Black Sun

Meire woke up around two in the afternoon today. I wouldn't dare to wake her up for anything. Let her wake up by herself, sleep as much as she needed to. In my view, two days wouldn't be enough for what she went through.

She was still dizzy from yesterday's arrival in Taurinos. She smiled with a good-morning and smiled again when I clarified it was afternoon already. Both smile and good-morning were weak, from someone who had spent most of their energy in such a dreadful situation. She was astonished to see she was in my house. The same house she had visited so many times in Santos. For a while there, it was like nothing that happened to us two had really happened. I had to ask her for some time before I could explain how she could be back to the same house I used to live in in Santos.

I didn't know where to start the talk. I asked about her life, her husband, about the little everyday things. Though it was not going to alter my situation any longer, I avoided talking about my situation in February. About what might have caused that coma. But I ended up asking her instead of just burying the subject definitively.

"According to the doctors, you had what they call ischemia. Lack of oxygen in the brain caused the death of many parts of it, Stella. Through your tomography, the doctors concluded you would never have a normal life again. Maybe you wouldn't speak again, maybe you wouldn't recognize anybody, maybe it could evolve to Alzheimer or dementia or anything to that effect. I cried a whole lot when I was given the news. The doctors only talked to me after a lot of trying when I convinced them you had no one else to look after you but me."

Funny thing was, far from relieving me for finally telling me I had no other choice than the one I ultimately made, Meire's answer brought me to a state of sadness I didn't manage to explain to myself. She noted my sadness. She then hugged me and said she wished I had never asked her that question. I returned the hug and changed subjects, offering her some coffee.

"I haven't made lunch yet, but if you prefer, I can whisk something quickly for us."

"Oh, coffee is a great idea, let alone here in Minas… We are in Minas Gerais, aren't we?", she laughed, trying to relax from something that seemed to have her worried.

I laughed too and said so. While I boiled some water for the coffee, noticed that the situation was now reversed. Now it was her who seemed to hesitate to ask me something. I didn't let show what I perceived from her attitude. She did hesitate for a while, but like me, ended up bringing on the subject.

"Yesterday, you seemed nervous on the phone, before all of that happened. That nightmare. What was that that happened to me? What was that apparition in the middle of the forest? How did I get trapped in that net?"

"Oh, it's such a long story, Meire… So unbelievable… But as it is as unbelievable as you being here in my kitchen with me today, I know you are going to understand."

And I told her the whole story that for the reader here is no novelty anymore. Meire listened in, eyes full of dread and astonishment at each new detail I added to my account of what happened.

"And so you created everything that exists in this town, people, animals, those rituals you mentioned?"

She simply didn't understand how I could have created the town inside the mind of a twelve-year-old boy already born twelve-year-old. I told her that even having lived here for nearly five months, I still couldn't tell reality from dream. Said that perhaps there were no more frontiers between dream and reality. Maybe not even reality any longer.

Coffee was ready and we sat down to eat. She loved the Mineira variety of food, the cakes, the kinds of bread, the farm butter, Minas and Canastra cheese. She ate with a lot of appetite, aparently forgetting the question she had asked me about her capture. I explained to her that one of the builders of my house here was the same lad who had seen her in his OOBE in his own house and that first started revealing to me what the Day of Creation really was. Meire didn't believe me or was having a hard time trying to believe me. But, like me, she realized she would have never believed — if someone told her — that she'd be able to communicate with me via MSN let alone be eating with me here in Taurinos.

"How weird and amazing! And it all came from that talk we had about the Mexican boy!", she shook her head in disbelief.

"Yes, at least the part of the rituals; also, a lot came from my readings, from my patients' life, from that case you watched in 1994, a crazy quilt of all of my life."

"How insane, Stella", she bit a loaf of cheesebread, "I don't think I'll ever be the same when I come back to Santos…"

"Yep, it's really hard to believe so much insanity. But it only came to prove myself what I used to say, that there are no barriers between reality and imagination, at least not the ones we'd hope existed."

