One way or another, it ends tonight.
Lupe, 11:40 P.M.
Lupe spoke to las madres, making sure her voice was strong enough to be heard over the din of the concert. She had to go ahead as if Javier was on his way, as if this was all going to work. “How were you standing when you spoke to the boys five years ago?”
Carlos’s mother spoke up. “We held hands as we talked to them. It gave us strength.”
Memo’s mother cleared her throat. “Yes, it felt like we were supporting each other, mother to mother. I remember that feeling well. I was standing over here.…” And the women shifted into place, Vico’s abuela standing in for her daughter.
Lupe tried to sound encouraging, though without Javier she was certain the ritual was futile. Hell, even with him who knew whether it would work? A week ago she hadn’t thought monsters existed. But they had to try something. “Good, good. Hold hands, stand like you did that night. We need to bring this whole thing full circle.”
As the women shifted, Lupe’s gaze swept the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of Javier’s curly head, to see his smiling eyes. Her aunt Maria came up behind her and put her arm around Lupe’s shoulders.
“You know, when you said you wanted to see the real Puerto Rico, I didn’t imagine this was what you had in mind.”
Lupe laughed.
“So, sobrina, do you have a better idea of what makes you Puerto Rican? What part is Dávila?”
“I’m starting to. But I think by the end of the night I’ll have a full answer.”
Maria patted her cheek and stepped toward Esteban.
“Oh! Tía?”
Maria turned around. “Yes?”
“Is it too late to go to the caves?”
Maria smiled back at her.
The police officers stepped back, still behind las madres but giving them room to take one another’s hands. As the last hand was grasped, the line of women was complete. They looked so incongruous among the crowd, like a line of sparrows in the middle of a sea of crows, but the people around them started to move back, giving them space.
Lupe stepped in front of them. “Great! That’s great. Now all we need”—she glanced over at Javier’s mother and saw pain in her eyes and imagined she had the same look in her own—“are the two remaining cangrejos.”
Javier, 11:45 P.M.
Javier saw Chief Dávila above the crowd, to the left of the stage. He didn’t want to see the chief: he’d only try to stop him, and Javier wouldn’t let anything do that now. He kept pushing but the crowd continued to shift and he ended up off course. He began to feel as if he would never get through.
Javier finally made it to the front of the crowd, his belly against the stage. He stopped to catch his breath when a voice bellowed from the massive speakers.
“Ladies and gentlemen! I’m proud to introduce Amapola’s favorite son, el jefe, Papi Gringo!”
The applause rose like a massive flock of birds until Javier could feel it shake his internal organs. All faces turned as the spotlights brushed back and forth across the stage. Javier looked up to see his friend, the only other living cangrejo, Carlos Colón, strut his way across the stage. When he reached the center, Carlos thrust his arm into the air with the beat, the crowd jumping up and down until it was as if the audience had a single heartbeat. Javier swore he could feel the asphalt pulsing beneath them.
While the DJ scratched, Carlos caught Javier’s eye and his lip lifted in that grin that hadn’t changed since they were five years old. The crowd pushed forward as Carlos moved to the front and Javier was shoved hard against the stage, the metal edge digging into his belly, the pulse of the music beating faster and faster.
He wondered if he would be cut in half and save El Cuco the trouble. He looked at his watch: 11:53. Seven minutes left.
Javier turned around, putting his back to the stage so he could lift himself up, and his eyes scanned the crowd. He saw Lupe just a few feet away, the circle of mothers right beyond her. She was talking to his mother. Las madres were there. He felt a warmth spread over his skin for this group of women who’d come here just to help him, to join in his fight. But there was no way he was going to risk their safety, too. Look how that had served Sebastian.
Someone was calling his name.
Lupe. She’d seen him. He looked up to see her reaching for him across the shoulders between them. He reached toward her, but she was being pulled farther into the crowd. No! He had to reach her. And how could she be pulled against the wave of people? How was she being pulled back when the crowd was pushing forward? “Lupe!” He shouted her name over the heads between them, and in that one instant he could see so many things in her eyes: relief, fear, confusion. She reached her hand out toward him, screaming his name.
