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Synopsis
From S. L. Edwards comes debut novel In the Devil's Cradle, a captivating haunted house story where the house is an entire country, a nation coming apart due to influences both internal and external, both natural and supernatural.
Release date: November 8, 2022
Publisher: Word Horde
Print pages: 237
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In the Devil's Cradle
S. L. Edwards
Port
Emelda Esquival ran her fingers through her daughter’s hair. For the moment, Téa slept peacefully, leaning limply across her mother’s chest. Emelda smiled, though she couldn’t help but notice that her youngest daughter was much heavier than even a few months ago. Téa was at that age, only recently six, when children begin growing exponentially rather than incrementally. Her youngest was getting tall and lanky, too awkward and big to cradle in her mother’s arms and yet, it seemed to Emelda, far too young to leave them.
Sunlight poured in from the cabin windows, bringing with it the clean view of Rio Primero and the thick rainforest that banked it on either side.
Emelda had always heard stories about this place. Everyone in Antioch had. The first Antiochans believed the river was the source of life’s beginning, that lizard men had crawled from its murky depths and onto its banks so that they might better worship the sun and sky. She’d read of the bandas, the vigilantes who hid in the jungle and fought off the Spanish and English alike. The jungle warlords. The river pirates.
Téa was too little for those stories, still baby-cheeked and too quick to laugh. She was a pretty thing, though, with curled copper hair and a button nose. A little red dress and a bright red bow.
The colors of her father’s party.
Emelda loathed the idea of moving to Rio Rojo, a place she had once thought of as the “swamp capital” of the world: centered between two rivers in a region so storied, cursed, and reviled that the nation’s first cartographers had named it ‘the devil’s cradle.’ It hadn’t helped when William had told her that there was an “impressive” library, one of the greatest archival collections in Antioch, patronized by the most prolific historians and writers in the nation. William thought she would be comfortable reading at home, that this was all she wanted in the world.
William didn’t seem to understand that she took walks in the city alone, that Margería was a greater palace than she could ever want. He didn’t know that she liked the smells of the factories, the cars, the soot and all the smoke. He never grasped that she reveled in the history of the capital, her city, which rose repeatedly from its own ashes to be one of the greatest cities on the continent.
But now, with their daughter on her lap and their three other children peering out the windows, Emelda knew that she loved her husband. That she took comfort in the safe knowledge that her husband was a good man.
He had purchased them passage on the riverboat, after all. A whole cabin to themselves.
Christopher sat in his seat with his forehead on the glass window, peering out into the jungle with a languid disinterest. He was fifteen years old, awkwardly tall and even more awkwardly voiced. The poor boy would be handsome one day, if he would only wait. For now he refused to shave his thin black mustache, or cut his thick, sprawling hair.
Edward and Victoria sat with each other, as they always did. Emelda’s second son was the spitting image of his father, and at thirteen seemed as if he would easily grow into adulthood. He had his father’s wide shoulders, his clean face and a low, clear voice that made him a calming presence and natural leader. Victoria, if she would ever grow up, would be stunning. Emelda saw a beauty in her daughter that she could attribute neither to herself or to William, a sharpness of her features and blue in her eyes that must have come from some distant ancestor. But for now she was still afraid of so many things, far too afraid of shadows to be anywhere near as ready for adulthood as her brother.
Emelda wasn’t certain how or when the two had become so close. She supposed it was because they were only a year apart, that neither had truly known life without the other. But they always went together, always each other’s best friend. At thirteen and twelve they no longer held hands, no longer slept in the same room, but they still sat together. Though they didn’t speak often, they occasionally whispered conspiratorially, as if Emelda couldn’t hear them.
They were scared, unsure. Just as their mother was.
Emelda stood up and paced the cabin. Téa stirred only a little, leaning her cheek into the spot just beneath Emelda’s neck. The trip from Margería to Colón had been long enough, four hours of winding and bumping roads. At Colón the boat crew had been waiting for them, just as William said they would be.
The boatmen were surprisingly thin men, with bright white uniforms and smiles like cartoon wolves. They’d patiently loaded the Esquivals’ belongings onto the boat. All of Emelda’s books. Christopher’s bicycle and his myriad of notebooks full of poems and sketches. All of their toys. Their clothes.
Then they boarded.
A thin man in a crisp uniform came through the cabin door, a white tray of sandwiches in his hands. Edward and Victoria rose from their seats quietly and cautiously. They looked from the sandwiches and back to the man.
“Hungry?” he asked.
They nodded solemnly, each taking a sandwich and receding back to their seat. The man turned to Christopher, who took a sandwich just as quietly as his brother and sister.
Emelda took one and bit into it slowly. Her stomach was empty, and this food didn’t help. The meat was slick, the bread dry and the tomatoes almost sour. She had hated the idea of Rio Rojo, but now she couldn’t wait to get there.
