John Saul: Brain Child

“More,” María said softly, her eyes going to the hearth where Alejandro had died so short a time ago. “It was built for one of the overseers.”

Donna Ruiz looked puzzled. “Overseers?”

“From the hacienda, before the … before the americanos came.”

“How interesting,” Donna replied. “It sounds like you know the house well.”

“Sí,” María said. “I cleaned for Señora Lonsdale.”

Donna’s smile faded. “Oh, dear. I didn’t know … Perhaps you’d rather not work here.”

María shook her head. “It is all right. I worked here before. I will work here again. And someday, I will go back to the hacienda.”

The last of Donna Ruiz’s smile disappeared, and she shook her head sadly. “It must have been awful. Just awful. That poor boy.” She hesitated; then: “It almost seems like it would have been better if he’d died in the accident, doesn’t it? To go through all he went through, and end up …” Her voice trailed off; then she took a deep breath and stood up. “Well. Perhaps we should go through the house, and I can tell you what I want done.”

María heaved herself to her feet and silently followed Donna Ruiz through the rooms on the first floor, wondering why the gringo women always assumed that she couldn’t see what needed to be done in a house. Did they think she never cleaned her own house? Or did they just think she was stupid?

The rooms were all as they had been the last time she had been here, and Señora Ruiz wanted the same things done that Señora Lonsdale had wanted.

The cleaning supplies were where they had always been, as were the vacuum cleaner and the dust rags, the mops and the brooms.

And all of it, of course, was explained to her in detail, as if she hadn’t heard it all a hundred times before, hadn’t known it all long before these women were even born.

At last they went upstairs, and one by one Donna Ruiz showed her all the rooms María Torres already knew. Finally they came to the room at the end of the hall, the room that had been Alejandro’s. They paused, and Donna Ruiz knocked at the door.

“It’s okay,” a voice called from within. “Come on in, Mom.”

Donna Ruiz opened the door, and María gazed into the room. All the furniture was still there — Alejandro’s desk and bed, the bookshelves and the rug, all as they had been when the Lonsdales left.

Sitting at the desk, working on a model airplane, was a boy who looked to be about thirteen. He grinned at his mother, then, seeing that she wasn’t alone, stood up. “Are you the cleaning lady?” he asked.

María nodded, her old eyes studying him. His eyes were dark, and his hair, nearly black, was thick and curly. “ Cómo se llama?” she asked.

“Roberto,” the boy replied. “But everybody calls me Bobby.”

“Roberto,” María repeated, her heart once again beating faster. “It is a good name.”

“And he’s fascinated with history,” Donna Ruiz said. She turned to her son. “María seems to know all about the house and the town. I’ll bet if you asked her, she could tell you everything that’s ever happened here.”

Bobby Ruiz turned eager eyes toward María. “Could you?” he asked. “Do you really know all about the town?”

María hesitated only an instant, then nodded. “Sí,” she said softly. “I know all the old legends, and I will tell them all to you.” She smiled gently. “I will tell them to you, and you will understand them. All of them. And someday, you will live in the hacienda. Would you like that?”

The boy’s eyes burned brightly. “Yes,” he said. “I’d like that very much.”

“Then I will take you there,” María replied. “I will take you there, and someday it will be yours.”

A moment later, María was gone, and Bobby Ruiz was alone in his room. He went to his bed and lay down on his back so that he could gaze at the ceiling, but he saw nothing. Instead, he listened to the sounds in his head, the whisperings in Spanish that he had been hearing since the first time he came into this room. But now, after talking to María Torres, he understood the whisperings.

Soon, he knew, the killings would begin again.…