was looking at it, very much like a dreamer, very much like someone who does not recognize the object in her hands, still caught in a vague, soporific state.
Then her expression changed. A startled flash of recognition came over her and then a spark of rage. Noemí wasn’t aware that Catalina could be capable of such rage. It was naked hatred, it made Noemí gasp, and at last Howard seemed to notice something amiss and turned his head, only to feel the scalpel descend into his face.
The blow was fierce, going straight into an eye.
Catalina became a maenad, her frenzied stabbing—the scalpel bit the neck, the ear, the shoulder—brought forth a river of black pus and dark blood, splattering the covers. Howard yelled and shook as if an electric current ran through his body, and the others in the room echoed him, their bodies convulsing. The doctor, Florence, Francis, they fell upon the floor, seized by a terrible paroxysm.
Catalina stepped back, dropping the scalpel and slowly moving toward the doorway, where she remained, staring at the room.
Noemí jumped to her feet and rushed to Francis’s side. She could see nothing but the white in his eyes, and she grasped his shoulders and tried to pull him up into a sitting position.
“Let’s go!” she said, giving him a hard slap. “Come on, let’s go!”
Though dazed, he stood up and clutched her hand, trying to make his way across the room with her. But then Florence’s hand clawed at Noemí’s leg, and she stumbled and lost her footing. Francis tumbled down with her.
Noemí attempted to stand again, but there was Florence holding her ankle tight. Noemí saw the gun on the floor and tried to reach for it. Florence, noticing this, leaped upon her like a wild animal, and as Noemí’s fingers closed upon the weapon, Florence’s hand closed around Noemí’s hand, clutching it with a grip so strong Noemí yelped as she heard the cruel, hard cracking of bones.
The pain was atrocious, and her eyes watered as Florence pulled the gun out of her useless hand.
“There’s no way you can leave us,” Florence said. “Ever.”
Florence pointed the gun at her, and Noemí knew this bullet would kill, not wound, for the woman’s face was eager, the mouth a vicious snarl.
They’d cleanse the house afterward, she thought. A mad thought, but it was there, that they’d wash the floors and the linens and scrape off the blood, and toss her into a pit in the cemetery without a cross, like they had so many others.
Noemí raised her injured hand, as if to shield herself, which could do no good. There was no way to dodge a bullet at this range.
“No!” Francis yelled.
Francis lunged toward his mother, and they both crashed against the black velvet chair where Noemí had been sitting, toppling it. There was the noise of the gun going off. It was loud. She pressed her hands against her ears and winced.
She held her breath. Francis lay under the weight of his mother. From the angle where she was sitting Noemí couldn’t see who had been shot, but then Francis rolled Florence away, stood up, and he had the gun in his hands. His eyes were bright with tears and he was shivering, but it wasn’t like the previous monstrous shivers that had wracked his body.
On the floor, Florence’s body lay still.
He stumbled in Noemí’s direction and shook his head helplessly. Perhaps he meant to speak, to give himself into the fullness of grief. But a groan made them both turn their heads toward the bed as Howard extended his hands in their direction. He’d lost an eye, and the cuts from the scalpel marred his face. But the other eye remained open and monstrous and golden, staring at them. He spat out blood, spat out black mucus.
“You’re mine. Your body is mine,” he said.
He held out his hands, like claws, commanding Francis to approach the bed, and Francis took a step, and Noemí knew in that moment that this compulsion could not abate, that Francis was primed to obey. There was a pull there that could not be ignored. She had assumed, until now, that Ruth had committed suicide, that, horrified by her actions, she’d shot herself.
I’m not sorry, she’d said, after all. But now Noemí realized it had probably been Howard who had pushed her to do this. He had incited Ruth to turn the rifle onto herself in a last, desperate attempt to survive. The Doyles