Charlie Hernández & the Castle of Bones

by Ryan Calejo

  “What’s going on…?” I said out loud, feeling my skin prickle.

  How the heck had I gotten here? And where was here…?

  No sooner had the last question crossed my mind than I knew the answer: I was in my room, my old room, back in my old house—the one La Cuca had burned down—and somehow… someway… it looked just like it had when I was eight years old.

  “¿Mi hijito?” whispered a warm and familiar voice at my back.

  I turned—and my entire world froze.

  Sitting behind me, on the edge of my bed with the Dragon Ball Z bedcovers and matching sheets, was the person who’d been there for every birthday, every Christmas, every time I’d scraped my knee or needed a hug. The one person I missed most in this world.

  “¿Abuelita?” I heard myself whisper.

  Tears welled in my grandmother’s eyes, spilling down her brown and wrinkled cheeks as she grabbed me up in her arms. “Mi niño precioso…”

  That voice, so kind, so full of love and everything I remembered most about my childhood, seemed to fill this huge hole in the middle of my heart that had been there since the day my mom had told me she’d died.

  “Ay, so long I’ve waited for this…,” she murmured as she stroked my hair, her touch as familiar as her voice, imprinted in my soul.

  I started talking without even realizing it. “But, Abuelita… how are you…? Am I—dead?”

  “No, no, no, no, no…” She pulled back, shaking her head, those large brown eyes as beautiful I remembered them, as loving. “¡No digas eso ni jugando! I just wanted to talk to you.… Watching over you all these years, watching you grow into this incredibly brave and beautiful boy, I—I’m just so proud of you, mi hijo.…” Another rush of tears spilled down her cheeks, falling to the carpet below us, splashing my feet.

  I was in so much shock I could hardly think. “You… watch over me?”

  My abuela gave me a smile that was so warm and full of love that I felt my heart melt in my chest. “I’ve been watching over you since the moment la enfermera brought you out of the nursery wrapped in that little blue towel with the initials of the hospital on it,” she said. “And I remember turning to your father—even before the nurse had told anyone whose you were—and saying, ‘Look! That’s him! ¡Ese es Charlie!’ And the first time I ever held you in my arms, I made you a promise—whispered it into your little ear even though you were too young to remember or understand. The promise was that I would always—siempre—look after you, para el resto de tu vida, and no power in this world or the other will stop me from keeping that promise. After all, an abuela’s job is never really done.…”

  For a moment her eyes drifted up to gaze at something behind me, but when I turned to look, there was nothing there—just my bedroom wall.

  A shudder shook the room. Windows rattled. Behind me, the TV blinked off.

  My abuela gripped my shoulder, still smiling. “Mi corazón, it is time to go.…”

  “What? Why? I just got here.…” I felt a single cold tear roll slowly down my face to drop into her palm. “And… I miss you so much.”

  “And I’ve missed you.” Her hand came up to wipe my cheek. Her voice was thick as she said, “One day we will be together again. But right now there is something you must finish—something only you can finish.”

  I knew what she meant. Only, I wasn’t so sure that I actually could. “But I can’t.… I can’t stop La Mano. There’s nothing I can manifest to beat Madremonte. I—I’m not strong enough.”

  My abuela leaned in close to whisper, “Charlie, your strength doesn’t come from your manifestations.… Your strength comes from your heart—your loving, selfless, incredible heart.” Her eyes smiled into mine, and she said, “You might be able to manifest animal traits, mi hijo, but you’re more human than all of us.” As she spoke, the edges of my abuela’s face began to glow, her outline blazing out, blurring into pure white light. Before I could ask what was going on, she said, “¿Y Carlito?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Evil has always drawn its power from fear, from anger. So don’t hold on to any and it won’t have any power over you.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHT

  CHAAARRRLIEEEE!”

  My name echoed through my head like thunder, and my eyes burst open and I sat up, gasping, a circle of white-hot pain burning—blazing—in the center of my forehead. My eyes flew to the thorn that had pierced my heart, and I saw that it had begun to sizzle and burn as if someone was blasting it with a blowtorch.

  At the same moment I noticed a fine yellow dust drifting down from between my eyes; it fell in tiny flakes and smelled faintly of wet hay.

