Charlie Hernández & the Castle of Bones

by Ryan Calejo

  Now the spooky old bruja grinned, deepening the map of wrinkles across her face as understanding seemed to illuminate her cold black eyes.

  “Qué lechero…,” she cooed, wrapping the silvery chain tighter around her hand. “What a special bond you two must share.… A very special bond, indeed.” Beside her, the peacock stretched its wings to their full length and began to flutter about, tugging nervously against the chain. “Is your friendship truly so precious? Am I to understand that you would gladly sacrifice yourself for this niña…?”

  I didn’t respond to that—didn’t know she’d expected me to—and for a moment there was complete and total silence. Then, suddenly, la bruja’s eyes blazed out like red-tinted spotlights and, well, things started to get scary. She roared, “I ASKED YOU A QUESTION, MOCOSO! WOULD YOU SACRIFICE YOURSELF FOR HER? ¡CONTÉSTAME!”

  All at once the witch went into this insane growth spurt. Her body stretched like taffy, growing wider, taller, towering above us now, the shadows darkening around her, creeping slowly up the walls and out from under tables and furniture like something alive and slithery.

  Behind us, the shutters on the only window began to slam open and shut. Lamps flickered. A few buzzed and went out. Closer, the animals trapped in the hanging cages had begun to go wild, howling and jumping and chittering and making the cages swing back and forth on the ceiling like pendulums. Zarate’s peacock also seemed to have lost it: the thing was screeching at the top of its lungs now, loud enough to make me worry my eardrums might burst, while at the same time flapping its wings and dancing wildly about the little kitchen, hopping from one leg to the other, as if the old wooden floorboards had suddenly turned into burning coals.

  Not liking where this was going—okay, more like terrified where this was going—I forced myself to speak. I shouted, “Yes, okay? I would. Happy?”

  “¡MENTIRAS!” la bruja snapped back. I could feel anger boiling off her like waves of heat. It pulsed through the floorboards, making them tremble beneath us. “ALL LIES! WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT SACRIFICE? ABOUT TRUE FRIENDSHIP? WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE MISERY BETWEEN LOVE AND HATE WHERE ALL BECOMES BLURRED AND THERE IS NO ONE YOU HATE MORE THAN THE ONE YOU ONCE LOVED?”

  “Dis not good…,” Saci said, backing slowly toward the door. “Dis muito not good, bro!”

  “YOU KNOW NOTHING OF IT!” Zarate’s voice boomed through the small room like an explosion, rattling the tables and shelves, sending jars and plates crashing to the floor. “HOW DARE ANY OF YOU JUDGE MY ACTIONS? HOW DARE ANY ONE OF YOU JUDGE ME?” The tips of her fingers shone with a fierce reddish light so dark it was almost black. Her pupils had expanded to fill her eyes almost completely. It was freaky to say the least. “I SHOULD CURSE YOU! I SHOULD TURN YOUR PRECIOSA INTO A PEACOCK!”

  La bruja’s craggy hand stretched toward us. Violet gasped. She staggered on her feet, and I looked downt to see that her legs were changing, thinning, the skin thickening, becoming those of a bird—a peacock!

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

  WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” I yelled as bright green feathers began to pop out all over Violet’s arms. Her lips were changing too—hardening, turning beaklike. Her eyes bulged; her skin rippled and discolored beneath the sprouting feathers. “OYE, ¿ESTÁ LOCA? STOP! STOP IT!”

  I screamed at the witch, but she totally ignored me, cackling at the top of her lungs. I didn’t know what else to do, so I just kept screaming at her, screaming with everything in me: “PARA! FOR THE LOVE OF THE PEACOCK, PLEASE JUST STOP!”

  And somehow—I honestly had no idea how—it worked. I watched Zarate blink her eyes slowly, as if coming out of a deep trance. Then, even more slowly, the anger began to drain from her eyes, her face—the room seemed to brighten, and I saw, with a huge rush of relief, that Violet’s legs were turning back to normal again, the skin smoothing and losing that bumpy texture as the feathers dropped away to seesaw lazily to the ground around her sneakers.

