When The Shadows Began To Dance

by Yamaya Cruz

  Nelly, he splits people’s souls. He crushes them into little fragments because he knows that if people are in pieces, they won’t have the strength to fight against his brujeria. Instead, you end up fighting against yourself, beating yourself up, feeling worthless, alone, inferior, abandoned, rejected, depressed, angry, and unloved. Nico wants this, because if you are whole, you are beyond his control. I wished that I had known this then; maybe things would have been different. I wouldn’t have left your momma for Nico and your great abuela would have lived a lot longer. Like I said Nelly, I ain’t proud of the things that I did, but you need to know everything.

  One night, after one of our lovemaking sessions, I whispered to Nico that I had to go to the bathroom. He mumbled and turning in his sleep he replied that I had to go to the outhouse. I got up and put on my nightgown and walked outside barefoot. It was really dark; a few stars twinkled, lending me some light.

  I stopped when I came to an old rickety shack that was guarded by two of Nico’s most loyal hounds. I shooed them away and entered the outhouse. I covered my nose and held my breath as I pulled up my gown. The smell was awful. I danced around, and then squatted in the dark while I aimed to pee in the wooden hole. A long warm stream of urine poured out. I sighed with relief, and instantly regretted it. How can Nico live like this? I hurriedly adjusted my nightgown and underwear as I swung open the door. I heaved with relief as I waved my hand in front of my nose, trying to dispel the lingering smell.

  It was then that I spotted a familiar garment that was buried in the soil. I could identify it from anywhere, even in the darkness. I kneeled down on the ground and yanked on the top half of the garment, the soil loosened and I was able to pull it out of the ground. I held the thing up with my both arms, my eyes widened with disbelief as I immediately recognize what it was. It belonged to your great abuela! It was her wedding dress.

  Frantically, I began shoveling through the dark soil. I had to know what else he had of hers. I dug through a massive pile of dirt to find, a wrinkled piece of paper with your great abuela’s name scribbled on it. I dug further and spotted a long neck black bottle. I examined its contents; there was something inside of it. What was it? I froze, the hairs on my neck stood up. There was someone standing behind me. I didn’t dare look back. Somebody shoved a black cloak over my head. I could feel the person’s legs leaning against the small of my back. He forcefully twisted the bottom sheath of the cloak around my neck.

  I started to choke; my breaths became short and raspy. The black mask worked like a filter, muffling both the air and my screams. I began to kick my legs in an effort to break free. I felt a strongarm grab hold of my midsection, another arm reached over my neck and they both worked together to pull me backwards. In one quick movement, I was hoisted up and my body rested on a set of broad shoulders and a strong back. My assaulter used his spare arm to harness me in and then began to run with as much stealth as fox in the night. I heard the barking of hound dogs, where they coming after us?

  I could see brief glimpses of light through my cloak. Was it fire?

  The man came to a crashing hold.

  “Hey, I got her, where do I put her?” he said panting.

  “In the trunk. But hurry, cause we got to get her out of here, fast.” said a man, whose voice I thought I recognized.

  He took a few huge steps and plopped me down like second hand luggage in the back of the trunk. “Let’s go,” the man said before he closed the trunk. I heard two doors slam shut and then the car peeled off into the night.

  Nelly, I had no idea where I was going, or who the strange men were. We drove through most of the night. I wanted your great abuela; I needed her to come and save me. I fell asleep and dreamed that I was seated a safe distance away from Nico’s shack.

  “Burn the motherfucker down.”

  There was a gaggle of men who all stood outside of the abandoned wood-shack. The house stood on four measly stilts, the windows were broken and the inside had been looted.

  “Nico, your ass is grass. You crossed way too many people in this town,” an angry man yelled before he launched a long neck bottle ablaze with flickering flames.

  Another man furiously yelled, “Your put brujeria on Elvisa,” shaking his fist. And then threw a bottle filled with kerosene at the wood-shack. The bottle exploded upon contact, unleashing dark unruly flames that started to devour the frame.

