The Liar of Red Valley

by Walter Goodwater

“Nope,” Sadie said. “Not really.”

  “That bad, huh?”

  Most secrets were just embarrassing. Others were maybe shameful. But a secret like this was dangerous. Deadly. “Yeah, that bad. Sorry, I think it’s better if I keep this one to myself.”

  “I guess that’s part of this whole Liar gig. Keeping the secrets, like the King asked.”

  Sadie closed the ledger. “And here I thought being the Liar would be fun.”

  Graciela shrugged. “Whatever it is, your mom handled it, right? So you can too.”

  She had a point. Her mom had known this secret too, but no one had bothered her about it. No one had started snooping around until her mom was gone. And her grandmother must have known, and her mother, all the way back to Mary Bell. And they’d kept the secret. Because they were the Liar, and no one screwed with the Liar.

  “I need to learn how to do what my mom could do,” Sadie said. “And fast.”

  “So, how do you do that? Learn how to Lie and all that.”

  “I have no idea,” Sadie said. “I think my mom was supposed to teach me.” So why hadn’t she? Especially once she knew about the cancer?

  “Huh,” Graciela said thoughtfully.

  Sadie let a French fry drop. “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, that was something. You have an idea.” Sadie narrowed her eyes. “And judging by the look on your face, it’s a bad one.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Graciela said. “Real bad.”

  “Spill it.”

  Graciela finished off her Cherry Coke and wiped salt from her hands. “What if you could talk to your mom again?”

  Sadie’s skin tingled and her lunch flopped in her gut. “What do you mean?”

  “Beto,” Graciela said. Graciela’s eldest brother was a brujo, but Sadie didn’t know much more about him. He was older than them, intense even when they were all kids, and never much interested in his little sister or her friends.

  “He can talk to the dead?”

  Graciela nodded. “I heard him talking about it once with some of his brujería friends. It sounded like it wasn’t easy or safe, but they could do it.”

  Mom, Sadie thought. Are you out there somewhere? Sadie had never given much thought to what happened after death. Just being alive was enough work on its own. But if there was a chance? You didn’t help me when you were here. Can you help me now?

  “Let’s go.”

  “You’d better let me do the talking,” Graciela said when they parked in front of her house. “Beto doesn’t know you very well, and since he got out on parole, he’s… well, even more of his usual charming self.”

  “Yeah, that seems smart,” Sadie said, a little relieved. “And, thanks for everything today.”

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  They found him in the garage. The air inside was stale and smelled of gasoline. A 1973 Mustang stripped to gray primer and sitting on cinderblocks took up most of the middle of the room. Every corner was full of crumbling cardboard boxes laced with spiderwebs. Beto sat cross-legged on the stained concrete next to the car. His eyes were closed and sweat ran freely down his face.

  “Roberto,” Graciela called as they entered. “Need to talk to you.”

  Sadie saw him wince at the interruption. His eyes opened slowly and stared at them both with dark, unimpressed eyes. He was shaved bald, save for a thin black mustache and a wispy soul patch. Tattoos crawled up his forearms; she didn’t remember those from before he went to jail. Sadie didn’t know what he’d done—no one really talked about it.

  “We need a favor,” Graciela said.

  He closed his eyes and sighed.

  “Hey, I’m talking to you,” Graciela said, snapping her fingers in front of his face. Sadie was starting to question the wisdom of letting her do the talking. “Don’t make me go get Mamá.”

  His eyes opened again. His irises were nearly black, like wells too deep to see the bottom. Sadie saw something in there, more than just the natural antipathy an older brother has for his annoying little sister. There was anger, sure: coiled tight and ready to strike. But also power. Sadie couldn’t nail it down any more than that, and wasn’t sure she would have even noticed it a week ago, before her world went a little crazy, but it was there.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “A favor, like I said.”

  “And why should I do anything for you?”

  “It’s not for me, dumbass. For my friend.”

  His gaze turned fully to Sadie. She met it and held it. Maybe there was power moving behind her eyes too.

  “I know you?” Beto asked.

