Читать книгу Demon Dancer - Alexander Valdez - Страница 19

Chapter 14

The Wise Woman Lupe

As Albert told the boys what we had done that day, they were shocked to learn that we had visited the old mansion. One boy, in particular, perked up, and he became very interested in the tale.

I said that it was my idea and that I had heard an old wives’ tale. The boy Sergio gave me a look I wouldn’t forget. He told me he wanted to take me to his grandmother’s house so he could introduce me to her. I told George and Albert that I would be back soon and that we would catch up with them at the nearby park. They told Sergio to be real protective of me and to be back soon.

As Sergio and I walked to his grandma’s house, I asked him who his grandma was and why he thought it important that I meet her. He said to wait and everything would be a little clearer. He mentioned that Albert had told him I had a keen interest in the legend of the dance hall. Apparently, Albert and George never spoke to Sergio on this matter, and Sergio never spoke of the legend to anyone. It was just a couple of blocks away in an older station of homes where his grandma’s humble adobe home awaited us. The home was dimly lit, and it was evident that the people were of very modest means.

Grandmother Lupe was about ninety-some years of age, and her eyes were glazed over with advanced cataracts. She came from a mountain town in Sonora that was called Rayon. I had heard of it because my grandmother was from those parts, but her family left there when she was a little girl.

The old woman asked for my hand so she could get a sense of me, because her eyes could only produce a blurry image. Upon our touch, she gasped and squeezed my hand so hard it hurt a bit. She had me sit and then commenced to tell me a story. She came right out and told me that I had seen the man at the old dance hall on the hill.

I was shocked that she would come out with that, but I said that I had and asked how she knew. She continued by telling me that she was there at the wedding party in 1923 and that the young bride was her niece. She told me that she had noticed the man in black grab the hand of her niece and lead her out of the main room into the powder room. Sensing that it was an inappropriate situation, she followed after the two.

As she peered into the room, it was at that very moment the stranger was leaving through the window with the young girl draped over his shoulder. The stranger grabbed the wall on his way out, turning to give Lupe a demonic glance she would never forget. Lupe fainted right there in the doorway; she was so traumatized that it took two days for her to come to, with her memory unclear as to what she had seen.

As the days went by, her memory started to compose itself to the point of telling a story that the townsfolk thought her to be suffering some sort of delirium. As she described to the townsfolk her recollection of the man in black, some characteristics were deemed too insane, too supernatural for them to believe. Thus, she was labeled a loon and was never paid another mind. She went on to tell me that there was one man who had contacted her and believed her story.

Nobody put any faith in this man because he was the town drunk. A year had passed when this drunk sought her out. He had since dried out and had something to tell Grandma Lupe. It just so happened that he was outside the dance hall on the other side of the building from where my father was lurking in the bushes. He was back in the shadows sitting under a wagon, nursing a bottle of tequila. He saw the man with the young girl as they had just exited the window, and what he saw next was the eventual reason for his stopping the booze.

As he talked to Lupe, telling her the story, tears welled up in his eyes, giving Lupe the sense that everything he was saying was the truth. What he swore that he saw was that the man in black and the girl seemed to have penetrated a veil on the road, like crossing a dimension. There one second and gone the next. Lupe was not buying the story and sent him on his way with a few pesos for more liquor or whatever he fancied. As the years passed, she started having second thoughts about the old drunk and the manner in which she discharged him. She began asking around the town as to his whereabouts.

The events of the wedding night plagued her mind, and she started coming around to the old drunk’s story and felt she needed to hear more. As fate would have it, he had been brutally murdered, and the crime was never solved. Now she was the sole keeper of the vision they called the stranger in black.

Sergio and I decided it was time to get back to our friends in the streets. As we stood to leave his grandmother’s house, the old woman reached for my hand and gripped it tightly. She placed a small talisman brooch in my palm and said it would keep me safe as I grew older.

It was made of pure silver and contained some rubies embedded in the medallion that gave me the immediate impression it had great value. The woman said it belonged to the stranger in black. She said he had dropped it as he went by the wagon where the old drunk sat obscured by the darkness. When the stranger and the girl disappeared through the dimensional veil, he grabbed the piece of jewelry and spoke of it to no one. He held on to it until the day he visited Grandma Lupe. He made a gift of it to the old woman, telling her that it had belonged to the stranger, and he feared that someday he would be sought out by this mysterious man.

Lupe accepted it because the old drunk was adamant that she keep it and not to mention it to anyone ever. Now it was mine, and I couldn’t refuse this gift. It had an attraction that I could feel pulling at me to possess it, if for no other reason, at that point, it was a valuable piece of jewelry. Her glance toward me as I was stepping out of the doorway was mysterious, as if she could now see me through the fog of her cataracts. It was a piercing look of great knowledge that later I would come to understand.