Children of Chaos

by Greg F. Gifune

  I pulled off my shirt, tossed it aside and sparked a butt. I was sweating like a pig and dying for a drink, so I popped the cap on my whiskey and took a long pull. After checking to make sure my door was locked, I went to the window, opened it and watched the street, bottle in one hand, cigarette in the other.

  If the booze and tobacco didn’t kill me, this trip surely would.

  Welcome to Tijuana, gringo. Enjoy your stay.

  Party Boy must’ve been following me, I thought. Bosco probably had him tail me just to make sure nothing happened to me or the upcoming payday I represented. I wondered what was in store for Brunner. Despite what he’d tried to pull, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. For all I knew he was in an alley somewhere getting the beating of his life.

  Then again, maybe it served him right. I could’ve lost an ear for a few thousand bucks.

  Eventually I came all the way down from the rush and felt myself relax.

  Much as I tried I couldn’t get Jamie out of my head. I’d left him alone with his track marks and tears, certain I’d never see him again. He’d never make it out of Tijuana alive. He’d die here, so far from home, with his pain and regret and guilt, diseased and OD’d in the arms of some sad hooker dolled up to look like a teenage girl, all the while waiting for someone—anyone—to save him. When we were just carefree boys even our vivid imaginations couldn’t have conceived fates such as these. It seemed unfair how naively oblivious youth often turned out to be, though I suppose a great many people considered that a blessing. Either way, we were all on a funhouse ride from day-one. None of us knew what was coming. We never did, never would. Against the rules, I guess. But I’d never much cared for rules.

  And now, with Lucifer rising, all bets were off.

  Despite the late hour the street was still bustling with life, but nobody seemed to notice me sitting up in my window watching the night go by.

  I looked out over the rooftops to the outskirts of the city and the canopy of stars stretching far as the eye could see.

  Tell me your nightmares.

  Somewhere on the other side of that dark night, out there in the desert, Martin waited, biding his time. Feeling how close I was. Knowing I was coming.

  For him.

  TWELVE

  The following morning Rudy Bosco arrived right on time, pulling up in front of the hotel in a dated Land Rover covered in layers of baked-on dirt. The body was scarred with various nicks, scrapes and dents from previous off-road ventures, but was otherwise in good shape structurally and seemed to run well. Rudy and Party Boy emerged from the vehicle dressed exactly as they’d been the night before. A third man I hadn’t seen previously accompanied them. Of average height, he was lean and well-muscled, with a short but spiked shock of bleached-blond hair and a matching goatee. He looked to be in his early thirties and wore khaki shorts, sneakers, a New Orleans Saints T-shirt with the sleeves cut away and a desert camouflage Boonie hat, the chinstrap loose and dangling well below his throat.

  “This is Quid,” Rudy told me. “He’s part of my team.”

  I greeted him with a nod. Quid returned the gesture, eyes hidden behind mirrored sunglasses. “Did the price just go up again?”

  “It’s covered. Quid’s an employee not a partner. We just don’t want to get caught shorthanded out there, trust me. Never know in the Corridor.”

  Without a word, Party Boy took my bag and tossed it into the back of the Rover.

  “Heard you had some trouble last night,” Rudy said, motioning to my ear. “Quite the booboo you got there, boss.”

  The Band-Aids had come off during the night, but I’d inspected the wound earlier and there was little chance it would open again unless I disturbed it. “Could’ve been a lot worse.”

  Bosco’s face hinted at a smile but was hard to read as he too wore sunglasses, his dark and tight against his face. “A character like Hardy Brunner, he’s a hustler and con from way back. He can get you anything in this town, including dead. An old-school guy like Brunner sees the kind of money you were throwing around and figures he’s got an easy mark for the taking. It’s nothing personal. It’s just the way a guy like that operates, he’d slit his own mother’s throat for fifteen bucks and a bottle of muscatel. I had the Party Boy keep an eye on you to make sure you didn’t get in over your head.”

