World's Scariest Places: Volume Two

by Bates, Jeremy

  “Well, what do you do when you drink then?”

  “Do you really care?”

  “I’m curious, Jack.”

  “I have a car I’m working on, rebuilding.”

  “That sounds fun.”

  “It’s more work than fun, but it fills in the time. I’m also working on a board game.”

  She frowned. “A bored game? Why?”

  “Huh? No—board.” I pantomimed a square. “Like Monopoly.”

  “I know Monopoly.”

  “Do you know IQ 2000?”

  “IQ 2000?”

  “It’s a board game too.”

  “You forget where I come from, Jack. We did not have Coca Cola or Pepsi when I was child in Soviet Union. You think we had this IQ 2000?”

  Sometimes I did forget Elizaveta grew up in the Soviet Union. It might have only collapsed a decade ago, but to me it seemed as relegated to the past as Nazi Germany. “Well, the game I’m working on is like IQ 2000, trivia. But the questions and categories relate to NASCAR.”

  “That sounds fantastic. I will buy it.”

  “It’s never going to be published. It’s just a hobby.” I shrugged. “What about you?” I asked, wanting to switch topics. “What do you do every day?”

  “I work,” she said. “I am governess, you know.”

  “But what about your free time?”

  “Ha. Free time? I have zero free time, Jack.”

  “You’re that busy?”

  “I am like mother to these twins. It is exhausting.”

  “But rewarding, I imagine.”

  “Maybe if the children were…normal.”

  “They’re not?”

  “Their father is a Russian oligarch, Jack. They get anything they want. At last birthday party, they had pony rides, wild pigs, piñata, a cake bigger than me. They are…” She pinned her nose up with her thumb.

  “Piggish?”

  “Yes, but not that word. Snotty? Yes, they are snotty monsters.”

  “Can’t you quit?”

  “And do what? Go back to Russia?”

  “Is it still that bad?”

  Elizaveta nodded. “We have a president who says he will help poor, but he won’t. He only helps himself. He is corrupt. Everybody is corrupt there. Da, it is still bad.”

  “Do you like Mexico?”

  “Better than Russia.”

  “Then just get another job. There are some good international schools around.”

  “You don’t understand, Jack. You are American. You can work anywhere. Mexico, Europe, anywhere. Your government has agreements with other governments. Russian government has agreement with nobody. No country wants Russian worker. No country gives visa. I was very lucky. The family I work for is very powerful. Only they can get me visa. I can’t quit.”

  I chewed on this because I’d never given it much thought before; I’d never had any reason to. I said, “When does your visa expire?”

  “Next spring. So I still have time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “To convince Jesus to marry me.”

  Her words slapped me. I felt hurt, bitter. However, I immediately swept these emotions aside. She and Jesus were still a couple. Of course they were. What happened between us, the sex, it was just that: sex. A diversion, an escape, albeit temporary, from Nitro’s death, this island of horrors.

  Still, I found myself asking: “You want to marry him?”

  “I would be a permanent resident. I would not be forced back to Russia. I could quit job as governess.” She offered a playful smile. “Then I could build cars and make board games too.”

  I wasn’t amused; I was jealous. It was stupid. Nothing more was going to happen between Elizaveta and I.

  Still…

  “So you’re just with him for the visa?” I asked.

  Elizaveta’s smiled vanished. “I like him, Jack.”

  “Because he has money? Because he can get you a permanent visa?”

  Her eyes flared. “Do not judge me, Jack,” she said dangerously. “Not everyone has easy life like you.”

  “I’ve had an easy life?” I said, genuinely surprised. “I worked like a dog to get to where I was—”

  “But you could get there,” she said. “How many Russian race car drivers do you know? Well?”

  “None,” I admitted.

