Name of the Devil (8 page)

“
D
O YOU KNOW
why they call it the Caves of the Dead?” asks Dr. Moya as he sloshes through knee-deep water. His body is just a short silhouette in the blue glow of his flashlight. Giant daggers of shadow slide across the walls as we pass stalactites stretching from the ceiling to the surface of the water. Moisture glistens their ragged edges making it feel like we're in a reptile's mouth.

“I thought it was just ‘cave' and not ‘caves'?” I protest as the cold water pours over my borrowed boots, soaking my socks.

“There are many Caves of the Dead here.” He points his light toward a dark passage. “Some of them are connected. Maybe all of them. But, back to my question.” Dr. Moya speaks perfect English. Educated in Mexico and the US, he's got that Socratic way of asking you questions instead of telling you things.

With Ailes, it's earnest. With Grandfather, it can be condescending. I think Moya is just being himself.

Apparently, my FBI badge didn't impress him. I'd asked him about the source of the psilocin variant we found. His answer was to take me into the cave to help collect his sample kits. With his research assistant filling in at a nearby school for the underprivileged, he drafted me as an able-bodied helper. If I wanted his assistance, I would have to climb down the thirty-foot ladder.

I admire his pragmatism.

“Is it the Caves of the Dead because of all the dead things they find down here?”

I can see Moya's cherubic smile in the shadows. “All caves have dead things. Every cave could be called the Cave of the Dead. Skeletons were piled as tall as you at the mouth of this one when we first found it. Jaguars, cattle, coyote, a hundred other animals that fell down the hole and died.”

“Didn't they find human remains in one near here?”

“
Si
. Where the church stands. The priests there took those bones and buried them nearby and renamed their cave “The Healing Cave.” A little girl said she saw the Virgin Mary bathing her feet there once, and people have been coming there ever since. The church does quite well by the traffic, you could imagine.

“But no. The Caves of the Dead are much older than that. The people who lived here before, the Yucatecan, used to come down into the caves when they needed advice. Not the kind you got from throwing chicken bones on the ground or eating peyote with the elders. The Caves of the Dead was a place for matters of war. A shaman would be chosen to make the journey. He wouldn't always make it back.”

“They'd get lost down here?”

“They'd lose their minds. The
Iluicatl michin
, as the ritual was called, was supposed to open a door. On the other side you could see the realm where the dead lived. If the Old Coyote was digging many graves above, then you knew they were about to be filled. Sometimes the Old Coyote didn't want the shaman to return and kept his mind down here. The man who came back had the same body, but was filled with the spirit of the trickster and did wicked things.”

“The trickster?” Black Nick had used that phrase.

“A native term for the devil. In primitive cultures good and evil weren't as black and white. Even the Greek and Roman gods were capricious.”

“What was this ceremony?”

Moya turns out his light. The cavern is completely dark, darker than black. “What do you see?”

It's cold and damp. For the briefest moment I'm afraid this man could try to cut me or do something that'll require a violent response on my part. “Nothing.”

“What do you hear?”

“Water dripping.”

“What else?”

There's a faint splash. “Just water.”

“Would you describe this cave as a living place or a dead place?”

“It feels somewhere between.”

“That's what they thought.” Moya flicks on his light, revealing a smile. “But to get to the other side, they needed the
Iluicatl michin
.”

“And what was that?”

“It's what you came here for. It's the source of the chemical you asked me about.”

“The paper you published didn't say where it came from specifically, just that you had isolated it from biological samples.”

“That was a precautionary measure.”

“For what?”

“Toads,” he replies.

“Toads? I didn't know they kept up-to-date on the latest scientific literature.”

Moya's boisterous laugh fills the cavern and continues to echo. Evidently he's been spending a lot of time by himself. He wipes away a tear. “I am sorry. I imagined a little toad reading
Nature
. When people found out you could get high by licking the skin of certain toads, young people and mental incompetents started doing this. I didn't say where I found this because I didn't want the same thing to happen. There are drug tourists who seek out
these things. I couldn't care less about the fools that want to do a stupid thing, but I'm worried about the creature. This substance is very powerful. It's unlike other hallucinogens. It literally takes the mind to a dark place.

“There are stories of shamans coming back from the
Iluicatl michin
and killing entire villages. The dark spirit was powerful in them.”

“You mean the drug?”

“Perhaps. But most drugs simply lower our resistances. We say things when we're drunk that we secretly hold in our hearts. A drug doesn't make you creative as much as it stops you from
not
being creative. It lets out what's inside you. But when it comes to this, where does that evil come from? Some might say it's a doorway. But although I'm a rational man, I can't understand why a man who never had a violent thought in his life would act out in such a way.”

“Are you suggesting possession?”

“Which frightens you more? That each of us harbors in our soul the potential for evil, to do such wicked things as murder others? Or that real evil, the kind you came here to find, comes from outside and that we're safe as long as we remember we're fallible and don't invite it in?”

“I didn't expect this metaphysical discussion from a scientist.”