  “And how is Mr. Brunner this morning? Or don’t I want to know?”

  “He’ll live…probably.”

  I left it at that. The sun was already high in the sky, and the heat, along with my hangover and the sticky sweat coating my skin, was getting worse. I couldn’t get off the street fast enough.

  Five minutes later we were at a bank a few blocks from the hotel. I picked up the cash Janine wired, transferred it to Bosco, and we then drove to another bank across town where he stashed most of the money in a safety deposit box. With that transaction complete, we piled back into the Land Rover and hit the road. Quid drove, Bosco sat in the front passenger seat and Party Boy and I sat in back. The interior of the Land Rover was well-maintained and surprisingly clean, and in the far back were our bags, supplies and one large, conspicuous black canvas bag zippered shut. Thankfully the vehicle had air-conditioning, which quickly offered a respite from the suffocating early afternoon heat. The Best of the Doors played from the iPod mounted on the dash, and outside, I watched the city dwindle then vanish as it rolled past the tinted windows. We found our way to the outskirts, which consisted of scattered and occasional buildings in various degrees of disrepair, and then the pavement began to give way as well. Crumbling blacktop gradually became dirt road surrounded by stretches of uneven and barren terrain sprinkled with sagebrush and juniper.

  After all the setup and talk it was finally happening, I was on my way to Martin and only God knew what else. Just me and three strangers, men I had no choice but to trust in an unforgiving land I knew nothing about.

  We roared along the dirt road, covering miles and making good time. Every once in awhile we’d pass through a small village, most of them made up of low mud or cinderblock buildings and rundown trailers, with an occasional store or archaic gas station thrown in for good measure. But the farther we went the rougher the road became, and the villages were fewer and farther between. Eventually they stopped popping up altogether, leaving only desolate road, dust and relentless sun.

  “Is this the Corridor?” I asked.

  Quid laughed quietly.

  “Still a little ways away, boss,” Rudy answered.

  I glanced at my watch. We’d been traveling quite awhile since the last outpost of a town and hadn’t seen any signs of civilization since.

  Ray Manzarek’s driving keyboards and Jim Morrison’s haunting voice crooned through the speakers, tempting us to break on through to the other side. Quid cranked it louder and bobbed his head in time to the music. Rudy Bosco snapped his fingers, his lips silently mouthing the lyrics, and in the seat next to me, pokerfaced as ever, Party Boy began dancing from the waist up, his arms moving in swaying patterns through the air like charmed snakes.

  The Land Rover rolled on.

  I didn’t say a fucking word.

  * * *

  Some time later Quid pulled over to the side of the road and turned onto a narrow and bumpy path. I sat up and saw a low, long building in the distance, a large and worn wooden cross on its flat roof.

  “Pit stop,” Rudy announced.

  The building was old and decayed and sat in the center of a large dirt clearing. Perhaps fifty small children in inexpensive but clean clothes—all of them under ten—ran about in the dirt, playing and laughing while two nuns in full black habits who must’ve been sweltering, watched over them.

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  “Santa Lucia. Saint Lucy’s, an orphanage and school run by the church. This is the last place you’re gonna see for awhile with toilets—even if they’re mostly outhouses—so I suggest if you got any deuces that need dropping, now’s the time. I got some business with the Mothe
r Superior I have to take care of then we’ll get back on the road.” Rudy scratched at his stubble-covered chin. “The Corridor’s close. We’ll be on it before nightfall.”

  I stepped out of the Rover and into the heat. It was like walking into a wall. I stretched my legs and lit a cigarette. Rudy headed for the front door of the orphanage, stopping only briefly to speak with the nuns and to pat a few kids on the head. Party Boy made a beeline for a row of outhouses just to the left of a small garage next to the main building, and Quid sidled up next to me and lit a pencil-thin cigar. We watched the children play awhile, neither of us speaking. They reminded me of when Gillian was that age, and how she’d run and play with such abandon and shameless delight.

