Charlie Hernández & the Castle of Bones

by Ryan Calejo

  I was so terrified that if I’d had any strength left in me—any strength at all—it probably would’ve melted away like butter on a hot pan.

  I tried to scream but couldn’t; it felt like there was no air left in my lungs. Worse, when I tried to reach up to push her away, I realized I couldn’t move my arms, realized I couldn’t move any part of me; it was as if she’d paralyzed me!

  Panic and adrenaline burned in my veins like acid, but it wasn’t nearly enough to break the paralysis. Just a few feet away, I could hear Violet breathing heavily in the cabin of the truck, fast asleep, and thought, V, wake up! WAKE UP, WAKE UP, WAKE UP! But she wouldn’t wake. In fact, she wasn’t going to wake. Not in time to help me, anyway.

  Black started closing in around the edges of my vision. The pressure in my lungs, chest, and head was almost too much. I needed to breathe. I NEEDED oxygen!

  Just when I was sure I would pass out, I heard the sound of crunching leaves… of footsteps, light and quick, coming this way—

  Abruptly the footsteps stopped. There was a squeal of hinges, and suddenly the truck’s tailgate slammed shut behind me. It banged loudly off the hag’s head, flinging her back against the rear window of the truck. She hit it with a sickening thwap, then slumped onto the truck bed, unconscious.

  Panicking, finally able to breathe but almost in too much shock to care, I looked frantically around and saw Adriana standing over me, her dark brown eyes glittering in the moonlight. “¿Estás bien?” she asked. “You okay?”

  When I gave a shaky thumbs-up, she hauled the hag out of the truck by the shirtsleeves of the long, raggedy light-blue pajamas she was wearing and dropped her on the ground, where she muscled her over onto her back and tore open the neck of the hag’s pj’s.

  “What’s going on?” I heard Violet shout as she scrambled out of the passenger door, obviously startled out of her mind.

  “Everything’s been taken care of,” Adriana replied breezily, as if taking out evil hags was her part-time job. I watched her reach both hands around the hag’s neck to unclasp some kind of necklace. It almost looked like two ancient skeleton fingers!

  “And who the heck is THAT?” Violet shrieked, staring down at the woman’s deformed, crusty feet.

  A split second later, it hit me: She was La Pisadeira! She who steps! How many stories had my abuela told me over the years about the vicious old hag who sneaks into the bedroom windows of kids with full stomachs and sits on their chests, trying to suffocate them? Probably too many, which was why I never went to bed right after dinner. But that wasn’t all I realized.… “You used me as bait!” I shouted at Adriana. “That’s why you fed me all that junk food!”

  “Oye, ¡cálmate!” she snapped back, aiming a warning finger at me. Her fingernails, I noticed, were completely caked with dirt. “I told you—you are going to help me help you. And you agreed. So what’s the problem?”

  Is she kidding? “The problem is that I almost got suffocated to death five seconds ago!”

  Ignoring me, she said, “Put this on,” and tossed the hag’s necklace in my direction.

  I accidentally caught it, then nearly threw it down just as fast. “What? Ew! No. It looks like—fingers!”

  Adriana’s eyes narrowed on me. “You lose that and the next head I slam into the tailgate will be yours, ¿me entiendes?” I could tell from her tone that she wasn’t kidding. Not even a little. “Besides,” she added with almost a smirk, “you’re already wearing a dog collar as an accessory, so it’s not like it’s going to hurt your style game.…”

  Ha-ha, I thought, holding the necklace out at arm’s length. “But—what the heck is it…?”

  “¡Ya! No more questions!” she shouted. “Just put it on and be quiet! There are far more dangerous things out here than this hag.”

  Without giving me a chance to at least wipe it down with my T-shirt, Violet snatched the necklace, slung it around my neck, and quickly fastened the clasp in back. I shivered, imagining the hag’s cooties spreading over me like an army of invisible creepy-crawlies. First Al’s dog collar and now this.… “How many ridiculous necklaces are you planning on putting on me?” I asked Violet.

