Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales

by Simon Strantzas

  “Well,” he hesitated. “That was part of it . . . How are you holding up?”

  She shrugged. “This weather here only makes me feel more bloated than usual. At least I have this.” She lifted her arm to display the wreath circling her forearm like a large bracelet. It was made of hundreds of dried stems woven into a rough tangled circle.

  “Who gave you that?”

  “Some woman was passing by. She looked upset, and I suppose she caught me staring. I would have asked her what was wrong, but . . .” She shrugged, the reason obvious. “Then she gave it to me and said madre. I guess it’s my first baby shower gift.”

  He smiled, then thought of Eli.

  “We should get to the hotel. The girl on the phone said it was near the church.”

  They followed the directions Noah had been given. Though he secretly doubted he’d understood the broken English correctly, he remained silent for fear of worrying Rachel. In the end, it was for naught, as he quickly recognized ahead the broken spire of the church he had seen from the bus—a black needle piercing the sky against the blinding backdrop of the setting sun. It forced him to avert his eyes as they continued toward it. Noah and Rachel passed few people, and as they did each glared back with suspicion. Noah hadn’t expected to feel so alien, so unwelcomed. The worst had been the old lady in front of the church as they passed, dressed head to toe in black, a child’s bicycle in her hands. She was wailing, yet when she saw Rachel, she stopped and looked at her growing pregnancy without a sound. It was only when she and Noah had passed that the wailing resumed.

  They arrived at the Hotel Borelo just as the sun vanished behind the horizon and failed to take the stifling heat with it. The building was simply a converted two-story house, out of place in its surroundings of poorly built shanties, but even the late addition of inexpertly installed siding could not dispel the influence of the ornate church. Positioned so close, the church made an eyesore of everything in its shadow. Insects filled the sky with an electric drone, and tiny flies preceded Noah and Rachel into the building, harbingers of the couple’s arrival. Noah could still feel them crawling on his skin, but reaching to scratch their tiny legs away only left his hand sticky with sweat. The skin of the señora behind the counter was deeply bronzed and leathery, and it folded like paper around her eyes as she glared with equal parts suspicion, worry, and fear. She said nothing, instead dropping the keys to the room into Noah’s hand as though they were slick with poison. She would not look at Rachel.

  The room was barely larger than the bed, and when Rachel sat down upon it she sank with a long creak of old springs. “I guess we don’t have a lot of options,” she said. “At least we have that balcony door we can open to catch a breeze.”

  “There doesn’t seem to be much hope for one,” Noah said, putting their bags in the corner and climbing onto the bed to join her. He lay down and stretched out his arm so she could snuggle close and put her head on his chest. Rachel’s flesh was on fire, but he tried to ignore it and simply enjoy the feel of her against his skin.

  “So what’s the plan?” she said, looking up at him. He swept her blond hair off her face.

  “We can’t go to the police. We can’t even prove it’s her in the photo.”

  “But you’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Have you any ideas on how to find her?”

  “I only care about finding him.”

  The first moment Noah stumbled across that article in La Diario Oficial during his monthly trek to the Toronto Reference Library, he knew he was on the right track. The police did not agree. They felt the photo was too blurry, too indistinct to take seriously despite Noah’s insistence it was his fugitive ex-wife. He knew her body so well, its shape and how she held it, that there was no doubt in his mind the obscured figure was Sonia. For the police, however, it was not enough. When he finally convinced someone to listen, he was told that without more solid proof there was little they could do . . . even if they believed him. The Canadian police had no jurisdiction in Mexico, and the Mexican police were too corrupt to help find a missing boy when so many others disappeared daily from their overrun streets.

