The Machu Picchu Mystery

by Matt Beighton

  “But we know that it isn’t real, right?” Trixie said, thoughtfully.

  “I don’t know anymore,” Maria said.

  “I think it’s definitely real, and it’ll come and eat all of our bones!” Xavier said and started walking around doing his best impression of a bone-eating monster.

  “That’s bad luck for you!” Colin said. He grabbed Xavier’s arm and ran off into the throng of people.

  “Oi, give me that back!” Xavier cried, chasing after him.

  “Idiots,” Gloria said with feeling.

  “The thing is,” Trixie said, trying to get back on track, “if we know that it isn’t real, all we have to do it work out what or who is happening to these monsters. Then, we can stop it.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t like to get involved in things,” Maria said.

  “That’s not a problem,” Gloria said with a smile. “We’ll show you how!”

  “Hello, girls.” A lonely man wandered over to them. He was dressed in a thick cloak with a hood pulled over his head, despite the heat. He looked tall but walked almost doubled over. His feet shuffled across the dirt, scraping a trough as he went.

  “Diego?” Trixie said.

  The man pulled his hood back. His greasy hair flopped against his head. She realised he was missing most of his teeth and he smelt. His odour was so strong, Trixie suspected it may have had a personality all of its own. It was a strange smell. If somebody had dredged an old pond and left the muck to sweat as it dried out, they would have achieved something similar. “Isn’t this terrible?” he said. “All these monsters mixing with people.”

  “Don’t you like the people?” Gloria asked.

  “I don’t like monsters,” he said. “I applied to come here when I was younger. They wouldn’t let me in. Said my hunchback didn’t make me a monster.” Diego stopped and sniffed, a long blob of snot was hanging from his nose. He pulled out a handkerchief that may well have once belonged to a caveman and blew his nose hard. The trumpet-blast echoed around the walls of the citadel, and the crowd stopped and stared for a moment. Diego growled.

  “They said I wasn’t a monster,” he continued. “But you try telling that the other people in my village. My mother was forced to flee. They thought I was a monster. They told her I was cursed. They begged her to leave me in the mountains or else the village would suffer. But she didn’t. My mother ran away and cared for me, and when the time came, they turned me away!” Diego’s face was flushed, sweat poured from his brow.

  The caretaker nodded to the three girls and pulled his hood back over his head. “The party will be finished soon. The children are starting to head back. You don’t want to be left out here alone.”

  Sure enough, the other children were all heading back into the forest. Gloria and Maria made their way over to the back of the line, but Trixie raced after Diego. She had a secret she needed to share with him. Once she’d spoken to him, she caught up with the others and began the long walk back to the stone doorway.

  That night, Trixie’s dreams were filled with visions of flying monsters. They swooped down over the walls of Monstacademy and plucked screaming children from the courtyard. The flying beasts carried them up into the sky and disappeared in a puff of smoke. She woke with a start, sweating and with her head smothered under her blanket. Something was wrong.

  Normally, the bedroom was quiet. Trixie reflected that there were two types of quiet. Usually, the room was filled with the noisy kind of quiet, punctuated by the sound of the other roommates snoring or rustling their sheets. The second type, the more terrifying, was the quiet that happened when somebody was deliberately trying not to make a sound. It somehow distorted all of the other sounds, swallowing them in a black hole of silent noise.

  Somebody was stood at the foot of her bed. She could make out the shadowy silhouette through the weave of the blanket. The hairs on her neck stood on end. Her arms sprouted goosebumps in response to some primal instinct. She closed her eyes and slowly pulled the blanket from over her head. She felt cold air on her face but remembered that she’d shut the windows before climbing into bed. The breeze came in short, ragged gusts. Whatever was in front of her, was breathing on her face.

  She opened her eyes and bit her tongue. There was no point in screaming. A tall, slender figure towered over her. It was naked, except for a loincloth, and covered in patches of grey fur. It was twice as tall as Trixie but was leaning down to get a closer look; its face was inches from her own. She looked up into pale yellow eyes, each one bloodshot with a narrow, reptilian pupil. Something wet dripped onto her cheek. The monster was drooling.