  She grinned, showing me her pearly whites. “As many as it takes.”

  Sighing, I stared down at the pair of crooked, twisted, gnarled—what were they, fingers? Sticks?—things and couldn’t help wonder what was so special about them. I mean, why had Adriana thought they were so great that she’d decided to use me as bait to get them? And why did she want me to hold on to them? This whole thing was sick.… And not in the “sick” meaning “cool,” either. “Sick” in the nastiest, grossest possible way.

  La Pisadeira, meanwhile, was still out cold. Funny, for someone who preyed on her victims while they slept, she certainly seemed to enjoy a nice nap.

  Staring down at her, I asked, “What are you going to do with her?”

  “I think I’m going to let her sleep it off,” Adriana said. “She’s had a rough night.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  It was past midnight by the time we hit the road again, this time driving west through the deep forests of Argentina. We drove nonstop for hours, still traveling through sombra wood and rolling along until the tall trees gave way to vast, low-lying expanses of sandy nothingness, framed by the rough peaks of faraway mountains. Soon we found ourselves climbing the ice-slicked roads that wound their way up those mountains, lurching around impossibly tight turns and blind corners where one wrong move would’ve sent us tumbling out of this life.

  As early morning turned to late afternoon, the landscape once again changed; we were now moving through Chile’s Los Lagos Region, and with its sparkling blue lakes, snow-white mountains, and rolling green hills dotted with fat sheep, it was easily one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. Anywhere. And it felt almost criminal not to stop and snap a picture or something. But as we traveled farther into Chile, cruising along the blacktop, I began to notice something strange: Everywhere I looked I could see animals fleeing out of the woods. All kinds of animals too—rabbits and foxes, chinchillas, Chilean long-tailed horses, guanacos, and even sleek, loner predators like pumas. At first I thought I was the luckiest kid on the planet; I was getting all these close-up looks at some of the coolest animals in the whole world. But I’d watched enough Nat Geo to know stuff like this wasn’t supposed to happen. It wasn’t natural.

  “This can’t be normal,” I said, staring out the window. “What’s going on?”

  Adriana’s eyes slid to mine. Her fingers were tight around the steering wheel as she said, “The forests are dying.… The animals can sense it. I told you this already.”

  “You also mentioned something about rumors before,” Violet said. “Which ones were you talking about?”

  Adriana was silent for so long I thought she hadn’t heard her. Finally she said, “Rumors of graves rumbling… of things long since dead crawling back up from the deep places of the earth.”

  Violet and I exchanged tense looks, neither one of us too thrilled to hear that.

  “Some believe it is happening again,” Adriana said darkly.

  Violet’s eyes still hadn’t left mine, but she spoke to Adriana, saying, “Why do you say ‘happening again’? Has it happened before?”

  There was another silence. Then Adriana said, “Sí…” and took a deep breath, turning briefly to stare out the window at the scenery whipping by before continuing. “Long ago, the dead and those who refused to remain dead began to rise. Some say it started in Mexico. Others say Portugal. Either way, the world was thrown into panic, into chaos. Everyone was convinced it was the end of days.”

  “So what happened?”

  She gave a small shrug, leaning back in her seat. The bright sunshine slanting in through the gap between the visor and the ceiling turned her hair the color of hay. “The dead eventually vanished. Crawled back into their graves. Who knows? No one likes to talk about those days.”

  “But why do people believe it
’s happening again?” I asked.

  “Because some claim to have seen corpses walking the earth like before. They also claim to have seen those horrible castells popping up again.” My reaction must’ve given me away, because Adriana said, “You’ve seen one…?”

  I nodded, swallowed hard. “One or two.”

  “Then the rumors are true.…” She turned back to the road with a troubled look in her eyes.

  “But what do the bone castles have to do with the dead rising?” Violet asked her.

