Walkers (36 page)

Their first surprise had been that
the soil around San Hipolito had been so deeply riven with cracks. On the
north-west side of the village, half a hillside had broken open and dropped
away; and there were deep crevices running all the way across the main highway.
In places, the tarmac was so cracked that it looked like a satellite map of the
Mississippi delta. As the priest had explained, one of the end walls of the
church had collapsed. A deserted wheel -barrow stood hopefully beside the
rubble, waiting for the siesta to finish, so that it could once again be
brought back into the service of the Lord.

The priest was short, only five feet
five, but thickly built, with a large head, and penetrating eyes. His principal
flock, he explained, were at Ojos Negros, but he had been born in San Hipolito,
and the people here had known him all his life.

‘We’ve been looking for a friend of
ours, an American girl named Sylvia Stoner,’ said Henry. ‘We heard she might
have come this way. Maybe a month ago, maybe longer.’

The priest said, ‘Come inside’ and
led them through the churchyard, where stone crosses and blind-eyed angels
baked in the hundred-degree sun, through the heavy dried-oak door, and into the
church itself. Although a large rhomboid of sunlight fell across the nave from
the half-collapsed wall, the church was very much cooler inside, and they sat
down with relief on one of the polished pews.

‘I wondered when somebody would come
to find out what happened,’ said the priest.

‘Oh, yes?’ asked Gil, looking
around, at the single stained-glass window, at the simple altar, at the silent
confessionals.

‘Do not understand this wrongly,’
the priest replied. He coughed, and cleared his throat. ‘Everything was
properly reported, to the church authorities, and to the police at Ensenada.’

‘What was properly reported to the
church authorities, and to the police at Ensenada?’ Henry enquired.

‘You came because of the girl, yes?’
the priest replied, his thick eyebrows crowding together in perplexity.

‘That’s right, Sylvia Stoner. Pretty
girl, blonde hair. Always wore a silver chain around her ankle.’

‘And you do not know what happened
here?’ the priest asked them.

Henry shook his head. ‘I think you’d
better tell us.’

‘Well... said the priest, licking
his lips anxiously. ‘If you do not already know...’

‘Father,’ Henry put in, ‘this
information is vital. A friend of ours is in really serious danger. It could be
that it has something to do with whatever happened here in San Hipolito.’

‘I suppose it can do no harm, if I
tell you,’ the priest said, just as worriedly.

‘It certainly won’t do anybody any
good if you don’t,’ Gil pointed out.

‘Very well, then, come with me,’
said the priest. He stood up, and beckoned, and they followed him along the
nave to the very end of the church, where the wall had collapsed. They could
see that the ground had gaped open to a width of nearly fifteen feet, and that
there was a sixty-foot crevice zig-zagging from the middle of the graveyard to
the foot of the very front pew. It looked as if part of the crevice had once
been a vault of sorts because six or seven feet of the wall was lined with
terracotta tiles, salt-glazed so that they were shiny black.

‘Of course you know how bad the
earth tremors have been,’ said the Priest, standing right at the very edge of
the crevice. ‘You have probably felt them in San Diego.’

‘I had no idea they were as strong
as this,’ said Henry.

‘Well, they have been less frequent
lately, and not so powerful. But the night when this wall collapsed, there was
quite a severe tremor, three point four, and many houses and outbuildings were
destroyed, all around this district. When I felt the tremor in my house at Ojos
Negros, I had a strange feeling that something terrible had happened, and sure
enough I was telephoned to come at once.’

‘There’s no damage here that can’t
be repaired,’ Henry commented, shading his eyes so that he could look out of
the church and into the sun. ‘A couple of truckloads of concrete should put you
right.’

The priest rubbed his hands together,
slowly and nervously. ‘I am afraid that something happened here which all of
the concrete in the world could not put right.

