Charlie Hernández & the Castle of Bones

by Ryan Calejo

  “Seems like everyone’s trying to do that,” I said.

  “It’s true. But I’ve done a bit of traveling over the years and learned a few tricks.” He brought out a handful of small red tickets, about a dozen of them. “I was able to get my hands on these. They’re raffling off the last twenty seats on a small plane that’s leaving not too far from here. They’re going to announce the winners in the town hall. I’m making my way there now to ensure that I get a seat. These old knees much prefer to sit. Meet me there in ten minutes, and we’ll test our luck!”

  “You got it, Mr. Ovaprim!”

  “Oh, I almost forgot. I’m looking for my son. He was supposed to meet me here. His name is Ronald. He has black hair, a nose ring, a couple tattoos. If you see him, would you please let me know?”

  “Definitely!” I said. “You’re a lifesaver, Mr. Ovaprim!”

  Now his grin did reach his eyes. “Let’s hope so, niños. And nice grapefruit, by the way,” he said to Saci. “They look tasty.” Then Mr. Ovaprim began to waddle away, moving so slowly and carefully that it made him look like he was wearing a skin suit he was afraid might fall off.

  When he disappeared into the press of bodies crowding the sidewalks and streets, Saci turned to me and said, “Maybe we win?”

  “Maybe. But we need a backup plan,” I said, and Violet, who was usually one step ahead of everyone else, pointed up the narrow street to what was very obviously some kind of bus station; the sign over the front door read AUTOBÚS, and there was even a picture of a speeding red bus below.

  “Worth a shot,” she said.

  * * *

  The El Camacho bus station was pretty big for a bus station but still overflowing with bodies. The lines literally were out the doors. In fact, right where we stood to open the door was where we joined the line.

  “We gonna be here all night,” Saci grumbled.

  V glanced at him. “You got something better to do?”

  “Saci can think of a few things.…”

  I saw his dark, mischievous eyes surveying the room and said, “Well, you better stop thinking.”

  He sighed. “Can I at least put this basket down already…? This stupid fruit heavy.”

  “Just don’t lose it,” Violet said. “You heard the witch.”

  To our left two men in leather vests and faded jeans were sitting on the inside sill of the front window. They were wearing guns on their hips, even though there was a NO PISTOLAS sign hanging on the window above them, and talking so loudly that they reminded me of two overly caffeinated first graders exchanging wild stories in the school cafeteria. The one wearing a cowboy hat said, “Oye, forget the zombies. Olvidalo! It’s the bloodsucker that worries me.… And like I tol’ you—there’s only one bloodsucker. There’s this guy I know. He seen it face-to-face. Cara-a-cara. Thinks it’s after him. But I think it’s after all of us… this whole freaking town.”

  Wannabe number two was shaking his head. “Esta loco, compadre.…”

  “¿Yo? No, you just blind! Don’t you see what’s happening? The thing’s herding us up. Like cattle! Cutting us off from the rest of the world. And then, well, then it’s feeding time.…”

  “You listening to that?” Violet whispered.

  I nodded.

  “Should we…?”

  I nodded again. “I think we should.”

  V turned to Saci and handed him some cash. “Hold our spot in line. But if you make it to the front, buy us three tickets and one for Mr. Ovaprim. And no fooling around, okay?”

  Saci gave her a mischievous grin, and since that was probably the best the guy could do, we left it at that and strolled over to the two vaquero wannabes like a couple of hotshot detectives from telenovelas. I decided to let Violet do the talking.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “but we overheard your conversation.… Did one of you say that you know a guy who’s seen the bloodsucker face-to-face?”

  The guy in the hat crossed his arms over his plaid shirt. “That’s right.”

  “Is he still in town?”

  “Sure is.”

  “I know this is going to sound strange, but could you take us to him? We’d love to ask him a few questions.”

  “I don’t think so, señorita.… He’s locked himself up pretty tight and isn’t much interested in company at the moment.”

  “We can help him,” I said.

  The man’s eyes narrowed skeptically. “Oh yeah? And how’s that?”