  There was no nose to speak of. The face was flattened and featureless, outlined only by deep wrinkles around the cheeks and eyes. The mouth was a lip-less slit cut into the flesh. Spiky teeth jutted out at strange angles, some of them brown and rotten, others polished and white.

  Slowly, the creature reached out a hand. Trixie noticed how skinny the arms were. She could make out the outline of all of the bones underneath the skin. There was an air of strength about it, nevertheless. Trixie closed her eyes and waited. The twisted fingernails, more like talons, scraped across her forehead. She winced as one of them grazed her. Then, the pressure eased, and the breath against her face disappeared.

  Trixie opened her eyes again, afraid of what she would see. The face had gone, replaced by the darkness of the night. She could sense it was still in the room, though. She sat up and looked around her. The monster was climbing out of the window, but it wasn’t empty-handed. Something was slung over its shoulder. Someone, Trixie corrected herself. She knew who the monster had grabbed. Trixie felt helpless as she stared into Maria’s terrified eyes as the pishtaco scrambled through the window and took her away.

  The Cave Beneath The Moon

  Trixie screamed until every lamp in the dormitory had been lit, and Miss Brimstone had been summoned. The banshee didn’t look at all pleased to be seen with her hair sticking out at strange angles and her hair pinned up in curlers. As soon as Trixie explained to everybody what had happened, and Maria was confirmed as missing, Miss Brimstone sent for Madam Garcia.

  “Listen, girls,” the banshee said, pulling Trixie and Gloria to one side while the rest of the room had hysterics. “I don’t know if Madam Garcia will believe what has happened here. But, like I told you before, I trust you two to do some investigating. It’s a lot more serious now.” She turned to Trixie directly and said, “Do you think it really was the pishtaco?”

  Trixie tried to calm herself down before speaking. Her voice was shaking nearly as much as her hands. “I think so, Miss Brimstone. I know I’ve not been around monsters for very long, but it wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before. It looked exactly like the pishtaco in the stories that the children here are telling each other.”

  Miss Brimstone looked puzzled for a moment but shook it away. “You said it was bending over you when you woke up? Why didn’t it take you, I wonder?”

  “What if it could tell I wasn’t a monster? If it only wants to take monsters, then maybe I’m not what it is after.”

  “Possibly. Something still doesn’t feel right about all of this.”

  “I know what you mean,” Gloria chipped in. “Trixie doesn’t normally exaggerate or spread rumours, so I believe her when she says what it looked like. But it’s almost too much of a coincidence that it looks exactly like the rumours.”

  “I know what I saw,” Trixie said sourly.

  “I know. We’re going to have to do some investigating.”

  “You will have to be quick,” Miss Brimstone said. “They are going to bolt the doors in an hour to stop anybody getting in or out until the morning.”

  The rest of the girls parted by the doorway as Madam Garcia buzzed into the room. The fairy seemed to have been crying, her normally manicured face was swollen, her eyes were red and puffy. “You poor girl!” she wailed and threw her tiny arms around Trixie’s shoulder. “I must apologise on behalf of my school. What ki
nd of children would pull a prank like this, especially at this time?”

  “Madam Garcia, this wasn’t a trick. The monster was very real, whatever it was,” Trixie said, not quite believing what she’d heard.

  “My dear, the pishtaco isn’t real. This is just another one of the older monsters trying to scare you out-of-towners, I’m afraid.” The headmistress turned to the rest of the room and said, “The rest of you should be ashamed of yourselves for spreading these rumours. You must go back to bed right now. We’ll deal with your punishments in the morning.

  “You know, it’s got so bad that the other teachers want to cancel the Fiesta de Fantasmas. The Fiesta has been held the day after the open day every single year for the last four hundred years. And now they want to cancel it? Not on my watch.” Madam Garcia turned back to Trixie and Gloria. “As for you two, please get any sleep you can. I will apologise properly in the morning when I look more like myself.”

