by Jack L Knapp
Ana Maria came in while I was finishing up and gave me a quick kiss. I could see that something was bothering her more than usual. Perhaps her family problems had gotten worse.
We went to dinner later but she had little to say and picked at her food. I finally gave up the attempt to make conversation. She would tell me what the problem was when she was ready.
#
El Diario had picked up a report from a newspaper in Chihuahua. Reportedly, members of one of the cartels had managed to kill the Chupacabra. The young man had been shot numerous times and the body was surrounded by the cartelistas when the photo was taken. Too bad, I thought. The young man had managed to strike fear into the hearts of some of the worst people on the planet. Now that he was dead, they would soon be back to their old murderous ways again.
T had been interested…for a time each of us had wondered if the Chupacabra were the other, or perhaps Shezzie…so I commed him with the news.
We broke the comm and I laid the paper on the end table by my recliner.
I went into the bathroom for a minute, and when I came out, Ana Maria was reading the article. Her face was white and she looked as if she would break into tears at any moment.
“Ana Maria, are you OK? Is it something in the newspaper?”
I waited but got no immediate reply. “Ana Maria?”
I had never tried to pick up her thinking…it seemed like too much of a violation of her privacy…but I didn’t need to pry this time.
“Oh, God!” She gasped and sank down into the recliner.
Yes, indeed. It was something in the newspaper.
She had known the young man well. Very well, as it turned out. He had been a boyfriend once, before the family had moved to Juarez.
And she’d seen him a number of times while I was gone. She had been with her cousin in Juarez, the cousin had known there was friendship from before and had invited the young man to join them for dinner.
Ana Maria had been surprised, and it hadn’t taken long before the cousin was left at home and the two went out. A little dancing, a couple of drinks…
She had known the dead man very well; and very recently.
Chapter Eleven
Ray:
I didn’t know what to do. Call me gobsmacked, for lack of a better word. Ana Maria had gone out with her former boyfriend, someone she’d been intimate with in the past, and slept with him again?
Ana Maria dropped the paper and wavered before nearly-running to the bedroom.
The idea of a relationship with someone so much younger, a vivacious pretty woman…now I sat in the recliner and just felt empty.
I had been hopeful of finally meeting someone, now that I was no longer required to pick up and move at the Army’s whim. Ana Maria had far exceeded anything I dreamed of.
I had concentrated on what I wanted from the new relationship, something permanent, and that desire may have blinded me to reality. Ana Maria might have different expectations; if there were clues to what she wanted from our involvement, I hadn’t seen them. Well, men are famously unobservant of subtle female clues.
I had little recent experience involving women, and none of that experience approached permanence. A younger woman, one from a different culture and background; what could she see in a former soldier? Someone who was fifteen years older than she was, someone from a different culture? Someone of a different background who wouldn’t necessarily share her beliefs?
Perhaps she had always been on a different plane. She had needed someone who could substitute for her family as they pushed her away, and maybe worse, she had seen me as a father figure who would stand in for the man who didn’t want to see her. My thoughts kept going round and round. I sat in the recliner and simply let my misery surround me.
There had been times we’d connected. I’d felt it, felt closer to Ana Maria than anyone with the exception of T and Shezzie. Even then, it had taken the mind-meld between the three of us to achieve that closeness.
Wretched, lonely, I sat, now leaning back in the recliner. At some point I fell asleep.
I woke up after eight, stiff, sore, and still hurting. I stumbled into the kitchen to put coffee on to brew. It was beginning to percolate before I noticed something.
The house felt empty. I hadn’t sensed her thinking before yesterday, but I’d known when Ana Maria was there.
I left the coffee to finish percolating through the grounds and went to the bedroom. I knocked lightly on the door and called out, “Ana Maria?” but there was no answer. I opened the door and looked inside. No Ana Maria, and the bathroom door stood open. The bed looked rumpled and the closet door stood open too. I could see that there were a number of empty spaces now. Some of her clothes were still there, but many were gone and the suitcase that had been in the closet was also gone.
I looked around but there was no note. Perhaps there had been nothing she wanted to say.
