Page 38 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)

N ORA WAS AWAKENED by the smell of fresh coffee.

Opening her eyes, she saw Don Benicio bending over her, offering her a cup.

She sat up, wincing a little from the night spent on the floorboards of the porch.

Despite the discomfort, she’d slept well, disturbed only occasionally—when the dog had woken up and remembered to bark at the intruder before curling up and going back to sleep.

Now Don Benicio gestured her toward the door, which was standing open.

She stepped inside what appeared to be a two-room hut, spare, cool, and whitewashed.

One room served as a kitchen, dining, and living area, with a single window looking out over the distant mountains.

The other, windowless room was the sleeping area.

As she sat at the crude table, drinking coffee, Don Benicio prepared a simple breakfast of esquites.

He joined her at the table and they ate together in silence, glancing now and then out at the landscape beyond the window.

Finally, the old man said: “He is not here.”

It took Nora a moment to realize he was picking up the conversation where they’d left off the evening before.

Why, exactly, he’d left her outside, so abruptly and for so long, she couldn’t be sure.

Maybe it was an old man’s eccentricity.

“Where is he?” she asked.

Don Benicio shrugged.

“Do you mean to say,” said Nora, “that he has gone somewhere and will return, or that he isn’t here at all?”

“I have not seen Carlos in many years,” said Benicio.

Although the others she had met hinted at this possibility, Nora was taken aback nevertheless.

“How many?”

Another shrug.

“He left long ago. He never came back.”

“Wait. You mean he hasn’t been in contact with you since he wrote his book?”

“That is what I mean.”

Nora was shocked afresh.

“So…” She paused to organize her thoughts.

“You haven’t heard from him at all? He didn’t present you with a copy of the book?”

“He gave me nothing. I know nothing of any book.”

At this, Nora took a long, deep breath and drained her mug.

This surprising revelation overturned all her assumptions.

How could Oskarbi have written a book about Benicio and never told him?

And if Oskarbi wasn’t here—where was he?

“Years ago, Oskarbi was a disciple of yours, a student. Isn’t that correct?”

Benicio didn’t seem to hear.

His eyes were on the distant horizon.

Nora realized she was getting ahead of herself.

Peppering Benicio with questions, so soon after he’d allowed her into his home, was no way to get answers.

She stopped herself for a moment and let the silence gather, let the peace of the morning return.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For the desayuno .”

Benicio nodded.

“Another cup?”

“If you wouldn’t mind.”

He rose, went over to the stove, and brought back the pot, refilling both cups.

“Don Benicio,” she began again when her second cup was half-empty, “may I ask you some questions about Oskarbi’s apprenticeship with you?”

He shook his head in a silent no.

Nora took some time to rearrange her thoughts.

Finally, she said, “May I tell you why I have an interest? Why I have come all this way?”

No reaction.

“When Oskarbi returned to the States after the time spent under your tutelage, he wrote a book. It was about you and your teachings. Even though it was somewhat scholarly in nature, it was a bestseller and millions of people read it—read about the teachings of Don Benicio and how they transformed his life. He became a professor and gathered around him a group of students. And then, twelve years ago, he abruptly disappeared. Everyone said—believed—he’d grown disenchanted with the academic life and returned here, to continue his discipleship. But, obviously, everybody was wrong.” She paused.

“But here’s the reason I’ve come: in the last five years, there have been at least two ritual suicides among his former students. I’m looking into what might lie behind those suicides.”

At this, a subtle change took place in Benicio’s face.

Its lines deepened, the eyes growing cold and even more distant.

“I need your help,” Nora said.

“ We need your help. We’re trying to find out why these former students killed themselves in a most horrible way. It seems possible that it connects, somehow, to what Oskarbi learned down here.”

Finally, Don Benicio replied.

“I cannot share with you this knowledge,” he said.

“Why?”

“It is dangerous. Even to mention it is dangerous.”

Nora let a beat pass.

“If that’s true, then Oskarbi is dangerous. It can’t be just coincidence—one way or another, he must have had a role in those suicides.” She paused and waited.

After a moment, Benicio asked the question she had hoped.

“How did they die?”

“They took off all their clothes in the desert, in the full sun, and died of dehydration and heatstroke.”

Benicio went very still, deliberately turning his head toward the window and the distant canyons and mesas beyond.

He remained this way for a long time—long, no doubt, even by his own standards.

Minutes passed. Then a quarter of an hour.

Nora picked up her empty coffee cup, toyed with it, put it down.

“Don Benicio—”

He held up his hand in a gesture of restraint.

Yet again the silence gathered.

It seemed to Nora that Benicio was pondering something, his brow creased, eyes inward-looking despite the vista, expression quiet.

And then—at last—he began to speak, hesitantly, in a low voice.

“Carlos came to me,” he said.

“It was, perhaps, twenty-five years ago. I don’t know how he found me. He said he was an anthropologist seeking traditional knowledge. Before, all my teachings were with my own people—to bring them back to the ancient truths. But students were scarce and growing scarcer. My people were losing interest in the old knowledge. Yet here was this person who not only learned about my existence but sought me out. And so I agreed to teach him— provisionalmente . For a long time, perhaps a year, he was a very good student. Maybe the most attentive and eager of all. He was greedy for information, always…”

His voice trailed off.

Nora waited patiently.

“The traditional way to knowledge is to open a door to the powers that live invisibly in the world around us. The key to that door is hikuri —peyote. There are many spirits that come through doors opened by hikuri . Some of these are spirits of light. Some are of the dark. And then, there are the spirits we call duende , which can go either way. These last are spirits of trickery and gratification.”

He finished his own cup.

“Carlos chose as his spirit a duende . That spirit found a receptive soul, took him by the hand, and led him down the paths to the dark powers.”

“You couldn’t stop it?” Nora asked.

“Keep him from that path, or perhaps guide him back?”

Benicio shook his head.

“The attraction of power, especially the power of darkness, is very great. When Carlos first came here, he followed my lessons, wanting to learn. He wasn’t sure if the teachings were real or perhaps just old Indian superstitions. But in time he took hikuri —and, eventually, met his duende . Only then he realized the power was real, and that he, Carlos, could harness it. But a duende spirit is not only full of deceit, but patient. The process was slow, subtle. By the time I realized what had happened, he was already lost.”

“What then?”

“I told him to leave. He took the power and knowledge with him and disappeared. I never heard from him again.”

“But…” Nora had become increasingly shocked.

“He wrote a book. You really never knew that?”

Don Benicio shook his head again.

“I never knew it. Perhaps he did not want me to know it. I fear—”

He stopped.

But Nora guessed what he might be thinking.

Despite being scoffed at by certain scholars as fantastical, or even fiction, Oskarbi’s book might well have been academically sound—revealing truths that were never meant to be revealed.

“Do you think,” she pressed, “the deaths of these women might have something to do with all that you’ve just told me—of Oskarbi trying to harness these dark powers?”

Benicio bowed his head.

“It is possible. In fact, it is likely. Dark spirits are attracted by sacrifice—especially human sacrifice.”

Another silence fell.

The temperature of the room, already cool, seemed to fall several degrees.

“And yet Oskarbi disappeared twelve years ago,” Nora said, almost to herself.

“Nobody has seen him—he seems to have left no trace.”

Don Benicio turned his dark eyes on her.

“He was already far along the dark path when he left—and he would only have increased his power since. Wherever he is now, you can be sure that his duende is there, too.”