by Jeremy Brown
The artist hadn’t done it justice.
The house was three levels in the center and sprawled out into a wing on each side, dipping to two stories, then one at the extremities, like it was melting into the mountain. Every window was sealed with cinderblocks except two on the top level. These were open, a dozen red candles burning in each, their sills draped in hardened red wax like tumorous scabs.
Three wide steps led to a deep porch—almost a stage—built across the bottom level like a jutting jawbone. There was no furniture, but the floor was littered with offerings to Exu. Knives, rum, cleavers, dead chickens, hatchets. Flies buzzed and the stench wriggled through the air and stuck to my upper lip.
Carrasco put one foot on the bottom step. “Come. We will invite Exu to be here for this.”
“I thought you were Exu.”
He barked a laugh and struggled to the next step. “I am Carrasco. The Hangman, remember? Exu works through me when it is his desire, sure. And he desires to be here when his Pomba Gira comes to him.”
“Well, I think he’s here already. I can smell him. Let’s get this over with.”
Carrasco made it to the stage and leaned on his stick, took a few deep breaths and turned to face us. “You will know when he is here, sure. And you will want him here, I promise you.”
He limped toward the black wooden door, which opened for him. Red candlelight danced within.
“You will want him here. Because when you see him, and he sees you, it will make you run very fast. Faster than you would ever believe, sure.”
Eye Patch followed us up the stairs.
I scanned the offerings to Exu, but none of the blades were close enough to snatch up before I got a Mac-10 tattoo across my back. From the platform I could see rings of canvas and leather strewn across the floor and hanging from nails driven into the front of the house. Those on the floor had a red candle in the center and what looked like scraps of furry fabric. The wall offerings had the swatches nailed inside the rings.
Marcela saw them and covered her mouth, and I finally realized why the silence bothered me so much.
There were no dogs barking.
Even in Vegas, you step away from the racket of the Strip and at least one dog is yapping somewhere nearby. But in the Axila da Serpente, where watchdogs and scavengers and litters of feral puppies should have been barking and howling, there was nothing.
The rings of canvas and leather had been collars at one time, and the scraps within probably still had the velvet texture that made dogs’ ears perfect for rubbing. I couldn’t help picturing Malhar, his hands and that damned framing hammer matted with blood and fur, grinning while he pounded the nails into the wall.
I glanced back at him, still standing in the middle of the crushed concrete.
He had the hammer out, flipping it head over handle and catching it without looking.
He licked his greasy lips, tilted his head back, and howled at the sky. He cut the mournful sound off with a high-pitched yelp.
He was still laughing about it when Marcela and I entered the Black House.
The room had a bare wooden floor and scarred plaster walls of an unknown color. The hundreds of red candles cast a shifting, simmering coat over everything.
Carrasco stood across the room with his back to us, facing an altar crowded with more candles, photos, dog collars, blades, and sticky bottles of rum. It covered the entire wall and spilled around the corners toward us.
Closed doors led left and right. A hole in the center of the ceiling sprouted frayed wires from the light fixture that had been torn out. From somewhere in the house above us came the thump of a constant drumbeat and female voices chanted in a language I didn’t know.
Carrasco said, “Pomba Gira, I know what you are wishing. After seeing Exu’s soldiers, what they are going to do to this man, you want another choice. You wish for Exu to offer to let this man go home, unharmed, and in return you will stay with Exu.”
I scoffed. Looked at Marcela to share a good eye roll.
She stared at the floor.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Carrasco turned to face us. “I know. Exu knows. And he is offended. For you to realize you must be with Exu only after you see for yourself this man is going to die—it is an insult. And for that, Exu will kill this man. He will die badly, Pomba Gira. With blood and screams in his mouth.”
The drums and chanting got louder. Now it came from the same floor, maybe the next room. Carrasco’s black lenses studied me, drifted to Marcela. He took the sunglasses off. His left eye was swollen with blood, pulsing and sliding across the top of his cheek.
“But Exu is not cruel. He will not make you go with him down the Coluna da Cobra, to see him die. You will stay here with Exu, sure.”
Marcela took a step forward, her head still down. Another. “You will not let him go?”
“It is not me, Pomba Gira. Exu.” Carrasco shook his head, so very sad. “Exu will not let him go.”
Marcela moved closer to him. She lifted her head so she could look him in his dead eye. “Neither will I. Never. Do you see that now? Do you realize it?”
The drums and chanting stopped.
Marcela stepped back, cracked her knuckles, and spat a bullet against the wall.
“Now get your stupid Exu here so he can watch me kiss my man before we walk down your little hill.”
Carrasco’s breathing took on a harsh, ragged rhythm. His fingers opened on the head of his walking stick, wrapped around it, and squeezed. He fought to keep his lips from snarling.
The door on the left opened and four women dressed only in long, flowing silk headscarves walked through. Each scarf was a solid color—blue, green, yellow, purple—and matched the smears of paint slashed across their bodies.
An ancient black man with a full head of white hair and a knife in his teeth hunched into the room behind them, hugging a large handmade drum to his belly. He squatted against the wall near the end of the altar and started thumping the skin, the same beat we’d heard descending from somewhere in the upper floors of the Black House.
