It was Stephen who closed the door behind us, I learned later. He didn’t want to witness his brother’s fate.
Eddie tried to get up, but Juan placed a foot on his chest. They must have been the same age, but Eddie looked like a teenager, or even a child. He tried to fight back but he was very scrawny, and Juan had an impossible advantage: the Other Place was on his side.
When did you get in here? Juan yelled at him. Eddie bit his leg and received a kick in the face that broke his nose and choked him with blood. The temperature of the Other Place had risen. It was a heat like breath. I finally understood why Laura said it was a mouth. Juan let go of Eddie, who tried to get up again but couldn’t: he collapsed, faceup and gasping. Juan approached him calmly and sat on his bony hips. Florence’s son: the one they had trained to be a medium as if that were possible, as if all the experiments over many years had not amply proven that the Darkness found the medium, and not the other way around. Why do you want to kill me? Juan asked, and he brought his mouth close to Eddie’s. It was an amorous scene. I couldn’t see them well through my tears. They were beautiful as they fought under the starless sky, with the heavy breath of the Other Place around them.
“She said you were in the first one, but it wasn’t true. Stupid girl, stupid.”
He meant the first bedroom, on the ground floor, where he’d started shooting.
“Who told you that?”
“The pregnant girl. She can’t see well! They burned out her eyes.”
“You knew this place?”
“Not this door, but I’ve been here before. In a different place. It’s endless. It shouldn’t be opened. She showed me the door. The pregnant girl. It shouldn’t be opened.”
I don’t know what language they were speaking, but I heard the conversation clearly. Eddie was making an effort to get up, and he opened his mouth: his fox-child’s teeth were all he had against Juan. “It has to end,” I heard at one point, and it was Eddie’s voice, calm and convincing.
“You’re right,” Juan replied. “It shouldn’t be opened. It has to end. But I can’t do it, because this is my land.”
Eddie kept fighting and gnashing his teeth at the air. I think he wasn’t afraid because he knew where he was. The Other Place accompanied Eddie’s bites with fetid panting: now everything stank like a hungry mouth. Juan kicked him, and in the silence of the valley I heard the crunch of his cheekbone as it broke. Eddie didn’t know how to fight; he was just tenacious and felt no pain.
“Why?” Juan yelled. With a single yank he dislocated Eddie’s shoulder. The Other Place seemed to applaud, to concur with the crack of the joint.
Eddie finally answered. Because you’re an impostor. Because all of this should have been mine, it was promised to me. It couldn’t be anyone else’s. The pregnant girl had told him he had to end the lineage, there could be no more children, the doors had to close.
Eddie no longer resisted. He was moaning. It’s not the pain, he told Juan, I don’t care about the pain. The pain is to lose and lose and lose.
“Help me,” Juan said to me, without looking at me.
I went closer, and once I was beside him, he stood up and smashed Eddie’s sternum with a kick. The boy screamed and fainted. Why was he so weak? He had fought and it was hard to breathe in the Other Place, but I felt like he hadn’t put up enough resistance. Outside, he had killed. Inside, he surrendered. Eddie started to cough blood, and he was bleeding from the nose. I reacted and handed the white Afghan blanket to Juan. Being naked in the Other Place made me feel vulnerable in a new, obscene way. I expected at any moment to feel a hand hit me or touch me between my legs, or to be carried off to the Valley of Torsos, where my body would be used as decoration. But I was with Juan and he was the guardian; he would protect me.
Juan placed Eddie on the blanket and motioned for me to pick up the end with his feet. He did the same with the other end. We carried him like a wounded soldier being removed from the battlefield on an improvised stretcher. My feet were wounded as I walked over the bones, and I felt the breath of the Other Place directly on my skin. Eddie weighed very little, but I couldn’t take in enough air. Juan only looked at me once, to check that I could do it, and I nodded.
I didn’t know where we were going, but the path of bones we were following had broadened. It was a road now. We came to a narrow passage leading away from the Valley of Torsos. We picked our way down it until we reached a clearing that was like the others except the trees were farther apart, some of them only trunks, others with treetops. I asked Juan for a break and he nodded. Eddie was moaning. When I could focus on the clearing and its trees, I saw the shapes hanging from the branches. They were people. Juan took Eddie out of the blanket and pushed his body so it would roll down the hill. Then we went down on our own, more easily. Juan carried the blanket and gave me his hand: it was freezing, unlike mine, which was burning. It’s because you’re alive, he said, and I didn’t answer. He was going to hang Eddie with the others. It was a mechanical act, an old, repeated task. There were several empty trees, and he chose one with a relatively low treetop, its branches within reach.
He wasn’t going to hang him alive, though. Under the tree, he circled Eddie’s neck with his hands and squeezed. I watched, enthralled. Juan killed seriously and surely, as if he had done it many times before. It was the sacrifice the Other Place wanted. I could almost hear it savoring Eddie’s death. There was a clicking sound through the whole valley and it wasn’t the branches, it was the satisfaction of an enormous tongue. I felt bad for Eddie, but I was fascinated watching him die. There is no greater disappointment than to believe oneself the chosen one and to not be chosen. To this day, I think he accepted his end. Maybe he even sought it out. Eddie’s eyes were red, his mouth blue, he had blood on his lips, his neck, his sunken sternum. He was ruined. He had cut his tongue on his teeth. Juan stood up. The air of the Other Place reeked. I had often wondered why a place decorated with human remains had no smell at all, and now I realized it was a matter of perception, of recognizing the territory. The Place gave little by little: as if it were turning on the lights in dark places and revealing new scenes, hidden doors, horizons that had always seemed like paintings.
There were ropes beside each tree: everything had been prepared. Juan didn’t know how to tie knots, but I did. My father had taught me on the boat. I showed him. Juan had to be the one to hang Eddie, but I could offer my advice. First, I went closer to the ones who were hung around us, to understand the procedure. It was very simple. They were all upside down. Juan had to tie Eddie’s right foot to a branch and drop him.
When Juan took Eddie in his arms, he struggled to lift him: he was tired. The price he would pay for this effort was incalculable. He supported Eddie with the strength of his own body to keep him from falling, but he still slid to the ground several times. I moved to help him, but he stopped me with a gesture of his hand. I could not profane the sacrifice. Eddie’s eyes were open, and as he lay faceup on the ground, he seemed to be staring at the starless sky. Juan managed to hang him on the third try. Then he bent Eddie’s left leg so it was behind the one he hung by; he used some of the rope to tie Eddie’s waist to the tree, and the rest he used to tie his hands behind the trunk. Some versions of the Tarot left the hands loose, but there in the Other Place it seemed appropriate to respect the traditional version.