Authors: Richard B. Dwyer
It was late when Pedro finally got ready for bed. It
had been a long day. The Highway Patrol had kept him at the accident scene,
throwing off his work schedule for the rest of the day. He did not get home
until the sun had gone down again.
The sound of a woman’s soft, sweet voice drifted
through the quiet house. She sang in Spanish about the hardships of life. About
love lost, and fortune lost, and family honor lost. Pedro knew the themes well.
Too well. He pushed the invading, depressing thoughts out of his mind as he
neatly folded his paint-covered, concrete-encrusted pants and laid them on the
chest that sat at the foot of his bed.
The depressing thoughts fought their way back
into his conscience, gaining a toehold in the rubble of tragic memories. He
glanced at the chest he had laid his pants on. It had once belonged to his
great-grandmother. Pedro’s family, once one of the richest in Florida, had lost
virtually everything in the nineteen twenty-nine stock market crash. The wealth
had come from his great-grandfather who had been a brilliant, but difficult
man. Family legend had it that he had outlived five wives. No one really knew
how old he had been when he finally died in nineteen twenty-five. Four years
later, the family went broke.
A photo of Pedro’s paternal grandfather and
grandmother, dressed in fine clothing in front of a grand house and holding his
infant father, sat on one corner of his dresser. The family, under Pedro’s
great-grandfather’s relentless drive for success, had achieved their wealth
selling water from the spring-fed pool that sat in the clearing behind the
house. Gullible Easterners, who wanted to believe in a miraculous fount of
enchanted water, a fountain of youth, made the de la Garza family rich. Pedro
had only known the wealth in pictures.
He thought about his great-grandfather as he
busied himself around the small house. Early one spring morning the servants
had found his great-grandfather’s body floating in the pool behind the de la
Garza estate. No one in the household dared to go into the pool to retrieve the
old man’s corpse. It floated for several hours until the sheriff sent out some
men with a grappling hook who were able to drag the body to the grassy edge.
Pedro’s father had told him that the corpse had
shriveled into almost nothing in the few hours before the sheriff’s men
arrived. He said the men made jokes about how the pool could not possibly have
been Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth. They said the old man’s corpse looked
like one of those Egyptian mummified things that they could occasionally see in
the museum in Tampa. Besides, his father explained, everyone in Florida knew
that God had hidden the Fountain of Youth somewhere up near St. Augustine. Not
that anybody had ever found it there either.
The State of Florida had taken control of the
property shortly after the family had moved out. Two college professors doing
research on Florida’s original natives had found ancient, native burial grounds
on the property, not far from the pool. A decade later, the State deeded the
property to the federal government when the Army took over the huge de la Garza
house as a headquarters for coastal defense during the Second World War.
The music playing in the background changed. The
woman now sang, if at all possible, an even sadder song than the first one.
Pedro sighed.
He studied his grandparents’ photo. It never
failed to amaze him how large the house was. It stood stately and proud behind
his grandparents, more of a mansion than anything. Pedro had only seen it once
in person. He had stood outside the government security fence that surrounded
the property a few days after his father had died.
Fortune lost and family
honor lost.
The depressing thoughts, intertwined with the
woman’s sad voice, pushed hard against Pedro’s mind. Nevertheless, he ignored
the sadness, ignored the depression pushing down on his spirit, and allowed
dark memories to wander comfortably through his consciousness.
He thought about the stories that his father
told when whiskey gave voice to things a man would rather forget. “While the
property sat empty,” Pedro’s father said, “sometime before the soldiers moved
in during World War Two, a huge alligator took up residence at the pool. When
the soldiers arrived, they named him ‘Tank’ and the Commanding Officer put the
pool off limits. Strange that they did not just kill the monster.”
Pedro would hang on every word, believing that
someday his father would find a way to defeat the government and restore their
honor and their fortune.
“My father, your grandfather, used to tell us
that Tank guarded the de la Garza’s family fortune,” Pedro’s father had said.
“He told us that your great-grandfather had made a deal with the devil, and
after he died, his spirit haunted the pool. In possession of the beast, his
spirit would travel away from the pool searching for children to drag back into
its deep waters. Anytime a child disappeared and never returned home, everyone
blamed Tank.”
A child-eating alligator controlled by a
malevolent spirit scared the crap out of Pedro’s father and the other de la
Garza children, and they did not hesitate to share the story with their
friends. Even local teenagers stayed away from the enticing spring located
behind the estate.
“Some years later,” his father said, “a federal
officer shot an alligator when it tried to drag a government biologist into the
pool. It was in the papers. The officer swore he hit the alligator, especially
since it let go of the biologist, but he also reported that the wounded
alligator had escaped back into the pool. The government presumed the gator
eventually died of his wounds. No one ever went into the pool to find out.”