  “Perdóname…,” Zarate breathed, stumbling back a step, her dark eyes wild, unfocused. She had shrunk back down to what I guessed was her usual size and her fingertips were no longer blazing. Thank God for that. “It’s the season.… It makes me un poquito—uneven.”

  I didn’t think the word “uneven” was—no pun intended—even in the ballpark (more like psycho), but I wasn’t about to say a peep.

  The fingers of la bruja’s left hand loosened. The silver chain she was holding slipped from her grasp, and her peacock immediately scampered out of the house through the back door. Zarate’s wavering gaze sharpened on me like a laser. “No eres como los otros.…”

  “I’m not like the others?” I asked, shaking my head.

  “The other Morphlings.” She hesitated, her eyes once again narrowing in that dangerous sort of way. “You can hear the voices, can’t you…?”

  “The voices?” My heart was still pounding so hard and so fast I could barely make sense of her question. “What voices?”

  “The ones no one else can. The whispers, the groans.”

  Yeah, that made my arms tingle with goose bumps. How did she know that? “Yeah… who are they?”

  “Those who have passed yet are to come. Who else?”

  I was still shaking my head, the goose bumps now working their way up my neck, over my scalp. “But—how come I can hear them?”

  “Because of El Ojo. The Eye. It watches you day and night. It has already bound the sacrifice to its offerer. I can see it on you.… You now hear without limitation. Your ears now perceive both the living and the dead.”

  “I—I don’t get it.… What eye? What sacrifice?”

  “The more I say, the less you’ll understand. But now, for the reason you have come…” Moving quickly, she picked up a small wooden bowl filled with the leaves of marigold flowers. She ran some tap water into the bowl. Then she brought out a stone pestle from a drawer below the sink and began to grind the flowers into a thick yellowish paste sort of the way I’d seen my mom do when she makes mofongo, that tasty dish of smashed fried bananas. But la bruja didn’t stop there. Next she plucked a strand of thick, sticky web from the cage of those bird-eating spiders, thumbed a finger’s worth of slime from the back of a poison dart frog, flicked all of that nastiness into the wooden bowl, and a second later I saw her eyes roll to white as she began to mutter something under her breath. Her muttering quickly turned to chanting, and maybe it was my imagination but I thought I could see some sort of vapory mistiness escaping the witch’s mouth and flowing into the bowl, mixing with the marigold paste. Then she dipped her thumb and index finger into the yellowish goo and touched them to my forehead. Finally, her eyes rose to meet mine.

  “It is the final step of preparation,” she whispered. “La Marca will give you a second chance. But only one.”

  I felt my lips pull down into a frown. “I—what?”

  Zarate didn’t answer; instead she just smiled at me. It was a sort of apologetic smile—one that said, Cheer up; things will get better… maybe.

  She didn’t seem like she was going to say anything else, so I said, “I didn’t come here for any mark. I came to find Joanna.”

  “Yo lo sé. You followed her butterfly.” With the tips of her fingers, la bruja peeled back the collar of her robes, and I saw Joanna’s butterfly resting quietly on her shoulder. Its wings were still, and it now appeared more pin than butterfly. “She wanted you to find me.”

  “Why would she want us to find you?”

  Zarate frowned. “I’ve already told you why. Were you not listening?”

  This bruja clearly put the k in kooky. Maybe both ks. But Joanna had obviously wanted us to find her. So maybe she could help. “Look, we’re running out of time. Where do you think Joanna could have hidden her next clue?”

  “There are no more clues,” she replied quickly. “I am the final bread crumb in the path that has been prepared for you.”

  “So you know where she is?”

  “No. But I know where she will be. Mexico. San Miguel de All
ende. In El Jardín. The heart of old San Miguel. You must be there by midnight. Tonight.”

  This was big. No, this was huge. But… “Midnight tonight? Why?”

  “Because events that cannot be reversed have been set into motion.” Zarate cast a quick look around, frowning. “Y algo más… something else I needed to tell you… ¿Qué fue, Dios mío?”

  In the distance, a single piercing howl split the air.

  Every cell in my body seemed to turn to ice, and Zarate’s eyes, now wide with panic, flew to the window.

  “Los Embrujados,” she breathed.

