World's Scariest Places: Volume Two

by Bates, Jeremy

  She kept her eyes fixed on the water. It was very clear. She could see all the way to the bottom and the small little fish darting away from her feet.

  “This is fun,” she told Angela.

  “Don’t go too deep.”

  “I know that.”

  “Don’t slip.”

  “I know, Angela! I’m not a baby.”

  On the rippling surface of the canal, she saw her reflection grinning up at her. And then she saw her father’s reflection looming next to hers. His shadow fell over her.

  “Turn around,” Angela said quickly.

  María was already turning when the rock her father was swinging struck her in the side of the head and sent her crashing into the cold water.

  Jack

  1

  Close to an hour later, pushing four in the morning, the storm finally seemed to show signs of moving on. The rain still fell in relentless droves against the corrugated iron roof, but the wind and thunder had eased off, and it no longer felt as though the cabin might be torn from its foundation and tossed to Kansas.

  Elizaveta and I sat in silence, trying not to fall asleep. I was lost in half-lucid thoughts of Nitro, of his blusterous personality, his machismo, how I despised yet respected him, respected not only his ability to remain cool under pressure, to lead rather than be led, but also his discipline, the work he obviously put into keeping fit, which, oddly, made his death even more tragic. In my half-lucidity I drew a comparison between a neglected yard shriveling up in a drought to a lovingly tended garden suffering the same fate. Because all those years spent lifting weights and watching what he ate…for what? He would never lift weights or eat anything again. All his hard work ceased to mean anything in the second or two it took a maniac to slit his throat open. It all seemed so senseless.

  At some point I realized I didn’t want to reflect on Nitro anymore, on his meaningless death, I didn’t want to be sad or feel despair, and I ended up thinking about my sister, Camille. She was a year younger than me and still living in Vegas, a dancer in a show playing in the Broadway Theater at the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino. I saw the show once. It was a matinee, filled with dancing, music, and comedy. The dancing was great, the comedy not so much, with most of it being raunchy. I remember the singer though. She was pretty and a capable performer. I met her backstage. I’d been chatting with Camille when the singer—I think her name was Joan—came down the corridor carrying a bouquet of flowers, presumably given to her by an adoring member of the audience. Camille introduced us, saying, “Joan, this is my brother, Jack. He’s a NASCAR driver.” It always embarrassed me when she introduced me with not only my name but profession. After all, you didn’t say, “This is Steve, he’s a waiter over at The Olive Garden,” or, “This is Joe, he’s a dentist.” Anyway, Camille was proud of me, I guess, and I was proud of her (and come to think of it, I do believe I’ve introduced her, saying, “This is Camille, she’s a performer in a Vegas show”).

  I missed Camille. The last we saw each other was in Florida. She and my parents flew there to visit me in the hospital after the accident. They remained for a few days, leaving only when I assured them I was one hundred percent okay.

  In hindsight, I wish I’d made more effort to see them over the years.

  I’ll be seeing them all shortly, I told myself. Once I’m back in Polanco, I’ll arrange movers to transport my stuff, pay off whatever remained on the house lease, pack what I need into the Porsche, and drive north for the border. It was about a thirty-hour drive from Mexico City to Vegas. I’d split it up over a few days. I liked long road trips. Pulling over whenever you pleased, wherever you pleased, checking into random motels, trying local food, starting out again first thing in the morning with a hot coffee and some tunes on the radio. All this reminded me of the first two or three years I’d been with Pita, when we would cruise the interstates from race to race together, free as birds, our biggest concern the distance to the next rest stop when we were busting to use the toilet.

  And then I saw Elizaveta in the car with me instead of Pita. The image caught me off guard, yet it excited me too. I imagined the two of us heading north through the desert, stopping at small towns for a day or a week, we had no schedule to keep, making love whenever the urge took us, only with a bed beneath us, perhaps some music, clean and showered, no fear of waking anyone else up…

  Nevertheless, this was a fantasy, nothing more. Even if she wanted to run away with me, she didn’t have an American visa. She wouldn’t get across the border.

