by Mal Peet
One of the hooded men yelled an obscenity; the other, muttering, “Jesus, Jesus,” groped in his satchel and pulled out a gun, a heavy executioner’s pistol with a stubby barrel. He inched sideways, peering into the shadows beyond the shrine, trying to remember where exactly he’d ripped the television lead from the wall.
The pai straightened up, his mouth gaping below his mask. Ricardo didn’t move; he remained on his knees, his head close to the floor. Maybe he thought that what he was hearing was part of the process.
The screen resolved itself into two unsteady vertical bands, red on the left, black on the right. The soundtrack faded, then returned as a series of short fuzzy outbursts of speech. They sounded to Faustino like the rantings of a drunken madman roaming the streets at night, proclaiming his rage in a language of his own devising. Ricardo now lifted his head. He looked puzzled, like a dog dimly recognizing the voice of a previous owner.
Two pale shapes appeared on the screen, one in the red half, one in the black. In a wrenching moment of focus they became eyes. In huge close-up. Pupils that contained points of fire. Corneas mapped with worm-like threads of blood.
Faustino’s breath was locked in his chest.
Prima’s grip on his hand was fierce.
The eyes receded, and a complete face filled the screen. The red and the black were not paint, nor were they a mask. They were flesh; muscles moved beneath the skin as the broken, guttural voice rattled the television’s speakers. The head and the mouth moved jerkily, out of sync with the sound, like a badly edited film. The mouth was full of yellowish, triangular pointed teeth. The words that came from it were incomprehensible to Faustino but not, it seemed, to the pai. He crept backwards away from the television, trying to shrink himself. Behind him, the hooded figures had moved closer together. The one with the gun was pointing it aimlessly from place to place. The other had picked up the axe club; he clutched it tightly with both hands, staring at the television.
The eyes in the monstrous face moved slowly from side to side, as if the screen were a window and they were looking through it, seeking some guilty thing that was trying to conceal itself. A second voice now rumbled from the speakers, breaking into and overlapping the first. The head turned, revealing a second face where the back of the skull should have been. Both mouths were speaking. The volume rose to an almost unbearable level, distorting badly, but Faustino could make out scraps of words and phrases spoken in his own language.
“Who calls Maco? Can’t stand this damn place … stinks of tomcat … lies… All this way… Who is this? …cleto? Where? Not here… Tear … soul and heart out…”
The masked pai was on his knees. He had removed his hat and covered his face with it. His body rocked back and forth in an ecstasy of terror. Ricardo had risen to his feet and was facing the screen. He held his arms out from his sides, his hands open: a shy, uncertain gesture of greeting.
As though some invisible hand had adjusted the volume, the roaring babble died away, fading into a single soft exclamation: “Aaah.” Maco turned; his first face filled the screen again. Then he closed his eyes and the image froze.
The ensuing silence had weight and density, like water. All that disturbed it was the pai’s muffled whimpering. Then the candles and the overhead light went out.
Faustino had not heard thunder; perhaps it had been drowned out by the continuous sound blast from the television set. So the lightning was unheralded, and it must have struck the earth just outside. In the nanosecond before his eyes recoiled, Faustino glimpsed the open ground and trees outside the doors. The flash had drained them of colour; they were shapes scratched onto silver foil. Brutal beams of floodlight strobed the shrine, then withdrew. In the greenish darkness someone cried out. Even before the sound had died, a second bomb of light silently exploded. The annihilating glare that filled the building robbed everything in it of solidity. The timbers of the shrine were as thin and delicate as burnt matches; the four paralysed human figures were frail columns of ash inside a furnace.
Before he went blind, Faustino saw or hallucinated a group of figures in the doorway: a huddle of black-cowled monks gathered around a pale form, a wraith. Its after-image, a reddish-purple negative, burned on his retina. He was still trying to blink it away when he heard Prima’s whisper.
“Now he come.”
Her nails were digging into Faustino’s palms. He was trembling and his mouth was dry.
Now the only light was the dull red glow from the television screen. Maco’s grotesque face was still placid, his eyes still closed. The hooded men were jabbering.
