Black Yé’ii (The Evil One) – My Work In Progress
I am towards the end of writing Black Yé’ii (The Evil One), which is my current WIP (work in progress), and I’m having fun with it. It explores a Navajo belief and tradition, and how George Tokay, one of my protagonists, deals with it. It isn’t easy, because he is a full-blooded Navajo boy, living in the white world as the adopted son of Jeremy and Vicky Evans, along with his six adopted brothers.
Black Yé’ii (The Evil One) is a continuation of the story of the seven adopted brothers who make up my fictional Evans family, along with the detectives that make up my other books. It is a true thriller-crime-mystery in every sense of the genre, and it is a “sort of” sequel to a previous book, Caught in a Web though you would not have to read it before diving into this book.
Yéʼii are spiritual deities of the Dine’, or Navajo people. They seldom speak of Black Yéʼii because they consider Black Yéʼii, to be The Evil One, and the Dine’ believe that by just speaking the name, they are inviting it into their lives. Black Yéʼii uses the five senses to trick an individual into seeking pleasure in life, but, by doing so, they bring harm to themselves or others. The Black Yéʼii interferes with living in the light of inner life and harmony, or Hozho, but more importantly, the Black Yéʼii violates Hozho by creating darkness and evil among people.It can damage relationships, disrupt families, and bring harm to an individual.
At the end of Caught in a Web, a promise was made. This promise was to keep Carmen Benevides and her son, Angel Benevides, and George Tokay, and his younger adopted brother, Bobby McGovern, safe from MS-13. MS-13 is a violent and ruthless gang that originated in El Salvador. MS-13 controls the drug and gun trade, and prostitution rings up and down the I-94 corridor between Chicago and Milwaukee, all the way up into Door County, Wisconsin. If MS-13 found out the truth of what happened one evening in the Benevides’ home, those four lives and their families would be in imminent danger.
The promise may have been broken and members of MS-13 travel to Waukesha, Wisconsin, to find out what happened that night, putting everyone in both the Benevides and Evans families in jeopardy.
I am giving you a glimpse into my next book, Black Yé’ii (The Evil One). Remember, it isn’t completed yet, and while I am fairly certain this first chapter will remain mostly intact, anything can happen during edits and rewrites. I apologize if there are formatting issues.
Chapter One
Waukesha, Wisconsin
The doorbell rang, and Carmen Benevides opened the door to three kids she didn’t recognize. She assumed they were friends of Angel. Actually, she knew they weren’t kids, but at her age, anyone younger than she was a kid. And when they stormed into the house and the two boys threw her on the couch, she realized they weren’t kids and they weren’t friends of her son, either.
Shocked, bewildered, and frightened, Carmen cowered as far away from them as she could.
The fat boy with ugly tattoos up and down his arms and around his neck hovered over her. He had the black, soulless eyes of a shark and a shaved, round, bullet head. His lips were pulled back in a sneer. The boy was Manny’s age. He wore what looked like a sword on his hip, but in a scabbard. It wasn’t as long as a real sword, but it was longer than a knife.
The other boy, the skinny, jittery one, had small, beady black eyes and a full head of thick black wavy hair. He didn’t have tattoos, at least none that she could see. She would have described him as a handsome young man, but he had a nasty scar on the left side of his face running along his jaw, like someone had cut it with something sharp. Despite that blemish, the boy was handsome, much like her Angel. However, Angel would never have treated anyone, much less an old lady, like he and the other boy did.
“Where is that bendejo, Puta?” the ugly fat boy asked.
Carmen’s glare was her answer, and the only answer he would get.
He slapped her. Her ear rang, and from the coppery taste, she knew the inside of her mouth was bleeding.
“Juan, that’s no way to treat this lady.”
Content for the moment to watch and listen, it was the first words the girl had spoken.
She was on the small, skinny side, with long black hair falling past her shoulders, and had large dark eyes, and a beautiful smile. Under any other circumstances, Carmen would have thought she was beautiful. The type of girl she had hoped Angel would come home with one day. But Carmen understood that while she might look beautiful, under all that beauty was the ugliness of sin and Satan.
The girl sat down on the couch, but turned to gaze at Carmen.
“I apologize for Juan. He can be rude when he wants something badly.”
Her voice was light and musical.
“About a year ago, a friend of ours was killed in your house. His name was Ricardo Fuentes. There were other boys killed too, including your son, Manny. We would like to speak to your son, Angel, about this.”
Carmen blinked and turned ashen. No one was supposed to know this. The details. She shivered and hugged herself.
The girl smiled sweetly, but Carmen wasn’t fooled.
“Angel had nothing to do with that,” Carmen growled. “Manny killed those boys, and he got killed himself.”