Pedro’s father paused and finished the glass of
whiskey he had been working on.
“The government put the estate off limits to all
but a few federal bureaucrats whose only responsibility was to make sure it
stayed off limits.
Bastardos
.”
Somewhere on that grand estate rested Pedro’s
inheritance and he was not even allowed to set foot on the property. Pedro’s
father had spoken to him often about how fate and the government had robbed his
family.
Pedro sat the photo back on the dresser. Wearing
boxer shorts and a tattered T-shirt, he made his way to the kitchen. He took a
glass and a bottle of cheap whiskey from one of the cabinets mounted above the
diminutive, single-basin sink and sat them on the counter. He went over to a
small, antique, writing table. Another antique, a cigar box, sat on top of it
beside framed photos and a cut-glass ashtray he had brought back from Germany.
He opened the cigar box and helped himself to one
of Castro’s finest. The cigars were a gift from Raul, one of his Haitian
laborers. He never asked how Raul got them. He just knew that Raul would be the
last worker to go if they ever had a layoff.
Pedro brought his cigar and ashtray back to the
kitchen table, got the whiskey and glass from the counter, sat, and prepared
the cigar by biting off the tip at one end. He then poured a straight shot of
the bourbon into his glass, lit the cigar, and, in his mind, began a journey
back to a better time and place. He did not get far. A loud rapping pulled
Pedro back to reality. He glanced at the modern digital clock on the kitchen
wall.
Who in God’s sweet name would be visiting now?
Pedro purged the cigar and placed it in the
ashtray, careful not to snub the end. If it went out naturally, he could always
trim the end and relight it. If he snubbed it, it would stink and taste like
crap later.
He looked at the glass of whiskey sitting next to
the ashtray. Shrugging his shoulders, he picked up the glass, and killed it in
one swallow, grimacing as the room temperature liquid burned its way down his
throat. The knocking stopped for a moment and then started again.
“Just a minute,
un momento, por favor
.”
Pedro made his way across the living room and
turned on the porch light. Looking through the peephole he had installed in the
original front door, Pedro saw the fisheye image of a Florida Highway Patrol
Trooper. It was the same trooper from the early morning accident. Pedro did not
bother to get his robe from the bedroom. He turned the lever for the deadbolt
and opened the door.
“
Como estas?
How can I help you?”
While Kat slept in a dark, cool room in the Colony
House hotel, Baalzaric contemplated the day’s events. Kat had arrived early in
the morning and spent the day out on an almost empty beach. In the evening, she
enjoyed an expensive dinner of surf and turf accompanied by a 2000 Dom
Pérignon, all on Bruce’s dime. Afterward, she watched the latest action
thriller at a local theater, and was back in the room in time to catch the ten
o’clock news.
“Florida entrepreneur Jefferson Briggs and a
female companion died in a horrific traffic collision on I-75…”
A good end to a good day. The demon had enjoyed
it all.
Kat nestled alone in the middle of a king-size,
four-poster bed carefully placed as the center point of the room. She slept soundly
surrounded by an eclectic mixture of classic Victorian furniture and
turn-of-the-century Florida tropical decor. Baalzaric let her sleep.
He had learned to be patient. If he took too much
control too soon, Kat could have a psychotic break. At least that is what the
modern witch doctors, known today as psychiatrists, called it. It seemed that
few of these so-called doctors, these priest-princes of science and technology,
could discern the difference between mental illness and demonic possession.
But the priests who had arrived in
La Florida
with the Spanish conquerors in the sixteenth century knew the difference. They
believed in demons. They believed so strongly that one of them had tried to
send him into the pit. Baalzaric replayed the memory.
In 1528, his host, Captain Juan Carlos de la
Viña, driven by Baalzaric’s demonic influence and cunning, had fought his way
into the conquistador Cortez’s inner circle. Juan Carlos was poised to be
appointed as a regional governor in Mexico. He had come a long way from Ponce
de León and
La Florida
.
The initial connection between Baalzaric and Juan
Carlos had been strong and quick —
too quick it had turned out.
The many
“psychotic breaks” Juan Carlos experienced caused the high command’s spiritual
advisor, Father Miguel, to suspect that the soldier’s bouts with mental
instability were something more than the erratic temperament of a warrior who
had taken too many blows to the head. Father Miguel, accompanied by soldiers
loyal to the Church, took Juan Carlos into custody.