  “Do your friend a favor,” Violet said. “Tell him to talk to us. You just might save his life.”

  “Well, for starters, the guy ain’t my friend.… He’s a customer. And for seconds, I don’t see what I’m getting out of all this.”

  V brought out a wad of cash. “How about a couple of Benjamin Franklins and an Andrew Jackson?”

  I heard him swallow hard. “Always loved those two gringos.… Name’s José. Follow me, por favor.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

  The building attached to the bus station had three floors connected by a rickety wooden staircase; it creaked and groaned as we followed José to the third door on the top floor, where he raised a silver door knocker, then paused. “This fellow’s been through a lot recently,” José whispered, “so no sudden movements. No sneezing, coughing. Don’t reach into your pockets; don’t tie or untie your shoes. Try not to smile. Oh, and do either of you have any open wounds? No? Good. Because he’s not too keen on blood at the moment. Also, don’t look him in the eye for too long either. In fact, maybe avoid eye contact altogether.”

  Geez.… “Anything else?” I asked.

  He thought for a second. “Nothing comes to mind.” Then he banged the knocker once, twice, and shouted, “Oye, Ronny, I got some visitors for you.…”

  “¿Qué? ¡No! ¡No visitas!” came a loud voice from the other side. “Tell ’em I not here!”

  “But they say they wanna hear that story you tell! The one ab—”

  “WHY YOU TELLING PEOPLE ABOUT THAT, MAN? YOU CRAZY?”

  José glanced down at the money V had given him, sighed, then brought out a ring of keys and began to unlock the door. “Oye, my friend, please don’t shoot!”

  We followed him into the tiny apartment, which reeked of vinegar and something else… something stronger—fermented garlic, maybe?

  None of the lights were on—only a cluster of wax candles burning over the cold fireplace, but even in the semi-dark I could see dozens of silver crucifixes dangling from the ceiling fan on fishing lines and strips of fabric.

  “Oye, what’s wrong with you, man?” a voice yelled from somewhere in the shadows. “You deaf? I said NO VISITAS!”

  My eyes flew around the room again, and I still almost missed the guy. He was sitting on the love seat next to the sofa, half hidden in the dark and buried almost to his knees in a mountain of uncooked rice, his bare toes poking out the bottom like hairy little foothills. The guy was somewhere in his early forties with dark eyes peeking out from under a mop of darker hair and a silver nose ring glinting dully in his left nostril. Slung around his upper arms were wreaths of black garlic, and in his trembling right hand I saw a sharp wooden stake. Looked like he’d carved it out of a spatula. Yep, the dude was definitely one bean short of a cafecito. Suddenly I wished I’d paid a little more attention to that long list of don’t-dos José had given us.

  “I—I’m gonna leave you three alone, okay?” José said, already backing out of the room. “Have a nice chat!”

  He closed the door behind him, and for several seconds no one spoke. In the silence I could hear a TV in another room, some news anchor talking about how the Spanish president had been missing for days now—how no one had heard from her or had any idea where she’d gone. We’re working on it, I thought.

  “What do you two want?” the man finally asked. He sounded angry, borderline furious, in fact—but also scared; his voice trembled like a plucked string.

  “We wanna help,” Violet said.

  “Okay, so help.�
�

  “Look, my friend here is an expert on all things… freaky, you could say. So if you just gave us the four-one-one on the thing you saw, we might be able to stop it before it hurts anyone else.”

  Ronny—or whatever his name was—laughed, but it wasn’t a ha-ha sort of laugh; there was bitterness in it, and fear… much fear. “You have no idea what this creature is, do you, señorita? You think you two can stop it?” He leaned forward to whisper, “This thing will suck every last drop of blood out of your bodies before you can even muster up the courage to open your mouths to scream for help.”

  I heard myself gulp. Yep, that was a visual I didn’t need. “So what is it exactly?”

  “At first? Una luz—that’s all, just a light… but then the creature takes its true form, and you see it for what it truly is.”

  He was silent for so long, I found myself stepping forward to ask, “And what is it?” Half of me was dying to hear the answer, the other half, well, not so much.