  We could always stay in Mexico. Go south instead of north, go to Cancún. Live in tropical paradise—until her visa expired and she had to go home.

  I could marry her.

  Right. It wasn’t that easy. It took time to get a greencard, there was a lot of paperwork involved, a lot of hassles.

  Besides, why would I want to marry her? I barely knew her. Plus, she’d only be marrying me for the same reason she wanted to marry Jesus: money and a visa.

  I glanced at Elizaveta now. She was looking at me, and I couldn’t shake the feeling she knew somehow what I was thinking about.

  “You look tired,” she said.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You can rest. I will keep watch—”

  The door to Pepper’s bedroom creaked open.

  Rosa appeared. She looked guilty, as though she were up past her bedtime and knew it

  I said, “What’s wrong, Rosa?”

  “I can’t sleep,” she said.

  “Do you want to hang out with us?”

  She nodded.

  I got up and went to her, closing the door quietly behind her and leading her back to where I’d been sitting. She settled between Elizaveta and I.

  “What are you guys doing?” she asked.

  “Waiting,” I said.

  “For what?”

  “For morning.”

  “Then we’ll leave?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Good. I don’t like it here.”

  “I don’t either.”

  She studied the floor, and I could guess her next question.

  “What happened to Muscles?” she asked.

  “He was…hurt.”

  “Is he dead like Miguel?”

  I couldn’t see how lying would help any. I nodded.

  “Did the ghost get him too?”

  Elizaveta said, “We don’t know anything for sure.”

  Rosa looked at her. “Why do you talk funny?”

  Elizaveta blinked. “I don’t talk funny.”

  “Yeah, you do.”

  “How funny?”

  “Like the bad guys in movies.”

  Elizaveta snorted. “American movies.”

  “She’s from Russia,” I said. “That’s how Russians speak English.”

  “Are there Russian movies too?” Rosa asked.

  “Of course,” Elizaveta said.

  “I haven’t seen any.”

  “There are, don’t you worry,” Elizaveta said, somewhat indignant.

  “There are,” I agreed. “But they’re so bad nobody outside of Russia watches them.”

  Elizaveta made a pfft sound.

  We fell silent and listened to the machine gun patter of rain on the roof.

  Rosa said, “You promised to teach me ‘Little Miss Muffet,’ Jack. Can you still do that?”

  “Sure,” I told her. “It’s really easy. It’s only six lines.”

  “I’m ready.”

  I recited the nursery rhyme, explaining along the way to both Rosa and Elizaveta the words “tuffet” and “curds” and “whey.”

  “What a stupid song,” Elizaveta said at the conclusion. “Girl sits on tuffet? Runs away from spider?”

  “Have you ever heard the Russian version?”

  “There is Russian version?”

  I nodded and said, “Little Miss Beautymark, crawled in the dark, searching for carrots and potatoes; along came a scorpion, who made her scream like an orphan, and frightened
Miss Beautymark away.”

  “Wait!” Rosa protested. “Eliza doesn’t have a beauty mark.”

  “I needed something that rhymed.”

  “Well, ‘potatoes’ and ‘away’ don’t rhyme.”

  “Sorry, Rosa. I was sort of making it up on the spot.”

  “You can be real jerk, Jack,” Elizaveta said, and her eyes were daggers.

  I looked at her, surprised. “It was just a joke, Eliza.”

  “You think being orphan is joke? You think it’s funny?”

  “It rhymed with scorpion, that’s all.”

  “You didn’t know I was an orphan?”

  “What? No! You were an orphan?”

  “Pita didn’t tell you?”

  “No. Eliza, I swear. Shit… If I knew…”

  “You don’t have any parents?” Rosa asked her.

  “No,” Elizaveta said, still glaring at me. But then the edge left her. She shook her head and said to Rosa softly, “They were taken away.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did they do something bad?”