  “Did I tell you what I was dreaming about on the bus? I dreamed I saw Sonia at a vegetable stand—a lot like the one we saw at the St. Jacob’s market, do you remember?—and Eli was right beside her, holding her hand. I walked up to them without saying a word. Eli saw me first. He shouted with joy—ecstatic—and ran into my arms. I scooped him up and held him so close I could smell his hair and his skin. It was just like I remembered—comforting and sweet. Then Sonia looked at me and she was crying. She tried to speak and maybe she couldn’t or maybe I cut her off, but the words were choked. While she struggled I simply took Eli’s hand, turned around, and walked away. Somehow I knew that now I’d be the one to disappear and never be found.

  “Then I woke up. Have you ever had a dream where you got just what you wanted, and for a second when you woke up you thought it might be real? There’s absolutely nothing worse than realizing you’re wrong. It’s soul-crushing, absolutely soul-crushing. Still, I should know by now that nothing is ever that neat, that simple. When I finally find Sonia and Eli, things are going to be messy and painful. I just hope to shield him from as much of it as I can.”

  Rachel was quiet. He hadn’t noticed her stiffen as he spoke, but now that he was done he felt her tense body and looked down. She was staring at her swollen belly, silently rubbing it with both hands. Then, with some effort, she slid off the bed and stood.

  “Let’s go out. I’m feeling claustrophobic holed up in this little room after being on that bus for so long. I think a walk will do us both some good. Just give me a minute to get ready.”

  Rachel left the room and he heard her feet softly pad down the hallway. Noah went over to the window and opened it, but without a breeze the air refused to move. He looked out instead at the darkening street below. The heat radiating off the ground distorted everything he saw. The village itself looked insubstantial, as though it might vanish altogether, and instinctively he worried what he would do if that happened, how he would find his Eli. He shook his head. It was crazy. All of it was crazy. But the building heat in their room only made his thoughts more muddled, and he knew Rachel was right—he had to leave before his imagination consumed him in a blaze.

  There was no one at the front desk when they left, though they could hear the señora somewhere in the back, whispering or watching television. The air outside had cooled only slightly, but remained stagnant, and he was wiping his brow after only a few steps. He hated the heat, but would endure it for Eli. Rachel wasn’t as accommodating.

  “I can’t stand the feeling of my skin sticking together. Or the fact that every time I lick my lips I taste salt.”

  “Do you want to go back?”

  “No, I need to be moving around. Dr. Mielke says I need all the exercise I can get now before I can’t do it any more.”

  Even in the darkness, the broken spire of the church was still darker, a black void in the evening sky. The small buildings and houses at its foot were all without lights, as though the hanging cross cast its shadow long across the Astilla de la Cruz street. Noah and Rachel walked hand-in-hand in as straight a line as they could along the uneven pavement, and as Rachel seemed focused on remaining upright Noah spied those people they passed on the street. None were walking, all instead silently stood and glared at the couple as they approached. When Noah came alongside, he looked at their dark faces and saw the jumble of emotions he’d seen earlier on the face of the señora at the hotel. Was it so strange for the village to get visitors from outside the country? Did Sonia stick out just as much? He wanted to show the newspaper clipping to them, find out if they held the secret of his missing child, but it was clear none of them would help. He and Rachel were strangers, and small villages despise strangers.

  “It’s quiet here, isn’t it?” Rachel was panting, but not enough for it to be worrisome.

  �
�I suppose,” Noah said. Outside, in the darkness cast by the church, little was revealed of the Astilla de la Cruz streets. The houses seemed to be less built and more sprung from the ground as though a crevice had opened from which each had sprouted. Like rows of plants, each tiny house was at a different height than its neighbor, and mixed with the random sheets strung between two poles to form makeshift tents for the less-than-poor, the terracotta skyline attained a jagged uneven appearance, slightly hallucinatory in the near-dead light. The walls of the homes looked to have been crumbling for years beneath the baking sun, which had clearly bleached the colors to dusty grey. Or perhaps that was a trick of the ebbing night. Noah could just make out the advertisement for Corona painted large upon a wall, though the paint had flaked to such a degree hardly more than the name of the beer was still visible. And yet, in front of the barely legible sign a series of tables were set up with candles burning on each—a small outside cantina, underpopulated. At the furthest table from the light sat a solitary old man, perhaps in his sixties, hunched so completely his head was halfway down his chest. Yet Noah could still feel the stranger’s eyes on him, and though he tried to return the intimidation with his own glare, the man seemed unmoved. “I don’t think they like foreigners here. Hopefully that will help us flush Sonia out.”

