The Temptation Of Demetrio Vigil Part 25

"I am listening, to every word."

"Then you aren't hearing."

"What are you trying to tell me?" I asked. "Is it so hard to just say it in plain English?"

She pointed to the painting. "That came to me, after your call. Look at it. I've told you what I've come here to tell you. Listen harder. You are among shape s.h.i.+fters. You are in the presence of witches. Be smart. Prepare your bow and arrow. Remember that song."

With that, Yazzie hugged me with a promise to return the following day, and left as quickly as she'd come. I sat alone in the room for a moment, listening to the embers crackle in the fireplace, and trying not to be afraid of the ceiling and its tragic history. Then I unwrapped the painting Yazzie had given me. It depicted a bullfight, the horrible Spanish practice whereby a matador kills a defenseless bull before a large and cheering crowd. The bull in the painting sat on its haunches, looking away from the matador, whose knives were raised in an energetic pose, as though he were about to sink them into the beast's neck. The words You are not my brother had been painted beneath the scene. I tried to understand what it meant, and failed.

My therapy session with Dr. Bergant the next day went very much like the others, except that this time, she told me she had communicated with her husband's dead grandfather, and had learned that a protection ceremony was needed for me to be able to see Demetrio again. Any lingering doubts I might have had about her sincerity disappeared then, because I had not mentioned the protection ceremony idea to her; she had brought it on her own. She was one of us. She understood. It was amazing, and beautiful, the way the universe had brought us together in my time of need.

"I think it's important that you see him, don't you?" she asked me.

"Yes. I feel crazy without my phone, thinking I'll never see him again or hear his voice."

"He told me how to do it," she said. "We could do it after sundown this evening, if you trust me."

I thought about it. "You're not just trying to mess with me, are you?" I asked her.

Dr. Bergant looked hurt and offended. She told me she thought we were destined to meet, and that The Maker had put her in my path to help me connect with Demetrio and override my mother's cruelty. I had never told her that Demetrio used the term "The Maker" either; I was sold now on her as someone who understood me.

That evening, just after dark, Dr. Bergant came to retrieve me from my room. I went with her to her Mercedes coupe, and together we drove along the b.u.mpy road, off the hospital grounds, to a nearby side road and then onto a series of rough and narrow dirt roads that led into a more heavily wooded area. Soon, she parked, and I followed her along a hiking path along a mesa, down an embankment, and into a clearing next to a large pond that was iced over. The moon was out, and while it wasn't full, the night was clear and starry, and it shone a bright whitish light over the eerie nocturnal scene.

"Helpers," she announced, after we'd taken our places next to the lake. "Come now."

From the shadows of the dead reeds and trees around the pond came sounds, and five hooded figures appeared, surrounding us in what felt very much like a pagan sort of way. It honestly felt ridiculous, because even though I knew the truth of what I'd been through, I certainly hadn't shed my practical cynicism and former skepticism.

The five hooded figures began to drone, a low note, chanting in unison as Dr. Bergant removed a golden chalice and bottle of wine from her bag. She poured the wine, and they pa.s.sed it around, handing it to me last of all.

"I'm underage," I said.

"Drink," said Dr. Bergant. "Just one sip, for ceremonial purposes."

I did as she requested, and she began to speak the words of what sounded like a prayer, in Latin. I wasn't fluent in that language, of course, but as was the case with every student at Coronado Prep, I'd taken enough of it to understand some words.

Mentere sorridono La terra e il sole E si ricambiano D'amor parole This was something about earth and sun, and smiles and love. No problem.

E corre un fremito D'imene arcano Da' monti e palpita Fecondo il piano This was about hugs and coming down from the mountains. Nice, I thought. I began to grow excited thinking that I might see Demetrio again. Dr. Bergant continued: A te Disfrenasi Il verso ardito Te invoco, o Satana Re del convito Now, I was no master linguist, but I could have sworn this last bit was something about invoking Satan. I kept listening, and became very aware of the movements of the hooded figures around us now. My eyes had adjusted more to the darkness, and I saw that their robes were not brown, as Demetrio's had been in the dream, but red, and that the hems appeared to be writhing, like snakes.

"What's going on here, Dr. Bergant?" I blurted, suddenly overcome with a terror and sick. My stomach hurt terribly, probably from the wine, or whatever it was that I'd drunk.

Dr. Bergant smiled at me as she continued her chant, but it wasn't her usual rea.s.suring smile of sweetness; this smile was vile. It had a wanton quality, a s.a.d.i.s.tic perverseness to it. She came closer to me, and reached out her hand to stroke my hair in a disturbing way.

