by Hades
Then it became clear where I was, and what was happening to me. There was a man standing above a hole, shoveling dirt into it. I could see the grains covering the wood above me and it looked as though the dirt would strike my face, but it did not. My body was in a casket made of undecorated wood, and had been lowered into this hole, seemingly too deep for a common grave, about ten feet into the earth. I was watching from the side, yet also watching from the casket. It was as though I were standing, staring at the whole thing, halfway sunk into the ground as though the ground were made of glass, so I could see into the open grave.
There were other people, besides the man shoveling the dirt. They were watching and praying while a man, who looked the part of a minister, dedicated the grave. My emotions ran cold. I was dead! The fair Banshee had come for me. I tried to remember what had happened, going back to the alleyway (the last thing I could keep in mind). In my efforts I recalled the light, and then a sudden crash – something I had overlooked the first time. As I centered on this crash, the answers came. Not from my own memory, though I did remember it in part, but rather the explanation came from the people on top of the open grave.
Out of everyone’s head came a mist, of sort, as if they were all boiling pots with steam rising from the top. This steam, or mist, spread out with branching fingers, finding its way into my head, and told me what they thought, in the way a book might be read.
But it wasn’t with words; it was all at once. The cloud first weaved around the people, making a chill run through their spines, then when it came to me it came all of a sudden, penetrating and teaching.
All their thoughts, even all their lives, were rolled into seconds of instant explanation. I learned more about those people in the twinkling of an eye than I ever could, had I known them their entire lives. Most of them were thinking, at that moment, about how I died. (Indeed it was a shock that I was dead. The irony in it was that I gained my necrophobia after death.) And this is what I gathered from their thoughts: When it was discovered that I was missing, Blanca was the first to send out a search party. She made such a fuss about me that all the neighbors joined in the search. Even Noelia’s family became very involved. When they finally found me, it was a bad scene.
There was a small crowd gathered around the tragic spot and no one knew what had happened. There was a large crate, spilled all over the ground with fruit rolling everywhere. A man was lying unconscious, with blood dripping from his forehead, against an adjacent wall. A few feet further down the alley and under a few bricks, was my body: crushed like a spider and dripping lifeless.
The last people to have seen me and knew anything about what had happened were the bums in the alleyway. When someone finally got around to asking them, for no one else had a clue about what had happened, they said that I had walked intoxicated down the alley straight into the man on the bicycle. He had tried to miss me, but toppled over, spilling the fruit. I continued to walk, unaware of the near miss, then slipped on a mango. My arms waved as I tried to catch myself, but it was aimless. My tries only resulted in a heavier impact when I finally hit the wall. And there, I would have rested until my headache went away. Unfortunately my head chose a fresh wall that had not yet set. The bricks gave-way, falling in rhythm on my head and the mortar blade a worker had set atop that wall came down and traversed my throat.
My life spilt out and I was dead. That was the way it happened. I was now watching my own funeral. I watched in anticipation, looking upward from my grave. A lady leaned over and spoke to me, as if the dead could hear, and yet I could hear. It was Blanca. She was dressed in black and had a see-through veil covering her face. The rest of the people stood around her while she talked; some I knew, but others I’d never seen before. The part about it that was strange was that I didn’t recognize everyone all at once. It was only when I focused in on individuals that I found out who they were. Before it was just a combined pattern of information with no exclusive identity. Also, if I focused this way, I could distinguish more detailed information about each person’s emotions and feelings; this way I could sort out everything, and find out more about what was happening.
It became harder to understand everyone’s “mists” at once, so I started to look at each person in turn. Noelia was there as well, also in black, her eyes draped with a sadness that was as deep as mine. I looked at her for a moment, as she dropped a flower into the hole, and then moved on. I could not look into those eyes again.
Higinia and Jose-Luis, the boys, the stranger who had bid me to go with him to the mountain ritual, medicine men who had tried to help me, and others that I had met or seen on the island were all around Blanca and the open hole.
And there was another – a small man, less than five feet high. He had stepped into the circle surrounding my grave just moments earlier, so he had not even been a part of the mist of thoughts.
It was at that same moment when everyone’s thoughts had become hard to understand. Perhaps his arrival was connected in some way to my loss of power. I do not know. But my mind became a shroud from then on so that I couldn’t understand things as before.
At first I could not remember who this strange man was; but then I knew! It was the same witch-priest whom I had so unpleasantly encountered my first days on the island, whom so greatly I’d offended by blaspheming his idol-god while desecrating his worship shrine. There was no mistake, it was he, and he was there to hate me.
His thoughts sprang from his insides, black and putrid, heavy, creeping their way towards my brain. It was not like the others, whose mist had been white, but a black fume, a vapor, which was directly intended to suffocate me as I slept; almost as if he knew I were listening. His soot was a vapor that was intoxicating, but I didn’t stick my attention on this man very long, even though the weight of his thoughts held me at grip like the gravity that sucks in planets. I had to know what Noelia was thinking. I had to know because I could not leave this world without ever knowing if she could forgive me. So I pulled my attention away from him and towards her.
