“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 apologize 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 rearview 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 center, 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 neighboring 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. The details are sketchy, but somehow he did something to his own wife, something horrible, because when she gave birth to their second son 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 demeanor. 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 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 mustache 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.