I watched the priest as he held the Eucharist before us. The flesh beneath his chin trembled in the way of the well-fed as he spoke; the war had been easy on him. Not so of his congregation: I lost count of the widows as I watched people crowd to the front of the church to receive Communion. Many of the men of fighting age had a pinned-up, hollow trouser leg and crutches, or were missing an arm. Padre Guillermo blessed them all, bidding them farewell one by one at the arched doorway. I hung back, watching him clasp the dark hands of his parishioners in his own plump, age-speckled white ones, wisps of hair from his balding crown silhouetted against Apan’s blinding azure sky.
I approached him last, Paloma trailing in my shadow.
“Do?a Beatriz,” he effused. “I trust you are settling in well.”
His hands were as sweaty as I anticipated. I forced my lips into what I hoped was a beaming smile, counting the moments until it was proper for him to release my hands. I counted at least two moments longer than I would have hoped, but kept the smile pasted on my face.
I fished into my well-stocked reserve of society small talk to gush about the beauty of the countryside, the kindness and goodness of my new husband, the quiet of our home. Then I reached into my small purse and withdrew Rodolfo’s letter. I had read and resealed it and was pleased to discover that Rodolfo promised the priest silver in return for following my wishes.
Their God is money.
If only he knew what that silver was in return for.
I had written Rodolfo a long letter around my request for a priest to come to San Isidro, but I had not touched on anything that was truly unsettling me: the body in the wall that no one else seemed to see.
The only thing less desirable than the daughter of a traitor was a madwoman.
I was not mad. All I wanted, as any devout Catholic would, was for a priest to come and tread his holy, plump feet over my threshold and throw water at things in return for my husband’s money. That was all I wanted.
Or rather, that was all I told Padre Guillermo in the bright light of Sunday morning.
Once he stepped into my home, we would have a different conversation.
“Padre Andrés will join me.” He gestured over my shoulder at a second priest lingering at the door bidding farewell to the townspeople, a slender young man with the serious expression of a student. I had noticed him during Mass, flitting like a raven behind Padre Guillermo’s ample, ambling form on the altar. “He is well acquainted with the property.”
Padre Andrés met my gaze over Paloma’s head. They had been engaged in a hushed conversation, and I was immediately struck by how the severe line of his nose and shape of his eyes echoed Paloma’s in the way of relatives. But unlike Paloma, his eyes were light, hazel in the direct sunlight. He could not have been much older than me, for his clean-shaven face was still lean in the rangy way of youth. I thought of the men with crutches and the widows; there were so few young men among the townspeople. Perhaps if he hadn’t become a priest, he would also be missing a limb. Perhaps he might not be here at all.
He dropped my gaze. It was only then that I realized how inappropriately long I had held it, and felt embarrassed warmth rise up my neck.
“Do?a Beatriz,” he murmured in greeting, keeping his eyes shyly downcast. “Welcome to Apan.”
* * *
*
I AWAITED THE PRIESTS at the gates of San Isidro the next morning, swaying slightly from exhaustion. I had slept especially poorly the night before. It was as if the house knew what I had done. That I had gone and tattled on it to its parents, that men with heavy books and heavier senses of self-importance were coming to shake its ill humors loose.
And it retaliated.
A cold wind kicked up inside the house as I left the kitchen last night. At first I thought a door had swung open, but the wind poured down the hall, ripping my hair loose from its bun, its ice sinking into my bones and tightening around my chest like a clawed hand. I tried to run forward, run through it, but it was too powerful. I took slow strides, teeth chattering, throwing my weight into the wind and fighting to make my way to the staircase as it ripped at my hands.
I clutched a piece of copal to burn in my room the way Ana Luisa did in the kitchen. I hadn’t been able to find any in town as I intended, so I ripped apart the pantry when she was gone to help myself to her supply. The pickings were meager—she must have kept her store in her own home in the village.
I don’t know how long it took me to get to my room. The cold stiffened my limbs, weighed on my chest; it only increased when I entered the parlor. It was as if I had stepped into an icy stream. I wondered if I could see my breath on the air, but the dark was too complete, too thick, soot black and heavy. My numb fingers fumbled the matches in my bedroom, and time after time, I lit a candle and it was extinguished by the wind. Tears rose in my eyes.
Nothing else in the rooms seemed disturbed by the wind. Not the curtains, not my papers, not Papá’s map in the study. Only me. Me and the candles.
I had to focus on lighting the copal. It must be the reason the kitchen seemed so quiet when Ana Luisa was in it, empty of something the way the rest of the house never was. It had to be the solution. It had to be.
I nursed the end of the block of resin as its tip reddened and began to smoke, cupping my hands around it and coaxing until the plume grew hale and curled toward the ceiling. Slowly, the temperature of the room began to warm. The chill seeped away; the darkness grew warmer, less dense.
A wink of red light caught my eye from the study, hovering about a meter and a half off the ground. It moved closer and closer to the bedroom, approaching with the quiet determination of a hunter.
I leaped to my feet and slammed the bedroom door shut. I stuffed the key in its hole and locked it as swiftly as I could.
Click.
I withdrew the key.
The room was silent. My racing heartbeat began to slow. The numbness had faded from my fingers, and soon would from my freezing feet and arms. Now that I had copal, I would be able to sleep.
I stepped away from the door.
Thundering erupted over the door from the study, as if a thousand fists were hammering against it, pounding and pounding with immortal force.
I flung myself back, narrowly missing the end of the four-posted bed as I fell to the floor in a heap. The thundering paused, then began again with renewed force, so hard the door handle rattled and bounced against the wood. I imagined the hands that had shoved me on the stairs, icy and disembodied, pounding and pounding. The door was going to break off its hinges. It was going to cave in, and whatever was making that noise, whatever had red eyes and moved with the silence of a ghost, was going to sweep into the room and come for me.
But it never did. The pounding would stop, then begin again, but the door never gave out. I nursed the resin incense and lit candles, then sat with my back against the stucco wall, my knees curled to my chest, my hands over my ears.
That was how the night passed. Pounding on the door, then silence. Pounding, then silence. The silences were never the same length; long after midnight I began to drift off in one of the longer pauses, and then would wake with a strangled scream as the thundering of thousands of hands attacked the back of the door.
The sun rose. My incense burned low. My sanity was in tatters, shredded by a thousand claws.