It was like opening a bottle of perfume. Her thoughts were precious. They were full of hopes and dreams that would eventually come true. These were thoughts that were maturing in the deepest part of her to one day spring forth and bring her joy once more. The other thoughts, the more immediate ones, were focused on me. She still loved me. The feelings for me had never left, but her heart was dyed with betrayal and the steam from her head was streaked black, as if someone had spilt a bottle of black ink all over the insides of a cotton pillow. These were the marks left from the bitter memories that would never wash away, never letting her forget what I’d made her go through. They would never go away, even if I were to come back from the grave; there was no way back to her heart, which was still broken.
With those thoughts she shed a tear and it splashed where my face would have been, if not for the coffin. She was so sad to see me dead. Her emotions swelled and the pain stained the mist lifting from her into me, making streaks of color on the white steam. Hers were not like the witch-priest, whom I glanced at for a second to compare. Hers were streaks of color, as if dye had been dropped into a running stream, all in different colors, yet telling me she loved me still. His was simply black.
Then I turned my attention to her mother, Higinia. She was sobbing but her language was as readable as all the others. She had almost forgiven me for what I had done to her daughter and to her whole family, but blame still resounded through her thoughts and it brought more of the guilt to me. “Why,” came her thoughts, “when she gave you so much? Why did you do it? And now you have to die so that she has to go through so much. She did not even get a time to heal from you. She would not have seen you again, but maybe she would have forgiven you sometime later. But you didn’t give her enough time for that. Time... You were selfish. How could you die now? She needed more time – we all did!”
Those were all the thoughts I allowed myself to listen to. If I thought I could have cried I would have let myself cry at
that moment; but still there was some forgiveness in her. From Higinia I moved on to the boys. The only thing they were thinking was how much they missed me. To them, I was still their friend. By their thoughts I discovered they had meant to visit me, but had been too busy doing boyish things to do so. They each felt a little guilty about it and it made me want to tell them that it was all right. And even if they had gone to look for me they wouldn’t have found me because I had become a street-bum. No one could have found me, except by accident – running into me somewhere unexpected, like in the streets or in the gutter. I wished I could tell them that, but there was no way. I tried to reach them, thinking if I could hear them then maybe there was some way for me to send a message. If I could concentrate enough, then there would be a way. But there wasn’t. I tried and soon gave up. They weren’t in the same sphere as I; they were caught up in a different world, not where I was, in a world without boundaries. They had ground to walk on and I did not.
Perhaps at first, this unbound world might seem ideal: a place not set by bounds and limits. But there are things that enclose much tighter than walls. They are the chains in the mind that tie and drag a soul into a captivity far more restraining than any wall could ever be.
It wasn’t until I realized this that I dared to look on the witch-man again. Something about him frightened me, so I tried to keep from having to look at him. Maybe it was because I’d committed an offense towards him that I felt that way. My guilt was always ready to condemn me for any crime, no matter the reason, and that left me vulnerable and afraid to even look directly at him. I wish I could have had the security of knowing that he could not see me, but even that was not there. I felt as though he was looking straight at me, as though his thoughts and his whole energy were directly targeted at me. Unlike like the others, whose steam rose and coincidentally fell on me, his was steered to me, and even had to be blocked to be ignored – but I chose now to listen.
Like a black fog that clung to the ground, the smoke that oozed from his head searched the hole where my body was laying. I could see its blackness descending into my coffin, mass upon mass as the dirt was shoveled higher. I saw it being sucked into the cracks and small apertures in my cheaply manufactured coffin, then into my brain. Then all I had to do was open up, for just a second, and in came the eager thoughts, to reach me in the form of vengeance.
“You... I have found you!” cried the voice, a frail voice as if the man were a larva hiding inside the skin of a man. “This is the just cause of your final existence!” he went on. “I know you can hear me now. You do not block me! Speak, and I will tell you of your end!”
It was frightening to think he wanted me to answer. If I could have felt chills, I would be a goose-bump, but there was no body to cast my spirit’s frost. His words felt too close, as though his mouth was an inch from my head, but I could see he was more than a dozen feet away. If ever I was scared of someone, this man made me fear as though he were the devil himself, and now he was speaking to me in conversation. Could it be that he wanted me to answer him? Did he have the ability to hear my thoughts as well? I did not dare to think so, for then he would be more than just a man. His thoughts continued, almost unstoppable now, penetrating into my mind and continuing the words of judgment.
“You desecrated Meni and now you see the consequence! I consign you to your utter doom. I place you to another curse, then you suffered in life, now you will suffer in death! Now speak, answer me, and I will tell you of your fate! Speak! Who can stop your thoughts from coming from your mind? I bid you speak. I know you listen to my voice so speak!”
His thoughts were full of hatred. I could not bear that he was speaking to me even beyond the grave. But to have conversation would have been worse. I could not bear to have it so, so I chose not to answer. It would have been wonderful had I been able to communicate with the boys, Higinia, or even Noelia, and tell them I was sorry and that they should go on and not blame themselves.
