The Black Witch of Mexico

by Colin Falconer

  “It’s a lot of money, Jamie, but it’s not all I’m worth.” He put out a hand. “can I borrow your cell phone? I left mine in Boston. Didn’t think I’d need it.”

  “What do you need the phone for?”

  “I need to make a call.”

  “Who to?”

  “My bank. Then I’ll need to borrow your laptop as well. Do they have internet coverage in this place? I can probably do it online. I’ll need to okay this in Boston first.”

  She shook her head. “No, you’re not having my cell. Go ahead and do what you want but I’ll not be a party to it.”

  “Please, Jamie. The sooner it’s done the sooner you can go home.”

  “No!’

  “I have to do this. What do you care, it’s not your money.”

  “I won’t let him cheat you!’

  “If he is cheating me, you can’t stop him. I’ve made up my mind.”

  They stared at each other.

  “A witch with an online bank account,” she said. “What does that tell you?”

  “It tells me this is the twenty-first century. I saw a shaman in the church at Chamula with a cell phone. Now, please may I use your phone? Otherwise I’ll use the phone down at reception and that will cost me even more.”

  She yelled at him wordlessly, tossed the phone at him and went out, slamming the door behind her.

  * * *

  He stared at the laptop screen, his finger poised above “cONFIRM.” He was about to give all the cash savings he had to some fraud in Mexico. He thought about all the things he could do with fifty thousand dollars, about what his sister would do with it. She and Denny struggled along on his nurse’s salary; if she knew he was throwing fifty grand away on some conman in Mexico she’d kill him.

  If he wanted to give his money away, there were kid’s charities, cancer research. How about the homeless in the streets that he slipped just a few coins to? He could feed half of Boston’s homeless for a year with that much money.

  He hesitated, checked his emails. Most of it was junk but there was one from Elena. She did not know he was in Mexico; her message said that she had tried to contact him on the phone but kept getting his voicemail. Oliver was getting worse; he had stopped the chemotherapy because he’d had enough, he was sick all the time, his hair had fallen out and he felt too weak to continue.

  He had decided to go to the retreat he had emailed her about, down in New Mexico. He had left the day before and now she was alone and she had no one to talk to. Her sister’s funeral had been held the day before. She couldn’t sleep and she couldn’t stop crying. The doctor had given her medication. Please call.

  He stared out of the window, watching a guy with no legs sitting on the steps outside the church, begging for coins. A whole world of pain out there, people needing doctors and witches and healing and divine intercession.

  A whole world vulnerable and in pain.

  Everyone was searching for something that could change their fate and fortune. Now he was one of them; smart, skilled and affluent, and down there in the plaza with the rest, his hand out.

  He tapped the key before he could change his mind.

  CONFIRM.

  There, it was done.

  Chapter 73

  The door to his room swung open and Jamie stood there, her bags at her feet. “Have you finished with the laptop?”

  He shut it down and closed the lid. “Thank you. Are you leaving?”

  “You can catch a bus from here to Veracruz, then you get a connection to el DF. I cannot spend another three days hanging around here waiting for your funds to clear. I have work to do.”

  “Thank you for helping me.”

  “I didn’t help you. You wouldn’t let me.”

  “I did what I came to do.”

  “Give all your money to that cabron?”

  “I had to do it. Time will tell whether he cheated me or not.”

  “Of course he cheated you! You don’t need to wait to find that out.”

  He gave her back the laptop. “Well, it’s too late now. I’ve done it.”

  “Why. Why?”

  “I have dedicated my life to saving lives. I cannot bear to think I have taken one.”

  “So this will prove to you that you’re a good man?”

  “I am redeeming my soul.”

  “On the internet, with money?”

  She tucked the laptop into her holdall, turned her back and stamped down the stars.

  Chapter 74

  The Crow wore a dark suit and an open-necked shirt. The silver snake tooth pendant at his throat shimmered in the glow of a hundred red candles.

  “You have your money,” Adam said. “Now give me the photograph.”

  The Crow reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small gold key. He unlocked a drawer in his desk, reached in and took out a handful of photographs, shuffled through them and slid one across the desk. He put the rest back in the drawer and re-locked it.

  “There. Is that what you want?”

  He looked at her photograph, how she had looked once, how she would never look again. Her body and her future were broken. Was this man culpable? Was I culpable? In this dim cave of candles and death’s heads, it was so easy to believe.

  “I want you to reverse whatever it was you did.”

  He grinned. “So now you are a believer?”

  “Just do it.”

  “First I must give you a limpia, a cleansing. But you do understand, the evil that you have set free cannot be rescinded.”

  “What?”

  “It cannot be undone.”

  Adam half rose from his chair. He wanted to grab him by the throat. “Then what the fuck did I pay you that money for?”

  “For the photograph. But the evil cannot be recalled. It must be transferred to someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “You can choose. Some other person. It can be transferred to you, if you wish. But once you have released this thing into the world it cannot be recalled. You know this, you saw the shamans in the church at Chamula. They put the evil in the chicken and the chicken dies. Now you must do the same. You must put the evil somewhere else.”

