Best New Horror #26

I. A Long Bus Ride

NOAH SCREAMED AND opened his eyes. No one on the bus would look at him, all eyes curiously pointed down, and Noah felt the vestiges of his dream lingering in the dry oven air. The windows were tinted, but the sun still bore through them, bathing Noah in an unbearable heat, a heat intensified by his anxiety. Sweat trickled through the tight coils of his dark hair and down his face. In his hand was clenched the newspaper clipping he’d been carrying for days.

“Are you okay?” Rachel’s eyes were wide with worry. Noah’s head, a jumble as his sense of displacement ebbed.

“Yeah,” he said, folding the blurry photograph and placing it back in his pocket. “How long did I sleep for?”

“Not long, I don’t think.” She looked down at the small mound under her shirt and placed her hands upon it.

“I feel worse now than before. Still, I’m surprised I was able to sleep at all.” He swallowed. It tasted sour.

“That’s what happens when you don’t sleep for three days.”

It had taken a week to put the money for the trip together and make all the arrangements to get from their tiny house in Sarnia to Astilla de la Cruz in as straight a line as possible. Neither knew how long it would take to find Noah’s ex-wife, Sonia, in Mexico, let alone rescue his son, Eli. Sonia had been one step ahead of them for two years, and though Noah liked to believe his son cried for him the entire time, rationally he knew the boy forgot him more with each passing day. If he couldn’t find the boy and rescue him from his mother, Eli would be lost forever.

“Are you holding up? You know you didn’t have to come down with me, considering.”

“I’m okay. Just a bit tired. It’s still early enough that I don’t feel too frazzled. That will probably change soon.”

“It did with Sonia—” He stopped himself, but it was too late. The damage was done. Rachel shook her head.

“It’s okay, Noah. I’m not bothered by it.”

It was clear she was lying.

The bus hit something on the road, some rough spot that caused the entire length to shake. Noah held Rachel’s hand as she squeezed, reminding him of the delivery room when Eli was born. He tried to push the memory out of his mind, unwilling to have it contaminated by his situation. Rachel had her eyes closed as though in prayer, waiting for the disruption to end, and Noah wished he’d been able to convince her to stay at home. Already, he was terrified about what he might find when he finally discovered Eli, and Rachel’s presence only further compounded his fears.

Noah carefully took in the crowd of passengers. They barely looked human, as though sculpted from leather, not flesh, filled with sand, not blood. Their movements were sluggish and weighted, eyes half-lidded or closed—a lifetime of survival had worn them down. Across the aisle sat an elderly lady, her head covered in a thin shawl, her feet bare and calloused. In her hands was a small leather-bound book with blank earmarked covers. She stared unblinkingly at Noah and Rachel, and he had to look away as much from embarrassment as from fear; in her gaze he saw nothing but the endless expanse of desert. The woman opened her mouth to wheeze, and Noah worried the glaring heat had baked him out of reality and into some sub-reality, one in which everything moved slower than it should. She raised her hand, her crooked fingers bent in some crazy pattern, and touched her stomach in the same manner Rachel touched her own. He saw Rachel’s hands awkwardly fall away.

“Tú tienes la marca de la Madre. Bendita sea la Madre.“

“What’s she saying?” Rachel whispered to him, visibly upset. He wished he knew, but it was clear by the sudden shuffling of feet and positions that the woman’s voice was making the strangers around him and Rachel almost as uncomfortable.

“Something about you being a mother, I guess.”

The old woman nodded, smiling, repeating, “Madre.“ Rachel smiled too, hers as forced as the old woman’s crazed.

“Ya mero llega la hora,“ she said with glee, then laughing returned to her small leather-bound book. Rachel leaned toward his ear, her breath as hot as the sun.

“I remember now why I never wanted to visit Mexico. My sister had a horrible time in Guadalajara. Why the hell would Sonia have brought Eli here? What’s there to see but a whole lot of nothing?”

“I have no idea.” There was too much Noah didn’t understand, nor was he sure he wanted to. Sonia had changed after the divorce, only slightly at first, but over time the cracks grew wider and greater in number. There had always been something inside her, something he saw only on rare occasions. It was in her eyes, in the tone of her voice, but she managed to keep it hidden. When the cracks grew wide enough, however, there was no hiding it, and what she once tried to suppress she instead became. It was the only explanation he had for why she would have taken Eli from him. The boy was everything, and to have him gone for nearly half his life evoked a pain Noah could never sufficiently convey to Rachel. Sometimes he wondered if she had only become pregnant to try and replace what he had lost. But how could he ever replace Eli? It was like trying to replace a piece of his soul. “What are you looking at?” Rachel asked. Noah’s eyes were wide and dry. He hadn’t blinked in what seemed like days.

“I think we’re getting close.”

The black mark on the horizon grew as the bus approached it, peeking out from the haze of the radiating desert to form a church spire, then the rickety buildings beneath it. Within the hour the bus was close enough for Noah to point out the village to Rachel, who simply nodded solemnly. Noah itched for action, desperate to be freed from the bus he had been trapped in for so long so he might begin the search. Sonia and Eli were there, somewhere, in the small village, and he knew it. Knew he was so close. Strangely, the excitement made him salivate, and he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand in anticipation before Rachel noticed. All he tasted was salt.

As the bus pulled into Astilla de la Cruz, things became clearer to Noah. The church spire he had seen from so far away was broken, the cross hanging precariously upside down from little more than a wooden sliver. No one seemed to be tending to the church to fix it, however. The delicate stained glass was broken, the ground of the small graveyard beside it upturned until few of its tombstones remained upright. The stores along the street of the village were no better, a small step beyond wooden shacks, nearly indistinguishable from the rundown houses around them. Had the road not been paved, he would have wondered if there were a road at all. Each crack and pothole jolted the bus, shaking Rachel’s head back and forth as though she were a puppet. Noah put an arm across her chest while his other hand gripped the back of the torn vinyl seat in front of him. He squeezed tight, hoping to keep them both from being pitched to the ground. None of the other passengers, including the elderly lady, seemed nearly as concerned.

The bus came to a stop alongside a long wooden platform set in the dirt. At one end was a small wooden office with the word Estación carved in a plank hanging above the door. “I guess this is the station,” Rachel said as Noah relaxed the arm that had been holding her down. They gave the other passengers time to stand and gather their things before they retrieved their bags from under the seat and made their way off the bus. When they stepped down onto the platform—Noah taking Rachel’s hand as she navigated the stairs—he cast a glance sideways at the window he had been sitting beside for so long. The glass reflected the light from the bright streets, yet the reflection looked almost like a negative of him that had been burned in by the blazing sun. He stared at it, but did not admit it to Rachel for fear he was hallucinating. Then that image moved, and the confusion made him dizzy. Rachel tripped as she came down the stairs but Noah snapped back in time. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, then looked again at that image in the window. It had become translucent, and when he looked again he was able to see through it to what lay beyond: the elderly woman, glaring. Noah nervously raised a hand to shield his eyes, but it was too late. She had stepped away from the window and vanished into the patterns of light.

Rachel stood on the rickety platform with her bag over her shoulder, ignoring the low creak as her weight shifted to her left foot. Noah flashed to when he’d first met her, standing much the same way outside the front of the police station. Her shape was different then—straighter, leaner. It was a good shape, but he liked the new shape better. Still, there was something there that was familiar, some older memory that the new could not successfully supplant. Without Eli, it all seemed worthless. “So,” Rachel finally said. “Where do we go from here?”

Noah sputtered.

“What do you mean?”

“Where’s the hotel? How do we get there?”

“Ah.”

“Why, what did you think I meant?”

Noah shrugged. “Why don’t we go inside and ask?”

The station contained barely more than a few chairs, fliers, and a ticket booth. He thought he saw someone behind it, but as soon as he and Rachel stepped inside, the bottled heat drove them back.

“I think I’m going to wait for you outside,” Rachel said.

Noah stepped in again and let himself get acclimated to the heat. He took deep breaths, his body struggling for oxygen, and the exertion only made him sweat more. As he walked in, he realised the station was much older than he thought. The wood was mottled and cracked, baked too long in the sun. But as old as the station appeared, it must have been built up around the station agent, who had no doubt sat slack-jawed on his stool since the beginning of time. Noah approached, but the man’s eyes did not move. Instead, the left merely drooped somewhat further than the half-lidded right, and he licked his lips with an inhuman patience. Had he not blinked, Noah might have mistaken him for a wax sculpture that the heat miraculously hadn’t touched. As though on cue, the station agent spoke in a rasp not nearly powerful enough to disturb the flies crawling over his sweating face. He moved his head with a creaking, his eyes scouring Noah and his bag. Noah did not enjoy the sensation. “Can you tell me where the Hotel Bolero is?”

“¿Que? Bolero?”

“Si, si,“ Noah repeated with exasperation. Outside, he could see Rachel standing against the side of the station fanning herself while trying to squeeze into a sliver of shade.

“No la puedes dejar afuera. Es peligroso.“

The language barrier was proving difficult for Noah, especially knowing it would likely be the biggest impairment to finding his son.

“Telephone?” he said, miming dialling a rotary phone. The station agent barked inhumanly, and with what must have been a tremendous show of strength he lifted his arm and pointed across the room. There among torn billets on the irregular walls hung a telephone, or the remains of one. It was barely more than a dangling receiver. Noah caught a glimpse of the old man’s tongue as he gummed his lips and wheezed, and the small wrinkled flesh looked like a chewed piece of leather. The station agent seemed stricken dumb, his long white moustache hanging over his mouth. It twitched and rustled as though he spoke under his breath, and Noah had to force down his paranoia in the face of that unblinking gaze.

Despite its rough-hewn looks, the telephone produced noise that seemed to approximate a dial tone, though the sound was not at all one to which Noah was accustomed—its pitch was higher, and it was a series of short bursts of varying length. Noah clicked the hook switch a few times to try and mediate the sound without success before dialling. There was a pause after the number was entered, a dead space that lasted long enough for Noah to worry nothing was happening. Then, there was a ring, a horrible ring that was like a wailing child. A voice spoke words he didn’t recognise, then a click and a voice.

“Hotel Bolero.”

Rachel was standing against the wall of the station, waiting for Noah to be done. When he opened the door she raised her hand to shade her brow. After being inside for so long, he found the baking Mexican air refreshing and wondered why Rachel was still sweating.

“Did you get the directions?” she asked.

“Eventually. It was a bit of a struggle.”

“Did they have trouble understanding you?”

“Well,” he hesitated. “That was part of it…How are you holding up?”

She shrugged. “This weather here only makes me feel more bloated than usual. At least I have this.” She lifted her arm to display the wreath circling her forearm like a large bracelet. It was made of hundreds of dried stems woven into a rough tangled circle.

“Who gave you that?”

“Some woman was passing by. She looked upset, and I suppose she caught me staring. I would have asked her what was wrong, but…” She shrugged, the reason obvious. “Then she gave it to me and said madre. I guess it’s my first baby shower gift.”

He smiled, then thought of Eli.

“We should get to the hotel. The girl on the phone said it was near the church.”

They followed the directions Noah had been given. Though he secretly doubted he’d understood the broken English correctly, he remained silent for fear of worrying Rachel. In the end, it was for naught, as he quickly recognised ahead the broken spire of the church he had seen from the bus—a black needle piercing the sky against the blinding backdrop of the setting sun. It forced him to avert his eyes as they continued toward it. Noah and Rachel passed few people, and as they did each glared back with suspicion. Noah hadn’t expected to feel so alien, so unwelcomed. The worst had been the old lady in front of the church as they passed, dressed head to toe in black, a child’s bicycle in her hands. She was wailing, yet when she saw Rachel, she stopped and looked at her growing pregnancy without a sound. It was only when she and Noah had passed that the wailing resumed.

They arrived at the Hotel Bolero just as the sun vanished behind the horizon and failed to take the stifling heat with it. The building was simply a converted two-storey house, out of place in its surroundings of poorly built shanties, but even the late addition of inexpertly installed siding could not dispel the influence of the ornate church. Positioned so close, the church made an eyesore of everything in its shadow. Insects filled the sky with an electric drone, and tiny flies preceded Noah and Rachel into the building, harbingers of the couples’ arrival. Noah could still feel them crawling on his skin, but reaching to scratch their tiny legs away only left his hand sticky with sweat. The skin of the señora behind the counter was deeply bronzed and leathery, and it folded like paper around her eyes as she glared with equal parts suspicion, worry, and fear. She said nothing, instead dropping the keys to the room into Noah’s hand as though they were slick with poison. She would not look at Rachel.

The room was barely larger than the bed, and when Rachel sat down upon it she sank with a long creak of old springs. “I guess we don’t have a lot of options,” she said. “At least we have that balcony door we can open to catch a breeze.”

“There doesn’t seem to be much hope for one,” Noah said, putting their bags in the corner and climbing onto the bed to join her. He lay down and stretched out his arm so she could snuggle close and put her head on his chest. Rachel’s flesh was on fire, but he tried to ignore it and simply enjoy the feel of her against his skin.

“So what’s the plan?” she said, looking up at him. He swept her blonde hair off her face.

“We can’t go to the police. We can’t even prove it’s her in the photo.”

“But you’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“Have you any ideas on how to find her?”

“I only care about finding him.”

The first moment Noah stumbled across that article in La Diario Oficial during his monthly trek to the Toronto Reference Library, he knew he was on the right track. The police did not agree. They felt the photo was too blurry, too indistinct to take seriously despite Noah’s insistence it was his fugitive ex-wife. He knew her body so well, its shape and how she held it, that there was no doubt in his mind the obscured figure was Sonia. For the police, however, it was not enough. When he finally convinced someone to listen, he was told that without more solid proof there was little they could do…even if they believed him. The Canadian police had no jurisdiction in Mexico, and the Mexican police were too corrupt to help find a missing boy when so many others disappeared daily from their overrun streets.

“Did I tell you what I was dreaming about on the bus? I dreamed I saw Sonia at a vegetable stand—a lot like the one we saw at the St Jacob’s market, do you remember?—and Eli was right beside her, holding her hand. I walked up to them without saying a word. Eli saw me first. He shouted with joy—ecstatic—and ran into my arms. I scooped him up and held him so close I could smell his hair and his skin. It was just like I remembered—comforting and sweet. Then Sonia looked at me and she was crying. She tried to speak and maybe she couldn’t or maybe I cut her off, but the words were choked. While she struggled I simply took Eli’s hand, turned around, and walked away. Somehow I knew that now I’d be the one to disappear and never be found.