  ¡Santo cielos! It was the stuff Zarate had dotted onto my forehead! And just like that la bruja’s words came back to me: La Marca will give you a second chance. But only one.

  I felt a tingling sensation in my chest and looked down again to see that the thorn had completely burned away, leaving nothing behind but a crumble of brownish ash that had gathered in the center of my lap. The hole in my shirt was still there, but the hole in my chest was not—and there wasn’t even a scar.

  Madremonte gave me a puzzled look. “Tricky bruja,” she said. “Pero no es un problema—we’ll simply try that again.”

  She let out a loud roar, and the walls of hedges began to tremble as if there were some wild animal trapped inside trying to break free. A hail of thorns shot out, arching through the air as they flew toward us.

  There were too many. Way too many. There was no way to dodge.

  The thorns came screaming at us like a prickly wall of death—

  And less than three inches from our faces they seemed to hit an invisible barrier, which flickered with bursts of greenish light as the thorns embedded themselves into it. For a crazy second I went all Urkel, thinking, Did I do that? Then the barrier must have dissipated because the thorns clattered harmlessly to the bony floor.

  Without thinking, I picked one up and saw that its razor tip had been seared flat, like someone had taken a butcher’s knife and hacked off the end.

  They were basically harmless now. Harmless twists of dried-up leaves. Violet’s eyes, wide with shock but relieved—really, really relieved—found mine.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk…,” said a low, smooth voice at our backs.

  I spun, saw the Witch Queen of Toledo standing there, her green eyes like fire, her long jeweled arms hanging loosely at her sides.

  Relief crashed over me like a tidal wave—we weren’t going to die after all!

  Joanna was shaking her head disapprovingly at Madremonte, her expression one of barely contained fury. “Not playing nice with los niños… I’m disappointed.”

  Then, in a blur of motion, she charged forward as Madremonte unleashed another volley of thorns, raising some sort of greenish-bluish shield that expanded over her like a liquid bubble, repelling the thorns, and tackled Mother Mountain (or should I say, the Mother of All Traitors) around the waist, both of the them vanishing out of sight with a crack of thunder the instant their bodies touched.

  I stared at the spot where they’d just been standing, dazed.

  “Where’d they go?”

  “Charlie, the hand!” Violet shouted, hauling me to my feet.

  “Go… go!”

  We raced past Madremonte’s thorny hedge but didn’t make it more than four, maybe five steps before a roaring, shrieking column of wind snaked down from out of nowhere, lifting us off our feet and sending us flying. Violet was thrown one way, almost ten yards up the hall, crashing down so hard she didn’t even scream, and I was flung the other, the entire left side of my body going numb as I slammed against the wall, hitting the floor a moment later like a sack of bricks.

  My head spun. The ground seemed to seesaw around me. Rolling onto my side, I grimaced at the pain in my ribs, my neck, my spine—and turned my bleary, tear-filled eyes up the hall to see the hand—La Mano Peluda itself—dancing along the edge of a cutout in the far wall, which overlooked the main alt
ar. There it was… prancing around on its fingertips, like some hairy, deformed, five-legged spider, flicking and kicking its fingers as it played puppeteer over the zombie horde below.

  “You’re mine,” I growled, but as I clawed at the gaps and cracks in the floor, trying to pull myself toward Violet, toward the hand, someone suddenly appeared in front of me, seeming to materialize out of thin air. And there he was—the legendary overall-wearing traitor himself—Saci Pererê, removing his stinking red cap and glancing around at us with that seashell pipe hanging off his lip.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINE

  I felt my hands ball into fists. “Saci, you backstabbing punk!”

  “Traitor!” I heard Violet shout.

  Saci turned those big brown eyes on me. “Dis no personal…,” he said. “Saci hope you two understand.”

  “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS?” I screamed up at him. “WE TRUSTED YOU!”

  “Saci got problem, okay? You know dis. La Mano know dis… and dey use it to make Saci do thing Saci no wanna do.”

  “Like betraying your friends?!”

