The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (26 page)

At the other end of the room from me, at the altar
stood a very tall, very thin man, with a plump, pleasant-faced
woman. I instantly recognized the man as the same one who had told
me and Kelsey to get off of his land down the road from here. He
and the woman looked up at me from their work arranging candles,
containers, and what appeared to be surgical instruments, upon the
large wooden table. I smiled meekly at them. They did not smile or
return my wave of greeting. Rather, they watched me warily,
flinchingly in the woman’s case. They were, I realized, afraid of
me for some reason. This was not comforting in the least.

I walked toward them, marveling as
I did at he sheer quantity of animals here - dogs and cats, but
also deer, bears, and the baby bobcat Demetrio had held in his
arms. Buddy was beside himself with fear, facing so many other
animals that were bigger than he was. He was boastful under most
circumstances, but
did
have it in him to recognize the truth of his size when push
came to shove.

He cowered behind me now, trying to dart between my
legs with every step I took. Curiously, none of the other dogs
attempted to greet him, or me. Like the cats, who displayed a
profound courage considering their mixed company, they sat
perfectly still, and watched us move with patient, knowing eyes. It
was uncanny, and more than a little creepy. All of the animals
stayed still, and payed attention as though they understood what
was happening here. I, for one, did not. At all.

“Well, hello,” I said sarcastically to the cranky,
horrible man, when I got within earshot of the couple.

“Sit down, there,” said the man, pointing to the
front pew without looking up from his task. He was just as unhappy
to see me now as he had been before.

“So, what’s happening here?” I asked, jovially.
“Ritual sacrifice? Neighborhood potluck?”

“Be quiet, please,” said the man, pinching the
bridge of his nose with two fingers. “You give me a headache.”

“Sorry. I have some Tylenol in the car, if you want
it...”

“Silence!” he roared.

“Alrighty then.”

I sat quietly and observed them. There were boxes of
powders and vials of liquid upon the table, and greenery that
seemed to have been take from trees outside. Candles of different
sizes, all of them white, burned. I noticed now that the man and
woman both wore brown robes, the same kind Demetrio had worn in the
dream I’d had about him, but with colorful woven Pueblo-style
serapes draped over them. The man had what appeared to be a fox
skin hanging from his roped belt. The woman wore a pendant around
her neck that appeared to be in the shape of a very fat, or very
pregnant, woman. They both had moccasins on their feet, and small,
colorful feathers woven though their hair.

The whole scene was reminiscent of the dream,
actually. Goosebumps scattered across my arms and legs, and I
shivered to face the unknown. At worst, they might have been
planning to sacrifice me, I thought. Or Buddy. At best, well, I had
no idea. The only thing I could come up with at that moment, given
the chilly reception of the man and woman, and the odd staring
stillness of the animals, were worst-case scenarios. I played a few
of them out in my mind, each time growing more and more anxious.
Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Are you going to kill me?” I asked, point blank.
“And if you do, will it hurt? What if I call 911 first?”

The man ignored me with a tightening around his
mouth, but the woman looked at me with sympathy.

“We’re
probably
not going to kill you,” she
said, jokingly. She had a very nice energy to her, and seemed
quietly peaceful and loving.

“Oh,” I replied, sarcastically.
“
That’s
comforting.”

“He shouldn’t be doing this to her,” griped the man
to the woman. “Or himself, or any of us. It’s ridiculous. And you
seem to condone it. I’m surprised.”

“It is
his
choice
.” She looked steadily at him.

“It’s a foolish choice,” he said.

“Perhaps, nonetheless, it is his foolish choice to
make and your duty as a mayordomo is to accept and respect it. The
truth is, we don’t know what sort of outcome there will be.”

“What is a mayordomo?” I asked.

“Silence!” cried the man, stabbing a small golden
knife with a turquoise handle and black scrolling script across the
blade, through the air in my direction, though several feet away. I
cringed with a yelp, and recoiled.

“Easy there,” the woman soothed him. “It’s not her
fault.”

The man lowered the knife.

“Thank you,” said the woman. “If you continue to
overreact, I will have to ask you to leave. I don’t want to do
that.”