  “No. They were good people.”

  “So why were they taken away?”

  “It is complicated,” she said. “But very simply, when I was growing up, the leaders in my country had great power. They were like… Do you know puppet-master? They were like that. They controlled everything. Media, economy, political opponents, free speech. They were so afraid of losing power they used surveillance to watch everybody, and terror to keep everybody obedient. They were especially afraid of people like my parents, people who told truth. So one day they just took them away.”

  I was watching Elizaveta closely. I could see the pain these memories brought her.

  What was it she’d told me earlier?

  Not everyone has easy life like you.

  I really did feel like a jackass now.

  Rosa said, “I don’t think I ever want too much power.”

  Elizaveta smiled sadly and rubbed the girl’s hair.

  “Why don’t you try to get some sleep, Rosa?” I said.

  “I’m still not tired.”

  “Morning will come faster if you’re asleep.”

  “Can you sing me a lullaby?”

  “Me?” I said. “No. I don’t sing.”

  She looked at Elizaveta. “Can you?”

  “I don’t know lullaby.”

  “I can teach you one. But I only know the Spanish. Is that okay?”

  “Yes, I can understand Spanish—if you don’t think I will sound too funny?”

  Rosa missed the sarcasm and said, “Great! It’s called ‘A la roro niño.’ It begins like this: A la roro niño, a lo roro ya, duérmete mi niño, duérmete mi amor.” There were six verses in total. Rosa would sing one verse, Elizaveta would repeat it, then they would move on to the next. They were melodic, repetitive, and soothing, with long pauses and alternating harmonies. Rosa sang with a slightly higher pitch than Elizaveta, though both conveyed the emotions of love and affection.

  When they finished I said, “You guys are awesome.”

  Rosa beamed. Elizaveta blushed.

  “I know more,” Rosa said. “Can we sing another? Please?”

  So over the next ten or fifteen minutes Rosa and Elizaveta sang several more lullabies. Some were mournful and haunting, like a lament. Others were hypnotic and moving. All were therapeutic, lifting some of the heaviness that had settled over my heart.

  While Rosa sang the latest verse, Elizaveta smiled over the girl’s head at me. I smiled back. Then her eyes focused on something behind me. Uncertainty and confusion flickered in them a moment before her face drained of color.

  2

  When I was a kid, traveling the country with my parents in the RV, we’d spent much of one summer in a caravan park in Montana near the Little Belt Mountains. I’d really enjoyed it. There were the remains of railways and mines to explore, cold streams to splash in, rugged trails to follow, and a lot of neat wildlife. I made friends with a raccoon that loved toffee, a particularly brave chipmunk that would hop right onto my outstretched hand for a few nuts, and a girl from Canada named Sally who was into catching insects. Sally carried around her insect of the day in a Tic Tac container, which she liked to show off. Her prepubescent interest in entomology rubbed off on me, and soon I had my own collection of ants, beetles, butterflies, crickets, so forth. Every now and then we’d have a beetle death match. A cereal box with the back cut away served as the gladiatorial ring. Usually the chosen beetles would try to escape rather than fight each other, but they were still fun to watch and egg on. One evening, however, I left the gladiatorial ring outside during a light rainfall, and the cardboard became soggy and warped. The cereal boxes in my RV were still mostly full, so I couldn’t make a new ring. I knew Sally would blame me and maybe beat me up—she was two years older and a bit of a bully—so I went to the edge of the campground to search the line of garbage bins for a cereal box. I tipped the first bin over as quietly as I could and prodded through the trash. That’s when I heard a deep chuff. I turned, scanning the dark, and spotted a huge black bear no more than ten feet from me. It stood on all fours, a plastic bag hanging from its snout, just standing there and watching me. In fact, it must have been standing there and watching me for a good minute.

  This had always held the title of the scariest moment of my life—until now—when I turned around and saw the eye peering through a hole in the wall, watching us.

