by Glover, Dan
"I have something you must hide for me, Church. No matter how I beg you, don't tell me where it is and please don't open the sack that I'm about to give you."
"What is it, mother?"
"It's something best not disturbed, Church. I'm sorry to involve you but I don’t know what else to do. I once buried it beneath that sycamore tree that grows out of the church where you were so fond of playing... remember?"
"Of course I do, mother."
She'd come to him on an early spring morning holding a sack of thick cloth tied shut with its top securely wound by stout wire so as to be nearly impossible to undo. His curiosity was instantly aroused and like Pandora he couldn't resist the pull of knowing what was inside.
The first thing he noticed was the music. It occurred to him that his mother had handed him a wind-up music box but as he listened to the melody he realized he didn’t hear it in his ears. Should he plug them with his fingers the music kept right on playing... the same music he'd heard his whole life.
Though his mother had stuffed the sack with paper probably in an effort to hide the proper nature of the contents but giving it a good feel he determined the bag clearly held a box.
Was the stone inside? Was it the treasure that Billy had been so passionate about finding? If so, and if it truly offered the holder unlimited wealth, why would his mother desire for him to hide it?
Thinking of his Tia and the affliction that Billy was suffering under was enough to pry Church's interest away from the sack his mother had handed to him. He wanted nothing to do with anything so potent and so obviously evil. Yet still it pulled at him incessantly especially when he lay down at night to sleep.
The music was familiar. He had grown up listening to the melody playing in the wind and dancing upon the dawn. For the longest time he thought everyone heard it. It wasn’t until Tia Evalena arrived that he realized that his aunt had no idea of its existence, for if she did she would have surely mentioned it.
He remembered the girl who used to watch him when he was little... her name was Maria. She could hear the music but unlike Church it frightened her. The girl had done everything to keep the melody out of her ears... she stuffed them with cotton, wore earplugs, and even played a small transistor radio at night, but nothing worked.
The music gradually drove Maria mad. He remembered her accusing him of having something to do with it... that he had hidden a radio somewhere nearby... that he hated her and was seeking to drive her away.
Only he didn’t hate the girl. He loved her. During his first four years of life he spent more time with Maria than with anyone else including his own mother. When she left he was devastated... in fact she hadn’t even told him goodbye.
Now he knew the source of the music yet that knowledge did little to assuage the guilt he carried over being a part of the deception that surrounded the stone, if indeed that was what he carried.
The thought of abandoning the ranch depressed him. The animals needed him now more than ever what with Billy suffering his own private hell and unable to help out around the Triple Six. Still, mother had entrusted him with a duty and by taking what she handed to him he had accepted the task.
He tarried as spring turned into summer which wore away into autumn telling himself that once the harvest was in his presence wouldn't be so sorely missed. Rancher had a handle on the ranch, as always, and he was sure the man could manage without his help for a few days... he'd go and return as quickly as possible so as to minimize the extra work his father'd have to do in his absence.
After mulling over his prospects and what to do with the sack he'd been handed Church decided to not only rid himself of the stone but hide it from the entire family, to shield them from its influence. Though he couldn’t prove it he suspected Billy's sickness was somehow related to it... perhaps if he took the stone far enough away from the Triple Six Billy might recover.
On a warm late October day he jumped into the old pickup truck normally reserved for work around the ranch and drove it south through Texas while keeping to the back roads since the truck had no license plates. As his trip progressed he noticed how the land was even more barren than in northern Texas... it was apparent the drought had been ravaging that area as well.
He forded the river at a shallow point and headed into Mexico after crossing the border on a dusty back road just west of Del Rio. He felt as if he was being pulled onward by an invisible yet powerful force that knew exactly where the thing he carried should be buried.
He arrived around the first of November along with the butterflies. Angangueo was actually a real place... for the longest time Church thought the village was only a fantasy brought to life in his imagination by his mother's many colorful tales.
The small town was situated inside a pass deep within high mountain ranges. A pair of rivers ran through the area which reminded Church of the two creeks that wound behind his beloved home back in Texas though the lushly wooded landscape in Mexico stood in stark contrast to the dry and dusty fields of home.
Initially the horrid masks that all the villagers wore had disconcerted him... he heard of Dia de los Muertos many times but still it shocked him to be caught up in the middle of the macabre celebrations that seemed to be breaking out spontaneously right in front of his eyes and all throughout the village.
He'd come whether purposely or subconsciously to the one place his mother had spoken of with great delight. Almost all the people in the tiny hamlet seemed delighted to see him almost as if they'd been awaiting his arrival... only a solitary priest crossed himself upon seeing Church while turning his back to the boy as if shunning something evil.
Stopping at a posada for a late dinner and walking inside carrying the sack—he feared leaving it in the truck lest it be stolen—the old woman who served him crossed herself as profusely as the priest like she too sensed what he carried was an evil thing. Could she hear the song of the stone? If so she didn’t say so and no one else paid him any mind. Still, when he indicated he would like to eat and a room in which to spend the night and produced a bundle of American dollars she was only too happy to provide food and accommodations.