  “Ay, no…” Saci whirled, staring out the same window. “Not lobisomem!”

  “Tómalo. Take this!” The witch shoved a basket of grapefruit into his arms.

  “What dis? Saci no want no stinkin’ fruit!”

  “Do not lose those! Carry them with you until the very end!” La bruja’s dark eyes found Saci’s. “Can I trust you to do that, traitor?”

  “Wha’ you call me?” Saci said, but Zarate had already turned, motioning us toward the back of the house.

  “Out through the kitchen!” she cried. Saci and Violet took off for the back door, but the witch grabbed me before I could. “There is one more thing you must know.… This path you walk, the path of the sacrifice—you must walk it, ¿me entiendes? It must be your feet! And remember: Castells are the pathway to the High Altar.” Before I could ask what any of that meant, she said, “You are the fifth and the final, the last of five. You must do what your predecessors couldn’t—you must do what no one else can. You’ve already come so far, mi niño, tried by the elements—earth, wind, water, fire—and proven true.… But you must finish this.”

  Finish it? I didn’t even know what it was. “And what if I can’t?”

  “Then this world will fall to the hand of darkness.”

  * * *

  Saci and Violet were standing on Zarate’s back porch, staring up at a couple of camels chained to a post.

  “Take them!” the witch cried as we spilled out the back door to join them. She smacked her hands together, and the chains began to unwind themselves, clinking and clanking as they loosened. “And treat them harshly! These rascals deserve it.”

  Another howl—and bloodcurdlingly close.

  “Out of the way, lady!” Saci screamed. “We not riding any of your nasty people-animals. And dey ain’t no slowpoke camels in da world that gonna outrun lobisomem!” Then, winking back at me, “But Saci can.” He raised a hand, cried, “AÇÚCAR!” and suddenly a swirling, screaming whirlwind snaked down out of thin air, gusting around us and slurping us up into the clear blue sky.

  From way down below, I heard Zarate shout, “¡Hasta la muerte, hasta que veas la Catrina y la Calavera te retenga en sus brazos!” (which basically translates into “Until death, until you see La Catrina and she takes you in her arms!”), then: “¡Pura vida!” (which translates into “Pure life!”), and then we were gone.

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

  When we touched down again, we were standing in the middle of some dusty little town… what looked like a ghost town.

  “This isn’t San Miguel de Allende,” I couldn’t help pointing out.

  Saci frowned, embarrassed. “Not as far as I hoped… Saci a bit tired.”

  Worse, as the world steadied around us, I saw that the town wasn’t exactly uninhabited… and even worse, I saw that what I’d first thought might be an injured, limping, overly dressed couple ambling slowly, arm in arm, across the desolate intersection was actually a couple of zombies—yes, zombies. And what I’d mistaken for some kind of calaca-inspired decoration was really a severed zombie head trying to roll itself across the strip of grass that ran along the sidewalk just off the road.

  “The heck’s going on…?” I started to say, but as I took a closer look around, I realized, with a spike of panic, that the town was actually crawling with these things! And I meant that both figuratively and literally. They limped and lumbered and dragged themselves through the streets and alleyways, dozens upon dozens of walking, disheveled, undead corpses in various stages of oh-so-yucky decay: men with greenish skin and moth-eaten tuxedos, women with curls of fingernails that hung below their knees and patches of stringy white hair down to their ankles.

  Some wore shoes, but most didn’t. Some had eyeballs swimming around in the sockets of their sagging, melted faces—but a lot didn’t. And their smell? Well, let’s just say it registered off the charts on my ’Bout-to-Barf Meter.

  I remembered what Adriana told us about the days when the dead walked the earth. I remembered what Mario had said about how the necromancer’s zombie army had nearly overrun the entire world. And, no big surprise, I shivered. Shivered even in the dry heat of this dusty little town.

  “It’s happening again,” Saci breathed, hardly daring to look around. “Dey already rising.…”

  That there was zero question about. The only question was, why? Was this some side effect of Joanna preparing to raise the necromancer? Had something gone wrong? Or—and no doubt the scariest possibility—had Joanna gone full-blown evil and decided to raise her own army?

