Entry #23

Oh, Adan!

More people have gone missing. Since my last entry, about a month ago, two more have disappeared. We can only presume they are dead. We can never find them. When one search comes to an end, a team of Lope’s soldiers enter the forest to begin yet another. The manner in which these victims are spirited away is so violent. Why, in the village beneath our hill, the last disappearance revealed to Father Leoncio that the victim had struggled, knocking over things in the hut. There were streaks of blood across the floor, and then dragged sweeps of red when the victim was finally taken away. He said he found fingernails lodged in the earth. That and the blood have been the only traces. Who could be doing this? The crimes are too violent to blame an angry predator surfacing from the deeps of the jungle to claim a meal. No, such a terrible and calculated act can only be attributed to a person.

I was later assaulted in my room as I was trying to sleep. There was a rapid knock at my door, the rhythm repetitive and urgent. I drew a robe around me as I rose from bed, and took a candle stick with me. I tucked the object behind my hip, and threw the door open only to find Pepita. Her face was haggard. Her eyes sparkled with tears. I drew my arm around her and tugged her into my room, dropping the candle stick. I locked my door and guided her to my bed.

“Easy, easy.”

I lit a couple of candles, just enough to give me some light. When I saw her face, I could not keep myself from withdrawing a step. No, I recoiled at the sight of her, so aghast was I at the face I hardly recognized. Her cheek was a swollen bruise, ripe and split. Her jaw was a queue of bruises, all waiting to pile up under a swollen, burst lower lip.

“I am sorry, I should not come.”

“Did he see you come here?”

“No,” she shook her head, hardly able to speak.

“You should be at the infirmary. You cannot stay like this. Let us go together.”

But I progress was slow. We had to be sure we were not being watched. A trip that normally only took a few minutes took much longer, but we eventually arrived to the infirmary. I lit a candle by the bed, and Pepita helped me gather some tools. Something to clean her cuts, something to decrease the swell of those bruises. I set to work mending her face. Her tears had started to slow, no longer making her uneven face a slick surface to work on.

“I am finished,” Pepita whispered, and I only heard this upon her second saying of this.

“Do not say that, Pepita. You are not defeated, not by someone like that.”

Pepita laughed, “Defeated?” She lifted her handkerchief to her mouth to spit out a gob of blood. “Who said anything about defeat? I am finished taking this. One of these nights, you know, one of these nights,” she laughed again, “he will kill me.”

“I hardly see the humor in that,” I chastised her lightly, distracted with my repairs.

“Nieve, I am being serious, do not mistake my laughter. It is the laughter of Elektra herself, the laughter of a vengeful woman.”

I frowned at her, I began to clean her wounds with a solution that would normally make someone flinch and pull away, but Pepita was still. Eerily still, her eyes focused on some point beyond my shoulder. Maybe on the vision she was about to describe to me.

“I can let Lope kill me, or I can get rid of him. For good.”

I stopped, I looked at her. “Pepita, you will be jailed for that. He is a man of war, as well, you could be… Lord, I do not wish to think it.”

“I am finished taking his hits, I am finished pleasing him, I am finished doing everything he tells me to do. I want nothing more than to see him suffer for this.”

“Then you are just as wretched as he…”

“Am I?!” Pepita shrilled, pushing my hand away. “Were you to be beaten, pummeled, and raped, would you stand for it as long as I? Would you let that man, that brute of a man, get away with making you his toy? Manipulating you? Would you let him do that, and get away with it.”

For once, I could not say:

“No, Pepita, I would find a way to forgive him.”

“No, Pepita, he will meet his judgment in time.”

“No, Pepita, such power is not ours to wield against a man, only God’s.”

I could say none of this, because I did not believe it.

“You know I am right,” Pepita said, recognizing my hesitance for what it was.

“No!” I stood away from her, dropping the rag I had been using to clean her face. “Such a thing is not so simple as that. I cannot… agree with any of this because I do not want there to be any more death in this mission, or in the village below us. I do not want it!”

“Lope and his men are out of control, they are doing this. They are carrying these people away for their own sick amusements.”

“Do not say that. Such an accusation is too vile, too grave.”

“I cannot let other people get hurt, and I cannot let myself be killed by such a swine.”

“Pepita - ”

“You do not have to help me,” Pepita interjected. “But please… do not tell anyone what I have told you. I will not breathe your name, not a single syllable of it, only do not breathe to anyone what I have come to you with. Can you promise me?”
I shook my head sadly. “Pepita. This is not confession. I cannot hear such an atrocious action and pretend I did not. The Fathers could not either, that is not how this functions, Pepita.”

“You would let a mad man like him live,” Pepita’s voice shook, “a monster, a demon like him…”

“Demons will meet their angels, and they will lose. You cannot mistake yourself for such an angel. You cannot mistake one sin as good compared to another, Pepita, you cannot! You will damn yourself. This is not your decision - ”

“This is my decision, Nieve, this is my choice. I have chosen to kill Lope.”