The ceremony transported itself outside fluidly. While the drummers kept up a thunderous roar, the healer and her acolytes moved rhythmically, spinning and swaying towards the beach. Wading in up to their knees, the curandera raised her voice in a song that sounded like birds whistling and cawing as the other women threw their fiery sticks into the sky. When the torches splashed into the water, fizzling and sputtering, the drumming ceased on a final explosive beat.
As the sun set, I realized I had failed to take any photographs and would need to improvise my drawings. Seeing the curandera standing nearby in a dark grove of palms, I raised my Polaroid and snapped a picture. The flash lit the area, revealing her to be looking directly at me. I pulled the sheet to develop the picture and counted off sixty seconds. Should be ready.
There was the grove, lit up, but I couldn’t see the woman in the photograph, only a transparent blur of her blue dress with the plants and trees visible directly behind it. What? Is this a defect, or is she invisible?
I looked back to where she still stood, motionless, studying me.
Meanwhile, the plaza, beach, and hotel had turned into a festival area. Johnny waved me over to join him for dinner, and afterwards, I watched people swim and dance, listening to their laughter while trying to catch the joke or follow their conversations with my high school knowledge of Spanish. The party went on. I caught a slight whiff of marijuana drifting in the air but, not comfortable with the idea of Johnny finding out I smoked the stuff, didn’t go looking for a toke. I curled up in our Plymouth, trying to come down from the excitement of the day and catch some sleep. But all I could do was toss and turn, sweat incessantly, and grow frustrated in the hot tropical night.
I climbed out of the back seat to smoke a cigarette and sat watching one of the witch’s dancers drink and flirt with Johnny.
A sudden burning sensation drilled itself into my temple. I snapped myself around and saw the curandera still standing in the palm grove. Without a doubt, she was responsible for the searing that had just zapped my head. Nothing hurt, but the energy had been sudden and unnatural. What kind of power did she possess?
She moved into the light of a lantern, then crossed back through the darkened grove. As if pulled by a magnet, I followed. On the far side of the trees, her shadow stretched across the sand of an empty moonlit beach.
When I caught up to her, she was sitting on a log watching the waves roll in and spread towards her bare feet.
I sat next to her, the two of us silent for about ten minutes. When she finally spoke, she tapped at my chest, made a stabbing motion at my injured shoulder, then made a full rounding motion in front of her stomach. She gently asked me, “Bebé?”
“No, different, uh, differente.” I held up three fingers. “Tres.” I couldn’t think of the Spanish word for women, so I reached down and quickly sketched with my finger in the sand three exaggeratedly curved female forms. With a fat belly on the first one, and a crude knife in the hand of the second, I hesitated, then after drawing the symbols of breasts and vagina on the third, I added a heart shape with a cracked line through it.
“Ah, tres mujeres.” The bruja smiled sadly.
A wave crashed, its water racing across the figures. Sam and Brenda disappeared under the long fingers of the sea, but Teresa was only half-obliterated. As the foam receded, a small, white, fluffy seagull feather settled itself on the wet indentation of Teresa’s faint outline. I reached down and picked it up. The curandera slipped her left hand into my right. We sat there, fingers intertwined, the feather pressed between our palms, with no more words said until the sun rose to turn the ocean into a panoply of silver and gold.
Chapter 6
Johnny and I splashed around, jumping waves as we watched the caravan of cars and the old bus pull out onto the mountain road. As I sat drying off, a big black dog came up to me with a gnarled stick in her mouth. She dropped it by my feet. I picked up the piece of driftwood and hurled it far into the water. The dog smiled with excitement as she pounced into the waves, trotted back to me with the stick, and plopped it expectantly in front of me. We repeated the game for awhile until Johnny motioned me over to our vehicle.
Bernardo and the curandera were pulling away in an old junker. We all called out hearty farewells to each other. As the dust from their departure swirled about us, Johnny nudged me and motioned me to get into our car.