"But there's just one thing: you still haven't answered my question from the beginning of our talk", Meire reminded me.

Well, I took a deep breath. Knew the question would re-surface and that our positions were going to be inverted. I told her what happened when I came to town in the very beginning. Of the cattle thieves and how they had been killed by one of the citizens with the indirect collaboration of another one. Of how the killing of the cattle thieves generated an automatic behavior in that citizen to eliminate all of the outsiders with the exception of myself that should be protected along with the town and its townspeople.

"Little by little, he started becoming that apparition you saw. As if it were a curse. Now he has no escaping it anymore. He'll be doing it forever and ever."

"How horrific!", she instinctively cringed.

"He is not always beastly like that. If you see him in his normal, you won't believe me."

"Isn't he an apparition?", she couldn't afford to close her mouth in sheer astonishment.

"Not always; only when he is at work, patrolling the town for outsiders."

"Was he going to kill me?"

"Yes. You have no clue how lucky you really were yesterday."

I told her about the other townsperson and his refusal in helping him patrol the town, the confusion around the moniker Obscure Police and how he had managed to distract the policeman by finally agreeing to work with him. She wouldn't say a word in the end. I wondered how the story landed on her brain at last. Meire looked very disturbed though; as if she analyzed how perverted I could really be, creating all that chaos from pieces of my former life in the physical world she still lived in.

Sounds of a horse coming down the dirt road. Judging by the direction, it might be one of the men from the farm Taurinos. I looked through the kitchen window, from which I could have a good view of the road. It was Renan, and wasn't coming on his palomino, but on his black horse, all in black, bearing something on the left side of his chest that the Sun made shine when reflecting its light.

"Meire, pay attention. The policeman that got you yesterday is coming here."

She rose from her chair, in panic.

"What should I do, Stella???"

I reassured her, "you keep on drinking your coffee and eating as you are, nothing is going to happen to you", and I saw her calm down a bit more and sit back in her chair, "but I ask you to refrain from being too astounded, he is not by far alike to the idea you have of a policeman."

"What do you mean???", she was all but perplexed.

"Well, you'll see."

I didn't wait for the little policeman to knock my door down with his five classic punches on my iron knocker. Went to the porch to wait for him. I got inside and he followed me in to the kitchen, "sorry to trouble you, I know you have a visitor from Santos at home…"

When we stepped in the kitchen, Meire was looking behind the boy, curious to see who else was coming. Renan turned around to look and inquired her, "you looking for someone?"

"Stella, didn't you say there was a policeman coming here?"

Renan glanced at me, turned his eyes back to Meire and grinned.

"I'm the only one in town for the moment. At your service, lady."

Only then did Meire stop to look at the child. Her eyes were fixed on Renan, perplexed, not believing what she saw. The boy began to get embarrassed, glancing at me at times as if he was asking me for help. He asked me if it was the same that happened to me when I started seeing them at that infinite resolution and I said it was more or less the same thing.

"What an amazingly handsome boy!", she was stunned, doubting that that fluffy and robust little thing was a policeman.

He was showing off his badge that I hadn't seen yet. Black, with red lettering all over. Made by Anderson, the refinement and precision of its details and high-relief for the lettering was evident, the symbol of the Infinite between two moons. Obscure Police, Night and Day, Since 2009. Meire began to get scared at the symbol. Said she had seen it on the forehead of the apparition in the forest. Renan grinned at her.

"I want to apologize to you for yesterday's trouble in the forest. Anderson told me you are really a friend of Miss Grisam's. Outsiders can only enter Taurinos for delivery. Other than that, it's only trouble here with me, you know."

Meire started to laugh. I saw Renan stretch out his neck and frown at her, looking alternately at me and her. Foreseeing deep trouble ahead, I poked Meire on her rib and told her that was no joke at all. She noticed my desperate expression and stopped laughing. The sudden respect from Meire disarmed the policeman. Meire apologized to the boy, that smiled at her again.