  “Because they cannot drive race car? Nyet. Most cannot buy shee-it car. You think they can buy race car? You take much for granted, Jack.” Before I could say anything, she added: “Let me tell you, okay? I lived in building with six other families. I woke up before light every morning just to avoid line for bath. In winter my floor, the fourth, was always very cold, but the third floor was always very humid with steam. Go figure. My school was also always very cold. You needed jacket, hat, scarf. Sometimes the ink in pens would freeze. The children I taught—you know what they all wanted?”

  I shrugged. “To become astronauts?”

  “To move to United States.” She shook her head, reflectively. “Life in the Soviet Union was not so bad. You did not have to think about having food, paying bills. You had zero concerns really—as long as you didn’t…how do you say…stand out of crowd. And most people didn’t. They didn’t know better, what they were lacking. But after Gorbachev, everything changed, everything. For first time you could see beyond iron curtain. You could watch CNN or BBC. People realized how shee-it their lives were compared to Western countries, especially the US.”

  I stared at her, digesting what she was saying.

  “Let me tell you about one day,” she went on. She was getting worked up, and I didn’t want to interrupt her. “I was walking back from school where I taught. I was carrying bags. You know, I carried bags everywhere I went—everyone did. This was no fashion statement, Jack. We didn’t know when basic commodities would be available. So better to be prepared, right? I passed a grocery store near my building. There was line, forty people maybe, waiting in cold. I didn’t know what they were waiting for, but I didn’t want to miss out on getting something—anything was better than nothing—so I joined line too. I waited maybe one hour. Snow started to fall. My fingers and toes were frozen. My face and lips and nose, frozen. I remember a car pulled over on the road. The driver took the windshield wipers from trunk and attached them to car. They go automatically, there is no off switch, so you have to take them off in dry weather or they fall apart. I watched him from the line, him and his old car, thinking he was very lucky, because he had car. I got angry. Because why did he have car? Why couldn’t I have car too? Why did I have to stand in line? Standing in lines was for grandmothers. That was their purpose in life. They wait and wait and wait for whatever might be at the end. But I was no babushka. I was about to go to front of line…bud in…when another woman tried this first. A man yelled at her. She yelled back, saying she had kids to feed. The man, he seemed drunk, he punched her. She fell to the ground, bleeding in snow. No one helped her. They didn’t want to lose spot in line.”

  I was shocked. “You didn’t help her?”

  “Of course I did. I couldn’t let her lie there in snow. I let her go in front of me in line. Others were not happy. They yelled at me too.”

  “Did you ever reach the front of it?”

  “Yes. All that was left was bread. Crumbs, more like it. The shop owner, Yury, sometimes had items from black market, but that day I had nothing to trade him.”

  “What did you usually trade him?”

  “My rations of vodka usually. Sometimes US dollars.”

  “Where did you get US dollars?”

  She shrugged. “From trading something with someone else. That was how it worked. Once, I found fur hat on street. It was like finding gold. I ate very well that month.”

  “Someone traded you their rations for a hat?”

  “A fur hat.”

  “Yeah, but if they were starving…?”

  “You don’t understand, Jack. It was because people had nothing that they wanted something. Ho
w do I explain? It is not wealth that makes you happy. It is simply having more than your neighbor. If you are poor, but have more than your poor neighbor, you are rich. It makes you feel good. Human nature, I suppose.

  “Anyway, my point, the system was broken. Nothing worked. Then the war in Chechnya happened and everything got worse. Violence everywhere. People planting explosives in apartment buildings. Murders, robberies. So, no, Jack, my students didn’t want to become astronauts. They wanted what they saw on TV, what they saw in America. Because you work hard in America, you can do anything, right? American dream, right? They just want fair chance in life.” She paused for a long moment. “So you ask me if I am with Jesus for money and visa? Da, maybe. Do I love him? Do you want truth, Jack? I don’t know love. I don’t know what this is. But I do know surviving, and I don’t want to survive always, I want to live. Can you understand that now?”

  “Yeah, Eliza,” I said, believing her last statement to be an apt aphorism. “I think I can.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I can.”

  “Good.”

