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heard them reload and quietly separate so they could come at him from both sides. The Stranger lay still until one of them was almost on top of him. Then he brought the walking stick straight up into the man’s groin. The man gasped, in too much pain to scream. He would not father any more children. One more hit and he was unconscious. The second shooter fired, so the Stranger pulled the gun out of the first one’s limp fingers. The robber had no cover, but the Stranger was protected by the barbecue pit. Throwing down his gun, the man put his arms up. At that point two Mayan men with stone hatchets stepped from the jungle. One sliced the surrendering man’s throat while the other picked up the gun. As the Stranger watched, more Mayans materialized from the jungle and quickly killed the wounded attackers. For the drunk, death came so quickly that he did not even fully wake up.
    The stunned and confused villagers walked through the debris searching for their loved ones. Wails of suffering and grief came with every gory discovery. The Stranger felt an evil presence that he hadn’t encountered for years. Mr. Dark was close. The thought filled him with dread, and an icy coldness gripped him deep inside his chest. A few survivors tried to thank him, but the Stranger had no time. Running toward his village, he crashed through the jungle with no regard for his body. He suffered more wounds from trees and tangled roots than from the fight with the robbers.
    When he reached his village, there was a creepy silence—no happy chatter, no children playing, no corn grinding. He hoped they had fled into the forest, but as he entered, he saw the bodies lined up, side by side, and stacked neatly in the center of the village. They had been gutted and decapitated, butchered like animals. He knew them all so well that even mutilated he could recognize them. His family and the shaman were not there. As overwhelmed as he was by the day’s death and tragedy, he still had hope that his wife and child had survived. Looking up from the corpses, he saw a body hanging from a tree. The head was still attached, so it was easy to recognize the shaman. The Stranger walked toward the body with a growing sense of despair. The shaman’s belly had been hollowed out, butcher-style, just like the rest. Inside him, where his stomach used to be, was Itzel’s head. The Stranger staggered backwards and tripped over a bloody metate. His hands landed in piles of intestines. Scrambling to his knees, he retched until his stomach was raw. For hours he howled out his mourning. Even after he lost his voice, he continued the raspy roar of pain.

    From somewhere in the desert a bird called out a warning. The Stranger had stopped talking, as if he couldn’t continue with his story. His voice was raw and strained, like it was giving out again just from the memories. Matt sat quietly in the darkness until the Stranger recovered and continued.
    “I don’t remember the next day. I guess it was shock. The insects forced me to move again. There were thousands. It was like the jungle was trying to take their bodies. I had to get up. The rest of Itzel’s body was lying inside our hut. It took days to bury all of them. I couldn’t do it right, the way the shaman did, but I washed candles and made sure everyone had some. They need light so their spirits can find the way out of purgatory. I spent weeks looking for my son, but I never found anything. Maybe the jaguar scar was lucky. If I hadn’t gone after those killers and revealed myself…if I’d stayed where the shaman could hide me, then they would have lived. Or better, if I’d left that village the day I arrived. I was such a fool to let myself think I could live a normal life. It was stupid and arrogant.”
    “It wasn’t your fault.”
    “I didn’t kill them, but the evil came for me. They paid the price for my selfishness.”
    “No, that’s not—”
    The Stranger interrupted. “I’ve been doing this a long