"No hard feelings, "sá" Meire. I know I don't look a lot like a regular officer anyhow. But not to seem doesn't mean I'm not one, you know."

Meire was looking at that uniforme in pristine black, his shining boots and those sharp spurs. Renan was playing with his horsewhip, passing it from one hand to the other, now apparently amused at her reaction and astonishment, turned down the coffee and anything else I offered him to eat.

"Today Anderson and I will only eat at night."

"You haven't eaten since this morning?"

He nodded. Told me this was why he was coming to my house. To summon me to the Anderson's initiation ritual for his admission in the Obscure Police, that was scheduled for today at the end of the afternoon.

"But so soon? Thought it would take you a bit longer to…"

"It's taken too long already, if you ask me", the cadet sounded impatient.

"Am I allowed to attend?", interfered Meire. I glanced at her, aprehensive, wasn't expecting her to fire that request out of the blue. The boy looked at me apparently not believing he had just heard such request.

"Under no circumstances, lady", retorted Renan dryly, "the initiation is closed, only for member of the Taurinos' Ancient Society."

He grinned at us again, as if he wanted to soothe his severity at denying Meire's request and said he had to go.

"Andrés told me you inquired him about the initiation. You'll learn how it goes today, step by step. I hope you like what you see, our work is all done to protect you and the pacific townspeople of Taurinos."

After he had gone, I told Meire I hadn't expected her to ask something as awkward as that. She said she did it only to see what his reaction would be. I laughed and told her I had done something like that in my first times in the city. As in her case, my request was denied too.

Meire was the sensation of our visit to the farm Taurinos. Adriano was looking at her hypnotized, what made Meire ask me what was going on with the lad. I told her that was the fellow I told her about, that saw her in his OOBE

I intended to leave my friend in the good company of Aparecida and make use of Andrés and Adriano's ride to Anderson's initiation. Andrés said it was no mere invitation from Renan, it was a summons and could not be disobeyed.

5:15

Adriano drove the car on the dirt road with Andrés at his side and me taking a back seat, looking through the window. Concerned, aprehensive what the ritual might consist of. Andrés knew what it was, but wouldn't say a word. I only wished master Danilo could be with us today. He could attend, but wouldn't come. Didn't even want to get involved in telling me what the ritual was.

Adriano drove for long time until we got to the middle of nowhere, on a high part on the mountains of Taurinos. We ran into Mr. Pinho's car and there was no other car until Adriano eventually stopped his at a spot where Arthur, Bruno and Guilherme were already waiting for us. No jokes from the lads on the way, serious, grave faces, and now the sullen silence from the others too, that only made for more and more nervousness for me.

"Where are Renan and Anderson?", inquired Adriano.

"Up there", said Arthur, pointing at the summit of the nearest hill, "we can only go by walking from this point on."

"Yep, and we'd better start climbing, you know what my brother's like with these things…", suggested Guilherme.

The Sun sank more and more as we climbed. It was still a bit distant from the horizon, maybe because we were too high. I was dying to make a comment, break the spell of that maddening silence, however nobody else spoke but Andrés, and only to tell me I was not allowed to close my eyes, look away from the ritual nor utter a single word during the initiation.

"See, not even the birds are singing from this point on. This is the silence", he said before he shut up definitively.

5:25

We walked a bit more until we saw two black horses tied to nearby trees, next to each other. We were closer now. A bit more of walking and we got to a plain exactly on the top of the hill. There, two familiar figures waited for us all dressed in black. Sun beat down on our eyes, made it difficult for us to see in detail.

