The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (17 page)

Then it hit me.

“Kelsey!” I screamed.

She jumped. “What? Maria! What is
your
problem
?
Don’t yell like that!
God
!”

“I know what’s going on.”

“Me, too. You’re yelling like an idiot and
frightening the driver. That’s what’s going on. Please refrain from
doing that again.”

“He’s
faking
it.” I turned my body toward
her and smirked at my powers of reasoning.

“I’m sorry?”

“Demetrio. He faked his own death. Think about it.
He’s trying to get out of a gang, but they don’t let you leave.
They kill you if you leave. So he fakes his death, and they don’t
have to kill him. That’s why he couldn’t let those guys see him, or
us.”

She knit her brows in thought. “You know, Nancy
Drew, that makes some kind of sense.”

“It makes a heck of a lot more sense than ghost
stories, right?”

“Yes, of course. But why would
he
stay
there? If
he faked his death, he should do what all the other people who fake
their deaths do, and move to Mexico, or Rio Rancho.”

“His grandpa,” I said, remembering
how nicely put-together the old man was, and how awkward he was
about talking about his grandson. “If Demetrio were really dead,
the old man would have said that. But he
didn’t
. Demetrio probably takes care
of him, and that’s why the old man didn’t say he was dead, exactly,
because he probably doesn’t like to lie, but he didn’t want to give
anything away, either.”

“Wow,” said Kelsey. “I know don’t exactly say this
often, but I think you’re right.”

“He said those gang dudes are nocturnal, right? They
do all their - whatever it is they do -”

“Murder and mayhem.”

“Right. Whatever. They do it mostly at night. And
Demetrio’s always hurrying to get home before dark. Kelsey! He
doesn’t want them to see him! Right?”

“Wow. Yeah. You know what? I think you might be
right. So who’s the other cross for?”

“I don’t know. Did you even read it?”

“No. You?”

“No. But I bet you whoever it is, they know he’s not
really dead.”

By the time Kelsey pulled the Land
Rover into the driveway of my father’s house, we had resolved to
keep all of this a secret until we understood more what was going
on. We holed up in my the crafting/Maria room, put the TV on for
background noise, got into our pajamas, and spoke in whispers; we
agreed that there was no way we could tell our parents, or even our
friends at school, without looking crazy, or without them thinking
we were in danger - which, under the circumstances, we probably
were. My parents didn’t need to know about that.

Missy knocked on the door then, and told me the
plumber was on the phone and wanted to talk to me. She held the
phone with her fingertips, as though merely speaking to a plumber
might make it septic. She seemed to think I was gross, like I’d
seduced the plumber or something.

I took the phone, confused, and closed the door.

“Hello?”

“He’s probably a morboso,” said the plumber, without
so much as a hello.

“A what?”

“A morboso. A damned spirit who cannot move on, and
stays near the site of his violent and unexpected death. Sometimes,
if something very emotional happens in that same area, they can be
shaken out of where they are, and conjured up as morbosos that some
people can see and feel and others can’t.”

“Okay.” I rolled my eyes at Kelsey, and couldn’t
wait to hang up and tell her.

“If you crashed where he died, it makes perfect
sense. We’ve heard stories like this before. It’s uncommon, but not
unheard of. Morbosos have to keep feeding on other souls. Their own
soul is damned for eternity, but they’re stuck and can’t move on,
so they eat other souls. They eat souls. He might have been
disappointed that you didn’t die in your accident, and he came to
find you again because he wanted to set things right.”

“You mean he’s a ghost that wants to kill me?” I
grinned stupidly at Kelsey, and twirled my finger at my temple in
the “loco” motion. Kelsey rolled her eyes in agreement.

“Yes. In fact, you should check the public record
about accidents around there. Could be he does this a lot, and
lures people to their deaths to sustain his own suspended state of
being.”

“What can be done?” I asked with a hand to my
forehead like Scarlett O’Hara.

“Call me in the morning,” he said. “I’ll make some
calls, and we’ll work out a plan. There are ways to protect
yourself. Don’t worry. We’ll get you taken care of.”

