The Witch Narratives: Reincarnation (37 page)

She returned with her hands full of hot peppers. She crushed the peppers over his stomach.

He gave her a look, like he thought she was crazy. “Still…with the… chili seeds…my…foolish…love,” he said and tried to laugh, but it came out more like a gurgling.

“The peppers have an anesthetic quality and will ease your pain,” she said, ripping off her blouse and skirt. She wrapped the fabric tightly around his back and stomach to stop the bleeding, and then wiped the sweat from his brow with a piece of petticoat. She blinked at her tears. “Better?”

“…Pain…stopped,” he said, weakly. His face was so white, and his breathing rattled.

With a terrified face, she examined his stomach. The peppers may have stopped the pain, but the makeshift bandages were fast turning red. “I’m going to take you to the hospital.”

He nodded.

She yelled at the top of her lungs for the nursemaid.

The girl came running down the stairs, explaining that she had been hiding in the nursery with the baby. She swore she didn’t see who shot him.

“Quit being hysterical! You’re going to have to help me lift him and put him in the car. You take his legs. I’ll lift his shoulders.”

The two women tried to lift him, but he was too heavy.

“Watch him,” Salia said and ran upstairs, then back down.

He stared up at her with glazed eyes. He watched Salia twirl. When she stopped spinning, she had the bulging muscles of a man.

She tenderly lifted him into her arms, carried him to the car, and laid him in the back seat.

“You’re going to be fine,” she told him, as she drove recklessly. Her words were jerky, her throat filled with tears. “You’re going to live to see Bradley grow…”

“Salia…,” he whispered from the back seat.

“Sh. Save your strength.”

Silence.

She felt even more panic, wondering if he lost consciousness or died. She couldn’t see. Damn it. She couldn’t see him in the mirror.

She drove blindly, tears blocking her eyes like a thunderstorm.

She slammed on the brakes, bringing the car to a screeching halt before the hospital. She jumped out and pounded on the door. “I need a doctor,” she hollered.

She kicked at the door. Due to her shape-shifting, her legs were heavily muscled and after a few kicks, the door burst into splinters. By now, she had an audience staring in amazement at the massively muscled Salia carrying Samuel into the small hospital, as if he was a feather. There was blood all over the back seat of the car.

She tenderly set her unconscious husband down on the operating table. She unwrapped the blood-soaked rags covering his wound.

He lifted his chest and stilled.

“Samuel?” She had never before felt such fear.

She lifted his eyelid, but could only see the white of his eye.

Mewing, she placed her ear to his chest, feeling faint from his after shave. Samuel couldn’t be dead. He smelled so alive.

Even her acute sense of hearing, like a coyote, could not pick up his heartbeat.

She placed her finger under his nose but could feel no breath.

“Samuel,” she screamed and held his head to her chest, rocking in anguish. “Don’t leave me, Patrón! I don’t want to live without you!”

She remembered his words of last night doubting her love for him.

She recalled the heartache she caused him.

She regretted her stubbornness, her refusal to marry him when he pleaded with her, and the times they parted, and when they fought.

And it had been her fault. Always her fault.

She placed her lips on his, trying to breathe life into him, but it was useless. Samuel had left her, as she always knew he would.

She sobbed wretchedly, “Oh, my Love, I promise, I shall never leave you. Forgive me for keeping you here in Madrid.”

She had seen his death in the chili seeds five years ago. She didn’t know he would die in her arms. She could never see herself in the seeds, but she had known all along that Samuel would die young in Madrid, with the Ortiz Mountains at his back, those coal-infested mountains he loathed.

And she hated Madrid.

And most of all, she hated herself.

For keeping him here, where he would die.

And her pain was so great at her loss, that without the help of her shape-shifting stone, she shriveled back to herself, weak and without muscle, with no foundation to hold her. Once again, she was that little girl, rocking in an ocean of sadness, with no ship to steer her home.

Drowning, as she held onto her man, refusing to let him go.

Wanting to go with him, wherever it was his spirit had flown to.

Apart from her.

Gone from Madrid.

Away from this wretched town he hated.

It was Marcelina Martinez who finally tore Salia from Samuel’s arms. Everyone else was too afraid of her. If they only knew, she had no strength left to fight. Not any of them.

She leaned her head against her old friend, unknowing who comforted her. “No. No,” she murmured, with tears gushing down her face. “I can’t leave him. Please.”

She struggled to be free. To go back to him. Where Samuel lay on the table, so cold. So alone.

To be with him. Forever. Just the two of them.

“Be still, Salia. The patrón will be well looked after.”

“When did he say he was coming home?”

“Soon. The patrón said that soon he will follow.”

“Tell him…tell him, I’m waiting for him. Tell Samuel…I’ll always wait.”

She stumbled down the steps to the glare of the sun. She blinked at the bright light.

The villagers crowded outside the hospital, whispering among themselves.

Hissing.

Spitting.

Judging.

Salia stood there, clothed in her torn petticoat and undershirt, bare skinny arms, with her husband’s blood splattered all over her.

Part Five

We Must Keep The Home Fires
Burning

Throw open the doors of San Cirilio!
Ring the church bells!
The Spanish Inquisition has returned to New Mexico!

46

May 25, 1934

D
ry spells were many in the cursed land of New Mexico. The earth fried and crops died, just so Tezcatlipoca, Lord of the Night and Patron of the Witches, could walk across the Rio Grande and outdo the Son of God, Who once walked across a lake filled with sparkling water. The people of New Mexico were not impressed, if the black mud of the Rio Grande was the best Tezcatlipoca could do. Nevertheless, Tezcatlipoca was called the Swamp Monster of the Rio Grande, because his clawed footprints were often seen in the mud of the river.

