The Night Marchers and Other Strange Tales (15 page)

We ride till we reach the bustling market crowding the square in front of Mechalu’s church. Vendors in close quarters wrap meats, pack fruit, fold blankets, and handmade shirts. People just like the townsfolk I know purchase candies, flour, handmade dolls and trinkets, to sell to the crowds back in Punta Cabre. 

Samuel buys a caged chicken and a single egg from a farmer unloading his rickety wagon. We clop through the market and tie the horses and mule. The smell of fresh pine greets us as we open the heavy hardwood doors.  

There are no pews. No chairs. No altar. The floor is covered in a thick coat of fresh pine needles. Along the walls, encased in glass in their own alcoves, are the Saints. Two feet high, each wears traditional clothes and a small, round mirror hanging around the neck. Those along the east wall glow with the late afternoon sunlight streaming in from windows high above. 

A young couple clears the needles beneath the Saint in the corner. Red fabric pokes out from underneath the layers of traditional blue clothing the figurine wears. Thin red and yellow candles are stuck to the floor in pools of wax.  

“Saint Figueroa,” Samuel says. “Granted Sainthood in 1914. Patron Saint of Children, also the Maya guardian of newborns.” 

He leads me to a Saint midway up the wall. Layer after layer of clothing wraps the doll. He clears the needles beneath it. 

“Has it been ten years?” he mutters. “Your red poncho suited you better.” 

“If they treat the people well, the Saints stay for another
tun
—a Mayan cycle of time. They get new clothes, but the old ones stay.” 

Like the temples built on temples in the jungle. Did I do wrong to the town by clearing all the old out of the church when I arrived? 

“This is Mother Eloisa,” he says. “It is said she cured a great sickness brought on by a demon living in the boat of a prominent fisherman who sailed too far from shore. Though the symptoms were closer to chicken pox, her potency is not in question. You can see from her clothes she’s been here a while. She is associated with the Maya spirit of Purity. She will cleanse you.”  

“What have I done?” 

“The Imposter has clouded you. I need you clear and focused. It is your church where the plant resides. Your church that will be assaulted. Your will, your prayer will be the most potent protection. You will see this bond better after Mother Eloisa has lifted the veils from your eyes.” 

I had the fragile hope we were coming for crosses or blessed statutes of the virgin. But I knew better. Though I trust the old man, I know not to what strange shore he is sailing. 

The young couple scurries out of the church. Samuel closes the door behind them and walks back to Mother Eloisa. 

“Kneel, Padre.” 

I drop to my knees. I lift my hand to cross myself, but Samuel stops me. He takes the egg he bought, passes it over me, himself, and then Mother Eloisa. He brings it over the candle flame and holds it there. For an instant, I see the silhouette of a wriggling, misshapen chick, then it is just an egg again, red from the flame beneath it. Reflections of the candle flame dance in the mirrors of the Saints.  

He drops the egg, and it splatters. A puddle of yolk and white spreads toward the needles. 

Samuel opens the cage door and swiftly grabs the chicken by the neck. He lifts the struggling bird into the air and holds it over my head in a flutter of feathers and clucks. He passes it over the Saint, and with a quick swish of his other hand, its neck is cut. Blood drops mingle with the egg. 

I feel a gentle patter all over my skin, like the first fat raindrops of a downpour. The dull ache of the day’s ride washes from my legs.  

Samuel lights a white candle. 

A scarred, sunburned face, with broken teeth and stringy, thin, disheveled hair, jumps into my mind’s eye. The man is clothed in dirty linens, as I would imagine a leper from the Bible. 

“He is horrible,” Samuel says. “But, he can’t hide his true face from the Saints.” 

He points at three other Saints in quick succession. “Take them from their alcoves. We bring these four to Punta Cabre.” 

**** 

Joseph of the Angelic Flame and Peter the Revealer stand in their glass cases in the two far corners of my church. Mother Eloisa and Mary Elena of the Golden Fields rest atop the altar.  

Samuel affectionately pats Mary Elena’s glass case. He lights a cluster of green and black candles and sticks them next to the offering of dead frogs slit up the middle that are piled in front of Saint Joseph. The graveyard and the jungle beyond is silent. The thatched roof of the palapa bulges where the cornstalk is pushing through.  