  Adriana’s expression grew dark, and she was quiet for several moments before she finally answered: “There was a saying in more ancient times, one as true today as it was then: When castells rise, the dead rise with them.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  It was dark again by the time we finally reached the coast, and the moon was a huge yellow orb in the sky. Adriana pulled the pickup into a tiny gravel lot across from where more than two dozen old fishing boats were moored to rain-beaten docks that jutted out into the water. A few yards up the coast, foamy waves lapped onto a thin strip of sandy beach dotted with seagulls and large gray rocks.

  When Adriana cut the engine, the three of us got out and started toward the edge of the docks, where a group of fishermen had gathered to watch the incoming storm. There were about eight or nine of them, all rough-and-tumble-looking dudes in long black slickers, staring expressionlessly at the horizon, watching storm clouds mass and swirl in the distant sky. And they all smelled sort of… well, fishy.

  Adriana, however, didn’t seem to mind. She pushed her way into the group and asked them if they could take us across to Chiloé; the fishermen looked at her like she’d just asked them to wear their boots as hats and dance “La Bamba.”

  “¿No ves la tormenta?” one said.

  “¿Estás loca?” asked another.

  “Mateo say he saw El Nguruvilu swimming out there,” said a third, and then all of them made the sign of the cross and shivered.

  One of the fisherman dudes glanced back at her. A soggy, unlit cigarette dangled from his lower lip. It barely even twitched as he said, “Storms move fast over open water. No one’s risking their boat tonight, amigos. Perdona.”

  “It’s fine,” Violet said, gripping my arm. “I have a plan.”

  Didn’t she always?

  She nodded past me, up the coast. I turned and saw there was a tall chain-link fence blocking off a narrow path that led out to a strip of beach. In front of it, lounged out on what looked like one of those foldable beach chairs, was some sort of rent-a-guard. He wore a backward ball cap and a dark blue uniform, which weirdly enough included a shiny black radio belt but no radio.

  On the gate above the guard’s head was a sign that read NO ENTRADA PARA LA PLAYA. ¡PELIGROSO! (No beach entrance. Dangerous!)

  “What’s your plan?” I asked. “We swim across?”

  Violet rolled her eyes. “Keep looking.…”

  And that’s when I saw it: At the far end of the beach, where the land narrowed to about a pinkie’s worth of a peninsula, was a lone, sad-looking pylon. And tied to it was an even sadder-looking boat—no, two boats: one old propeller boat and one dinghy; actually, calling it a dinghy might’ve been too much of a compliment—it didn’t look like much more than a floating plastic shell.

  “Perfecto,” Adriana said, sounding very much like she was digging Violet’s piratey impulse. “We take the boats. Cross over ourselves.”

  I glanced between them. “You guys don’t have any concept of personal property, do you?”

  Adriana ignored me. “I’ll distract the guard. You two untie the boats. ¡Y muevesen!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  It didn’t take long for Adriana to distract everyone’s favorite radio-less security pro. She pretended to drop something in the high grass, then started talking to him about plants or flowers or something else that was growing wild in the bushes that bordered the edge of the parking lot, and before we knew it, he had followed her out to the roadside and was pointing across the street, laughing and talking about God knows what. I guess some things are just that easy. And speaking of easy, the fence blocking off the beach wasn’t padlocked or even chained; all we had to do was lift the little fork latch, and we were in. The narrow footpath that led to the beach was choked with thorny weeds and tangles of underbrush, which snaked up the chain link, forming these high, bristly walls that shielded us from view.

  The first thing I noticed when we reached the shore was the cold—the air blowing in off the ocean was easily ten or fifteen degrees colder than the air by the docks. I was already shivering, and now we had to go into that water. Great.

  I slipped off my shoes and socks and slowly, very slowly, waded on in. Yep, this wasn’t Miami Beach.… “If I get hypothermia, I’m telling my mom it was all you.”

  “No deal,” Violet said, grinning. When we made it out to the boats, I saw that they had been tied together by a couple of frayed-looking ropes. We obviously didn’t have any use for the dinghy, so we tried to undo the knots, but no matter how hard we picked at them, they just wouldn’t come loose. The ropes had hardened with age and swelled with salt water, which meant that we’d probably need a pickax—and not just our fingertips—to get through them.