  Graciela groaned in exasperation. “She’s been my friend since kindergarten.”

  “We’ve met,” Sadie said. “A few times.”

  “Don’t look familiar,” he said. “So what do you want?”

  “We need you to do your brujo thing,” Graciela said.

  Muscles tensed along his jaw and neck.

  “My mom just died,” Sadie said quickly before Graciela could irritate him more. “And she’s left me in a lot of trouble. I need to talk to her. I don’t need long, just a few—”

  “And you think I can talk to the dead?” he asked, his voice sharp. “Who told you a fool thing like that?”

  “I heard you,” Graciela said. “You were talking with Esteban and Paco.”

  “You listened in on my private conversation?”

  Graciela laughed. “Nothing’s private here. You want privacy, move out of your parents’ house, tough guy.”

  Storm clouds crackled in those deep eyes. He pointed at the door. “Get out.”

  “Don’t be like that,” Graciela said. “We’re just—”

  “Get out.” His words hit like falling on concrete. Sadie was sure she imagined it, but she could have sworn she heard some of the bottles on the shelf next to her rattle.

  “Fine,” Graciela said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  “Just you,” Beto said. He jerked his chin at Sadie. “She can stay.”

  “Oh, no,” Graciela said.

  “I don’t like your tone,” her brother replied. “And if your little white friend wants a favor, then she and I need to talk business.”

  Graciela looked at Sadie. Sadie felt her blood racing. The heat in the garage bore down on her like a heavy wool blanket, smothering her in sweat and fumes. She had remembered Beto being intense, but this was something else entirely. She didn’t like what she saw in his eyes. But the only way out of this mess was forward, and she was starting to discover that things that used to scare her didn’t seem all that frightening anymore.

  “Go ahead,” Sadie said softly. “I’ll be fine.”

  “If you touch her…” Graciela said, before launching into a litany of rapid-fire profane Spanish that Sadie could barely follow. “I’ll be inside. Kick him in the balls if you have to.”

  The door to the garage clicked shut.

  “Nice car,” Sadie said into the hot silence.

  “It was, once,” Beto said. “Maybe will be again someday. So Javi tells me you’re the new Liar of Red Valley.”

  “Javi told you that?” Sadie was surprised; she’d never heard Graciela’s youngest brother talk much.

  As if he could read her thoughts, Beto tapped his temple. “Javi talks all the time. You just have to know how to listen. Now, is it true? You’re the Liar?”

  “I guess so,” she said. “But that’s what I need to talk to my mom about.”

  Beto nodded, considering. “Even if I could do the thing you think I can do,” he said, “I can’t. Condition of my parole. Sheriffs in this shit town don’t like brown men using magic.”

  Sadie’s shoulders slumped. All that for nothing. There had to be others in Red Valley who could help her, but she didn’t know how much time she had. But she couldn’t expect Beto to risk getting sent back to jail for someone he barely knew.

  “Alright,” Sadie said. “Sorry to bother you.”

  As she turned to
go, Beto said, “Hold up, gringa. Not so fast. I didn’t say no.” He stood up and stretched out his legs. “I’m just providing you with the necessary details for this negotiation.”

  “Is that what we’re doing? Negotiating?”

  He smiled a little, though his storming eyes didn’t settle. “I’ve got something you want, you’ve got something I want. So yeah. A simple business transaction.” He pulled out his wallet and retrieved a crinkled picture of a pretty girl with a round face and long black hair. “This is my girl, Teresa. Been together since high school. Waited eighteen months for me to get out of that fucking prison. Met me at the front gate.”

  Sadie didn’t know what to say to that, but handed the picture back.

  “We found out last week that she’s pregnant,” he said.

  “Congratulations.”

  Now the smile broadened and the clouds thinned a little. “Gracias. Still can’t believe it. It’s one of those things, happens all the time. Nothing more normal in the world, people having kids. But when it’s you, when it’s your kid, there aren’t any words for it. It’s magic, just as much as anything a brujo or a Liar can do.”

