Wraiths of the Broken Land by S. Craig Zahler

through Estrellita’s window, and the mountains outside were indistinguishable from the charcoal sky. Humberto set his guitarrita case down, struck a match and lit the wick of a lantern that was hung too high for his daughter to reach. Amber light chased the shadows away.
    The little girl locked the door (as if she intended to hoard every forthcoming musical note), climbed into bed and told her father that she was ready.
    Humberto withdrew his guitarrita and sat upon the windowsill. Behind him, the sky and mountains were a black curtain.
    A gentle melody drifted from the instrument’s plucked strings and into the girl’s ears. Unlike some balladeers who had to sing loudly in order to ring accurate pitches, Humberto performed adeptly at any volume.
    The lyric described an imaginary South American town that was located in the bottom of a dell and surrounded by green forests and tall white mountains.
    “Objeto Bendito!” Estrellita sang in concert with her father. (Humberto was pleased to hear his daughter match the pitches almost perfectly.)
    The people who live in Blessed Object go to church and before each meal say grace and acknowledge His great sacrifice. They are pious. (Humberto played a melody where each note was plucked strictly on the downbeat—this refrain showed the townsfolk’s steadfast devotion to the Savior.)
    As is often the case with Catholics who live in rural communities, the residents of Blessed Object have augmented the Trinity with a provincial saint to whom they pay tribute.
    (“San Pedro del Objeto!” Estrellita sang, a little ahead of the beat because of her excitement. Humberto added a two-measure etude so that he could lean over and kiss her forehead.)
    Saint Pedro of the Object is the supernal patron of the town and this is his story.
    (Upon Estrellita’s face was an enormous smile.)
    Two hundred years ago, at exactly nine seconds after eleven seventeen at night, an infant escaped his crib. He crawled from his house, across dark cobblestones and to the craftsman’s shop that was located on the far side of the settlement. When his parents found him the next day, he was covered with wet clay. His mother and father apologized to the shop owner and repaid him for the material that their child had ruined.
    They took young Pedro home and—with a long ivory shoehorn that the man used to get into his knee-high boots—very gently scraped the clay off of the baby’s skin. The parents put their child back into his crib and went to sleep.
    The next morning, when the mother and father entered Pedro’s room, they saw two babies. One baby was Pedro, and the other was made out of clay. The parents were uncertain how their six-month old child could have sculpted this second baby, and they suspected divine aid. This clay infant became the first sacred Object.
    The settlement that was located in the bottom of a dell and surrounded by green forests and tall white mountains was given the name Blessed Object.
    (“Objeto Bendito!”)
    Throughout his life, Saint Pedro of the Object refined the Object that he had begun as an infant. He apprenticed with a carpenter, mastered the art of woodcraft and carved elaborate curly hair, one strand at a time, for his Object. With lapis lazuli, he made eyes for his Object. With fine pearls, he made perfect fingernails and toenails for his Object.
    When he was a man of forty, Pedro studied the diagrams of anatomy and thereafter began his most time-consuming elaboration. He inserted pieces of clay, each no larger than a pea, into a tiny hole in the left shoulder of the hollow Object, and with long needles and tweezers, he sculpted bones, nerves, arteries and organs inside the boy.
    Saint Pedro of the Object died when he was sixty-six years-old—exactly twice as old as the Son had been when he was betrayed by Judas Iscariot and crucified. The patron was buried in the central square and mourned by every person in Blessed Object.
    (Humberto saw that his daughter was getting