* * *
Fernando and the others followed Chico back to his home on the outskirts of town. The home was little more than a hovel, built from the rusted bones of what looked to be an old farmhouse slatted up with mismatched boards and sheeting, crippled under the weight of the years and its bizarre accouterments. Fernando’s stepmother María Luisa would not have deemed it fit to house dogs.
Haphazard additions had been tacked onto the barn house from all angles. A slope-roofed garage of sorts protruded from one side. Stacked railcar rooms had been welded to another. A crude, turret-like widow’s walk jutted precariously from the barn’s northern face. A clothesline hung here, flapping limply in the humid breeze, strung from an old antenna bent sideways to a flagpole set in the turret.
The grounds of the place seemed to be a cross between a rock farm and a junkyard. There were wrecked cars and appliances scattered all about among crops of weedy stones. Children and chickens ran screeching and weaving through this apocalyptic terrain. From the open doorway, a stout harried woman shouted after them.
She had a squalling babe clasped in one hand and a cookspoon waving in the other. An array of earthy colors stained her aproned front. Cornflour dusted her brown arms under the shoved-up hems of her sleeves. To one side of her on the gap-planked porch an old man in a wicker chair slept on, heedless to the commotion under the shade of his frayed straw hat.
Spying Chico and the others approaching, the woman turned on her heel and disappeared back through the door. Chico led the way up the creaking porch steps after her. He ignored the sleeping old man as if he were simply another fixture of the house.
Inside, Fernando found himself standing in a room that seemed to serve as entryway, den and kitchen all at once. All the furniture and cabinetry looked like salvage. Religious images and curios covered almost every inch of available space, interspersed seemingly at random with family photos and children’s crayon art. The room was cramped and cluttered, poor and grubby, yet homey in a way no home of Fernando’s had ever been.
Savory scents filled the air, balmy with cook steam. Fernando realized suddenly he was ravenous. At the smoky rear of the kitchen, the woman stood with her back to them. She ladled from a motley of kettles as if she’d just been expecting them, plating out beans and seasoned pork and corn cakes while she rocked the baby in a spindly squeaking bassinet beside her.
Walking up to her, Chico put his arms around her from behind. He bent and pressed a kiss to her shiny temple, murmuring something to her. The woman paused in her plating. Her tired eyes kindled with warmth as she turned.
“So you are Fernando,” she said as she crossed over to him, wiping her hands on her apron. “What a handsome young man you are.”
Pushing her thin graying hair back from her brow, she smiled up at him. He knew her name already, too—Emmanuella. Her round face was kind yet worn, creased with what seemed to be perpetual worry. Her touch to his cheek was cool and smooth as riverstone, a benediction.
“Hijo de mi prima Carmen,” Emmanuella said.
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La Gorgona © CS Dark Fantasy