Moya aims his beam in the water. “Look. Just wait.” After a moment a small school of fish swim by. Tiny, each no bigger than my fingernail, they pass in and out of the light in a flash. “What is the water to them? The cave? If they have minds, do they have any concept of what's above their heads? What's an ocean to them? The universe? What are our legs to them? Do you imagine that for even a glimmer of a moment, they think we're something like them? No. We're part of their world. Transient. In a fraction of a second their brains will have moved on to some other stimulus.

“We're like that. We don't have the attention to focus on problems for a long time. We ponder things, we make equations until something new comes along. The deep questions, the big mysteries, you're not going to find the answers in the words of any one man. Not even the questions. You have to take the long view. What questions have we been asking collectively? What have we observed in tiny fractions, but can't describe as a whole? I think of these as slow questions. You know the parable of the blind men trying to describe an elephant as they touch it? Each one feels something different: the trunk, the tail, a leg? None of them see the whole. Science is good for specific questions. It's not so good at seeing elephants.

“Still, I don't believe in the supernatural, Agent Blackwood. I believe in science. I believe the universe can yield answers to our questions and our experiments. I'm just not sure if we really know how to ask the right questions yet. The slow ones.”

I get a little of what he's trying to tell me. You can learn a simple sleight-of-hand and fool someone, but never fully understand why holding your hand a certain way as opposed to another evokes an almost mystical experience—a suspension of disbelief. It's not just that you tricked their optic system. Something happened that struck a primal chord in our relationship to the universe.

“Fortunately for me, I have simple questions. I just need to know the source of the chemical.”

He veers down another passage. “Yes. Yes.
Iluicatl michin
. It means ‘fish ceremony.' Our tiny little friends just swam past you. They're the source. The toxin is a defense mechanism they developed to keep hungry predators from eating them. When a coyote or a lizard travels down from the surface and swallows them, they release it. The animal then gets disoriented and lost. It dies down here, its body decomposing and feeding the bacteria that feed the fish. The fish have their revenge, as the corpse provides for their children.”

“The circle of life,” I reply, the song from
The
Lion King
playing in my head. “Do you have any samples I can take with me?”

“Like psilocin, it breaks down in hours. You'll have to take some living fish with you. I'll help you get some tonight.”

“Tonight? Why not now?”

“They like to sit in the pools of water where the moonlight reaches them.”

Were-fish. Of course.

“It's so they can know when the bats come home. The fish eat their droppings.”

“Delightful.” I shake my head and follow him to the next chamber. “Moonlight, dark caves, bat
guano
, psychoactive fish. Quite a job you have.”

“Gracias.”

“
T
HIS CAME FROM
a bad place. You don't want to go there,” says Patience Viñalon as she scrutinizes my mud samples from the tree in Hawkton. Moya had said she was the local expert on soil. He wasn't kidding. Where I just see mud, an expert like Patience can spot the color, clay content and environmental makeup on sight. She puts her books into her bag and hugs two waiting girls before they run to the playground outside. Tall, with long black hair, she's just over twenty. Her intelligent eyes suggest she doesn't have any trouble keeping up with Dr. Moya. She'd started doing field research into the geology of the area before she was a teenager. Moya picked her over scores of graduate students because of the quality of her undergraduate research.

A little boy with dark hair in his eyes wanders across the classroom, stares up at me, and whispers something under his breath to Patience as if he's too scared to say it out loud. My Spanish is barely passable enough to understand the whisper.

“He'd like to give you a hug,” Patience translates.

I lean down and let the boy wrap his arms around my shoulders. He flashes me a gap-toothed smile, then runs after his friends.

There's a soft pang in my stomach. I remember that need for affection. My house wasn't a hugging household. If I initiated one, it would be politely reciprocated, but never more than that.

I was jealous of the cat because Grandfather and Dad would absentmindedly pet him if he happened to sit near them on the couch. Of course, when the poor beast sat in Grandfather's chair and got hair on it, he'd find himself tossed across the room by the scruff of his neck with the threat that next time it would be “
into the fireplace
!”

I watch through the window as the boy climbs onto a swing set. I'd pity him if I wasn't a little envious of the attention he seems to get from Patience and the other staff here. I feel guilty for my envy. I had it better than most kids, I'm sure.

“Some of them have parents. Some don't. We try to do the best we can for them,” Patience explains as I watch the children through the window. “When I'm not helping Dr. Moya, I come here and teach science.”

“We have foster programs in Mexico, but they're still quite new,” says a woman standing by the door. Her English is perfect. Short, dressed in a blouse and slacks that I recognize as being more expensive than they first seem, she looks like a plain woman—the exception being a Parmigiani watch on her wrist. Her hair is pulled back to reveal a face with simple makeup. She has a soft face, making her age difficult to tell.

Patience makes the introductions. “Sister Marta, this is Jessica.”

“Hello, Sister,” I reply.

Marta politely smiles. “What do you think of our school?”

“It's quite nice,” I respond with sincerity. “The children seem very happy here.”