“Man, man.”
“The hell with this, man.”
“See anything?”
“Can’t see any damn thing.”
“Oh shit, man. I’m out of here, me…”
The candles relit themselves.
It seemed to Faustino that they were considerably brighter than before. Each flame was an unwavering spearhead radiating spokes of light. They illuminated the figure standing silent and motionless halfway between the salt and blood barrier and the framework of the shrine.
It was Bakula, but transformed. Like the masked pai, he was dressed in white. The shirt had a large floppy collar and wide, loose sleeves buttoned at the wrist. The trousers were short, the legs fastened with cords just below the knee. He was barefoot. A line of black ran down his left cheek, a line of red down the right. He resembled, Faustino thought, a character from some piratical adventure.
The hooded men saw him no more than a heartbeat later. The one with the club yelped like a dog; the other swore and raised his gun, stepping sideways to get a clear shot at Bakula between the timbers of the shrine. But the gunshot that broke the air apart came from somewhere else. A lumpy spurt of blood erupted from the gunman’s back, ripping open the letter T in BRUJITO. The impact of the bullet turned him slightly and threw him backwards against the wall. He slid down it, leaving a wide red streak on the powdery white paint. His right knee lifted, not much, then the leg straightened and was still.
His companion had already dropped the club and lifted his hands high in the air; he swivelled from side to side in urgent confusion, unable to tell from where the shot had come.
“No, man. Don’ shoot me, man. I ain’t got a gun. Jesus! Don’ shoot!”
A shadow moved behind the remains of the stainedglass window and Lucas came into the light, clasping his gun in both hands out in front of him. On the other side of the room another shape hulked beyond the candles. Mateo. Or Juan.
“Okay,” Lucas said. “Now you do everythin I tell you, an’ do it real slow, all right?” He spoke in a friendly and reasonable way, like a patient man giving instructions to a halfwit. “Les’ see who you are. Take that damn fool hood off. Slow, remember?”
He was young, no more than twenty, with his hair shaved back to a narrow strip at the top of his head. Medium-dark skin slick with sweat. Mouth open, trying to draw breath in deep enough to smother his panic.
“Mmm … you less scary now,” Lucas observed, tipping his head slightly to one side. “Not that you was that scary before. Now, you toss that bag thing over near to me.”
The man’s satchel landed, with a soft flump, between two candles. Lucas investigated it with the sole of his foot before kicking it away.
“Lissen, man, I wasn’—”
“Hush up,” Lucas said. “We got no time for lissenin, not to you. The man waitin. Now, you lie down on your belly right where you are an’ clap your hands top a your head. Good. That’s right. You stay like that an’ who knows you might live through the night. You clear ’bout that?”
Bakula walked through the shrine towards Ricardo. On the television screen Maco opened his eyes and watched him pass. There was nothing slack or submissive about the boy’s posture now. It was almost comical, the way he held himself: stiff and expectant, like a military cadet awaiting inspection. The two stood face to face for a moment, then Ricardo went down on one knee.
“Pai,” he said,
very quietly.
Bakula laid his right hand on Ricardo’s head, held it there briefly. Then he murmured something and the boy arose. Bakula put a hand on either side of Ricardo’s face and spoke again. Ricardo nodded; his body relaxed.
Bakula moved past him and approached the man in the white mask.
Fear had dehumanized the false priest. Kneeling, hugging himself, teeth bared, moaning, with half a face, he looked like a caricature from a church fresco painted to remind the sinful of the horrors of hell. A dead man wrenched from the grave on Judgement Day.
“I know who you are,” Bakula said. It was not Bakula’s voice. “You are a liar, a twisted mirror, a thief, an impostor. You wormed your way into this boy’s trust in order to betray him. Worst of all, you have fouled my house and wiped your arse with my name.”
The man’s head twisted from side to side as if it were trying to untether itself from its neck.
“Yes, I know who you are. Your mask hides nothing. Do you know who I am?”
“Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Oh Jesus and Mary.” They were sobs, rather than words.