  The fairy flapped her wings and disappeared back out into the corridor. The rest of the girls fell back into bed, muttering about how terrible it would be if the fiesta was cancelled.

  “We have to do something,” Trixie said. She could feel anger bubbling up inside her. How dare Madam Garcia think she had been duped by somebody in a costume? The memory of the teeth and the breath against her face would keep her awake for weeks.

  “Go and get your sidekick, and get out of here,” Miss Brimstone said urgently. “But please be careful. If something happens to you...” the deputy-headmistress trailed off.

  “We’ll be fine, miss,” Gloria said. “It’s not our first time!”

  The two girls raced out of the dormitory and along the short corridor to the boy’s room. They didn’t bother to knock, but they eased the door open quietly and crept over to Colin’s bed. He was lying on his back with his mouth open wide, and he was snoring loudly. His legs were twitching as he chased sticks in his dreams. Gloria gently shook him awake.

  “Gsfglmph,” he said.

  “It’s us,” Gloria said, stating the obvious. “You need to get dressed and meet us in the common room in one minute. Don’t take forever, Colin. This is important.”

  “Wha’ ’appened?” he asked groggily.

  “Maria’s been taken.”

  The girls left him suddenly alert and crept downstairs. The common room, normally bustling with noise and monsters doing homework or relaxing, was shrouded in silence and filled with shadows. A weak, dirty light filtered through the stained-glass windows high in the walls and shone on something pale resting on a low coffee table. It was a piece of paper. Trixie tiptoed towards it, half-expecting it to jump up at her at any moment, and picked it up. It was a simple note, scribbled hastily on a scrap of paper.

  The cave beneath the moon.

  “What does it mean?” Trixie asked Gloria.

  “There are many caves in the hills above us,” Xavier said, stepping into the room with Colin.

  “Sorry,” Colin said with a shrug. “Once he heard about Maria...”.

  “When I heard Maria was in trouble, I had to come,” the skeleton said, cutting Colin off. “The cave beneath the moon is the legendary lair of the pishtaco. Nobody has ever found it.”

  “Probably because it doesn’t exist,” Gloria said.

  “This clue suggests otherwise,” Xavier said, taking the note. “We must leave now and head into the mountains. I will take you to the caves, and we will see if there is one that is underneath the moon.”

  “But the moon moves through the sky,” Trixie said. “It could be any of the caves.”

  “We will deal with that when we get there,” Xavier said, valiantly. “We must do everything we can to save Maria.”

  The three monsters and Trixie grabbed their coats and pulled on their boots. Xavier had warned them that the mountains were as cold at night as they were warm during the day. Nobody was in the corridors as they wound their way towards the stone doorway. Xavier led the way. Trixie was glad to see him taking something seriously, for once. Even Colin wasn’t messing around.

  The heavy door creaked ominously when they pulled it open, but there wasn’t a soul about to hear it. Xavier pulled it shut behind them, and they stepped out into a frosty night bathed in the light of a half-moon.

  Into The Tunnels

  Shattered-glass stars glittered against the black-canvas sky. Shadows ducked and raced away with every step. Xavier led them out into the forest and almost immediately turned back on himself. A winding pathway amongst the trees, overgrown but freshly trampled in places, led back towards the school. Instead of heading for the door, it wound away into the mountains.

  “Is it far?” Colin moaned. His legs were already aching, and he missed his bed.

  “It will be quicker if you put as much energy into your legs as your mouth,” Xavier said. There was none of his usual playfulness, Trixie noted.

  Colin grumbled something about it being easier for Xavier—he didn’t have a whole body to carry after all—but sped up and stopped complaining.

  The trail into the mountains was scattered with sharp rocks and questing tree roots. More than once, Xavier let out a shout of frustration and raced back to a point a few yards back along the trail. He’d invariably return carrying his foot or a toe bone that had snagged under a rock or root. Eventually, they all started to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. Gradually, Xavier relaxed into his usual good mood.

  “It’s always happening,” he said with a smile. “You should see me in the three-legged race!”

