“Tell him that I’m with you, that I’m protecting you,” Ari said. “Tell him to come back up before they find him.”
But Michi’s breathing grew shallow, and her voice sounded strangled. “I’m scared of the other one. Very scared.”
Ari stroked her forehead and kissed her to calm her down, but the girl grew more upset.
“He’s one of them—if he finds me, he’ll take me away,” she said in a hoarse squeal.
Ari spoke reassuring words that weren’t getting through to the terrified girl.
For a moment, though, she seemed to relax. “Are you coming to find me?”
“I’m with you, honey. I’m right here with you.”
Ari cried at her inability to soothe the pain in the little body before her. She yearned to comfort and protect her. But then she sensed something behind her. When she turned around, there was nothing there. Michi moved her head toward the door. She opened her eyes, but only the whites showed. She was crying.
“He’s coming now,” she said in a pleading, childish voice.
Ari knew from the way the hair prickled on her arm that they weren’t alone. Something had come in that she couldn’t see. She couldn’t protect the girl from it. Ari suddenly felt cold while Michi, staring blankly, began to breathe out gusts of condensation.
Then she directed her empty eyes at Ari. “You have to go.”
Ari was chilled to the bone, terrified by something that didn’t exist and yet was all around them.
“Go away! Leave her alone!” she screamed in terror, struggling to keep back the void. A part of that void took shape over Michi, who kept crying in her icy skin.
Ethan ran to the entrance, praying that he’d get there in time. When he kicked open the door from the basement, he found himself in front of a group of paramilitaries pushing a corpse into a car. Time stopped. He knew that corpse.
Ari hugged Michi in a useless attempt to spirit her away, but the girl was getting colder and colder. She rubbed her hands, crying into her arms.
“No, honey, please. Please don’t leave me.”
“You have to go. He’ll take you away along with me,” she said in a very weak voice.
Ari leaned her head on the girl’s chest. “I’ll go with you—then you won’t be alone.”
The girl’s chest swelled, and her voice transformed into an inhuman howl. “Get out!”
Ari jumped back, terrified. But she stayed there. “No. I’m staying with you.”
Ethan looked at the team, and his well-honed survival instincts took over. He identified his only way out: to shoot the man closest to him and head back down the corridor before they could react. The old man was placed in the seat, knowing that the survivors wouldn’t follow him because they had what they were looking for and weren’t interested in him. The vehicle started up—the door closed. There was no choice. Ethan accepted this cruel reality, and suddenly Stobert became aware of him. Caught in the never-ending dream, he knew that something was wrong. Ethan sensed the empty shell of the incomplete transit, the anguish of the trapped victim. He fired at the vehicle, filling the chassis full of holes. He hit the driver in the liver and lungs, killing him instantly. The same burst of fire cut through the old man’s jugular and jaw, obliterating the arteries. The blood flow to the brain was cut off, and his respiratory system was destroyed, causing its immediate collapse.
Stobert leaped like an electrocuted dummy and fell apart over the upholstery. As he faded away, he heard the voices. They were laughing and, for the first time, calling him by name: “Walter.” They were now free of his uncle’s form. The laughing voices were allowing him to hear them. He suddenly knew. Now he knew everything. It had always been this precise instant. The instant that had sealed his fate for the past eighty years. His pursuer was always going to track him down and kill him, and the thin thread of time had turned against him thanks to the final decision of someone he’d never been aware of. The voices knew that they had lost, both here and in Vienna; the world between worlds would happen and had happened because that was how they wanted it, and now they were laughing the way they would laugh as they devoured him for all eternity. In the clarity of his death, he tried to make himself understand: he’d never had a chance. None of them had. They were just playthings on which to take revenge. He had always been doomed because he didn’t learn in time. This tenth of a second was the time he needed to achieve the transmutation; they had judged him there and eighty years before. The path of his life was just one big joke, a horrible, humiliating joke. He learned everything in that moment, in a flash, because that was also the way they wanted it. And from the abyss beyond his soul rose a horror so great he couldn’t face it. It was taking a little time to gloat before it swallowed him whole.