“Lots of hugs. We make sure these children are very loved.” Marta gazes out at the playground filled with new swing sets and toys. Her smile seems genuine.

“They look it.”

“What brings you to Tixato?” She eyes my bags sitting on the desk.

“I'm on vacation and a friend asked for a favor.”

“A favor?”

“He's a geologist and wanted some samples.” I feel guilty lying to a nun, but it's important to keep a low profile. You don't know who knows who.

“Oh.” Her expression changes to one of suspicion. “Are you a scientist too?”

“No, no. I'm a bookkeeper. Between jobs, actually.”

Patience doesn't know as much as Dr. Moya, but she knows I'm not telling Marta the truth. Although she keeps silent, her eyes narrow as I lie.

“I'm sure something will come up.” She nods to the window. “Tixato may not be much, but it's a special place.” Marta gives Patience a pat on her shoulder, then leaves the classroom.

“Sister Marta is wonderful,” Patience says enthusiastically. “She's the reason this place exists. She found the money and made it possible for these children to have something special.”

“They're fortunate to have you.”

“They're like my little sisters and brothers. Are you close to your family?” She'd have to charge by the hour for me to tell her the full story on that. “My mother left when I was young.” I've used this truth before to end the conversation.

Patience's face turns sad. “Were you raised by your grandmother?” Her expression shows how deeply she cares.

“Um, no. Mostly my dad and my grandfather. My grandmother died before I was born.” It's an odd subject for me to address. Dad never spoke too much about his mother. He was in his teens when she died. Grandfather would mention her name in passing, but they were divorced years before she passed away.

I think I learned from their example when it came to dealing with the absence of my own mother.

“Cousins?”

“I never had much contact with my mother's side of the family.”

“None at all?”

“It's . . .” I decide not to explain to her my mother came from a difficult background. She was young when she had me. Younger than Patience. I've never been really bitter about her departure. After all, I barely remember anything about her from when I was a child.

I pick the mud samples off the desk along with the printout from the lab. “You were saying this came from a bad place. What do you mean? Dangerous?”

“Yes.” She gives me a solemn nod.

“Could I at least see it?”

She thinks it over for a moment. “Okay. You'll understand when we get there. But we must take my car. If they see someone from not around here, that would be bad.”

Twenty minutes later we are on the other side of the small range of hills dividing Tixato. I see what Patience meant by a “bad place.” Hundreds of shanty houses pile on top of each other up a red dirt hill, above which it looks like part of the mountain has been scooped away. Assembled from rotten plywood, pieces of plastic and metal siding, the houses embody the poorest side of Mexico. I remind myself that even the United States still has pockets like this.

One paved road runs through the area. Half-naked children hide behind doorways while scowling teenagers linger on carcasses of rusted cars, shooting suspicious glances.

“What's that?” I ask. “X-20” is spray-painted on a number of walls. I know it's one of the fastest-growing gangs in Mexico and now the American Southwest, but I want to hear Patience describe them.

“It's a gang. Many of the young people who live here are in it. It's not as violent here as it is elsewhere, thankfully. It was started
by some former members of our special forces. Most of them are dead now.”

“Who runs it now?”

Patience shrugs. “I don't know. They used to just be involved in street trafficking. Now they're supposed to be in narcotics across the border. I don't pay attention to those things.

“They don't like outsiders here. Tixato is mostly a safe place, but if you went wandering around here alone, it would be no good.”

“Is this why you say this is a bad place?”

“No. There, see the side of that hill? That's why.” She points to where the vegetation and rock give way to the reddish earth that slopes down into the shantytown. “There used to be another village here. Then they had mudslides and the whole hill came down on them. This village was built on top of the wreckage.”

“That's horrible,” I reply, trying to imagine the houses buried under the ones I'm staring at. My chest tightens at the thought.

“You don't understand.” Patience's voice descends to a whisper as she points to the ground. “They're still down there. Over a hundred people, children. The old orphanage. They just built over them. They never dug them up. At the top of the hill there's a small marker. That's it, and even that marker has been covered by graffiti.

“It was bad. They killed one of the rescue workers because it took so long to get here. Officials barely checked for survivors in the buried homes. Government ministers won't even come here for fear they'll be killed. It's like this place doesn't exist.”

The dirt is the same color as my mud. “This is where the dirt sample came from?”

“Yes. You can tell by the mixture of clays and volcanic ash. Soil composition is like a fingerprint.”

We reach the end of the road and Patience turns the car around. On the second pass I see more than the weariness of
poverty in the eyes of the people watching us: anger and resentment burns. These are people who feel betrayed not only by society, but also by God.

I don't know how the mud got from here to the tree in Hawkton, but I have no difficulty understanding how they could be connected in some way. Both places of devastation, Hawkton and Tixato are linked by anger.

Patience drops me off at my car by the orphanage. Sister Marta waves to us as she pushes the boy who hugged me on the swing. I wave back and head to my hotel to call Ailes. Hopefully I get a cell phone signal. I've been out of range almost since I got here.