  “And you took her daughter Maria. What kind of heartless shit is that?” Another man ranted as he launched a wooden javelin tipped with burning flames.

  The flames soared, and a dark cloud of black smoke began to rise. The men began to cheer as the one of the stilts collapsed, overtaken by violent flames. It was not long before the frame went down. It held on for dear life, while the flames grew wild like tresses of hair blowing in the wind.

  “It’s coming down,” one of the men yelled.

  “TIMBER” he yelled, as the tin roof came tumbling down. It crashed onto the ground with an earth-shattering thud. The remains of the wood shack were now under attack by the flames. It was slowly beginning to melt away, turning into a black pile of sweltering ash. All the men cheered as they waved their machetes, rifles and rusted axes in the air.

  “The piece of shit motherfucka is finally gone,” sang a solo voice from the chorus, as he swung a sack filled with jewelry and Hawaiian shirts over his shoulder.

  “Yeah, we are not going to see his black ass in this town again.” pitched another, while he walked away, balancing two squawking hens in the headlock.

  They patted each other on the back and walked to their homes, happy that they had managed to rid their town of a wicked brujo, who could cast spells and perform magic that was darker than anyone else on the island.

  There was a hand, with palms as hard as sandpaper. It was slapping my face. I was lying on a hard wood floor, my cloak had been removed, and I was hog-tied. My eyes strained from the light as they focused in on a dismal figure that was standing over me. It reached behind me and untied my hands and then unclasped my feet. The blood in my body began to flow again.

  “Maria, are you okay” the voice said as it tenderly stroked my hair.

  I strained my neck, trying to look up. It was Nico! I gasped from both exasperation and relief. I was very happy to see a familiar face, any familiar face. He helped me to a sitting position.

  I shook my head, I felt woozy, almost as if I had been drugged. “Nico, what happened? Where are we?

  “Sssh,” he said, as he placed his dirty forefinger on my lips. “Just take it easier,” he said gently. He sat down in front of me, and began to rub my arms and shoulders.

  Another man walked in with disheveled hair and grimy boots. “Oh, she’s awake,” he said as he crossed his arms over his chest.

  Nico did not take his eyes off of me. I started to shiver. He removed his jacket and covered me with it.

  “Hey Cabron.” Nico said looking over his shoulder.

  “Why don’t you go and get my woman something to drink.” “What!” the man spat.

  “Nico, what am I gonna find around here? At this time of night?”

  he said.

  Nico stood up; he was a man of about five foot eight, with scrawny arms and a plucked bird chest.

  He walked over to the man who was as big as an Arctic bear. He grimaced as his words shot out like pellets.

  “I don’t give a shit what you find, just get out of here so I can talk to my woman”

  He blinked a few times and shook his head to indicate that he was sorry for not picking up on the hint before. He backed away, while keeping Nico’s bony frame in full sight. He turned and ran out the door, whimpering like a frightened hound. Nico walked back over to me. He kneeled down and gently palmed my face.

  “Mi Amor, he whispered as he leaned over and kissed my forehead.

  My body was trembling. My head was throbbing. I seemed to be weighted down with some kind of guilt, like I had done something that was terribly wrong. Tears began to stream
from my eyes, but I could not understand why.

  “Baby, don’t cry,” he said as he dabbled at my tears with his dirty hands.

  I slapped his hand away; I did not want him touching me. I did not want him around me. I could not shake this feeling of shame that was burning deep inside me. I wanted to be home again, with your great abuela, with your momma. I needed them for warmth and comfort. Nico backed away. He looked offended. I thought that he was going to get up and leave, when he reached forward and grabbed my hair. I shrieked as I tried to untie the knot of fingers that gripped large strands of my hair. My neck felt like it was being ripped from my shoulders. He released me and my head went smashing into the wall. There was a loud thud and then an explosion of pain that traveled through my body.