  5

  We were quiet after that, during which time Elizaveta smoked her last two cigarettes and I finished off the vodka. Elizaveta’s revelations had caught me off guard. I’d had no idea how tough she had it growing up in the Soviet Union and the subsequent Russia that emerged from its ashes. All I’d really known of that part of the world was what I’d seen in movies, and this was more James Bond than Gorky Park: frozen tundra, international spies, Machiavellian women, and cold-hearted assassins. And what was that bit about Elizaveta not knowing what love was? What about her family, her friends? She made it sound as though she’d grown up in an icy hell.

  With these thoughts in my head, I got up to give Elizaveta some space and to check in on Lucinda. Her condition hadn’t changed. She was alive but corpse-like, pallid, unresponsive, fading inward. Even her hair seemed flat, lifeless. Her rapid deterioration bothered me all the more because I was helpless to prevent it. I could not provide her the medicine or assistance she needed. I could do nothing but hope she pulled through until morning, or whenever the storm moved on. Frustrated, I was about to leave when her eyes fluttered open.

  I knelt next to her. “Lucinda?” I said softly, quickly.

  She stared at me.

  “Lucinda?”

  “…muñeca…”

  “What?”

  Her eyes closed.

  “Lucinda?”

  She didn’t reply.

  6

  When I returned to the main room Elizaveta was exactly as she’d been, sitting cross-legged, staring at the floor. The candlelight cast a gentle chiaroscuro pattern across her features, making her appear statuesque, ageless. When I sat down, she came out of whatever trance she’d been under and looked at me.

  “Lucinda opened her eyes,” I said.

  “Yo-moyo!” Elizaveta swiveled her head toward Lucinda’s room. “And?”

  “It was only for a couple of seconds. She’s unconscious again.”

  “Did she speak?”

  I nodded. “She said, ‘Monica,’ I think. Something like that. She mumbled it. But that’s what it sounded like.”

  Elizaveta frowned. “Monica, like person?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was ‘munica?’”

  “Munica…” She sat straighter. “Muñeca?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said. “What does that mean?”

  “Doll,” she said.

  7

  “Are you shitting me?” I said.

  Elizaveta shook her head. “Muñeca is Spanish for ‘doll.’ This island, it is called, Isle de las Muñecas.”

  “Ah, right,” I said. I pondered this, examining the possibilities, the implications, then added, “I wonder if she thinks she’s in a hospital or something. She wanted to tell us where she was attacked.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe she thinks doll attacked her.”

  I chuffed. “Come on, Eliza.”

  “I said she thinks. She is injured. She is dying. Maybe she is… What is word? Sees make-believe? Del…?”

  “Delirious?”

  “Yes, that.”

  I nodded. “She might not have been fully conscious. Could have been speaking from a dream.”

  “Should we try to wake her again?”

  “How?”

  “Shake her. Or pour water on her.”

  “On her face? I don’t think that’s a good idea, Eliza.”

  “But she could tell us what happened.”

  “Or go into cardiac arrest.”

  Elizaveta frowned. Thunder resounded. “Earlier,” she said, “before Nitro…before what happened to him…you mentioned a doll. It disappeared. Do you think Solano took it?”

  I nodded. “I think he’s been watching us ever since we arrived at the island. I had a feeling, after I had that fight with Nitro and left you guys, I had a feeling of being watched. I thought it was the dolls…having their eyes on me. But now I think it was probably Solano. It makes sense he would follow me, doesn’t it? He didn’t want me stumbling across Miguel’s body, or Lucinda and Rosa.”

  “But you found Rosa.”

  “And he realized he could no longer just wait and hide and hope we left. We knew something happened, we would call the police. So he went in the cabin after Rosa and I left to get more weapons or whatever he needed. That’s when he must have taken the doll. I don’t know why he would. Maybe it was special to him. His favorite. Actually, I think it was—the way he put makeup on it, bathed it. Anyway, he’s crazy. It doesn’t matter why he took it. He just did.”