I shuffled back to the kitchen. I drank a cup of coffee, then another. I didn’t feel like eating. Finally, I went out and brought the newspaper in but I saw nothing that interested me. I dumped it in the trash and sat back down.
I thought of comming T or maybe Shezzie, but I decided that this wasn’t their problem and there was nothing they could do anyway. I turned the TV on and just let the sound fill the room. There was nothing interesting on CNN. The usual talking heads nattered about the latest Middle East crisis. I’d been there, and I thought most of their comments were no more than noise to fill the airtime. One talking head, yakking to another talking head, much ado about nothing. Shakespeare got it right.
I didn’t expect any of the Middle East’s issues to be resolved in my lifetime. There was too much ancient hate for people to stop killing each other. Let the next generation worry about it.
T commed me in mid-afternoon.
Perhaps some of my feelings leaked through.
Maybe I already did. This put my problems into perspective. I shaved and went out to breakfast.
Finished, I decided to drive out into the desert. Maybe I needed time away from people, and if T needed me, he could comm me anywhere.
Heading west on Interstate 10, I impulsively took Trans-Mountain Road northeast. It cuts through the Franklins and finally exits at the Patriot Freeway. There are several parking spots near the summit of the pass the road runs through. I got out at one of the parking spots and just looked over the mountains and desert.
The city spread out to my left and Mexico was visible ahead and to the right. The Rio Grande wasn’t visible from here; perhaps it was dry again, with all the river’s water diverted into the irrigation ditches. I could see a green strip of vegetation that marked the river’s course.
I resumed driving but soon stopped again. From this point, the view was across Smuggler’s Gap, the ancient trail that had been used to slip products into Spanish and then Mexican territory without paying the duties in force at the time. The gap between peaks was visible, but no trace remained of those who had used it in the days before a road was built through the mountains.
I left the car and walked across the two stretches of highway. There was little traffic at the moment, and I had no difficulty crossing.
A small canyon led up into the mountains. North Franklin peak towered above me, rocky and majestic. Scrub oak and mountain mahogany grew up in the canyons, enough to feed the few deer and smaller animals in this area. They attracted the occasional mountain lion, and some of these had fallen victim to traffic on Trans-Mountain.
Finally, I levitated and drifted up the canyon. I saw no one and simply followed the canyon to its head, and from there I simply went up the mountainside. I had forgotten to bring goggles, but I was in no hurry anyway. Twenty minutes later I stood on the summit.
There’s nothing like standing on a mountaintop to make your troubles seem small.
I still had friends, I had things I could do that only one other person could do, and there would be work for me in the future.
I finally took a step off the edge, fell a short distance, and then raised my bubble. I tumbled for perhaps two hundred feet before dropping the bubble and levitating. I drifted slowly down the mountain and finally resumed walking as I approached the highway.
A car passed me, no cars were in sight coming from the other direction, and I decided to take a chance. The driver of the car which had passed wouldn’t be looking back anyway as he approached the summit.
I levitated, sped across the highway perhaps ten feet up, and dropped down by the Volvo. I opened the door, got in, and then just sat there and grinned for a moment. I felt good, better than I’d felt since I realized I had probably lost Ana Maria. There was still a residual ache, but I could deal with it now.
I drove on through the mountains, letting the Volvo purr its way around the curves and accelerate on the straightaways. Turning right at the intersection with the Patriot Freeway, I sped on into town. I turned right again onto Interstate 10 and was soon home.
Ana Maria’s car was parked out front when I drove up.
She was sitting on the porch in front of the doorway. She looked as empty and hurt as I’d looked when I got up this morning.
I didn’t know what to do for a moment, but finally I got out of the car and opened the door to the house.
I held the door and said, “Come on in. I’ll put coffee on, or I can make tea if you’d rather have that.”
She just shook her head, so I put on coffee anyway.
“I missed you this morning. I didn’t know where you’d gone.”
It took her a moment before she spoke.
“I started for my cousin’s house, but she wouldn’t have been awake yet. There was no place else to go.
“There was a church and the door was open. I went in and sat there. I sat there for a long time, I think…I don’t remember.
