Fat Crack nodded. “It’s the same thing my auntie, Rita Antone, told me long ago,” he said. “And the duajida says it is true.”
Pulling her robe on over her naked body, Lani glanced at the window. It was still night outside on the frozen prairie beyond the double-pane glass. And since the night wasn’t over, it was still all right for her to do a duajida of her own.
For days now she’d had a nagging feeling that something was terribly wrong back home. Since Fat Crack was the one who was ill, she was convinced his condition was the source of her malaise. Because no one seemed willing to tell her what was really going on, it was hardly surprising that Lani might look to some other means of finding out what she wanted to know.
She went to the dresser and took down a small framed picture that dated from the night of her high school graduation. She stood in her cap and gown flanked on either side by Gabe and Wanda Ortiz. After retrieving her medicine basket from her dresser, she sat down cross-legged on the floor, pried off the tight-fitting top, and spilled the contents onto the rug.
There before her was everything that had been there that night on Ioligam, and a few things more besides. Most had come to her from or through Nana Dahd: First came a piece of ancient pottery with the faint image of a turtle etched into the red clay. That had belonged to Rita Antone’s paternal grandmother, Understanding Woman. There was Nana Dahd’s sacred scalp bundle along with the shiny smooth bone owij-the awl-the old woman had used to weave her wonderful baskets. A few items were Lani’s alone-things she had retrieved from Betraying Woman’s cave-a blackened fragment of a broken pot and the delicate bone from a dead bat’s wing. Last of all was the soft chamois bag that held Looks at Nothing’s precious crystals.
Lani’s fingers trembled as she untied the string and spilled the crystals out into the medicine basket, confining them there rather than risk losing one on the floor. Taking the photo in one hand and a crystal in another, she held them up to the light and studied the faces through the haze of rock. She focused her gaze on Fat Crack’s smiling face. The first three times she did it, nothing happened. Then she picked up the fourth crystal.
After a few seconds she noticed a slight shifting in Gabe Ortiz’s features. They seemed thinner somehow. It’s because he’s ill, Lani thought. He’s losing weight.
Then Fat Crack’s face changed altogether. It seemed to dissolve and then remake itself. Gradually someone else’s features emerged. For a moment a blond Anglo woman’s face-a face Lani had never seen before-seemed to hover there under the crystal. Then those features, too, disappeared, leaving behind nothing but a bare skull. What does this mean? Lani wondered. And what does this Mil-gahn woman have to do with Fat Crack?
Shaken and having no idea what the crystals had told her, Lani carefully returned them to the bag. Then she placed the bag, along with all her other treasures, back in the medicine basket and closed the lid.
With the medicine basket restored to its hiding place, Lani turned once again to her computer. Looks at Nothing’s sacred crystals had left her feeling even more distressed. The old ways hadn’t worked, so it was time to resort to new ones. Lani switched her computer back on and sent three e-mails in a row. Half an hour later, as the sun touched the still winter-brown landscape outside her window, Lani Walker finally lay down and went to sleep.
Maria Elena heard the click of the lock. There was a single blanket on her bed. Ashamed of her nakedness, she pulled that over her now, even though she knew it was useless. He would peel away the puny covering once he reached her. The harsh light flashed on overhead. She cringed and squeezed her eyes shut, not only to close out the bright light but also to keep from seeing his face as he came toward her. To keep from seeing the terrible greediness in his eyes as he reached out to tear away her blanket. To keep from knowing exactly when his hurtful fingers would reach out with some awful tool to probe some part of her that should never have been touched. Somehow to put off the dreadful moment when she would writhe in agony and hear herself pleading and begging for him to stop.
It was as though, by not seeing him, she could avoid or delay what was coming. By not seeing it happen, she hoped somehow to distance herself from the pain and deny its reality while she endured whatever was to come. Acceptance was not an option.
This time the doctor’s approach took far longer than usual. For as long as possible, Maria Elena resisted the temptation to open her eyes. Someone had once said that eyes were the windows to the soul. Senor the Doctor had stolen her body from her, forcing her to relinquish it to him. By keeping her eyes closed, she hoped to deny him what little was left-her soul.
Finally she could stand it no longer. She opened her eyes and was amazed to see not the doctor but his wife. Maria Elena no longer thought the silver-haired woman beautiful. She was evil-every bit as monstrous as her husband.
The senora had come to Maria Elena’s cell with Senor the Doctor early on, during those first awful days when he had kept her tied up most of the time. He had hurt her some before that, but only a little. As soon as Maria Elena saw the senora, her hopes soared. She was sure the woman must have come to help her-to rescue her. Surely the senora would intercede on Maria Elena’s behalf. Surely she would stop her husband and keep him from hurting her.
Instead, the senora had simply smoothed her skirt under her and sat down on the steps. Rather than stopping her husband, she had sat there, strangely silent, avidly observing everything Senor the Doctor did, smiling her approval, and seemingly deaf to Maria Elena’s screams.
Over time Maria Elena had learned there was a peculiar rhythm to these sessions. The doctor preferred to start the process slowly, gradually escalating the assault and inflicting ever-increasing doses of pain. By the time it ended, he would have brought Maria Elena’s suffering to a howling, wild crescendo-to a point where she begged and pleaded for him to stop, even though he never stopped until he was ready. Sometimes he took pictures. When what he called that day’s “little game” was finally over, Senor the Doctor would force Maria Elena to eat and drink before once again shutting off the light, locking the door, and leaving her alone.
But when the senora came to watch, things were different. For one thing, he never brought the camera along when his wife was there, but the torture was always far worse with the senora watching. At some point in the process, the senora would nod at him. When that happened, he would immediately break off what he was doing. Without a word, he would follow his wife up the stairs, closing and locking the door behind them and leaving Maria Elena alone and sobbing in the dark. Much later, he would return alone to finish what he had begun.
Other times the senora would simply disappear from her place on the stairs. She would leave so quietly that at first neither Maria Elena nor Senor the Doctor would notice. When that happened-when Senor the Doctor realized she was no longer sitting there watching-he would take after Maria Elena with such fierce vengeance that all she could do was will herself to die.
And so, this time when Maria Elena could wait no longer-when she finally opened her eyes, blinking against the harsh glare of light-she saw not the doctor but the senora herself standing alone beside the filthy cot. That in itself was unusual. Never before had the senora come any farther into the room than that spot near the top of the stairs. Maria Elena was sure Senor the Doctor must be there, too, probably standing somewhere just outside Maria Elena’s line of vision.
The senora was strangely dressed. A green stocking cap confined her mane of silver hair. Over the green headgear perched a red-and-blue baseball cap. She wore a sweatshirt over ill-fitting jeans. On her hands was a pair of rubber gloves.
At the very moment Maria Elena noticed the senora’s gloves, she also saw the machete. Seeing the weapon, the girl recognized it for what it had always been-a death-dealing tool. In an instant of clarity, Maria Elena knew that the senora had come not as an appreciative audience to that day’s torture but as the Angel of Death.
Maria Elena watched transfixed as the shiny curved blade rose high in the air above her. When it fell, she made no attempt to dodge away from it or defend herself. Rather than fighting the swiftly falling blade, she welcomed the blow and willed herself to rise up to meet it. Her moment of release was finally at hand.
After countless days of unrelenting horror, death came as a blessing to Maria Elena-an answer to her desperate prayers, the only possible answer.
J. A. Jance
Day of the Dead
Seven
