Read Online The Black Witch of Mexico by Colin Falconer - Free Book Online Page B

book across the room. He reached for the remote and turned on the TV. He found an old black and white movie with Asian actors and Spanish subtitles, a horror story about a man who changes into an insect. It made more sense to him than the damned book. He watched that.
    He woke with the TV still on. He went to the bathroom and found a cockroach on the floor, right there on the spotless marble, frozen in the harsh white light. It was huge and black, its long feelers sniffing the air.
    He killed it with Love is the Drug . Its guts were smeared over the author’s photograph on the back cover and he tossed it in the trash.
    He couldn’t imagine how a bug that size had gotten in here. Maybe it was a shape shifter, like in the movie, and had flown in like a witch.
     
     
     

Chapter 22
     
    Jamie rang him the next morning at seven. He woke from a black sleep, felt as if he’d been drugged. It must have been past four when he finally got to sleep. He hadn’t expected to hear from her, not after her welcome the day before. “ Qué onda, güey ?”
    What’s up, dude?
    “How soon can you be ready?” she said.
    “I ... I don’t know ... what time is it? ... I haven’t had breakfast yet.”
    “I’ll pick you up in the foyer at eight.”
    “Where are we going?” hesaid, but she had already hung up.
     
    * * *
     
    “I’m sorry if I was little brusque yesterday,” she said. “I had things on my mind.”
    “It’s okay,” he said, though he didn’t mean it.
    She manoeuvred her SUV into a parking spot on the Calle Republica de Cuba and told him they were going to the Zocalo, the main square. “Do you know the Dia de Los Muertos , the Day of the Dead?” she asked him as they walked. “It’s our major celebration here in Mexico.”
    “I’ve heard of it.”
    “In America we have Halloween, but here we take it much more seriously. I’ll take you to the witches” market later and you can see for yourself. First let’s get a cup of coffee.”
    The Zocalo was the very heart of the city; there was a flagpole with the largest flag he had ever seen. Jamie said there was a ceremony every morning and evening to raise it and lower it, and an entire platoon of soldiers marched out of the gates of the Palacio to do it.
    She showed him how the Catedral was slowly breaking in half, subsidence sending the eastern wing sinking into the ruins of the ancient Templo Mayor beneath it. Twenty thousand people had been sacrificed in one day on this very spot, she said, back in the days of the Aztecs.
    Drumbeats echoed around the square, a modern day warrior in a jaguar costume was performing for the tourists outside the museum.
    They passed a jewellery shop. Inside on the counter there was a grinning silver skull wearing a soldier’s helmet. It had a long cigar clamped between its teeth and its gaping jaws were filled with banknotes.
    “It’s for good luck,” she said.
    There was so much that was strange, he felt like one of those puppets that could turn its head around in a complete circle. He rubbernecked at the bright orange vendors’ carts laden with candy and cigarettes, the green Volkswagen taxis, the lottery ticket vendors wandering up and down the cloistered street.
    He had never felt so alien. He was over six feet tall, taller than most of the Mexicans on the sidewalk. He felt naked.
    She took him into the Catedral. A woman knelt in front of the Madonna, her arms outstretched, pulling the little clouds of incense towards her with her hands while her daughter knelt beside her, texting on her cell phone.
    “The Spanish built this on the site of the old Aztec pyramid temple. There was an altar right at the very top,” she said, looking up into the dome. “They used to take prisoners up there and rip out their hearts with an obsidian knife and then throw it on a brazier of coals while they were still alive.”
    “In America we call it ‘divorce.’”
    She smiled for the first time. “Let’s have a coffee.”
    There