  “He stops every time we’re anywhere near here,” Quid told me, his voice laced with a subtle trace of Cajun. “This place is more or less forgotten by the church, the country—everybody. They just barely get by. Rudy gives them money whenever he can. But don’t tell him I told you. It’ll ruin his image.”

  “Why is it way out here?”

  “It’s like sweeping them under the rug. Out here nobody sees them. Out of sight out of mind.”

  “The orphans?”

  He nodded.

  “But why?”

  “Take a closer look.”

  I moved across the lot, closer to the children.

  And then I realized what he meant.

  They were all blind. The way they’d been running and playing I’d had no idea, but the closer I got to them the clearer their faces and eyes became. Not one of them could see.

  “Saint Lucy, Patron Saint of the Blind.” Quid puffed his cigar. “Wherever there’s poverty there’s lots of blindness, most of it in kids. Lots of them get dumped here.”

  The nuns nodded at me. One of them, the younger of the two, offered a kind smile. I smiled back, though I’m sure in that moment I looked as cheerless as I felt.

  Quid wandered back to the Land Rover as I strode through the mass of children. One of the nuns said something in Spanish which I assumed alerted the children of my presence. Several paid no attention, but others came toward me in a wave, reaching for me. I felt their little hands take hold of my legs, tugging at me as their laughter filled the air. My heart broke for them, yet despite their hardship, they seemed genuinely happy. Were they simply oblivious, unaware of their existence as they had nothing to compare it to, or did they possess something the rest of us didn’t, an ability to find the joy in their lives through all the pain, poverty and suffering? I touched the faces of several children, forced myself to smile and offered some awkward hellos. But the deeper into their fold I went, the more comfortable I became. The boundless innocence and enthusiasm engulfed me like a blanket, drawing me closer, away from the anger and sorrow at finding a bevy of children in such a state and instead toward something far more profound, something pure and inconceivably powerful. Though I couldn’t identify it, I could feel something else there with us, beneath the blistering sun and amidst these children and doting nuns clad in heavy garments. Something as real as the evil I’d felt breathing down my neck for most of my life. And it asked nothing of me.

  It was unconditional.

  I wondered if this was what Jamie had felt, this palpable weight of God pulling him toward something beyond that which we can see and understand. Before the darkness had taken him, was this what he experienced that made him so sure he’d been placed on this earth to serve a higher purpose?

  And when it died, was it a gruesome death? Did he still cling to surviving ribbons of it, shredded like slashed flesh? Was there still some glimmer no amount of heroin, young girls, nightmares and guilt could ever hope to extinguish? Or was it all one more cunning lie, another disease sent to drag us down into depravation and hopelessness, a rigged game he and the rest of us were destined to lose from the very start?

  I kept moving until I reached the entrance to the orphanage. The nuns called the children away and they ran off, leaving me alone on the doorstep. I walked into a small and dark foyer, allowing the shade to cool me as I leaned against the wall and focused on a painting in an old ornate frame on the far, shadow-laced wall. A woman—Saint Lucy—a doe-eyed young girl with brown hair and fair skin, clad in a translucent gold dress and a pale red sash draped about her shoulders and curled around her slender arms. In one hand she held a small sword, and in the other, a chalice-like dish with a pair of human eyes set atop it. Beneath the painting, a holy water font—a small silver bowl with a flat panel above it in the shape of a cross—had been attached to the wall. I moved closer. To my left was a small chapel, the doors open and the wooden pews and altar visible. To the right was a dark windowless hallway leading to the depths of the orphanage. Though I could still hear traces of the children playing outside, it was quiet and still here, as if it were important to listen in this place, to hear those things it wanted to reveal but could only manage in utmost silence.