In preparation for his inquisition of Juan
Carlos, the priest consecrated a chamber in the mission. The soldiers tied Juan
Carlos securely to a sturdy chair. Father Miguel, ready to confront and
exorcise the demon, did not know that Baalzaric was ready to confront him.
Baalzaric smiled to himself. More than four
hundred years later, the memory remained fresh and vivid.
The foolish priest had never confessed his own
hidden sin; therefore, everything that Father Miguel touched became polluted by
that unrepentant corruption. The room where dozens of local savages had been
tortured and killed in the name of God remained spiritually unclean. As the
inquisition began, dark spirits hovered above Father Miguel, unseen by the
unsanctified priest. Disembodied demons danced in anticipation, waiting to
taste the shock and panic that would soon envelop the priest’s soul. Father
Miguel began the exorcism.
“Speak your name, demon.”
Juan Carlos replied slowly, “Speak your sin,
priest.”
Father Miguel looked startled. There was
laughter, dark and ugly, coming from somewhere above him. Through the eyes of
Juan Carlos, Baalzaric observed the swirling dance above the priest’s head.
Juan Carlos spoke again, his voice dark and menacing, “Your sin, priest. We
want to hear your confession.”
Father Miguel started to tremble and Juan Carlos
fixed the priest with a soul-piercing stare.
“Speak Your sin, you filthy cleric,” Juan Carlos
commanded.
Father Miguel’s trembling became violent shaking.
He collapsed to his knees. His voice was little more than a whisper.
“My God.”
“You have no God. By your own mouth you denied
Him, to save yourself.”
Juan Carlos continued, “Before the great Aztec
temple you gave your soul to
Huizilopochtli.
You denied your God in
order to save your own miserable life. You committed the unpardonable sin,
priest, and now you are damned.”
***
Tears burst from Father Miguel’s eyes, his body racked
by deep, bitter sobs. The memory of his humiliation, back in 1521, burst into
his mind like a flood of filthy, excrement-infected water.
He had accompanied a party of four priests,
escorted by two dozen soldiers, when Aztec savages ambushed them. Those that
the Aztecs had not outright killed were ritually executed in front of him.
He watched in horror as the Aztecs placed head
after head on the
tzompantli
, the skull rack. They even put the heads of
the Spaniards’ horses on the rack. Miraculously, they had spared his life. Or
so he thought.
An Aztec priest pressed the edge of a
blood-soaked knife against Father Miguel’s throat.
“Where is your God, priest?” The Aztec spoke in
heavily accented Spanish. He looked around. “Call on him to come save you.”
Bloody heads with unseeing eyes mocked Father
Miguel. Fear strangled his voice. He blinked as tears blurred his vision.
“Please,” he grunted. “Please don’t kill me.”
“
Huizilopochtli
will have mercy on whom he
will have mercy,” the Aztec said. He raised his knife and shouted toward the
sky. “
Huizilopochtli
will have mercy on whom he will have mercy.”
The people roared their approval.
“Bow to
Huizilopochtli
and worship him and
you will live.”
All the people bowed down. So did Father Miguel.
When reinforcements sent by Cortez arrived, they
slaughtered every Aztec at the temple. They discovered Father Miguel hiding in
a ditch beneath a pile of rotting skulls. No one that knew Father Miguel had
denied God remained alive, except God, Father Miguel himself, and the Devil.
***
Father Miguel’s anguish kept him on his knees, his face
buried in his hands.
“Doomed, doomed,” he sobbed.
Baalzaric watched as the demons swirled downward
and dove into the priest. One after another. A legion of foul, fallen angels
took up residence in the broken cleric.
Father Miguel fell to his face and writhed on the
floor. He ate dirt, spit it out, and ate some more. He crawled on his stomach
toward the door making horrible, wounded animal noises. He staggered to his
feet, tore his robes, and alternately shouted in Aztec and in Spanish while
banging his fists on the door. The door opened and Father Miguel ran past a
startled soldier.
Later, in the presence of Juan Carlos and the
returned Cortez, the guard said that he was sure that Father Miguel actually
flew down the dirt street, the priest’s feet not even touching the ground. A
search party, under Juan Carlos’ command, found Father Miguel’s naked body
three days later, miles outside of the city. He had run himself to death.
After Father Miguel ran off, it had been easy for
Juan Carlos to convince the soldiers that the priest had been the one who had
been insane, or even possessed. Juan Carlos could afford to reward personal
allegiance. Loyalty to the church was a fine thing, but many soldiers believed
that money, not God, could change a poor soldier’s life.
Baalzaric smiled to himself again. Kat stirred, but
did not wake up.
Patience and control. That was the secret. Even the
God-lovers preached patience and control.