"This is so not cool," I said, doubling over with the pain in my gut. "What are you doing? You're supposed to be helping me."

Small reddish lights began to glow within the pond, faintly, and I could see something moving there, beneath the ice, like b.l.o.o.d.y large fish swished around below. The hooded figures began to touch one another in a filthy way, panting disturbingly, and moving closer to me.

"No!" I cried, fighting the pain in my gut to run from them. I lurched, and pushed past a couple of them, while Dr. Bergant continued her terrible chant, in a scream now.

I felt sick, wild, alone and chased. It was utterly dark, except for the light from the moon.

This way, mamita.

I heard his voice, just as I had the night I visited his grave. I looked about me manically, hoping for the blue and gold lights of his outline. He did not disappoint me. I saw him, just a bit further ahead, but only for a split second before he flamed out and disappeared again.

Fast as you can. Run toward the moonlight, fast, as though you meant to hide behind it.

I did as he'd told me, and sprinted toward the moon in the eastern sky. Behind me, I heard a terrible cracking noise, and then screaming as a branch from one of the cottonwoods appeared to break and fall upon two of the hooded figures. I screamed.

Toward the light, Maria. Fast as you can go.

I ran, stumbling over branches and twigs, uneven ground, running like I'd never run before, and then, faintly, I heard the song, from just the other side of the next hill. A woman's voice, chanting the syllables that yesterday had seemed unintelligible to me. It was not loud, or forceful. I stopped for a moment to listen for it, and there it was. Yazzie's voice, singing to me in the night, the hide and seek song. As she sang, it appeared to me that the plants and trees moved their boughs to allow me to pa.s.s easily toward the sound.

"This can't be happening," I whispered, even as it was.

I ran through the cleared path, stumbled over the hill, tripped, and fell. The singing, then so close, stopped, and I saw a woman's figure silhouetted against the nearly full moon. It was familiar. Yazzie.

"How did you know?" I whispered, aware of the powerful scent of gasoline all around us.

"We'll talk later," she said. "Now, you follow me and do as I say."

The sound of a match lighting came next, and then a ma.s.sive torch ignited at the end of a stick.

"This is the sun," she told me. "Hide behind it so they may not see your face. Do not look them in the eye. Follow me."

Yazzie stepped toward the pond now, with the torch held before her. At the top of the hill, she stopped. I saw the little valley lit up from the torch, and was able to make out the figures of four people moving toward us, three in robes, and one Dr. Bergant.

"Flora and fauna helpers, now is your time," said Yazzie, and to my astonishment, birds, hundreds, maybe thousands of them, came from the trees in a ruckus of noise, and descended upon the figures that ran toward us. The humans shrieked as they were pecked and stabbed by beaks in the night. Yazzie began to sing again, softly yet powerfully, a haunting melody, and I saw now that she was dressed in traditional ceremonial clothing, with moccasins upon her feet and feathers in her hair.

"Flora and fauna, capture and leave the woman for me," she said, and the birds focused their efforts of the figures in hoods, all of whom had fallen to the ground in fetal positions to protect themselves.

"Come, Maria," she said.

I followed. Yazzie found Dr. Bergant held to a tree by the arms of the tree itself. I could not believe my eyes. The more Dr. Bergant squired, the more tightly the tree wound its branches about her.

"But how?" I asked.

"Everything has a spirit," Yazzie told me. "Everything helps you now that you have joined the rank of seers."

Dr. Bergant squirmed in the grip of the ancient cottonwood, the light of the torch obscuring Yazzie's face, though we were perfectly able, behind the fiery glow, to see the doctor.

"You will pay for this," screamed my doctor.

"I have seen what you tried to do here, doctor," Yazzie said, sounding sane and strong as I had never heard her before. "And we have two choices upon us tonight. In choice one, you go into the pond, victim of a terrible accident, and the world mourns for you. In choice two, you agree to sign the papers to release Maria from Rancho la Curacion, and you are allowed to resume your life with the provision that in the event you come near her again, you will then sink to the bottom of the pond, victim of a terrible accident."

"Who are you?"

"I am nature, a seer, a spirit in touch, I speak for the creator of all good things. You will not harm this child."

Dr. Bergant struggled, only to be held more tightly by additional branches that moved, snakelike, on their own to trap her.

"No," said Dr. Bergant.

"Uncle," said Yazzie to the tree. "Pressure."

The tree responded by wrapping a thin, flexible branch around the doctor's neck, and tightening.

"Okay!" screamed Dr. Bergant. "But it's not me," the doctor whined. "I am not the one who sought her out."

"Then who are you working for?"

"The boy."

"Which boy?"

"Demetrio Vigil," she said, and my blood ran cold.