I close my eyes and can sense the positions of the Saints, like compass points. My shoulders tingle with energy. I feel it coursing through the room, alive and kinetic, a power absent even on my best days and most inspired sermons. Ignacio would be pleased. 

Eduardo enters. He holds a black mask and ammunition is slung over his back. “My men are in place,” he says. “They have warned most of the pilgrims away.” 

“Thank you,” Samuel says to Eduardo. “Beg them to stay inside and keep their children close. It is almost night.”  

**** 

With the haze of evening, a man comes. He walks the deserted dirt path and stops at the edge of the graveyard. His sunburned face is coated in sweat and grime. His hands and neck wrapped in filthy linens and bandages. The air around him ripples like a heat mirage. I think I see the cherub faced Inquisitor, but then his ragged visage returns with the putrid odor of a filthy port street in summer.  

“I’ve come for it, Samuel,” the Imposter yells, his hoarse voice cracking. “Stand aside.” 

“You are rot,” Samuel yells back to him. 

“And you are alone among the faithless in the jungle. You cannot win.” The Imposter steps into the graveyard, gingerly at first, as if testing the ground. Satisfied, he plows forward. 

Samuel lights the thick wads of incense sticks bound together and stuck in the soil. 

“Your prayers, now,” Samuel says to me.  

I speak the first words that come to mind, “Our Father, who art in heaven…” 

Samuel grits his teeth, and gestures with his hands—as if wrapping an invisible thread around a ball. Tendrils of smoke waft to the Imposter, carried on a perfectly obedient wind. 

The Imposter halts, then struggles to move. His dirty hands clutch the air. I picture them closing around the old man’s neck. Then mine. 

I speak the prayer words louder, but nothing happens. 

Samuel glances to the trees, then lowers his fist. A hail of bullets rain down from Eduardo’s men.  

My bones feel like they have turned to jelly. I can’t bear to see the pulp they have reduced him to. 

I open my eyes. Bullets are falling harmlessly at the Imposter’s feet. He thumps forward, bullets dropping around him like gnats. Samuel and I inch back until we are against the church door. 

I speak slower, enunciating each consonant, losing myself in the words. For an instant, in my mind’s eye I see the green bulk of the plant. In the lines of the husk I see an oversize Mayan nose protruding from beneath a tiny eye. His grinning line of a mouth moves, then is gone. Whether it is the face of the Lord or a Mayan Chac I don’t know. A sharp pain dances on my fingertips, energy like tiny firecrackers explodes on my skin, crackles up my arms, and settles in the roots of my teeth as I pray. This is my church. These are my people. I will not let him enter. 

The Imposter staggers, then takes a menacing step forward.  

Samuel glances at me, and a giddy drunken smile spreads on his face. Does he see something I do not?  

“Think of the Saints,” he shouts and lowers his fist again. Another volley of bullets explodes from the trees. 

The bullets ricochet off the Imposter. Dust and incense smoke has gathered around him like a cloak. Only steps away, I can smell his reek, the stench of unclean flesh, and rotten vegetables.  

As he moves, the smoke ripples. I see shadows, shapes, afterimages of where he passes. 

His filthy hands reach for me and though I punch and kick, they close around my neck. 

I choke and cough. My knees threaten to buckle and my vision dims to a black circle.  

“You must pass through me,” I say, but I think I hear Ignacio’s raspy old voice. 

All is smoky dark, and full of the putrid stench. I feel one of my blows connect with the Imposter’s chest. Beneath the soft flesh, I feel impact with bone—the reverberation moves through me like electricity. 

I hear Ignacio’s voice whispering in the language of the jungle. I think I see him moving in the smoke. Then I am striking, kicking, biting at that awful rotten neck like a beast. 

“You have to come through me,” I say. This time I am certain I hear the words with Ignacio’s voice, and a deep harmonic echo. The Saints? 

I feel strong arms pulling me. I turn to see Father Samuel. 

“Get back,” he says. 

The Imposter staggers backwards, blood oozing from his neck. 

Another round of bullets bursts from the trees. This time, the Imposter spins in a gruesome dance, thrashing this way and that, throwing off clouds of dust. The bullets have found their mark. My prayers? Or the power of the Saints?  

A red glow, like hot coals burning within him, emanates from his unraveling bandages and robes. He makes it to the edge of the jungle, trailing ash and swirling linens, before falling. 