“Then I woke up. Have you ever had a dream where you got just what you wanted, and for a second when you woke up you thought it might be real? There’s absolutely nothing worse than realising you’re wrong. It’s soul-crushing, absolutely soul-crushing. Still, I should know by now that nothing is ever that neat, that simple. When I finally find Sonia and Eli, things are going to be messy and painful. I just hope to shield him from as much of it as I can.”

Rachel was quiet. He hadn’t noticed her stiffen as he spoke, but now that he was done he felt her tense body and looked down. She was staring at her swollen belly, silently rubbing it with both hands. Then, with some effort, she slid off the bed and stood.

“Let’s go out. I’m feeling claustrophobic holed up in this little room after being on that bus for so long. I think a walk will do us both some good. Just give me a minute to get ready.”

Rachel left the room and he heard her feet softly pad down the hallway. Noah went over to the window and opened it, but without a breeze the air refused to move. He looked out instead at the darkening street below. The heat radiating off the ground distorted everything he saw. The village itself looked insubstantial, as though it might vanish altogether, and instinctively he worried what he would do if that happened, how he would find his Eli. He shook his head. It was crazy. All of it was crazy. But the building heat in their room only made his thoughts more muddled, and he knew Rachel was right—he had to leave before his imagination consumed him in a blaze.

There was no one at the front desk when they left, though they could hear the señora somewhere in the back, whispering or watching television. The air outside had cooled only slightly, but remained stagnant, and he was wiping his brow after only a few steps. He hated the heat, but would endure it for Eli. Rachel wasn’t as accommodating.

“I can’t stand the feeling of my skin sticking together. Or the fact that every time I lick my lips I taste salt.”

“Do you want to go back?”

“No, I need to be moving around. Dr Mielke says I need all the exercise I can get now before I can’t do it any more.”

Even in the darkness, the broken spire of the church was still darker, a black void in the evening sky. The small buildings and houses at its foot were all without lights, as though the hanging cross cast its shadow long across the Astilla de la Cruz street. Noah and Rachel walked hand-in-hand in as straight a line as they could along the uneven pavement, and as Rachel seemed focussed on remaining upright Noah spied those people they passed on the street. None were walking, all instead silently stood and glared at the couple as they approached. When Noah came alongside, he looked at their dark faces and saw the jumble of emotions he’d seen earlier on the face of the señora at the hotel. Was it so strange for the village to get visitors from outside the country? Did Sonia stick out just as much? He wanted to show the newspaper clipping to them, find out if they held the secret of his missing child, but it was clear none of them would help. He and Rachel were strangers, and small villages despise strangers.

“It’s quiet here, isn’t it?” Rachel was panting, but not enough for it to be worrisome.

“I suppose,” Noah said. Outside, in the darkness cast by the church, little was revealed of the Astilla de la Cruz streets. The houses seemed to be less built and more sprung from the ground as though a crevice had opened from which each had sprouted. Like rows of plants, each tiny house was at a different height than its neighbour, and mixed with the random sheets strung between two poles to form makeshift tents for the less-than-poor, the terracotta skyline attained a jagged uneven appearance, slightly hallucinatory in the near-dead light. The walls of the homes looked to have been crumbling for years beneath the baking sun, which had clearly bleached the colours to dusty grey. Or perhaps that was a trick of the ebbing night. Noah could just make out the advertisement for Corona painted large upon a wall, though the paint had flaked to such a degree hardly more than the name of the beer was still visible. And yet, in front of the barely legible sign a series of tables were set up with candles burning on each—a small outside cantina, under-populated. At the furthest table from the light sat a solitary old man, perhaps in his sixties, hunched so completely his head was halfway down his chest. Yet Noah could still feel the stranger’s eyes on him, and though he tried to return the intimidation with his own glare, the man seemed unmoved. “I don’t think they like foreigners here. Hopefully that will help us flush Sonia out.”

As though on cue, a middle-aged woman approached Noah and Rachel, a smile wide across her tanned face. Noah thought he saw her eyes first, like twin moons in the darkness, bright and round and moving towards him. Only when she reached the couple did he realise she was wearing glasses too large for her narrow face, too old to be anything more than second-or third-hand. She carried a bag at her side that was misshapen and lumpy, its contents having no distinct form. Noah thought he saw peeking from its opening coloured tissue paper, dulled by the absence of light.

“¿Nos has traído un bebé?“ she said with undue warmth. Noah wondered if she were as genuine as she masqueraded to be. “¿La puedo tocar?“ She made motion with her hands, as though beckoning Rachel into them. “Ella e,” the woman said to Noah, and he was stunned to see tears had welled in her eyes. “Ella es.“

Noah stammered, unsure how to respond. Rachel, uncomfortable, shrugged.

“Gracias?“ he finally offered.

The woman smiled again and wiped her eyes with the palm of her hand, then kissed it and placed it on Rachel’s belly. The contrast of foreign skin was never clearer. “Madre,” she said, then nodded her head. Rachel did the same, though it was clear to Noah she had no better clue what was occurring. The woman removed her hand and kissed it again before reaching into her bag. Rachel rubbed the spot where the woman’s flesh touched hers. From the bag, the woman produced three ochre dahlias, their stems twisted together to form some sort of wreath, and reaching up, placed it like a crown on Rachel’s head. “Una corona para la futura madre,” she said before turning and walking quickly away, back into the night. Noah watched her go, then glanced at the old bent man. His glower only intensified.

“I can see why Sonia likes it here,” Rachel said, taking the wreath off her head and smelling the flowers. She then looked at Noah with a face twisted in stunned apology.

“Sorry, honey, that’s not what I meant. I just meant it’s a nice place to raise a child.”

“I don’t think a cult is the right place for anyone, let alone a child. My child. My Eli. He doesn’t belong here.” Noah felt his anger rising, and Rachel was quick to diffuse it.

“I know, I know. We’ll find him. We’ll go out tomorrow and we’ll show the picture around. Someone has got to know where he is. The place isn’t that big. Look over there—” She pointed in the distance, up the hill that started behind the church and only went back and up into the darkness. “That’s the edge of this place. We’ve already walked across most of it. How can she possibly hide from you here?”

“If anyone could find a way to keep me from Eli,” he spat, “it would be her.”

Rachel gasped, then stopped and put her hands on her knees, her face twisted in a grimace.

For the first time since arriving Noah felt cold.

“What’s wrong?”

Her breaths were heavy, but controlled. As both she and Noah had been taught at Lamaze class.

“It’s nothing. I’m okay. Dr Mielke said I might get sharp pains in my back or stomach during the second trimester.” She continued to push air through her teeth. “I just need a second. Christ, it feels like someone stuck a knife in me.”

“Do you…Do you want me to do something?”

“No, no. I’ll be okay. Just a minute.” She breathed deeply, one final time, then straightened herself out. Her face was a bit red and swollen, but otherwise she looked okay. She sniffled. “See? All better.”

“All the same, we should call it a night.”

She took his hand again and they turned around. Other than the moon and the tiny light of the Hotel Bolero, there was nothing else to guide them through the dark.

II. Avenues of Investigation

Noah could not lie still between the hotel sheets. Sleep seemed elusive, impossible, when he was so exhausted from his journey on little more evidence than a blurry newspaper photograph. He itched with unbridled anxiety; it was like electricity travelling through his nerves into his addled brain. His ears buzzed, his eyes filled with sparks behind closed lids. Even his teeth felt slightly displaced, and biting down did not alleviate the discomfort. He was charged with the knowledge that Eli was close—closer than he’d been in years—and it became impossible to spend another moment in the shrinking bed. While Rachel slept easily and deeply, Noah pulled back the covers and slipped free.

The heat in the middle of night remained oppressive, and sitting beside the open window proved futile—the air from outside was no cooler. Still, Noah could look out from his perch at the tiny village streets lit by moonlight, and past the broken spire of the church toward the rough-edged horizon. He stared out and wondered where in all that emptiness Sonia was hiding. Sonia, and the son she had stolen from him. He boiled with impotent rage. If he only knew where Eli was being held, he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from storming over there, despite the assurance of both Rachel and the Sarnia Police that it would likely result in his death. But Noah was willing to risk it all to be reunited with his son. No one understood how much Sonia had taken with her, what emptiness Eli had left. The man Rachel met two years ago was not whole, had never been whole the entire time they’d been together. But there in Mexico, his body vibrating in anticipation of its missing piece, Noah was closer than he’d ever been. He didn’t know how things would change when he was complete, didn’t know if Rachel would reject the version of him she’d never seen before, but he couldn’t allow himself to falter with worry. Eli, his only son, was close, and his presence was stoking the fires that burned in Noah’s heart. It was burning him up.

Noah was still sitting by the window as the sun made its slow ascent into the sky, a fiery god from behind the horizon. More heat came with it, and whatever respite the dark had offered was revoked, a victim to the burning orb. Rachel opened her eyes not much later, she too finding it impossible to sleep, and when she waved her arm at Noah, beckoning him back to bed, he complied. Arm around her body, hand on their unborn child, he pressed his body into her back and fought the instinct to flee from the unbearable heat she was radiating. It was essential to his sanity that he stay tethered to her. Eli, though, was out there waiting for him.

“We have to go soon. We need to start looking.” He felt her take a deep breath, then exhale slowly. “You’re not too hot, are you? If you want to hang back here, I can meet you later.”

“No, it’s okay. I’ll be fine.” She swallowed hard. “Where to first?”

“I guess we’ll start with the photo. Show it around. See what happens.”

It did not take Noah long to get ready, but Rachel moved slower, her ligaments aching as they stretched to accommodate their growing child. Noah had not planned what to do once he and Rachel reached Astilla de la Cruz. Before they arrived, he had felt certain it would be easy to find a Canadian woman and child in a village so small, and yet once there he realised how detrimental his own foreignness was. He and Rachel had little in common with those around him. One mistake and they would get nowhere.

Downstairs, the old señora sat behind her desk as though she had been stationed there overnight, staring at a framed photograph. Rachel appeared discomfited by her presence and tugged at Noah’s arm to keep him moving past, but Noah decided if they were going to start searching there would be no place better. The señora‘s scowl did not frighten him—he would have suffered far worse for Eli.

“Excuse me? Señora?”

She grunted in response, her jowls tight over a clenched jaw. But when she looked up at him her face was wet, and those cold eyes red. He glanced at Rachel, hoping to catch her eye, but she was intentionally looking elsewhere.

“Do you know this place? Do you recognise it?”

He unfolded the article he’d been carrying. Time had already worn its creases, giving the photo an additional layer of fog. Noah flattened it out as best he could before showing it to her. Her eyes didn’t move.

“Señora, please. Muy importante.”

Her scowl deepened, scoring the flesh of her leather face like an old handbag, and she laid the small framed photo face down. “Ándale. Dámelo.“ Her hand snatched at the article, and he gave it over, albeit reluctantly. He struggled to tamp down the fear that by simply relinquishing possession of the clipping, he might lose his only clue to his son’s whereabouts. When her swollen eyes landed upon the photograph, they stretched open wide, much wider than he would have expected. She turned noticeably paler, as a dark shadow crossed her face. He worried she might scream. Instead, she shook her head vehemently and pushed the clipping as far away from herself as she could. As though it were on fire.

“No, no conozco a este lugar.“

“Please, Señora. In English.”

“No sé esto. Vete. Lleva tu hereje contigo.“

“What?”

She pointed at the photograph, and then looked at Rachel. Noah felt uncomfortable with the glare she gave his girlfriend.

“Where is the place?” he repeated.

“¡Hereje!“ she said, slamming the table. Her finger shot out, pointing at the door. “¡Vete!“

Noah picked the clipping up off the counter and backed away, his arms raised in surrender, unsure what had happened. He stopped when he felt Rachel touch his back. The old woman was still seething.

“We’d better go,” she whispered, tugging at him. Noah nodded and let her guide him outside, his eyes unable to leave the crooked glare of the señora.

Outside, the heat hit them like a wall. A glare reflected off the church across from them, though its bulk remained in shadow. Enough of a glare, at least, to disguise the presence of the priest until Noah bounced off him.

“God, I’m sorry!” he said, then immediately regretted the curse. Rachel’s mouth was agape.

“Okay, it’s okay,” the priest said, fixing his collar. He was taller than Noah and broader, built sturdy enough that he barely acknowledged Noah’s clumsiness. He scratched his wide round face with stubby fingers, and when he glanced at Rachel and saw she was pregnant, a smile overtook him. “Nobody was hurt, after all. At least, not out here. What was the screaming about?”

“I’m not really sure. I’m trying to find someone and when I showed the señora inside she went crazy.”

“Ah, Señora Alvarez. She hasn’t been the same since her granddaughter passed away. Do you mind?” He reached his large hand out and looked from Noah to Rachel and back again. Noah was confused, until he realised the folded article was still clutched in his hand. He passed it over carefully.

“Hm,” the priest said, holding the clipping an inch from his round brown eyes, then holding it at arm’s length. “It’s no use,” he sighed. “I’m blind without my glasses, and your wife shouldn’t be outside in this weather. Come, let us go inside the church. It will be cooler there.”

“How long have you lived in Astilla de la Cruz?” Rachel was sitting in the second pew, hands over the back of the first and tucked under her chin. Noah remained standing, looking at the sparse furniture and the small handful of parishioners spread out across the place, all with heads down and praying. The church was far more spartan than Noah expected, but he imagined all the money had been spent on the ornate cross that was a hanging broken shadow beyond the dull stained glass. Rustling emitted from behind the large altar, somewhere near the back of the nave, though he saw no cause. “I only ask,” Rachel said, wiping away sweat in the crook of her arm, “because your English is perfect, Father Manillo.”

“Well, it’s not perfect, but I try. I was born here, but my family was blessed enough that we moved to California when I was still a young boy. I studied there for many years. Many years until I was teenager and I felt the calling. I returned home, here to Astilla de la Cruz, and heard the voice stronger and knew I must stay. I studied here with Father Montechellio, and when he was too old to continue, I took his place. But enough of me. That’s not why you’re here. Let me get my glasses and take a look at this picture of yours. I know the village like I know my own face, and if anyone can help, I think I will!”

Father Manillo strode off toward the chancel, his shoes clapping the floor. Noah looked around the congregation but still could not locate the source of the rustling.

“I have a good feeling about this, Noah. I think he’s going to help us.”

