— Good evening. I'm Deputy Hood.
She peered at him, face darkly lined, eyes fierce but steady. She was short and wiry and wore a black dress to her ankles and red slip-on sneakers. Her scapular today was made not of rattlesnake parts but of dried peyote buttons interspersed with plastic Telmex calling cards with action pictures of famous soccer players on them.
Hood held out the Popsicles and she took the orange one and a soda. He explained that he wanted to see what she had shown to Sean Gravas, the man who had filmed her healing of the stung girl, Silvia. She motioned him into her home. The floor was swept recently, broom marks on concrete, and there was a propane oven and a three-burner stove and a sink and a poured concrete counter. She opened her bottle and handed the opener to Hood.
— He is a white devil.
— He is a sick man.
— Silvia is strong.
— Sean is weak. I want you to take me where you took him.
— It is ten minutes to drive.
It was a thirty-minute drive. The dirt road that wound up past the curandera's house soon narrowed to a twist of ruts. Hood straddled them in the big SUV. The sun was lowering now and there was a pink tint to the mesquite and madrone, backlit by the sun. They cast blue shadows on the tan desert sand. The curandera threw her Popsicle stick and wrapper out the window and a minute later the soda can.
Finally the road ended in a fan of uphill paths that looked more traveled by flash floods than by humans or animals. The curandera put her hand on the door pull and Hood parked and shut off the engine. He came around to her side and she started up a trail through the dry brown brush. Hood got his Glock from the toolbox in the back and clipped the holster to his belt, then locked up the vehicle and caught up with her.
She led the way, walking briskly. Lizards hugged the rocks for the last warmth of sunlight. They climbed for a few minutes, then walked downhill into a stand of scrub oak and greasewood. Hood smelled the spring and saw the foundation of a small house that had been destroyed, now just a black smudge upon the earth. There was a rock chimney. Beyond the foundation scattered sticks and rusted swatches of chicken wire lay half-buried in sand.
She led him past the house and coop and a well and along the copse of greasewood trees. The ground around them was piled high with the dead needles into which spiders had tunneled. Their webs caught the sunlight, and just inside the mouths of the tunnels the spiders waited pale and still. She ducked under a branch and brushed between two trees, and Hood followed. The greasewood grew close together and Hood smelled the mint smell of them and felt their oil on his hands as he pushed aside the branches to follow her. A trail opened and after a minute they came to a clearing. Here the trees had not grown or were removed long ago.
In the middle of the clearing was a rude rock pyramid four feet high, made of desert stones held together with cement. It looked to have been hastily made-thick seams of cement and an erratic shape. There were two staunch iron rings set into the concrete, one low and one high. A length of heavy chain ran from each ring to the ground and ended in a manacle drilled for a lock. Hood looked down at one, the large, rusted iron bracelet an exaggerated and seemingly ancient version of modern-day handcuffs. There was another pile of stones thirty feet away, at the edge of the greasewoods, and these were piled loose and dusted with dead brown needles.
— Juan Batista lived here, she said. Crazy. Eyes like the devil. Eyes like Sean Gravas. That is how I know.
The curandera walked to the manacles and placed the longer one over her small hand. Her dark fist moved easily in and out so she raised it, and the huge rusted cuff slid to the crook of her elbow. The short lower manacle she placed around her ankle, and over each one she made a locking motion with an invisible key. Then she threw the key into the greasewood and sat down in the dirt and looked at Hood.
— He locked himself up and threw away the key?
— Yes. Seven days in the sun and he died. Many weeks later they pulled his hand and foot from the manacles and buried him where those stones are.
— Why did he do this?
— He lived with his young wife and gathered firewood. He got a fever. He began to tremble and scream. He panted but could not drink. He drooled all down his shirt and pants. He growled like a wolf. He became strong as a chupacabra. He bit and raped his wife for four days. He repented and locked himself here to die. To save her life.
— What made him go crazy?
— He was not crazy. He went with the devil.
— Was he an evil man?
— No. He always loved God.
— If he loved God, why did he go to the devil?
— The devil came to him.
— How?
— In the caves of his blood.
— I don't understand.
— You cannot understand. You cannot see. You cannot hear. This is his power over us. But when he comes into you, when it happens, then it cannot be hidden. All see and all know. This is our power over him. This is why he leaves us quickly.
She squinted at Hood. The sun was low and in her face, burnishing it copper around the sharp teeth and the wise but feral eyes.
— When did you know that Sean had the devil inside him?
— The smell. The eyes. He would not look at his own reflection. He would not allow Silvia to drink water. These are signs.
Hood looked at the crude stanchion, then at the loose pile of stones that marked Juan Batista's grave. The sky was orange and black now in the west and Hood suddenly felt alone and afraid. Like Oz must feel, he thought. He felt uncertain, too, as he knew Sean must. And Hood also felt compelled to finish his mission and find his friend. Just as Ozburn, he thought, must feel the need to complete this journey of murder and attempted miracle that he had conceived.
Hood thought again of Mike Finnegan, the man who had claimed to be a minor devil, and Mike's insistence that no devil could possess a human, that a devil's work was to influence, to direct, to cajole. Finnegan had said that men were free to choose. Finnegan had said that devils wanted men to be free to choose, to make their own laws, define good and evil for themselves.
— What did he say when he saw this? he asked.
— He said nothing as I told him about Juan Batista. Then he touched the manacles. He put them on and stared at them. He prayed. He became furious and the prayer became a scream and the scream became a howl. I walked home a hidden way.
They drove back toward the village in darkness. Hood couldn't shake the fear and the aloneness. He felt that he was connected to Sean. Felt that he owed Sean for enduring this terrible curse so that he wouldn't have to. The least I owe him is respect, Hood thought, and some attempt to understand what he's going through.
— Did Gravas drive into Agua Blanca?
— There was no vehicle at Silvia's house.
— Where is your nearest airport?
— Tecate.
— There must be something closer.
— There is a strip outside of Agua Blanca. Follow the main road back to Tecate and turn where you see the sign to the gringo resort. When you see the large white boulders turn right. Hood saw the boulders ahead in his brights. He slowed and made the turn and bounced onto a rough dirt road. The wind had come up and the dust swirled in his headlights. A few hundred yards in, he followed an arrow spray-painted on a big rock, and this road ended at an old lake bed that stretched as far as Hood could see in his high beams. It was flat and cracked, with wisps of tan, dry grass waving between the tiles of dried mud.
He drove the Durango out onto the bed until he found the tire marks left by a small plane. He followed them until they ended in a semicircle. He stopped and got out and looked where someone had tied down the airplane. There were old stakes with lengths of bailing wire for securing the tires. There were footprints lightly stamped into