The women flowed around Carrasco, turning and skipping and chanting. They started fast, picking up where they’d left off in the next room, and within seconds jumped to a frenzied pace, wild-eyed with teeth bared.
The drummer pounded a manic beat, his head rocking back and forth like the blade in his mouth could sever the final strings anchoring the room to reality. Carrasco stood in the center of the spinning ring with his head tilted back and mouth open. His bulging left eye throbbed, the blood and fluid within it swirling.
I reached for Marcela, and we squeezed each other’s hand, making sure the other was still there in the red, dancing light.
Carrasco’s head tipped forward. He was panting. The hunger and promise of violence in his face as he stared at Marcela made my hackles jump. His gaze slid to me, and I realized my impotent fury was feeding him just as much as her flesh would when he finally got his hands on her.
He knew we were scared and wanted to catch a glimpse of it—flick his tongue out and sample the stench of it. His right eye rolled up and he started to chant with the four frenzied women.
The door on the right opened. Malhar stepped through with a white rooster trapped between his outstretched hands. He carried it straight to Carrasco like it was too hot to hold. The rooster knew what was coming. He kicked and thrashed and squawked, pecked Malhar’s hands hard enough to hear above the chanting.
The women parted for Malhar, who held the rooster out to Carrasco and bowed his head.
Carrasco stood trembling, leaning his full weight on the stick with his eyes flashing white and red. He flung the stick aside and snatched the head off the rooster with one hand. He pulled the twitching body away from Malhar and held it up, letting the blood splash across his upturned face. It seeped into his white linen suit and spread like an infection.
He crushed the rooster’s body, wringing every drop he could get, then tossed it over his shoulder on
to the altar like a rag. It landed among cigars and glasses of rum, and even in death it wasn’t sure how to interact with such foreign things. One wing rested above a candle and started to smolder.
The four women started again, chanting and clapping toward the ceiling. It sounded grateful, and it terrified me. The man they surrounded stood unbroken, chest lifted and arms out to his sides. His grin was wide and even—no more internal wires yanking it to one side—and his right eye was closed so he could glare at us with that pulsing, bloody sac.
Carrasco was gone.
Exu was here.
This thing laughed a deep, guttural bellow that spewed blood onto the floor.
“Run,” it said.
We ran.
18
We jumped off the porch littered with sacrifices and kept going.
The area in front of the Black House was empty. The Suburban was gone. The crushed concrete ran to the edge of the plateau and dropped off into nothing. Rickety buildings with red candles in the windows rose from the darkness and leaned away from us, pulling us down the Coluna da Cobra.
Marcela sprinted for the road.
I snatched her wrist, cut in front, and pulled her to the right. The road was a funnel into a drain clogged with the grease and bones of everyone Carrasco—Exu—had murdered in the Axila.
Even though the light coming from the Black House was dim, it cast enough of a shadow to make the ground past the lip of the plateau a dark pool.
We jumped in.
We landed on a steep slope of wet, ripe trash that shifted beneath us and slid down itself like skin shedding off a snake. I kept my left arm tucked and held my breath against the thick, sweet odor, some primal instinct telling me most of it came from rotting meat on slippery bones.
Marcela coughed, gagged, and grunted when we hit feet-first against the foundation of a two-story building constructed from sheet metal and tarp. Black House trash piled against our backs and flowed over our shoulders.
We burst out of it. I banged against the metal with my left shoulder, felt a pang as my elbow tried to straighten to catch me. The framing beneath the metal groaned, leaned away, and rocked back again. I’d never moved a multi-story building with just bodyweight and momentum before. I ignored the obvious lack of structural integrity and took the credit.
“Come on.”
Marcela followed close along the wall away from the road. “Where are we going?”
“Away from the action. Into the jungle. Hell, into the sewers if we can find one.”
“Sewers?”
We got to the corner and stopped. Beyond it was a sheer rock wall rising to the second story of a house that had been built as close as possible to the mountain. But the sag and lean of the house created a narrow gap we could squeeze into. A black, silent gap hiding fuck knows what.
I held my breath again and listened.
Nothing.
I put my lips against Marcela’s ear. “Rubin and his men are at the bottom of the mountain. They’re going to storm the favela. Armor, machine guns, grenades. He isn’t going to arrest anyone.”
She pulled away, searched my face in the darkness. “This is why you agreed to run the Coluna?”
“Carrasco’s done. Exu, all of it. You and your family won’t have to worry about it anymore.”
She looked around, wide-eyed. “Starting when?”
Fair question.
“Like I said, we hunker down, stay out of it until Rubin sweeps through.”
“He knows we are here?”
I thought about my phone, his messages unanswered, unread as far as he knew. “Sure.”
“And he knows it’s started? The Coluna?”
“Yes,” I hoped.
A man screamed from the top of the mountain. It had to be Exu. I pictured him standing on the edge of the stage, bellowing with blood falling from his mouth, calling his disciples to arms.
Footsteps splashed across the crushed concrete.
