The Tower of Il Serrohe (23 page)

No one around. As he stood up unsteadily, he saw empty plains devoid of life but for a few sage bushes with early spring leaves on their scrubby branches. The tumbleweeds were still dried up, and thorny gray branches of dead mesquite trees were pleading for mercy to an impassive night sky.

Nearby, the noise of human voices and the revving of a car engine drew his attention.

Car engine! This wasn’t the Valle Abajo!

Looking toward the sounds he saw a pool of light illuminating a group of five or six men flailing their arms as if in a fight. It
was
a fight: a bunch of gang-bangers were kicking the shit out of some poor bastard right in the middle of them.

The poor bastard was crying out. “Come on guys! It’s me, Felipe. Your homey. Give me a fucking break. I didn’t fucking give any bad shit to Brittany. That was someone else. I know she’s Juan’s woman. I’m not fucking crazy—ow! Damn it, vatos! Just leave me here. I don’t want no—”

His pleas ceased abruptly as, with a sickening thud, one of the “vatos” swung a shovel across his face. In the sudden silence, Don saw he was only about fifteen yards away. They would have seen him had it not been for the glare of headlights from the cars surrounding the horrifying scene.

Slithering to the ground, Don pressed himself tightly against it so the sparse brush hid him from view of the crazed gang. It was only then he realized he was buck-naked.

Gee, it’s good to be home!

forty three

Don somehow managed to stay out of sight while the gang buried the poor homey using the very shovel that had smashed in his face. He stayed hidden for at least twenty minutes after they were gone.

Hurting like hell all over, he had never been more grateful to be alive. In the moonlight he made his way to the drop-off overlooking the Rio Grande Valley in the almost identical place he had been headed in the Valle Abajo.

It was the same but different. Here, everything was familiar on a scale he was used to. Why did the other valley seem humongous?

Because that’s the nature of dream environments, dipshit,
he thought.
Any familiar place, even one’s own childhood home, is always different in subtle or obvious ways in a dream. Even though there is recognition of the place, it’s different. Simple distortion of memory and brain function while asleep.

In fact, everyone over there, although not like regular humans, still had something about them that was familiar. But what was it? None of them, except for Raquela and maybe Nersite remind me of anyone I know, yet there was a familiarity… Oh, what the hell. Who cares?

Don could barely see his big cottonwood down in the valley. A few miles to the south were the dim lights of Rio Luna.
Yep, everything is where it belongs. Good thing it’s night—my prick’s about to fall off in this cold, but at least no one can see my bare ass.

He made his way back to the Casita. Though reluctant to dream again, he slept like the dead until about 11:30 the next morning. Finding no beer in the refrigerator, he quickly showered, shaved, and drove into Albuquerque. Stopping to buy a case at the first discount liquor store he saw, he removed a 16 oz. bottle from one of the six packs, and guzzled it in the parking lot.

He went by his office at St. Jude to see if he had forgotten any ungraded papers. There were none on his desk, but he remembered his briefcase was still in his car from the night he’d made his way home to the disaster with Bess
and sleaze-ball.

Only a couple of days old, that memory made him nauseous and pissed off all at the same time.
Oh well, I’ll tackle the papers this afternoon. Got to get my mid-term grades in by the end of the week. Then I need to plan for the resumption of classes next week.

That thought was repugnant. He could face grading a stack of papers but not the bland faces of his students expecting him to go on normally when nothing was normal.

Needing time, he decided to ask his department chairperson for a couple more weeks off to get his head together. When he got to her office, he found a sticky note on the door saying she would be available for three hours the following morning.

OK
, fine. I’ll grade my papers tonight and see her tomorrow. Wonder if there’s a category of leave for getting shit on by your wife and having delirium tremens?

A student Don had seen around campus entered the faculty office building just as he was leaving. Of average height though finely boned, he appeared to be African American or a darkly complected Hispanic. Long ears poked from his thick hair and his piercing black eyes latched onto Don like a mad dog.

But he wasn’t “mad dogging” because those eyes held a twinkle in spite of their intensity. Don thought it was almost as if they knew each other.

He shifted into his professorial mode. “Can I help you? I doubt if anyone is here, if you’re looking for a professor.”

That intense look didn’t waver. “Oh… guess I didn’t think about the time,” he said huskily. “I just wanted to see… Well, I’ll come back later.”

“
Check the office doors. Some of them post hours during the break.”

Smiling, the student revealed two wide rows of long, narrow teeth. “Thanks, professor…”

“
No need for formality,” Don said. “Don Vargas, English II and Mid-Twentieth Century Southwest Lit. Maybe I’ll see you in class?”

There was that smile again and those wet, gleaming teeth. “Maybe. I’ll see you around,” he said in a raspy voice that almost sounded familiar.

Don got back in his car and tried to think.
Creepy. Seems like a nice kid, but something got under my skin. What the hell is it about him? Nah, it’s just me.

There was his briefcase.
Yep, there’s all those little bastards waiting for me to read, fondle, and mark ‘em up with red ink! No more beer until this stack is put to bed.

After a long bleary-eyed night, three tall 16 oz. cold ones were all the sweeter.

Don passed out with the stereo endlessly repeating the Enya CD. He shut it off at 10:00 the next morning.

He cleaned up, trying to cover the black circles under his eyes with tan chalk from the kit he brought from his home desk, and headed for the college.

