Tristán stood up and bid the woman goodbye. She waved him away. He felt flushed by the time he reached Montserrat’s car and opened the door, anxiously looking at her. Montserrat was fine, listening to heavy metal of all things, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Marisa had royally spooked him.
“What did she say?” Montserrat asked, lowering the volume of the song by Luzbel that was playing. He didn’t like that type of music, but being around Montserrat he had absorbed the names and songs of a few bands she preferred.
Tristán tugged at his tie and sat next to her, staring ahead. “She says Ewers’s cult is having a good time. She recommends we get rid of anything he owned, especially the film.”
“She knows about the dub.”
“The dub, or maybe the silver nitrate print. Maybe both.”
“Hmm.”
“Hmm, what?”
Montserrat turned the key, and the car began moving down the street. Tristán rolled down the window a little.
“She says Ewers himself may not be dead. That a part of him remains.”
“I think I saw him, at that building downtown.”
Tristán stared at Montserrat. “Why didn’t you say so before?”
“You were mocking me, remember? Asking about my German boyfriend and latest crush?”
Tristán felt like smacking himself. Yeah, of all the things to say, all the things to needle her with, he’d picked that. It was a low blow. He was aware, although he didn’t like to acknowledge it, that Montserrat had liked him quite a bit back in the day. One afternoon she had even attempted to verbalize this attraction, at which point he had promptly cut her off and turned evasive until she had understood through oblique gestures that this avenue was closed.
That had been around the time his braces had come off and he was getting interested looks from the prettier girls in class, and Tristán, greedily delighting in the opportunities his eroding shyness afforded him, had decided Montserrat’s earnest affection was not as enticing as miniskirts and plunging necklines.
She’d never made any overtures when they grew up, and they’d buried that episode, but then of course he hadn’t forgotten it.
“Well, fuck! I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry,” he said, attempting an apology that would not earn him a tirade from her.
She seemed to take it well enough, shrugging.
“You saw him, then?” he asked, tentative, a little afraid of the answer.
“I didn’t see anything. Not really. But I felt it. I think it’s him.”
The semaphore was red at the intersection they were approaching. Two teenagers wearing dirty Santa Claus hats were going from car to car, selling bubble gum. Tristán took out a couple of coins and handed them to the kids. Everything was turning American. The Three Kings were giving way to the fat guy in the red suit. Downtown, buildings were decorated with traditional pi?atas but also glowing reindeer.
“Why is he following you?” he asked as the lights changed and the car began rolling down the street again.
“I don’t know. Why did you see Karina? But it’s happening, and I don’t trust Marisa or her aunt. They’re playing at something.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tristán said. “The problem is we’re playing, too, but we don’t know the rules of the game.”
Montserrat did not reply. He sank back in his seat and glanced at the city streets. The posadas were starting the day after tomorrow. A time for joy and parties. Meanwhile, they were being chased by dead people.
Merry Christmas, 1993. It was going to be a hell of an end to the year.
20
Tristán was still trying to deal with the debacle at his photo shoot and spent a whole day on the phone, talking back and forth with Dorotea and other people. That meant they didn’t head to Clarimonde Bauer’s house until Thursday evening rather than tackling the issue immediately. This suited Montserrat fine because she wanted to see Araceli before her sister left for Morelia.
With a strange presence following her and the possible existence of cultists, Montserrat didn’t have time to shop for a fancy gift and ended up hastily stuffing a couple of candy boxes in paper bags and pasting bows on them. She handed them to her sister—one for Araceli, one for their mother—and they had coffee at a joint that sold churros and hot chocolate.
“How’s work? It seems you’re busy every day I call.”
“Shifts here and there,” Montserrat said. She was not going to mention Ewers or his spells, so she jumped to the question she wanted to ask without preamble, figuring she might as well know. “What about you? Are you feeling okay?”
She was worried that whatever good luck might have been generated by the spell they’d cast when they dubbed the movie had vanished. Abel was dead, Tristán was probably out of an acting gig, and Montserrat couldn’t even collect a check. This might mean a complete reversal of fortunes.
“I’m great. I went to the basilica on Sunday to thank the Virgin of Guadalupe for helping me out,” her sister said.
“It must have been packed,” Montserrat replied, remembering the processions, the people carrying their statues of the Virgin in their arms and their bouquets of flowers.
The Virgin’s Day marked the beginning of the festivities that would bleed into the first week of January. Their mother had been devoted for a single day of the year and lit her candle and said a prayer every December 12. But others took it much further. Montserrat remembered the people, moving like ants downtown, heading to venerate her image.
It was a spectacle, as were the pastorelas where people dressed up as devils and angels and enacted the play of the Nativity. She wondered what Ewers would have made of those, interested as he was in performances. Religion and magic were not the same, but maybe Ewers had caught the scent of something when he walked downtown and saw such forms of entertainment.
Mexico was syncretism in motion, and Montserrat supposed in a weird way so was Ewers’s magic system. Of course, he bent it the way he wanted, talked his talk of Aryan superiority and ancient lay lines, but he was not exactly original.
There she was again. She wished to chat with her sister and forget about Ewers, but she kept going back to him. Tristán wasn’t wrong about her compulsions.
“Have you put up your Christmas tree?” Araceli asked.
“I forgot,” Montserrat admitted.
“Wow, you must be busy. But you have figured out how you’re spending New Year’s, right? You’re not going to be all alone?”
If Montserrat even hinted that she was planning on being alone, Araceli would never leave the city without her. She shook her head vehemently. “Of course not. I imagine Tristán and I will order takeout.”
“You are an adventurous duo. Then he’s not going anywhere, either.”
“No. It’s the two of us.”
“You should make sure you have a smidgen of Christmas cheer. Put up the tree, go to a party.”
When they were done with their hot chocolate, Montserrat drove her sister back home. Araceli surely noticed that she was distracted, but Montserrat hoped she chalked it up to the imaginary shifts she was working.
On the way home, she stopped at the same store where she’d bought books on Crowley and other occultists and bought more items. She didn’t have money to burn on this stuff, but Tristán was right: they didn’t understand the rules of the game they were playing. More reading material might be useless. Then again, her growing collection, spread across her desk, or resting atop a chair, comforted her. It wasn’t exactly Christmas cheer, like Araceli suggested, but it was keeping her busy.