The Machu Picchu Mystery

by Matt Beighton

  And then, the tunnel opened up. If a church had been built underground, Trixie would have expected it to look something like the cavern that they stepped into. At some point in the past, this had been a room used by people. Every few yards, thick wooden beams too wide for Trixie to reach around, stretched from the ground into the darkness above them. By the light of the torch, Trixie could just make out an ornate ceiling, decorated with moulded dirt to look like the plaster mouldings in stately homes.

  “What are these?” Colin asked, touching a strip of fabric hanging forlornly on the wall. As his fingers brushed it, it fell to dust.

  “Colin, leave them!” Gloria snapped. “They are tapestries, ancient ones by the look of it. They could be priceless.”

  Colin snapped his hand back and had the decency to look guilty.

  Xavier had wandered off on his own to the other side of the room. “You guys better check this out,” he said. “I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  Trixie used the torch to find their way to Xavier. He was stood in the far corner, next to a door that seemed to lead further into the network of tunnels. That wasn’t what had caught his attention, though.

  “Cages?” Gloria said nervously.

  Hundreds of metal cages were stacked on top of each other, discarded against the wall. Each one had rusted and warped over time, but every single cage was the perfect size to hold a child.

  The Monster's Lair

  “I don’t like this at all,” Colin said, backing away from the cages.

  “Me neither,” Xavier agreed. “What are these cages for?”

  “Maybe we should head back and tell Miss Brimstone what we’ve found?” Gloria said cautiously.

  “Do you remember what happened every other time we’ve tried to tell her something?” Trixie reminded her friends. “She told us to investigate, so that’s what we’ll do. Let’s see where this door takes us.”

  She turned away from her friends, acting far more bravely than she felt, and pushed on the wooden door. It swung open easily on well-oiled hinges. “It definitely came this way,” Trixie said, mainly to keep herself from thinking about what it might be. Something was still gnawing at the back of her mind. Something didn’t feel right.

  The door opened into yet another tunnel. This one was narrower than the others, the ceiling was much lower. Trixie had to walk with one hand raised at head-height to avoid cracking her head on snake-like roots and sharp rocks that intruded at irregular intervals.

  Trixie had no idea how long they’d been walking for, but the passage seemed to wind on forever. There appeared to be no general direction either, which made it impossible to know where they were heading. Other tunnels branched off every now and then, but Trixie followed the footsteps in the mud. She knew that to deviate would risk getting lost forever. If they just walked straight, even if they didn’t find anything at the other end, she’d know how to get them back. To help, she made Gloria scratch an arrow into the damp tunnel walls every few yards.

  “If we get lost,” she said, “just follow the arrows backwards, and you’ll end up back in the big cavern. If we get separated, we’ll meet there by the cages.”

  Eventually, the flame from the torch started to splutter before finally dying. Trixie expected to be plunged into darkness, but instead, a gentle blue glow seemed to illuminate everything. It wasn’t the same swirling mist that they’d seen at the entrance to the cave, but danced and flickered like a flame. Trixie urged them on more quickly now, and she headed straight towards the source of the light.

  After a few hundred yards, the tunnel turned a corner and once again opened up into a wider passage. Trixie stopped dead in her tracks. The others piled into the back of her. The wider passage continued for another hundred yards before giving way to yet another underground hall. This one was even larger than the last one. In the middle, a roaring fire burnt with a blue flame, illuminating everything around it.

  Unfortunately, what it illuminated made Trixie’s stomach do somersaults. The passageway that they had stepped into was lined floor to ceiling with more cages. Each row must have been six or seven cages high. These cages weren’t rusty and twisted, and they weren’t empty.

  “Monsters,” Gloria whispered in shock.

  “Maria!” Trixie yelped, louder than she’d meant to. She raced over to a cage halfway along the passage and pulled on the metal bars. The centaur was sat down, her legs tucked underneath her in the cage. There was no room to stand up. A dirty water bottle, green with algae, was strapped to the side of the cage.