5:29

When we arrived at the spot, we saw a large ring drawn on the ground with a white powder. The powder was simply cooking salt. Around this ring, another, even larger, forming two concentric circles. In the inner ring, the two boys were standing, with three men lying on the ground around them, their mouths sealed with a wide piece of duct tape. A chainsaw, an axe and other objects of equally aggressive aspect. One of the men was exactly in the center of the ring, bound to a metallic object that was a bit smaller than him, that kept his legs spread open and a sharp point that came from the outer part of the object, connected to a crank. The sharp point, next to the man's body pointed at his backside. Strange as it was, this was the calmest of them all. The other two twisted their bodies like hell, without ever moving from the places they had been set on. I didn't understand why they couldn't move from where they were, as there were no ropes binding them to the ground. I didn't know whether it was necessary to be an expert to understand why Andrés and master Danilo wouldn't give me details about Anderson's initiation. I felt so jealous of master Danilo for being so safe, calm and away from harm at home. Wished I could be there right now, just talking and drinking his coffee as I often used to do.

Renan glanced at his wristwatch and looked at us. Anderson only stared at me and the eerie look in his eyes was something to remember however much I tried to forget. A stare bearing a heavy and silent reproach, almost like an infinite anger for the situation I had helped push him into. Renan told us six to position within the outer ring, with equivalent spaces between us so that we couldn't have the chance to talk among ourselves. Under no circumstances were we allowed to talk, shut our eyes or look away at anything that was not the events happening within the inner ring.

"There are forces outside the rings that will start acting from the moment the ritual starts; outside the circle you have no protection against these forces. At the end, I'll clear the salt cleaning it to a gap where you get out of the ring. Never try to jump the salt line anywhere, you can only get out of the ring through the gap. Same goes for the two of us in the inner ring", he explained in a gloomy tone of voice, turning around to look at each and every one of us, "if anyone has something to say or to ask, the time is now. When the ritual starts only those in the inner ring will be allowed to speak. Any questions?"

None. Only that cold, mortal silence of so many times before. I glanced at Anderson again and he was still staring at me. In a threatening, frightening way. As if I had lost a friend it was once so difficult to make.

"Let the ritual begin", Renan simply said.

He squatted beside one of the men that twisted all his body on the ground. Pulled the duct tape out from his mouth with violence. The man started to cry, in distress. My heart was tight, I swallowed hard uncontrolably.

"Have mercy on me", the man begged, "I have a wife and two children…"

"I know how hard it is", replied Renan, "I'm a child myself, I have a father too", he added, kicking the man's mouth with insane violence, "that serves you right, you will no longer go round following morons with their stupid ideas of invading other people's lands."

Renan turned his eyes to Anderson; he then nodded slightly, signalling that the blacksmith started. Anderson picked up the axe and walked close to the man, that started to scream, "no, no, no!", or whatever to that effect. I tried to look away to where Andrés was, on the other side of the outer ring, but felt my eyes burn so intensely and painfully that I had no choice but turning them back again to the inner ring.

"You start by his feet, what do you think?", inquired Renan, staring at his new partner in atrocity.

Not one to argue over the matter, Anderson raised the axe high and the man's first foot flew away, severed from his body, with a strong squirt of blood, with a lancinating scream coming from the very guts of the poor outsider. Then the other foot. Renan oriented his partner to cut finer slices so that his sufferance could be prolonged to the utmost. An intense row of screams, the precise surgical blows, one by one, little by little slicing what once was a man. And little by little, the screams and the frenetic floundering of the body subsided. The man was finally at peace. And in pieces.

A final cut. Anderson separated the top of the man's skull in one blow only. He collected a bit of the man's blood in the cup formed by the top of the skull, always oriented by Renan, watching it all with his arms crossed.

"Drink it all", and he watched as Anderson drank — with difficulty — the blood from the macabre cup he had just manufactured. The elder lad panted, the blood and some clots oozing from his open mouth. He tried to clean the corners of his mouth, but was prevented from doing so by Renan.

"This is what blood tastes like, Anderson. Now you know."

