We must go into the forest, he told them during the next excursion. When he was on the Other Side he talked to them, he went in front of them, he guided them. Florence and Mercedes followed. He didn’t let them intimidate him, nor did he feign obedience. On the Other Side he also dominated because he had a secret: everyone got tired except for him. The old people were left exhausted. Crossing the swamp to the field was no more than five hundred meters, but they reached it nearly unconscious. He especially liked to see his grandmother keeling over. Seeing her breathe with her mouth open was extraordinary, a spectacle from hell. How had his father hurt her like that? And why? He would have the answers. It wouldn’t be long now.
We have to get to the forest, he said, and he made them follow him. The guards were outside the door, they were never allowed in. That meant he had to leave with Stephen, who knew how to fight. Gaspar needed him. He didn’t want to need him, didn’t want another father figure ever again. If it weren’t for the guards, he would leave Stephen on the Other Side, except that he was also the only witness to his father’s life. Him and Tali. He needed Stephen alive. He had a lot to tell.
The forest wasn’t dense, the trees were spaced far apart. The members of the Order caught sight of the hanged man. A mummy. Dried-out skin. The body was still. Gaspar backed up and let the others go forward without him. They all found something fascinating. Mercedes: a tree of hands; that is, a trunk with stiffened hands wrapped around it, some of them mummified, others rotting. Grandfather Reyes: a torso skewered on a thin trunk. There were several. The heads on some of them had been replaced with animal heads. Someone was having fun behind the door. Gaspar had known it ever since Adela’s house. There’d been something of the collector about those shelves with their fingernails, their teeth. He remembered his father’s box of eyelids. He couldn’t get distracted. He had to finish, and the arm, his own arm, told him where to go. His scar was burning. Follow the arm. A little farther. Past the forest. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he knew what direction to take.
Florence’s scream revealed the objective of the march through the forest. Stephen, behind him, grabbed his arm.
There were many trees with people hanging from them. The first man, the mummy, hung by his neck. And very high up. He was missing a hand. But the position of all these men and women was the same. Gaspar recognized it: they had been hung in the position of the Tarot’s Hanged Man, head down.
“That’s my brother’s body,” said Stephen.
Florence had stopped screaming. Now she was on the ground, her face against a cadaver’s face, a young man with very white skin. She was verifying that it was, in fact, her son, and she was talking to that dead head. It didn’t seem decomposed, but the eyes were fixed and the neck was bent, broken. There was dried blood on its face and its long hair was red and strawlike. Gaspar felt some pity, in spite of everything. Florence was no longer panting, she seemed rejuvenated as she kissed her son on the mouth. Why hadn’t he rotted? How old was he? A teenager, Gaspar realized. His arms were very thin and his neck black, as if time had not been able to hide the bruises of hanging. His father had done that. Stephen would tell him how.
Florence spoke in English to the dead teenager, cooing to him. My magic boy, she repeated, how much you must have learned in this place, in the realm of the gods.
She asked the others to help her get him down, but there was no response. No one moved. Mercedes indicated the other hanged people: they went as far as the horizon, like in a cemetery of soldiers, a valley of the fallen.
Florence insisted, with all the sternness she could muster in her exhaustion and desperation. No one was paying attention to what was happening around them, nor did they notice Gaspar start slowly backing up, and Stephen with him.
Mercedes was the only alert one. Her beastlike face sniffed at the air. She had noticed the change that the others were unable to perceive, bewildered as they were by that field of hanged bodies, and above all by the reappearance of Eddie, the vanished heir. The place behind the door had never had a smell on the previous excursions Gaspar had led. Now, however, there was a swelter in the air, a stench of old meat and sun-warmed crypt, of rotten milk, of menstrual blood and hungry breath, of dirty teeth. The breathing of a filthy mouth.
We need to leave, Mercedes said, but they didn’t hear her. They ignored her. But she had realized. The place was a mouth.
Gaspar met his grandmother’s eyes and nodded. She was right. They had to leave. So he shoved several members of the Order who, not understanding, didn’t try to catch him, and he ran. Stephen was behind him, lagging. Some people tried to follow them, but a head start of a few meters in that place without enough oxygen was insurmountable. They couldn’t run, no one had any air except for Gaspar, who had time to turn around to watch the useless efforts, to raise his head toward the moonless night and wonder, if there was no moon, no stars, what was the source of that lowering light, so like a cloudy sunrise? When he reached the scrublands, the swamp was giving off a repugnant stench and he felt a wave of nausea. Behind him, he heard Stephen’s choking, disgusted cough. He didn’t want to help him, but if he managed to get out, he would need him to fight the guards. He retraced his steps and dragged Stephen by the arm, pushed him. They had time to escape from the Order’s members, who were falling to their knees on the grass, gasping, but he didn’t know how long they had in relation to the resurrection of the world around them. Everything was waking up and crawling, flowing, sticking out tongues, drooling. The hanged man was starting to sway, though the wind was imperceptible. There were noises in the water. There were no hands along the path through the swamp, though. They were allowed to pass. Gaspar touched the wall of stone, like a mountain, and found the passageway, a short, high tunnel. At the end, the doorknob that opened the door. And then, the hallway of the Puerto Reyes guesthouse.
The guards were on the other side, as always. Gaspar yanked Stephen out—he fell to the floor, his face such a dark red it was nearly purple—and then closed the door behind them. The guards looked at them questioningly. They said nothing. Disconcerted, they turned to Stephen, who couldn’t get a word out, couldn’t breathe.
Gaspar understood what he had to do. It was so simple.
“We came to get you,” he said. “Se?ora Florence says you two should come and see what we found.”
And he opened the door to let them through. For a moment he considered going with them. Maybe just as far as the swamp. Push them into the stagnant water. Skewer them on the trees that were waiting for their torsos. But that massacre was not his. And following them would be dangerous. He shut the door as soon as they were through.
Stephen had gotten up and was looking out the window, trying to catch his breath. Aside from his panting, the house was completely silent.
“What comes next?” asked Gaspar.
“Tomorrow we brick up this door.”
Gaspar felt the trembling in his hands, slight at first and then a violent shudder. The nausea was so intense he soaked his pants with vomit, spattered the wooden floor. His long hair stuck to his face. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he was alone. He crept out of the guesthouse, hesitant: outside, the sun was shining, ignorant and idiotic, and he didn’t see Stephen anywhere.