Victoria gasped and pointed frantically out the window.
If Emelda attempted to take comfort in the serenity of the jungles, of the tropical river that fed their nation, she could not deny how sinister it was when that river turned red. The color clouded the murky green, clustering in floating coagulates of crimson and brown. The riverboat continued along, turning away from the Rio Primero and into the scarlet mouth of Rio Sangria, the other river cradling the region.
The stories the tribes told about Rio Sangria were far different than those they told about Rio Primero. The Primero was the source of life, the foundational waters of the world. Sangria was a scar, a cut so deep that the ground could never stop bleeding. So they cursed it with legends of panthers who walked like men, of monsters who swam beneath the waters.
“It’s the iron,” Emelda explained.
Victoria turned to her mother, still shocked and still dubious.
“The iron and other minerals at the bottom of the river get kicked up. Makes the whole river look like blood. That’s why they called it the ‘bleeding river’.”
“Who would want to live next to a bloody river?” Edward slipped.
Emelda couldn’t see if he had any regret on his face. She had hardly hidden her fear from her children, her resentment of their situation. But out of all the people in the cabin, Edward was the one who most resembled his father.
“It doesn’t have anything to do with what you want, Edward.” Emelda found her voice colder than she meant it to be, the tone she wished she had used to answer William now being used against his son. “Who wants to live in a swamp? A desert? Who wants to be born and die anywhere other than where they’re comfortable? It was about the same thing it always is.” She looked at her son, stern-faced and tired.
“It’s about survival. The people who made Rio Rojo survived. They survived the Spanish. They survived the English. They survived civil war, and they survived peace too. It was the same reason anyone stays anywhere. They would survive.”
And they would, too.
***
William Esquival had been honest with his wife. He had spoken enthusiastically, raised his arms and pointed to the many maps that pockmarked the walls of his study. Rio Rojo belonged to the Esquivals, he explained. Their family would be treated like royalty. William told her stories about his visit to Rio Rojo when he was a child, about the sunny, just-big-enough town with smiling people who would grin and tell him how much he resembled his great-grandfather, Thomas Holcomb.
He told her of the sprawling library, assembled by Thomas shortly after he declared Rio Rojo his “summer capital,” how Antioch’s first true president had acquired books from all over the world and insisted that the children of his home be no less privileged than those in the capital.
But William was not doing a good job. He could tell she didn’t believe him, from the way she sighed and the way she walked away. Emelda had never been one for politics. She wasn’t the one that needed to run away.
He hadn’t told her about the letters: the ones that first arrived at his office in the Senate, and then found their way into the mail slots in his home.
In times of wealth, being a member of Antioch’s Socialist Party was easy. He could wade into the crowds, descending from his stage and raise his hands high. He could clasp the shoulders of the working men, laughingly receive the kisses and blessings of their wives. Because in times of wealth, the people knew the truth. William, they knew, cared for them. He wanted the same things they did. Their children fed. Their families healthy. An opportunity for their sons and daughters. Justice.
But the times of wealth made them forget the truth: that all times were a struggle.
When the recession began, people began turning away. There were so many strands, so many variables beyond the simple control of any one man or woman. Their pain, their frustration, bound their vision in their short-term anxiety. Even if the party took Senate and the presidency, even if they held a two-thirds majority, it would be very unlikely that the Socialist Party could reverse course overnight. And, like any happy fool, William had told them exactly this in one of his speeches.
The crowd had booed. And the letters had started.
First came the unsigned ones, the ones that made vague promises of violence and destruction. But others came: ones that recited the senator’s schedules, when he took his meals and when he left his office. Ones that knew the names of his children. Ones that detailed the various walks his wife took when he was not home. Ones signed by noms-de-guerre and drawings of bloody red swords.
William didn’t want to abandon Margería any more than his wife did. He was proud of his country and its capital, at varying points better and brighter than any Paris or any London, far younger metropolis though it was. But people were being murdered. Protestors, police captains, labor leaders murdered in violent riots, or deliberately executed with a bullet.
Elías Pasqual had declared war on the country. William knew the priest from the National University, where Father Pasqual had taught a class on divinity in religion. He was a clean-cut figure in a black cassock. The priest had made William uneasy then, but now he had become something else entirely. “The Holy Swords,” they called themselves. Students, only a little older than Christopher, spurred on by messianic rhetoric of a “sacred revolution.”
In their letters they called William a “traitor,” a “false disciple” who abandoned the revolution for political opportunity. While it was true that William had never concerned himself with the dogma of his party, he first took exception and even offense to the accusation before he understood that it was no “accusation” at all. The Holy Swords, Pasqual. They were not challenging William’s legitimacy at all. Merely explaining themselves before their guns arrived on his porch.