  Then Ronny spoke two words—just two—but they were enough to make my insides twist into the twistiest pretzel you’ve ever seen “Un vampiro…”

  “A what?” Violet asked.

  “A vampire,” I translated. “He said it’s a vampire.…”

  CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

  The dude’s gaze drifted down to my feet and his eyes went glassy for a moment, like he was no longer really looking at me but rather staring back into the past. “I’ve never seen anything move so fast. Its fangs are daggers; its eyes a hungry fire.” He brought a candy bar from his pocket, tried to unwrap it, but his hands were trembling too badly. He sighed and tossed it onto the couch. “Those things are no good for you, anyway.…”

  “Where did you see it?” Violet asked, her blue eyes locked on his.

  “I was working overseas… herding cows… before it slaughtered them.”

  Violet and I exchanged looks of shock. The words “cow” and “slaughtered” rang through my mind like a gong, and suddenly I was picturing that first castell Joanna had taken us to see… the one made up of all those sucked-dry cow carcasses.

  Every inch of my skin rippled with goose bumps.

  “Let me guess,” I said. “You’re from Portugal?”

  And just from the way his eyes flashed with surprise I knew I was exactly right. “I—I’m from España. But I was working in Portugal.… How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess.” I turned to Violet. “So Joanna is working with a vamp, then—a vampire.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  “What are we gonna do?”

  “You’re asking me? That’s your specialty.”

  “My specialty? Who do I look like, Buffy? I’m not a vampire slayer.”

  “Well, you better start acting like one.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, but Ronny spoke first. “It’s hunting me…,” he murmured as if talking to himself. “Once a vampire knows you’ve seen it, it will hunt you until you’re dead. It’s why I haven’t stopped running.” He laughed humorlessly. “The only reason I’m even still alive is because the monster got tripped up, lost its shoe. That gave me enough time to get to my car and—”

  Just then the door to his apartment flew open, and Saci came scrambling in with the basket of grapefruit clutched under one arm. He made a funny face as his eyes flew around the room, but then he spotted us and quickly closed the door behind him, slid the bolt.

  “Ei!” he said, panting. “Been looking for you!”

  “Who THE HECK are you?” Ronny blurted out, leaping from his chair. Grains of rice flew everywhere. A handful pelted the side of my face.

  “It’s okay,” Violet said. “He’s with us.”

  “And that’s supposed to do exactly WHAT for me?” he shot back. Candlelight glinted off the point of his deadly spatula-stake as he aimed it threateningly (well, as threateningly as you can aim a spatula) at Saci, who’d probably broken Jose’s entire don’t-do list in about three seconds after entering the room.

  “Dude, what are you doing here?” I asked Saci.

  His breath was wheezing in and out of his lungs like a busted bagpipe, but he managed: “The guy in the cowboy boots… wass his name? He tol’ me you were here.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” I said.

  Saci grabbed my arm, started pulling me across the room. “I think we should probably go.…”

  I yanked my arm free. “What? Why?”

  “Did you get the tickets?” Violet asked him.

  “Oh, sim, sim… four tickets just like you wanted.” He pulled them out of his overalls and handed them to her.

  “Wow. I thought they’d all be sold out by now,” Violet said. “Did you get change?”

  “Sim, sim, sim.” Nodding, he handed that over too—all of it, everything Violet had given him. Which started to make me really, really nervous.

  Violet stared down at the bills. “So the tickets were… free?”

  “You could say that…,” Saci mumbled, looking down at his toes.

  Pounding footsteps echoed in the hall outside. Lots of people, from the sound of it—heavy boots. Someone shouted, “¿Dónde fue?”

  And someone else answered, “He went that way!”

  The footsteps grew louder, closer.

  “Or you could say something else…,” Saci said in a low, embarrassed voice.

  “In here!” someone shouted, this time just on the other side of the door.

  Violet aimed a threatening finger at Saci. “You didn’t prank those guys by taking their bus tickets, did you?” she whispered harshly.