  I was dizzy and I tried to shake it off, when Nico grabbed hold of my hair like the reins on a horse. He violently shoved my head back and forced me to look into his cold dark eyes. My nerves were frazzled, my head was throbbing and my body was limp. He kneeled down and his face was so close to me that I could smell his sour breath. He moved his lips and in a few short words, he captured the truth that was buried inside of me.

  “You belong to me now!” he sneered.

  I stared back at him. His words had hit me hard. He released his grip and I collapsed. I lay on the floor, wondering how this happened. How did I let someone like Nico into my life? I was afraid to look up. I was motionless, waiting for the pain to subside. I watched Nico leave the room. Within minutes, he came back in. I focused in on his dirty boots as they walked closer to me. He kneeled down and placed a black longneck bottle in front of me. He inched it closer to my face with his foot. He then kneeled down and whispered.

  “Are you ready to finish this shit?”

  I slowly sat up and pleaded. “Nico, don’t make me do this, please Nico don’t make me do this.” I shook my head as tears began to stream down my face. I couldn’t believe this was happening.

  “Maria.” He leaned over and cupped my face.

  “No! I can’t do this.”

  “Maria, we got to use the only shit that we’ve got left,” he said.

  I didn’t answer him, but I understood. Everything was starting to come together. Nico was a brujo who took advantage of people in their weakest state. He set out, convincing the poor, the hungry, and the destitute to believe in things that were outside of themselves. He worked with people’s darkness, the shadows, the repressed memories and emotions to gain power. Suddenly it all made sense. The vision of the slave revolts. It was a brujeria ceremony, an exchange of one form of slavery for another. It was a way for Nico to gain control, making people believe in him. Meanwhile, he was sending them off to get slaughtered, because there was no death worse than the imprisonment of the soul.

  “My mother would never do what you do,” I said shaking my head with disgust.

  “Yeah! And look at her now. The bitch is one step away from her grave,” Nico spat.

  “I didn’t start this shit. I am just a fucking man trying to survive, trying to make a living for myself, for us,” he said with spittle flying out of his mouth.

  “This ain’t right,” I said pleadingly.

  “Half the shit that happens in the world ain’t right. Your momma worked all her life, poor and miserable, and for what? People are dying all over the world, in war, in famines, in fucking chains. And you’re bitching at me for doing a little bit of brujeria,” he said while wiping his brow, he was struggling to maintain his composure.

  “This is the power that God fucking gave me and I ain’t going let your momma or anybody else take it away from me,” he continued while rising up to his feet.

  “What I do is natural,” When a fucking wild animal is hungry, he feeds; when he feels threatened, he destroys. That’s the code I live by,” he said waving his fist. He stopped and looked at me for a long time before he continued.

  “What I do is real magic, not the fairy-tale shit you believe in. You need to get your head out of the clouds, because what I do ain’t for the faint of heart,” he said.

  “But my momma,” I said.

  “Maria,” he said lovingly as he rushed over and cupped my face.

  “Your momma is weak and because of that, she deserves to die,” he said.

  I slapped his hands away before I replied. “She’s not weak; she’s the best healer in town.”

  Nico looked at me with an expression of pity.

  “No she’s not, because if she was, she never would have let me take her down,” he said with a mischievous smile. I wanted to rip his eyeballs out of his sockets.

  He just laughed, loud wicked cackles.

  “Alright, that’s what I’m talking about. Show me that you’re worth keeping. Show me that you got the guts to do this shit,” he said handing me the bottle.

  I hesitated.

  “Maria, the world is a fucking jungle and if you don’t eat, you get eaten. Take of care of this for me, and I will show you things that will make your head spin.”

  I looked down and focused on the ground.

  “Tomorrow, it will all be over, you won’t ever feel pain again. I can promise you that,” he said while caressing my cheek and chin. “I love you, Maria. I want to make you my wife. I want to share with you all of my secrets, but I need to be sure that I can trust you,” he said while raising my chin up so I can look at him.