  The walls were cool and smooth and felt good against my flushed skin. I suddenly felt lightheaded and could feel my heart racing, so I wiped the sweat from my face and neck with the back of my hand and slid along the wall until I’d reached the entrance to the chapel. I fell against the doorway, my eyes scanning the empty old pews and the altar at the rear of the room. An enormous crucifix hung on the wall behind it, and there was a faint smell of burned candle wax in the otherwise stagnant air.

  Pain suddenly fired across my temples, thunder exploded overhead and the deafening rush of torrential rain hammered my ears. The chapel was doused in unnatural, impassable darkness, save for intermittent flashes of lightning.

  Something moved—was moving—falling from the rafters.

  I staggered into the chapel, watching through the lightning bursts as a large humanoid creature landed atop the altar with a loud thud and crouched there defiantly. Its dead skin was deeply scarred, pale and bloodless, and its face hideously disfigured, the features extended, elongated and deformed. As it fell back on its haunches, lightning flashed again, and it threw back its bald head and opened its mouth to reveal pointed teeth. Its throat was a bloody gash, its eyes solid black orbs, and when it extended its arms I saw that the hands were open and the fingers were long, curved and tapered like talons. An inhuman screech escaped it, tearing through the chapel and boring into my skull.

  I dream of fire and the beautiful screams…

  From the altar beneath it, blood, running in rivers onto the floor, splashing and spattering and contrasting sharply with the blinking blue light.

  I could feel him inside me…in my head…moving in my blood.

  Just as my head felt as if it were being ripped open from the inside, the sounds and visions left me. All that remained was the strange sensation that someone with cold flesh had taken hold of my hands. I blinked rapidly until my vision returned to normal and came back into focus. The empty hallway blurred and blended with a figure in the foreground.

  A face…

  Impossibly old and wrinkled, a woman—a nun—her milky gray eyes streaked with cataracts, her mouth open, lips chapped, hands gnarled with arthritis and clutching mine stood before me. A wisp of gray hair poked out from one side of her black habit, and her body was frail and hunched.

  Startled, I tried to step back and away from her, but her grip was surprising for such an old woman. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I—”

  “Salvador,” she said abruptly, her voice deep and raspy. “Le he visto en mis sueños, cuando ruego. Usted es un salvador.”

  I nodded and tried to take my hands away, but she held tight.

  Rudy appeared at the end of the hallway with a middle-aged woman in a matching black habit and long dress I assumed was the Mother Superior. They hurried over to us and the woman gently took the nun by the shoulders and attempted to pull her away from me.

  “I’m so sorry,” the Mother Superior said with a thick accent. “Sister Theresa is very old. She doesn’t see well and suffers from dementia. Forgive her, she means no harm.”

  “
It’s all right,” I assured her. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing important, she rambles on at times.”

  “Please, I—tell me what she said.”

  The Mother Superior looked at Rudy. He nodded. “She said she’s seen you in her dreams when she prays. She says you’re a savior. She means well, I’m sorry if she frightened you.”

  “Limpíelo con sangre, él puede ser limpiado solamente en sangre,” Sister Theresa said; hands against her chest and clasped in prayer now. “Excepto él, excepto nosotros.”

  I could tell by Rudy’s reaction it wasn’t good. “We have to go,” he said, placing a hand on the Mother Superior’s shoulder. “I’ll be back when I can.”

  “You’re sure you and your friends wouldn’t like to stay for lunch?”

  “Thank you, but we can’t.”

  “God bless you, Rudolfo.” She guided the old woman toward the chapel. “The children are most fortunate to have such a kind and generous friend.”

  Bosco shrugged, the cool, tough guy persona replaced with one more closely resembling a self-conscious teenager. “Pray for us, Mother Superior.”

  “You’re always in our prayers. May God have mercy on you.”

  Grabbing hold of my arm, Rudy none-too-gently escorted me back out into the sun and heat. “What the hell did she say?” I asked.

  “She’s a million years old, you heard what the Mother Superior said, she’s nuts. You weren’t even supposed to be in there in the first place. Now let’s go, we’re burning daylight.”