The hovel of a hotel was dug halfway into the ground with walls of baked adobe that reminded him of the old church—the Church of Five Angels—not far from the old chabola at the end of Cherry Creek Road... a place where he remembered as a good and a happy home though a poor one. Smoke from the cooking and the other customers' tobacco permeated the air in the posada like a fog drifting in from Cherry creek at night.
Helping himself he ate heartily from the big pot of beans simmering over an open pit fire in the middle of a great open area which seemed to serve as both a dining room and a gathering place for the villagers. The tortillas were freshly baked like the ones his mother made though there was an underlying aftertaste that he could not quite identify though not unpleasant.
After satiating his appetite and wiping his bowl clean with a tortilla shell the boy sat drinking strong beer and listening to the tale being told by an enormously fat hombre named Pedro with an equally gigantic moustache which he kept pulling and twisting as he walked about the room and continuously talked and who seemed to be the center of attention. Though Church couldn't speak the language fluently he understood it well enough to follow the fellow's strange tale of intrigue and death.
It seemed that once upon a time a man named Count Bruno—a member of Spanish nobility—was on his way to a far off village to meet for the first time the girl he was to marry. Such unions were not rare in that time and place. The arranged marriages often served to consolidate the holdings of two wealthy families and were therefore looked upon as Godsends.
Her name was Tilde, the girl he was to wed, and he hoped they would love one another as his own father and mother had done after consummating a marriage under similar circumstances. Tired from his journey and stopping for the night in a insignificant hamlet at the edge of the desert the man was drawn to a meeting house by the sound of merriment and music.
After eating his fill he joined in the company who were drinking and taking turns telling ghost stories.
He found himself dozing. His belly was full and the sangria potent and the day had been long. Each time he looked up from the comfort of his chair the landlady was filling his mug again with a seemingly bottomless pail out of which she ladled generous doses of the purple liquid which smelled of grapes and watermelon.
None of the speakers caught his attention until a beautiful and fetching girl with the voice of an angel stood up and began telling a tale of a friend named Juliana—the same name as the Count's sister—who was killed by a portrait which had terrified her since she was a child. The enormous frame had fallen upon her as she showed her fiancé around the house on the day before their marriage.
Fat Pedro comically imitated how the tiny girl talked and walked about the room animatedly describing in horrid details how the picture had hung for ages over the entryway to the bedchamber and how when it was apparently jostled by the bridegroom's heavy steps it fell upon the poor girl and the frame had decapitated her on the spot despite the fact there were no sharp edges to be found on the wood.
Juliana's husband to be was so bereft at seeing his fiancée beheaded before his eyes that he promptly went mad and blaming his future bride's family for her death he pulled out a revolver and killed everyone living under the roof of that house before taking his own life by firing a final bullet into the side of his skull.
As the girl's story came to a close the dim lights in the room faded out all together and though the Count desired to speak with the teller of the tale he couldn't see to do so. Finally after much fumbling around in the dark he managed to find his room and fell into a deep and dreamless slumber.
The next morning the Count woke with a headache and lying in an alley behind a brothel. At first he thought that he must have overstayed his welcome at the inn but upon finding his pockets empty he decided he'd been the victim of hucksters... the landlady and her cohorts had gotten him drunk and allowed him to fall asleep before robbing and depositing him in the alley.
Although he was in dire straits the Count could only think of the fetching girl from the night before who told such a dark and gloomy tale and who had kept him enthralled for what seemed like hours just watching and listening to her. He decided he had to find her again, if only to thank her.
Her beauty had been beyond compare with shadowy and luminescent eyes that flashed fire as she talked and a delicately exquisite face framed by long black hair that shone like silk. She wore a black dress that accentuated her dark features and which was tight in all the right places.
Inquiring around the tiny village did no good... everyone he asked looked at him strangely before crossing themselves and hurrying away. Finally as a last desperate measure he went to the small chapel in the center of the hamlet where he asked the padre if he could help him find the girl.
After describing her and the house where he had spent the night to the man, the padre shook his head as he told the Count that there was no such girl living in the hamlet now nor was there a dwelling like the Count told of stopping at... but in the past a girl just as he portrayed had been the daughter of a business man who lived in just such an abode. At one time the man had been the wealthiest merchant in the state and grew as fat as a hog off the work of others but then he made a fatal error.
He had purchased an old castle. Rumor had it that as long as the castle walls stood the owner and his family would live long and happy lives, but should the walls fall they would all perish within one year.
Discounting the rumor as nonsense the merchant had the castle razed so as to build a new and splendid store. By the time the final stone fell from the walls both his daughters had taken ill. Tilde the older one had exhausted her resources in caring for her younger sister Juliana. When the merchant visited their room one horrible morning he found them both dead while huddling in bed as if in mortal terror of something unseen.
The merchant in his grief had killed his wife by strangling her with his own hands and then he doused himself in lamp oil and burned himself alive while simultaneously setting fire to the house though because the walls were made of adobe and set into the ground the only part that burned was the wooden beams that held up the steel roof as well as the furniture inside.