I felt like throwing up, in anguish. I wondered how Anderson was feeling. He stopped for a while, still panting like a dog; dropped the cup and his eyes happened to meet mine once again. His stare at me only grew colder, more intense, more frightening, more threatening. As though each and every move he made within the inner ring made him angrier and angrier with me. I was feeling like trash. And the ritual had just began.

Anderson turned his eyes back to Renan. The latter squatted beside the second man, on the other side of the inner ring. Pulled out the duct tape from his mouth. The man shook all over, but wouldn't say a word. Renan asked him if he had anything to say. The man wouldn't say a word, petrified with horror.

"Really nothing, nothing to declare?", the policeman took a pair of gloves from his uniform pocket and put them on, "not even the famous last words?", Renan opened the man's pants fly and set his penis out of it. From his pocket, he drew a hunting knife. Pressed it against the man's escrotum and said, "since you don't want to speak, you won't mind if I plug your mouth, will you?"

In a single move, he slashed out the man's penis and in a movement that was so fast the eyes could not follow, put an end to his insane screaming, sticking the whole severed organ inside his throat, testicles and all. The boy's fierce hand pushed the penis hard into his deepest throat more and more until he started choking. Calmly, Renan rose to his feet and was standing there in total tranquility watching the man as he slowly died choking with his own penis. I started throwing up and judging by sounds nearby I was not the only one. Anderson turned his eyes back to me and smiled in delight; the only smile I'd see him smile for long, a smile of satisfied revenge for my desperation. At Renan's nod, he started the chainsaw.

"Let us see how you fare at 10,000 rpm", said the blacksmith, smiling, a young Mineiro Hildebrando Pascoal walking closer to the second convict.

Anderson cut lengthwise the man that was still in agony, as a hot knife slides inside butter. The blood squirted on the two young headsmen and Renan grinned with satisfaction at receiving the squirts on his once pristine uniform. Anderson worked serious, efficient and cruel as his mentor. When he got to the man's skull, he stopped and severed the top of it as he had done with the first one. He turned off the chainsaw, collected his blood and drank. Didn't seem to have the same trouble doing it. as if he had already gotten used to the labor. His efficiency in doing the job was impressive.

"Here's the crown jewel", Renan squatted beside the man and pulled his hair with anger, as to expose him to our look, "the great leader of the invaders. The one who troubled me the most. I eliminated his band little by little but he was always the one to elude me. But no one can escape me forever. Because I'll go to the deepest hell to fetch them."

He ripped the duct tape out of the man's mouth, who took a deep breath and said, "it was about time, flatfoot, you were choking me…"

"Don't worry about that. My partner will make it the least of your troubles in a short while. Soon you won't have to worry about breathing. Your blood is the one he'll drink from the most, intruder."

"It's a great honor to donate my body and my blood to the initiation of a novice, flatfoot", the man smiled.

"You're quick to talk for one who is about to turn into vulture feed", remarked Anderson, smirking.

"The dead have the authority to talk like this, novice. The dead can do anything as they please. Now please, let me look into the eyes of the one who'll kill me and drink my blood", and he stared at Anderson's eyes.

Renan opeed his eyes wide open foreseeing trouble and kicked the face of man bound to the object-machine, "no, Anderson, don't you look into his eyes!"

For the first time, Anderson looked disturbed. The irony of the comment that he had just made gave way to a worried look. He looked away from the convict, but something remained inside of him spinning round and round. His eyes turned to me once again. The same look of deep anger, of dismay before the mountain of animal violence he himself was helping to build stone by stone. The confused feeling of pleasure and pain for causing such pain. No one can live so divided. But Renan could. And Anderson would have to learn it by himself too. I felt the hard comfort of his stare devouring me deep in my soul, burning me from inside like my eyes every time I tried to look away from such atrocity.

"And that has to be the Creator in the flesh! See how much honor for a poor outsider here… My blood helping feed the novice for the Obscure Police and adding to it, all of it watched closely by the Great Creator of Taurinos… Miss Grisam! The one who is going to die salutes you!"

