Каарон Уоррен - The Best Horror of the Year Volume Ten

Crispin turned to Morgan, who looked all of a hundred pounds, half of it hair and the rest of it camera bags. “Maybe we can put you on that.”

She looked queasy and stammered something about not speaking the language.

Olaf wasn’t having it anyway. “If you want an assistant, maybe you should’ve brought your own.”

So. These three in from LA Plus the crate they’d shipped along in cargo. Plus Enrique and Sebastián and Sofia, fresh off their puddle-jumper flight up from Mexico City. Twenty minutes later, all of them were packed into their driver’s SUV. This was how it was going to be for the rest of a very long day. At least it was a long SUV.

Crispin sat up front, taking the only other bucket seat for himself so he could play captain, give the orders. After a few moments of idling beside the curb as their driver scrolled his phone, Crispin slapped his fingertips on the back of the man’s headrest, bap-bap-bap-bap-bap. “Come on, let’s get rolling. We’re not paying you to check Twitter.”

“Yeah you are,” Enrique said. “Back home, all you got to check is traffic reports. Where we are now, before you go anywhere it’s a good idea to check that you’re not gonna be heading into somebody’s shootout.”

“I’m sorry, señor,” the driver said. “He is correct.”

Sofia perked up from the very back. “Crossfires don’t ask to see your passport.”

Hector, that was their driver’s name. A middle-aged guy, big thick moustache, and you could just tell, this spotless SUV meant everything to him. It wasn’t all that long ago Enrique would’ve laughed at the idea of a guy like Hector, where Hector found his pride. And had, probably more times than he wanted to admit. It took a while to grow up and find the respect again. The man was somebody’s father.

Hector spent a few more moments on his phone, then looked up happy and put the SUV in gear. They were rolling.

Next to Enrique, Morgan was still looking queasy, but in a whole new way, like she didn’t know what she was doing here and was two seconds from jumping out and running back into the terminal. They’d ended up seated together in the middle because he was so big and she was so small, so they evened out. And what was wrong with this Olaf guy, anyhow, he does his homework but doesn’t bother telling her what to expect.

“It’s okay. We’ll be okay.” Enrique leaned in close, kept his voice to a soothing murmur. “Just a little precaution, that’s all. Nothing bad is gonna happen.”

She took a deep breath and smiled at him. Tried to, at least.

“And remember this: Tiene usted un corazón de cerdo? ” he told her. “That’s how you ask for a pig’s heart. Just in case.”

Growing up, Enrique knew who Santa Muerte was. No secret about her. She was around. You just didn’t see much of her, not then. She was a back room kind of saint, for the kind of altars you never got to see as a kid, because they were private, kept by people who fucking meant business.

Now, though? Now you didn’t have to look hard at all to find her. Santa Muerte was everywhere, never more so than during the last decade, ever since the cartel wars erupted into a never-ending series of bloodbaths and massacres. Saint Death, Holy Death, had really come into her own.

In hindsight, it seemed inevitable. There were things you took for granted as a kid that took being an adult to see how strange they really were. That, and being lucky enough to gain perspective, to see past your own borders. And he had. Enrique had seen enough of the world to know now. The band had given him that much. Every tour made it that much clearer:

Here at home, people found death a lot more interesting than life.

Santa Muerte—she might look different in a hundred details, but was always the same simple figure: a skull in a dress, a skeleton where a woman used to be. She might look like a nun. She might look like bride. She might look no different from Santa Maria, except for that face of bone. Sometimes she might be holding a scythe. Always, she held your fate.

Here in the southside neighborhood in the Colonia Buenavista, Enrique knew they were getting close without anybody having to say a thing. It was the population explosion on the other side of the SUV. People on their own. Families. Mothers and fathers carrying sleepy babies, crying toddlers, to introduce them to the Saint of Death. The slow-goers made it up the street on their knees, not because they had to, but to show humility and devotion. They brought offerings. They brought photos and needs. They brought sorrows no one would ever hear about except the saint.

It wasn’t a proper sanctuary, not like a church or a mission. The shrines never were. It just happened, grew up here like a tree from a seed. Some family starts it in their home, puts up the saint in their front window, and that’s all it takes. They built it, and people came. Eventually they moved the saint farther inside, where there was more room, once their shrine took on a life of its own.

Hector wheeled as close as he could, then cut over to the side of the street and shut down. He stayed with the SUV while the rest of them went ahead, stepping out into the clamor, the laughter and the tears and the numb despair of people who didn’t know where else to turn.

Along the way, Crispin bought a bouquet of droopy flowers from a kid on the street. “Why not?” he said, and waggled them at Enrique and Sofia and Sebastián, petals sifting to the street. “Maybe we can get her to bless this next album.”

Sofia perked up again. She was like that—you never knew when she was tuned in and listening. Looked hard and wiry and ready for combat, muscles like taut cables, drummer’s muscles, her thoughts a thousand miles away, yet she was onto you. She shouldered past to squeeze up close to this PR guy who was always coming off like the band’s biggest fan, like he’d never heard genius until he heard Los Hijos del Infierno.

“Don’t joke,” Sofia told him. “I know you’re only joking, but don’t, okay? You stop a minute and think what it takes to push people, good people, everyday people, to revere what’s inside there. It makes sense the narcos would pray to her, sacrifice to her. She’s made for men like that. But these folk? Jesus and Mother Mary… people still believe, they’ve just given up. Jesus and Mary don’t deliver anymore. Or they can’t. Or maybe they stopped listening. But Santa Muerte does. She’s the one who listens now. She’s the one who loves them. She’s the one they look to for healing. So remember where you are and think what it’s taken to do that to them.”

Crispin was a clean-cut Anglo who looked beyond shame, but he wasn’t above looking chastened. Good to see.

Did these people in the street know who they were? Many looked, some stared. A few, maybe, might have recognized them. The six of them weren’t your average half-dozen people out here, that much was blatant. Three gringos and three Mexicans, but even as locals, more or less, he and Sebastián and Sofia stood out. The black clothes and boots, the hair. No other guys out here had a need for eye makeup. Sebastián drew the stares most of all, the way a front man should—a head taller than most, crazy thin, with a spiked black leather pauldron belted over his left shoulder, like a gladiator on his way into the arena.

Equals, though, in spite of it all. Death turned everybody into equals.

The closer they got to the pink shrine house, the more crowded it got. After a minute of conferring with Olaf, Crispin squeezed his way inside and found the owners, used the power of dollars to get them to close off the inside for a private audience. After passing through a couple of arched doorways, the walls close and the ceiling low, they had the place to themselves.