  “Go away,” Maria hissed. “You don’t understand. Go away while you still can. He’ll snatch you as well.”

  “I’m not going anywhere—” Trixie began.

  “Who will snatch us?” Xavier interrupted.

  “The pishtaco. He’s real,” Maria said. Tears flowed down her cheeks, mapping out rivers in the dirt.

  “Where is he?”

  Maria nodded towards the fire. Trixie turned and saw the creature from her bedroom. He hadn’t spotted the intruders yet. The towering, gaunt figure was dancing around the fire, screaming curses and insults at yet more cages stacked closer to the centre of the hall. A large iron cauldron was hung over the blue flames. Even from a distance, Trixie could hear something inside it bubbling and boiling. Whenever it overflowed, it hissed and steamed as it evaporated on the burning logs.

  Trixie listened closely and realised that the beast's words weren’t foreign curses or gibberish, he was singing a song.

  Lock your doors and shutter the windows

  Through the eve the shadow grows

  Cursed monsters haunt the night

  Fire burn and keep it bright

  “That’s a song the people in the villages sing,” Xavier said. “It’s supposed to warn their children not to go out at night. Otherwise, the monsters will get them.”

  “That’s horrible,” Gloria said. “Monsters aren’t creatures to be afraid of any more than humans are.”

  “The fire is burning, children,” the pishtaco screeched. “I am the shadow in the night!”

  Trixie stood and stared. She could see the same pale-yellow, watery eyes that had stared into her soul a few hours before. The jagged teeth snapped against each other as the monster danced around the fire, waving its arms and gnashing at the children in the cages. It was tall, but Trixie could see that the pishtaco seemed to be holding itself taller than it was. There was something about the ungainly way it walked, as well. Trixie had watched as her mother had trained the kittens in her cat circus to walk on stilts, and she thought back to when she’d had a go herself. She had staggered around the room in a sort of delayed fall, trying with each step to balance herself. The pishtaco walked the same way, as though his legs were barely under his control.

  “We need to get out of here and think about what to do,” Trixie whispered to the others. “Let’s head back to the other hall and come up with a plan.” She turned to Maria and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll be back for you soon. Stay strong.”

  Trixie didn’t dare look back as they fled along the winding corridor, carried by their fear. Behind them, the pishtaco continued his song, his voice like fingernails scraping along a blackboard.

  Realisation

  “We need to go back to the school and get the teachers,” Xavier said, wheezing to catch his breath. They’d reached the wide-open cavern and regrouped near the rusty cages.

  “We haven’t got time,” Gloria said sharply. “Plus, in our experience, teachers don’t really believe us anyway.”

  “Not until it’s all over,” Trixie agreed bitterly. “And then they want the credit.”

  “Okay,” said Xavier cautiously. “There’s clearly a bit of history here. What do we do instead?”

  “Maybe it’s time for a human story?” Trixie said. A plan had been forming in her head as she’d sprinted along the dark corridors. Could it work?

  “What do you mean?” Gloria said.

  “Have any of you
heard of the story of ‘Hansel and Gretel’?” The three monsters shook their head. Trixie told them the story as well as she could in the short time they had.

  “So they pushed her into her own oven?” Colin said once she’d finished. “Cool!”

  “I don’t think we’ll get close enough to the pishtaco to push him into the cauldron,” Gloria said.

  “We will. We just need some bait.”

  Gloria and Xavier stared at Trixie with wide eyes. “No!” they said together.

  Colin, a bit slower on the uptake, said, “Huh?”

  “Trixie is going to use herself as bait,” Gloria said.

  Trixie heard the fear in her friend’s voice. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Besides, he had the chance to take me before and didn’t. Just make sure you are ready to push him in once he’s distracted. You’ve seen the way he walks. It’s like a puppet. He barely seems in control of his arms and legs.”

  “I don’t like it,” Colin said. “It seems too risky.”