I held a trembling Buddy on my lap, and tried to
sooth him with slow strokes along his back. He was beyond hope,
however. Once the trembling began, it would be hours before it
stopped again, especially in a room as cold as this.

I was about to inquire about Demetrio, when he
strolled into the church from a back door, swaggering as though he
were heading to the basketball court for a pickup game. He wore the
same outfit he’d worn earlier in the day, at my school, and a
grin.

“Hey, mamita,” he said casually as he came to sit
next to me on the pew. He cocked his head to one side and smiled at
me as though we had just happened across each other at a movie
theater or something. “Wassup, shorty? You look good. And
scared.”

“Where did you come from?” I asked, startled. He
laughed.

“You should know by now that you ask a question with
a pretty complicated answer.” He grinned at me, that crooked,
glorious grin, and I went weak-kneed. I felt soothed, though, by
his comfort level. He was happier here than I’d ever seen him
before, other than in the dream. He was bubbling over with
happiness, in his own laid-back way.

“Honor’s student, huh?” I asked him now. “I saw some
articles about you. About who you used to be, I guess.”

He blinked slowly, with a small smile. “I did okay
in school, sure.”

“You’re hardly an ignorant country boy,” I said.
“Full ride to St. John’s College. But you played it off like you
were some ignoramus.”

His brows shot up in alarm.
“I
did
? Nah,
mami, I didn’t. That was your interpretation of me. Just like your
mom and Logan, and everyone else.”

I thought about this. He was right.

“People see tattoos, hear me use a double-negative
now and then, see you wear a certain style of clothes, they make
assumptions,” he said. “It’s one of the uglier sides of human
nature. I like to let them people assume, because you can learn a
lot about people by the assumptions they make.”

“You said you were homeschooled,” I said. “I’ll
assume from that that you’re a liar, then?”

He laughed at me, drawing a
scornful look from the man. “It wasn’t a lie. It’s actually very
hard for me to lie anymore. I told you the truth. I’ve always told
you the truth. I’ve learned a lot these past two years, from them.
Homeschool.” He jutted his chin toward the man and woman now.
“There’s been a
lot
of schooling.”

“Who are they?” I whispered. The man and woman shot
Demetrio cautionary looks now, having heard me somehow.

“My mayordomos.”

“What does that mean?”

“Can’t tell you yet,” he told me. “Soon, though.
You’ll know.”

“We’re ready,” the woman called out to us, as she
struck a small chime with a mallet. “You may approach the
altar.”

“C’mon,” Demetrio told me, as he stood up and held a
hand out for me. “Leave Buddy.”

“But he’s scared,” I said.

“He’ll be fine. Ain’t nothin’ but love here. Just
leave him on the seat.”

I did as he told me, and took his hand. Together, we
walked to the table at the altar, and stood facing the man and the
woman. The woman took a cane of some sort from the side of the
table, and held it in her left hand, while raising her right hand
to us. The man beat a small drum with a stick, in a hypnotic,
monotonous rhythm, for about three straight minutes, while chanting
a song in a language I couldn’t make out, and stopped.

“In the name of rain and sun,” he said.

“Let us mix the corn and water,” she told the
man.

The man, still scowling, removed what appeared to be
corn flour from one container, and handed it to her. She murmured
in that unknown language, as though saying a prayer of the flour,
and placed several handfuls into a large empty pottery bowl. To
this the man added water of different colors, from several of the
vials, after saying a similar prayer-chant. Together the man and
woman stirred the mixture with their fingers, until it made a thin
batter. Then they rinsed their hands in a basin behind them, from a
clay pitcher, and dried them on clean white towels.

“Demetrio,” said the woman, smiling benevolently at
him now.

“Yes, Mayordomo Guadalupe?”

“Demetrio,” said the man.

“Yes, Mayordomo Diego?”

Together the man and woman chanted, “You know what
you must do now.”

As the woman began to sing in a language I didn’t
know, Demetrio nodded, and approached the table. From among the
many items there, he selected the sharp, small knife with the
turquoise hilt. As he lifted it, I saw the writing along the blade
begin to move, snakelike. My heart thundered, and I gulped in
horror. Was he going to kill me now?

