Kiss Of Evil

16

The dead live here.

The cauldron, the nganga, sits in the center of the room, a room decorated with black shag carpeting, black walls, black ceiling. Twelve feet by twelve feet. The sparse light from the half-dozen votive candles deployed in a loose six-foot circle seems to soak into the darkness like moon-silkened blood into virgin snow.

Outside, in the hallway, there are red and green lights strung along the crown molding; a pine-scented wreath between the elevators, just above the call buttons. In the lobby, there is a huge silver tree, ringed with multicolored lights and laden with dazzling ornaments.

In here, there are no lights. In here, it is always midnight. In here, it is a place called Matamoros, a place called El Mozote. In here it is My Lai. Srebenica. Amritsar. Phnom Penh. In here, in this undying darkness, the silence is interrupted only by the screams of the dead, cold and unavenged, their pleadings a brutal red sea at the bottom of my cauldron.

But the black room doesn’t hear them. The black room stores their pain, nurtures it.

I made the nganga, my first, from an old Charmglow gas grill I found on a tree lawn on Neff Road. I waited until the middle of the night to bring it up in the service elevator. If anyone had seen me, they most certainly would have wondered what I was going to do with a huge, dilapidated gas grill in an apartment building with no balconies.

No pets, no kids, no barbecues, the building super had told me when I scoped the Cain Towers apartments on Lee Road for the first time. Of the twenty or so apartments, it was hard to believe there wasn’t a cat, a kid, or an hibachi lurking in one of them, but these were the rules.

I sanded and painted the round, deep bowl, then emblazoned Ochosi onto its side. It now contains flesh. Flesh of this earth. Flesh that is rotting. It will only be a matter of time until the smells reach the hallway, the elevator.

I must act.

I squat next to the cauldron, sip the Metusalem rum laced with the very last of the Amanita muscaria, the rarest of magic mushroom. I will need more. I light the cigar and exhale smoke in a casual orbit around me. Smoke draws the gods. Smoke masks the overwhelming odors of human meat gone bad.

I inhale deeply, drawing strength from the ill-starred spirits in the nganga, filling my lungs, my being, with the power of such tormented flesh. The brain of a whore. The brain and hands of a seducer…

I close my eyes.

I am nkisi.

I begin to dream of Mexico as the amanita takes hold. I dream myself fourteen, standing nude, drenched in my own sweat, the sweat of others. I am in the room over Cedrica Malo’s bodega, waiting for the dry creak of the first step, the first of eighteen dry, wooden steps that will bring a watcher, a toucher, a torturer. The fan overhead turns slowly, barely molesting the air so thick with sour smells. There are soiled black silk sheets on the bed; gold-veined mirrors above.

Suddenly, the step cries out again, its aching back wondering how many more.

Yet I know that, outside, the hot Tijuana sun still sears the sidewalks, the streets, the very minds of the reprobates who come here. It is just afternoon. Hours to go.

So they come. Eighteen steps, turn to the left, one or two more steps. Push. There is no lock on the door to the room above Malo’s. One is not needed. The door opens and the noise intrudes quickly after, crashing inside me like a black gale; followed, always, by the hideous touching, by the fantasy of skulls caving in, razors carving flesh, throats, gurgling with contrition.

All the men who climb the stairs are big-fisted, like my dad.

All the women, rich and violent.

Because I am the grail. Fourteen years old, unlined, shoulders and hands like a man. I am the prize that Cedrica Malo offers in her lottery, the one it costs five hundred dollars to play, the one that will make us both rich.

Sometimes the lottery winners ask me to trade in pain. Sometimes, in sacrifice. But always I am bound to deal in pleasure, and to collect its many debts.

The black room swoons.

El brujo esta aqui.

The witch is here.

And I will look you in the eye and tell you I am an itinerant farm-worker from Culiacan, and you will believe me. I will tell you I operate a hot air balloon over Napa Valley, and you will believe me. I will tell you I am a baker from New Orleans, and you will believe me.

I will fuck you in your marriage bed, my workman’s fatigues around my ankles, while your husband fetches the mail.

The blood will flow, sweet and plenteous.

I will tell you that I love you.

The world will fall silent.

And you will believe me.