“Did you notice? The girls, the three dancers, are still here. They didn’t leave with the curandera or all the others. There’s only two cars here, theirs and ours. You think it’s a coincidence?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ah ha, Deets, don’t be dumb. I saw how you were with that little rich girl whose portrait you drew. Well, I tell you, the way these girls danced and partied last night, they might have some other ideas about healing than the curandera does.”
We watched as the women climbed into their car, cracking jokes and casting looks our way. As their dilapidated Ford coughed across the plaza, belching blue smoke, Johnny called out to them. The woman he had been talking to late into the night leaned out the window, answering excitedly. The three of them waved, and the one in the back seat blew me a kiss and laughed.
Johnny jumped in the car and turned the ignition. “Lets go, Deets. I told them we’d stay behind them in case their car broke down.”
“Yeah? What’d they say?”
His smile filled his face. “They said they might need us to check the car when they stop to bathe at the stream crossing.”
“Far out, I like that one who just threw me a kiss. She really knew how to twirl a torch last night.”
“Ha, ha. Twirl a torch.”
As we followed behind the old Ford, the woman in the back seat would occasionally turn and wave at us, then smile or stick her tongue out playfully. When a bra came flying back and hit our windshield, the possibility of getting laid became a fluster of worry as I tried to fight the emotional debris from my recent failure with Cecilia. It would be a horrific embarrassment if it happened again, and more so, if Johnny learned of it.
I was a nervous wreck, lighting one Kool after another, until Johnny finally eased the car into the stream.
The dancers were lounging, wet and sultry. One had a bikini on and lay on her back in the cool mountain stream. The other two sat on a rock with their feet in the water. The woman I was interested in wore a short skirt, a halfway-unbuttoned blouse, and no bra.
As I approached her, she was obviously aware of my eyes flashing to the shadows between her legs. The crucifix around her neck was a strange distraction but not enough of one.
They laughed and joked and practiced English words I taught them. Then they splashed at us and teased us, hinting with their bodies, inviting with their movements and mannerisms. I took out the Polaroid, and they posed—the one in the bikini dropping her top briefly as I snapped the picture. They all giggled, and my favorite leaned against me while waiting for the film to develop. Her tits lingered and bumped, making it difficult to concentrate on keeping to my Polaroid timing count.
Johnny started walking upstream with Miss Bikini. Although I could only see the back of his ducktail, I knew he had to be grinning.
My woman, her name was Andrea, took my hand and led me through the shallows around a bend. Still standing in the water, we stopped by an overhanging vine filled with tiny cascading magenta flowers. Without even a kiss, she unbuckled my jeans. I popped out, gratefully hard. She tugged at my pants, encouraging me to strip, then invited my hands to wander over her tits as she unbuttoned the rest of her blouse, reached up beneath her skirt, and removed her underwear. She gave me a peck on the lips and with hand gestures easily enticed me with the idea of taking erotic pictures of her. I nodded my head up and down enthusiastically when I figured out she was also suggesting I photograph her friend Filomena.
After signaling that I should wait while she went to get the Po
laroid and Filomena, she pumped her hand on my cock a couple of times, then ran back to the cars.
I was excited, anticipating the rewards of the photo shoot. Filomena’s no knockout, a bit tough-looking, but she seemed the wilder of the three when they were dancing. I can’t believe the horniness level in this country so far. Should be no harm in messing around with two chicks again.
My dick was still hard when I heard Johnny yelling in Spanish. There was no mistaking that he was angry and alarmed.
Then a car door slammed, and I took a few steps downstream as the sound of an engine trying to kick on entered my bewildered brain. The battery was whirring and straining, but then a loud backfire blew. The motor roared.
Johnny’s voice turned threatening.
I took off towards the disturbance. Splashing around the bend, I saw a nude Johnny running in front of me, Andrea sitting next to Filomena in the old Ford, and the bikini girl—her top in hand, nothing covering her ass—screaming while she grabbed at the rear door handle. Filomena was stripping gears as she tried to get the vehicle to move.
