The Black Witch of Mexico

by Colin Falconer

  “It won’t be hard. I go down there, I find him, I get him to...”

  “Take away the spell? Listen to yourself.”

  “I should never have done it.”

  “That’s the first sane thing you’ve said since you got here. I am...beyond words. You of all people. You used to laugh at people who did things like this, you’re always making fun of the prayer group.”

  “I never made fun of it. I just thought you guys were...”

  ‘“Polyannas,” you called us.”

  “Well, now you can laugh at me.”

  “I don’t find anything even vaguely amusing about what you’re telling me.”

  “It’s simple, right? I fly down, rent a car, drive to Santa Marta, do this...I’ll be back in four days.”

  “I think you should be in a padded cell, where you can’t harm yourself or someone else.”

  “It was just a...I don’t know. I thought it was a joke. I never...I never believed it.”

  “You shouldn’t believe it NOW!’

  “But what if... He’s dying, Lynne.”

  “There’s people dying fucking everywhere.”

  “But I wished this on him!’

  “You really think she lost the baby and all this other shit happened because of what you said to a Mexican witch?”

  “I’m saying I can’t sleep at night thinking about it.”

  “You are out of your goddamned mind. This is the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

  “He could die if I don’t do something about this.”

  “Adam. Hello! Reality speaking. If you can invent a cure for cancer he won’t die. Outside of that there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  One of the boys had fallen over on the patio and was screaming. She went outside to look out for him.

  He waited a moment then got up and put his head around the back door. “I have to go,” he said.

  “No, don’t go, I’ll be there in a minute,” she said, rubbing Mattie’s knee where he’d fallen.

  “No, I’ll see you later.”

  He went out to the car and drove away before she could catch him. He had had enough talking for one day.

  * * *

  He thought about what she had said as he drove back to Boston. Of course she was right; he was out of his mind. There was no such thing as witches or black magic. This was the twenty-first century for God’s sake.

  He was back in the city, stopped at a light, looking down Massachusetts Avenue. He could turn right and get back to the St Mary’s in time for his shift or he could keep going, head home, pack his bags and drive out to the airport, get a standby flight to Mexico City.

  The guy behind him was punching his horn, the lights had turned green and Adam was holding up traffic.

  He had to make up his mind. Which way should he go?

  Chapter 58

  Mexico City

  She was waiting for him at the airport when he arrived. This time she was not sending text messages on her cell. He had her full attention. “I got your message on my answering machine,” she said.

  “Honestly, I didn’t think you’d want to see me again.”

  “Honestly, I didn’t think you’d ever come back to Mexico.”

  “Well I guess we should never say never.”

  She looked at his hand luggage. “Travelling light this time?”

  “I don’t plan on staying long. Thanks for coming out to meet me.”

  “That’s okay. You can buy me a drink.”

  He followed her through the terminal. He wondered how he would tell her the reason he had come back. He decided it was best to wait until they both had a drink in their hands.

  She held the steering the wheel so tight he thought it was going to snap. A window washer came up to them at the lights and she lowered the window and yelled at him to clear off and he retreated, stunned.

  He remembered what she had said to him that very first day: I have skin like a gringo but I have Mexican blood. For all her blonde looks she was a Latina to the bone, caught fire quicker than petrol.

  Somehow he liked it about her. At least he knew where he stood. He wondered where she stood on guys who called down spells on their exes. He guessed he would soon find out.

  * * *

  The streets in the Zona Rosa were named after European cities: Geneva, Dublin, Oslo, Hamburgo. She took him to a cavernous bar with track lighting and industrial tables and chairs. It was packed with young men in double-breasted suits and ponytails drinking Chivas, buying their girlfriends cocktails worth more than a Mexican farmer made in a month. The relentless beat of the music was getting on Adam’s nerves.

  “You did what?”

  “I’m not proud of it. I wasn’t... I was just curious.”

  “I don’t fucking believe what I’m hearing.”

  “I thought...I don’t know what I was thinking.”

  “I do. You were thinking you’d get home to Boston and she’d be there waiting for you at the airport on her knees begging you to come back. Right? It was like waving a magic wand to you.”

  “I wanted her back.”

  “And you didn’t care how you did it.”

  “I didn’t think it would be - look I still don’t even believe this is true. It could be just a gross coincidence.”

  “If you don’t believe it, then why are you here?” People were staring. The men were smirking. They think we’re lovers, he thought, and the way she’s shouting at me, they figure I’ve been caught cheating with another woman.

  “These guys are evil,” she said. “You want this in your life?”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’ve invited it in. You see how it works? He’s in your head now. ¡Qué güey eres! He owns you!’

  “I’ll pay him whatever he wants, get the photograph back, have the curse removed. It’s all crap, but I’ll feel better for it.”

  “It’s not going to be that simple.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know these guys. You’re going to have to be real careful. Puta de hijo!’

  “Look, I get that it was a stupid thing to do. I get the picture.”