  “He never attacked us though. When we split up, it was just Jesus, Pita, and me. Why not attack us then?”

  “That’s still three against one, and he’s an old man. Besides, he would have known by then the storm was coming. He would have known we were staying on the island overnight. Probably figured he’d try to knock us off one by one.”

  “He didn’t attack you or Pita. You had first watch. Why not attack you? Why wait for Jesus and Nitro?”

  “Maybe he hadn’t worked up the nerve yet. Or maybe he was waiting for us to all go to sleep. But when Nitro and Jesus went out, he realized we were keeping watches, and he had to act.”

  Elizaveta considered this. “These are many ‘maybes,’ Jack.”

  “It’s speculation, yeah,” I said. “But, hey, if you got something better, something that doesn’t involve ghosts or animated dolls, please tell me, I’m all ears.”

  1957

  1

  María sat in the front of the trajinera, watching the trees and colorful flowers float pass on the banks of the canal. Angela was seated next to her, watching the scenery too. She wasn’t the real Angela that Sister Lupita stole. She was a new one that her father had purchased for her the day before.

  “What’s that, Angela?” she said. “You want to go swimming?”

  “Can we?” she asked.

  “Do you know how to swim?”

  “Not really. But I can learn.”

  “I guess I can learn too.”

  María turned to look at her mother, and her father behind her, pushing the boat with a long pole. They returned her look, puzzled. They couldn’t hear her speaking to Angela. María and Angela were using their special voices that only each of them could hear.

  She said out loud: “I want to go swimming.”

  “We’re going to have a picnic first,” her mother replied.

  “I said I want to go swimming!”

  “After we eat, sweetheart. Then you can go swimming. Is that okay?”

  María faced forward again. She heard her parents talking behind her, but she ignored them. She said to Angela, “We can go swimming after we eat.”

  “Okay.”

  2

  A short time later María’s father steered the trajinera through weedy water until it bumped against the bank of an island. He got out and held the gondola steady as María climb
ed onto land first, then her mother. They went a short way inland until they found a patch of soft ground beneath a big tree. María’s mother set down a serape for them to sit on. It was woven in shades of gray and black and had fringes at the ends. Her mother owned all sorts of these blanket-like shawls, and she used them for everything: bedspreads, sofa covers, car seat covers. There was even one hanging on the wall in the living room, next to the picture of the Virgin Mary. Before María went to Saint Agatha’s School for Lost Children, she had loved all of them. They made her feel safe and special when she was curled up in one. Now, however, the serape on the ground meant nothing to her. In fact, if anything, it angered her. Everything seemed to anger her recently.

  Except Angela.

  “You’re my best friend, Angela,” she said in her silent voice.

  “You’re my best friend too.”

  “I’m never going to let someone take you again.”

  María’s father and mother began unpacking the picnic basket they’d brought, setting the food on the ground: watermelon slices, tortas, nachos with avocado salsa, pickled potatoes, white-powdered cookies, candied pecans, and a big bottle of lemonade. María was hungry and stuffed herself until her belly ached. Afterward her mother asked María if she could brush her hair. María always used to like when her mother brushed her hair—when it had been long and thick—so she said yes. While brushing it, her mother began to sing a lullaby under her breath. It was one she had often sung to María when she was younger.

  María closed her eyes, enjoying the warm sun on her face and the brush’s bristles tickling her scalp and her mother singing in her soft, beautiful voice, and although she wasn’t aware of it, she was smiling for the first time in a long, long while.

  3

  The water felt cold on María’s bare feet and ankles, even though it was summer. Nevertheless, she waded farther into the canal, gripping Angela in her hand. The water rose to her knees. The rocks beneath her feet turned smooth and slimy, and she had to be careful not to slip.

  She wasn’t wearing a bathing suit, because she wasn’t really going swimming. She was just splashing around, and that was okay with her. The hem of her dress was already wet and clinging to her thighs. That was okay too. It would dry when she got out.