I wondered what Johnny had done to Miss Bikini to cause this sudden departure from our afternoon of delight, not understanding the commotion until he yelled, “Deets, Deets, they’re stealing our stuff. Your cameras, art, everything. Hurry. Hurry.”
I had been a three-letter high school athlete, and despite the asthmatic background, cigarettes, and constantly being high, I still had good speed. I angled towards their car that was hopping erratically across the stream.
Johnny veered towards our Barracuda and leaned in the driver’s window.
“They’ve got the keys. Don’t let them escape.”
He tore open the door of our car, but then I banged up against the side panel of the women’s Ford and lost track of his movements. I quickly realized courtesy wasn’t going to work with the three thieves cursing at me as their car picked up speed. I reached in through the driver’s window, scrabbling for the steering wheel while Filomena clawed at my arms. Then, like some kind of rabid beast, she lunged and bit my forearm. Goddamn if I didn’t hear her snarl. Then the horn blared—somebody’s elbow must have smacked it—and her head slammed backwards as I yanked myself free of her teeth.
She was cursing and spitting blood, and it hit me immediately that I was in yet another physical brawl with a woman. Andrea was huddled against her passenger door, too frightened to help her friend. I couldn’t see Miss Bikini, but her crying and wailing punctuated the chaotic encounter.
“You vampire thug. Crook. Stop the car.”
But Filomena stomped the accelerator, and the machine jolted forward. I wrapped one arm around her neck, inadvertently tearing off the buttons of her blouse with the other as I flailed madly for a grasp on the steering wheel, the key—anything to gain advantage. Somehow, despite our entanglement, she started rolling up her window but stopped when I managed to punch the gearshift into neutral.
She threw the Ford back into gear and snapped her jaws at me in a frenzy of spittle and incisors and rage.
But it was her eyes that made me falter.
They glowed red. Demonic, science fiction, superpower red.
“Shit.”
“Dejame, gringo.”
I was totally caught off guard by her left knee coming out from beneath the dash and connecting with my jaw, followed quickly with a finger-jab into my eye. Reeling backwards from her furious attack, slipping on wet rocks while the car jerked towards the embankment, I scrambled to stay upright. But my feet were dragging, and my left hand lost its grip on the partially closed window. In that same instant, I grabbed blindly at Filomena with my right hand. The car leaped in a surge of acceleration. Suddenly, I was spinning and bumping against the side of the car, but my hand had grasped onto something. I held tight. My fingers screamed with excruciating pain, a sharp edge cutting into them as they curled around an oddly shaped object. Filomena’s flesh bounced against the back of my hand, and she cried out in a strangled garble while pulling frantically at my arm. I could feel her desperation and realized I had grabbed the crucifix hanging from her neck. As the car moved forward with my full weight dangling alongside, my hold on her pendant was causing her to choke.
Then a broken chain slashed across my mouth, and I sprawled in the water with a four inch Jesus-on-a-cross in my hand. My right foot caught and became lodged between two rocks. The left rear tire swept over them, slightly brushing my ankle. I jabbed the crucifix like a dull knife at the tire as it passed inches from my head.
I pulled my foot free and scrambled up, sure the women had gotten away, wondering what happened to Johnny.
A loud explosion near me almost blew out my ear, and I flattened myself back into the water. The car spluttered to a stop.
Johnny stood at the window of Filomena’s car, a handgun pointed at her head.
Chapter 7
Andrea and Miss Bikini had jumped from the car and were now hunched together on the far side of the stream. Miss Bikini had nothing on, and Andrea’s tits spilled out of her open shirt.
Exposed and terrified, they looked vulnerable and defeated. For a brief moment, my mind was vivid with the memory of fucking Brenda, thrusting into her furiously as I battled for my life in our intimate war. Now, a similar dark desire growled from deep within me—I wanted the women to understand their betrayal and offer themselves while begging forgiveness.