“No worries, mami,” he said softly, over his
shoulder, with a comforting smile. “I didn’t want to hurt you
before, and I won’t hurt you now. I won’t never hurt you.”

Instead, he stood directly next to the table, placed
his left hand over the pottery bowl of newly mixed gruel. With the
knife in his right hand, he pierced the skin in the center of his
left palm, deeply. He turned the hand sideways as he twisted the
knife gently, his face grimacing with the pain. Dark red, nearly
purple blood oozed from the wound, across one side of his hand, and
dripped into the bowl with large, glisteningly dark drops.
Together, the man and woman counted them, in Latin - a language I
had studied during eighth and ninth grade.

“Unus, duo, tres, quattor, quinque, sex, septum,
octo.”

They stopped when eight drops had fallen. Demetrio
promptly pulled the knife tip from his flesh, and the hand was
quickly wrapped in a clean white cloth by the man.

All three of them had their eyes were on the bowl
now, so I looked, too. A wisp of pale blue smoke rose up and
twisted around. I gasped softly, as the smoke grew to the size of a
small dog, twisted and turned through several disturbing shapes,
each one seeming to make the others more nervous than the last.
Finally, it formed itself into the likeness of a long, snakelike
serpent with feathers and wings. It held that form for several
moments, before glowing hot white, and evaporating away.

Demetrio smiled at me with unbridled joy, the
apprehension gone from his face now.

“Quetzalcoatl,” said the woman, with relief; I
assumed she was referring to the snake-thing. Next to her, the man
inhaled deeply, and released the breath in guarded relaxation. They
all grinned at each other, breathing a bit easier now.

“Is that good?” I asked. “The, whatever you called
it.”

“Quetzalcoatl,” said the woman again.

“Right,” I said.

“Very,” said Demetrio, ecstatically. “It means that
we’ve passed the first of two tests fort the day, and I can now
tell you everything you’ve wanted to know.”

“Good,” I said.

“But not without risk still,” intoned the man.
Demetrio ignored him, so I did too.

“C’mere, mamita,” Demetrio told me. I walked to the
table, facing the man and woman; Demetrio turned me to face him,
staring deeply into my eyes.

“You know I’m not like you. I’m
not a human being anymore. You figured a lot of that out on your
own, but I helped, and for that,” he looked at the man and the
woman, “I am sorry, though as the test
showed
, I was correct in assuming it
was safe to let her know.”

“Duly noted,” said the woman. “Your time is running
out, Demetrio. Talk.”

Demetrio nodded to her, and
continued to talk to me. “I began to tell you the other day, about
the Fibonacci numbers, and their relation to the realm of souls. I
didn’t know none of this when I died, either, Maria, so don’t feel
all bad or nothing. Okay? I learned it here, with them, the
mayordomos. I’ll tell you who they are in a minute. First, I want
you to understand, and I’ll put it in real simple
terms...”

“Right. Because I’m an idiot,” I joked,
nervously.

He smiled, gently. “No, because it’s real
complicated, and I’m not sure I understand all of it myself. You’re
perfectly smart for a human.”

“Gee, thanks.”

He laughed. “Okay. Here’s the situation. Everyone
has a soul, the same soul for all eternity.”

I interrupted him. “I get that, but if you’re dead,
why do you still have a body?”

“I’ll get to that. Be quiet. I know that’s hard for
you.” He winked at me affectionately.

“Sorry.”

“Silence, human,” said the man horribly, his eyes
narrowed to slits. “You heard the boy.”

I glared at the man and rolled my eyes. I turned my
attention back to Demetrio, and he went on with his lesson.

“The soul can come back, after you
die, in another body, but it’s always the same soul. Some people
call it reincarnation. It’s not exactly how it works, though. None
of the world’s human faiths have gotten it all completely right,
Maria. They all come close, and they are all good in their own
ways. And we know a lot of this stuff instinctively, as human
beings, and a lot of faiths, philosophies and science come close,
but it’s not until after that we learn it in a way that we fully
understand.”