The fat boy, Juan, stepped forward and pulled his hand back for another slap, but the girl held out her hand and stopped him.
“If you tell us where Angel is, we could speak to him and find out his side of the story, and then we’ll leave.”
“There is no other side to the story,” Carmen said, her eyes darting from the mean boy to the girl.
“There are always sides to a story, Mother. Sometimes there is the truth. Sometimes a lie.” The girl raised her eyebrows and smiled as Carmen turned her head from her. “Sometimes there are shades of truth.”
That startled Carmen. First, she wondered who had broken their promise. Second, if it was like everything else in her long life, the promise made that ugly, awful night was only an illusion. No one was supposed to know what had happened. The three cops had assured her, Angel, and the two other boys that if no one spoke of it, all of them would be safe. It had been at least a year, perhaps more, and she had just begun to relax, believing in the lie’s safety.
She shook her head sadly. Like any mother would do, she would do her best to keep Angel safe. The other two boys and the three cops were on their own.
“Manny killed them and Manny got killed. That is all there is to know.”
“Mother, we would like to know where Angel is so we can speak to him. We drove a long way from Chicago, and we would like to go back yet tonight. It is getting late.”
“There is nothing more to say.”
The girl stood up, walked back to the kitchen. There were clean dishes on one side of the sink, and the other side was filled with soapy water. The girl picked up a cell phone from the counter. The woman must have been doing dishes and set it aside so it wouldn’t get wet, but near enough if someone called.
She walked back into the living room carrying the phone. There wasn’t a lock screen, and it wasn’t password protected. She flipped through contacts and popped Angel’s contact information up on the screen.
The girl sat back down and handed the cell to the woman.
“Please call Angel and tell him he has a visitor who would like to speak with him. He’ll want to know who, so just tell him it is an acquaintance from Chicago.”
Carmen took her phone from the girl and held it to her breast.
“There is nothing more to tell you. I already told you Manny shot those boys and was killed that night.”
“That may be true, but we want to hear that from Angel. Now. Please call him and tell him to come home.”
Carmen said nothing, but she was scared. Not so much for herself, but for Angel.
“Mother, I am losing my patience. We have a long drive ahead, and we need to speak with Angel. Call him and tell him to come home. Do it now!”
“No.”
The girl snatched the phone away from her, and then nodded to the fat boy with tattoos.
Without taking his eyes off of Carmen, he dragged the short sword out of the scabbard slowly, and for show. He wanted the maximum effect.
Carmen knew the entire scene had been rehearsed.
When the three of them entered her little house, it didn’t take long for Carmen to understand how it was going to end. She wasn’t sorry for herself, but wanted to spare Angel. He was a good boy and didn’t deserve what was going to happen.
“Last chance. Will you call Angel and tell him to come home? Or will Juan have to hurt you with his cuchillo largo?”
“There is nothing more to say. Besides, I’m going to die tonight, anyway.”
The girl sighed dramatically, and said, “It didn’t have to be this way, Mother.”
The girl nodded at Juan, who, with a sly, sick grin, plunged the long knife into Carmen’s stomach.
Carmen grunted, eyes bulged, and she bent over slightly. Juan pulled his long knife out and grabbed Carmen by her hair, forcing her to stare up at him.
He said, “I look forward to doing this to your bendejo son. Only more slowly and with more pain, Puta.” Then plunged it in again, this time higher, aiming for just below her breastbone.
He pulled out his knife and wiped it clean on Carmen’s dress as she pitched to the side, dead.
—
I hope you enjoyed the sneak peek into Black Yé’ii (The Evil One). If it gained your interest, pick up a copy of Caught in a Web to see for yourself what that secret was, and why it was so important for Carmen and Angel Benevides, and George Tokay and Bobby McGovern to keep it. Until now, it seems.
Caught in a Web : A PenCraft Literary Award Winner! Named “One of the Best Thrillers of 2018!” by BestThrillers.com
Caught in a Web is also available in Audio Book, Kindle and Paperback! http://bit.ly/2WO3kka
They found the bodies of high school and middle school kids dead from an overdose of heroin and fentanyl. A violent gang, MS-13, controls the drug trade along the I-94 and I-43 corridors. They send Ricardo Fuentes to find out who is cutting in on their business, shut it down and teach them a lesson. But he has an ulterior motive: find and kill a fifteen-year-old boy, George Tokay.
Detectives Jamie Graff, Pat O’Connor and Paul Eiselmann race to find the source of the drugs, shut down the ring, and find Fuentes before he kills anyone else. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CKF7696
Thanks for following along on my writing journey. I would love to hear what you think, so please use the area below to add a comment or two. Until next time …