  “Addiction’s a cruel master, irmão.… It take you farther than you wanna go and make you hurt people you don’ never wanna hurt.” His expression turned hard, like stone. “But Saci don’t have no friends.… Saci don’t need no friends.”

  “You’re wrong,” I said. “You had friends. You had us. But”—I flinched against a stab of pain in my ribs—“I guess you’re right, too, because we’re not your friends anymore.”

  A flash of hurt flickered across his face. “You think dis new for Saci?” he snapped, his voice bitter, his hands clenched fists at his sides. “Saci been alone his whole life! Saci don’t have no parents. Saci don’t have no family. SACI DON’T EVEN KNOW WHERE SACI COME FROM!” His dark eyes seemed to swim in their sockets. “And nobody ever like Saci when Saci was little.… Ain’t nobody wanna be Saci’s friend, because Saci different.… Saci only got one leg. He hop, not walk.… Saci got holes in his hands, can’t scoop water from the river to drink like everybody else. Nobody like Saci, nobody need Saci, so Saci don’t like or need nobody.… Like I say, Saci born alone, Saci gonna die alone—and that’s that.”

  “You talk like you’re so tough,” I said, “but all that stuff about not needing people—you’re lying. You want people to remember you, to talk about you. That’s why you behave the way you do; that’s why you play all those pranks! You’re crying out for attention, dude! You want people to know you exist, so that maybe one day—just maybe—you’ll find that one person who’ll give you the only thing you ever really wanted, the one thing you could never prank your way into getting… friendship.”

  Saci blinked, and a single tear streaked down his chubby cheek. “You don’ know Saci.… You don’ know what it’s like being different.”

  “Except I know exactly what it’s like! I’ve had horns growing out of my head, lobster claws for hands—I currently have wings stretching out of my back. I’m, like, the biggest freak in the whole world! And I was terrified—sooo terrified—that someone would find out just how different I really was.… But you wanna know what I learned? I learned that what makes you special aren’t the things that make you like everyone else; it’s every single little thing that makes you unlike them.”

  Saci was shaking his head now, tears free-falling down his face.

  “¿Qué esperas?” roared a voice behind us. “Kill him already!”

  I snapped my head around, grimacing against the pain in my neck. The asema was standing in the middle of the hallway, just beyond the thorny hedge. Its face was twisted in an angry snarl, revealing a bloodred mouth choked with jagged fangs. Its eyes burned with hate.

  Saci looked from me to the vampire, then back again. He wiped tears from his face, stretched one hand out toward me, palm out. I couldn’t believe it. He was seriously getting ready to whirlwind me into the afterlife. Getting ready to, quite literally, blow me away. Even after everything we’d been through—after everything I’d said!

  “FINISH HIM!” cried the asema. “¡TERMÍNALO!”

  Saci’s lips had begun to tremble. He flexed his fingers. His expression changed, becoming fierce, his dark eyes narrowing… but then his face changed again, softening; all the anger, all the venom vanishing from his eyes in an instant. He lowered his hand. His lips stopped trembling.

  The asema started to come forward. “What are you doing? KILL HIM!”

  But Saci said, “No.”

  Which stopped the vampire in its track. Its furious, hate-filled eyes bore into Saci. “¿Qué?” it hissed through its fangs. “Shall I take back the deed to the sugarcane farm? SHALL I TAKE BACK OUR ENTIRE AGREEMENT?”

  “Go ahead.” For several seconds that was Saci’s only answer. Then his head turned, his dark eyes found mine, and he said, “Because friendship mean caring more about others than you do ’bout youself.” He paused, glancing briefly toward Violet, before turning his gaze back to the vampire and adding, “And Saci don’t want no sugar farm anymore, anyway. Eating too much sweets been linked wit obesity and diabetes. A friend I once had taught me dat. So you can take it back. Take it all back.”

  And as you can imagine, that wasn’t exactly what the asema wanted to hear. The vampire let out a shriek high-pitched enough to shatter glass. My entire being seemed to flinch against that awful sound—and next thing, the asema transformed into a ball of light, a vapory, bluish orb that streaked up the hall toward us. It reappeared behind Saci, close enough to stare directly down at his shiny bald head; Saci had a moment to smile at me, just a second or two for his lips to begin to curl mischievously up at the corners. Then one of the vampire’s clawlike hands snapped out, and I saw Saci’s eyes widen in shock—in pain.

