Spirits - No. 1

Piloto: A Good Day to Die

A storm’s brewing.

They look pretty much the same here in the desert of central Mexico as they do up north—storms, that is. The biggest difference from this to the last one I experienced in Devil’s Corner, California, where I’m from, if I had to put a finger on it, is this one comes with a fat, cigar-chomping cartel boss right out of crime cinema, his tall, spooky sidekick, and a half dozen goons with rifles.

And the kite.

“This is bad,” Ben says, eyeing the sweaty sicarios, but I’m fixed on the kite. It’s red, with a tail of white ribbons, and it’s way up there. So high I’m the only one who notices.

Ben and I are paranormal investigators, not rogue Interpol agents or undercover cops who went too deep.

The too-deep part is real enough, though.

I lower my eyes. I can still make out the old yellow military compound on the horizon. This guy likes to keep his skeletons close.

“Cheer up, gringo. It is a beautiful day to die, no?”

I suppress an eye roll.

“No.”

I’m no fashionista, but a suit worth that much deserves better. He’s sweating right through it, and I just know he’s not going to bother to get it cleaned. He’ll probably have these guys shoot it and bury it next to me.

He laughs a bit too warmly for a man who’s about to kill me, punctuating it with a phlegmy smoker’s cough that drags me back to reality. The Tall Man rushes to his side with a handkerchief, sunset orange. He’s sporting a respectable handlebar mustache and a black cowboy hat, the kind with a brim that’s a flat circle, lined with brass medallions, like a true villain. His suit may be less expensive but not by much, and it’s roughly half as sweaty.

He glances up where I’d been looking a moment ago, then meets my gaze. His eyes are cold, like a reptile, like something that wants to feed me to its babies.

I can’t be sure, but the kite looks a little lower now.

The Fat Man tucks his cigar under a curled index finger, resting it on a knobby knuckle, wipes his chubby lips and says, “You know, my mother, whenever I was sad she would say to me, ‘Cheer up, mijo, it is a beautiful day for…’ you know, whatever was getting me down.”

The Tall Man glances up again, this time at the dark clouds. He readies an umbrella for his boss.

The Fat Man continues, “You know, like if Ernesto, this piece of basura bully from the barrio, had given me a black eye, Mama, she would say to me, ‘Cheer up, mijo, it is a beautiful day for a black eye.’”

“Aaron,” Ben says, “I don’t like these odds.”

“What are they?” I whisper back.

Ben closes his eyes briefly then looks at me. “About one in ten to the sixth, multiplied by—”

“Forget I asked.”

The Fat Man waddles up close, blows smoke in my face. “It never cheered me up, you know?”

A raindrop lands on his hat. Another on his suit. A third on the cherry of his cigar with a sizzle.

“You don’t say?”

He chuckles, turns and meets the Tall Man with his umbrella already open. The two take their place between the rest of his men.

“My mother, she was… un poco loco.”

Ben and I share an uncomfortable look at that line.

A few drops turn to hundreds turn to thousands.

The sky is falling.

It’s the end of the world and I feel… ambivalent.

“You know what did make me feel better?” he asks, and I don’t think I’m going to like the answer.

“After school one day, I followed Ernesto home and gutted him in his back yard while his mother prepared Pozole.”

He should pitch that to Hallmark.

The gunmen fixate on something in the sky.

“Well, beautiful day or no… it is time for you to die.”

“Aaron!” I turn and see Ben’s gaze is also skyward.

The kite is fixed about two stories off the ground, impossibly stationary, though the wind fights to dislocate it and the rain batters it mercilessly.

The air tastes like metal.

From beneath the umbrella, the Fat Man breathes a word carried on thick smoke as it pours out into the humid air.

“Mátalo.”

Click here for No. 2 - The Cemetery Kite