I knew that fear. I had felt it last night. I felt it every night inside the walls of San Isidro.
“I woke up and she was like this.” Paloma’s voice trembled barely above a whisper. “I can’t even close her eyes. I tried—” Her voice broke.
Andrés’s posture shifted. He put a hand on Paloma’s back; she immediately turned into his embrace and began to sob against his chest. He hushed her gently.
I was suddenly aware that I was intruding on a private family moment. Paloma deserved the same privacy I had needed when Papá was taken away, the privacy I was only able to get at night, sobbing into my sheets with Mamá stroking my back. I took a step away from them and turned to leave.
As I did, I glanced at the wall that Ana Luisa pointed at in her final moments. An unassuming stucco wall, so like the wall Andrés had been thrown against last night. White, rough, plain. My eyes dropped to the floor before it. There was a cross there, a simple wooden cross like the one that hung in Andrés’s room.
It was broken.
The center of the cross was cracked, its short arms almost fully detached. It looked as if someone had taken the heel of their shoe and smashed the center of the wood, not once but over and over again, grinding it into the floor.
A chill coated my palms, slick as oil.
Something had been here last night.
Something frightened Ana Luisa to death.
I shuddered and left the house, blinking as I adjusted to the painfully bright morning.
Other villagers had stepped away from the door, but still hovered, forming an arc around it. Next to José Mendoza, I recognized the woman from the baptism Andrés had performed a few days ago. She was crying. The child on her hip watched me solemnly.
What was I supposed to say? Ana Luisa had been their friend. Perhaps they had lived alongside one another for years. Perhaps they had known her longer than I had even been alive. Who was I to tell them to go away?
But part of me saw Paloma’s back shuddering with sobs and saw myself.
I cleared my throat. “I think Paloma requires privacy,” I said. Murmurs quieted as Andrés stepped out of the doorway behind me. He held up a hand to shade his eyes.
“Funeral Mass in an hour,” he said. “Burial after. I require volunteer gravediggers. May God bless you.”
Despite the grimness of this pronouncement, the tightness in my shoulders eased. I had the sensation that all of us around Ana Luisa’s door responded as one to the soft authority in his voice. Something in the air shifted; relaxed. I am here, his presence said. And if I am here, all will be well.
A few voices repeated the words back to him, and the people dispersed, retreating to their homes or moving to other parts of the hacienda to begin the day’s work.
Andrés let loose a long sigh.
“What on earth happened?”
“My aunt had a weak heart,” he said, keeping his voice low. Paloma’s sobs had waned but were still audible. “A number of people in my family do. It might have been natural, but . . .”
The terror on her face caused both of us to think otherwise.
“Did you see the cross?” I murmured.
Andrés nodded slowly, carefully, as if his head were made of blown glass and shaking it too hard would cause it to shatter. He had not lowered the hand that shaded his face.
“What if when we broke the circle—”
“You broke the circle?” he interrupted.
I stared at him. Was this a joke? “Last night. You broke it first, and then I followed.”
The crease between his brows deepened. A shadow of fear passed behind his eyes. “What?”
“Do you not remember?”
“I . . .” He chewed his bottom lip. “No.” His voice wavered close to cracking over the word. “I know we began the ritual. And then . . . Paloma was pounding on the door.”
A long pause stretched between us. How could he not remember? He looked just as panicked by this thought as I felt. “What happened?”
I dropped my voice to a whisper, as dry and raspy as my mouth felt. “The thing—whatever you drew from the house—it hurt you. It threw you against the wall. Your head . . . you were hurt, so I ran after you, and it—”
“It’s loose,” Andrés finished grimly. What little color remained in his face drained completely. “It must have been here last night.”
My gut twisted. I knew he was right. A wild, unfettered darkness was roaming free beyond the walls of the house. I had felt it last night as I drew water from the pump. “Do you think that’s why she was pointing at—”
He nodded, the movement slow and ginger. “It must have been here.”
“Andrés.” Paloma’s voice snapped through the air with the finality of a book being shut. Andrés jumped; winced at the sudden movement. She was right behind him, her eyes bloodshot, her hands curled into fists. “What are you talking about?” she accused.
“The rain,” Andrés said quickly. “It will rain this afternoon. Two hours before sunset.” Then he paused, as if weighing whether or not to continue. “I was wondering . . . did you hear anything unusual last night?”
For a moment Paloma stared at him blankly. Understanding, then frustration, blossomed over her features.
“Stop. Enough.” Her voice cracked in exasperation over the words. “Why can’t you be a normal priest? Sometimes that’s what this family needs.”
She turned on her heel and disappeared back inside the house.
Andrés watched her go, looking as wounded as a pup that had been kicked. Then his hands rose to his temples and he closed his eyes. He swayed gently where he stood. Was he going to be ill again?
“Are you all right?” I said softly. My hand strayed to his arm; I drew it back quickly.
“I need to go back inside,” he murmured. He was ghastly pale.
“I will go clean up the parlor,” I said.
“Don’t touch the circle.” The urgency in his exhausted voice sent a chill down my spine. “Do not go inside the marks. I can still feel it. It’s . . . active. Please, be careful.”
“I will,” I promised, and let my hand fall. He ducked his head gingerly beneath the low doorway and melted into the darkness of Ana Luisa’s house.
What had we done?
I began the walk up to the house, my feet heavy with dread. What would I find there?
“Beatriz.”
I whirled to face the voice. Juana was walking up the path to the villagers’ quarters. She held two letters in one hand and waved them at me, gesturing for me to come to her. One was opened, the other not.
My heart lifted with hope. Was one from my mother?
Any other day, I would have stood my ground and insisted she come to me. Dig in my heels for a battle of wills to see which one of us was the true master of San Isidro. But not today. I didn’t have the strength to fight her.
There was mud on her skirts. Her hair was mostly undone from its plait and falling around her face; thin blades of hay stuck out from amidst the sandy brown of her hair.
“What happened to you?” I asked.
“I was drunk and fell asleep in the stable,” she said bluntly.