  Saci nodded shyly, and I was surprised that I didn’t spontaneously combust on the spot. “Well, give them back!” I roared.

  “Saci can’t!” he said.

  “Why not?”

  “I try! But dey don’ care! Dey too mad!”

  I glared at him, trying not to a) strangle him or b) bite his head off. (The first was going to be harder to resist.) “What exactly did you do to them?”

  “Exactly?” he asked meekly.

  “Yes, exactly!”

  He took a breath. “Okay, here go. After I take tickets, I tie dey belts together and dey shoes, write silly things on dey faces, like I did to you. I take dey wallets and switch everyone’s licenses. I tape, ‘Kick Me’ notes to dey backs. I shoot spitballs at meanest-looking guy and blame it on someone else. Oh, and then I sour dey cups of hot cacau.”

  “You did all that in ten minutes?” Violet asked, sounding almost impressed.

  But now Saci looked downright depressed. “I know… slow day for Saci.”

  “V, go out there and negotiate some kind of peace treaty!” I shouted.

  She glared at me. “What do I look like, a UN ambassador?” And before she could say anything else, a storm of bullets ripped through the door, sending metal and chunks of wood flying.

  “Don’t look like dey want peace!” Saci shouted. “Jess a piece of ME!” Then he grabbed Violet and me by our shirtsleeves and dragged us across the room to the window overlooking the main street. He threw it open, started to climb out. When we didn’t immediately follow—I was still staring back at the door, terrified out of my mind—he grabbed us again and pulled us, side by side, through the small rectangular opening. We crawled out onto the little slope of the roof just as the door on the other side of the room was kicked in.

  “VAMOS!” Saci screamed at us. “MOVE!”

  The roof had been weatherproofed with rocky shingles that bit painfully into the palms of my hands and my knees as I scampered across it. When we reached the edge, Saci hopped off, landing in the middle of a dumpster overstuffed with plastic bags. We went next, crashing down on either side of him, and just as we fought our way out of the stinking thing, one of the guys Saci had pranked stuck his head out the third-story window, scanning the street below. I could see the word ‘burro’ (which is Spanish for donkey) scrawled clearly across his forehead in black marker, and on either side of his mustache Saci had drawn in some o
versize curly ends so that the dude looked like a fancy French chef. He spotted us, then drew a pistol and squeezed off a couple of fast shots. One went whizzing by over my head and pinged off a telephone pole. Another shattered the window of the old-fashioned ice-cream parlor down the street.

  Everyone on that side of the street—actually, pretty much anyone within earshot—started screaming and running for cover.

  I wanted to yell, Aim for the barefoot pickpocket! But then the maniac was sighting me down his barrel, and I was done trying to talk any sense into him.

  “Are you INSANE?” Violet shouted up at him. “You’re shooting at kids!”

  “C’mon!” Saci yelled. He grabbed me by the shirtsleeve again and took off down the middle of the street, weaving recklessly through the crowds as two of the gunman’s friends spilled out of the first-floor doors and gave chase.

  As we ran, I heard a soft tinkling sound, something like a wind chime, and looked down to see that the dozen or so plump purple grapefruit Saci was carrying in the basket had suddenly turned to gold—solid gold!

  Saci, who’d also taken note of this interesting turn of events, was staring at me with eyes the size of soccer balls. “BRO, YOU SEE DIS?” he cried, giggly with joy. “IT’S A MIRACLE!”

  Only it wasn’t—not really. It was actually legend! In one of Zarate’s most famous tales, she’d been tracked down by some poor farmer who had been robbed of all his animals and lost his land. He wanted the witch to give him money so he could feed his starving family. But when he finally found her and told her his story, Zarate gave him a basket of grapefruit and told him to go on his way. The farmer was obviously disappointed but left since he didn’t think there was anything he could do to change the witch’s mind. Later that day, as he was making his way back home through the woods, he began to dump some of the grapefruit because they were getting so heavy. It wasn’t until he was almost home that he realized the grapefruit had all turned to gold. Apparently the kooky bruja was still up to her old tricks.

  There was another burst of gunfire behind us. More screams erupted.