“I hope so. I’m trying not to get my hopes up. How are you feeling?”

“I’m still a bit achy, but I’ll manage.”

Father Manillo appeared from behind the unadorned rood screen, a pair of thin glasses curled over his ears and nose. They gave his eyes a magnified appearance, like a newborn staring wide.

“Now let me take a look at that picture.”

Noah handed him the folded clipping. Father Manillo opened it up and laid it flat on the pew. He stared intently at it while Rachel and Noah watched him. A hand went to his chin, stroking the dark wrinkled skin there. Then Father Manillo nodded and looked at Noah and Rachel. He motioned for them to sit.

“I don’t know how much history you know of Mexico. When the Spaniards came in 1521, they brought God to the natives here, forced Christianity on them until it took, and over time those natives became civilised, paired with the Spanish, and developed into the Mexico we have today. Often dirty, often corrupt, but never godless is Mexico. But before this—before Columbus and Cortés and iron helmets and God himself—there were different rules the Olmec, Toltec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Maya, and Aztec lived by, and different gods to worship. Hexatopsodil, Quesadasidodfll, Setinodoginall—these were the ones who ruled the land, controlled air and water and earth. There was a god for everything; a separate yet no less important god to pray to, to sacrifice to, if a farmer wanted to grow a crop or heal his child. The ancient Mexican gods were not like the Christian God at all. The idea of one god instead of many would have seemed impossible, unbelievable—at least until the white men arrived and proved otherwise.

“But even that story, as widely believed as it is, isn’t quite the whole story. History is like that—never presenting everything it should, forgetting things it shouldn’t. Few people know what I’m about to tell you, fewer still actually believe it—at least, outside Astilla de la Cruz—but history has a way of changing the rules, even when time itself rejects the notion. I said that the Spanish brought the concept of the single god to the Mexican people, but that isn’t quite true. There was another cult of worshippers who believed a single god would save the world, although who or what that god would be is open to debate. The story has been lost for centuries, so very little is known; but as I’m quite interested in religion, as you can imagine, I’ve paid particular attention to talk of this nature and have pieced much together. Great Huitzilopochtli was at ancient millennial war with the other gods over the souls of all the children lost to illness and plague. He called the gods together for a truce, but Ueuecoyotl, trickster god of foulness and chaos, was not to be trusted and tricked Huitzilopochtli into transforming himself into a hummingbird, then impregnating a mortal woman whom Ueuecoyotl had already impregnated. Then Ueuecoyotl did the same to Ixtlilton and Camaxtli and so on until he had tricked them all into impregnating that woman. With each impregnation, a piece of the gods’ power was stolen, and Ueuecoyotl believed the subsequent child, the child of all the gods, would have all their power and usurp them as the one true god.”

“But wouldn’t he be usurped as well?”

“Ah, my friend, that was the beauty of Ueuecoyotl’s plan. He simply didn’t care. He was the god of chaos, after all.”

“Wait, so you’re saying this god and God-god—”

“Yes, one and the same. This is how a small number reconciled the new god the Spaniards brought with them. They believed this god, named Ometéo-tlitztl, to be the true supreme being, one which our God was only an aspect of. The cult has grown and persists, but they remain secret, unwilling to reveal their hidden selves to the world. Astilla de la Cruz is their home, and it’s everything I can do to keep the true God alive here in the face of that.”

“But does this have to do with my ex-wife and Eli?”

“I look at this photograph and even blurry it’s clear to me where it was taken. The blasted heath. Come outside once more. The sun has lowered enough that you might see.”

Noah trailed the priest to the entrance, Rachel a few steps behind. They were still in the shadow of the church’s spire, which spared them the worst of the heat, but after being inside for so long, the sun seemed doubly bright and harsh, and Noah had to squint to keep his eyes open. Father Manillo said something to a passerby, but Noah could not see much through his squinting eyes beyond a multicoloured blur. By the time Noah’s eyesight improved the person was long gone.

“There, my friend, do you see it?” Father Manillo pointed toward the distant rocky outcropping that bordered the village. “Do you see that shape at the top?” At first, nothing seemed amiss, simply acres of scrub surrounding the village, then Noah noticed something unusual. There was a hill leading back toward the mountains, and on this hill was what looked like a large rock structure. All around it there seemed to be no life at all—just rocks and what looked like a leafless tree. The entire image wavered in the heat like some blackened flame.

“That’s where your photograph was taken. That’s where the Tletliztlii worship, during the lost hours of the day.”

“How do we get there?”

“It’s not a place for going—at least, not unprepared. The woman in the photo—your wife, yes?”

“Ex.”

“Your ex-wife, she’s not the same anymore. The Tletliztlii have her, and your little boy most likely.”

“Tell me how to get there.”

Father Manillo sighed, then consulted his watch.

“I don’t have Mass for a few hours. Let me change into something more comfortable than robes. You will need an emissary, anyway, if any of them are to talk to you.”

Noah sat beside Father Manillo in the borrowed truck, while in back Rachel grabbed what she could to stay seated. Even so, Noah wished they were moving faster.

“I apologise for the ride,” the priest yelled back so she might hear him. “The terrain to the ruins is rough, but there’s no way around it. There are no roads that go there. As you can guess, if there were, the Tletliztlii wouldn’t use them. They like their privacy.”

Noah turned to look at her.

“Are you okay?”

Rachel nodded, then put a free hand on her stomach. “It’s not too bad,” she said, then was jolted harshly, lifting her off her seat a few inches.

“Maybe we should slow down.” Father Manillo looked at him, then into the rear-view mirror.

“We’re almost there, Rachel. I don’t want to risk getting stuck in one of the crevices. Can you hold on a few more minutes?”

She nodded and looked at Noah. Noah’s teeth chattered.

“Don’t worry. I’m doing my Kegels,” she said.

Noah shook with giddy anxiety, a symptom compounded as they approached the ruins, yet as the distance shrank Noah found himself increasingly puzzled. The site looked nothing like the photograph, nor like anything he had imagined. He had expected a towering altar made of stone, housing an antechamber in which the Tletliztlii—including Sonia and Eli—would be hiding. Perhaps a large carving of Ometéotlitztl’s face in the rock, overseeing everything. Instead, the ruins were just that—ruins, and consisted of little more than a few crumbling walls in a semicircle around a small raised platform that was split in two. There were no buildings, no people, no sign of life of any kind. The area was bare rock without shade or plant. Nothing grew for at least a few hundred feet in any direction, and even then only a circle of low brush that looked tiny and black against the blazing sun. The only proof life had ever existed on the rock was the lone dead tree standing at its centre, sprouting from the cleaved rock, its branches knuckled and bent, hunkered and barely unfolded in death. A thick cord was tied around one of its branches, the spot beneath worn smooth, and at its end swung what remained of a faded piñata. Noah did not know what animal it once must have been—the shape bore no resemblance to anything he’d ever seen before—but its dead eyes stared at him as it slowly spun in the breeze, yellow streamers fluttering. Its stomach has long ago been burst open, and Noah couldn’t help but wonder what had once been inside.

“Where is everyone?” Rachel asked, squinting out from behind her sunglasses. “And is it just me or is it hotter here than in the village? I’m sweating like a pig.”

The priest took off his hat and ran his forearm across his forehead. Beads of sweat ran down his arm like blood.

“This is where they’re supposed to be…” he said, but he wasn’t listening closely. Behind his tinted glasses he was surveying the scene.

Noah had known all along, but refused to let himself believe it until Rachel and Father Manillo spoke the words aloud. Eli was not there. Probably never had been. Everything was slipping through his fingers, like the scorched sand beneath his feet. Every hope he had of rescuing his son was gone at once.

“I thought you said they’d be here. There’s nothing, no sign of them at all.” It was so hard to think under that sun, and his disappointment so vast.

“Honey, it’s okay,” Rachel said, putting her hand on his arm to cool him. But her skin was like a flame and he jerked free.

“It’s not okay. Don’t you get it? Eli is gone, and we were so close. Why did we come out here? Why are we wasting our time?”

His anger flared, lit the world on fire. Noah winced, the blinding brightness needles in his skull. “I need to find Eli,” he tried to say, but his mouth refused to work. “He’s the only thing I care about.” The jumble of words faded into the distance along with all other sound, faded until nothing remained but deep endless quiet. Behind his closed eyes Noah saw Eli standing on the starkly lit barren heath, waving, his expression inscrutable. Noah reached for him and tripped forward, falling head first into the parting earth. But before the darkness could swallow him he was suddenly stopped, and the motion threw open his tear-filled eyes. For a muddled moment he wondered when he’d started crying.

“Be careful,” Father Manillo said, helping Noah up and handing him a bottle of water. “The heat—I think it’s too much for you.”

Noah wiped his face and looked at Rachel. She stood with her arms crossed over her belly, turned ever so slightly away from him. Noah wanted to say something but didn’t know what.

“We shouldn’t have come here,” he murmured.

“I understand, Noah,” Father Manillo said, his wrinkled hands held out to ease Noah’s anger. The red mist had already dissipated, but Noah’s unhappiness remained.

“We aren’t any better off than we were back home. Actually, we’re worse off. At least then this stupid photo offered hope.” He pulled the folded article from his pocket, tempted to tear it up and throw it away. “But look at this place. There’s no hope anywhere here. Everything’s dead.”

“It didn’t use to be,” Father Manillo said, bald pate gleaming with sweat. “Once this all used to be jungle. Right here where we’re standing. When the Aztecs built this temple to Ometéotlitztl, it was hidden from the prying eyes of neighbouring tribes. They called it ‘the lost temple’ because of how secret the Tletliztlii kept its true location.”

“So what happened to it?” Rachel asked, roused from her heavy-headed silence. She would not look at Noah, though. “Where did the trees disappear to?”

“Ah, you know the way of things,” he said, looking out over the rocks back toward the village. Noah looked, too, but saw only the wavering heat warping the broken church steeple. “Time has not been good to plant life anywhere, including Mexico. Perhaps even more so in Mexico where your environmental protections don’t apply. They began clear-cutting about fifty years ago, pulling down and removing more and more trees, trunk and all, until they exhausted the area. The sun here being as it is, everything beneath it was burnt to a cinder without the trees’ protection—soil simply dried up and the wind took it away, leaving behind only the bare rock beneath. In a generation, the area was transformed, and when the logging companies finally left, Astilla de la Cruz was left more destitute than it had ever been before.”

“Why didn’t anyone stop them from cutting down the trees?” Rachel’s breath was wheezing out of her. Noah’s lip curled despite his own lingering curiosity.

“No one could. A local family that did most of the cutting here—there were stories about them. They were involved in a lot of things, most illegal. You met one of their children at the hotel. Señora Alvarez? Her father was Hernando Alvarez, and when Hernando found out the trees could make him money he wasted no time cutting them down. Back then, the idea of sustaining a crop didn’t occur to anyone, especially one as hungry for money as Hernando. In the end, though, what drove him over the edge, what caused him to bleed the area dry, was a mishap with his second son. The details are sketchy, but somehow he did something to his own wife, something horrible, because when she gave birth what emerged was a dead thing, black as coal.”

“She’d had an affair?”

“No, that’s the thing. It wasn’t a black baby. Instead, its skin had been turned black and gangrenous, the same thing that had probably killed it. The son Hernando had waited so long for was dead, and his wife soon afterward once the unsettled toxic flesh flooded her body.”

Rachel gasped. Noah felt ill. The heat from the sun was starting to twist what he was seeing, and he wondered if Father Manillo was losing his cohesion.

“The story goes that Hernando wailed so loudly on their passing that it drove all life from the area, leaving only death on this hill. They buried the child here too. Underneath that slab. Some people wonder if that also had something to do with the curse here. Not me, of course. But some people. That’s why most of the villagers avoid this place. Everyone but the Tletliztlii followers. It’s the perfect spot to hide a child you don’t want found.”

The priest looked guiltily at Noah. His face was slick with sweat, and he was trying to blink it from his eyes.

“I’m sorry. I let my mouth get away from me, my friend. Maybe it’s best we all leave, I think. It’s a bad place.” He crossed himself. “Come, let me take you both back to the village. You don’t belong here. Not under this horrible sun.”

“But what about Eli?”

“Have faith, Noah. I will pray for you both.”

That answer did nothing to ease Noah’s worries.

Father Manillo left Noah and Rachel at their hotel. Noah had been silent during the trip back, weighed down by despair. What made it worse was Rachel’s demeanour. She had never spoken a word aloud, but it was clear her presence in Mexico was for his sake alone. She was not as committed to finding Eli as he was. But how could she be?

Eli. The boy had been so much a part of Noah. He filled a hole that could not otherwise be filled. Rachel did her best, and he knew that he should be happier about the new child she carried, but somehow that feeling was trapped inside of him, trapped within solid amber, visible but unreachable. Rachel, the baby—they were not his beautiful Eli. But he went through the motions. It was all he could do. It would change when they finally found Eli; there was no doubt in his mind. With the boy back in his arms, that amber would crack, would crumble beneath Eli’s beauty. Eli was Noah’s true heart. There was no way he could go much longer without the boy.

But he tried. Only a few steps away from the hotel was a small cantina, pressed into the side of a degraded brick hovel. There was no door, only a large opening and awning from which a child’s papier-mâché animal hung, its odd-numbered legs erupting from its twisted body without reason. Inside the cantina the lights were low, the air smelled of sweat and spices, and the unshaven men who sat there turned to stare eyes wide and silent at the couple as they entered. None were any younger than fifty, Noah suspected, though their faces made them look impossibly older. Noah wondered if he had ever before felt so out of place.

“Do you want to leave?” he asked Rachel under his breath.

“I think it’s fine. Look, there’s a table over there.”

She strode where Noah hesitated, deep into the heart of the place. Noah meekly followed, doing what he could to avoid eye contact. There were few women in the place, all lingering at the back of the room or behind curtains, and those he saw looked incredibly sad. He wanted to say something to help them, but couldn’t think of a single thing that might make a difference, so he did his best to put them out of mind. It was easier than having to deal with problems that had no clear solutions.

“Do you think they have menus?” Rachel asked, moving her sunglasses to the top of her head, but before Noah could respond a small man in an apron and pencil moustache approached and put a dirty paper menu in front of them. He seemed nervous and hovered over Noah and Rachel as they looked over the menu, spending most of the time looking at the other patrons behind him.

“Nopalitos con chile, por favor,” Rachel said.