  Did you feel that way, Mom, when I came along? And what about her dad, whoever that was? Had he beamed like this when he talked about Sadie? And if so, how long had that lasted, before he disappeared from her life?

  “I’m sure you’ll make a great dad,” Sadie said.

  “I hope so,” he replied. The gloom darkened his face again. “But that’s where you come in, Liar girl. I don’t know how this whole Liar shit works, but I know you can change things. I need you to write in your little book. You write that I never went to prison. I don’t care if I know it isn’t true. I need my kid to think it’s true. I don’t want them thinking about that every time they look at me. You can do that?”

  Sadie thought about all the stupid Lies her mom told for people, and wondered if she told Lies like this, too. Maybe some things were worth the Liar’s Price.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I can do that.”

  “Good,” he said. He sounded a little relieved. “Then we can do business.”

  “So you can let me talk to my mom?”

  He held up his hands. “I can commune with the spirits. That’s not the same thing. But it can be done.”

  “You’ve done it before?”

  “I’ve heard of it being done,” he corrected. “By my elders.”

  She was about to get angry before she remembered she’d never told a Lie before, but had promised to do so for him. So maybe it was an even trade after all. “Okay,” she said. “What do we need to do?”

  “This is the tricky part,” he said. “We need some things, if we’re going to do this. Things you maybe don’t have.”

  “You didn’t tell me that before we negotiated.”

  He shrugged. “It’s not my first negotiation.”

  “Just tell me what we need.”

  He held up a finger to count. “We need a conduit,” he said. “Lucky for you, that’s me.” Another finger. “We need a crossroads.”

  “Is that like, Washington and Main Street?”

  “That,” Beto said, “is an intersection. I’m talking about a true crossroads.”

  Sadie’s eyes flicked around the garage as she thought. What made a ‘true crossroads’? What the hell did that even mean? Where two roads came together, right? How was that different than just any old street corner? But there was more to it than just roads running into each other. People had to make a choice at a crossroads. Take a diverging path.

  “I know where to go,” she said at last.

  “Good,” he said. “Because those were the easy ones. We need a piece of something alive that can never die.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I’m not finished,” Beto said. “Magic makes sense, but this is more than just magic. We’re talking about breaking the laws of the universe, not to mention the laws of the County of Red Valley. This shit isn’t easy, otherwise people would do it all the time.”

  “Fine,” Sadie said. “What else?”

  “You need an icon of the dead.”

  “What, like a picture?”

  “That’d work. But you also need the blood of the dead.”

  Sadie felt light-headed and not just from the heat of the garage. She thought she might throw up. “Why would I… I don’t have my mom’s blood.” They’d cremated her, on her mom’s wishes. She was gone, really, totally, completely gone. Sadie didn’t even have a picture of her.

  Beto shrugged. “Nothing I can do, then.”

  No, no, no. Not when I’m this close. Just when she thought she might see her again, her mom’s face slipped away a little further in her mind. Did you have to leave me with nothing I could use to help myself?

  Sadie let the anger in, felt it burn hot inside, consuming all the air in her chest. She swallowed a scream and screwed her eyes shut, for a breath, two. Then opened them again. She did have something: the ledgers. They were full of blood, but only the blood of those telling Lies. But she remembered what she’d read in Mary Bell’s book, her first Lie: In this book I will write only truth. That had been Mary’s Lie. Mary’s blood. That had been the first Lie in every ledger, so if she could find her mom’s ledger, she’d have her mom’s blood too.

  But she had no ideas left on how to find her mom’s ledger. And little time before the undersheriff or the Laughing Boys came calling again.

  “So all you need is blood and an icon?” she asked Beto.

  “And a piece of—”

  “Yeah, yeah, something that can’t die.” Sadie needed to get out of the airless garage, but her mind was already turning, moving. Plotting. “I’ll be back,” she said, wiping a bead of sweat from her forehead. “Then we can do business.”

  Beto sat back down on the concrete, hands resting lightly on his knees. “I’ll be waiting.”

  Chapter 8

  “Today’s been strange, no doubt,” Graciela said as they parked. “But I never expected to end up here.” She shuddered a little. “I mean, you’re great and all that, but our friendship has its limits.”