The padre examined the Count closely as he commented on how much he looked like the two dead girls. Perhaps he was a long lost relative. He beseeched the man to go to the spot where the castle once stood and say a prayer that he too would not be taken by the curse.
Thinking that a grand joke was being played upon him and yet nevertheless wholly disconcerted by everything he'd seen and heard the Count had saddled up and ridden out of the tiny hamlet as quickly as his horse could carry him.
As his journey took him west he stayed on the main road. Less than an hour passed before he came to a wild and overgrown cemetery surrounded by high stone walls. Something he knew not what compelled him to stop. The tombstones had been badly neglected but the Count thought he could espy a name upon one that sat in a distant corner.
It was his family's name.
Dismounting from his steed the Count passed through the rusted iron cemetery gate picking his way through the dismal fallen stones until he stood before the grave he had seen from afar. The names of his sisters Tilde and Juliana were carved upon it and side by side were the graves of his mother and his father who he had heretofore thought were still home in Spain, safe and sound.
A high wind sprang up at that moment as the cemetery trees rattled like old skeleton bones and a far off owl hooted in an especially mournful way reminding the Count of the old steam locomotive that used to blow its whistle each time it passed by his home in Andalusia. He'd always thought what a sad and a lonely sound it was.
Lightning danced across the sky as day turned to night and raindrops as big as puddles began falling out of the sullenly gray clouds overhead. With the flash another tombstone caught his eyes... it sat far back of the others as if purposely placed there, set apart from the family to which the body that lay moldering in the ground had once belonged.
Etched upon the stone was the Count's name.
The fat man telling the story suddenly stopped talking as he put a hand to his ear like he was listening to something unheard. It was obviously the music coming from the sack at Church's feet but only he and the fat man seemed to hear it. Suddenly he pointed a thick stubby finger that ended in a black fingernail right at Church saying something in Spanish that the boy couldn't understand. Moments later the room had cleared as if all the people were frightened away by what the fat man had said.
That night Church had strange dreams in which he kept thinking he was awake. Though he had never actually known Lorraine Ford before her untimely death the woman appeared to him like a trusted friend, sweet and young and without guile. Though she was naked it seemed so natural that he hardly noticed at all.
"You may not know me, Church, but I know you."
"You're Billy's mom... you're Mrs. Ford."
"That's right... but please call me Lorraine."
"What are you doing here, Lorraine?"
"I always watched you from afar, Church... I'm here on account of the guilt I carry. It's in knowing I could have done more to make your life better yet I did nothing. Were I alive I could never forgive myself but now nothing matters any longer."
"You never did me any harm, Lorraine. There's no need for you to feel guilty."
"I may not have harmed you but I could've been more of a help... regardless, there is nothing I can do to make amends now other than to offer some advice."
"Thank you, Lorraine. I'm worried about Billy. He's in a bad way."
"I know... and you should know something else too, Church. The one who killed me has your brother in her grasp. He is powerless to resist that witch... her power grows greater each day as Billy's wanes. Soon he will be too far gone to rescue."
"What can I do, Lorraine? Tell me and I'll do i
t."
"I don't wish for you to put yourself in danger, Church, but I can help you if you allow me to do so. I know it'll never make up for the neglect I piled upon you but maybe we can both rest easier knowing we did all we could."
"Does this have something to do with what my mother gave to me?"
"Everything you are and all you know of your world is directly related to what you carry, Church."
"I don't understand..."
"Few people do... that which you carry is both water and stone yet it is neither. It has the ability to grant any desire yet in the end will ensnare whoever is foolish enough to dabble in its charms."
"Is that what Billy was searching for?"
"If it is, then Evalena has poisoned his mind."
"He asked me if I had ever seen a strange stone."
"And have you, Church?"
"Yes, Lorraine... I had to look."
"What you carry will slowly drive you mad, Church. The longer you keep it, the less likely it is that you will ever let it go. Not even death will separate you from it."
"How do you know all this, Lorraine?"
"I was touched by water and stone, Church... or rather by a wraith summoned through it. Now I'm part of it too."
"What can I do to save Billy?'
"In the mountains east of this village are many caves. The ore inside the rocks will act as a shield against the stone you carry. Plant it deep inside a mountain but take care you're not followed. The people here are so poor they'll stop at nothing to earn a few pesos while a gringo like you setting off into the mountains alone is an easy target."
"I'll be careful, Lorraine... but what do I do once I get there?"
"Bury it... dig a deep hole inside one of those caves. By shielding your world from that stone, the witch's power will wane. It is Billy's only hope. Say nothing to anyone, Church. Leave at once. I will visit you again soon."
When Church woke early the next morning with the dream fresh in his mind the entire village seemed to be in golden slumbers from the excessive parties of the night before. Picking up the one thing that mattered to him—the cloth sack containing the stone—he slipped out of his room and taking the old pickup truck out of gear he pushed it down the road far enough that he judged no one would hear it start.