He had secured a boat for them with the help of his colleague Senator Martin, a modest riverboat that would take them the better part of half a day to travel on. He would admit to himself, and perhaps Emelda if the conversation ever came up, that there was something peaceful about being so far removed from the world. The grey sunlight peeking through thin rain clouds. A chorus of birdsongs coming from the grey-covered forests.
Rio Rojo felt familiar, even though it had been a little over four decades since his last visit. He was only six at the time, or maybe even a little younger than his little daughter. He and his brother, Edward, had been enamored with the gardens around his grandmother’s house. But now, he couldn’t even remember her face. William only had a vague memory of seeing his mother carrying Edward in her arms, her face sunken and serious and Edward’s wet and pale.
His mother died shortly after, leaving her young sons to a man who resented them for a wealth he would never have. Whatever happened between his mother and grandmother, it meant that neither William nor Edward would inherit anything until there were no other descendants of Thomas Holcomb left. And Edward had been dead for over decade, never meeting the son who William named after him.
In its more charming moments, Rio Rojo seemed like a quaint relic from the past. It was hardly the underpopulated village that people in Margería imagined it to be. It was a considerable town, complete with neat white-wooden buildings and well-groomed dirt roads for horse-drawn carriages. There was a large high school now, a thriving central market filled with nearly everything he could want. He had spent the day before beneath brightly colored tarps and canopies, poring over fish and meat and wondering what he would treat his children to first. The shopkeepers had smiled and waved, pointing and calling him “our senator,” even though María Martin had represented the town and its inhabitants for the last two decades.
At the post office, the old woman behind the desk had dropped the package she was holding. “Señor Holcomb.”
The name had been like an accusation.
William hadn’t been close to his mother’s family. She’d done her best to keep him away from them, telling him that her grandfather was a “good, cursed man.” But Thomas Holcomb loomed over Antioch, and his sons lived wildly in the public eye. William’s uncle Anthony had been a prominent senator himself, a larger-than-life figure whose love life had thoroughly scandalized his wife. When he was assassinated, the first rumor had been that it was his wife who hired the gunman. Peter was a war hero, the favorite brother of William’s mother. The Holcomb family had groomed Peter for greatness and named him after a king. But he died young when his boat sank along the Caribbean coast. Then there was Uncle Gregory, the only Holcomb William could ever recall meeting other than his mother’s loud, sniping sisters. Uncle Gregory, whose last words to his nephew were “You’re like the devil too.”
Whatever rot sat between his mother and her family had evidently spread and taken root. Now, William was the only one left to take the Holcomb name.
But when William explained this to the poor woman, that his last name was “Esquival,” she merely swatted her hands and smiled.
“The name doesn’t matter. The blood does.”
For nearly a week now he had been “Señor Holcomb.”
And finally, two days later, he would have to admit that he had lied to his wife.
Rio Rojo did not belong to the Esquivals after all.
***
Edward couldn’t understand why his mother was mad at him. He didn’t want to leave their home any more than she did. Torie came into his room the night before, crying the whole time. He hugged her and told her it would be okay even though he wasn’t sure that it was true.
Christopher could have helped, but he was too moody. He used to be a good big brother, or a present one at least. But ever since he’d started going to high school, it was awful. He was distant, sometimes mean and intentionally cruel.
Edward regretted saying anything at all. Regretted giving his mother an opportunity to belittle him.
Silence passed between them, only broken by red water gurgling white and pink across the top. Green jungle banks, dense forests. To anyone else those jungles would have been magnificent. Paradise.
But Edward knew better. He’d heard his mother’s stories. He’d read her books.
The tribesmen inside those forests had fought tooth and nail, first against the Spanish and then against the Antiochans themselves. They claimed to be the descendants of some fabled empire, the final resistance to colonization. They threw themselves against the Antiochans, against the bandas and the piratas and anyone else who would try to take their dark refuge away.
And they were not the only terror in the jungle.
Malaria. Pythons. Quicksand. Flash floods. A thousand nameless tropical diseases. Edward knew this country far better than his mother believed, and he did not understand how they would survive here.
Beside him, Torie was shivering. He turned away from the red water and blue skies. “Hey.”
Torie had always been a pale girl. Edward believed she was the perfect mixture of their mother and father. She had their father’s handsome features, his dark hair and their mother’s soft chin and lithe shoulders. But she had also been tragically, constantly frightened: of the dark, of other people. Of loud noises and sudden changes. Her blue eyes, which more than any other feature were her own, always darted to corners and shadows.
Now, she was trembling furiously.
“Hey.”
There was blood at the corner of her lips. But Mother was fussing over Téa’s hair and Christopher’s head was slouched in his hands, asleep again.
“Torie!” he hissed.
She blinked at the name only he called her. Her jaw unclenched. Her breathing fluttered as she steadied herself.
“Torie.” He slid his hand to hers and patted it hard, as if he were waking her up. “Are you okay?”
“Did you see? Did you see?”
“Torie,” he whispered. “It was only one of your terrors. ...
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