As soon as I opened my mouth, I was at a loss for words.
I was suddenly more afraid to be right in my guess, than to be wrong and be destroyed. I struggled against my fear. I forced my lips to form the words, ‘You are . . . you are. . . .’
I felt a tug at my pants leg and looked down at Carolina staring up at me. ‘Don’t guess, Verge,’ she pleaded in a faint voice. ‘We’ve got one more day to make sure.’
‘Whatever I say, right or wrong, Carolina,’ I responded, ‘you’ll be safe.’
‘I don’t want to be safe, Verge. I just want . . . to be with you.’
I looked at the brooding creature. Its ribs expanded and contracted like a steel accordion. Foam spilled from its lips. I said to it, ‘Be gone with you, Satan’s servant. I shall not guess tonight.’
‘Cheater!’ it screamed. Then it bucked and brayed, churning the muddy ground beneath its burning horseshoes into steaming bracken. ‘Indian giver!’
It backed up twenty yards or so, making a half-circle in the mud. Then it burst forward at break-neck speed. It battered its head against the column of bricks that formed the archway to the gate. I pushed Carolina into the slight impression of the chapel, before the column of bricks rained down on top of us. Huddled in the alcove, pressed against the image of the Holy Mother, we were sheltered from the bulk of the rubble. But my hands and face were gashed by the flying debris.
The red-hot coals of the monster’s eyes glared at us through the swirling, choking cloud of dust. I heard the awful, creaking noise as it extended its wings. There was a whooshing sound as it galloped into the air. Then a foul gust burst around us, and it lifted off, wheeling into the night sky. In its tortuous, multitudinous voice, it shrieked, ‘Tomorrow night, you’ll be mi-ine you li-ittle ba-aastard. And the deal’s o-off. I’m going to go-obble up your little gi-irlfriend, too!’
In the darkness of the swirling dust, both Carolina and I burst out sobbing. Then our lips found each other, and we kissed and kissed again. Then, exhausted, we lay huddled together in the little grotto, buried under the wall of bricks, and soon lost all sense of the world around us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The smell of damp earth roused me. It must have rained during the night. But now, rays of bright sunlight directly above us were fighting through the heavy grey clouds that rolled in, ponderously, from the east. I was still holding Carolina. Her face was covered in a fine layer of grey powder. She reminded me of those tragic, huddling corpses in Pompeii I’d once read about, caught by surprise by a vengeful Vesuvius and sealed in volcanic ash for all eternity.
She was so still, so statuesque that I thought of Beatrice in the story. Was Carolina real, or was she just a statue? Had we really kissed, or had it been another of the Muladona’s tricks? I held my breath as I watched her, fearful that she was truly made of stone. Then ever-so-slowly I saw her eyelids flutter, and her beautiful, black eyes opened. She extended her hand to me and touched my face in a languid motion.
‘Oh, Verge,’ she said, ‘all covered in dust, you look like a ghost.’ Then she added quickly, ‘We ain’t ghosts, are we?’
‘No. We’re still alive, my love.’
‘My love,’ she repeated, and we drew our faces together and kissed. Our lips were gritty from the dust and tasted like chalk. But it was magical and mysterious all the same. She put her head on my shoulder, and we sat there awhile, our legs covered over by a quilt of broken bricks.
I heard rolling thunder in the distance. ‘We’d best get up, Carolina,’ I said, ‘and get back to town, before we’re caught in a storm. Can you move your feet?’
‘Yeah,’ she answered, ‘I think so. I feel banged up is all, but I don’t think I got any broken bones.’
Slowly, we shifted our legs, careful not to bring down the precarious mountain of rubble on top of us. We scrambled up and surveyed the destruction: we were at the centre of a crater, and all about us were scattered fragments of coffins and body parts. Shards of stained glass, broken urns and twisted crosses were interspersed amidst the wreck.
We made our way across the awful landscape of half-buried faces and bloody shirts and shoes. We walked past a mangled arm sticking out of the debris at an odd angle, the old, knotted fingers covered in liver spots. It looked like the hand of a drowning victim trying to come up one last time for air.
