“Right, I’m going out to signal Marius and Henry,” Vincent announced as he passed the other two in their makeshift morgue.
“Alright, Skipper!” Sam cried. “I’ll just stay here with my insane colleague, sifting for more creepy shit through all these delightful dead people. Have fun now! I know I won’t.”
Purdue sighed. “I’ll give you a bonus for emotional injury.”
“Ta,” Sam replied.
“You bitch like a teenager,” Purdue muttered as he dragged a papery seaman onto the casket edge. “The good thing is that they are quite light in weight, so they’re not difficult to handle.”
“That’s true. I feel so much happier that they don’t weigh a lot,” Sam teased.
“All jokes aside,” Purdue said, “could you please go up into the wet for me, Sam? I left the blowtorch at the entrance of the hatch, and I have to melt these locks quickly.”
“Gladly,” Sam answered. “Even the heart-stopping moan of that entrance hatch is preferable to this body pit.”
Sam had been gone for less than five minutes before he surfaced through the flooded drain entrance again.
“Damn, that was quick,” Purdue chuckled, but Sam was not laughing. His face was white as a sheet as he tried to form words.
Purdue ran toward him, just as Sam lifted Vincent’s limp body up from the dark pool where the chasm in his throat had colored the blue to dark red.
“Oh my God! What happened?” Purdue exclaimed.
“I don’t know!” Sam finally managed to force. “I came out of the lower level and there he was, floating as if he had drowned! But then I saw the blood! Look, somebody cut his hose and severed the valve lines to his cylinder. Look, serrated incisions.”
“Diving knife,” Purdue guessed. “Jesus. Vincent!”
“At once the skipper of the trawler inhaled a monstrous tuft of air, making for a hideous death rattle through the scarlet fountain that welled from his neck. He pounded his chest, his voice impotent from the injury.
“What is it?” Sam asked. Again, Vincent glared at them while hitting his chest with his last strength. With his hair tucked into his neoprene hood, his bulging turquoise eyes were prominent enough to linger in Sam’s memory for good.
The dying man kept slamming his own chest, and just before he died, he mouthed, ‘melt her down.’
24
The Martyr
Dr. Sabian stood half behind Javier Mantara, prompting the young man’s actions with a conducted electrical weapon, a device much like a Taser pressed to his short rib, which by now had become quite prominent. Javier was suffering all the symptoms of anorexia and advanced dehydration, yet he was consuming food and drink like everyone else. He knew by instinct that the Santero had something to do with his current condition, but how to reverse it, he did not know.
It terrified Javier that the evil old man could control his physiology without even touching him, but he dared not back down or show fear. His sister’s welfare was everything, as was her safety from both Sabian and the police, and he did not intend to waver in the face of tribulation.
“I’m so sorry, Madi,” Javier uttered blandly, but the quiver of his brow attested to his intense emotion in betraying her. Nonetheless, Madalina rushed to embrace her brother. Instantly, her tears reappeared as she wept on his neck. “My God, what have I done to you? I’m the one who should be sorry, Javier. I love you. I love you. Now look at you! Because of me, because I could not listen to you.”
Raul and Sabian eyed one another like age-old acquaintances while the siblings sobbed in each others’ arms. “This is not your fault,” Javier whispered to his sister, while a waitress interrupted Sabian’s subliminal engagement with the child to ask if he would like a menu. Politely, Dr. Sabian accepted the offer and took his seat next to Raul as if nothing was amiss.
“But look at you! Clearly the stress of my actions, my terrible actions and my disappearance have caused you to neglect yourself,” Madalina persisted, wailing softly with her face tucked into his bosom. Javier stroked his sister’s crown and hushed her. Perhaps it was better if he had shared his ludicrous theory with her, if only to lighten her burden of guilt for his condition. It was so far-fetched that he doubted that she would even consider it a consolation, but he said it anyway.
“Madi, I am under a terrible spell, a curse that is bedeviling my brain to detach from my body,” he whispered in her ear. “Are you listening to me?” He hissed angrily into her hair that covered her ear to impress upon her the seriousness of his accusation. “Sabian is responsible for this. I don’t know how, but he is causing my body not to recognize nourishment.”
“You are as crazy as I am,” she said, holding his gaunt face in her hands. “Honey, that is impossible.”
Javier did not have time to persuade her, and he was immensely fatigued from the trip. “Let me prove it to you.”
“How?” she asked under her breath.
“What happens when I eat peanuts?” he asked her.
“Jesus! Are you insane? You’ll die from the allergic reaction, Javier! What are you trying to do? Your throat will swell up and you’ll die if you do that!” she cried, unable to understand why her brother would put his life at risk for such a trivial remark about his bodyweight. “Okay, okay,” she panted, feigning concurrence, “I believe you! I believe you about Sabian, okay? Just, don’t, you don’t have to prove anything. I believe you.”
“Just sit down,” her brother replied indifferently. He knew when she was bluffing. There was not a grain of belief in her that he was not crazy and she was a terrible liar.
“Hola, doctor,” Madalina greeted. She eyed her therapist but said nothing else.
“Madalina,” he nodded cordially, but she could detect no judgment on his face for absconding from his treatment a short while before the incident in the motel.
Javier sat down and looked at the child. “You are a very good boy,” he said slowly. The difficulty of speaking increased every day, but Javier managed with hard whispers.
“I am a very good boy,” the child answered him with a smile. Javier smiled, “And what is your name?”
“Raul,” the boy replied. “Are you a martyr?”
Madalina gasped. Sabian’s prying eyes grew wide. Javier felt his heart sink, but he reacted with curiosity while he hid his dreadful assumptions about his illness. “Why do you think I am a martyr?”
“You look like one,” Raul informed him. “When I was in Romania during the religious festival last year, I saw many pictures painted on the walls of churches. It was all pictures of men who looked like you, and they looked very sad. The priest called them martyrs.”
“Well, I sure feel like one,” Javier answered down the middle, resisting a leer at the psychologist next to the boy in the booth. “I’ll tell you what, Raul. Do you eat peanuts?”
“No,” Madalina yelped suddenly.
“I love peanuts, Madi,” the boy frowned. “Please? Please can I have some?”
“Sí, over there on the bar counter they have bowls of peanuts,” Javier struggled to smile at Raul. “Why don’t you go and get us some?”
Raul jumped up cheerfully and made for the bar on the other side of the room. Sabian and the siblings stared at one another. They could discuss nothing yet, because the child would be back shortly. The awkward silence was thankfully filled with a group of Australian tourists coming in through the main doors with quite a lot to say about the interior décor and how steep the ramp road up to the Castillo de Sax was.