lay still.
The fiery streaks across the sky seemed to evaporate, and the strange whistling ceased. All that remained was the sweet smell of burnt meat filling the air.
Father Castillo sat next to his colleague, watching a girl fan the old man’s face with a large, broad leaf. The slow strokes were almost hypnotic in their pace and tenderness. It had been two weeks and, though Father Gonzalez continued to draw ragged breaths, he hadn’t woken from his death-like sleep. His once-robust frame had fallen in on itself and his grey face and shrunken cheeks looked incongruous among the bright piles of sweet- smelling flowers heaped around him. The Indians replaced the blossoms daily, but Father Castillo knew they weren’t delivered just as a sign of respect for the old man. From his position next to the bed he could smell the strange odour coming from Father Gonzalez’s open mouth — raw and rancid. It disgusted him.
He turned his head at the sound of breaking pottery. The Guarani had been sun-curing the hundreds of flat clay plates that would be used as roof tiles on the church. They were only days away from having a completed structure ready for furnishing and blessing. The massive stone altar had been carved and hauled into position, a task that had taken a full day. A previous block of granite sat discarded — a shallow face, perhaps of Jesu Christi had been started on the stone, but the block had proven far too hard and heavy for the stonemason’s tools so it had been abandoned. It would take nearly every man in the village to remove it.
‘
Castillo flinched as the girl touched his arm, then placed a pile of clean cloths and a bowl of water on the table beside the bed. It was time to change the dressing over the old priest’s eye. It was strange how he thought of Gonzalez as an old man now — a few weeks ago he had seemed anything but — however, the damage to his head had seemed to absorb his life force and left him a foul smelling skeleton.
He carefully unwrapped the damp, discoloured bandage from around the patient’s head. In the noon light, Father Gonzalez’s tight, grey skin looked almost reptilian. Up close, the vile odour wafting from his open lips was stomach- turning, even for a Jesuit who had endured more hardships than many men had seen in a dozen lifetimes. Father Castillo pulled back the old priest’s top lip — the gums were black and also seemed to be shrinking. His teeth looked strange … longer perhaps, and the tongue behind them lay like a fat, dead worm in the back of his mouth. He couldn’t help secretly wishing that the Lord would take Gonzalez and free him from his rotting bonds.
He soaked one of the clean rags in the water and wiped away the sticky fluid that was still leaking from around Gonzalez’s eye socket. The ruined eye seemed lumpy and uneven behind its closed lid. He gently bathed the mucus-smeared lashes, then reached with his thumb to pull back the lid to check for further infection. As he lifted the delicate skin, he felt a movement behind it. He leapt back, landing on his rump and sending the small clay water bowl flying. He grabbed for it, too late, and managed to cut the skin between his thumb and forefinger on the broken shards.
There was something
After a few seconds he gathered himself and approached Father Gonzalez again. His heart hammered and his hand shook as he lifted the eyelid once more, steeling himself to make a grab for whatever creature had invaded his mentor and friend. There was nothing. He leaned forward over the wound, peering closer; still nothing. Perhaps it had just been the light, or his fatigue and anxiety for the old man had made him see something that wasn’t there.
He was about to gently probe the empty socket for anything foreign in the wound when the old priest dragged in a large breath and slowly opened his other eye. Its once clear brown iris was now indistinct, as though a layer of slime had grown across it. The muddy orb fixed on Father Castillo, then on the bleeding cut on his hand. The nostrils in the cadaverous face flared as the older priest inhaled again, and his lips turned up slightly in a brush of a smile. Then the expression vanished and the eye closed again.
Father Castillo should have been elated at this sign of consciousness from his holy colleague. Instead, he felt a terrible coldness spread from his stomach through his entire body. He hadn’t recognised the man who had stared up at him.
The church was finished, but there were no celebrations.
The previous night, all the animals in the village had been slaughtered. Their bodies had been found shredded, as though whatever had attacked them had rent them to pieces in search of their precious fluids. Some of the animals had been taken while tethered close to the villagers’ huts — yet no one had heard a thing. It worried Father Castillo that whatever had attacked the animals so viciously had crept silently among them while they slept — and was clever enough to untie knots.
When he went to check on Father Gonzalez, he found the old man had colour in his face again and his cheeks seemed fuller than they had in weeks, which was amazing as he had been given nothing but water dripped into his open mouth.
Father Castillo peeled back the eyelid of the ruined eye, steeling himself as he remembered his last experience of cleaning the wound. It was a miracle: there was once again an eye in the socket. Still shrunken and a milky grey colour, but an eye nonetheless.
Father Castillo leaned closer and placed his hand on the old priest’s cheek but Father Gonzalez didn’t wake. The younger man noticed the smell from his mouth had changed. Now it was rawly metallic and musky; and unsettling.
Father Castillo felt he had aged a decade in the last few hours. They had woken to find they had been visited again in the night — but this time several children had been taken. The sleeping infants had been silently pulled from their mats and spirited away in the dark.
The villagers had been frightened following the killing of the animals, but now, with the children missing, their fear turned to panic and anger. The children had to be located quickly, and alive.
By mid-morning, a single child had been found wandering incoherent through the deep green maze of the jungle. The small boy had turned his red-veined eyes on Father Castillo’s black robes, screamed the Guarani word for devil, and sobbed until bloody tears ran down his face. Father Castillo did what he could but the child had lapsed into a deathly blankness and had never woken again.
Now, the young priest exhaled wearily and looked at the faces surrounding him. Not since he and Father Gonzalez had first arrived had he seen such mistrust among the Guarani. And now there was something more in their eyes — fear … fear of him.
A dry rattling behind him caught his attention and he turned to see the medicine man, Nezu, shaking his gourd and pointing it at him, his creased lips moving in a chant and his eyes full of hatred. A small crowd had gathered, and this time they listened to his every word.
Father Castillo decided to move Father Gonzalez into the church. It was cooler within the stone structure, and far more secure. The tribe’s superstition was like a river that ran strongest just beneath the surface, and now that undercurrent was bubbling upwards in a surge of panic. It would not be long before it turned into savage action.
Father Gonzalez groaned as he was carried across the clearing. Steam seemed to rise from his sweat-damp skin wherever the dappled sunlight touched it. Despite the way the old man’s body shivered, Father Castillo thought it looked fuller, more fleshed out.
The faces of the men carrying the stretcher were twisted in disgust. None of the Guarani wanted to be near the old priest, or even look at him. It was if they believed he was somehow responsible for the turning fortunes of the village.
Garbled words bubbled up from deep inside the man and Castillo leaned close to his lips to hear. ‘
The old man’s mouth hung open behind his damp beard and strange squeaks and half-words continued to tumble out.