The commandos returned fire. Stobert’s body bounced against the backrest, and a terrifying, unnatural scream emerged from a throat that had been stripped of its vocal cords, competing with the sound of the guns until one of the mercenaries forgot his training and aimed his submachine gun right at his skull. It burst like a pumpkin, splattering the interior of the 4x4. The rest of them fired at Ethan, who allowed himself to be hit. The stream of bullets riddled him full of holes as he and Stobert fell, the latter emitting a squeak that they mistook for a scream. Ethan could now see the full horror of the transdimensional nightmare as his energy ebbed away with the impact of each bullet. He was happy with everything that had happened in his life, everything that had led him to this moment, to the streaking bullets that decided his fate, a fate that bound him to Michi and her great-grandfather in the blink of an eye. Everything was happening just as it was supposed to. As it would always happen for all of eternity because it was the only thing that existed. It was beyond time.
Ethan fell to the ground. He was dead.
The soldiers ceased fire and pulled out the decapitated wraith. The pair in the basement rejoined them, and they surrounded the Jackal, dumbfounded by their catastrophic failure. “It all happened in a second,” he said to himself, before allowing his bodyguards to whisk him away.
Ari held Michi, trying to keep her warm. Suddenly the girl’s normal temperature returned. She sat up screaming.
“Mommy! Ethan!” The scream caught in her throat. “No! They, they . . .”
Ari hugged her, but she had no idea how to console her. “I know; I know. I’m here with you.”
She let her cry for a few minutes and lifted her up to take her away. Suddenly, she heard a click and jumped back, shielding the girl with her body. A shadow was standing outside.
“It’s me! Don’t shoot.”
Caimão’s voice echoed around the room. Ari cautiously lowered her gun, and he stepped forward, carrying Yarlín, who was still unconscious.
“They’ve gone. I saw the cars go and came back to see what had happened. I found your friend’s body. I’m sorry. We need to get out of here right away, and we need to take him and 4:20 with us. The police will be here soon—maybe the army and who knows what else.”
In Vienna, Stobert opened his eyes in the dark. He was covered in ash, and his uncle’s body lay next to him.
Helmut was staring blankly at a curtain. “My God. There was a girl.”
“What? What happened? The house is on fire!”
Helmut came out of his trance and helped him up. Their thuggish chief was searching through boxes, emptying bookshelves and keeping anything of value he could find. He shouted at them angrily.
“What luck—I thought you were dead. So? Can we go now? Are these the wonderful secrets that will shake up the party?”
“My uncle had them.”
“That old man didn’t have anything. He’s dead, but before he went, he took the trouble to curse you. You don’t appear to have been a very close family.”
“His gun wasn’t loaded! I told you he wasn’t dangerous—I could have handled him.”
“He was a freethinker, a Mason, and he was threatening us with it. What did you expect us to do?”
“He
wasn’t a Mason.”
“A theosophist, a spiritualist, who cares? Decadent cults, just like the Jews. Trash we need to sweep out of Europe. We need to go before the police get here.”
Helmut Schwindt picked up the gun. It was a beautifully engraved Luger P-08. He put it in his pocket.
Walter anxiously searched the shelves. “What about the list? It might help us—it might lead us to other leaders of his group.”
“Didn’t you hear me? They’ve fled or died or recanted. They’re finished! This stuff is nothing but family hysteria. This is what I deserve for trusting a Hungarian.” He reached into his vest. “Here’s the list. Where are the leaders? They’re just the names of farmers. This corrupt aristocracy shall fall like a house of cards under the weight of the new society. And this trash”—he pointed to the exquisite calligraphy on the page—“shall be taken to party headquarters. But I doubt it’s worth anything.”
Epilogue
In Santa Catarina the amazement of the authorities was matched only by the eagerness of the press, which went crazy. International agencies rushed to file reports across the world, and the news soon went viral. It was too juicy a story: anonymous hero saves girl from mass cult suicide. Caimão, a friendly event organizer and nature enthusiast (many of his friends were rather surprised to hear this), had been on one of his regular drives through the jungle (cue more surprise) when he’d been caught in a huge explosion that had shaken the province, leading many to believe that there’d been an earthquake. The explosion that had destroyed the compound had been set off by fanatics who apparently believed that the world was about to end. Instead of running away, Caimão, true to his generous, determined spirit, had gone to help the survivors, confronted one of the murderers, and had come back, wounded, with a girl who would turn out to have been kidnapped in Colombia. Colônia Liberdade joined other harrowing cases such as the Peoples Temple of Jim Jones and the Order of the Solar Temple in the annals of tragic cults. A morbid fascination with the cult and its kidnappings kept the media busy for weeks, creating yet another forum for paranoid conspiracy theorists who weren’t satisfied with the official explanation. Meanwhile, social networks focused on the human side, eating up images of the relieved mother hugging her daughter.