In this vault, there rested a box, a
long wooden box, carved and sealed. I still have it, but it has been taken to
my house atOjos Negros for safekeeping. Up until the night of the earth tremor,
the box was hidden below the ground, and covered with an iron trap, three
inches thick, and tiled over so that it was indistinguishable from the
remainder of the church floor. But, crack! when the earth shifted, the iron
trap was broken in half, and the wooden box was exposed to view. My church
curator, Miguel Estovar, ran here to the church as quick as he could, but he
was too late. The trap had been broken, the seals had been damaged, and the
wooden box was empty.’

Henry said, in a quiet voice, ‘Tell
me, Father, what was
inside
the
wooden box?’

The priest stopped wringing his
hands, and instead chivvied his fingertips anxiously against his sleeve.

Even more quietly, Henry asked, ‘Was
it Yaomauitl?’

The priest stared. ‘You know about
Yaomauitl?’

Henry nodded. ‘We are Night
Warriors. When the sun sets, I am Kasyx, and this is Tebulot.’

Immediately, without any further
questions, and without any ceremony at all, the priest went down on one knee, and
clasped Henry’s hands. Then he clasped Gil’s hands, and kissed them. As softly
and quickly as if he were reciting his rosary, he said, ‘The legends always
said that the Night Warriors would come, if ever Yaomauitl was freed, but I
never believed them.’ He looked up at both of them, the sunlight shining around
their heads like haloes, and he said, with the deepest of emotion,

‘You have restored my faith. It is
like a miracle.’

‘We’re not
that
miraculous,’ said Gil. ‘We only started training last night.’

The priest stood up, and gripped
them both by the shoulder. ‘I know that you will defend us. God be praised.’

‘Tell us something about Yaomauitl,’
said Henry. ‘Was he buried here for very long?’

The priest said, ‘He was buried here
in 1687. It happened after a dream battle in which it is said that sixty of the
finest Night Warriors lost their lives. He was placed inside a box of elm wood,
through which evil manifestations may not pass, and the box was sealed with the
nine holy seals of God. The iron trap was then lowered over his tomb, and the
iron trap was blessed by nine priests and crossed ninety-nine times with holy
water. The church of San Hipolito was built on top of the tomb, to further
sanctify this place. Yaomauitl has lain here ever since – until he was freed by
that earth tremor.’

‘Do you know what he looks like?’
asked Henry.

‘Come with me,’ said the priest. ‘I
have a contemporary woodcut of the entombing of Yaomauitl in my study. It shows
the Devil quite clearly. It also shows the nine seals, and the Night Warriors
who entrapped Yaomauitl at last.’

They left the church and walked
across the glaring courtyard at the back, until they reached a small adobe
house shaded by scrub trees. A Mexican woman was outside on the verandah,
cleaning moths off the oil-lamps with white spirit. She watched Henry and Gil
in suspicious silence as the priest took them into the house.

‘Maria is like most of the people of
San Hipolito,’ the priest explained. ‘She doesn’t take to strangers very
readily.’

‘You still haven’t explained what
any of this has to do with Sylvia,’ said Gil.

‘Well,’ said the priest, ushering
them into his house, and then leading them through to the living-room, ‘this is
because you have to understand the background of what occurred before you can
come to the same conclusion as I. There are no easily explained facts. There
are no reliable witnesses, either. But everything indicates that my assumption
is correct, and I have to say that Monsignor Del Parral in Ensenada concurs
with my opinion.’

The inside of the small adobe house
was cool and musty. The furniture was simple: rushwork chairs and plain wooden
sofas. The walls were painted white, and hung with brightly coloured native
paintings of Biblical scenes -Joseph and his coat of many colours, Moses in the
bulrushes, the Pieta. The floors were tiled dark brown, and there was a basket
of eucalyptus logs beside the hearth. Henry and Gil waited for a minute or two
while the priest went through to his study. He came back with a red cardboard
folder, which he laid on the low table in the middle of the room, and opened.
Inside was a sheet of thick art paper, yellow at the edges and badly
discoloured, but printed with the most richly detailed woodcut that Henry had
ever seen. It was in the style of Diirer’s
Apocalypse,
and although it was not nearly as accomplished as a work by Diirer, it
clearly showed the Devil Yaomauitl being imprisoned in his elm-wood box.

