Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

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DIA DE LOS MUERTOSAUNTING THE DEAD
With enormous effort, Eileen shifted her perceptions
completely back to the living world, shutting out
the restless dead. As she had suspected, the music was
coming from a parade of marchers in colorful costumes.
The walkers, dressed as merrymaking skeletons, stiltwalking
ghosts, crows and Aztec warriors wielding
Styrofoam swords, mingled with the crowds of dead.
The ghosts seemed to take sustenance from the joy and
laughter that followed the marchers.
“Día de los Muertos,” Teo said. “The Day of the
Dead festival. I remember a parade like this one, once.
It’s one of my few good memories of this third-world
toilet of a country.”
Eileen was startled at the bitterness in his voice.
“My mother…” Oozing cracks appeared on his face.
“This country is why my sister and I lay under a tarp for
sixteen hours in 120 degree heat to make it to San
Diego. If there wasn’t such a shortage of agents who
spoke Spanish, I’d never have come back here.”
“I could have handled this alone,” Eileen said. “You
didn’t have to come.”
Teo’s face was unreadable. “I guess I like my job too
much.”
Eileen almost laughed. “No, Teo. Be honest with
me if no one else.“
His eyes were blazing now and the fissures bled
freely. “Look at them!” he said, ignoring her question
and pointing at the colorful denizens of Guadalajara.
“Tomorrow is Día de los Muertos—Day of the Dead.
Under those colorful displays, candy skulls and grinning
masks are lives filled with misery, despair and fear.
Once a year they organize this sad little comedy to hide
the truth from themselves—that the fear of death rules
over their entire lives.”
“And we’re different, I suppose?”
“Of course we are! Look at us—we wear the meat
when we have to, but then we cast that thing off and
walk among the spirits. What fear does death have for
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