“Para mí también,” Noah added. “And a beer.”

The small man nodded profusely and hurried away. Noah watched him disappear into the back. The other patrons turned partially away as well. Rachel did not blink. Instead, she put her hand on his.

“You still look upset,” she said. “Don’t worry. Today was just a minor setback.”

“It was the only lead we had, Rachel. I have no idea where we’re going to look now. We’ve come all this way, we’ve come so close. I can’t believe it was all for nothing.”

“It wasn’t for nothing,” she said. “We’ll find him. You have to believe it.”

“I don’t know what I believe anymore.”

“Believe this: we’ll find him. We’ll find him and we’ll take him away from this place, from Sonia and whatever crazy thing she’s mixed up in. We’ll take him away to a new life back home with us, and soon he’ll have a new brother or sister and all this will be like some horrible nightmare for us all, a nightmare that happened so long ago it will soon fade to nothing. We can have that, Noah. You just have to believe.”

Maybe it was the heat, or the exhaustion, or the pain of missing Eli for so long, but Noah could not keep himself from crying. It was horrible, and he felt the eyes of so many in the room staring at him once more, staring as Rachel squeezed and rubbed his hand. Like a summer storm, it passed over him as quickly as it arrived, but he was left drenched, wiping his face with the cheap paper napkin that had been laid for them on the table.

“I’m sorry, Rachel. I really am. I’ve just felt so lost for so long.”

“I know, babe. I know. Dry off, here comes our food.”

The little man was still hurrying as he delivered their plates, less setting them down than throwing them. He then retreated and brought back a warm bottle of cerveza. Noah reached out for it, but the man did not let go. Instead he leaned closer.

“Tú y la madre necesitan irse ahora mismo.“

“I’m sorry. I—”

“Es peligroso,” he said, his voice a seething whisper, and it only took a mumbled cough from behind for him to let go of the beer instantly. It kicked back, some of it spilling onto Noah’s hand, but the small man seemed to take on a completely different stance, looking at the rest of the room out of the corner of his eye.

“Cuarenta y nueve pesos,” he grunted, and left them alone as quickly as he could. They did not see him again.

Back at the hotel, Rachel insisted on standing outside their room in the warm night.

“It’s amazing; I’ve never seen anything like it,” Rachel said, staring up at the colours of ebbing dusk as her hands idled on her pregnancy. Noah followed her eyes skyward. In the dark that followed close the stars lit the sky like a thousand pricks of light. “The world is a lot different in these places. You forget what it’s like when you spend your life a few feet away from electricity at the flick of a switch. Out here, you really get an idea of what it must have been like to be alive hundreds of years ago. The Spaniards came here and conquered, brought Christianity, but you can almost feel what it was like before that, back when the sky was filled with gods of fire. I can understand why people would come here to worship Ometéotlitztl and the rest. It’s like a whole different way of being. I’m almost jealous.”

Noah bristled, but tried to hide it. He had no interest in repeating their experience on the heath. “You have a way of looking at things, you know.”

She took his arm and rested her head on his shoulder. “What do you mean?”

He shrugged, careful not to dislodge her.

“You see everything in a positive light. You look up and see a flood of stars. I look up and see the endless space around them. I wish I could be as positive as you.”

“Oh, Noah,” she said, her voice pulled into the vacuum of her disappointment. She didn’t say anything else, but instead took his hand and stood there in the dark of the blistering night. He let go first.

“We should probably go inside. Father Manillo was right. You need to rest.”

“Just stand with me for a little while. It will be good for you to stop moving—you’ve been running ragged since we left Sarnia.”

“I can’t. Not if I’m going to find Sonia and Eli before they disappear again. What if Father Manillo calls? He said he would.”

“If he calls, you’ll be able to hear it. Right now, I need you, Noah. We both need you.”

“I know that,” he said. “But what am I supposed to do? Forget Eli? Let Sonia have him? I know that would be easier, but I can’t. This is my son we’re talking about. I can’t let myself forget.”

Rachel started to say something, then stopped. She pulled him close and kissed him on the cheek, then brusquely pulled her shawl around her shoulders. “Go on in,” she said. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure? You’re going to stay out here alone?”

“You don’t have to worry,” she said. Had her tone changed, or did Noah simply imagine it? “I’m sure I’ll be safe out here for a few minutes.”

Noah opened his mouth to speak, but behind him he heard a sharp trilling from somewhere inside, and his heart skipped. With hands wet and body shaking he turned and looked at Rachel. She had turned too, but her expression was inscrutable.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Go on. I’ll be inside in a minute.”

He was already in the door when he realised she’d said something else, something like “I love you.”

Noah picked up the phone, but no one responded to his greeting. There was a wheezing sound. A snuffling. Garbled and metallic as though the line had been degraded. Noah started to get worried. He looked at Rachel through the window, her back to him, shawl pulled tight. “Hello?”

There was some more scratching, then, “Noah? This is Father Manillo. I had an idea.”

Noah’s blood raced.

“About where to find my son?”

“Yes. Of course. Villages like Astilla de la Cruz, farming villages in the depths of Mexico, are filled with children who must work the land with their fathers all day, or must scavenge the streets at night to scrape together what little they can to help their families survive. But there are some, especially those belonging to the more wealthy or foreign, who still must be educated. So a tiny school was erected a few years ago for them. There they can learn, but so few attend, or can attend often during the farming season, that it is only in session a few days a week.

“I’m not certain,” the priest continued, “but I believe there is class tomorrow. Perhaps your Eli is there? If your past wife is how you say, she might want him in school.”

Rachel entered the room and closed the door behind her. She did not look at Noah, even though it was clear she knew he was watching. Instead, she brushed past him and lay down on their bed. With some effort she turned onto her side, her back twisted toward him.

“Thank you, Father. How do I get there?”

III. Back to School

Rachel had managed to drift off while Noah was on the telephone with Father Manillo, gathering details about the nameless school’s location. She lay still, chest slowly rising and sinking, shirt ridden up to expose her swollen pregnancy. Noah lay down beside her but could not bear to put his arm around her. The room was a furnace, and the last thing he wanted was for her body’s heat to compound his own. He rolled over and tried to sleep.

He’d been warned repeatedly that the odds of finding Sonia, of finding Eli, were virtually zero, yet he could not stop himself from holding out hope. It buzzed through his head, his hands, his feet, and each remained in motion as he twisted and turned through the night. Eventually it was simpler to give up, get out of bed. Frustrated, tired, and angry, he crept to the window and sat in the dull moonlight. There, he studied the unfolded article he’d carried all the way from Sarnia, looking for some overlooked clue about where his son might be. Even that proved more than he could bear in the lingering heat, so he simply gazed out the window at the field of stars and waited for the daylight to arrive.

The broken spire was the first thing that came into view as the red morning sun crested the clay roofs. The air already smelled of frying corn, rich and bittersweet. The light of the rising sun burned Noah’s face, a giant ball of fire that seemed to hang a few feet away, not a hundred million miles. He watched it rise in starts, as though lifted on the shoulders of some great giant or dragged upward by a team of animals. As it ascended, it lit the sky further, and the silhouette of the hanging cross transformed into the cross itself, casting its long shadow over the poor village below.

Finding the school proved to be more challenging than Noah had anticipated. What should have been a walk of a few minutes was instead an hour-long odyssey without any clear sign where he and Rachel were headed. He had written down Father Manillo’s instructions carefully, but the streets of Astilla de la Cruz did not obey his crudely drawn map. In places, it was difficult to tell where roads ended or began, and at one point he was certain houses had simply been erected without consideration of anything beyond the whim of the builder. Each place was more rundown than the last, dirt yards filled with old and broken toys that were as untouched and abandoned as everything else they passed. If not for the occasional movement of curtains, or sound of someone scrambling unseen, Noah would have suspected he and Rachel had been just as forgotten.

Noah stopped and looked back for the broken cross to orient himself. It was a dark spike in the eye of the sun, and no matter where he and Rachel went, its position never seemed to change.

“Maybe we should ask someone where this school is,” Rachel suggested. Underneath her wide-brimmed hat her face was slick with sweat.

“Who are we going to ask? Do you see anybody around?”

“Let me see those directions again. Maybe we took a wrong turn.”

He handed them over reluctantly. Rachel studied them.

“I haven’t seen any of these street names. Are you sure these are right?”

“I haven’t a clue. I was hoping once we were close enough we could figure things out by looking at the signs. I didn’t count on there not being any.”

“Do you know how to get us back at least?”

Noah paused, unsure how to phrase the answer, but his silence was answer enough for Rachel.

“So we’re completely lost. Great. You do know I’m carrying a baby, don’t you?”

“Obviously.”

“Do you know my back is killing me as well? What happens if I need to sit down? Should I do it right here in the street?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

“Oh, like we figured out where the school was?”

He tried not to look at her. He would only get angry if he looked at her. How could she be so selfish when Eli was out there, somewhere?

“It can’t be far. We’ve almost reached the edge of the village.”

“I hope you’re right. I don’t know how much longer I can keep going. Remember what Dr Mielke told us.”

What she’d told them was that Rachel should stay home, something she flagrantly disobeyed. But Noah managed to bite his tongue before saying it.

He was sorely tempted to knock on a door, any door, and ask for directions. The sun was no longer inching its way into the sky but climbing swiftly, and every moment that passed intensified its heat. And yet, he couldn’t bring himself to ask for help. The houses looked too rundown, too hopeless, and he needed all the hope he could muster. Eli needed it. Even Rachel needed it. But Noah didn’t know if he had enough left to go around.

“Wait,” Rachel said, so quietly Noah wondered if she spoke.

“What is it?”

She shushed him. “Listen, do you hear it? I think it’s music. Like a flute or something.”

She cocked her head and listened; Noah remained motionless. The blazing heat on his skull, the slow thumping of his heart, deafened him, but he strained to listen for the sound she heard. He wondered if it was merely wishful thinking, an auditory hallucination charged simply by her desire, and had almost given up when he finally heard it: The trilling of the sort of pipe he hadn’t heard since he was a child.

“I think you’re right.”

A wave of relief crested, washing over him. Rachel smiled. “Someone up there must like you.”

“I guess so. Come on, I think it’s this way.”

The sound of music had long since stopped, but that did not prevent Noah and Rachel from finding their way to the unnamed school Father Manillo had mentioned.

“Let’s hurry,” Noah said. “If Sonia’s left him it won’t be for long, and I’d like to be far away from here before she realises Eli is missing.”

The school was tiny; hardly larger than the rundown houses they’d passed, with an exterior so baked by the sun it had become porous and brittle. Running his fingers along the wall, Noah’s hand came away coated with brick and dust. The remnants of childhood lay in pieces around the school’s periphery—boxes drawn in chalk on the pavement, a crumbling rubber ball on the sparse, well-trodden grass. Rachel, putting her sunglasses atop her head so the tiny black arms held the chestnut hair off her face, rattled the locked door.

“This is where Eli is supposed to be? The place looks like it should be condemned.”

She bent and inspected the sorry collection of desiccated flowers in the garden outside the door. The plants were merely husks, untended for far too long, and they surrounded a clay figure that looked crafted by a child’s hands. The unclassifiable thing was painted pink, a coloured ribbon around its neck, and had what looked like four limbs. “Look at its eyes,” Rachel said, huffing as she picked it up for inspection. “They don’t even seem to be looking in the same direction.” She dropped the figurine, and its weight buried it headfirst in the ground. Rachel wiped her hands on her pants with disgust.

“I don’t understand it,” Noah said, looking through the windows at the empty classroom. “Father Manillo said they’d be here—all of them, all the children.”

“Maybe he got the days wrong?”

“No, no.” An overwhelming wave of disappointment swept Noah. “He was so sure…”

A noise caught his attention. He looked at Rachel for confirmation she’d heard it too, then scanned the area. There was no one in sight, yet he distinctly heard the sound of someone crying.

“Do you think—” Rachel whispered. “At the back?”

The two of them walked slowly around the side of the school, Noah in front with Rachel close behind. The sun made everything too bright, and even through squinted eyes Noah wasn’t sure the shadow beside the empty playground was truly a person until it stood and looked back at them. Noah froze, motioned for Rachel to do the same, and he simply waited to see what would happen.

The shadow bolted.

“Hey!” Noah shouted, and gave chase. “Hey, come here a minute! I want to talk to you. Por favor!“ He sensed Rachel following close behind, but as Noah’s legs moved faster the distance between him and his girlfriend grew wider. When Rachel cried out his name, he was already more than a hundred feet away before he looked back and saw her doubled over. He rushed back to find her with her hands on her belly, her face contorted. His fear left him physically ill.

“Are you okay? What’s wrong?” His sentences were clipped, his attention distracted by the fleeing shadow. But when he looked up, he was startled to find the shadow too had stopped and was watching them from a distance.

Rachel breathed heavily in tight, controlled breaths.

“I’ll be okay,” she panted. “I think I’ll be okay. Go on. Go find Eli.”

He looked at her and she nodded, then winced again.

“No, I’ll stay,” he said, hoping to any god that would listen that she couldn’t see his disappointment. “I’ll stay.”

“Noah—”

“It’s fine. I want to make sure you’re all right.”

“No. I mean, look.”

Noah turned and saw that the person he had been chasing was no longer standing still, observing, but instead was walking back toward them. Noah stood and squinted for a better look.

“Are you okay if I leave for a minute?”

“What does he want?”

“I’m going to find out.”

Noah walked toward the figure as it advanced forward. The stranger was speaking loudly in order to be heard, his arms flailing animatedly, but Noah did not understand the jumbled hybrid of Spanish and English. The man was about a foot shorter than Noah, thin with a head that seemed slightly larger than the body it was on. He had a wide uneven moustache, though Noah wasn’t sure if it was only because that was the only facial hair that would grow. The stranger sounded terrified, screaming “¡Fuego!“ before making the sign of the cross across his chest and kissing his fingers.

“Calm down, I’m not going to hurt you.” Noah held his hands up to show he wasn’t a threat.

“The woman, she’s hurt?” The man breathed heavily, his face red and swollen from crying. Noah shook his head.

“She’s fine. We’re looking for the children. For a boy.” He reached into his pocket and the man flinched.

“It’s okay. I’m just going to take a picture out of my pocket, okay? I’m not going to hurt you.”

The man hesitated, then nodded.

Noah took the creased article from his pocket and held it out unfolded. The man cautiously leaned forward, watching Noah more than the photo, and when Noah didn’t move the man glanced quickly at it. Then, for longer.

