Brain Child

The mirror exploded, and shards of glass flew everywhere, then the shelves of glasses and bottles collapsed on themselves. A moment later, all that was left was wreckage.

Alex turned away, and started back up the stairs. He would wait in the courtyard for the murderers, as his mother and sisters had waited before.

Now, at last, he would have his vengeance.…

“Darling, how would I know why Alex was up there? All he was doing was sitting, looking down at the house.”

“Well, you should have called the police,” Carolyn complained. “Everybody knows Alex is crazy.”

Cynthia shot her daughter a reproving glance. “Carolyn, that’s unkind.”

“It’s true,” Carolyn replied. “Mom, I’m telling you — he’s acting weirder and weirder all the time. And Lisa says he told her he didn’t think Mr. Lewis killed Mrs. Lewis and that he thought someone else was going to get killed. And look what happened to Mrs. Benson last night.”

Cynthia turned left up Hacienda Drive. “If you’re trying to tell me you think Alex killed them, I don’t want to hear it. Ellen Lonsdale is a friend of mine—”

“What’s that got to do with anything? I don’t care if she’s the nicest person in the world — Alex is a fruitcake!”

“That’s enough, Carolyn!”

“Aw, come on, Mom—”

“No! I’m tired of the way you talk about people, and I won’t hear any more of it.” Then, remembering her own impulse just before she’d left the house an hour ago, she softened. “Tell you what. You promise not to talk about him like that anymore, and I promise to call the police if he’s still there when we get back. Okay?”

Carolyn shrugged elaborately, and they drove on up the ravine in silence. They came around the last curve, and as Cynthia scanned the hillside, she heard Carolyn groaning.

“Now what’s wrong?”

“The gates,” Carolyn said. “If I’d left them open, you’d ground me for a week.”

Cynthia swore under her breath, then reminded herself that she’d only been gone an hour, and it was the middle of the afternoon. Besides, the courtyard was empty. She drove inside and got out of the car. “Well, at least we don’t have to call the police,” she observed, her eyes scanning the hills once more. “He’s gone.”

“Thieves,” a soft voice hissed from the shadows of the wide loggia in front of the house. “Murderers.”

Cynthia froze.

“Who … who’s there?” she asked.

“Oh, God,” she heard Carolyn whimper. “It’s Alex. Mama, it’s Alex.”

“Quiet,” Cynthia said softly. “Just don’t say anything, Carolyn. Everything will be all right.” Then, her voice louder: “Alex? Is that you?”

Alex stepped out of the shadows, the shotgun held firmly in his hands. “I am Alejandro,” he whispered.

His face was dripping blood from a cut above his left eye, and his shirt was stained darkly from another on his shoulder, but if he felt any pain, he gave no sign. Instead he walked slowly forward.

“There,” he said, gesturing with the gun toward the south wall. “Over there.”

“Do as he says, Carolyn,” Cynthia said softly. “Just do as he says, and everything will be all right.”

“But he’s crazy, Mama!”

“Hush! Just be quiet, and do as he says.” She waited for what seemed like an aeon, praying that Carolyn wouldn’t try to get back in the car or bolt toward the gates. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her daughter begin to move slowly around the end of the car until she was standing at her side. Cynthia took the girl’s hand in her own. “We’ll do exactly as he says,” she said again. “If we do as he says, he won’t hurt us.”

Slowly, keeping her eyes fixed on Alex, she began backing around, pulling Carolyn with her. “What is it, Alex?” she asked. “What do you want?”

“Venganza,” Alex whispered. “Venganza para mi familia.”

“Your family, Alex?”

Alex nodded. “Si.” Again he began moving forward, backing Cynthia and Carolyn Evans slowly toward the wall.

He could see the wall as it had been that day, even though they’d plastered over the damage and tried to wash away the blood of his family. But the pits from the bullets were still there, and the red stains were as bright as they had been on the day he’d watched his family die.

And now, the moment was finally at hand.

He wondered if the gringa woman would face death with the bravery of his mother, crying out her defiance even as the bullets cut the life out of her.

He knew she wouldn’t.

She would die a gringa’s death, begging for mercy. Even now, he could hear her.

“Why?” she was saying. “Why are you doing this? What have we done to you?”

What did my mother and my sisters do to deserve to die at the hands of your men? he thought, but it was not the time for questions.

It was the time for vengeance.

He squeezed the trigger, and the quiet of the afternoon exploded with the roar of the shotgun.

The gringa’s face exploded before his eyes, and new blood was added to the courtyard wall. Then, as with his mother before her, the woman’s knees gave way, and she sank slowly to the ground as her daughter watched, screaming.

As Alex squeezed the trigger a second time, his only wish was that the courtyard was as it should have been, and he could have watched as the blood of the gringas disappeared into the dust of the hacienda.

Jose Carillo turned up Hacienda Drive, and shifted his battered pickup truck into low gear. Listening to the transmission’s angry grinding, he hoped the truck would last long enough for him to begin the job at the hacienda. With the amount of money that one job would produce, he would be able to afford a new truck. But he was already late, and worried that he might lose the job before he ever got it. He pressed on the gas pedal, and the old truck coughed, then reluctantly surged forward.

It was on the second curve that he saw the boy coming down the road, a shotgun cradled in his arms, his face and shirt covered with blood. He braked to a stop and called out to the boy. At first the boy hadn’t seemed to hear him. Only when Jose called out a second time did the boy look up.

“You okay?” Jose asked. “Need some help?”

The boy stared at him for a moment, then shook his head and continued down the road. Jose watched him until he disappeared through the gate in the wall whose vines had just been torn down — something Jose’s gardener’s eyes had noticed as he’d come up the hill. Then he forced the truck back in gear.

He was already inside the courtyard before he saw the carnage that lay against the south wall.

“Jesus, Jose, y Maria,” he muttered. He crossed himself, then fought down the nausea in his gut as he hurried into the house to find a telephone.

Alex stared at himself in the mirror. Blood still oozed from the cut over his eye, and his shirt was growing stiff.

He’d already examined the shotgun, and knew that he’d fired three shells.

The last two were now in the chambers.

And though he had no conscious memory of it, he knew where he’d been when the voices began whispering to him and the images from the past began to flood his mind. He also knew where he’d been when it had ended.

When it began, he’d been on the hillside overlooking the hacienda, remembering Maria Torres’s stories of