  “That wasn’t the picture,” she said. “That was just the frame.” She reached into her bag and tossed something onto the bar. “Here, I bought you this at the Sonora market. You’ll need it.” She pushed back her chair and walked out.

  He stared into his cerveza. He didn’t blame her for being mad; she’d tried to warn him. He hadn’t even told her about Elena losing the baby or about Oliver getting sick or Julia dying. Somehow he hadn’t been able to bring himself to tell her everything.

  He was too ashamed.

  He looked at what she had thrown on the bar; it was a crystal amulet on a leather thong. Once he would have laughed at her.

  He shrugged and put it in his pocket.

  * * *

  That night he watched a thunderstorm move across the city; the sky turned black and the lightning streaked and burned behind Chapultepec castle. The windows rattled so hard he thought they would break. He was scared; he didn’t want to go back to Santa Marta, he didn’t want to find the Crow. Jamie was right--he was evil. He had seen his share of lowlifes in the ER, the detritus of shootings and stabbings, the gangbangers and junkies. Some of them were violent, and some of them would steal from their own grandmothers. But he’d never met anyone quite like that guy.

  Another loud clap of thunder made him step back from the window. The lights flickered in his room. In moments the Reforma was flooded. It was raining so hard he couldn’t even see to the other side of the avenue.

  Did he really think he was going to save Oliver’s life by getting Elena’s photograph back from this huckster? Let’s say I pay for another spell, he thought: what if Oliver dies anyway?

  What does that prove, except I’m the biggest sucker this side of the Rockies?

  He took a couple of Advil for his headache and lay down on the bed and tried to
sleep. It was a hell of a way to spend a weekend but at least when it was done he would be able to sleep again at night.

  Chapter 59

  The flight to San Cristobal took less than an hour but the tail of the storm that had shaken the city the day before was still moving in from the Gulf and twenty minutes out they flew through heavy turbulence. Women screamed and men fingered their rosaries as the plane bucked and skidded through the sheer. It felt like the devil was shaking the plane with his fist.

  By the time they touched down in San Cristobal he was sweating. He saw several of his fellow passengers cross themselves; the man next to him kissed the amulet he wore around his neck.

  He looked for the amulet she had given him. It was still in shirt pocket. As he was waiting at passport control he slipped it over his head.

  Just think of it as travel insurance, he thought. You can never have too much travel insurance in Mexico.

  Chapter 60

  Bernard was at the airport to meet him. He supposed Jamie had rung ahead and warned him he was coming. He didn’t look best pleased.

  They walked out to the jeep and Adam threw his case in the back. “Did you talk to Jamie?”

  He nodded.

  “What did she say to you?”

  “She’s furious with you. I don’t blame her. What were you doing meddling like that?”

  “I couldn’t help myself. This woman...I loved her.”

  “You didn’t love her, Adam. Loving and wanting are two different things. If you had loved her, you wouldn’t have gone to the Crow.”

  It hurt, hearing someone say it aloud. Bernard was brutally honest, although he clearly wasn’t a brutal man. Still, Adam was rocked, hearing it so plainly stated.

  Bernard started the car and they pulled out into the dusty haze of the sunset. He guessed it would be dark by the time they reached Santa Marta.

  “I thought you didn’t believe in witches,” Bernard said.

  “I don’t. It was like I told Jamie, I was just...curious.”

  “Have you heard of Pandora’s Box?”

  “It’s a Greek myth, isn’t it?”

  “Pandora was the first woman on the earth. She was Zeus’s daughter, and when she was born she was clothed by Athena, given the gift of speech by Hermes and given beauty by Aphrodite herself. I guess that made her the original femme fatale. But when Prometheus stole fire from heaven, Zeus took a curious revenge on him by giving her to Prometheus’ brother. She brought with her as part of her dowry a beautiful jar – and she was told, under no circumstances, was she to open it. But naturally her curiosity got the better of her and she removed the stopper. Inside was all the evil ever created and it escaped into the world. You, my friend, through your curiosity, have opened Pandora’s box.”

  “You forgot one thing.”

  “And that is?”

  “At the bottom of the jar she found one spirit still remaining: Hope.”

  “Well I don’t want to take away your hope, but you know he’s gone, don’t you?”

  “So he never came back?”

  He shook his head.

  “But what about the dog?”

  “He left it to starve. No one would go near it, not just because it was vicious, everyone believed it was possessed by bad spirits. I had to shoot it.”

  “Someone must know where he is.”

  “Men like the Crow, if they want to disappear, they can.”

  “I have to find him.”

  “You really believe this will change anything?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, and that was the truth. Like Bernard said, all he had left was hope.

  Chapter 61

  He was up before light, standing on the veranda, drinking coffee from a tin mug. He stared up the hill, feeling the world spin away from him.

  He saw a shadow in the darkness. Bernard.

  “I thought you’d be up,” he said. “You’ve made coffee?”