Just then Javier’s feet left the ground, the asphalt falling away beneath him. No! He still had a few minutes!
So this is it, he thought, his heart thrumming in his chest. In that instant he locked eyes with Lupe and he caught her panicked gaze. She was struggling against someone.
“No!” They were both screaming at once.
He heard his name booming off the buildings and knew that El Cuco had really come for him; despite all his hard work, his abstinence, he was calling Javier out in front of all of these people, in front of his mother, in front of Lupe. At least Padre Sebastian would not have to see his end, would not know that he had failed with Javier. He could feel hands around his upper arms and he looked up to see Carlos’s bodyguards lifting him onto the stage, placing him next to the singer as if he were a chess piece.
Javier took a deep breath, grateful to feel the solid wood beneath his feet, to see all the people spread out in front of him.
He realized Carlos was talking about him into the mic. “This is my hermano, my fellow cangrejo, Javier Utierre! Give it up, mi gente!” The obedient crowd roared in response. Javier blinked and looked down at the mob pressing in toward the stage, the line of madres an eye in the hurricane of people.
He could no longer see Lupe.
“At midnight, in four minutes, this pendejo turns eighteen.” Again a roar from the crowd. “So this next one’s for you, man.”
The instant the first notes of the synthesizer hit the heavy night air, the noise from the crowd reached a crescendo, a level that Javier didn’t think was possible, then Carlos yelled the song’s title into the mic next to Javier’s ear.
“El Cuco!” The bass and drums built up as the lyrics began to pour out of Carlos’s mouth, his scantily clad backup singers echoing the chorus and the monster’s name as if they were in church.
Retribution, El Cuco will find you
Carlos’s voice was echoing throughout the street.
Javier’s head was buzzing. The audience was frenzied, pushing forward, and the space between the women and the crowd narrowed.
Retribution, it begins inside you
The police were having trouble holding the multitude back, away from las madres. He could see his mother and the others mouthing the Hail Mary in Spanish. He didn’t even need to hear them; he could feel each word in his chest. The energy coming off his mother and the others was like the electricity that runs through the air before a storm. He’d underestimated them.
Retribution, he sees all you do
The crowd was singing along with Carlos, as if it were a hymn.
Javier looked at his watch as the glowing yellow numbers switched from 11:59 to 12:00, the date counter to July 11, a date that used to fill him with joy, images of new video games and bikes, birthday cake and a party with los cangrejos.
Every night I pray for you
He didn’t feel any different. Maybe nothing was going to happen. Maybe he was safe.
Javier tried to take a step forward, hoping to find Lupe in the crowd, but when he looked down at his sneakers he realized he was no longer standing on the stage; his feet were off the floor just a bit, hovering. He spun around, expecting to see stagehands or someone holding him up, but there was no
one.
El Cuco doesn’t prey on you
As he looked at the shadow of his body on the stage, it felt like hot embers were catching across his skin. In that instant he thought of all those times in his childhood he’d dreamt he was flying, up and out of his too tidy house, away from Amapola. But this time he was being taken.
He whipped his head over to look at Carlos, who was still next to him.
Your fate is under your control
His friend was looking down at Javier’s feet, his brown eyes wide, but he didn’t stumble at all with the lyrics, he just put his arm around Javier’s shoulders to hold him down, but then they were both rising, slowly, higher and higher above the stage.
Don’t let him find and bind your soul
Javier could feel a pull from las madres, but something stronger was pulling him and Carlos from above. Javier looked up and saw a tunnel of darkness, the type he saw at the edges of his vision, in the room at his dealer’s, but this was different, stronger. Tendrils of shadow reached down for him, flicking their thin, skeletal fingers.
Carlos was still singing beside him, but Javier could see fear in his friend’s eyes.