I froze in my tracks, overcome by fright.
‘What is it Verge?’ Carolina asked.
‘I . . . I know that hand. It’s Lupita.’
I dropped to my knees and began shovelling away the surrounding dirt with my hands. ‘No, no, no, it can’t be!’ I wailed. ‘She’s with her sister. This can’t be.’
But as I uncovered the corpse’s head, I saw it was, indeed, my dear, sweet Lupita, eyes open wide, staring into nothingness. I cradled her body in my arms and sobbed my heart out. Now that the light had gone out of her eyes, now that that ever-present strength had vanished, she looked so fragile and small, almost like a child’s corpse.
‘God forgive me, Lupita! Oh, Almighty God, forgive me,’ I wailed.
Carolina dropped to her knees beside me and cried. ‘Oh, Verge, Verge, this is so awful,’ she said. ‘But it ain’t your fault. You got nothin’ to do with this.’
‘But you don’t understand, Carolina! Last night, before you stopped me, I was about to guess that Lupita was the Muladona. That she was the beast! The woman who raised me, who raised my mother. And I repaid her kindness by doubting her.’
‘But Verge, why would you possibly think that?’
‘It was her hat and her bag we found in the old gambling hall. She had them with her the day she left town. I started thinking, the morning Lupita had left, I’d seen her clench a piece of paper in her hand . . . but she hadn’t shown me the telegram. It could have been a trick. Then it sounded too convenient, that, the same morning my father went away on a business trip, her sister fell sick.’ I wailed, ‘But now I know that that damnable person who’s behind the Muladona is responsible. Somehow, it lured her here and killed her. Then it hid her things in the gambling hall, so no one would suspect. ‘
‘Maybe . . . just maybe,’ Carolina said haltingly, ‘poor Lupita died of the influenza on the way out of town, and they just picked up her corpse and buried it. There are dead people everywhere, Verge.’
‘No, no,’ I wailed, ‘the creature wanted to make sure Lupita didn’t come back for me, that she didn’t repent of leaving me alone. Don’t you see? It’s all part of its plan, to isolate me, to destroy anyone who’s close to me.’
‘But, Verge, how can you be sure?’
‘Because of this,’ I said, and wiped away the dirt covering Lupita’s neck, showing where it had been slit from ear to ear. ‘That wicked person,’ I said, rocking Lupita slowly in my arms, ‘that wicked, wicked person.’
‘Oh, Verge,’ Carolina said, tears rolling down her cheeks, making tracks in her dusty face, ‘What do we do now?’
With decision, I said, ‘First, we say our prayers for Lupita and bury her the best we can. Then we go back to town and talk to Doc Evans. He was here at the time my grandmother jumped from the old tower. He must know why she’s buried next to my father’s kin. It’s time old secrets came to light . . . and there’ll be hell to pay for it.’
***
We slogged back to town and made it under the cover of the schoolhouse porch, just as the storm broke. We cupped our hands to the rain and washed the dust from our faces and necks. All the patients we had previously seen scattered about the porch were gone. The only person left was Miss Dawson sitting on a rocking chair. She creaked slowly back and forth, in rhythm with the gusts of wind. I’d been wondering what excuse I was going to invent to push past her, but it wasn’t necessary. As we went up the steps, I saw her bright-red face covered in beads of sweat. A small trickle of blood ran from her nose onto the gauze mask she wore, making a bright scarlet spot. She didn’t move. She didn’t say a word as we went past, but her bloodshot eyes followed us all
the way inside.
The schoolhouse floor was sticky. Masses of cotton, used bandages and rubber gloves, were scattered all about. Doc Evans was seated in a child’s wooden chair. It was too small for his stooping, grey body, so he was bent over, hands on his knees. There was a blank expression on his face as he stared at the body of Corporal Riquelme laid out on his desk. The scene struck me as a sitting for a Civil War photograph, where everyone stood frozen while the film was exposed.
Without looking up at us, the doctor said, ‘He’s the only one still alive, you know. The other patients were younger, stronger. By all rights, the transfusion shouldn’t have taken. His wounds were too severe, and strange.’