“Si. I know this boy. Elias.”

Noah’s heart stopped beating.

“What do you mean? Where’s Eli? Where’s my son?”

“The madre?” he said, pointing at Rachel. “Is she Tletliztlii?”

“What? No. Not at all. She’s my girlfriend.”

“Good. We must get her inside before the sun gets stronger.”

They lifted Rachel and brought her inside the classroom. It was small, covered in paints. It took a few minutes for Noah’s eyes to adjust to the lower light, and the first thing that came into view was a purple papier-mâché elephant that stared at them from its perch on a desk. The man kept casting nervous sidelong glances at it while he poured Rachel a glass of water. She drank it quickly and without question, then thanked him.

Noah couldn’t handle waiting any longer.

“Where is Eli? Where is my son?”

The man shook, crossed himself again, and kissed his fingers before taking the folded article from Noah’s hand.

“This is your hijo?”

“Yes. My boy, Eli.”

The small man removed one of the children’s paintings from the wall of the classroom and gave it to Noah. The colours were wrong, sky yellow and ground black, but it was a self-portrait of a boy, standing with a pink, green-faced animal at his side.

“This painting? This is your boy.”

Noah took a second look, mesmerised by the thick-painted features. Could he tell, just by looking at the poorly constructed face, that it was his son? Was there any resemblance between that twisted figure and the boy he’d spent so long searching for? He couldn’t take his eyes off of it, the first artefact of his son’s existence he’d held in years. He lifted it to his face and inhaled deeply, trying to recover some sense of the boy. When he pulled the cheap paper away, he could barely speak.

“Where can I find him?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes the Tletliztlii—” He swallowed, then looked out the window of the classroom. Noah glanced, but there was nothing there. Only the sun burning in the sky. “The children, they were here. Your son, too. Then today, no children. But I find that.” He pointed toward the piñata on his desk, then crossed himself. “Eso es todo lo que queda de los niños.“

“What do you mean?”

“They are gone.”

Noah slumped down into one of the tiny desks, unable to keep his balance any longer. Knees up to his chest, he couldn’t help but laugh, the rasps swirling in his chest before erupting volcanically from between his teeth.

“My name is Señor Alfred Muñoz. I am one of the teachers here, but I am also the caretaker. The rest, they come only when they are needed. Classes for the babies on some days, classes for the older children on other days. Between, I must make sure the school is ready. But now, maybe I’m losing my job. Today, I’m supposed to have the children, but they do not come. Maybe never again.”

Noah looked around the room, needing to occupy himself to keep his heart from breaking. The walls of the classroom were covered in drawings scribbled by tiny hands, pasted upon a larger mural that swept everything else up in it—chalkboard, windows, the door. It was a row of children, their heads wider than tall, features pinched but gleeful. Each was a different colour, and they danced as though floating, all in line following behind a tall musician in some sort of parade. The musician’s face beamed like the sun as he blew notes out into the air, the string of them carrying across two walls. The line of happy children behind, all no more than four years old. Suddenly, Eli seemed so far away. Impossibly distant and irretrievable.

“Where would the Tletliztlii take them?” Rachel asked.

“Nobody will say. People, they are afraid of the gods, even if they don’t believe in them. They are afraid of what will happen.”

Noah banged his hand on the small desk.

“You have to have some idea. My son—he was stolen! I haven’t seen him in years. I don’t even know if he’s still alive.”

Rachel looked at him after his outburst in that way he hated. With well-meaning pity.

“We’ll find him, Noah. Don’t worry. If they’d left the village I bet Father Manillo would have known it. They’re still here, somewhere. We’ll find Eli somehow.”

“How can you be so sure? Even I can’t be sure. His own teacher can’t be sure.”

“I just know, Noah.”

“You know? What do you know?” Noah recognised, dimly, his frustration was misplaced, but the fire was too great; he could not stop himself. Tinder became a blaze, and he could not turn back. “We’re not going to find him. We aren’t going to find Eli or Sonia or anyone from the Tletliztlii. We’re—”

“Excuse,” said Muñoz, careful in his interruption. “You say Father Manillo is helping you?”

“Yes, Father Manillo.”

Muñoz did not get a chance to speak. A horrible moan, like the creaking of a massive door on rusted hinges, interrupted him as it echoed thorough the empty schoolhouse. The sound rattled Noah, who fell silent and cold and could not understand why—not until he saw Muñoz’s terror-filled eyes bulging wide. They were locked on Rachel, and as Noah turned he could feel the passage of time slowly stretch itself out. The room expanded outward until it fell away from the edges of world altogether, and all the while the distance between him and Rachel shrank to near nothing. He saw the web of veins standing from the pallid skin of her sweating face; saw the wrinkles around her eyes, her mouth, as she grimaced in agony. Tears fell onto her rigid arms and as she clutched at her belly trying to claw her way in to stop whatever was happening. Noah swallowed, his brain dully wanting to reconcile the sight, and it wasn’t until Muñoz finally stood and screamed that time’s normal pace resumed.

“¡Madre!“

Noah rushed over and put his hand on Rachel’s face. She was burning, and crying uncontrollably.

“My God, Rachel. What’s wrong?”

She shook her head without speaking, and Muñoz covered his own again, muttering under his breath. Noah grabbed hold of the small man so tightly he thought his fingers would puncture skin.

“Call a doctor! Do something!” he said.

Muñoz’s eyes were stuck as wide as they could go, but he still managed to whisper a question.

“The name. What is the name?”

Noah didn’t understand.

“Her what? Her name—her name is Rachel. What—”

“No, no. What is the nombre del bebé? The baby. The baby has to have a name.”

“We haven’t—we—what does that have to do with anything?”

“Noah,” Rachel managed, her voice strained. “Help me.”

Muñoz shook his head, pulling away. “El bebé necesita un nombre.“ But Noah would not let him go. Instead, he squeezed the teacher’s arms harder.

“Why do you want to know the name?”

“Noah, I need a hospital.”

“Cuando la madre de gran Ometéotlitztl’s estaba embarazada con su hermano, ella no le dio nombre al bebé y los dioses estaban tan enojados que le forzaron que lo abortara.“

“I don’t understand!”

“Help me,” Rachel cried. Noah looked down at her, his daze clearing. Panic setting in.

“¡El sin nombre se quema! ¡Un lumbre que nunca se apaga!“

He slapped Muñoz hard across the face. Muñoz stumbled.

“We need to see a doctor now,” he said, and picked Rachel up. Muñoz nodded.

“Yes, your wife. We need to help your wife.”

“We aren’t married,” Noah muttered. It was all he could think to say.

IV. The Truth Will Out

The only doctor in the village lived ten minutes away, but it could have been ten hours and the journey would have been no easier. The men carried Rachel as quickly as they could, and Noah did his best to calm her despite her delirium, while Muñoz guided them through deserted streets toward a tiny nested house.

“We’re almost there,” Noah said, but Rachel did not seem interested in being comforted. Instead, she continued to emit a high-pitched whine that steadily increased in volume. Part of Noah expected locked doors to swing open and shut windows to fly up, but as they passed rows of houses in the warm night nothing moved. They were more alone than they’d ever been.

The men burst through the door of the doctor’s house with Rachel in their arms and called out for help. A short, dark nurse with deep-set eyes and a harelip from an ancient scar appeared and looked directly into Rachel’s eyes, then at her swollen belly, then directed the two men to place her into a worn wheelchair. Noah asked if he needed to sign anything, but the nurse did not respond. Instead, she wrapped her stubby fingers around the handles of the wheelchair and pushed it forward, not waiting as Rachel weakly reached out. Before she could speak, Rachel was pushed clear of the front room.

“What are we supposed to do now?” Noah asked, eyes plastered to the door swinging unceremoniously shut.

“Now, we sit,” Muñoz said. “And we wait.”

Until then Noah hadn’t noticed his surroundings. The stress and adrenaline had narrowed his attention until he was blind to anything not directly in front of him. With Rachel taken, that adrenaline wore away, leaving behind a cold shiver in his limbs he couldn’t shake.

The front waiting room was the filthiest place he had seen since arriving in Mexico. The floor was made of press-on linoleum tiles loose from the sweat of summer heat, some missing, some cracked beyond repair. In the corner sat a small box of toys—a duck, some plastic cars—that Noah got the impression were not often played with. There seemed to be no sign of children ever having been there, which seemed appropriate, considering how oppressive the room was. But despite the small size of the room, Noah hadn’t immediately noticed that he and Muñoz were not alone. There was a lonesome couple seated in the corner, their faces long and sagging, their eyes dead. They did not glance at Noah or Muñoz. They did nothing much at all except cradle a pair of twin papier-mâché dogs in their arms. At least, Noah supposed they were dogs. Bright, multicoloured dogs; fat and malformed and without eyes.

“Why do they have those here?” Noah whispered.

“Here it is customary for the birth of a child. It’s a regalo. A gift. Our people, they are too poor to afford to give anything they cannot make.”

Noah nodded. They sat quietly, listening to the erratic tick of the old clock on the laminate wall, and to the sound of the couple’s heavy breathing as they stared at nothing and waited. Noah was in no condition to handle the silence.

“Thank you,” he whispered again. “You don’t need to stay here.”

“It’s not trouble. I have no children. No one who needs me more. Without the Tletliztlii to teach, I—”

He caught himself, and lowered his head.

“I am sorry. Your hijo—your Eli—I forgot.”

Noah swallowed. “It’s okay. I’ll find him.”

Muñoz nodded.

Noah waited on word about Rachel in silence for almost two hours, but the nurse never returned. No one else entered the office either, and the long-faced couple across the room were barely more than statues, staring up at a buzzing clock, holding their plaster gifts. Noah looked to Muñoz, who sat still, eyelids closed, and Noah wondered where the teacher had taken them. A nervous itch crept across his jittering legs. Where had the nurse taken Rachel so quickly? Noah stood, started pacing, desperate to dispel his growing unease. First Eli, now Rachel—was he doomed to have parts of who he was forever disappear, plucked from his life one at a time, until he was nothing more than a set of bleached bones? Even the article in his pocket, unfolded and folded so many times, was beginning to wear.

Muñoz opened his eyes.

“You must stop moving. It is not good for you.”

“I have to do something. I’ll go crazy if I don’t.”

“You will be crazier if you do. They will come and tell us about Rachel soon. Dr Nunio is very old, but very good.”

“If he’s so good, where is everybody?”

Muñoz shrugged.

“Maybe they are working. Even the poor must work, especially in Astilla de la Cruz. There is always much to do before the season ends.”

“But there’s no one else sick at all?”

“Maybe the people pray,” he shrugged. “Maybe that is enough.”

Noah didn’t believe it.

“The church wasn’t any busier yesterday. If it was, you’d think they’d be able to fix up the place. The steeple at least needs work.”

Noah stopped twitching at the sight of Muñoz. The teacher did not look well.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“That is no church. Manillo, él es el mal.“ Muñoz spat on the ground. Noah tried not to recoil.

“But we met Father Manillo yesterday and—”

Muñoz spat again.

“The man makes lies. Lies and half-truths. Do not listen! El anda con el Tletliztlii y—”

“Wait. ‘The Tletliztlii’? Does he know them? He told us—he told me and Rachel that…He knew where they were the whole time? Why didn’t you tell me before?”

Noah paced the room faster, hands running through hair.

“I have to do something. I can’t just—I mean, I have to go. I—I have to find Eli.”

“But your girlfriend,” Muñoz said, eyes darting back and forth, jaw trembling to speak.

Noah had no idea if Rachel was okay. But his son needed him. His kidnapped son. How could he know what to do? No matter what his choice, he might never forgive himself. But he had to choose.

“I can’t leave him there. I can’t let him slip through my fingers.”

Muñoz nodded solemnly and stood.

“Then I will take you. You cannot go there alone.”

As he spoke, the wooden door of the waiting room opened. The small nurse entered, her stony, harelipped face long and craggy.

“Ya puedes verla.“ Her voice was like gravel, slightly sibilant.

“What?”

“Tu esposa. Ya puedes verla ahora. Ella está preguntando por ti.“

“She says it’s okay to see your wife now. She is calling for you.”

“I told you she’s not—I can go see her?”

The nurse nodded, her tired eyes already bored.

“But—”

“Go, señor. I will wait out here. I do not think the Tletliztlii will go anywhere at the moment. Unless they find out you are here…” He trailed off, looking at the silent couple in the room with them. They seemed oblivious to Muñoz’s attention, yet Noah felt everything slipping as he was drawn further apart by opposite poles and did not know which direction he desired more.

“Señor?“ The nurse, impatient.

“Okay. Let’s go.”

It took too long for Rachel’s room to appear at the end of the unfinished hallway, but when it did Noah was startled. There was little equipment, and what was there appeared far too old. Light slipped past the blind slats and bisected the room, creating a staggered line across the unfinished floor. On the opposite side of the divide was a pair of single beds, but only one was occupied. Rachel sat up, her hands fidgeting absently with a small, colourful toy. It was clear from her flushed wet face she had been crying before he entered.

“They finally let you in,” she said. “I was worried they wouldn’t.”

“I don’t think they could have stopped me.”

“The doctor’s had a look, but he isn’t worried.” She sniffled, then tried to hide it behind the sleeve of her gown. “It’s a bit of hysterical labour, probably caused by the stress of the trip, and maybe from some dehydration. I felt a lot better once I got some water in me.”

“The baby?”

“The baby is fine, too.”

“Good, good,” he said, and checked the time on his watch. Rachel went quiet.

“Can’t you stop looking at that thing for a second to see how I am?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that I have a lead on Eli. I think he—”

“You have a lead? Wait, were you going to leave me alone here?”

“You’re safe. There’s nothing wrong, is there?”

“It has nothing to do with if something’s wrong or not. I’m in the hospital. Me. The woman you supposedly love. And the child I’m carrying.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Are you? I know you, Noah. I’ve been living with that look in your eyes for years. The last thing you want is to be here with me. Sometimes I wonder if you care about me and the baby at all.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

She scoffed.

“Where are you going? To meet that bitch, Sonia? Do you think she’s going to tell you anything?”

“She’d better.”

“I love you, but you’re fucking naive if you think it’s going to be that easy. After everything she’s done to keep you from Eli, you think she’s just going to give him back to you? She has no intention of giving you anything. There’s something wrong with that woman, Noah, something that scares me, and I don’t want you going anywhere near her. Especially when I’m laid up in here with no idea what’s going on. I need you, Noah. Your child needs you.”

