Montserrat went to the kitchen and put water on to boil. The battered kettle stretched her face across its surface, deforming her reflection as she crossed her arms and waited for the steam to rise. The instant coffee was insipid, but she wasn’t fussy, and she carried her cup back to the living room to continue her reading.
The opener of the way, the book said, and there was an illustration of a man seen from behind with his arms raised toward the sky, while a gigantic eye stared at him from the heavens. Urueta had called the vegvísir “That Which Shows the Way.” And here was the “opener of the way.” There was a symmetry to the book, and not only in the text, but in the illustrations. The circle with the four sections aligned perfectly with the drawing of the vegvísir, and when you paid close attention you realized that the black circle was in fact an eye with a pupil in the center.
She stopped, her finger resting upon the page, feeling odd at the realization that there was a logic to Ewers’s manuscript and perhaps she was beginning to get the hang of it. In fact, it was quite the elegant, artistic little book. A bit garrulous. Ewers favored long paragraphs and never-ending sentences, although there was an undeniable allure to the way he structured his thoughts. In person, had this delivery been amplified, had the words been even more insidiously charming when spoken?
“？‘Fear gives a sorcerer power over a person,’？” she read out loud. “？‘Never let fear control you: rage will be your shield. Forge an armor out of anger and bile.’？”
She flipped to the last few pages of the book to the black-and-white headshot of Ewers with a tiny biography beneath it—nothing useful, merely two sentences declaring Ewers an occultist and expert in all matters magical. A water stain marred the back of the book, as if someone had left it near an open window when it rained or spilled a cup of tea, and the headshot in turn was deformed, and the details of the face were smudged by the ravages of time and the elements. And yet, once again, there was something vivid, bewitching, about Ewers’s gaze, staring at her across the decades.
* * *
—
The next day, she dropped by Araceli’s place. They were both still giddy with her diagnosis and besides, her sister had wanted to take a bunch of clothes to the laundromat and run errands. When they were done with that, Araceli suggested they have supper together, and therefore it wasn’t until eight p.m. that Montserrat walked into her apartment and saw the answering machine with the number four blinking on it.
She groaned, figuring that the guy from the video store was going to scold her.
She pressed the button to rewind the messages.
“Montserrat, give me a call,” Tristán said. “Something’s wrong.”
Then another message. “Montserrat, you’re not in yet? Why don’t you have a pager? Call me.”
Were all the messages from Tristán? Had he gotten himself in trouble? Before she could listen to another message the phone rang and she picked up.
“Finally!” Tristán said. “Where the hell have you been? I’m tired of talking to your machine.”
“Out. What are you, my mom?”
“I saw some fucking shit and today it’s even more fucked up.”
“What?”
“You better get over here.”
“Sure, boss. Do you want me to swing by with Cheetos or anything else you might want? A pizza, maybe?”
“I’m not kidding. It’s important.”
Montserrat scoffed as he hung up, then she grabbed the keys she had dumped next to the phone and went to get her car. When she arrived at Tristán’s building, he was waiting for her outside, arms crossed. She had been ready to yell at him, but he looked tense and truly worried.
“What happened?” she asked as they went into the building.
“After that celebration at Abel’s apartment the other night I saw Karina,” Tristán said, walking briskly toward the elevator.
“Were they showing a rerun?”
“No, she was in my apartment.”
“You were looking at pictures of her?”
“She was standing in my apartment.”
Montserrat stared at Tristán as he jabbed the elevator button. Before she could ask another question he spoke again. “I freaked out. I got dressed and checked in to a hotel, and I spent a whole day there.”
“You went to a hotel because you had a nightmare?”
“I saw her. And don’t look at me like that. I’m not doing any drugs, and alcohol doesn’t scramble your brain.”
You’re having a nervous breakdown, she thought. They’d been through one already. And whatever he said, he might be lying about the drugs.
“Well, the pressure of the new soap opera, the excitement—”
“I don’t see my dead girlfriend when I’m excited, trust me!” Tristán yelled as he jabbed the elevator button one more time.
The doors opened, and he stepped in with a huff. Montserrat followed him and watched as he pressed the button for his floor. She was trying to watch her words and gently suggest he needed to talk to a doctor, but then Tristán muttered a low “fuck,” and she figured she needed to ease him into that conversation.
“Look, I told myself that I had a nightmare, too. Just like you did. And I was willing to believe it because frankly even if I wasn’t doing drugs that night, maybe all the stuff I snorted and injected through the years dislodged a few components inside my head. I was willing, until two hours ago, to toss myself on a couch and tell a psychiatrist how the other kids bullied me when I was little and that I wasn’t potty-trained until I was three.”
“But?”
“Oh, I’ll show you ‘but,’？” he muttered, slipping his hand into his pocket and taking out the apartment keys.
He unlocked the door with an angry curse word, then stomped toward the dining room table, where he extended an arm and pointed at a yellow manila envelope.
“Look at it,” he said.
The manila envelope had been ripped open, but she handled it carefully, sliding its contents onto the table: it was full of feathers, as if someone had plucked a chicken. There were also seven long nails, old with rust, and a long piece of thread, knotted seven times. She contemplated this strange assortment of objects with a raised eyebrow, then looked again at the envelope, searching for a sender. There wasn’t one, but the recipient’s address and name scribbled with a black marker did not belong to Tristán. She raised her head quickly.
“You stole Abel’s mail?”
“I didn’t steal Abel’s mail. The postman keeps leaving it in my mailbox, and I was distracted today so I opened it before I paid attention to the name. And look what I found! I saw my dead girlfriend and now he’s getting a fucking witch’s kit in the mail.”
“We don’t know what that is.”
“You go to the Mercado de Sonora and shop around blindfolded or what? That looks like witchcraft!”
Montserrat had not, in fact, paid too much attention to the wares sold at the market, but what she had seen were candles, powders, sprays, soaps, and incense, all packaged with silly labels that promised money, love, or fortune. She had not come across an assortment of feathers and nails like this; it didn’t look like any of the amarres Araceli might buy.