Miss Bikini’s wet cunt hairs stirred my cock. Andrea had rubbed my hard-on as a pretense, her mind set on stealing my belongings. She owed me for that deceit. Lust and anger combined into a blinding turmoil, pounding at my temples.
Give me what you led me to believe you were promising. Or do I have to force my revenge and punishment into you.
Then a car door groaned open, and Johnny barked orders at Filomena to get out and join the other two women. Hearing those sounds, I came out of my vengeful trance with a disturbing flash of my old buddy Greg pinning down a young virgin while fire raged around him, the smoke fouling his thoughts and actions.
Man, I’m really fucked up. Jesus... I almost lost it.
Filomena stood apart from her accomplices, looking defiant with her hands on her hips, her blouse ripped open and splattered with my blood.
Johnny paced in front of the women, waving his gun, and cursing at them. He yelled for me to find everything they had stolen and load it back into our car.
“Make sure you find our wallets and cash.”
After transferring our belongings back to our vehicle, I rummaged through their purses, trying to find Johnny’s car keys. I came across a small piece of newspaper, folded and tucked in a way that formed a makeshift pocket. A familiar aroma came as a surprise, and I knew it held marijuana. I hid it in my suitcase—the theft being my justice.
“I still can’t find the keys.”
Johnny and I both heard the rumble of a powerful engine and looked questioningly at each other.
“Impossible, we were the last to leave Santa Paloma. There’s no way a car can be behind us.”
But there was. A large black Cadillac edged up to the stream, idling smoothly, its smoked window glass revealing nothing.
Filomena became belligerent, ordered the other two women towards the new arrival. They wailed in protest, approaching the monstrous vehicle reluctantly. The whole situation seemed wrong—the car from out of nowhere, the women protesting. Suddenly the vulnerabilities of Andrea’s and Miss Bikini’s nakedness had me worried.
A loud thunk startled me. A rock bounced across the hood of the car I had been searching. Filomena let go of another stone that whizzed past me and smacked into the back window. She gave me the finger and poured venom at me, finishing off her tirade which classified me as an hijo de puta.
I kept my distance from her, ready to dodge any more missiles.
“Johnny, those two don’t want to get into that Caddy. They know somet
hing we don’t.”
“What am I going to do? Start shooting? Fuck them. Those whores would have left us with nothing.”
“I’m going to see who’s in that car.”
“Stay back, Deets. You going to be the hero? Whoever it is, doesn’t want to talk.”
From up the stream, from somewhere in the trees that clung to the sides of the mountain slopes, I heard that unearthly screech again. Bird or curandera or demon or saint, whatever, it sounded forever haunted. Johnny didn’t react to it, Miss Bikini and Andrea were still blubbering, reluctant to pull on the mystery car’s door handle, but Filomena stopped in her search for another good chunk to heave and riveted her attention at me.
Her eyes smoldered red as if her soul was afire. Her skin looked a mottled patchwork of stone and lava.
I turned my head slowly towards the Cadillac, knowing instinctively a similar creature sat within. Two red orbs behind the blackened window were brighter, larger, and more malevolent than those of the thing that hunched in the stream near me. Whatever sat in that car possessed a power capable of blistering me into ash.
Filomena hissed in a language that wasn’t Spanish or English, but I understood it.
“Your keys are there.”
I looked to where she pointed and saw the glitter of metal under two inches of swift water. As I gathered up Johnny’s key ring, Filomena shoved Andrea and Bikini into the Cadillac, but she no longer looked as if she was born in hell. Johnny said something to her in Spanish, and she spit at him. He jerked a thumb at whoever sat behind the smoked windows, indicating that the Cadillac could go first.
It didn’t move.
Johnny motioned to me. “Get in our car, quick. Not my favorite choice, but we’re going to try to outrun them and hope they don’t bump us over the damn cliffs.”
Magic (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 2) Page 3