  “I’ll make all the pain go away. I promise,” he said with a wink. I took the bottle and fought hard not to throw it at him.

  It was late in the night when Nico led me down to old stream that was right outside of my old home. He was very careful and quiet. He did not want anyone to know that he had snuck back in town. We walked by the river side by side. Nico had a death grip on my arm. He looked at me in the dark and he motioned for me to follow him up a hill. Together we climbed, I was barefoot, hungry, and my white night gown was torn and soiled.

  I kept climbing and focused in on Nico’s dark figure that was moving in front of me. When we got to the top of the hill. Nico grabbed my hand and guided me to the center of the bridge. Nelly, we had to be about a hundred feet off the ground. I looked down and the deepest part of me wanted to jump off. Nico seemed to have read my thoughts. He pulled me toward him. It was a full moon, the wind whistle through the air. The river began to ripple and stir. I supposed that it was sensing my animosity. The bottle seemed to slip out of my hand. My eyes were glued to Nico’s as it plummeted down into the stream. A body of waves that carried it out to sea then seized it.

  I was in a trance again; it was almost as if something had taken over me. Like newfound lovers, Nico and I climbed down from the hill and walked back to our secret haven, hand in hand. That night, he made love to me. I lay with Nico, entangled in his arms. I dreamed of your momma finding your great abuela’s dead body. In just a few hours, the house was filled with people. Everyone knew that she had been sick, but they were still in shock to find her dead.

  When she died, I died because I was too stupid to go back and retrieve her book of secrets and uphold the knowledge that she was trying to pass down. She tried to teach me that positive and negative are on opposite sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other. In fact, you need to overcome the negative in order to experience the positive. My whole life, I thought that Nico could solve all of my problems. I was a fool, who was tricked by a brujo who took all of my power. I believed in someone other than myself and my strength and my ability to fight the shadows leaked out of me like a dripping faucet. The next thing I knew, I had nothing left. I was depleted and I was very much like Nico, hallow and dark inside and using the only power that I had left.

  Nico was right. I didn’t feel any pain. Not when I was around him. It was like I could do awful things and not feel guilt or regret because I had power. Power that I got from exploiting others. After a while, the negativity made me sick, and I knew that we both had to stop when our world started to fall apart. We lost our family, our money, our reputation and self-resp
ect. I begged and pleaded with Nico to stop. He couldn’t; he was so afraid of the shadows. He was paranoid that one day, he wouldn’t be able to control them, and they would turn on him. It took me a long time to realize that his desire to control stems from fear.

  Don’t forget what Chobo told you. You need to work with Oggún. He represents the energy that passes through our souls. He can replenish you and help you function fully as a person. You don’t need to feel like you’re a victim. You got to understand that the hardships in life make you more powerful. Nico has already taken so much from you, but Oggún can help you to regain your personal power. Please, don’t be like me. You might feel disappointed because it might seem that everyone in your life has let you down. But no matter what, don’t close your heart. Trust me when I tell you that it makes things worse. I lost every chance that I had to love because I was afraid of hurting them and myself. But you need them, listen to them, let them help you and guide you. Let Oshún open your heart. She will help you to become independent inside, so you never have to fear losing people, or of being alone. She’ll give you the inner strength and courage to love, first yourself and then eventually others.

  I took away so much from you, and I wish that I could have left you so much more. Just remember this, Nina; I loved you, your brother, and momma more than anything in the world. I’m sorry I didn’t say that when I was alive. But I want you to know that I am here to help you and guide you. You should learn from my mistakes and love unconditionally; this way you’ll never have to go out looking for love, because you would already have it inside of yourself.

  ~ ~ ~

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Nelly I was running from the past, my past. I maneuvered around bushes and leaped over logs. I didn’t know how long I could keep up the pace. But I knew that running was my only option. I couldn’t slow down. I couldn’t look back. Because my past had become a monster that was threatening to eat me up alive.