Dr. Sylvia Contreras was not impressed with his situation. How could someone take over his classes mid-term? Giving the students class time to read Rudolfo Anaya novels was not an acceptable substitute for a lecture. However, watching a film based on the Anaya novel for two class sessions would be legitimate provided it was tied to some of their other literature and became useful for reference in the essay portion of the final. Yes, he had to play the film and answer questions, but didn’t have to lecture.  He could sit in back of the dark classroom and cry without anyone being the wiser.

Geeze, Sylvia, you’re all heart!
“OK, fine. That’ll help. See you, Dr. Contreras.”

“
Let me know if there’s anything else I can do,” she said routinely.

I just did and you told me I had to show up to run the DVD player and cry in the dark. You’re just full of compassion, bitch! Just like the one that caused this whole damned mess.

That night was a whole six-pack.

forty four

But before Don could blessedly pass out, a sibilant voice cleared its throat.

“
Oh, Jesus Christ, bat, can’t you give me a break? I have a good drunk going and you step in to fu—screw it all up!”

“
Don’t you want to hear more about Teresa?”

“
No, but I won’t stop you. Go ahead, asshole. Maybe I’ll take notes and write a big-ass best seller based on this hallucinatory shit. That would at least free me of any other responsibilities.”

“
You certainly seem to be in poor mood. I heard you had disappeared after leaving the Nohmin Place of Homes—”

“
Yeah, well, I had a little get-together with the Soreyes, but when one of the bastards hit the back of my head, I ended up here… Well, on the plains west of here. I don’t want to talk about it.”

Looking around as he spoke, Don spotted a dark chocolate- brown bat hanging onto the curtains he had installed on the Casita’s west window. The hand-sized bat had its back to him while its small body seemed to be shuddering.

“
So that’s you,” Don remarked dismissively. “How come you’re almost my size over in the Valle Abajo?”

“
I don’t know. I don’t write the rules for how this works or even for how traffic works between two places that seem to be the same only in different universes or dimensions, or however you want to think about it. I am puzzled on how you returned here if you didn’t go through the Portal. The only other way anyone has visited the Valle is through dreams, as Teresa first did. But then she was only visible to Pia and Pita, but not physically present as you and I are when going through the Portal.”

“
I’m not going to lose any sleep over it,” Don replied. “Which is what I’m doing right now,” he added petulantly, realizing he was starting to sober up despite six beers.

The bat shuffled around on the curtains, finally managing to hang upside down facing Don. “There. You do look a little worse for wear, I must say. Most of the clans of Valle Abajo don’t have alcoholic beverages which, from what I’m gathering, is to their credit.”

“
Yeah, but it will definitely discourage tourists. Probably what they want. So why do they think I can be of any use?”

“
They need someone who can think ahead and strategize. They have no head for it, but the Soreyes do, and that’s the problem. That and the Tower. Somehow the Tower helps the Soreyes. Teresa was not able to discover its function, but she did destroy it.”

“
Really? Nersite and his little buddies didn’t seem to think so. Some kind of storm—”

“
And that’s a part of the story I know because my ancestors saw parts of what actually happened. The Piralltah sisters filled in more details but, more importantly, my great-great-grandfather, Nightecho, became close to Teresa in her later years. She shared a great deal with him. Seems like they wanted to keep what happened quiet to use what those of your kind would call a secret weapon. If the clans knew what really happened, the Soreyes would eventually get wind of it. But you need to know because you’re their best hope.” Pausing, the bat looked Don over carefully. “Such as you are.”

“
Oh, shit, what else do I have to do now? What’s the real skinny?”

“
I understand Nersite had told you something about Teresa too.

“
Yeah… Oh crap, let me see.”

Don tried to corral his beer-soaked thoughts. “It was something about Teresa putting together all the clan legends and stories about the Soreyes. Then wondering about you guys—the bats—and how you’re connected in ways no one knew or understood—

“
Whatever. I’m asking about
Teresa,
” the bat said.

“
Yeah, yeah. Then she got this great idea and I conked out from exhaustion and boredom. There’s something else. You said travel between the valleys was done only through the Portal or dreams. If Teresa traveled often to Valle Abajo, it doesn’t make sense. She lived in a time when transportation was slow and rare. I mean, it would take half a day just to get here from Peralta unless they rushed and didn’t mind risking the lives of their horses. And they did
not
let their young women travel alone in those days, especially single Catholic Hispanic women. Trust me I know.”

The bat reached up (actually down since he was hanging by his back feet) to vigorously scratch his ears.

“
You’re right,” he said. “There’s a lot Nersite, the Nohmin, and, in fact, all the clanspeople don’t know. Teresa continued to visit her sisters through dreams, but within the first year when she was twenty-two years old, the plague started developing. They needed her to come through the Portal to be physically present in Valle Abajo. So, to travel to the Portal, Teresa used a cover story.

“
She convinced her priest that she had visions the Madonna was calling her to serve her people more fully than a curandera, although she didn’t fully understand what was being asked of her. She rambled on and on about angels of heaven who told her the ‘Valle’ was in serious spiritual trouble unless someone with a special heart and soul prayed the rosary thousands of times and studied the scriptures out in the fields of the floodplain west of the Rio Grande.

“
She hated making up a story to the priest and knew eventually she would have to confess her lie—although exactly how she would word her confession caused no small amount of stress. But right then she needed his blessing to convince her parents.

“
She went to her parents with the priest and asked their permission to travel to offer prayers in a field north of Rio Luna on the west side of the Rio Grande River. The priest reluctantly backed her up, but only on the condition she provided evidence of a revelation after her sojourn there.