  “I will not hurt anyone else.”

  “Then it must be you.”

  “You want to put the curse on me?”

  “There is evil set free in the world. Once released it must find a home. You decide.”

  “You never said that when I came back to see you. You said you could mend this.”

  “I said it would be difficult, but you said you wanted this very badly. It will be as you wish.”

  “Puta de hijo!’

  “You used me for your purposes. I bear no fault. I will give you the limpia and then we will ask the Lord of the Fog to move the evil elsewhere. Let us begin. Take off your shirt.”

  He drew a chalk six-pointed star on the floor and told him to stand in the centre of it. He placed a candle at each point of the star and two glasses of water in front him. “These will absorb the evil spirits,” he said.

  He started chanting in Spanish. Adam did not understand all the words. Then the Crow switched to some other language he did not know.

  “I will now cleanse you of any maldad. Repeat these words after me: “O Lord, send me San Pedro, send me San Martin the Horseman. And Santa Elena. And San Guillermo of the Glass of Red wine.”

  He felt foolish standing there half naked saying these stupid things. But he did it.

  “Send me these saints, O Lord, and send me Lucifer and Satan and the Devil – the Great Lord of the Fog.”

  He took a bottle from the altar in the corner of the room and poured some into his hand. He rubbed the brackish green liquid into Adam’s face, his neck, then his chest. Adam gritted his teeth. Having the man’s hands on him repulsed him.

  Then the Crow took a swallow of it until his cheeks bulged and he spat it at him in a long, warm spray. Adam was shocked and for a moment he could not breathe. “Take away this maldad negra from this
man’s woman, all illness, all harm, all frights. Let this be your sacrifice.”

  He smashed an egg against Adam’s breastbone and let it drip down his chest.

  “Put the maldad on this man instead.”

  He started growling deep in his throat. His eyes rolled back in his head so that only the whites were visible. “O Sirs, please come to me, favourably and under my orders. God, go near Satan and put him in the light. Take away that spell from your obedient daughter and save her from the enchanted snakes that have been buried in the black graveyard. Let this man bear her pain in her place. He renounces his claim to her.”

  The Crow turned away. There was a bowl of water in the corner of the room. He started to wash his hands.

  “Is that it?” Adamsaid.

  “It’s done.”

  He stood there, felt the slime from the eggs and the spit ooze down his chest while the Crow rinsed off his hands in a bowl of scented water in the corner of the room. He had his back to him.

  “I am stronger than you are,” the brujo said, as if he could read his mind. He looked over his shoulder. “Do not think you can overpower me.”

  Adam fumbled for a towel.

  “Am I supposed to go back to the hotel like this?”

  “Are you worried what people will think? This is Mexico. Everyone is humiliated.”

  “Except you.”

  “Yes,” the Crow said. “Except me. But I am the brujo. I have the power over the dark, and you can never hurt the dark.”

  Chapter 75

  Adam rushed out into the waiting room, shouting for help. The squat Mexican woman who had shown him in rushed out from a back room and screamed when she saw this gringo standing there with his shirt off, that mess smeared all over him, wild-eyed and stinking to heaven.

  “Hurry,” he said.

  She just stood there. No one had ever come back through the curtain, he supposed.

  “Hurry!’ he repeated. “Deprisa!’

  Murmuring prayers to the saints she waddled down the corridor and threw aside the curtain. He followed her in. The Crow lay on his back by the altar, arms outspread, eyes bulging.

  She screamed again and threw open the door to the street. In the sudden daylight the room looked tawdry. Even Santa Muerte no longer appeared as fearsome.

  The two bodyguards, if that was what they were, ran in.

  “Que pasó?” the woman screamed at Adam.

  “He was giving me a limpia and he went down,” he said in Spanish. “He said his chest hurt.”

  She knelt beside him and started to wail, wrapping him up in her arms. He wondered who she was, his sister, his mistress? “Fetch the doctor,” she yelled at the two men. “Fetch the doctor, hurry!’

  The Crow was yet alive but he could not breathe, his eyes were bulging from his head, his arms and legs jerked spastically. It was as if he was drowning in the air.

  His eyes were fixed in Adam. He was trying to say something.

  One by one the candles blew out in the room. Adam watched the brujo until the light went from his eyes.

  Then he picked up his shirt and left.

  Chapter 76

  Adam sat in the Catemaco bus terminal, such as it was, sipping from a bottle of Pepsi he had bought at the snack counter. His luggage sat in the dirt at his feet. The bus for Vera Cruz did not leave for another hour.

  He felt for the amulet at his throat but it wasn’t there. It must still be on the floor of the witches’ cave. His shirt had been ruined: it reeked of egg yolk and the vile liquid the Crow had sprayed on him so he had bought a t-shirt from a souvenir stall in the main street. It had a cartoon of a witch on the front of it.