  3

  The hole was an excised knot in a plank of wood maybe three feet from the ground. It was the size of a golf ball. The iris of the eye peering through it appeared brownish-red, surrounded with white. It gleamed wetly in the candlelight.

  Then it blinked.

  Elizaveta and Rosa leapt to their feet but remained oddly silent, as if they’d lost their voices. I was on my feet too, my blood icy sludge in my veins. I snagged the pistol from the waistband of my shorts. I raised it toward the devilish eye and squeezed the trigger.

  Click.

  The safety!

  I found it, flicked it off, aimed at the eye again.

  It was gone.

  Nevertheless, I squeezed off two shots. The rounds blew two new holes through the wall.

  The reports were earsplitting and toneless. Blue smoked trailed up from the end of the barrel. Cordite filled my nostrils.

  Jesus and Pita emerged from the bedroom, demanding to know what was going on.

  “Solano’s outside!” I said, shoving the table aside and throwing open the door. I expected an ambush, a blade to arc through the air.

  Nothing.

  I swung the pistol to the left, to the right.

  Nobody on the porch.

  I scanned the dark forest.

  Nobody fleeing.

  Nobody anywhere.

  From behind me Jesus swore softly.

  4

  He was looking at Nitro’s body. It was exactly where we’d left it. I was about to ask him what was wrong when I noticed Nitro’s eyes—or lack of eyes.

  Like Miguel’s, they were missing.

  1957

  She sank below the surface of the canal in a cloud of red until she came to rest on the rock-covered bottom. Unconscious, she wasn’t holding her breath. Instead water gushed down her airway, filling her lungs, preventing the transfer of oxygen to her blood. There would be a feeling of tearing and burning inside her chest, though she wasn’t aware of this. She was blissfully ignorant of any physical sensation.

  Then her breathing stopped altogether, and she was in respiratory arrest.

  Somewhere deep inside of her, however, in the womb of her mind where all thoughts were born and most dwelled without being spoken out loud or acted upon, she was wondering why this was happening to her, and this bewilderment was mixed with surprise that she was drowning, that she was dying.

  And then the strangest thing happened. She experienced a kind of hiccup, and the part of her responsible for these tho
ughts was outside of her body. It was floating back up through the water, through the surface, and she could see her little body lying at the bottom of the canal, convulsing violently now, in the final stages of death, and she could see her father and mother already in the gondola, moving quickly away, her father’s face a steely mask as he pushed the boat with the pole, her mother sobbing into her hands.

  And as she watched them leaving her for a second time, abandoning her to her cruel fate, a hatred of frustration and despair roared through her, consuming her entirely, a banshee-like madness driven by a single purpose.

  Revenge.

  Elizaveta

  1

  Jesus blundered into the cabin, his face manic with fear, shouting in Spanish that Nitro’s eyes were missing. Pita moaned miserably. Elizaveta felt sick. Whoever was out there—Solano, it was only Solano, an old man—took Nitro’s eyes too? But why?

  She clutched Rosa against her, covering her ears with her hands.

  Jack returned next, pistol in hand. He seemed agitated.

  “Did you hit him, Jack?” Elizaveta asked.

  He shook his head. “He got away.”

  “What did you see?” Jesus demanded. “What did you shoot at?”

  Elizaveta pointed at the knothole. “Solano was watching us through that.”

  “Watching you? Christ! For how long?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe five minutes? Maybe all night?”

  Jesus whirled on Jack. “And you let him get away? How did he get away? You had a gun.”

  “The safety was on. I wasn’t ready.”

  “Fuck, Jack!” Jesus exclaimed. “You could have killed him!”

  “Whatever, he didn’t do anything. Everybody’s okay—”

  “He took Nitro’s eyes!”

  “Did you see him, Jack?” Pita asked. Her hair was tousled and frizzy from the wind and rain, while mascara and dried tears streaked her cheeks, making her look zombie-like. “Solano? Did you actually see Solano?”