Burnt Black Suns: A Collection of Weird Tales

by Simon Strantzas

  Eli. The boy had been so much a part of Noah. He filled a hole that could not otherwise be filled. Rachel did her best, and he knew that he should be happier about the new child she carried, but somehow that feeling was trapped inside of him, trapped within solid amber, visible but unreachable. Rachel, the baby—they were not his beautiful Eli. But he went through the motions. It was all he could do. It would change when they finally found Eli; there was no doubt in his mind. With the boy back in his arms, that amber would crack, would crumble beneath Eli’s beauty. Eli was Noah’s true heart. There was no way he could go much longer without the boy.

  But he tried. Only a few steps away from the hotel was a small cantina, pressed into the side of a degraded brick hovel. There was no door, only a large opening and awning from which a child’s papier-mâché animal hung, its odd-numbered legs erupting from its twisted body without reason. Inside the cantina the lights were low, the air smelled of sweat and spices, and the unshaven men who sat there turned to stare eyes wide and silent at the couple as they entered. None were any younger than fifty, Noah suspected, though their faces made them look impossibly older. Noah wondered if he had ever before felt so out of place.

  “Do you want to leave?” he asked Rachel under breath.

  “I think it’s fine. Look, there’s a table over there.”

  She strode where Noah hesitated, deep into the heart of the place. Noah meekly followed, doing what he could to avoid eye contact. There were few women in the place, all lingering at the back of the room or behind curtains, and those he saw looked incredibly sad. He wanted to say something to help them, but couldn’t think of a single thing that might make a difference, so he did his best to put them out of mind. It was easier than having to deal with problems that had no clear solutions.

  “Do you think they have menus?” Rachel asked, moving her sunglasses to the top of her head, but before Noah could respond a small man in an apron and pencil mustache approached and put a dirty paper menu in front of them. He seemed nervous and hovered over Noah and Rachel as they looked over the menu, spending most of the time looking at the other patrons behind him.

  “Nopalitos con chile, por favor,” Rachel said.

  “Para mí también,” Noah added. “And a beer.”

  The small man nodded profusely and hurried away. Noah watched him disappear into the back. The other patrons turned partially away as well. Rachel did not blink. Instead, she put her hand on his.

  “You still look upset,” she said. “Don’t worry. Today was just a minor setback.”

  “It was the only lead we had, Rachel. I have no idea where we’re going to look now. We’ve come all this way, we’ve come so close. I can’t believe it was all for nothing.”

  “It wasn’t for nothing,” she said. “We’ll find him. You have to believe it.”

  “I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

  “Believe this: we’ll find him. We’ll find him and we’ll take him away from this place, from Sonia and whatever crazy thing she’s mixed up in. We’ll take him away to a new life back home with us, and soon he’ll have a new brother or sister and all this will be like some horrible nightmare for us all, a nightmare that happened so long ago it will soon fade to nothing. We can have that, Noah. You just have to believe.”

  Maybe it was the heat, or the exhaustion, or the pain of missing Eli for so long, but Noah could not keep himself from crying. It was horrible, and he felt the eyes of so many in the room staring at him once more, staring as Rachel squeezed and rubbed his hand. Like a summer storm, it passed over him as quickly as it arrived, but he was left drenched, wiping his face with the cheap paper napkin that had been laid for them on the table.

  “I’m sorry, Rachel. I really am. I’ve just felt so lost for so long.”

  “I know, babe. I know. Dry off, here comes our food.”

  The little man was still hurrying as he delivered their plates, less setting them down than throwing them. He then retreated and brought back a warm bottle of cerveza. Noah reached out for it, but the man did not let go. Instead he leaned closer.

  “Tú y la madre necesitan irse ahora mismo.”

  “I’m sorry. I—”

  “Es peligroso,” he said, his voice a seething whisper, and it only took a mumbled cough from behind for him to let go of the beer instantly. It kicked back, some of it spilling onto Noah’s hand, but the small man seemed to take on a completely different stance, looking at the rest of the room out of the corner of his eye.