“Eli is my child, Rachel. He needs me too.”

“I hate to tell you this, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t need you at all. He’s got Sonia.”

“You just told me you don’t trust her. But you trust her enough to care for my child?”

Rachel was starting to cry again. Noah wanted to back off, but suddenly understood she had never wanted anything to do with Eli, didn’t even want him in her life, and she was using any weapon she could to turn Noah against his own son. The realisation made him angrier than he thought possible.

“Eli is a part of me, Rachel, and nothing you say can make that different. He’s my son, and he means more than the world to me. He means more to me than my own life.”

“Does he mean more to you than me? Does he mean more to you than your other child? The one I’m carrying?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Answer me!”

“You want me to choose?”

“Yes, exactly. I want you to choose between your fucking crazy ex-wife and a child who has no idea who the fuck you are; and me, the woman who loves you, the woman who came down here on this crazy mission with you even though she is carrying your future child, one who you’ll know and grow close to and will love you forever. Choose, Noah. If you’re half the man you believe you are, it should be easy. Choose.”

Noah took a breath, but had no idea what words were going to come out of his mouth. The anger and resentment had built up to such intolerable levels they confounded him. The pressure in his head was building, struggling for release.

Who was she? Who was she to tell Noah that Eli was nothing? That he should be forgotten? Who was this woman? Not the demure girl he’d met what seemed like only months before, the girl who once didn’t know the meaning of the word “relationship”. He had only been with her because her commitment to being noncommittal was so different from his that she seemed exciting, good for him. When had she become the yoke around his neck, telling him that he should no longer care about the only thing he’d ever cared about? Who was she? And who was the unborn child she said was his? Did it smile like Eli? Did it laugh like him? Was it as smart, as friendly, and perfect as his little son? It was nothing to him, nothing but a lump of flesh buried deep in a woman he didn’t know, didn’t recognise. She wanted him to choose between that and his perfect little boy? There was no choice. There had never been a choice.

Rachel’s eyes narrowed as she glared at Noah. His skull filled with opaque fuses and felt as though it was burning. He touched his forehead; it was strangely cold.

“I have to go, Rachel. We’ll talk about this later.”

“Get the fuck out of here,” she said, and threw the brightly-coloured toy at him. It bounced off his temple, catalysing his anger before it smashed to the ground.

“With pleasure,” he bellowed, then stormed out.

Muñoz was sitting in the waiting room, speaking quietly with the strange staring couple. It was clear by the look of guilt on his face that he’d heard part of the argument. Noah didn’t stop. Full of burning embers, he stormed outside. Muñoz followed close behind.

“Is she okay?” Muñoz dared.

“You don’t need to worry about it. Just get me to the church and to Sonia. Nothing else is going to come between me and Eli.”

The sharp shadow of the steeple lay across the front of the church, cutting the path to its door like a giant razor. Noah had been anxious on the journey there from the doctor’s office, still carrying his burning anger over what Rachel had said, and his nervous anticipation at seeing Eli again. He and Muñoz passed the rundown houses and saw few people outside. Most moved as if they were still asleep, staring off into space. On the stoop of a house, a woman sat surrounded by broken toys and the half-formed piñata she was building. Her hands were caked in pink plaster, and they covered her face as she wept uncontrollably.

Muñoz led Noah on without comment, along the dirt road to the towering church. Heat warped its height until the spire climbed forever into the sky. Out front, a shirtless man was working the arid ground, planting grass and flowers where it was clear nothing could grow. His back was tanned and broad, his muscles tight along his barrel chest, and it wasn’t until the two men were almost upon him that Noah realised it was Father Manillo.

“You came back!” he said, his grin wide, lenses reflecting the sun into Noah’s eyes. “Did you find everything you needed?”

Noah hesitated. “Almost.”

“Good, good!” he said. Not once did he look at Muñoz.

“And your wife? How is she?”

“My girlfriend is fine,” Noah said curtly. “But you know why I’m here, don’t you?”

“¿De verdad?“

“My wife. My ex-wife. She’s here, isn’t she?”

Noah watched the priest’s eyes, hoping the revelation would shake the man, but instead the older man dug his shovel into the ground and leaned on the handle. Then he laughed.

“What do you think is going on here? This is a place of God.”

“I don’t know about that, but I know you’ve been sheltering the Tletliztlii here. It’s probably why we didn’t find them up on the heath. Were they ever there?”

The priest laughed again, the sound as paternal as it was cold.

“Oh, they come and go. They come and go.” Then his face grew still, the laugh lines fading back into tanned leather skin, and he grabbed Noah’s arm and pulled. Noah tried to resist, but the sudden snatch had unbalanced him.

“You want to go inside, yes? I will not stop you—everyone is free to worship at Ometéotlitztl’s altar—but no matter what you find you must respect the sanctity of the church. There is no anger among the Tletliztlii, only shared purpose. Do you accept?”

He held out his hand for Noah to take. Noah shook it, but his own hand felt inadequate inside Manillo’s giant paw. When the priest let go, Noah wiped his fingers across his chest, trying to erase the feel of Manillo’s sweat and calluses. Noah turned to Muñoz, but the teacher remained cautiously and infuriatingly mute.

Though its windows were pointed away from the sun and let only indirect light inside, the interior of the church was an oven. There were more people in the pews, more people praying than ever before, many with plaster-covered hands, working on piñatas of various sizes and shapes; each was a colourful reminder of all the children Noah had not seen, had not held in so long. Each was a painful memory of what he had lost. He wondered about Rachel, about how she was, about whether what she’d said was true, but the thought was interrupted by the sight of the woman kneeling before the church’s towering black altar.

Her auburn hair was pinned back, but wisps of it fell over her apple face. Lines had been carved where he had never seen them, and dressed in meagre clothes she bore little resemblance to the woman he’d known. But the way she hung her head, the awkward turn of her nose, made it all too clear who she was. He would never forget her. Not the woman who had stolen his son from him.

“Sonia!”

Everyone stopped to look at him. A hundred eyes all staring. All eyes but two. Those remained transfixed on the altar.

“Sonia! Where is he? Where is Eli?”

The kneeling woman did not answer, did not turn. A shadow from the door spread across the room, and Noah saw Manillo standing there, filling the frame. The priest slowly wiped his hands on the cloth hanging from his belt. The church shrank to half its size. Muñoz stepped back, but Noah did not. He would not back down until he found Eli. He had come too far, travelled too long.

“Sonia! Where?”

The crowd became agitated as Noah’s anger intensified. Manillo took a few steps forward, and Noah glared at him in warning. Manillo paused, but the smirk on his face was disconcerting. The shirtless old man looked more than capable of snapping Noah in two. Nevertheless, Noah carried on undeterred, his voice increasing in volume with every step he took toward his ex-wife.

“Sonia!”

She stood slowly as he stalked toward her, and her expression looked both irritated and bored.

“Hello, Noah.”

He was momentarily startled. Her eyes—her eyes were bloodshot and circled with red, as though she’d been crying, but it was clear she hadn’t. It had only been a few years, but the changes were immense. She’d been beaten by the sun until her face creased, and by something else that had bruised her across the side of her body.

“What are they doing to you here? Are they keeping you here? Are they keeping Eli here?”

“Of course not. Nobody’s being ‘kept’ anywhere. I need you to calm down. I have to talk to you.”

“Calm down? Calm down? You kidnap my son from me, take him to another country where you hide in case I come looking, and when after three years I find you, all you can tell me to do is ‘calm down’? I ought to—” Flustered, the anger welled up inside of him, like a geyser of flame waiting to erupt. His muscles twitched; he was desperate to throttle her, but before he could act Manillo was there, chest glistening with sweat, jaw set with concrete. He stared into Noah’s eyes until the younger man grudgingly backed down.

Noah sighed.

“I just want to know where Eli is, Sonia. I just want to take him home. He has no place here.”

Sonia sat in an empty pew, pushing aside a crude elephant-shaped piñata, and looked down at her plastered and wrinkled hands. Noah felt a twinge of confusion, then he saw the flicker of a smile. It re-ignited his rage, but Manillo would not tolerate it.

“If you cannot control your emotions, Noah,” he said, “I will have to control them. You are a guest under this roof. Act that way.”

Noah did not care.

“I want Eli. I want to know where he is right now.”

“He’s fine. He’s safe. Ask his teacher.”

Noah looked at Muñoz, but the man would not lift his head to meet the gaze. He seemed smaller than before.

“You see, Noah,” Manillo said, resting a burning hand on the back of Noah’s neck that couldn’t be shaken, “Eli’s fine. You can calm down.”

“Yes, calm down, Noah,” Sonia said, a hint of mockery so slight Noah suspected only he could notice. “There’s nothing wrong with Eli. He likes it down here.”

“I don’t care if he likes it or not. He shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have taken him. He doesn’t belong to you.”

“He’s a boy, Noah; not a car. He doesn’t belong to anyone.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Do I?” She glanced at Muñoz. “Haven’t you even wondered why, Noah?”

“Why what? You took my son? No, I just want him back.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Make me understand.”

She looked at Manillo, who only nodded in response. Then the priest put his sweating hand on Noah’s shoulder and glared at him. The message was clear.

“Muñoz,” he barked at the shrinking teacher. “Venga conmigo.“

The two men retreated, leaving Noah and his ex-wife alone. The rest of the spectators resumed their crafts.

Sonia’s head was in her hands, the greasy wisps of hair falling over her unwashed arms. She did not seem capable of being awake, let alone taking care of their son.

“After we—after the divorce, I can’t explain to you how lost I felt. I was doing what I could to keep up appearances, but inside I was broken. I think if I’m being fair, I was always broken; you just had the bad luck to come across me when I was hiding it better. There’s always been something missing, some piece of me left empty, unfilled. I’ve always felt hollow, but I’d been that way for so long I thought that was how everybody felt. Do you feel that way, Noah? Do you feel hollow?”

“I can’t say I do.”

She looked up at him, her sunken eyes bloodshot and pleading. He’d never seen her like that before; it unnerved him. “Seriously. Think about it. Don’t you feel like something is missing?”

“I do, Sonia. I’ve felt it ever since you took Eli from me.”

She looked down again with what he hoped was a grimace, but might have been something worse.

“I had to take him. You won’t understand.”

“Probably not.”

She stood and paced, rubbing her hands along the legs of her jeans. She moved back and forth between pews, fidgeting with one of the large papier-mâché creatures that were perched on them. She tenderly ran her fingers across the coloured tissue paper.

“I needed something to fill the hole, Noah, and I found it, of all places, in the Coniston Public Library. Or at least in the newspapers there. It was a tiny article, no bigger than a column, and it laid out the plight of the Tletliztlii and their worship of Ometéotlitztl. Something about it spoke to me. Maybe because of the way they described the country, vast but lonesome, or maybe I just felt the need to fill the hole with experience. Anything to recharge my battery. By that point, there was nothing left for me anywhere.”

“And some cult saying God was born from the other Mexican gods was the best place for you?”

“It’s not a cult, Noah. And who told you about the child?”

“Your friend Father Manillo did. If he’s even a priest.”

“Oh, he is. But he didn’t tell you the whole story.

“Even if I understood why you’d want to join a cult—”

“I told you: it’s not a cult.”

“Even if I understood why,” he continued, “I don’t understand why you’d want to steal Eli from me, too. Why did you have to take him? What good could have come from that, other than to hurt me?”

She put her hand on his, and though his skin instinctively curled away from her touch, he did not move.

“Noah,” she said. “I didn’t want to hurt you. Honestly, you didn’t cross my mind at all.”

Noah felt the baking heat multiplied tenfold across his skin, igniting the fire in his brain. He thought he might burst into flame. Manillo’s warnings echoed in his clouded mind, the only thing keeping him from unleashing his fury. That, and the number of Tletliztlii around him and Sonia.

“There was something about the Tletliztlii that spoke to me as soon as I read about it. People from all walks of life came on a pilgrimage, all needing to fill the hole in their lives. Ometéotlitztl offered something nothing else did. Ometéot-litztl offered fire. But when I got here I realised it was much more than that. So much more. I don’t know if I can explain it. I don’t know how to make you understand what my sisters and brothers and I understand. I came down to Mexico an empty shell and found myself transformed by what filled me. I’m so much more than I once was. I like this feeling, Noah. I want to keep hold of it.”

“What about Eli?”

“What about him? I’ve always felt a strange connection to him. Not like mother and child but something else. I can’t explain, and he’s too young to do it for me, but Eli and I have a relationship that is built on different foundations. This is one of the things I realised while I waited for my life to begin again, and I wondered what that made me. Was I some sort of a monster?”

“You don’t want me to answer that.”

Sonia let go of his hand and paced again, lightly stroking the animal effigy. Noah watched closely for signs of the woman he’d once known, once been married to and shared a child with. But it wasn’t her. It wasn’t who he remembered. This woman, this person in the shape of Sonia, was a stranger, and he did not understand her. He could not predict her. She had his son hidden somewhere, and Noah knew then that Rachel was right: she would never tell him where.

“You can keep your crazy cult for all I care. I just want our son back.”

“Noah, you don’t understand anything. You’ve never understood anything. That’s always been your problem. You move without thinking about what you’re doing, about who you’re hurting. You’re like a blind bull, and I hate to tell you this but you can’t always get what you want.”

“Where is he?” He was becoming more agitated, his head spinning on his shoulders. “Where’s that fucking Manillo gone?”

“Noah, stop it. Look at me.”

“I want Eli. I need him and I’m not leaving without him. Nobody is kidnapping my son!”

“I told you: he’s not kidnapped. Everything is fine. Eli needs to stay here with me. I need him more than you ever could.”

But Noah was not listening. His fists clenched in rage, he screamed for Manillo to show his face. All the Tletliztlii were watching, and they started to laugh, and their laughter only further fuelled his anger. He grabbed Sonia by the wrist hard so she could not struggle away and jerked her close. Her breath was foetid but barely registered through his bloody haze.

“You could never need him as much as I do. Take me to him now, or—”

“Or what? What are you going to do? Besides turn around and leave? Save yourself: Get the fuck out of here and take care of the other Eli you have on the way.”

Noah stood and punched one of the misshapen piñatas with all his strength, breaking it in half.

“I don’t want another Eli. I want mine!”

“You can’t have him,” she said. Laughing.

