Chapter 13- Expert Witness

Chapter 13

Expert Witness

Villa Cyranno, Venezuela

The stranger with the gun had moved off quickly and quietly, a sense of purpose behind his every step.  Beyond recognizing the uniform, Oscar had recognized the stealthy and muscular style of movement, the man was a professional.

Oscar had watched from a distance, simply trying to breathe in and out.  The calm he had felt had faded away after the man had moved off.  But Oscar had never gotten a sense that the man would simply shoot him, he had seemed decent.

But Oscar didn’t want a man with a gun randomly wandering around his village, no matter how he felt about Cyranno at this point.  So Oscar had decided to creep behind him at a safe distance.  The man had suggested that he moved faster alone and now Oscar didn’t doubt that.  But he hadn’t said “don’t follow me.”

The man had gone into the barn and Oscar had followed, edging around the barn.  It was then he first heard the strange sounds from elsewhere in the village.  Oscar had kept low, to avoid the gaze of the man with his gun.  But he had been able to follow him to the church.

Once inside he was no longer visible so Oscar had to move around the church to look in through a window.  He saw the priest, Father Castillo, and another man dressed in a similar garb.  But the other “priest” wasn’t familiar to Oscar.  And if someone was in the village that Oscar didn’t recognize, that was certainly something.

Was this the missing army man that the stranger had been talking about?  Was he dangerous?  If he was, why was Father Castillo helping him?  Oscar wondered what to do.  He certainly didn’t think that Don Brazzo was the man to talk to, even now.

The first gunshot had shocked Oscar out of his thoughts.  Oscar stared in wide eyed amazement as Father Castillo attacked the stranger.  More gun shots and a strange growling sound.  The other man turned and walked away, out the back door.  Oscar edged around the back of the church.  ‘Why did he attack him?’ wondered Oscar.  Father Castillo was occasionally a little drunk but never dangerous.

He saw the helicopter, a huge vehicle that seemed like something out of a movie came down with surprising grace behind the village.  Sand and dust was blown across him and he covered his face with one hand.

The strange man dressed like a priest walked away.  There was blood on his hands, Oscar could see that from a distance. Oscar watched him walk, a slow normal walk that did nothing to draw attention to him.  Oscar then saw blue uniformed people moving through the village, guns drawn.

“Mother of God,” he whispered to himself.  Oscar moved quickly, keeping low.  The stranger in black, this false priest, walked quickly now but still kept a simple upright profile.  Oscar stopped not too far from him but dodged back behind Don Cardenza’s house.

He looked back out as the priest stalked on, past the edge of the village and on.  Where was he going?  He was trying to avoid the army people, that was obvious.  Oscar continued to follow him.

The “priest” walked on, never slowing up, never seeming to need to take a break.  “Where are you going?” thought Oscar.  The next village was Villa Escobar and was another twenty miles from where they were now.

Oscar watched him for a moment and then decided to go back to the village.  Something strange was happening and he needed to make sure that the village would be ok.  He shook his head, if he had followed through with his threat to leave last winter, he would be reading about this in some paper rather than living through it.

Oscar moved quickly back to the village.  The first gun shots made him duck low.  But then there were more and more.  The clatter of machine gun fire caused Oscar to curse and drop prone for a moment.  “Not shooting at me,” he whispered to himself and got back up.  He rushed back to the village

Oscar was sent sprawling when he collided with Ivan Massarov, the village’s engineer in residence.  “Mother of God,” Shouted Oscar.  “You scared me to death!”

“Oscar!  There is shooting here,” Said Ivan in his functional but colorless Spanish.

“Yeah, there are US army people here,” Said Oscar.

“Why?” asked Ivan, looking around in alarm.

“I think a very dangerous man is on the loose and they are trying to find him.  Excuse me, I must get back to the church,” said Oscar.

“Why?” asked Ivan.

“Because Father Castillo attacked one of the soldiers!” snapped Oscar, moving away.

“Why?” Ivan seemed to have a million questions today.  Oscar didn’t have even half of the answers so moved away quickly.  Ivan began to follow him.

Oscar reached the church and looked back into the window.  There was movement inside but from the angle of this window, Oscar couldn’t make out what was happening.

“Gun shots,” Said Ivan, “More of them.”

“Yes” Said Oscar, impatiently.

Oscar moved around to the rear window.  He was not prepared in the slightest for what he saw there.  Captain Barrow wasn’t visible from where Oscar was stood.  But the friendly old priest, Father Castillo, stood there in front of him.  He was recognizable from his girth, his bearing.  But his face was gone, totally gone.

Where a jowly old man had once been, there was now a stranger.  Two dark pits where eyes had been.  There was blood smeared around them.  His mouth was a long tear in the face, extending almost from ear to ear.  Teeth seemed to be visible but they were utterly unlike anything human.

Whilst Oscar had been at university he had seen the jaws of a shark, preserved on the wall.  They were long, wickedly pointed like daggers.  The priest that was not a priest had teeth like that, teeth like a shark.

“Mother of God,” said Oscar.  Ivan leaned in next to him.

“What the fuck is that?” he breathed over Oscar’s shoulder.

“I don’t know.  But it isn’t Father Castillo.  It only looks like him.”

The door burst open and three army men in blue uniforms appeared.  Father Castillo’s face seemed to shift again and gradually began to take on a near human aspect until it was almost Father Castillo again.

When he turned around, he was shot repeatedly by the army men.  Oscar and Ivan took cover as round exploded into the wall in front of them.

“What the hell is that?” asked Ivan.

“I don’t know, but it’s not Father Castillo.  Something very bad has happened here.  We’ve got to warn someone.”

“Don Brazzo?” asked Ivan.

“Perhaps,” muttered Oscar.  He began to think.

There were more gun shots and Oscar’s mind raced, trying to find a solution to the problem, trying to knit all of these disparate elements together. A man was escaping from the village.  Another ‘man’ had taken the place of Father Castillo.  He’d now been killed by the army.

Oscar heard a woman scream and turned around to see Mrs De Lopez fleeing from her house on the edge of the village.  “Go after her, make sure she’s ok!” hissed Oscar at Ivan.  Ivan looked blankly back at Oscar for a moment.

“She’s sixty five years old, what’s she running from?” asked Oscar.

“Oh, sure yeah I’ll make sure she’s ok.  Sure.” Said Oscar and moved away, keeping very low, almost comically low.

Oscar moved back around the church when he heard the familiar voice of Don Brazzo.

“What are you doing here?  Why are you shooting?  Did you just shoot Father Castillo?  He’s a man of the cloth!  Are you mad?”

Oscar braced himself for the inevitable clash and moved around to Don Brazzo’s right.

“Don Brazzo, there is something very strange going on, we must warn these people.”
“Of course there is something strange going on here, these people are shooting like it is the OK Coral.  Americans, they are insane!”

Oscar switched to English but no one heard what he said.

“Stay away from the priest; he’s not what he looks like.  He’s not priest.”

“We’ve got to burn it.” Said an American.