Lots of them.
I pulled Marcela around the corner into the dark gap, straight into a deathtrap.
The man was standing right around the corner, listening. Waiting for the right time.
I brought the right time to him, ran smack into the top of the ax he had in his outstretched arm like an antenna, probing the space in front of him. When it pressed into my belly he tried to pull it back.
I caught it below the blade in my right hand, crouched and yanked him forward, drove my forehead into the shadows. I stayed low—none of these urchins would be as tall as me. My forehead crushed something hot and wet. Blood sprayed. A heavy sack slumped against the wall to my left and slid down.
Poor guy would never walk around in the dark again, if he ever got up at all. It was like running full-speed in the black of night and going face-first into a tree trunk. Though a tree trunk wouldn’t reach down, find the leaky head, and stomp on it three times.
I would, and I did.
Then I felt around, plucked the ax out of the mess, and handed it to Marcela. I only had one hand, and I wanted to be able to grab things. Mostly throats.
We stepped over the body and squeezed between the metal paneling and the mountain. I felt along the face for handholds, roots, cracks, ridges—the stone was rough but had nothing big enough to grip.
Marcela leaned close. “What are you doing?”
“Maybe we can climb. Get over the top and into the jungle where it’s safe.”
I said this with confidence, having never been in a jungle.
“Uh,” Marcela said.
Voices rolled around the top of the mountain, shouting and calling, whispering.
Hunting.
My eyes were getting used to the dark. Artifacts still floated around—possibly due to having used my head as a blunt instrument—but I could see shapes in my peripheral vision. The gap we were in led out to a three-way junction. Left or right. Ahead was another two-level structure, no doors or windows visible, sheathed in odd shapes of particle board.
I peeked left.
The road was there, past the depth of the two buildings, glowing red. Something ran past in a blur, downhill.
We went right.
When we got to the next corner we went around it low, ready.
Nobody home.
It was another gap, sheer mountain on the right, but slightly wider. I started forward.
Marcela tugged my shirt. When I turned, she pointed up.
I shook my head. “Nothing to grab.”
“Watch.”
She dropped the ax and pressed her back against the particle board, put one foot on the stone, then the other, wedging herself between the two. Walked her shoulder blades up the wood, paused, and brought her lowest foot higher.
I looked up. Dark foliage sagged over the top of the cliff. We could get close enough to grab it, pull ourselves over and run like hell. I smacked her butt when it shimmied past.
“Not now.”
I walked ten feet away from her and started up. My left shoulder and upper arm did a decent job bracing against the wood, but having my left hand available would have been nice. When I pushed my full weight against the house it grumbled and tilted away from the mountain. Moisture seeped out of the damp, squishy paneling.
Marcela hissed at me. “Don’t make me fall.”
“I think it’s good.”
I tried to keep the racket to a minimum, stomping and sliding and grunting my way up. Marcela looked like a ballerina floating up a curtain. She was near the top as I rose above the first level and someone whistled from the road in front of our building.
Once, high-pitched. A signal.
I froze. Whispered, “Go. Get over.”
Marcela eased one hand out, reached for a gnarled coil of roots above her feet, and yanked on them. They held strong. She pressed her butt hard against the wood, stretched her other hand higher into the roots, then let her body dangle against the cliff. Executing a perfect pull-up, she hooked one leg over the edge and rolled into the underbru
sh.
She was out.
Low male voices spoke somewhere close. Footsteps thumped away, but the voices stayed.
Sending someone to bring everyone?
Let them find no one.
I ground my way higher.
Marcela appeared above me, a finger to her lips.
Yeah yeah.
I was halfway up the second level. A thick root sagged over the cliff near my left foot. I stretched with my right hand, couldn’t reach. I worked my shoulder blades left, brought each foot behind, one at a time, pushing hard against the stone. I reached again and brushed the root with my fingers.
“Paulo!”
The voice was right under me.
I quit breathing. Marcela’s eyes were huge across the gap.
“Paulo, onde está você?”
So the guy I’d headbutted into sleepy time was Paulo. The man looking for him came around the corner to my left, took a few steps into the gap, and stopped below me.
I did not look down.
He’d feel my eyes.
“Você os viu?”
He took a step, paused, then ran forward. I let the corner of my vision slide toward him. He stooped and picked something up off the ground.
Paulo’s ax.
“Eles estão aqui!” He disappeared around the corner, running toward Paulo. “Aqui!”
Voices and whistles and war cries rose from the street. Footsteps flooded toward us.
So much for silence.
Marcela reached down for me.
I braced my ass against the particle board, lunged for the root, and exploded myself backward through the soggy wall into the second level of the building.
It was not empty.
I landed on my back in a thick cloud of mold and sawdust. I tried to keep my left arm pressed against my ribs but the elbow still tried to straighten and break my fall. The pain shot up and across the back of my neck, added a high-pitched finale to the impact grunt.
I scanned the room from my dominant position. A man stood at the open street-side window, silhouetted by a red candle burning on the sill. His head was cranked around to see what the hell had just happened. His body didn’t seem to believe it yet—it still faced the window.