  The temperature dropped even further, the higher they climbed. Clouds raced each other across the sky, thunder rolled in the distance. Flashes of lightning, far away but still brilliant, illuminated the way ahead. For a split second, Trixie was sure the landscape twisted in front of her. It seemed to flick between a towering mountaintop and...something else. She felt a tingle of electricity run across her skin.

  The trail changed quickly. One minute Trixie was holding onto the rocks on either side of her as she scrambled up a steep slope, and the next she was standing on a gravelly plateau. Stones had been piled up around the edge, blocking off any views of the forest below and creating a bowl. As they stood and watched, heavy raindrops hammered into the ground, throwing dust into the air. Trixie pulled her hood over her head and shrugged her coat tighter around her shoulders.

  “This is the Valley of Caves,” Xavier shouted over the growing storm. “Only the monsters know about this place.”

  “How have you kept it secret from the villagers?” Gloria shouted back.

  “Magic. Hundreds of years ago, these caves were an important place for monsters to hide away from the pitchforks. An ancient wizard cast a spell and placed a shield of invisibility around it. Unless you know it is here, or are invited by a monster, all you see is an enormous mountain ahead of you.”

  Trixie thought back to what she’d seen as they approached the plateau, how the landscape had shifted.

  “So which cave do we need?” Trixie asked. Many of the rocks around them seemed to have darker pools of darkness between them. As Trixie spun around and took them all in, it became more obvious that they hadn’t landed there by accident. Somebody had piled the rocks up to form doorways like the one that led into the school far below.

  “Legend says the cave beneath the moon.”

  “But the moon is hidden behind the clouds,” wailed Trixie. Surely they hadn’t come this far to be thwarted by the weather?

  “Wait!” Gloria raced across the open ground towards a cave on the other side. She pointed to a rock balanced precariously above the entrance stones. “What does this look like?”

  Trixie moved a few steps closer to Gloria, and the shape became obvious. “It’s a crescent, like a half-moon!”

  “What do you think, Xavier?” Gloria said.

  “It’s as good a guess as any, and I’m soaked to the bones!” Xavier said and punched Colin playfully on the arm.

  Eager to get out of the storm, the four of them
raced through the stone arch and into a tunnel. It sloped steeply. Trixie had to lean back on her heels to stop herself from losing control. Pulsing fireflies clung to the walls giving everything an eerie green glow. Stalactites hung from the roof like inverted termite mounds. Water dripped onto Trixie’s head and ran down her back.

  “This is the right cave,” Trixie said assuredly.

  “How do you know?” Gloria asked.

  “Somebody has been here recently.”

  “What makes you the world’s greatest detective, all of a sudden?” snapped Colin. Trixie could tell he wasn’t in a good mood.

  “For a start, there are footprints,” she said, pointing at said footprints leading away into the tunnel. “Secondly, there’s a box of matches here. The burnt one is still warm.”

  Colin harrumphed but said nothing.

  “There’s another torch,” Trixie said, holding up a thick length of wood bound tightly with a rag. She struck a match and filled the tunnel with a warm yellow light.

  Further ahead of them, a distant wall glowed. It wasn’t from the light of the torch, but a swirling blue mist that seemed to be trying to form shapes but could never quite settle on a design. A strange, high-pitched wailing filled the tunnel. Gloria, Colin and Xavier yelped and cowered, but to Trixie, there was something slightly wrong about the whole thing. She couldn’t put her finger on why, but she wasn’t scared.

  She put her finger to her lips in the universal sign of silence and carried on along the tunnel. Before they reached the wall, the glowing mist disappeared. The screaming drifted away as quickly as it had arrived. Trixie held the torch over her head.

  The top of the tunnel was higher here, and the light of the torch cast flickering shadows far above them. Bats spun in circles and dipped and bobbed. Again, there was something strangely familiar about them to Trixie. She could feel the beginning of an idea forming, but it was like a thread on the hem of her dress. She knew she had to pull at it, but slowly. Tug it too quickly, and it would snap.