  “Cuarenta y nueve pesos,” he grunted, and left them alone as quickly as he could. They did not see him again.

  Back at the hotel, Rachel insisted on standing outside their room in the warm night.

  “It’s amazing; I’ve never seen anything like it,” Rachel said, staring up at the colors of ebbing dusk as her hands idled on her pregnancy. Noah followed her eyes skyward. In the dark that followed close the stars lit the sky like a thousand pricks of light. “The world is a lot different in these places. You forget what it’s like when you spend your life a few feet away from electricity at the flick of a switch. Out here, you really get an idea of what it must have been like to be alive hundreds of years ago. The Spaniards came here and conquered, brought Christianity, but you can almost feel what it was like before that, back when the sky was filled with gods of fire. I can understand why people would come here to worship Ometéotlitztl and the rest. It’s like a whole different way of being. I’m almost jealous.”

  Noah bristled, but tried to hide it. He had no interest in repeating their experience on the heath. “You have a way of looking at things, you know.”

  She took his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

  He shrugged, careful not to dislodge her.

  “You see everything in a positive light. You look up and see a flood of stars. I look up and see the endless space around them. I wish I could be as positive as you.”

  “Oh, Noah,” she said, her voice pulled into the vacuum of her disappointment. She didn’t say anything else, but instead took his hand and stood there in the dark of the blistering night. He let go first.

  “We should probably go inside. Father Manillo was right. You need to rest.”

  “Just stand with me for a little while. It will be good for you to stop moving—you’ve been running ragged since we left Sarnia.”

  “I can’t. Not if I’m going to find Sonia and Eli before they disappear again. What if Father Manillo calls? He said he would.”

  “If he calls, you’ll be able to hear it. Right now, I need you, Noah. We both need you.”

  “I know that,” he said. “But what am I supposed to do? Forget Eli? Let Sonia have him? I know that would be easier, but I can’t. This is my son we’re talking about. I can’t let myself forget.”

  Rachel started to say something, then stopped. She pulled him close and kissed him on the cheek, then brusquely pulled her shawl around her shoulders. “Go on in,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

  He hesitated. “Are you sure? You’re going to stay out here alone?”

  “You don’t have to worry,” she said. Had her tone changed, or did Noah simply imagine it? “I’m sure I’ll be safe out here for a few minutes.”

  Noah opened his mouth to speak, but behind him he heard a sharp trilling from somewhere inside, and his heart skipped. With hands wet and body shaking he turned and looked at Rachel. She had turned too, but her expression was inscrutable.

  “Well, what are you waiting for? Go on. I’ll be inside in a minute.”

  He was already in the door when he realized she’d said something else, something like “I love you.”

  Noah picked up the phone, but no one responded to his greeting. There was a wheezing sound. A snuffling. Garbled and metallic as though the line had been degraded. Noah started to get worried. He looked at Rachel through the window, her back to him, shawl pulled tight. “Hello?”

  There was some more scratching, then, “Noah? This
is Father Manillo. I had an idea.”

  Noah’s blood raced.

  “About where to find my son?”

  “Yes. Of course. Villages like Astilla de la Cruz, farming villages in the depths of Mexico, are filled with children who must work the land with their fathers all day, or must scavenge the streets at night to scrape together what little they can to help their families survive. But there are some, especially those belonging to the more wealthy or foreign, who still must be educated. So a tiny school was erected a few years ago for them. There they can learn, but so few attend, or can attend often during the farming season, that it is only in session a few days a week.

  “I’m not certain,” the priest continued, “but I believe there is class tomorrow. Perhaps your Eli is there? If your past wife is how you say, she might want him in school.”

  Rachel entered the room and closed the door behind her. She did not look at Noah, even though it was clear she knew he was watching. Instead, she brushed past him and lay down on their bed. With some effort she turned onto her side, her back twisted toward him.