“And did you think, fool, that I would allow this? This abuse, in this place?”
“Please. My wife … my wife is sick. My son… It was the money. I needed—”
“Money?” The voice was full of a cold and ancient rage. “I was stolen. I was bought and sold. And you dare to speak to me of money, to offer that as an excuse?”
“I am sorry, pai. I didn’t know… I didn’t believe… For pity’s sake, forgive me. Please forgive me.”
“I cannot,” Bakula said, quite calm again. “I don’t have the right. Forgiveness is beyond me. And there is too much to forgive, and not enough time. I have been sent to cleanse.”
He reached into his pocket, took out a white cord knotted halfway along its length, and looped the ends around his fingers. The masked man crawled backwards, gibbering, begging, until he collided with the wall; then he scrambled to his feet and lurched away sideways, out of Faustino’s line of sight. Bakula followed him, unhurried, implacable. There was a frenzied tugging at the vestry door, the bolt rattling. Faustino’s heart stumbled; then, a moment later, he could not suppress a cry of alarm because the man’s face had appeared at the window. The mouth was a wet red hole studded with stained teeth. The yellowish eyes rolled wildly behind the mask, hopelessly seeking hope within the darkness beyond the glass. His hands appeared, and it seemed that he might try to smash his way through.
Faustino recoiled, staggering into Prima. He felt both her hands grip his arm, perhaps to steady him, perhaps to save herself from falling. Faustino could not tear his gaze away. He saw Bakula’s face, expressionless, distant-eyed, appear behind the false pai’s; he saw the white cord flick over the man’s head, the knot lodge beneath the bulge in the throat and sink in; saw the fingers’ fumbling dance along the garrotte. He heard the dry gargle, and then the face sank from view. Bakula’s lowered head and straining shoulders followed it down.
A moment’s silence, then feet drumming madly against the wall, then nothing.
“Oh dear God,” Faustino said hoarsely. His legs were about to fail him. He turned away from the window, groping for support. His knees struck something; it hurt. A chair. He clutched it. He was breathing too fast but could do nothing about it. The faint beams of candlelight entering from the window illuminated grimacing idols and sorrowing saints.
“Prima? Prima, unlock the door, please. I must get out.”
The girl did not reply, and for a panicky moment Faustino imagined that she had somehow slipped away, abandoned him. Imprisoned him because his own death was to be part of this terrible thing. But no; he heard her move, saw the silhouette of her head block out half of the window.
“Prima, for Chrissake let me out. I think I’m going to be sick.”
“No you ain’t. Be of good heart, Señor Paul. It almost over now.”
THE MAN WHOM Lucas had shot, the man slumped clownishly against the wall, was called Benno and he knew he was going to die. He’d been in the business for a good while and he knew the signs. He’d gone and gotten himself killed, just like he’d always known he would, always been told he would. He’d stayed still and quiet dealing with the pain for what felt like a year now, thinking that maybe he might come through and get fixed up; but no, it wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t that kind of a situation.
Too cold now, anyway. The warmth had all run out of him and couldn’t be got back. He was lying in a pool of it. And the word for the cold that was filling him up was disappointment. Disappointment so deep it could never have been imagined.
He opened his eyes. It was such a huge thing to do that he was surprised nobody heard it happen and shot him again. One eye had gone blind. No, it was the hood thing slid over it. Shit. Thinking was so slow it was like laying bricks. The eye he could see with was on the same side as the hand that held the gun. There it was, down at the end of his arm. Beyond that, there was all this crazy criss-cross of light, like car headlights in the rain.
Car headlights in the rain was beautiful. He nearly remembered something, but then it went.
In among the dazzle there was the guy in the white. Not the old guy they’d brought with them. He’d gone. No, the other sonofabitch in fancy dress who’d come from nowhere and got him killed.
Sound came on now. Chanting. The guy in white. Chanting at the football kid. Who was, come to think of it, why he’d ended up here dying in the first place.
It was going to be the biggest thing ever just to lift the gun out of the puddle. Come on, hand. Come on.