Conscience is growing evil
Carlos was hanging there, the words to his hit song spilling from his lips into the metal mesh of the microphone, then spreading over the heads of the crowd like vapor.
Life’s pumping through a needle
Your mother’s words fade to black
El Cuco’s cure will conjure that
Carlos. Javier pulled at his friend’s hands. “You have to let go!” Javier yelled over the driving beat from the speakers and the screaming from the crowd. Javier could hear his words amplified over the street, like a voice from God. Was that how it felt to be Carlos?
The song was driving on and Carlos responded. “No way, man! You go, I go. We’re in this shit together!” At that, a deafening roar came from the crowd in response and the wind picked up, the crescendo of the driving music, the screaming of the crowd, the pop of fireworks overhead, the garbage from the street pulled up in the shadow that cycloned around them both as they were slowly lifted into the dark night. Carlos was pointing his microphone toward the barely visible crowd as if this were just part of the show, as if it were their turn to sing.
Retribution, El Cuco will find you
Retribution, it begins inside you
Javier wondered when it had gotten so cold; he almost imagined snow among the swirling winds.
He heard Sebastian’s voice in his head. The monster always exacts a price.
No.
Carlos didn’t deserve this.
Javier pried his friend’s fingers loose and watched Carlos drop to the stage. The singer landed on his feet as the crowd went absolutely wild. The last thing Javier saw before being fully engulfed in the shadow cyclone were the worried eyes of his childhood friend as Javier was pulled up and away from him.
Lupe
As Lupe watched Javier being pulled up, there was someone pulling her back by the neck of her shirt, yanking her through the flood of people to the darkened sidewalk, far away from her uncle and the safety of his police force. Javier had made it! But something had him, was dragging him into the building storm.
El Cuco was a black hole/tornado forming in the middle of a suburban street in a San Juan suburb? She had to get back, had to make sure nothing kept las madres from the plan. But who—or what—the hell was pulling her?
She reached back and grasped at the sleeves of whoever had her, her arms flailing against the press of people. Wildly she strained to see Esteban’s men trying to subdue the crowd, las madres trying to keep their hands together. Lupe watched as Memo’s mother’s hand slipped from Mrs. Utierre’s and instantly the energy retreated. It was like a vacuum had been shut off, and as she looked back at the stage she saw Javier rising faster, Carlos dropping to the stage, the cyclone pulling Javier farther and farther away. She was jerked to the ground away from the crowd, behind the sawhorses that lined the sidewalk. Lupe felt the concrete scrape skin off her palms, her knees, and she struggled to get to her feet, looking up at the shadowed face above her.
Then a knife was against her throat. The glint of the blade contrasted against the deep black handle, the yellow skulls glowing in the moonlight. Lupe froze, her chest heaving as she tried to catch her breath. Was this it? Was it her turn to die?
“Now, gringa. Now you pay for what you did to my brother.”
A girl.
It was a girl’s voice.
Lupe squinted in the darkness, trying to make sense of the features. Then she looked into her captor’s wild eyes, and it was as if the last piece of the puzzle had just snapped into place. The blue car in Old San Juan. The texts. It was all Marisol.
“I never even met your brother!” Her voice was raspy over the music; it was hard to speak with the edge of the blade across her throat.
“It’s gringos like you that stole our house from under us, idiotas like Javier”—she gestured wildly toward the stage—“who got my brother hooked on drugs! And killed my mother!”
Lupe laughed. Not the best response when a lunatic was holding a knife to your throat, but scared as she was, she couldn’t help it. “So I’m to answer for an entire continent of people?”
Lupe felt Marisol’s body tighten again and Marisol’s face grew red. “You don’t get it, gringa! Someone has to pay for what happened to Vico! To my mother!”
“Yeah, right. Look, let me up.” Lupe made a move to stand. Before she got halfway up, Marisol drew back her arm and bashed Lupe across her jaw, knocking her head back against a garbage can behind her and back on her butt on the sidewalk. It felt as if Lupe’s jaw had exploded, her teeth shifted. The taste of metal filled her mouth and she was having trouble focusing her eyes.
