Clay stands in the backyard of his home, the one that he had shared with his older sister and the love of his life; his partner Ivan. Things had been beautiful, they had found a way to move on from the conflicts that made their community unsafe just a year ago. Though Clay still had a looming conflict with a drug dealer who tried to kill him multiple times, that drama was on the backburner while that drug dealer dealt with legal issues. Things had been largely normal for Clay’s family.
Ivan was taking classes to become a paramedic and he had accepted a part time position at the hospital where he used to volunteer. Both Clay and his sister appreciated the extra help that Ivan provided since he started living with them permanently, and they were becoming a very happy family. Occasionally, Ivan would sense danger in their community and the two would be secret heroes, but they largely dealt with incidences of street crime. Until that night a couple months ago, when it seemed that the ground shook, and Ivan lost that green glow that allowed him to do extraordinary things.
Clay is yelling at the moon. It has become his scapegoat as he ponders his relationship with Ivan that had seemingly fallen apart for the second time. Maybe they were cursed, he thinks as he remembers that night, months ago now, when he was lifting weights in the backyard and he suddenly heard a commotion from the house. When he ran to the house, he saw Ivan inside smiling a nefarious smile that he had never seen before, and the green glow was replaced by the red one that gave the interior of the house a haunting feel.
“What’s going on?” Clay asked. He could feel the difference in Ivan, and he could feel it encroaching on the connection they shared. Usually when he was close to Ivan, Clay could feel the green glow slip through the pores of his skin, then he felt it move like he imagined the blood of his body traversed his veins, and he felt it all as a force that he could manipulate – an extension of his own discipline that he had honed over decades – to alter the size of his body.
Ivan responded in a language that Clay had never heard before, a language that he was sure Ivan did not know, but he remembered his mental connection to the love of his life and all of the work they had done to perfect their nonverbal communication, and Clay focused. He could sense that the words did not come from the man he loved, but from the new red force that made everything in their home look murderous.
The Ivan who stood before Clay shook his head pitiably when he felt Clay inside of his mind and he curled the corners of the lips that Clay loved to kiss into a snarl. Then he lifted a hand, a glowing red hand that was a fist, and when he opened it, Clay felt a force hit his chest and knock the wind out of him.
“What perversion do you live, my child?” Ivan spoke English then but he was not himself. The voice was deep, gravely like it traveled over rough stones in his throat, and there was an accent that Clay could not place.
Clay was shocked and struggled to collect himself. He was used to punching anything that threatened his love. This new threat, though, had seemed to take Ivan over from the inside out, and Clay could not imagine punching him.
“Ivan, talk to me…” Clay tried before he felt the force at his chest come again.
“Ivan is nothing. I am the Red Father.” As he spoke, he levitated from the floor of the house. “This Ivan has made poor use of the conduit. It is not my own, but similar enough, it will do. And you, you are a disgrace.”
The Red Father approached Clay who tried to lunge at the body of the man he loved with the hope of subduing him and talking him back to himself, but the Red Father used his red glow to pin Clay to the ground.
“Where is your sister? She will make a decent enough vessel for my beacon.”
Clay felt the weight of the glow on his chest like a tank rested on top of him and in the fear that he would be crushed, he finally put the thought of his love out of his mind, and he reacted to the threat of an enemy. His mind blanked, and his pores opened as they had learned to do, and before long, his body absorbed the entirety of the glow, and he projected it back at the Red Father who was piloting Ivan’s body. The force blew Ivan clear through a wall of the house and he went tumbling across the yard.
When he had expelled all of the red energy, Clay doubled over and vomited the contents of his stomach. Though he had no physical wounds, every fiber of his body felt that they had been burned and he ached. When he looked through the hole in the wall of his house, he saw Ivan floating and levitating like he had seen so many times before, only this time it was blood red and the image shot fear through Clay’s heart.
“I know what your pervert knows,” the Red Father hissed. “I will find my vessel.” He flew off before Clay could stand to follow him.
It was hours before Clay recovered enough to move, and when he could, he found his phone to call his sister.