I hung up and told Kelsey everything.

“Eat my soul?” I asked, mockingly.

“If you had one, that could be a real problem,” she
joked back.

“This is
absurd
.”

“Totally.”

“People are insane.”

“Yup yup.”

We busied ourselves getting a
snack, brushing our teeth, and getting ready for bed then. When she
stayed over we both slept in the queen bed in the
guest/crafting/Maria room. I turned off the light, and the TV, and
we lay there in the darkness, listening to the sounds of the
nighttime house. My father’s master wing was far from our wing, and
the twins had been asleep for a while. There were the usual creaks
and groans of a house settling, and the wind outside whipping
through the branches of the many trees that surrounded the
house.

“What if he’s
not
faking it, though?” I asked her.
“What if he’s, like, actually dead?” I shuddered a little, with a
grin because the premise was wholly impossible.

“Then I bet he was here watching us undress. Which
is kinda cool, if you think about it.”

“Kelsey!”

“I hope so. He might want to eat your soul, and his
friends might be creepy axe murderers, but he’s still freakin’
hot.”

“For a dead guy.”

We laughed.

“You’re crazy,” I told her.

“Look who’s talking,” she said.
“Miss ‘morboso’s gonna eat my soul’, with plumbers calling her in
the middle of the night. I wish a guy would want to eat
me
. You get all the
fun.”

“Gross.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Seriously, do you think he’s here?” I asked,
feeling a chill.

“Let’s ask him.”

We giggled a little, half girls and half women,
trying to understand, but also trying to joke this thing away
completely.

“Demetrio, if you’re here, give us a sign, come to
me, come to me,” I said, utilizing the language and
ghostly-dramatic voice of girlhood séances and sleepovers, and one
too many Scooby-Doo episodes. “Woo-ooo, wooOOOO,” I added, for
dramatic effect.

“Dork,” said Kelsey, kicking me under the blankets.
“You’re lucky I like you, because if I didn’t, it’d be way too easy
to make fun of you. Like, constantly.”

“You do that anyway,” I reminded her.

“Not nearly enough, though.”

We waited, and listened, and beneath the covers
Kelsey reached out and grabbed my hand, the way we’d done as very
young children, even as we giggled and pretended to be way too
mature to believe any of the nonsense we were saying.

“Are you real?” she whispered. “You sexy dead cholo,
you?”

“Help us to understand,” I said. “And forgive my
horny friend.”

“Shut up.”

“What? You
are
. You’re such a wanton hussy,” I
joked.

“Whatever. Hard to be a hussy when you haven’t had a
date in more than a year.”

“Not for you.”

“Shut up.”

Again, we waited, and again, there was no sound. I
grew drowsier, and though Kelsey and I tried to continue talking,
we both kept dosing off, and jolting awake again to babble a little
more.

“Just one little sign,” I said, finally, so, so
sleepy. “Something to help me know I’m not crazy, and to tell me
there are people in this world who can help me.”

With that, the faucet in the attached guest bathroom
began to leak, loudly, as it had done that morning. Drip, drip,
drip. Kelsey was already asleep, so I poked her. When that didn’t
rouse her, I shook her.

“Do you hear that?”

“What?” she asked, groggily emerging from her
slumber.

“The faucet! It’s leaking again. I asked him for a
sign. It was leaking in the dream, or I heard the sound of it. Do
you think it’s him?”

“If it is, he’s pretty damn annoying. Who the hell
can sleep with that kind of noise going on all night? Apparently
boys are as clueless about our needs dead as they are alive. All it
shows is that the plumber your dad hired is as good at his job as
he is at making up ghost stories. He sucks at both.” She buried her
head under her pillow.

“I’ll shut the door,” I said,
letting go of her hand and swinging one leg over the edge of the
bed, to head to the bathroom. But I didn’t have to go any further,
because as soon as I stood up and said “You should know better than
to annoy girls like this, Demetrio,” the drip
stopped
. Just like that. Right on
cue.

“Kelsey!” I hissed, hopping back into bed and
burrowing into the covers.