  “And that’s coming from the boy who once wanted to arm-wrestle the five-armed giant of Lancashire for fun,” Gloria said with a knowing nod.

  “We can’t leave the other monsters to be boiled,” Trixie argued. “I’ll head in and distract the thing. If you three wait until he’s looking the other way, then you can run in, and we’ll try to trip him up or something.”

  For a brief moment, the four of them stood and thought about how ridiculous the plan sounded. “We don’t have a better idea, I guess,” Colin said. “Let’s do it.”

  Trixie led the four of them back towards the flickering blue light and stopped once they reached the cages. Maria tried to talk to them, but they waved her into silence. Trixie turned to leave, but Gloria grabbed hold of her and gave her a tight hug. “Be safe,” she said. Trixie could see her friend was trying her hardest to seem brave.

  The pishtaco was still dancing around the fire, wailing at the monsters. From where Trixie stood, there were another hundred feet or so of the tunnel before it really opened up into the cave. She edged along the wall as quietly as she could. She could feel the cold stone scraping against her back. Somewhere nearby, the sound of rushing water broke through the screams and shouts of the monsters in the cave.

  As she drew closer to the mouth of the tunnel, she saw the way was blocked by an enormous spider’s web. It stretched the full width of the entrance to the tunnel with strands anchoring it to the ground and walls. Just like the eerie blue mist and the fluttering bats, something seemed odd.

  If there was a spider big enough to weave such a web, Trixie definitely didn’t want to meet it. In a world where the pishtaco could roam free, she wasn’t prepared to bet against it. However, something didn’t look quite right. Tentatively, she reached out and touched one of the strands that bridged the gap to the wall. It wasn’t sticky, like a normal spider web, and it didn’t break. Trixie knew what the problem was. Suddenly, it all made sense.

  There wasn’t enough time to head back to the others to let them know what she’d worked out, but the plan would definitely have to change. They couldn’t boil him alive, not now she knew his secret.

  Trixie pulled the web out of the way and shoved it into her pocket. She crouched down and edged into the cave. She suddenly felt very exposed. The ground of the cave sloped towards the centre as if a scoop had been taken out. At the bottom of the bowl, the fire still burned with a blue edge to the flames. A ring of rocks lay in a ragged formation on the lip of the indentation like a half-hearted Stonehenge. Just past them, and resting against the walls of the cave, were the cages.

  Now she was closer, Trixie could see that most of the cages were thankfully empty. Many of them were, in fact, filled with masks and toy monsters. The whole thing gave an impression of being more about looking good than scary. It fit perfectly with what Trixie already thought she knew.

  On the far side of the cave, Trixie saw the source of the rushing water. A hole had been worn through the wall, maybe six feet above the ground. A river of water was rushing out of it and cascading down a pile of rocks, before being dammed by a large boulder. After that, a small stream carried on its course. Somewhere behind one of the stones, it seemed to disappear again, possibly deeper underground.

  Trixie crouched down behind one of the rocks and peered at it. The pishtaco was in front of her, on the other side of the fire. Gloria, Colin and Xavier were waiting patiently in the tunnel behind her. Her only hope was to make it to the other side so that she was in front of the beast. If it turned around and saw her, there was a good chance it would see her friends as well.

  Slowly, she started to creep from boulder to boulder. The sound of sand crunching under her feet threatened to give the game away with every step. Her breath came in short bursts, desperately trying to avoid any noise at all. She was grateful for the pishtaco’s screams.

  When she was sure she was as far away from her friends as possible, Trixie took a deep breath and stepped out from behind her rock. The pishtaco towered above her, frozen with shock. Its horrid yellow eyes turned towards her, and she saw its thin tongue whip out and slide across its teeth. She could smell the familiar mix of sweat and decay already. Her knees began to buckle, and she staggered backwards until her back pressed against the cold stone. Staring into the eyes of the beast, she instantly regretted her decision. How could she have been so stupid? Everything she thought she’d worked out disappeared in a puff of the monster’s foul breath.