  He stared up at the rafters, a green iguana was watching him, there was a soft pulsing at its throat. It blinked once and then darted forward and caught a large insect in its jaws. It retreated back up the rough-hewn pole with its prize.

  A filthy SUV pulled up in the road outside. He stared at it but did not move. The driver turned off the engine and walked over.

  Jamie sat down on the bench beside him.

  She reached for the Pepsi and he handed it to her.

  She sipped it. “It’s warm.”

  “I’ve been holding it for a while.”

  “Not thirsty?”

  “I was.”

  She picked up his case and wheeled it across to the SUV and threw it in the back. He still did not move.

  “You came back,” he said.

  “Well, I was worried about you. I was sure you’d get yourself into trouble.”

  “As you can see, I’m perfectly fine. The witch, not so much.”

  “You exercised your powers on him.”

  “They say you can’t take it with you. Fifty thousand is a lot not to take with you. That must have hurt.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “He had a heart attack.”

  “Just like that.”

  “That’s the way they happen, just like that. Trust me, I’m a doctor.”

  “While he was performing the limpia.”

  “He was a big man, he probably wasn’t watching his diet.”

  She handed him back the Pepsi. He swallowed some, grimaced and put the bottle on the ground between his feet. “How did you hear about it?”

  “I went back to the hotel to look for you. It was all everyone was talking about.” They sat there for a while, watching the lanchas heading back across the lake from Monkey Island. “Did you try to revive him?”

  “Revive him?”

  “You’re a doctor.”

  “I didn’t have any equipment. Besides, I didn’t feel inclined to try.”

  “You want to sit here all day?”

  “I feel very tired now.”

  She stood up and put out her hand. “Then we should go,” she said.

  * * *

  They stayed overnight at the Novo Mar in Veracruz. She booked a double room.

  He stood for a long time in the shower under the hot needles of water. He scrubbed his skin raw but whenever he closed his eyes he could still feel the brujo’s soft, filthy hands on him.

  He didn’t know why they called it a cleansing; he didn’t think he would ever feel clean again. He shampooed his hair four times but he could still smell the stink on him.

  What was he going to do now? Go back to Boston, maybe talk to Bill, see if he still had a job to go back to. It would be difficult to convince him that everything was all right now. He would probably have to find a job somewhere else; Boston was a small city, people talked, he might even have to move.

  “Take away that spell from your obedient daughter and save her from the enchanted snakes that have been buried in the black graveyard...”

  He had to stop thinking about that now, try to get his life back, forget everything that had happened here. And he couldn’t let anyone know about the money, especially Lynne.

  But first there was Elena, and Oliver. He couldn’t really forget, not yet, whatever happened he would have to deal with it one way or another.

  He got out of the shower, wiped the condensation from the mirror and peered at his reflection but he could barely see himself through the steam. He heard a buzzing; a flying beetle had somehow got into the bathroom. He flapped at it with his towel. It retreated to a corner of the ceiling and was lost in the steam.

  How the hell did that get in? Perhaps Jamie had left the French windows open.

  When he came out she was standing at the balcony window, in the dark, staring at the wine-coloured sea. She was wearing a white bathrobe. As she turned around it fell open.

  “can I tempt you?” she murmured.

  Chapter 77

  She clung to him as if she was drowning, her arms and legs locked around him. It was fierce and brief. He fled inside her; there was sanctuary there.

  Later, after the sweat cooled, he made love to her again, more slowly. The musky scent of her made him forget the reek of the brujo.

  Much later, asleep in her arms, he heard a soft knocking
at the door. He got up and peered into the corridor but there was no one there. He supposed he must have imagined it and went back to bed.

  * * *

  The next day she drove him back to el DF, out to the airport. He bought a standby ticket back to Boston.

  They stood hand in hand at the departure gates.

  “I rang my father yesterday,” she said.

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him you found the brujo.”

  “Did you tell him what happened?”

  “I don’t know what happened.”

  He smiled at that.

  “He said some drugs have gone missing.”

  “Really? Who would steal from the clinic?”

  “They were his words, too.” She waited for him to ask, and when he didn’t, she said: “He’s missing two doses of succinylcholine.”

  “That’s a very dangerous drug. I hope it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

  “What is it?”

  “Anaesthetists call it Suc. They use it for intubation to totally relax the patient. It ceases all voluntary and involuntary muscle control. You administer it to someone, they can’t even breathe unaided.”

  “How long does it take to work on an adult?”

  “Intravenous, it’s very quick.”

  “Intramuscular?”

  “A little bit longer, a minute or so.”

  They were silent for a long time. They announced the last call for his flight.

  “If someone had a drug like that in their blood stream, would it show up on a toxicology report?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “If you were looking for it, I guess. Why, has someone died at the clinic?”

  “I was thinking about the Crow.”

  “You would have thought he would have picked a more original name. There were three Crows in Catemoco, you know. I did some research.”

  “You’re changing the subject.”

  “What is the subject?”

  “You’re a big guy, you could probably hold him down, especially if you came up behind him and got an arm around him before he had a chance to call for help.”