“Oh my god.”
“I would bring them water and food, just slip whatever I could and then start the sawing again. It was so scary. Dad worked as a truck driver for a beer distributor. Since I went to school all day, I would only have an hour or so to saw that crack before he came home.”
“Did your mom know you were doing it?”
“Yes. At least I think so. She had to know. She was sitting in the house while I did it. But she never said anything to me or Dad. By then she was no longer sleeping or speaking in comprehensible sentences. Dad didn’t want anyone to know how bad Mom was so when my grandma or Al called, I said Mom was sick and just talked to them myself. To keep me quiet about it to my school officials, Dad said he would kill Mom. I never doubted him and did what I was told.”
“Except when it came to trying to free the girls?”
“Yes. If they got free, I figured I would leave the saw there so he would think that one of them gotten it somehow and did it themselves. It wasn’t a foolproof plan, but it was the best I had at sixteen. But I never got to save them.”
My heart broke for Hex. His eyes watered and he turned away from me. “Dad killed them all that night, right in front of me. And when he was done, he made me drag their dead bodies into the shed one by one. When I dragged the last body into the shed, someone pushed me forward and locked me in. I thought it was Dad at the time, but later the cops told Al it was my mom. She’d broken the bathroom window, climbed out of it, got a gun, and snuck outside.”
“She killed him?”
“Yes. That’s why Al calls her Dayanara. It means husband slayer in Spanish.”
“That’s a really sick thing to call her, with everything that’s happened and all of what you’ve been through.”
“Al is not the sanest man, either. He and Grandma use the name to honor her, but it just sends her further down the crazy path. Like I said, she isn’t that sane either. None of us are, which brings me to the curse.
“When Mom killed Dad she didn’t bind the spell to the earth. She didn’t do anything, but walk back into the house and call the cops.”
“She left you inside the shed?” I asked.
“Yes. The cops freed me. But that’s not what’s important. When doing any complex magic one must open the door to the gods and close the door when they are done. It’s hard to explain, but I’ll try my best.” He set his cup down. “In corazón muerto the person uses the four elements to open the lines of communication to the gods. Burning herbs that the particular god likes would take care of the elements fire and earth. Liquor is spit into the flames, which represents water and the smoke from the fire serves as the element of air.”
“That’s what your grandma and friends are doing outside now, with the huge bonfire and spitting the liquid into it?”
“Yes. The blood covering them is there to protect them from the gods’ power. Sacrificial blood is armor for them.”
“I don’t understand why that would protect them.”
“It’s one of the first laws. When the protective shields of our world are pulled down so that humans can talk to the gods, they run the risk of having a god pull them back into their existence. However, Donalito created the universe for only the gods and the earth for only the humans. He only allows communication between the two when it is in a way to honor him. Sacrificial blood is an honor to him, and therefore the gods can’t touch anyone who gives respect to Donalito.”
“Alrighty. I’m going to need another cup.”
“I told you.” He poured me some more and did the same for himself.
“That night Dad used the first woman’s blood as the sacrificial armor and then opened the lines of communication with the elements. The gods came through to see my dad’s honoring of Donalito with all the deaths of the women. Grandma says many of them would have been jealous that Donalito got so many sacrifices.”
“But isn’t Donalito sort of the head god? At least that’s what it sounds like, since he made the universe.”
“No. There isn’t truly a head god in this religion. Donalito was just lucky enough to invent a place for all of them to live as well as form the earth and grow humans for their entertainment. It was just the nature of his power that makes him so important to practitioners of the religion. He’s sort of the operator for all communications, but in no way is he the most powerful.”