  As though on cue, a middle-aged woman approached Noah and Rachel, a smile wide across her tanned face. Noah thought he saw her eyes first, like twin moons in the darkness, bright and round and moving towards him. Only when she reached the couple did he realize she was wearing glasses too large for her narrow face, too old to be anything more than second- or third-hand. She carried a bag at her side that was misshapen and lumpy, its contents having no distinct form. Noah thought he saw peeking from its opening colored tissue paper, dulled by the absence of light.

  “¿Nos has traído un bebé?” she said with undue warmth. Noah wondered if she were as genuine as she masqueraded to be. “¿La puedo tocar?” She made motion with her hands, as though beckoning Rachel into them. “Ella es,” the woman said to Noah, and he was stunned to see tears had welled in her eyes. “Ella es.”

  Noah stammered, unsure how to respond. Rachel, uncomfortable, shrugged.

  “Gracias?” he finally offered.

  The woman smiled again and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand, then kissed it and placed it on Rachel’s belly. The contrast of foreign skin was never clearer. “Madre,” she said, then nodded her head. Rachel did the same, though it was clear to Noah she had no better clue what was occurring. The woman removed her hand and kissed it again before reaching into her bag. Rachel rubbed the spot where the woman’s flesh touched hers. From the bag, the woman produced three ochre dahlias, their stems twisted together to form some sort of wreath, and reaching up, placed it like a crown on Rachel’s head. “Una corona para la futura madre,” she said before turning and walking quickly away, back into the night. Noah watched her go, then glanced at the old bent man. His glower only intensified.

  “I can see why Sonia likes it here,” Rachel said, taking the wreath off her head and smelling the flowers. She then looked at Noah with a face twisted in stunned apology.

  “Sorry, honey, that’s not what I meant. I just meant it’s a nice place to raise a child.”

  “I don’t think a cult is the right place for anyone, let alone a child. My child. My Eli. He doesn’t belong here.” Noah felt his anger rising, and Rachel was quick to diffuse it.

  “I know, I know. We’ll find him. We’ll go out tomorrow and we’ll show the picture around. Someone has got to know where he is. The place isn’t that big. Look over there—” She pointed in the distance, up the hill that started behind the church and only went back and up into the darkness. “That’s the edge of this place. We’ve already walked across most of it. How can she possibly hide from you here?”

  “If anyone could find a way to keep me from Eli,” he spat, “it would be her.”

  Rachel gasped, then stopped and put her hands on her knees, her face twisted in a grimace.

  For the first time since arriving Noah felt cold.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Her breaths were heavy, but controlled. As both she and Noah had been taught at Lamaze class.

  “It’s nothing. I’m okay. Dr. Mielke said I might get sharp pains in my back or stomach during the second trimester.” She continued to push air through her teeth. “I just need a second. Christ, it feels like someone stuck a knife in me.”

  “Do you . . . Do you want me to do something?”

  “No, no. I’ll be okay. Just a minute.” She breathed deeply, one final time, then straightened herself out. Her face was a bit red and swollen, but otherwise she looked okay. She sniffled. “See? All better.”

  “All the same, we should call it a night.”

  She took his hand again and they turned around. Other than the moon and the tiny light of the Hotel Bolero, there was nothing else to guide them through the dark.

  2. Avenues of Investigation

  Noah could not lie still between the hotel sheets. Sleep seemed elusive, impossible, when he was so exhausted from his journey on little more evidence than a blurry newspaper photograph. He itched with unbridled anxiety; it was like electricity travelling through his nerves into his addled brain. His ears buzzed, his eyes filled with sparks behind closed lids. Even his teeth felt slightly displaced, and biting down did not alleviate the discomfort. He was charged with the knowledge that Eli was close—closer than he’d been in years—and it became impossible to spend another moment in the shrinking bed. While Rachel slept easily and deeply, Noah pulled back the covers and slipped free.