  “V, I see dead people…,” I whispered. Couldn’t help it.

  “Jess keep walking,” Saci said, focusing his eyes straight ahead. “And whatever you do, don’t look dem in dey face!”

  Violet cringed. “I don’t think that one even has a face.”

  We walked on through the town, pretending not to hear any of the gruesome moans or groans coming from inside the buildings or notice any of the decaying, bedraggled bodies lumbering their way through the streets, and we reached the next town over about an hour later—just as the sun had begun to set over the stretch of hills that marked the horizon. The first thing I noticed was the people: Unlike the zombie town we’d just walked through, this place was absolutely packed—and, even better, with genuine living bodies this time. There must’ve been thousands, maybe several thousands, crammed along the board sidewalks and wandering almost aimlessly up and down the narrow two-lane road that cut through the center of town. The second thing I noticed was what wasn’t there: There were no cars anywhere along the road, no taxis waiting at the curb in front of the office buildings, no buses sitting in the pickup zone to our left. I didn’t even hear the distant whine of an electric scooter.

  “Guys, I don’t like this,” Violet said, looking around uneasily.

  Off to our left, a mother with two young children was holding up a shoddy cardboard sign that read HAVE MONEY—NEED TRANSPORT. Farther up the road a man was waving one that said WILL PAY FOR GAS. I realized a lot of the people sitting or standing along the dusty street were carrying similar signs, and most were in Spanish. I saw children standing next to suitcases with name tags stapled to the sleeves of their T-shirts. Abuelitas were crying. Men and women were poking their heads out of the second- and third-story windows of the short brick-faced buildings that flanked the road, shouting the names of family members or asking for people to help them pack their belongings. I had no idea what was going on here, but something was seriously wrong.

  “Hey, what’s going on?” Violet said to a dude in an Astros cap as he came toward us.

  “¿Qué?”

  “What’s going on?”

  “What does it look like? Everyone’s trying to get north.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “You joking, kid? Central America’s being overrun by the dead, and you’re asking me why people are trying to leave?”

  “Wha you mean overrun?” Saci asked the man.

  “I mean they’re crawling out of their graves, attacking people! It’s happening all over South America too, I heard.” He narrowed his eyes at us. “Esperate. Where are you three from? Where are your parents?”

  “They’re, uh, in Oaxaca, Mexico,” I lied. “We’re trying to get there.”

  “You and everybody else, kid.”

  “Where are the taxis ’n’ stuff?” Saci wanted to know.

  “Taxis? I haven�
�t seen a car in over a week. The government is sending buses around, but we’re not exactly the biggest town, so we haven’t seen one yet; but everybody and their cousin is trying to get a ticket.” His eyes moved up the street, past us. “Oye, I gotta go. I got a wife and two small children I have to get out of this place.” Then, turning around, he shouted, “¿Oye, Paco, encontraste el carburador? ¡Paco!” And he ran off down the road.

  “This is jess perfect,” Saci grumbled. “How we supposed to get to Mexico now?”

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of blue light between the buildings to my left, and when I turned to look, thinking it might be the headlight of a motorbike, I saw a familiar wrinkly face beneath a familiar yellow turban heading straight for us.

  “Mr. Ovaprim!” I shouted.

  “¡Niños! We meet again!” He grinned broadly at us, but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I only wish it were under better circumstances.…”

  “Me too,” Violet said. “But you made it off the train okay, huh?”

  “Sí, sí. On my way to the bathroom I slipped and hit my head, but when I woke up, we had arrived in Argentina and everything was fine. They even refunded my ticket money.”

  The least they could do after a werewolf attack, I thought.

  Mr. Ovaprim hesitated for a moment like he was trying to think back. His cheeks and forehead creased like a rubber mask. “By the way, do either of you know what happened after I left the cabin? It felt like the train might have hit something.…”

  Violet and I looked at each other. “Uh, yeah,” V said. “I think it might’ve.…”

  “Yeah, there were some animals on the track…,” I said, (which wasn’t even telling the half of it), and Violet had to hide her smile. “But you’re okay, right?”

  “Sí, sí. I’m fine. I’m just trying to find a ticket to Mexico.”