Silver Nitrate(46)

“My apartment is haunted, Momo. That’s what happened,” he said, turning the key and opening the door. He poked his head inside. Everything looked fine. He took a tentative step inside, then another. Montserrat didn’t follow him; she was still standing by the doorway. “You’re not hanging out for a bit?”

“I won’t sleep over.”

She sat on the arm of his couch and watched as he went around the living room, looking for the candle he knew he had somewhere. Finally, he retrieved it, along with a candlestick, and placed them both on the coffee table. The match’s flame burned quickly, and he shook it out.

“Araceli is going to be okay then?”

“Seems like it,” Montserrat said, but her shoulders were hunched, and she was biting her lip.

“I thought you’d be happy.”

“I am. It’s this talk of spells and magicians that is bothering me,” she said and opened her purse. She took out the yellowed book Urueta had given her and stared at the cover, holding it with both hands.

“You’re not scared, though. I can tell. I guess it’s not surprising. Nothing ever scares you.”

She looked up at him and shook her head wearily. “Plenty of things scare me. Maybe I’m not as nervous as you because nothing bad has happened to me.”

“Do you think he was telling the truth? Will the candles help?” Tristán wondered.

“I hope so.”

He would stop by a florist the next day and order two dozen roses; he’d get more candles. He’d get veladoras with pictures of the Virgin of Guadalupe or the Sacred Heart painted on them. Incense, too. But who knew if it would be any good, and he could tell she was thinking the same, that even if she was not afraid, she was concerned about him. He thought about asking her a third time to stay with him but refrained.

He found himself thinking about the day he’d met Montserrat. Three boys had cornered him behind the stairwell and were teasing him, their taunts a crescendo that would soon no doubt end in a beating. She’d had her cane back then, and he remembered how she’d come into the apartment building, carrying a sturdy bag of groceries in one hand.

He hadn’t seen her at first. He’d heard the tap-tap of her cane, heard the distinct patter of her shoes, and then her voice, loud and clear. “What are you up to?”

The boys had turned in surprise and then, seeing the girl with the pigtails, they laughed and swore at her. Go away, they said. But she was insistent. She stood there, gripping her cane and her grocery bag, and glared at the boys.

“You go away,” she replied.

Two of them scuttled toward the front door, but the biggest boy stared Montserrat down. She stared up at him, though, and before he could open his mouth, she hit him with that cane. The way she landed the blow, Tristán could tell she had done this before, and the big boy yelped and stumbled, but he did not raise his hand against her.

“Come on,” the other boys said. “You know she’s nuts!”

They ran off. Tristán stood with his back pressed against the wall, warily looking at the little girl as she adjusted her stance and gripped the cane properly again.

“I’m Montserrat. But you can call me Momo. Wanna play?”

Just like that, with a boldness that made him immediately agree that yes, he wanted to play after he helped her carry the groceries up to her apartment. Which proved his point that she’d never been scared, while he on the other hand had possessed a long résumé in the art of being a coward. This haunting couldn’t have happened to a worse person.

He was going to buy five dozen roses the next day.

Tristán adjusted the candle on the table, scraping off a drop of warm candle wax with a nail, and looked at Montserrat as she turned a page. The sight of her fingers upon those yellowed pages made him grimace.

“Should you be reading that?”

She glanced up at him. “Why not?”

“Urueta gave you a racist magic manual circa 1960. Very vintage, and also probably the equivalent to a fucking Necronomicon in Spanish.”

“There was a kid from the UNAM who told me he photocopied the real Necronomicon one time. He wanted to barter my copy of Fulci’s Zombie for it.”

“The laserdisc of Fulci?”

“That one. He also wanted a blow job for it. There’s always someone wanting to sell you a lie around El Chopo.”

Tristán wondered who had been the kid who had the gall to ask Montserrat for a blow job, not because she was unappealing—she had, as he liked to say, her angles—but because she looked like the kind of person that would knife you in the bathroom stall if you asked for that. She was a Tlaltecuhtli, not a Venus.

“Of course, but that’s a real magic book in your hands,” Tristán said.

“Why? Because Ewers might have been a real sorcerer?”

“I’m sure he was. His spell worked, and I saw Karina standing right here in this apartment,” Tristán said, pointing in the direction of the hallway where he’d seen the dead woman.

“It doesn’t mean the book is correct.”

“What, he wrote all that down and lied?”

“There’s something about this book,” Montserrat said, tapping a nail against the page. “It’s like Urueta said, it’s a mishmash of ingredients. And there are pages missing.”