  “Thank you, Father. How do I get there?”

  3. Back to School

  Rachel had managed to drift off while Noah was on the telephone with Father Manillo, gathering details about the nameless school’s location. She lay still, chest slowly rising and sinking, shirt ridden up to expose her swollen pregnancy. Noah lay down beside her but could not bear to put his arm around her. The room was a furnace, and the last thing he wanted was for her body’s heat to compound his own. He rolled over and tried to sleep.

  He’d been warned repeatedly that the odds of finding Sonia, of finding Eli, were virtually zero, yet he could not stop himself from holding out hope. It buzzed through his head, his hands, his feet, and each remained in motion as he twisted and turned through the night. Eventually it was simpler to give up, get out of bed. Frustrated, tired, and angry, he creeped to the window and sat in the dull moonlight. There, he studied the unfolded article he’d carried all the way from Sarnia, looking for some overlooked clue about where his son might be. Even that proved more than he could bear in the lingering heat, so he simply gazed out the window at the field of stars and waited for the daylight to arrive.

  The broken spire was the first thing that came into view as the red morning sun crested the clay roofs. The air already smelled of frying corn, rich and bittersweet. The light of the rising sun burned Noah’s face, a giant ball of fire that seemed to hang a few feet away, not a hundred million miles. He watched it rise in starts, as though lifted on the shoulders of some great giant or dragged upward by a team of animals. As it ascended, it lit the sky further, and the silhouette of the hanging cross transformed into the cross itself, casting its long shadow over the poor village below.

  Finding the school proved to be more challenging than Noah had anticipated. What should have been a walk of a few minutes was instead an hour-long odyssey without any clear sign where he and Rachel were headed. He had written down Father Manillo’s instructions carefully, but the streets of Astilla de la Cruz did not obey his crudely drawn map. In places, it was difficult to tell where roads ended or began, and at one point he was certain houses had simply been erected without consideration of anything beyond the whim of the builder. Each place was more rundown than the last, dirt yards filled with old and broken toys that were as untouched and abandoned as everything else they passed. If not for the occasional movement of curtains, or sound of someone scrambling unseen, Noah would have suspected he and Rachel had been just as forgotten.

  Noah stopped and looked back for the broken cross to orient himself. It was a dark spike in the eye of the sun, and no matter where he and Rachel went, its position never seemed to change.

  “Maybe we should ask someone where this school is,” Rachel suggested. Underneath her wide-brimmed hat her face was slick with sweat.

  “Who are we going to ask? Do you see anybody around?”

  “Let me see those directions again. Maybe we took a wrong turn.”

  He handed them over reluctantly. Rachel studied them.

  “I haven’t seen any of these street names. Are you sure these are right?”

  “I haven’t a clue. I was hoping once we were close enough we could figure things out by looking at the signs. I didn’t count on there not being any.”

  “Do you know how to get us back at least?”

  Noah paused, unsure how to phrase the answer, but his silence was answer enough for Rachel.

  “So we’re completely lost. Great. You do know I’m carrying a baby, don’t you?”

  “Obviously.”

  “Do you know my back is killing me as well? What happens if I need to sit down? Should I do it right here in the street?”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  “Oh, like we figured out where the school was?”

  He tried not to look at her. He would only get angry if he looked at her. How could she be so selfish when Eli was out there, somewhere?

  “It can’t be far. We’ve almost reached the edge of the village.”

  “I hope you’re right. I don’t know how much longer I can keep going. Remember what Dr. Mielke told us.”

  What she’d told them was that Rachel should stay home, something she flagrantly disobeyed. But Noah managed to bite his tongue before saying it.

  He was sorely tempted to knock on a door, any door, and ask for directions. The sun was no longer inching its way into the sky but climbing swiftly, and every moment that passed intensified its heat. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to ask for help. The houses looked too rundown, too hopeless, and he needed all the hope he could muster. Eli needed it. Even Rachel needed it. But Noah didn’t know if he had enough left to go around.