"You lie," said Yazzie in a low, angry hiss. "You work for the boy's chindi, the one who tempts him, and now you try to fool the girl."

"I work for Demetrio Vigil," repeated Dr. Bergant, and the tree squeezed her harder, eliciting a nauseating shriek of pain from her.

"You have one last chance to amend your declaration for truth," said Yazzie, calmly. "I see all things. The maker sees all things, and your repentance will be appreciated and rewarded. You still have time to redeem yourself."

"I work," repeated Dr. Bergant in a sneering, laughing, hideously ugly tone of voice, "for the girl's one true love, Demetrio Vigil." She cackled out an evil laugh now, and it echoed through the forest.

She lies, mamita. It's not me. I have never seen her before.

"Meme," said Yazzie to the old tree, stroking its bark lovingly. "Uncle. I have tried to take the correct path, but this chindi is not worthy of the righteous path. I ask you to do what you must, to protect the spirit of this dear child."

I watched, in complete shock and horror, as the tree lifted my pretty young psychiatrist, and threw her, as though she were a child's doll, toward the pond. In the eerie glow of the torchlight, I saw her fly like a tiny comet, her piercing scream of terror ending only with the sound of a terrible crack opening in the ice, and her falling through it, where she appeared to be devoured quite quickly and happily by whatever it was that swam and thrashed bloodily beneath.

"Oh no," I cried, covering my face with my hands. "That's terrible."

"It is self-defense, Maria. That was what she intended to do to you," Yazzie told me, as the tree regained its original shape and stillness.

"Thank you, uncle," said Yazzie, embracing the tree.

"But why did she want to hurt me?" I asked.

"To tempt Demetrio into a trap of some sort, I suppose. He's what they want. Not you. You're the way they get to him. You, I sense, are the bait."

"But why?"

"I do not know. This is what he warned you of. This is why he cannot see you."

"But I saw him, tonight! He sent me to you!"

She put her arm around me, and guided me back through the woodland, to where her Jeep awaited us on the mesa.

"So he came, then," she said, sadly. "His love for you is greater than his love for himself."

"That's beautiful," I said. "Right?"

"Perhaps," she said, turning the key in the ignition. "But the blindness of young love often leads, too, to great tragedy. We've only just begun this journey. Fasten your seatbelt."

FINAL THIRD.

tercio de muleta.

{whereby the matador prepares to kill the bull}.

The following week, after Rancho la Curacion's administration announced that my doctor was mysteriously missing, I was a.s.signed a new doctor, a harsh, cold, cruel man with a pinched nose, to whom I spoke only the words I knew I needed to speak to convince him of what he needed to be convinced in order to release me to my mother. In short, I falsely confessed to having been temporarily rendered crazy by the stress of my auto accident, and I said I missed my old life and would do anything, and take any pill, in order to regain it. The pills went beneath my tongue then down the sink drain. The lies went to the center of this man's tiny brain, where they worked, as lies often do, to appease the wicked, and I was given back to my mother fully rehabilitated and, they claimed "cured".

My mother drove me home with a smug satisfaction dancing like a twitch upon her lips, believing the hospital had broken my spirit and brought me to my senses. She had even planned a reconciliation dinner at the country club, for me and Logan, and even though I hated every minute of that steak and caviar nonsense, I allowed him and my mother to believe I cared for him and wouldn't mind dating him again if he could forgive me my trespa.s.ses. He was delighted, of course, and expressed this by posting a new "Welcome Back Maria" page on Facebook. We were going to Winter Ball together after all. Oh, joy.

Only Kelsey and Yazzie knew the truth, that I was going along with all of this in order to avoid being imprisoned by my mother in a mental hospital again - and only Yazzie knew that Demetrio was my Kindred Other and a revenant. Kelsey still thought of him as my gangster hottie I was seeing on the side; it was less than a year until I turned 18, and she believed me when I told her I was biding my time with the old status quo until I was able to legally make my own decisions about things such as being inst.i.tutionalized.

My mother gave my phone back. Logan's father gave her a pile of money for her mayoral run. Buddy was overjoyed to have me home. I resumed studies at Coronado Prep, a new year began, and I began the long process of waiting for the arrival of spring, which was the time, Yazzie told me, that Demetrio could perform the protection ceremony for me that would allow me back into his life - or whatever it was that he had. Important ceremonies for revenants could apparently only happen once a solstice. I tried to push him out of my mind, and he began to visit me in my dreams, nearly every night. I began going to bed earlier, waking up later, until it was my waking world that felt like a dream. Demetrio was the reality I wanted.