Noah’s brain shut down, unable to comprehend what Sonia was saying, what she was doing, how far he had travelled only to be blocked by a wall of insanity. He heard the crying of children filling his mind, even though he knew their voices couldn’t be real. But the cries only grew, intensified, bursting his skull amid Sonia’s mocking laughter. He squeezed her wrist tighter, squeezed his eyes shut tighter still, trying to surface in the tidal wave of anger flooding over him. He was drowning in it, deaf and blind and dumb and full of hatred. He opened his eyes long enough to see Manillo had returned, and his enormous fist was travelling straight at Noah’s face.

Noah remembered little after that. Just an endless series of fists and feet raining down on his crumpled body.

“Where’s Eli?” he tried to spit out, but the blood in his mouth choked him, and he could barely emit a gurgling cough. “Oh, God,” he cried, and Sonia laughed even harder.

“You stupid man. Don’t you get it? There is no child of a hundred gods. He was aborted; never born. There is no God.”

She then spat on him and kicked him hard in the face. He felt the clammy lithe arms of unconsciousness grab hold of him from the cold darkness below, and they pulled him close into her waiting bosom.

V. This Blasted Heath

Noah and Eli lay on the soft green grass, staring up at the clouds slowly moving across a picture-perfect sky.

“See that one? That’s a horse, Eli. What sound do horsies make?”

Eli brayed, then laughed uproariously. Noah laughed too, the feeling of his son’s body wriggling against him filling him with never-ending bliss. Noah couldn’t remember how long they’d been lying there—it seemed like forever—but he never wanted it to end. Couldn’t imagine the world any better.

“Are you two going to goof off in the grass all day?”

Noah rolled over and looked up at Rachel sitting on her wooden chair. She wore a deep, knowing smile and had one hand over the edge of the crib beside her, the other wrapped around her full belly. She sat in the afternoon light, the nursery around her so bright he wondered if he should draw the blinds.

“We’re seeing animals playing in the air!” Eli shouted, then cackled at his own antics. Rachel smiled too, then gently shushed him.

“You’re going to wake the baby, Eli.”

He laughed again.

“You don’t want to do that, do you?”

Only laughter. Noah grabbed the boy around the waist and threw him into the air.

“Of course you don’t. That’s my favourite boy. That’s my favourite Eli.”

Then they both laughed, both rolled on the green grass, and Noah could smell it on them like the smell of summer, and knew that if he kept rolling nothing would ever change.

But there was a noise, the sound of a tree branch breaking. Noah put Eli down and looked at the beach but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Just Sonia walking along the shore, holding the hand of a small child he knew looked familiar, but could not place.

The park around them was crowded with people, all standing on the grass barefooted, all staring up at the sky. Some wore old clothes, worn away to almost nothing, while others were dressed in suits and evening dresses. All stared up at the clouds expectantly.

“They must be looking for the horsies too,” Noah said, but when he turned he found Eli had vanished. Noah’s smile faded. “Eli?” he called, looking for someone who might have his son. But no one would look at him. They each held a small child by the hands, all staring upward. Noah cast a glance too, long enough to see that the white clouds were moving past so swiftly he barely recognised their shapes.

“Eli, where are you?” he called out.

More people crowded the beach, packed to its edges, some up to their knees in water, and when he called out Eli’s name they gathered around him, all holding a small faceless child by the hands, cutting him off.

“Eli!” he screamed, squeezing his way through the throng of immovable bodies. Through gaps he saw Sonia in the distance, wispy auburn air fluttering as she led a small boy by the hand, a small curly-haired boy dressed in his favourite green cap and blue Oshkoshbigosh overalls. Somewhere behind Noah was the sound of Rachel crying, the crackling sound of paper being crumpled, and a heat that blanketed everything, charring bodies and the ground to deep black ash. Noah was thrown forward by the wave, landing in the darkened nursery. Rachel had gone, the crib was empty, the shelves with nothing left. There was just a window, a large rectangle framing the blasted heath beyond. The sky was a deep blue, the air so clear he could make out every detail of the world beyond in excruciating detail. Insects creeping, rodents scurrying, grains of sand blowing though mounds of ash, and in the distance speeding toward him at an impossible rate was a column of black flame, stretching from the ground upward into oblivion. The dervish spun and spun, consuming everything in its path. And it was aiming straight toward the house Noah was hiding within. But where was Eli? A mewling sound behind him, coming from the crib, and Noah felt the joy of relief. He turned around and put his hands into the crib, so full of shadows it was like putting his hands into a well of tar. He felt something squirm in his grip, resist him, but he struggled to get Eli free. A small body broke the surface, covered in paper and shaped like some amorphous, brightly coloured animal. It mewed again, staring upward with painted-on eyes before catching fire and burning to cinders in Noah’s quivering hands.

Noah’s swollen eyelids did not part easily, and when they finally did he wished they hadn’t. The fluorescent lights were harsh and they stung, and he turned his head from them to see where he was. Somehow he had made it back to the doctor’s house, though he had no clear recollection of how or why. His half-memories were of manic and leering faces, all laughing at him. He tried to lift a hand, but it felt weighted down, and it wasn’t until he gathered enough strength to move his head that he realised why. His arm, from elbow down, was wrapped with thick plaster and bandages.

The air was sour with sweat and ash, and his entire body felt overrun by a dull aching pain. He called for help, but his shrivelled tongue prevented anything more than a choked grunt and cough. His chest exploded in pain.

Noah slowly pulled himself up to sit, resting every few inches to rediscover his equilibrium and slow the shards of pain that sank deeper with each jarring movement. He began to remember what happened and everything that had come before. He only felt sicker.

It took work, but he managed to get his legs over the side of the bed, and after a few minutes more to get to his feet. Every inch ached from his ordeal, but beyond the broken arm and his taped-up chest he seemed to be intact. His bloodied clothes were draped over an empty chair, and as slowly as he could he slipped into them. In the far corner of the room, hidden from sight until he was able to stand, was a crudely made piñata, left there by some previous patient. It looked up at him with its mismatched eyes, as though it judged him for all that had transpired. He had to find Rachel. He had lost Eli, probably forever, and couldn’t face losing her as well.

His shuffling echoed in the short corridor. The nurse was nowhere to be found, but he dimly remembered which was Rachel’s room and stumbled down the empty hall toward it, tears blurring his vision, heavy breathing making his ribs ache. He had nothing left without her, and as he found her room he starting apologising before he even entered.

There was no trace of her, nor of their unborn child, just as she promised. The bed was made and room straightened, and the odour of disinfectant still hung strong. Noah sat on the visitor’s chair, exhausted, dumbfounded, staring at the empty bed. Beneath it he saw something the cleaners had missed, something small and colourful that had rolled under the bed after Rachel had ricocheted it off Noah’s temple. He raised his good hand to his brow and could still feel the bruise. The pain felt good because it felt different, because it wasn’t the pain that was going to tear him in two.

Astilla de la Cruz met Noah with creeping daylight and an unbearable heat that glued his clothes to his flesh. He felt vile and dizzy, and wondered if he had suffered a concussion in the assault. The broken church loomed like a vengeful spirit, and those few houses he saw along the street he hoped would lead him back to the hotel. Each window was dim, haloed by the wavering burning air, and as he slowly passed curtains were quickly drawn closed. Yet the rest of the houses seemed vacant, large paper creatures hanging from windows or sitting in the dirt outside the doors, dead eyes watching as no one walked by. The odour of something burning wafted through the air, a greasy smell not unlike grilled pork; it could have been coming from anywhere.

The bleeding had stopped, at least. He coughed, choking on the mucus that had flowed back from his nose before spitting it onto the dirt road. He felt so alone without Rachel beside him. Perhaps she was right: maybe he should never have gone after Eli. It had only made things worse. He’d waited so long to be with his son, sacrificed so much of himself, of his life, dreaming of the day they’d be reunited, that the realisation he might never see the boy again was devastating. His body revolted at the thought, releasing in a flood all the unbearable emotion he’d pent-up or plastered over. He dropped to his knees in the middle of the street and wept for the years of loss and hopelessness he could see laid out before him. Each hitch of his body brought a new throb of pain from his taped ribcage, but it barely registered through his grief. He’d lost everything he’d built of his new life, sacrificed on the altar of his old, and those arms he’d held wide for so long would never be filled, but neither would they ever close.

When he reached the hotel, he was a mess. Covered head to toe in dirty bandages, his clothes ripped and bloodied—had Señora Alvarez still been there, she would likely have called the police. But she wasn’t there. No one was. No one but another gaudy piñata, silently watching him hobble.

With some awkwardness, he was able to retrieve his key and open the door to his hotel room. When he saw the empty hangers and missing suitcase he understood the futility of the hope he’d been harbouring—Rachel had gone to Sarnia without him. What little remained of his strength dwindled, and he dropped onto the bed where springs stuck him as penance. From his pocket he removed the article he had been carrying with him so long and unfolded it. He stared at the blurry photograph of Sonia, of the heath, of everything he had tried and failed to rescue. Noah had come so far to find the piece of himself that was missing, and instead the rest of him fell apart, scattering those pieces far and wide with no hope of gluing them back together. He stared at the worn article and wondered why it should be any different, why it should be spared the same fate. He had done everything he could, and there was only one thing left unfinished. Noah took the article in both hands and tore it to shreds. He let the fragments rain down around him.

He hadn’t noticed the sound at first, his head still ringing from despair, but as it cleared the scraping of burning wind against brick faded, uncovering the hush of a mumbling crowd moving through the blistering heat. Noah squinted out the window into the distance and saw flickering light dotting the gentle slope toward the blasted heath. That was where the entire town had gone, or at least those not cowering in their ramshackle homes. They went to celebrate with Sonia and her cult of kidnappers. As if on cue, a streamer of yellow tissue paper drifted across the street, and he heard a woman’s distant careless laughter.

The ground was not easy to cover by foot, even in the growing daylight, but Noah had no car, nor was Manillo’s truck at the church when he passed. Dirt was hardened to rock, cracked with fissures that gaped like a series of ever-widening mouths, each hungry for him to step inside. Thirst came upon him slyly, and it wasn’t until he had travelled far beyond the village’s outskirts that he realised how dangerous a trek he had embarked upon. The sound of rattlesnakes thundered in Noah’s ears so close he tensed for a strike. But his eyes did not deviate from where the ruins should be. He trailed the lights ahead of him as best he could, but they moved quicker than his injured legs could manage, and the ground radiated heat like burning coal. It did not take long before he was left behind, alone under a baking sun that bore down on his unprotected body.

Had he not known where they were headed, Noah might have lost them forever, but he never questioned that the heath was their destination. Manillo had spoken so lovingly of the site that it could only have come from someone who knew it well. As well as any of the Tletliztlii, if not better. Noah wondered how long Manillo had been leading the movement, if he had always been one of them or had been turned from God once he arrived. The church had been desecrated by their cult worship, yet no one from the archdiocese had intervened. Or, at least, Noah hoped. The alternative—that the agents had been murdered to keep the Tletliztlii’s secret—was one revelation too many for him. He knew he would have to tread carefully, far more so than he had previously.

He crept closer to the ruins, and as he did so he slowed, moving as quietly as his injuries allowed. He didn’t know what he was going to encounter further up the increasing slope—there was virtually no noise on the heath except the crackle of flames and the howl of wind around the stone ruins. Noah crawled the last few feet to the brush that surrounded the site, wanting to keep from being spotted. He wiped the sweat from his eyes and lay still on his back, dehydrated, trying to preserve his energy and formulate a plan. From his hidden vantage-point, he hoped to spot Eli once the Tletliztlii appeared and determine how best to liberate the boy from his captors. Rachel was wrong: There was no way Eli would be better off with Sonia, not while she was under the spell of that unholy cult. Noah had sworn a vow to protect his son at all costs, and would not fail again. No matter how much everything else in his life was falling apart, he would not fail again.

Noah lay still, listening for any sound that might give him an idea of what was happening. He knew he eventually had to look over the brush, if only to determine what might be waiting on the rocky heath, but he was terrified. If one of the Tletliztlii were to see him, the game would be up, and he doubted he could survive another beating. But he also knew he had no choice. Slowly he rolled onto his side, wincing as his weight rested on his broken ribs, and, getting his good hand underneath him to push upwards, he raised his head to peek over the brush. He meant to look only for an instant, but was unprepared for the bizarre spectacle that awaited him. Instead of ducking down, he simply stared, trying desperately to will the landscape to make sense.

Nothing of the heath’s structure had changed, and yet when it finally came into view it was unmistakably altered. The ground was still baked, the brick surfaces cracked and brittle, and the petrified tree in the rent stone tableau at its centre seemed no more or less insubstantial than ever, but instead of the bare rock that once surrounded the tree, Noah saw a series of small figurines left on the ridges of the altar openings, each staring back at the centre of the heath. But what startled Noah most was what encircled the petrified tree and spiralled in a hazy pattern outward—a sight he would not have imagined was real had he not witnessed it. Around the tree, their sizes ranging up to a few feet wide, was an ever-tightening arc of piñatas. They stood, backs to him, all different shapes and sizes and colours. But they shared the same plastered appearance and the same lifeless eyes, and all were pointed toward the petrified tree that stood like a priest on a pulpit.

Eli had to be hidden somewhere close, but Noah saw no sign of him, no proof the boy was there at all. His heart sank, but he forced himself to ignore it. It was his own fear of failure trying to control him. Eli was there. He had to be. And yet the voice in his head remained. What proof did he have that Eli was in Astilla de la Cruz? A painting? The words of a teacher, a priest, and an ex-wife, all of whom had betrayed him? Noah had been driven on faith and nothing else, and that blinding faith had cost him Rachel and his unborn child. There was something else, though, that bothered him. Something not just about Eli, but about the children of Astilla de la Cruz as well. Had he seen sign of any of them since arriving at the village? He tried to recall, but his swimming head made it difficult to think. He ran through all the faces he could remember—Señora Alvarez, the waiter at the cantina, the station agent. Each was older than the last. He recalled the broken stroller, the crying women, the empty swings. All asking questions he didn’t want to think about. How could they all be at the heath, hidden behind those stone ruins? He scratched his head and felt the blisters on his scalp. The world slowly rocked back and forth, and it took more concentration than he could muster to keep it all in focus under the blinding light of day.