“Ugh,” she grunted from under her pillow. “Leave me
alone. I’m tired.”

“It stopped,” I whispered, pulling the pillow off
her.

“What? Really?”

We lay in the quiet, listening to the astonishing,
terrifying nothing.

“Coincidence?” I asked, tepidly, my heart
racing.

“Bad plumbing,” she said. “Your dad acts all money,
but he’s a cheap bastard.”

“Yeah.”

We lay in the dark, listening, freaked out, and
scarcely breathing.

“Have I told you yet today how much I regret being
your best friend?” she asked, scooting closer to me.

“No, but after the day we’ve had, I’ll assume it’s a
given.”

♦

The sun was barely rising in a pink and
turquoise glow behind the Sandia Mountains by the time I pulled
into the long driveway at my mother’s house in the High Desert
neighborhood the next morning. I’d left my father’s before dawn,
because the dance team competition began at 8 a.m. in Albuquerque,
and I needed to stop off at home first to get ready.

Like all other homes in the area, ours was large,
but nestled discreetly into the natural desert landscape per zoning
rules, with at least half an acre between it and the next closest
house. Grass was forbidden up here as an environmental no-no, and
the houses were restricted to either adobe or modern construction
that blended into the sagebrush and juniper landscape. Ours was in
the modern camp, two stories. It was situated in a small valley and
wasn’t actually visible from the street. You had to pull into the
driveway, and drive down a curved steep incline, around a few
boulders and pine trees, before coming to the hidden four-car
garage tucked tastefully out of sight, around the back side of the
house. My mother found few things in life more repugnant than
houses that looked to be “all garage” from the street.

Strangely, as I pulled along the driveway, a hawk
circled overhead and swooped down as though it meant to crash into
the windshield. I braked, hard, and it flapped around the car for a
moment, before swooping to the ground and taking flight again, with
a big juicy mouth in its beak. Ah, so that was it. Hunger was a
great and universal motivator.

After parking the Land Rover in the garage between
my mother’s champagne pink Lexus sedan and her baby blue Audi
convertible, I went through the door that led to the mud room, used
the powder room there, and then scaled the stairs that led directly
to the kitchen pantry and laundry room area. I heard the comforting
thump of clothes tumbling in the dryer, and knew my mother was up
and waiting for me. This filled me with dread, because I had a hard
time lying to her, and knew I’d have to.

I found her at the industrial-grade metal table, in
her black gym clothes, her shoulder-length black bob tied back in a
low ponytail. She was eating her usual banana and plain organic
yogurt, while reading the Wall Street Journal. She greeted me with
a smile and asked me how I had slept. She asked me this every
morning, and every morning I said fine. Then I asked her the same
question, and she tended to answer in the same way. Today she asked
if I was ready for the competition, and I said yes. She asked about
my night at my dad’s, and I answered as vaguely as possible.
Pleasantry upon pleasantry.

The entire eastern wall of our modern house was made
of thick modern glass; it was slightly steamed in the kitchen at
the moment from the coffeemaker. Beyond the glass, there was
nothing but the foothills: nature, awash in the blue-pink tones of
winter sunrise; boulders, piñón trees, cacti, yucca, rabbits and -
I thought with a shudder - coyotes.

My mother knew better than to try to cook for me
anymore. I liked my independence. I made myself a toasted
cinnamon-raisin bagel with cream cheese and tried to calm my nerves
enough to eat it. I poured some orange juice, but the acid made my
stomach turn. I sat at the table with my mother, looked through the
neglected local paper for the weather page, and tried not to appear
distracted and nervous. I smiled too much. Fatal mistake.

“You okay?” she asked, worried. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m fine.”

“You look pale. M’ija, look at
me.
Look
at
me.”

“I’m fine, mom.” I did not look at her. Rather, I
read the weather page. Snow again, soon. Great. Another storm.

“I made an appointment for you with Doctor Bergant,
per our conversation yesterday,” she observed a few minutes later,
as she stuck her nose in her Carlsbad Caverns coffee mug. She had
an annoying way of slurping her coffee in that particular mug that
bothered me, but now was not the time to say so.