I went to Kelsey's house to get ready for Winter Ball that Friday. She lived in the university area, in a neighborhood known as Ridgecrest. Her house was a lot older than mine, but it had a charm and warmth that my house - both my houses, really, if you counted my dad's - lacked. It was located on a tree-lined street with a gra.s.sy median, was white stucco with a red tile roof, and turquoise trim on the shutters, doors and windows. Whereas in our High Desert neighborhood it was against the rules to have gra.s.s or anything that required a lot of water to grow, there were no such regulations here, and even though it was yellow and dry with winter, the front yard of the house was a lush green lawn in the summer.

Kelsey's parents were home, but they were busy with an intellectual dinner party of the type my mother would never have or be invited to. I envied Kelsey her parents. They were artsy, and calm, relaxed people. They had lots of books about esoteric subjects, and seemed genuinely grounded, balanced and interested in anything you had to say. They also didn't get in the way. I know that if we had gotten ready at my house, my mom would have wanted to stop in every few minutes to check on us. Kelsey's parents, luckily enough for her, had lives of their own, and those lives seemed rich, rewarding, and full of interesting people.

Kelsey had a couple of younger brothers, but her parents had the nanny over to watch them in the nursery wing of the sprawling one-story house. Kelsey had her own wing, adjacent to it, separated from the younger boys by a large laundry room and a music room that housed a baby grand piano, a drum set, guitars and all sorts of other cool stuff. Kelsey's room itself wasn't nearly as large as mine, but it was more interesting in some ways because it had a loft for her bed, accessible by a ladder and descendible by a circular slide. This had been somewhat more fun, of course, when we were a little younger, but we still managed to make good use of it. The room was decorated in muted earth tones, and had real art on the walls. It was elegant, but still a teenager's room, and at the moment we had music blasting.

Victoria was there, too. We'd brought our dresses and collective makeup, shoes and accessories, and had everything laid out on Kelsey's queen-sized futon bed on the floor. We were all in our jeans and t-s.h.i.+rts, sort of standing there a.n.a.lyzing it all. The guys would be here in about an hour to pick us up. A tray of snacks, brought in by the guest chef Kelsey's parents had hired to do the party tonight, sat basically untouched at Kelsey's desk. We were all supposed to go out for dinner before the Winter Ball, and we didn't want to spoil our appet.i.tes.

Somewhere in the past week I'd managed to get myself to a mall with Kelsey and we'd both purchased dresses. It felt exciting and strange to try them on, because they were terribly fancy and unlike anything either of us had ever worn before. We, unlike my stepsisters, weren't exactly the princess type, and we'd never put all that much thought into looking particularly girlish. I, for one, had felt a combination of shame, excitement, and general stupidity as I tried them on. In the end, I'd settled on a cla.s.sic, elegant black sleeveless dress, taffeta, with a fitted bodice and a flared skirt that ended at the knee, with a playful pink sash around the waist, twisted into a bow in the back. It was flirty, silly, and fun. I felt like a gift when I wore it, and that, Kelsey and Victoria reminded me, was how I was supposed to feel.

"Forget about him, whoever he was," Victoria told me. As much as Kelsey and I liked her, we didn't think she was a kindred, and we didn't feel safe telling her the whole truth. We had concocted a lie about how I'd been dating a guy from St. Pious High School but that he dumped me for a girl from La Cueva High.

We all changed into our dresses together, and adjust each other's snaps and b.u.t.tons, zippers and seams. Then we took turns doing our makeup at the mirror over Kelsey's dresser, helping each other. I went light on the eyes, but Victoria set me straight. Her mother was an actress in the theater in town, and so she knew about stage makeup.

"Tonight," she told us, "is a performance. The lights will be low, and you deserve to have eyes that pop."

She lined my eyes in black all the way around, and stuck fake lashes to my top lid. It felt awkward and uncomfortable, but looked fantastic. My eyes looked twice as big as they'd ever looked. I wore my hair mostly down, with a few front layers pinned up, and my friends helped me set it with hot rollers so that it cascaded in pretty waves. I'm not sure exactly what Victoria did to my face and cheeks, but when she was finished with me I looked like a model with sculpted cheekbones. I wasn't complaining.

Kelsey wore a sky-blue silk dress that set off her eyes beautifully, and Victoria helped her pile her hair up in an elegant twist. Victoria wore a hot orange dress that set off her skin tone, and she put sparkly flower barrettes in her kinky hair. In the end, we all looked fabulous, and we knew it. When we went to the dining room to show the grownups, Kelsey's parents looked completely surprised and overjoyed.

"You kids look like you just stepped off an episode of The Real World," said Kelsey's mom. We tried not to be too annoyed at the dated reference. Instead, we just said thanks.