The hand wasn’t listening. Like it didn’t belong to him any more.
He wanted to give up. Besides, there was a kind of pulp in the middle of his body that wanted to come out of his mouth, and he needed to deal with that.
Then, hey, look, the hand lifted. It was wearing a red sticky glove he’d never seen before and it had the gun in it. It all lined up: arm, hand, gun, cross hairs of light, the back of the man in white.
Pull the damn trigger. Pull, damn you to hell.
Something greater than physical tiredness had possessed Faustino. There was a limit to the number of brutal and irrational things a civilized man could put up with, and he’d gone beyond it. His world had shrunk to this nasty dark space. It wasn’t just a nightmare any more; it was an outrage. It had numbed him. He sat for a while on the chair, slumped, his forearms on his knees, his head hanging. He thought about lighting his last cigarette, as a small act of defiance, then decided he couldn’t be bothered.
The only sound from the shrine was Bakula’s chanting, rising and falling, pausing, rising and falling. Faustino ached, almost prayed, for it to stop. Wearily he got up and went to the window. When he’d last looked, Brujito had been on the floor at Bakula’s feet, twisting about and moaning gibberish in a horrible way; now he’d calmed down and got onto his knees. He looked happily drunk, swaying slightly from side to side and sort of hiccuping. Maybe this whole lunatic business really was coming to an end.
Then everything went mad again.
Someone – Mateo? Yes, Mateo – yelled, “Lucas!” Lucas began to turn away from the shrine, lifting his hand with the gun in it. A loud bang came from somewhere down to Faustino’s right, close to the vestry wall. Then both Lucas and Mateo were firing in that direction, four shots, maybe five. They came all in one deafening stammer.
Prima screamed something and groped her way along to the door, yanked at the bolt, dragged the door open; then she was out of the room and walking through the candlelight towards Bakula and Brujito. It seemed that they had done something to make her angry, because she was shaking her hands beside her face and saying, “No, no.”
For some reason that had nothing to do with making a conscious decision, Faustino also went to the door. There was a short drop on the other side which he failed to take account of. He tottered forward, stumbled over the body of the false priest, and fell. The hand he put down to save himself slid through the line of con
gealed blood and came to rest on the salt. Frightened and embarrassed, he got to his feet, ineffectually wiping his hand on the front of the slithery black jacket. A few feet away, the hoodless guy was curled up on the ground with his arms wrapped around his head. He was making small noises like a kicked dog. On the far side of him, Mateo and Lucas were standing over the other man, who was too awful to look at. The air was full of the bad-egg smell of shooting.
Over in the shrine itself, both Bakula and Ricardo were kneeling, awkwardly embracing like two inexperienced lovers. Bakula was resting his head on Ricardo’s left shoulder. Neither of them knew what to do with their hands. Bakula’s were tucked awkwardly in front of him. Ricardo’s made tentative attempts to settle on Bakula’s back but couldn’t, perhaps because of the dark stain that was slowly spreading on the white shirt. Juan stood in the background, bracing himself against one of the shrine’s uprights. The arm with the gun at the end of it hung by his side. He was looking down at the floor, desolate.
The gunfire might have made Faustino temporarily deaf, because only now did he become aware of the angry persistent hiss coming from the television set. The screen had dissolved into seething black and red pixels around two flickering white discs.
“Edson? Pai?” It was Prima’s voice.
Bakula must have heard her, because a second or two later his head lifted and his body moved slowly back, away from Ricardo’s. He raised his hands and stared at them, apparently fascinated by their redness.
Lucas said, “Oh, man,” and then he and Mateo put their guns away and went over; and because he didn’t know what else to do Faustino followed them, three big dark moths heading for the light.
Prima was kneeling beside Edson and her brother now. “Pai? Please. Please. Is it done? Is Rico okay?”
Bakula did not speak. He seemed to be holding his breath. Ricardo was staring at him, drop-lipped and wide-eyed. Faustino had seen that expression on the boy’s face before, on a video. It was, in a word, stupid. There was a good deal of blood on the front of his shirt.