Marcelina Martinez knew that tonight, Tezcatlipoca rose from the bosque of the Rio Grande and made his way to the Ortiz Mountains, because she dreamt of him.

It was one of those dreams that seemed so real. She was sleeping with her eyes wide open so her bedroom furniture appeared fuzzy. The only reason she knew she was asleep was the strange almond glow, making her world black and white. At least, she saw nothing but black and white until the scarlet demon, Tezcatlipoca, walked into her room.

First, she smelled him like a drowned, bloated animal. She gagged, suffocating from the stink of stale water and the stench of the Rio Grande. Truly, like a fish out of water, his steps were leaden and robotic, as though he had grown legs and was not used to moving about in this clumsy fashion. She waxed the wooden floor that morning, so it was not surprising she heard him fall.

Curse words vomited from his lips. Her ears burned from his cussing, yet, even as his obscenities repulsed her, his voice soothed her. The most filthy, disgusting words imaginable erupted from his mouth, spewed across the room, and then caressed her ears like velvet. His voice was masculine, hoarse, and slick, reminiscent of a bubbly, stopped-up sewer, yet, silky with wetness.

Her mouth became parched, her thirst overpowering, her desire overbearing.

She licked her lips and turned her head toward the sound. She could see in the middle of her black and white room a brick red shape leaning on one knee.

Tezcatlipoca struggled to heave himself up from the floor.

When he finally rose to his feet, he farted.

It was the sound of this bodily function that made her panic.

Wake up, Marcelina. Wake up
, she ordered herself, but lay paralyzed on the mattress. The medal of San Benito, her patron saint, was cold upon her chest, but she could not move her fingers to grasp the medal, though they were but an inch apart. Indeed, her hands clutched the blankets like she had been dead for some time, and now lay in a state of rigor mortis. She could not even utter a prayer to protect herself from this demon lumbering towards her bed.

She wet her underwear. That she could feel. Hot urine running down her legs, chilling her blood until veins stuck out of her neck like the cords she hung the wash upon.

Her one traitorous thought,
I must look ugly to him
, because she had a thick neck inherited from some peasant origins. Whenever she became emotional, veins protruded from her neck, making it appear monstrous to her eyes.

Her ruling sin. Vanity.

With horror she watched the red shape moving closer, swinging his muscled arms.

His knee hit the bed rails, and four letter words spilled from his lips.

She tried to yell out,
Blasphemer
, but no sound came from her throat. It was as if her vocal cords were severed.

The mattress sagged. Tezcatlipoca was so near that even in darkness, she could make out weeds from the bosque stuck to the mud slathering his body.

With a long pointy fingernail he scraped her hair behind her ear. His tongue felt like a knife, stabbing her ear.

“Mi Hija,” he whispered, tracing his tongue around her ear shell.

No. No
, she silently screamed, tossing and turning.
Never that. You are not my papa. I am not a witch
.

“You are mine,” he hissed, “Have always been mine.”

Never
.

“Yes,” he hissed. “I can give you what you want.”

Unbidden, she saw a vision of herself, slim and lovely with refined features, long curly lashes, and glowing, unmarked skin. She was no longer pregnant. In her arms, she held a healthy baby, cooing at her. “Junior,” she said, caressing her womb, daring to name the baby. She did not yet think of this baby as hers. She was too afraid she would lose this child, like she lost the other babies who lay buried behind the house in a garden of their own. Five little crosses, all in a row, stuck up from the small mounds of earth.

Her stubby fingers, numb with sleep, tried to cling to the covers, but it was useless. Tezcatlipoca peeled off the blankets as easily as if she was an onion. He lifted his knee to the mattress. Her teeth chattered, because she knew what was coming.

No. No. No. No
.

He heaved on top of her, as if she was a mountain, and she almost was because she was heavy with child. The mattress coils groaned.

He’ll hurt the baby
, she thought.
Maybe the child will be the tool he will bargain with
—
a guarantee of a live birth in exchange for me. Tezcatlipoca thought he had me once, when I was Salia’s friend, but I have repented. I tell you, I have repented. Aren’t the scabs on my knees proof? Every day I attend mass. I drop my coins in the basket
.

It did not matter that her cousin Conchita was spending the night because Juan went to Albuquerque to play baseball. Nor did it matter that Conchita lay in bed beside her. Tezcatlipoca still had the nerve to visit her.

While Marcelina tried to push him off her, Conchita slept restlessly, running her hands over her body, moaning and writhing, her nightgown damp with sweat.

Finally, Marcelina pushed with all her might and heaved her body up.

Tezcatlipoca’s thick body, slick with mud, slid across her, rolled from the bed, and landed with a thud on the floor.

Marcelina raised her arms to her face, expecting his blows.

Instead, Tezcatlipoca just lay on the floor, laughing at her.

47

M
arcelina woke, sobbing with fear. With shaky fingers, she lit the coal gas lamp and checked the timepiece. It was an hour past midnight. She crawled from the bed, slipped on some mud, and banged her knee. Tezcatlipoca always left evidence to remind her of his powers.
He plays a psychological game to seduce me, trying to wear down my resistance by making me doubt my sanity. If only I was loco
, she thought.

She rose to her feet, cradling her stomach, feeling the kick of tiny feet against her ribs. Thank goodness, the babe was still lodged in her womb, like a guest addicted to room service.

Limping, she made her way to the kitchen and pumped water into a pail so she could wash more muddy footprints, which were beginning to dry on the wooden floors.