  The heat in the middle of night remained oppressive, and sitting beside the open window proved futile—the air from outside was no cooler. Still, Noah could look out from his perch at the tiny village streets lit by moonlight, and past the broken spire of the church toward the rough-edged horizon. He stared out and wondered where in all that emptiness Sonia was hiding. Sonia, and the son she had stolen from him. He boiled with impotent rage. If he only knew where Eli was being held, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from storming over there, despite the assurance of both Rachel and the Sarnia Police that it would likely result in his death. But Noah was willing to risk it all to be reunited with his son. No one understood how much Sonia had taken with her, what emptiness Eli had left. The man Rachel met two years ago was not whole, had never been whole the entire time they’d been together. But there in Mexico, his body vibrating in anticipation of its missing piece, Noah was closer than he’d ever been. He didn’t know how things would change when he was complete, didn’t know if Rachel would reject the version of him she’d never seen before, but he couldn’t allow himself to falter with worry. Eli, his only son, was close, and his presence was stoking the fires that burned in Noah’s heart. It was burning him up.

  Noah was still sitting by the window as the sun made its slow ascent into the sky, a fiery god from behind the horizon. More heat came with it, and whatever respite the dark had offered was revoked, a victim to the burning orb. Rachel opened her eyes not much later, she too finding it impossible to sleep, and when she waved her arm at Noah, beckoning him back to bed, he complied. Arm around her body, hand on their unborn child, he pressed his body into her back and fought the instinct to flee from the unbearable heat she was radiating. It was essential to his sanity that he stay tethered to her. Eli, though, was out there waiting for him.

  “We have to go soon. We need to start looking.” He felt her take a deep breath, then exhale slowly. “You’re not too hot, are you? If you want to hang back here, I can meet you later.”

  “No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine.” She swallowed hard. “Where to first?”

  “I guess we’ll start with the photo. Show it around. See what happens.”

  It did not take Noah long to get ready, but Rachel moved more slowly, her ligaments aching as they stretched to accommodate their growing child. Noah had not planned what to do once he and
Rachel reached Astilla de la Cruz. Before they arrived, he had felt certain it would be easy to find a Canadian woman and child in a village so small, and yet once there he realized how detrimental his own foreignness was. He and Rachel had little in common with those around him. One mistake and they would get nowhere.

  Downstairs, the old señora sat behind her desk as though she had been stationed there overnight, staring at a framed photograph. Rachel appeared discomfited by her presence and tugged at Noah’s arm to keep him moving past, but Noah decided if they were going to start searching there would be no place better. The señora’s scowl did not frighten him—he would have suffered far worse for Eli.

  “Excuse me? Señora?”

  She grunted in response, her jowls tight over a clenched jaw. But when she looked up at him her face was wet, and those cold eyes red. He glanced at Rachel, hoping to catch her eye, but she was intentionally looking elsewhere.

  “Do you know this place? Do you recognize it?”

  He unfolded the article he’d been carrying. Time had already worn its creases, giving the photo an additional layer of fog. Noah flattened it out as best he could before showing it to her. Her eyes didn’t move.

  “Señora, please. Muy importante.”

  Her scowl deepened, scoring the flesh of her leather face like an old handbag, and she laid the small framed photo face down. “Ándale. Dámelo.” Her hand snatched at the article, and he gave it over, albeit reluctantly. He struggled to tamp down the fear that by simply relinquishing possession of the clipping, he might lose his only clue to his son’s whereabouts. When her swollen eyes landed upon the photograph, they stretched open wide, much wider than he would have expected. She turned noticeably paler, as a dark shadow crossed her face. He worried she might scream. Instead, she shook her head vehemently and pushed the clipping as far away from herself as she could. As though it were on fire.

  “No, no conozco a este lugar.”