I went up to the hobo and clasped his cold, clammy hand in mine. His face was pale and masklike, fixed in a grimace. He looked at me through thin eye slits, as if just opening his eyes cost him a supreme effort. ‘I’m happy to see you’re still alive,’ I said.
‘Yeah, me, too,’ he replied slowly. He half-nodded towards Carolina who was standing behind me and asked, ‘That your girl?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This is Carolina. She helped save you. In fact, you’d have been a goner without her.’
‘Much obliged, little missy. Much obliged,’ he whispered, his voice fading. Then he asked, ‘The . . . creature’s not dead, is it?’
I shook my head in response.
He wheezed, ‘Did I hurt it . . . at least?’
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘and then some. Whatever happens tonight . . . I just wanted to say thank you.’
‘What happens tonight?’ he gasped.
‘The monster’s coming to visit me for the last time. Tonight, I either kill it, or it drags me to hell.’
The doctor seemed roused by my words. ‘Monster?’ he asked. ‘I knew there was somethin’ wrong with those wounds. I saw a horseshoe mark burned into the centre of his back, like someone had heated it in a forge and branded him with it.’ Shaking a finger at me, he demanded, ‘What evil secret are you hiding, son?’
I turned to the doctor and replied, ‘I can ask the same of you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Where’s my grandmother buried?’ I asked sternly.
‘You know very well where she’s buried . . . next to your grandfather, the venerable pastor.’
‘I’m not talking about his wife,’ I hissed. ‘I’m talking about my mother’s mother, the one who’s buried next to them in a grave without a name.’
Suddenly, the doctor’s eyes were wild with fright. He raised himself slowly from the little chair. ‘How . . . how do you know about that?’ he asked.
‘I’ve just been to her grave. And we were tracked there by an unholy monster, the Muladona.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said. He held up his blood-stained hands, as if trying to ward off my words. ‘She’s come back to get us all. I knew we should never have buried her on holy ground!’
‘What do you mean?’ I demanded.
‘She led our pastor astray,’ he said vaguely.
‘Because Grandfather adopted her daughter . . . my mother?’ I continued. ‘What was wrong in that?’
‘She was the seed of evil, she. . . .’ Then he stopped himself and said, ‘No, no, these things shouldn’t be talked of. Only the three of us knew . . . the Reverend, his wife and me. He made me swear on the Holy Bible never to tell a soul.’
‘Never to tell what?’
He only shook his head in response. I gripped him by the shoulders and shook him fiercely. ‘This evil creature’s after me. I’ve got to find out who’s behind its appearance, or it aims to murder me. And Carolina’s in danger, too. Tell me what you know.’
The old doctor seemed to crumble apart in my hands like newspaper charred in a fire. He sat back down in the little chair and covered his face with his hands. He sobbed, ‘When Mrs Strömberg, your grandma, came to me with the baby and told me what had happened, I advised her to send it away. We could give it away to a farm far away from town, the next county over. No one would ever know.’
‘The little baby was my mother?’
‘Yes. But Mrs Strömberg wouldn’t listen to me. She said, “You’ve got to keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” That’s exactly what she said.’
Carolina burst out, ‘How could a little baby be an enemy? She’d just lost her mother. She was all alone in the world. She was innocent.’
The doctor looked up blankly and said, ‘Oh, but she was an enemy. She proved that by what she did later.’
I couldn’t take it any longer. I lashed out at him, ‘My mother was a wonderful, beautiful person. She didn’t do a bad thing in her entire life. What could she have done for you to speak of her in such a way?’
He looked at me, his head like a dried cornhusk. His eyes were so very small and lifeless, like old buttons.
He said simply, ‘What she done wrong was to marry your father, even though he’d been warned. The good Reverend had just called your father home to take care of his flock. He was on his deathbed, and I was tending to him, so I overheard everything.’
‘What happened between them?’
‘Your father was disrespectful, angry. He said there was “No way in hell I’ll take over the church in this God-forsaken backwater”. Those were his very words. He’d come back just to say his goodbyes. He’d already booked passage on a steamer from New York headin’ out to the highlands of Peru to become a missionary. That boy always had his head in the clouds, dreamin’ of travellin’ to far, distant countries.’
