ELEVEN
Karl Hauser was only sixty two years old but to the casual observer he looked a good fifteen years or so older. Chasing the darkness in the world would do that to a man. Doing what he did, or had done took its toll on one’s body as well as one’s mind.
Hauser had hoped that now he had retired and settled his weary bones in Mexico, his lost vitality would somehow return. That his mind would regain the sharpness it had gradually lost throughout the years.
He looked into the bathroom mirror and an ancient stranger looked back. Grey eyed, white haired with skin like an inner city road map it was so lined. It didn’t seem fair to the German, to be left so desiccated after a lifetime of sacrifice. But then again when did fair ever come into it?
He abandoned his ghostly reflection and came through to his spacious bedroom. And although he had only gotten out of bed ten minutes previously Gabriela was already in the room changing his sheets. Hauser stood in the doorway and watched her work.
Gabriela was about fifty as far as Hauser could tell but whereas he wore every year on his face and then some, she could easily pass for thirty five, forty on a bad day. Her long straight hair was still jet black and her olive skin was only just showing the early stages of age, and mostly around her deep brown eyes.
It could almost be supernatural if Hauser didn’t know what supernatural really looked like. No this was just good old fashioned clean living and having a large loving family. Neither of which could be more foreign to him.
“Are you coming to the barbeque?” Gabriela asked without turning around. She bungled up the bedding and thrust it into her wicker wash basket.
Hauser had been so wrapped up in the letter he had received last week from Mendez at the Vatican that he had clear forgotten it was that time of year again. Three years ago Hauser had saved Gabriela’s nephew, Pedro, from the clutches of a nasty little demon that had taken up residence in the village, Pedro and a dozen others. It had been Hauser’s most exacting case in years and had damn near killed him.
“He’d be heartbroken if you didn’t come,” she said and turned to him with the basket in both hands.
“Do I have a choice?” Hauser asked good naturedly in his now almost flawless Spanish.
“What do you think?” She said with a smile.
He could tell she wanted to say more, but there was an unwritten rule with the people of the village that you don’t pry too deeply into the crazy German’s life. They owed him that much.
“What’s on your mind Gabriela?” He asked.
She glanced guiltily at the letter from Mendez on his bedside table, Hauser had forgotten he’d left it there. She was a devout Catholic and must have seen the Vatican crest on the letter head. “I didn’t read it!” She blurted out. “But I suppose this means they found you.”
Everyone knew Hauser’s feelings on the church it had been the subject of many a drunken discussion between the German and the villagers since they had invited him to stay for saving the children. He nodded, “they want my help with something, but as always they can go...”
A look of daggers from Gabriela stole the curse from Hauser’s lips. “I keep telling them I’m retired,” he said instead.
“And so you deserve to be,” she said.
“They never once helped me,” Hauser said with an edge to his voice. He took a breath, all those years fighting on his own had made him so bitter it used to eat him up inside, but he knew it was something he really needed to let go of for his sanity as well as his health. But he had to admit it gave him no little satisfaction telling them to go fuck themselves.
Father Mendez was a reasonable enough man, Hauser had to admit, and the priest knew more than most at the Vatican about what evil truly looked like. But if he insisted on bowing and scraping to a God that didn’t exist, then the German had little time for him and his ‘research.’
“So, you’ll come?” Gabriela said.
“Will there be booze?” Hauser asked.
“More than enough for you, old man.” She told him with a smile.
“Then how could I refuse?”
When Gabriela had left with the washing, Hauser stepped out onto the balcony of his room. She or one of the others had set out a generous breakfast for him as they usually did. He sat at the wooden table and poured himself a glass of fresh orange juice.
The balcony looked out onto the village’s main square and already people were about their daily business. Occasionally one of them would look up in his direction and seeing him sat there would give a wave or doff their hats in greeting.
He felt like the mayor of the place at times like these or some drug cartel leader surveying his compound. Everyone who lived there knew his name and what he had done for them and in return they almost all contributed to his well-being. He had never asked to be treated like this but he knew they saw it not only as an honour for the lives of their children, but also a pleasure.
For all his years of wandering, for the first time in his very eventful life Karl Hauser felt at home and this was a place he could never imagine leaving again.
No, he had done his part in this life, more than most in fact. The things he had seen and done to this day made him wince but still he could be content that he had never taken an innocent life, just the lives of those either created by evil or those who had allowed themselves to be seduced by it.