Even to communicate the message through someone else would have been great! But not through him! He was the last person I wanted in my mind, yet his thoughts came pouncing in like a headache strong and beating. His power was real, not like any of those other charlatans (the curanderos) that took the money from the sadly sick and made them witless cures. I felt the depth of his dominion. Where evil was once a myth to me, now it was a certainty and I knew the extent of it. This man, the one I had pillaged, could even speak to the dead!
This man held such a power. Possibly all the voodoo-doctors on the island did. His voice, black as it was, kept on coming, speaking to me from his side of the veil as he tried so strenuously to inflict some kind of damage on me. But something prevented him, I could feel it. There was something that did not allow for him to finish his work, as if I had to be the one to let him in. That was why he insisted on some sort of answer from me. Perhaps, I was the link and there could only be a curse if I gave an answer.
His persistence continued even more: “Speak, speak,” came the louder thoughts, the dark fog dripping sentences into my open grave. “Speak, I call you: face me, man,” and in each word resonated a vibrating tone. There was something nightmarish and yet familiar about the way his words fell into phrases. They sounded and felt natural as if I had know them before, a staring face of familiarity glaring into me with knives of penetration, but I could not place it. I felt that same impression about his outer force, watching and indulging in my pain. I had felt those eyes before, but it did not come to me still.
“I will give you the fate you have asked for. You have sought for it,” he continued, “You have every day asked what it would bring; now I give it to you. All the answers! Everything you’ve longed for. Your fate! Don’t you remember the thing you so longed for? You cannot escape the fate I’ve written for you. Now speak! I will answer you. Speak to me! Answer, and I will tell you, a curse for your beyond! Then you can finally rest, falling into the chaos you’ve created, into your open hole. Your destiny is written now. Do you not see? Look at her, you want her so much. Don’t you want to know if she will ever be with you again? I can tell you if you speak. You see her now and she cries, splashing upon the place where you are lost, looking at death so full of emptiness, while your immortal soul sits in that rift. Her heart lets go of you and heaven will not prevent it. But I can. I can let you escape, if you answer me now. Speak you fool!”
The words were like a whirlwind, spinning sentences that I had heard before, and then it came to me – it was he! The realization came all at once, and took me without guard. Now all I wanted was to turn away from him, to run, but I could not. My mind twisted yet his words of darkness never ceased. They poured over my decomposing corpse like black molasses.
“You! You are the one that has written all those poems!” Those thoughts raced out like a swarm of angry bees. My mind was so intent on this new enlightenment that by mistake my thoughts took direction. He must have heard them, clear as any voice, because he turned and looked at me. Not into my grave where my body was lying, but directly towards me, where my essence stood afar, as I watched the whole of it. Although I should have stopped right then, my thoughts continued on, even though I tried cutting the line. “You!” my inner voice went on, “the author, watching and laughing at me while I read. It was you all along, hiding somewhere every time.”
His eyes stood still on me and his grin became the real reflection of ill sentiment. My mind had stopped our conversation, but fearfully too late. The blackness had begun to surround me, even at that moment, as his thoughts became a distant hollow and turned to laughter. Now faint, in the far reach of distance, a bellowing holler was heard. “Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.”
Again I was in my casket. Somehow his voice had sucked me in. The weight of my body was overpowering and held me cloistered in the coffin. Why was I there, no longer able to move about?
Maybe it was just another stage like all the rest, I thought, and I would soon go to another place. But something foreshadowing my captivity made it feel a
s though my guess was gravely wrong. I could hear the voices from above. They came in funneled streams, not like before with uninterrupted fluidity, but muffled through the dirt and wood above. I was almost hearing with my ears and not the other way any more; so the sounds were faint, almost incomprehensible, and that made it hard to distinguish anything through the noise of the ever-piling dirt on top my head.
The only thing that came through was the voice of Blanca, speaking from above. I could hardly understand her at first, then it began: the shrew of her vexation. “You shou have listened, inste yous may this way for yous.” Then she spoke in third person form to me, or to God or her Gauchito: “Hir his stand, dis unbeliever, not even to dies in his own lands.” An aborigine prayer followed this, probably to El Gauchito. I couldn’t understand any of it, though I recognized the immaculate Guarani she used when praying to this make-be-saint; but none of the actual words came as low as the grave. Then she said “amen” and I could understand her again.
Why I could not understand her while she prayed is a mystery. Perhaps I was exempt from prayer, from any prayer though it might be to an idol. Thus the sounds of any aiding words never sunk as far into my resting place. All that I had was the hate from this small man, and I still felt it, wrapping around me like the blankets used to wrap a dead poor-fellow.
“This pray maybe reach you, maybe no. I dons know,” said Blanca. “If yous too far for help, I hop no. I hop yur rest well, and yous release to go to das sky, and no stay hir in dis eart forever. May yur body rest . . .” She stopped for a second; I could tell she could not hold her composure any longer. With tears in her words she started, and she sounded angry, but I think she was angrier that I was not going to the good place; and thus she began again.