In a flash, I saw my father in a different light. He’d once been a child with fragile dreams. Weren’t those my dreams, too? Hadn’t I always wanted to leave Incarnation and see the world?
‘What happened? What made him stay?’ I asked.
‘Your grandfather was not a man to be crossed lightly. When he spoke, he did so with the authority of the All-Mighty. Even as the light passed out of his eyes, he obliged your father, bent him to his iron will. He called upon our Lord to smite your father if he should disobey him, that he should be cursed for all eternity. Then he demanded one more thing of him.’
‘What was it?’
‘He was to break off all friendship with your mother. He was to turn her out of the house and never see her again. Your grandpa had seen the looks they’d exchange now and then when he was back home from school. He’d even intercepted some of their letters. It was disgusting. Your father used to call her . . .’
‘Beatrice,’ I finished, as if I’d known it all along.
‘Yes,’ the old doctor said, ‘some name out of a damn fool, romantic book he was always reading . . . the Inferno or some such nonsense. Said she was his guide through hell.’
Feeling numb all over, I asked, ‘Why would Grandfather keep them apart?’
‘Bad blood . . . bad blood,’ the old man repeated, and he rubbed his chapped, bloody hands against themselves.
‘Why? Because she was half-Indian? Is that why they treated mother like some sort of criminal?’
The old doctor looked up at me with a sorrow beyond expression. His eyes were filled with defeat. He said, ‘Because your Mother . . . your mother was your grandfather’s child.’
‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you saying?’
‘The Reverend used to tend to the heathens outside of town, bringing them to the Light. He would spend weeks, months out in the wilderness. Only God knows what lonely nights he endured amongst them and what wicked things he bore witness to. I don’t condone what he done. But I don’t blame him neither. I blame her, that little Indian trollop, whose father was a Chief he ministered to, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. Livin’ among the savages, your grandfather succumbed to their licentious ways. She seduced him and bore his child.’
‘No, no, no’ I said. ‘That means my father and mother were . . .’
‘Brother and sister,’ he completed emptily. ‘When that Indian girl came to town nine months later, with that little bundle in her arms, she asked your grandfath
er to recognise her as his wife. She pleaded with him to take her in, because her tribe had abandoned them both. She said, they’d both die without him.’
‘Of course!’ I said, trying to recover from the shock. ‘She had nowhere else to go.’
‘But the Good Pastor didn’t do it. No, he refused,’ the old man replied, ‘and rightly so.’
‘Why?’
The doctor suddenly broke out in a sob, ‘Should a great man be defined by one moment of weakness? Should he let a scandal shake the foundations of a community that he, himself, had built? Your grandfather built Incarnation with his own two hands, through a supreme force of will. If the other parishioners learned of this, they might doubt the sanctity of our task. No one could know, and no one could abandon Incarnation.’
‘So,’ Carolina said, ‘he turned his back on his own daughter?’
‘Yes,’ the doctor assented. ‘That morning, he turned the Indian girl away. That night, we found her body at the foot of the old tower. Before she’d jumped, she’d left her baby at the door of the church. Even so, the Reverend was firm in keeping her far away from his family as possible. There was even talk of leaving her outside in the cold for the night, to see if the Good Lord had other plans for her.’
I cried out, ‘His family! My mother was his family, too.’
Not seeming to register what I’d said, he continued, ‘But Mrs Strömberg demanded he take in the child. She was a pious old woman, one of the Elect, I’m sure. But it was also her way of holding it over your grandfather. Keeping that girl in the house, raising her there to serve them, was a constant reminder of his sin. The poor man . . . it must have been almost unbearable for him to look upon her every day.’
I thought of the words inscribed on my grandfather’s pocket watch, from his ‘legitimate wife’. Then I let out a long groan. ‘Unbearable for him? Your upright, righteous Reverend was a heartless scoundrel. And his wife was pitiless and cruel. I’m more ashamed of them than I could ever be of my mother, even if . . . even if what you say is true.’
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