The next day, the police found the bodies of Ethan and 4:20 in a car in Joinville and, given 4:20’s background, the case was filed as a settling of scores by cartels. The mortal remains of Ethan and Michelle were sent back to their home countries.
Caimão, meanwhile, enjoyed the fruits of his sudden fame: he had returned a girl to her despairing family with the whole planet watching. He went from talk show to talk show telling his story, which grew more detailed each time. In a few weeks, he’d signed a contract to appear on a reality show about the dangerous world of concert security. He was strong, handsome, and charismatic and could talk the talk. Producers were rubbing their hands with glee.
Back in Central America, Ari learned of Andrés’s murder. Calvo studied the papers and told her that she had every right to adopt Michi, who had no other legal guardians left. It was a long, labyrinthine, uncertain procedure, but, as ever, if he got involved, arrangements could be made far more quickly. Even so, Ari noticed that he’d stopped making jokes. Something about the experience appeared to have doused his spark. When they said goodbye, he hugged her, and she realized that the old cynic had a heart after all.
Calvo’s voice was choked with emotion. “I’ll always wonder: Was it worth it? All that death and pain to save one girl?”
“It’s not about whether it was worth it. It was just something that we had to do. That’s all.”
Ari tried to be with Michi as much as possible, but sometimes she had to get away. She had to find some space for herself so the girl wouldn’t see her break down. She went to the hotel gym to lock herself in the shower and cry in the stream of water. She cried until she was exhausted, until she puked. After that she felt able to speak to this abnormally mature girl again. They both sat on the bed. She didn’t know if she was capable of making a connection with her.
“What can I say? I don’t know what to tell you. Do you want to come with me? I . . . have a little sister. She lives with my older brother. Years ago . . . I didn’t dare to adopt her when I should have. I didn’t feel mature enough or ready. It was stupid because we’d always lived together, and I’d always taken care of her. But suddenly, making it legal, when the papers came . . . it seemed too much for me. I haven’t thought about it again. Maybe . . . you could be friends. I know that you’re . . . alone, but maybe I’m not very good at this kind of thing . . .”
Michi curled up in her lap. “Ari, are we both alone?”
Ari hugged her, trying to copy the way Ethan used to hug. He had been like an arch that protected you from the pain of your life, but even though she’d practiced, she came up short, and the gesture only reminded her that he was gone. She got a lump in her throat that she couldn’t control and started to cry. Then Michi joined her. Ari felt Michi’s tears soaking her chest and knew that she’d never be able to let her go.
Later, they had dinner at a burger place. Ari reminded Michi about Candy and Bear and how excited they were to see her. For the first time, they both smiled. Michi finished her fries, trying to forget her sadness.
“In the movies, everyone’s happy in the end. Is this the end? Is this a happy ending?”
“I don’t know, Michi. I’ve never known. All I know is that we’ve lost the people we loved most in the world, but the horrible thing that stalked your family is gone too. It’s all over, and nothing will change that now.”
Their time was running out too. They went back to the room. Michi closed her eyes and felt a phrase unwittingly emerge from her lips. It was like a math problem she’d been puzzling over for months, and now the solution had come to her subconsciously.
“Nothing is ever truly over.”
Through the windows, the palm trees swayed in the evening light, filled with birds chattering away in strange, melancholy languages whose origins were lost in the mists of time.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2018 Laura Pacheco Castro
Guillermo Valcárcel was born in Madrid. He worked in the construction industry by day and studied filmmaking at night until 2008, when he moved to Costa Rica, where he currently lives and works as a filmmaker. He also dedicates his time to writing and illustrating. He is the author of another thriller, Counterfeit, as well as The Wave That Hit Spain, an influential essay that launched his writing career.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Photo © 2018 Ar De Bonis Orquera
Kit Maude is a Spanish-to-English translator and editor based in Buenos Aires. His translations of stories by Latin American authors have been featured in Granta, the Literary Review, and The Short Story Project, among other publications. He has translated several great Argentinian and Uruguayan writers, including Jorge Luis Borges, Armonía Somers, Julio Cortázar, Antonio Di Benedetto, and Adolfo Bioy Casares. He was born in Hong Kong and received a bachelor’s degree in comparative American studies from the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom.
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