  Sadie smiled briefly before she opened her door and heat outside pummeled her. “Stay close,” she said as they hurried inside. “I’ll make sure no books jump out and bite you.”

  The Red Valley County Library didn’t look much like a library from the outside; in fact, it had once been a grocery store. When the original building burned in a mysterious fire back before Sadie was born, they’d reclaimed the abandoned structure, replacing aisles of pre-packaged dinners with the works of Tolstoy and Dickens. Sadie knew the place well; she could still picture the spinning racks of children’s books, the colorful covers staring hopefully back at her. When they stepped in through the glass doors, the musty smell of old paper suddenly made her six years old again.

  “So you used to come here, willingly?”

  “Books are your friends,” Sadie said, soaking it in. “Think of them like telenovelas for your mind.”

  “Telenovelas are telenovelas for my mind, you elitist—”

  Sadie shushed her and jerked her head meaningfully toward the busy kids’ section only a few feet away. A few of the moms eyed them with that judgmental glare you only earn after bringing your special bundle of joy into the world.

  They found the local records room in the back, next to the sections on WWII and the Gold Rush. A librarian sat behind a nearby desk. She was older, with long graying hair that hung loose past her shoulders. She wore a mismatched collection of jewelry around her neck, beads, crystals, and chains all tangled up.

  “Can I help you young ladies?” she asked with a welcoming smile. Graciela flinched at the question, but Sadie smiled back.

  “I’m doing some family research,” she said, nodding to the local records room. “My family has been in Red Valley a long time, so I was hoping to find something about them here. Specifically any pictures that might have been in the local newspaper or something.”
>
  The librarian looked a little more closely at Sadie, but if she saw something of note, she kept it to herself. “We’ve got records that go back before the founding of the town,” she said. “Though few photographs back that far.”

  “Can we take a look?”

  “Certainly,” she said. “Let me show you.”

  The records room was cramped. Shelves filled the walls and books and binders filled the shelves. There was a single computer with a tiny screen that took its sweet time to boot. Once it came to life, the librarian showed them how to search.

  “Who are we looking for?” she asked.

  “Try ‘Mary Bell,’” Sadie offered.

  “Ah,” the librarian said with a little nod. “Your family has been in Red Valley a long time.”

  “You know who Mary is?”

  “I’ve spent my life studying our town’s history,” she said. Her fingers played idly with the beads around her neck. “And whatever the era, the Liars always play a part. Don’t know what pictures we might have of her, but we can look.”

  They ran the search. Only a few records were returned. One was a title for a 10-acre plot of land on the edge of town in Mary’s name.

  “It would be unusual for a woman to own land at that time,” the librarian noted. “But Mary would have been an unusual woman.”

  Sadie smiled at that. She knew nothing about her family—just another thing her mom hadn’t bothered to share with her—but she liked the idea that they’d all screwed with the status quo.

  “But no pictures?”

  “I’m sorry, no.”

  They searched for some of Mary’s descendants, all the way up to Sadie’s mom. The Liars appeared in records here and there, including a few times in the newspaper, but no pictures. Maybe her mom hadn’t been the only one in her family to disconnect herself from the rest of Red Valley.

  “Dead end,” Graciela said.

  “I’m sorry, girls,” the librarian said. “I’ll let you poke around a bit, if you’d like. Let me know if you need anything else.”

  She left them alone. Graciela eyed the books surrounding them suspiciously. Sadie stared at the cursor on the screen, mocking her: blink, blink, blink.

  Sadie searched for Mary’s name again. One of the records had caught her eye. She opened it up. It was an article from the newspaper from 1871 and there was a photograph included, just not of Mary. It was a grainy black-and-white picture of an old Victorian-style building with a gabled roof and pointed tower. Two men in old-fashioned suits and even older-fashioned mustaches stood in front, scowling at the camera. The caption at the bottom read, “Pictured, Thomas Gray, owner of the Gray House, and friend Charles Hooper, before the mysterious disappearance of the house and occupants last Thursday.”