire tracks on the dirt road to the strands of yellow tape screaming for attention for what felt like hours before her mental engine kicked back into gear and picked up steam.

  “Why did you come here?” she whispered as she cautiously moved forward. “Were you meeting someone?” She stopped next to the yellow-taped tree and aimed her light deeper into the thicket. The question that came next, she didn’t ask aloud because it was absurd. She’d already rejected the idea when Detective Hart had posed it. There was no way he’d ever kill himself. Not Parker. He wasn’t the type. Besides, if he had, or if he’d fallen and or been injured in some other way, the police hounds would’ve found him. Hunter’s Haven was large, but nowhere close to Yosemite large.

  She closed her eyes, took slow, measured breaths like when she meditated in the afternoons, recited the finding spell three more times, focused her energy and tried to reach out with her feelings again. Slow seconds ticked by. Her gut danced. Crickets chirped. Just when she was about to give up and open her eyes, a hopeful thought sprouted her mind. A simple thought.

  Parker had driven out to Hunter’s Haven because he didn’t want to go home.

  Tension had been building at 216 Matador Lane for months. Cel had confronted him about Lauren this morning. Fought with him. Accused him. He had probably come to Hunter’s Haven to think. To contemplate. Formulate a plan on how to deal with Cel when he went home. Decide whether to lie or tell the truth. Fight to save their marriage or propose divorce. But if he’d left the comfort of his car on his own, where had he gone? For a walk? To where?

  Cel opened her eyes and looked northeast, toward Mesquite Creek. If Parker wanted a meaningful, secluded place to collect his thoughts and weigh his feelings and future with Cel, there was no better place than Table Rock. The place where they started. The place they first kissed. A stone’s throw away from where they first made love. It was also the place where they had spent countless summer afternoons with the other Cricket Hunters, debating songs and movies, aggrandizing and reminiscing about their experiences, predicting and dreaming about their futures.