  “NOOOOOOOO!” I roared, and in what felt like slow motion, began pushing up with my legs even as Saci’s gave out underneath him.

  The asema, holding him up now, smiling wickedly, bent its head down to snarl into his ear, “How does it feel to be stabbed in the back…?”

  But an instant later its eyes too widened in a look of shock and pain.

  “You tell me,” growled another voice—Violet’s. She’d snuck up behind the vampire, Juan’s wooden dagger in her hand, and now she gave it a vicious twist.

  The asema’s face instantly drained of color. Its mouth opened in a soundless scream of horror, and before I could flinch, it exploded into a swirling cloud of bluish, chalky ash.

  Without the vampire holding him up, Saci collapsed to the ground like a sack of rice.

  “SACI!” I screamed, and Violet and I knelt down beside him; I lifted his head off the floor, resting it on my lap. Those big brown eyes rolled up to look at me.

  “Forgive me.… Forgive Saci,” he said, reaching out for me with trembling hands.

  “There’s nothing to forgive…,” I told him as he gripped my hand between both of his. His fingers were cold—freezing cold. “Just hold on! Hold on, okay? Zarate can help. She can make you all better.” Her yellowish marigold goo had helped me, hadn’t it? I turned, shouting, “ZARATE! CAN YOU HEAR ME? ZARATE, WE NEED YOU!”

  But the sounds of battle were still reverberating through the castle, and I knew there was no way the witch could hear me.

  “ZARATE!” I turned to call for her again, to stand up—but Saci grabbed me.

  “Don’ go.… It’s too late; no one can help Saci now.…”

  “Don’t say that,” Violet breathed. “Just hold on. I’ll get her!”

  “No.” Saci’s trembling fingers closed around V’s wrist. “Stay with Saci.… Just stay.”

  Violet was nodding now, tears filling her eyes, streaming down her face like rain on a windowpane. “Okay. I’ll stay.… We’ll both stay.”

  My voice was thick, shaky, as I said, “You’re gonna be all right, you hear me? You’re going to be back in Brazil and pranking people in no time. Just relax.” I tightened my grip on his hands.

  Saci flinched. “I guess it’s too late to make whirlwind and
go bye-bye, huh?”

  Violet and I both had to laugh at that. Laugh through the tears.

  “We’re ready to go if you are…,” I said.

  Saci smiled up at me, wincing with the effort even that tiny movement had cost him. “Dis not such a bad way to go, you know,” he said, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper. “Surrounded by meus amigos… by my first friends…” Dipping one trembling hand into the front of his overalls, he brought out a fat magic marker. After uncapping it with his teeth, he held it up, motioning for me to come closer. “For old time sake?” I grinned, leaning down so he could write on my face. When he finished, he motioned to Violet, and she also bent down so he could write on her. This time when he was done he looked up at us, smiling, and whispered, “Pranked you both once las time.…”

  On the last word, Saci’s breath wheezed out of his lungs in a low sigh, his eyes closed, and his grip on my hands went limp, his fingers falling open, lifeless.

  “No… no, no, no, no.” I grabbed his shoulders, shook him. “C’mon, don’t give up, dude.… SACI, LISTEN TO ME—DON’T GIVE UP! DO YOU HEAR ME? WAKE. UP! ”

  Violet touched her hands to mine. “Charlie… he’s gone.…”

  But I shook my head, not about to accept that. No, we had Zarate. We had Joanna.… One of them could bring him back—couldn’t they…?

  Even as tears blurred the world around me, in my mind it was like I was watching clips from old home movies. I was seeing my abuela in her favorite rocking chair, telling me Saci’s stories in the little living room of my old house. I saw myself lying out on my bed, no more than five years old, drawing pictures of Saci on the inside cover of my math book: Saci tying someone’s shoelaces together, Saci sprinkling flies in a bowl of soup. I saw my mom and dad running around my backyard on a sunny afternoon, chasing me, while I dodged between lawn chairs and potted plants, wearing Saci’s trademark red cap and overalls, pretending to be him.