“A priest finally came out in the morning. He sat down and talked to me, and finally he offered me confession. I haven’t been to church for a long time, but I thought maybe it would help.
“So I did, went to confession I mean. I told him about it, all of it. All about the killings and…and everything else. All of it. I hoped he could help me. He’s a priest. They’re supposed to help you!
“But he…he said I was possessed. He called me a devil. He wanted to exorcise me or maybe have someone come in who could do the exorcism. He mumbled about not knowing enough to do that himself. The Church has special priests for that, I guess.
“I’m not really a devil. I would know, wouldn’t I?”
“No, Ana Maria. You’re no devil. You’re just human, as human as any of us. People just make mistakes, that’s all.”
I got us both coffee and a doughnut apiece before sitting down again. I had been thinking about what she said.
“I couldn’t stand it. I went up the mountain to the cross, Monte Christo Rey? You know where it’s at, don’t you?”
I nodded. If she’d gone there, Monte Christo Rey had been in view when I stopped to look across the valley from the first overlook.
“But it didn’t help. I walked up the trail, the one the people follow on Easter with the Stations of the Cross. And I didn’t feel anything. I kept on until I came to the top and then tried to pray. Even there, under the cross, I felt nothing.
“And I just decided to end it. I looked off over the river, and it was hazy and smoky…
“So I just jumped. I went over the edge and began falling. I scraped my arm on a rock and then I think the Devil caught me. I saw a red flash and I didn’t hit anything else. Finally, I stopped and I fell a little way.
“I walked back to my car and came here. I don’t want to be exorcised. And I didn’t have anyplace left to go.”
I had been thinking about some of the things she’d said.
“You said something about killings. Are you talking about the ones in Juarez?”
She looked away.
“Yes. And the ones that Javier did, too. I think the Devil must have possessed him too, when we…when we…
“So I’m responsible for those too. Oh, God…my soul must be black, black with sin.”
“You’re the Chupacabra, aren’t you, Ana Maria?”
She nodded. “I’m one. Javier was one too, I guess. Or maybe it’s the demon in me, in us. Maybe the Chupacabra is a demon.”
“Ana Maria, you’re no devil, and you don’t have a demon. How did the killings happen?”
“I was walking a
lone, the first time it happened. I was grabbed and dragged into an alley and someone put a trash bag over my head, and I just panicked. And then they let go and I tore off the bag, and the men were dead and they’d been ripped apart.
“It happened again, but this time I saw it. The man just flew into pieces. I was frightened, and I ran away. I didn’t know what had killed him, but I was scared and I ran. And it happened again. And then Javier and I….
“And then Javier went back to Chihuahua and he did it too. He called me on his cell phone, but that was the last time I spoke to him. He was killed by those animals. I hate the damned cartelistas!”
The coffee had gotten cold, so I got up, dumped what remained into the sink, rinsed the cups and then refilled them.
“Ana Maria, am I a devil?”
“Oh, no. You’ve never been anything but wonderful! I don’t know why that happened…you’d been gone, and….”
“Ana Maria, look at me.” As soon as she lifted her eyes, I formed my bubble. I waited perhaps five seconds, long enough for her eyes to open wide with astonishment, and then collapsed the bubble, dropping and catching myself with knees flexed.
“Keep watching.” This time, I levitated a few inches above the floor, drifted across the room, and finally lifted the chair I’d been sitting in. I brought the chair to me, drifted in front of it, and lowered myself to the floor before sitting in the chair.
“There’s no devil, Ana Maria. It’s just something new, a Talent. Somehow, you’ve acquired it. It only happens to you when you’re frightened, at least so far. But it can be controlled, by you not by some mythical devil. You’re not the only one who can do this. There are others, and I think I want you to talk to them.”
“Bu…but how, Ray? How could this happen?”
I was beginning to have ideas, but I would comm T and Shezzie before I tried to explain it.
Chapter Twelve
Ray:
My own problems paled beside those of Ana Maria. She’d been so desperate that she’d tried suicide…and failed? No wonder she had come back, even though she’d expected nothing from me but rejection.