But at least her throat wasn’t slit.
Why wasn’t it?
Marisol shrieked in Lupe’s face. “You think you’re above it all? That you can take over the island, poke the bear? I tried to warn Padre Sebastian. But did he listen? No!”
Through a haze of pain, realization slowly dawned on Lupe. It wasn’t bad enough that los cangrejos had El Cuco hunting them down. Since she’d arrived on the island Marisol had been threatening her, trying to kill her. And she’d stabbed the priest. El Cuco wasn’t the only monster in this scenario. Lupe’s eyes narrowed, fury foaming behind her eyes.
The music rose in a crescendo, the crowd throbbing with the beat.
Retribution, he sees all you do
Retribution
Lupe roared and threw her body forward at Marisol, both of them tumbling to the sidewalk. They rolled back and forth, stones and glass pieces from the sidewalk cutting through Lupe’s thin cotton shirt, blood gluing the fabric to her back. Marisol was trying to go for her eyes, but Lupe managed to keep her just far enough away that she couldn’t reach. The peaks of the concrete scraped the skin off the backs of her arms and she wasn’t sure she could hold Marisol back much longer.
Why wasn’t Marisol using the knife?
Lupe managed to push Marisol away enough that she could lift her leg between them, shoehorning in more space, until she pulled her whole leg back, aimed, and brought it up full force just as Marisol’s bent down. There was a sickening crunch as her knee connected with Marisol’s chest. Marisol let out a howl, hands flying to her chest. Lupe took the opportunity to scuttle backward on her butt, until she was just out of reach. She ran her finger over her teeth. They were all there, but her jaw felt like a cement truck had hit it. When she pulled her hand away from her mouth it was dark with blood and dirt.
They both sat back, breathing hard. This was never going to end, and her odds were only getting worse with exhaustion. She had to get Marisol to talk, to distract her so that she could get to Javier, that was the priority. “Javier was a victim, too. That night—”
“Don’t talk to me about that night! I was there! Would they let me into their stupid little cangrejo club? No! But I got to shar
e in the monster’s curse!”
Lupe froze. “What?”
“You think I don’t feel the same things they do? The dark shadows following me everywhere, the feeling that something’s just ahead, waiting to get me? No, I didn’t get to share in the brotherhood but I could feel their monster.” Her whole body seemed to sag. “I just want it to be over.”
So Marisol felt it all. It was like she was haunted. That didn’t excuse what she had done to Sebastian. But Lupe had to get her to understand that tonight was different. “But Javier is clean; he worked hard to get there. El Cuco won’t have to take him.”
Marisol shook her head back and forth, a smile snaking across her face. “Such a gullible little gringa. I followed him last night, figuring he would eventually hook up with you. He went to his dealer’s.”
Lupe shook her head, but suddenly she wasn’t so sure. “You’re wrong. He must have been there looking for … doing something else.” Don’t be an idiot, Lupe, she thought. If ever there were an excuse for a relapse … but he couldn’t have … could he?
Marisol shrieked again. “There’s only one reason he would go there! He’s just as weak as the rest of them.” She glanced back at the stage. “And he deserves whatever he gets tonight. And he’s the last one, so it will finally be over. I’ll be free.”
“You’re lying.” Lupe could hear the uncertainty in her own voice, the panic. If she wasn’t convincing herself, she sure wasn’t getting through to Marisol.
Another shriek and Marisol stamped her foot on the ground like an angry toddler. “Javier is bad, just like the other three cangrejos! I tried to warn them! I knew from that night that those drugs would destroy us all. When I sat there on that couch with my abuela I knew it in my bones those boys were going to ruin everything with their bad behavior. And look! My brother and mother! Gone! They took everything from me.” She took a ragged breath and the mania decreased in her eyes, just a bit. “Now, it’s midnight. Time for you and Javier to pay.” Lupe turned around, looking for a bottle, something to use as a weapon.
Five Midnights Page 22