Samuel drops to his knees, exhaustion and relief on his old face. It is so quiet I hear his racing breath. No chorus of insects, frogs and lizards. 

Eduardo lowers himself from a tree just as the world begins to shake. Another aftershock. Deep booming reports of gunfire punctuate the terrible groan of rock. 

“The soldiers have heard. Hurry,” Eduardo says, trying to stay on his feet. His men drop from the trees and awkwardly run on the heaving ground into the jungle. The sound of rifle fire grows near as their unsteady forms disappear into the darkness. 

The aftershock passes, and I wait for the sounds of the night to return and tell me it is alright. They do not. Something rustles in the palapa. 

“Go,” Samuel says. “There is one more thing that must be done.” 

“Come with me,” I say. 

“You will finish this,” he says, looking to the jungle. “My work is out there. In the fields.” 

“What are you talking about?” I say. 

“When all is done, return the Saints to their home,” he says. His exhaustion from a moment ago is gone. Something has changed in him. He turns to the jungle and for a moment his face is a face of leaves and vines.  

“Who are you? Tomorrow will another man named Samuel Morgan come to this town?”  

“I am a man of faith. As you are,” he says, and without looking back follows the fleeing rebels into the jungle. 

I want to run after him, demand him to tell me what happened back there, but I hurry to the palapa. I can’t make sense of anything, but I know will protect the plant. I will not budge, even if the soldiers come. 

I’m surprised to find Juan Haberno inside. His hands and forearms are covered in a sticky clear sap. The pod is slit open and wilted over. The rear blanket wall has fallen. Whatever was growing inside is now gone.  

“Thank you, Padre,” he says. “Your god is strong. I’m sorry I ever doubted.” 

“Juan, what happened?” I ask. 

“The Green Man has come,” he says in a daze. “I saw him.” 

Something rustles outside. I catch a glimpse of a man standing just inside the tree line. It could be a trick of the shadow or the dense growth, but he appears to be green, a green as dark as the prehistoric ferns.  

Rifle shots crackle nearby. The man disappears into the jungle. 

“Juan, you have to leave,” I say. 

“He said he’s sucked all the poison from the corn, and he’s going to bring it back up North. He wants the mummy returned to where we found it.” 

I have no time for questions. Whatever has happened here, the soldiers are getting closer, and I will not have Juan suffer any more. 

“Then hurry and help me dig,” I say. 

I plunge my hands into the mound of earth surrounding the stalk. Thick pink roots sprout from its base. Intertwined within them, near the surface, is the rotting shell of Marco’s mummy. It still clutches the seed bag. I pick it up and we run. 

The rifle fire is louder. People fleeing town run across the field to the jungle. Bullets fly over us from somewhere in the trees. One of Eduardo’s men covering their escape. A man herding crying children bumps into me, and I almost drop the mummy.  

Bullets whiz back and forth above us, but we push against the flow of fleeing bodies to the trench. The aftershock has widened it, undoing the attempts to fill it in.  

Marco is standing there. He is so close to the edge I fear he may fall.  

“Marco, run,” I yell. 

“A quake when we found him, Padre, and quake when we put him back,” he says, smiling and proud. 

I hear a whiz and an awful crunch, like a bullet hitting a tree, and Marco is gone. The earth at the edge of the trench crumbles. I drop the mummy and dash over. Marco lays at the bottom. A bullet has found his head. I turn to hold Juan back, to spare him from the sight.  

Juan has not moved. He stands frozen and expressionless next to the mummy. Crossfire sails above. 

“I told him to go with his mother,” Juan says.  

**** 

The morning sun bakes Juan Haberno’s field. I use the last of the white paint to coat the old weathered cross. I light a bundle of incense and leave an offering of tortillas and chocolate for Marco. With Ignacio Rivera gone, Punta Cabre needs me more than ever. I will find them a new brujo, or learn about every leaf and every animal myself. Maybe now that this storm has passed these people may return to growing corn. 

“Chac, bring the rain,” I say. “Juan Haberno’s field needs water.” 

I want to contact the Cardinal, inquire about Samuel Morgan. I’m sure I’ll find a name in the records, but who the man is I doubt I’ll ever know. Right now, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I was touched by a god of smoke, or some remnant of Ignacio. I don’t care if the stalk was a rampant weed or birthing pod of a vengeful spirit of the corn. There are so many bodies to bury. So much to be done. My cemetery will soon be too full.