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 apologizing before he even entered.
There was no trace of her, nor of their unborn child, just as she promised. The bed was made and the room straightened, and the odor 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 colorful 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 odor 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 realization 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 harboring—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 realized 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 more quickly 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 center 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 center of the heath. But what startled Noah most was what encircled the petrified tree and spiraled 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 colors. 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 colored 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, mesmerized 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 recognize, 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 grit 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 specter 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 figures 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, men and women 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.