Picture yourself in my shoes. No, please, for the love of Mithra, don't. I wouldn't wish it to the worst of my enemies, to the very soul of Ariman, in his work carrying the poor human souls into eternal darkness. Anderson once again smiled, once more revenged by the words of the convict to me. Revenged without having to utter a single word. I was feeling like less than trash in that moment. I was speechless to describe the inexplicable horror to know this life was for real. The horror of knowing I had created all that horror myself. I remembered Renan's words, "I hope you like what you see, our work is all done to protect you and the pacific townspeople of Taurinos." When I turned my eyes to Renan he was staring at me. The look that was the same as Anderson's, the wicked smirk of a satisfied revenge for the sleepless nights when he gave himself away, body and soul, to all of that nighttime and daytime abomination.

"And what about the famous last words? Is this all you have to say?"

"Kill me, flatfoot. Bring the wrath of the Immortals like you over me. The Immortals are cruel to us, poor mortal beings. But, like rats, we'll torment you for the Eternity. Kill me and you'll be killing only one cell of this disease. It'll survive for all of the centuries and for the centuries of the centuries, punishing you Immortals like you Immortals punish us. Invading, taking away the sleep of Immortals like the two of you. Of the Obscure Police that is the symptom of this disease that'll plague you for the whole of the Eternity!"

Renan seemed to have heard enough. He nodded, signalling to his partner. Anderson squatted before the convict to start. Renan told him to kneel before the convict instead.

"On your knees now. Thank him before you start. Thank him for his blood and for the blood of his comrades that have just fallen. Thank for the blood that feeds this Initiation and that'll feed you through the long nights when only ghosts will come along with us in that amazing journey. This is the time. The moment is now."

Anderson wouldn't argue. Knelt before the man and thanked him. The moment he did it, his eyes met those of the convict. Renan was faster this time and in a move that lasted only for a split second and made me nauseous and dizzy, torn the eyes of the convict with his sharp spurs. The man screamed for pain, for rage, for despair all united in a single lancinating scream. Again, Renan nodded so that the execution could start. Anderson began to spin the crank at the end of the object. The prong started moving very slowly revolving around a bolt that seemed to be endless. The prong started to slowly penetrate the man's anus, creeping, full of perverse and ominous promises, slothful to the point it disgusted me, no matter how fast Anderson spun the crank. The deft blacksmith had built the obnoxious machine so it moved along the bolt thread as slowly as possible, prolonging the sufferance of the convict to levels never dreamed before by the most perverse of the minds ever known. More than that: as he spun the crank, the rear part of the prong opened like an umbrella, forming a cone whose base grew wider and wider in time.

"Let us now see where all this bravado goes to. All of your beginner's irony. Poke some more fun at us now, I want to see you joking, you intruding little maggot!", Renan panted with hate, while the abyssal screams of the convict filled our ears already so tired, but never so tired as our eyes.

Blood ran from the convict's body like a spring. He screamed, shouted and cursed while the unimaginable pain only grew inside of him as the blacksmith spun the fatal crank of his hellish equipment, "your feelings will never be reciprocated! Your feelings will never be reciprocated! Your destiny, o filthy flatfoot, will be wandering through the night, without a shadow of the friendship you so badly yearn to receive! Wander through the night, accompanied yet all alone, everlastingly alone, in eternal frustration of a friendship that will never be accomplished!!! I swear for this sky, in the name of this black Sun that'll consume my body to ashes, for the goddamned Initiation that will incorporate your novice to this world of darkness where you already live and will live for all of the times of the times of the times. I fucking curse you! I fucking curse you!"