Tiny squares of tissue paper wrapped the piñatas, and the sight of them fluttering in the waves of heat compounded the surreality of the situation, giving the plaster effigies the appearance of taking breath, but it was clear from Noah’s perch that it was a trick of the light. Still, he could not shake the feeling something was wrong with them, something beyond their painted, dead-eyed stare, past that crooked tree they were facing. They were like sheep, row upon row of them, all black-eyed and still, making no noise beyond the rustle of coloured paper. The sight evoked an ever-deepening dread in Noah. It silenced all sound on the blasted heath, stole so much noise from the air that Noah could not hear the sound of his own breathing. There was nothing but silence; it buzzed and burned inside his head so intensely he thought he might cry out. The only thing that stopped him was the sight of shadows moving at the entrance to the ruins.

At first, he mistook the distant thumping in his ears for the beating of his own heart, blood rushing faster as Noah stared at the scene wavering before him. Then that single muted sound intensified, came closer, and what once was background slid to the forefront of his consciousness. It was the sound of a hidden drum being beaten, old leather thwopping deep and hollow. It echoed in his head, vibrated the broken bones beneath his plaster cast, shook loose clots and stitches and ushered in near-unbearable pain. The drum was everywhere, crashing in on him, stretching the world outward from that blasted heath, from that petrified tree, from that circle of pseudo-idols, blurring it further until there was nothing left beneath the rising sun but the barren hell before him.

Noah stared, mesmerised by the radiating vision. It shimmered in the boiling sun, slowly losing cohesion, and the world slipped from one reality into another. The rocky heath took on a foreign aspect he did not recognise, some alien world of ancient creatures, clumsily moving through endless and boundless time. There was no heath, no rocky ground, but a vast barren plane that occupied numerous worlds simultaneously, one stepping-stone to many, a portal both spatial and temporal. It induced dizziness and nausea, compounded by the motion he detected in the distortion, shades of the past and future cohabiting a space that was and always would be dead deep below its surface. A place of endless nothing. He tried to wipe away the sweat that drenched his face, but his broken limb was leaden, anchored by its immovable weight.

The visions that played out before him seemed no more real than a dream. He watched hazily from between branches of the scrub, entranced by the vibration of the heath before him, the pulse of the earth, giant and consuming, fighting to maintain some hold on what he knew. He gritted his teeth, struggling to ground himself in the present, and when that failed he used his own wounds against the vision, struck his arm against the ground until the razor-sharp pain focused him icily, righted the world, and threw closed doors that should never have been opened.

And in that clarity he saw what the visions had attempted to hide from him, what he was never meant to see. From between the branches of the scrub he witnessed the spectre of his nightmares made flesh, loping across the baked rock. Father Manillo’s bald pate was unmistakable, his thick barrel body obscured by the dried and cracked grey mud that coated his naked form. Bare feet moved in time with the ever-present drum, and Noah could not help but wonder if it was they that were the source of the excruciating noise.

Manillo, though, was only the first of the desecrated men and women to appear. Close behind, an overweight and stocky man followed, his face obscured by a painted mask that revealed yellowed eyes sharp and narrow. The man’s stomach protruded, blissfully hiding his member beneath rolls of stretched skin, but he used his girth to dance in a series of graceless jerks that never once drew Manillo’s attention. And from behind the overweight man more figures emerged, figures of all shapes and sizes, all naked and all chanting the hypnotic rhythm that throbbed from the ground, from that empty space beneath the petrified tree. Mud-smeared grey figures, cracked and dry, continued to dance forward, navigating through the crowd of vibrating plaster animals with reverent care, silently drawing life from what occurred before the rows of dead painted eyes.

The endless beating of the tired calloused feet continued, pounding out an appeasement to their half-dreamed Ometéotlitztl, and accompanying the sound were those faint notes of a pipe, reverberating off the stone walls, calling out with arms held wide. Their singing was like no song Noah had ever heard. The language was impenetrable—grunts and clicks as if Nature herself were in revolt, throwing off her suffocating yoke. Still more figures spilled forth from the ruins, multiplying in the burning height of day, each one solidifying into a grey, mud-covered mockery of humanity. But none were shaped like children. None were his Eli.

The discordant music elicited an orgiastic fury from the Tletliztlii, their cracked flesh drumming the world into submission. Every note, every image served to further dwindle Noah’s rationality until he doubted the truth of what he witnessed. All his anchors were gone, abandoning him when he needed them most, leaving him to stare at events his sun-stroked mind could not fathom. Nothing on the heath could be trusted. Nothing on the heath could be real. There were familiar screams, but in the chaos of impossible events they retreated into moorless oblivion. A scattering of ashes, motes of dark dust, filled the air. Lifeless, shapeless piñatas vibrated, painted-on faces distorted by the blaze. Fire raged white and pure inside his skull, and yet Noah felt the cold fear of being trapped in an elaborate Goldbergian web of events. He sweated profusely as before his eyes the twisted figures danced harder, faster, and from within their multiplying childless numbers the terrified screaming resurfaced, demanding his flailing attention. It was a voice he knew frighteningly well.

Rachel was as naked as the mob that dragged her struggling from the ruins, her body covered in streaks of coloured paint radiating from her swollen pregnancy, and they held her high above their heads. Noah opened his mouth wide, but nothing emerged, all sound lost somewhere inside his dried throat. He was trapped in an ever-worsening nightmare, far beyond his breaking point, and yet could do nothing but watch the woman he loved, the mother of his unborn child, as she was carried across the baked earth and placed onto that cloven altar the petrified tree loomed over. Noah stared impotently as Muñoz appeared, covered in the same cracked grey mud, and bound Rachel’s hands over and over with thick loops of rope. The chanting of the others grew louder as Muñoz wrapped the rope between Rachel’s arms and pulled so tight her hands slammed together. He then threw the other over the worn branch of the petrified tree where other muddy hands waited to receive it, clamouring for a grip. Noah tried to will himself to stand, to scream for help, to do anything to disrupt the nightmare that was unfolding, but his paralysis held firm, the drone of the plaster creatures overpowering him. With a sudden jerk of the rope by the dancing Tletliztlii, Rachel was hoisted violently from the ground to hang from the branch of the tree, her mouth contorted in a drawn-out scream that Noah could not hear. Rachel’s legs kicked and thrashed, her round belly thrust forward by the angle, and Noah wanted to call out to her, but his bruised and broken body would not comply. Even his tears dried before they emerged. He was held fast to the spot, rooted by ineffectuality and torment.

The village danced in chaotic ecstasy to the tribal rhythms and Rachel’s feeble kicking, while around them the rows of plaster piñatas continued to vibrate from the pounding of so many villagers shaking the rocky terrain. Noah felt it slipping up into his body as he lay powerlessly immobile. Each of those dead-eyed creatures stared at the proceedings, and in his sun-baked delirium Noah wished they would act, do what he could not and stop the horror. But though the piñatas shook, they took no action, not even when, from the depths of the crowd, a lone muddy figure appeared. She moved differently from the others, her limbs flailing as though in the throes of deep spasm, as though the stifling heat was consuming her from within. From beneath the tangles of mud-caked auburn hair her face flashed, revealing a darkly painted countenance blacker than was possible. And yet, within that empty void two bright eyes burned; he did not have to see them to know their owner. His battered body bucked with the strange sensation running its length, crawling into his pelvis, shrinking him in terror. “No,” he rasped as Sonia’s darting hand grabbed hold of Rachel’s face and smeared the coloured paint into chaos, her fingers leaving wet black streaks in their wake. Then Sonia stretched her head back and screamed a word into the black night, a word that echoed across the heath, a word that seemed to fracture the very air. It was a word so large Noah’s mind could not comprehend it. Tears finally erupted from his eyes as though to cleanse them of the unholy blasphemies they had witnessed, but did nothing more than streak his dusty face. Sonia raised her arms toward the orb burning above and for an instant it went dark, became its antithesis, a solid ball of pure emptiness, of burning space and countless overlapping aeons. The sun burned bright, burned black, and the sound itself was like thunder rolling across the heavens. Then a glint from Sonia’s upheld hands filled the sky, bursting through walls and shores like an exploding sun, and from that flash her arms emerged, swinging down in a purposed arc, one hand over the other, so swiftly Noah did not know where they had gone until Rachel’s swollen belly burst open, blood and flesh spraying, the grue of his unborn child tumbling forth soundlessly to die on the heat of the ancient pedestal.

Noah found his voice then, but it was too late. And had been before he and Rachel and their unborn child arrived in Astilla de la Cruz. Before Eli had been taken, before Sonia saw any articles. The series stretched back further, each piece, each cog, tumbling in time, lined up one before the other. So far back, there was no beginning, simply causality stretching back into something else, something so distant that were Noah to scream forever the sound of the last dregs of his sanity would never reach it. Instead, they would spew into the æther until his body was burned clean through. But even the sound of his shattered sanity was eclipsed by what followed.

The rock of the blasted heath raised a foot beneath Rachel’s lifeless swinging legs, a jump that shifted the earth beneath so many. The villagers stopped, the drumming ceased, and all were mesmerised by the stained altar. Even Noah, to whom words and noise had recently returned, stared dumbly at the wet mass covering the stone, at what remained of his unborn child and at the petrified tree growing impossibly from rock. The sense in the air dragged down on the world, blanketed everything in oppressive dread, and the group of villagers and their offering of piñatas could do nothing but watch as the distant thunder grew louder. And louder. And louder still. Then, with no warning, a deafening crack. As loud as the world at its end. Everything shook, the Tletliztlii stumbling over themselves in confusion, some dropping to their hands and knees as everything became unstable. The altar fell to thousands of pieces, Noah’s unborn child consumed instantly by the fissure that grew down the middle of the heath, wrenching the earth apart with a horrible sound. The petrified tree tottered, its weight too much for the crumbling, receding earth, and it too fell forward into the widening chasm, the remnants of Rachel’s empty body tumbling alongside. The Tletliztlii stumbled over one another as stable ground collapsed, some swallowed into its depths without a sound.

The rows of piñatas danced on the vibrations, their twisted faces smirking at the destruction. Sonia staggered across the baked uneven ground, screaming incoherently at the sky, covered in Rachel’s blood. Her eyes were wide, crazed, confused by the chaos around her. Other Tletliztlii bumped into her in their mad scramble to escape, but one by one the collapsing ground took them—took Muñoz and Manillo and all the rest—until only Sonia remained. Sonia, and those endless rows of misshapen piñatas. She looked around, desperate for help, but no one was there. No one but Noah, who remained hidden. She stumbled, looking for somewhere safe she could step, and as her eyes scanned the crumbling landscape he froze, convinced she had spotted him in the midst of the brush staring at her. If their eyes locked, it was only for the fraction of a second before the ground beneath her feet wrenched open and swallowed her whole.

Noah’s head continued to swim, faster and faster. Had what he witnessed been real, or had the horror and the heat finally broken him, filling his sight with the impossible? The rocky ground could not be yawning wide, swallowing chunks of the barren heath into its endless void. The ruins could not be crumbling, not after so many years of standing, crushing anything that still remained—everything but those piñatas. Those plaster abominations that shook and rattled but did not fall, not one of them into the ever-widening crack into the centre of the world. Instead, they served as silent, multicoloured witnesses to what Noah had to endure. He wondered how any of it was possible, any of the death and destruction that lay before him on the thundering ground, and for the briefest instant he felt hope. Perhaps he was mad. Perhaps nothing was real, and Rachel and Eli were somewhere else, somewhere far away from the boiling destruction, from the ground bubbling up, throwing rocks outward. Perhaps they were on that beach, relaxing and looking at the animals in the soft clouds. Noah looked up and saw nothing in the sky but a sole burning orb in endless blankness; the only animals left on the ground twisted, ugly and dead inside.

Noah’s entire body was racked with pain, but as rocks rained down around him he knew he had to escape. He slid his legs to the side, then under him, enough to push himself back up. Exploding lights filled his eyes as he felt the knives of his bones slicing into his insides, but he managed to stand on a pair of unsteady legs. Stand and survey the end of everything before him.

The plaster effigies were vibrating so quickly on the quaking earth that they appeared as blurs, so insubstantial as to no longer be part of the world. Like ghosts, they hovered over the broken ground, and the sound they made was a strange-pitched and deafening howl. Deep black cracks formed across the piñatas, widening and deepening before Noah’s disbelieving eyes, and from those long black cracks dark ichor flowed. It bubbled out, slow and viscous, but instead of falling to the rutted ground it moved unnaturally upward, up and across the plaster backs of the faux animals, and Noah realised it was not blood or liquid that he saw but fire. The piñatas were burning. But the flames were as black as night. They grew higher, burning clean everything they touched, destroying any life that still remained on that rocky barren heath. The brush that surrounded it lit as well, Noah’s hiding spot quickly becoming an inferno, further obscuring his vision.

The flames grew higher, enveloping the entire heath, and in the centre of it the deep chasm that had swallowed so many spewed something back to the above world, the world of living. It was small, the size of an orange, burnt black and still afire. The flames, those black burning flames, had destroyed everything to bring it life, and as the cold fire grew so did it. First it doubled its size, then doubled again, growing exponentially before Noah’s fracturing psyche. It grew and metamorphosed as the black fire that enveloped it burned—arms that became a pair of writhing serpents, an encephalitic head perched precariously on sloped shoulders. Along its newly formed ebony back, curved spines jutted in odd patterns, each alight with burning phosphorescence. But its eyes were the most horrifying of all. Deep pits of nothing, they scoured the blasted heath that was its nursery, blind to all the horrors that had transgressed, and as that giant misshapen skull panned toward Noah those two deep wastes stayed. Though the fire burned unfettered, uncontrolled, Noah’s being became ice and he averted his gaze in pain.

There was a wrenching sound then, and the thing bellowed an indescribable noise that echoed across the empty wasteland. It lifted one of its many bent legs out from deep within the earth—a pillar of black fire that filled the sky with the dark storm of night, a storm that lasted forever—and stepped over its father below and into the blistering day. Each footfall struck the ground with the force of the heavens, the first laying waste to the circle of piñatas that had acted as its host. Small bones spilled forth, some very old and some very fresh, many generations of bones all kept, all hoarded for one particular day, one particular set of events, bones no bigger than a child’s. Seeds for the rebirth of an aborted god brought forth to reclaim the future it had lost. And to deliver unto all everything it had promised.

But Noah would know none of it, trapped as he was in the prison of his broken mind. Eli was there, smiling, laughing, dancing in circles around the edges of the world while Noah desperately tried to catch him before the boy was lost forever.