‘How old is this?’ asked Gil,
quietly.

‘The print is relatively new, 1880
or thereabouts. But the original woodcut from which it was taken – which is now
in the Museum of Religious Art in Mexico City – that was dated 1687. The artist
was Paolo Placido SJ.’

Henry and Gil examined the woodcut
with gradually increasing dread. It depicted a long coffin-shaped box, richly
and fantastically carved with ivy and mistletoe and other holy plants, as well
as the faces of angels and saints, being lowered by derricks into a tile-lined
crevice in the ground. There were twenty or thirty people standing around the
box, some of whom were dressed in elaborate armour and winged helmets. Henry
and Gil both recognised a very much earlier form of Tebulot’s armour, and a
weapon that was primitive by the standards of the weapon that Tebulot carried
now, but which must at the time have been the most powerful machine that
anybody could have dreamed of.

It was the illustration of Yaomauitl
which disturbed them the most, however. He was tall, with dark slanted eyes
that even after three hundred years still seemed to stare out at them with
glistening malevolence. His body was gristly, with protruding ribs, and a
grotesque pelvic girdle, from which depended a long sinewy penis. His hands and
his feet were like claws, with curved razor-sharp nails – the kind of nails
that could take your eyes out with one scratch.

Both Henry and Gil recognised the
Devil at once. He was older, and more battle scarred, but he was indisputably
the parent of the creature that had taken Susan hostage; the ‘boy’ who for one
split-second had revealed to them the real shape of his body and the real
wickedness of his soul.

Henry said, ‘Yes,’ gently, and
handed the woodcut back.

‘You recognise him, then?’ the
priest asked them.

Gil nodded. ‘We saw one of his kids,
if that’s what you can call them.’

The priest stared at the woodcut
with an expression of solemn apprehension. ‘Then it has already started, the
spreading of his seed.’

‘Yes, Father,’ said Henry. ‘That was
how Sylvia Stoner died.’

The priest looked up at him.
‘Night Warriors,’
he whispered, with
reverence. ‘Perhaps you won’t believe this, but I have been dreaming that you
would come. It says in
De
Daemonialitate
that the Night Warriors
would always rise in response to a reappearance of the Devil, in any one of his
manifestations. And here you are. You will forgive me if you are no surprise to
me.’

‘It’s more helpful that we’re not,’
Henry smiled, and grasped the priest’s shoulder.

Perhaps there was still some residue
of Ashapola’s power in Henry’s hand, for the priest glanced at it quickly, and
smiled the smile of the reassured.

‘Now then,’ the priest said, ‘You
wish to know what connection was formed between Yaomauitl and your friend
Sylvia Stoner. Let me tell you what happened as far as I know it; then I will
take you to see Ludovico, who is the only person in the village who knowingly
encountered Yaomauitl after the box was broken open.’ He asked,

‘Would you care for some wine? We
cultivate our own vines here, you know. I cannot guarantee that it is as smooth
as anything from Napa Valley, but it is quite refreshing.’

He poured each of them a glass of
dark red pinot wine, fruity and aromatic, and then he sat back and said, ‘Your
friend Sylvia and her male companion arrived here in the last week of February.
I remember that. They came in a wagon – you know, four-wheel drive – and they
said they were touring Baja California on vacation. They asked me if I knew of
any place they could stay for a day or two, and I directed them to Senora
Rosario’s house. Her two boys left home to work in America, her husband died,
and so she has many spare rooms.’

‘What did Sylvia’s male companion
look like?’ asked Henry.

‘Well, you could say that he looked
like a tennis player who has let his training go by the way,’ said the priest.
‘Curly hair, not too tall, handsome but very untidy.

Unshaven, crumpled clothes.’