"Filthy goddamned bastard, swear, curse me! Curse me more! Cry, for your end is near! Cry, for my partner is here to make you cry!", Renan kicked his face like there was no tomorrow, like a man possessed. Anderson's Initiation seemed to be out of control. Everything else seemed to be out of control. The young blacksmith spun the crank ruthlessly, alternating feelings of concentration and astonishment before everything he heard and saw. Tormented by the very pain he was causing so efficiently, a pain that was as endless as the fields around the town I had created. I could not see beyond the fiendish scene being accomplished in front of me. I could only imagine what went on on the other Society's members' minds together with me within the outer ring.

The convict's body opened like a mortal flower would, opening a cave, a tunnel of endless terror through which a truck could easily make its way. The noises of bones crushing by the prong that went on in its unsatiable digging, cracking, bursting, creating in hearts and minds the most absurd feelings of horror. The distressing backwardness of the process, the awe-inspiring curse of a Mineiro Jacques DeMolay, cried out from what remained of his forces.

Anderson stopped the crank. He had finished. A chaotic body mass was all that remained from the last convict now. Anderson picked up the axe again and cut, like the first convict, the top of his skull with a single and perfect blow. This time, Renan made him fill the whole of the cup. The blacksmith knelt to a command of his mentor before that obscene thing that was the man impaled on that metal cone. He started drinking the blood. His body started to shake. More. More.

"Drink it without rejecting. We were never so close to the end. Drink it. Yup, drink this fucking blood…", Renan oriented him calmly, "easy, drink without throwing it up… That a boy… My warrior… This is my warrior…"

Anderson drank, bloodshot eyes, as fiery red as the liquid he was drinking. Renan held him like a baby, stroked his hair, encouraging him to go to the end of that bloody ritual. He seemed to think that was the final moment, that its conclusion was near. He glanced at his wristwatch. Anderson drank. His body was shaking in spasms. It was not only that he felt like throwing up. His difficulty was that of asthma, sucking the air, convulsive, ready to faint. Experiencing death in life. Experiencing the same death he had refused by voting for eternal life in Taurinos. Following on into darkness built over the corpses he had just produced in the most refined of massacres. Following on into darkness. Following on…

The air itself started going dark. We hadn't reached the sunset yet and the air began going dark around us. Scary screams echoed over the plain we were on, presences were felt all around the outer ring. Screams coming from the hell of the very human insanity. In this gloomy environment, where the world seemed to be about to collapse on our heads, I dared to gaze into the Sun. The Sun went black like pitch. There were no rays harmful to the eyes. There was no intrusion of a heavenly body, no half-moon shape. It was not at all the eclipse we saw during the Ordeal. It was no eclipse. The Sun simply went black.

When I turned my eyes to him again, Anderson had finished his ghoulish drink. The ritual had come to an end. Illuminated by the black Sun, the novice staggered and fell like a tree falls. As a dead tree. When he rose again, still staggering, his aspect was the same as the heinous black drake I had seen so many times in Renan. The same ghastly apparition. Renan had trapped him into the Obscure Police forever at last. And in a moment, he was Anderson again. Not the same Anderson, because the old one had died during the ritual. A new Anderson instead. Much more wrathful, much more aggressive, much fiercer, much mightier.

Renan cleaned the barrier of cooking salt and made it to the outer ring where we stood along with his disciple. He closed the inner ring again and proceded to clean the way out of the outer ring as the black Sun made it night everywhere in town. After all of us had passed, he once again closed the barrier of salt as if the ring had never been opened. He told us to go back on our own footprints descending to where the cars had left us. He and Anderson mounted their horses and soon disappeared from view, taking the path he had shown us. We started coming downhill, in mortal silence. With the exception of Andrés, all of us had thrown up on our own clothes. He'd never tell us how he had managed to keep his clothes clean throughout the ritual.

It took us some time until we saw the cars' headlights down there waiting for us. From behind us, a light that looked like a thousand Suns flashed before the King Star went reddish yellow again.

Ghost of a chance | Greetings from a dead man

Radio Universal: Obscure Police