“You are nothing,” the Red Father said when he answered the phone. “You could be so much, but you are nothing. I blame your elders, they did not show you what you are. We will show you. We will show this world. You could join us. But you have many sins to account for.”
That was the last he had seen of Ivan or his sister. He has tried to find them, but his efforts at meditation have proven too weak to make a lasting enough connection to Ivan’s mind and pinpoint his location. He tried to get in touch with friends who could help, but neither of their extraordinary friends, Alia and Kevin, are anywhere to be found. Detective Young is a state away and most likely occupied with the work of dealing with corrupt police officers. He could call the police, but that would mean putting innocent people in harm’s way and he couldn’t risk that because he wasn’t fully aware of the Red Father’s powers. He would have to figure all this out himself. Ivan had saved his life many times before, it was time that he rose to the occasion to save him.
In Jalisco, Mexico, in the barely-there town of Borges, there is an old man walking briskly through the desert. The night is quiet and the man feels the emptiness of his surroundings. It is a beautifully barren night, the Don can see the flat and pale blue desert under the full moon all the way to the distant horizon and the mountains off to one side. He has been patrolling this spot for some time now, over a month, since he first heard a plea for help that sounded like the grandson he had loved with all of himself, but who had proven incompatible for the work of a true Wixaritari shaman. The boy was too self conscious, too ashamed of himself to stir the spirits the way a real shaman managed when he was actually effective; a true shaman is only truly effective if he can serve the people who depend on him for restoration from maladies that spring up in their daily lives.
The Don stops in the usual spot that is indistinguishable from every other spot on the homogeneous landscape. He knows that he has come to the right place because he can see a difference that so few others can discern. He has special eyes that illuminate bright green and allow him to see energy signatures that are not visible to most human eyes and technology. His concord with the Earth, his connection to the first Shaman, Grandfather Fire, had afforded him the gift of energy divination that allowed him to see spirits that inhabited the land, the plants, and the animals that moved over it. He never used his powers in flashy ways, but it was an amazing sight to see his eyes illuminate. The illumination allowed him to find anything or anyone in the world with some effort, and he could receive messages from various realms of existence that even he did not fully comprehend.
The place where he stops is the last spot that the Don ever saw his grandson, Ivan. When the boy was no more than ten years old, he had visited Mexico with his parents and siblings to see his grandfather. None of their relatives in Mexico had ever meet Ivan and his siblings in person because the parents hadn’t been able to afford the trip to Mexico and the illegal trip back to the US. They risked everything when they were sure they did not want more children because the Don, who is the father of Ivan’s father, had been very insistent that he meet all of their children to ensure that they received necessary protection from evil spirits, and he had no interest in traveling to the US where his abilities were diminished.
When Ivan was ten, he and his grandfather got along very well and Ivan didn’t mind the heat of the desert as his siblings did. They all spent most of their time with relatives in Guadalajara because the home of the Don in Borges had no electricity. Ivan spent about a week with the man, and he showed Ivan the wonders of nature that most everyone else were either incapable of seeing, or just uninterested. Ivan developed the sight, it took the course of the week, but by the end of it Ivan’s eyes had a glow like his grandfather, though considerably dimmer. Ivan marveled at the world that was normally invisible to him and the desert seemed to be teeming with life in the spot where Ivan sat and smiled around himself, the very spot that the Don has come to in the present. All those year ago, when the Don saw Ivan, he knew that the boy could carry on his legacy, until Kauyumari appeared as the blue deer and approached Ivan closely like he was assessing him. When the deer made eye contact with the Don, he knew that Ivan would never realize his potential.
But unbeknownst to the Don, this was the spot where Ivan acquired his special abilities; the question is why Kauyumari misled the Don.
Ivan’s call for help emanated from this spot, which is what brought the Don back here, and occasionally he would catch glimpses of Ivan’s plight; confused and lost, his soul shrouded in red.
“Just talk to me, tell me where you are,” the Don calls to Ivan when he hears him.
And he can only barely make out the response, but it finally dons on the Don that Ivan is calling him to the US, to the state of North Carolina. “Help Clay!” Ivan’s voice calls. But the Don has no idea who Clay is.
PRL Serials 