“I’m listening,” said Juan.
They will test the child just as they did in past years, and they won’t let you be there this time. It was a mistake to summon a demon in front of your son just before my mother and the inner circle test his abilities.
Gaspar thinks the vision of the demon was a dream.
And you believe that? What if he tells them about the dream? They’ll know he’s only confused. It was a mistake to do that, another self-destructive mistake. I’m starting to doubt the love you claim to have for your son, and I’m starting to think you’re hiding something from me. If the demon had escaped your control, it could have destroyed you in front of Gaspar. Or destroyed him. It’s not the whole truth that you wanted to find out if he could see it. You have other ways of testing him. Maybe you’re going crazy. Why are you playing this game?
What did you find out about Rosario’s death?
I haven’t found anything.
I don’t think you looked properly.
It’s possible. I was busy with other matters. Mercedes has the underground passage full to bursting. Some of them are children. Her experiments to try to find another medium are worse than ever before, and my mother approves. They’re worried because Gaspar still hasn’t manifested, they think your death is imminent, and they don’t want to lose communication. Gaspar is too young for the Rite of Transfer to be carried out on him now.
There was silence. Juan heard the hum of the air conditioner.
Listen to me. If they conclude that Gaspar isn’t a medium—and they will, because we’ll hide his powers—they’re going to start preparations for the Rite. You know that doesn’t involve any physical torture. It’s very simple at this stage.
I don’t want to hear anymore about that. I will never hand my son over to them. The Rite cannot be done successfully. We already found that out.
What we’ve seen were just practice sessions. Missteps. You know that the chances of success, in your case, are very high. And you wouldn’t be handing him over: you would use your son’s body for yourself.
It’s exactly the same thing. He would no longer exist. I’m not going to change my mind. Not even the possibility that I’ll be taken to the Other Place when I die will make me change my mind. You’re talking the way Rosario used to.
If he’s a medium this is the only way, Juan. He’s barely younger than you were when they started using you. My brother’s preparation started when he was even younger than Gaspar. They’d use you both until your bodies gave out. This could have been avoided if the boy didn’t exist. But he exists and he’s your son. And if you don’t want to use his body to carry on, I’m going to help you. Deceiving them, for now, is possible. Making the Rite fail when the time comes, also possible. We can get Gaspar away from the Order, and we can also keep them from using his body for the Rite.
My son is in danger no matter what.
He’s in less danger if they don’t find out he has abilities. And they won’t find out, because we’ve worked well to hide them, and we’ve had help from the Other Place. Don’t you trust yourself, and us? In six years, we can save him from the Rite.
Promise me?
Well, really you should promise yourself. The only thing that needs to happen for the Rite not to work is for you not to want to do it. To act as if it failed or to make it fail.
I can’t stand being so unprotected, I can’t stand this lack of power I’m feeling, I can’t stand knowing that they’re wrong and yet they keep on with this veneration.
How many times have we talked about this? And yet, here you are.
As if I could help it.
It was a mistake not to try to control the Order sooner. We would have done it. We didn’t try seriously.
Juan looked at the ceiling. Stephen continued:
Rosario would have controlled the Order, with Gaspar and with you, and you know it.
You think they killed her because of that?
My mother is a good negotiator. And I haven’t found a single sign of any serious suspicion about a plan. It was no secret that Rosario was rebellious.
Don’t betray me, Stephen.
And don’t you insult me. I’m in danger because of you.
Stephen got up from the bed, but before leaving, he placed his hands on Juan’s shoulders, though he avoided looking him in the eye.
My mother once told me that your power was as great as your irresponsibility. I’ll be with you forever. As long as you don’t push me away, I’m with you.
Still not looking at Juan, Stephen left.
Dr. Jorge Bradford asked Juan how he’d been and Juan told the truth, describing his symptoms and crises. Bradford decided to increase the dose of beta blockers and antiarrhythmics. Then Jorge examined him, using his good hand; he kept the other, mutilated one hidden in a black glove. “I want you to take an antianxiety pill and go to sleep,” Bradford said. Juan agreed: he was exhausted. “But I’m going to need something stronger,” he said. Bradford didn’t argue and gave him a high dose of Valium. “We’re better prepared for your recovery than last year,” he said, while Juan swallowed two pills without water. “Graciela is already in the house, and another doctor is with her. We set up a very advanced intensive care room.” “All right, Jorge.”
Bradford started to add something, but stopped. For twenty years now he’d behaved the same way toward Juan, with an indifference that disguised his devotion. Juan fell asleep naked on top of the sheets, and, possibly influenced by the air conditioning that cooled the room, he dreamed the Darkness was cold and wet, he dreamed of chattering teeth and twisted beings and fields of bodies and forests of hands and the hanged man strung up by his feet and the forest and then he couldn’t walk anymore, walking in the Darkness was very difficult, it was like climbing and there wasn’t enough air and things took on shapes his eyes recognized but then went back to being broken and inexplicable images; the forest, however, was clear, though so far away and colorless, and in among the trees there was a clear presence, waiting, and piles of skulls, a black river that made no sound.
He woke up agitated, but not confused: Puerto Reyes was his house more than any other place was, even if he only visited once a year now. He took a quick shower and, under the water, in the steam, he thought about Gaspar. He was okay, Juan sensed. Nearby and okay. He got dressed to meet up with Stephen and Tali, and when he went out into the hallway the heat made him dizzy. It was almost solid. There was no one in the house, as far as he could hear. Somewhere, surely, Florence, Mercedes, Jorge, Anne, and the others were meeting? He couldn’t hear them.
He knew every corner of the house as though he had his own private map. The same wooden stairs he was going down now had led him, when he was little, to the Place of Power. The garden where Tali had kissed him for the first time and he’d tried to contain his astonishment and joy hadn’t changed much since then. He knew the number of steps on the stairs that led to the catwalk and the river.
When he left them behind, he sensed, first from the tips of his fingers and then as a sort of explosion of light in his head, something agonizing in the old tunnel that had once joined the two houses, the main mansion and the guesthouse. The tunnel had fallen into disuse after a flood. It was built too close to the river and it had collapsed, except for the first stretch—the part closest to Puerto Reyes—where some two hundred meters were still intact. Mercedes used that stretch to lock up children and prisoners. She had always preyed upon forsaken people, and there in the north she had an ideal hunting ground—poor, forgotten people, so abandoned they didn’t even turn to the authorities if a son or a brother went missing. And for years now she’d also had the detainees her military friends handed over to her. The Darkness asked for bodies—that was the excuse she gave. But that wasn’t true. The Darkness didn’t ask for anything, and Juan knew it. In the Order, Mercedes was the firmest believer in the exercise of cruelty and perversion as the path to secret illumination. Juan believed, moreover, that she considered amorality to be a mark of class. The further away she got from moral convention, she thought, the more apparent her inborn superiority became. Florence no longer shared her methods, but she didn’t stop Mercedes, who, as a member of one of the Order’s founding families, enjoyed a certain amount of free rein to pursue her own agenda.