  Trixie was vaguely aware of her friends pouring into the cave, shouting and screaming to distract the creature. Either it didn’t hear them, or it didn’t care. Its slitted pupils never left Trixie’s eyes. She felt the hideous creature diving into her soul.

  You are worthless, it said. You thought you knew what I was? You know nothing, little girl.

  Fear took over, and Trixie kicked out at the monster’s shins. She heard a howl of anger and something metallic crunch beneath her foot, but she was already spinning and running around the edge of the fire. Before she could get very far, she felt a blow to the back, and she tumbled forwards. Something ice cold and wet engulfed her hands and splashed her face. She’d fallen into the river.

  There was no time to think about any of that. She knew she had to force herself to turn around. Even now, she could feel the heat of its breath on her neck, a strange contrast to the frozen blood running through her arms. Trixie eased herself round onto her elbows and looked up. Two sets of pinpoint teeth, yellowed and at strange angles, were opening and bearing down on her. All she could do was try to avoid breathing in the decaying air and to hope something would come to her rescue.

  Unmasked

  “Leave her alone!” Trixie opened her eyes to see Gloria bearing down on the monster. Her face was red with the effort of screaming and running.

  The pishtaco turned its head lazily. It swiped at the vampire with a scrawny arm and sent her tumbling across the cave. She stopped rolling next to the blue flames and didn’t move.

  Trixie let out a low growl and pounded her fists against the monster’s chest. “Leave my friends alone!” she bellowed.

  Something flickered in the monster’s eyes for a second. It closed its mouth and paused. Out of the corner of her eye, Trixie saw Colin creeping up behind the pishtaco. He was holding a heavy stone over his head. She shook her head gently, begging him not to come any closer. She needed to know if she was right about the monster. The glance towards her friend hadn’t gone unnoticed. The pishtaco spun around and bore down on Colin.

  Trixie watched him panic, frozen to the spot with fear. She saw the pishtaco push him out of the way and heard the crunch as the heavy boulder fell on the werewolf’s leg, pinning him to the floor. She watched helplessly as the colour drained from Colin’s face. He began to cry. And then she had to force herself not to laugh when Xavier raced to his friend's side and was sent sprawling across the cave floor. Hundreds of bones scattered in different directions, but it didn’t take long before they started to bounce around trying
to find each other to rebuild the skeleton.

  It was now or never. Trixie took her chance. “I know it’s you.” She knew she’d guessed right as soon as the monster’s shoulders slumped. Gloria shuffled to her feet somewhere in the distance, but Trixie didn’t have time to worry about her. She had the monster’s attention, but it wouldn’t last forever. She winced when the beast loped towards her and pressed its face against hers. The feel of the rubbery skin pressing against her forehead was the final proof she needed.

  Trixie slowly reached towards the monster’s head. She could feel the adrenalin pumping through her veins, but her hands weren’t shaking. There was nothing to be afraid of now. Gloria and Colin gasped as her fingers curled around the edge of the mask and she pulled it away.

  “Hello, Diego,” she said.

  “How did you know?” he snapped. “I was so careful.”

  “You didn’t kidnap me. When I spoke to you in the citadel, I told you that I wasn’t a monster, either. I don’t know if it was because you thought nobody would care enough about somebody like me going missing or if I reminded you of yourself. But you couldn’t hurt me. And then when you had me trapped in here, I saw it in your eyes.”

  Diego waved his hands dismissively. The long costume arms looked comical now that his mask had been removed.

  “There’s also the fact that the bats and blue mist in the tunnel are just cheap Halloween props. The spider’s web was the same. Cheap and plastic. My friends haven’t ever celebrated Halloween like I have, so they had no idea. But I knew I’d seen them before.”

  “It doesn’t matter!” Diego screamed in the high-pitched voice of the pishtaco. “Nobody knows you are here. Nothing has changed!” He strode across the cave in two giant leaps and snatched Gloria into his arms. “I think I’ll start by boiling this one. I’m sure she’ll be tasty!”