  Fortunately, the length of rope securing the boats to the pylon hadn’t actually been tied to it, more like slung around it, so that was no sweat.

  I steadied the real boat while Violet climbed on board, and then I pushed us off and hopped in. Even here in the shallows, the current was freakishly strong, and I could already feel it dragging us out into open water.

  “You know how to work one of these?” I asked Violet as she studied the controls and the engine.

  “It’s your basic outboard motor. Sit,” she said, and the second my butt hit the bench, she gave the starter cord a savage yank. There was a loud pop and a coughing rattle as the old rusty engine slowly sputtered to life.

  The boat lurched forward, and suddenly the beach looked far away.

  “Where is she?” Violet said, looking around for Adriana. “I don’t see her.”

  “Me either. She can’t still be talking to that guy, can she?”

  Violet shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she likes him.”

  “Likes him? Dude looks like he counts his toes for fun.”

  “Hey, some people put love ahead of little things like that.”

  “Do they also put love ahead of saving the world from an impending demon invasion?”

  “Some people put love ahead of everything, Charlie.” She worked the throttle, fighting the pull of the current, and crept us a little way back toward the beach. I scanned the coast (it took me about two seconds) but didn’t see Adriana anywhere. I was about to ask Violet if she thought Adriana was planning to settle down with the guy, maybe start a family before rejoining us, when something terrible happened: The boat’s engine began to sputter and spit. Bubbles fizzed up around the propeller, and the little boat started to shudder like a wounded bird.

  “What’s happening?” I said. And I’d barely uttered the words before the engine suddenly shut off. Just like that.

  “That didn’t sound good.” Violet stood up and yanked on the starter cord again, but nothing happened. She tried again, and this time the little engine that couldn’t coughed, once… twice… the propeller whirling into high gear for a moment before the entire engine—protective steel cage and all—came free, dropping into the water with a quiet splooosh.

  Violet stared down at the back of the boat where there was nothing now except for a square cutout in the shape of a boat engine. “You’re kidding me.…”

  Before I could say anything, the current suddenly picked up and began to pull us rapidly away from the shore. And without an engine to fight it, we were basically sitting ducks. My eyes desperately swept up and down the little beach.

  Nothing. No Adriana. What was she do—

  “There she is!” Violet shouted, pointing. I looked around, spotted
her just as I managed to slip my freezing feet back into my sneakers.

  Adriana had made her way around the foresty area by the fence and was now standing on a rickety bridge on the far side of the beach. Her arms were waving frantically over her head, and she was yelling something—probably something like Come get me! Or maybe even Get the heck out of the water! Jaws is coming!

  But there was nothing we could do. We didn’t have an engine anymore.

  “The boat’s broken! The engine fell off!” Violet cried. “We can’t do anything!” Then she started waving her arms around in what I could only assume was some kind of nautical distress sign. Above us, the clouds churned and billowed as the storm grew closer, intensified. The temperature began to plummet. An icy wind picked up, lifting salty spray into our faces, stinging our eyes. Our now engineless boat rose and fell, rose and fell. Lightning forked across the sky—an electric scar in the clouds. I could feel the infinite power of the sea rolling underneath us, doing whatever it wanted with our two sorry excuses for boats. We might as well have been riding a little kid’s floatie. Or nothing at all. I doubted it would’ve made any difference.

  Violet must’ve seen the panic in my eyes, because she said, “It’s cool. We’re gonna be fine. As long as the waves don’t get too rough, we should reach land well before the worst of the storm gets to us. And I’m pretty sure we’re heading straight for Chiloé, so we’re looking really good, actually.” She sat back down, began putting her shoes and socks back on. “Just stay positive. That’s the most important thing.”

  Suddenly the currents changed direction—we changed direction.

  The waves lifted the boat, turned it slightly sideways, and set us on a course that was almost perfectly parallel to the docks and the strip of beach.