  “Wait,” Rachel said, so quietly Noah wondered if she spoke.

  “What is it?”

  She shushed him. “Listen, do you hear it? I think it’s music. Like a flute or something.”

  She cocked her head and listened; Noah remained motionless. The blazing heat on his skull, the slow thumping of his heart, deafened him, but he strained to listen for the sound she heard. He wondered if it was merely wishful thinking, an auditory hallucination charged simply by her desire, and had almost given up when he finally heard it: The trilling of the sort of pipe he hadn’t heard since he was a child.

  “I think you’re right.”

  A wave of relief crested, washing over him. Rachel smiled. “Someone up there must like you.”

  “I guess so. Come on, I think it’s this way.”

  The sound of music had long since stopped, but that did not prevent Noah and Rachel from finding their way to the unnamed school Father Manillo had mentioned.

  “Let’s hurry,” Noah said. “If Sonia’s left him it won’t be for long, and I’d like to be far away from here before she realizes Eli is missing.”

  The school was tiny; hardly larger than the rundown houses they’d passed, with an exterior so baked by the sun it had become porous and brittle. Running his fingers along the wall, Noah’s hand came away coated with brick and dust. The remnants of childhood lay in pieces around the school’s periphery—boxes drawn in chalk on the pavement, a crumbling rubber ball on the sparse, well-trodden grass. Rachel, putting her sunglasses atop her head so the tiny black arms held the chestnut hair off her face, rattled the locked door.

  “This is where Eli is supposed to be? The place looks like it should be condemned.”

  She bent and inspected the sorry collection of desiccated flowers in the garden outside the door. The plants were merely husks, untended for far too long, and they surrounded a clay figure that looked crafted by a child’s hands. The unclassifiable thing was painted pink, a colored ribbon around its neck, and had what looked like four limbs. “Look at its eyes,” Rachel said, huffing as she picked it up for inspection. “They don’t even seem to be looking in the same direction.” She dropped the figurine, and its weight buried it headfirst in the ground. Rachel wiped her hands on her
pants with disgust.

  “I don’t understand it,” Noah said, looking through the windows at the empty classroom. “Father Manillo said they’d be here—all of them, all the children.”

  “Maybe he got the days wrong?”

  “No, no.” An overwhelming wave of disappointment swept Noah. “He was so sure . . .”

  A noise caught his attention. He looked at Rachel for confirmation she’d heard it too, then scanned the area. There was no one in sight, yet he distinctly heard the sound of someone crying.

  “Do you think—” Rachel whispered. “At the back?”

  The two of them walked slowly around the side of the school, Noah in front with Rachel close behind. The sun made everything too bright, and even through squinted eyes Noah wasn’t sure the shadow beside the empty playground was truly a person until it stood and looked back at them. Noah froze, motioned for Rachel to do the same, and he simply waited to see what would happen.

  The shadow bolted.

  “Hey!” Noah shouted, and gave chase. “Hey, come here a minute! I want to talk to you. Por favor!” He sensed Rachel following close behind, but as Noah’s legs moved faster the distance between him and his girlfriend grew wider. When Rachel cried out his name, he was already more than a hundred feet away before he looked back and saw her doubled over. He rushed back to find her with her hands on her belly, her face contorted. His fear left him physically ill.

  “Are you okay? What’s wrong?” His sentences were clipped, his attention distracted by the fleeing shadow. But when he looked up, he was startled to find the shadow too had stopped and was watching them from a distance.

  Rachel breathed heavily in tight, controlled breaths.

  “I’ll be okay,” she panted. “I think I’ll be okay. Go on. Go find Eli.”

  He looked at her and she nodded, then winced again.

  “No, I’ll stay,” he said, hoping to any god that would listen that she couldn’t see his disappointment. “I’ll stay.”

  “Noah—”

  “It’s fine. I want to make sure you’re all right.”