  “There’s some in the pot.”

  He went inside, got coffee, and came back out. They watched the sun rise over the hills together. “He’s not up there, I told you.”

  “I have to go up and see for myself.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “It’s better I go up there alone.”

  “No,” Bernard said. “I don’t think so.”

  * * *

  It was deathly quiet, the only sound was the wind. An empty house, a brisk dawn, a coyote baying somewhere in the hills.

  He tried the door and it creaked open. His skin crawled.

  He stepped inside. Bernard made the sign of the cross. “You can smell it in here,” he said.

  “Smell what?”

  “I don’t know. Darkness.”

  They went in. It was empty, as Bernard said it would be, cracked whitewashed walls, bare earth floor. He had taken everything. Bernard went through the beaded curtain into the back room.

  “Look,” he said.

  Adam followed him into the back. Bernard was pointing at something that had been taped to the wall: a photograph. He went over for a closer look. “He photographed me,” Adam said.

  “You let him do that?”

  “No, of course not!’ He ripped it down from the wall. “How did he get this?”

  “You know sometimes, they take photographs without people knowing.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged.

  “Because he thinks he can capture their souls,” Adam said, answering his own question.

  It had been taken outside the clinic. He was standing on the veranda talking to Luis. It was blurred and badly focused; it must have been taken some distance away. Why would the Crow do that? Why did he take this and then leave it behind for Adam to find, as if he knew he would be coming back to look for him?

  A row of ants trailed across the floor, scavenging some dark nourishment they had found in the corner. The grease of the dead, perhaps.

  The inverted crucifix still hung on the wall. Bernard snatched it down. He clearly didn’t know what to do it with it. It was a sacred object yet it had been defiled by the Crow.

  Finally he snapped it across his knee.

  “This place is an abomination,” he said.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Adam said, pointing to the broken cross.

  “I’m going to burn it.” He snatched the photograph out of Adam’s hands and tore it in half. “I’m going to burn that as well. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 62

  “He was just a conman, Adam. Whatever he told you, whatever it was he said, you have to put it out of your mind now.” He bent down, crossed himself and threw the two halves of the crucifix into the small fire he had built down by the creek, well away from the village, where even the smoke could not contaminate anything. He tossed the two halves of the photograph in after it, watched the edges curl and melt in the flames. “Nothing happened here, except in your mind,” he said.

  “Did she tell you what happened in Boston?”

  “She told me a woman you knew had a car accident’

  “There was more. She lost her baby. Then the guy she was engaged to was diagnosed with terminal cancer and then her sister died.”

  He was silent a long time. “These things can happen. I could tell you a hundred stories of people who have endured tragedy upon tragedy and no witch was involved! It was the will of God.”

  “I don’t believe in God.”

  “But you believe in the Devil?”

  “Shit, I don’t know what I believe.”

  “Enough now, go home. He’s not here. Go home and forget about this.”

  “I have to find him.”

  “Evil’s not out there, Adam--it’s in here.” He put his hand across his heart.

  “You may be right, but...I’ve come this far.”

  “It’s not evil that’s driving you; it’s a guilty conscience. Somehow you may have your way despite everything and you want to sleep more easily when this man dies, is that not the tru
th?”

  “Perhaps.”

  They watched the cross burn. “You are determined to go through with this, aren’t you? It’s madness. Listen to me.”

  He’s right, Adam thought. Stop this now, go home and get back to work, to a normal life. Listen to him!

  But what if he’s wrong? He could still hear his father, the great rationalist, his last breathless plea. It was as real now as if his mouth was still pressed to his ear: Adam, don’t let me die.

  There is nothing to fear in the light, he thought, it is only when the darkness came inexorably towards us that we start to doubt. Can we really be sure there is nothing on the other side, watching us?

  What if, what if. Like Bernard said, perhaps it was just a guilty conscience. He knew he would never get a sound night’s sleep again if he let this go.

  And what if...afterwards...she begged him to come back to her?

  What would he do?

  If he found the Crow, if he had him remove the curse, and if Oliver died anyway... Then he would have made himself look like a fool but he would know once and for all that it was all nonsense, and he could sleep seamlessly in the arms of reason again.

  He looked Bernard in the eye. “Help me find him.”

  Chapter 63

  No one in the village professed to know where he had gone, and whenever they asked about the Crow they were met with blank stares. Even Rosa and Luis shook their heads and said, ‘no, perhaps the devil took him,” which perhaps was what the rest of Santa Marta genuinely believed.

  “We’re wasting our time,” Bernard said. “We’d better talk to Doña Dolores.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Dolores is a bruja blanca, a white witch. She keeps pretty much to herself, like the Crow. But she doesn’t practise this maldad negra as they call it.”

  “What does she do then?”

  “She mixes herbs, performs limpias, as they call them. But she won’t curse anyone and she won’t cast spells, so she doesn’t get as many customers as your friend the Crow.”